Transcript of China denies spying on Nvidia boss

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 15:00 hours GMT on Monday, the 9th of November. China dismisses claims it spied on U.S. tech giant Nvidia following reports that Chief Executive Jensen Huang had a relationship with a suspected spy. We hear from inside the French drug gang recruiting teenagers to kill. And the UN climate summit in Turkey opens: can it deliver where its predecessors failed?

It's been eight years since I've spoken on this topic. Now everyone knows the truth. It's out there.

A former Australian cricket star comes clean on the sandpaper gate scandal, plus how vibrating mattresses can help reduce the risk of Alzheimer's. He's the leather jacket-wearing tech boss who's been phoned by President Trump live on stage. But now Nvidia chief Jensen Huang is facing questions about his judgment after reportedly being caught up in a honey trap scandal. Despite the previous denials, the 63-year-old tech boss has now admitted having an affair following reports he'd been in a relationship with a suspected Chinese spy.

Jensen got played. He fell for it. I think Ms. Alice Huang is a woman who was running a big data center operation in Malaysia, and most of the chips that were shipped there were either diverted directly into China or used kind of illicitly and accessed by Chinese entities. It should have been obvious that this woman had some red flags about her. She had no business background. She had no computer science background. Megaspeed just kind of came out of nowhere to start building these data centers. And so Jensen should have been much more concerned. Where he faces a huge risk is, in fact, the looming congressional investigation.

Investigative reporter Stephen Witt: The foreign ministry in Beijing says it's a smear. I spoke to our security correspondent Frank Gardner. If the allegations are true, how big a security risk is this?

The potential for damage here works in both directions. As you heard there from Stephen Witt, there is the potential that she could have influenced upwards, as it were, via Jensen Huang to the White House itself, to President Trump's policy towards China. But there's also the far more serious potential threat that market-sensitive or technologically sensitive data could possibly have flown the other way to Beijing. There's no question that China has a huge interest in U.S.

What do we know about how China targets foreign executives?

Well, they do it in a number of different ways. And I've no doubt China is going to deny every single bit of this. But they don't need to because Western countries also target people of interest. So it's not as if China is the only one doing this, but they just do it on a massive scale. The sort of node for all their espionage is something called the MSS, the Ministry of State Security, which deals with both external and domestic intelligence gathering and security. It's a kind of, if you imagine, a kind of combination of MI6 and MI5 or CIA and FBI all rolled in together.

Our security correspondent Frank Gardner. A BBC investigation has found that one of Europe's most powerful drug gangs is recruiting teenagers from across France to carry out murders and kidnappings. The so-called DZ Mafia won a bloody turf war against a rival group in Marseille in 2023, but it's now looking further afield for recruits. Officials say narcotics are flooding into France and amount to a threat to national security. This report from James Waterhouse in Marseille contains violence and strong language.

A ballgame has passed trap in one of Marseille's poorest neighborhoods. As children try to sling wooden pucks through a narrow gap, they're a generation surrounded by an enticing threat. These parts of the city are overshadowed by a network of around 90 drug dealing zones, high-rise housing estates sealed off by powerful drug gangs. For their safety, we have altered the voices of the people we've met. I knew about the Cité Nord, and I asked them if I could be a lookout. So I started working for 60 euros a day, a teenager tells me.

There seem to be two main concerns here for parents. Firstly, of complaining about the gangs. Most don't want to talk on camera. The second worry for people here is of their children's futures. Because if they chose to, they could wander a few hundred yards over to the deal point and make hundreds of euros a day from the age of 11, for example.

After a bloody turf war, there is a dominant gang which rules the Cité Nord, DZ Mafia. It is a world where often vulnerable teenage minors are lured from Marseille and across France with promises of easy money before being trapped in a world of drug dealing, violence, and exploitation. It would take months to access a drug dealing zone, where we finally meet someone who runs one.

This is what you're presented with: three menus, one for cocaine, hashish, and marijuana.

When I was 13, I made about 3,000 euros per month. Now it's between 5,000 and 10,000 per month.

