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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Joe Lieberman. In the early hours of Sunday, the 21st of March, these are the main stories. Demonstrations against coronavirus restrictions have taken place across Europe as lockdowns are reintroduced ahead of a feared third wave. Eleven people have been charged in Malta with offences linked to the murder of the investigative journalist Daphne Gorgona.

Galatea No overseas spectators will be allowed to watch this summer's Tokyo Olympics because of the virus. Also in this podcast, one thing we don't realise, we tend to think happiness is this big overriding thing that you can achieve. But a better metaphor for happiness is that it's like a leaky tire. You know, every once in a while you get to pump it up full of air. What does it really mean to be happy and where are the happiest places to live?

Find out later.

Tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in Germany, Britain and other European countries to demand the end of the coronavirus restrictions. But governments in many countries are seeking to tighten, not ease, lockdowns as the numbers of deaths and cases rise.

The largest demonstration was in Cassol in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel is considering reimposing a lockdown.

The protest highlights a growing weariness with the restrictions. For more on the mood in Germany, I spoke to our reporter in Berlin, Damien McGuinness.

The people we have in custody have been demonstrating quite representative of of quite an extreme part of the national debate right now in Germany. And the people there, a real mix. Some of them don't really think this is a real pandemic. Definitely some members of the far right were also there. You can tell that by the signs they were holding up, some people just don't like this government in general. The same sorts of people. We might have seen anti migrant protests beforehand or we've had other groups of people in these protests.

This is the last time we've had really this year. But we see these protests every week really in various different cities. And it's such a varied mix of people who don't agree with this lockdown or the government's policy in general. It's hard to characterise them, but I think when we're looking at Germany as a whole, what we're seeing really is a growing dissatisfaction of how the government's handling it. And that's really more to do with the vaccination campaign because the numbers are going up right now and the numbers of vaccines are not going up.

That's the real problem.

And indeed, Germany was praised six months ago for containing the virus better than other big countries, notably Britain. And the death toll is not as high, but the vaccination campaign is a mess.

Yeah, it's been really difficult. And what's been interesting, Joe, is that last year, Germany was really seen as a model of how to deal with the pandemic. Hospitals were well prepared. They managed well with the rising cases. Angela Merkel's government provided strong leadership and most people agreed with how Germany had dealt with things this year. Very since the rollout of the vaccine, there has been a lot of dissatisfaction. Numbers have really shot up. The death toll has risen quite remarkably over the past six months.

And the problem right now is that infection numbers are going up while the government is loosening restrictions. And that's why it's it's it would be wrong to say that people are dissatisfied with the lockdown in general, because a lot of people are saying, actually, we need more restrictive measures because the numbers are going up. And I think there's this general feeling of dissatisfaction on both extremes of the debate, what we're seeing in kastle, but also coming through in the political debate and really falling polling numbers also for Angela Merkel's conservative party and for the other Social Democrats who are also in government right now, Damien McGuinness in Germany, there were also protests in Spain and the Netherlands, as well as discontent in France and Poland.

Thousands marched through central London as well in a demonstration police said was larger than expected.

Our correspondent John Donnison sent this report from the midst of Saturday's protests in Trafalgar Square to the beat of a drum with some chanting freedom. Thousands of tightly packed anti lockdown protesters marched up Whitehall and down the ballot.

One man carried a placard bearing the words, No more government lies.

Very few demonstrators were wearing masks and there was no attempt at social distancing. So far, the police who are out in numbers have been taking a hands off approach. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Lawrence Taylor said mass arrests were not practical.

They are committing an offence by gathering in these numbers. Equally, if we've got several thousand people walking through London to arrest, every single one would require several thousand police officers. And at the moment that would be very challenging. We are making arrests, we are enforcing it, and we are doing that in a proportionate way. Among the crowd, there are some conspiracy theorists and covid deniers, with some accusing the mainstream media of pushing fake news, but that's by no means everyone here.

One woman who didn't want to be named told me she knew covid-19 was bad, saying I had it myself last March. But this lockdown is too much.

John Donnison in central London. Chile has recorded its highest daily number of new coronavirus infections, the latest South American country to be swamped by a resurgence of covid-19. Almost all hospital beds in the country are occupied, and the capital, Santiago, has been placed into lockdown this weekend. Chile has one of the most advanced vaccination campaigns in the world. By some reckonings, it stands third behind Israel and the United Arab Emirates. But officials say the arrival of more contagious variants of the virus and a relaxation of some restrictions has led to a rise in cases staying statement at 19.

