US strikes Iran-linked targets in Iraq and Syria

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Hi, I'm Una Chaplin, and I'm the host of a new podcast called Hollywood Exiles. It tells

the story of how my grandfather, Charlie Chaplin, and many others were

caught in the same trap that they were caught in the same trap that they were caught in

the same trap that they were caught in the same trap that they were caught in the same trap that they were

caught up in a campaign to root out communism in Hollywood. Hollywood Exiles from CBC Podcasts

and the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.

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

I'm Janet Jalil, and in the early hours of Saturday, the 3rd of February, these are our main stories.

US officials say the United States has begun airstrikes against Iranian targets in Syria and

Iraq in retaliation for Sunday's drone attack in Jordan that killed three American military

personnel. More than 800 officials in the US and Europe have signed a joint statement saying that

the governments they serve risk being complicit in war crimes in Gaza. An Italian minister has

resigned amid allegations of stolen art and corruption. Also in this podcast...

Are you woozy? How many stripes do I have?

I'm fine. Answer the stripe question.

Three. No! See, something's wrong with you. I have one, two, three. That's all I have.

A scientific study suggests that real-life clownfish may have the ability to count as

well as their animation counterparts. For days now, the US has signalled that it was planning

to retaliate to a drone attack by an Iranian-backed group that killed three American soldiers in

Jordan on Sunday.

Now, five days after the deaths of those soldiers, the US has begun striking targets in Syria and

Iraq. A statement released by the Pentagon said facilities with command and control centres

were among the dozens of targets that were hit, and that this was just the start of the American

response. Ben Thompson heard more about the US strikes from the BBC's senior international

correspondent, Orla Gerin, who's in Erbil in northern Iraq.

What we're not dealing with is a war that's going to happen. We're not dealing with a war that's going to happen.

We're dealing with a war that's going to happen. We're not dealing with a war that's going to happen.

What we're not dealing with tonight is the element of surprise. This has been very well telegraphed.

In fact, there's been a countdown going on since last Sunday, since the killing of those three

American service personnel in that drone strike in Jordan. I think the important thing about this

is the very fine balance that Washington is attempting with this operation. It needs to have

a strong response, strong enough to satisfy American public opinion after the killing of

three soldiers, strong enough to satisfy the American public opinion after the killing of three soldiers,

strong enough to satisfy Republican pressure in an election year, but not so strong that it triggers

an escalating response from the other side, from the Iranian-backed militias, or indeed from Iran

itself. Now, the messaging from both Iran and Washington in the last few days has been pretty

consistent. Both sides are saying the same thing. We don't want an escalation. We don't want a wider

war. And the US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, has said there is a way to manage things.

And his phrase, so that things don't escalate further out of control. Well, now we will see if

Washington has come up with a formula, has been able to find a formula to deliver its response,

but not to escalate things, not to make a bad situation even worse.

Yes, and all of that is the very difficult balancing act that both sides have to play here,

isn't it? How do you do that? How do you send that message and the deterrent whilst not tipping this

into a wider conflict? And it's entirely possible, isn't it, that that could happen by accident,

both sides may say that they don't want that. But if airstrikes begin, as we are told they have

done tonight, it is possible that this is a worrying new chapter in this conflict.

That's always the risk. And I think it's a greater danger now than perhaps it has been for many years.

You'll remember that the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, said this week,

this is the most dangerous time in the Middle East since the 1973 Arab-Israeli wars.

I think many people would agree with that. We are in a new moment of uncertainty with,

of conflict spilling out in many different directions. We have the Iranian-backed militias

here in Iraq and in Syria who are targeting US forces. We have Iranian-backed Hezbollah

trading fire with Israel across the Israel-Lebanon border. We have the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen

who are paralysing global shipping with attacks in the Red Sea. And of course, we have Israel's

ongoing assault on Gaza and the devastating death toll among Palestinian civilians. The region

really is a tinderbox.

Right now, so every step has to be very carefully measured. And however careful President Biden and

his defence officials may be in selecting targets, there is the risk that something goes wrong. And

the Americans have said the first thing we see will not be the last thing we see. In other words,

this will be a multi-tiered response. It could take place over several days in several different

locations. So we are just at the start of something now. And we don't know how far this

retaliation is going.

The Americans may be trying not to escalate too far, but things can achieve a momentum of their own.

