--:-- Asma Khalid: This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. America is changing and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, DC.
--:-- Tristan Redman: I'm Tristan Redman in London.
--:-- Asma Khalid: 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.
--:-- Tristan Redman: to try to salvage ceasefire talks and help improve the dire conditions in Gaza.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Also in this podcast, the World Food Programme in Nigeria says drastic aid cuts have left a million displaced people at the mercy of jihadists.
--:-- Tristan Redman: It will be much easier for the militants to lure other youths to join them and spiral the insecurity across the whole region.
--:-- Asma Khalid: And what do we need to know about children and screen time and how to protect developing brains.
--:-- Tristan Redman: We start in Ukraine, where the capital Kiev has come under fire again by a barrage of Russian weapons.
--:-- Jonathan Beal: At least nine people were killed and dozens more were injured as drones and missiles hit at least 27 locations.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Several districts of the city were attacked and an apartment block was destroyed.
--:-- Jonathan Beal: The dead included a six-year-old boy.
--:-- Tristan Redman: This man was in his apartment when the attack happened.
--:-- Man: The main thing is that we're alive and I hope the apartment will be okay too.
--:-- Jonathan Beal: I was just lying in bed when there was a really bright flash, then a very loud explosion.
--:-- Tristan Redman: We heard blasts before, but nothing like this.
--:-- Jonathan Beal: Our defence correspondent in Kiev, Jonathan Beal, told us more.
--:-- Jonathan Beal: There were more than 300 drones fired from Russia towards Ukraine overnight.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Most of those focused on the capital, Kiev.
--:-- Jonathan Beal: And it's been a fairly quiet few days, partly because they're thunderstorms.
--:-- Tristan Redman: So quiet in the sense, no, not many Russian strikes going on.
--:-- Jonathan Beal: But certainly last night it was quite intense.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Also missiles fired, lighting up the sky as they hit the ground.
--:-- Jonathan Beal: That orange glow lighting up the night sky.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And there have been significant civilian casualties.
--:-- Jonathan Beal: And among those killed includes a six-year-old boy and his mother, a child of five months, has also been injured.
--:-- Tristan Redman: So a very heavy, difficult night for Kiev.
--:-- Jonathan Beal: It's not the first time I remember this has happened, but I think the timing is significant.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Yes, it's just a few days after President Trump issued a new ceasefire deadline to Vladimir Putin.
--:-- Jonathan Beal: Russia doesn't seem to be taking much notice, does it?
--:-- Tristan Redman: No, it doesn't.
--:-- Jonathan Beal: And let's be honest, there have been lots of sanctions imposed on Russia and it may have made the economy, how Russian government tries to make its budget work, more difficult.
--:-- Tristan Redman: But at the end of the day, they are able to get around these sanctions.
--:-- Jonathan Beal: And the threat of more sanctions from President Trump has clearly not changed the direction of President Putin's war.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And it's not just a war in the air, it's a war on the ground too.
--:-- Jonathan Beal: And that is continuing.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Russia says that it's made an important advance in the east of Ukraine.
--:-- Jonathan Beal: So this is the claim from Russia about the town of Chazivyar, which I've been to many times.
--:-- Tristan Redman: It's an important strategic goal for the Russians because it does give them high ground and it gives Ukraine high ground to defend.
--:-- Jonathan Beal: But Russia clearly targeting that city because then they believe they can move on to other cities like Pukrovsk, which is already under huge threat, and Konstantinivka.
--:-- Tristan Redman: So getting more of the Donbass, essentially.
--:-- Jonathan Beal: So we have seen on social media scenes of Russian flags being raised in Chazivyar.
--:-- Tristan Redman: That said, Ukraine is adamant that Russia does not control Chazivyar in its entirety and that fighting is still going on.
--:-- Jonathan Beal: But, you know, this is a pattern we've seen repeated throughout the war where a fierce battle goes over against the town or a city slowly but surely, given that the Russians throw lots of resources, lots of people and a lot of them die at taking these objectives, that this looks like it will be the next one to go.
--:-- Tristan Redman: The overnight attack in Kiev did nothing to deter demonstrators who gathered outside Ukraine's parliament building today.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: It's an amazing U-turn.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And last week, Parliament voted on a bill essentially handing over control of these two key agencies to a political appointee, a Zelensky loyalist.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: And predictably, that triggered those massive protests, thousands of Ukrainians taking to the streets across Ukraine, saying that this is not what we want.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And also, predictably, Ukraine's Western allies have expressed concern.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Now, not one of those MPs who voted to curtail those agencies' authority, well, essentially they did the opposite.
