Migrants rescued as boat catches fire in Channel

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0:30Designed by She's Birdie for hotels, dorms, Airbnbs, and anywhere you're staying away from home. It installs in seconds on the doorframe, and if the door is opened, it activates a loud siren and flashing strobe to help draw attention instantly. She's Birdie. Because peace of mind should check in with you. Birdie Box by She's Birdie. Visit She's Birdie.com. That's S-H-E-S-B-I-R-D-I-E dot com. And order your Birdie Box before your next stay away from home. Hello, I'm James Kamarasamy. Thank you for downloading the BBC's World Tonight podcast for Tuesday, August the 4th. As more than 170 migrants are rescued from a dinghy that caught fire in the Channel, we'll look at how the small boat crossings are changing and what that means for the authorities trying to tackle the people smuggling trade.

1:18A key election in the United States that could decide the direction of the Democratic Party and whether it can regain control of Congress in November. Why are Germans so fascinated with Britain? a star Cambridge professor coming under increasing scrutiny. We have a report on Europe's aircon boom and hear about the SpaceX rocket that's going to crash into the moon. In a week when the Prime Minister has promised to be relentless in curbing small boat crossings during a visit to Dover and Reform UK has said that if elected they would deploy the Navy to ward off crossings, there's been a reminder today of the risks that the small boat passengers are taking.

1:56More than 170 people had to be rescued in the Channel after a boat carrying migrants caught fire in the French search and rescue area. 11 of them had minor injuries. All were escorted back to France where an Egyptian national was arrested. The Justice Secretary, Alex Norris, gave this reaction. A very visible reminder both of the dangerous nature of those crossings, also of the blind indifference that human traffickers have for life on those boats. The right levels of crossing, of course, is for them to never happen. I'm pleased with the work that we're doing with France that's reduced 46 ,000 preventions already this year we are seeing some positive steps forward in terms of some of the numbers related to it too but we've got to keep doing that work to dissuade people from making those dangerous crossings and that's what we're doing.

2:41According to the French authorities the overloaded dinghy had left the village of Vaux-les-Roses in Normandy a long distance from the shortest channel crossing points like Calais and a sign of how the people smugglers seem to be changing their approach. Well, David Chazan of the Times has been reporting from northern France this week, and he began by telling me about today's events. This particular boat got into trouble just before it entered British territorial waters, and the engine caught fire. That caused the dinghy to start disintegrating very rapidly, but the migrants were all rescued. There were no deaths, and they were rescued by French and British vessels in a sort of coordinated operation.

3:28I mean, the French have one rescue vessel, which is called the Mink, which shadows these dinghies as they make the crossing. And if they get into trouble, it tries to rescue the migrants to stop a real tragedy happening. But the French police say that they can't intervene once the dinghies have launched because they're scared that if it capsizes or if they slash it so that it's no longer seaworthy, they're scared that they will cause deaths by drowning. Interesting. Now, David, you are actually up in that area, not quite as far south as where the boat that got into trouble today launched from.

4:14Just tell us a bit more about what you were able to see. I was in a place called Ardloplage on the Channel Coast in northern France, which is about 40 miles south of Calais. And what the people smugglers have been doing is, as there is a new multi-million pound agreement with France for the French police to look after, monitor their coast and try to stop migrant crossings, the people smugglers have moved south so they're now launching these precarious inflatable dinghies from much further south than they used to which makes the crossing even more dangerous because it's further from the coast from the english coast and on those beaches where you've got holiday makers they are what just sort of mingling with the migrants waiting to to board these boats these dinghies yesterday i was amazed because our little plage is a very upmarket resort it's got lots of edwardian villas and the holiday makers on the beach were generally fairly well healed and i thought there would be some hostility towards the migrants which i've seen in the calais area that has not happened in our little plage and what i saw was a lot of sympathy for the migrants, including from British tourists who were there.

5:42I saw a group of about 30 migrants, about half men and half women, a lot of very young children with them, just toddlers, and in one case, a baby that couldn't have been more than about a year old. And they tried to aboard a dinghy which was trying to approach the beach. It was about, I'd say, 100 yards out. But the 30 migrants on the beach were unable to get to it because a French police boat and French police officers on jet skis got in the way and prevented it from coming too close to the beach. So the migrants were very disappointed, some of them quite distressed at the failure to board this dinghy.

