Venezuela: Thousands of people are still missing

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. The United States is about to mark its 250th anniversary. And so on the Global Story podcast from the BBC, we're telling surprising tales of American influence on the world stage and in ordinary people's lives all across the globe. We have this ability to export our story and a lot of people have bought it. I feel like the American dream is alive but not well. From the BBC, it's the United States at 2.50. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:41Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. I'm James Menendez and we are going to start today in Venezuela where the authorities are now confirming the deaths of 1 ,450 people in last week's twin earthquakes. But still, that's likely to be just a fraction of the real number of dead. Tens of thousands of people are missing, many of them believed to be buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings. The government says at least 189 buildings collapsed completely. Of course, as time goes on, the likelihood of finding survivors is diminishing fast.

1:18But some are, and rescuers are still trying, as the BBC's Will Grant reports from the worst affected area, La Guaida, just north of the capital, Caracas. They're still searching for signs of life, but all they're finding is death and dust. This used to be a multi-storey beachfront property in the coastal town of La Guaida. Now volunteers and machinery have spent hours painstakingly picking through the wreckage of a concertina department block. Suddenly, the rescuers spot something. The digger backs up and debris is removed by hand, neighbour digging out neighbour. We've just been told it was an entire family.

1:57and none of them have survived. Unfortunately, it's the second such harrowing discovery here. It is the hope that drives these rescue workers forward, but that hope is rapidly giving way to this grim reality. For now, Camila Acosta refuses to lose faith, even as she walks the streets in search of her missing family members, an uncle, two cousins and her godmother. We cross her devastated town, past apocalyptic scenes of destruction and ruin, the stench of death at times overwhelming. The earthquakes lasted under a minute, and just look what they caused, says Camilla. At times she can barely comprehend the scale of the loss for her town, and she can't contain her fury at the government, calling their response slow and inadequate.

2:51it. Arriving at her relative's flattened home, it's still smouldering from a fire that also broke out. In her heart, Camila knows the likelihood of anyone still alive is almost nil. Hope is the last thing we lose. We're in this to the end, until we find them dead or alive. Whatever happens, we just want to find them. Edgar Guaita has already accepted his family's fate. The body of his son, a soldier, was brought out earlier. His two granddaughters and his daughter-in-law are still lost. A block away, rescue workers again call for silence, convinced they can hear three people trapped inside. We are the rescue workers.

3:40Call back if you can hear us. But no sound comes back. At this stage, between the exhaust and the desire for a positive result, it might be more wishful thinking than anything else. Well, Grant reporting there. Well, some good news in the past half an hour or so. Reports saying that rescuers have pulled a man and his teenage son alive from the rubble. I've been getting a view of the rescue efforts and indeed the destruction caused by the quakes from a resident of La Guayra State. Freddy Carreño is a university English professor. He lives in the port city of Katia Lamar. What are things like there?

4:22It is. It is a chaos. It looks like a war zone. 39 seconds and it destroyed the whole state. Lots of buildings crumbled. Now the situation is getting quiet. A lot of people helping, removing all the debris and trying to rescue survivors. Also, a lot of organisations helping people, giving aid, food, clothes and medicine to homeless people. And what sort of organisations? Are they Venezuelan or are they international organisations? Both. Lots of volunteers here from Venezuela. Also lots of people from other countries sent help, both people and also material to support homeless and victims for this disaster.

5:10And what about your own home? I mean, where were you when the earthquake struck? I live specifically here in Katia Ramal. That's a part of the state which was severely damaged. But fortunately, in my neighborhood, there was not material damage. So, of course, we left the home the first day. We went nearby to relatives who lived nearby, spent the night there. But we came back basically because we didn't have electricity. But then everything started to be normal, of course. And we came back to our apartment, but also day after day we've been feeling the little quakes. So we have to, every time we feel something, we have to leave the home.

5:54We're still sleeping on the floor in the living room with doors open. Whenever we feel something, we have to run, rush out of the apartment. But the apartment building where I live, fortunately, it didn't suffer any damage. But as you say, it must be nerve-wracking, wondering if there's going to be another big tremor. Right, exactly. That's what we fear. And how do you see what's happened in the context of the turmoil that Venezuela's experienced in recent months and all the problems it's had over the past few years? I mean, it just feels like the most appalling bad luck. I mean, is that how you see it?

6:34Yeah, it's the most devastating event we have here in Venezuela. I must say lived here in 1999, tragedy, which was in the same state, La Guaida. But this, I think for me, this one was worse. And that was a big, that was a landslide, wasn't it, that hit La Guaida? A landslide, yeah, a landslide, yeah. But I think this one was worse. Really? I mean, do you think people can come back from this? uh it will take long to recover everything we're talking about hundreds of buildings that came completely to the ground that crumbled thousands of people lost everything homes and everything and of course the human lives were lost they were turning yesterday there was about 1 ,100 but but still looking for more and what's going to happen on monday i mean are people going to just going to be staying at home are people going to be able to go back to to work No, no, not to work.

