Janet Jalil

This is a NATO live fire exercise, and these German troops are wargaming a Russian invasion from the east on the great European plain. From the Baltic Sea in the west to the walls of the Kremlin in the east, there are few natural defensive barriers, no mountain ranges or deep river valleys. This terrain is extremely vulnerable to invasion.

I'm standing a few kilometers from Lithuania's border with Belarus, the very eastern edge of democratic Europe, in front of a column of German armored personnel carriers known as Boxers. Nothing illustrates the transformation of Germany's reputation and place in Europe more graphically than this German military build-up on territory outside Germany. For generations, Germany's neighbors had good reason to fear German militarism. Now they want democracy.

...Germany's strength in defense of European democracy.

I've never experienced a situation which is that dangerous, that urgent like it is today. And this is the man who is leading the rapid expansion of German military might. Karsten Breuer is the most senior soldier in the Bundeswehr, the chief of defense. What we are seeing, what we are facing is a threat from Russia. We can clearly see that Russia is building up their military to a strength which is nearly doubling in size from what they had before the war against Ukraine.

Mutta vuonna 2029 on mahdollisuus Ranskalle tehtävä iso sotilasvaara NATO-maassa. Ja minä sotilasvaltiolla täytyy sanoa, että meidän täytyy olla valmiita tähän. Konferenssi löytää, että sotilaalliset ihmiset, heidän koko maansa johtaneet, ovat aloittaneet käsittelemään terveistä... Joulukuussa 1945 BBC kertoi kuulijoille, miten yhdistelmät yhdistelmät poistivat Ranskaa.

Clement Attlee, Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin decided that Germany must be demilitarized, and for decades Germany was content to rely on America to guarantee its security. But no longer. Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz has said Europe needs to acquire what he called operational independence from the United States. It is a measure of the breakdown of trust between Donald Trump's United States and many of the European allies. But what would European defense look like without the USA?

I think that is a question that many ask, and I think it is the wrong way to think about it. Sophia Besch is a senior researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. I doubt that we will have one country in Europe that can fill the footsteps of the US. The way that European defence has been organised in recent decades really is around the US. Yes, they were all equal, but the US was very much setting the tone. It was the capability foundation of European defence.

What happens in one theater has impact on the other theater as well. When NATO was founded, it was said that its purpose was to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down. That era is over. Eight decades after Germany's humiliation, the country is back, rearmed, and at the heart of Europe's new power map. That report by Alan Little. Still to come in this podcast...

This is the Global News Podcast. The US golf legend Tiger Woods has been arrested and charged with driving under the influence after being involved in a car crash. The 15-time golf major winner was taken into custody after he rolled over his car while trying to overtake a truck. Nedda Torfik is following the story.

Nedatofik. US officials say the personal email account of the FBI chief Kash Patel has been compromised. A hacker group linked to Iran has claimed responsibility for the breach, publishing photos of Mr Patel and also work correspondence. A US government official said the material appeared to be authentic.

In a statement, an FBI spokesman said malicious actors targeted Kash Patels personal email. The US has offered a reward of $10 million for information about the hackers. Our cyber correspondent Joe Tardy spoke to my colleague Andrew Peach.

There's an Iranian-linked hacktivist group called Handala, and this morning they started posting on their telegram cryptic clues about some sort of hack they've carried out. They said, hello FBI, then they said, hello Kash Patel with a picture of him, and then they posted a gallery of nine images of him in some sort of personal capacity. Some of them looked like holiday pictures, things like him doing selfies, pulling funny faces, sniffing cigars.

and also a CV of his as well. They offered a download link to what they are claiming are hundreds of his personal emails, because they say they've hacked his personal email account. And on their website, the Handala Group have said, Today, once again, the world witnessed the collapse of America's so-called security legends.

They carry on and they say, Kash Patel, the current head of the FBI, who once saw his name displayed with pride on the agency's headquarters, will now find his name among the list of successfully hacked victims. The so-called impenetrable systems of the FBI were brought to their knees within hours by our team. All personal and confidential information of Kash Patel, including emails, conversations, documents and even classified files, is now available for public download.

But they're overstating it a little bit there because it looks like this was an attack and a successful hack of his personal email account, possibly his Gmail. The FBI have come out and said this was not a successful breach of their own systems and that the emails are, although genuine, they say that they are old and that there's no potentially classified information in there. But don't get me wrong, this is a very significant breach of a public figure in the US and a major victory for this activist group.

If they want to play it down and say it's not that important, why are they offering such a huge reward? Well, the reward actually came last week when they put up a $10 million reward for any information that would lead to the arrest of the Handala group or members of the Handala group. But that was based upon different activity. This group has been around for a long time, at least a couple of years, and they usually hack the US and Israel. And recently, since the conflict began, there's been real...

Tämä on se, mitä minusta on tärkeää.

which is a bit of a kind of speciality of Iranian hackers. But generally speaking, though, we haven't seen a lot of activity from that area of the kind of the conflict, the cyber war. But this certainly does up the ante today. Joe Tidy, we don't often report on ski jumping in this podcast, but the sports World Cup series is reaching its climax this weekend. And as almost always, jumpers from tiny Slovenia will be on the hunt for medals.

So what's the secret to their success? Well, many credit the specialist equipment they use, made by a family firm from a local alpine village. Our Balkans correspondent Guy Delaunay has been to visit. If you're going to launch yourself off a ski jumping hill at 100 kilometers an hour, you'd better trust your equipment.

And for almost every elite competitor on the World Cup circuit, there's one brand they trust above all, Slatnar. It might not be a famous name, but virtually all the jumpers use their bindings, and this year's runaway champions deploy their skis as well. Peter Slatnar runs the business that bears his name, pivoting from auto parts production after he took over from his father.