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

Hello, I'm Emilio Sampedro and the 14 hours GMT on Thursday, the 21st of January. These are our main stories. The top U.S. infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, addresses a World Health Organization meeting a day after President Biden signed an order just after his inauguration reversing Donald Trump's decision to leave the organization. A suicide bombing in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad has killed more than 30 people. Also in this podcast, we hear of the hopes of Central American migrants heading to the United States.

What I've heard is that Biden is planning to take down the wall. I'm not sure up to that. And we've also heard he's going to help Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

And one day comes we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never ending shade?

The young African-American poet who's become a global sensation following her poetry reading at the Biden inauguration.

President Joe Biden has made the fight against covid-19 top of his agenda in his inauguration speech. He warned that the coronaviruses pandemic in the U.S. was entering its deadliest period and has pledged to increase testing and vaccination. And in another break from President Trump's policies, he's already signed an executive order to rejoin the World Health Organization. Dr. Anthony Fauci. Mr. Biden's chief medical advisor on the pandemic spoke on a video call to the show's executive board headed by Dr. Tedros Adhanom.

Ghiberti Jezus confirming America's re-engagement.

I am honored to announce that the United States will remain a member of the World Health Organization. Yesterday, President Biden signed letters retracting the previous administration's announcement to withdraw from the organization. And those letters have been transmitted to the secretary general of the United Nations and to you, Dr. Tedros, my dear friend.

So how significant is this? I asked our correspondent in Geneva.

Immagine, folks, I think, is very significant, not necessarily because of the move to rejoin the World Health Organization. We knew this, that the way Anthony Fauci appeared this morning, now 10:00 o'clock in the morning, Geneva time is four o'clock in the morning, Washington time. But he was determined to do it. And the way he said what he said, not just we will rejoin, but praising the WTO for its global response, leading the global response to the pandemic.

And he said very trying circumstances. He said that we would maintain its financial commitments, it would maintain its staff seconded to the Waco. And really interesting, he said President Biden is committed to working multilaterally to recover from the pandemic. So kind of a long way from America first.

This is the complete opposite, in fact, of what Donald Trump had been saying up until when he left office about the relationship with the WHL and its handling of covid.

Yes, it is. And you know that when Donald Trump first said will leave the Waco, you know, it was a blow here in Geneva.

Obviously, the US is a big, big financial contributor to the organization.

Also carries a lot of political clout as time went on and other countries, particularly Europe, stepped up to the plate to support the WTO, the US looked diminished.

And we're still asking ourselves here in Geneva, how will the U.S. reassert itself in international affairs? A lot of that happens in Geneva.

Well, we got a sign this morning from Anthony Fauci multilateralism. We will work together. A couple of other things he announced. He said the US will join the Kovács initiative, that's the Waco's program, to ensure that poorer countries don't lose out in a big bidding war to get vaccines. He's committed the US to supporting that. And that means financially, he's also and this is interesting that separate from the pandemic reversed what is sometimes called the Mexico City policy or the global gagging order.

This was a freeze on US funding for aid agencies and non-governmental organizations that offer counselling and reproductive health and sexual health to women and girls. This is something women's groups in particular have said is always needed to be addressed by the U.S. He's done it in 10 minutes. He's reversed vast quantities of Trumpy in policy towards global health. As I said, that's a sign of what I think we can expect from the new administration when it comes to international affairs and multilateralism and its attitude towards the UN as a whole.

Immagine, folks in Geneva. So Joe Biden hit the ground running in total. On his first day in office, he signed 15 executive orders, reversing some of Donald Trump's flagship policies. President Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris, then celebrated their inauguration with a host of stars and a fireworks display at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Here's our North America editor, John Sopel. The so-called Muslim travel ban gone America has re-entered the climate change agreement. The ban on transgender people in the U.S. military rescinded, and on it went.

But President Biden has a veritable mountain of problems. And the challenges facing the U.S. were what was on his mind when he addressed the American people last night from the Lincoln Memorial.

There are moments in our history when more is asked of us as Americans. We are in one of those moments now when we meet the moment like our forebears have, I believe we must and I believe we will.

This came as part of a made for TV special Celebrating America, replacing the fancy books that are normally the staple of inauguration night. It was a star studded lineup. Tom Hanks, the rating musical performances from Justin Timberlake, the Foo Fighters and The Boss, Bruce Springsteen with. This train carries seats in Syria. It was an inauguration day that was anything but normal. Intriguingly, however, one tradition was carried on. It's emerged that Donald Trump did leave a letter for his successor.

