This BBC Podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. The Hubble Space Telescope was designed to peer deeper into the universe than ever before, unlocking some of its greatest secrets, but after launch, a devastating flaw emerged. The significant spherical aberration appears to be present in the optics. National disaster, humble launch of Flood Mirror. The BBC Space Podcast 13 minutes is telling the inside story of how NASA rescued Hubble. The future of space astronomy depends on it. From the BBC World Service, 13 minutes, trouble with Hubble, all ever-sales available now, wherever you get your BBC Podcasts. Welcome to The Haunted Library. Join me, Colin Morgan, as I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. A story of science and ambition, loneliness and longing, and what it truly means to be human. Listen to The Haunted Library, wherever you get your podcasts, or find us on YouTube. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritson, and in the early hours of Monday, the second of November, these are our main stories. A Democratic congresswoman in a key battleground state, Michigan, has endorsed the Republican Party Senate candidate just days before the mid-term elections. We'll hear from our correspondence in swing states. The Italian Kimi Antonelli has become Formula One's youngest ever world champion at the Mexico Grand Prix. Also in this podcast, it's a pretty nice world out there as a traveler, meeting people face-to-face. The British man on the verge of completing an epic 2018 journey around the world to walk home. The US midterms are almost upon us and the stakes could not be higher. Americans are voting for both houses of Congress, and the results will determine exactly how much power Donald Trump will be able to wield in his final years as president. Mr Trump has held campaign rallies all over the United States to try to boost support for his Republican Party, but with prices soaring in the US, will that be enough to convince voters? Here's what some voters in the state of North Carolina had to say. I'm not saying as the best there is. I mean, he has some childish habits that I don't really care for, but in the end versus the other choice. He was the person. He was the man for sure. Everything's going up. He's going to make America great again, you know? That was his main slogan. Everything was going to come back down. I don't think so. I don't think it's a referendum on him as much as it is on the general direction of the nation. I am not happy. I was a Trump supporter and I'm so, which I regret not even I'm not even thinking out of it. I mean, you have to ask yourself the question, am I better off than I was two years ago or four years ago? I am. So to find out more about what's happening, I spoke to an North America editor, Sarah Smith, who's in the state of Maine. Well, Maine is one of these states where you have got a long-served Republican incumbent senator, Susan Collins in this case, who's been here for nearly three decades as a senator, being challenged by a Democrat. And most of the races that look the closest that we'll be watching the most carefully are ones where you have a Republican incumbent facing a really serious challenge from a Democrat who are performing particularly well in the opinion polls. Now, they've been wrong before. We don't know for sure that they're correct this year, but they are fairly consistently showing pretty much a surge in support for Democrats across the country with the result that states that have been reliably Republican for decades like Texas or Kansas or places like Ohio or Iowa look as though they could elect Democrats in this cycle. And what are the issues that are chiming with voters? A cost of living is top of mind for almost every person I've spoken to. I've been across the country to a number of key states speaking to voters, and they are almost all angry about the cost of living and blaming it directly on Donald Trump and his decision to go to war and around. There's not much doubt in anybody's mind who they hold responsible for the fact that prices are going up. Not everybody, though, said that's going to cause them to flip their vote. Some people still plan to back Donald Trump's Republicans despite their fury about prices, but that has set an atmosphere, electrically, which is one of the reasons why Republican candidates are likely to suffer in these midterm elections because they're associated with Donald Trump and the decisions he's made that voters don't like. He's been campaigning very hard for his Republican candidates, hoping to inspire those who are still his loyal supporters to come out and vote. But the danger is, of course, when you have an unpopular president that the more voters see of him, the more it galvanizes people who don't like him to come out and vote against his candidates. So what outcomes are possible? What are we expecting to happen? It's very likely that Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives because even if there isn't a surge in Democratic support as currently suggested by the polls, it's very normal for the party of the sitting