7:32Of course not. It will take long to get back to work. People are still trying to recover first psychologically and then because lots of people lost also their jobs because infrastructure suffered. So it will take longer to get back to work. Freddy Carreño. Well, the government's response to the disaster has already come in for criticism from people in those badly affected areas. for the slow speed of the response and for the apparent lack of coordination between different agencies. It is the first real test for acting president, Dilsey Rodriguez, who took over with Washington's blessing after Nicolás Maduro was captured, arrested and whisked off to a New York courtroom.

8:17Tiziano Breda is a senior analyst on Latin America at ACLED, a global monitor on political violence and protest. How tricky a moment is this for Mrs. Rodriguez? Well, it's certainly a make-or-break moment for Rodriguez. She has the opportunity to try and overcome the political divergences that have affected the country and driven the political crisis over the past few years, and sort of rebrand the Chavismo or clean its image as a unifying force that brings the country together in this moment of great difficulty. But she may also face the temptation of politicizing the humanitarian hate through channeling through the Chavista sort of movements and so prioritizing certain sectors.

9:04And, of course, leans on top of an institution that is affected by widespread corruption. So may also see her image tainted by any possible scandal about that and may face a renewed wave of discontent if her government doesn't manage to handle this crisis correctly. Interesting that you mentioned Chavez more, the movement that she's part of and named, of course, after Hugo Chavez, her predecessor but one. And it's interesting, isn't it? Because he faced a similar situation just when he came to power in 1999. there was a big landslide in what is now La Guaida. I mean, he was able to sort of project himself as a hands-on leader.

9:47Does she have the same sort of charisma? Well, it's a good comparison, but certainly the country was in a very different shape when Chávez came to power. I mean, it was the main Latin American power, the wealthiest oil prices were driving an economic boom. So the resources available in order to, you know, address that crisis were certainly different from today, which is a country which was already, you know, collapsing, basically. And certainly Chávez had this charisma, as you were saying, projected this image of a leader that people rallied around. Certainly is not the kind of figure that Delce is.

10:28She was seen as the sort of political actor, but not necessarily a leader within the Chavismo. She has the opportunity to consolidate her position, but she will have to prove that. Hugo Chavez, at the time, back in 1999, he rejected help from the United States. It's a very different situation now, isn't it? Delcey Rodriguez has said, look, you know, we welcome all help. The fact that she can count on the US because she is cooperating with the Trump administration. I mean, is that going to help her, do you think? Certainly the country couldn't make it alone, frankly. The fact that she's in power, the consequence of the U.S.

11:08operation against Maduro, and basically the reopening, the restart of diplomatic relations between Venezuela and the U.S., but also other Latin American countries, other European countries. It's certainly an opportunity, not a plus, that helps ease the arrival of aid of humanitarian missions and so on and so forth. But of course, the LCS and Venezuela's sort of destiny is very much intertwined with Trump. I mean, it's a great priority for the U.S. to have a stable Venezuela, a Venezuela that does not collapse again, and that does not result in another exodus of people that have been affected, displaced, that lost everything, and they try to resettle elsewhere in the region.

11:51because that would also mean the collapse of one, if not the only, Trump's foreign policy success so far, which would be, of course, harmful for the midterm elections as well. The opposition, of course, has been waiting in the wings for some time for its chance to, well, I mean, it wants to see elections, doesn't it? I mean, elections that it says it's already won. I mean, how do they play this, do you think? Well, there's a great risk that this situation sort of repeats what happened in 2019, for example, when the country was experiencing already the economic collapse of the weight of the U.S.

12:28sanctions, so on and so forth. And the U.S. push under the first term to get humanitarian aid into the country was used politically by both the Maduro government and the opposition. And I think it didn't serve neither's interest to basically politicize, to use the tragedy of that moment to sort of gather support and use it politically to demand the transition. I think the opposition would also gain more if it put aside for a while the political divergences and tried to use that as an opportunity for reconciliation rather than to attack the government, to demand an acceleration of the transition, because it doesn't serve its interests back then.

13:09and I think it would be not well seen by the population nowadays either. Tiziano Breda there. There is, as ever at the moment, a live page up and running on the aftermath of those earthquakes, bbc.com forward slash news. You're listening to News Out.

