Five arrested over suspected plot to attack UK military base

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1:00Grocery outlet. Big deals. Now delivered. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles and in the early hours of Monday the 28th of September. These are our main stories. Five men are arrested in Britain on suspicion of explosives and terrorism offensive. Suspicious vehicles were reported near an airbase used by the US military. We have an exclusive report from Yemen where fighting is intensifying as Iranian-backed Houthis continue to advance on the key city of Thais and politics and sport collide as islands football team beats Israel in a match overshadowed by the Gaza conflict. Also in this podcast, Venezuela's take to the streets, demanding the return of the opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. Will she ever be allowed back in?

2:01And the early days of Route 66 are not a fun story. Where people really want to talk about it is that post-war, that open road represented freedom in Route 66, it just kept reinventing itself. As the famous road celebrates its centenary, we take a ride down memory lane. The speculation is growing over who was behind an attempted attack on an air force base here in the UK, which is also used by the US military. Five men have been arrested on suspicion of explosives and terrorism offences. After suspicious vehicles were reported near the base in rural England. Earlier this year the British government gave US warplanes permission to use RAF Fairford as a staging post for strikes on Iran. Nor Trump praised British police for arresting the five men. Working with Britain was an amazing job. We had them under investigation. They were looking to do big damage to our fort.

3:04And working with the British worked out great. It may have been Scotland yards, I don't know. We worked with a lot of them. We had them under view for a long time and we got them. Well despite President Trump's claims that the men were under view for a long time, local police have said the arrests occurred after a member of the public contacted them. Our diplomatic correspondent James Lander told us more about how this story unfolded. Well it began with a telephone call to the local police in the early hours of the morning from a driver passing by who saw these three vans parked in a strange way and alerting the authorities and then it followed from there. It is a global story simply because this kind of threat against military infrastructure across Europe is now something that is forming a pattern. The idea of hostile activity spilling out of conflicts around the world back to European capitals and countries, even to the United States.

4:04So the interesting question will be what was the threat? Where did these men come from? Because at the moment there's an awful lot of information we don't know. We know that the Iranians have directly threatened the British authorities for allowing the Americans to use the base. There's a formal statement by the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Tehran and July making that threat. We also know that in the last few days the UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband met the Iranian Foreign Minister Mr. Erragci and explicitly warned him against the hostile activity of foreign states in the UK and reinforcing UK resolve against such threats. So the idea of the Iran being a potential line of inquiry for this investigation is clear and it's obvious. Some people are looking to Moscow. We know that Russia has been threatening to step up its hybrid activity and attacks against NATO countries. The Danish intelligence warned about that only a few days ago. Germany has now formally blamed Russia for a drone attack against Leipzig airport.

5:07And we know that the Russian embassy in London over the summer formally warned the UK of an increasingly higher price that it would pay for its support for Ukraine. So that might be a line of inquiry too. James Landau. Earlier this month, Houthi fighters made dramatic advances against government forces taking control of hundreds of kilometers of Yemen's coastline close to the Bab Al-Mandeb straight, declaring as it did so a naval blockade for Saudi shipping. That's a huge concern around the world because the Houthi advances mean they can threaten the millions of barrels of oil that flow through the strait every day. Yemeni government forces are now pushing back. Fighting is intensifying around the city of Tayyis. Our senior international investigations correspondent, Noel Al-Maghafi and her team are the first international news organization to reach Tayyis since those Houthi advances. She travelled with government forces to one of the closest positions to the Houthis. Locked and loaded, the Yemeni troops are heading for battle, unsure of whether they'll return.

6:16They're taking us with them through the values of Tayyis. It's not long before we're confronted with the reality of this war. The sound of artillery echoes from afar but the threat is very close. Head to deck, head to deck. Go, go, go. She, she, she. We can hear a drone above and we've been told that it's a Houthi drone so we're just taking cover. No, no, no, no. Go up the pathway there and come straight down to the road to the cause. Okay. Come on. As we're leaving, we came across Ali who's chosen to stay. He fears what would happen if the Houthis take over and they're getting close. I don't know if they're going to come. It's terrifying but we can't afford to leave our home. Have they ever bombed close to your home? Yes, the shells fell here down the valley behind the school.

