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--:-- Oliver Conway: You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. This edition is published in the early hours of Thursday, the 14th of November. US Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives, giving them both chambers of Congress, but they reject Donald Trump's choice for their leader in the Senate. Experts at the COP-UN climate summit have discussed how to reduce the global warming effects of aeroplane contrails. And Spain is facing more extreme rainfall two weeks after devastating floods.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Also in this podcast, a piece of history is auctioned in Geneva. It's possible that some of these diamonds may have come from the famous diamond necklace that led to the downfall of Marie Antoinette. And taking off the varnish layers and taking off all the overpaint you will see the naked truth so you will actually get as close to Rembrandt's paint as you can get into the life of this painting. Art lovers get a chance to see the night watch being restored.
--:-- Oliver Conway: In contrast to his angry departure from the White House four years ago, Donald Trump has been given a warm welcome on his return. President Joe Biden followed the traditional protocol by inviting his successor to the Oval Office to discuss the transition. The pair sat in armchairs in front of a fire and shook hands. Well, Mr. President-elect and former president and Donald, congratulations. Thank you very much. as it can get, and I very much appreciate that, Jim. You're welcome. Thank you all.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Well, Donald Trump is moving quickly to pack his administration with ultra-loyalists, announcing firebrand Congressman Matt Gaetz as Attorney General, and the man he once dubbed Little Marco, Senator Rubio, as his Secretary of State. The 78-year-old president-elect hinted he would be open to a third term in office when he spoke to Republican lawmakers earlier. They are now set to control both chambers of Congress after projections suggested they would win the House of Representatives as well as the Senate.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But Mr Trump did suffer a small setback in the Senate when Republicans there rejected his preferred candidate, Rick Scott, as their leader. Instead, they chose Senator John Thune, and he spoke to reporters after the vote. We'll make sure that the president and his team have the tools and support that they need to enforce border security laws and to remove the violent criminals who are wreaking havoc in every one of our states.
--:-- Oliver Conway: We will work to make America prosperous again by streamlining the bureaucratic machine and overturning costly Biden-Harris regulations. And we will work to restore American energy dominance. So what are we to make of the president-elect's latest appointments? Tom Bateman is our State Department correspondent.
--:-- Tom Bateman: When it comes to Matt Gaetz, I've just been down at Capitol Hill where senators had come out of that vote that you were hearing about that elected their new Senate leader. And a lot of these names, as they are coming out over the days, have been celebrated by many Republicans. Matt Gaetz as Attorney General is creating something of a shocked surprise reaction, not just among Democrats who oppose him, but among Republicans as well.
--:-- Tom Bateman: And that is because he's been a divisive figure in the party. It means that he will probably face an uphill battle for confirmation in the Senate for that role of Attorney General. The reason this matters is because Matt Gaetz himself, first of all, had been investigated by the same department that he will now oversee over a now closed and long-running sex trafficking investigation where the federal prosecutors decided not to press charges.
--:-- Tom Bateman: But the same allegations have been subject to a House of Representatives ethics committee review, which has been ongoing. So there will be a lot of questions, I think, over this particular pick. But it comes back to that fundamental point that Donald Trump is showing what is characterising these picks for the senior members of his cabinet and senior White House positions is loyalty being an absolutely key trait that he's showing that he wants to have in his appointees.
--:-- Tom Bateman: And what will Marco Rubio's approach be if he is confirmed as a US Secretary of State? Well, Marco Rubio sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I mean, he's long taken a keen interest in foreign affairs. He's a well-known Republican senator. I mean, was once derided by President Trump when they both ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
--:-- Tom Bateman: But they have since had a rapprochement of relations. I mean, he was among the few people that Mr. Trump was considering as his pick for his running mate on the ticket. He chose J.D. Vance in the end. now the vice president-elect. It's an interesting choice. I think some of those in Mr. Trump's movement would have preferred a different candidate, frankly, and they might see this as the more sort of conventional choice.
--:-- Tom Bateman: He is somebody that comes from the neoconservative wing of the party, very hawkish on foreign relations, but has since sort of shifted his views to align a bit more closely with those of Donald Trump. And I would characterize it as being in now a sort your hawkish isolationist view on foreign affairs to match those of Donald Trump.
--:-- Tom Bateman: But, you know, the idea here is that Donald Trump has said they need to end foreign wars, but still project sort of overwhelming American military power and prowess to scare off America's adversaries around the world. But clearly he's going to have his work cut out, given that during the campaign, Mr. Trump had said that he would bring an end very quickly to the war in Ukraine and to the wars in the Middle East, but hasn't said how.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Are the white vapour trails left in the sky by jet planes harmless, or do they represent something sinister? Certainly they generate lots of conspiracy theories, and while these may be false, it turns out that contrails do actually damage the environment. Researchers have found they can double the amount of global warming caused by carbon emissions from planes.
