TRTWORLD — Roundtable
20260915 043000 UTC
428 transcript segments
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking
Data courtesy of The GDELT Project (https://www.gdeltproject.org/), from the Internet Archive TV News Archive.
Machine transcription. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a verbatim quotation record.

[00:00:10] Welcome, you're watching TRT World, with me Neil Harvey, and these are our
[00:00:13] headlines: Yemen's Saudi led coalition says
[00:00:17] 13 civilians have been injured in missile and drone attacks by the Ansar
[00:00:21] Alahuthis on three Saudi cities. A Monday, Yemen's army
[00:00:24] today he's looking after a said it had struck hoothy positions along the red sea coast, while the
[00:00:28] US vice president says Washington is concerned, the group sees
[00:00:32] another island near the Babab straight. We've
[00:00:36] been in constant contact with the Emirates, the Saudis and others who are
[00:00:39] affected in the region, so it's something the United States administration is very much
[00:00:43] top of. We've also been engaged in direct conversations
[00:00:47] with the hoofies themselves, so we actually feel like
[00:00:51] we are top of the situation.
[00:00:54] Iran's state media says that a drone strike is it two Iranian
[00:00:58] fishing boats along the... straight of horamus, leaving several people
[00:01:02] missing. in a separate incident, Iran's revolutionary guard says
[00:01:05] an oil tank exploded and called fire after hitting mines in
[00:01:09] the waterway. The US military disputes that account saying the tanker
[00:01:13] was struck by Iran and rendered inoperable last
[00:01:16] month.
[00:01:18] In Gaza, at least four Palestinians have been killed in the latest wave of
[00:01:22] Israeli attacks. Several others were taken to hospital after strikes a tent
[00:01:26] no, we've landed next to what's left of camp in Gaza City as well as areas in central and southern.
[00:01:34] says Kiev is ready to take steps towards deescalation, but only if
[00:01:38] Moscow also commits to halting attacks on Ukrainian
[00:01:40] infrastructure. Early US president Donald Trump said Russia and Ukraine had
[00:01:44] agreed to a mutual pause on strengths against energy
[00:01:47] sites.
[00:01:50] The US Supreme Court has blocked President Trump's attempts to titen
[00:01:54] Mailing voting rules just weeks before November's mid-term
[00:01:57] elections. White House wanted to block Mailing. from voters not on
[00:02:01] lists provided in advance to the US postal service, but critics
[00:02:05] argue the president lacked the authority to
[00:02:08] minute,
[00:02:11] launched the continent's biggest share
[00:02:15] shares in his Nigerian oil refinery
[00:02:18] now being offered to the public.
[00:02:22] IPO is designed not only to raise funds for the refineries
[00:02:25] expansion, but also to give ordinary Nigerians a stake in the
[00:02:29] my hotel, it was the oldest of business.
[00:02:33] Those are your latest headlines, stay with us, the news continues after beyond borders.
[00:02:58] Is it possible to stand? the way of nature and
[00:03:02] win,
[00:03:07] we're with those trying to stop disasters like
[00:03:10] this.
[00:03:17] village wiped out
[00:03:20] scenario where the entire with hundreds of other communities at risk. what
[00:03:23] do you do when a melting glacier slips and brings half a mountain side
[00:03:26] down onto your community? can such.
[00:04:00] It has been moving about 3 meters per year, two years ago,
[00:04:03] now it's down to 5 cm, so it has slowed dramatically
[00:04:07] due to the effects of the
[00:04:09] tunnel.
[00:04:13] Improbable or possible,
[00:04:15] welcome to be on borders.
[00:04:34] 'the contrast between our surroundings and what happened in
[00:04:37] this valley could hardly be greater. It is
[00:04:41] a still summer's day in the Swiss
[00:04:43] Alps
[00:04:46] and this man will show us what he filmed as his world
[00:04:49] was torn apart in May
[00:04:52] 2025.
[00:04:56] The inhabitants of Blatton had been warned and evacuated from their...
