France rocked by student protests

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1:02Or wherever you get your pods. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Charlotte Gallagher. And in the early hours of Friday, the second of October, these are our main stories. French police have arrested almost 2,000 people drawing violent student protests that have spread across the country. The family of Renee Good, who was shot by a US immigration agent in Minneapolis, is suing the Trump administration. The American death row inmate, Christopher Pike, is reported to be receiving life-saving medical care after surviving a botched execution. Also in this podcast, Vladimir Putin repeats his warning that Russia is prepared to use nuclear weapons if it finds itself at war with Europe. And I'm glad that our show sort of helped him stay calm. And if anything, not make the situation worse.

2:05Delighted that we played a very, very small role in this event. The makers of an air disaster TV show respond after a fly-do by passenger said the program taught him how to stop the plane from crashing. For more than a week now, pupils across France have been protesting outside secondary schools. About an education system, they say, is failing them. Fulham! Hattie team! They're frustrated about a shortage of teachers, overcrowded classrooms and rundown buildings. But on Thursday, demonstrations took a more violent turn with clashes between police and protesters at schools across the country. Almost 2,000 people were arrested and 300 police officers injured. At least two high schools were set on fire and one reported that a head teacher was doused in petrol.

3:06The government has accused hard-leaf politicians of encouraging the unrest to create tension ahead of next year's presidential elections. But students see it very differently. The buildings are like falling apart. There's no nurse, there's no tipper. We need money. This is also with the rise of the far right and the election, which are coming soon. And if we cannot vote, the only way to make everybody hear us is to do this. We heard more about how the demonstrations of escalated from Lisa Louie, a freelance journalist in Paris. They started off as mostly very peaceful protests. And then police were deployed and then clashes happened across France. Hundreds of schools are now hit by these blockades or demonstrations. And then the protests would get quite violent in certain areas. I was at one school where there's a blockade going on just north of Paris in Anya Sorsen,

4:15a secondary school. And the pupils there were telling me that they were sitting basically peacefully in front of their school. And then the police arrived and used tear gas and arrested one pupil there. So, you know, it's very difficult to figure out what happened exactly where. But it seems like clashes are now multiplying. And when you look at the pictures that are being broadcast on TV here in France today, there is lots of fire, you know, burning waste bins across France, clashes between protesters and the police and their protests really seem to get more violent. A far left party France unbode under Jean-Ledmoulin Shaw, they've been showing pictures on themselves with the students in front of the secondary school, saying basically they need to defend and fight for their rights. And the police should be nonviolence towards them. And then we heard also Buddy Bugger, a Yorker who's the mayor of Sunderny, one of the Paris suburbs.

5:16He was saying basically in certain cases, violence was justified. And that really caused an uproar throughout the political class. Other politicians then came out and said, you know, no violence is not justified in any case. And LFE, the France unbode, you had to backpale. Lisa Leuys in Paris. When René Good was killed in January by an ICE agent in the city of Minneapolis, it sparked protests across the United States. A video showed the officer firing several shots into her car. An action the agency later claimed was in self-defense. It led to calls for the Trump administration to rein in ICE agents deployed in cities around the country. Now René Good's family are launching legal proceedings against the government and the agent responsible for her death. The family's lawyer told a news conference, our government has become a grave and mortal threat to its own citizens. René Good's brother Brent Ganger spoke to journalists.

6:17What happened to René was completely senseless. And the fact that there's been no accountability, no investigation, no expression of condolence, no change in policy, is completely mind-blowing. What happened to America? Something must change now. Our correspondent Tom Bateman has been telling us more. These are civil lawsuits that have been brought by the family of René Good. These are civil cases, so they're not criminal cases. One of the things that came out of the press conference that was held by the lawyers, was their complaint really was because these are federal agencies. It's a lot harder than if it were state or local law enforcement to lodge these kind of complaints. But they have done so and there are two civil lawsuits, the first of which asserts wrongful death through its as battery, assault, false imprisonment, intention, inflection of emotional distress and negligence. And then there is a second lawsuit which alleges a conspiracy to interfere with civil rights. And what the lawyers have said here basically is they argue that the federal government,

7:21the Trump administration and these agencies, including the agent who shot René Good, were involved in effect in a conspiracy to try to suppress the rights both of Hispanic and Somali communities that were being rounded up. But also they said to silence those who were trying to protest against it. So it's a pretty broad ranging kind of a lawsuit. I mean, this second one, names Christy Noll, who was the Homeland Security Secretary at the time. It names Stephen Miller, President Trump's deputy chief of staff. It names Jonathan Ross, the agent involved in this. So, you know, this is a pretty broad attempt to try to bring damages. The Trump administration has responded to that and said it will vigorously defend what it says are baseless civil lawsuits. It then goes on to give a comment from President Trump himself, quote saying that he believed that René Good was a very solid, wonderful person under normal circumstances, but says her actions were pretty tough. When you look at the way, the car pulled away,

