Indian hunger striker: We had no fear

21:36Sonam Wangchuk:And some serious criticisms as well from people like the Chief of Global Football Development, Arsene Wenger, and Prince Ali, the President of Jordan's Football Association. Yeah, this is another intriguing development, the intervention of Prince Ali. As you say, he's the president of the Jordanian Football Association. He's accused FIFA of creating a situation which, in his words, amounts to blackmail. Now, that's in relation to unpaid prize money and support for Infantino's re-election, basically suggesting their own money, which they claim they've been told is now dependent on whether they support him or not.

22:11Now, these claims, it's important to say, have not been verified by the BBC and FIFA didn't make any comment when we approached them. But Prince Ali's statement is, I guess some would see, indicative of the strength of feeling amongst those associations that do oppose him.

22:27Sonam Wangchuk:And what can happen after this meeting then? We're expecting a statement. And from what you said, Infantino likely to stay on for the moment, just briefly. Yeah, for the moment. Well, if he does fight on and others in the game remain determined to oust him, then there are a few areas, avenues, areas to travel. The FIFA Council could try to force his hand through an emergency meeting. They'd have to get certain numbers to get that through. Another option would be an extraordinary Congress. Again, they'd need around a fifth of the associations to make that request. And then there's the re-election, which is due next March.

23:03Now you'd need to find an alternative candidate that everyone else is prepared to get behind. And that kind of unity previously, if history is towards anything, is difficult to find. So it's all in the balance.

23:15Sonam Wangchuk:That's BBC Sport reporter Adam Wilde. And we've just heard that Portugal footballer Luiz Figo has called for FIFA president Infantino to resign, describing his conduct as the lowest, most deceitful and cravenly behavior I've ever witnessed.

23:39President Trump has described the surge of migrants into Spain as an invasion. But what really happened in the tiny Spanish enclave known as Ciuta? I'm Asma Khalid 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.

24:10Sonam Wangchuk:Welcome back to NewsHour. Police in Germany say they found a drone carrying an explosive device at Leipzig airport. They say the device was disarmed after being spotted by a worker overnight in a cargo operations area. Police are also investigating another unidentified object which collided with a plane at the same airport. Well, let's speak now to our correspondent Bethany Bell, who is in Leipzig for us. Welcome back to NewsHour, Bethany. Just tell us more about what we know. well last night quite late last night they somebody who was working at the airport in the cargo operations security area on the south runway discovered this drone that turned out to be carrying what they say was an unknown explosive device they got the police in and they used an explosive detection rope and they removed the detonator from the explosive device.

25:11Sonam Wangchuk:And then, as you said, there was another unidentified flying object which collided with a cargo aircraft just after it had taken off from the airport. And that plane had to be diverted to Hanover and they discovered minor damage on the aircraft after it landed there. Now, initially, they suspended all flight operations at the airport after the first drone was detected. And then they inspected the north runway, and that has been cleared for use today, and planes are taking off and landing there. The south runway where this has happened wasn't due to be used today. There's maintenance going on, and that is not being used.

25:57Sonam Wangchuk:And have police said anything more about whether there's any connection between these two incidents and indeed who they think might be responsible? So far, they haven't speculated about who may have been responsible for these. What they have said is that there's no danger to the lives and safety of passengers and airport staff there and that passenger air traffic hasn't been affected anymore. But it must be said that German airports in general are on high alert at the moment. There have been a series of drone flights in Germany in recent months over sensitive sites, including military bases, airports, logistics companies.

26:38Sonam Wangchuk:And the police in the past have warned that such flights could have been organised by Russian agents. Now, in July 2024, a parcel burst into flames on the ground at Leipzig Airport just before it could be loaded onto a DHL cargo plane. And Moscow, though, has denied anything to do with this. Now, it is where the current drone was discovered was in the cargo section near DHL's very big hub at Leipzig. And so the police will be scouring this. We've been told that Saxony's counterterrorism police will also be involved. Bethany Bell in Leipzig. Thank you very much for that update.

27:40Sonam Wangchuk:You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC with me, Regine Vaidyanathan. Ukraine's capital, Kiev, was hit by another wave of Russian strikes overnight into Wednesday. At least 17 people have been killed and at least 44 injured. Reports say eight people died at a train station in the east of the capital. Ukraine's President Vladimir Zelensky said lives could have been saved by ballistic missile interceptors. something he's been calling on Western allies to provide more help with for months. Well, Dan Johnson is our correspondent in Kyiv. Dan, good to have you on NewsHour. You've been down to the scene of one of those strikes.

