BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. American politics can sometimes feel like a different language. But our podcast can help you translate. Make sense of what's happening in the US with new podcast episodes arriving throughout the week. America's Listen on BBC Sounds. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Uncle Desai and at 16 GMT on Friday the 3rd of April, these are our main stories. Iran says it has shot down a US fighter jet over the west of the country. There's been no official confirmation from the Pentagon, but an unnamed US official has been quoted as saying that a search is underway for the crew. It comes as Iran has also continued its attacks on its Gulf neighbours, striking critical infrastructure in Kuwait. After President Trump threatened to further escalate the American bombing campaign. Also coming up in this podcast, Bikini Faso's leader tells people that they can forget about democracy and has rolled back on plans to hold elections. And we also look at South Sudan's rapidly worsening security and humanitarian crisis. Over 540 children have been registered by UNICEF and protection partners as being unaccompanied so separate from their families. And then we have this issue of abduction which is terrifying for mothers who lose their children and mothers overall. We begin the podcast with the latest in the Middle East. Iran says it has shot down a US fighter jet over the west of the country. At the time of recording there's been no official confirmation from the Pentagon, but an unnamed US official is being quoted as saying that a search is underway for the crew. If the incident is confirmed it would be the first time since the beginning of the war that a US jet has been shot down over Iran. Mikey Kaye, host of the security brief on BBC News, gave Tim Franks this update. This first came to light on some very credible open source intelligence channels about the claims of Iran shooting down an aircraft. It was originally reported that it was at what's called an F-35, fifth generation fighter, but on looking at the debris on open source intelligence, it's quite clear that the symbology and the markings on a specific part of the wreckage, which was the top end of the tail fin. The tail fin, Tim, an F-15E basically has two tail fins. And the markings from the library, which was basically a red strip through to a badge, which is Yusaf in Europe badge, that basically aligns that debris, the striking similarity between that debris and the, an F-15 strike eagle from the 494th fighter squadron, which is part of the 48th fighter wing based at RAF Lake and Heath near Cambridge. And how many crew would there be on board typically? Let me just talk to you about what the F-15E is. It's a strike eagle. It's a pretty large jet, but it is air to air and air to ground capable, which means that it's being used and there has been user generated footage that have seen the F-15 doing what's called drone cap, which is drone combat air patrol. So basically F-15's airborne looking for She ahead 136 drones coming across the Iraqi border. We know they've been doing that. We know that some three F-15s have also been shot down earlier on in operation Epic Fury by Friendly Fire. So we know that those F-15s from the 494th are in the region and they're on combat operations every day. But I think it's important to note here that whilst there are three US officials basically confirming that there has been a shoot down, we don't know why it's been shot down or how it's been shot down. We don't know if it's from enemy fire. We don't know if it's from Friendly Fire. We don't know if there was a technical fault and the geolocation of the debris has not been corroborated yet. But where I go back to open source channels, there is suggestion from open source that it's Kazakhstan province, which is a province in Iran, which is literally right up to the Iraqi border. So when you start joining the dots on this type of investigative work, the dots do kind of make sense. There's also been combat search and rescue that have been put up and looking for the crew that would have likely ejected. In another development officials in Kuwait say an Iranian missile has damaged a power and desalination plant. That comes as Donald Trump is threatening ever greater destruction, including striking power plants and bridges, unless Iran does a deal. The escalation comes, despite international law experts warning of serious violations by the US, Israel and Iran as civilian infrastructure is targeted. First, here's our correspondent Katie Watson in Doha in Qatar on the latest there and across the UAE. Kuwait had a few hits overnight early this morning. The Ministry of Electricity and Water Set of Power and Water Desalination Plant was attacked. There was material damage to some components and they also had an attack on a key oil refinery, Mina Al Ahmadiyy. It's one of the largest in the Middle East. It has a capacity of about 350,000 barrels of oil a day. It's also been targeted before and that's just Kuwait. There were alarms that went off in the UAE and Bahrain and attack in the UAE on a gas facility. So clearly what we're seeing and continue to see is this retaliation by Iran and the Gulf continues to fill those effects. Yes, the Gulf nations have warned Iran against targeting water plants as you mentioned there. Is there a sense of growing anger in the region? Certainly, I mean, I think there's frustration that nobody, no authorities really speak publicly, but there is a sense of wanting, obviously this war to be over, wanting