president to lose seats in a midterm election, and the Democrats don't need to take many to take control of the House of Representatives. If they do that, they can block pieces of legislation that Donald Trump wants to get passed, and they can open investigations into a lot of his more controversial actions and decisions they could even try and impeach him again, or maybe one of his cabinet secretaries, like perhaps the Defense Secretary Pete Hegsett. It's much tougher for the Democrats to try and win a majority in the Senate, but it is possible. And if that were to happen, if they controlled both houses of Congress, they could start trying to pass their own legislation. One Democrat Senate candidate I spoke to on the campaign trail told me that one of the things he wants to do first is try to force Donald Trump to end the war in Iran by passing a war power spill. So it could have a real impact on Donald Trump's last two years in office if he loses control of Congress and his Democrats working against his agenda. Because Donald Trump has governed by executive order in many cases, will he try and do that? Were that to happen? Yes, inevitably he will try and bypass Congress if he no longer has a majority there. And as you say, even when he did have his Republicans controlling both houses, nonetheless, he'd like to skip the congressional procedures and simply try and rule by executive order. The problem is that in quite a number of cases with some of his more controversial ones, like the trade tariffs that he imposed on nations around the world or his attempt to end the right of people born in the United States to become U.S. citizens, these executive orders have been struck down by the courts. And often because they say, actually this was something that should have been done by Congress, it can't be done by the President alone. So it is getting harder and harder for him to ignore Congress just at the point at which he might be about to lose control of it. Sarah Smith in Maine. Well, the battle for Michigan took an unexpected turn on Sunday. Democrat Abdul El Saeed beat Congresswoman Hayley Stevens in the Democratic Party's Senate primary earlier this year. But now, instead of backing him, she's endorsed the Republican candidate, Mike Rogers. And that could be a critical move. President Trump welcomed her decision. We just had the big news. He came over the sets and just announced about Hayley Stevens endorsing Mike Rogers. That was a big move, I think. Nobody expected that, but it's a smart thing to do. Mr. Trump went on to say that Hayley Stevens would be welcome to join the Republican Party, so a remarkable development. Something I put to our North America correspondent Will Grant, who's in Washington. Yeah, it really is. It caught a lot of people off guard. The appearance of Hayley Stevens alongside the Republican candidate at church on Sunday really did, you know, throw people into a bit of disarray. There is clearly some personal difference between the two Democrats, which has involved this change of heart. But I think in part it's come down to messaging over Israel. Specifically, there was a campaign advert from an outside liberal group, a super back called Rebellion, which blamed Israel for high food prices in the US, specifically blaming US military aid in USAID to Israel. Now, Mr. L. Syed has criticized the advert, said he had nothing to do with it. But Congresswoman Stephen said, I don't belong in Abdul's campaign. She posted that in a video to X and said that people of the state, it was not who we are, hate is not who we are, and that they were not getting who they were out of their democratic nominee right now. So it's been seen as a real betrayal by many in her camp, including her own chief of staff who resigned. How much of a problem is this for Abdul Syed, has he said anything? Well, clearly at this stage, he's not going to welcome that kind of press and that kind of attention. But I mean, you know, he said that he simply isn't focused in Congresswoman Stevens, that he's focused instead on the roof.
race on the needs of people in the state of Michigan, less interested in the politics of it all than the policies of it all is how he put it. And interestingly, his campaign has confirmed to our U.S. partners, CBS News, they've managed to raise over $1.2 million since Congresswoman Stephens publicly backed at Mike Rogers. You mentioned Gaza as one of the drivers for this, but also his religion. Yeah, I mean, you know, we heard Donald Trump there welcoming the move from Hailey Stevens, saying it was brave and so on. But within that same breath, he also repeated this sort of anti-Muslim attack on Mr. Syed, calling him a jihadist, that he's part of a Muslim brotherhood, of course, completely unfounded claims. But I do think that has fed it in as well to the relationship between Hailey Stevens. He sees him as having been anti-submitted, you know, leveling these sorts of accusations at his campaign, something he is consistently, of course, denied. But he, you know, is trying to become the first Muslim senator in U.S. history and has come up against repeated attacks over