Myanmar's military stages controversial election

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If 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.

0:47I'm Alex Ritson and in the early hours of Sunday, the 28th of December, these are our main stories. Voting is underway in the election stage by Myanmar's military leaders amid a civil war and humanitarian crisis. The poll has been labelled a sham. President Zelensky is going to Florida for a crucial meeting with Donald Trump about the Russia-Ukraine peace plan. And China proposes stricter rules for human-like AI systems. Also in this podcast, Hondurans in the US are sending home more money in remittances than ever before. We hear from people in both countries. And tennis is set for another battle of the sexes.

1:30A lot of people think it's just going to cause division and mirth. It's kind of lose-lose for Sabalenka and therefore the women's tennis movement. Is this the sequel no one asked for?

1:45The polls have opened for a general election in Myanmar, the first held in the country since the military seized power in a coup nearly five years ago. It's taking place despite the fact that the country is in the grip of a civil war and humanitarian crisis. The military government has been trying to inspire voters, but the elections have been widely slated as a charade, intended to rebrand the army's rule. There are 57 parties on the ballot, but most have links to the military that ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, who's currently in jail. Our correspondent, Jonathan Head, spoke to me from a polling station.

2:22People are voting here. This is quite close to central Mandalay. In fact, it's a very big military base near here. There may be some connection to that. It's possible that are military families, but actually the crowd's pretty diverse, and this is a very diverse city. The numbers aren't huge there. I wouldn't, compared to previous elections here, the atmosphere is very, very different. It's very quiet. There's really no sign there's an election on when you're outside the polling station. In fact, people didn't even know where the polling stations were until yesterday. I think in this area, quite a lot of people will vote willingly, though some people we've managed to speak to.

2:57It's very difficult. People are very frightened when journalists talk to them. There is this dreadful law which effectively criminalises any kind of negative comment about the election. So people don't know what they can and can't say, what will get them sent to prison. Generally, people have just mumbled to us that they feel they have no choice, that they've got to vote. And I think a lot of people will not vote. And, of course, the picture I'm seeing here in Mandalay is in many ways deceptive. This is a school. It's very orderly. It's very quiet and peaceful. The military has got electric voting machines for the first time ever.

3:29So it's quite a very smooth process inside. People are having to work out how to use those. But you only have to travel perhaps 30, 40 minutes from now to find villages that are actually controlled by armed rebels. Very, very tense situation there. We've been out close to one. Everyone is armed to the teeth. There are no elections happening there. In this first round, there are three rounds of these elections because it's so difficult to hold them because of the civil war. only perhaps a quarter of the country will be able to vote. Once all three rounds are completed, the general assessment is perhaps half the country will have taken part in the vote.

4:03I expect turnout will be low. And, you know, inevitably large numbers of large parts of the Myanmar population are going to quietly reject this election as illegitimate. Because there is little doubt about the likely outcome, is there? None at all. And, you know, think of the irony here. The military's own party, the USDP, it's been around a long time. When it had to compete against Aung San Suu Kyi's party, it was pretty much wiped out. At the last free election five years ago, it got only 6 % of seats. Aung San Suu Kyi's party got more than 80%. This time around, the USDP is the only party with full institutional support of the military behind it.

4:41There are only five other parties contesting nationwide, and they will not do anything like as well. We expect the USDP to get by far the largest bulk of seats in the parliament. So in many ways, this is just applying a democratic facade to a military regime. I mean, as some people are saying, look, you do need to look at the small bright side here, which is this country has been trapped in a brutal five-year stalemate that's killed perhaps 90 ,000 people. It's destroyed the economy. At least when they broaden the number of people involved in power, it might soften some characteristics of the military regime or bring some element of power competition at the top.

5:20It's a small window of optimism. I think for some people, even some who are deeply opposed to the selection and to the military, some of them will feel there is, you know, after five years, this is the only off-ramp from this dreadful civil war, and perhaps people need to go with it. But even if the military think this will give them some democratic legitimacy, it's not going to, is it? Because everyone can see what's going on. It won't, among all those who are opposed to the military, But where I think it will count is it will perhaps give a sense that there is some forward momentum to something else.

5:53Also, internationally, China is fully backing this election. There's a wonderful irony here. China, which doesn't have elections or multi-party system, is actually giving technical assistance and advice on how to do it. Probably the first time China has done this. But China is worried about state collapse. The anarchy in Myanmar, the fragmented opposition groups for China, which has a huge border with Myanmar, is so risky. China feels they've got to go ahead with elections and support this regime. And I think other Asian countries will somehow reluctantly follow suit. So the military will at least be a little less internationally isolated once this poll is over.

