Lisbon's world-famous funicular derails

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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Valerie Sanderson, and in the early hours of Thursday, the 4th of September, these are our main stories.

One of the best-known tourist attractions in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, the Gloria Funicula, has crashed, killing several people.

Victims of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein call for all the files on the case to be released.

China flexes its military muscles to the world.

We hear a Chinese perspective.

Also, in this podcast, we mark 10 years since Germany opened its borders to Syrian refugees and a million people arrived in Europe.

And new research says that even one minute of vigorous physical activity can be a lifesaver.

Not leaving things at the bottom of the stairs and taking them up when you've got a pile, but taking them up every single time is all part of the exercise and I love the fact that it's now being proven to be of a real benefit to us.

We start in the Portuguese capital Lisbon where as we record this podcast at least 15 people have been killed and 18 others injured when the city's famous Gloria Funicular Cable Railway derailed and crashed into a building.

Footage from the site showed the tram-like carriage practically destroyed, with emergency workers pulling people out of the wreckage.

This woman witnessed the accident.

It fell about a metre and a half, made a huge crash.

It was packed.

Just as we were going to help, we saw another tram coming downhill.

The only thing we could do was turn and run toward the avenue.

I looked back.

I'm sure I saw at least one person manage to get out.

They were on the sidewalk when the tram hit the building.

Some foreign nationals are thought to be among the dead.

This method of travel is one of Lisbon's most popular tourist attractions, and the Gloria Fernicula, with its distinctive canary yellow colouring, hauls around three million passengers up and down one of the city's steepest hills every year.

VBC's Alison Roberts is in Lisbon and she gave me the latest.

Here on the scene in the very centre of Lisbon, there are large numbers of emergency service personnel on the ground still.

We know that the PJ Criminal Police have already been on the scene looking to see if they can start their investigation into the causes of the accident.

Meanwhile, we know that 15 people have been confirmed to have lost their lives in this awful incident.

And 18 people are in hospital and five of them, we believe, are seriously injured.

So there's a lot of concern about those individuals.

The authorities here have expressed their great sorrow and their condolences to the victims and their families.

The mayor of Lisbon has declared three days of mourning in the city, and the national government has declared a day of national mourning for tomorrow.

Is the wreckage still there or have they managed to clear it?

No, very much so.

It's really quite a large vehicle, this cab of the funicular, and

it crashed onto its side as it became derailed and crashed into a building.

So I think, first of all, that forensic work is going to have to take place before they're going to be removing that vehicle.

We certainly haven't seen anything of that kind being lifted out of the quite narrow street in which the funicular normally operates.

And we understand it was absolutely packed with people at the time.

Well, the authorities said that there were at least 20 people injured.

And at this time of day, in the summer, there would be a lot of tourists using it.

This is a vehicle that goes up and down every 10 or 15 minutes on this very steep street between the Baixa downtown area and the Baihu Alto, a popular bar and restaurant neighborhood.

And so it's very likely that it was pretty full.

Most of the people in the vehicle, which can take up to 40 people, are normally standing and not sitting.

And that's quite likely to have been the case that a number of people were standing and not sitting when the accident took place.

And this was the funicular gloria, wasn't it?

I mean, one of the most famous tourist attractions in Lisbon?

Yes, of the three old funiculas, this is the one that's the most visible, the most central, and the largest, and the most used, in fact.

It's really an attraction in its own right, but also used as a means of transport, not only by tourists, but also by locals.

So, anyone who lives in the city will have passed by it many, many, many times, and they'll be doing that again in the next days and weeks and looking at it with shock and horror and thinking how on earth could this have happened it's been operating for almost 150 years since 1885 and there's never been any incident of this kind before now and presumably there would have been regular safety checks

yes and the company that operates lisbon's buses trams and funiculars has said that the last major general maintenance check was carried out in 2022 they're normally carried out every four years that there was an interim check carried out last year and that there are daily weekly and monthly checks carried out on all of these vehicles these vehicles do have a driver so there would have been someone who was there operating and trying to ensure that everything was working as it should and we don't know what happened to that person or those people because one of the the other vehicle also seems to have had a bit of a problem although it didn't come off the rails but we know that it fell back a meter and a half at least.

So we don't have any news about that, but there's clearly going to be a major investigation into what happened.

