Tehran calls reports of US talks 'fake news'

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You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 5 o'clock GMT on Tuesday the 24th of March.

The speaker of the Iranian Parliament denies claims by President Trump that peace talks are

underway between Iran and the US. The Colombian militaries as 66 soldiers have died in a plane crash,

and we report on the increase in Israeli settler attacks in the occupied West Bank.

Also in the podcast, a Swarovski cat flap studded with crystals. You can buy enormously expensive

satin pyjamas for your dog or cat. And even your ferret is your pet controlling your life and your wallet.

In the face of turmoil on the markets and defiance from Iranian hardliners,

President Trump has for now backed down on his threat to obliterate Iran's power plants.

He had said he would target them if the Strait of Hormuz was not reopened within 48 hours.

That deadline has now passed and the crucial waterway remains shut,

but the US has not attacked. Instead, Mr. Trump says he's paused the threatened strikes

because peace talks are underway.

We're giving it five days and then we're going to see where that takes us.

And I would say at the end of this period, I think it could very well end up being a very good

deal for everybody as good as if we went all the way and just literally annihilated the place,

which if we don't have to do that, that would be a good thing, not a bad thing.

But Iran says there have been no negotiations. The speaker of the Iranian Parliament,

Mohammed Bagh Ali Baf mentioned as Iran's possible negotiator said it was all fake news to

manipulate the financial and oil markets. John Bolton was US national security advisor in the

first Trump term. What does he make of it all? I find it a little bit difficult to believe that

there really are negotiations with Iran that are as close to bringing an end to the war as he says.

I think he was very worried about the markets in Asia and it was convenient to avoid a

blood bath on American stock exchanges too. And it may cause him to declare victory where victory

doesn't exist. What we're doing is showing our weakness by allowing Iran to dictate the terms

on which the struggle is going to end that they'll open the strait of hormones when they choose to.

So we could lose a very significant opportunity here because Trump feels the domestic political

pressure and is looking for an exit no matter what the long term consequences, much of which

might be felt after he leaves office. John Bolton. So what is actually happening in terms of

negotiations? If anything, I asked David Willis in the United States. President Trump has said that

talks are underway and that his special envoy Steve Whitkoff and his son-in-law, Jaren Kushner,

held discussions with Iranian officials yesterday and will continue to talk to that official.

Today and that the talks were involving, he said, a top person in the Iranian regime,

whom he wouldn't name, although he did confirm that it wasn't Iran's new supreme leader.

The individual in question is not to be Muhammad Baga Khalifbuf who is the speaker of the

Iranian parliament. And there are reports that Steve Whitkoff and Jaren Kushner could meet a

negotiating delegation from Iran as early as this week in Pakistan, possibly with the US Vice

President JD Vance joining those talks. The White House hasn't denied those suggestions

and administration official confirmed that President Trump did indeed speak by phone today to

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr Netanyahu afterwards acknowledged that the

US thought a deal with Iran was possible. The Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said that

messages had been received from friendly countries and that's thought to be Egypt, Pakistan,

the Gulf States, indicating that the United States was in favor of negotiating an end to this

conflict. Although that particular individual denied that any such talks had so far taken place,

majority of people here all of a remain opposed to this conflict and they've seen

petrol prices sore. They've seen the conflict drag on. It's now entering. It's fourth week and

they've heard plenty of mixed messaging from Donald Trump in terms of both timelines and objectives.

David Willis. But why is President Trump talking peace just 48 hours after threatening to wipe out

Iran's energy infrastructure? Sanam Vakil is head of the Middle East and North Africa program

at the Chatham House think tank. First of all, this was a very bad threat to make because striking

Iran's electricity grid its power capabilities would have 100% resulted in retaliation across the

region and there has certainly been lobbying from Gulf countries if not more to perhaps get President

Trump to walk back about decision. Secondly, of course, there is the persistent speculation that

President Trump is trying to manage the markets. So Trump quickly on Monday morning tried to

temper oil prices which are expected to continue to go up. But thirdly, there's nothing wrong with

test running what negotiations would look like. I don't think that this is going to quickly

end or cease this war. But this could be a first effort at testing the waters. And from what I

hear, it is Iran's speaker of the parliament, Muhammad Bakr Alibov, who is in communication with a

new American interlocutor that could be JD Vance. Despite the heavy blows and the decapitation

strategy underway, the Iranian system is still intact. It's intact because it's not personalized.

It's bureaucratic and institutional and it still has plenty of individuals working in that system

that have history, that have experience, that have decision-making authority. And Alibov has been

speaker of the parliament for quite some time, but he's been a well-known figure within that system.