8:21there are a couple of versions of the tape that are very, very bad. So it seems the administration very much sticking to its position that it believes that she was a threat to the agent involved. Tom Bateman. In a grim irony, it's understood Christophe Pike, the American death row inmate who survived two lethal injections, is now receiving life-saving medical care. It's still not clear what led to her botched execution. The mother of Pike's victim, Colleen Slemer, described it as a mess. Prison officials say they followed protocol, but the governor of Tennessee, Bill Lee, has temporarily halted all executions and ordered an investigation. And the people of Tennessee have determined that capital punishment is the appropriate sentence for the most heinous of crimes. The people of Tennessee expected those sentences will be carried out in a manner that's not only legal and constitutional, but effective, and that didn't happen.

9:22Pike's lawyers have called for her death sentence to be commuted. Randy Spivey said they'd previously argued her small veins and blood disorder would cause unnecessary suffering. Last night was not just inefficient. It was cruel and it was torturous. It was also predictable. Christophe Lee Goldstein told the state of Tennessee in the courts that her medical conditions would cause her to suffer an agonizing death. The state and the court dismiss Christophe's concerns. After having endured solitary confinement for more than 20 years and a full attempt to kill her by lethal injection, Christophe has endured punishment greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty. Christophe is now in hospital. Our correspondent, Aini Wells, has been telling us more. The last that we heard from her lawyer was that she was in a critical condition and that they didn't know how much damage or not had been done to her brain. But her medical information is all confidential. So we don't even know the definite which hospital she is being treated at.

10:27They were also unclear whether or not she'll actually remember if she comes around what happened. And that is still a hugely open question because witnesses who were at that attempted execution recall this moment where the curtain across it was closed for about 20 to 30 minutes and then an ambulance arrived. And no one knows what exactly went wrong. If she received any kind of care at the scene before she was rushed to hospital, there are various theories as to why it didn't work. And one of them is that perhaps the drug was degraded, was perhaps out of date. Although this is all unconfirmed, this is all being investigated at the moment. Another is that the drip which was feeding the drug to her wasn't attached to her vein properly. Another is simply that she didn't receive enough of the drug in her bloodstream to trigger a cardiac arrest. Another theory is that simply people's bodies do react differently to drug overdoses. Some people survive different levels of drugs to others. And there have been cases before or any where the state has tried to execute

11:29someone. It hasn't worked. They've recovered. But then they've been put to death. Yeah, that's right. This isn't the first botched execution that's taking place in Tennessee. And that's being hugely contentious here. People are frustrated that this has happened again. It isn't clear at this stage what the next steps for her will be if she survives this and there is still an if about that. We don't know if the state would try to execute her again. At the moment, all we know is that the governor's called off all executions for the rest of the year. So it's unlikely that if she were to face it again in future, it would happen anytime soon. I knew well in Nashville more prisoners are executed in the US than any other country in the Western world. BBC verifies Jake Horton has been looking into the figures. The death penalty is legally enforced in about half of US states. It's something the president Trump has repeatedly advocated. On the first day of his return to office, he signed an order reinstating it for severe federal crimes.

12:29And last year, the number of executions in the US almost doubled from the year before. There were 47 in total according to Amnesty International, which says only China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen executed more people in 2025. Lithuania injection is the most common method in the US, followed by electrocution, but firing squads have also been used in recent years. South Carolina executed free people using that method last year. Using poisonous gas like cyanide is also permitted in several states, but it hasn't been used for decades. So far this year, there have been 29 executions, mostly using a lethal injection as was attempted with pike. There aren't exact figures for how many attempts fail, but there have been a number of other occasions in recent years. Jake Horton, we've already got a vaccine, which can prevent cancers caused by the HPV infection. And this summer, a trial of a vaccine given in combination with another drug was said to stop skin cancer returning in patients. Now clinical trial is being launched in the UK for a vaccine to protect

13:32against a type of lung cancer, which kills tens of thousands of people every year. Oxford University oncologist, Professor Sarah Blackdon, founded the project, which has led to the trial. She's been speaking to Sarah Montague. We know that there are studies ongoing looking at vaccines to treat cancer and some of these have had really positive results. What we feel is that actually if you get in earlier, before the cancer becomes established, a vaccine probably has more likelihood of working. People will be familiar with the HPV vaccine, which is already widely used and has been phenomenally successful. Absolutely. I mean, we're really seeing for once that a cancer might be completely eradicated, which is so exciting. And what that vaccine does is it basically prevents people from getting HPV, which is the virus that causes cervical and other cancers actually as well. But unfortunately, not all cancers are actually sparked by a virus.

