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

I'm Jackie Leonard. And at 14 hours GMT on the 26th of January, these are our main stories. The European Commission president has joined the growing number of world leaders in calling for fairer distribution of coronavirus vaccines. Chaos in parts of the Indian capital, Delhi, as thousands of farmers converge on the Red Fort to demand that the government drop its agricultural reforms. And the Thai parliament has voted to allow abortions in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Also in this podcast, scientists are saying, you know, it's great news that people are planting trees, but when you're doing this on scale, then you have to put the right trees in the right place, the golden rules of planting trees in an environmentally beneficial way.

Deliver on your promises, the message from European politicians to vaccine manufacturers after a series of setbacks, both Pfizer and AstraZeneca have cut supplies to the EU in recent days and the bloc's health commissioner, Stella Karaoke. This has demanded to know by Wednesday how many doses the company has produced and where else it's been sent. Meanwhile, Germany's health minister, Jens Shabaan, told German television ZDF that he supported EU proposals for vaccines, leaving the bloc to be registered. Addressing a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum, Ursula von der Leyen said Europe had helped companies develop the vaccines, and she made it clear it expected to be treated fairly.

In return, Europe invested billions to help develop the world's first covid-19 vaccines. To create a truly global common good. And now the companies must deliver. They must honor their obligations. And this is why we will set up a vaccine expert transparency mechanism. Europe is determined to contribute to this global common good. But it also means business, our global health correspondent, Naomi Grumbly, told us more, starting with the EU health commissioner demand for information?

Well, it's pretty obvious that they are furious and they have summoned the executives of AstraZeneca to virtual meetings to ask for explanations. Let me just quote to you what they've been saying publicly about this. The European Union wants to know exactly which doses have been produced by AstraZeneca and where exactly so far or if to whom they have been delivered. So I think we can read between the lines and see that the European Commission is worried that AstraZeneca is somehow prioritising other countries and has ended up with this shortfall, which they blame on manufacturing problems at their Belgium plant.

And what about that German idea of registering vaccines, leaving the EU? What would that mean? And just how serious is Yen's Siobhan here?

This looks like it may well happen in some form that companies that are producing vaccines. So this would include Pfizer, which has a big plant in Belgium, too, would have to seek permission before they export to third countries. And that, of course, would include Britain. EU Commission feels, you know, stuff is being made on their turf, as it were, and yet might then be being exported abroad. And they are worried that that, combined with the AstraZeneca problems, might leave Europe under sourced with vaccines at a time when their rollout is going slower than perhaps in Britain.

Yes, our EU countries are under a bit of pressure here because they really haven't been able to vaccinate people in the numbers that they were suggesting. Absolutely.

I mean, the British figures are very dramatic at the moment. They've already managed to vaccinate 10 percent of their population in the UK. If you compare that with Europe, it's more like one percent. So I think underneath the obvious tensions and the vaccine nationalism that we're seeing right around the world, there's also this sort of worry that particularly in the EU, it might be falling behind on vaccinations, although it must be stressed. That is also to do with bureaucratic problems, not just supply.

Different EU member nations are handling coronavirus in their own individual ways. Is there a danger that there might be disunity among EU members over this?

Europe has so far tried to have this unified response to coronavirus, particularly in the co-ordination and distribution of vaccines. But we are already seeing some countries like Germany and Denmark trying to slip out of the shackles of that and look to do their own bilateral deals with pharmaceutical companies. And that is something I think we're going to see much more of, because this is a scarcity now and competition for them right around the world is intense.

Naomi Grumbly. Senior staff expressed frustration about the lack of information coming from China over a year ago when Coronavirus was first identified in Wuhan. That's emerged from audio recordings of internal WTO meetings, some of which were shared with PBS Frontline and the BBC by the Associated Press as part of a jointly produced documentary. They reveal unease and misgivings among some of those at the show in its early dealings with China. Caroline Hawley reports.

New Year's Eve, 2019. It's 30 days since a Chinese man in his 70s became ill with a mysterious pneumonia like disease. But the world was still blissfully unaware of the new virus that would change all of our lives. I was in a restaurant waiting to ring in the new year and I got a call that it was George Carl.

George GAO is the director of China's Center for Disease Control. The man who took the call was leading American virologist Ian Lipkin.