He also sits on the Supreme National Security Council, which is the body where theoretically

foreign policy decisions are made in consensus and recommendations are put forward.

Sana Makhilov, chatroom house. With his analysis of what possible negotiations may involve,

here's our international editor, Jeremy Bowen. If there were talks, the agenda would have to be

massive and complicated. What about the enriched uranium that could be used to make a nuclear weapon?

What about the alliances Iran has around the region, like Hezbollah and Lebanon? And what about

the Strait of Hormuz? The most potent weapon that Iran seems to have discovered, in fact,

knew about all along. Plenty of people asked why didn't President Trump know about it.

The Iranians, if it is that kind of real negotiation at some point, will make their own demands.

They'll want to retain control in some way of the Strait of Hormuz. Maybe live sanctions,

maybe get some assurance that the Israelis are not going to attack them. So I think that what we're

seeing right now, is it perhaps Trump preparing a declaration of victory? Gulf states don't want to

be left with a mess in the region. Or is it simply an attempt to reassure the markets? That seems

to be one of the most credible things. The point is, though, to have victory in war, you need a

defined objective, you need a clear exit strategy, you need a plan for what's coming next.

And the evidence is that he had none of those things, whereas Iran has had this plan to make

this into a war of attrition. And what President Trump has done has dismissed all those worries and

doubts that previous American presidents have had about attacking Iran because of all the difficulties

it would cause. And I think he's discovering that that's why they chose not to destroy the

Islamic Republic, but try to contain it instead. Now, international editor, Jeremy Bowen,

with the world focused on the Iran war, there's been an increase in Israeli settler attacks in

the occupied West Bank, the larger of the two Palestinian territories. Six Palestinians have

been shot dead by settlers this month, according to the local health ministry. Over the past two

nights, settlers have gone on the rampage after an 18-year-old settler was killed in a car crash.

At least 10 people were injured in a village east of Nablus from where our Middle East Correspondent

Yehland Nell reports. I've just come into what must have been just one day ago a very smart villa,

a multi-storyed house, and now it has been burnt to ashes inside. All the furniture is charred.

It was set a light in a big settler attack. The family was just here watching television.

There's what remains of the TV screen there up on the wall. The house belongs to Barhan Omar,

who's a bank manager. He built this house for his family.

We had taken precautions, but we're not expecting so many of them to come.

With all they wanted to kill us, it was terrifying when you are sitting with your family and your

children, and then you come under attack. I'm crying out to fear for my children.

This is a village. It's called Dear Alhatab. It's on the eastern side of Nablus surrounded by

olive groves, and this is the road, which locals say was absolutely packed last night with

settlers. There's still graffiti that's up on the walls, a star of David over here,

and it's here that villagers say dozens of settlers forced open a big black iron gate

and entered into another property. There's what remains of a car here, really just the wreckage of a car

at this point. This is the house of Samar Omar and his wife. They were here with their four children

and didn't expect anything like this at all. It was so scary. I never imagined something like

this would happen. My daughter ran inside and told me the settlers are burning the house down.

I took my family outside because we were suffocating from the smoke. I didn't know what to do

because the settlers were throwing stones at us. We had our hands on our heads.

Samar has shown me up the stairs to the rooftop where there's a wooden ladder. He was saying that

his daughter was so frightened she could barely get up here, but this is the only way that his

family managed to make it out of the house to get up here on the very top of the roof

away from all the smoke and the stones that were being thrown in this direction. From here you've

got a really good view all around. I can see the built-up city of Nablus over on one side and then

here a past all of the olive trees which locals say belong to the village but they're no longer

able to go to them without getting a permission from the Israeli military. Well here on the hillsides

you've got a couple of new outposts and there's an Israeli military watch tower over there as well

and then on the far hill there is the settlement of Ilan Morey. That's where a funeral took place

for a young settler that was the trigger for the latest violence. His family says that he was killed

deliberately by a Palestinian. Palestinians say it was a car accident but after that funeral

mourners came to attack the village there was actually a wave of attacks across the occupied

West Bank. Now the Israeli military has condemned the arson that was carried out the disturbances,

violent assaults with several people hurt in this village including one man shot in the foot

but locals criticised the army for not letting Palestinian ambulances and firefighters

get here quicker. In the past two years there has been a real acceleration in settler violence which

Palestinians say is designed to push them off their land. And now since the start of the Iran war

Palestinians are saying that there has been a new uptick in this kind of violence. It's the same

pattern repeating itself again. Reporting from the West Bank, Ilan now.