--:-- Tristan Redman: They backed a presidential bill restoring their independence by a huge number, 331, for not a single one against.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: You describe it as an amazing U-turn.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Has this damaged President Zelensky?
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: What this vote shows is that he's still very much in control.
--:-- Tristan Redman: He's not a lame duck.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: I was listening to the debate in Parliament before this vote and the MPs, they made critical angry noises saying that we're not going to be dictated.
--:-- Tristan Redman: We're not going to follow whatever the EU tells us or the president tells us.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: But yet in the end, they voted the right sort of way.
--:-- Tristan Redman: It begs the question of what was the point in the first place of allowing this to happen?
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Damage was done to Ukraine's credibility as a fighter against corruption.
--:-- Tristan Redman: But this vote, pretty much unanimous, is probably the best way of containing that damage.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Can you just explain for us how big an issue is corruption in Ukraine right now?
--:-- Tristan Redman: It has been a huge issue for decades, for generations.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Having said that, over the past years, Ukraine's made huge strides, well, mainly thanks to those two agencies, in fighting corruption.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Transparency International ranks Ukraine pretty highly in its corruption perceptions index.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: And over the past years, we've seen numerous examples of high ranking officials being exposed.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And now the fear that caused all these protests and all this concern was that if those agencies were subordinated to a political appointee controlled by the government, years of hard work would have been undone.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Vitaly Shevchenko of BBC Monitoring.
--:-- Tristan Redman: To the Middle East now, and the person Donald Trump entrusts with much of his diplomacy, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, is back in Israel today.
--:-- Yolande Nell: He's meeting senior Israeli officials to discuss how to get more aid to civilians in Gaza and efforts to kick-start stalled ceasefire talks.
--:-- Tristan Redman: So could this trip be more successful than previous visits, particularly as President Trump has been coming under increasing pressure to intervene in the humanitarian crisis
--:-- Dennis Ross: I think with regard to President Trump he seems to be more and more concerned about the realities in Gaza.
--:-- Tristan Redman: I don't believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu can say no to him.
--:-- Dennis Ross: That's also one of the reasons I think Whitcoff is going out there to impress Prime Minister Netanyahu on what the administration needs to be done.
--:-- Tristan Redman: So there's a climate that is changing here.
--:-- Dennis Ross: I think it's very much in Israel's interest to find a way to end the war.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Obviously, Hamas has a say in that, but I think if the Israeli position were to change to one in which it would announce that they will end the war provided all the hostages are released, with the understanding that if Hamas tries to reconstitute itself, Israel will act again.
--:-- Dennis Ross: I think it would be difficult for Hamas not to release the hostages under those circumstances.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Our correspondent in Jerusalem, Yolande Nell, told us more about Mr. Witkoff's visit.
--:-- Yolande Nell: Well, local media expecting him to meet the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about now, but we haven't had an official schedule.
--:-- Tristan Redman: He's coming here really at a critical moment, expected to meet different Israeli officials to talk about the ceasefire and hostage release deal after efforts to secure this deal really stalled last week.
--:-- Yolande Nell: You had both Israel and the US pulling their negotiators out of indirect talks that have been going on for weeks in Qatar.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And in recent days, we've had Israeli officials being quoted threatening punitive action against Hamas if it does not, in the coming days, accept this deal for a 60-day truce and returning hostages.
--:-- Yolande Nell: That is on the table.
--:-- Tristan Redman: At the same time, the deep humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
--:-- Yolande Nell: And we had President Trump earlier this week saying that the US and Israel would team up to set up new aid centres in Gaza.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Now, the White House has not given any information.
--:-- Yolande Nell: Israeli officials have not given any information about what that might mean.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And that's why, against that backdrop, there's a lot of interest in the media reports that we've had that Steve Wyckoff could indeed go to Gaza, as he has done once before since taking up his job, to see things on the ground for himself and to look at those controversial aid sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
--:-- Yolande Nell: And as I mentioned in the introduction, Israel does appear to be increasingly isolated diplomatically.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Certainly more countries like Canada is the latest to talk about potentially recognising Palestinian statehood.
