Artemis II leaves Earth's orbit and heads for Moon

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0:31I'm Tristan Redmond, one of the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. How would the US invade Iran? Different options are on the table, but the Pentagon has wargamed this for years. And our guest today was in the room for many of them. What are Donald Trump's remaining military options? Listen to the Global Story on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:01This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Celia Hatton, and in the early hours of Friday, the 3rd of April, these are our main stories. NASA's Artemis II mission moves into its next phase. A big engine burn sends the astronauts beyond the Earth's orbit on a trajectory around the Moon. Plus, the military general behind Myanmar's coup five years ago becomes the country's president. Also in this podcast, Donald Trump fires his second cabinet member in less than a month. There had been speculation for some time that the Trump administration was not particularly happy with her performance at times.

1:45Pam Bondi is out as U.S. Attorney General.

1:53We're starting the program with news from NASA's Artemis II moon mission and its translunar injection burn. This is the message from Houston Mission Control just a few hours ago. Confirmation from teams here on the ground to the Artemis II crew aboard Orion. We have translunar injection burn cut off and early reports that it was a very good burn. Orion now 520 miles away from Earth. Just five minutes ago, we were only 115 miles above Earth's surface. That distance will continue to increase as we are now on a trajectory to fly around the moon for the first time in over 50 years. This critical moment marked the next phase of the space mission that's taking four astronauts on an unprecedented trip.

2:42The burn, a boost of the engine that lasted just under six minutes, put the spacecraft on a path to go out of the Earth's orbit towards the far side of the moon. One of the astronauts, the Canadian Jeremy Hansen, spoke to mission control shortly after the burn had taken place. We just wanted to share a little bit of the sentiment up here as we came around the planet. And we're zooming over just 100 nautical miles above it, if you've got a moment. Please, Jeremy, we are all ears. Well, with that successful TLI, the crew's feeling pretty good up here on our way to the moon, and we just wanted to communicate to everyone around the planet who's worked to make Artemis possible that we firmly felt the power of your perseverance during every second of that burn.

3:32Humanity has once again shown what we are capable of, and it's your hopes for the future that carry us now on this journey around the moon. Our science correspondent, Paleb Ghosh, is in Florida for us. Well, this is a moment that we've all been waiting for. We were treated to a wonderful launch, but it would count for nothing unless it went to the moon. And for that, the astronauts had to check out this very new spacecraft, which has been flown for the first time with a crew, to make sure that the launch hadn't rattled it up. So that's what they've spent the past day doing, and they decided to go.

4:11If they hadn't decided to go, then they would have had to come back. But as it is, they have given it a big push. They've turned on the thrusters of the Orion spacecraft, which is accelerating thousands of miles to put it on a bigger loop than just going around the Earth. It's now on a loop that will take it past the Moon, further than any astronauts have been before, breaking the record by around 4 ,000 miles and then back to Earth. And a huge relief, no doubt, by mission control. A lot to look forward to in the pictures we'll see in the coming days. As you said, a lot to look forward to, Pala.

4:47But what are the most crucial moments that will take place over the next few days? Well, there are some beautiful moments. This mission reminds me of the Apollo 8 mission that happened in 1968. It had the same purpose. it wasn't a mission to land on the moon it just swung around in preparation for the eventual moon landing by Neil Armstrong on Apollo 11 but that for the first time showed pictures of earth from space in beautiful color for the people of the world for the first time now we're all used to seeing that but I'm hoping it will have a similar effect because it will be in gorgeous high definition and we'll be able to see it again through the eyes of the astronauts there's going to be a critical phase where it swings around to the far side of the moon, where for 40 minutes, they'll be out of communication.

5:37Now, nothing should go wrong, but they are up in space on their own in a dangerous environment. So mission control will be holding their breath, hoping for the best until contact is restored. Pahlab Ghosh, let's focus on the war in Iran now, with Donald Trump threatening to bomb Iran and send it back to the Stone Age, how are people coping there? Information is difficult to come by. The regime in Tehran has imposed an internet blackout and security forces are threatening anyone passing information to the foreign media. However, using trusted sources, the BBC has managed to obtain testimonies from ordinary Iranians.