[00:05:03] Homes, one man died outside of what was considered to
[00:05:06] be the danger
[00:05:11] back up the mountain, he talks of area uh... 'we had 300
[00:05:13] habitants, so everybody knew everybody,
[00:05:17] yeah, of course, and your relatives with nearly
[00:05:20] everybody,
[00:05:23] i was up in the alp, i was right in the face, so i was really on
[00:05:27] the face of the landslight, i see
[00:05:30] it life, never thought that it will happen, that really the
[00:05:34] houses is are away, lucas
[00:05:37] calbermatton's hotel was destroyed as rocks, the
[00:05:40] size of buses traveling at
[00:05:59] this this part of the roof we two weeks before,
[00:06:12] Lucas recorded the moment a glacial lake burst its
[00:06:15] banks and a mountain
[00:06:17] slipped
[00:06:22] scheiße,
[00:06:32] and then i stopped filming because when i would go
[00:06:35] down i would see some houses and i wouldn't film like
[00:06:38] the house is going, the landslide was caused. by
[00:06:42] melting perma frost described as the
[00:06:45] glue that holds ice to the rocks
[00:06:48] underneath. Lucas says it won't be the end
[00:06:51] of blatan. what is safe? why people living on the
[00:06:55] volcano enough? why do people go back in indonesia
[00:06:59] where there were the tsunami? it's the memories you have, the the
[00:07:02] heritage you have, the childhood where you played and
[00:07:05] everything. we lost the neighborhood, we lost the church, we lost all the
[00:07:09] memories you had in this small village to be there. and why
[00:07:13] why we want to rebuild the village there is is uh
[00:07:16] because there is our heritage, so we construction this village for the next
[00:07:20] generation. Lucas is now running another hotel
[00:07:24] nearby, built from scratch in
[00:07:27] 105 days. he's in
[00:07:30] partnership with Esther Belvald who also
[00:07:33] lost her hospitality business on that
[00:07:36] day. I felt very, very, very secure in
[00:07:41] the valley. so it's she wants to stay and believes
[00:07:45] her young sons will do the same. Esther
[00:07:48] still can't believe what happened to her village, so
[00:07:52] you sometimes think it's a bad dream, a bad dream or science fiction
[00:07:56] or yeah, I'm still living in a movie,
[00:07:59] sometimes I think the mind and the heart or the
[00:08:02] soul are not
[00:08:05] connected with all this with reality, yeah,
[00:08:09] yeah,
[00:08:12] the... Villages maar takes us to the end of what was the road into
[00:08:15] blatan until it was blocked, new one is being
[00:08:19] built. So what is your hope, your big
[00:08:23] hope for the future? Will there be town of blatan again with people
[00:08:27] living there? 2029,
[00:08:31] people who want to return can return. That is not
[00:08:34] your hope, that is the
[00:08:37] goal, to revive culture and
[00:08:40] tradition.
[00:08:45] "they've even managed with true swiss neatness to keep the
[00:08:48] grass nicely
[00:08:50] mown.
[00:08:53] until the new road is finished, the only way into blatten, one
[00:08:57] kilometer away is a half-hour drive via a
[00:09:01] high mountain track. you can really
[00:09:04] see it now,
[00:09:05] look,
[00:09:09] oh my god, Okay,
[00:09:13] yeah,
[00:09:16] look how stupid it is,
[00:09:28] down next to lake formed by the collapse is what was once a
[00:09:32] community, mostly now
[00:09:34] submerged.
[00:09:52] I think it will take a long time, because
[00:09:55] nature needs time to clean up the rest of this
[00:09:58] debris until everything is green again, until a forest
[00:10:02] grows there again and so on, so we will see
[00:10:05] these scars in nature for a long time, they simply
[00:10:09] belong now.
[00:10:19] Nature is so powerful, when we see how quickly it
[00:10:22] happened.
[00:10:25] This combination is so unusual, that the material was on
[00:10:29] the glacier and then the glacier simply collapsed.
[00:10:32] We're a journey across the
[00:10:36] Swiss Alps and an hour's drive from Blatten we take to the
[00:10:39] skies to understand what's causing such catastrophes
[00:10:43] and to see how scientists and
[00:10:45] engineers are trying to control the forces of
[00:10:49] nature.
