This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Lasketteli me hiitolo mien hintoja. Ostan nyt talven tarjoushintaiset junnalliput. Esimerkiksi Helsinki Tampere alkaen neljä 90- ja Oulu Helsinki alkaen neljä toista 90. Kampania voimassa kahdeksastoista tammi kuuta asti. Ver yhteysellä matkalla. Hystytäni, puuttiin ja kohdalla. Mä oon BBC.com, ja joten se on todella. Kampania on se, että se on todella. Kolumbia on se, että se on todella kohdalla. Tämä on yksi kohdalla. Tämä on todella. Nasa on se, että se on yksi kohdalla. 10 000 protestas on se, että on yksi kohdalla. Tämä on yksi kohdalla, että on yksi kohdalla. Tämä on yksi kohdalla, että se on yksi kohdalla, että se on yksi kohdalla. Tämä on yksi kohdalla, että se on yksi kohdalla. Tämä on yksi kohdalla, että se on yksi kohdalla, että se on yksi kohdalla, että se on yksi kohdalla, että se on yksi kohdalla, että se on yksi kohdalla. Sitten järjestelmää on järjestelmää, että minulla on seuraavaa muuta. Ja sitten, käy, että olen seuraavaa, että järjestelmää on järjestelmää. Hienoa, että hän on kylä, että hän on järjestelmää, että hän on järjestelmää, että hän on järjestelmää. It points to the widespread nature of anger frustration and grievances across Iranian society. I think the protests are adding to a cycle of protest that make clear that change is coming one way or another. No one knows exactly where all this leads now. Donald Trump has again warned Iran it will be hit hard if people are killed. Soon after these pictures emerged, the regime imposed a near total internet blackout. Cutting Iranians off from each other and the outside world. Caroline Hawley reporting. I asked GR goal from the BBC's Persian service if this feels like a turning point for Iran. It is certainly the most sustainable and white ranging unless we have seen in many years. And that alone makes it significant. But what we have seen in Tehran and the footages we have obtained and also eyewitnesses before the regime cut off the internet totally. We're telling us in so many different neighborhoods in Tehran, tens of thousands of people have pulled into the street chanting slogans against the Iran Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Hamley targeting him directly holding him responsible for the current conditions of the country. I think in the past most of the mass protests were outside Tehran. And I think this time around it is also in Tehran and if people in Tehran come out in masses it will encourage the rest of the country and it could be a turning point. Iranian human rights groups say more than 40 people have been killed. BBC Persian has talked to the family of 21 of them and confirmed their identities. When the protests started it seemed to be about money, the economy, inflation, stuff like that but it's changed hasn't it? The US-led sanction has crippled the economy. The value of Iranian currency rules has sharply fallen against US dollar and this has created an unsustainable situation for so many people. Many people are struggling to make ends meet. But also many people are unhappy about social restrictions and deep anger at critical unaccountability. Corruption and highest level among the officials and also their families. I think there are a combination of so many different reasons people are coming to the street. It feels many of them have little to lose. GR Gold from the BBC's Persian Service. Protest has been spreading in the United States over the fatal shooting of a woman by a federal immigration agent on Wednesday. Thousands of people marched through the streets of Minneapolis, close to where René Good and American Citizen were shot, chanting slogans against immigration enforcement or ICE. These residents were vocal in their opposition. I'm showing that my discomfort with ICE being here and calling senators and mayors and telling them how I feel and stuff like that. I feel like that's just one way that I can show my support. They need to get out. There wasn't a problem in our state until they showed up. Some things got to be done and I don't think violence is the answer, but things have to change. The Trump administration does not like Minneapolis because Minneapolis stands up to the Trump administration. And so their presence is really to just incite more chaos, incite fear. Hundreds of people also gathered at demonstrations in New York and Philadelphia. The incident has sharpened the already intense political divide across the US. Officials have offered different accounts of her killing. With the Trump administration claiming the ICE agent was acting in self-defense, while local officials say the woman posed no danger. Here's the vice president, JD Vance. There's a part of me that feels very, very sad for this woman, not just because she lost her life, but because I think she is a victim of left-wing ideology. What young mother shows up and decides they're going to throw their car in front of ICE officers who are enforcing legitimate law. You've got to be a little brainwashed to get to that point. Officials in the US state of Minnesota say the FBI has cut them out of the investigation into the incident and that the inquiry will be neither transparent nor fair without the involvement of local law enforcement officials. But the Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said they had no jurisdiction over the case. State Governor Tim Woltt said the people in the Trump administration had already passed judgment. They have determined the character of a 37-year-old mom that they didn't even know, don't know. They've determined that the actions are done. I don't know. I've not used inflammatory terms of what happened. I've asked us to find the answers. The only way we find the answers is a thorough investigation by non-partisan professionals. Well, during his election campaign, President Trump promised the largest deportation program in American history. And he placed ICE at the center of his immigration policies. The agency has deported hundreds of thousands of people in recent months, but critics say that it's acting as a paramilitary organization. So how did the American public feel about what's going on? That's a question I put to our North America editor, Sarah Smith. Well, if you look at recent polling that was conducted before this incident in Minnesota, you'll see that most people do generally support