6:17We've hidden their identities and are not using their real voices. This report from our special correspondent Fergal Keane and a warning that listeners may find some of the accounts distressing.

6:34It is a harsh spring of broken glass, wind blowing through collapsed buildings that sends dust sweeping along empty streets. For the people of Tehran, the only news they can trust is that which they see and hear happening before them.

6:59But from inside Iran, we've obtained first-hand testimony of people trapped between American and Israeli airstrikes and state repression. We saw smoke rising into the sky, but we didn't know what place had been targeted. Satara is an office worker in Tehran. After that, everyone working in the company panicked. People were shouting and screaming and running away. For one to two hours, the situation stayed like that. Complete chaos. Now, like millions of Iranians, she's unemployed and feels trapped in her home, running out of food with no money to buy any. I don't know how this massive wave of unemployment will be handled.

7:44There is no support system, and the government will do nothing for all these unemployed people. I believe the real war will start if this war ends without any outcome. Nightly bombing has stolen her ability to sleep naturally. She lies awake, worrying about the present and the future. I can honestly say I haven't slept for several nights and days in a row. I try to relax by taking very strong painkillers so I can sleep. The anxiety is so intense that it has affected my body. When I think about the future and imagine those conditions, I truly don't know what to do. Satara has now fled the city for a rural area.

8:32As she left, she passed the ruins of the latest airstrikes. Tina is a nurse in a hospital outside Tehran. I witnessed extremely distressing scenes. they were not bringing in the wounded they were bringing in bodies that were not even recognizable some had no hands some had no legs it was horrifying tina says she's haunted by the images of suffering she's witnessed a pregnant woman was brought to us because of bombardment in her area her home was close to a military center and their house was damaged when they brought her to the hospital, neither the mother nor the foetus was alive.

9:23They ambushed us in one of the alleys, the alley leading to the square. They fired bullets and tear gas. These are the pellets near the spinal cord and these are the ones near my heart and on top of it. This here is the trace of tear gas and this bruising is from the force of impact. Benham is a former political prisoner, here showing an x-ray of the damage done by a shotgun to his body. He was wounded by regime gunfire in the January anti-government demonstrations. Then the state killed thousands of its own people and the threat of that violence is ever present. Benham is now suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

10:09Once you see how easily your life can be threatened, that a simple incident or a twist of fate can mean death or survival, after that, your life no longer holds the same value for you. And that experience makes you care less about yourself. I will not heal until the day we are in a free world looking back on the suffering we endured in an unfree world. and laughing at it.

10:37But in Iran, one month into the war, the hour of laughter seems very far away.

10:47That report by Fergal Keane. Another country hard hit by the ongoing war is Lebanon. Israel is stepping up attacks on the Lebanese capital Beirut. It says it's targeting senior members of the Iran backed armed group Hezbollah. More than 1 ,300 people have died so far during this conflict, according to the Lebanese authorities, and a million have been forced to leave their homes. Many of them have now spent weeks in government shelters with little or no prospect of returning home. James Menendez has been speaking to Amy Pope, Director General of the International Organization for Migration, which is linked to the United Nations.

11:27She's in Lebanon at the moment. So the situation is quite grave. There are over 1 million people who've been displaced in the last month. If you think back to the conflict that happened at the end of 2024, it's a significantly higher number. And that's coming on top of people who had been displaced from that conflict and had not been able to go home before. On top of that, it's coming at a time when the stress on the humanitarian system to respond is greater than ever. Many, many governments have cut their humanitarian support for people in need. The resources to support even some of the most basic needs are just not there.