religion. Will Grant in Washington. The last time a Democrat won an election in Texas was nearly 40 years ago. Do you think it would be an easy win for the Republicans? But apparently not. The race between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talleriko is reportedly too close to call. A defeat for Republicans there would trigger a lot of soul searching within the party. Chief North America correspondent Gary Adonahu is in Austin. Donald Trump won Texas in the general election, the presidential election two years ago, by 14 points. The Republican candidate for Senator Ken Paxton should be out ahead, out of sight in this race. Nevertheless, it's neck and neck too close to call between him and James Talleriko the Democrat. While other thing of note here, they've spent something like $570 million on advertising alone in this race. It makes it the most expensive, non-presidential race in American history. So now, a word of caution, Democrats haven't won here in nearly 40 years in the Senate. This place has a lot of Republicans in it. If they do manage it, it'll be a major upset. And once more, Donald Trump has nationalized this race, so it'll be a huge judgment on his record. Gary Adonahu. 28 years ago this month, a former British paratrooper Carl Buschby set out from the deep south of Chilean Patagonia with one thing in mind. He walked back to his mum's house in the English port city of Hull, without using any form of transport. They mean feet. As South America barely joins the North American landmass at the Derry and Gaff, and North America is separated by the bearing straight from Asia. But on Monday, Carl, who also had to cross the English Channel, will complete his journey. Our reporter, Danny Abahart, met him just months into his journey in Argentine Patagonia nearly half a lifetime later, for both Carl and him, he tracked him down on one of the final legs of his journey in a village in rural Cambridgeer in eastern England. Carl, we're sitting here in a cafe. The last time I saw you was 1999, this small pinprick of a figure emerging out of the distance on the route acquired into Patagonia. We thought, we've got to stop, who is this crazy dude with his beasts like cart that is pulling. Tell me what it was like in Patagonia. No, Patagonia was pretty rough. I mean, there were some hard days there, because again, an old dirt track and everything. So pulling the machine that I had was really built for the road, and yeah, he was struggling. And that was just a very large expanse of nothing in Patagonia. In the good old days, you know, before social media and before the digital world and using paper maps and stuff back then. At the time, Carl had no sponsorship. On occasion, he had to find discarded food on the roadside or forage from farms. Only years later did proper sponsorships kick in, although those were disrupted, including by a global financial crisis. There were countless other disruptions too, forcing Carl to break his journey. A planned 12-year trip became 28. Some people say this is a modern day equivalent of the Odyssey. In the Odyssey, you know, people faced cyclops, they faced witches, all sorts of other monsters, the Leicester-Gonians. What were your Leicester-Gonians then? It was government, for sure. There were things like the fart guerrillas and the Dariengap. Governments, you know, the Russian government gave us a hard time. It wanted to put me in jail for five years. And China almost banned me, but again, they let me continue. There's geographical challenges. There is the bureaucratic challenges of dealing with all the politics of those borders and things. Because you wouldn't get away with it today. I mean, you know, that's when we were all friends, now or not. So we couldn't pull that off today. As well as the Dariengap, the physical challenges included him and a fellow adventurer becoming the first people in recorded history to cross the bearing straight from Alaska to Russia on foot, an extremely perilous undertaking across shifting sea ice. Many years later, Karl, with a fellow adventurer Angela Maxwell and two young Azerbaijani swimmers became the first people to swim across the Caspian Sea, going from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan, as walking round the sea through Russia or Iran wasn't an option. And recently he swam across the channel between France and England, after the channel tunnel denied in permission to walk through its service tunnel. Despite the difficulties and dangers he's faced, one of the beauties has been the people he's met along the way. Absolutely. I mean, there's just no two ways about it, right from the get-go, right from the first days in Patagonia, just overwhelming general seen kindness from locals. Every country, every culture, now I can say, I've met 99.999% of the very best of humanity. And it's just across the board. And every now and then I think we need to be reminded of that, you know. It's a pretty nice world out there. There's a traveler meeting people face to face, for sure. Karl's story now is one that itself has travelled the world. The famous German director, Werner Herzog, is