You know, what we have to bear in mind is this has been heavily telegraphed. Senior Iranian militia

leaders or figures who support Iran will not simply have been sitting at their bases in the last few

days waiting for the Americans to come and strike. In fact, there was a lot of speculation on social

media today in Baghdad that prominent figures, Iranian-backed figures in various militias

had left their...

their offices and their known locations in Baghdad in recent days because they weren't going to sit

around to wait and be hit. So there is no element of surprise in this. And I think it will take

tonight and maybe into the next few days before we see whether America has managed to hit a different

kind of target, what the response from Iran is, and whether or not we are into a new moment of

escalation or whether things will... will stop at this for now.

Yeah, and all that. Iran, as we...

Iran, as we...

To be very clear, has denied any involvement here. It says the accusations from the U.S. are baseless,

saying it is not involved in the decision-making of resistance groups. And by that, it's referring,

of course, to these militias that are, we understand, trained, equipped and funded by the

Revolutionary Guard Corps. There's a problem, though, here, isn't there, and a distinction,

I guess, between those movements in the region that are directly linked to Iran. I'm thinking

the Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah.

And then these separate, more maybe disparate groups that Iran says, look, we do not direct their actions.

What they do is up to them, and therefore it is not fair to blame us for the strikes that they have carried out,

particularly those just this week that killed those three U.S. servicemen.

Well, Iran maintains that it doesn't direct any of the members of what it calls the axis of resistance.

So we're talking about Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and, of course, this array of Iranian-backed

militias.

which operate here in Iraq and also in Syria. So Tehran's stance is we don't tell them what to do.

We support them. We agree with the broad objectives. And, of course, we know that the Iranians are

arming and training these groups, but they claim that they are not issuing orders and saying strike

this target and strike that target.

Ola Geren in northern Iraq. Meanwhile, in an unprecedented display of coordinated dissent

against Israel's war on Hamas, more than 800 serving officials from the United States and

Europe have signed a statement which strongly criticizes Western support for Israel's attacks

on Gaza, which have killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and displaced hundreds of

thousands more. The signatories, whose identities have not been revealed, say they're worried that

Israel's war against Hamas could strengthen the appeal of the militant group rather than destroying

it and that their own government's policies could amount to, quote, grave violations of international

law.

Ola Geren in northern Iraq.

Ola Geren in northern Iraq.

Ola Geren in northern Iraq.

Ola Geren in northern Iraq.

More on this statement from our U.S. State Department correspondent, Tom Bateman.

This is 800 serving government officials from the United States, from the European Union and from 11

other European countries, including the U.K., France and Germany. And what they have said is

that they believe that their government's own policies risk contributing to a grave violation

of international law, as you say, that they say may even extend to ethnic cleansing and even

national security. So, I think that's a very, very important statement.

So, I think that's a very, very important statement.

I think that's a very, very important statement.

When they've been giving advice and opinion to ministers and to policymakers, but that advice has basically been sidelined and ignored for what they call political and ideological reasons. And that is why they say they have come out at this point. I mean, I was speaking to one U.S. official with 25 years of experience. I mean, I was speaking to one U.S. official with 25 years of experience. And I think that's a very, very important statement.

So, I think that's a very, very important statement.

And what they have said is that they have used their professional experience, their experience in some cases, knowledge of the region when they've been giving advice and opinion to ministers and to policymakers, but that advice has basically been sidelined and ignored for what they call political and ideological reasons. And that is why they say they have come out at this point.

I mean, I was speaking to one US official with 25 years of experience in national security in the US

who said that it was the first time this official had done this and come out publicly

suggesting that things had reached a breaking point.

And that is why there's this unprecedented statement coordinated between the US and European countries.

And meanwhile, UN aid agencies say they are concerned that the fighting in Gaza

could spread to the southernmost city, Rafah, where more than a million people have fled.

It's extremely crowded there.

Let's just hear from Jens Lerker, who's a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

This is what he had to say about the situation in Rafah.

In recent days, thousands of Palestinians have continued to flee to the south,

which is already hosting over half the Gaza's population of some 2.3 million people.

Most are living in makeshift structures, tents.

Or out in the open.

Rafah is a pressure cooker of despair.

And we fear for what comes next.

And this is further adding to the pressure on Western governments over their support for Israel.

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, what you've heard there is about, you know, these dire, very, very dire conditions on the ground.

Of course, Israel is saying that it's going to continue to go off to Hamas to completely erode and eliminate its capabilities.

But it is really that that's at the crux of this.

Because.

What strikes me about these officials, what they've said is, yes, and they're talking about the vast number of Palestinian civilians that Israel has killed alongside what Israel says is the killing of militants.

But it goes further because what these officials are suggesting is that there is, you know, traditionally has been very strong allegiance from European countries in the U.S. towards Israel,

extending in the case of the U.S. to very, very significant military support.

And at the same time, they believe.

That the policy is failing.

That what's happened in Gaza has been, you know, massive destruction of property and lives.

But without serving Israel's own security interests in that there is no long term solution, they believe from this.

But it endangers the hostages being held, further endangers them and endangers stability in the region.

So they're saying that in their view, the policy is a failure.

And that the way in which Western support for Israel has been carried out is failing and it's endangering their own national security interests.

But also the wider.

Now, obviously, Israel would absolutely reject and it does reject all of this and says it applies international law and accuses Hamas of hiding in civilian areas.

But I think this is a very significant number of people that have now come out.

This dissent isn't new, but it's the coordination of it between these Western nations, key allies of Israel.

That is a new development.

Tom Bateman.

Next to the Netherlands.

We've recently reported on how judges at the International Court of Justice in The Hague have ruled that Israel,

must do all it can to prevent genocide in Gaza after South Africa brought a case against it.

Now, judges at the ICJ have ruled on another genocide case, this time brought against Russia by Ukraine.

The judges decided that they did have jurisdiction to hear that case.

Kiev accuses Moscow of violating international law because it justified its invasion of Ukraine on the false grounds that it was to stop the genocide of Russian speakers in the east.

Anna.

Holligan reports from The Hague.

Moscow argued in launching the lawsuit, Ukraine was abusing the genocide convention by using it as a roundabout way to get a ruling on the overall legality of Russia's special military operation.

The judges found the ICJ has jurisdiction to entertain Ukraine's request to find that there is no credible evidence Kiev is committing genocide,

but will not rule on whether Russia's invasion or recognition of the independence of areas in eastern Ukraine,

amount to a violation of the international law.

Anna.

Holligan.

Now, here's a message from Oliver Conway.

Just a quick reminder that we are looking for your questions about the current state of the war in Ukraine for a special edition of the Global News Pod to mark the second anniversary of the invasion.

We'll get answers from the team at UkraineCast.

So if you are wondering whether some in Ukraine would be willing to sacrifice occupied territory for peace,

or what's the impact of so many years of war,

young men from Russia being killed in Ukraine,

then please email us at globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk or tweet at globalnewspod.

And if possible, record your question as a voice note.

Thank you.

Now, let's turn to Sudan, where the UN's World Food Programme says it's receiving reports of people dying of starvation in the country.

Two warlords have been fighting for control since last April.

The violence erupted in the capital Khartoum.

But has since spread to other regions of Sudan, like Darfur and South and North Kordofan.

Millions of people have been displaced and more than a million forced to flee the country.

And because of the worsening security, the delivery of aid is becoming increasingly perilous.

Julian Marshall spoke to Michael Dunford, Regional Director for East Africa for the World Food Programme, or WFP.

The situation in Sudan today is a catastrophe.

We estimate that there are over 18 million people who are acutely food insecure, acutely hungry because of the conflict.

Sudan has the largest number of internally displaced people across the globe today.

And 1.7 million Sudanese have already left and crossed into places like Chad and South Sudan.

So unless we get an end to the fighting,

unless we get an end to the fighting,

unless we get an end to the fighting,

unless we get access to the populations,

we fear the situation is going to continue to deteriorate

and a very real possibility of people dying of hunger.

Has that already been happening though, people dying of starvation?

Certainly we fear that the numbers of people severely impacted is increasing

and certainly there are pockets of people who will have,

who will have perished as a result of a lack of food and other services.

How has it come to this?

Unfortunately, Sudan has now been in a civil war for the last almost 10 months.

And the whole system within the country is in the process of collapsing.

I was talking to a colleague recently.

Their point was that Sudan was no longer on a cliff edge.

It had already fallen off the cliff.

And the question is, how far will it fall?

As a result, we simply need the end to the conflict

because WFP and other humanitarian actors are not able to scale up

our response to the extent required to meet all of the needs across the country.

And why is that?

Is it because of the continuing conflict and problems of access?

Absolutely.

The conflict is in areas which are preventing,

either us from reaching the population

or is forcing populations to leave those locations and move elsewhere.

So it's a constant churn of people moving to different parts of the country.

And it just makes it increasingly difficult for WFP

to be able to reach them at the scale required.

So what kind of challenges does the WFP face

in trying to bring aid to those who need it in Sudan?

So the challenges are enormous.

First and foremost, we simply do not have the levels of funding that we require.

We need over $200 million in the next six months

to be able to respond at the scale required.

Beyond that, at the start of the conflict, we lost many of our assets.

Our offices, our warehouses were raided.

Our commodities were looted.

So we really had to start all over again.

And now it's a case of,

once we get food in,

can we move the trucks down the roads into the locations?

How do we negotiate the cross-line,

the cross-border operations that are necessary?

Do we have the partners on the ground who can do the distributions?

Can we reach the populations that need the support the most?

That was Michael Dunford,

East Africa Director for the World Food Programme.

Still to come on the podcast...

My theory here is that this is eventually going to replace the phone.

It won't look like ski goggles it looks like now.

It will look much more like a pair of glasses.

The Apple tech company launches its Vision Pro headset in the US.

So is this the future?

For just as long as Hollywood has been Tinseltown,

there have been suspicions about what lurks behind the glitz and glamour.

And for a while,

those suspicions grew into something much bigger and much darker.

Are you a member of the Communist Party?

Or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?

I'm Una Chaplin,

and from CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service,

this is Hollywood Exiles.

It's about a battle for the political soul of America,

and the battlefield was Hollywood.

Search for Hollywood Exiles wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome back to the Global News Podcast.

In Italy, a junior culture minister in the right-wing government of Giorgio Maloney

has resigned amid allegations of stolen art and corruption.

The minister, Vittorio Scarbi, made the announcement on Friday

at an event which was being televised at the time.

Our Europe regional editor, Alice Adly, has more.

71-year-old Vittorio Scarbi announced his resignation to a shocked audience

while speaking at an event in Milan,

Milan.

Mr Scarbi, who denies any wrongdoing,

has raised eyebrows in the past for using profanity

and making sexist comments during public appearances.

In January, prosecutors said they were investigating

whether a painting he owned,

allegedly by the 17th century artist Rutilio Manetti,

had been stolen and modified to hide its origin.

Separately, he's being investigated for allegedly accepting lucrative fees

for speaking at cultural events.

Alice Adly.

Since being appointed to head Turkey's central bank nine months ago,

Hafizge Erkan, the first woman to hold the post

and a former Wall Street banker,

has been leading a successful economic turnaround.

She's managed to bring down Turkey's soaring inflation

after President Erdogan stopped going against conventional economic thinking

by insisting that Turkey's central bank should be shut down.

She's been told that Turkey's central bank should be shut down.

She's been told that Turkey's central bank should be shut down.

She's been told that Turkey's central bank should be shut down.

But now she's announced that she's stepping down to protect her family

after allegations of nepotism, which she says are untrue.

I asked a reporter in Ankara, Victoria Craig,

if her resignation had come as a shock.

For Turkey, nothing really is a shock.

But yes, this is a shock resignation tonight

because there had been these allegations

that have been swirling in the local media

that Erkan's father had been involved in the dismissal

of one of his children.

of one of the central bank's employees.

And Ms. Erkan herself had come out and denied these allegations.

She said she was going to use the full force of the law

to defend herself and her family.

She said that these allegations were false.

And President Erdogan last week, on Wednesday,

came out and essentially backed her

and said that this was part of an effort

to derail an economic turnaround

that she had been one of the chief architects of.

And do we have any idea why she's chosen to go now?

It was a very emotional tweet.

It was several paragraphs,

and it was a very emotional tweet.

It was a very emotional tweet.

It definitely wasn't something that had been pre-written

or looked as though it had been signed off

by many layers of bureaucracy.

She said that she came back to Turkey

after having lived in the U.S. for a number of years.

She worked on Wall Street.

She was sort of seen as a person

who was going to bring about economic orthodoxy to Turkey,

which was much needed to fight red-hot inflation.

She talked specifically about her child,

who isn't even two years old yet,

as one of the reasons for leaving the job.

The final line in her post on X said that

serving as the central bank governor will, quote,

be the greatest legacy I leave to my child.

But ultimately, you know,

she expressed that it was what she called the smear campaign

that was the reason for this resignation.

She said that it was bringing a lot of distraction

to the central bank.

And crucially, the finance minister came out

about the same time as the central bank governor tweeted

and said that President Erdogan

is fully backing this economic turnaround plan.

So that laying to rest any fears

that this is a U-turn in policy.

Where does this all come from?

Where does this all leave the Turkish economy,

especially as we've seen a succession

of central bank heads in recent years?

Yes, five in the last five years, if you can believe it.

But like I said, central bank governor Erkan

was the one who sort of helped engineer

this economic turnaround.

And in that time, they implemented this aggressive plan

to raise interest rates.

But in the time that those rates have risen,

inflation has begun to cool.

And this is a long process.

And this is something that both Ms. Erkan

and the finance minister have been talking about.

And I've reiterated to the Turkish public

that this economic turnaround will take time.

And so the fact that the finance minister tonight

has said the president continues to back this plan

is a good sign for the Turkish economy.

Victoria Craig and President Erdogan

has now named a replacement to head the central bank,

the ex-Amazon economist Fatih Karahan.

Researchers here in London say a blood test

could help pinpoint the underlying cause of injury

in newborn babies.

Some three million infants,

a year worldwide,

are born with brain injury through hypoxia.

That's a lack of oxygen.

When that happens, the results can be devastating.

The babies can die or develop disabilities.

Those effects are specially testing

in developing countries.

The findings were published in the Journal

of the American Medical Association Network Open.

Krupa Paddy asked Sudhir Tayil,

professor of perinatal neuroscience

at Imperial College London,

and the lead investigator,

how the study worked.

So we looked at something called expression of genes.

So in our blood there are hundreds and thousands of genes.

So for example, if you take a bar of chocolate,

immediately some genes will get switched on,

asking yourselves to produce more insulin.

So all the time, you know,

all the time these genes are getting switched on and off.

So what we did was to take some blood from a group of babies

with this brain injury from a high-income country

and also from South Asia.

And then we compared how these expressions are the same

or the different.

So what we found was that the patterns

was completely different.

In high-income countries,

it was related to an acute event,

sudden hypoxia happening.

And often there is a clear cause why that's the case.

But in South Asia,

it was more like an intermittent hypoxia pattern

and there was no clear clinical reason

why that was happening.

That's an extraordinary finding

because many will associate the deprivation of oxygen,

to a difficult labour and problems

in those final hours of labour as well.

Can you just explain to us

when a baby is deprived of oxygen,

what happens and what are the consequences?

That's really important to understand.

So if you imagine the normal labour process,

every time the uterus contracts,

there's hypoxia and less blood flow to the baby's brain.

But if the baby is healthy,

baby can tolerate that process quite well.

Unless something,

catastrophic happens,

you know, like you said,

something goes wrong just before birth

or there's a bleeding and the brain injury happens.

But if this baby is already stressed,

chronically stressed,

it could be because of they are under nutrition,

some infection and all those things going on.

The baby cannot even tolerate

the normal hypoxic process of the labour

and that is leading to hypoxic brain injury.

So we think in the population,

we looked in South Asian countries,

these babies are already stressed in the womb

and that they cannot tolerate the normal labour process.

And then getting hypoxic injury as a consequence of that.

So if you look at the overall numbers,

around two to three million babies are affected worldwide

and about one million die.

So the numbers are as big as COVID,

but it's kind of an invisible pandemic

and we are not really focused until now.

Professor Surin Tayo from Imperial College London.

Now to the world of tech.

Apple's high spec Vision Pro headset was launched on Friday,

but in the United States only.

Some experts call this device revolutionary and game changing,

but others have doubts.

The headset's eye tracking technology can function

by monitoring just one dominant eye.

So what is it like?

James Reynolds spoke to Zoe Kleinman,

the BBC technology editor and Joanna Stern,

the personal technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal.

First Zoe.

I think it's a really interesting device.

I mean, let's start with the fact

that it's three and a half thousand dollars, right?

This is not going to be,

this is not the version of this headset that everybody buys.

I have tried a lot of headsets in the course of my job

and it's definitely up there with the best ones.

I think Joanne might disagree with me here,

but some people have said that they found it quite heavy on the head.

