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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.
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.
I'm Charlotte Gallagher and in the early hours of Sunday, the 25th of January, these are our main stories.
Another US citizen is shot dead by ICE agents in Minneapolis.
The Trump administration says the man violently resisted a claim disputed by city and state leaders.
It's the final round of voting in Myanmar, where the pro-military party looks on course for a landslide.
Critics call it a sham.
Also in this podcast, Donald Trump pays tribute to British soldiers who died in Afghanistan, appearing to step back from false claims about their role.
China's highest-ranking general becomes the latest military official to be purged by President Xi Jinping.
And I most humbly beseech your majesty to pardon your poor old servant, to be this bold and send you to know how, my gracious Lady Doth, I humbly kiss your foot.
An exhibition of love letters across the generations opens in London.
First.
Ice go home!
Ice go home!
Ice go home!
Ice go home!
Hundreds of people have been protesting on the streets of Minneapolis against the presence of ICE agents after an American citizen was shot dead by a federal immigration officer.
It's the second such killing there this month.
The victim has been named as 37-year-old Alex Preti, a nurse who worked with military veterans in an intensive care unit.
The Trump administration moved swiftly to defend the actions of the federal agents.
The Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, gave this account of what happened.
An individual approached U.S.
Border Patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun.
The officers attempted to disarm this individual, but the armed suspect reacted violently.
Fearing for his life and for the lives of his fellow officers around him, an agent fired defensive shots.
Medics were on the scene immediately and attempted to deliver medical aid to the subject, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
The suspect also had two magazines with ammunition in them that held dozens of rounds.
He also had no ID.
This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.
But city and state officials say that version of events is contradicted by videos of the shooting which have been circulated online.
The Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar says ICE agents are making the situation in Minneapolis worse, not better.
We need ICE out of Minnesota.
They are not making us more safe.
As the tragic, tragic killing this morning, as people saw it viscerally on that video, shows us.
They are making us less safe.
Our correspondent Tom Bateman is in Minneapolis.
This is the spot where Alex Preti was shot dead.
A lot of people laying flowers.
They've come to light candles and laying them, writing messages, chanting Alex Preti's name.
I spoke to one woman who described an atmosphere of fear over recent weeks as ICE agents have been carrying out these raids, and saying that she felt she just had to come down here when she saw the video of him being killed.
There are now multiple videos of the angles here and there have been hundreds of protesters out but a lot more anger being expressed, and that talks to the way that you now have this extremely polarized narrative about what happened here the trump administration publishing the pictures of the nine millimeter handgun that they say alex pretty had.
They say that he approached officers and had that gun.
Although in the video, of course, there is no evidence so far to suggest that there was anything that potentially would have made those officers feel their lives were in danger in terms of what you can see in the video.
But of course, all of that is still being looked at and determined.
And at the same time...
You have the state governor, Tim Walz.
You have the local officials and the mayor here accusing those immigration officials of having terrorized this city.
That was a word that one of the city officials used here today, continuing to call for ICE to get out, to be withdrawn from this city, because of the second fatality in the space of this month alone.
And so what you're seeing now is a standoff between the Trump administration on one side and the protesters and the state authorities here on the other.
A request from the city now to send in some state National Guard troops, because the police themselves are concerned about their ability to continue to keep control in the streets of Minneapolis.
That was Tom Bateman.
President Trump has appeared to try to make amends for his remarks about NATO troops in Afghanistan, which provoked outrage among the families of soldiers who died there.
On social media, Mr Trump praised the bravery of UK troops, but he didn't mention any other NATO allies.
The statement followed a call with the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Saturday.
Jo Inwood reports.
Donald Trump is not a man who apologises easily or often.
But such was the outrage from Afghanistan veterans like Andy Reid, from politicians from bereaved families, over his claim that NATO forces had stayed away from the front lines.
He clearly felt he had to say something.
Following a call with Keir Starmer, he wrote on social media that the great and very brave soldiers of the United Kingdom will always be with the United States of America.
He went on to say it's a bond too strong to ever be broken.
The UK military, with tremendous heart and soul, is second to none, except for the USA.
One of the most powerful criticisms of the president's initial claim had come from Diane Durney, mother of Ben Parkinson, whose frontline service in Afghanistan nearly cost him his life.
He was never going to say the word sorry.
I just hope that the words that he has spoken and the sentiments that he's expressed do take away some of the pain and the hurt that he's caused.
This comes at the end of a tumultuous week for the NATO alliance, which has left it feeling fractured like never before.
This statement about British forces may undo some of the damage done to US-UK relations, but they were not the only ones accused of avoiding the front lines.
Joe Inwood.
Voting is underway in Myanmar in the third and final round of national and regional elections.
The dominant pro-military party is on course for a landslide victory, amid criticisms by human rights groups that the elections are a sham, as most other parties are barred from taking part.
The elections are taking place in the middle of a civil war, five years after the military seized power in a coup which detained the democratically elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
So is there much enthusiasm for voting?
Our Southeast Asia correspondent, Jonathan Head, is in Shan State in eastern Myanmar.
I think it's hard to describe it as enthusiasm.
I mean, at this polling station, it's very orderly.
We found that in previous polling stations in other parts of the country.
People are very relaxed here.
Security is not too tight.
There are armed police around.
And many people, I think, feel it's their duty to vote.
But many others.
In a way, this is deceptive because in the run-up this vote and this is the third stage it's only about something like around a quarter of the country that's going through this at this particular time to finish off this extraordinary one-month election.
In the run-up there's been almost no campaigning.
Very few parties have campaigned, partly because the military parties almost guaranteed victory, but partly also because of fear.
And just the sense that it's pointless.
But also, there's an absolutely stifling security presence.
I cannot tell you what it's like.
And we have been followed and monitored at every single step we've taken.
We even had military intelligence chasing us out onto Inlay Lake when we tried to go off there in the hope to be able to speak to people.
We've been blocked from covering the only rally that was taking place when we were here by the army.
So it's an extremely repressive environment for a vote to take place.
And many people have said to us they're too scared even to give any kind of comment about the election.
All they've really said is we have to vote.
We don't have a choice.
Now, looking at people voting here today, they're smiling.
They're handing over their cards.
It's all very orderly.
I think turnout will still be low.
It was very low in the first and second stages.
And, of course, remember, this is Shan State.
It's another war-torn state.
Half the state, there's no voting taking place at all.
You don't have to travel very far from where I am now in a town called Nyongshue, to go into areas that have been very badly affected by the war and which are still contested.
That is the backdrop to the somewhat peaceful scenes that I'm actually witnessing now.
And what has happened to the opposition there?
There is no opposition, in reality.
There are small parties that are allowed to contest, but 90 of the parties that did well in the last election the free one five years ago, of course, notably Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy are barred from taking part.
So you've only got small or new parties who are taking part, and they're so disadvantaged in terms of resources compared to the military party.
They're not very well known.
And even they're complaining about the election being rigged against them and their candidates being banned, sometimes for very trivial reasons.
So it's such a stacked deck in favour of the military party here.
You can't really talk about an opposition.
The main opposition are either in exile or in jail or keeping their heads down.
And if this pro-military party wins, which it sounds like, obviously it's certain to what will happen next.
Everything's laid down in the Constitution and I think for the coup leader, Min Aung Hlaing, the man who's accused of setting off this catastrophic civil war with his very ill-judged coup he gets the chance to be elected president is obviously what he hopes.
Parliament will convene sometime in March, and by April there will be a vote in Parliament.
But, of course, with the military having a guaranteed quarter of the seats even before the election in Parliament, there's no question they will choose their preferred candidate.
And we're almost certain that the coup leader in a line will then become president and have a kind of civilian veneer.
I mean, you talk to people here and say, do you think anything will change?
Nobody thinks anything's going to change, at least not in the short term.
It will simply be a civilian veil over what is still essentially a very hardline military government.
That was Jonathan Head.
China's highest ranking general and another senior officer have become the latest figures to be purged from the People's Liberation Army in a crackdown by President Xi Jinping.
General Zhang Youxia and the other officer have been accused of serious violations of discipline and law a code in China for corruption.
General Zhang, who's 75, was widely seen as Mr. Xi's closest military ally.
Isabel Hilton is an expert on China.
She gave us her assessment of the latest purge.
This is pretty extraordinary.
This means that of the Central Military Commission, which is the party's command of the army.
Every single member who was promoted by Xi Jinping in 2022 has now been purged.
And Jiang Yuxia was the last one standing, if you like.
And he's particularly interesting because he was once described as Xi Jinping's leader elder brother.
Their fathers served together back in the 70s.
They were veterans of very early campaigns.
Chiang himself had seen action against Vietnam in 1979, one of only two of the military leaders who had actually seen action.
So his demise is really extraordinary.
They're being accused of corruption essentially, which is the standard way of getting rid of people whom, for any reason, including corruption, you might have decided you don't trust.
And I think after Putin's invasion of Ukraine, Xi Jinping decided to look very closely at his own military, because it was manifest in the Russian case that corruption had just hollowed out.
You know the kind of division of military competence.
It turned out to be ill-equipped and indeed incompetent.
And I think Xi Jinping did worry about that.
But, you know, corruption is extremely prevalent in the Chinese system.
So there's usually also a political reason That was Isabel Hilton.
Still to come in this podcast.
There is a Count Filippo delle Lanze that was killed inside the palace by his lover.
Why a palatial home in Venice is proving to be a hard sell.
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.
Ukraine's President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has described the first three-way peace talks with Russia and the US in Abu Dhabi as constructive.
He said further negotiations could take place next week.
Despite the talks, Russia carried out more attacks overnight on Ukraine's energy infrastructure, leaving more than a million people without power in bitterly cold temperatures.
Our correspondent Abdul Jalil Abdusaralov reports from Kiev.
It appears the meeting in Abu Dhabi has produced little progress, although a US official said the first direct meeting was a big step.
President Zelensky has said that the focus was on possible parameters for ending the war.
All sides remain silent as to whether any result has been achieved to resolve the most contentious issues of all territory.
Without it, there will be no deal.
US officials have suggested the next round of the three-way talks could start on the 1st of February.
On the streets of Kiev, there is little optimism that the war could end soon.
It would be great to end the war and to stop people dying, but I don't expect anything to change.
For many people, Russia's daily attacks show Vladimir Putin has no plans to end this war.
Ukraine's air defense systems were busy intercepting Russian drones just hours after the meeting in Abu Dhabi started.
Most of them were shot down, but nearly 20 drones, as well as two missiles, managed to hit their targets, according to the country's air force.
Once again, the main target of the attack was energy infrastructure.
Ukraine's foreign minister, Andrei Sibyha, warned about the impact of the latest bombardment, saying that Russian missiles hit not only Ukrainian residents but also the negotiation table.
More than 40 environmental groups have called on the Albanian government to suspend a holiday resort project by Donald Trump's son-in-law.
Jared Kushner plans to transform the uninhabited southwest island of Cezanne into a luxury tourist destination at an estimated cost of a billion dollars.
This report from Bernadette Keogh.
It's one of the last undeveloped islands in the Mediterranean, previously home to a secret communist military base with almost no fresh water.
Its pristine beaches have begun to attract a trickle of day visitors from a nearby port.
But the low-key tourism will be totally transformed if Jared Kushner's ambitions are realised.
Angering environmentalists from 28 countries, who've warned in a letter to the Albanian Prime Minister, Idi Rama, of the risks to biodiversity and critical habitats, including the world's most endangered seal, the Mediterranean monk seal.
They say the construction of a luxury resort poses a serious threat to these delicate habitats and have called for the immediate suspension of any decisions advancing the project.
Earlier this week, Jared Kushner's wife, Ivanka Trump, visited several sites in the region, accompanied by around 60 architects, reportedly having dinner with Mr Rama.
Last year, the Albanian government decreed that the project fulfilled the criteria to be awarded strategic investor status, highlighting the creation of 1000 jobs.
Albania, one of the poorest European countries, recently joined President Trump's newly created Board of Peace aimed at resolving conflicts.
The Trump family has built a massive real estate empire of luxury resorts and hotels around the world.
Bernadette Keogh.
It's a majestic property in the heart of Venice and has been described as a historical gem.
The 15th century Cardario Palace on the Grand Canal was painted by Monet, amongst others, and for 20 million euros it could be yours.
Yet it's not been lived in for years and and is proving difficult to sell, partly because of the number of deaths associated with it and rumours that it's haunted.
My colleague, Rebecca Kesby, has been speaking to the Italian architect, historian and filmmaker Francesco De Mosta, who shared some of the grisly details.
The palace is something that is really fantastic.
It's a gothic building.
There are nearly 100 pieces of marble of different colors.
It seems that it's standing on the water of the Grand Canal like a miracle, and how much the reflection of the water gets the colours of the marble.
And I remember there was a room with so many tiles, there was an incredible fireplace and there are works of art of every kind.
And all the wood inside is carved with different ways.
It's something that really you can understand how much wealth there was in that period in Venice.
But then we come to its rather troubled history.
There have been a number of quite suspicious deaths connected to this building, I think.
Yeah, yeah.
The story is incredible.
Giovanni Dario, he was a merchant.
He made the building.
He had a daughter that she married with the Bernardo family.
The problem that this Bernardo was working for the government but he was pushed out of the Council of the Ten and then he was killed.
So the wife suicide, throwing herself on the water, and the son died in Creta.
So from that moment, it seemed all the town, that palace was damned.
And the deaths have continued right up until the modern day.
It's incredible.
There is Herbert Abdoli, who was a merchant from Armenia.
He went bankrupt.
So he sold to an English that he went bankrupt to.
Then there was a billionaire from America.
He had to escape to Mexico because he was homosexual and he suicide with his lover.
Then there is a Count Filippo delle Lanze that was killed inside the palace by his lover.
Then there is The Who.
The manager started to think that there were ghosts inside the palace, making him go crazy.
So he started to take more drugs and drugs.
And at the end, he came back to Great Britain and he died there.
Playing the boss in The Who, he died of heart attack just after having rented after a week.
So it's fair to say if you believe in ghosts, there might be a few in the building.
I don't believe in ghosts.
Other people say that the number of the windows on the Grand Canal is 17.
And that is a bad luck.
So that's not exactly selling it.
But if you did have a spare 20 million euros yourself, would you buy it?
No, if they give me as a present, maybe I will accept it.
I will risk.
Me too.
That was Francesco De Mosta.
Here in London, the National Archives is putting on a display of what it's calling devotion longing, sacrifice and passion.
It's an exhibition of love letters across the generations, and it brings together some truly remarkable pieces.
David Lewis has the details.
Royals, romance, family and friends.
This new exhibition is a who's who of love letters, in a feast of fascinating forms, but with a link committing to paper what might be too risky, painful or dangerous to utter out loud.
There's aristocratic longing and heartbreak.
A strikingly suggestive and tender letter from Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, Queen Elizabeth I's favourite written soon before his death in 1588.
I most humbly Beseech your majesty to pardon your poor old servant, to be this bold in sending to know how my gracious lady doth and what ease of her late pain she finds being the chiefest thing in the world.
I do pray for and for her to have good health and long life.
I humbly kiss your foot.
The correspondence was found years later after the Queen's death in a casket by her bed.
She was stricken with grief at his passing and had inscribed it his last letter.
There's a note too, from Catherine Howard, Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII's fifth wife, to courtier Thomas Culpepper.
The 1541 missive was seen as evidence they were having an affair.
Within months, the King had them both executed.
Fast forward four centuries and the joy and stress and longing and despair is just as apparent.
King Edward VIII's 1936 abdication letter is on display.
He had a choice, take the throne or marry the divorcee, Wallace Simpson.
He plumped for the latter.
There's a billet due from the infamous British spy John Carecross to his former flame, Gloria Barraclough.
He penned it in 1944 while passing secrets to the Soviet Union.
Writing to you seems to have some magical effect on me.
The alleged fifth man in the Cambridge spy ring wrote.
Your letters have a lightness, vivacity and joie de vivre, a fresh voice from an exquisite past.
Notes were uncovered by her son, Dr Tom Brass, after she died.
He told the BBC how.
They were actually interestingly, hidden documents in the back of a book by John Cancross, his autobiography.
I brought them out.
I looked at them.
The writing was virtually indecipherable, but I recognised they were from John Cancross.
The exhibition shines a light too, on the love that dare not speak its name.
Lord Alfred Douglas's phrase for same-sex relationships
The display features his plea for clemency for his lover, the writer Oscar Wilde.
Bosie, as he was known, wrote to Queen Victoria in 1895, begging her to exercise a power of pardon.
He was starting a two-year sentence for gross indecency after Bosie's father exposed their relationship.
The monarch did not intervene.
Close families feature.
Visitors can glimpse the novelist Jane Austen's devotion to her sister Cassandra.
Her short will, just 90 words, orders her manuscripts and most of her worldly possessions be sent to her sibling.
And perhaps an example of an unconditional love too.
Charles Cray, dad to the notorious criminals the Cray twins, wrote to the court backing his boys.
He called the gangsters the most respectful and good-natured lads anyone could wish to meet.
They were so kind to my wife and I and everybody, he wrote.
That was David Lewis, and the producers were Marion Strawn and Stephen Jensen.
The editor is Karen Martin.
I'm Charlotte Gallagher.
Until next time, goodbye.
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?
Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