doing a documentary on him. On Monday he'll see his mum for the first time in ten years. Then he'll be embedded in a media scrum. But after that, what next for a man who spent half his lifetime completing one soul mission? How do you deal with the end of something like this? Which is half your life when Karl has to have an identity crush, because the Karl Busch be everyone knows, he's going to just disappear. I have to reinvent myself and all that weird stuff. I mean, I think the idea is get another passion, find another mission and get busy, get busy quick. My other passion is science, literacy and science engagement. So that's hopefully what I'll spend the rest of my life focused on. Karl Busch be speaking to the BBC's Danny Aberhardt. Still to come in this podcast. We hear about the mindfulness city in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan. The Hubble Space Telescope was designed to peer deeper into the Universe than ever before, unlocking some of its greatest secrets. But after launch, a devastating flaw emerged. The significant spherical aberration fears to be present in the optics. National disaster, Hubble launch with Flood Mirror. The BBC Space Podcast 30 Minutes is telling the inside story of how NASA rescued Hubble. From the BBC World Service, 13 Minutes, Trouble with Hubble, all ever-sales available now, wherever you get to your BBC Podcasts. Join me, Colin Morgan, as I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, a story of science and ambition, loneliness and longing, and what it truly means to be human. Listen to the Haunted Library, wherever you get your podcasts or find us on YouTube. The real-life dramas of one of Italy's most prominent dynasties, Fiat's Agnieli family. Fiat was so important in Italy's economy. Italy was Fiat, Fiat was Italy. Inheritance Fiat from the BBC World Service. It's about money. Power the succession story. Listen now, wherever you get, 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 2, the question of science now, wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast. At least eight people have been killed by Israeli air strikes in Gaza, including a four-year-old child and five police officers. That's according to the Hamasra and Health Ministry. The strikes were carried out despite the year-old ceasefire agreement. The Israeli military said it had attacked what it described as "military operatives." At least Correspondent Hugo Bashega sent this report from Jerusalem. Outside the sheifer hospital in Gaza City, a crowd gathered to pray. On the ground, two bodypacks and a tiny body of a child wrapped in a white towel. Officials say in Israeli missile hit a group of civilians who were next to a school. To the south in Hanyunis, the Interior Ministry said a drone attack targeted a group of police officers as they were carrying out their duties. It called it a massacre. It named the five men killed whose ages ranged from 23 to 53. The Israeli military confirmed it carried out two attacks on what it described as "military operatives." It has provided no further information or any evidence. A ceasefire in Gaza came into force in October of last year. But Israel's attacks have continued almost every day. Since then, more than 1,500 people have been killed according to Gaza officials. Israel says it is targeting Hamas, saying the group is trying to rebuild its military capabilities. Here you go, Bashega. In recent weeks, large-scale, often youth-led protests over issues such as the rising cost of living or underfunded public services have broken out across Europe. France, Italy, Portugal and Albania have all seen demonstrations and some of them turned violent. Now, the demonstrations have spread to Germany. Tens of thousands of people participated, demanding action on issues affecting young people from the cost of living to spending on education. But on the sidelines, masked rioters, looted shops in Frankfurt and clashes broke out in Berlin, Cologne and Hamburg. And in France, the authorities have launched an attempted murder investigation after petrol bombs were thrown at security forces during similar protests in Paris. Pete Ross heard more from our world news correspondent, Joe Inwood. There were some really extraordinary scenes in the number of German cities in Cologne in Hamburg, in Berlin and Frankfurt, where I think they've been the most dramatic. Scenes of mostly young people, rioting, looting, serious clashes with police, the police deploying water cannon, in Frankfurt, a number of shops were broken into. And this has happened across a number of cities. It's not the sort of thing you normally see in protests in Germany, and so has been met with real shock in the country. We should say this came as part of a much, much larger protest movement, organized by a group called Genzi will sort it, a kind of a youth movement. The vast majority of the protests and the protesters were peaceful. Most of them were calling for understandable demands around public services, about opportunities for young people about housing, about education. And it seems though that there was a minority, a significant minority, an