Drugs can ruin lives, and people die from violence on the streets that your gang perpetrates. Do you think about that?

It destroys people, but they make their own choices. We've all made our own choices.

We found miners are often enticed through DZ Mafia's most potent recruitment tool, social media. And if you scroll on your phone, they're very easy to find. "Our soldiers are ready to move. There is work. Do not miss your train," reads this one. Another lists a number of roles, including being a driver, an assassin. This one says, "Everyone will have access to housing and a meal allowance." Someone used to seeing these adverts is Celine Regnault, a local prosecutor.

Over the years, we've seen a major shift, with younger miners becoming involved in much more serious crimes, including murders and unlawful confinements.

Since 2024, police have arrested around 1,000 DZ Mafia members. 600 have been jailed, and one of them has agreed to speak to us from his prison cell. He says he was part of a hit squad and is waiting to go on trial for several murders. This interview is extremely rare.

The assassinations that I'm charged with being involved in were quite shocking. Attempts in broad daylight, in traffic jams. It can range from going to hit a guy, slap him, to taking him in front of his mother and burning him up in the car.

To burn someone alive or to execute them in front of their parents, that is a different kind of evil. I'm just trying to understand what was going through your mind.

In fact, when you enter this environment, it's a trap. You no longer have control of what happens. There are other people who would have done that in my place, and so on. I'm just another brick in the wall.

In Marseille, the police are seeing successes, but for reasons beyond its port. It's a battle only becoming more arduous for officers rather than easier. France, they say, is uniquely placed, with the price of narcotics like cocaine dropping globally, and the main importers to the country being French themselves. Drugs are flooding in, fueling violence, straining the state, and distorting the economy. In the middle is the widening exploitation of children.

James Waterhouse reporting from Marseille. The COP 31 UN climate summit is underway in Turkey, and the hosts have taken an unusual approach to get people excited about tackling global warming. A song called "Bring Down the Heat," which comes after the World Meteorological Organization released a report saying 2026 will be one of the four hottest years on record.

No COP is a silver bullet. No single conference can bridge the chasm between the science and reality. We must deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be. Every recent COP has delivered strides forward. This one must, too. A climate solution step-up creates a real chance for faster progress. This is what the era of implementation looks like.

So how likely is it that COP will be able to deliver this time? I asked our climate reporter, Esmée Stallard.

Let's take a step back and look at how far we've come. It was only about a decade ago that we were looking at warming about four degrees. That's now come down to about 2.8. Renewable energy is growing. The International Energy Association has said that within the next six years, we're expected to see that grow by another 60%. But as you say, we are still going to miss that crucial 1.5 target. We're above that. We're expected to see more severe impacts of climate change. Will we get concrete action at this summit? Well, we haven't seen as much progress as we would like, and that's been overshadowed by the Iran-US war, which is putting huge amounts of pressure on government's budgets, not being able to commit as much as maybe they would like to climate action, coupled with the fact that the U.S.

So what should we look out for? What would be a measure of success?

So Turkey, who is co-hosting with Australia, has put a number of things on the table they would like to see. One of them is this electrification target. Currently, about a fifth of the world's energy comes from electricity. They want to see that increased to about 35% because, of course, electricity can be met with renewable energy rather than fossil fuels. But I think it is unlikely we'll get a new target. Many countries feel like COP after COP, we've got new, new targets, and actually we should be focused on achieving those ones we've already set out. The one other thing which we'll see probably for the first time potentially in that final agreement is a mention of AI and data centers.

Our climate reporter, Esmée Stallard. Eight years after Australian cricket was rocked by the infamous sandpaper gate scandal, one of the players involved, David Warner, has broken his silence. The former vice captain posted a video backing teammate Ousmane Khawaja, whose new book says the whole team knew about the ball tampering in the final 2018 Test against South Africa.

Hi, everyone. It's been eight years since I've spoken on this topic. And Uzi, I throw my full support behind you. I thank you for what you've done. It's 100% accurate what you've said. Now everyone knows the truth. It's out there. People wanted to know it. You've come out and said it, and now people are saying, "Why eight years on?" Talking about selling a book. This is Ousmane's story. This is what Ousmane believes. Uzi wrote down every single thing from that day on.