Donald Trump's immigration policies. It's desire to stop illegal immigrants coming across the border and to deport undocumented migrants who are living in the United States. But over recent months, when we have been seeing more ICE agents moving into different cities and using quite aggressive tactics there, more and more people have been concerned about the method in which this is being conducted. And most recently, more than half of people say that they are really worried about how this policy is being carried out. But there are no signs from the administration that they are going to change their tactics in any way as a result of what's happened in Minneapolis. They're already sending more agents into that city and are very unlikely to back down from the kind of harsh enforcement tactics that they have been using up until now. So it seems that they don't feel that this is damaging the popularity of the Trump administration. No, because you hear from administration officials that they are absolutely certain of the rightness of their policy but also of their interpretation about what happened in this particular incident in Minneapolis. Almost immediately after it happened and people had had a chance to see the videos on social media. Administration officials were doubling down on their interpretation that Renée Good caused her own death, they say, by trying to ram an ICE agent with her car. They're convinced that that's what happened. And all day today, they've been becoming very competitive about this. The Vice President JD Vance came to the White House briefing room to speak to reporters. And he was insisting not only that what happened in Minneapolis was an attack on law and order itself according to him. He was calling Renée Good without any evidence a deranged leftist, he said, and claiming that she was part of a network of activists who were trying to incite violence against law enforcement officers. So if anything, what's been seen by the Trump administration officials, redoubles their certainty that they need to carry on with the immigration enforcement tactics that they've been using up until now. But on the other side, in this very, very divided country, other people have looked at the video footage, come to completely opposite conclusions about what has happened, are deeply worried about the way in which the ICE agents behaved. The Minnesota Governor Tim Walls, who is a Democrat, of course, he's saying that administration officials are absolutely lying about what happened on the streets there. And that he doesn't even believe that a federal investigation when it looks into this will have a fair outcome. And I have to say everybody in this entrenched debate came to their conclusions very, very quickly after seeing some video footage. Before the opportunity had come for any sort of investigation to be done, people have decided that they know what happened and are very much sticking to the entrenched positions that they've taken. Sarah Smith in Washington, NASA has confirmed that it's preparing to bring the crew of the International Space Station home early because one of them has a medical issue. The US agency said the astronaut was in a stable condition but gave no further details on the grounds of privacy. Space journalist Richard Hollinum says such events are a reality when human beings are in space. Going into space is risky. Further away we go from Earth is risky. And these things do need to be thought about. We do maybe need star trek like sick bays, we maybe need doctors on the staff, surgeons, robotic surgery, all those sorts of things. So what's it like looking after your health in space Clayton Anderson spent 152 days on board the ISS back in 2007. He spoke to the BBC's Evan Davis. We were fortunate enough on my five months that we had Alek Kotoff who was a medical doctor on board. We never needed his services for the most part, but I was trained to take blood. I was trained to pull a tooth several basic medical things, although if I were to have been called upon to do some of those things, I would have told the crew member that I was working on that hey it's possible you're going to die because I mean I'm not a doctor. And you know you may be practice those skills three or four times and then you don't think about those skills for a long time until you get to space and maybe have to use them. And so that's a concern for me for long duration missions to the moon or to Mars. Do you we need a doctor on board. I mean a appendix attack if it's not dealt with can be fatal and they can happen out of the blue to some extent and you do just think is it just a matter of time before something like that hits someone that you're not only up there for two days it's months up there before somebody has an episode of that kind not an infectious disease not a virus. That's a good episode for example is all terrifying I would have thought yeah if you think about this as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and all these people begin to send more and more folks into outer space. Many of those people are not medically cleared like astronauts were looked at every which way to Sunday and when we fly into space there's a pretty good chance that we're going to be very very healthy when we go. But if we think about commercial space flight all those other things that you mentioned become more possible more prevalent and how do you deal with those things when you have them. For example if there was a situation where you would need to provide fluids intravenously to an astronaut and then decide that they need to come home. What do you do about that person space suit how do you get them into the vehicle I mean there's lots of issues that to my knowledge we haven't really thought about. And how long does it take in an emergency to bring a crew or a crew member home from the space station. What's the quickest they could do that get them into a hospital on earth from 400 kilometers up there. It would be a variable answer depending on when you undocked and where you targeted landing. It could be hours but if it were an emergency situation where you couldn't exactly predict where you're going to land such that you'd have people waiting for you there. It could be a harrowing situation those are things that nest is pretty good about thinking about planning for. But as we