And to Brazil now, as the rate of deaths from the coronavirus continues to rise partly through the highly transmissible local variant, Brazil's hospitals have been overloaded to breaking point. In some states, there are no intensive care beds available at all, while the ICU wards in many others are almost full. Amid the chaos, President Jair Bolsonaro fired his health minister, who is an Army general and appointed the fourth health minister since the pandemic began. Our Latin America correspondent will grant reports.

In cities across Brazil, protesters wearing the green and gold of the Brazilian flag took to the streets over their government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. But even with the country's entire hospital system on the brink of collapse, they weren't protesting against President Jair Bolsonaro or his dismissive attitude towards the virus. Rather, the defiantly masked men and women were his supporters, angry at the lockdown's imposed by their local governors in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and beyond their capacity.

Around the time, those who oppose closing schools and businesses were exercising their right to gather, 52 year old petrol pump attendant Antonio Colline was fighting for every breath in a hospital in Soumaré in the state of Sao Paulo. He exchanged voice messages with his daughter Jessica, as she desperately paced the corridors trying to track him down. After I finished the tests, I'm going to be hospitalized, he tells her. It was the last time they spoke to her.

She. His death has been especially hard on Jessica. The doctors told her that her father would die without an ICU bed, but none was available. She lodged an appeal with a local judge in order that he be admitted to the ICU, afraid of the jeopardies things.

Jingsheng came out two days after I made the request. It said that the state had 48 hours to find a hospital bed from the father. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time. The deadline is Friday on Sunday, and that was the day he died.

Stories like Antonios are happening every day in every state in Brazil. The desperate situation is overwhelming the country's health care system and shows little sign of easing up while other nations appear to be finally turning a corner with a pandemic. Brazil recently registered its worst day yet in covid-19 related deaths hundreds of kilometers away from Soumaré. Where Antônio died is Florida, Indianapolis, in the state of Santa Catalina.

Right now I have no beds left if someone dies. I have already another one waiting in line.

Dr. Israel Maiya is an intensive care doctor in Florida, nor police who specializes in respiratory disease. The picture he paints of the situation in his hospital is bleak.

We have people intubated outside of the ICU. This is not good because the doctors that will treat those patients, they are not in intensive care doctors. So the surveillance of the nurses, surveillance of the doctors are completely different.

The overloading of the system has been bad enough, says Dr. Meyer. But the problems are exacerbated by the more aggressive variant of the virus circulating unchecked in Brazil, in the state where I live.

We have already 65 percent of the virus. They are variants. We don't know which of the variants varies from man hours from South Africa or even from UK. However, their variants are much more transmissible as it is to others.

As President Bulsara has steadfastly downplayed the threat from Coronavirus, even recently told people to stop whining. He may now be facing a political reckoning over his handling of the pandemic. The country's popular ex-president, Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, has burst back onto the political landscape after a Supreme Court judge threw out the corruption charges against him, saying You might want to change Ignacio.

It all comes too late for Jessica Collene and her family. They lost their father because there simply wasn't a bed for him at the height of the crisis. She has little doubt.

Where the blame lies is killing my client's mother, Pricket Both senators like the child. He was supposed to be working, doing his job responsibly and that is not what we had seen. He makes fun of the virus. He belittles the pain of people who have died. At first he said it was just a little flu.

While the little flu has already killed more than two hundred eighty thousand people here in Brazil, psoas antipolice annatto protests continue to reverberate around cities like Sao Paulo as the president's critics call for him to resign. Yet he will pay them little heed. The true cost of his cavalier approach to coronavirus is already clear in Brazil's ICU wards as medical teams there improvise, work around the clock and strain every sinew to stave off complete collapse.

Will grant reporting delayed and now all but silent, the Olympic and Paralympic Games were scheduled to take place in Tokyo last year, but then postponed because of the coronavirus until July this year. As of now, they are still going ahead, but spectators from overseas are to be banned. While a decision on whether to allow homegrown spectators will be taken in April, those who've booked tickets will get their money back. Japan is at the tail end of a third wave of the pandemic, and there's been some resistance from the public to the country hosting the games at all.

The International Olympic Committee says safety has to be the first priority, despite disappointment of fans. Thomas Bach is the president of the IOC.

We share the disappointment of the many enthusiastic fans around the world and of the families and friends of Olympic athletes about this decision. And we were feeling with them. And I really feel sorry for this situation. But it is a necessary decision because we have to respect the safety of all the participants.

