Hero pilot tells India PM Narendra Modi about alleged hijack and other stories | Global News Podcast

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. Here's what's coming up. The Indian pilot hailed a hero for stopping an alleged hijacking tells his story to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. I felt like a flight was going down and I knew for sure that this would be the last push. President Trump miles banning diesel exports and is urging Europe to release its reserves. Kenyan politicians court Gen Z voters. It's too soon to say whether Edwin Sapuna might shape the outcome but he does carry the energy of the youth movement and that means he's given momentum to a new generation demanding change. And French students clash with police in protests over school conditions. They've been throwing shoes and rocks and the police have now responded with quite potent tear gas. I was not going to let others die. The words of Captain Smith Machar from India who was the pilot of the Fly Dubai plane which plunged more than 5,000 metres during an attempted hijacking. He was stabbed in the cockpit on Wednesday morning by his co-pilot reportedly for Oman. The plane was going from Dubai to Tel Aviv with Captain Machar managing to open the cockpit door so that passengers could overpower his attacker and save more than 170 people on board, most of them Israeli. The captain has been speaking to the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a video call from his hospital bed. I had suffered so many injuries that I had fallen down and at that time I said to myself that if I did not get up and say I have been flying planes for 17 years I have been a captain for the last 11 years I can tell what is happening to the plane even with my eyes closed. When I was down on the ground I felt like a flight was going down and I knew for sure that this would be the last push. Just do it, the door is right there and even then I was still being beaten. I just opened it sir and everyone else came in and everyone else had an equally important role in it but consciously sir I was saying that I was doing it for my own survival but at the same time I also knew that I could not let them all die. Meanwhile investigators have been looking into the alleged hijacking. Earlier I heard the details from our Middle East correspondent Yolande Nell in Jerusalem. The Emiratis lead the investigation. This was their plane that was involved and we're told that the co-pilot who was arrested when the plane landed in Saudi Arabia was taken back to the United Arab Emirates. The chief prosecutor there said to be looking into whether this was indeed a terrorist attack, whether this man was acting alone. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come out saying that this was Islamist radical indoctrination that the man had been through and said that he was clearly suicidal from what was being said on board. We know that the Israeli security agencies have been speaking to the passengers who are on board the plane collecting their testimony and that Israel is participating in this investigation. President Trump also was asked about this by journalists what was going on and he said if Iran was found to be involved then it would be hit hard. Across France violent clashes between protesters and police are continuing sparked by a wave of student demonstrations against conditions in schools. The education minister says more than 100 schools have suffered severe damage since the unrest began last week. Authorities have arrested nearly 2,000 people with the majority still in police custody. As of Friday more than 400 schools remain closed due to the ongoing disruptions. Our correspondent James Waterhouse filed this report from the streets of Paris. You can turn a corner in central Paris and find yourself in the the bottleneck of what is this demonstration. Students are staring down riot police, they've been throwing shoes and rocks and the police have now responded with quite potent tear gas. These demonstrations are only building in momentum. At the heart of them is a legitimate political debate. You know students are saying our classrooms are in disrepair, there aren't enough teachers, there's also there's that excitement I mentioned. At the heart of it you know students feel that some of their schools are lacking in funding and also there's a political homelessness that many people of this generation, Gen Z, feel. They don't feel represented. Even though ministers admit there are mistakes there is a real danger now. I mean the government's saying legitimate demonstrators are quickly being drowned out by those who want to turn out. And that's in danger of happening. Things are in danger of spiralling right across France as hundreds more colleges are closed. Kenya could be at a crossroads as its young population challenged the political structures which have governed the country for decades. With 75 percent of Kenya's population under the age of 35 they have the numbers to make a difference. But can they really challenge the embattled president William Ruto? Barbara Platt, our show reports. The rallying cry here is no. No they say to poverty, no to corruption, no to the governing party. Led by a senator Edwin Safuna who's captured the attention of Kenya's youth. A digitally savvy generation, Gen Z, determined to challenge the old guard. Angry with political leaders they say do not offer them a future. Many young people didn't bother to vote last time. Now they're courted by the opposition. It's very early days yet in the run-up to the election so it's too soon to say whether Edwin Safuna might shape the outcome. But he does carry the energy of the youth movement and that means he's given momentum to a new generation demanding change. Two years ago that energy had a very different feel. Gen Z protesters stormed parliament to stop a controversial tax bill. They were crushed by a police crackdown that killed and injured dozens. But Kenya's youth have found another way to press for change. A trendy social media campaign hopes to instead harness that momentum at the polls. These were people who'd actually come out to register that day. Ademba Allens is behind the drive urging youth to register. There has never been a case where there is a block that is not affiliated to any person or any party. They just want to vote in the right leaders and this is what we created. It's more of a swing vote. The party of President William Ruto is doing badly in the polls but it is fighting back, also making a pitch to Gen Z. The party's youth leader insists the president is already delivering for young people. The president is a listening president and he's been able to now come down to the youth, listen to them, get what their concerns are, give them jobs and that has absolutely, even for the party, given us a head start. Some are willing to give the governing party another chance. The government is really doing well about the youth. They are really concerned about the youth, yeah, and we hope there will be changes. Less than a year to Kenya's election, it feels like politics might be changing but nobody yet knows what the energy of Gen Z voters could mean at the ballot box. Still to come, why South Korea has fallen in love with a stranded shark. Forget about K-pop in this world right now. So the latest sensation in South Korea is not BTS, it's actually a shark. With problems over the supply of diesel because of the wars in Iran and Ukraine and prices soaring as a consequence, the US is looking for other means of increasing supplies. Washington is considering banning diesel