Philippine ferry erupts in flames

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Listen to Choiceology at schwab.com slash podcast or wherever you listen. It's everything your business needs in one place, saving you time, headaches and serious money. Stop paying for missing pieces. Go to odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com to learn more. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Celia Hatton and at 14 hours GMT on Thursday, the 10th of September, these are our main stories. A massive search operation is continuing in the waters off the Philippines following an explosion on board a ferry. Dozens of people are missing. A port city in Yemen has just been captured by the Houthi rebel group, a major blow to the Yemeni government, which has been fighting the Houthis for more than a decade. We'll hear from the region. Also in this podcast, you might remember the excitement around the Artemis moon mission in April. I have absolutely no idea what to say. This is 24 hours ago. The earth was that big out the window and we were doing Mach 39 and here we are back at Ellington at home. Two of the astronauts involved with that say they won't be involved in spaceflight again. We'll tell you more. Now to the Philippines. It's nighttime there as we record this podcast and rescuers are frantically searching for around 90 people missing after a passenger ferry caught fire after an explosion. Five have already been found. The ferry, the MV June Aster, is afloat but tilting heavily to one side. The Philippine Coast Guard has held a news conference. Its spokesperson, Commodore Naomi Kayab Yag, said thick smoke continues to billow from the vessel and that's preventing rescuers from boarding the ship. The challenge we are seeing right now is the strong winds. So that is limiting our response. No matter how much we put out the fire, there are external factors that could reignite fire. According to our Coast Guard station commander in the area, there are no longer flames inside the ship. What we are taking into consideration is smoke in the ship. If our personnel get on board, they could be suffocated. So we are ensuring the safety on the ship before we go on board. The Philippines is an archipelago of thousands of islands, so it's dependent on boat travel. Ferries are a cheap way to move people and cargo between islands, some of which are inaccessible by air. But as we know, there are a lot of people who are not able to get on board. So we are here. It also has a very bad record for deadly marine accidents. Karen Lemma is the Reuters bureau chief in Manila. When I spoke with her, she began by telling me more about the news conference. The Philippine Coast Guard just ended a press conference a while ago where we heard from the spokesperson about their conversation with one of the survivors who reported hearing an explosion before the blaze quickly spread in the ferry. That is the thing, it still remains unclear what caused it. She didn't want to speculate, obviously, on what might have or the reason behind the explosion. So that is still a question that remains to be answered by the Philippine Coast Guard. And what more can you tell us about the rescue effort? Have emergency crews made it on board the ship yet? Interestingly, they have definitely deployed a lot of vessels. It's become a comprehensive rescue and search. They could not approach the vessel at this point until the fire has been completely extinguished. I don't know if you've seen some of the drone footage that the Coast Guard has handed out, but you can see from these images how charred the vessel is. And there's still thick smoke that continues to billow from the vessel, making it difficult for the rescuers to attempt to enter the vessel. So that's complicating and hampering the rescue efforts. Worried about the extreme heat that rescuers might experience. And they're also concerned that there might be explosions inside the vessel. So we're still waiting on that. According to the Coast Guard, they're hoping that they could do that before the end of the day. But yeah, it's been complicated by that. Karen, why are marine accidents a recurring problem in the Philippines, a country that is so dependent on boat travel? Ferry capsized in January, killing at least 60 people. 65 people. Why can the authorities not get a handle on this issue? You know that the Philippines is an archipelago of more than 7,600 islands. So inter-island travel is very common. A lot of people rely on it to go as a means of transportation. And obviously, it's a cheaper option. But if we've seen the track record of the country, it's a bit patchy. And a lot of it is due to overloading, overcrowding, lax regulations. But of course, we hear from officials that they've been trying to tighten this. They've been doing a lot of screening. And in fact, the Coast Guard official just told us today that the vessel actually passed a safety compliance assessment that they've conducted. It should have enough. When they did the checks, it says that they've had enough life vests for the passengers. But that has often been the case. Overcrowding, overloading was a common reason. And yeah, the enforcement of regulations, which officials are saying that they've been trying to address. So that's why if you look at the history of the Philippines and marine record, you see these tragedies occurring, which is, of course, very unfortunate. Karen Lemma, speaking to us from Manila. Now to a major military development in Yemen. The government there has been battling the Houthi rebel group for more than 10 years. And today, a strategic port hub has fallen to the rebels. Houthi fighters have seized the city of Mocha on the coast of a key shipping route linking the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. That change comes after days of increased escalation and fighting between the government, backed by Saudi Arabia, and the Houthis, who are backed by Iran. Our Global