Aaron Brown is a self-confessed Olympic superfan who has attended 15 summer and winter games. So how does he feel about not being allowed to go to Tokyo?

I've spent the last couple of years planning the trip. It's getting tickets, finding air reservations, getting a hotel and then having to do it all twice since that got postponed last year. So, you know, part of me is disappointed. Part of me realizes we're in the middle of a pandemic and it's prudent decision for public health reasons.

You must have shelled out a fair amount of cash in order to prepare for your Tokyo trip.

Most of the money right now is tied up in the tickets. I was up last night and this morning waiting for the final answer. And I was hoping that Tokyo 2020 would be a little bit more specific and maybe offer the fans that aren't going as some sort of a timeline as to when we could expect a refund last year when they offered this refund. They didn't. But the people that took advantage of it were charged 20 percent to get their money back.

And it took six to seven months for that process to happen. And so now with more people impacted, it'll take a while. And it would be nice to know what point we could expect the funds to be returned.

When did your interest in the Olympics begin ever?

You know, as a kid in the 60s and 70s. I watched the Olympics on TV and was always amazed by the opening and closing ceremonies and all the history that's made at the Olympics. And Sport in Los Angeles in 1984 was my first Olympics and I ended up snagging tickets just before the games to go to the opening ceremonies. And it was just an incredible show. 84 baby grand piano playing Rhapsody in Blue, one of the world's largest card stunts.

Everybody held up a card. And as you looked around the stadium, it was all of the flags of Olympic countries. A few days later, we're seeing gold medals given out in person. And I thought, wow, this is better in real life than it is on TV. From there, the bike was bad and I started to go to the Olympics.

Given everyone the importance for you of being there, are you going to bother to watch the Tokyo Olympics on TV?

I will tune in for sure. Want to see what we're missing out on? I want to from afar, cheer on our favorites and our Team USA people. But it'll be a little poignant. Not being there will be poignant. If we don't have our refund by then, who knows? We might not get it until Christmas or maybe a year from now. We'll still be talking about it. Hopefully they get it out quickly and that'll take the sting out of it.

That was the Olympic superfan, Aaron Brown, speaking to my colleague Julian Marshall. Fewer than three percent of those accused of sexual assaults in Pakistan end up with someone being convicted on Saturday. Two men, Abeed Mali and Shafqat Hussain, joined that small number. They've been sentenced to death for the gang rape of a mother of two by the side of a highway in the eastern Punjab province. The attack last year sparked an upsurge of protests against the violence that many Pakistani women must endure.

I heard more about the background of this attack from our South Asia regional editor Gilma Jibbering.

This was last September, a woman who is of Pakistani origin but a French national who was driving late at night with her two young children in the back of the car. And as you say, they became stranded at the side of the road because she ran out of petrol. She phoned for help and, of course, locked the car. But these two men came across. They broke into the car. They took her and the children into a field nearby and they raped her.

Obviously, there was a lot of shock when people heard what had happened and that became compounded when. A senior police official who was commenting on the media in the case the next day, and he seemed to be suggesting that she was partly to blame for the assault, he questioned, for example, why was she out so late at night and why hadn't she checked out that she had enough petrol? Mitsuko's in that particular room to these sorts of remarks, which, of course, made people even more angry and led to all these protests with women saying stop blaming women for this sexual violence that we're having to endure.

Now, the law has been changed in Pakistan since that attack, which created new special courts.

Yes, that's right. And this went through a fast track court. It was actually one of the anti-terrorism courts, but it didn't mean that this conviction happened very quickly. And those changes we saw in December, the latest in a series of tightening of laws were partly prompted by this case and all the the concern about it. The prime minister, Imran Khan, came out publicly and promised that there will be tougher, swifter action. That's part of this and that also at the same time, there was a more controversial measure, the introduction of chemical castration in some cases for serial offenders, a controversial move that also something that Imran Khan personally endorsed Gilma giving and staying with the issue of women's rights.

There's growing concern in Turkey as well. After the government pulled out of the Council of Europe's landmark convention on Women's Rights, the council's secretary general called the move devastating and deplorable. The decision attracted particularly attention because the convention had been signed in the Turkish city of Istanbul, and hundreds of women reacted to the move on Saturday by protesting on the streets of the city, watched by our correspondent Paula Geren.