--:-- Yolande Nell: What is the reaction to all of that where you are in Jerusalem?
--:-- Tristan Redman: I mean, it's just been a sort of consistently angry reaction that's come from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, saying that this both harms ceasefire efforts and it gives a reward for terrorism to Hamas.
--:-- Yolande Nell: And, you know, that was a big policy shift announced by Canada, as we've had by other close allies of Israel, France and the UK in recent days.
--:-- Tristan Redman: All of them saying, you know, this is conditional, this move that they're suggesting they could make to recognise a Palestinian state.
--:-- Yolande Nell: Canadians are talking about it needs reforms to the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the occupied West Bank.
--:-- Tristan Redman: But really, this is getting a lot of attention.
--:-- Yolande Nell: Israelis do feel increasingly isolated internationally.
--:-- Tristan Redman: While the US is standing by the Israelis, I've just been at a rally with hostage families calling on Steve Wyckoff to do more to try to get their loved ones released from Gaza.
--:-- Yolande Nell: But there the people were saying that they felt betrayed somewhat because they believe that hostage releases should come before any recognition of a Palestinian state.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Of course, the Palestinians have really welcomed this move.
--:-- Yolande Nell: It's something that President Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, has really been pushing for with other officials, especially those in the West Bank, for years now.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Since back in 2014, we had the last direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians stalling with nothing really, you know, to replace those in the last decade.
--:-- Yolande Nell: That was Yolande Nell and she was speaking to Ben Brown.
--:-- Tristan Redman: The UN in Nigeria says it will today run out of money needed to continue supporting over a million people displaced by militants.
--:-- Anne Soy: The Boko Haram group is considered one of the world's deadliest.
--:-- Tristan Redman: It has killed thousands of people across northern Nigeria and forced tens of thousands more to flee and seek refuge in UN camps.
--:-- Anne Soy: But now the World Food Programme says cuts to global aid budgets, including by the US, which was the biggest donor, could leave people hungry and force families back into the hands of insurgents.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Anne Soy reports from Groza in northeastern Nigeria.
--:-- Anne Soy: I'm walking in the middle of the internally displaced persons camp in Gwaza and there are children all around me.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Millions of Nigerians across the northeast have fled to camps like this one over the last 10 years for their safety.
--:-- Anne Soy: They are fleeing from militants.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And just beyond the camp, I can see in front of me, there are beautiful hills.
--:-- Anne Soy: But it can be misleading because just beyond those hills, that's where the militants are located.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And I'm told from time to time they do come into the camps to attack people.
--:-- Anne Soy: I meet 40-year-old Aisha Abubakar.
--:-- Tristan Redman: She abandoned her farm and fled from home after her family was attacked.
--:-- Aisha Abubakar: I had 10 children in total.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Six have died and four are alive.
--:-- Aisha Abubakar: Some of my children died of illness while others were abducted.
--:-- Tristan Redman: My husband was killed too.
--:-- Aisha Abubakar: And that means Aisha is entirely dependent on aid.
--:-- Tristan Redman: It's food distribution day at the camp.
--:-- Anne Soy: There are easily hundreds of people here seated in the shade, women on one side, men on the other.
--:-- Tristan Redman: They are holding debit cards that are loaded with cash.
--:-- Anne Soy: So rather than give them food in kind from the World Food Programme, they get cash and there are retailers here.
--:-- Tristan Redman: They have grains, they have cooking oil, they have all sorts of food supplies.
--:-- Anne Soy: So the internally displaced people will buy the food using their cards, but it's the last amounts they are receiving.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Our warehouse are empty.
--:-- Anne Soy: That's Trust Mulambo, the World Food Programme's head of operations for northeast Nigeria.
--:-- Tristan Redman: So you don't have any more to give them?
--:-- Anne Soy: We don't have any more to give.
--:-- Tristan Redman: The situation is dire and it's desperate.
--:-- Anne Soy: So if the support that you've been giving these people ends, where does that leave them?
--:-- Tristan Redman: It will be much easier for the militants to lure other youths to join them and spiral the insecurity across the whole region.
--:-- Anne Soy: For years, Nigeria has failed to tackle the insurgency.
--:-- Tristan Redman: What's clear is that the crisis is not waiting.
--:-- Anne Soy: Things are getting worse by the day.
--:-- Tristan Redman: I've come to the Hauzaribe Nutrition Centre in Guoza.