It identified the virus. It was a new coronavirus and that it was not highly transmissible. Well, this didn't really resonate with me because I'd heard many, many people who had been infected. He should have released some sequences and said, this is what we know. That's the way we do it, because this is too important to hesitate. Viral pneumonia has hit central China's Hunan city in China itself. News of the new disease was accompanied by reassurance that it was under control.

By this point, state labs were sequencing samples from several patients, but the Chinese government hadn't shared any of the preliminary sequences with the World Health Organization, as it should have done under international protocols. References online to a new SARS like disease had begun to be censored by the authorities, and the doctor who'd raised the alarm had been taken in by police. Larry Gostin specializes in public health law.

It was always going to be very difficult to control this virus from day one, but by the time we knew that it was transmissible human to human, I think the cat was out of the bag and it already spread. That was the shot we had and we lost it.

By early January, Chinese labs had the full genetic sequence of the virus, but they'd been ordered to keep quiet. And the World Health Organization first learned about the outbreak from social media. The Associated Press obtained leaked recordings of internal H0 meetings and has shared some of them with the BBC. Dr. Mike Ryan, head of Shows Emergencies program, speaks of endlessly trying to get updates from China. The recordings aren't easy to hear, but his frustration is crystal clear.

There's no evidence of human to human transmission is not good or not. We may see the data we need to be able to determine for ourselves the geographic distribution timeline, the IP curve and all of that is absolutely important at this point.

Back in Wuhan, hospitals were filling up and hard pressed health workers were becoming ever more alarmed. They're not allowed to talk to the international media without authorization, but one has spoken anonymously to the BBC. We've revoiced their interview with an actor.

Everyone knew it was human to human transmission. Even a fool would know. So why say there is no human transmission? This made us very confused, very confused and very angry. The hospital told us that we will not allow to speak to anyone. They wouldn't even let us wear masks. They said they were afraid of causing panic among the patients.

One patient in hospital in late January was a 76 year old man, jangly for his son, had driven across China so that he could have an operation in his hometown. Shanghai told us that his father's operation was a success.

At first, he recovered well and then he caught a fever so young she saw two young children.

When I heard them say positive, I realized they meant the coronavirus. My heart sank.

It was me personally who brought him to his death. So I feel extremely guilty, but also really angry. If the Wunan authorities had not cancelled it, my father would not have left me because they covered it up. So many people lost their precious lives.

China's government told the BBC in a statement that it had always acted with openness, transparency and responsibility and in a timely fashion.

So, you know, I think a agreed.

But it wasn't until January the 20th, seven weeks after the first known patient got sick, that China announced to its people that there was indeed human to human transmission. And by then the virus had a deadly momentum that would carry it into every corner of the globe.

Caroline Hawley. Places around the world are trying different tactics to appeal to the more hesitant members of the general public to get a covid-19 job. One city whose public service announcement strikes a different tone and a different beat from what you might be used to is New Orleans is my shot.

I'm getting the vaccine so we can have Mardi Gras. Know if my shot I'm getting a vaccine to protect my family. I'm going to get my shot so I can visit my 92 year old mom and we can eat in our favorite restaurants. I'll get the vaccine to continue my culture so that I could dance another day so I don't have to lose. Another brother cleans up NOLA three up NOLA sleeves up nola bleep up. Lola, please. Lola, clean up no less.

No Mardi Gras festival this February, but there's a carnival beat being used in the fight against covid. Laura Malem is the public engagement officer for the New Orleans Office of Emergency Preparedness.

It's carnival time here in New Orleans and many around New Orleans are really missing the traditions that we would normally be doing. That, of course, can't happen this year due to the pandemic. You know, usually that's dozens of parades, parties, second lines and all other kinds of revelry. So so what we what we did with the sleeves that NOLA campaign is to feature these really iconic community and cultural leaders in their full Mardi Gras garb with feathers and beads and dashes.

And the message is really clear. As you heard, the covid vaccine is our way out of a pandemic. And it's also our way to get back to Mardi Gras and back to the New Orleans that we all know and love.

We have a lot of confidence in this approach because it's grounded in best practice in public health messaging.