There is plenty of anger among the crowd here. These protesters believe that this change is going to drag them and Turkey back in time and deprive them of key rights and freedoms. Now they've been pledging that they will resist. But in Turkey these days, there isn't much space for resistance. Turkey's main opposition party has some things up like this, saying that women will now be kept as second class citizens and will be left to be killed. Some of the protesters in the crowd have been carrying photographs of women who have been killed or placards with the names of women who were victims of violence.

And according to one women's rights group, last year alone here in Turkey, around 300 women were killed. And they say the numbers have been increasing. Now, the government has given no explanation for this. It was done by way of a decree issued in the dead of night. One minister has said that Turkey's own laws and its constitution are sufficient to protect women. But the reaction from the Council of Europe has been one of horror. It says that this will set back the cause of women not just in Turkey, but also in Europe.

There is a considerable security presence here. The police are lined up, water cannons are at the ready. But so far the demonstration has been peaceful, although the feeling, the mood is very much one of anger or Ligurian in Istanbul.

Still to come on the podcast, that people have been growing tired of these significant earthquakes that constantly be keeping us awake. There's been growing anxiety and some residents were saying there's going to be an eruption. Might as well just happen.

The volcano has erupted in Iceland, about 30 kilometers south of the capital, Reykjavik. Eleven people who were being investigated by the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia before her murder in 2017 have appeared in court in Valletta. They have been charged with money laundering, corruption and fraud. I heard more from our Europe regional editor, Mike Sanders, on who exactly was facing these charges.

The police say that there are about 20 companies that are actually involved in these current charges. And a lot of these people are the former executives or current executives of these companies that have been under the spotlight. And many of them do have links to the Maltese government. But prime among them is Keith Schembri, who was the chief of staff for the former Maltese prime minister, Joseph Muscat. Now it's alleged that Mr. Stembridge Company bribed the former managing director of a newspaper group, some 650000 euros.

That's a bit more in dollars to secure a contract to supply a state of the art printing press. Now, Mr Schembri denies any wrongdoing, as does the former executive of the newspaper group. But it's all linked to accounts that their companies had shell companies in the British Virgin Islands through which alleged illicit payments and money laundering was conducted.

They're not being charged with murder. Why not?

Because there's no direct implication in the murder of Daphne Caruana. Glitzier is, to put it briefly, there are suspicions about them. But the one person, I suppose, who is definitely in the frame for the murder itself is Jorgen Fennec. Now, he's a major businessman who has been under arrest since November 2019. He also denies any involvement in the actual murder. But he was arrested by the Maltese armed forces as he was leaving the island after a middleman in the alleged middleman in the murder.

Melvern Tumor began to tell prosecutors what he knew. So Mr. FedExes is the one, I suppose, who's under the spotlight for the murder itself or commissioning the murder. And, of course, a hit man, Vincent Muskat, actually pleaded guilty last month to involvement in the crew that planted the car bomb. And he's begun a 15 year jail sentence like Sanders.

To Ukraine now. And a court in Kiev has transferred the shares of a key aviation engine maker to a Ukrainian state agency to thwart a takeover by a Chinese firm that is subject to U.S. sanctions. The Biden administration says Sky Reason has significant ties to the Chinese military. And the Ukrainian security services said the decision had not just been about the fate of one company, but about the state's ability to protect its own interests around Cochi reports.

Ukrainian officials said keeping Motorcity under Ukrainian ownership was a vital measure to protect national interests. The decision, in effect, nationalizes the company and brings an end to a yearlong battle over the fate of the aircraft engine maker wrestling control away from the Chinese firm Sky Risin, which has been trying to buy it for the past five years. Motorcity is one of the largest engine manufacturers for the aviation industry. Its engines power aircraft used in Russia, China and other countries of the former Soviet Union.

But ever since the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, Ukraine has been in a state of war with its eastern neighbor, and its aviation industry has been looking for Chinese investment instead. All this was being closely watched in Washington, which sees Chinese efforts to gain access to sensitive military technology as a security threat to China's neighbors, including U.S. allies Japan and Taiwan. This prompted the then US national security adviser John Bolton, to travel to Kiev in 2019 to push the Ukrainian government to block the acquisition.

Earlier this month, the US Defence Department announced that it was providing 125 million dollars in military support to Ukraine, with an additional 150 million to come if the country made progress on defence reforms. In the end, finding itself in a fierce tug of war, Ukraine had to choose between the economic appeal of China and American security assistance.

Ariane Cochi. Iceland is home to around 30 active volcano systems and has almost constant seismic activity. In the last few days, a volcano has begun spewing lava spectacularly after being dormant for 800 years. The area close to the capital, Reykjavik, had been hit by tens of thousands of small earthquakes in the buildup to the eruption. Experts say activity is now subsiding, as Charlotte Gallagher now reports.