--:-- Oliver Conway: The issue has been discussed at the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan. Carlos López de la Osa from the Transport and Environment Campaign Group in Brussels worked on the study. He spoke to Owen Bennett-Jones.
--:-- Carlos López de la Osa: Contrails are formed because planes don't just emit CO2, they also emit huge amounts of water vapour. And this is similar to what we have in a cold winter morning when we breathe out and our water vapour condenses.
--:-- Carlos López de la Osa: So when a plane flies up in the sky and finds a pocket of cold and humid air, the water vapour released by the engine condenses. It's just an artificial cloud that we're creating. And the cloud interacts with the radiation from the Earth, especially the heat that's trying to escape to outer space.
--:-- Carlos López de la Osa: Now then, having seen a vapour trail, we've all seen them. They're very thin and they go behind a plane. You don't see much of them. I mean does that have a big effect It does the effect is of a similar magnitude to the warming effect of CO2 emissions from aviation So even though they might seem like pretty harmless thin lines they do have a sizable effect on climate especially those ones which stay for a long time in the atmosphere and develop into serious clouds.
--:-- Carlos López de la Osa: So they become a bit thicker. So what do you think can be done about it? Because apparently there are quite easy fixes for this. Yeah, as I've said, they don't form all the time. So if we see planes flying in the sky, we don't always see controls behind them. But in those specific cold and humid regions, they tend to form more easily.
--:-- Carlos López de la Osa: So it would consist of finding those areas and avoiding them in a similar fashion to what we do already today with thunderstorms or with areas of severe turbulence. And that would consist of relatively small deviations going up or down by 300, 600 meters, which is a relatively small climb or descent.
--:-- Carlos López de la Osa: This will have very limited impact on flight times or almost no impact and very limited impact as well on fuel consumption. But in that way, we can mitigate significantly the formation of contrails. I mean, that sounds like another surprising claim that 300 metres could make such a big difference to the air temperature and therefore the capacity to form these trails.
--:-- Carlos López de la Osa: Yeah, those areas are very thin. Is this science absolutely established or are there people who challenge you on this? There's a consensus on the fact that these countries are very warming for the climate and their impact is of a similar size to that of CO2. The exact extent is still a subject of scientific research.
--:-- Carlos López de la Osa: But one thing that we can tell for sure, and we've looked at it in our analysis, is that if we tackle those very few flights which are responsible for the most warming controls, we're talking about 3% of flights generating 80% of control warming, that's certainly a no regrets solution for climate which can be also deployed at a very low cost we're talking less than the cost of a coffee at the airport per passenger right i mean it's just a few dollars per head in each flight.
--:-- Carlos López de la Osa: Are people taking it seriously there has been quite a lot of attention from the climate community and also by policymakers and that is precisely what we want to achieve by talking about it and presenting it at cop because so far it's been a very niche topic in the aviation community, but it's really a significant climate issue which has so far flown under the radar, but at the same time is one climate issue that has a relatively easy fix, which will have no impact on the aviation industry and on passengers.
--:-- Carlos López de la Osa: That's why it's such an attractive solution, and we want more and more people to be aware of it. Now, you're talking about, they're called contrails, and I think we should just mention, because lots of people will have seen this online and therefore just be wondering if it's connected which it isn't but that there's talk online a conspiracy theory about chemtrails which are the same thing it's a different word for the same thing and there are all sorts of ideas about what chemtrails are meant to be which are all basically not based in reality right yeah so quite often reality is simpler than it seems so as opposed to having some chemicals being equipped on aircraft and released to spray population.
--:-- Carlos López de la Osa: It's much simpler, is what we said before. It's quite simply the water vapour condensing behind place on certain areas of the atmosphere. So luckily we are not being sprayed. There's a climate issue, but we also have the toolkit to start solving it very soon.
--:-- Oliver Conway: The authorities in the Spanish region of Valencia were strongly criticised for failing to warn residents about the floods last month that killed more than 200 people. Well, more bad weather is hitting southern and eastern Spain, and this time people in the southern province of Malaga have had phone alerts, while 3,000 have been evacuated. But in Valencia itself, two weeks on from the flooding, anger remains, as Nick Beak reports.
--:-- Nick Beak: A message blares out from a military vehicle trundling through the streets. More rain is on the way. This alert in the Valencia region, a stark contrast to the lack of warning two weeks ago when the deadliest floods in generations hit Spain.
