Former FBI director James Comey indicted on two criminal charges

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

I'm Alex Ritson, and at 0500 GMT on Friday, the 26th of September, these are our main stories.

The former director of the FBI, James Comey, faces criminal charges amid a push by Donald Trump to prosecute his political foes.

An Oval Office executive order paves the way for U.S.

ownership of the American operations of TikTok.

Scientists say a one-million-year-old skull found in China suggests our species began to emerge 500,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Also in this podcast,

when you come down from Mephedrone, you can't sleep.

You can go for days without eating or sleeping.

Everything feels terrible, and you feel like dying.

Use of the illegal party drug mephadrome soars among young people in Russia.

The former director of the FBI, James Comey, has been in President Trump's sights for some time.

Now, a federal grand jury has indicted Mr.

Comey on charges of making a false statement and obstructing justice.

He could face up to five years in prison if convicted.

The indictment comes days after Mr.

Trump stepped up pressure on the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to be more aggressive in investigating the President's political opponents.

Mr.

Comey has responded to the indictment in a social media post.

I'm not afraid, and I hope you're not either.

I hope instead you are engaged, you are paying attention, and you will vote like your beloved country depends upon it, which it does.

My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I'm innocent.

So let's have a trial and keep the faith.

Our North America correspondent David Willis told me more.

James Comey has been indicted on charges of making false statements to Congress and obstruction of justice.

And it's thought that the charges relate to testimony that he gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee back in 2020, Addressing Republican criticism of the FBI investigation into Russian election interference, James Comey denied authorizing the disclosure of some sensitive information to the media.

And that testimony, it's been claimed, contradicted statements made previously by Mr.

Comey's former deputy.

Now, these are those two indictments represent potentially serious charges.

The perjury charge, Alex, carries the possibility of up to five years in prison on conviction.

But it's worth pointing out, I think, that despite President Trump's zeal in this regard, as far as putting indictments in place against James Comey, officials at the U.S.

Attorney's Office that is handling this case, the Eastern District of Virginia, have viewed targeting James Comey with some skepticism to the extent that the district's top federal prosecutor, a man by the the name of Eric Siebert, resigned last week after expressing doubts about the strength of the case against James Comey.

Because it is fair to say that Donald Trump really doesn't like James Comey.

I think that is very fair to say, Alex, and this is the first time in American history, in fact, that an FBI director has been indicted for a crime.

And it does reflect the animus between James Comey and Donald Trump.

Mr.

Trump sacked James Comey back in 2017, shortly after it was confirmed that the president was under investigation over his election campaign's connections to Russia.

Mr.

Comey subsequently branded Donald Trump morally unfit to hold public office.

Since then, Mr.

Trump has repeatedly called for Mr.

Comey to be investigated and charged, and he repeated that call in a social media post at the weekend, basically calling out the Attorney General Pam Bondi and urging her to get on with prosecuting James Comey.

And today, in a post on his Truth Social social media platform, Donald Trump celebrated the indictments against James Comey, calling it justice in America and adding, one of the worst human beings this country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former corrupt head of the FBI.

David Willis.

The video sharing platform TikTok is highly popular in the US and Donald Trump has credited it with helping him win re-election last year.

He wasn't always in favour of it, warning in 2020 of a national emergency over fears the Chinese-run company could steal data or exert undue influence in the US.

Well, now the President has signed an executive order laying out a proposed deal for a US version of TikTok that would see Chinese ownership reduced to 20% and control put in the hands of US investors.

The move is in response to a law passed last year under Joe Biden that forced TikTok's Chinese owner Bnight Dance to sell its American operations or face a ban in the U.S.

The Vice President J.D.

Vance had this to say at the signing ceremony in the Oval Office.

The fundamental thing that we wanted to accomplish is that we wanted to keep TikTok operating, but we also wanted to make sure that we protected Americans' data privacy as required by law, both because it's the right thing to do, but also because it's a legal requirement of the law law that was passed last year by Congress.

So we think that we are able to do that.

Of course, we're going to keep on working at it, but this deal really does mean that Americans can use TikTok, but actually use it with more confidence than they had in the past because their data is going to be secure and it's not going to be used as a propaganda weapon against our fellow citizens.

President Trump said his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, had signed off on the deal.

I asked our North America technology correspondent, Lily Jamali, in San Francisco, if that meant ByteDance were willing sellers.

Well, the issue with that statement from President Trump is that we haven't heard confirmation from President Xi or any other organs of the government in Beijing confirming what President Trump is saying.

So we don't have confirmation that President Xi has signed off on any deal.

We know that the two presidents spoke on Friday.

The White House had pitched that call to the media as a, you know, final confirmation that was supposed to take place on that call.

That doesn't appear to have happened because subsequent to that, Beijing basically acknowledged that negotiations were ongoing and reminded that any deal would have to comply with market rules in China.

