More questions about Swiss fire

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2:01If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Charlotte Gallagher and in the early hours of Saturday the 3rd of January these are our main stories.

2:50The latest on the investigation into the deadly fire at a Swiss ski resort. Everything leads us to think that the fire started from sparkling candles or sparklers which were put on bottles of champagne that was moved too close to the ceiling. Why hundreds of billions of dollars are stashed under mattresses in Argentina. As Donald Trump warns Iran, the US will intervene to protect protesters. There's fighting talk from Tehran. The United States and colonialists are always bullying and plundering the world. We must steadfastly uphold our own policies and unite as one. Also in this podcast. But there was just this flood of emails that I kept getting from people who were like, we want to move to Russia to escape the terrible American tyranny.

3:42I was just like, oh man, guys, the graph would always greener on the other side of the fence. The Americans moving to President Putin's Russia, and US tennis star Venus Williams will compete in the Australian Open at the age of 45.

4:00A fire which killed 40 people at a bar in the Swiss ski resort of Cran, Montana appears to have been caused by sparklers placed on champagne bottles that were too close to the ceiling during the New Year celebrations. Investigations are continuing, with officials saying they're focusing on the bar's safety measures, its capacity and the number of people inside at the time of the fire. Officials said the 119 people injured included 71 Swiss citizens, 14 French nationals and 11 Italians. For those yet to hear of what has become to their loved ones, the wait is agonising. Letitia Brodar has been searching for her son, Arthur.

4:44I must find my son. And today I must go through this kind of thing to find him. It's been 30 hours since my son disappeared. 30 hours. 30 hours since I've had no news of my child. So now I'm on social networks. I started it yesterday. I want the photo of my child to be everywhere, just in case. Just in case someone recognises him. They can call me, contact me. So that's it. Our correspondent Sarah Rainsford is at the scene of the fire. All day long, people here have been laying flowers outside the Constellation Bar, pausing to remember the dozens who were trapped by fire. Today, officials said they were still working to identify the bodies, forced to use DNA samples from relatives because they were so severely burned.

5:35For the families, the process is agonising. Many have been posting images on social media, hoping their own loved ones are still alive and that someone somewhere will have news. Most striking is their young age, so many of the missing and the injured are teenagers. And now prosecutors believe they know how the fire started. They've been checking phones found at the scene and questioning witnesses, focusing on images of flares stuck into champagne bottles. Beatrice Pilou is the Attorney General for Valais Region. Everything leads us to think that the fire started from sparkling candles or sparklers which were put on bottles of champagne that was moved too close to the ceiling.

6:22From that, a blaze began quickly, very quickly. Other videos from inside the bar show the moment when the fire first took hold on the ceiling, and young partygoers, perhaps unaware of the huge risk, tried at first to stop it with their clothes. Within moments, though, it was raging. The only exit from the basement bar, a narrow stairway, and many couldn't get out. Swiss officials will now investigate who is responsible for the enormous loss of life here, check safety measures, overcrowding and other possible violations. So far, though, few here are talking about that. All the focus is on those fighting for their lives in hospital, on identifying who exactly has died and returning their bodies to their families.

7:11Sarah Rainsford. Investigations into the cause of the fire are likely to take some time. Our correspondent Tom Simons has been looking at the early evidence. A chilling photo shared with the BBC of partygoers holding up flaming champagne bottles appears to have been taken seconds after the fire started. It suggests flames had already spread to the low ceiling in the club. The surface of the ceiling looks to have been covered with grids of black dimpled acoustic foam, usually fitted to improve the sound in the room and prevent echoes. Richard Hager, president of the UK Association of Fire Investigators, believed it may have played a part.

7:53If you look at the flames in between the grids and that really looks like the start of the fire on the ceiling. Because it looks not fire-retardant, it was spread really rapidly across the ceiling. Acoustic foam is usually made up of flammable polyurethane, but fire-retardant versions are available. A key question will be what safety specifications were required for ceilings in the club and whether they were adhered to. Fire regulations are enforced by individual local government areas in Switzerland. Investigators said previous inspections had not identified defects. However, there is a precedent for insulation materials causing fires in nightclubs.

8:36In 2003, pyrotechnic sparks ignited during a gig at a nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island in the USA. 100 people were killed. Another factor may be the speed at which the fire spread, with some witnesses describing an explosion. Experts said this might have been a flashover when hot gases from flammable material instantly ignite. Smoke from the fire may also have contributed to deaths. Tom Simons. And for more on one of today's big stories, you can go on YouTube, search for BBC News, click on the logo, then choose Podcasts and Global News Podcast. There's a new story available every weekday.