Affairs reporter is Richard Kugoy. So what we have, the latest from Yemen is that the port city of Mocha has been overrun by the Houthi fighters. The city felt to the Houthi fighters on Thursday morning. And what has happened is that government forces have reportedly withdrawn from the city, together with their allied fighters, and they're heading south to a town called Duhab. So this is a very strategic town on the Red Sea coast in Yemen. Tell us more about the importance of this port and why there's been so much fighting over the status of this port. Yeah, there's been fighting. And this was reignited last week on Thursday. And between the government forces and the Houthi fighters, what has happened is that the militants have been targeting to gain more control of strategic towns along the Red Sea coast. So the endgame basically is to gain control of the Bad al-Madeba Strait, which is on the Red Sea coast. And it's a very key passage that links the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. So it's an important shipping lane where, you know, ships transiting from the Gulf with the goods and also heading to Europe and also heading to Asia are normally passed through. And so this has been a spillover of the conflict that we've been seeing in the other strait. That's the Strait of Hormuz, where we've been seeing the fighting between U.S. forces and Iran. So this has been, it's been a strategy for them to push and to gain control over this strategic pathway. And it's because also they've intensified attacks across the border in Saudi Arabia within the southwestern regions. Richard, as you've been reflecting, this conflict has global implications, doesn't it? What's it been doing to the price of oil? Absolutely. You know, the price of oil has risen sharply in the past couple of days and are now slightly over $100 per barrel. What this really means is that we're going to see global inflation, also the delivery of this critical supply, because what has happened is because of the fighting in the Strait of Hormuz, what has happened is that the Saudi Arabian authorities have been shipping out the precious commodity now through the Red Sea. But now with these sort of disruptions, you're likely to see the rise in global inflation. We're expecting to hear from the European Union Central Bank CENTRAL BANKS. if they're going to be announcing a new interest rate. So everybody at the moment is watching. And I was really hoping for a bit of relief. But now with the SAJA infighting just in the entire region, it's really going to cause some massive disruptions in terms of logistics and also the supply of oil. Richard Kugoy in Nairobi. To the U.S. now, President Trump has promised $5,000 to every adult American citizen if the Republicans win the midterm elections. It's unclear where the money, totaling around $1.3 trillion, would come from or if President Trump is breaking the law by offering it. He made the announcement at a Republican Party convention in Texas, which the Democratic Party has described as a flashy distraction from real issues. Our North America editor Sarah Smith was at the convention. Donald Trump has just finished his big speech to supporters at this Republican convention and he told them, the midterm elections that are coming up in November are going to be one of the most important elections in American history. And then to try to guarantee a Republican victory in those elections, he made a rather surprising promise. He said he would pay $5,000 to every adult in America if and only if the Republicans win those midterm elections. So if the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000. It will be called the Trump dividend. We'll call it the Trump dividend. But the only condition on the payment of this dividend that we're going to be making, so it's $5,000 to every adult. The only caveat I have is that the dividend that we're making must be spent in the United States of America. It's not clear that it's legal to make a promise like that because it is against the law to try. Navigating New Beginnings and why starting over can feel so hard. Listen to Choiceology at schwab.com slash podcast, or wherever you listen. This is the Global News Podcast. Now, to a story in the city of Portsmouth, here in the UK, where over 30 angry demonstrators gathered outside a hotel after hearing false rumours that a group of migrants had arrived there by bus. It was, in fact, Pakistan's under-19 cricket team that are on tour in England. Portsmouth has been shaken by anti-migrant protests since Sunday. Hundreds of people, many wearing face coverings, clashed with police and blocked roads in an attempt to stop buses carrying migrants from leaving the city. Our Pakistan correspondent, Kerry Davies, told me more about the incident. This information that I have received came through Pakistan Cricket Board's chief operating officer, who I spoke to this morning. He told me. He told me that he'd got his information from the manager of the under-19's cricket team. And according to him, there had been some outsiders on Tuesday night that had come to the floor where the team were staying and then began to knock on the team's doors. Now, he said that the cricket team had responded responsibly and they hadn't escalated the situation. Now, BBC's also been speaking to a local politician, a reform politician for the county council. Now, he had gone down there to try to help defuse the situation. He described what was about 30 or 40 people outside the hotel, by the time he got there, about an hour, an hour and a half or so, after they'd first arrived. And he said the whole situation had developed because someone had seen and then taken a photo and posted online of the cricket team arriving in their coach to this hotel. And they had made the assumption that this was a coachload of migrants that had come to this hotel. And that's what spread online and led to people coming to the hotel to protest against, as you