28:19Sonam Wangchuk:Just tell us more about what you saw. Yes, I've been to that railway station on the east of Kyiv, and I can verify that report of eight people having been killed there because sadly I was able to count the body bags as they were taken away by the recovery workers who were clearing up the aftermath there, The railway station had been hit, the power lines had been brought down, the trains were disrupted. Already last night the trains were delayed because of the air raid sirens that sounded across the city. So there were people actually waiting at that railway station. It's right on the edge of the city in quite a rural, remote spot.

28:52So they were essentially stranded there waiting for a train that wasn't coming when it looks like they were hit by a Russian missile that was probably destined for a warehouse that was just across the tracks behind some trees. That warehouse had also been hit last night and was still smouldering this morning. And we also spoke to a couple of residents who live near there whose homes had been totally destroyed, although they miraculously had managed to survive, even though the top floor of one lady's house had been taken off. Her and her mother were able to get out of there. So people right across the capital city heard the air raid sirens and the explosions last night.

29:28And this morning they have seen the devastation and are counting the cost in terms of further lives lost and more people injured. They're still fighting the fires at some of these warehouses on the edge of the city. And one question being asked is whether this was deliberate Russian retaliation for the attacks targeting the biggest online retailer in Russia, which Ukraine has had success with over the past few weeks. The other question is about the vulnerability here that people now feel with the evident threat that is able to get through with not enough Patriot interceptors to form a functioning air defence above this city and across the rest of Ukraine.

30:06That's why Vladimir Zelensky has been so insistent that he needs those interceptors in much greater numbers to keep people safe.

30:12Sonam Wangchuk:Yeah, I was going to ask you more about that because you mentioned there President Zelensky making another plea for those interceptors. Is there a sense that that is one of the most urgent things at the moment then? It's certainly the urgent call that he has repeatedly reiterated over the past few weeks and again today. No one's saying that they've run out of interceptors. But the problem is if the stocks get so low, the question is where do you place them? If you've got to be strategic about where you put them and when you deploy them, if you're having to essentially ration them to keep some in reserve, then you just cannot bring down all the Russian missiles that are fired towards Ukraine.

30:50There were 28 ballistic missiles fired last night. Ukraine's air defences were successful in bringing down quite a number of drones that were sent towards the country last night. But in terms of the ballistic missiles, they were able to get through and cause so much damage and destruction. President Zelensky says that the partner countries, mainly the U.S., that produce those weapons and can supply them to Ukraine, need to do that in greater numbers. He said any delay was now leading to casualties and destruction. He says lives could have been saved last night if he'd had greater stocks of those missile interceptors.

31:21Sonam Wangchuk:OK, Dan Johnson, our Ukraine correspondent, thank you very much for that update. For people in the Ukrainian capital, strikes are a regular occurrence as the war continues on. The artist and writer Diana Berg lives in Kiev with her husband and four children. She moved there four years ago from the city of Mariupol, which was taken over by Russian forces. Well, last night, she was by herself on a train in Kiev, waiting for it to leave to Poland when those strikes began. I've been speaking to her a short while after she arrived in Poland to get more about her reflections of what happened. I just took the train and it was about to move like in one minute when the air raid, a siren activated.

32:05Now there is a rule in Ukrainian railways. When there is an alert, then the trains should be stopped and people must be evacuated. One of the targets are the Ukrainian railways. There are underpasses right near the platforms and we were sent there. Did you feel scared? Yeah, of course we were scared.

32:28Sonam Wangchuk:Everyone is scared in this moment, but it's not something unusual. Because this, of course, isn't the first time that Kiev has been hit. Oh, no, no, no. It's two, three times per week when ballistics hit us. How can you be totally calm and sleep in your bed when you know that there are missiles coming to hit the residential areas? When it's really hard, we go to safer places in the apartment or in the building where there are several walls between you and outside. And Diana, President Zelensky said in the wake of these latest attacks that he believes lives could have been saved if the country had more ballistic missile interceptors.

33:12Sonam Wangchuk:Does it feel to you that more missiles seem to be getting through now? Yes, absolutely. There are more and more ballistics coming to give end all over Ukraine. Unfortunately, we ran out of anti-aircraft missiles to the Patriot systems that we do have. And they are effective in hitting these ballistics before they hit us. But it's an obvious shortage of this. And that is why we have these massive distractions. And that is why more and more ballistics come. Last night, it was like 30 or something. I actually could hear more ballistics. You know, you can hear it and feel it because everything is vibrating.

