Chris Ewokor
Appearances
Global News Podcast
Trump's threats to seize Greenland and Panama Canal
It is an extraordinary shift, a sea change almost, in what we're hearing from Meta. We're all familiar with tech companies telling us about all they do to fight things like misinformation. Now, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook, Threads, is saying... fact-checking has gone too far. There's been mission creep and it's resulted in censorship.
Global News Podcast
Trump's threats to seize Greenland and Panama Canal
He says it's time for the company to get back to its roots in free speech. Now, it's no coincidence that this is being said at the dawn of a second Trump presidency because there has been a narrative on the right that efforts to fight misinformation have effectively resulted in the censorship of right-wing voices. What we're seeing here is, in a sense, a sort of an adjustment.
Global News Podcast
Trump's threats to seize Greenland and Panama Canal
Mark Zuckerberg may well believe that there's too much censorship, but at the same time, it doesn't hurt now that he is looking at working with President Trump and Elon Musk, who described himself as a free speech absolutist, of course.
Global News Podcast
Trump's threats to seize Greenland and Panama Canal
Yes, and this is the system that effectively works on X. It's called community notes, and as you say, it is users adding notes to posts that they believe are erroneous. Of course, many people would argue it doesn't work particularly well on X, and it's not going to work particularly well on meta. It's going to result in more misinformation going through.
Global News Podcast
Trump's threats to seize Greenland and Panama Canal
Of course, other people would say less censorship, but we've heard from one of the organisations that is at the moment saying, a third party fact-checking organisation, Full Fact, their chief executive, Chris Morris, has said, we absolutely refute Meta's charge of bias. We're strictly impartial. We fact-check claims from all political stripes with equal rigour. Part of what Mark...
Global News Podcast
Trump's threats to seize Greenland and Panama Canal
zuckerberg had to say was that he looked forward to working with donald trump to take on governments around the world and particularly mentioned europe as in effect trying to censor free speech and censor american companies he looked forward to pushing back against that so is this nakedly mark zuckerberg just trying to get close to donald trump who's going to ultimately be his regulator for the foreseeable future
Global News Podcast
Trump's threats to seize Greenland and Panama Canal
I think two things can be true at once, can't they? I mean, he can believe genuinely that there is too much censorship, the fact-checking, etc., has gone too far, they need to get back to free speech. He can believe that. And also, it can be convenient for him to get close to Donald Trump. I mean, he spent the day before Thanksgiving dining with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
Global News Podcast
Trump's threats to seize Greenland and Panama Canal
Nick Clegg, a former centrist British politician, has departed. He's been replaced by his deputy, Joel Kaplan, who is on the right of the US political spectrum, who will be taking over his role at Meta. And Meta has recently appointed Dana White. to its board of directors, an individual who is seen as close to Trump as well.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
So here at the BBC Weather Centre we produce well over 100 forecasts each day. We broadcast to a couple of hundred million people on TV and radio at the BBC. We're quite a small team actually. We've got 12 presenters that work here around the clock here at the Weather Centre.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
Do you see your job changing? Oh, I'm sure it will change in the future. You know, every time there's been... available extra computing power. We've seen a step change in the forecasting capabilities, and I don't suppose AI is going to be any different from that.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
However, I have looked at some AI models from time to time when the forecasts have been difficult, and I've gone back and looked at what had been predicted by these AI models on previous days, and You know, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not so good.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
I don't see anything groundbreaking at the moment in terms of difference in the day-to-day forecasting whenever I've looked at these models, but I'm sure it will come. It is early days, as they say. Chris and Zoe, thank you.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
Does this affect your work? Well, the one thing I see quite often on social media, you know, questions directed at us are around chemtrails. It's the idea that some people have that the government's somehow spraying us from the skies. It's contrails, aeroplane contrails. These are ice crystals that follow aeroplane engines.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
And, of course, there's a little bit of moisture that comes out from burning fuels at that altitude in the atmosphere. Here's the thing. These things are predictable. If the atmosphere has got quite a bit of moisture in it and you put extra in from aeroplane engines, you get these persistent aeroplane contrails that can last for most part of a day.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
There are other times when the atmosphere is very dry and at the kind of height that planes fly at, and you'll see very quickly those contrails just evaporating. So nothing to do with getting sprayed about. That's a complete fallacy, a complete hoax. It is just atmospheric physics. It's just about how much water there is up there in the atmosphere.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