The other funiculars in the city have not stopped operating.

So far as we know, at this time of day, they wouldn't be operating anyway.

But as I say, the company that runs them says that the regular checks were being and had been carried out.

Alison Roberts in Lisbon.

Survivors of the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have been holding a rally outside Congress in Washington, calling for more files to be released.

The event was organized by two members of Congress and follows the publication of more than 30,000 files on the case on Tuesday.

Our North America correspondent Neda Tofik reports.

Several of Epstein's victims stood on the Capitol steps with the Democrat Congressman Rohana and the Republican Thomas Massey, demanding transparency, accountability, and action.

The administration has been under pressure to release all of the documents related to Epstein after President Trump promised to do so during his election campaign.

Among the victims that spoke and met with politicians behind closed doors was Marina Lacerda, a previously unidentified victim in the 2019 federal indictment against Epstein.

She spoke publicly for the first time.

The worst part is that the government is still in possession right now

of the documents and information about that could help me remember and get over all of this maybe and help me heal.

They have documents with my name on them that were confiscated from Jeffrey Epstein's house and could help me put the pieces of my own life back together.

But I don't have any of it.

And I know the same is true for many of these women.

Another one of Epstein's accusers, Lisa Phillips, said the victims would begin working together to compile their own list of people involved with the sex offender.

The two congressmen said they are just two signatures shy of the 218 needed to force a vote on their bill, pressing the Justice Department to release all of the files related to Epstein's case and his close circle.

Nedatofik.

China's Victory Day parade on Wednesday to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War was a huge show of military and political might.

President Xi Jinping hosted more than two dozen world leaders, including Russia's President Putin and North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un.

Professor Dao Wei is director of the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Sean Lei asked him what image he thought China was seeking to project.

I think the two images.

The first image is

this event of the parade commemorating the victory of the World War II.

The image is like China is a major player in the World War II and played an important role in World War II.

And also

China is

an important

contributor to the international order established after the World World War II.

The second image is China has a lot of friends and partners all over the world.

You say part of this is reminding people of the role that China has played since the end of the Second World War in supporting the international order that emerged after it.

Yet, some would say that the whole point of that was that it was a rules-based system.

Yet, one of the guests of honor at the parade today was President Putin, who has invaded a neighboring country in defiance of the belief in post-1945 that might should not be right.

Of course, we honor China, honor the international order, sovereign countries, you know, territory integrity.

This is the principle honored in the UN Charter.

China, of course, supports that very much.

So you can say, yes, Russia violated international law by invading another country, but if we are fair enough, let's say many Western countries, particularly the United States, also violates international law, but we still need to work with the United States.

Whether a country violates international law is one thing,

but whether we should work with them,

try to solve the problem.

And also, like President Trump met with Putin in Alaska recently.

So I don't think a lot of people in the West criticize Trump for that.

I suppose the question that is asked by some who were not at the parade and who were not invited to Beijing is whether the fact that the images presented to the world were of Mr.

Xi

flanked by President Putin and Kim Jong-un

and a display of much military might that is not historical from 1945 but is right now of the present, whether that rather undermines the suggestion that China is intending to project to the world an image of peace?

I think, you know, in the West, people always say peace through strength, right?

The United States always say peace through strength.

You need strength to maintain the peace.

China, I mean, at least among the, you know, the major countries in the world, is probably the most peaceful country in the world.

We have not launched any war in the past four decades.

Probably this is the only country.

But some of your neighbors say that China harasses them and uses its

military

to threaten them.

That's how they do it.

But

that's not a war, right?

China has not,

yes.

I don't think it will not be in the future.

So it's not a war.

We do have

territory dispute with others, but we have never used our military forces.

Professor Da Wei,

just one minute of exercise a day could add years to your life.

That was the eye-catching headline in the Times newspaper here in the UK.

It referred to a new study which looked at more than 3,000 Americans with an average age of about 50 who said they didn't go to the gym or do regular exercise, such as running or playing a sport.

So, can this really be true?

Professor Emmanuel Stamatikis is from the University of Sydney and he led the study.

Here we are talking about incidental physical activity.

So strictly speaking, it's not exercise, what most people would understand by exercise.

Most people would understand gyms, running, swimming.