9:18Next, Iranian officials have warned the US against intervention in mass protests over the cost of living. President Trump has said the US would come to the rescue if anti-government protesters were killed. Videos show clashes between demonstrators and security forces in cities across the south of the country. Six people have been killed. Our diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams has this report. after almost a week of protests a day of funerals across iran

9:52from east to west north to south public anger mounting amid reports of demonstrators being shot dead since last weekend popular fury has been increasingly visible on iran's streets the Islamic authorities lashing out in response. And now Donald Trump has weighed in. If Iran kills peaceful protesters, he warns, America will come to their rescue. We're locked and loaded and ready to go. A senior adviser to Iran's supreme leader hits back. The American people should know Trump started this adventurism. They should be mindful of their soldiers' safety. More fighting talk at a ceremony to commemorate top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, assassinated on Donald Trump's orders six years ago.

10:43The United States and colonialists are always bullying and plundering the world. We must steadfastly uphold our own policies and unite as one. But facing mounting discontent, Iran's reform-minded president is trying to strike a conciliatory note. People are dissatisfied, Masoud Pazeshkian said yesterday. We are at fault. Don't go after America as the one to blame. It is we who must make the effort to find solutions. Solutions are urgently needed. This latest upheaval has been triggered by a collapse in currency and the soaring price of food on the back of crippling sanctions and economic mismanagement.

11:27But there's another fear looming, that Israel and the United States will once more attack, as they did last summer, to devastating effect. Donald Trump hosted Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago earlier this week, both men accusing Iran of ramping up production of ballistic missiles.

11:49Faced with popular unrest, Iran's hardliners have generally been ruthless in the past.

11:58with pressure coming from inside and outside the country. Which way will the regime turn now? That was Paul Adams. Traditionally, the usual response from the authorities to any internal dissent has been repression. But senior officials are conscious that the triggers for these latest protests have been economic, with the national currency losing nearly half its value against the dollar since September, while inflation rates are up to 42.5%. The BBC did manage to speak to one young protester in Tehran when not giving her name. We don't have any kind of liberty here. We fight every day. We face the most brutal things every day.

12:40We want to end it even with the price of our lives. We start at night every day because every spot in this city has security cameras and they can spot us easily and they can silence us. So will President Trump's warnings actually result in any changes in US policy? Our Washington correspondent Tom Bateman has this assessment. Well, that 3am social media post from Donald Trump intended for the Iranians containing a clear military threat. I think it is meant to signal to the demonstrators that they have the backing of the US president, but it's also meant to deter a further violent crackdown from the Iranian security forces.

13:24All of that said, Donald Trump has in the past equivocated on the issue of US backing for regime change in Iran. There are also pretty strong domestic political pressures against foreign entanglements and such an intervention. And, you know, I think what Donald Trump has always regarded as a red line when it comes to Iran is the issue of its nuclear ambitions. They want a policy of zero enrichment of uranium in Iran, something the Iranians see as unacceptable. And so I think what Mr Trump is doing here and has always wanted to do is try to really cajole or coerce the Iranians back to the table to do a deal with him on the nuclear issue, but on his terms.

14:08Something they have said would be on his terms, basically a capitulation. But I think the administration is looking at what is happening on the ground in Iran and sensing weakness by the regime and the potential to capitalise on that for what Mr Trump wants. That is all, though, a pretty high-risk strategy. We've had a response from Abbas Arachi, the Iranian foreign minister, accusing Mr Trump of being reckless and another Iranian official threatening to retaliate if there is any American military action. Tom Bateman. Still to come in this podcast, the AI chatbot Grok says it's working to fix lapses in its safeguards after users reported it was generating sexually explicit content of children.

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16:28If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

17:26They're built to last. Find out more at polandyourplacetogrow.com. The headlines never stop, and it's harder than ever to tell what's real, what matters, and what's just noise. That's where Pod Save America comes in. I'm Tommy Vitor, and every week I'm joined by fellow former Obama aides Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Dan Pfeiffer to break down the biggest stories, unpack what they mean for the future of our democracy, and add just enough humor to stay sane along the way. You'll also hear honest, in-depth conversations with big voices in politics, media, and culture, like Rachel Maddow, Gavin Newsom, and Mark Cuban that you won't find anywhere else.

17:59New episodes drop every Tuesday and Friday with deep dives every other weekend. Listen wherever you get your podcasts, watch on YouTube, or subscribe on Apple Podcasts for ad-free episodes.

18:15This is the Global News Podcast. Hundreds of thousands of Russians are thought to have left their country since the start of Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But less reported is the small number of Westerners traveling in the opposite direction in search of a fresh start. Many governments actively advise their citizens not to travel to Russia and a number of US citizens have been detained in recent years. Our correspondent Christina Volk has been talking to families who swapped life in the US for Russia. In a restaurant in Russia, the Hare family is trying local dishes. Leo, Chantel and their three teenage sons are sitting around a table in Ivanovo, a city 150 miles northeast of Moscow.