7:16Aren't you afraid that any day they might take this area while you're here? It's in God's hands. Nestled in these mountains, the Houthis lie in wait. Their recent capture of mocha and the Bebbelmendepstrait has transformed this battle. Now they're pushing inland towards Taz. If this city falls, their grip on the western coast will be much harder to reverse and this war will be felt far beyond Yemen. The latest fighting has displaced more than 100,000 people to places like the Elmuni camp around 20 kilometers from the front line. In just 10 days, 200 families arrived. Most of them have been displaced before. It took Fatima two days to get here from mocha. As the fighting closed in, her sons were forced to make an impossible decision, leaving her behind to save their children.

8:16I lost my sons. I don't know where they are. And now I'm alone out here in the cold. The human cost doesn't end there. Racing towards the city, one ambulance after another. 24 casualties within 24 hours to this hospital alone. We've just been told that a 12-year-old girl was brought here two hours ago because she was hit by a shrapnel. This war is costing lives and it's not just militants, it's civilians too. Runa lies here alone. She was at home when the mortar hit. But Yemen's battlefield doesn't have boundaries, and this war has a way of finding those who never chose to be a part of it. Now are our Maghaffee reporting. Ireland has beaten Israel 3-0 in a hugely controversial Yawafa nation's league match that took place in Hungary. The game almost didn't go ahead because of opposition to Israel's war and Gaza,

9:18but after days of intense discussions, most of the Irish football squad agreed to take part. The goalkeeper, Gavin Bazounu, refused to play and the rest of the team wore black arm bands in honour of the tens of thousands of mainly Palestinians who've been killed in the conflict. Before the match, the Israeli Football Association insisted that politics and sport should remain separate. Our sports correspondent Kevin Shaki was at the match, and he told me more about the drama in the build up to the game. It wasn't an easy decision. A vote had to be taken among players. One player left the squad because of the controversy.

10:20And the Republican players came. They gave an emphatic performance and they won 3-0. So perhaps from their point of view, there will at least be some vindication in their decision to go ahead and play the match. But notwithstanding that, the controversy leading up to this match will not have gone away because there are still very many fans of the Republic of Ireland who believe they should not be playing Israel under any circumstances. Kevin, tell us how the match actually went. Was it tense at times? That was what was particularly noteworthy about the match. There was none of the tension we had leading up to the match in the actual match itself on the field of play. It was very much a normal football match. I played in good spurs. There was one particular flashpoint, but it was over almost before it began. And from a fippling point of view, it was a competitive match. Notwithstanding the fact that the Republic won by 3 goals to nil.

11:21It was played in a good spirit. But of course there were matters before the match where some traditional protocols were not adhered to. The Irish camp bowed their head during the playing of the Israeli national anthem. There were no handshakes between the captains before the match. And there were no traditional penance exchanged before the match. So it was clear that the Irish players having decided to play the match, this cell wanted to register their protest before the match and before kickoff. And they did. And Kevin, the ground itself was relatively empty. Was that perhaps due to the controversy surrounding the match? Well, the Football Association of Ireland had decided not to sell any tickets for the match. So that ruled out the Republic of Ireland supporters. Israel had sold about 150 tickets. But, Missourle, there were also at least a couple of dozen Republic of Ireland fans who somehow found wherewithal to find tickets. And it was quite remarkable because the stands were by and large

12:22empty. But for the 150, Israeli fans in one small section. And then a couple of dozen of Irish fans, 50 meters or so apart. And the small number of Irish fans were making quite an noise. But also, there really fans. They were very vociferous in terms of supporting their team. Kevin Sharky, Israel and Ireland are set to have a rematch next week. A month on from catastrophic floods in Nepal, 12 climbers and support staff are missing after an avalanche hit a Himalayan mountain on Sunday morning, blanketing the base camp of Himlong Himal near Nepal's border with Tibet. A global affairs reporter, Ambrassan Etter Rajad, has the details. A foreign team is expected to come in the first week of October. So this team was sent all of them, Nepali nationals, to prepare the base camp, maintain the route and also fix the rope all the way up to the peak. There was a huge avalanche that basically, you know,

13:24blanket of thick snow fell on this base camp. And according to several expedition teams, up to 14 people are set to be missing. The rescue team was rushed from the Kathmandu immediately. And now what we understand, according to various Nepal media reports that they had recovered some bodies. But the condition of other missing climbers and support staff, it's not very clear. At the same time, some of the rescue team members contacted the teams in Kathmandu saying probably four to five meters of snow in parts of the base camp they could see. So the rescue effort will continue on Monday morning. This is the annual monsoon season. Heavy rains are not uncommon, but it came after this flash floods that swept through villages and towns about a month ago, killing at least 1,400 confirmed dead and nearly 6,000 missing. And again, on the Chinese side, on the Tibetan side, about 200 to 300 people were still missing.