--:-- Anne Soy: I can see dozens of mothers here who have brought their children.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Some of them are sat on a mat, others on plastic chairs waiting for their turn to be seen.
--:-- Anne Soy: 25-year-old Hawa Badamasi has brought her children here.
--:-- Tristan Redman: She's just received the news from the medics.
--:-- Anne Soy: Her oldest, Amina, who's three and a half, is malnourished.
--:-- Tristan Redman: I feel so bad, every mother wants her baby to be healthy.
--:-- Anne Soy: How were other mothers here?
--:-- Tristan Redman: Do not know it yet, but this clinic, as well as many others in this region, may just close because of funding cuts.
--:-- Anne Soy: I asked her where it would leave her and her family.
--:-- Tristan Redman: The people are in a difficult situation and there are no farmers.
--:-- Anne Soy: When the farmers enter the bush to farm, they get killed.
--:-- Tristan Redman: The aid has stopped and people are killed in the farm.
--:-- Anne Soy: What are we going to do with our lives?
--:-- Tristan Redman: We will be in a dire situation with no food and no medicine.
--:-- Anne Soy: Our survival depends on these essentials.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And as she leaves the clinic, Hawa is given a bag with the nutrition supplement to take home to continue the treatment.
--:-- Anne Soy: But this might just be the last batch she receives here.
--:-- Tristan Redman: That report by Anne Soy in northeastern Nigeria.
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: One of the great fears of modern times is that we are somehow rewiring children brains by the use of screens rewiring them in a way that reduces their capacity and causes them mental decline that will affect them as adults and so affect all of society.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Australia seems to be leading the way when it comes to direct measures to limit screen time, most recently planning to ban YouTube accounts for under-16s to go alongside bans on TikTok and Instagram etc.
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: In Britain recently an online safety bill was partly aimed at reducing access to pornography.
--:-- Tristan Redman: But what about the wider question of screen time for children which so many parents grapple with all the time?
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: Here's our technology editor Zoe Kleinman.
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: The reason I started looking into this is because we see so many headlines about you know the worries and the fears of screen time and there are some scientists who are saying actually if you look at this scientifically the evidence base that we have for all of this is not there.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And they argue is actually quite flawed.
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: So they say the way in which this data is gathered is generally quite unscientific.
--:-- Tristan Redman: You're asking people to self-report how much screen time they've had and how it made them feel.
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: You're not necessarily asking them what it was they were doing, you know, on their screens during that time.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Were they doom scrolling or were they learning a language and talking to other friends around the world?
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: What else was going on in their lives at the time.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And they also say there's issues with correlation.
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: So, for example, in one big data set, they found there was a small link between increased screen time and depression.
--:-- Tristan Redman: But there was the same statistical link in the same data set between reports of feeling depressed and whether or not the person had eaten potatoes in the last seven days.
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: So, you know, the argument is that you're sort of looking for something in data that's not really scientifically there yet.
--:-- Tristan Redman: There's also some studies that suggest blue light is really bad for you before you go to sleep.
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: It stops you sleeping.
--:-- Tristan Redman: But equally, there are others that say, do you know what? It doesn't make much difference at all.
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: There really isn't the conclusive evidence scientifically that we might think there is, even though obviously parents will say, well, we can see it.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Yeah, but that's the point, isn't it?
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: The evidence would be the link.
--:-- Tristan Redman: I mean, and that would put to bed the potato thing, wouldn't it?
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: Because what is missing with the potatoes is a link between the two.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And that is what a lot of parents think is actually there and is visible to them.
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: Yeah, and I spoke to one neuroscientist several years ago, actually, who said she thought screens were changing children's brains and this was like a climate emergency situation, you know, that we really should be a lot more worried about it than we are.
--:-- Tristan Redman: But the science has never really backed that up.
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: One study looked at the brain scans of 11,500 9- to 12-year-olds and didn't find any changes.
--:-- Tristan Redman: You've got to also bear in mind that everything changes your brain.
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: That's how we learn.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And, you know, that the evolution of our brains happens quite slowly.
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: One neuroscientist said to me, if our brains change dramatically very quickly in response to environmental factors, we'd be extinct by now because, you know, we wouldn't be able to keep up with our environment around us.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And there are some concerns that by making screens a forbidden fruit, are we driving it underground?
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: Are we making it harder for children to feel like they can ask for help?