14:35So we have to have a different approach. And that is to really understand the early changes that happen in cells before they become a full-blown cancer and whether we can vaccinate against those early changes. And that's really the principle that we've been operating with in Oxford. Without somebody actually getting the cancer, how can you know that they're the ones that should have the vaccine? That's the million dollar question. If you go into a high risk group, you know that they have a high chance. So you're already looking at a high risk population. You can statistically design a study that if you don't see cancers in those high risk groups, then there's a high chance the vaccine is working. And for lungs, that would be smokers. Yes. So for example, in the lung vac study, we're looking at people who've had a small lung cancer resected. We know they're at risk of new cancers as well as recurrent disease. So that's a good population to test in because their risk is quite high. But you know, there are other high risk individuals. So the other cohorts of people that will be going into the study are high risk ex-smokers who are already in lung cancer screening.

15:37So we know already that their risk is more than the normal population. And ultimately might there be a way of reaching other types of cancers that affect other parts of the body where you can target pre-cancerous cells? Definitely. We have a project that's being led by Professor David Church, which is looking at preventing colorectal and endometrial cancer in people who have linch syndrome. We have a project looking at protecting women who carry the bracker gene mutation from getting ovarian cancer and breast cancer. We're also looking at a vaccine with a sort of more broad effect against colorectal cancer. So we have a pipeline of vaccines and we want to bring in, you know, more cancer types as we go because we've starting to see sort of general principles can be applied across all of the studies that we're designing. Professor Sarah Blackdon. Still to come in this podcast. Is it the end of Ronaldo's international career as he walks out of the Portugal camp?

16:37I don't think that any Portuguese fan is on Ronaldo's side by now because the feeling we have here in Portugal is that the captain left the ship. Is Facebook dying? I'm Tristan Redmond, host of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. More than 15 years after the social network, a new movie on the inner workings of Facebook hits cinemas in October. The journalist who's reporting inspired the film tells us why Facebook stopped being cool and whether matter its parent company can reinvent itself. For more, listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your pods. This is the Global News podcast. New York's Attorney General, Titia James has been appointed special prosecutor in the investigation of the alleged gang rape at Cornell University.

17:38A former student filed a civil lawsuit two weeks ago saying several members of a fraternity drugged and assaulted her in 2024. The men deny any wrongdoing. The case has sparked national outrage and raised questions about how the university and law enforcement initially responded to it. Our correspondent, Nettao Fiek told us there's a dark cloud hanging over the Ivy League campus. I've just been inside a public hearing being held here on Cornell's campus for students to speak openly about how they feel, about the alleged gang rape that happened here in 2024. A portion of it was open to the media and a few people who spoke described feeling ashamed by what happened here at their university, saying the greatest failure was not protecting Jane Doe. One woman said she was a freshman when this all happened and she cried then and she says she is devastated and continues to cry with this message that she wants Cornell to value safety of students over reputation. There was even a woman who said that she faced her own sexual assault

18:41and investigation by Cornell University. She said the biggest factor in healing for victims is feeling there is a broader support network there but that the university failed her and Jane Doe. And there was a mother, 50-year-old mother who said that she was dealing with rape culture on college campuses when she was younger and can't believe that this is still an issue that society is grappling with. But then there was a portion that went off record for this meeting and most of those students expressed feeling disgusted, appalled and disappointed with Cornell. So emotions running incredibly high throughout this hearing and Cornell University has said that they support presenting a criminal case to a grand jury but they have rejected any claims that they failed to punish those involved severely enough or that anyone got away with just writing an essay but they have also agreed to have their whole process essentially reviewed independently by an investigation.

19:44Nettafi, Russia's president Vladimir Putin has warned his country will use any weapons in its arsenal if it found itself at war with Europe adding no one at present has the kind of strike means that Russia has. He made the comments during a wide-ranging speech in Moscow on Thursday where he also ruled out a long-range strike ceasefire with Ukraine at a time when Russia has intensified its attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure. Kiev has called it a deliberate campaign designed to cripple the power grid before winter. Our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg has this assessment of the Russian president's words. In the closed world of Russian politics, it's not always clear what the Kremlin is thinking, what it's planning will Vladimir Putin escalate in Ukraine. How will the Kremlin react to growing tensions with Europe? What clues can we find to what comes next? Some clues here at a foreign policy forum in Moscow.