But what we did see today from Trump was an executive order that says the plan he's come up with qualifies as a quote-unquote qualified divestiture, that it constitutes a qualified divestiture, which is therefore going to be compliant with this law that you noted was passed by Congress and signed into law last year.

So do we know more about this list of approved investors in TikTok?

Yeah, so J.D.

Vance, the vice president, said that the full list wouldn't be forthcoming at least for another couple of days, which is curious, you know, given that there is this framing of this event as a deal.

But what we did here were a couple of names that we've heard quite a lot over the last few months.

One is Oracle, the tech giant, which has been overseeing TikTok's data here in the U.S.

for a number of years now.

They will be involved.

Oracle is chaired by Larry Ellison, who, of course, is a close political ally of Donald Trump's.

We also heard Michael Dell's name, the tech entrepreneur, founder of Dell Computers, as well as Rupert Murdoch.

Donald Trump said both of those men are involved.

We don't know the extent of their involvement, but again, J.D.

Van signaling that we'll learn more in the coming days.

Mr.

Trump said the New American owners will control TikTok's algorithm.

What's that going to mean?

So, this is important because that algorithm is part of the reason that Congress wanted to intervene last year.

There was concern that Beijing may have a say in the kinds of content that the TikTok algorithm was pushing to TikTok's 170 million American users.

From what we understand, the plan is to copy that algorithm, inspect it under the auspices of Oracle, retrain it and operate it.

But that's pretty complicated.

From what we heard in some of these court hearings, that algorithm involves millions of lines of code.

So the technical aspects of that remain to be understood.

Lily Jamali in San Francisco.

A gang of cyber criminals who say they've stolen pictures and private details of thousands of children and their families from a British nursery chain are threatening to publish more of the information on the dark net if they're not paid.

The company Kiddo Schools has links with a network of schools in the US, India and China.

Here's our cyber correspondent Joe Tidy.

In a highly unusual move, the hackers have made phone calls directly to parents to try and get them to put pressure on Kiddo's nursery to pay the ransom.

One mother who spoke to the BBC described the call as strange and threatening.

The criminals say English isn't their first language.

They claim to have hired people to make the calls.

It's a sign of the callousness of these criminals, who also told me they don't care about the distress they're causing.

They're now planning to post 30 more profiles of nursery children on their Darknet website unless they get paid.

Kiddos is refusing to speak publicly about the situation, but it's apparently not cooperating with the hackers, who are resorting to increasingly cruel and desperate tricks.

Joe Tidy.

The popularity of a party drug known as mephedrone has soared in Russia.

The United Nations and Russian government say sales and seizures of the drug are up because it's easy to make in improvised labs and sales happen on the dark net.

A new documentary from the World Service shows the devastating effects mephadrone is having on young Russians.

Anastasia Platonova from BBCI Investigations reports.

It's nighttime in Moscow.

A group of teenagers are taking part in what looks like a citywide treasure hunt.

It's called stash hunting.

It's when you go to places where there might be a stash.

18-year-old Olya and her group of friends are searching for stashes of a drug known as a mephadron.

Tiny bags are hidden across the city, under windowsill and loose bricks on the pavement, waiting to be picked.

If you find something, you take it.

You learn where they're hidden.

Olya started using mephadron at 15.

Now she's struggling with addiction.

It's a ruthless drug.

You might think mephadrone is a soft drug.

You go clubbing and have a snort.

But no, you'll go back to the club and get more mephadrone.

Mephedrone is a highly addictive drug.

It's often compared to cocaine, but can be five times cheaper.

If injected or snorted, it can make users feel euphoric, but can also lead to paranoia, depression, and heart problems.

When you come down from Mephedron, you can't sleep.

You can go for days without eating or sleeping.

Everything feels terrible and you feel like dying.

The BBC estimated that 700,000 Mephedron purchases were made in one month in 2024.

According to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, Mephedron now outsells cannabis on Russian darknet markets.

And some of its young consumers go on to become producers.

The first time I went to collect a stash, it was in these woods.

I was terrified.

Maxim, not his real name, began dealing methidrone when he was 15.

My family was having a tough time.

I wanted to earn some money, go to the Maldives.

No one gives you a job at 15, but the lads on the darknet will hire you.

By the age of 17, he began producing the drug using a makeshift lab.

In 2023, Maxim was arrested for dealing and producing drugs.

He told the BBC he'll go fight in Ukraine to avoid prison.

Back in Moscow, Olya is at her friend's house.

Dirty pots and pans clatter a kitchen counter crusted with grime.

On the floor, worn-out mattresses sit against stained walls.

She spent some time in rehab, but she's since relapsed into taking heroin.

This is where you end up: bare walls, a stained mattress, then one syringe between five people.