Joe Biden said the tone was generous, but he wouldn't reveal what it said until he'd spoken to the former president, John Sopel.

So what else should we expect from President Biden's first few days in office? I asked our Washington correspondent Gary O'Donahue, today he's really going to focus on the pandemic very intently.

You already heard from Immagine. About the rejoining of the show. He's also issued this mask challenge, trying to encourage people to wear masks more widely in the United States. And in the last couple of hours, they've published a sort of national strategy for covid and it has sort of seven different areas. They're focusing on rebuilding trust, getting more vaccines out there, opening schools and the messaging that's coming around it is that there was really nothing left in place by the Trump administration.

Now, that may be some message management, if you like, but they're suggesting that there was no distribution system really in place for the vaccine, that they're going to have to build that up from scratch.

And the tone of the administration is very different, isn't it, from that of of President Trump and his whole administration?

Yeah, I think that will continue. That is part of their their USP, if you like. But there are governments like any other and they're going to no doubt make mistakes. They're no doubt going to have difficult periods of time. They may get some sort of honeymoon period as new administrations tend to get. But with these huge challenges on hand with the pandemic and the the sort of divided nature of this country and, you know, potentially ongoing security threats and things like that, it's not going to be the sort of honeymoon you choose as a newlywed.

I don't think.

Gary O'Donahue, there have been violent scenes this week of the Guatemalan military breaking up a group of Central American immigrants as they attempt to reach the United States. The migrants in the caravan departed from the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. They say life in Honduras has become unbearable after two huge hurricanes devastated their communities late last year.

Are Mexico and Central America correspondent Will Grant reports the immigrants in this latest attempt to flee Central America got further than most. They managed to cross the border from Honduras into Guatemala. However, as they traveled through the Department of Agriculture, they came up against the full force of the Guatemalan military under orders to stop the group in their tracks. The banks of the Society River, the border between Guatemala and Mexico, make a calm contrast to the violent scenes a little further south.

On the Guatemalan side of the river is the city of taken man, where Honduran immigrant Ana Garcia got ahead of the rest of the caravan and managed to find a bed at a migrant shelter. Because Mexico is definitely the hardest part.

For example, I've seen people come back here from trying, saying they've been assaulted, they couldn't get past the federal police or immigration officials, and to avoid the immigration agents stand up in the hands of criminal gangs who attack them.

And they may well be right to see Mexico as the hardest link if the caravan even makes it that far. A huge deployment of the National Guard. Hundreds of officers in full riot gear are waiting for them being a communication.

All these thousands of these Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said the authorities would strive for dialogue with the migrants and maintain respect for their human rights. An unlikely ally of President Trump's, the Mexican president also called on the incoming Biden administration to formulate a new immigration policy. Honduran migrant Angel Garcia said the word in the caravan was that Joe Biden was soon going to make life easier, which I think the other thing that I perceive, like what I've heard is that Biden is planning to take down the wall.

And we've also heard he's going to help Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, although that's just the promise in words. And even if the money arrives, it will be badly administered.

It seems many of the migrants are misinformed about the Biden administration's plans. There will doubtless be some easing of the Trump administration, zero tolerance policy, particularly overbuilding the controversial border wall.

My name is Cloudera Law and I'm an immigration attorney in Tucson, Arizona. These last four years for my clients has been very horrifying physically, emotionally and economically.

For those who spent the past four years fighting the Trump administration's draconian rules. There is one policy above all others, which they believe Mr Biden should overturn on day one child separation.

Thousands of children were referred to the Office of Refugee Settlement. Customs, Border and Protection did not collect any specific data of immigrant family reunifications and what we have now, it's a crisis of these children that cannot be identified. The parents were sent back and the children were here. The whole world knew that this was inhumane.

For a second consecutive day, the caravan of Central American migrants was pushed back by force in Guatemala. Some made it past the military, but their journey is still only just beginning. The obstacles now near insurmountable for the ones sent back, the outlook is bleak unless something is done to ease their desperation. And even if the authorities manage to break up this particular group, they won't be able to dissuade many others from trying, will grant reporting.

And hours after being sworn in as U.S. president, Joe Biden revoked the Trump administration's emergency declaration that helped fund the building of a wall along the Mexican border. After years of deadly sectarian violence, suicide bombings have become relatively rare in the Iraqi capital. The last attack was a year and a half ago. But today, a suicide bombing in Baghdad has killed more than 30 people. Here's our Arab affairs editor, Sebastian Usher.

The horrific scenes at the busy closed market in Tyre and Square were once a familiar sight in Baghdad, but this is the first such attack for more than a year and a half. Ambulances rushed to the scene to take the many wounded to hospitals that have been put on alert across the Iraqi capital. A military spokesman said the two attackers detonated their bombs as they were being pursued by the security forces. The same market was hit in 2018 by an attack that killed 31 people.

No group has said it was responsible so far, but the Islamic State group, which still has sleeper cells in cities as well as holdouts in remote areas, has terrorized Iraq with many such attacks in the past. It comes as the country prepares for elections later this year.

Sebastian Usher. Still to come on the Global News podcast, you know, it's 40 years, so it's very timely. It's also timely because I think that HIV has become the forgotten epidemic.

We hear from two people about their experience of HIV AIDS in Britain in the 1980s.

It quickly emerged to be a key highlight of Joe Biden's inauguration on Wednesday, the performance by the 22 year old African-American poet Amanda Gorman, her poem, The Hillary Clim, recalled the Capitol riots and look to the future of the U.S. One day comes we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never ending shade the loss.

We carry a sea. We must wait. We've braved the belly of the beast. We've learned that quiet isn't always peace in the norms and notions of what just is isn't always just. Yes, and yet the dawn is ours before we knew it. Somehow we do it. Somehow we've weathered and witnessed a nation that isn't broken but simply unfinished. We, the successors of a country and a time or a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.

The youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, Amanda Gorman, won instant plaudits in less than 24 hours. She not only gained over a million Twitter followers, but her debut poetry collection has shot to number one on Amazon and is officially. She's been telling the BBC's Razia Iqbal how she found out the new president wanted her to read a poem at his inauguration.

I was just literally in my West L.A. apartment on Zoome, you know, obviously screamed and danced my head off. What kind of ran through my body was excitement and joy and honor and humility and also at the same time, terror and anxiety, because I knew it was an amazing opportunity, but it'd probably be the biggest performance of my career.

And did you start thinking about what you were going to write? Was it clear in your mind that you were going to write something new?

Yes, it was pretty clear in my mind that I like the moment demanded it. It was daunting to try to create something original that spoke to the moment I began writing. You know, I kind of have an abstract address in my head of where I want to arrive, but I kind of just kept nipping at it every day, waking up, writing a few lines and shaking my way along. And then when they came along and I basically just vomited the rest of the comment on the page and a rush of inspiration.

What was it that you wanted to convey in this poem? I really wanted to speak of a united nation. I really wanted to use my words to kind of be a point of unity in collaboration and togetherness, which granted is a really challenging task when we're talking about a country that just experienced an insurrection in our capital not too long ago. And so it was both reconciling and looking at that moment and also everything that we've gone through in the past few years and then trying to use a poem to speak of something beyond that and larger than that.

And has the poem changed since January the 6th? Oh, definitely. January the 6th was the day in which I finished the poem. I was chugging along and feeling very slow in my progress. And then the news broke and it was just this moment that underscored for me the importance of getting the poem done, writing the poem with heart and hope and love on the brain. And so I finish the rest of the poem that day. I don't want to say that it completely upended the work because I was not necessarily, I would say, surprised by what happened.

So it wasn't as if it completely changed my world view, but it just energized, I think, the execution of Setsuo.

Amanda Gorman, clutching her newborn baby, a young mother infected with coronavirus was loaded into an ambulance in freezing conditions, wearing nothing but hospital pajamas. The images shocked Mongolians, and the scandal has now led to the resignation of the country's prime minister. Jonathan Savage reports.

Many of the 5000 protesters in the capital, Ulan Bator, carried wrapped up bundles to represent the baby and its mother. TV footage showed the pair being moved to an infectious disease center wearing only hospital pajamas and plastic slippers. The resignation of the prime minister UCAN again follows those of his vice prime minister and health minister, as well as the head of the hospital, concerned that yesterday we saw that officials acted as if they were not born from.

Mothers, my children watched it, it was disgusting. Many mothers came here, all protesters came here of their own accord with standing for our children because we don't see that they'll be a bright future for them. My children worry about their futures, too.

Temperatures in Mongolia have fallen to as low as minus 25 degrees Celsius. And as Mongolian tradition, the new mothers should avoid cold weather and cold food for the first month after giving birth. But the anger in Ulan Bator was about more than a breach of national custom. I don't think Mongolians will die of covid-19, said one 20 year old. Instead, they will die of poverty and hunger. Fully landlocked Mongolia's borders were closed early on in the crisis, and that early decision appears to have worked.

The world's most sparsely populated, independent country has recorded just over 1500 cases and only three deaths. But the first domestic transmission in November sparked a series of lockdowns. Many have complained of waiting weeks for a virus test to allow them to return to their homes or of having to sleep in their cars. With hotel doors currently closed, Washbourne said.

I can't earn money, I'm hungry. I can't afford to buy food.

I don't want to live like this. I prefer to die instead of living like this.

About 80000 people are stranded in the capital, unable to move between provinces. Many Mongolians abroad have been unable to even enter their homeland.

Jonathan Savage. In the early 1980s, a mysterious illness began killing gay men around the world. It became known as HIV AIDS has gone on to kill more than 30 million people. Initially, it wasn't even known to be a virus. And the way a group of young gay men in London dealt with the fear and confusion at the start of that pandemic is the subject of a new U.K. drama. It's a sin shown in Britain on Channel four and on HBO Max.

In the United States, the BBC's Michelle Hussain spoke to Jonathan Blake, who in 1982 became one of the first people diagnosed with HIV in Britain, and Lisa Power, a volunteer on the lesbian and gay switchboard who went on to be co-founder of Stonewall and a consultant on the TV show.

I was on switchboard from 1979 onwards, so I remember the very first tentative calls and and the very early discussions switchboard when we had no idea what was causing it. And in fact, it got nicknamed onepoint gay related immune deficiency grid, because it seemed to be mostly gay men that were that were coming down with it. Slowly, literally, over a period of several years, we managed to find out that it was a virus, that it was something you could carry for a long time without showing that you had it in any way, which was was very scary for people because they had no idea who might have it.

And for you, Jonathan, it wasn't only scary, it turned out to be very real because you were diagnosed in 1982. As you watch this, how true was it to your experience?

Oh, I found it incredibly true. I found it, you know, at times it was very painful. It was difficult to watch. But it was amazingly at the end, it was amazingly cathartic. You know, it's 40 years. So it's very timely. It's also timely because I think that HIV has become the forgotten epidemic, they say.

Your like the just target civil rights, one of the things we see in the series, at least, is the denial, even amongst the young men who this is happening to, who are seeing friends disappear. Was that something that really happened, that even when it was people's friends who were getting ill, there was still a sense of denial about it?

It happened incredibly often. People were ashamed. There was already a lot of stigma, a lot of assumption that maybe you'd been getting up to a lot of sex, all kinds of assumptions made about it. But the denialism, I'm afraid it's a human trait and not a very helpful one in terms of of health.

I just thought I'd ask what I'm here. I was wondering if you had any information about AIDS. I don't understand what you mean. Why on earth would I have anything to do with that?

What was the effect on your life after you were diagnosed decades ago now? I mean, I was given a terminal diagnosis. I was 33 years old. My life was over before, you know, it had even started. And I kind of closed down. I, I shut the door and I shut my friends out. I didn't speak with people. And in the December of that year, I attempted suicide because the way that people were dying was just horrendously.

But as it was, I couldn't do it.

There is now a danger that has become a threat to us all. It is a deadly, famous or infamous AIDS Don't die of ignorance Tombstone campaign that didn't happen until 1986. Princess Diana didn't visit the AIDS ward until 1987.

So far, it's been confined to small groups.

So this was a period still of ignorance, Lisa, wasn't it?

All that you had was one gay newspaper, Capital Gay, which had a weekly column or you could call switchboard. And we became a central hub for that information. And indeed, quite rapidly, we started tacking onto the end of every single call. Have you heard about AIDS?

There are some really heartbreaking scenes at funerals where, you know, the boyfriend has been effectively airbrushed out of the picture, Jonathan.

That was where it was so painful, a huge amount of fear. There was a huge amount of ignorance. The right wing press vilified us. We were attacked. We were shamed. There was this huge build up of stigma for many people.

They hadn't come out as gay to their parents. So the first that their parents knew that their son was gay was when he was in a hospital ward with AIDS. And I've been to those funerals where the families tried to pretend it wasn't happening. And I've seen gay men stand up and get very angry about the denial of their relationships.