get into this new time of commercial space flight it kind of opens that window of the things we need to think about and prepare for. We've talked Clayton about physical conditions do you worry about mental health episodes in a place like the space shuttle where someone needs to come out is that something that is often talked about. It's not often talked about it's happened before on a shuttle mission there was a situation which then led to astronauts like me having to put a padlock on the hatch in the mid deck so that it couldn't be opened without purposeful operations. And if you think about humans traveling together in a small confined space you know I don't know how small is or how large a spaceship traveling to Mars would be but you're putting people in a can for six to nine months to get to a planet where they can't even see earth anymore. The psychological aspects of this are critical to me you have the issue of depression you have the issue of sexual tension you have these medical issues right if you have a medical situation you have a little room where the tools in the table and the things are available for you. We haven't gotten that far yet and those are going to be critical things if we're going to become as Elon Musk says an interplanetary species. That was the former astronaut Clayton Anderson. Still to come in this podcast. Many of the best ideas have been generated during periods of falloness and boredom so I feel like mindfulness has had a rebrand and it was boredom's turn. Why boredom is a good thing. If journalism is the first draft of history what happens if that draft is flawed. In 1999 four Russian apartment buildings were bombed hundreds killed but even now we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Marimen and in a new BBC series I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The history bureau Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast. Venezuela's interim government has released a number of political prisoners calling it a "goodwill gesture". It was announced by the president of the National Assembly Jorge Rodriguez. The Bolivarian government, together with state institutions, has decided to release a significant number of Venezuelan and foreign nationals. These releases are taking place as we speak. Consider this gesture by the government with its broad intention to seek peace. As the contribution we must all make to ensure that our republic continues its peaceful life and pursuit of prosperity. The release of the prisoners comes just days after US forces seized the former president Nicholas Maduro and declared the US administration was now in charge of Venezuela. Roberto Paredes from BBC Mundo was outside the prison in Caracas. Will Grant is our central America and Caribbean correspondent. There's been one of Washington's demands for a long time. Really, any time there's heightened repression in Venezuela, particularly around contested elections, around protests, around those same elections. Washington has urged the Venezuelan government to release political prisoners. Of course Mr. Rodriguez said it was a sort of unilateral step by the Venezuelan government. But the suspicion is that of course this comes under pressure from Washington. We don't know the identities or the numbers of those who are currently being released. But NGOs in Venezuela believe 1,000 and 11 people have been detained over the years because of their political leanings. There is a very notorious, well-known detention centre and alleged torture centre in Caracas called "Elecoida" and one human rights group amid rumors and unverified information at this stage that it is currently being shut down. Look, there are other centres in the country. They want to see a genuine change after Nicholas Maduro has been removed from office by the immigrants. We'll grant reporting. Meanwhile, Colombia's president, Gustavo Petro, has told the BBC he believes there is a real threat of US military action against his country after the strikes on Venezuela and the seizing of Nicholas Maduro. President Trump has said a military operation in Colombia sounds good to me. Our South America correspondent, Ioni Wells, sent this report from the Colombian capital Bogota. These two world leaders have long been adversaries frequently trading insults and threats on social media. Since the US's military operation in Venezuela last Saturday, Donald Trump has suggested several times that Colombia is also in his sights, telling President Petro in rude language to essentially watch his back. I asked Mr. Petro how seriously he was taking these threats and if he was afraid for his own security. "I do believe it's a real threat and the prospect of removing it depends on the ongoing conversations. Colombia has already experienced military violence from the United States, most recently in Panama at the beginning of the 20th century. Today, Panama is not part of Colombia." Mr. Trump, as he did with Nicholas Maduro, has accused Mr. Petro of being personally involved in trafficking cocaine, which he strongly denied, saying that it had always been proven that he was not involved in that. His critics have accused him of failing to tackle cocaine production, which has hit record highs in recent years. I only wells in Bogota. Now, put down your phones. It's no secret that there's been growing anxiety about what social media or always being online is doing to our brains, but could one way of giving out often overworked and overstimulated mind to break be boredom. It's become recent trend on social media with people filming themselves doing absolutely nothing, otherwise called raw dogging. So what are the advantages of boredom? And how does it change the way your brain works? Sarah Montague spoke to Helen Russell, an author who recently wrote a piece entitled The Quiet Rebellion of Doing Nothing, and Dr. Sandy Mann, a senior psychology lecturer at the University of Lancashire here in England, who wrote a book called The Science of Bordom, The Upside and Downside of Downtime. First up is Helen. Having the privilege of being raised before the internet in 1980 meant that I was quite familiar with boredom, but like many of us with social media, with constant distractions, I had become a little alienated from it. And then I had three children and the constant refrain of I board was driving slightly up