33:53Even though I was in the subway like underpass yesterday, last night, but the sound of when they actually hit Kiev, you could hear it so close as if it's just around the corner because they destroy everything around and it's not like drones. That is why the tactics of Russians is changed. Obviously, they know about our problems.

34:18Sonam Wangchuk:And where were your husband and children when all this was happening?

34:48What is flying? What was launched? Is it a drone? And if it is, then you have like 30 minutes to get to the metro station and then hide there. If it's a ballistic, then there is no point in going anywhere. Maybe just to the corridor, just to hide from the shattered glass, but not from the direct hit. You can actually read what and where it's coming. So I saw how the missiles were flying to the direction of where we live. And we were texting and calling each other with my husband. There are problems with internet connection, with mobile connection, because our army has to silence the connection because they need it.

35:33It's crazy. My message is please don't be afraid to be generous and give us or sell us those anti-aircraft missiles that we need for our petrol systems.

35:46Sonam Wangchuk:That's the Ukrainian artist and writer Diana Berg who's now in Poland.

36:02Sonam Wangchuk:part of a spacex rocket is believed to have crashed into the moon the falcon 9 was launched last year and its upper section was shed in space as planned but it then turned onto an accidental collision course with the moon it's thought to have crashed at around five and a half 1000 miles an hour. The impact is expected to carve out a new crater near the moon's western edge. Well let's get more on this by speaking to Libby Jackson, the head of space at the Science Museum in London. Welcome to NewsHour Libby. So what exactly has happened here? So the fairing, the top stage of the Falcon Line rocket that took the blue ghost lander to the moon and it launched about a year and a half ago, it took the lander to the moon.

36:51And then this top stage was left in a trajectory, in a path that was thought to just keep being in space. But it's quite hard to predict when you have three bodies, when you have the moon, the Earth, the sun and this rocket body, quite which path it will take. And it's found itself on a collision course with the moon. and this morning it's crashed into the moon at quite small speeds and astronomers have been quite excited because they're hoping that perhaps they will get to see some of the ejector crater. They were looking for that this morning and we will see a new crater formed on the moon and that will tell scientists a little bit about what the moon is made of and a bit more data in trying to understand the moon's history.

37:34Sonam Wangchuk:So what effect will this crater have on the moon? Will it be positive then, even though this is sort of an accident? The moon is bombarded every day by objects from space, by rock, by dust, by lumps of metal, nearly all of which were left over from when the solar system formed. When we look at the moon, we see the distinctive marks. And some of that was due to volcanic activity in the moon's past. But a lot of it is just from the constant bombardment. There's no atmosphere on the Moon to slow the meteors down as we have here on Earth. And so it's a fairly everyday occurrence for the Moon for things to hit it.

38:12But it's pretty unusual for something to hit it to have been made by us here on Earth.

38:17Sonam Wangchuk:And what exactly went wrong? How did the bit of this SpaceX rocket end up crashing in the first place? It's not so much I think that anything went wrong. Perhaps it could have been put on a slightly different path. but it wasn't thought to be impacting the moon. It is, as I say, just the way that the physics of it, the fact that you can't always predict exactly how three bodies will allow you to solve the equations to know where the path went. What it is, I think, more an example of is why we have to keep discussing the challenges of space debris, of things that humans have made and put into space and then left pieces of rubbish, defunct satellites, rocket stages floating through space.

39:06This hasn't impacted the moon, but there are lots of similar pieces of space junk orbiting the Earth. We all depend on space every single day. The satellites that are orbiting our Earth for our communications, for our navigation, for satellite communication, for every payment we use, uses the timing signals that we have in our global navigation systems. and all of these satellites now are getting more and more congested. There are more than 12 ,000 satellites in space and there are more than 100, 200 manoeuvres every day of satellites moving out the way of space junk. When two pieces of space junk collide with each other, when two pieces of anything collide with each other in space, they create more and more pieces, more and more debris and that debris doesn't go away.

39:53It remains in space as another object that then has to be dodged And that challenge of space debris is a building problem and something that the space sector is looking at solving.

