Fifa President faces his critics

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. President Trump has described the surge of migrants into Spain as an invasion. But what really happened in the tiny Spanish enclave known as Ceuta? I'm Asma Khaled and I host the Global Story podcast on the BBC. Last week, tens of thousands of migrants from Morocco streamed into Ceuta. It ignited a political storm in Europe and even here in the US. But who's really to blame? For more, listen to The Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:40Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. I'm James Menendez and we're going to begin today with the fate of the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, following the collapse of his efforts to sell off parts of the World Cup and other football tournaments. He's believed to have spent the day in crisis talks at FIFA's offices in Morocco with his senior team, many of whom have come out to criticise the plan in public and to criticise the way it was handled. One of Mr Infantino's advisers even resigned, saying he'd been kept in the dark about it. And if there's pressure from within FIFA, there's even more pressure from outside.

1:17Three big regional associations, including Europe's hugely influential UEFA, have indicated that they've lost confidence in Gianni Infantino's leadership over the affair. However, his future lies in the hands of the individual member associations or MAs, and there he still has support. Qatar, Kuwait, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines have all declared their loyalty, and so too Malawi. I've been talking to that country's football association president. He's Fleetwood Haya, and he happens to be in Morocco at the moment for a women's team match. My position is guided by principle rather than personalities.

1:55I have worked with FIFA president Gianni Fantino, and I have seen his commitment to growing football globally, particularly in developing countries such as Malawi. Through FIFA Forward and other development programs and projects, many member associations have benefited significantly. And for that, we remain grateful and I can assure you that I support him wholeheartedly. And what about his plan to sell off some of the rights to tournaments like the World Cup to private enterprise? Why did you support that? The benefits of this proposal is that we are going to generate more income. that is going to transcend to football development.

2:43Countries like Malawi, which is economically considered one of the poorest countries in the world, it was an unbrainer. It's something that I couldn't think twice of not supporting it. So you saw the plan as a way to generate more money and that would filter down directly to the development of football in your country. To me, that was the biggest support. If football can create money out of itself, it's better off. So what do you think then when you read some of the comments from people within FIFA, senior people in FIFA, including the Secretary General, for example, Matthias Grastrom? I mean, he described the plan as a sad and reproachable series of events, said it was difficult to comprehend and accept.

3:29We've had Arsene Wenger, and again, a very senior FIFA official, saying it was right to abandon the plan. and we've had one of G &E Infantino's closest advisors resigning over it. Does that not make you question whether the plan was the right thing to do? I think this makes me question. This is why I earlier only indicated that my position is guided on principle rather than personality. I'm happy to see that that proposal has been withdrawn because if it is very true that the proposal was made out of no consultation at all, broader consultation and proper governance is the one that is a positive step to our football.

4:14So was good governance missing in the process that led to this plan being floated and then abandoned so quickly? Athen Wenger is like the one in charge for global football development and he was not aware about it. This also raises some questions. Do you think Gianni Infantino should stay as head of FIFA or should he now resign, do you think? As I said, 100 % I support Gianni and I've been with Gianni since day one. I can assure you his commitment to the growing football globally, particularly to developing countries like Malawi. He gives equal opportunity. Like he treats Malawi the same way he can treat Spain.

4:57And I don't think I would not... A cynic would say that's because he needs your vote. It may be that way, but I would give him my vote. But assuming he made a decision, which was personal to his personal interests, beyond football interests, personal benefits, maybe it can change my will. But as we speak, I'm 100 % in support of Ifantino. You're saying that if it was found that he stood to benefit personally from this proposal. You would change your vote, but as it stands at the moment, you'd like to see him serve another four years. A hundred percent. If I have to banish you because of your proposal, I feel like it's not fair.

5:40I would be surprised to see Africa not supporting Ifantino on the next coming elections, because he has been the president who has shown so much respect, so much love to African football. and that was Fleetwood Haya who's president of Malawi's football association well Jim Boyce is a former vice president of FIFA he's also honorary life president of the Irish Football Association so as we heard there Jamie Infantino still has his supporters in countries such as Malawi does Jim think that means his position is safe no I don't no I don't uh first of all can I say I'm a Democrat and a gentleman who we're speaking to has every right to make whatever decision his association feels that they're going to make.

6:26But I have to say that I think Gianni Infantino was very wrong in doing what he did. Can I say to you that I still believe that if you are an investor and you're selling something from FIFA to outside investors, they're not going to invest unless they're going to make money out of it for a start. Now, whether or not associations eventually would have made money out of it, to me, that's a different attitude altogether. Because quite honestly, this proposal, if he wanted to do something like this, there's a way to do it. The way to do it was to put it to 211 associations. And certainly, he should have put it to the 37 members of the FIFA Council as it is now.