Authorities in Russia claim to have disrupted over 260 methadron labs in two years.

But with young Russians still falling into the cycle of addiction, the mephedron crisis looks far from over.

Astasia Plata Nova.

Still to come on the Global News Podcast.

To actually put your hand on something and read the notes, it's still the only way.

Braille is the only way to do it.

So it's amazing that he did this and that we still use it.

It's 200 years since Louis Braille invented his tactile reading system for people with sight loss.

But we also find out about his remarkable work that helps blind musicians.

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Now, our understanding of human evolution may have been turned on its head following new analysis of a one million-year-old skull that was unearthed in central China.

It suggests that our species emerged at least half a million years earlier than previously thought, and that we coexisted with two other types of large-brained humans for nearly a million years before they became extinct.

Shi Jianni is one of the researchers at Fudan University in Shanghai.

It's really

exciting because that it totally changed our understanding about human evolution.

From the very beginning, when we got the result,

we thought it's unbelievable.

How could that be so deep?

Our science correspondent, Paula Ghosh, told Will Shawk more about the discovery and its significance.

The scientists involved say that their discovery totally changes our understanding of human evolution.

This is the story.

There was a large-brained human called Homo rectus that existed around a million years ago and it evolved and it was only 600,000 years ago that our species and Neanderthals emerged.

They began to populate the planet and replace erectus.

Now there has been a Chinese skull that dated to a million years that's been around for uh ten years or so and so people automatically assumed that it was that of an erectus, this earlier human.

But what the scientists have done is that they've used clever computer magic to reconstruct the skull because it was crushed and damaged.

So what they did was they scanned it and used graphic software to uncrush it and then analyze its structure.

And they concluded that it wasn't an erectus after all, but a third more advanced species that genetic information tells us we know existed alongside Homo sapiens, our species, and Neanderthals.

What all this means is that if this skull is a million years old, then our kind must also have started emerging not 600,000 years ago, but a million years ago, at least 500,000 years earlier.

So that totally transforms the picture in terms of when our species and Neanderthals and this third species evolved, but also the fact that we coexisted with these species for nearly a million years.

So that's a radical shift in what we used to think.

And what could it change then about how we understand who we are and what we are?

I think what it says is our kind that existed far earlier than we thought before.

So the search will be on to find species of Homo sapiens and indeed Neanderthals that date before 600,000 years.

We thought we began emerging 600,000 years ago because those are the dates of the oldest fossils.

I suppose the other thing is that this interesting thing about coexistence, because there was interbreeding with the latest species.

So rather than being warring factions living alongside other species for maybe a million years, might suggest that, you know, we got on and there might have been exchanges.

So, it does transform what the world might have been like.

I mean, that said, the world was much more sparsely populated, so they might have just avoided each other.

But as I say, there was interbreeding.

I suppose it tells us the story of our evolution and those of our evolutionary brothers, sisters, grandparents is far more fascinating and complicated than we previously thought.

Palab Gauche.

There's growing pressure on the international football organisations FIFA and UEFA to suspend Israeli teams from competitions.

A panel of United Nations advisers has been pushing for the ban after a UN report concluded that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

But the Trump administration has told the BBC it will fight any attempt to stop Israel from competing at next year's World Cup.

Our sports correspondent, Andy Swiss, has the details.

The US State Department say they will work to fully stop stop any effort to ban Israel from the World Cup.

The tournament, which is being co-hosted by the US, is organised by football's world governing body, FIFA.

But the sports European body, UEFA, which organises Israel's qualifying matches for the World Cup, could yet decide to suspend them.

One senior source at a European member association told the BBC there is a new high-level pressure from many nations compared to just a month ago.

The UN experts who are calling for Israel's suspension say that sporting bodies must not turn a blind eye to human rights violations.

There have been a number of protests against Israeli teams in recent weeks.

Last night, there were demonstrations in Greece ahead of Maccabi Tel Aviv's Europa League match there, while earlier this month cycling's Welter España was disrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters.

Andy Swiss.

The men's magazine GQ has crafted what it describes as the ultimate guide to being a well-mannered gentleman in 2025.

They've put together a list based on the challenges of the modern world as well as what they describe as the classic evergreen rules.

It makes for quite a long list, 125 rules that range from take out your AirPods when you're talking to someone to always sneeze as if you're at a library or a funeral.

Adam Baidawi is British GQ's head of editorial content and the publication's deputy global editorial director.

My colleague James Menendez asked him whether his team had had fun compiling the list.

We always do and these sorts of things tend to lead to great big and sprawling arguments, something we take very, very seriously.

But I think we've come together to produce something that really captures and bottles up modern life quite well.

How did you come up with it?

Did you just pool all your ideas?

Listen, we have an incredibly talented global team.