12:07And so that confluence of impact is serious. And then that lack of, I mean, funding, essentially, what does that mean in practice for those who have had to flee their homes? It means that people don't necessarily have the shelter they need. They don't necessarily have the food or the clothing or even the most basic baby formulas they need. The government has asked for a list of just the most basic life-saving support to support those whose homes have been destroyed, whose communities are no longer safe to stay in, who are now seeking refuge primarily in places like Beirut, which is already crowded and where the refuge points are already quite limited.

12:54I mean, do you see any of that extra help that's needed coming down the pipeline, as it were? Well, we hope so. I mean, this is why it's so important to tell the story of the people that we're speaking to. You know, it's families who are sleeping on floors. We are hearing from people who've lost their livelihoods, who don't have any future support. And without some level of assistance, this could become a much more serious crisis. The displacement doesn't stop just when the bombing stops. At that point, people have to look and often rebuild their homes, determine whether or not there's anything to go back to.

13:31So the repercussions of what's happening could last for years. And that's the point. I mean, many of these people won't be able to go back in the near future. I mean, Israel said that it's going to expand what it calls its security buffer zone and it stretches quite a long way into Lebanon. And it also says it's going to raise some of the villages along the border. So, as I say, those people won't have homes to go back to. So what happens to them? Well, that's the most alarming factor that we're dealing with right now. This could be a very prolonged displacement. As you can imagine, prolonged displacement actually increases tensions within communities.

14:10It increases strains on already stretched social services. having to redistribute effectively a million people in different parts of the country, but also in places where they can have access to job opportunities. It's a major challenge for a government that already is dealing with a number of challenges. Amy Pope. Still to come in this podcast. He is full of his usual vim and vigor. In some ways, he's actually getting more healthy. The ancient tortoise who's not dead after all.

15:10military options. Listen to The Global Story on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

15:24This is the Global News Podcast. After five years of military rule, Myanmar will have a new president from today, although he's not really new. General Min Ong Lai led the 2021 coup that ousted Myanmar's democratically elected government and triggered a civil war. He's just stepped down from his post as top military commander and is taking over as president. The move is widely seen as an attempt by the military regime to win more legitimacy. Meanwhile, inside the country, the civil war rages on, with daily airstrikes carried out on large areas under the control of opposition forces. Our Southeast Asia correspondent Jonathan Head sent this report from Yangon.

16:16On a vast parade ground overlooked by towering statues, thousands of soldiers march with impressive precision in front of their commander-in-chief. He's an unprepossessing figure, short and stout with blinking bespectacled eyes. Yet today, General Minong Lai is by far the most powerful man in Myanmar, despite having led a catastrophic coup that tipped his country into civil war and being accused in international courts of genocide and crimes against humanity.

16:52They hold this parade every year in the strange, citadel-like capital of Nepidor. It's a reminder to the people of Myanmar of the tenacious hold the military has had over their country for most of its modern history.

17:09The formidable weaponry on display, also a reminder of how much this regime has been propped up by support from Russia and China. But this is the last time Min Honglan will preside over this. Five years after his coup, he's hanging up his uniform to become a civilian president. His final speech to the troops was as unyielding and unapologetic as all the others he's given here.

17:38The military has a constitutional right to get involved in politics, he said, and he dismissed those who've taken up arms against his regime as terrorists, led on by what he called foreign aggressors. There wasn't a hint of regret over the thousands of lives lost because of the coup.

17:59Jorwin, not his real name, was a student when he was arrested for taking part in a small flash mob protest in Yangon three years ago. He described days of torture in the interrogation centre. They beat me with iron bars, he told me. They burnt me with cigarettes, slashed my leg with a knife and sexually assaulted me. Only recently released from prison, he said he's had enough and wants to leave Myanmar. Thousands of other young people have already gone.

18:32If I stay in this country, I will always face all kinds of oppression. There is forced conscription that really worries me. We are under constant surveillance. I love my family. I want to stay with them. but going overseas is now the best option for me.