I didn't.

And the reason for that is that the battery pack is separate.

So the battery pack sits next to you and you can charge it as you go along,

which means you don't have to have it sitting on your head.

The interesting thing about it, I thought, is actually,

is how ordinary it is when you put it on

and you look at the screen in front of you.

It is like looking at an iPhone screen.

If you have an iPhone, you'll recognise the apps.

I looked at beautiful photos.

I looked at videos.

It was very much a demonstration that was geared towards

doing stuff I do all the time on my phone.

And I, to be honest with you, I sort of found myself thinking,

why am I doing this?

You know, why do I need to put on a headset to do what I can do on my phone?

But then I realised my theory here is that this is eventually going to replace the phone.

It won't look like the ski goggles.

It looks like now it will look much more like a pair of glasses.

But I think this potentially is how Apple sees the future.

You know, something's going to replace phones at some point.

Is it going to be a pair of glasses?

And Joanna Stent from The Wall Street Journal.

I'm half in the corner of my eye looking at a video of you trying on the headset,

which, as Zoe says, does look like a pair of ski goggles or to me,

almost like a snorkelling mask.

How did you find it, Joanna?

Yeah, well, I wore them skiing.

I thought that was what I should do.

So in my video review, you'll see me on the mountain wearing them.

I didn't ski for long in them,

but I did try it, which is kind of remarkable because I was actually able to ski for a little bit of time wearing these goggles.

I agree with everything said.

I think, look, there's one part of this story, which is that this is absolutely amazing and futuristic.

And you put these on and you feel like you're in a science fiction movie or novel.

And I've been wearing them for pretty much nonstop for the last week.

I've been testing them in various places, including the ski hill.

And there are many times where I just think this is the future.

And then there are.

There's the other side of this story where it grounds me in what's happening today.

And this is heavy.

It is bulky.

You have to wear a battery pack.

That means you're basically strapped to the wall because that battery pack only lasts two to three hours.

It can get buggy.

There are definitely moments where, you know, I'm like, where did the window go?

Is it? Oh, I left it in the other room.

Then there's the fact that there are not that many apps to start.

But all those things I just listed are typical of really any first generation product.

But this is to be expected. And I totally agree.

This is where it's going.

I don't know if it replaces phones one day, but it's certainly going to take the place of doing certain things we do on our phones or our laptops.

Joanna Stern from The Wall Street Journal and before her, the BBC's Zoe Kleinman.

Now to something rather more fishy.

Wake up, wake up. Come on, go to school.

I don't want to go to school. Five more minutes.

Time for school.

Nemo.

That, of course, was the Pixar film Finding Nemo, the tale of a clownfish's quest to find his lost son.

That may be a cinematic exaggeration of the clownfish's abilities.

But now scientists in Japan have done a study suggesting the colourful stripy fish may be more intelligent than we give them credit for.

Terry Egan reports.

Small, with white stripes on orange, clownfish may look cute, but they're extremely territorial, especially when it comes to those of their own species.

From them, much more than from any other stripy fish.

They guard their homes in the anemones with what seems like a high level of intelligence.

But scientists in Japan wanted to find out just how they sorted out friend from foe, especially in the intricate world of reefs.

So they focused on the stripes.

The researchers raised their own group of common clownfish from the egg, making sure they didn't encounter any other anemone species.

Then, after six months, they introduced them to other animals.

They were able to find a common animal.

They then introduced them to others of their own and other species, as well as to models painted in different ways.

That's when the behaviour of the fish suggested they were anything but clowns.

Despite having had no previous interaction, they showed a lot of aggression to those of their own type with three stripes,

and diminishing levels of hostility to those with fewer stripes, or indeed none at all.

The results indicate they can count the white bars they're looking at,

and while that may not give them the ability to dodge disaster while seeking out their relatives,

the results do tell us much more about the brain power of those fish we observe gawping around in the blue.

Are you woozy?

No.

How many stripes do I have?

I'm fine.

Answer the stripe question!

Three.

No!

See, something's wrong with you!

I have one, two, three.

That's all I have?

Huh.

You're okay.

Marlin from the film Finding Nemo ending that report by Thierry Egan.

And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.

If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered, you can send us an email.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

You can also find us on X at Global News Pod.

This edition was mixed by Chris Ablakwa.

The producer was Liam McSheffrey.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Jeanette Jalil.

Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.