Twin earthquakes strike Venezuela

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1:26This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Chris Barrow and in the early hours of Thursday 25th June, these are our main stories. A state of emergency has been declared in Venezuela after two major earthquakes struck seconds apart, causing fatalities and extensive damage. Celebrations have officially begun in Washington to mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. and a major drugs trial to help fight the latest Ebola outbreak is about to get underway.

1:59Also in this podcast... It kind of looks like somebody's just thrown glitter across the cosmos. This thing is teeming with stars. Astronomers have taken the most detailed picture yet of the centre of the Milky Way.

2:15A state of emergency has been declared in Venezuela after two major earthquakes struck Venezuela seconds apart. The epicentre was close to the capital, Caracas. It's understood there have been fatalities and extensive damage. This resident said her home had been left in ruins. All the walls were cracked. We managed to open the door, but there was a cloud of smoke, so we couldn't see much. When we went downstairs, it was like a scene from a horror movie. I only saw the building superintendent with a baby and one family from that building get out. Our reporter Vanessa Silva spoke to us from the streets of Caracas.

2:54A lot of buildings are without power, electricity. After the earthquake that hit the north of Venezuela around 6 in the afternoon today, a lot of people are trying to look how to go back to their homes. The metro system is completely closed, all the stations. So it was just at the time that people were getting out the works before. even though today is a holiday. All the structure shakes very strong in the capital. In my home, I can see how many things fell down and broken in my building. One of my neighbourhood, she fell down and broke her arms. I don't know at this moment how many victims are, but we can see videos coming from social media, from infrastructure collapses in the city.

3:43Our America's correspondent, Will Grant, is following developments. The interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, has been on state television and said that there are collapsed buildings in Caracas. So we're trying to find out exactly how many and whether or not people are trapped inside. Of course, we've seen images of emergency services on the scenes there. A tsunami warning has now been lifted. It was triggered for parts of the Caribbean, Aruba and Bonaire, and obviously for Venezuela itself. The tremors were felt as far away as the Colombian capital, Bogotá, and it does seem that many thousands of residents of the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, remain outside their homes.

4:24Their buildings may have been cracked or they may simply be too scared, fearful of aftershocks, to go back inside their apartments at this stage. How well prepared is Venezuela for seismic activity? Because it's not the first time. It's far from the first time. There's a combination, really, of parts of a place like Caracas that are very well prepared with modern buildings, sort of well-resistant for earthquakes and built up to code, and obviously whole swathes of the city that are very informally built, creeping up the hillsides of the Avala National Park, the well-known shanty towns, the barrios, where homes are made of bricks.

5:00And there's plenty of parts of the city that are very vulnerable to earthquakes. It's just a question at this stage of working out how much of those have been affected. And is the emergency service response quite good in these kinds of situations there? Is the access good? Again, it's relative. I mean, the economic crisis in Venezuela over recent years has meant everything has been stretched to breaking point. Ambulance services, fire services, all these sorts of things are not what they once were as the sort of oil money ran out during the Maduro regime. Things, I think, have been improving a little in recent years in terms of the economy, and they're certainly well-trained.

5:39They are very, very experienced in that regard. So I think there is good personnel on the ground, and then it's just a question of whether or not they've been dispatched to the right parts of town. Will Grant. Now to Washington, where celebrations for the United States' 250th birthday have officially begun.

6:00The 4th of July this year marks two and a half centuries since the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Donald Trump opened the Great American State Fair in Washington, an exposition across the capital which will celebrate various aspects of American culture and history. Those timeless American principles did not just win a revolution, but they built us into the greatest, strongest and most exceptional nation the world has ever known. There has never been anything like the United States of America, and together we are making it bigger and better and stronger and far more exceptional than ever before.

6:47I spoke to our correspondent at the event, Hal Griffith. It's a mixture of nostalgia, talking about the USA's 250-year history and pulling on that sort of estate fair and childhood memories that some people have, And then, yes, it's also got the hallmarks of a Trump rally, lots of MAGA hats, plenty of stars and stripes. And the main act, the president himself, who, after some musicians pulled out, is at the top of this bill. Yeah, just tell us what the festivities will involve over the next few days. And it seems like the celebration's gone for weeks. Yeah, 16 days altogether in what, well, one person from the stage described would be the most epic party in all American history.