18:54Dinza Shunleyi made that decision a few months after the coup. As an organiser of the movement resisting military rule, there was already an arrest warrant out for her. From exile, she's kept up her campaign to restore democracy and she's not impressed by Minong Lain in civilian guise. He cannot credibly present himself as a legitimate president. He is not my president. He is not our president. For many people in Myanmar, this is not a transition to democracy, but simply an attempt to normalize impunity they have long been enjoying in Myanmar. Unlike the villages in Myanmar's contested areas, you don't really see the impact of the war in Myanmar's cities like Yangon.

19:41But people here are definitely feeling it. rapid inflation, businesses closing down. I'm in the factory district of Langtaya. It's Sunday, and the workers who live here are all dressed in their colourful finest, waiting for buses to take them to parks or pagodas to spend their day off. So let's ask them what they expect of their new notionally civilian government.

20:10They won't care about us, said this motorbike taxi driver, we'll still have to rely on ourselves. With the fuel shortages caused by the Iran war, he complained that his earnings no longer covered even his food and rent. Like so many who've not fled overseas, he said all he could do was try to survive, while waiting to see whether anything will change when the same military men remain in charge. The BBC's Jonathan Head reporting from Yangon. To the latest from Washington now and the news that Donald Trump has removed another member of his cabinet, the U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. Ms. Bondi has long been an ally and fierce defender of President Trump.

20:52And as Attorney General, she attempted to reshape the U.S. Justice Department, turning it away from its traditional role as a largely apolitical body. Earlier on Thursday, Donald Trump was full of praise for her, releasing a statement to say she is a wonderful person and doing a good job. But just hours later, he confirmed in a post on Truth Social that Pam Bondi had been removed from her role. Her time leading the Justice Department was often overshadowed by its handling of the release of files relating to Jeffrey Epstein and its investigation into the convicted sex offender. I asked our correspondent in Washington, Ioni Wells, whether this decision was unexpected.

21:35Well, I think the timing certainly seems to have come as a bit of a surprise. There had been speculation for some time that the Trump administration was not particularly happy with her performance at times, particularly over her department's handling of the Epstein files release. The fact that some victims' names weren't properly redacted. The public fallout from this case and the investigation. the fact it's become quite a political liability for the Trump administration. I think her performance as well in certain congressional hearings where she got very feisty, responding, for example, to certain questions, demanding she was going to answer them, how she wanted to answer them, I think sometimes didn't go down particularly well.

22:17I'm going to answer the question. Answer my question. No, I'm going to answer the question the way I want to answer the question. Your theatrics are ridiculous. Chairman Jordan, I'm not going to get in the gutter with these people. I think also another thing that has caused friction, I suppose, between her and Donald Trump has been that he has tried to take control of the Department of Justice and use it as a vehicle to essentially prosecute some of his political opponents and foes, including, for example, the former director of the FBI, James Comey, chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell.

22:49but I think he's been frustrated at the fact that some of these investigations or prosecutions haven't made the progress that he hoped and she potentially is the head of that department is essentially the one that he might bear responsible for that but she is a close ally of him and so in that sense I think it is surprising to some people and certainly both their statements about her firing read as if there was nothing wrong she says she's thrilled to be moving on to a new job he said that she'd been doing a tremendous job at getting crime down and was a loyal friend and Patriot. So this does seem to have come somewhat out of the blue today.

23:23And I think suggests a sort of discontent really at the heart of the Trump administration, because this is the second cabinet secretary that Mr. Trump has fired in less than a month. Indeed. I mean, what can we expect next then? Well, in the interim, she will be replaced temporarily by her deputy, Todd Blanche, who was formerly Donald Trump's personal lawyer. There will then be a process to formally nominate a more permanent replacement who will have to be sworn in by the Senate in a formal process. But I think it's interesting because Todd Blanche, who will be taking on that role temporarily, is somebody who is very close to Donald Trump as well, but also was also very publicly associated with the Epstein files, even had been involved with some of the press around this case.