6:28Jonathan Head. Donald Trump will later meet Ukraine's President Zelensky in Florida following weeks of intense diplomacy. It began after the release of a 28-point plan which came out of negotiations between Washington and Moscow. Ahead of his talks with Mr Trump, President Zelensky consulted with allies, briefly stopping off in Canada on Saturday to meet the Prime Minister Mark Carney. At a news conference, President Zelensky said the latest Russian airstrikes on Kyiv demonstrated that Russia didn't want peace. This attack is, again, Russia's answer on our peace efforts, and it's really shown that Putin doesn't want peace, and we want peace, and he's a man of war, but he's afraid to speak about publicly, but we see the steps and what we need, we need to stop this war.

7:20The meeting between the US and Ukrainian presidents is expected to discuss the most politically sensitive parts of a US peace proposal that would ultimately be presented to Russia. Our correspondent in Washington, Sean Dilley, told us what we can expect from the meeting. The key areas that we would expect discussion on is the territory in the Donbass region of Ukraine that Russia would like for President Zelensky to hand over. That's not something obviously that has gone down well with President Zelensky. Instead, the two men are expected to talk about the possibility of a free economic area or a demilitarized zone where troops from Russia and Ukraine would put out.

8:02But that's still an area that's going to be controversial with Russia because they've said that they were unhappy with some areas of the negotiations. They say it was unacceptable. And President Putin said just the day before the meeting that if there is not an agreement, then Russia would achieve its military ambitions with force if necessary. That's the one key area. But the other key area is what any security guarantee would look like. What happens if a peace agreement is made and then there would be any reneging, technically on anyone's part? Would it be fair to say that the only way this meeting is going to achieve something is if President Trump comes out of it feeling like he's the winner?

8:43Do you know, I'm going to engage directly on that because I don't think I actually know. I think part of the reality with President Trump is that he is very adept at negotiations. People can like him. They can loathe him. He's not going to enter into negotiations unless he thinks there's something in it for the United States. He said in the past that what it is about is stopping war in Ukraine. But look, let's not forget, President Trump can't speak for President Putin. What he might be able to do is to have a very, very good idea of any back channel discussions, any direct conversation with President Putin as to where a compromise can be met.

9:19Obviously, no, we know from President Zelensky being kicked out of the Oval Office earlier in the year after a high profile bust up with President Trump and J.D. Vance, President Trump's vice president, that President Trump would certainly want to feel that he's won. But ultimately, there is an awful lot riding on this one. And President Trump, who speaks about having ended eight wars across the world, will be very keen to do anything that moves towards recognition for his peace efforts. Surely the underlying problem here is that essentially the position between President Zelensky and President Putin is irreconcilable.

9:55To a degree. I mean, President Trump has spoken about his concerns that Ukraine's elections that would in the normal run of things have been held in May of 2024 haven't happened. So we're expecting President Trump to raise the issue of elections in Ukraine. That's something that President Zelensky says could happen within months if the security of that process could be guaranteed. But actually, one thing that Donald Trump would be very aware of, you only need to read his various writings on his negotiating tactics, is it doesn't matter whether President Putin and President Zelensky like each other.

10:34What matters is, is there a business deal effectively that could be done that could save lives? Sean Dilley. As artificial intelligence becomes a part of our daily life, countries around the world are questioning how the technology should be regulated. China, which is known for controlling information using state propaganda and censorship, has issued draft rules to govern the use of human-like AI systems. Our reporter Paul Moss spoke to Oliver Conway about the proposed changes, starting with just how important AI is in China. It's huge, you know. I mean, first of all, the numbers. Last year, the number of Chinese people using AI doubled in just six months.

11:15It's now more than half a billion. But this isn't just about numbers. I think it's about the role that China thinks it can play with AI. If you could say that the modern tech era began with, you know, companies like Microsoft and Apple, well, China's only role there was to provide a low cost labor force to make all the gizmos that these American companies were designing. They're hoping it will be different with AI, that China can be a leader. Last year, they caused quite a surprise when they launched DeepSeeker, their own AI platform, which they say was faster and cheaper to run than platforms like ChatGPT.

11:48And what they're hoping is that this will be the shape of things to come. OK, so tell us about the rules that they're planning to introduce. Well, the first kind of rule are to protect people who use AI, and they are things like saying the AI platforms mustn't promote self-harm or suicide. They mustn't encourage gambling. They also say that AI platforms should detect if users are becoming addicted to talking to these human-like platforms. And this is a phenomenon that has been noticed elsewhere. People are literally becoming addicted to it. It will be up to the companies themselves to detect whether this is happening and, if necessary, cut users off to stop them becoming addicted.

12:26But if the first type of rule announced on Saturday was about protecting users, I would say the second type of rule is about protecting the Chinese government because I think they're coming round to realise that AI is a double-edged sword and could lead to them being criticised in ways they don't like. So one of the rules that's been announced is AI platforms mustn't do anything to undermine national security. Well, we know that can be defined very, very broadly indeed. It has been used in the past to crack down on the free speech. Similarly, the rules say that AI platforms must not spread false rumours.

12:58Well, who's going to judge what's false? The Chinese authorities. Once again, I think people who care about free speech, they're going to worry about that. Yeah, in the US, the Trump administration has been reluctant to regulate AI. Why are the Chinese authorities doing it? I think it's because, you know, AI is so unpredictable. I mean, you look at the internet, when that arrived in China, obviously, they needed to embrace it to be a modern tech savvy country, but they could easily censor it relatively easy. They could block web pages that mentioned, for example, the Tiananmen Square massacre or Xinjiang prisons.

13:30AI is far more difficult because the bots, the platforms generate stuff and they get material from a vast range of sources. So there's no reason why an AI platform might not start talking about how democracy is a great thing with multiple parties, or perhaps it'll start saying that Taiwan's been a great success as a de facto country. So this, I think, is about the Chinese government thinking, well, OK, we do need this, but we've got to control it. That said, I think a lot of tech-savvy people are going to say, you want to start trying to control AI? Well, good luck with that one. Paul Moss. According to recent research, a mysterious force called dark energy, which drives the expansion of the universe, might be changing in a way that challenges our current understanding of time and space.

14:18Some scientists believe we may be on the verge of one of the biggest discoveries in astronomy for a generation. Here's our science correspondent Pallab Ghosh. What we see here on Earth and in the stars and galaxies are made of atoms. They account for just 5 % of the universe. The rest is mostly something called dark energy. But what is it? Now, it all started with a big bang. The universe expanded. and astronomers believed that eventually this expansion would slow down under the force of gravity. Some believed that it would even collapse back in on itself in a big crunch. Now, in 1998, they made a shocking discovery.

15:08Rather than slowing down, the stars and galaxies were actually accelerating away from each other faster than ever. A telescope in Arizona tracked the acceleration of 15 million galaxies to learn more about dark energy. The astronomers involved, such as Professor Ofala Hav of University College London, were shocked again by what they saw. It's a very weird scenario. Acceleration of the galaxies had changed over time, something not in line with Einstein's theory, no less. Now with this changing dark energy going up and then down again we need a mechanism right we are in search of a mechanism which could be a shake-up for the whole of physics you know maybe it connects quantum mechanics to gravity so it's one of these things that you just never know it may disappear or it may just get amplified and will be a whole new theory there.

16:04Since then the Royal Astronomical Society has published research from a Korean team led by Professor Yong-wook Lee of Yonsei University, that seems to back this astonishing finding. The fate of the universe will change if dark energy is getting weakened in the future. And then this will change the whole paradigm of modern cosmology established 27 years ago. No one really knows what dark energy is or why it might be changing, if indeed it is. But here are three ideas. Number one, phantom energy. Now this is a force that increases as the universe expands, to such an extent the stars and galaxies get torn apart.

16:49This idea is called the big rip. Number two, quintessence. This is a gentler form of energy that also expands the universe, but doesn't result it being ripped up. And finally, number three, the universal dark fluid, where there's a single substance that changes from dark matter, invisible particles spread throughout the cosmos, and dark energy. But then it could be something completely different, involving multiple universes. One of the ways that people think about resolving the puzzle is that there are many different universes. Professor Hiranya Perez is from the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge.

17:33In most of them, beings like us could not evolve to actually observe a universe because the universe accelerates so fast there's no time for matter to climb together and make galaxies and make planets and then eventually have life arise. Hundreds of scientific papers have been published on the subject and astronomers are split in what they think is the best explanation, which is no bad thing, according to Professor Robert Massey, who's the Deputy Director of the Royal Astronomical Society. Who doesn't want to understand how the universe is going to end and how it began? You know, it's one of those grand questions.