7:27What does it mean? Well, it means lots of stalls on the mall between the monument and Capitol Hill. And then events like this where people come out and cheer, hear some singing and get all patriotic together. If you want to spend$20 on roast turkey or maybe some pretzels, then there's lots of food from around America on offer as well. So, as I said, it's drawing on that sort of sense of nostalgia and patriotism. But there are political overtones and a military overtone as well. In fact, we just had a B-2 bomber fly overhead at the end of one song, and the words military might come up on the screen, showing American military dominance and sending that message that America sees itself as the most powerful country in the world still.

8:12You mentioned some of the music acts that dropped out in the run-up to this event. Just tell us a little bit about some of the replacements and some of the people who are still in the event, because not everybody dropped out. No, not everyone. We've just been hearing from New York tenor Christopher Macchio. He was performing, hallelujah, as that bomber flew overhead. We've also got some country singers. Another singer who will be here to celebrate the 90s later in the week will be Vanilla Ice. But as I said, it's got far more of a sort of political sense and a patriotic sense than a music festival here.

8:46It's talking about America from a certain position, from the right, really, seeing it as the land of the brave and a country of military might, rather than maybe more nuanced in a celebration of American diversity. Obviously, people who have turned up will probably be supportive of the event. But what does the country think of this overall? I guess perhaps there's a bit of a mixed bag there. Yeah, as you say, anyone who's come here to be part of it is probably going to be hugely supportive of that message and of President Trump. And as I look out, we're definitely seeing thousands here. So they have managed to fill the allocation and bring people to D.C., bumped into some people visiting from out of state.

9:27And while they weren't sure exactly who was on the bill, they knew that President Trump was going to be here. So they are definitely drawing in a crowd, but not everyone. And this is not a moment of great unity within America. We know that approval ratings are low and that support for the war in Iran is low as well. We've seen that play out within Congress today with some Republican senators questioning the president on the ongoing action and the situation in Iran. So it's not a moment of national unity, although that's the message that is being given from the stage. Hal Griffith in Washington DC and during the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence we'll have a special podcast looking at the state of America today and if you have thoughts or questions on that we'd love to hear from you.

10:17Do email us it's globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk and if you can include a voice note that's even better. Thank you so much Now there have been mixed emotions for two of the teams at the Men's Football World Cup, it was a disaster for Scotland. They were beaten 3-0 by Brazil in Miami, whereas co-hosts Canada were beaten 2-1 by Switzerland, but they still go through to the knockout round for the first time ever as runners-up in Group B. And Canadian fans were relatively pleased with the result. Canada won their first ever game in the last game. Amazing. Put up a really good performance there. We lost, but I feel like we won.

10:54We've never been to the knockouts. It was a great performance especially in the second half i wish we did not lose this game yeah we would have loved to win but they did play great and it was fun to watch i'm sad they didn't tie our correspondent isaac fanin was at the canada match people were obviously disappointed to see their team lose and obviously lose the opportunity to stay in canada but i think there was a pride at the way in which they had put on such a good fight canada have never gotten this far at a world cup they'd never won a match before their game against guitar so i think after the match there was definitely a sense of yeah we may have lost but listen this is the best canadian men's football has ever been and it can only get better they're now in the knockout phase they're going to be waiting to find out who they'll play it's a shame that they're not going to be staying in vancouver they'll play their knockout round of 32 match in los angeles but i think there is definitely a sense of, do you know what, we are just so happy to see our team competitive on the world stage.

11:58My esteemed colleague Wendy Urquhart was supporting Scotland in the Scotland-Brazil match and for some reason her telly was 20 seconds ahead of mine so I knew what was happening in advance and it didn't sound like it was going well all the time. 3-0 down to Brazil. Brazil are a good side though, so was everybody just a bit too hopeful about that result? Well, it was just one of those, it's football, you know, you never know when it might surprise you And I think Scotland, with the vibe of the team and the fans who have taken America by storm, first in Boston, and then exactly going in Miami, I think they've become the darlings of everyone who has watched them.

12:33And I think there was a hope that they could go into the match against Brazil needing to not get thumped and potentially go far in this competition. Now, though, they have a nervous wait because that 3-0 defeat to Brazil means that Scotland will be waiting nervously to see the results and hoping that some teams will do them a favour. But, yeah, that result against Brazil did not go very well for them. OK, so not fully game over. And just briefly, Isaac, I know you know these sort of things. The match is happening simultaneously. Is that to maintain the excitement of who's in and who's out? Is that the reason behind that?

13:06Exactly. So it's to give every team that's playing an opportunity. A few years ago, two teams, I think Austria and West Germany, played in a match where they both knew they needed to win 1-0 and that would send them through. And so they got rid of that. And for the last group games, they make sure everyone plays together so everyone knows exactly what they have to do and they can't collude to get the result that everyone needs. So that's why they all play together at the same time. Isaac Fannin in Vancouver. To China now, where an advert for a laundry disinfectant product has been withdrawn after claims of sexism.