40:04Sonam Wangchuk:Really interesting to discuss all of that with you. That's Libby Jackson, the head of space at the Science Museum here in London. And I'm just reading that lunar junk that Libby was talking about is more than 209 tonnes now. So a big challenge and issue there. You can get more on what's happened with that SpaceX rocket collision on the BBC News website as well, where you can also find more on all of the stories we've covered in the programme.

40:41Sonam Wangchuk:This is Rajini Vaidyanathan with NewsHour, coming to you live from the BBC here in London. Over the years, we've brought you stories of allegations of foul play or cheating in sport. The latest controversy is in the world of women's cycling and relates to the use of padded bras. Well, there are claims that a rounder chest can give cyclists an advantage by reducing aerodynamic drag. And now riders in the Women's Tour de France are being checked to ensure there's no extra padding. Let's speak to Amy Jones, a cycling journalist and podcaster. So what's this all about? Yeah, hi there. It's basically, as you said, the aim is to reduce aerodynamic drag.

41:26So in this instance, the race was a time trial. So it's an individual time trial where riders are on their own against the wind. They're in a position where their talk's really low, trying to break through the air and go as fast as they can. So any advantage that they can gain, riders will try. But obviously, there's got to be certain restrictions and regulations within that.

41:50Sonam Wangchuk:So is there a real sense that having a little bit of extra padding in a sports bra could make a difference? Yeah, so definitely, I mean, not necessarily in a sports bra, just in the frontal area. So it's about the reduction in drag that you can gain from having that. actually wider as well as as as further as bigger um it reduces the drag and it gives you an aerodynamic advantage there have been studies to find that this is the case um I say not necessarily just in bras because it isn't exclusive to the women the men's side of the sport do it as well interesting and so now people are being checked yeah so um the day before the stage uh the UCI which is the governing body of the sport, sent out a communication to the teams to say, just make sure that everybody is aware of this regulation within their rules that states that they're not allowed to manipulate the morphology of the body using non-essential items.

42:56So obviously in this case, padding would be considered that. So they're allowed to wear helmets, for example, that are designed for to reduce drag and to be aerodynamic. There's restrictions within that too, just in the size that the helmet can be. But they were particularly concerned with this. And so they sent out a communication and they were checking in at the start of the stage before everybody went up to the ramp to start their time trial.

43:22Sonam Wangchuk:And what's been the reaction to these checks? Because they are, of course, potentially invasive, aren't they? yeah so I think that the kind of stir around it has been um partly because of that I think obviously in the case of women it's much more sensitive um the the reaction from the riders I think most of them would prefer the sport to be fair so I don't think they're particularly troubled by the fact that the checks are happening also because the checks themselves were nothing invasive they were just visual checks they were supposed to have been conducted exclusively by female commissars, so the judges.

44:01And it was mainly just checking, just a visual check. So nobody was kind of taken off and given any kind of invasive checks.

44:11Sonam Wangchuk:OK. Amy Jones, cycling journalist and podcaster, thank you very much for taking us through that story.

44:22Sonam Wangchuk:at least 15 elephants have died in the space of one month in kenya in which what experts are describing as an unprecedented loss of life well most of the elephants were found paralyzed before dying a few days later authorities say cyanide used in tomato pesticides could be behind the deaths. But several conservationists have told the BBC that this doesn't tell the full story. The BBC's Africa correspondent Thomas Mukwana sent us this report from southern Kenya.

44:56The 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 Isaac Lecolol, told me that the pesticides on tomato farms could be to blame.

45:47It 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. The human-well-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.

46:41Stephen 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 them. But not everyone buys the theory that pesticides are to blame. We can't just assume it's the cyanide... Paula Kahumbu is a world-famous conservationist. She and others say there's more to this than the official explanation.

47:17Sonam Wangchuk: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. Those 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. As the uncertainty continues, worries grow over what could endanger humans and wildlife alike. That report there from the BBC's Africa correspondent, Thomas Mukwana from southern Kenya.

47:58Sonam Wangchuk:There's more on that story online on the BBC News website. And there'll also be more on NewsHour's interview with the Indian activist Sonam Wangchuk, who ended his 26-day hunger strike recently. That interview on the BBC News website. That ends our programme from myself, Regine Vaidhanathan, and the team here in London. Thanks to all of you for listening, wherever you are.

48:42President Trump has described the surge of migrants into Spain as an invasion. But what really happened in the tiny Spanish enclave known as Ciuta? I'm Asma Khalid, 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.