--:-- Tristan Redman: And because there aren't really any consistent official guidelines, so there are lots of paediatric bodies that don't have any screen time guidelines at all.
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: The World Health Organization does have some, but it's really more geared around keeping children active rather than keeping them on their screens.
--:-- Tristan Redman: You know, I'll be creating an unlevel playing field here where we're going to have some tech savvy children and some who aren't.
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: And then when they do get online, they're likely to be more vulnerable.
--:-- Tristan Redman: That said, there are others who say, no, that, you know, there is absolutely no controversy around this.
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: Screens for children are bad.
--:-- Tristan Redman: One psychologist I spoke to, Jean Twenge's work with Jonathan Haidt, who's very well known in this space.
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: And she says she started out looking at why depression rates were rising dramatically in US teams.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And she didn't set out to prove that smartphones were evil, but it was the only common denominator that she could find.
--:-- Zoe Kleinman: And she thinks the only answer is to delay them for as long as possible.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Zoe Kleinman was speaking to Justin Webb.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Still to come in this podcast, what archaeologists are learning from the tattoos of a mummified woman discovered in Siberia.
--:-- Tristan Redman: What I hope people take away from it is the increased sense of respect and awe for the people back in the day.
--:-- Asma Khalid: America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
--:-- Tristan Redman: I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C.
--:-- Asma Khalid: I'm Tristan Redman in London.
--:-- Tristan Redman: 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.
--:-- Olga Robinson: A BBC Verify investigation has revealed that the identities of British public sector workers are now being cloned using AI by a Russian-linked disinformation campaign.
--:-- Tristan Redman: An emergency medical advisor from Preston in northwest England was stunned to learn that his voice had been faked in a campaign spreading fear ahead of Poland's presidential election earlier this year.
--:-- Olga Robinson: Aaron, an emergency service call operator from Preston in England, recorded a video for the NHS, the UK's public health service, about his work during the Easter holidays.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Hello, my name's Aaron. I'm an emergency medical advisor.
--:-- Olga Robinson: But to his surprise, his voice was stolen by a Russian-linked disinformation network to create an AI fake pushing pro-Russian messages.
--:-- Tristan Redman: I have many friends who are paramedics in Poland. They are terrified of the upcoming election.
--:-- Olga Robinson: In this case, the operation seemed to try and spread fear ahead of the May presidential elections in Poland, which is a staunch ally of Ukraine.
--:-- Tristan Redman: We've also found that the quality of fabricated videos like this is getting more sophisticated.
--:-- Olga Robinson: We've compared the audio of the fake featuring Aaron with his real voice, and found that it's similar.
--:-- Tristan Redman: I don't think my friends or family would have been able to tell it was fake.
--:-- Olga Robinson: I think they would have probably believed it was real.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Independent researchers have also helped us to confirm that this is part of an extensive Russian disinformation campaign which BBC Verify and other analysts have been tracking for years.
--:-- Olga Robinson: Previously, they impersonated dozens of media outlets, journalists and academics, but now seem to have broadened their tactics to exploit British public sector workers.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Guillaume Kuster, the CEO of CheckFirst, a Finnish analytics company that has previously linked the network to Russia, says that the operation keeps evolving.
--:-- Olga Robinson: They are trying something new. They are, you know, throwing spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Aaron is not the only one to have his identity cloned using AI.
--:-- Olga Robinson: We found at least four other British public sector workers whose videos have been exploited like this.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Luckily, none of their fakes went viral, but there's no guarantee that another one wouldn't.
--:-- Olga Robinson: I warned my little brother and my little sister about using social media sensibly.
--:-- Tristan Redman: So for my video to be used, it's quite scary, really.
--:-- Olga Robinson: That report by Olga Robinson.
--:-- Jonathan Head: The military junta, which seized power in Myanmar four years ago, has for the first time lifted the state of emergency under which it's been ruling the country.
--:-- Tristan Redman: The junta's announced plans to hold an election at the end of the year.
--:-- Jonathan Head: Our Southeast Asia correspondent, Jonathan Head, explained what the move means.
--:-- Jonathan Head: It's really a technicality, although of course the state of emergency is the fig leaf under which the military has given itself the aura of legitimacy.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Ever since it deposed the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi four and a half years ago.
--:-- Jonathan Head: The Myanmar military, they wrote a constitution under which Myanmar has been operating way back in 2008.