6:31And the people who were sunbathing on the beach, really, were more concerned about the migrants' welfare than anything else. I saw one woman in a swimsuit holding her credit card who went up to a Somali man carrying that very young baby and asked him if he was hungry and said, come with me, I'll get you some food. A few minutes later, a man in swimming trunks appeared with a tray of ice cream, which the children were very happy to eat. So all in all, people felt sad to see such desperate people risking their lives and risking their children's lives. David Chazan of The Times there has been reporting from northern France.

7:19So what more can be done to stop these kind of incidents? And what are the large number of people who are rescued today? Tell us. We can speak now to Rob Lurie, a former soldier turned aid worker. He's worked with the Radio 4 journalist Sue Mitchell on two acclaimed documentary series about people smugglers to catch a scorpion and to catch a king. Rob, good evening. Good evening, James. How are you? All right? I'm fine, thanks. I mean, this could have ended very differently today, couldn't it? Well, I first got wind of this unfolding this morning where the first thing I heard was the boat was on fire and I kind of quickly realised how it would catch fire.

8:01It's something that we've been monitoring for a long time, really, in terms of the dangers. These outboard motors that cross the channel attached to these small boats, they're actually fuelled by a jerry can with a pipe going from it into the outboard motor. So we've often thought it's only a matter of time before this might happen. What is staggering is that there were no deaths, which is obviously really good news. I mean, you've got to applaud the rescue services in this particular case in terms of 170 plus people saved from the water. It's just incredible. And we heard there from David that the places that the people smugglers are choosing to launch the dinghies from are changing because obviously the police on the other side of the channel are getting wise to the more common locations.

8:59But what about the numbers involved? I think this would have been if they'd got across the largest single number of migrants to cross the channel this year. I mean, are the numbers getting bigger? so yeah in terms of the numbers in the camp it's been a i mean i'm i've been in cali and dunkirk you're busy working out there for the last 10 years both podcasting and doing my own aid work for over a decade now the numbers remain the same it's like a conveyor belt through europe of migrants when so many say 10 boats leave over a week those people are replaced in the camp Now, David is absolutely right in terms of the smugglers changing their methodology.

9:41The reason behind this is because historically boats have launched just south of Dunkirk, just north of Dunkirk, the gravel lines area, north and south of Calais. the police have had some real success over the last the you know French law enforcement have had some real success over the last six months to a year which is then seeing this uptake from smugglers to move north even over the Belgian border to Japan and as far north as Zeebrugge and down to as far south as Dieppe and I just I just wonder Rob whether sort of paradoxically the success and we heard the government again saying look the the numbers of crossings are down or the numbers are down 43 percent on the same period last year but is that meaning that they're going to be bigger risks taken trying to get more people on single dinghies well the dinghies have grown so when i mean this when this phenomena started it was six meter eight meter and and 11 meter boats some of these mega dinghies coming over now they're 18 meters they've been manufactured in Turkey and shipped in backs of vans, underneath coaches and backs of trucks through Europe to France.

10:52So these are 18-meter huge dinghies. They're really fit for sailing around calm lakes on a summer's afternoon. No more of them, not the English Channel. So they're able to carry a lot more. I mean, I think going forward, you are going to see maybe fewer boats, but a lot more people on the boat. So in the last sort of like three or four weeks, we've seen 156, 165, and today 170 plus on one boat, which is staggering. I mean, when you take into consideration the innate dangers involved in crossing the channel in one of these boats, it's just incredible. Indeed. Rob, thank you very much for that. Rob Laurie there, soldier turned aid worker who's written and worked a lot on these people smuggling gangs.

11:42and coming up later on in the programme.

11:53What we're expecting to happen is a flash of light when the thing actually hits and then a huge plume of dust lifting up into the air, maybe 50 kilometres or more, and then when the dust settles it'll be a huge hole in the moon, maybe 30 metres across or so.

12:11Well there are no hurricanes blowing or rivers overflowing but there is a rogue SpaceX rocket part that's about to slam into the moon. We'll be asking how worried should we be? Now in the United States it is election day in several states. Not the general election but the primaries when parties choose who will be their candidate in November's midterm races and in the midwestern state of Michigan so often a national bell weather. Today's Democratic Senate primary is the most expensive one ever. That's because it's being seen as a test case for the party's direction in a year when the Democrats hope to regain control of one or both houses of Congress.