14:25And following that, the monsoon rains started even in the past few days. Several houses were damaged, at least seven to ten people are reported to have been killed in these latest round of rains. Ambrassane Tehran. Still to come in this podcast. There's a very long history continuing up to the present of people who are being politically repressed by the government moving deeper into the forest in order to evade political control. How a book about trees in Russia has picked up a special literary award. How to make a book about trees in Russia Technology made banking easier, travel easier, shopping easier. Home insurance is still catching up. Kin is changing that. Smart technology that helps you find coverage fast and real people when you actually need them. Simple tools, faster help, no trade-offs. Home insurance that finally makes sense. Go to kin.com slash podcast.

15:25That's kin.com forward slash podcast. Kin refers to kin distributor insurance services. A licensed California surplus lines broker. Ensure that it's not licensed or regulated by the California Insurance Commissioner. How did Katzai become one of the biggest girl groups in the world? I must macho. And I'm Tristan Redmond and together we host the global story podcast from the BBC. In this episode we give you everything there is to know about Katzai. They've gone from their first EP to a sold out US tour in just two years. But has their stratospheric success revealed the darker side of the K-POP model? Search for the global story and BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast. Protests have been held in Krakash and other parts of Venezuela, demanding the return of Venezuela's exiled opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado.

16:25All that is the sound of dozens of motorbikes and cars full of demonstrators, waving giant flags and banners in support of Machado. She left Venezuela secretly nine months ago to accept her Nobel Peace Prize award. Her supporters say she's tried seven times to return since then, but not been allowed back into the country. So with elections promised by the country's interim president, Delci Rodriguez, how much broad support is there for Machado to come home? A question I put to our Latin America correspondent, Will Grant. Protests like this one tell us about two key elements of the complaints of the demonstrators. The first is, as you say, the support that still exists for Maria Corina Machado, the hopes of the opposition supporters in Venezuela are really pretty much solely pinned on her as an individual, that she seems like the person who would be president and they want to see that happen, with known that she has support and that support remains. And I think that's what that demonstration does.

17:25It shows that it is still there. But of course, the other thing that it does is show the rejection of Delci Rodriguez, the interim president and her burgeoning relationship with Donald Trump. There is no coincidence that Delci Rodriguez was meeting with Donald Trump as Maria Corina Machado was unable to return to Venezuela for what we understand with the fifth, sixth, and seventh attempts this year. So she's been attempting via sea, via air. She's constantly turned back. One thinks, given the key control that Washington continues to exert over Delci Rodriguez, her administration and Venezuela as a whole, there's clearly resistance coming from Washington as well as Caracas. And I think that is partly what these protesters were saying. You know, not only do we want Maria Corina Machado to come home to Venezuela, we want an end to this relationship, which they see as simply the remnants of the Maduro regime in bed now with the Trump administration. Having said that, there must be people in Venezuela who see the relative economic stability

18:30returning to Venezuela under this relationship between Delci Rodriguez and President Trump. And say, well, this is the situation. We don't want to rot the boat now. I think you're right. I think the problem is though that that pragmatism perhaps comes from a sense of stability, not necessarily economic stability, because the country's economy is still in difficulties. It's not fixed yet. But there is more calm in the international relationship with the most powerful nation in the hemisphere that things feel more stable, less prone to some of these shocking moments that Venezuelans have been through this year. Now, several days ago in New York, the United Nations, Delci Rodriguez promised elections. She didn't say when they would take place. What is your assessment as to when and if that will happen? It's hard to read that one, isn't it? My feeling is that this is simply something that the Trump administration needs to now be bringing to bear on Delci Rodriguez and her administration, that they can't simply continue to work with her with absolutely no movement towards

