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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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The Interview from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Kun me oltiin menossa talvilomalle, niin siellä junassa me oltiin yötä makuvaunussa. Ja siellä oli myös sellainen ravintolovaunu, josta sai kaikkea ruokaa ja myös jälkkäriä. Sit me kävin seikkailemaan eri vaunuissa, ja siellä oli toinenkin lapsi.
Se oli kans menossa talvilomalle, ja me mietin, että meissä tulee varmaan kaveri, kun me molemmat tykätään lumilautailusta. Se oli tosi kiva matka.
Vapaus matkustaa raiteilla. VR. Yhteisellä matkalla. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Paul Moss, and in the early hours of Sunday, the 8th of February, these are our main stories. The Italian authorities denounce what they call serious sabotage on the rail network, linking the incidents to the start of the Winter Olympics.
The US has apparently insisted that a peace deal on Ukraine be reached by the end of June. And the Washington Post's chief executive is stepping down, days after the newspaper announced mass layoffs. Also in this podcast, the French government is sending 29-year-olds a letter urging them to have children and a medical milestone.
She offered to donate her face. This gave us a unique opportunity, which is having enough time in order to prepare the surgery.
A woman offers to donate her face for a transplant before she undergoes euthanasia. On Friday, the Winter Olympics was all about sport and celebration. The opening ceremony in Milan saw music from Mariah Carey, and this being Italy, from Puccini and Verdi as well. And yet politics did intrude. The audience loudly booed the US Vice President J.D. Vance and the Israeli Olympics team.
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Chapter 2: What caused the disruptions at the Winter Olympics in Italy?
It's quite clear that that was the case because Epstein would constantly be in touch with Lange when he came to Paris. He had a home here. And then there's more because it's clear also that between Caroline Lange and Epstein, there was some kind of financial arrangement to set up an offshore company in the American Virgin Islands, which was funded by Epstein in theory to buy French artworks.
Plus, there's indication that at some point, Jacques Lange intervened with Epstein to try to arrange the sale of a Riyadh, a fancy house in Morocco, and that he got $60,000 from Epstein to help fund a film about his political career, none of which amounts to criminality. But it's all highly embarrassing.
And the pressure has been building on Jacques Lange to step down from this sort of diplomatic post, which he's got kind of permanently at the head of the Arab World Institute. And on top of that, You know, there is now a preliminary criminal inquiry.
I mean, it doesn't necessarily mean that it will end up as a full criminal kind of prosecution, but the prosecutor's office is looking into suspicions that maybe there's something criminal that went on financially between the Langs and Epstein. I imagine regarding this offshore account in the Virgin Islands. So, all in all, highly embarrassing.
And at a time when France wants to boost its standing around the world and wants to be squeaky clean... it was clear that the pressure on him to go was very, very strong. Hugh Schofield, and staying in France, 29-year-olds there will soon be getting a letter in the post reminding them that their biological clock is ticking. The French government, like others around the world,
is urging people to have more children. As official data shows, France recorded more deaths than births last year, for the first time since the Second World War. But the new scheme, hoping to buck that trend, is not going down well, as our reporter Stephanie Prentice told Anchor Dessai.
Well, the scheme to tackle fertility issues in France has been in the works for a while at the Ministry of Health, but it's just been revealed, well, aspects at least. One of 16 new measures is this letter that will arrive when people turn 29, reminding them of their biological clock and basically give them a nudge to say, get on with it if you want to have children.
Its goal, it says, is to tackle what it calls the if-only-I-had-known mentality, which some young people in France have been reacting to. So they're saying this doesn't make any sense. They're saying sending a letter to remind them isn't necessary.
French influencers have also been commenting, mostly humorously, saying lack of awareness isn't the issue, they haven't got any money, they haven't got job security, with one viral comment saying people don't want to be pressured, saying Macron, il a combien d'enfants, pointing out that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, doesn't have biological children.
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Chapter 3: What were the reasons behind the protests against the Winter Olympics?
Skannaamalla Lidl Plus sovelluksen nappaat itsellesi eri hyvät tarjoukset. Olis esimerkiks valkosipulipatonki tarjouksessa. No se ihan skannattaa. Mutta skannattaakohan vampyyri syödä sitä valkosipulipatonkia? Mitä? Kuka? Ihan kaverin puolestakin selen.
Skannattaa skannata. Skannaamalla Lidl Plus sovelluksen saat viikoittain vaihtuvia Lidl Plus tarjouksia. Pidit valkosipulista tai et?
Pulto! When it comes to the war in Ukraine, there have been plenty of grim predictions that the conflict will go on and on. The two sides irreconcilable, Russia's demands unacceptable. And yet it seems Donald Trump wants the whole thing over and done with by June.
According to President Zelensky, the US administration has set June as a deadline because it wants the situation sorted out well ahead of America's midterm elections in November.
Mr. Zelensky made clear the challenge of reaching a peace deal, not least that this new deadline was imposed just as Russia launched one of its most ferocious drone and missile attacks yet on Ukraine's energy infrastructure. This is a level of... of attack that no terrorist in the world has ever allowed themselves to carry out. And Russia must feel the response of the entire world.
Russia must demonstrate that they don't just care about striking and the war itself, but also truly about the negotiations that are currently ongoing and that they must deliver results. But until that happens, it is of course the ordinary citizens of Ukraine who'll bear the brunt of Russia's attempt to destroy its power supply. People like Kateryna Malofieva, a journalist living in Kyiv.
At home, the heating is completely cold. The radiator is cold. You could see the steam coming out of your mouth because it's so cold. And yeah, so basically, the situation is difficult for all members of this part of the city. And of course, there is no hot water because it depends on the electricity. The electricity we have, like, Three, four hours a day, that's not enough.
So everyone just hope for the springtime because at least in springtime, you know, the power outages in general, it's not as frightening as actually staying without heat. It's really hard.
Talks to end the war in Ukraine were held in Abu Dhabi this past week, but with little sign of progress there due to reconvene in Miami. And President Zelensky has now confirmed that he will be sending a delegation. But what the president has repeatedly made clear is that the country needs more military equipment to fend off a Russian invasion, which for now remains ongoing.
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Chapter 4: How did the Italian authorities respond to the sabotage incidents?
But everyone here knows winning entire elections is never enough. Powerful, unelected bodies like the courts will ultimately decide who actually runs this country. Jonathan Head. There were a few people scratching their heads when Elon Musk announced he was merging two of his companies.
XAI is the artificial intelligence wing of his corporate empire, while SpaceX, of course, focuses on space rockets. So what's the connection? Well, it seems Mr Musk wants to take the data centres used for AI and send them into orbit, where he believes they can be powered by the unfiltered energy of the sun. Science fiction? Not at all, the tech billionaire insisted.
It's a development that's just round the corner.
It's a no-brainer for building solar-powered AI data centers in space. The lowest cost place to put AI will be space, and that'll be true within two years, maybe three, three at the latest.
should be said that Elon Musk's plans for space have often been dismissed, only for some of them at least to materialise just the way he promised. And yet this latest plan has met with particular scepticism. Among the doubters is Adam Michael Becker, an American astrophysicist who spoke to my colleague James Kumarasamy.
There are a lot of reasons why data centers in space make absolutely no sense. And at the top of that list is a very basic fact about space, which is that the best insulator is a vacuum. So putting a data center in space is like putting a giant blanket around it. And data centers need to be kept nice and cool.
Elon Musk's answer to that, certainly when he was speaking at the World Economic Forum, is that you have a radiator pointed away from the sun. It would be massive. And that's going to be extraordinarily difficult to deploy in space for just one data center, much less, you know, a lot of them. There are also many other problems. For example, the radiation levels are much higher in space.
And radiation wreaks havoc on digital data. If you ever want to upgrade the hardware in the data center, congratulations, you have to do a spacewalk. But I suppose one could ask, are they insurmountable problems? Given, you know, at some point in our history, the idea of even going into space was thought to be fanciful. Are these insurmountable necessarily?
It is not impossible to put a single data center into space. But it's never going to be a better idea than building it here on Earth. Well, you've addressed the economic and the practical, but there is another aspect to this, is there not? And one that you're interested in, which is the philosophical one, the why.
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Chapter 5: What led to Jack Lang's resignation from the Arab World Institute?
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 find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag hash global news pod. And don't forget our sister podcast, The Global Story, which goes in depth and beyond the headlines on one big story. Available wherever you get your podcasts.
This edition of the Global News Podcast was mixed by Shalotta Hadroy-Tuzimska and the producer was Muzaffar Shakir. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Paul Moss. Until next time, goodbye.
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