exports and it wants European countries to start using their reserves. Now, while it's rejected the threat to ban diesel exports, the European Union says it's ready for collective action with the International Energy Agency on the stocks of fuel. I heard more from our business reporter in Singapore, Achana Shukla. The United States wants European countries to open up their diesel stockpiles, release them in the market to increase supplies, global supplies, and bring down rising diesel prices which we've seen have hovered to record highs in the recent days. And we know that, you know, the European Commission has said that the UK has also spoken with some of the member countries in the European Union about the situation, about releasing stockpiles and discussing scenarios. This also comes at the backdrop of the threat from President Trump that he may look at stopping exports of US diesel, which has somewhere in the recent past become a supplier of last resort for this refined product, very crucial for transport, farming equipments and even for industries. Yeah, I mean, how dangerous a moment is this? Well, it is crucial because, you know, prices have gone up substantially. In the US, diesel prices have gone up by 70% since the beginning of the Iran war, and it is becoming a major political concern and a talk point ahead of the midterm elections. And that is something where President Trump may want some actions happening and be seen as doing something around that. Global supplies are squeezed. We know the state of Hormuz, while the supplies through the state of Hormuz has improved in the recent past, but it hasn't gone back up to the previous levels. There have been Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries that has also squeezed supplies. And recently, even China has said that they would be looking at their domestic market and reducing exports of diesel. And that definitely is squeezing global supplies. For UK and the European Union, it is an even more, you know, graver situation because both these, you know, regions depend heavily on the United States for import of diesel. About a third for Britain, and about half of what the European Union needs in terms of diesel requirement comes from the US. So there is definitely a lot of deliberations to deal with prices, you know, supply in the market and for the prices to come down. A US congressman has criticised the decision by the US coffee company Starbucks to open two branches in the Chinese region of Xinjiang. China has been accused of human rights abuses. John Moolenaar, chairman of the Select Committee on China in the House of Representatives, said an American company should not be doing business in Xinjiang. Over the last 10 years, it's thought hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim Uyghurs have been put into re-education camps, been imprisoned or have been subject to forced labour. The UN Human Rights Office previously said China's actions in Xinjiang could amount to crimes against humanity. BBC's Mickey Bristow, who spent many years reporting on China, told me more about why the decision to open these coffee shops is so controversial. Firstly, it's who's involved. Starbucks, big American company. They were one of the first American firms to open up in China. 1999 was the first time they had a coffee shop. They even had one in the Forbidden City in Beijing. I've been in it myself. And so they seem to encapsulate the sort of American's acceptance of China on the international world stage, really. That was a time China joined the World Trade Organization. And secondly, it's taking part of these shops have been opening in Xinjiang, a really contentious region. For the last few decades, China has been accused of carrying out human rights abuses there, particularly 10 years ago, when hundreds of thousands of people were put in re-education camps. This is ethnic minorities, mostly Muslim Uyghurs who live in Xinjiang. The Chinese authorities were accused of engaging in forced labour, separating parents from their children, putting them in orphanages. So a whole raft of abuses, which the human rights, the UN Human Rights Council said could amount to human rights, serious human rights, crimes against humanity. And so that's really why this has been such a serious incident. What's China saying about this? Well, China says all along, essentially it's trying to fight religious extremism, separatism and terrorism in Xinjiang. That's always been its justification. On this particular issue, it says that essentially the criticism is just naked lies. That you look at Xinjiang now, there's stability, economic growth, racial harmony, unity among ethnic groups. They say everything's fine. Interestingly, human rights groups say, well, that's because of repression. Everything seems fine because nobody's allowed to do anything. And Starbucks, by going to Xinjiang, opening two coffee shops, one in the airport in Urumqi, the capital, the other one in Urumqi's Grand Bazaar, essentially what Starbucks is doing is endorsing that repression. And that's what they say. But what is the situation like in Xinjiang now? Well, about six years ago, Xinjiang was in the world news for a good few years, essentially because of that re-education camps that China opened that I mentioned, people put into them without doing any crime, essentially being sent there just to be better Chinese citizens. A lot of those closed and so the events in Xinjiang have fallen off the international agenda to a certain extent. But there's a lot of surveillance, restrictions on religious freedom, restrictions on what Uyghurs can do there, just like there always has been and just like there is to a certain extent in the rest of China. So life is certainly hard. They face a lot of repression in Xinjiang. So that's not really changed. A fresh attempt to free a large shark trapped in a canal in the South Korean city of Busan has been halted after problems with the net being used to guide the fish. Rescuers were attempting to gently steer the creature towards the sea before the net got caught on the bottom of the waterway. The three and a half metre long shark, nicknamed Bukangi, has attracted hundreds of thousands of curious spectators as we heard from the BBC's Sophie Jung. Forget about K-pop in this world right now. So the latest sensation in South Korea is not BTS. It's actually a shark. So this three and a half metre shark got stuck in a canal two weeks ago in the port city of Busan in this tiny waterway. So it got stuck in what's called North Port in Busan. So in Korean, that's Bukang. So that's where it got its nickname, Bukangi, from. So experts believe it is a type of a copper shark and it got stuck while chasing its prey into the waterway and couldn't find its exit and ended up being stuck there for two weeks. So the shark has gathered national attention. So over 600,000 people have flocked to see the shark along the waterfront park and it has gained attention of the city as well. The city has named the shark an honorary ambassador for the city saying that the online poll actually showed strong support for this idea and it's helping the local businesses as well. They have seen a huge boom in customers and sales and just to show you how far that has gone, there's a meme coin launched after Bukangi online. Now you can trade those as well. So what started initially as a, you know, just a wildlife incident has turned Bukangi into a national celebrity in South Korea. And that's all for this edition of the Global News Podcast. If you'd like to get in touch, our contact details are below. Until next time, goodbye.