And that's really that individuals are motivated most by the things that they care about. So if you want to elicit behavior change in this case, you know, convincing people to get the vaccine, we really need to appeal to their values.

We're invoking the importance of family, of culture, tradition and community, which are all reasons that the community came here to roll up their sleeves when their time comes.

That was Laura. Malem the Rodford complex in Delhi is one of the Indian capital's iconic historical sites. But today it was overrun by farmers protesting at agricultural reforms. They clambered onto its walls and domes and even hoisted their own flags. It followed even more chaotic scenes earlier in the day when the phone was broke through police barricades to enter the city.

The police trying to drive them back with batons and tear gas.

The BBC's Solman Ravi was watching the security forces are withdrawn.

There have been teargas while fighting appeared to disperse the mob. But apparently the police force, they were outnumbered by the professor and former lawyer. Hundreds and thousands, a number of different parts of the country, and especially the orders coming from both the British and other areas of the northern part of India, Salman Ravi.

So why are the farmers protesting? A question for our India correspondent, Yoga Telharmonium.

Well, at the heart of this protest are new laws that were passed by India's government, India's parliament, in September last year. The government says that these will reform agriculture, that they will allow farmers to sell their produce to the free market in many areas of India. They were already allowed to do so, but these laws will sort of change it nationally. What the farmers are afraid of is that the laws could open them up to exploitation by private companies.

And, you know, people are firmly divided in whether or not these laws actually help farmers. But I think, you know, the anger that we're seeing on the streets of Delhi today is not just about the laws. It's also about how the laws were passed in parliament last year. They were passed in quite a rushed way. There was not enough of a debate in parliament. And farmer groups say that they were actually not consulted during the process.

This is something the government disputes. But the bigger picture really is that in six and a half years, these protests are perhaps the biggest challenge that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has faced since he came to power.

And will protests on this scale have any effect, therefore, on putting more pressure on the government to think again?

Well, literally, for the first time since 2014, this government has been forced to negotiate with people protesting against their actions or their laws. There have been several rounds of talks which have been held. They've been inconclusive. The government offered to suspend these laws for 18 months. Farmer groups rejected that. They said they want a full repeal of the laws. And that's what farmers on the streets were telling our colleagues as well today. And, you know, with sort of the anger that has spilled out on the streets today, you can see why it's going to be very hard to reach any kind of resolution soon.

That was the limit.

Still to come on this podcast, are you missing home? Wow, you've got 15 minutes. The people taking advantage of an offer to work from home, but in Barbados.

The parliament in Thailand has voted in favor of legalizing abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy. It follows a ruling last year by the Constitutional Court, which said the ban on abortions contravened women's human rights. East Asia regional editor Michael Bristow told us more.

Well, it's a massive change because for the last 65 years, essentially abortion has been illegal in Thailand. And what the parliament has now done has voted to allow abortions up to 12 weeks of a pregnancy. And previously, there were very strict rules to enforce this ban on abortion. Women could be sent to prison for three years, doctors for five years. Some of those punishments still remain in place for any abortion carried out over a 12 weeks. But essentially, it's a major change, social change in Thailand.

And as you indicated, it all came about because of the constitutional court. An anti-abortion group in Thailand challenged the ban on abortions in the court. And last February, it ruled that the government had to change its policy because it was against women's human rights, against the Constitution. It gave the government a year to do that. And the government has done that just within that time scale.

And what sort of reaction has there been in Thailand? There's been great reaction from women's groups, rights groups who think this is a major step forward, obviously from no abortions, although few and to up to 12 weeks. And so they're held in. This is a major step forward. Also, it will protect women who previously would have to seek out illegal abortions. And all the problems are health problems that that would bring. They are mentioning, though, pointing out that abortions are still banned after 12 weeks, does still restrict women and it will still force some women after that time period in to seek an illegal abortion.

So really, what they would have wanted is a change to allow abortions up to 24 weeks. That hasn't happened.

That was Michael Bristow. Ugandan security forces have withdrawn from around the home of the opposition leader, Bob Widen, following a court order on Monday. He had been banned from leaving since the presidential election 12 days ago. Despite the absence of legal proceedings against him, his grandfather is wearing a red berry and blue suit.

Bobby Wind appeared relaxed as he spoke to members of his National Unity Platform Party and reporters in the garden of his home in Kampala.

