This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. So, we can now listen to your podcast. many of his previous trade levies. And there's controversy at the Berlin Film Festival, after the head of the jury said cinema should stay out of politics. Also in this podcast, when I used to work, I had a lot of money left for travel for some fun. But now almost all my income goes to food. We look at how Russia has changed over four years of the Ukraine war. And what do the Epstein files tell us about the patriarchy? Let's start in Iran. Students at several Iranian universities have been protesting against the government again, the first large-scale rallies since last month's deadly crackdown by the authorities. Thousands of people are known to have been killed in the repression. The true figure could be much higher. The BBC has verified footage of demonstrators marching on Saturday on the campus of the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, crowds chanted death to the dictator, a reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other anti-government slogans. Scuffles were later seen breaking out between them and government supporters. A sit-in was held at another Tehran university and a rally was also reported in the northeast. I asked Bahman Kalbasi from the BBC's Persian service what we know about the scale of these recent demonstrations. What we have seen in the last few days really is an extremely shocking number of families, friends, and also neighbors of each of those killed in Iran, spread around small cities, major towns, and also major cities, coming together to commemorate the loss and turning those gatherings into protest. and it has taken in forms of dancing near where they have laid their loved ones to rest. It has turned into somewhat of protests and marches in some cities. And the very same slogans against the supreme leader, against the entire Islamic Republic that we heard 40 days ago right on the days of the massacre, January 8th and January 9th, were all repeated. So if the hope of the government of Iran was that with that massacre, they have shut down protests and have instilled the kind of fear that would prevent people from repeating it, that has clearly failed. But what we have seen in the last few days to in the last 24 hours, we've seen this spread to a few major elite universities in Tehran, Sharif University, University of Tehran, Polytechnic University. And these three universities are sort of leading indicators of how much the society, especially students in these universities, are ready to risk it again. And they clearly are. And so that just gives you an indication that what we've heard from a lot of observers inside Iran, especially in the last month or so, that they have remarked that nothing is going to go back to pre-January 8th, January 9th, given the scale of the massacre. is very true. The society has changed. Iranian public is furious and infuriated in ways that has never been seen before. And that anger and that mourning, that sense of loss, that sense of shock of how much the regime was ready to employ the kind of brutality that none of us even thought possible has changed Iran and has changed the public. Has the government responded yet to these protests? Not with the sort of violence that we've seen before, but we should not expect them to, you know, hold fire if this goes out to major streets and major cities again. So they obviously are careful at this point not to immediately employ the kind of violence they did on January 8th, January 8th and 9th, because everybody's watching in ways that has never been, you know, recorded before everybody is like sort of on their toes waiting to see if they'll respond. But that doesn't mean that they won't if they feel that this could turn again into something that we saw 40 days ago. We know that the United States has more military presence now near Iran. Donald Trump says he's considering some kind of military strike potentially. Are people in the streets now worried about that as well? I mean, Iran is not a monolith. It's a country of 80 million people and whoever claims to know what everybody thinks is probably not telling the truth. So obviously there are a considerable part of the population that is very much in favor of a foreign intervention because they feel that this government has employed the kind of brutality that unarmed protesters cannot counter it. There are other parts of the society that obviously have the traumas of the 12-day war in June and are worried about what could happen and what the consequences of a full-out war might be. So there are all kinds of feelings and obviously even in some people the duality of welcoming a foreign intervention at the same time being worried about the consequences of it. Barman Kalbassi of BBC Persian. Countries around the world are reviewing their trade deals with the United States after the Supreme Court ruled that most of Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs were illegal because he'd used powers meant for a national emergency. The president then quickly announced a new 10% levy on imports under a different law and has now increased that to 15%, fueling global uncertainty. Seema Jalawa Show reports from Washington. President Trump has continued to react to the Supreme Court ruling. Today announcing on Truth Social he was increasing global tariffs further to 15%. percent. They are likely to come into effect on Tuesday, but can last just 150 days before requiring congressional approval. In his post, Mr. Trump said over the next few months, his administration will continue to determine and issue new permissible tariffs, insisting it will bring in even more money than the previous tariff regime. But many businesses and Mr Trump political opponents see the court ruling as a significant blow to his approach The Democratic governor of California Gavin Newsom has said the administration now needs to offer refunds The tariffs were illegal from day one A tax increase on ranchers on farmers on small businesses, on you and me. Donald Trump should return that money immediately. Pay us back, put that money back in the pockets of working families and the American people. The governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, sent Mr. Trump an invoice demanding nearly $9 billion in tariff refunds for families in his state. But it's not clear that any money will be paid back. That could take years of legal wrangling. The Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said the president's use of tariffs had brought in billions of dollars and helped secure strong trade agreements for America. So meet Jalawa Show. And for more analysis from this team, you can go to YouTube, search for BBC News and click on the logo, then choose podcasts and global news podcast. There's a new story available every weekday. Earlier this month, Canada suffered one of its worst ever school shootings. Eight people were killed and 27 others were injured. It's now emerged that months before the killings, the 18-year-old suspect reportedly asked ChatGPT about scenarios involving gun violence. Those posts were flagged and the account was banned, but the company that runs the chatbot, OpenAI, decided not to refer the matter to police. So what should tech companies do in these kinds of situations? Dex Hunter-Torek works for a non-profit organisation looking at how society is adapting to the age of AI. He's been speaking to my colleague Leila Nathu. This is an extraordinarily sophisticated company with immense resources and one that is used by hundreds of millions of people all over the world, including lots of users from very vulnerable communities. This is a company which has a duty of care towards not just its users, but towards society at large. And not only did they fail to take action on something that led to eight Canadian lives being lost, they actually debated it internally and then decided not to act. And it's something that clearly raises serious questions, not just about OpenAI and its leadership, and how it's effectively protecting users, but also clearly about regulations and how governments should be thinking about ensuring that chatbots aren't being used for things that lead to terrible tragedies like this. I don't think everyone will be aware of the fact that when you are inputting something into ChatGPT, essentially everything you are asking is being scanned by OpenAI. Can you just talk us through the kinds of ways that is happening? There are a range of systems which are both automated. You think about the massive volume of content and queries that are moving through open AI servers. But there's also human reviewers who, when AI flags patterns of disturbing behaviors using those chatbots, which may be based on keywords, but other things as well, then a human will look at this. And that's what actually happened in this case. We know that there were human reviewers on the open AI side who looked at what was happening here. And there was an internal debate within the company about whether this should be flagged to law enforcement. and the company subsequently chose not to until after the attack had taken place. And importantly, OpenAI itself is deciding on the threshold at which they would deem it necessary to refer to law enforcement. That's right, exactly. So OpenAI has a set of policies which say that they require a credible and imminent risk of serious physical harm to trigger a law enforcement referral. And what I understand the company is arguing is that policy didn't apply because, in fact, there wasn't an imminent risk of harm. This was something that unfolded many months earlier, and it didn't seem to meet whatever threshold of risk. I mean, this is the challenge. You have companies that are setting standards, you know, in this case that clearly did not meet the moment, and they're then grading their own homework. They're saying, you know, we actually have complied with our own policies here. And, you know, this is something which is very, very concerning. It's obviously something that companies, I think, need to be much more transparent about how they are actually approaching these situations. But more than that, you know, I think these are matters that are too consequential to be left just to the tech companies alone. Dex Hunter-Torek from the Center for Tomorrow. The Berlin Film Festival is considered as one of the top international festivals alongside Cannes and Venice, and is often the largest in terms of drawing in audiences. This year's event, though, has been marred by controversy after comments from the organisers about politics. Stephanie Prentice has this report. Yellow Letters took home the coveted Golden Bear Award for Best Film. It tells the story of two Turkish artists who lose their jobs due to political persecution. We saw your film as a terrifying premonition, a look into the near future. It got under the skin of all of us who see the signs of despotism in their country or in their neighborhood. The president of the festival's jury, Wim Wenders, announcing the winner and seemingly smoothing over tense relations after saying filmmakers should stay out of politics when asked about the German government supporting Israel. That sparked outrage online and on the ground, with some artists pulling their work or refusing to attend altogether. Accepting the award, Yellow Letters director Ilke Katark addressed the infighting head on. There is a scene in Yellow Letters where former companions and friends argue with each other. It reminded me of the last few days here in Berlin. The real threat is not among us. It is out there. It's the autocrats. It's the right-wing parties. It's the nihilists of our time who try to come to power and destroy our way of living. Let's not fight each other. Let's fight them. Before the ceremony, more than 100 actors and filmmakers signed a letter condemning the festival's silence on Gaza. And during it, a number of winners and presenters criticized Israel's conduct in the war, as well as the German government, using their speeches primarily to make political points. Last night, my grandfather spoke to me. This is a sign. The film Salvation, about a rural dispute that leads to a massacre, took the second-place silver bear prize for its exploration of the dangers of dehumanising others. Accepting it, director Emin Alper expressed solidarity with high-profile opposition figures in prison in his native Turkey and later on the red carpet made no apologies. Since my film is political, my position is obvious. Nowadays in the world, around the world, especially in my country, you cannot stay out of politics. It's impossible. We don't have that luxury because politics is determining every sphere. As I told in speech, my friend is in prison, so I cannot stay out of politics. I know what's happening to her. Understand? I do. Elsewhere, Queen at Sea, a drama that follows French star Juliette Binoche managing her mother's dementia won two prizes, and Nina Rosa about an art curator verifying work by a child prodigy won best screenplay. Closing the ceremony, the festival's chief recognised it had been an emotionally charged addition. But said that showed the event doing its job and cinema doing its job. Stephanie Prentice. Still to come in this podcast? After 90 minutes, they would go straight to penalties and do a shootout. Japan's plan to make football more interesting by getting rid of draws. Starting a business can be overwhelming Thank you It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. I do the ASR for you and a more expensive community. ASR does it. So, we can now listen to your podcast. Shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. This is not the future we were promised. Like, how about that for a tagline for the show? From the BBC, this is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your everyday life. and all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. As battles rage on for more of the Epstein files to be released, the documents we have so far have painted a picture of an ecosystem surrounding a powerful, rich and well-connected sex offender. Due to the sheer scale of emails and images to get through, journalists are still excavating the files. Guardian reporter Amelia Gentleman has picked up on one trend. For women, these files offer an unprecedented chance to eavesdrop on conversations from which we are usually excluded. Pluck any message at random from the millions that have been released and you'll understand something new about what a cast of distinguished global figures are thinking and saying about women when they assume the women aren't listening. Most fascinating for me has been the way the files exposed the workings of a global patriarchy in action. I think sometimes the word patriarchy makes people feel a bit uncomfortable. It's become unfashionable, perhaps because it can sound a bad-tempered accusatory term or an unsubtle framing that doesn't reflect the nuances of modern life, where we like to believe we're inching towards greater gender equality. But reading the files convinced me that this actually is the best word to describe the environment in which Epstein exists. This is a world where the men are rich and powerful and the women are not. The emails showcase the private behaviour of a male ruling class as they network, joke and trade information. Women exist at the periphery, tolerated only because they organise the diaries of the busy men. They arrange the food. They provide sex. Epstein is endlessly trying to bring together important people for dinner in New York or on his Caribbean island. One day, he might wake up and decide that he will organise a couple of seminars on power and on money. So he instructs his secretary, a woman, to start contacting 20 or so influential people. It doesn't occur to Epstein to invite any women to these gatherings and no one remarks on their absence. There are two groups of people in the Epstein files. The men, the billionaires, the tech entrepreneurs, the bankers, statesmen, leaders, and the women, who exist as insignificant plus ones or as the people he doles out money to because they're providing him with services. Women feature as objects to be looked at and improved. They have teeth that need fixing, sexually transmitted infections that must be treated, plastic surgery that needs to be booked. It might be tempting to dismiss these files as just evidence of the unpleasant behaviour of a lone convicted sex offender. But the emails reveal how many of Epstein's eminent acquaintances behave just like him. They simply fail to notice that they are operating in a world mostly unpeopled by women, apart from those who are there for sex. Amelia, gentlemen. Despite hundreds of meetings, including recent talks between Russia, Ukraine and the United States, aimed at ending Moscow's war on Ukraine, there still hasn't been a breakthrough. Tuesday will mark the fourth anniversary since the start of the conflict. Nearly two million soldiers on both sides have been killed or injured, with millions of civilians forced from their homes. Our correspondent James Beardsworth was based in Moscow at the time of the invasion. He's been looking at how the country has changed. Almost four years ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine. On that morning, I stepped out to a stunned Moscow. As I walked from Red Square and wandered up Arbat Street, I asked people for their reaction to the news. One person went mad and attacked another country. Everything will be fine. There won't be a war. Ukraine will be crushed and that will be it. For Ukrainians, the war would mean the destruction of cities, millions of its citizens displaced and hundreds of thousands more killed and injured. In Russia, wartime crackdowns and sanctions were about to reshape life. New laws banned criticism of Russia's armed forces. Almost all the country's independent media organisations left. Anti-war protests, thousands of people were arrested. Vlad recalls how the war was felt not just in the streets, but also divided friends and family. My dad, he was so pro-Kremlin. We argued a lot. Last year he unfortunately passed away and we never covered our relationship. Estimates say as many as one million people have left Russia since 2022. Many of those fled in the early days of the war, while a partial mobilisation in September 2022 led to another exodus. I was one of ministers in local administration. Mikhail, not his real name for safety reasons, was a regional politician up until January 2022. After arguing with the governor, he lost his job. Ten months later, he received a military summons to go to Ukraine. After I knew that, I left Russia. After leaving to Kazakhstan, Mikhail flew to the UAE, then Mexico, and then walked over the border to the US where he claimed asylum. I asked him where he is now. I live in my truck. So I'm truck driver for three years and now I'm in my truck at Staten Island, New York. At the start of the war, Ilya Yashin was widely described as Russia's most senior opposition figure, not in prison or in exile. I was in the park with my friend and suddenly a group of policemen came to me They told me that the criminal case against me opened And from this day I spent 25 months in the prison In August 2024 Yashin was released in a prisoner swap between the US and Russia The deal came just months after perhaps the biggest blow to Russia's opposition. There's been an outpouring of grief around the world for Alexei Navalny. His death struck at the heart of Russia's already beleaguered opposition. Yashin told me more. Navalny death made a huge hole and it's very difficult to change Navalny to any other person. The BBC has identified the names of 186,000 Russian soldiers that have been killed in Ukraine. During that time, though, President Putin's popularity has continued to grow, according to independent pollster the Lavada Center. Jeremy, not his real name, from the small town of Naginsk in the outskirts of Moscow, says many of his friends support the war. The bigger threat to President Putin's popularity, analysts say, is Russia's struggling economy, weakened by almost four years of Western sanctions. When I used to work, I had a lot of money left for travel, for some fun. But now, almost all my income goes to food. That instability and a war that continues to drag on means that for Mikhail, he doesn't know if he'll ever return home. Now I don't feel like I have homeland. I chose the way of immigrant. James Beardsworth with that report. Thailand is home to a critically endangered population of Indo-Chinese tigers, but it also has a lucrative trade in tiger tourism. Visitors flock to controversial private parks to take pictures with the animals. In fact, there are more tigers in captivity than in the wild. And now in one of the worst incidents of its kind, a virus has killed at least 72 captive tigers in the northern Chiang Mai province. Officials are trying to contain the outbreak. Our reporter Tom Bailey told us more. The authorities have described this as a really unusual situation and they're understandably keen to get to the bottom of what's caused these 72 deaths over the last two weeks and of course to limit any further spread. And preliminary tests seem to point towards this highly contagious disease known as feline parvo virus. It's a really unpleasant condition that attacks an animal's digestive system and immune response and causes some pretty unpleasant symptoms including vomiting, diarrhoea, loss of appetite and high fever. And vets have pointed out that unlike domestic pets like cats and dogs, as humans are not in close contact with tigers it's often really hard to spot these symptoms until it's too late. They had loads of tigers at this site, well split into two sites, but they haven't had an outbreak for a long, long time of anything similar. We've got to go back more than 20 years, I think. Yeah, as I say, this is a very unusual case, but it isn't the first time Thailand's seen an incident of mass deaths of captive cats. In 2004, there was an outbreak of bird flu in eastern Thailand that actually almost saw almost 150 tigers die or actually be euthanised to prevent the spread of the outbreak. And this case was actually blamed on chicken carcasses that had been fed to the tigers, and that's where they believed the bird flu had come from back in 2004. But yeah, very, very rare. It hasn't happened for a long time. Is there anything else that can be done in this latest case to try and stop it from spreading further, protecting other animals at the zoo? What's going on now is an effort to, as I say, limit the spread. So there's enhanced disinfection measures going on at the zoos and the wildlife facilities. There's also a plan to roll out vaccines for healthy animals to prevent them catching this. And also there's a quarantine going on as well. So many of the animals that haven't actually been infected yet are being isolated away to protect them. So there's a raft of measures to go on. And one thing that the authorities are really keen to stress here is that this isn't an illness that can spread to humans. So that's something that is obviously important to say here. This is only affecting animals and isn't going to spread to humans. But the animal rights organisation PETA is not happy. It's issued a statement in response to the deaths. It's criticising the keeping of big cats in captivity and claims that the tigers died in the way that they lived. It says in misery, confinement and in fear. Tom Bailey. Now, draws in football are boring. At least that's the view in Japan. Its top flight J League is experimenting with getting rid of draws altogether. So if a match is tied after 90 minutes, it goes straight to penalties. Dan Olovitz is a Japan-based football journalist. We're currently in the middle of the J League 100-Year Vision League, which is a spring competition that is being used to transition the league to a European-style fall-spring schedule. Over a year ago, when this league was announced, the league said that basically the plan would be no promotion, no relegation, and also no draws, so that after 90 minutes, they would go straight to penalties and do a shootout. So that's what we're seeing so far. And overall, there's actually been a fair number of games that have gone to shootouts, including five today alone in the J2 and J300 division league. Chairman Yoshikazu Nonomura talked about this when they announced their plans, about how there was a desire to give J-League players more experience taking penalties in high-pressure situations ahead of international competitions like the AFC Champions League, the Asian Cup and the World Cup. We all know how things ended in 2022 and 2010. So Japan is still looking to get through to the quarterfinals. And this is one way to give not just players, but also goalkeepers, the experience of being in such high pressure situation. Bobby Seagal is the education ambassador at Britain's West Ham Football Club. He thinks the game needs to change to keep younger fans entertained. I'm a football traditionist, but I look at what my students do. How do they consume football? They're watching highlights reels, TikTok and Instagram clips. And even why Amazon Prime experimented with the sort of prime vision where there's stats overlaid to the real game. And this is the big thing. Football is in an existential crisis with viewing. And if you look at the, let's say, 18 to 24s, only one third will watch live football. You look at the over 55s, it's three quarters. So football, if it doesn't adapt, it will die, I think. And again, football has historically been a sport, unlike West Ham's defenders this year, the backline of a supporter, football has never stood still. The away goals rule, that's been changed in the Champions League. The back pass rule. Remember in the 90s, the Football World Cup, Italy 1990. 3.3, and that was to encourage attacking football. So once again, I will tell my students, no, football should always be about purists. You know, Wolves, Arsenal 2-2 this week. We would never get that if it had penalties. But I think football needs to take into account young people now. Football is not just competing against football, it's competing against Twitch streams, YouTube. Young people have a whole cornucopia of things, so football needs to fight back. Bobby Seagull. Thank you. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side.