7:11It used to be the executive when I was on it. And for to make a ludicrous proposal like this, quite honestly, I find it astounding. And I think that Johnny, who I knew, by the way, when I was chairman or vice chairman of UEFA for 14 years, I found him a very decent, honest type of person. I think power has gone to his head. I think it went to his head in Qatar, first of all. and I certainly think his relationship with Donald Trump and some of the things that happened in the World Cup are just appalling and I can understand the associations who have come out now and say that they've lost confidence.

7:50Thinking about the FIFA senior leadership and thinking about the meetings that we believe are taking place today, do you think the fact that some of those senior figures within FIFA have come out and said, look, we don't like the proposal, we didn't know much about it and we don't like the way it was handled, I mean, that is a problem if you're an executive and you don't enjoy the confidence of your senior team, isn't it? Of course. Of course it is. I mean, his closest personal advisor has resigned. Arsene Wenger, who I think everyone in World Football holds the highest esteem, he has come out and he has condemned what happened from Johnny Infantino.

8:27Another chap called Kevin Lemur, who actually was at UEFA when I was at UEFA, one first class individual. He also has come out and said that if he has to lose his job because he doesn't agree with what Infantino did. So the very senior people are coming out from his own organisation and saying that what happened was wrong. Football is for the ordinary person. It's a game we all love. And quite honestly, there is no way that FIFA should even consider selling any of those rights to investors. There are some reports in the Times newspapers this evening that Jenny Infantino has offered Morocco the World Cup final in 2030.

9:07It's one of three co-hosts with Spain and Portugal. I mean, is that a canny move on his part or the act of a desperate man? Well, let me ask you a question. Why was the meeting held in Morocco? FIFA's headquarters are in Zurich. Now, I know they have offices in Morocco, but I couldn't understand why the meeting with all these senior executives was held in Morocco. Obviously, it's difficult for me to comment on something that at the moment is pure speculation. But again, I don't think that Johnny Infantino should offer that World Cup final until the FIFA Council and the people who are involved in football decide where the venue should be.

9:48Yes, you say Spain, Portugal, Morocco are the three countries that are hosting the World Cup. At this point in time, that decision should be made, in my opinion, by the FIFA Council. And that was Jim Boyce, who is a former vice president of FIFA.

10:15time to get an update now from germany where police say they found a drone carrying explosives at leipzig airport that's in the east of the country they're also investigating another possible drone that collided with a cargo plane in midair the bbc's bethany bell is in leipzig for us Well, it was found in the cargo area on the southern runway at Leipzig Airport overnight. And it was identified. They deployed a robot, an explosive detecting robot to look at it. And then they managed to remove the detonator. And it's interesting, right at this moment, in fact, Germany's interior minister is speaking.

11:02And he has said that this was a very serious new danger. He said Germany was used to drones, but to have a drone with an explosive on it was something that was new. And we understand that the drone with the explosive on it was spotted very close to two Ukrainian Antonov planes that are parked there that use this as a hub for carrying cargo to and from Ukraine. Right. So Leipzig Airport is part of Ukraine, I suppose, Ukraine's war effort in that sense. Does that mean then that fingers are being pointed fairly firmly towards Russia in Germany? Certainly a lot. We haven't heard yet from the authorities, but there's been a lot of speculation that Russia might be behind this.

11:59Ukraine's ambassador to Germany told Die Welt TV that who else could it be but Russia? Russia hasn't commented, but we've heard from analysts saying that they believe that Russia might have had a hand in this, or Russian agents. Yeah, indeed. And just a quick word on the other, well, it was an unidentified flying object, I think it was described as. I mean, have they confirmed that that was a drone that collided with that cargo plane? At the moment, they're still calling this an unidentified flying object. It collided with a cargo aircraft that was leaving from the airport. And it got sent to Hanover.

12:47And when it landed, they detected minor damage on the aircraft. But the interior minister has promised a big investigation into this and has said that the authorities are on high alert now because there have been a number of unauthorized drone flights in recent months over sensitive sites. But this is something that is causing a great deal of concern. Bethany Bell talking to me from Leipzig. And Germany's Interior Minister, just a couple of other comments in the past, has warned about a, quote, new level of danger after that attempted drone attack, describing it as a hybrid attack scenario. You're listening to NewsHour.

13:34This is James Menendez with NewsHour live from the BBC. Now, a stray SpaceX rocket is believed to have crashed into the moon earlier today, even though it could be days or even weeks before the impact site is detected and before scientists can get a full picture of what it now looks like. It's expected to have created a new crater on the lunar surface and that could carry useful lessons for the future. The collisions also raise the issue of space junk or debris and the threat that can pose. Dr Megan Argo is an astronomer at the University of Lancashire in northern England. So first of all, how did the rocket end up crashing into the moon?