12:47Michiganders are choosing between a more establishment centrist candidate, sitting Congresswoman Hayley Stevens, and her more left-wing opponent, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. Well, Zoe Clark is political director at Michigan Public Radio and joins me live. Good to have you back on the program, Zoe. So let's start with the candidates. Tell us about Haley Stevens, first of all. Sure. As you noted, she's sort of the centrist, the establishment pick. She's been a congresswoman in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2018 when she won a Republican-leaning district. She worked on the auto bailout in the aughts and worked on the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for president in 2008.

13:30Yeah, and I note actually today she used one of those Obama phrases that she was fired up when she spoke to people. Interestingly, she's gone viral, hasn't she, for a pretty strong Midwestern accent. Let's have a listen to how she addressed her critics at a recent campaign rally. They're doing the cool kid chatter. Some of them might be the coastal elites making fun of how I talk. Not okay. Not okay. Says my governor. But let's be real. They're making fun of Michigan. She mentions a governor. Actually, that's someone else who's endorsed her, I think. It is. That's Governor Gretchen Whitmer, two-term governor, popular governor, we should say.

14:18also a sort of establishment candidate who just decided to jump into the race after she was sitting it out and endorse Haley Stevens. Now, what about the other person in the race, Abdul El-Sayed? What can you tell us about him? Sure. So he's absolutely the progressive in the race. He's a former health official in the city of Detroit and the state's largest county, Wayne County. He's a Rhodes Scholar, an Ivy League graduate. He actually ran for governor against Gretchen Whitmer in 2018 and lost. And since he's been an author, wrote a book about Medicare and also has hosted a health podcast. And there's another thing that he's been talking about, and that is about his desire to stop U.S.

15:04military funding for Israel. If Congresswoman Stevens makes it or Mike Rogers wins, either way, Israel will win. AIPAC is perfectly fine with either of my two opponents because they know that they will have a comfortable, reliable vote in the U.S. Senate. If you want politics to work for you, if you want politics to rebuild your schools or fix your infrastructure or to invest in your health care, you have an alternative choice. We heard him mention AIPAC. They also mentioned Mike Rogers, who's the Republican that the winner will face. But just remind us about AIPAC and the role it's played in the race.

15:35Sure. So this is funding from the country of Israel, right, that proponents of Israel and foreign aid from the United States towards Israel. And some$40 million has been spent on behalf of Haley Stevens in Super PAC ads, right? So these are ads that Haley Stevens isn't a part of, but basically say things like vote for Haley Stevens. And it's just a massive amount of money. some total of$60 million has been spent overall against Abdul El-Sayed. That ends up being about 12 to 1 in terms of dollars being spent. And the broader significance of this is about the direction of the Democratic Party, isn't it?

16:19What it tells us about whether the Democrats are going to go for these more progressive candidates or for the more centrist, more establishment ones who might be a better, or tradition have been seen as sort of a better fit for a race, a tight race against the Republican. That's exactly correct. As you noted at the beginning, Michigan is a swing state, what we call a purple state. We sometimes vote red, we sometimes vote blue. And so this race matters. And for many Democrats across the country are looking to see whether a progressive can win a swing state. You know, I'm sure you've heard about Zoran Mandani, you know, the new mayor of New York winning as a Democratic Socialist.

16:59That was the city of New York, which is a liberal city, of course. Michigan, again, being a swing state, if Abdul El-Sayed ends up winning, it will really show that progressive Democrats have the ability to push back some of established Democrats in this midterm. Zoe, many, many thanks for that briefing. Zoe Clark, their political director at Michigan public radio. Now when German holidaymakers lie on their sun loungers this summer, many of them are reading about a country which likes to poke fun at their perceived sun lounger habits, because for the last 11 weeks a book whose title is translated into English as Dear Britain in Search of the Soul of Great Britain has topped Germany's best-selling non-fiction list.

17:42It was written by Annette Dittert, who's a London correspondent for ARD, that's the German equivalent of BBC TV, from 2008 until the end of last year. She's now a freelance journalist and still a Londoner, but she's also a Briton, having become a naturalised citizen last July. Well, Annette's just back from a well-attended book tour of Germany. When she came into the studio earlier to reflect on her book's success, I asked her what she was trying to tell German readers. The hook was this year, 10 years of Brexit. So it was a book where I tried to take the temperature 10 years after Brexit. Where is the country now, where stands society?