A Coast Guard helicopter captures the moment red hot lava begins snaking its way down the valley. The volcano erupted on Friday night, the crimson stream clearly visible against the pitch black surroundings. A woman in the nearby fishing port of Grinderman said she could see the glowing red sky from her window. The eruption is smaller than volcanologists had feared and currently poses no danger to nearby communities on the Rakan as Peninsula and the Blue Lagoon Geothermal Spa, a popular tourist destination. Sigurður Chris Munsen is the local harbormaster.

We are excited if it's more like that than in far, far away from the town. And good for the tourist business and for people living nearby.

It's a relief the eruption has finally happened. The area has been struck by more than 50000 small earthquakes in recent weeks as seismic activity increased. Locals have had countless sleepless nights as they felt the ground beneath them shake.

Farner Johnson is the mayor of Grenda Veck a that people have been growing tired of these significant earthquakes. They've constantly been keeping us awake. There's been growing anxiety and some residents were saying there's going to be an eruption. It might as well just happen.

In 2010, another Icelandic volcano eruption saw ash propelled thousands of metres into the air. Flights were grounded across Europe, the largest air traffic shutdown since World War Two. This time, the event is a spectacle, not a threat.

Charlie Gallagher now. Are you feeling happy? We're always happy here on the Global News podcast. Lucky for us, because Saturday was the United Nations annual International Day of Happiness and the U.N. has published its list, which ranks the happiness of 149 countries. Finland tops the list for the fourth year in a row. Denmark was second, while Afghanistan was ranked as the world's unhappiest nation. Let's explore for a moment the concept of being happy. Nick Robinson spoke to Professor Laurie Santos, who is a professor of psychology at Yale University and host of the Happiness Lab podcast.

She has devised a happiness course that has been completed by more than two million people during the pandemic.

One thing we don't realize, we tend to think happiness is this big overriding thing that you can achieve. But a better metaphor for happiness is that it's like a leaky tire. You know, every once in a while you get to pump it up full of air. And I think many of the simple ways we pump our happiness tires full of air right now, you kind of can't do in the same way during lockdown.

People tend to think they have to transform their lives to become happy. You advocate something much simpler in a way.

Yeah. I think, you know, many of our theories of happiness involve the idea that our circumstances make us happy. Right? It's how much money we have or our job or a particular relationship. But what the research shows us that happiness is a lot simpler than that. Happiness is about our social connections. It's about doing nicer things for others. It's about finding ways to be a little bit more present. Right. You know, a lot of these kinds of habits that we struggle with during the pandemic.

But the good news is that we really can affect our happiness. It doesn't require a huge change in our circumstances. It's just adding in more behaviors that we know can bump up our mental health ever so slightly.

You think even now there are techniques people can use that would make a real difference?

Yeah, definitely. And I think we need to be much more intentional about those techniques. And I think one way to do that is to make sure you're finding social connection in other ways. You can pick up your phone, not to do email, but, you know, call someone you haven't talked to. You know, you can take a socially distanced walk with a friend, you know, depending on where you're living right now. Like, there's lots of ways we can build in more social connection and the simple act of doing so, the research shows can really bump up our well-being and in some cases much more than we expect.

You know, we have this causal arrow of happiness wrong. We think, you know, you get rich and all these good things happen and you become happier. But the research shows the opposite causal arrow to happy people are more likely to obtain a job, being happy, being cheerful, being in a good mood that's correlated with getting a higher salary later in life. And so all the things we kind of want in our economy or people getting jobs, people making more money, people coming up with creative ideas, those are the sorts of things that come from mental health, higher mental health, not the reverse.

Professor Laurie Santos speaking to a very happy Nick Robinson. And that's all from us for now.

But there will be an updated version of the Global News podcast a little bit later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is Global Podcast at BBC Dot Dot UK. The studio manager today was Sam Durham. The producer was Lee McAffrey, the editor is Karen Martin, and I am Joe Lynam. Until next time. Goodbye. I'm dusa the host of Deeply Human, where we find out why you do the things you do.

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What attracts one person to another? Why do you get déjà vu and how does pain change the way that you perceive yourself? There's a whole bunch of taboos around illness from the hidden power dynamics of the standing line to the technological advances that challenge our definitions of death. Join me for the Human and BBC World Service and American Public Media co-production with Iraq Media. Just search the deeply human.