Here, we are talking about incidental physical activity that is done as part of day-to-day routines, daily living.

It doesn't need any time commitment, any special preparations.

You don't need to spend money, you don't need to go to clubs.

It's things we are doing as part of our day-to-day routine, walking up the stairs, for example, instead of using the lifts and carrying shopping and playing with kids, doing gardening, things like that.

I would be very, very keen to reward and rephrase the headline of London Times because I really don't think that the message that one minute of vigorous exercise can sort you out is helpful.

What our findings really reflect is that those people who don't do any structure exercise, they don't go to gyms, they don't go for runs, for those people, those who day in, day out do five, six, seven, eight very short bouts of high-intensity activity that is part of their day-to-day routines, they seem to potentially be getting some significant premature mortality benefit, have lower risk of premature mortality.

So, it's very, very important to pitch this kind of research and these findings right, because this is not about silver bullets of any kind.

People who don't do any incidental activity, to be able to incorporate five or six or seven short bouts between 20 seconds, 30 seconds, up to one minute, it will take a little bit of effort.

Of course, it's a lot more feasible than joining a gym, getting a personal trainer, spending money.

It has a lot of many feasibility advantages.

But behavioral change and habit formation is difficult.

Professor Emmanuel Stamatikis.

Rosemary Conley has been teaching and writing about diet and fitness for more than 50 years.

So what does she think about this latest research?

I'm absolutely behind the professor here.

I think it's wonderful news because for most people, they don't want to join the gym and they don't want to go to a class or whatever and then they feel well I don't do any exercise at all so I'm basically I've written myself off.

What this does is give us hope by going up the stairs and not leaving things at the bottom of the stairs and taking them up when you've got a pile but taking them up every single time is all part of what the professor is suggesting.

And that is exercise ideas that we've been teaching for years and years and years.

And I love the fact that it's now being proven to be of a real benefit to us and similarly if you've got a dog we use those sort of slinger dog ball throwers but chasing after it chasing after the dog chasing after the children anything that makes us a bit out of puff and if we can do that several times a day that has to be good for us because basically it's saying to our heart let's work a bit harder i love the fact it's part of everyday living rosemary conley

Still to come.

Do standing ovations at festivals mean a film will do well at the box office?

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A civilian leader in a rebel-held part of Sudan's Darfur region says 270 bodies have been recovered after a landslide on Sunday buried a mountain village.

The head of the local authority said hundreds of people were thought to be trapped under the debris.

The African Union has called for a truce to allow aid to reach the victims.

The area is under the control of the Darfuri rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Movement, and James Copnell spoke to its leader, Abdel Wahid Mohammed Al-Noor.

In that area, there is a very deep valley, like a rift valley.

And that valley, most of it is lamat,

because it's a volcano area.

People found that place is the safe.

So it became like a village, including a lot of people from different areas.

In Sunday night, because there was very much rain, days and nights, days and nights,

then the disaster happened.

That land a slight.

Do you have any idea how many people were killed?

Till now, people confirmed they're in the ground.

We have a civil authority there, and they estimate above one thousand people are dead, or at least they are under the ground, under the mud.

That is an incredibly high death toll.

And already some people are saying, but no, there couldn't be that many i i in a place of that size.

How do you respond to to that?

As I told you, those places were empty, nearly empty.

Then people went there for their safety.

As Gabalmara, now more than five million people escaped from across the Sudan, Khartoum, Jezira, Kurdufan,

and of course, there are four.

And people came there because we took a neutral position and create our area like a safe haven.

You said that some people might possibly still be alive under the mud.

Is there any way in which rescue operations can take place in the current conditions there?

You know that we call national, international, regional

because we feel at SLM we feel helpless because we don't have any kind of equipment to rescue them.

We are able to create security to people,

but because we run out of food, run out of anything, that is why we continuously calling UN and any humanitarian organization to come.

Humanity has no borders.

This is why we call upon them everywhere, every country, who really believe in human rights, that those people have the right to live.

Abdelwahid Mohammed Al-Nur.

Human rights groups have criticized Burkina Faso's military juncture for a new law banning same-sex relationships and criminalizing homosexuality.

Last year, neighbouring Mali adopted a similar law, joining nearly 30 African nations that forbids same-sex relations.