14:10This is the upper stage of a Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket. So this actually left Earth back in January 2025. And its job was to take two landers on their way to the lunar surface. So the first stage of the rocket is the bit that gets you into Earth orbit. That's where most of the fuel is because that takes a lot of energy to get anything into Earth orbit. That part of the rocket came back down to Earth, landed safely and has been refurbished for relaunch. The upper stage is the bit that actually sent the spacecraft on their way to the moon. Now, because those two were landers, once it had done its job, the upper stage of the rocket was no longer needed.

14:47So it separated from the spacecraft and was left in a high orbit, a high elliptical orbit. And since January 2025, it's been on this elliptical orbit and the combined effects of the gravitational pull of the Earth, the gravitational pull of the Moon, and a little bit of the push from what's called radiation pressure, the light from the sun basically affects objects in space as well. All of these combined together resulted in this object, completely by accident, hitting the moon early this morning. And it is not alone, is it? I mean, there is plenty of other space debris on the surface. Is that right?

15:20There is. I mean, we've sent a lot of spacecraft as the human race to the moon over the last sort of 50, 60, 70 years. And some of it has landed as intended and has done science. We've sent humans there. So the Apollo missions, they landed in a spacecraft. They left behind quite a lot of equipment on the moon's surface. But there are plenty of spacecraft that have crashed either intentionally or by accident because something went wrong. So there's an awful lot of man-made debris on the moon already. And could it be that in the future, I mean, not the stuff that's already landed, but stuff, you know, landing either by design or by accident.

15:54I mean, is that going to pose a threat given the sort of ambitions that people are talking about for the moon? It could well do. I mean, the chance of any one rocket body accidentally hitting, you know, a piece of important equipment or, you know, goodness forbid, a habitat with humans in it is very small. The moon is quite large and these rocket bodies are quite small, but it's a non-zero probability. It could happen. And if it does, it's fairly catastrophic. There is an increasing amount of activity in low Earth orbit. So we're dealing with this problem of space debris in low Earth orbit and it's getting more and more serious.

16:29Satellites are having to do collision avoidance manoeuvres on a very regular basis now. And as we ramp up activity around the moon with more satellites going there to do observations and generate communications networks around the moon and for navigation purposes, and more landers go to the surface, and ultimately humans go back there as well with that associated infrastructure, the risks go up. So there's going to be more debris floating around and more stuff on the surface that's critical, mission critical, and could be damaged in a collision. So yes, it's going to become more serious. And some people talk about the risks of a sort of chain reaction, that one goes off course, hits another that goes off course hits another and suddenly all all those objects those satellites many of which we rely on heavily are put out of action i mean is that possible yeah this is something that certainly um a lot of the space industry are worried about in low earth orbit the the phenomenon you talk about is is kessler syndrome and kessler syndrome the idea is that as more and more stuff gets into orbit more of it becomes defunct gets to the end of mission has a problem becomes essentially flying debris.

17:31The Earth's atmosphere is negligible, there's not much of it, but there's enough that it slows material down and brings it back into the Earth's atmosphere where it burns up safely. Now, Kessler syndrome is where you're putting debris into that orbit faster than the Earth's atmosphere can remove it. And ultimately, you get to a point where nothing in that orbit is safe anymore. Dr. Megan Argo of the University of Lancashire, astronomer at that university. Well, from the moon, let's head back down to Earth. And a shocking incident in Mexico where a popular influence has been shot dead while live streaming to his hundreds of thousands of followers.

18:10César Gastelum was with friends sitting outside a restaurant in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa state, when two people pulled up on a motorcycle and fired at him. It is not the first time an influence has been targeted in this way and not the first time has happened while they've been broadcasting live. Freelance journalist in Mexico, Andalusia Soloff, has been telling me more. At this moment that they were recording a video, him and friends were like standing in front of a restaurant and they were dressed as delivery workers. So it's not clear why right at that moment, then two young men rolled up and one of them opened fire and killed him.

18:48As of the latest that we know, no one has been detained. And surely soon there will likely be some detentions, especially because it should not just have been caught on the camera that was transmitting, but that it was in front of a restaurant in a very popular area of Culiacán, Sinaloa. There is a very high incident of organized crime in this area. In Culiacán, there's been two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel that has been made life very difficult for its residents over the past two years since the detention of Mayo Zambal, who was just sentenced in the United States just a few weeks ago to a life sentence.

19:26But also, I think it's important to note that there's been a real increase of violence in Mexico, both against influencers and also journalists, where their murders have been broadcast live for their kidnapping. So I think it really speaks more to like the synthesize of violence, but that where people it's just there's such brutal violence in general that it doesn't make people blink when then they see it. Oh, now it's being transmitted. And there's unfortunately still the same levels of impunity. There was just a journalist in the state of Veracruz, which is a very dangerous state for journalists, and she was kidnapped live.