impactful minority, certainly, which has taken those protests and turned them into something much more violent. Now, there have been protests across Europe in several countries, perhaps most significantly, or some of the largest protests in France in the last couple of weekends. What's the latest from there? Yeah, France was where this really started, student-led protests. Again, talking about what they saw as the kind of crumbling schools, the state of educational funding. When you listen to the people that are leading the protests, whether they're in Germany in Switzerland, Portugal or Albania, they often cite this French student movement. France is the place, though, where this really sort of kicked off. From the last three weekends, we've seen really significant protests on the street. Two weekends ago, they were far and away the biggest, the most consequential and the most violent. Last weekend, not quite so bad, and this weekend, there were real warnings. There was going to be more violence on the street. And once again, there was the French police say they arrested about 770 people yesterday, and they've also launched an attempted murder investigation. After Molotov cocktails, petrol bombs were thrown at the police. And again, some of the footage is really extraordinary, shocking, of police running with their legs on fire. Some of them have been badly injured, second-degree burns. Again, it's really worth pointing out that this is a minority of people doing this, but it's a minority that is shaping how these protests are being seen. These protests are not coordinated, but there are themes that tie them together. They're often youth-led, they're on similar issues, like the rising cost of living. Do we see this spreading further? There doesn't seem to be any sign of this stopping. Where does this go? Yes, you say it's not one group that's doing this across these countries, but it does seem to be a sort of a domino effect of these protests. They all cite the French and their other movements. They do have connecting themes, threads that run throughout them, but it's interesting that in different countries, there are different other motivating factors. So in Germany, it's concerns around military service or conscription. In Portugal, it's about housing. Where they go, it's very difficult to see, but there's nothing being said at the moment that suggests that the underlying problems, the root causes that they're talking about, are being dealt with and are going to go away. So it's difficult to see, especially in a time when European governments have really, really difficult fiscal situations. They haven't got money to throw at these problems, quite how they deal with these. The protesters have given no indication that they're going to give up their course. Joe Inwood. Now to the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. The sound of Buddhist chanting marks a special event in which thousands of volunteers, some from around the world have gathered to build 108 Buddhist structures in 24 hours. The event is being held to bless a new so-called mindfulness city in the country's southern plains called Gellafu. It's hoped the city, which will have a new international airport and business district, will help stem the exodus of young Bhutanese who are leaving for what they see as better opportunities abroad. The government says the Gellafu mindfulness city will operate to Buddhist and Bhutanese principles working in harmony with the environment and incorporating the spirit of compassion and peace. Our reporter Julia Paul is there and told us more about the launch event and the new city. It is absolutely enormous. I mean Bhutan is a very tiny country, just a population of around 700,000. So 125,000 people had registered to take part. So that's already a percentage of the population. But in addition to that, you've had senior Buddhist monastics from around the Buddhist world. You've had Bhutanese diaspora returning families for the dayouts. It started in the early hours of the morning and you had this incredible scene of these people all sitting with electric lanterns, but they had drone shots and it was absolutely amazing. But a lot of people after the king gave his speech have sort of decided to get out of the sun and have a break. People have poured in really from all across the country. So we saw that, roads blocked, slights sold out, not a hotel room to be seen. I certainly think the Buddhist world has sat up and taken notice of this. I mean a lot of the Buddhist world has been invited and the significance of the stupas, these 108 structures that have been built today, is that they contain very important Buddhist relics or texts. And so these monastics who've come from across the Buddhist world in Malaysia, Thailand, a whole variety of places have brought Buddhist relics with them. These 108 buildings or 108 monuments were made from pre-fabricated steel and the volunteers who built them have been practicing for a couple of months. So I don't think Bhutan was ever going to let it not, you know, was never going to not meet that 24 hour thing. And I think it's going