South Africa remains the only country on the continent to allow same-sex marriage.

Audrey Brown spoke to Larissa Khudue, researcher on LGBT rights in Africa at Human Rights Watch.

The law doesn't only condemn same-sex sexual conduct, but also what they call promotion of homosexuality.

It implies not only advocating for LGBT rights, but also being a person who advocates for human rights for LGBT and also people who speak in favor of the respect of human rights for LGBT people.

So it's broad.

I think it's on purpose that it's that vague, but the consequences are there.

People who are homosexual are leaving the country, they live in fear, they close themselves in their house, they cannot leave their places, and then people who are human rights advocate and who have happened to advocate for respect of human rights for LGBT are also feeling targeted by the law.

What was the law before?

Was there a specific law pertaining to same-sex relationships in Burkina Faso before this?

Not at all.

There was nothing, but it doesn't mean that that was something that was accepted.

But Burkina Faso is one of those countries where people felt a bit more safe because there were no provision of the law condemning same-sex sexual conduct or advocating for LGBT rights.

But it's no more the case and things have been escalating since October 2023.

Before that, there were small events, homophobic speeches and some homophobic attacks, but it was quite isolated.

But we saw that coming.

We saw that increasing.

Why do you think it was the case that it escalated over the last couple of years?

We should point out, of course, that there were two military coups and President Ibrahim Troure came to be the leader of Burkina Faso.

Are those events linked from what you know?

I think when a country is not stable politically, when human rights are not being respected, the most vulnerable, the people who are less protected by the state, are the first ones to bear the consequences of this political instability.

And Ibay Mataré is not known to respect human rights.

And what he cares more about is the image that he's sending to his allies and supporters.

I mean, he's following the global tendency of anti-right policies.

Larissa Kujui, it's 10 years since more than a million people arrived in Europe in what was then the biggest movement of population since the Second World War.

Our special correspondent, Fergil Keen, witnessed the influx in the summer of 2015 and has gone back to retrace the journey into Europe from the Greek island of Lesbos.

This is the story of how Europe has transformed from open arms and solidarity to crackdowns and fences.

It's dusk on Lesbos, and I'm looking across at Turkey.

It's just six miles, just under 10 kilometers across the sea there.

It's quiet now, but it wasn't like that 10 years ago.

Thousands of people arriving every day.

At that time, it was the biggest migration of people since the Second World War.

I was here at this exact spot as people came.

The Greek island finds itself on the front line of the migrant group.

These scenes are repeated day after day, night after night, all along the coast here and on other Greek islands.

Most people made it clear to me that this was just the beginning.

They wanted to get off Lesbos and go north into Europe.

Very soon their problems began.

There was tear gas at the Macedonian border, fences going up in Hungary.

It's a warm sunny morning on the banks of the Danube here in the Hungarian capital, Budapest.

Of all the countries in Europe, Hungary was the first to begin erecting a a fortress against the arrival of migrants.

And I've come here to meet the EU minister, Janos Boca.

When you look, for example, today the British government is discussing legislation about tightening its rules on migration.

You see it all over Europe now.

Do you feel vindicated?

Absolutely.

Not only because most of the country is doing mostly what we have been doing for the past 10 years, but also because of the domestic political situation.

We see that our migration policy has huge public support in Hungary.

We're heading south now out of the capital and toward Szeged, close to the Serbia-Hungary border.

And that's where tens of thousands of people crowded into the railway station back in 2015.

My name is Tima Komáč.

I am a lawyer.

Part of my legal work is working with refugees.

What is the situation like for migrants now in Hungary?

Basically, there is no legal way to enter the Hungarian territory.

No, the whole system has been changed and now basically we can say that there is no Hungarian refugee system.

So that's the legal system.

But if you go down to the border from here, it's about 20 minutes away, it's worth looking at what they're trying to do in pure physical terms.

Both of these gentlemen here are dressed in camouflage and they're standing next to their Jeep.

This is a kind of citizens' patrol, but it's paid for by the state.

They go up and down the border looking for migrants who've managed to get through the fence.

We're going to go with them.

They're loading their shotguns here.

We're right next to the fence, and it's an electric fence.

And there are sensors, there's cameras.

They're telling me that organized crime gangs are still managing to get people through, even if it's much smaller than it was 10 years ago, but it's still happening.