[00:11:00] "you can see where the dabbories come down off the mountain, there's still a
[00:11:04] lot of water coming down, but that's because the glacial lake itself has
[00:11:08] overflowed,
[00:11:10] here you see the road that has been cut,
[00:11:14] how did you even know this had happened here? there are some people that
[00:11:18] are uh observing all natural hazards and
[00:11:21] processes in the valley and they reported it."
[00:11:28] so here we are at the the place where there was a
[00:11:31] lake, we're landing in what was it,
[00:11:33] exactly, it's not mady, we're not going to sink into it,
[00:11:37] no, i don't think
[00:11:41] so,
[00:11:44] we have to be quick though, it's
[00:11:45] quick,
[00:11:51] the set glacier which starts at more than f
[00:11:56] me above sea level. Switzerland glaciers have shrunk by
[00:11:59] 40% this century, and the melt water
[00:12:03] from this one formed lake that burst its banks and
[00:12:07] brought rock, ice and water into the valley
[00:12:10] below.
[00:12:13] We're standing on what was the bed of the lake until all
[00:12:16] the water flowed out of it. It's still very, very mud. You can see behind
[00:12:20] me, well, in fact you can't see the glacier, it's now being covered by rock and
[00:12:23] dairy. That was... what we could see then the
[00:12:26] CES glacier completely covered behind there
[00:12:30] too and you can see the water coming down here, this lake is unlikely ever to fill up
[00:12:34] again, it's been breached, but it's others where that could happen that
[00:12:37] they're particularly worried about. this
[00:12:41] glaceologist tells us that there are more than 600 high mountain lakes
[00:12:44] in this area alone that could pose a
[00:12:47] threat. she's working too with scientists in
[00:12:51] other nearby alpine countries. yeah, there are different types.
[00:12:55] of measures that you can you can do, so the first one is to put it
[00:12:59] under surveillance to know how it evolves, you know,
[00:13:02] like there are some lakes that you know where the level is going up and
[00:13:06] down and up and down, which is maybe a bit more critical, then
[00:13:10] if we really have to do something um, you
[00:13:13] can put some pipes and trying to pump out the water, can you
[00:13:17] stop this? no, no, you cannot, that's uh,
[00:13:21] that's too big, they are glaciers are retreating.
[00:13:25] 'uh, if we don't stop uh, the carbon emissions, the
[00:13:28] glacier will continue retreating and new lakes will
[00:13:32] form. is there a danger that there could be num in the
[00:13:35] future? uh, so it's it's not a danger,
[00:13:39] it's a very likely probability to that
[00:13:42] the hundreds of glaciers, i think it's about 700 that we
[00:13:46] have on the valley territory, they will disappear
[00:13:49] by the end of the century, so in 75 years
[00:13:52] from now, there won't be any..." glacier
[00:13:55] anymore.
[00:14:00] 2 hours from the sasseet glacier we come to a reservoir where
[00:14:04] melt water can be stored.
[00:14:07] the amount of ice that's disappeared can only be
[00:14:10] imagined at the top of this dam which supplies water
[00:14:14] for hydroelectric power. had
[00:14:17] Rolf Vingardner been able to stand here in the last ice age
[00:14:21] 20,000 years ago, the top of a
[00:14:24] glacier. would have been 300 meters above his
[00:14:27] head. snow is changing, also
[00:14:31] permafrost is changing, so they have lot of big
[00:14:35] changes, but everything is governed um by
[00:14:38] temperature and we know the how the future will
[00:14:41] be.
[00:14:44] there is a short-term dividend though, for a country that gets
[00:14:47] 60% of its power in the form of
[00:14:50] hydroelectricity.
[00:14:52] this glace has been there all the... time and now we're
[00:14:56] losing it and now we are profit, the energy
[00:14:59] production is profiting of let's say 20,
[00:15:03] 30, 40 years depending on the size of the glacier, but then
[00:15:07] when the glacier has been gone then is this additional water which is in the
[00:15:10] system is not there anymore and then we are again
[00:15:14] on the downside
[00:15:18] here below the dam daniel burky shows us where the
[00:15:21] electricity is produced to be used in valleys.
[00:15:25] nearby - the turbine, that's a
[00:15:27] turbine,
[00:15:36] the dangers to power company.