19:35free and fair elections as pushed for by the diaspora community in Florida, which are so influential in terms of Donald Trump's support in that stage. And more broadly, the Trump administration has sent in troops to remove Nicholas Maduro from power and seems so comfortable working with his vice president. That only gets them so far, I think. And Marco Rubeo, the Secretary of State, has been quite clear about that. They've basically said, look, they don't consider Venezuela to be ready yet as Donald Trump put it. Ultimately, Delci Rodriguez, the Trump administration have to get it to a point eventually that those elections will take place. We don't yet know whether Delci Rodriguez would be a candidate in those. We don't know if Maria Corina Machado will be able to get back for them and be a candidate. But I think we've seen all of the context around this is the huge energy deal between Washington and Venezuela to the tune of 65 billion barrels of oil. So of course, the Trump administration continues to be quite comfortable working with Delci Rodriguez under those terms for Venezuelans are beginning to really clamour for now the

20:39opportunity to choose their own country's leadership. Will Grant. Two mass shootings in South Africa have left 27 people dead. Seventeen were killed when eight governments stormed a bar close to Johannesburg on Saturday night. Then in the early hours of Sunday, 10 people died in another shooting outside an entertainment venue near Cape Town. Dozens more were wounded in the two shootings. The motive is not yet known, but South Africa has a huge problem with gang related gun violence and a very high murder rate. The BBC's Thomas McQuana gave us more details about these shootings. The one in Johannesburg acquired in the tavern and it's said that eight gunmen in two vehicles came out and shot at people outside the venue and then also entered and shot people inside. And after taking the cell phones that they had and then escaping in those two unidentified vehicles, then in Cape Town, there was an entertainment event happening and they entered the venue and a similar shooting occurred killing 10 and the injuring many more. South Africa has one of the highest

21:43murder rates in the world just between April and June this year. South Africa police said over 5,400 people have been murdered. Been murdered, are more of malicious intent and then it compounds when you realize that the murder rates and the conviction rates for investigations are much lower. So the investigations that lead to actual conviction for people who are murdered are much lower and that means basically justice is ensured to the victims of such shootings and South Africa is a wash with illegal weapons and gang activity that the police there found hard to end. Thomas McQuarner. A book about the centrality of the forest in Russian culture has won a prestigious British literary award. The Pushkin House book prize was given to Sophie Pinkham's book The Oak and the Large, a forest history of Russia and its empires. There are lots of references to trees in Russian literature from the Nald Oak in Tolstoy's War and Peace to Pushkin's reflections on pines,

22:46but this prize is for the best non-fiction writing on Russia in the English language. Owen Bennett Jones asked Sophie Pinkham why she found the theme of Russian forest so interesting that she wanted to write a book about them. Well I am a specialist in Russia, some of the Ukraine and the former Soviet Union, former Russian imperial territory. I started thinking back to all of the ways that forest appeared in Russian literature. So I'm primarily a specialist in literature and film and I began to realize how absolutely central the forest was not only to Russia's historical development and political development, but also to its, we could say, national imagination, sort of standing for fear, but also a sense of home and protection, for nourishment and riches, and also as a place from which a Russian culture had arisen. The way that I structured my book The Oak in the Larch was as kind of an alternative history of

23:48Russia before there even was a Russia. So when you say it's a source of protection, what do you mean by that? Well over the centuries the forests of Russia which are of course immensely, immensely large even now and many of them very remote have often been a place of refuge. So sometimes they provided a place of refuge from the step invaders, so many centuries ago, later on they served as a very important place of escape from political repression. So there's a very long history continuing up to the present of people who are being politically repressed by the government moving deeper into the forest in order to evade political control. I think it's fair to say that the communist Soviet period there was a policy of conquering nature to some extent. Did that extend to the forests where the Soviets began deforestation? Absolutely. There was a moment under Stalin when they even declared a war on the forest. Yeah and the Soviet attitude towards nature was indeed as you say that it had to be