I'm sad, I'm angry, and I'm worried about the future.

For For me, what's been happening for the past ten years is the occupation of Western Europe.

Politicians come and go, they make promises about protecting our borders, but I see that it's not working.

In a way, you sort of expect to hear hard-line positions about migration in Hungary, but the rise in support for far-right politics across Europe tells you that it's much more than a phenomenon in Hungary.

I'm going to Sweden to see the situation there.

Ten Ten years ago, Sweden admitted the most asylum seekers per head of population in Europe.

Today the numbers are among the lowest in the EU.

I'm walking up through a leafy suburb in Karlstad in central Sweden.

And just at the corner, I can see a man waving towards me.

He's somebody I haven't seen in ten years.

How are you?

A long time.

A long time.

Well, last time I saw you, we were in Turkey.

And you were trying to get to Greece to get to Europe.

Now you're here.

Abdul Menem came here with his family to escape war in Syria.

He cleans apartments now.

Getting to Sweden was Abdul Menem's dream, but now a surging far-right blames migrants for rising gang crime.

The government says the issue is more complex.

Abdul Menem blames the politicians.

There are politicians politicians only talking about this, encouraging anti-immigrant sentiment and opposing immigration to the point that they are trying to pass a law to deport people back to their countries.

Back on Lesbos, there are freshly dug graves of asylum seekers in an olive grove that's been made into a cemetery.

They're among the 30,000 who've died trying to reach Europe by different routes in the last decade.

However, the polarized debate on migration develops, the human desperation driving people to risk everything is the enduring and complex reality that won't go away.

Fergel Keen.

Standing ovations are pretty common at film festivals.

This week in Venice, viewers of two films took to their feet for a whopping 15 minutes.

But does it mean those movies will do well at the box office?

Andrew Quither has been finding out.

Let's have a round of applause.

Not for me or even for you.

That applause belongs to The Smashing Machine, starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson, about the MMA fighter Mark Kerr at the peak of his career.

And that was just part of a much longer, 15-minute long audience appreciation at the Venice Festival on Tuesday, one minute more than Dotoro's Frankenstein on Sunday.

Leila Latif is a film critic.

Does she view a standing ovation as a measure of success?

Oh, absolutely not.

It's a sign of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can come from like many different avenues.

Like, you know, someone like The Rock, who's been to these franchises for a long time, I do think the film was very good, but some absolute trash has gotten some long-standing ovations in the past.

I wouldn't view it as a marker of quality.

To be at these festivals is to have big ambitions too.

And with award season just months away, Oscars, Golden Globes, Grammys, and Tony's are all up for grabs.

So does a standing ovation pave the way to award success?

Or is there a longer campaign to build?

When it comes to like Oscar campaigns, I'm just thinking of someone like Brendan Frazier with the whale, who got a very long-standing ovation at Venice as well.

People get very moved by this.

So, you combine into a story almost around it, where it's just like, well, wouldn't it be nice?

And we've just seen him get this beautiful standing ovation and then finally have his wonderful comeback story.

The Oscars are not about what the best film is, they're about what the best Oscar campaign is, in my opinion.

You might be thinking, isn't it a bit awkward standing for 15 minutes clapping your hands?

Well, the journalist and film critic Hafa Salis Ross gives her take on that.

The premiere has a lot of pomp, and it is a lot of studio executives and people involved in the making of that film trying to create a moment for it.

And it has become not necessarily about the film, but about the beginning of awards campaigns at the time, about the perception that they want to create for this film within media.

But when you are in the room, sometimes you do get swept by it, and sometimes you do find the ridiculousness of it.

You might remember I mentioned Totoro's Frankenstein, which now sits in second place for this year's longest applause in Venice at 14 minutes.

So, is any film worth that length of time?

For me to be applauding for 15 minutes, it would take a very rigorous exercise regime.

I do have to agree that Guillermo Dotoro's Frankenstein is just a beautiful, beautiful film.

So, if I was to stand and applaud continuously for a competition film at the Venice Film Festival, it would definitely be for that one.

one.co.uk.

You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.

Just use the hashtag Global Newspod.

This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll.

The producers were Arian Cochi and Judy Frankel.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Valerie Sanderson.

Until next time, bye-bye.

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