And still to come on the podcast. We've captured a series of interactions that show them not just

ramming but nuzzling each other and shoving against each other in a kind of play. It gives us a

new window into the social lives of these animals. After centuries of speculation sperm whales are

filmed bashing heads for the first time.

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Your listening to the Global News Podcast. The authorities in Colombia say 66 people have now

been confirmed dead after a military transport plane crashed shortly after takeoff. Our South

America correspondent Ioni Wells has the details. There was videos shared extensively on social

media showing these huge plumes of black smoke, big flames at the location of this crash, which

seems to be in the south of Colombia near the borders with Ecuador and Peru. Since then, officials

in the country have said that there were 125 people on board, 11 crew members. What's really not

very clear at the moment is what actually caused this crash. There aren't really any details so far

about what might have happened, but we understand that the plane hit the ground only one and a half

kilometers away from where it initially took off. And because it was this military plane,

there was an online munition being carried on board, all of which seems to have detonated as a

result of a fire on the aircraft causing this huge flames and smoke as we've seen in these videos.

What we have heard from authorities in the country is that there hasn't been any indication of

an attack by illegal actors. I think there were certainly concerns given the location, given

it was right on the border. This is an area where there is a lot of criminal activity that takes

place. But I think interestingly, there are some reports that this is the same type of plane

that has been responsible for other crashes in the region previously. And I think there will certainly

be questions for the Air Force about what the safety of this particular aircraft was.

Our South America correspondent Ioni Wells, the owner of only fans, Leonid Radvinsky, has died at

the age of 43, leaving the fate of the multi-billion dollar streaming empire up in the air.

The site transformed the porn industry by enabling adult content creators to reach their

audiences directly for a 20% cut of their revenue. The boom in the site's popularity brought

scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators and accusations of a failure to deal with illegal content.

When only fans announced it would no longer allow sexual material, a backlash from subscribers

and creators prompted a quick U-turn. Anna Ayavine from the Digital Media website Mashable

spoke to Rebecca Kespy. Only fans is a subscription platform where creators offer content

like photos and videos behind a paywall. So customers who subscribe can have access to it.

And why not each and every creator on only fans uploads nude or explicit content? That is what

it's known for because it's not just free pornography. It's you have to make an account and put in

your credit card information in order to subscribe to a creator. Okay, so Leonid Radvinsky has

died, but many point to him as being the person that sort of helped the platform take off really.

Yes, while he was alive, he was described as reclusive often in the media. So not much is known

about him personally or his illness, but he was a tech entrepreneur. And prior to buying only fans

in 2018, he founded a website called My Free Cams, where performers put on live pornographic

web cam shows. So he was definitely not a stranger to the industry. And in 2018, he bought

a majority stake in only fans. And that's when the site really pivoted to porn instead of

just advertising as a way for musicians or quote unquote, safer work creators to make some extra

money. Now it's a way for porn creators to make some extra money. And then two years later when

COVID hit, that's when only fans really took off. It has fundamentally changed the porn industry.

It's really contributed to the rise of the independent creator, much like YouTube has for,

say, for work creators. It's lower the barrier to entry. You don't need to live somewhere like

Los Angeles or Las Vegas to shoot with a porn studio now. You can actually just make content

in your bedroom. And what does that do for law makers and scrutiny, regulators, that sort of thing?

Is that better or worse with only fans? I would say it's worse. There's been a ton of scrutiny

on only fans as there has been a ton of scrutiny worldwide on the porn industry in general since the

advent of porn hub and free porn online. So for example, the British regulator off-com launched an

investigation a couple of years ago over whether miners were accessing only fans and actually ended

up finding only fans over a million dollars because they couldn't adequately say how their

age-tracking. Anna Iovene. In the 18th and 19th centuries,

Seafarers wrote about seeing whales striking each other with their heads, occasionally even syncing

ships, providing the inspiration for the novel Moby Dick. Until now, though, there wasn't any

concrete evidence of whales actually banging their heads together. But scientists say the act has

now been caught on camera for the first time, as Chantal Hartle reports.