13:37and coming up later in the program the icelandic pop stars bringing an immersive listening experience in complete darkness your visual sense sort of takes over every time if you open your eyes that is your dominant sense it will always take over everything so So when you close your eyes or you bring someone into darkness, you are forced to sort of put everything into all of your other senses. More from Sigur Rós coming up in half an hour. Our main headlines from the newsroom at the moment. Iran has warned other countries not to challenge its control of the Strait of Hormuz, but Washington has hit back, accusing Tehran of taking an international waterway hostage.

14:15We'll have more on what's going on there in about 15 minutes. And in a rare split in Iran's top clerical body, most of its rank-and-file members have come out in support of a fatwa against Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.

14:35This is James Menendez. We news are live from the BBC to Uganda now, where soldiers have taken up positions outside the offices of the Daily Monitor newspaper, part of the country's leading independent media group. It follows an order from the Chief of the Army, General Mahouzi Kainarugaba, who also happens to be the son of President Museveni, to shut down the group's operations. Overnight, two of its TV stations were taken off the air. We had hoped to speak to someone from the paper or from those TV stations, but no one was willing to speak. I have, though, been talking to Alex Atuhari, a former editor of the Daily Monitor and an executive member of the Uganda Editors Guild.

15:15First, his reaction to what's happened. It was unprecedented. It is not the first time. But this is so different because the order to close the premises of the nation media group outlets in Uganda came directly from the military and it has not happened before. Why do you think it has happened? I mean, we haven't had any official reason from the government, have we, as to what prompted this? There hasn't been an official reason from government. The head of the Uganda Communications Commission said that they are going to engage and come to the bottom of what is actually going on. So even the regulator does not know what is going on.

16:02So from what we know is that the head of Uganda's military, he communicated and said he had ordered the action against the media house. And from what he tweeted is that he had gotten authorization from the president, who is also his father. So what we know is that the action has been commanded by the head of the country's military, who is the chief of defense forces, General Moski, in Erdogan. In one of those posts, I mean, he also wrote, I do not believe in a free press. Could that be the reason? One of the reasons he said he said the media outlet, the particular media outlet that is taking action against, has been engaged in constant insults against him, whatever that means.

16:56the statement that he does not believe in press freedom is shocking. It's shocking because this is a child of the NRA or a child of the NRA revolution that brought his father to power in 1986. and among the ideals of the NRA is that they believe in the total political freedom, including freedom of the press and the media. So it is a shocking statement from the country's chief of defence forces. So what do you think the response should be? I mean, do you think all journalists in Uganda should come out and say, you know, this is unacceptable, even if that is a risky move? Of course it's a risky move, but I can tell you under the Uganda Editors Guild, of which we are members, we are going to be supporting the national media group in whatever way we can.

17:53This is a direct attack on the freedom of expression and freedom of the media as guaranteed under the, first of all, the Ugandan constitution, Article 29. Also, the African Charter on Human Rights guarantees freedom of the media. So this is unprecedented. The military has before not directly attacked in a media house. Which maybe the army chief doesn't care about any of those things. I mean, he also said this was just the beginning. Yes, that's what he says. But of course, we have to engage and see how regularly we can get to have this resolved. We have to engage all the legal avenues to make sure that this is resolved in the best interest of public interest because the media works in public interest.

18:47The Ugandan journalist Alex Atuhari there. And we did approach the Ugandan government for comment, but so far have received no response. Let's talk about the World Cup now because the group stage is now complete. 48 teams is, well, they're now 32. They'll be competing in the knockout phase, which has just got underway. One of the North African teams celebrating getting through is Algeria, who drew with Austria 3-all after a night last night of high drama in Kansas City. Algeria go through as one of the best third-place teams to the obvious delight of their fans.

19:28This is what some of them had to say about the game, which essentially went off the rails in stoppage time with two goals in the dying minutes of the match. The game was awesome. We loved it. It was a lot of fun, a lot of goals. I think people came to see goals. Both teams qualified. We're happy. They might have the next game. It might be a little complicated for them, but for us, we might get a little easier one, but we're happy. Great game. Oh, it was excellent. This is my favorite game that I ever watched, and oh my God, I'm just so happy. We scored 3-3. like, one, two, three, five, all on jury.

20:10Oh, thank you. Austria also go through, finishing second in that group. The first time they've advanced past the group stage since 1982. Paul Scharner is a former Austrian international who's played in both Germany's Bundesliga and the English Premier League. I asked him for his assessment of the game. Yeah, it was a very unusual time to watch, to be honest, first of all. But the game was very unusual, to be honest, because you have seen the scores, actually the scoreboard. Yeah, at the end, it was a nerve game, actually. Yeah, very nerve wracking. And I mean, it all really changed in the last few minutes, didn't it?