a threat of Iran to be over. I was talking to some Qatari officials earlier this week who made clear that attacks on civilian infrastructure such as desalination is a huge threat to the region. This is a part of the world that what 90% of drinking water roughly comes from desalinated water. So if you don't have access to that, then it makes the region pretty unlivable pretty quickly and that is a concern here, certainly. And what about the mood where you are, Katie? How much is normal life being affected? Have you been able to gauge a sense of how people are feeling? It's much quieter than it normally is. That's for sure. It doesn't feel particularly kind of vibrant at the moment. Obviously, there were people who decided to leave when the war started. Some of those people might be coming back. Obviously, there's a lot of Qatari's who are still here. This is their home. But I think it's difficult because the authorities are trying to make it clear that they're safe, that they're doing their best to defend themselves. Perhaps foreigners might feel a little less certain about that. But overall, people are getting on with their lives. It just might be that there are a few people here right now. Katie Watson reporting from Doha. Well, on Thursday, the US and Israel struck one of Iran's biggest unfinished bridge projects. Iranian authorities say eight people were killed and nearly a hundred injured. What is likely to raise fresh questions about attacks on infrastructure that blurs the line between military and civilian targets. BBC Persian have managed to make contact with some people in Iran on what they think about the destruction of the bridge. I feel hopeless. Trump posts shamelessly about attacking our bridge. I don't know how much further this is going to go. Why is no one standing up to him? He's really taking us back to the Stone Age. We will end up with a ruined country. I'm more disappointed and saddened that I'm in the middle of a situation where I see Iran being destroyed and I can't do anything. My country is being destroyed more and more every day. That bridge could have reduced the traffic in the city. It was destroyed in the second strike. This strike has got me worried. I don't know why they hit it. I was really surprised that they hit a bridge, but I think they must have a reason for it. International humanitarian law says attacks must distinguish between combatants and civilians. The US and Israel insist their only targeting sites linked to Iran's military or security apparatus. But the UN's humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, strongly condemned the strategy. This has been a gradual and then very sudden deterioration in the way that we talk about protection of civilians, the way that we talk about international humanitarian law. This stuff isn't negotiable. You don't hit civilian infrastructure. It includes hospitals across Beirut and across Lebanon. I met huge numbers of medics whose ambulances are being hit at the moment. You don't hit schools. You don't hit energy sources. You don't hit bridges. Those are war crimes. That is absolutely clear in international law. But somewhere along the way, we seem to have thrown that all aside and we've chosen impunity, indifference, game show gambling over solidarity and humanity. We ask our Chief International Correspondent, Lise Doucette, what were to make of the kind of sites being hit? We heard from President Trump in his first primetime address during this conflict in the early hours of yesterday morning that he was in his bombastic language going to bomb Iran back to the Stone Ages, a comment that's been criticised both by legal experts, warning about potential war crimes, also causing growing alarm among Iranians, even those who had dared to hope that the beginning of this war would mean the beginning of the end of the regime. He did say that if Iran didn't come to a deal that they would hit every single one of their powerpans, again, and other potential war crimes, and then they've started hitting the bridges. He has celebrated the hitting of this bridge, which is linked to Tehran with the nearby major city of Karajan and his latest post on TruthSocial. He goes, bridges next, electric power plants, then electric power plants. And then he said Iran's leadership knows what it has to be done and done fast. And it's not just the bridges. Dr. Tedros, who heads the World Health Organization, which of course the President Trump had pulled out of the WHO, but he has regularly been expressing concern about the attacks on health facilities. The most recent is the century-old Pasteur Health Centre. It's a major public health agency that had been producing and distributing vaccines. And Dr. Tedros reported that it had suffered significant damage. There was a report that Iran was using the centre for other military-related activities for other kinds of research, but it has been widely condemned as an unacceptable targeting in this war. You've been asking about what is Iran going to do in retaliation, because of course Israel has been expressing concern about where the missiles are landing there. Gulf states, of course, are furious about attacks on their infrastructure. And we did hear from the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohamed Abad Gorkalibaf, who regularly hits back against President Trump on social media. He used that biblical expression, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth in this war. So the language is escalating. And in a war where President Trump has again said, his deadlines are always