18:10And human beings have always been interested in that, whether you take it from a kind of religious perspective and talking about creation myths and so on, or whether you talk about it from a scientific one. Having a feel, having an intuitive idea about how it will end, being able to think, OK, this is how things will end in many, many, many billions of years in the future, wouldn't that be extraordinary? So what next? The plan is to have larger telescopes, some in space, to look at dark energy in detail, to get to the bottom of what this mysterious force really is. The results could tell us not only how the universe will end, but maybe a better idea of how it all began.

18:51Palab Ghosh. Still to come, a Siberian tiger stuns conservationists with her litter. For a female Amor tiger or Siberian tiger to give birth to five cubs and have them survive as long as these five seem to have survived is pretty remarkable.

19:16If 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.

19:55Many undocumented immigrants in the United States are from the central American state of Honduras, and they're sending home more money in remittances than ever. During the first nine months of this year, they sent back in excess of$10 billion. That makes up an astonishing one-quarter of the Honduran economy. But President Trump's harsher immigration policies mean many of these migrants are being rounded up. Others are being put off from attempting to get to the US in the first place. Our correspondent Will Grant sent this report from Honduras. Donald Trump's relentless crackdown on undocumented immigration shows no sign of letting up.

20:36Chicago, Charlotte in North Carolina and communities in Minnesota the latest focal points of raids by the immigration agency ICE. Authorities say scores of immigrants with criminal records were detained. In each city, though, ice was met by protests. Yet even as their numbers dwindle in the US, Honduran migrants have been sending more money home than ever. Between January and October this year, there was a 26 % rise in remittances to Honduras compared to the same period the previous year.

21:15I spoke to one undocumented Honduran migrant, who I'll call Marcos, on the phone from a major US city where he has lived for five years, working in construction.

21:30Marcos said he's currently sending home every spare dollar he has to his wife in Tegucigalpa, while he lives on as little as possible in the US. This way, he reasons, if he is picked up on the streets by ICE, at least he'll return to a little money set aside.

21:50Marcos has gone from sending home around$500 a month to more like$300 a week, he explains, partly so his family will have funds if he's held in a detention centre for months. Remittances remain key to Honduras, worth around 25 % of GDP. But the Trump administration has also begun to target those funds. The Treasury Department has issued an alert to money services businesses, like Western Union and others, saying they must file a suspicious activity report for transactions that involve at least$2 ,000, and which they suspect involves the cross-border transfer of funds derived from unlawful employment.

22:32That could hit many migrants where it most hurts, sending money home. In conjunction with the ICE raids at schools, churches and at places of work, the Trump administration's aim is to both remove people from US soil and deter others from even trying to reach the US in the first place. Elias Padilla, I'm currently on Uber. In the case of Elias Padilla, it worked. An Uber driver in Tegucigalpa, he says he often makes as little as$12 a day. Elias had planned to make the journey north this year. Now, though, he says the images of his countrymen, with their wrists in zip ties being dragged away, has made him change his plans, at least for the time being.

23:18I wanted to go to improve my life conditions, because here we earn very little. In this line of work, for example, an Uber driver in the US is well paid. They make in an hour what I'd make in a day. Also, so I could send remittances home. But then I see what Trump is doing, and it's made me think twice. It's taken away my desire to go. Elias had even saved funds for a people smuggler, a man like Jimmy, though that's not his real name. For two decades, Jimmy made a living out of taking people across Mexico, considered the most treacherous part of the trip to the US. He claims he's given up that life.

23:57But he explains President Trump's draconian immigration policies aren't just affecting the legal economy in Honduras via omittances, but the illegal economy too. Many coyotes, or people smugglers, says Jimmy, are charging double, as much as$25 ,000 to$30 ,000 per person.

24:19Whether it is migrants deported by ICE or self-deporting, the Honduran government has a responsibility towards them when they return. The left-wing administration of President Xiomara Castro launched a support programme called Brother Sister Coming Home, involving some clothes, health checks and a small stipend. One thing is clear, the Trump administration's policies are undoubtedly having an impact in Honduras. And while it's partly in the form of more remittances, the economic boost may only be temporary. Will Grant. Cameras in a national park in China, located near the border with Russia, have spotted something remarkable, a Siberian tiger family that includes five cubs.