13:40The advert is a three-minute video micro-drama which features a young man explaining the qualities he looks for in a woman, and it angered many with this line. I can afford not to be a virgin, but my future wife absolutely cannot. Fortunately, I met this current woman, clean and uncontaminated by other men. Well, then the drama flips and presents Dettol brand laundry disinfectant as a solution for women to use to deal with what's described as toxic men. But on social media in China, users have complained that the advert in fact objectifies women and men, and they've called for a boycott of the brand.

14:21Celia Hatton spoke to our China media analyst Kerry Allen about the controversy surrounding this ad. This advert was a micro drama, which is like a little vertical video that you watch on your phone on platforms like Instagram or TikTok. And it was meant to be a video that called out sexism, but it sort of backfired. and what it did was the story of this micro drama it was about a man who was trying to find a girlfriend but he was saying that he wanted a woman who was clean untouched by other men and eventually he finds a girlfriend but she calls him out for toxic misogyny for his views and then at the end Dettol presents itself as the solution against toxic men who are just like bacteria.

15:03So what has been the reaction to this? There's been a lot of reaction over the past week thousands of social media users on platforms like Sina Weibo, very critical of this, particularly the male characters' comments in the advert. These have drawn outrage from women saying that they feel objectified. It has resulted in Dettol having to issue an apology. They said they recognise that it's offended many people, especially women, and they take responsibility. They've also pulled the ad. They said that it was a video created by a third-party influencer. But newspapers have been saying that outsourcing creative work does not mean outsourcing responsibility.

15:41So it makes clear that China's taking this advert very seriously. I mean, for People's Daily to comment, this is one of the top newspapers in the country ruled by the state. So they see this advert as really quite damaging. And it's interesting because it's not the first time Dettol's had to pull an ad in China. It's not. No, there was a similar case of this only last year. There was an advert that featured a line, a woman was just returning from her wedding, and there was a message in it that she wasn't clean. And again, you know, just basically kind of playing on women's experiences and drawing criticisms like that advert similarly had a very negative reaction.

16:16And newspapers have been saying today that they think that it's not learning its lessons. And when a company does adverts like this that come under controversy, especially ones from foreign countries, it does lead the charge for a boycott. So you do get a lot of newspapers that kind of get together and they say, you shouldn't buy these products. These companies just want to take advantage of China's big consumer market wanting to spend. And at the same time, they're sowing divisions between men and women. The advert itself is just really critical, has offended a lot of people. So a message is really being sent out that's not just to Dettol, but to other companies that if they create a damaging environment within China, that they could risk losing a lot of money.

17:02Our China media analyst, Kerry Allen. And still to come in this podcast, how a music studio has changed the lives of inmates inside a prison in Cameroon. The beautiful thing about it is this instrument of resistance and voices can be heard, even like going through healing.

17:58We'll be right back. the Moto Casino app today. Every story is a technology story in one way or another. And on the interface, we decode the tech that's rewiring your week and your world. On this week's episode, we look at the UK's teen social media ban and ask what happens next? Why are AI companies so interested in nuclear fusion energy? And will the new iPhone AI update mean that Siri will finally be good. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

18:39This is the Global News Podcast. A major drugs trial to help fight the latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is set to start next week. There are currently no approved vaccines or treatments for the strain of the virus that continues to spread in the DRC and has also reached neighbouring Uganda. So now the World Health Organisation says two different drugs will be used inside the DRC. The trial will evaluate whether either of these drugs can help reduce death rates in patients. The head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanam Ghebreyesus, said the health systems were under pressure to cope with the virus, which had circulated for months before it was officially declared.

19:17Despite the good progress we have made, we still face major challenges and the outbreak is continuing to outpace the response. There are now 1 ,094 confirmed cases with 277 deaths. Our health and science correspondent James Gallagher spoke to Celia Hatton about the experimental drug trial and what it hopes to achieve. You have to remember that we don't have any approved drugs or vaccines for this particular species of Ebola, the Bundibuju species of Ebola. And so it kind of means we don't really have the tools in the armory that we would have for other types of Ebola. So what you have to do is you take your experimental medicines and then you actually have to see if they are going to work in the real world.

20:05So there are two promising ones that are going to start their trials next week. Hopefully one of them is an antibody. So that's something very similar to what your immune system does when it fights an infection. it produces antibodies and they stick to viruses and then the immune system mops them and kills them so this is one that's been manufactured in a laboratory and the idea is that this should be able to attack all different types of ebolas no matter what species of ebola it is that causes any particular outbreak so that's one of the ones that's going to be trialed the other one is something called remdesivir which you may remember from covid because it's it's more of a generic antiviral.

