Technical issue causes global flight disruption

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.

0:49I'm Charlotte Gallagher and at 3.30 GMT on Saturday the 29th of November, these are our main stories. Passengers around the world have been told to expect disruption and delays as airlines work to install urgent software modifications to thousands of Airbus planes. President Trump says he'll pardon the former Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who's serving a long jail term in the US on drugs and weapons charges.

1:20Also in this podcast, the WHO issues guidelines on infertility and how it could be treated. Infertility is far more common than people realise. this can really lead to very difficult consequences and it can have, of course, severe mental health impacts.

1:40You're listening to The Newsroom from the BBC World Service with me, Charlotte Gallagher. As we record this podcast, the European aerospace company Airbus has requested immediate modifications to thousands of its planes because of a technical problem. About 6 ,000 planes were recalled after the discovery that an intense burst of radiation from the sun had affected one of the flight computers of a plane while it was flying over the US, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing. Airlines around the world have warned that there could be delays and cancellations. Tim Johnson is from the Civil Aviation Authority in the UK.

2:20Unfortunately, it may mean there is some disruption, maybe some delays, maybe some cancellations. over the coming days. But, you know, the airlines, so our advice to kind of consumers would be sort of check the airline website and check the airline app for the latest information about what's happening. Our global affairs reporter, Sebastian Usher, gave me more details. Airbus essentially took this to the aviation authorities themselves after an A320 operated by JetBlue, which was flying over the US, had a sudden uncontrolled descent. Several people were injured, it made an emergency landing. And that was due to a solar storm.

3:00And essentially, the computer software, which had recently been updated, wasn't up to dealing with that, it was corrupted by that. So what Airbus has really, I think, suggested is that this is extra caution. They don't think that this is an issue that's actually going to affect their planes right across the board. But they feel that this has to be dealt with now. So 6 ,000, which is about half the fleet of A320s will need to be looked at. And how quick can they fix this problem? I mean, can they fix this problem? As far as we know at the moment, this can be fixed. And for most of the planes involved, around 5 ,000 of them, this should be a very quick fix.

3:34This should be able to be done just in a few hours. This is a software update. There are maybe 1 ,000 planes which will need to have new hardware, new computer installed. That means they could be grounded for weeks. So that means that there is obviously a greater potential for disruption. But the A320 is the most popular plane that Airbus produces. It makes up a considerable amount of the whole global fleet of planes. So the fact that it is that particular plane that this problem has been found with obviously has consequences. And what kind of impact is this going to have on passengers? Right, left and centre airlines are talking about their fleet of A320s.

4:11Some are saying, We think that we can fix this problem within a matter of hours. It shouldn't really have any disruption. But at the moment, what we're hearing from airports is that they don't expect any major disruption. I mean, this is obviously a very, very busy time of year in the US and elsewhere for people travelling. So the potential for that disruption is there, but it doesn't look as if it's going to be a major, major worldwide incident that's going to essentially cause endless headaches and problems for people trying to get planes. Sounds like it could be a major cost though for Airbus having to fix this and also the fact that so many of the fleet are not going to be operational.

4:47That's an issue but I mean that's something that a company of that nature will have taken into account. I think reputationally is the issue. People are hearing about problems with very popular jet planes and it makes people concerned for their safety. And this is an absolute workhorse of a plane so that is bound to have a reputational effect on Airbus. If it's sorted out quickly, if there's no sense of any lingering danger, it may be something that all kind of disappears within a week or two. Sebastian Usher, make Honduras great again. With those words, Donald Trump has again intervened in the country's upcoming presidential election.

5:25Writing on social media, he urged people to vote for the right-wing candidate, saying the wrong leader can only bring catastrophic results. In the same post, Mr Trump also said he'll pardon a former Honduran president who was convicted of drug trafficking in the US. I've been speaking to our correspondent in Honduras, Will Grant. What seems to be at play is the idea that he's basically urging Hondurans to vote for the conservative candidate, Nasri Asfora. He has a favoured candidate and he's prepared to be very public about that ahead of an election, which in and of itself isn't the norm for Washington, which tends to sort of reserve its judgment under previous administrations.

6:07But that's not Donald Trump's way. So that much we know. What has been so surprising is that in that same social media posting, he continued to say that he was planning to pardon the disgraced ex-president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who has been sentenced to 45 years in a U.S. prison last year for drug trafficking and weapon smuggling. So the idea that Donald Trump, who was an ally with Juan Orlando Hernandez when the two men were in office at the same time during Mr. Trump's first term, the idea that he would actually overrule a US federal judge on something this sensitive and say, I'm going to let him out, I'm going to pardon him, and one presumes he would come back to Honduras, is extremely shocking and worrying to ordinary Honduras.