--:-- Tristan Redman: While many people say they violated it with the coup.
--:-- Jonathan Head: They do try to adhere to it under that.
--:-- Jonathan Head: They could declare a state of emergency for six months.
--:-- Tristan Redman: So they've renewed this state of emergency every six months.
--:-- Jonathan Head: It's been renewed eight times.
--:-- Tristan Redman: The reason they've not renewed it this time, the last one's just expired, is because under the Constitution you can't hold an election if a state of emergency is in place.
--:-- Jonathan Head: That means all this talk of an election at the end of the year is serious.
--:-- Tristan Redman: The military wants to hold an election possibly December possibly January despite the fact that it doesn't control a lot of the country.
--:-- Jonathan Head: There's armed insurgency and a great deal of it, that a large part of the population is unlikely to take part.
--:-- Tristan Redman: But they're still pushing ahead.
--:-- Jonathan Head: And I think the fact that they've suspended the state of emergency shows that they're set on doing it.
--:-- Jonathan Head: But given all those conditions that you just mentioned, is Myanmar in any state to hold a free and fair election?
--:-- Tristan Redman: Most countries would never hold an election in this state.
--:-- Jonathan Head: It's certainly going to lack credibility of any real kind, particularly as the military is organising it.
--:-- Jonathan Head: The most popular party, Aung San Suu Kyi's party, will not be able to take part.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And they've just passed a pretty savage law that penalises any sort of criticism of the election process, any attempt to disrupt it.
--:-- Jonathan Head: And the fact is there will be disruptions.
--:-- Tristan Redman: If they try to hold it, there's no doubt that the various insurgent groups will try to stop it.
--:-- Jonathan Head: They've said it's not legitimate, it shouldn't happen.
--:-- Jonathan Head: Behind Myanmar, though, there is some diplomatic support, partly from China, we believe.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Not that China approves of much of what the Myanmar military has done, but that China views some kind of election, even if it's deeply flawed, as the only off-ramp from the debilitating civil war that Myanmar's stuck in.
--:-- Jonathan Head: And I think that might encourage the generals to push ahead in the hope that they come up with some kind of government that can be worked with to find a solution to this ongoing conflict.
--:-- Jonathan Head: Will ending the state of emergency actually make any other difference to normal life?
--:-- Tristan Redman: I doubt it.
--:-- Jonathan Head: You know, I think the military has got a very firm grip.
--:-- Jonathan Head: You know, there's extreme violence.
--:-- Tristan Redman: They operate with impunity and much of the country is aerial bombardment.
--:-- Jonathan Head: The war won't stop and I think most Burmese won't notice the difference.
--:-- Priya Rai: New research is suggesting that women perform better than males in some scenarios.
--:-- Tristan Redman: A study by the University of Waterloo in Canada of pilots in their early stages of licensing has shown that female pilots make fewer flight control errors in simulations when stress levels increase.
--:-- Priya Rai: But that's not the full picture, as the lead researcher Dr. Naila Ayala told me.
--:-- Dr. Naila Ayala: Females in these high stress emergency situations tend to perform better even though we didn't find any differences in visual attention which was not at all something that we hypothesized.
--:-- Tristan Redman: This is about stress levels right so what are some of those situations where women are potentially dealing with it better?
--:-- Dr. Naila Ayala: This is one paradigm that we looked at in a wider range of nine different scenarios.
--:-- Tristan Redman: So four of those scenarios were really easy, the nicest skies, weather conditions pilots could probably dream of, and then another four conditions were a little more difficult.
--:-- Dr. Naila Ayala: Now across all those different types of scenarios, it was in the last type of scenario, which was our emergency engine failure scenario, that we surprised pilots with where we started to see differences between female and male pilots.
--:-- Tristan Redman: There was evidence of female pilots being able to identify the emergency quicker than male pilots.
--:-- Dr. Naila Ayala: There was significant differences in their ability to maneuver the plane and land the plane safely significantly faster than their male counterparts.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And they were also able to maintain consistent airspeed and not deviate from the recommended airspeeds for final approach and landing compared to their male counterparts, which actually demonstrated significantly larger deviations from what was recommended during their final approach during these emergency scenarios.