20:45It's not being tested in here, but it interrupts the ability of viruses to replicate and divide and make more copies of themselves inside the human body. So the idea is if you give that at the right moment when somebody is sick with Ebola, then you might again be able to improve their chances of surviving that infection. James, can you explain more about the United States' involvement in supplying one of these experimental drugs? Yeah, that's the antibody one that I mentioned, what the United States has said in the past is that they had some, we don't actually know how much, but they had some stocks of this experimental drug that hadn't been tested against Bundy-Bujo, but that they were going to make that available for US citizens that might become infected.

21:29And that would include, for example, healthcare workers who go from the United States to affected places and may become infected while they're there. We've seen that happen in multiple previous outbreaks and indeed in this one. So the idea was it would be reserved for those people, but now the United States has changed that and say that it is going to make this drug available both on compassionate grounds and also as part of this clinical trial. Again, we don't know exactly how many doses of it are going to be available, but it is going to be made available. And just to be clear, these drugs that we're talking about, they're not vaccines.

22:03We do have vaccines for some species of Ebola, but not for the Bundy-Bujo one. And hopefully we will see trials of specific vaccines for this species of Ebola this year. They are being researched in the laboratory at the moment, but the two do very different jobs. So the drugs are going to be about either treating people to once they have become infected or dosing people who you think are a very high risk of just having been infected. and you're trying to nip that infection in the bud by treating them really early. So that will be the goal of the drugs. The vaccines do a different job. They train your immune system in order to be able to fight an infection and if you can get that to work then you should get protection that lasts much longer because the drugs will only work while you're taking them.

22:49James Gallaher. A member of a cult-like group in the United States has been arrested over the deaths of her parents. A prosecutor in Pennsylvania says 33-year-old Michelle Zyko has been charged with the murder of Rita and Richard Zyko, who were shot dead at their home in 2022. Michelle Zyko is associated with the group the Zizians, which has been linked to several killings across the United States. I spoke to our reporter Helena Berg about this unusual group. The Zizians are an informal group which centres on beliefs like anarchism and veganism. Most of the members of the group are transgender or non-binary and they hold really strong convictions about the importance of animal rights and the need to resist the rise of artificial intelligence.

23:30They also have some pretty unusual theories about how the brain works and they engage in practices like forced sleep deprivation because they believe that being severely tired actually enhances a person's cognitive abilities. Now, the Zizians claim that they are not a cult. In fact, they don't even identify as a group. And the person who appears to be their leader, a woman named Zizla Zota, has rejected the assertion that she even is their leader. However, the group certainly has a lot of features of what would commonly be considered to be a cult. So the group itself, if you can call it that, has been linked to the deaths of six people across the United States.

24:03That's correct. So these are all ongoing murder investigations, and some Zizian members are actually already in prison awaiting trial for these cases. Two of those deaths are people who were members or ex-members of the Zizians. Another was the group's landlord at one point. He was stabbed to death last year. and another is a border agent who died in a highway shootout involving some Zizian members. Now, the final two killings linked to this group are those of Rita and Richard Zyko. Their daughter, Michelle, who's a member of the Zizians, has now been charged with first-degree murder. And what is it that prosecutors are alleging that Michelle Zyko's involvement is in the two deaths?

24:37Prosecutors in Pennsylvania allege that Michelle was at least partially responsible for the fatal shooting of her parents. They say they're not sure if she was actually the one who pulled the trigger or not, but they do believe she helped orchestrate their murders. This is what District Attorney Tanner Rouse alleges happened on the night they died. On New Year's Eve of 2022, which happens to be Michelle Zyko's birthday, her mother, Rita Zyko, reached out and explained that she was sorry for the rift that had grown between them. That text went unanswered. Several hours later, a car is seen approaching the Zyko home in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania, here in Delaware County.

25:11Two individuals at least get out of that car. One can be heard saying something that the time was indistinguishable, sounded like it could have been mom. The lights go on in the home and Richard and Rita Zico are executed. Prosecutors say they've now gathered overwhelming evidence that Michelle was at the scene of the crime and that's what's led to those fresh murder charges. Michelle doesn't appear to have entered a plea yet, but she has previously denied killing her parents. Helena Berg, a documentary called Jail Time Records was a big winner at this month's Tribeca Festival in New York. It tells the story of what's believed to be the first recording studio inside an African prison.