And, you know, the starting point, I think most of us grew up with pretty familiar rules, like

hold the door for the person that's behind you, dress neatly and appropriately, always use your pleases and your thank yous, chew with your mouth shut, very basic.

But I don't think the people who cultivated those rules could imagine that here in 2025 we have to ask people not to film videos in 4K at the gym, or that would be combating all these mass-produced single-use electric vaping machines.

So, you know,

it's a very different world and as such, you need to have very very different and updated rules.

Yes, I mean and that's so true.

The sort of notions around our personal space have changed so much.

I mean just the first one and to be honest I hadn't even sort of twigged till the other day when I saw someone doing this that lots of people don't take out their headphones when they're having a conversation with someone, even if they're not you know actually listening to something.

I mean you don't you you don't really know.

And I thought I mean that that to me struck me as a little bit rude.

It's quite unsettling isn't it?

I mean it kind of reminds me of when you're speaking speaking to someone who keeps their sunglasses on.

I'm like, okay, I know ostensibly you're looking at me, but are you really?

Are you really listening to me?

You know, it's quite unsettling.

This one, number six.

Now, this is about, you know,

one's always trying to think of gifts to buy, you know, particularly if you're going around to dinner or you want to say thank you.

And you're saying, look, just find something that's associated with you and buy lots of them.

Which, I mean, I guess seems convenient, but I mean, there is a potential, especially if you have sort of, you know, crossovers in your social circle, that you might well get caught out out when they go, they see exactly the same gift they received a couple of weeks before.

You know,

I understand that perspective, but I think to become known as giving this signature gift is quite a cool move.

I once knew a bloke that he gave away the same book to everyone.

He's like, this book really meant a lot to him.

He's like, you know what, I gift this to everyone that I meet.

Taking your shoes off on an overnight flight and then sort of walking around without socks.

I mean, that's just

revolting, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, there are a few things that should be quite obvious on this list.

I think we need to have a long and extended conversation also about phone speaker use in public and just the use of phones in cinemas.

You'll see there's a disproportionate number of things on this list created by our Global Team that relates to technology use, which I think is only too right.

Adam Baidawi from GQ magazine.

It's 200 years since the Frenchman Louis Braille invented his tactile reading system to allow blind and partially sighted people to read and write.

Louis Braille was also a musician.

He played the organ, and a few years later, he developed a system of musical notation to allow people to read music.

Matthew Wadsworth is a musician who taught himself to read musical Braille while at school and has just made a documentary about Louis Braille.

He's been telling Jane Hill all about it.

Before we went to Paris, the only thing I knew about Louis Braille was that he was French and he invented braille.

I didn't even know that he'd invented braille music.

So, to actually go to his home in Coufray, 30 miles outside of Paris, you know, stand in the living room where he was born, go to the workshop where he had an accident when he was three with a sharp tool for making saddles.

His father was a saddle maker and lost his sight that way.

He went to the local primary school, even though he was blind.

And then he went to the National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris when he was 10.

You're here today because we're reflecting on 200 years since Louis Braille invented that remarkable way of reading a system of raised dots.

You must correct me if I get my terminology wrong.

But the point is that Louis Braille was a musician himself, and so he went on to develop musical Braille.

Now, forgive me, is it possible to describe how the musical Braille actually works?

Are we talking, for example, about someone reading it with one hand and then playing an instrument with another?

Because some instruments need two hands.

So how does that work?

Yes, so that is a great question.

So Braille music is written, it is a linear system going left to right.

The notes and the rhythm are represented in one character.

And then the pitch, whether it is which octave that note is in, is placed before the note, along with dynamic markings.

But you are absolutely right, that you have to take a finger and read left to right, and then you go to the instrument and play, and you basically do it bar by bar.

So, I'll give you an example.

So, I'll read along, and then I'll go

and then you go back to the page, and you read the next bar, and you'll go.

and then when you've done that you put the two things together

and then you continue that process.

It's almost the opposite way a sighted person might play a piece through lots of times and end up memorizing it but if you are learning from Braille you've got to memorize the piece before you can play it from beginning to end.

Nowadays we have the ability to take an electronic score from a notation program

and

export that file into Music XML.

And then you can now

turn Music XML electronic format into Braille at kind of the touch of a button.

So it is, I'd say that it's kind of leveled the playing field in terms of accessibility and it's something that's being worked on all the time.

So there's great innovation still happening with access to Braille music.

Matthew Wadsworth.

And if you're wondering what instrument he was playing, it was a type of lute called a theorbo.

And that's all from us for now.

But there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.

If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

You can also find us on X at BBC World Service use the hashtag globalnewspod.

This edition was produced by Rebecca Wood and Stephen Jensen.

It was mixed by Darcy O'Brie, and the editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Alex Ritzen.

Until next time, goodbye.

Com.