19:01This was shortly after arriving from their home state of Texas, seeking refuge, as they say, because they felt their way of life was under threat in the U.S. There's the LGBT movement. That whole thing to me is just the degradation of everything that I believe in. It goes against every American ideal I have and even my religious beliefs. That's still one of the reasons why I've moved to Russia. After President Putin sent his troops into Ukraine in 2022, he has used his public speeches to attack the Western way of life, often portraying Russia as a rare protector of what he calls traditional values.

19:44This resonated with the Hares at the time.

19:50The Hares family was granted asylum in Russia in mid-2024. Their ceremony was covered on state TV, and they have since become the face of Decree 702, a fast-track migration pathway based on so-called shared values. It's a big system working as a clock, I would say. Maria Butina is a lawmaker with President Putin's United Russia Party. She oversees people from the West moving to Russia and claims around 200 US citizens have done so. The BBC is not able to independently verify these numbers, and the US embassy in Moscow has refused to comment. Justice Walker is a preacher and farmer from the US.

20:30In the 90s, as an 11-year-old, his parents moved to Russia for missionary work. He moved back and forth, but eventually settled in Siberia. I don't know what happened, but there was just this flood of emails that I kept getting from people who were like, we want to move to Russia to escape the terrible American tyranny. I was just like, oh man, guys. I mean, the graph of all the greener on the other side of the fence. Migration as a propaganda tool is a vast area and nothing new, says Kelly Greenhill, professor at Tufts and MIT. Regimes can use propaganda domestically. They can herald the fact that folks want to flee from their adversaries.

21:12That can be a way for leaders to make their populations feel better, to distract them from things that they might be unhappy about domestically. You know, just be used as a powerful set of advertisements. Back in Ivanovo, Chantel and Leo Hare say although they became the poster family of Decree 702, they did not receive any financial benefits. Russia is trying to attract big families with a common ideology. The Hares did fit the bill, and they still see their future in Russia, where they also share their daily life on social media. And we're working on making dinner. Even though now two of their three sons have moved back to the U.S.

22:01We kind of put a stumbling block before them. We're sorry that it happened that way. Essentially, I did it for them, but I was just basically ignorant of the culture here, of the effects it would have on the family. It was just a bad deal. Leo Herr ending that report by Christina Volk. Up to$250 billion is thought to be stashed under mattresses in Argentina and hidden in offshore bank accounts. That's six times as much money as the reserves in the country's central bank. Their president wants them to be put back into the country's banking system. The so-called Innocence Tax Law, ratified by Javier Malay on Friday, will mean that fewer questions will be asked about where the money came from.

22:41But why is so much wealth squirreled away in the first place? Luis Fajardo is our Latin American specialist from BBC Monitoring. Argentina has a huge underground economy. It's very frequent, even for middle class families, to have very large amounts of money that do not enter the formal financial system. There's many reasons for this. Among them, the memory of a couple of instances in which the previous governments, actually a few decades ago, during serious economic crisis, decided to seize the savings of the people to try to solve the financial crisis. So people in Argentina have a very, very strong distrust of the financial system.

23:21And because of that, there is a lot of money either in foreign accounts or actually in US dollars in cash held in people's homes. It is not entirely unusual for large real estate transactions, for example, to be done in cash. And this is part of what the government is trying to solve with this law that is providing a lot of incentives for people to put their savings back in the banks, in the formal financial system. What are the incentives that Javier Malay is offering people to put their money into banks? The main incentive is that the thresholds under which you have to explain to the authorities how that money was obtained, this threshold has been raised very substantially.

24:02Now, the Argentinians can deposit several tens of thousands of U.S. dollars in bank accounts without explaining, without questions about where the money came from. And this precisely has given rise to one of the criticisms of this new law. The opposition to the government of Millet is saying that this could create a situation in which money laundering becomes much easier, because one of the main things here is that authorities are going to be a lot less restrictive about asking where the money came from. There's also mechanisms by which even if you were to be facing the threat of prosecution, if the Argentinian citizen faced with this threat pays the amount owed, the criminal prosecution would stop.

24:50It would be dismissed. And I imagine, as you said, that people have long memories and a lot of people will still not trust the government and they'll go, I'm not handing any of my money over to the bank because I don't know what will happen to it in the future. Argentina has had, unfortunately, a very long history of financial instability. But it is seen by many people, many observers, as crucial to try to convince citizens to trust the financial system. It is said that there's nearly 250 billion U.S. dollars being held, as they say, under the bed of Argentinian citizens. This, to give you an idea, is nearly six times the amount of the central bank reserves.

25:33And if this money entered the financial system, the supporters of this measure are saying it would go a long way to help strengthen the Argentinian financial system and the general economic stability of the country as a whole. However, as you say, again, a lot of people in Argentina who will certainly remember other instances in which stability was promised. And in fact, a lot of people with savings saw their savings being severely affected by measures taken by previous governments. And that is what Millet, again, is promising not to do again. Luis Fajardo, the AI chatbot Grok, which is owned by Elon Musk, has said on X it's identified lapses in safeguards and is urgently fixing them.