Warner was suspended, along with the then captain, Steve Smith, and batter, Cameron Bancroft. Our Australia correspondent, Simon Atkinson, told us more.

Khawaja came out and clarified some of those comments. And he effectively said he thinks the whole team needs to take responsibility for the incident which he talked about in Cape Town in 2018. And it's problematic for cricket here in Australia because four of the bowlers who were involved in that game, including the captain, Pat Cummins, are still playing in the Australia team. Now, they put out a statement in 2021 denying that they knew that any "foreign substance," was the phrase they used, was brought onto the pitch. And the idea of that sandpaper being brought on is to change the way the ball moves to give the bowlers an advantage.

Simon Atkinson. Still to come in this podcast.

Authority reaches its highest meaning when it's exercised as service, and when it puts its capacities in the service of what belongs to everyone.

A papal rebuke for the Argentine president. You're listening to the Global News Podcast. Two years ago, the Bangladeshi prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, was overthrown in a violent student-led uprising. She fled to India, where she's been living in exile. Now it seems she wants to go home, even though she is facing the death penalty. She has requested a new passport and identity card, but the Bangladeshi authorities say she should be extradited.

She told a media interview a couple of months ago that she wants to surrender and face whatever comes on her way when she returns to Bangladesh. Now, she has been living in the Indian capital for the past two years after she was forced out of the country following this violent uprising. Now she faces the death penalty there back in Bangladesh for what the Bangladeshi courts say, crimes against humanity, for hundreds of people killed during this uprising against her long rule, which many describe as an autocratic rule.

As you say, she faces the death penalty. What would her return mean for the situation in Bangladesh?

That's a real worry for many people back in Bangladesh. Still, her party, Awami League, has a considerable support among Bangladeshis, and they have also been holding minor hit-and-run protests for the past few weeks. So on the one side, you have people really angry, like student leaders, who say that hundreds of people were killed by security forces when she was in power, when she was trying to suppress these protest movements. On the other hand, you also have the country's largest Islamist party, the Jamaat-e-Islami.

Do you think she will go back to Bangladesh?

She's trying to make this move, but she doesn't want to be extradited. But it all depends on whether the Bangladeshi government wants to give her a passport and an identity card as she has requested.

Global affairs reporter, Anbarasan Etirajian. Pope Leo has gained a reputation for speaking out about political as well as theological issues. He became the first pontiff to vote in the U.S. elections. And now, on the latest stop of his South America tour, he's criticized the austerity measures followed by the Argentine president, Javier Milei, and even appeared to rebuke his aggressive style.

Authority reaches its highest meaning when it's exercised as service, when it looks beyond the immediate, and when it puts its capacities in the service of what belongs to everyone. Those who exercise authority have a duty to act with prudence, to acknowledge the limits of the power entrusted to them, and to direct their decisions towards the good of the entire community.

I asked our Latin America online editor, Vanessa Bushaluta, how big a rebuke this was for Mr. Milei.

I think it was quite a pointed rebuke, but a carefully worded one. I think that key sentence was, "The economy must be at the service of the person and not the person at the service of the economy." That really erupted the room there erupted in rapturous applause when he said that. And if you remember, Milei famously campaigned on a promise to take a chainsaw to the Argentine economy. And he also stressed that people who are drawing pensions, people who are drawing disability allowances, that those allowances should be cut as part of this chainsaw program.

Yeah. I mean, will the Argentine government listen to what the Pope has said?

I think they will because there has really been a sign that they have been listening. Just a couple of weeks ago, there was a decision made in Congress to guarantee the funding of some of those disability programs that Milei had been ranting against. So he had been freezing these programs for years while he has been in power. And Congress and his party in Congress did a U-turn just a few weeks ago. And many of the observers in Argentine politics have said that that might have been because of the looming visit of the Pope and of the criticism that the Catholic Church had made against those chainsaw politics that Milei had proposed.

Latin America's home of liberation theology. Will this kind of speaking out go down well amongst the people there?

It goes down well with many who embrace that liberation theology, as you mentioned. But of course, there are also very conservative parts of the Catholic Church in Latin America. There's the Opus Dei group. And the Pope will be appealing to those who want to drive forward some change and some more politics that are embracing the poor more. And especially during his visit to Peru, he will be stressing those.

Our Latin America online editor, Vanessa Bushaluta. Demand for copper and cobalt is growing as the world shifts towards cleaner energy and new technologies. These minerals power everything from electric vehicle batteries and solar panels to smartphones and data centers. Billions of dollars from the U.S., the EU, and international lenders are being poured into a transport corridor linking the mineral-rich Democratic Republic of Congo to Angola's Atlantic coast. But will it simply make it easier to ship Africa's minerals abroad, or will it help create lasting prosperity along the way?

The sound of trains arriving from the port of Lobito is becoming increasingly familiar. They carry goods along a railway linking mineral-producing parts of Central Africa to the Atlantic coast. The route runs from the Democratic Republic of Congo across Angola to the port of Lobito. At its heart is the historic Benguela Railway, now being revived as part of the wider Lobito corridor. The scale of operation is clear.

I'm standing at the mineral terminal at the port of Lobito. And on the ground, there's thousands of bags of sulfur. I can also see blue containers stacked three high from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and then it will head out into the international markets.

Nicholas Fournier, the chief executive of Lobito Atlantic Railway, is showing me around the warehouse. Workers are arranging stacks of copper cathodes, the refined metal ready for export.

This copper is going to the U.S. So since we started in January '24, we have been at least more than doubling the volume. This year, we hope to achieve 200,000 tons of copper exported from DRC to the port of Lobito, a little bit less in terms of sulfur.

The railway was built during Portuguese colonial rule and once played a major role in transporting minerals from Central Africa to the coast. Years of conflict left much of the line in ruins. It was rebuilt with Chinese financing and reopened in 2015. Now, renewed investment from the U.S., Europe, and other international partners is bringing fresh attention to the route. There are also plans to extend the corridor towards Zambia's copper belt.

Corridor has brought benefit for trade. Product move between municipalities more easily, and people can travel more freely.

Easier journeys and more movement between towns are tangible benefits. But the big economic prize is whether local businesses can grow as trade increases. Political risk analyst Wellington Mzengeza says that will take more than a railway passing through the country.

The larger prize is Angolan firms developing capabilities in maintenance, engineering, warehousing, agricultural processing, and other services. But Angola should measure success not only by what passes through its territory, but what grows within its economy.

That is also the ambition of the Angolan government. The country's foreign affairs minister, Tete Antonio, says the country wants to break the longstanding pattern in which Africa exports raw materials while much of the value is created elsewhere.

If you export your raw material, you're exporting jobs. You're exporting even the knowledge. The knowledge will happen somewhere else because transformation is also a laboratory of knowledge.

As trains continue carrying Africa's mineral wealth towards global markets, people living along the corridor are hoping opportunity travels with it. For them, in the years ahead, that may be the true measure of the Lobito corridor's success.

Akiso Wanderer in Angola. Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia. The cause isn't fully understood, but there are plenty of suggestions about how to reduce your risks. Penny Sarchay from The News Scientist told us about some of the latest ones.

My colleague Carissa Wong, all year, really, she's been reporting on all these quite insane-sounding ways to try and boost the waste disposal system of the brain. And the one this week is a vibrating mattress. You lie on it for a period whilst also taking nitric oxide pills. I must stress, do not try this at home. But this is only the latest in a whole slew of findings. Things like listening to pink noise, which is a bit like white noise, or breathing in carbon dioxide. These are all being explored as ways to make your brain basically pulse its glymphatic system more effectively, boost it, so that you drain, hopefully, harmful proteins and waste products out of the brain.

Science journalist Penny Sarchay. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, email globalpodcast@bbc.co.uk, and you can see how we look by searching for The Global News Podcast on YouTube. This edition was mixed by Hannah Montgomery and produced by Nikki Virico and Oliver Burlau. Our editors, Karen Martin, I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.