18:16And what I tried to do with this book was to explain Britain a bit more in depth, because Germans are very, very Anglophile. I don't know whether you know how much we love you. I think it's partly an unrequited love, but anyway. But the knowledge what Britain really is, is quite superficial. And I've noticed over the many years I've been reporting on Britain how superficial it really is and how much cliché and sentimental ideas Germans have about Britain and project onto Britain as well. So what I try to do here is to go a bit deeper, try to explain Britain beyond these clichés. So what are the biggest misconceptions do you think that Germans have about Britain?

19:01There is this kind of romantic sentimental view that Brits are all very eccentric and quirky, which is partly true, like most of these clichés always have a true kernel, let's say. And especially when you compare Britain or British, the Brits with the Germans, I mean, we certainly are more sober and more rational in a way. And I think there is a sentimental longing for being a bit different, and that is projected onto Britain. And 10 years since Brexit, I do remember at the time of Brexit, interviewing a lot of Germans in the aftermath and getting that impression that you've just told us about of this sense of loss.

19:40Ten years on, is that still there? That's so interesting. And I think that's partly why the book is so successful in Germany. There's something shifting now, ten years after Brexit and also after the cautious but decisive attempt of Keir Starmer and now probably Burnham to move Britain a bit closer to the EU again. And I think something has shifted and especially these hardcore Anglophiles. People are ready to not only come back to the UK, but really embrace their old affection for it again. So those Anglophiles who were sad after Brexit. Aggrieved. Aggrieved. Yeah, I'm sure we can find other adjectives.

20:19But was there then a process of saying, OK, we go through our different stages of grief and we accept that Britain is somewhere else. But now a sense that maybe we can rekindle something? Precisely. I mean, grief has different stages. And I think they're over the first kind of really raw kind of grief by now. I think with these cautious steps towards the EU, there is some hope. That was one of the main or the most asked questions when I did this book tour in Germany with a book. And I always had to say, yeah, wait, maybe this might take a while. I had to be a bit sort of, yeah, dampen the optimism a bit, because I think this will take a long time.

20:58And if you look into the polls, most British people do say, even those who voted for Brexit, that this was a mistake. But whether that means that anybody wants a second referendum or do this massive step to rejoin is a completely different matter. And that's what I try to explain as well. The reception your book's got is quite remarkable. 11 weeks at the top of the nonfiction bestseller lists. You've just done this tour. You've had big crowds. Thousands of people, yeah. I mean, it drew really big crowds. I was astonished myself. Well, I was going to ask you why. I mean, you've now got this unique perspective of being a Brit and German and being able to get both sense.

21:36So why are the Germans so fascinated? What is it about your book that's captured the imagination? There is not many books on Britain and Germany that go a bit deeper. I mean, there's a lot of fun thing. There's novels, detective stories, all kind of things that represent Britain in a way. But there is very few nonfiction books that really delve a bit deeper and try to explain what really has happened here since Brexit. The other reason is I'm quite well known, having been a foreign correspondent for almost 20 years here in this country. A bit like Lise Doucette or Katja Adler here, just the other way around.

22:09Given that it's the 10th anniversary of Brexit is the peg for the book, if you like. Do you think people in Germany now understand the reasons for Brexit more, given the way your German politics has gone? Yes, certainly. Brexit was in a way the first big outbreak of this kind of populism that has reached the European shores just a bit later. in Germany, especially with the rise of the AFD, which is much more extreme than reform here, for example, they do understand there are parallels and that they are in a very similar situation now. That's another aspect why the book is probably so successful because they want to know how is that 10 years later?

22:51Do you ever get out of that again? I've noticed throughout this interview you've gone between us and them. I mean, is it difficult? Was it last year you became British? Last summer. So it's a year. It's a year now. A year since you've been British. Do you feel different? It does feel different. I mean, I do feel as if I belong more. But having been a foreign correspondent for all of my life, I mean, adult life, I think it's almost something like collateral damage that you never really belong anywhere. I'm a bit lost in transition like Britain after Brexit. So I feel, yeah, I live in between, but I'm living on an aeroboad in Little Venice, which is also part of the book.