Well, I suppose if you live in a flood prone area, there are steps you can take. For example, don't use soft furnishings on floors, use tiles, because that way, if you do get a flood, it's much quicker to clean up and get back to normal after the floodwaters have receded. And the same for electricity sockets.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
If they're low down in your house, if you put them higher up, they're going to give you a bit more protection as well. So there are simple measures that people can take like that, I suppose, to limit the impacts that flooding might have in their individual houses. Chris, thank you so much.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
Well, we should start, I suppose, in L.A. That's the most recent of our stories. And, you know, here we do get a lot of variability in our weather from one year to the next. And actually, the last couple of years, 2022 and 2023, were wet years in California. What this did is actually created pretty good conditions for vegetation to grow.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
Now, normally in Los Angeles County, we get most of the rain falling between October and April in a typical year. This year in Los Angeles, well, between May 2024 and now, they've had just four millimetres of rain. So they've had barely anything and that's led to severe drought conditions.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
That's dried out all of the vegetation that's grown rapidly over the last couple of years from those good growing years, if you like. And it's resulted in these tinderbox dry conditions. Added to that, we've had something called a Santa Ana wind. This is where we get air descending down through the atmosphere. It becomes very dry and warm as it descends.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
We get high pressure to the east of the mountains, low pressure in the Pacific. That causes the winds to blow. And over the tops of the mountains, we've seen gusts up to about 99 miles an hour. And so once these fires started, they spread very, very quickly, not just across the vegetated areas, but throughout whole communities, as we've seen. Yeah.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
Yeah, how did it happen so quickly? I mean, there's still question marks about what instigated the fire. You know, was it natural? Was it arson? Was it power lines clicking together in those strong winds? I think there are questions still to be asked about that.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
But once you start these fires, because those winds are so strong, so dry, so warm, and we've got all of that vegetation that's just there available to burn, we'll add in that... persistent wind for day upon day upon day, it makes battling these wildfires extremely difficult and dangerous because you've got embers just flying up into the air.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
They can leap over firefighters, setting off new blazes, and you can get all kinds of severe phenomena, even fire tornadoes we've seen mixed in with these, which create some particular hazards. Now, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, 19 out of 20 of the largest wildfires in California have occurred since 2003.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
And seven of the 10 biggest fires in California have occurred since 2020. Now, one of the central predictions about climate change is that we expect droughts to become more frequent. And so the conditions for these wildfires become more frequent in a warming world.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
Yeah, Hurricane Helene was a really interesting storm. It underwent rapid intensification. That's where the winds pick up by 35 miles an hour in 24 hours. Now, this one was even stronger than that. It hits the Big Bend region of Florida as a powerful Category 4 hurricane. 140 mile an hour winds, the strongest ever to hit this part of the United States.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
Now, that caused problems, but I think the biggest problems from Hurricane Helene actually came as it moved inland. It weakened significantly into a normal area of low pressure. And you might think, well, that's it. That's the problem's gone away. But it wasn't. If you consider... that water hazards are responsible for 86% of fatalities in such tropical systems.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
Well, it's the water that's the far bigger hazard, and this area of low pressure became slow-moving in Tennessee, and it brought enormous falls of rain in the mountains of North Carolina. We recorded 30.78 inches of rain, 780 millimetres of rain. And that led to catastrophic flooding.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
And Hurricane Helene became the deadliest hurricane to reach the mainland United States since Hurricane Katrina way back in 2005.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
Yeah, well, this one's interesting because it's partly driven by climate change, partly driven by natural events. So as we heard a moment ago, droughts become more frequent in a warming world. And that's the background that we're in in our current climate. Temperatures globally are about 1.3 degrees Celsius higher than they were during the pre-industrial period. So that makes droughts more likely.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
Coupled with that, we've got a natural phenomenon going on, El Nino. Now, in 2003-2004, we had an El Nino pattern that also reduces rainfall, so it was the combined effect here that caused the severe drought, with quite a few rivers in the Amazon basin actually reaching their lowest level on record last year.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
I have to say, things are slowly improving now, because we are going into the rainy season, and we're starting to see the drought ease in parts of Brazil, which I suppose is good news. But, yeah... Climate change does increase the risk of such droughts.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
Yeah, there are questions, I suppose, that still remain about the floods that hit Valencia. I mean, there was a huge amount of rainfall in just eight hours, about a year's worth of rainfall, 491 millimetres of rain, and that led to some catastrophic flooding. I've been looking back, though, at the performance of the local weather authorities, AMET. They're the Spanish forecasting authorities.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
And in the days ahead, they actually predicted this area of low pressure. They called it Adana weather events, and they do get these several times during the year. but they highlighted this one was going to be particularly bad. In the morning of the floods, they had a top-level red weather warning that was in force. So they were expecting some severe flooding.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
But what came was enormous amounts of rain. And I think if we look at this area of Spain, we've had deadly floods that happened back in 1957 and 1982. So they don't come along too often, but when they do, they can be absolutely devastating. And I think what we see with this weather event is an enormous amount of rain coming in a short space of time.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
The rivers in this part of Spain run off the land very, very quickly. So you don't necessarily get a lot of warning before a wave of water hits your properties and your communities. So I think the main questions that still are to be asked really about this are about weather.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
When the public received warnings from the government, both the national governments and the regional governments, the way that the water levels were monitored in these river catchments, given the history of flooding and how quickly the flooding comes on in this part of the world, and of course, like a lot of places around the world, we've seen quite a bit of construction involved.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
in what are known to be flood-prone areas. So there are questions that remain about this flooding. I can look back here in the UK, back in 2007, following the catastrophic floods we had here in the UK, there was a pit review that was done by Lord Pitt, and he recommended a much closer collaboration between the Met Office, which is the UK forecasting authority,
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
and the Environment Agency, which is responsible for issuing flood warnings. And that resulted in the setting up of the Flood Forecast Centre, which is manned by hydrometeorologists. What they do is they can take weather data, forecast data, and model what the response of the rainfall is likely to be on individual river catchments.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
And so that's led to a much more joined-up approach, and we're much better at forecasting floods these days. So there could well be questions about how we go about forecasting floods in other parts of the world in the future.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
I read reports of people actually getting notified on their mobile phones about the flooding. when it was happening, when the rain was already coming down. But from a meteorological point of view, at least there were red-level weather warnings, top-level weather warnings that were issued the morning that day, so actually hours before the flooding event hit.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
A lot of the stuff that we do starts off with the computer models that model the atmosphere. And the numbers involved in these computers are truly staggering. The UK Met Office supercomputer that crunches all the numbers can do 14,000 trillion sums a second, taking in 215 billion weather observations every day. That's enough for 2 million sums for every man, woman and child on the planet.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
So the numbers are immense. There are a million lines of code that go into these computer programmes and what comes out is a simulation of what we think the weather's going to look like. But even after all of those calculations, we all know that sometimes the weather doesn't quite go to plan.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
And so one of my jobs as a forecaster is to look at the computer model outputs, take a look at things like satellites or weather observations, and I have these available to me right the way around the world. and actually go and have a look.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
OK, so what we're looking at here is the Mediterranean basin. So we can see the satellite picture. The white is the cloud here. And this particular area of cloud is actually a named storm. It's been named by the Italian meteorological authorities. And if I zoom in, I can see the structure of the cloud, not just that, but I can actually see these weather observations.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
Now, these come to us from right the way around the world. The ones we're looking at here are actually on the north coast of Algeria. And the numbers here tell me that we've got some very, very heavy rain at the moment across northern Algeria. And this is one area we're watching to see if there might be some flooding over the next few days.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
Yes, so I'm zooming in, and all of these circles you can see are around the world, actually. I can zoom right out and show you right the way around the planets. Go to Singapore. Oh, they've got some thunderstorms there at the moment. So these are the actual observations that people are recording.
Global News Podcast
Israel launches waves of strikes on Gaza
Is there much faith in the government in their ability to be able to bring this under control? Because we were hearing there's you know, considerations of the death penalty being introduced. Is there trust in the government?
Global News Podcast
Myanmar declares week of mourning as death toll rises following earthquake
The Kinahan Transnational Criminal Organization, also known as the KTCO, has been accused of a wide range of heinous crimes all around the world, including murder, trafficking in firearms, and narcotics.
Global News Podcast
Myanmar declares week of mourning as death toll rises following earthquake
The United States will bring their leaders to justice no matter where they are.
Global News Podcast
Syria's de facto leader says the country is not a threat to its neighbours or the west
It was a deadly crush that claimed the lives of unspecified number of children in Ibadan, southwest Nigeria. The incident occurred at a carnival and charity event on Wednesday. The exact number of casualties is still not known as the authorities are yet to give specific details. However, residents in Basharoun area of Ibadan said over 5,000 children were gathered at the venue of the carnival.
Global News Podcast
Syria's de facto leader says the country is not a threat to its neighbours or the west
As the main organizers arrived to start the event, there were massive movements of the children as they tried to gain vantage position. Now, a few days before the event, the organizers had made broadcasts on popular radio stations in the city, leading to massive turnout of people, mostly children. The organizers had promised free items, including scholarships for children.
Global News Podcast
Syria's de facto leader says the country is not a threat to its neighbours or the west
This is the Christmas season, so there were expectations of free food items, especially with many families facing cost-of-living crisis and poverty in Nigeria. Yet, the cause of the incident has not been disclosed by the authorities.
Global News Podcast
Syria's de facto leader says the country is not a threat to its neighbours or the west
The governor of Oyo State, Shea Makinde, had tweeted on Wednesday afternoon that measures had been put in place to prevent further death at the venue, while the primary organizers of the event have been taken into custody for investigation. A statement by the Oyo State government said victims had been taken to different hospitals across Ibadan for treatment.
Global News Podcast
Syria's de facto leader says the country is not a threat to its neighbours or the west
The event was stopped and attendees were escorted out of the venue.
Global News Podcast
Senior Putin aide against temporary Ukraine ceasefire
We've received reports of many cases of rape through penetration of objects of men. More than can just be put down to individualised rogue officials. Now, I mean, you have to start wondering about a governmental system, military, civilian police officials and so forth, that on a mass scale undertakes these activities. So we have to say, what on earth is going on here?
Global News Podcast
Hundreds of thousands head home in northern Gaza
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Global News Podcast
Hundreds of thousands head home in northern Gaza
It was top of the Apple App Store charts in the US, UK and in China. Why has it been so successful? Well, I suppose there's one very simple reason, which is that it's free. That's obviously a big draw. But of course, if it was free and not very good, that might not be such a such an attractive proposition.
Global News Podcast
Hundreds of thousands head home in northern Gaza
But a lot of people are saying, you know, this is a pretty good AI and it works, you know, what the responses they're getting from this AI app aren't so different from some of the big Western companies. And of course, that's also causing some shockwaves amongst those Western companies.
Global News Podcast
Hundreds of thousands head home in northern Gaza
I mean, I think the first thing is, you know, the measures, the tests that have been done so far, you know, we're taking the companies, the Chinese app developers' word for it. But I think one of the things that's very striking about the claims they've made is the amount of money they've spent on training this. They've talked about $6 million.
Global News Podcast
Hundreds of thousands head home in northern Gaza
Well, the big Western companies spent billions training AI models. So I think there's quite a concern amongst investors in those companies that the AI race, if you like, between the West and China... is a lot closer than they might have thought. It's certainly true that the US government has over the years attempted to stop the flow of high technology to China.
Global News Podcast
Hundreds of thousands head home in northern Gaza
Again, if the stats, if the company's claims about this being almost as good or as good in some cases as the top Western models, if those pan out, it raises questions about how effective China those restrictions on, say, the export of advanced chips have been, or whether, in fact, these have encouraged some clever innovation. Chris Vallance.
Global News Podcast
Hundreds of thousands head home in northern Gaza
We're renovating. Who's renovating? We are. You're moving in here or something? What? Yeah, we just bought the place. Congrats! Thanks! Chris Sharp.
Global News Podcast
Hundreds of thousands head home in northern Gaza
I mean, a neighbourhood is worth nothing if we don't have some order, you know. We're very welcoming here in Stillwater. We've lived alongside one another for a long time. There's a way of coexisting.
Global News Podcast
'Peace must not mean a surrender of Ukraine,' Macron says after talks with Trump
As you approach the start line, you wait for quite a long time for your waves, your wave is due to start off. And I was thinking, OK, just take it easy, Chris. Don't hurt yourself. But once I crossed that line, the competitive spirit kicked in and I went for it.
Global News Podcast
'Peace must not mean a surrender of Ukraine,' Macron says after talks with Trump
I didn't know there was such a thing as a record, a world record. And I kept stopping for people, friends, or marines in the crowd, or sailors who I knew. They said, Chris, I'm a selfie, so I kept stopping. If I'd known that there was a world record to break, I'd have said, sorry, in a hurry.
Global News Podcast
'Peace must not mean a surrender of Ukraine,' Macron says after talks with Trump
As you approach the start line, you wait for quite a long time for your wave to start off. And I was thinking, OK, just take it easy, Chris. Don't hurt yourself. But once I crossed that line, the competitive spirit kicked in and I went for it.
Global News Podcast
Starmer warns US backstop needed for Ukraine peace deal
Unser Algorithmus wird all diese Ergebnisse ausdrücken und Ihnen sagen, dass Kanzer in diesem Sammler vorhanden ist oder Kanzer nicht vorhanden ist. Und es ist ein langsam wachsender Prostate-Kanzer oder es ist ein aggressiver Prostate-Kanzer und es ist ein hereditärer germline genetischer Kanzer. Das ist sehr wertvolle Informationen.
Global News Podcast
President Trump's planned tariffs on steel and aluminium imports widely condemned
And the Philadelphia players were celebrating with, you know, three or four minutes still left on the clock and they were dumping fizzy drinks on their coach. I mean, I think that the late scores that came for the Kansas City Chiefs were kind of because the Philadelphia Eagles weren't really playing anymore, it felt a little bit like.
Global News Podcast
President Trump's planned tariffs on steel and aluminium imports widely condemned
What did you make of the halftime show? There was a lot of talk in the build-up about Kendrick Lamar performing, potential unknown performers alongside him. We knew that SZA was very likely to appear and SZA did play. And the real surprise, I guess Samuel L. Jackson made a little turn.
Global News Podcast
President Trump's planned tariffs on steel and aluminium imports widely condemned
Yeah, well, we were watching the coverage and we did all look at each other and go, was that really Serena Williams? Because she was dancing away. But apparently, yes, is the answer to that. And what do you think is next for the Kansas City Chiefs in particular? Because to have a poor showing, they're going to have to pick themselves up and I guess think about the next season.
Global News Podcast
Israel accuses Hamas of 'evil' violation of ceasefire
Very few horses reach the age of 46. And what better way to celebrate than a cake made of linseed mash, grass pellets and grated carrots. Rona's owner first got to know her more than 30 years ago.
Global News Podcast
Israel accuses Hamas of 'evil' violation of ceasefire
So I'm sure a lot of people have asked you this. What do you think is the secret to Rona's longevity?
Global News Podcast
Israel accuses Hamas of 'evil' violation of ceasefire
Rona's cantered through all the significant moments of Keris's life. Keris's grandmother bought the pony for her when the riding school closed. Keris had been saddling up with Rona since she was just six years old.
Global News Podcast
Israel accuses Hamas of 'evil' violation of ceasefire
During the trickier times in life that we all have, how has Rona helped you during those times?
Global News Podcast
Israel accuses Hamas of 'evil' violation of ceasefire
What is she like? What's her personality like, would you say?
Global News Podcast
Murder suspect Luigi Mangione faces charges in New York court
Pictures and videos shared on social media showed what appeared to be the aftermath of the crash at an Islamic high school. There are broken chairs and other debris strewn all over the field. Local officials believe that more than 7,000 young people turned up for the event when around 5,000 had been planned for.
Global News Podcast
Murder suspect Luigi Mangione faces charges in New York court
It was an end-of-year fair where it's reported everyone had been promised more than £2 in cash and food. Police say that seven people, including the event's main sponsor and the school's principal, have been arrested in connection with the crash. Nigeria is faced with a cost-of-living crisis, and it's believed this led to the high turnout at the fair.