Many stories have been told of ships and the men who sail, of sea beasts and the men who hunt them,

but none has captured the imagination through the years, so much as Herman Melville's immortal

story of Captain Ahab, who lost his very soul in the bitterness of vengeance against the great white

whale Moby Dick. Moby Dick, the novel and film inspired by the syncing of the American whaling ship

Essex in the Pacific Ocean in 1820. The vessel was reportedly sunk by two head-on strikes from

a large sperm whale, of the 20-man crew only a handful survived, including the first mate Owen Chase,

who published his version of events a year later. It appeared with tenfold fury and vengeance in

his aspects he wrote, his head about half out of the water, and in that way he came upon us and

again struck the ship. Other similar accounts of whaling ships being sunk by sperm whales were

reported in the 18th and 19th centuries, but only now have scientists seen what this headbutting

behaviour actually looks like. We've known for a long time that large male sperm whales will use

their heads as battering rams, and what we've collected here is a series of observations which

suggests how that behaviour develops in young adolescent male sperm whales because we've captured

a series of interactions that show them, not just ramming, but nuzzling each other and shoving

against each other in a kind of play. That's Dr. Luke Rendell, one of the authors of the study

published in the Marine Mammal Science Journal. Using drones, researchers filmed the whales

in the Azores in the North Atlantic and the Balliara Islands off eastern Spain between 2020 and 2022.

What they don't know yet is why the whales do this, but Dr. Rendell has some ideas.

We suspect in mature males it is about dominance and obtaining mating opportunities if two of

them show up at the same group of females at the same time. It's possible that some of these

interactions where they're not lots of swimming at each other and just impacting but actually

making quite gentle contact and then pushing against each other may be a slightly safer

form of competing. The researchers also speculated that the juveniles headbutting may annoy

others in their social group, particularly the matriarchs, which could explain why they're

forced out of the group early. One of the scientists involved said it was very exciting to observe

this behaviour which had long been a mystery. Chantal Hartle

Moving on to smaller animals now and is your pet controlling your life? Here in Britain we're

famous for our dedication to our cats and dogs, but do we in fact belong to them rather than the

other way round? That relationship between humans and pets is the subject of a new exhibition

in the English City of Oxford. Sean Lay went along for the experience which included a hands-on

exhibit explained by Curator Charles Foster. I'm sitting by a fake cat. If I stroke it it

mues me. If I stroke it even more it will roll over. And this is a cat which is used

to make life better for patients with dementia. That's Professor Charles Foster,

barrister and veterinarian. I'm with him and his stuffed feline friend in the Western Library

where the exhibition he's curated has just opened. It's not called people and their pets but

pets and their people. I wonder why? One of the exhibits here indicates the colossal financial cost

of keeping pets. They say you want to understand things, follow the money. If you follow the pet

money you realise who's really in charge. We've just come into the entrance and we come in

and we're confronted by that's not a pet. It's not a pet but proto-wolves were pets.

Wolves were looking at us when we were up up in a little counter-gatherous and gradually they

realised that it was advantageous for them to have a relationship with us and we realised that

it was advantageous for us to have a relationship with them. And so a coalition formed in which we

change them often not for their good. In the ancient world where there are examples of the

worship of animals but also the sentimentalizing of animals. Egyptians had a cat goddess called

Bastet so you would go to the cat goddess temple. At the gate you would buy a mummified cat which

would present to the goddess in much the same way as these days you might buy a candle at the entrance

to a church and light it in order to put before an icon. Herodotus talks about the ancient

Egyptians loving their cats so much that they would run into a burning building to rescue them.

A whole Egyptian household would shave their eyebrows as a sign of mourning when their beloved cat

died. We've got some advertising displays here of the over the top way that some pet owners

dress their pets. Describe what we're seeing Charles. This is pet bling. This exhibit shows images

of things that we can buy for our animals. For example a Swarovski cat flap studied with crystals.

You can buy enormously expensive satin pyjamas for your dog or your cat and even your ferret.

These are tamagotches and they say that when we can't have a real animal such as our desire for

an animal that we create artificial ones so this will demand food from you. You will be able to feed

it, you'll be able to take it for walks. What does it say about us that we want to do that? There's

another bizarre illustration of exactly that here and one of the most cynical marketing ploys of

all time and that is the pet rock phenomenon. In the mid 1970s an advertising executive Gary

Darle started to market pet rocks and we've got one of them here. There is an ordinary stone

in a cardboard box with holes in it so the pet rock can breathe. Most people I expect took this

as a joke. It's basically just a stone. It's just a stone but some people took it seriously

and streaked their rocks and fed their rocks and no doubt took their rocks for a walk round the

park. I'm not sure what it says but it says something pretty worrying. Professor Charles Foster talking

to Sean Lay. And that is all from us for now but the Global News podcast will be back very soon.

This edition was mixed by Kai Perry and produced by Stephanie Zacherson and Shavon Lehi. Our editors

Karen Martin, I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.