24:48completely subjugated to human ends. And this is not a uniquely Soviet idea, it's something that appears already in the book of Genesis. Man is tasked with subjugating nature, but the Soviets as was their want took it to a really extraordinary extreme, rerouting rivers, for example, draining seas and also deforesting very intensely. The idea was that any part of nature that wasn't serving the Soviet project, Soviet industrialization was lazy and useless. Yeah, but when Stalin said we've got to get rid of the forest, did people see that at the time? I mean they probably didn't say so, but would they have seen it as an attack on the Russian soul or something like that? Yes, they did see that and actually they did say it. And it's quite remarkable because although Stalin was so repressive, there were a lot of people over the decades who stood up to him, some of them were foresters actually who opposed his practices and in fact risked their lives in order to try to protect forests. I should add also that under Stalin there was a sort of a strange

25:49duality to it because late in his life Stalin developed this bizarre plan called Stalin's great plan for the transformation of nature. It was sort of typical Stalinist grandiosity and part of that plan was in fact to plant large numbers of trees in order to protect Russian land from what were imagined as the uncivilized central Asian step winds and therefore thereby help agriculture. But there too there was a very strange ideological element to it because at that point they were relying on this bogus biological idea that you could even indoctrinate acorns to build these communist walls of trees. Sophie Pinkham. To the United States now where the famous route 66 turns 100 this year. The highway weaves its way through towns all the way from Chicago to Los Angeles and helped create the classic American roadside economy with all its diners, neon signs and quirky

26:51motels. But a century after it first captured our imagination does the ultimate American road trip which is also known as the mother road still have the same pull. Victoria Craig headed west across the United States to discover whether nostalgia is still drawing tourists and their dollars to towns along the route. Route 66 is a 2500 mile stretch of concrete and pavement that runs from the bustling metropolis of Chicago, Illinois all the way to the sandy west coast shores of Santa Monica, California. Our first stop is in Cuba, Missouri and the wagon wheel hotel. It's been operating here for more than 90 years. It's where we meet Roman Rich Dinkala, a lifelong route 66 enthusiast. He bought this historic mother road property which is his second in April this year. This place represents so much. You've got the Ozark stone cottages and people can come here. They can get a glimpse of

27:52what it was like in the 30s and 40s. Do you worry if there isn't more awareness raised particularly for younger generations who will eventually be the ones staying in this motel and others? I've been extremely worried about the centennial that we're going to see a lot of bad decisions and we have several hours west in Clinton, Oklahoma. There's been a boom in visitors to the city's Route 66 museum. The centennial gives us an opportunity to put our story back into a national conversation. That's museum director Corey Cart. Cells in our give shop are up over 300%. We're also celebrating America's 250th and that is giving us a chance to tell the story to audiences that before have never considered Route 66. Indeed Oklahoma's relationship to the mother road runs deep.

28:55During the depths of the Great Depression in the 1930s, an environmental disaster known as the Dust Bowl swept through America's southern plains. Tenant farmers pushed deep into poverty by severe drought and rapid agricultural modernization were forced off their land. Many of them went west along Route 66 searching for a better life in California but they faced bitter class prejudice and hostility every step of the way. The early days of Route 66 are not a fun story where people really want to talk about it is that post-war that open road represented freedom in Route 66. It just kept reinventing itself. So how important now is Route 66 to Clinton's economy? Would you say? If you look at the amount of restaurants and gift shops and things here in town that are either named after Route 66 or sell Route 66 souvenirs, it is a huge part of it.

29:56Pixar's 2006 animated hit Cars captured the nostalgia of the 1950s era road trip culture for a new generation. Research from the National Travel Center organization shows the power of heritage tourism. It found that secondary roads like Route 66, if promoted, can drive up to $450,000 in visitor spending per mile each year. That's around $280,000 per kilometer. Though for remote stretches of road capturing even a fraction of that, is still a constant battle. Victoria Crake And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at Global Podcast at BBC.co.uk. You've got also finance on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag globalnewsport. And don't forget our sister podcast, 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 Derek Clarke

30:59and produced by Emma Joseph. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Mars and until next time. Goodbye. How did Katzai become one of the biggest girl groups in the world? I must my heart. And I'm Tristan Redmond and together we host the Global Story Podcast from the BBC. In this episode we give you everything there is to know about Katzai. They've gone from their first EP to a sold out US tour in just two years. But has their stratospheric success revealed the darker side of the K-pop model? Search for the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcast.