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If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed?
In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed.
But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it.
It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories.
I'm Helena Merriman and in a new BBC series I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story.
What did they miss the first time?
The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs.
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
Let's explain this dollar drop.
It's World Business Express from the BBC World Service.
I'm Leanna Byrne.
What came out of the UK Prime Minister's trip to China and why are people in Germany getting free potatoes off the street?
So, while gold and silver prices are reaching record highs, the US dollar is going the other way down.
And this is unusual because the dollar is normally seen as the ultimate safe haven.
It's the currency most other currencies benchmark themselves against.
But these days it's been weak as other currencies have been rising.
And when it weakens like this, it ripples well beyond US borders and right to your pocket.
Kathleen Brooks is Research Director at XTB.
There are multiple reasons for the dollar being less in demand right now and actually actively being sold at a really rapid rate.
It definitely has accelerated since Donald Trump's inauguration.
In fact, that was kind of the peak for the dollar really.
And over the last year, we've seen it really lose pace.
And I think it's down to a few things.
Obviously the changing trade relationship between the US and the rest of the world.
When the US put up their trade barriers and added their tariffs, that just led to people to look outside of the US for investment opportunities and for forex trading opportunities.
And this year, it's really been accelerated by what we're calling the dollar debasement trade.
So it's where the dollar is essentially being eroded, partly by politics in the US, partly also down to events going on elsewhere, such as intervention to actually stem the weakness in the yen.
So to prop up the yen, that's having a knock on effect on the dollar.
And I think what's really made the market wake up to this weak dollar and this dollar debasement trade is that it's been actively encouraged by Donald Trump, who has said that he likes a weaker dollar.
And essentially you know no one's going to go in and buy it then, because the dollar is a bit like a falling chainsaw.
When you talk about how it interacts with other currencies.
For one example, the euro has been rising.
When I think about that, I think who wins and who loses from that shift?
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, you would definitely say that there are losers on both sides.
European exporters could get hit.
You know, we are in a period of global trade tensions.
And when that happens and you're an exporter, you really want a weaker currency.
So strength in the euro.
We've seen some strength in the pound, lots of strength in the Aussie currencies and the Nordic currencies as well.
That all plays into the US, because they're trying to sell their exports, which are all of a sudden much cheaper over the past year.
So US exports become much more attractive.
European exports become less attractive because of that strength in the euro.
They're more expensive to US customers.
But it's not all plain sailing in the US either.
Because US consumers the imports they're buying.
They need to use more dollars to buy them.
So all of a sudden, you've got inflation risks when you've got a weaker currency, particularly when it comes to imports.
A lot of the world own US assets.
US stocks have been absolutely massive this decade.
You know, 40% of UK retail traders have some form of US stock in their portfolio.
Once the dollar weakens, then actually it is devaluing that asset.
So any US asset is devaluing.
And that's the same in the US as well.
So a lot of Americans, they hold assets.
But when you're weakening the dollar, you might be pumping up the price of US assets.
But it's really, it's not intrinsic value.
It's just because the dollar is falling.
That was Kathleen Brooks, Research Director at XTB.
Now British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says steps have been taken to improve trade with China after talks in Beijing with President Xi.
It's the first visit to China by a British leader in eight years, and Starmer said that mutual relations were in a good, strong place and talks had made progress on cutting whiskey tariffs and possible visa-free travel to China for British visitors.
He told the BBC that he wants business to open up in both directions.
I know that, whatever's going on in the world, the most important thing to the vast majority of people is the cost of living.
So opening up access to business opportunities, seizing those opportunities, which then gets reflected in better businesses, in jobs, in price reductions at home really, really matter.
And so we made real progress on all of those areas.
Outside a Burberry store in Beijing.
These Chinese shoppers said how they see the visit of Starmer to China.
I think these European leaders' visits to China are driven by economic considerations.
Due to factors such as Trump's tariffs, Europe's economy hasn't been doing well.
Perhaps because British prime ministers have changed quite frequently or the focus of news reporting has shifted, it feels like our attention to them has waned.
Graham Wallace is Managing Director at the British Chamber of Commerce in China.
He says he wants to see some actual deals happen as a result of the visit.
We are hoping for some concrete outcomes, not just talk.
We are hoping for progress on market access issues we've long raised.
For example, tariffs on spirits, tariffs on active pharmaceutical ingredients.
We really have a whole long list of market access wins.
We are hoping the prime minister will advance and that ultimately will create more opportunity for businesses here on the ground.
Flipping that, we're also hoping for the announcement of deals from Chinese companies into the UK.
That is obviously the deficit in goods.
We are a services superpower.
And perhaps I think that kind of difference in the makeup of our economy kind of reflects how our members feel.
And you'll find much more optimism from the British community relative to say, the Europeans or the Germans, who perhaps rely a little bit more say on trading goods than us Brits, who are stronger in that service sector.
That was Graeme Wallace from the British Chamber of Commerce in China.
Let's talk Tesla.
Emma Walls, Chief Investment Strategist at Hargreaves Lansdowne.
Hello, Emma.
Hello.
So it's scrapping two models to invest $2 billion in Elon Musk's XAI.
Is that a big shift for Tesla?
It is indeed.
He said on the call today that he was honourably discharging the models X and S, two of the core EVs, from the fleet.
And that's because he's shifting to the two A's instead, autonomous and artificial, announcing plans to spend 20 billion this year on those two growth areas.
And this is really what he thinks will help Tesla win the AI race and become the kind of global number one provider of autonomous vehicles.
Mm.
Two A's, that's easy to remember.
Now, how have financial markets reacted?
Well, it's interesting because Tesla's results come out while the market is closed.
And so initially in pre-trading, it looked like the market had responded positively.
But actually, the share price has fallen over 4% since the open.
And that's really in reaction to that level of spending that's going to have to be made in order to get the kind of big price.
All right, that is interesting.
Also, Emma, copper prices have really jumped.
Are people just loving metals these days?
Yes.
They are indeed.
And that's because of the reasons you were discussing with Kathleen earlier in the programme.
You know the dollar weakness and the fact that the dollar doesn't look as attractive even though it is cheaper.
People are looking for alternative safe haven assets.
And we've seen gold reach ever higher record levels this year, up nearly 30% year to date.
And copper, some of that actually is positive contagion.
So just another metal that might do well.
Okay.
Emma Wall, thank you so much.
Now they say there's no such thing as a free lunch, but if you're in Berlin and Saxony there is, as long as you're willing to eat nothing but potatoes.
Thanks to the right combination of rain and sunshine, through the summer, farmers across Western Europe experienced a bumper harvest.
In Germany, it's produced the highest harvest in 25 years.
And because it's too much for the sector to process, farmers are desperate to unload them.
Kevin Chow was one of the lucky ones that managed to grab some.
Us people that live in Berlin, we just heard that there were a bunch of potatoes being dropped off.
There were just like kind of overnight, you know, I got texted by a friend who just said you know hey, there's a ton bag of a literal ton of potatoes sitting at Tempelhof right now.
Yeah, my girlfriend and I went over and started collecting a bunch of potatoes.
And yeah, I've been cooking with them almost every meal now.
Made mashed potatoes, two types of potato soup, roasted potatoes.
Yeah, I enjoy potatoes.
That was Berlin potato picker, Kevin Chow.
And that's it from World Business Express from the BBC World Service.
I'm Leanna Byrne.
Thanks for listening.