say, this backdrop of anti-migrant protests that we have seen particularly important. So that was what happened, according to both of those two sides. The local politician also said that he had spoken to the hotel and the hotel had told him at the time that no one had gone inside the hotel. So slightly different messages coming through, but we ultimately know that this protest did happen. Now, according to the Pakistan Cricket Board, they say that it's the responsibility of the board that are inviting Pakistan over to make sure that the security and safety is paramount, that they've been speaking to the England Cricket Board about it, and that they say that they think that's. that's being treated responsibly. And they really hope that something like this doesn't happen again. Meanwhile, this two and a half week or so tour that the under-19s have been on of England has been continuing. They played a match the following day after this incident happened, and they're still in the UK for the next few days as well. Do we know any more about how the false information spread that these people were migrants, when in fact they were young cricket players? I think the only information that we've been given, or the explanation that we've been given from this local politician has been that this. photograph was taken of them coming off a coach. Now, according to him, he says that the coach that was used was the same company that had also been transporting migrants from when they'd come ashore to other facilities. And so that's where some of this confusion had come in and where all of these rumours had begun to spread. But I think also, again, just shows, when things are posted online, some things get out of hand incredibly quickly. And people are on such high alert, is how he described it. And there's such a sort of, like, strong sense of tension, I think, in the city of. about a lot of these incidents at the moment. That's how quickly and feverishly something like this can happen and build. Kerry, you're speaking to us from Islamabad. Has there been any reaction to this story so far in Pakistan? I haven't seen any major reaction yet. I did notice that the story had been picked up by Dawn, which is the English-language newspaper here in Pakistan, one of the largest ones. And I'm sure there will also be continued conversations about this on social media, people sending it through WhatsApp. Because, of course, Pakistan has such strong ties, people-to-people ties, with the UK. And there's an enormous Pakistani diaspora in the UK. So I'm sure many people will be looking at this and thinking how did something that was intended to be presumably about sharing sport between the two countries has descended into something like this. Kerry Davies in Islamabad. We've reported a lot on the damage left behind by the alarming number of severe wildfires breaking out in Europe this summer. Climate change and the effect of El Nino, the periodic natural warming of the Pacific Ocean, are thought to be behind the unusually high temperatures. Now, the European Union's Climate Service says August this year was the joint hottest month ever recorded. For more on this, I spoke to our environment correspondent, Matt McGraw. Anybody who's been in the UK, Europe, parts of America, parts of Asia, parts of Africa, through the last few months, will have recognised the intense heat that many parts of the world have been suffering from and the related extreme events such as storms, droughts, and the global warming that have accompanied all those. So, it's no real surprise that the data for August shows that the global temperature for the whole of the world was the warmest on record. I think what is surprising for scientists in some respects is the margin of the scale of the warming. The Copernicus units are saying that basically it's 1.65 degrees higher than pre-industrial times. And that number is really important because politicians in Paris in 2015 agreed that they would try and keep the global temperature under that 1.5 degree level. And now we see that it's 1.65 degrees higher and now we see in this particular month it's gone past that. Now, it's not a breach. Usually that temperature is measured over 10 or maybe 20 years. But it's significant because of the direction of travel and the scale of it. And I think that's what's worrying scientists. Matt, we've been hearing this kind of news a lot. The hottest day on record, the hottest month on record. Can you put this into context for us? How worried should we be? I think there's a number of things that are different with this particular piece of data. I think the scale of the intense events that we've seen, what used to be normal, I guess, back in 10, 15 years ago, you might have one heat wave in the summer or two. You know, across Europe and the UK, we've had four, potentially five big heat waves. And in other parts of the world as well, it's the intensity, the severity, the fact that these are continuing to happen one after the other, the sequence of them. And I guess behind all this is what the scientists say is the onward rise of carbon emissions that are doing the most damage here. They are the key factor in driving up this heat and keeping that heat high. And we're seeing this, it's played out across the world in this summer, perhaps like we've never seen before. I mentioned the wildfires that burned across Europe this summer. Do you think that governments in Europe in particular are waking up to the dangers posed by climate change? I think it's interesting. You see the responses from governments. The governments everywhere are very concerned when they see the scale of the heat waves that overwhelmed parts of Europe in some respects. You know, nuclear power stations in France that couldn't run because the level of the water in the rivers was too low or too hot. We've seen so many aspects of this. Governments reacting to the heat waves but the bigger question of whether they're taking