20:04And then they didn't actually they never found her until she was dead when that whole thing was transmitted. So it's a very grave situation where violence has become way too normal. Because, of course, Andalus here, I mean, from the outside, this is incredibly shocking. And it looks from the description that you gave us that this was some sort of organized hit on Cesar, even if we don't know what the motive was. That is correct. These are the kinds of hits that are very commonplace in Mexico, especially on motorcycles. I mean, even just in Mexico City last year, the main advisor and the secretary of the mayor of Mexico City were killed in a similar hit in broad daylight on one of the main avenues of Mexico City.

20:47But these kinds of hits are common, I think, also because motorcycles, because they're wearing a helmet and they're fully covered, it's often easier for them to get away without being identified. Yeah, I mean, you talked about impunity a little earlier. I mean, how often in these sorts of cases, I mean, or indeed murders of journalists, for example, are people actually caught and then put on trial? Put on trial does sometimes happen, but I think actually just sentence, it's that there's impunity of 90%, I would say, or above actually in some cases of murders of journalists, they found that it's above 95%.

21:25And so I think also it's important to note just in the state of Sinaloa, that is what has been a conflict recently between the United States and Mexico, where Donald Trump and other leaders in the United States have been criticizing Mexico, saying that leaders of that state are directly organized, connected with organized crime. and the governor did have to take a leave because he was accused of being directly involved with organized crime. And that is what leads to this impunity because both the judges, the lawyers, the police, the army, the navy, the local police, the state police, everyone is involved with organized crime.

22:02And that is what leads to impunity. And then there are never enough resources to properly investigate these crimes. That was the journalist Andalusia Soloff speaking to me from just outside Mexico City. You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. Do stay with us. We've got lots more coming up in the second half of the programme. Don't go away.

22:29This is the BBC in London. You're listening to NewsHour and I'm James Menendez. President Trump has described the surge of migrants into Spain as an invasion. But what really happened in the tiny Spanish enclave known as Ceuta? I'm Asma Khaled, and I host the Global Story podcast on the BBC. Last week, tens of thousands of migrants from Morocco streamed into Ceuta. It ignited a political storm in Europe and even here in the US. But who's really to blame? For more, listen to The Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

23:08Welcome back to NewsHour. At least 15 elephants have died in the space of a month in Kenya in what experts are describing as an unprecedented loss of life. Most were found paralysed before dying a few days later. The authorities have said that cyanides used in tomato pesticides could be behind the deaths. But several conservationists have told the BBC this doesn't tell the full story. The BBC's Africa correspondent Thomas Mukawana reports from southern Kenya.

23:38The vultures are circling this carcass of an elephant. It's a 32-year-old female elephant here in Kimana Ranch. It's rotting. Rangers found it about seven days ago. There's maggots all over and there's a strong stench of decomposing flesh. The tasks have been cut off by the Kenya Wildlife Service. But the maggots are now taking over the flesh. Authorities say that some of the elephants showed signs of paralysis before dying within one or two days. Almost all of them were females and their cows. The Kenyan Wildlife Service is the agency ultimately responsible for protecting Kenya's wildlife. Its top vet, Dr.

24:25Isaac Lekolol, told me that the pesticides on tomato farms could be to blame. It could be unintentional. Maybe people are trying to do some controls of pests on their crops, and that could have been maybe a source, and that's what we're trying to see, if the elephants manage to pick from that site. These tomato farms are all around the National Park area. We went to visit one just minutes away from where we saw an elephant carcass. In the distance, we can see men in protective gear, spraying what looks like pesticides on these plants. Elephants love tomatoes. It's the reason they invade these farms in these areas.

25:07The human-world life conflict is particularly exacerbated by tomato plants, and organizations within this area have tried to put up fences around these farms, but the elephants are too strong and too big for the fences to keep them out. Stephen Michael has been a tomato farmer here for years. He says he's in a constant struggle against elephants and other wildlife. The last time the elephants came, they destroyed cabbages and tomatoes. I lost cabbages worth almost 200 ,000 Kenyan shillings. That doesn't include tomatoes. I might start crying if I count that. But not everyone buys the theory that pesticides are to blame.

25:52Pola Kahumbu is a world-famous conservationist. She and others say there's more to this than the official explanation. I've been working with elephants for more than 30 years. I have never seen elephants dying in numbers like this. And some information has been released to the public, but it's not adding up. Because elephants will have to eat a huge amount of tomatoes to actually consume enough to kill them. The Wildlife Service is still working with a number of theories, including intentional poisoning and disease. They're expected to release their findings in the coming weeks. That was Thomas Mukawana reporting there from Kenya.

26:35Let's head to India now.