23:29in theory you can always take the boat and go somewhere else which I do not intend to do but probably it makes some sense for a foreign correspondent that has never been really moored anywhere for long. Annette Ditter there. Quick reminder if you want to listen back to any of this programme or to previous ones you can go to BBC Sounds where you can also download the podcast. The main headline so far on the world tonight, the small boat which caught fire while trying to cross the channel this morning was the largest dinghy known to have attempted the journey. More than 170 migrants had to be rescued from the water.

24:03And in Dublin today... May God bless and keep you always May your wishes all come true And may you always do for others And let others do for you Bob Dylan's Forever Young, sung at the funeral of Glenn Hansard, the Oscar-winning Irish singer and songwriter who died in a motorcycle crash in Dublin at the age of 56. Bono, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and Hosier among the stars at St Patrick's Cathedral to say goodbye to a much-loved Irish musician who never forgot his street artist roots.

24:59Now, later this year, the memoir of the youngest black professor at Cambridge University's history, Jason Arday, is due to be published, just as the star academic is facing allegations of plagiarism and growing scrutiny of some aspects of his biography. The sociology professor, who says he couldn't speak until he was 11 or read and write until he was 18, has admitted to making errors but says he is not a liar or a plagiarist and alleges that he is the victim of a well-orchestrated and racially motivated campaign. He's featured a number of times on the BBC in recent years. Here he is in 2023 as one of the Today programme's guest editors.

25:36My strongest belief in life is that everything is possible And I think with humility, love, faith and a prayer, if it reaches the right person, you never know how things may turn out. The Guardian's arts and culture correspondent, Lanry Bakery, has been reporting on Professor Arday and he told me how he came across the case. About a year ago, I was contacted by someone who said that Professor Jason Arday had a story he wanted to tell us. What Professor Arday was telling us at the Guardian was that there was a kind of two-pronged attack against him. One was a group of academics going through all his academic work and trying to fight fault with it.

26:17And the other side of this attack was a kind of physical campaign of intimidation. So he said that a bullet had been sent in the post to his Cambridge address. He said that a severed pig's head had been sent to his parents' house. And he said that there'd been a couple of break-ins to his office and his faculty when a masked man on two occasions had managed to get into his office and threaten him the second time with a knife. So these were really, really serious allegations. And at that point, I thought I was going to be writing a story about Jason being in the middle of this pretty horrendous ordeal because the things he outlined were some of the worst kind of attacks on a British academic ever, probably.

26:56And you started reporting on it. And what did you find? Yeah, so I started looking into what Professor Rade had told me. Obviously, these are really, really serious allegations. and I realised that this should be a paper trail for some of this stuff, especially the severed pig's head allegation because Jason told me that the police had investigated this and they'd actually gone round to the local butchers in South London and found that one of the butchers had sold a whole pig on the morning that this pig head was apparently discovered. So I got the name of the butchers from him and I got in touch with the police and I asked them, was this story correct?

27:30And the butchers said, no, a police officer is not coming and asked us about a pig and we'd probably remember that and the police said that it categorically didn't happen and they didn't actually investigate this claim about the severed pig's head so at that point i realized that we obviously couldn't report that and that the story was starting to look slightly different right and you put this to him did you i went and sat down with jason in in south london and said look i'm i'm incredibly sorry but after looking into this i cannot report on this i cannot put this out i don't believe that what you've told me is accurate you know it's it's pretty serious so we at that point backed away from doing the story and took stock we knew that jason had a memoir coming out and uh we decided to wait and see what happened and what happened is other newspapers began reporting on him as well that's correct so the the telegraph wrote a piece which basically they'd gone back through his phd and analyzed it to see put it through some plagiarism software and they'd found several instances of similarities between Professor Arde's PhD and another PhD which come out six years before and yeah other journalists started going back through some of the other claims that Professor Arde had made because the other part of Professor Arde's backstory is he's got this incredible story of how he came up so he was non-verbal until he was 11 wasn't able to read or write until he was 18 and also has this amazing track record of charity work in which he claimed in multiple interviews and live appearances that he raised 5.5 million pounds for 70 charities over a 20-year period and people started looking into some of those claims and certainly raised questions about them.