6:58And I think what a lot of people will find surprising, Will, is this comes at a time when President Trump is launching these major operations against drug cartels in the region. He's designating them as terrorist groups. And this ex-president is in prison for drug trafficking. Yeah, it certainly raises serious questions about the strategy and the seriousness of exactly what's going on in terms of, if you like, the new war on drugs in the Americas. You're right. The Trump administration is, of course, in the midst of this major naval and military buildup in the region. It is involved the most important warship in their armada, in their military, as part of what is clear saber rattling against the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, who they accuse of leading what they say is a narco-terrorist organization called the Cartel of the Sons.

7:52Now, the idea that they would be doing that on the one hand while simultaneously pardoning Juan Orlando Hernandez, who is held up, if you like, in the Americas as the most egregious example in the modern context of drug trafficking and executive power, the relationship between presidential politics and organized crime in Latin America, since essentially the Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega in the 1980s, that is a significant development and, as I say, would raise serious questions about the strategy of the White House and Washington more generally. That was Will Grant. We stay with President Trump because he's taken another swipe at his predecessor, Joe Biden.

8:40He says he'll terminate every executive order the former US president approved using a machine that duplicated his signature. Autopen is a system that's widely used all over the world. But Mr Trump says other people signed the majority of documents, not Mr Biden. Our North America correspondent Nomi Rikval reports. Many presidents have used it, many politicians, many celebrities even to sign everything from correspondence to merchandise and so forth. Now, when President Trump says that he terminates it, he doesn't have the authority to do that. But he's had this fixation with President Biden and the autopen.

9:16He believes, this conspiracy theory amongst conservatives, that President Biden wasn't in charge in the White House, that everything he signed wasn't signed by him. There was a cover up of his cognitive decline. And so, therefore, all the actions he took are null and void. And he's had this particular fixation on pardons. So we know that President Biden preemptively pardoned a lot of people, including his own son. And Mr. Trump floated this theory before summer, saying that those pardons were not legitimate. But he also said back in March that this wouldn't really go far, that it would go up to the courts and that's it.

9:52But it's really hard to see how he would undo any of President Biden's work. I mean, what he can do is introduce his own executive orders to undo a lot of President Biden's work. In terms of the pardon, when you look at the US Constitution, it's really hard to see what the mechanism is to undo a pardon. So it's really hard to see where President Trump thinks he has the authority to do this. But he has been on somewhat of a social media splurge in the last couple of days, making a lot of claims in his truth posts about things that he doesn't really have the ability to do. That was Nomi Rickfell.

10:29The World Health Organization has issued guidelines on the causes of infertility and how it could be treated. Its report also warns of the psychological and social effects. Around one in eight people suffer infertility issues during their lifetime, and a third of infertile women experience violence from their partners. Julie Barlin is a professor of global health at Canterbury Christchurch University here in the UK. She spoke to my colleague Andrew Peach. It's a very important data. It's really a milestone in infertility globally, because as you know, the WHO has launched, really was the first ever global guidelines on infertility.

11:07And these guidelines address prevention of infertility, the diagnosis of infertility and the treatment of infertility actually worldwide. and it's really a starting point. What will come after the guidelines is also additional adaptation and also implementation tools to help countries and national health systems to implement the guidelines according to their particular specific context. Give me a sense of what the most common causes of infertility are. So causes of infertility, they can be female causes, they can be causes in men, they can be causes in both partners and that can be regardless of sex or gender.

11:45And they can also remain unexplained. So these are how we categorise the different causes. And the important thing to know is that actually infertility is far more common than people realise. Actually, a recent WHO study from 2023 shows that one in six people, that's 17.5 % of the global population, experience infertility at some point in their lives. And also it's a shared issue. So it's not necessarily a woman's issue. It's actually a shared issue. Causes can be in men or in women. I'm going to pick up on that because there's a cultural perception is very much that if there's infertility, it's the responsibility of the woman.

12:22In some parts of the world, the woman's even subjected to violence, if that is the case. And even the medical treatment is usually focused on the woman. And yet the cause of it could be on either side. Absolutely. There's a lot of focus and also attention and also stress and the stigma that goes with all of that, that is focused on women. That's true, I think, everywhere in the world, but particularly in some of the countries where I and my research group work in the Global South. In many of these countries, for social or for cultural reasons, women are expected to usually conceive within the first year of marriage.

12:55And if this doesn't happen, it's blamed on the woman. And so this can really lead to very difficult consequences, interpersonal violence, divorce. The women get excluded from family, from social events, and it can have, of course, severe mental health impacts, even leading to suicide. And men are a very, very important part of the picture. We've done research on men who have had infertility within their couple. And they also say it's very, very difficult for them. But this remains a hidden issue. And what we're working on is to try and transform this issue so that it becomes less of a gendered issue and more of a couples issue.