20:52Yes, I was watching the game with my little son, you know, and after Algeria scored the 3-2, we looked at each other and said, we are out now. Oh my God, Austria is out now. And a couple of minutes later, yes, we are in again. We are in again. Yeah, however, the fact that it was a draw means, and correct me if I've got this wrong, that Austria now have to play Spain. And that's quite a difficult prospect, isn't it? Yes. Before the game, actually, in Austria, we speculated that we should lose, actually, because then we don't get Spain, actually. But now, next round, you know, next stage, it's a very difficult one, Spain.

21:34But you never know if you had a look on the game so far. There are a few surprise results. Yeah, and what do you make of that? I mean, do you think it has been... I mean, the World Cup can be unpredictable always. Does this feel like a particularly unpredictable World Cup to you? It is, to be honest. Especially, let's say, in the middle level. Let's say the smaller countries are more up to it because they are very organized in the defense. And if you have no, let's say, enough creativity in the game, then it's very difficult to score. So it's very unpredictable. So maybe Austria, the giant killers of the next round, do you think?

22:18What's your prediction for the scoreline? Many Austrians are expecting it, to be honest. because we say it's the golden generation what we have at the tournament because our last qualification was 1998 and the last time we went into the knockout stages was 1982. So we have not a big history at World Cups, to be honest. But now we have a good squad. We have many players playing abroad in Germany, in England, in Spain. so it helps a lot to increase the quality of the squad of course but on the other hand you know Spain actually they are the European champions and so it's difficult of course but we can maybe surprise.

23:07So really your best chance in what nearly 50 years I mean that's amazing. Yes yes absolutely true and you never know what you have seen so far at the tournament and if we can find the right focus or actually the right setup, of course, as well, then everything is possible. The former Austrian international Paul Scharner there. You're listening to News Out. Do stay with us. Lots more coming up.

23:36The United States is about to mark its 250th anniversary. And so on the Global Story podcast from the BBC, we're telling surprising tales of American influence on the world stage and in ordinary people's lives all across the globe. We have this ability to export our story and a lot of people have bought it. I feel like the American dream is alive but not well. From the BBC, it's the United States at 2.50. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to NewsHour with its distinctive engine sound, links to youth culture and La Dolce Vita, the world's most famous scooter, the Vespa, has been celebrating its 80th anniversary this weekend in Italy.

24:28Hey! Excuse me. Hey, stop! Come back, you'll be thinking of me. A scene from the classic 1953 Hollywood film Roman Holiday starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck as they scooted their way around the Eternal City. Vespa means wasp in Italian, it's a reference to the scooter's shape and the distinctive sound of its two-stroke engine. This weekend, thousands of Vespas have been parading through the streets of Rome to mark that 80th anniversary. Davide Marelli is a Vespa expert. He's also been collecting them over the years and has been telling the BBC about their history. Vespa was born in 1946 in Italy.

25:10by the company Piaggio. And 1946 was the year after the end of Second World War. The project is mainly by two persons. One is Enrico Piaggio. So it was the owner of Piaggio that was at the moment a big airplane manufacturer that was providing planes for the Italian army. And the designer. The designer was an airplane engineer called Corrado Dascagno. Both of them, they were not in the motorcycle business. The idea of Enrico Piaggio was to have a vehicle for the families to start the country after the tragedy of the five years of war. So it takes a while to keep people able to buy economically first, and then to get used to this new object that was not a car and not a motorcycle, but something in between.

26:05The Vespa became very popular and started to sell hard after 1952-53. And the reason there were two. One was economically that Piaggio made the opportunity for families to buy Vespa paying once per month. And the second reason was marketing and very romantic story played by Hollywood. So the Vespa is a very friendly vehicle, not aggressive, friendly with all the ladies and the priest. So this is the sound of the little two-stroke, but a very civil, educated engine that sounds like a wasp, like a nice insect. The point is that the engine is not as motorcycle. You have a hot engine, oily engine in between your legs, while in the Vespa it's like a chair, you don't have anything, it's good to be ridden by people wearing skirts.

27:06I would say Vespa is a piece of design that is out really of the automotive industry, is really loved by several kinds of people and always brings you to Italy. Vespa expert and collector Davide Marelli. You're listening to News Hour.

27:38This is the BBC World Service in London. You're listening to NewsHour and I'm James Menendez. The ceasefire between the US and Iran is looking increasingly shaky with both countries attacking each other's infrastructure in the Gulf region and President Trump warning on social media that a return to all-out war is still possible. The dispute seems to centre on control of the Strait of Hormuz, that crucial artery for exports of oil and gas and other essentials. The Iranian government said today that responsibility for restoring the flow of tankers through the narrow waterway rests solely with it.

28:12Here is Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi speaking on a visit to Iraq.