--:-- Dr. Naila Ayala: But actually, there were some scenarios, I believe, where you found better things about how men were reacting.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Yes, I think what this really shows us is that there is more research that needs to be done to identify these different strengths and weaknesses, and there's more innovation that is also required to be done and integrated into training organisations and training institutions so that they can actually almost build off of the current training protocols to something that's more adaptive to the individual.
--:-- Priya Rai: Dr. Naila Ayala, and a shout out to my cousin, the airline pilot Janice Gibson.
--:-- Georgina Ranard: Archaeologists have produced high-resolution scans of the tattoos found on a 2,500-year-old ice mummy found in Siberia.
--:-- Tristan Redman: The decorations were on the body of a woman who was preserved in an ice cave.
--:-- Georgina Ranard: They're actually really beautiful, I think.
--:-- Tristan Redman: So they're on the arms and hands of a woman who's aged about 50.
--:-- Georgina Ranard: She was with the Hazaric people in Siberia in the 5th century BC.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And on the pictures from the scan, you can see these really thick black lines.
--:-- Georgina Ranard: They're quite large.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And then the tattoos were a mixture of wild animals battling.
--:-- Georgina Ranard: So there's leopards encircling a stag.
--:-- Tristan Redman: The stag's got kind of long back legs and antlers.
--:-- Georgina Ranard: Another tattoo shows this mythical creature, the griffin.
--:-- Tristan Redman: So it's half lion and then it has the head and wings of an eagle.
--:-- Georgina Ranard: But my favourite one actually is this tiny little rooster with a long neck and that was on her thumb, which they said sort of shows her flair.
--:-- Tristan Redman: They are very beautiful.
--:-- Georgina Ranard: What do we learn from them?
--:-- Tristan Redman: So we knew these ice mummies existed from these caves that were found in the 19th century.
--:-- Georgina Ranard: But these scans are the first time they've seen the tattoos in very crisp detail.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And they worked with a modern tattooist who himself decorates his own body with these ancient decorations.
--:-- Georgina Ranard: And his conclusions mean they think they penciled the design onto the skin first and then used needles probably made from animal bone.
--:-- Tristan Redman: So it's really rare to get this level of detail from an ancient culture.
--:-- Georgina Ranard: And the archaeologists are delighted.
--:-- Tristan Redman: So we spoke to Dr. Gino Caspari from the Max Planck Institute about his work.
--:-- Dr. Gino Caspari: What I hope people take away from it is kind of an increased sense of respect and awe for the people back in the day.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Tattooing is a practice that's very important for a lot of people around the world today.
--:-- Dr. Gino Caspari: And back in the day, it was already a really professional practice where people put a lot of time and effort and practice into creating these images.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And they're extremely sophisticated.
--:-- Georgina Ranard: So on first glance, when you look at the pictures, I think they don't look too different from what you would expect.
--:-- Tristan Redman: I think some people think tattooing is quite modern, but lots of cultures around the world, indigenous cultures have done it for centuries.
--:-- Georgina Ranard: And clearly we know that they've been doing it for thousands of years.
--:-- Tristan Redman: So you'd think, oh, well, probably a modern tattooist could do this quite easily.
--:-- Georgina Ranard: But actually, they think that these were quite difficult techniques called hand poking, where they're sort of obviously doing it by hand and sort of incising into the skin.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And if you think about the conditions they were working in, they lived on the Central Asian steppe, probably very cold and windy at times of year.
--:-- Georgina Ranard: And these needles were made from animal bones.
--:-- Tristan Redman: So they would have needed to be really careful about the risk of infection.
--:-- Georgina Ranard: You know, we know that when you tattoo, there can be blood.
--:-- Tristan Redman: So I think it was probably a far cry from the sterilised tattoo parlours we think about today.
--:-- Georgina Ranard: That was Georgina Ranard.
--:-- Asma Khalid: And if you'd like to see those images, do take a look on the science pages of the BBC News website.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And that's it from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.
--:-- Asma Khalid: If you would like to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, do please send us an email.
--:-- Tristan Redman: The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.
--:-- Asma Khalid: You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.
--:-- Tristan Redman: Just use the hashtag Global News Pod.
--:-- Asma Khalid: This edition was produced by Alice Adderley and Adrienne White.
--:-- Tristan Redman: It was mixed by Chris Lovelock.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Our editor is Karen Martin.
--:-- Tristan Redman: I'm Jackie Leonard.
--:-- Asma Khalid: And until next time, goodbye.
--:-- Tristan Redman: America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global