13:36That was global health expert Julie Barlin. Still to come, Russian scientists are reported to have launched a squadron of remote controlled spy pigeons for secret missions. They're claiming that these neural chips can be implanted in pigeons to allow swarms of them to be effectively steered and controlled in real time. We know how useful drones are. I suppose the point about pigeons is they can blend in undercover.

14:11If 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. Now to Ukraine. As Chief of Staff, Andrei Yermak was a key ally of President Zelensky and pivotal in the recent talks about the latest US proposals to end the war with Russia.

15:00Here he is in Geneva last Sunday alongside the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. We have very good progress and we are moving forward to the just and lasting peace. and I hope that we can achieve the good progress today. Thank you. Let's get back to work and we'll be back to you pretty soon. Okay, thank you. Thank you. But on Friday, Mr. Yermak resigned after anti-corruption investigators raided his home in Kiev. This is part of President Zelensky's nightly TV address, voiced by a translator. There will be a reboot of the office of the President of Ukraine. The chief of the office, Andriy Yamag, has filed a resignation notice.

15:44I thank and we for representing Ukrainian position in negotiations always the way it had to be represented. It was always a patriotic position. But I want to ensure that there is no room for gossip and speculations. Regarding the new head of the office, tomorrow I will have the consultations with those who can lead the institution. The president also appealed for unity. Mr. Yermak has been under pressure for his links to senior figures suspected of involvement in a massive corruption scandal, but he's not been named as a suspect and denies wrongdoing. Our correspondent in Kyiv is Abdul Jalil Abdurusilov.

16:23The anti-corruption agencies that searched the house of Andriy Yermak, they didn't announce the reasons of that search. And later on, they said that Mr. Yermak was not named as a suspect. However, this is happening in the major corruption scandal that has engulfed the entire country. And top government officials were allegedly involved in an embezzlement scheme that had certain kickback systems and that allowed these officials to enrich themselves. And anti-corruption activists believe that this arrangement would be impossible without the knowledge of Andrei Yermak. because top government officials and people close to President Zelensky were allegedly involved in this scheme, and therefore they demanded his resignation.

17:10Even though Mr Yermak's name was not used in those tapes that were leaked and released by anti-corruption agencies, there is still understanding that Mr Yermak is still in the centre of the scandal. That was Abdul Jalil Abdur-Uslov. Oleksandr Maresko chairs Ukraine's Foreign Affairs Committee and is a member of President Zelensky's Servant of the People Party. Andrew Peach asked him what he made of Mr Yermak's resignation. Well, it was expected in a sense that Mr Yermak has been for a long time not very popular. And during, for example, the last meeting between the faction and the president, the issue was raised about his dismissal.

17:53I understand that for president he was the right hand and to find another top manager might be quite a challenge. But generally speaking, I believe that this is the right decision by the president because it's an attempt to bring back trust. Now, you say not very popular, clearly popular enough with President Zelensky, who sent him to do the all-important negotiation last weekend in Geneva about the possibility of ending the war with Russia. So who not very popular with? Well, I'm talking about Mr. Yermak in the sense that he was playing sort of the role of the lightning rod, I would say. He would attract all the criticism.

18:34But, you know, he was in a way effective in terms of negotiating on the international arena. But at the same time, he was suspected of being involved in the corruption scandal. And of course, so far, he was not charged officially. But, you know, as president himself has said that it's important for all the people in his entourage and especially negotiating with our partners to be above any suspicion and to get rid of any doubts with regard to people close to the president. But President Zelensky clearly had faith and confidence in this man a matter of days ago. It's changed because of an anti-corruption raid.

19:15That basically shows us that the president put faith in the wrong person, doesn't it? Well, it's hard to say because it's up to the president to decide. It was his decision. He chose Mr. Yermak, and Yermak was very close, I understand, even friend of President Zelensky, because he proved himself in a positive light right after the full-scale invasion. So for this reason, he was in a way even indispensable for President Zelensky. But he's been dispensed of. Therefore, it's a huge loss. The government is in disarray. This man is almost the vice president, as I understand it, and he's gone. But it proves that for President Zelensky, what really matters are interests of the country.

19:55And he even eager to get rid of his close associates and even friends for the sake of interests of the country. He puts interests of the country over his friendship. If he was doing that, surely this would have happened a long time ago because his allegations have been swirling around for 18 months or more. When we had a conversation, a meeting with President Zelensky, and when the issue was raised about Mr. Yermak, he said that if there is a proof that anyone was involved in corruption, there should be serious political and legal consequences, no matter who he is. And I would like to remind that President Zelensky got rid of his first chief of staff.