20:48From President Putin, no suggestion is about to end the war and a message to European states who are supplying weapons to Ukraine. I am not saying that we intend to launch strikes tomorrow against the territory or the facilities of countries supplying weapons to Ukraine. However, it is a threat that we must clearly understand, assess, and keep in mind that Russia's armed forces and military intelligence must understand where the threats are coming from. Western officials accuse Russia of waging a hidden war against Europe through acts of sabotage and violations of airspace. So what other clues did we pick up from Putin at this event? Well, the Kremlin leader looked relaxed, looked confident, despite the fact that his so-called special military operation in Ukraine hasn't got a tool to plan. He also said he was ready for talks,

21:50but those had to be based on Russia's national interest and that suggests that Russia's position remains the same, that any peace settlement should be on Russia's terms. Foreign policy hawk Sergei Karaganov was at the forum. He says Russia should be prepared to launch a preemptive strike on Europe because of its support for Ukraine. The first series of blows will be conventional, but if there are Europe does not surrender, then unfortunately we'll have to go nuclear. But if Russia goes nuclear, then there'll be a response from Europe and nothing will be left of Russia. No, there'll be no response from Europe. Do you agree, though, that the last four and a half years of this so-called special military operation have been pretty disastrous for Russia? We lost a lot of people, yes. And I criticize my government for not being rough enough. But now we are getting rough enough in Ukraine.

22:54Another sign that for now, Russia feels no compulsion to end hostilities. From here, peace still feels a long way off. Steve Rosenberg. In our previous episode of the podcast, you will have heard of the apparent attempt by a copilot to crash a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv. The suspect has been questioned in Saudi Arabia where the plane diverted after passengers managed to subdue the alleged attack in the cockpit. One of the many surprising details about the incident is how one of the passengers, Yaneev Heyun, then managed to stabilize the plane. He was asked on TV by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu how he knew what to do. A corp? You can hear a surprise Netanyahu there asked him about pulling the controls backward, to which Heyun replies, I watch air crash investigation.

23:54Heyun has been hailed as a hero, and was praised by the US President Donald Trump. This plumber never having flown a plane had the sense to live to stick. And you know, it's not like planes are different today. You just have a little cereal. Well, today they fly differently. And when I asked why he did that, he said, he watches that show, air disasters. You know the show is that crazy. I never want to watch it because I watch it. I don't like watching it because bad things happen. But he said he watches it a lot. And he learned from watching that show. Well, Alex Bistram is executive producer of the long-running Canadian Dr. Drama Air Crash Investigation. So what did he make of the name check of his series? Obviously it's great to be recognized and acknowledged that way. And I'm glad that our show sort of helped him stay calm.

24:56And if anything, not make the situation worse, our show is focused on aviation safety and every episode provides lessons on how aviation can be made safer. So look, delighted that we played a very, very small role in this event, but I don't for a minute think that we affected the outcome. That's entirely in the hands of the captain of this light who really took unbelievable superhuman action to save the lives of everybody on board. This guy, look, he took the action of going towards the cockpit, which isn't something he learned on our show. And no, I don't remember doing any episodes where passengers are called upon to help pull the plane out of an absolutely staggering dive like this. Alex Bistram, executive producer of Air Crash Investigation. He's the most famous Portuguese footballer of all time and one of the biggest names in sport. But uncertainty surrounds the future of Cristiano Ronaldo.

25:58After he left the Portuguese national team's training camp on Wednesday, the five time Ballon door winner was an unused substitute in their two one win over Norway in the nation's league on Sunday. In a social media post, Ronaldo has promised to reveal the truth about his reason for leaving. But it's like speculation that the 41-year-old could retire from international football. Portuguese football journalist Duarte Montaeru has been following the story. Over the last five, 10 years, Cristiano Ronaldo gained a lot of power inside of the Portuguese football federation. And I think right now, we are facing a situation where political decisions, financial decisions are in play more than necessarily technical aspects of the game. And this is not new. If we go back to 2010, there was the very first moment when Cristiano Ronaldo played his power over a national coach. There was a rift between Keroz and Ronaldo. If we go a little bit further in time,

27:00there was a problem with Paul Vien to the national coach. And after 2022, the World Cup, Fernand Sánchez, who won the euros with Portugal, had to leave his position because he put Ronaldo on the bench. And this is the outcoming of someone who clearly didn't accept that he's 41. That his role as a player is not the same as he was 10 years ago. And the decision Ronaldo made by leaving the camp, I think he lost the last ones who stand with him in all of this. And by now, I don't think that any Portuguese fan is on Ronaldo's side by now, because the feeling we have here in Portugal is that the captain left the ship. And in the absence of Ronaldo, Portugal beat Denmark 42 in their latest nation's league match on Thursday. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.

28:02Use the hashtag global news pod. This edition of the global news podcast was mixed by Rebecca Miller and the producers were Stephanie Zakerson and Chantelle Hartle. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Charlotte Gallagher. Until next time, goodbye.