I was born free and I'm free only that I'm everywhere in chains. As you saw, while the court ordered the police to vacate the premises, we still have police and military helicopters hovering over us. That does not stop us. We are not going to let them to identify us as unfree. We are free and anything that is trying to take away our freedom will be resisted by.

The opposition leader has only a few days to file any legal challenge against the presidential poll, which he says was rigged, but he gave no clear indication of whether he intended to go to court. According to the official election result, President Yoweri Museveni won a clear victory, extending his 35 years in office. Poppy Wine committed himself to non-violence, but said he aimed to remove Mr. Museveni from office within a year.

That was Grant Ferrett. Twitter will allow users to flag and annotate misleading or inaccurate tweets in an effort to address misinformation on the platform, the social media firm says the pilot program named Birdwatch is being tested in the United States. It comes as calls to better combat misinformation on social media have grown substantially in recent years, particularly surrounding the 2020 presidential election. But what exactly will the new program look like and how will it work? Here's our technology correspondent Rory Catlin Jones.

Effectively, they're recruiting a bunch of moderators. Of course, they've got an army of moderators themselves, but they want Twitter users to do it. They will be invited to look at tweets and if they spot misinformation, write notes, which will then be discussed on an external website of Birdwatch website. And eventually, the idea is that those notes, if everybody agrees, could actually be added on to the tweets themselves, giving people added information. Now, what they seem to be trying to do is copy Wikipedia.

Wikipedia has got quite a successful approach where it's all put together by volunteer editors and those editors eventually agree what is accurate and what is not. But reproducing the culture of Wikipedia on such an argumentative place as Twitter, I think that's going to be quite a challenge. What they're confronting, of course, is a tidal wave of misinformation. They have not got the capacity to do it themselves. In essence, they're outsourcing this, but there will be all sorts of people trying to manipulate the system.

We know that whoever joins this effort will. Will. Presumably come with their politics to it, and that could lead to charges that free speech is being affected, that that Twitter is biased and so on. So I think they recognize this. They recognize that the whole process is likely to be manipulated. That very by stressing this is an experiment, they're not clear that it will work.

That was Rory Kathleen Jones. Now, many of us like to think that one of the ways we can help the environment and tackle climate change is to plant more trees. But it seems it's not that simple. And a team from London's Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew says getting it wrong might actually do more harm than good. Dr Kate Hardwick is one of the report's authors.

We all know that climate change and deforestation are massive problems. And one response has been a huge global commitment to reforestation. So I don't know if people realize, but the total commitments add up to an area globally that's larger than the size of India by 2030. So we've got to get it right. And I think most people assume that planting trees means cutting back the forest more or less the way it was before. But actually, that's not the case.

And what happens is instead of a complex natural forest full of different tree species of wildlife in two thirds of the planned areas, the natural forest will be replaced with commercial plantations and agroforestry.

We've got more details from our science correspondent, Helen Briggs.

This is all about what trees you use where so the right tree in the right place. And the scientists are saying, you know, it's great news that people are planting trees. And, of course, tree planting is a great solution for soaking up carbon, for supporting plants and animals, for bringing us food, fuels and medicine. But when you're doing this on scale, then you have to put the right trees in the right place to get the maximum benefits.

So it's all about protecting existing forests first, getting local people involved, the people with the knowledge of the area, they're the people who are going to be looking after the trees in the future, most likely, and thinking about things like protecting plants and animals and also possibly some trees there that are going to bring economic benefits for people.

So people who have been taking flights and thinking that they're offsetting their carbon footprint by being part of a process to plant trees shouldn't necessarily be too relaxed then.

Yeah, what it is all about, the right trees in the right place and doing this in a way that's going to maximize the benefits for trees. So one of the things that scientists are concerned about is when trees are replaced, say, with a single species, a monoculture, if you like, and those trees aren't going to be there for a very long time. They might be harvested a few decades down the line because if forests are disturbed, if they're logged, it takes a long, long time for them to come back to the way they were at least a hundred years, often a lot more before forests can actually be repaired.

At another point they're making actually is if you actually have areas of natural areas of forests, sometimes they will heal themselves.

So it's all about looking at the land and deciding what should be planted, but also not planting trees in the wrong place. You know, the best thing is to try and replace areas of forest and naturally there, which were historically there. But if you start planting trees in the wrong area, say other natural habitats, heathlands, grasslands, wetlands where there are never forests, and then you could do more harm than good.

That was Helen Briggs. Now, you might have heard us talk last year about how Barbados was countering the loss of holiday makers by offering people the chance to live on the island and work from their adopted island home for up to a year. They needed to pay a fee, provide a negative coronavirus test and endure a spell of isolation. I haven't quite managed to persuade our editor, Karen Martin, that it was a good idea. I really tried. But three and a half thousand people have swapped their humdrum home for a slice of Caribbean paradise.

The BBC's Hazel Martin has been speaking to Gillian Dtente, who moved from Scotland to the Caribbean with her husband. I should issue a warning. This report may invoke feelings of severe jealousy.

Cocktails are ordered. My husband worked in Dublin, so rather than stay in the cold winter, we thought we'd go to Spain and so often in Spain in January to be locked down in February. So we went back to Edinburgh. And then one of my friends and I said, I better this afternoon. I welcome somebody can go and stay here for the year.

Just what the hell did we just a few things in a case and jumped on the plane.

With tourism taking a massive hit, the Barbadian government introduced the Welcome Stamp Initiative last summer that opened up the islands to foreign nationals to live there for a year and work from home for their jobs in other countries. Denmark's five in the morning till one thirty in the afternoon. So that's and and the rest, that's just kind of normal working day for him. But he doesn't mind at all, actually, because it's quite bright in the morning, so and it's quite quiet.

So he gets a lot of stuff. So he's happy. But at the end of the day, I mean, the beach is something else. I mean, they really are beautiful. And there's loads of beach bars and nice casual restaurants I like the people's approach is really casual, laidback and friendly. I've met loads of people, very eclectic bunch of people, and they're all just absolutely brilliant. There's a lot to do here and there's a lot of room gets drunk.

If you sit around drinking, it's definitely should be on your bucket list.

Are you missing home?

Well, you've got fifteen minutes, but actually it's a shame because my two, my two older sons, they're in Florida, so I'm able to see them. And then my youngest son's here and then Helen and my daughter, she's a carer so she's right on the front line. So we just kind of I just get along, you know, and they all.

Are you doing such a good job of the Allens had just over a thousand cases in total and just nine deaths. But as batten down the hatches following a recent spike, you have to arrive with a negative test result and isolate until you return a second. There's currently a curfew in place, too, and those who do test positive have to stay in government run quarantine facilities.

It's basically you get taken away to an army barracks and kept in isolation out there. So it's not there. Well, it's a good way to do it in a way, because it means that people really have to toe the line when they go into lockdown. They just do it immediately. No mucking about.

Over three and a half thousand so-called stampers have taken up the offer so far.

Sometimes you have to go and take an opportunity and just go for it, even if it doesn't work. I always say I was saying yesterday, in fact, it's all the things that go wrong. That you remember anyway, you remember the way I just just or whatever, if everything goes really, really smoothly, there's nothing to report, really take a chance and do something you never know you might like.

You might.

Jillian Todd was talking to Hazel Martin, and that's it from us for now. But there will be an updated version of the Global News podcast later, if you'd like to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, or you'd like to ask our editor to let me go to Barbados, do please send us an email. The address is global podcast BBC Don't Code on the U.K. The studio manager was Holly Parmer. The producer was Rebekah Wood. The editor's name is Karen Martin.

I'm Jackie Lannett. And until next time, goodbye.

Hi, I'm Kim, and I'm Alan. And between us, we present to podcast from the BBC World Service that focuses on stories from Africa. So it sounds like we're going to be doing the same thing as the Congo, just like Africa do.

Not at all. I think the Goma is a much more reflective approach to stories, whereas Africa Daily is about reacting to the day's news.

Yeah, I think that's a good description. I think, you know, we'll be looking through the headlines to see the stories that are making the news and you'll be spending more time on the stories that impact people on a daily basis and reflecting on how that impacted on people. Isn't that right? Exactly. That's Africa Daily and the curb. Find them wherever you find your podcasts. Can I please do the same time? It sounds really exciting. Came as a welcome to I'm sure you don't remember.