to be about a decade before this entire area is developed in the way that they want to develop it. The idea of the mindfulness city is that you are going to still work with the environment. For example, they're preserving conservation routes, you know, for wild elephants to go through. They're trying to keep the tree cover as much as possible. And it's true that when you're actually up on the bank where the stupas have been built, looking down over the plain, although still a lot has to be developed, it's actually quite hard to see the buildings. But having said all of that, the legal structure of this area is distinct from the rest of Bhutan. And I think it's quite difficult to sort of actually envisage what a mindfulness city would look like as well. It's certainly a question that we've all been asking again and again. And I guess we're sort of trying to envisage a kind of Dubai, but with mindfulness, you know, it's hard to kind of envisage how you have an international airport and a hub. And even though they do want to open the country up, I think these principles are still very important. Julia Paul in Gellafu, the new mindfulness city in Bhutan. At the Mexican Grand Prix, 20-year-old Kimi Antonelli has become the youngest champion in the history of Formula One. The Mercedes driver finished the race in third place behind Red Bull's Max Verstappen and Ferraris Lewis Hamilton. Antonelli is also the first Italian champion in more than 70 years. He was so overcome with emotion that he cried on the team.
radio as he crossed the finish line, saying it's a day he will remember forever. The BBC's Richard Forest, a long time Formula One fan, told me more about the sports new champion. He's been on Mercedes books for 15 years since a young boy carting and he's been paid for for his career when he was talent spotted years and years ago and he's been brought up through the ranks of Formula One and he joined the actual Mercedes Formula One team last year, stepping into the big shoes of Lewis Hamilton who had decided to go off to Passes New at Ferrari. So he had big shoes to fill. Last year it was what people would say was a character testing year. Kimmy Atenelli showed some promise but he had some accidents as well. So this year he's absolutely Sean, he's won nine races, he's been leading the championship for pretty much most of the year and it was almost a matter of time of when, not if he was going to win the World Championship. Just tell us how big a deal this is for people who don't fully understand Formula One. This is just enormous, isn't it? Yes, it is enormous. I think because of his young age and he has captured the imagination of this, there's a new audience that's now watching Formula One, you know, the days of petrolheads, the people like me, you know, watched it for years and years and years. The American owners of Formula One, they're called Liberty Media, they took it over a few years ago, they've expanded it to lots of different countries and I think one of the key things they did was they brought Netflix in and there's this documentary series that's called Drive to Survive, the stars of a few years ago, which gave people the look behind the curtain of Formula One. It made you realise the personalities of the drivers underneath the helmet and I think because there's this new generation of younger people watching these young stars, so many of these drivers now are, under the age of 25, it's revolutionised the sport and I think Kimiatton Ali captures the imagination of the young people. He's with Mercedes, a team with an incredible track record, how much of it is down to the car and how much it is down to the driver. Interestingly, there were new regulations this year, so it was a completely new car and maybe this year's car has suited his driving style, he's been up against his teammate George Russell, who's no slouch, but Kimiatton Ali, he's just made the car work. And I think sometimes in Formula One there's a lot of luck involved and sometimes you just know it's going to be a particular person's year. This year almost the writing was on the wall that Kimiatton Ali was going to be the champion this year. The BBC's Richard Forest. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at
[email protected]. You can also find us on X. The BBC World Service used the hashtag global news port and don't forget our sibling podcast, The Global Story, which goes in depth and beyond the headlines on one big story. This edition of The Global News podcast was mixed by Rose N. Windrall and produced by Daniel Mann, the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritson until next time, goodbye. The Hubble Space Telescope was designed to peer deeper into the universe than ever before unlocking some of its greatest secrets, but after launch, a devastating flaw emerged. The significant spherical operation appears to be present in the optics. The National disaster, Hubble launched with Flood Mirror. In the BBC World Service, 13 minutes, trouble with Hubble, all ever sayings available now, wherever you get to your BBC Podcasts.
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