He was boyfriend to Nick Jacobs for six years. You can't leave him out like he doesn't exist. I'm really very sorry, but it's not the time or the place it is.

They've lived with somebody for 30 years, and then they would be locked out of seeing them at the hospital because they weren't a blood relative and the family didn't want them there.

Did you lose friends at that time?

Yes, we lost people from switchboard. I lost personal friends. They would seem to be fine and then they would be dead within weeks.

Sometimes if there was an illness and there you had it and you slept with him and then you slept with him and then you slept with 500 people, all of you do every weekend. And tell me, Richie, you're so clever. What's going to stop it spreading?

Watching this series does feel like the first time someone's talked about what it was like in Britain. Oh, yeah.

I think that that is so true. Suddenly I am seeing my story. It has this sort of powerful line that runs all the way through it that really is telling our story.

Jonathan Blakely Seppala, thank you both very much. Michelle Hussein, they're British scientists, have developed a way to count African elephants from space. The researchers from Oxford at Bath Universities used images taken by a satellite almost 400 miles above the planet's surface to monitor elephant herds, opening up a new way to track endangered animals. Here's our science correspondent, Victoria Gill.

When you first look at it, the image is a series of gray blobs amid a forest of green splotches. But when you study it closely, the picture the researchers are using taken from space is of a herd of elephants wandering through the trees. The scientists used a series of these images, pictures of one national park in South Africa taken by a satellite to test a new way of monitoring the African elephant population. The laborious task of actually counting the animals was all done via machine learning by essentially showing a computer dozens of these pictures, the researchers trained it to correctly pick out and count elephants amid trees, rocks and other animals.

The scientists say this combination of space based imaging and artificial intelligence could boost conservation efforts by allowing thousands of square miles of habitats to be surveyed in a single day.

Victoria Gill. And now this is for all the podcast fanatics listening, which I expect would be all of you, hopefully. Do you love podcasts and fancy making one with the BBC? The BBC World Service is first ever international podcast competition, which has been running since the start of January, closes tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow its opening to those living in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. The winning idea will become a BBC World Service podcast, and the winning entrant will produce it with the support of a BBC production team.

Here to talk to us a little more about it is Al Ridell from the World Service podcast team. Now, what sort of ideas are you looking for? And give us any tips for someone thinking of entering?

Well, I think the real beauty of the competition is that we're hoping to be inspired and surprised by aspiring podcast makers. So apart from the fact that we're particularly interested in ideas that resonate with women around the world, the idea itself can be about absolutely anything. You know, perhaps one of your listeners has a brilliant, true crime story to mind or an inspiring documentary series, maybe a discussion based podcast interviewing amazing people, you know, as we all do, a passion that the world needs to know more about.

And I think, as you'll agree, probably the wonderful thing about podcasts is that they can be about anything and in any format. And the only thing we're not looking for is anything scripted. So no comedy or drama.

And if someone's listening and wondering if they're eligible to enter, what advice do you have for them? Sure.

So you must be living in Kenya, Nigeria or South Africa for this first year. You have to be over 18. And we're looking for non broadcast professionals.

So new voices. So you can't answer if you're already a professional in broadcast media or you already have a credit on a commercial podcast. So that's one that's sponsored in some way. That's all the information anyone needs to know about entering and the link to entry form on our website. That's BBC World Service dot com forward slash podcast competition. Or it might be easier just to head to the World Service Twitter page and you'll find up in tweets at the top with all the information you need.

What does an entry need to look like? Sure.

So it's all explained on the entry form and it's really simple. And all you have to do is write up to 500 words explaining your podcast idea, what it is, who's involved, why is it a brilliant idea? And upload two minutes of audio that can just be using your phone while you describe why your podcast has the potential to be an international success.

So when does the competition close?

OK, it's the last chance, Claxon. It closes tomorrow. That's Friday, the 22nd of January at thirteen GMT. So that's two p.m. in Nigeria, three p.m. in South Africa and four p.m. in Kenya. So what you waiting for? Don't leave it too late. Good luck to anyone who wants to enter. Indeed. Good luck to all who enter.

Thanks for that, Albarado. And that's all from us for now.

But there'll be an updated version of the Global News podcast later. And 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 Dutko UK. This edition of the podcast was mixed by Holly Palmer and produced by Marion Straughn. And the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Amelio Sampedro. Until next time. Goodbye.