--:-- Nick Beak: This morning, flood water raced through towns once again, including in the south, in the Malaga area. This time, there were no reported deaths anywhere. But many are still reeling from what happened a fortnight ago around Valencia. no place was harder hit than here paiporta home to about 25 000 people 60 were killed in the floods and two weeks on it's still caked with this layer of mud everywhere you look.
--:-- Nick Beak: There were fire engines emergency services the red cross legions of volunteers and also you see a lot of the estimated 100,000 vehicles that were destroyed in these floods. Some of them are perching where the water picked them up and deposited them at these incredible angles, some vehicles upside down, others have been scooped up and moved and put in these sort of makeshift car parks of wrecked vehicles.
--:-- Nick Beak: It's nothing compared with the human cost. It was announced today that the bodies of five-year-old Ethan Matias and three-year-old Ruben Matias had been found. Last week, their neighbours had told us how the two brothers had been swept away by the torrent, ripped from their dad's arms, after a truck had smashed open a wall to their home.
--:-- Nick Beak: It was like a tsunami, says Juan Ho, showing us a video of the water racing through his street two weeks ago. It was only thanks to God I survived. He makes the sign of the cross. He and his sister Lourdes say they've been abandoned by the authorities since and are furious.
--:-- Nick Beak: This is a shame. We feel abandoned. For four days we didn't see the army coming to help. We need more troops. We feel locked in here. There are no roads. This is horrible. We lost Everything here in this town, everything, everything which was lower than three metres is lost.
--:-- Nick Beak: The loss has sparked a huge collective effort, while Spain's politicians have been trading in a bitter blame game. The Valencia government is still under fire for sending out an official alert by mobile phone nearly 13 hours after the state weather agency warned of very intense rain.
--:-- Nick Beak: Amid all this incredible stories are still emerging there was the man filmed outside the english language school who smashed open the door as the water rises with terrifying speed seen rescuing four trapped children we've managed to track down the man who was in that video he's danny burgit martinez he's the joint director of the english school in the local media here
--:-- Nick Beak: They're saying you're the hero of Pipe Porter. What do you make of that? There are a lot of people who did the same thing that night. Many heroes like me, if you want to call us that. I feel good because I feel the love of the people around here. I was the one who was filmed, but there were many, many other heroes.
--:-- Nick Beak: But an heroic effort will be required to clear all this up, and it will be needed for many more weeks and months to come, to restore Spain's traumatised and shattered communities. Our report by Nick Beak.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Every year, more than two million people see Rembrandt's masterpiece, The Night Watch, at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Now, the huge painting is undergoing its largest ever restoration, but visitors will not miss out. They'll be able to see the picture and the work being done on it inside a specially designed glass box.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Tako Dibitz is the Rijksmuseum's general director. He spoke to James Kumarasamy. The Night Watch is Rembrandt's most ambitious work. It's about four yards in width. It depicts 36 men who were the men who protected the city of Amsterdam during the war against Spain in the 17th century.
--:-- Tako Dibitz: And it's a painting with which Rembrandt wanted the viewer to feel respect and awe. But the special thing about it is that Rembrandt really revolutionized the way we look at people. He depicts people in a sense the raw truth He depict his sitters more beautiful than they are He depicts them as they are
--:-- Tako Dibitz: And now you are showing viewers the truth if you like of how a painting is restored We're a public institution and we feel that everyone has the right to see what we actually do with the night watch. It was first attacked by somebody with a knife and then it was attacked by somebody who tried to spray acid on it.
--:-- Tako Dibitz: So now slowly, with all the conservation that happened afterwards, taking off the varnish layers and taking off all the overpaint, you will see the naked truth. So you will actually get as close to Rembrandt's paint as you can get into the life of this painting.
--:-- Tako Dibitz: What are you hoping will be restored? What is it that has faded away over the years? What is it that you are hoping will return? Well, the varnish had yellowed, but it had also become matte in certain areas. And Rembrandt is such a master at creating depth with light and dark contrast.
--:-- Tako Dibitz: And when it was restored in the 1970s, they did it in less than four months. So they had to work very fast, often overpainting original paint by Rembrandt. So we will also be able to take that overpaint off and to really be certain that all the original paint of Rembrandt will be visible.
--:-- Tako Dibitz: And that will make the picture far more legible. I think it will be magic to see it again.
--:-- Oliver Conway: That's all from us for now, but the Global News Podcast will be back very soon. This edition was mixed by James Piper and produced by Nikki Verrico. The editor's Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye. I'm Tristan Redman in London and this is The Global Story Every weekday we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts
