EU condemns Russian attack on Ukrainian shopping centre

22:45The fact that it's getting to come out, that kids can be introduced to these characters, it's an amazing, only happy moment.

22:55Tim Pope:And for Mr. Coyote, a rare moment of joy in a life of failure. He's one of the most hard-working people I've ever met. And the older you get, the more you fail in life. Surely we're all supposed to be rooting for Wile E. Coyote, aren't we? Of course. The movie takes, I think, an anti-bird stance in general. And at the end of it, you won, haven't you? We haven't been splat yet at the bottom of the canyon, so we're taking that as a win.

23:32Tim Pope:Sammy Birch, screenwriter of Coyote vs Acme, ending that report by the BBC's David Sillito. You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.

24:08exercises with South Korea. He cited his very good relationship with North Korea's Kim Jong-un. For more, check out the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

24:21Tim Pope:Welcome back to NewsHour. For several years, scientists have been finding evidence that seas, lakes and rivers are being contaminated by traces of drugs, including antibiotics and opioids. Recently, though, there have been more cases of these kinds of substances being found in marine animals. Well, early this year, sharks in the Caribbean were, for the first time, found to have swallowed caffeine. So what's going on and how can these drugs be removed from marine environments? The BBC's Ryan Keane has been looking into the phenomenon.

24:58The soundtrack to a typical club night. But for the waterways surrounding these types of venues, as well as festivals and house parties, it's more than just the music they absorb. Illicit drugs like MDMA, crystal meth and ketamine can end up in our rivers and lakes thanks to their consumption by partygoers. Even pharmaceutical drugs such as antidepressants can too. From fish in Florida to crabs in southern England, evidence of our human footprint on waterways has been made clearer with recent research. One of the main ways drugs enter wild water is through sewage plants. When people don't finish a course of antibiotics or antidepressants, for instance, they might flush them down the toilet hole.

25:39And even if they do finish the course, traces of these drugs can enter the sewage system through their urine or faecal matter. But why aren't some sewage plants filtering out these toxins? They were designed to filter out solids and nutrients like nitrogen. In periods of heavy rain and flooding, sewage naturally overflows, especially before it's been screened and treated. And of course, if untreated sewage is going into wild water and into wildlife, so are the traces of drugs inside it. One study conducted this year in the Bahamas uncovered a new substance present in sharks, caffeine. Natasha Woznik, who led the study, told me she was shocked by the findings that were gathered through blood sampling.

26:18I guess what surprised us the most was finding these substances in sharks in a place we often imagine as a pristine paradise, far from pollution and other human disturbances. We detected cocaine alongside caffeine and painkillers, showing that very different substances from our daily lives are making their way into the marine environment. And that was a real eye-opening for us. It's unknown how caffeine affects shark behaviour, but one aquatic species where behavioural changes have been logged as a result of drug pollution is Atlantic salmon. So what are some of the possible solutions to drug pollution?

26:52One obvious suggestion is to improve filtration techniques in sewage plants. While bigger picture solutions are being discussed by regulators, one expert I've spoken to says a shorter term solution could be explored. Charles Tyler at the University of Exeter in the UK says that despite few anti-waste programmes existing, one country is leading the charge for change.

27:12Tim Pope:Now in Sweden it's very different, largely through things like extensive public awareness campaigns on the risk of drugs to wildlife and the environment. How likely it is that other governments will follow suit is debatable. But the scheme in Sweden shows that where there's a will to keep drug traces out of our water sources, there's most certainly a way. And that was Ryan Keane with those reflections on drug pollution in marine environments. You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.

27:50Tim Pope:You're listening to the BBC World Service. This is NewsHour coming to you live from London. And we're going to return now to the war between Ukraine and Russia. And in the last half hour, President Macron of France has posted on Exit. He's spoken to President Zelensky about that attack on a shopping centre in Krivuri and said that France will be sending interceptor missiles to Ukraine. But we're going to focus now on the impact on Russia, where today is Flag Day and a number of patriotic events are taking place there. They're aimed at rallying Russians around their white, blue and red flag at what is a challenging time for them.

28:21Tim Pope:On the battlefield, Russian losses are mounting, and at home, weeks of Ukrainian drone strikes on the country's energy and online shopping infrastructure have been bringing the impact of the war into people's homes and into their petrol tanks. Today, the Ukrainian authorities say that they've hit one of Russia's biggest oil refineries in Samara, as well as hitting a nearby warehouse that belongs to an online retailer. This report from our Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg. I'm outside a petrol station. I have to say I've never seen queues for petrol in the Russian capital as long as this. The road leading up to the petrol station is absolutely packed with cars.

28:59Tim Pope:I've counted about 60 and they keep coming. And there's another road to my right leading up to the petrol pumps and it too is packed with vehicles. But at least the sign here is saying that there is petrol right now in this place. Many of the petrol stations in Moscow right now are empty.

29:19Tim Pope:I head to another petrol station nearby. There's another long queue of cars, although the signboard on the forecourt indicates they're out of fuel here. The drivers are waiting, though, hoping that petrol will appear. They say that there will be more fuel. One of the drivers, Sviatoslav, says optimistically, maybe today or perhaps tomorrow. The cause of the current petrol shortages across Russia are the Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil refineries.

29:59Tim Pope:These in turn are a response to Russia's continued attacks on Ukraine. For months now, Ukrainian strikes have been cutting refining capacity and squeezing supply. Now they're making life very uncomfortable for Russian drivers. What does the Russian government say about that?

30:23Tim Pope:A few days ago, when a pro-Kremlin reporter asked Russia's energy minister, when will petrol be back at the pumps? He replied, no comment. Do you have problems filling up? asked the journalist. I use diesel, he replied. There's plenty of that.

30:46Yet this week, President Putin insisted

30:50Tim Pope:there are no critical consequences from such attacks. There have not been and there cannot be. Maybe he is trying to hypnotise himself that everything is OK. It looks like he believes in his own words. Andrei Kolesnikov is a columnist for the independent news outlet Novaya Gazeta. He claims that something is happening now in Russia that never used to. Increasingly, Russians are blaming the man at the top. Putin was untouchable. Now it is not so. He also shares responsibility for what is happening with the economy, with the social life, with everything around us. Not for everyone, for a big bunch of people, he's still a symbol of victorious, glorious war.

31:37Tim Pope:But let's say average Russian doesn't accept the idea that Putin is untouchable right now.

31:47Tim Pope:Just around the corner from the petrol stations I've been to, I discover another queue. This time, not for petrol, but for candy floss. It's a patriotic street party for Russian flag day.

32:04Tim Pope:My country, my fate, my dream, he sings. I'm raising my flag, the flag of my country. Red, blue and white Russian tricolers are being handed out to passers-by. In Russia, they may be low on petrol, but there is a never-ending supply of patriotism here. Amid all the problems, the authorities want Russians to rally round the flag.

32:32Tim Pope:We live in a wonderful country, she says, and Russia will always be victorious.

32:45Tim Pope:They've set up a stall in the corner with military hardware, from Kalashnikovs to handheld rocket launchers, and it's a case of come on down. Everyone's welcome to pick up and pose with the weapons. There are children here doing just that. But guns and patriotic fervour don't make difficulties disappear. Our Rush editor Steve Rosenberg reporting. Now it turns out the temporary pause was indeed temporary after 11th hour hopes that a deal could be done and deadline for talks being extended. It was confirmed today that a fresh wave of US tariffs on Canadian goods have come into effect. Those import taxes of 50 % are being imposed on a range of Canadian imports worth US$20 billion.

33:31Tim Pope:Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney has promised reciprocal measures quote dollar for dollar. Meredith Crowley is a Professor of Economics at Cambridge University. What's her assessment of these new tariffs? The US only get about 12 % of their overall imports from Canada, whereas for Canada about 45 to 50 % of what they import comes from the US. But I think the Canadian government probably felt like it had been bullied quite a bit over the past few years and wanted to take a tough stand on this. And Prime Minister Mark Carney is saying that there will be reciprocal measures dollar for dollar, he says.

34:07Yeah, so I think what they mean by that is the US is going to be raising tariffs on a variety of things from autos to food products, makeup, electronics. And so if the U.S. raises the tariff on$20 billion worth of Canadian imports, Canada would put tariffs on a variety of products whose total value is about$20 billion. So already Canada has been putting tariffs on imports from the U.S. So they've been in a tense relationship over the last few years. You know, if we go back to 2024, Canada was importing about 410 billion U.S. dollars worth of stuff from the U.S. Just last year, it was already down to 380 billion.

34:53One of the concerns the Trump administration raised back in August was that over the last year, Canadian imports of U.S. autos had gone down around 20 percent. Canada was importing autos from Europe, from Asia, and the U.S. wasn't really happy about this.

35:12Tim Pope:So the impact is still going to be felt far more inside Canada. Exactly. There are many more sources of very similar merchandise in the United States from other countries. The U.S. has a land border with Mexico. The cost of each ship coming in It's going to be a little bit higher on the Canadian side. So the hurt for the average Canadian is going to be considerably higher than the hurt to the average American. What then does the United States stand to gain from this? We have a saying in economics that big countries win trade wars. One of the remarkable features of the late 20th century was that bigger economies around the world weren't pushing smaller countries around.

35:59They're trying to be much more fair in their policy. But I think President Trump, he's a bit of a bully. I think he would like investment in the United States from third countries in Europe and in Asia. He doesn't want European or Japanese automakers establishing plants in Canada, employing Canadians and then exporting those goods to the United States. He wants Japanese or German auto manufacturers to think, oh, if I'm going to set up a North American facility. I'm going to set it up in the United States and employ American workers. So he's quite transactional, whereas other political leaders in the US have probably given a bit of a thought to, am I having a negative impact on workers in other countries?

36:42President Trump is quite clear that that's really not his concern.

36:47Tim Pope:Is there any political pressure internally on Mark Carney because of this? Canada's been suffering in its relationship from the US since President Trump came into office. I think Canadians can see that and I think at some level they think that if you give an inch President Trump will take a mile. Professor Meredith Crowley. Well at the end of a week when a jury in California began hearing the biggest legal challenge yet to Meta and other social media giant TikTok has paid 400 million dollars to settle a lawsuit that was brought by the US government over similar concerns about the platform's impact on children.

37:23Tim Pope:Let's speak now to Trevor Johnson, who spent 12 years at Facebook and Instagram before joining TikTok in 2020. He's now left and is a professional who advises startups. Hello, Trevor. This case against TikTok, which has been settled, was also about privacy, wasn't it? Yeah, it was brought on by the Biden administration's DOJ in 2024, where they accused TikTok of violating the Children's Online Privacy Act. And as part of this, the 400 million that they've spent or been fined, they'll also clear the allegations without undergoing further litigation or admit wrongdoing. And since the lawsuit was filed, I should say, TikTok will say that they've undergone significant changes to ownership and management and compliance and functions and privacy practices.

38:20But the settlement is one of the largest recoveries ever obtained in a case under the privacy law.

38:26Tim Pope:Is that just the price of business for a company like TikTok? Yeah, I mean, the settlement may be expensive, but it is better for the company than continued litigation with the DOJ. In the same way as Meta, it is a cost of doom. It's a fraction of their revenues. Whilst TikTok's revenues are smaller than Facebook's or Meta's, I think TikTok is about 20 billion for this year. They are part of ByteDance, which is a multi-billion, multi-multi-billion dollar company, which is a hundred billion dollars of revenue. Now, what I will say, the other element here was whether or not this is a Trump led DOJ bailout of Larry Ellison, who's the Oracle owner, who was part of the group that bought the US business of TikTok at the start of the year following the ban negotiations.

39:09and the eventual Trump-led sale. So that's another consideration within this. But yeah, a cost of doing business for these companies is are these fines.

39:18Tim Pope:Yeah, as you've outlined, there has been a difference in the ownership, hasn't there? But in terms of behaviour, what can TikTok point to? So definitely since 2000 or 2020, 2019, they can claim to have put in better moderation, better tools and resources, particularly for child or for parent or teens accounts um they have parental controls they have moderation they have um suppression of some of the tools such as messaging but they they they these platforms need to do a lot more these these platforms are getting bigger in people and bigger in content that's going on to these platforms and whether or not being able to report content whether or not the moderation either by people by ii is catching these things quick enough whether or not the reports are being responded fast enough is still a question.

40:09And these companies do set aside money because they do know that these fines are coming. So again, it is a cost of doing business. And they do need to do more. I think regulation is probably where these companies really start to change some of their businesses. So if you look at the UK, the Online Services Act is one of those things that we hope will try to push a little bit more. But you are competing with a global company that is a US company.

40:37Tim Pope:Trevor Johnson, tech professional there. Thank you very much indeed. You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.

40:49Tim Pope:A reminder of our top story this hour. Rescuers in the Ukrainian city of Kriviri are continuing to search for survivors of Friday's daytime drone attack on a shopping centre. President Zelensky has accused the Kremlin of carrying out what is known as a double-tap attack, a second strike designed to kill anyone arriving on the scene of the first one. The EU's ambassador to Ukraine, Katerina Matarnova, gave us her reaction. 23 kids in a broad daylight attacking a shopping mall means that you are taking the war really, really far away from the battle lines and this certainly cannot be called a military target.

41:25So I think that in the annals of this war, there will be a special place in the international war crimes categories for the double tap.

41:34Tim Pope:One other headline, US tariffs on Canadian goods have come into force after trade talks collapsed.

41:49Tim Pope:You're listening to the BBC World Service and this is NewsHour coming to you live from London. Iggy Pop, Neil Young, David Bowie and especially The Cure, just some of the many bands whose music videos have been directed by Tim Pope, one of the most in-demand and creative forces at work during the golden age of the music video in the 1980s and 90s. A music fan from North London who ended up filming and getting to know some of his childhood heroes, he has a new memoir, it's called I Shoot Rockstars, and as he told me, it was a piece of audio from one of those heroes that inspired him to write the book.

42:22hello it's David Bowie trying to get a hold of Tim Pope I'll try a bit later on this morning to see if there's anybody there

42:32Tim Pope:no message really I'll just call him later bye bye I had no intention of writing a book I have to say it was the last thing I ever thought about a very good friend of mine who is the singer of a band called Dether a guy called Matt Johnson phoned me a few years back and he said to me I've got something I think you should hear What it turned out to be was a message from David Bowie left on an answer machine. He'd wanted to contact me in the 90s, and he had tracked me down. I was going over to Matt's house. He tracked me down. He played me this message down the phone. And it was eerie because David had been gone, bless his heart, for quite a few years.

43:11And suddenly, it was like he was speaking to me from beyond the grave. I had no choice in it. After that, I realized, my God, I was around all these amazing people, and I should write it down. and that's what I decided to do.

43:22Tim Pope:Tell us about your first forays then into making videos. I think, well, your first concert video sounded like quite a traumatic experience. It was the specials. They were very famous for having a skinhead audience and I was on stage and there was a stage invasion and someone whacked me in the face, grabbed the camera. I was more worried about the camera than my face. Your first big video was Bedsitter, wasn't it, by Soft Cell. Tell us how that came about. by lying i do a lot of talking to film students and i encourage them to lie and what i mean by that there is a deeper meaning to that the thing about film is you have to put everything into it and you have to be able to willing sell your mother for doing it that's just the rule of making films so i just told endless lies got into the room with mark ormond i claimed i'd make this video and that video completely lied through my teeth and pitched the idea bed sitter was about the sort of 1980s sort of club world and how alien the world can become.

44:24So I came up with the concept of Mark Ormond wearing matching shirts to the wallpaper. And a very, very simple idea, but I think quite effective.

44:33Tim Pope:Let's turn to the band I suppose you're most associated with to this very day, which is The Cure, and your introduction to them. I guess a lot of people's introduction to them, listening to A Forest, wasn't it? And I went to, by coincidence, went to a 21st birthday party above a kebab shop in Haringey, which is where I first heard the band that I would mostly get known for, which is The Cure. And with whom I still work to this day, I heard the song A Forest and it blew me out the water. I thought, wow, who is this band? Let's talk about perhaps your most famous video, which is Close to Me by The Cure.

45:11Tim Pope:I mean, it's an amazing video filmed inside this wardrobe, this sort of claustrophobic video. Tell us about that and the challenges of making it. I got this song close to me and the vocals were really whispered and up close to the microphone. And instantly I got a sense of claustrophobia and I wanted to put that over. And I was very inspired, actually, by like the films of Polanski from my film school days. And I mean, Robert always jokes about it because he always says I took it so literally he had no idea I was going to then throw the wardrobe over a cliff, which I did at Beachy Head. You've worked with so many artists, it's hard to know where to go.

45:48Tim Pope:But, I mean, I want to ask you about that Queen video, It's a Hard Life, because that's quite an interesting one. It's quite famous, or is it more infamous? I'm not sure. Because of the way that Freddie Mercury dressed in it, he wanted to dress up in this mad costume, which many people say looks like a large Mediterranean prawn. I said to Freddie, we're going to make this like a grand opera, which, of course, he loved. Let's return to where this started, which was David Bowie, because you did eventually meet him. And I guess they say never meet your heroes. But you had a slightly awkward, to put it mildly, first meeting with him, didn't you?

46:24James, you're being very provocative again. How can I say this stuff on the radio? Yes, I met David in a bar in New York. And also at the table, there was Mick Jagger and a few other people, I think. And they were kind of ignoring me. and then Bowie turned to me and he went, Tim Pope, funny little **** aren't you? I'll leave you to give the reply to him.

46:44Tim Pope:Yeah, I know it's got a C word in it, hasn't it? Anyway, that's how I respond to him. And I remember the look on his face. There was this teetering moment where he's clearly thinking, who is this upstart? I'm not used to working with people like this. The ultimate thing was he asked me to film his 50th birthday party at Madison Square Garden, which was incredible. The through line of the book is how I started in North London, loved all these bands and ended up working with many of them. And that was Tim Pope speaking to me about his extraordinary career making music videos. It's a career that continues with plans for a feature film and more collaborations with The Cure as the band's 50th anniversary approaches.

47:25Tim Pope:Well, the end of this edition of NewsHour is approaching quickly. So from me, James Kamarasamy and the rest of the team here in London, thanks very much for listening. Is the West Bank reaching a tipping point? I'm Asma Khaled, and I host the Global Story podcast from the BBC. For more than a week, homes in the village of Qusrat have been under siege, including one of a Palestinian-American man from Ohio. It's just the latest to draw attention to the rise of settler violence in the West Bank, which the UN says is higher than at any point in the last 20 years. For more, listen to the Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

48:05know