the wall. So I began to look into the advantages of boredom and saw that there are many, and actually many of the best ideas have been generated during periods of faloness and boredom. So I feel like mindfulness has had a rebrand and it was boredom's turn. I think there is much to be said for staring at a wall or staring out of the window and all of my school reports would accuse me of daydreaming. I now feel a sense of pride over. And my children, if they are allowed to be bored then that's when the magic happens, that's when they create things or famously get along which is rare but beautiful. Okay, Dr. Sandy Mann, tell us what is going on when we are bored? I've done all the research which backs up everything that Helen has been saying. It's that lack of stimulation that leads us to search. And if you imagine you kind of like a search engine, constantly searching for stimulation, and when we're not getting it, we're just looking more and more. And that can lead us to negative things. So the things that we do to try and unbore ourselves can be harmful. So when we are bored, we can get that stimulation by being more creative because creativity is a very stimulating process. And that's why there can be advantages to boredom because it leads us to go into our own brains to look for that stimulation rather than getting in externally. And Helen, have you experienced that idea of something you would think I know that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't actually just been sort of letting my mind wander? Absolutely, I tend to write nonfiction, but I've just finished my second novel and none of that would have happened, had I filled the idle moments? Can you train yourself to be good at boredom? I think so, and I think that's what Helen's been referring to, just spending that time or more time in downtime. I actually did an experiment around my University of Central Lancashire where we got people off the street to a sensory deprived room without any phones with nothing to look at, soundproof. And we wanted to see what would happen to them. And those that agreed to do it reported that at the start they found it really stressful, really frustrating, they were agitated, they couldn't stand it. And some of them kind of begged to be let out, but those of them that managed to get through that kind of pain threshold found that they became actually relaxed and they got into it and they came out feeling that it was like a warm bath or a bit of respite. So it's training yourself to just be in the moment, what Helen called mindfulness, but not needing constant level stimulation. I think rather than feeling we have to pre-productive all the time, so giving ourselves a bit of a break is always helpful, I think. Helen Russell and Dr Sandy Mann, speaking to Sarah Montague about the hidden virtues of boredom. Finally, a name to remember, in the space of just eight months, the British pop singer, Sky Newman, has had a meteoric rise. She's toured with Ed Sheeran and Louis Capaldi, made her Glastonbury debut and she scored her first top ten single. Now she adds another accolade to her collection by winning the BBC's Sound of 2026, which predicts the year's biggest new stars. Our music correspondent, Mark Savage, went to meet her. Sky Newman burst onto the charts with her debut single last April. Within a month, she was drawing huge festival cries. So it was like a very quick journey to everyone else, but not to me. I've been doing music my whole life. For a show, I'd done us about six and I sang in school, and that was just magical, and it's when I really realised that this is what I want to do. Do you remember what you sang? I sung true colours in the looper. What a song. Those are big notes. My little voice managed to do it at the time. I don't know how. Sky's biggest hit to date is Family Matters, a song that details her tough upbringing, surrounded by drugs and violence on a London consul estate. I wrote that song from the perspective of someone who comes from a broken background. And I think there's a lot more of it than people realise. A lot of people have children not really understanding how big it is. And a lot of people have children without knowing themselves first and without fixing their issues. And they think that they don't have love elsewhere in their life, so they're going to get it from a child, but you're then just passing your pain and trauma onto them. And it doesn't fix it. Her stark and confessional songs have won a legion of fans among them, Elton John. I'm talking to Sky Newman, who's our guest on The Rocket Hour this week. Thank you. You are something else, and you're such a good songwriter as such an artist. It's just insanity when I think about it, really. It means everything, because these are voices that I heard in my home growing up. It made me feel proud of myself, which is not something I always feel to have. People who I respect and look up to show much, be so kind and welcoming, because they don't have to be. Did Elton John give you any glasses tips? No, but I was really sad, because I went on the interview and I didn't wear my glasses, and I was screaming at myself. It would, like, worry, I'll have them next time. And it's not just famous friends. A panel of 170 music experts have named Sky Newman the most promising new act of the year. Here's the moment she found out. You are the winner. A radio on Saturday, 2026. Make your noise for Sky Newman! It's a winner, everybody! Let's go! The signed-off list has previously tipped the likes of Adele, Sam Smith, and Jua Lepa for success. Now, Sky Newman joins their ranks, setting her up for a huge 2026. Well, that report by Mark Savage and Sky Newman beat two American rivals, Somba and Geese, as well as the British rapper Jim Legacy for that coveted sound of 2026 title. 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 in it, you can send us an email. The address is
[email protected]. This edition was mixed by Zabihullah Karush and the producer was Rebecca Wood. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Keith Adams. Until next time, goodbye. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. I'm Helena Maryman and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. The history bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
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