20:36What happens now, though? Because he's lost the person who was involved in this very crucial and delicate negotiation. He's lost his right-hand man. I realise he's got to reorganise his office, but how does the government function without someone who is so central to it? Well, as for peace negotiations, and for us it's now a top priority, I'm certain that Mr Yermak's resignation will not have negative consequences, and everything will continue as it is. How can he be certain of that? He was running the thing. Well, a process of negotiations is a process related to a big machine. And there are lots of people who play different roles.

21:12And there are no, I would say, indispensable people in this process. But if you're Vladimir Putin sitting in Moscow, you can't regard this as anything other than good news, can you? I'm sure that if, for example, the situation remained as it is with all the suspicions and doubts, it would be definitely used by Putin because they use any weakness on the part of Ukraine or any issue, any problem. And it might have been used also for all kinds of provocations. So that's why maybe the president decided to get rid of completely of even slightest doubts with regard to a negotiating team. Is corruption endemic in Ukraine?

21:55because some evidence of corruption was there long before the Russian invasion in 2022. And it still seems to be there to the same extent now. Unfortunately, democratic states are not immune from corruption. But the key question is whether you have special agencies which fight effectively against corruption. And for me, it's even a triumph of justice because it proves that our anti-corruption agency is truly independent and they're effective in fighting corruption, even at the top of the hierarchy. We're not so many months after President Zelensky was under fire for having tried to corm the independence of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and got quite a bit of grief for that.

22:38Yeah, luckily, the president very quickly backtracked on this terrible mistake and his reaction luckily was swift and he managed to rectify the whole situation. Does this bring us any closer to elections in Ukraine? Absolutely not, because even opposition agree that while the war continues, while we have martial law, we cannot have elections from legal perspective, of course, and politically. We can hold elections only when the country will be safe. Nina Dos Santos is a foreign affairs commentator. So what of Oleksandr Maresko's point there, that the problem has been contained, has it? Well, it's predictable that any government official of a ruling party would try and take that brace for impact and then move on position, Andrew, not least if it's a country like Ukraine that is at war with a bigger neighbour like Russia that's very aggressive.

23:28But I would argue that this scandal has been coming for quite some time. And it's also one that presents some real political jeopardy for Ukraine's beleaguered President Zelensky. There's a few reasons for that. As you heard there from Alexander Maresko, Andrew Yermak has been unpopular inside Ukraine and outside of Ukraine for quite some time. There's been concerns that he's monopolized power and access to President Zelensky. Remember, this is also a corruption issue. And corruption is a tool that the Kremlin knows full well it can use to try and cleave, key the way from the very European institutions that can protect it in the future if it wants to become more pro-Western.

24:09This could undermine Ukraine's ambition to become part of the European Union. And I think the last reason why it's important is because it chimes with the Ukrainian people who right now are dealing with rolling blackouts and Russia targeting the energy infrastructure. This is essentially part of a probe that is part of two investigations that the authorities in Ukraine are pursuing. One surrounds military procurement of a country that's at war, and the other one involves energy that the beleaguered people in Ukraine can't get their hands on at the moment. And plenty of negative impact then inside Ukraine from this resignation and the context around it.

24:49What about the impact on the negotiations over these US peace proposals? That's a big unknown here. It seems as though President Zelensky's had to make this decision in rather hasty fashion because, remember, Andrzej Yermak more or less acted as his praetorian guard ever since he was elected back in 2019. Zelensky's presidency essentially has been dominated by two things. One was the impeachment saga in Donald Trump's first term. And then, secondly, it has been his country's attempt to defend itself after the Russian invasion in 2022. And Andrzej Yermak has been the person who has transformed President Zelensky from being this comedic actor famous for playing the president to the kind of Churchill of Ukraine of our time.

25:32Who is going to have the president's back now? Who's going to act as his ultimate political fixer and try and defend him from further criticism? And who will negotiate with the Americans when, of course, the United States has presented just a week or so ago this plan in very direct fashion. Yes, it's been changed somewhat, but President Zelensky has said he wants to go to Washington, D.C. to talk about this plan, And that offer hasn't yet been taken up by the White House. But Steve Witkoff, who's also facing his own accusations after leaked conversations with Russian aides in the last few days, will still be going to Moscow.

26:10So it does leave Ukraine and Ukraine's president bitterly exposed at a time like this, when, of course, the conversations with the United States and the Kremlin are going to continue, even with somebody else who's facing his own accusations as well of bias, Steve Witkoff. And Russia will be looking for absolutely any weakness to exploit. And they like to point to the corruption that's been around in Ukraine. Yes, that's right. I was looking at Transparency International's latest figures for 2024. And Ukraine has slipped further down the ranks. It currently stands at 105 out of 180 countries below the likes of the Dominican Republic.