action on the driving force of this, the emissions of carbon dioxide, that is still in play. And governments are less, shall we say, committed than they were. They're more distracted by other things, the cost of living crisis, wars in various places. And I think we'll see in the next few months when political leaders get together just how stuck they are on this particular issue. And Matt, I mentioned the El Nino weather phenomenon. It's also playing a role, but the biggest impact of it is still to come? Yes, that's right. I mean, the scientists were saying that, we're seeing a rising, a rapidly rising El Nino, and it might be one of the strongest, possibly the strongest we've ever felt in the world. And we're not really seeing the full impact of that on temperatures yet. That's likely to be at the peak when it's November, December later this year and into next year that we'll see that heat coming up out of the oceans, mostly in the Pacific and impacting the atmosphere. But we're already seeing it in monsoons in various parts of the world. We're already seeing the fingerprints of it in that. So I think there'll be a lot more to come on the scale of El Nino and the impact it'll have on temperatures over the next number of months. Matt McGraw. And last, the Bayeux Tapestry, which tells the story of the Norman conquest of Britain in 1066, has just gone on public display in London. It's the first time it's left France since the 11th century. The tapestry has been loaned to the British Museum until next July. John Maguire was at the exhibition just before it opened to visitors. He spoke to some of the main people at the heart of the show. The Bayeux Tapestry, in all its glory, laid out in a straight line for the first time. If you've been to Normandy to see it on a school trip or something like that, it's in a bit of a horseshoe. But here, it's in a 70-metre long run. Along the back, there are representations that correspond with what's going on in the panel with the Norman conquest that tells you exactly what's happening underneath. This is the first chance that members of the public, friends of the museum, will get to see the tapestry in all its glory. And two people, I must say, are looking remarkably relaxed considering what you must have been, seen through in the last couple of months and years, Millie Horton-Inch and Nicholas Cullinan, both from the British Museum. Are you relaxed? I'm excited. I'm mainly very, very excited for the first visitors to come and experience the exhibition and see the tapestry for themselves. I asked you, let's stand somewhere where your favourite part of the tapestry is. You chose Harold's Coronation. Why do you like this bit in particular? It's the moment that the tone of the tapestry completely shifts. King Edward the Confessor has died and his most powerful Earl, Harold, has been crowned in violation of an oath he made to Duke William and he pretty quickly realises it's a bad idea when a comet appears in the sky as an ill omen, suggesting that bad things lie ahead. Do you see something new every time you get a chance to have a look at it? Oh, absolutely. Every single time I look at it, I see more details, particularly in the borders or the way the colours shift. As much as I've looked at it in detail, the people who made it looked at it in even more detail, which blows my mind every single time I think about it. Nick, it's been an incredible, journey, but today is the day that the people who who it was intended for, I suppose, get to see it. Today's the day that we've all been waiting for, which is to welcome visitors to see the tapestry in this country for the first time in almost 1,000 years, which feels like a really historic, momentous day, so we're thrilled. Why is it still so significant? I think it's just the change of context, the fact that it will be seen here in London, on these shores, for the first time in 1,000 years. I mean, certainly when I saw it here for the first time this summer, being condition checked, having seen it, of course, in bio, I wasn't quite prepared for how moving it was, and so I think people are just really excited to be part of this really historic and momentous occasion. What makes it moving? Well, it's part of our history. It's part of a shared history, which I think is very interesting with France. It's something that we all learn about, and I think it's still incredibly relevant to think about, you know, all of these themes that are woven literally into the tapestry, including scenes of daily life, which I personally find very moving, like the impact the Norman conquest had on everyday people, including women and children. And the people that have seen it, so far, Millie, what sort of things have they said, and what do you expect the visitors to take away from seeing it for the first time here? I think what's marvellous is that everyone seems to have taken away something different. I've never heard the same comment twice. Everyone has. As an ex, I've been very moved to have seen it. I've been really sort of not surprised, but pleased by the emotional responses that people have had. And I think people are struck by the humanity of it and the way that they can recognise their own experiences, whether it's cooking a kebab or, you know, struggling with a dog. But also, I think they've been struck by the brutality and the fact it doesn't shy away from how brutal medieval battle was. It's not a straightforward piece of Norman propaganda. It's a very complex work of art. The Bayeux Tapestry is on display until next July at the British Museum. Although all of the currently available tickets are sold out, more will be released. Something to keep an eye on. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also now watch our episodes in full just search for the Global News Podcast on YouTube. This edition was mixed by Chris Kouzaris and the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Celia Hatton. Until next time, goodbye.