fluid, that there would be another two to three weeks, this targeting on both sides, on all sides, raises questions about what is going to be hit next. At least you said reporting. The UN says food prices have risen to their highest level in six months, and could increase further if the war in the Middle East continues. The Food and Agriculture Organisation said high oil prices were mostly to blame. Several countries have mandated working from home and raised petrol prices with restricted passage through the Strait of Hormuz, affecting their ability to import oil and gas. Pakistan's government has raised fuel prices by further 43% overnight. Caroline Davies has more from Islamabad. This is a dramatic increase in the price of fuel here in Pakistan, and the government here is tying it directly to the war in Iran. Now, Pakistan is highly dependent on imported oil, a large amount of which comes through the Strait of Hormuz. And in fact, this is the second time that Pakistan's government has increased the price of fuel since the conflict began, which means that petrol has now increased 77% since the beginning of this conflict, and diesel by 87%. Now, Pakistan's government did announce some subsidies for certain groups, including motorcycle users, small farmers, passenger buses amongst them. But the rage of concern is that this will filter into inflation, and many here in Pakistan will already be making assessments about how often and how far they travel. Caroline Davies reporting. And we have more on this on our YouTube channel. Just search for BBC News on YouTube, and you'll find the Global News podcast in the podcast section. There's a new story available every weekday. A French court has overturned an attempt by the government there to ban a Muslim event, which is expected to draw tens of thousands of people over the weekend. The annual meeting of French Muslims started as planned this afternoon, despite the police warning of the risk of terrorism. Hugh Scofield reports. Part cultural and religious conference, part trade fair. This event is organised by an association called Muslims of France, which critics say is linked to the international Muslim Brotherhood. The French government is on principle ill-disposed to it, because it fears the group promotes separatism. But the reason given for trying to enforce a ban was the international context. The war on Iran and an increasingly polarised political atmosphere in France. The risk of terrorism against Muslims could not be ignored, the government said. Far-right groups might seek to disrupt proceedings, and foreign influencers might try to stage a provocation. But the organisers sought an injunction to overturn the ban, and just in time they got it. The court ruling that police had failed to substantiate that there was a serious risk to public order. For the organisers, the suspicion is that the government was looking for a reason to have the assembly stopped. Hugh Scofield reporting. Still to come in this podcast. They don't mate often, and octopuses actually don't interact often, they're solitary. When they do interact, they're very aggressive, and so we wanted to observe mating in the lab. The new findings on how octopuses mate. This is the Global News Podcast. Next, Burkina Faso's leader has told the people there they can forget about democracy in an interview on national TV. Captain Ibrahim Traore rolled back on plans to hold elections, despite promising them four years ago when he seized power. His rights record has come under a lot of criticism, most recently by Human Rights Watch. Its new report says the government and allied forces have killed more than twice as many civilians as Islamist militants in the past few years. Ilaria Alafrozi is a senior researcher on the report and told us the death toll is likely to be much higher, and that government forces are more brutal and violent than the militants. Military abuse creates a cycle of grievances, frustrations and resentment, especially among the most affected communities, which can fuel recruitment into the ranks of the Islamist armed groups, which are actually surfing and exploiting this kind of military abuse for their propaganda. Our global affairs correspondent Richard Kaguye is in Nairobi and told me more. Ibrahim Traore is, you would say, young. He's in his later 30s, considered to be one of the youngest African leaders, you know, where the average age is about 65 years. He has sort of built a persona around himself as an African leader who's out to liberate the West African country from the influences of what he calls Western imperialism and neo-colonialism. So what he has done is he has made radical reforms and policies in terms of nationalizing the country's mind sector, which is very richer in gold. And he says he wants to establish gold reserves. And so this has really endeared him, particularly to young people, not only just in Burkina Faso, but also across Africa. So a lot of them see him as the revolutionary leader or that was Thomas Sankara, who was the leader there in the later 1980s. He's been able to build his personality using social media. He's reflecting what people say is perhaps a political shift that's taking place across the continent. His appeal also goes even just beyond Africa. He seems to be resonating with African Americans, you know, black Britons. Yeah, so he's been able to do that over a period of time since he seized power in a military coup. So it seems a real sense of cult of personality with him, but is this like to the last and what sort of reaction has there been to him? I mean, opinion is divided. Lots of people are really conflicted about him. So he's got this sense of promise in terms of the way that he has approached his governance. That's what a lot of people say, perhaps, you know, breaking with the past with how African leaders seem to be done. But a lot of people are saying, even with the changes that he's doing in terms of the country's mineral wealth, it's a sense in terms of consolidating power and wealth for himself and for people around him. You know, as you mentioned, his human rights record has come under scrutiny. His mausoleum, critical voices, he suspended international news outlets and suspended even their journalists. You can see there's been a systematic, you know, dismantling of democratic institutions, including the country's electoral commission and political parties as well. Richard Kagoe reporting from Nairobi. He's been speaking to James Coppano about what he saw there. And up the river, there's another 25,000 people in nearby village. And what we saw as a population really in very bad shape, we met a mother called Nyawat and she was eating leaves from the tree under which she was sitting for sustenance. She had a small baby in her lap, but as she was running away from her village, she had lost her five-year-old son, Garwish, because he had been abducted. And she just looked gaunt and just completely devastated by losing her son. We then went to another place called We Eye, about an hour away by plane, and there everything had been looted. The health center, the water porn had been destroyed. It's one of the 26 health centers that we know have been destroyed during this fighting. So it's not just the civilians that are paying the price, it's the civilian infrastructure on which they depend that has also been destroyed. Luckily, there's some very good actors on the ground that are responding. Local NGOs, international NGOs, the UN agencies such as UNICEF, but much more is needed. In particular, I would imagine for children, the immediate disaster perhaps of fleeing one's home, but it's been quite hard historically to get kids into school in South Sudan in the best of times, now with so much displacement. I imagine many children will be missing out on an education. The schools are closed. I mean, in the country as a whole, even before this crisis, more children were out of school than in schools. And this is further impacting their education. None of the children displaced are in school in Zhongli. We're doing some early kind of learning and play activities, but it's not a substitute for the stability, the normalcy of being in school. And I have to say, we're also facing a protection crisis. Over 540 children have been registered by UNICEF and protection partners as being unaccompanied, so separate from their families. And then we have this issue of abduction, which is terrifying for mothers who lose their children and mothers overall. Both the government and the opposition have signed an action plan to desist from recruiting and using children in their forces. We've also called on the parties to de-escalate and return to a political dialogue. There needs to be a political way forward. There needs to be full access for humanitarian on the ground. That's UNICEF's deputy executive director Ted Chaban speaking to James Coppano. Holy Week leading up to Easter in Jerusalem has been a sub-Juda fair this year, as the war against Iran continues. It's been the same story for Muslims with Eid and now Israeli Jews with Passover. Pilgrims and tourists have stayed away, while sacred sites with immense significance for billions of Christians, Muslims and Jews around the world have been closed in the Old City. But the spirit of Jerusalem has survived, as our correspondent, Sebastian Asher, has been finding out. Welcome back. Thank you. It's good to be back. Old friends meeting up again in the Christian quarter in the Old City, lamenting events that have made Holy Week leading up to Easter, a shadow of itself. Easter, a Jerusalem resident whose family has lived here for generations, tries to be hopeful, as befits the man known, as the city's one and only Santa Claus. Whatever happens, still Jerusalem, you can feel the heart still beating. It's so powerful to be in the place where Jesus walked, where all of the Holy Week events literally took place. So that is so moving to us. We felt like this is something we're supposed to do, so we were feeling a little frustrated because we did try to come and the flights got cancelled. We felt really strongly, because we come to pray, the events need prayer. So for Samantha and I, it felt like something very important to do right now, but yeah, it feels different. Our families definitely felt more trepidation about it. I'm standing here in what is normally, especially during Holy Week, the week leading up to Easter, one of the busiest parts of the Old City of Jerusalem. Very, very unlike any time that I've seen here before in the Old City, just looking to my left, I see the gateway which leads into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That's closed. There are two guards who are stopping people from going in there. This is a very, very different sense of what the city normally represents for Christians around the world. 3 weeks ago, a fragment from an Iranian missile made impact on the edge of the Old City, just a few hundred metres from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Al Aqsa and the Western Wall, all closed for fear of mass casualties, where a missile to strike during mass religious gatherings. So on Palm Sunday, the Church of Bethpage, up on the Mount of Olives, held a mass for local Christians. The bejoyous procession with thousands of worshippers from near and far holding palms that normally sets off from there was cancelled. The destination is traditionally the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. At the same time that mass was being held in Bethpage, the Latin patriarch Cardinal Pier Batista Pizzaballa was denied entry to Jerusalem's most revered church by Israeli police. The incident sparked an international outcry. The break in centuries-old tradition was also felt deeply by local Christians like Isa. It's made me feel sad first as a patriarch because he's the leader of the head church of Jerusalem. This is like his house. It's like my house and also this is his house. He's more important person for Jerusalem. This is like he going home. You cannot tell someone don't go to your home. Two days later inside the Latin Patriarchate, Cardinal Pier Batista Pizzaballa played the incident down as a misunderstanding. The limited mass he was due to hold on Palm Sunday, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is now being allowed to go ahead on Easter Sunday. And he reiterated how he and other religious leaders accepted the wartime restrictions but grieved that Holy Week felt bereft. The war against the Muslims is not complete. You see that it's almost dead unfortunately. A place of life but without life in this moment which is very safe. Sebastian Asher reporting from Jerusalem. Now the octopus is one of the sea's most fascinating creatures, intelligent, elusive and still not fully understood. One of the questions that has long puzzled scientists is how it reproduces. Now researchers at Harvard say they've uncovered part of that mystery, specifically how the male succeeds in mating. My colleague Tim Frank spoke to Professor Nicholas Bellono, the senior author of the study published in the journal Science. He began by explaining what the process actually looks like. The male has one specialized arm. It's the third arm from the right. And it uses this arm not only to identify the female but then it inserts the arm into the female mantle and then the arm searches around the internal organs and finds the overduct. And then once it finds the overduct both the male and the female freeze and then the male passes a sperm manifold which is a package of sperm from its mantle down the length of the specialized arm to the overduct and then that's when fertilization happens. Right and just to be clear the mantle is this sort of bulbous structure. It's like the head. Yes, the head. How does the male know when it sort of hit the right part as it were? And what have you discovered on that? We discovered this kind of by accident. So they don't mate often and octopuses actually don't interact often. They're solitary. When they do interact they're very aggressive. And so we wanted to observe mating in the lab. And so our idea was to put two octopuses into one tank but be mindful that they are aggressive together. So we put a barrier between them and then we put little holes in that barrier so that they could sort of get used to one another and recognize that there is an octopus in the tank. And then our plan was to remove the barrier so they could mate. However, the male octopus was able to put the specialized mating arm through one of those holes, find the female and initiate mating. So this told us already that they were able to mate without visual information because they were blocked by this barrier and they could do the same thing in complete darkness. So the discovery even at that point is that the specialized arm for mating is actually a sensor of the female. And that led to the rest of the study which is to define how it serves as a sensory organ which was unknown. Your research, and I'm not in any way sort of downplaying it, but it's essentially it's all about sort of trying to work out how the male is, you know, responds to stimuli and is satisfied and decides where he's at. Decides where he's going to stick is the tentacle. Is there any suggestion or interest in how female octopuses decide that they're going to allow a male to mate with them? Yeah, definitely. This is a really interesting part of the system. So there's two things that the female does that contributes to selection of a mate. One is the behavioral aspect that we watched with this barrier where she will accept or not accept the male to find her with the hectic collar and initiate mating so she can swim away if she doesn't like that particular male. And then the other part that's really interesting to me is that she also can select which sperm she uses to fertilize the egg. Even from wild caught females can look in the overduck to find a different sperm from different octopuses of the same species. Also, even some octopuses of different species will try to cross mate and she can save the sperm for a really long time and then decide not only when to fertilize the eggs, but which sperm to select. Professor Nicholas Bellono. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can. You can just email us at globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service and you can use the hashtag Global News Pod. And don't forget us sister podcast. It's called The Global Story, which goes in depth and beyond the headlines on one big story. This edition of the Global News Podcast was mixed by Nick Randall and the producer was Charles Sanctuary. The editor is Karen Martin and I'm Uncle Desai. Until next time, goodbye.