[00:15:47] It is true that we are aware that there are such
[00:15:50] areas, which we monitor. What is happening to
[00:15:54] it? Yes, the permafrost is thawing due to these rising
[00:15:57] temperatures, which we have had significantly since
[00:16:01] about 1980,
[00:16:04] about one square kilometer.
[00:16:37] much longer, the Rone glacier was once the
[00:16:41] largest in
[00:16:42] Europe,
[00:16:50] there is a time every year called glacier lost day, when
[00:16:54] snow put down in winter has gone and ancient ice is
[00:16:57] exposed to the sun and starts to
[00:17:00] melt,
[00:17:05] because of heat wave while we're here, the... that day has
[00:17:08] arrived, it's happened much earlier than had been
[00:17:12] hoped,
[00:17:14] the this glacier smell now three times
[00:17:18] faster than the model uh show
[00:17:21] us 10 years ago, 340 years we
[00:17:24] have practical water here, the
[00:17:27] water is very important for the people here, for the tourism
[00:17:31] also for the agriculture, but the waters
[00:17:34] goes back and back and back, And I
[00:17:38] think the Switzerland is the water storage of the whole
[00:17:42] Europe.
[00:17:45] This glaciers melting so rapidly they try to save some of the ice
[00:17:49] by keeping it under sheeting here, but that in turn could be
[00:17:52] causing problems with microplastics from the
[00:17:55] blankets going into the water, the water going down into the valley
[00:17:58] and other water sources being
[00:18:01] polluted.
[00:18:09] Where we're heading next, the dangers are not from retreating
[00:18:12] glaciers, but from rising temperatures, which have
[00:18:16] brought more rain than
[00:18:17] usual.
[00:18:22] When glaciers melt, river levels rise, the
[00:18:25] stability of slopes nearby is lost, and this
[00:18:29] is the result,
[00:18:32] what's known locally as the feo
[00:18:34] crack.
[00:18:39] 'It's getting wider at alarming rate, and the
[00:18:42] fear is that 1 million cubic meters of land
[00:18:45] are at risk of falling in a landslide.
[00:18:49] If this carries on like this, what will happen? It
[00:18:52] will all disappear. There are two scenarios, the massive
[00:18:57] mass descends at once, and that will create
[00:19:01] a plug, a dam in the river, and there is a
[00:19:04] risk of a lake forming upstream that can extend
[00:19:08] several hundred meters upstream, and then in case of this
[00:19:11] lake overflowing, there will be a significant flood towards the villages
[00:19:14] downstream, and so here with constant monitoring
[00:19:18] using highly sensitive instruments, it's hoped there will
[00:19:22] be enough warning if a land slide is imminent and homes can
[00:19:26] then be evacuated.
[00:19:29] with the rain and the wind
[00:19:32] and this slope here, it would
[00:19:35] probably be safer to go back to the car. Okay, okay,
[00:19:38] simple.
[00:19:44] The dangers of thowing permafroster clear at our
[00:19:47] next destination, where the difference between imminent
[00:19:50] disaster and scientific success
[00:19:53] is clear. In Brians in 2023, there was
[00:19:57] a huge rock fall, and the people here had lucky
[00:20:01] escape. 2 million cubic meters of rock
[00:20:05] hurtling down the mountain in the middle of... tonight, the equivalent they say of
[00:20:08] 2,000 family homes and stopping what,
[00:20:12] 40 mes from what used to be the village school, a
[00:20:16] place they now plan to turn into a community
[00:20:19] center.
[00:20:24] now they've managed to put a break nature by building a 2
[00:20:27] km drainage tunnel under the Briensa
[00:20:30] rot horn to take water out of the rocks and
[00:20:33] stabilize the surroundings, the mountain isn't slip.
[00:20:37] as much as it used to,
[00:20:41] the geologists have seen that water is key to the whole
[00:20:44] movement, if you can take water out, if you can lower water
[00:20:48] pressure, the whole glide will will not be that
[00:20:52] fast because it's not a very steep area here where we stand, all
[00:20:56] the area where we stand is gliding, not only the rock part we see from the
[00:20:59] outside that something must be moving, but this part here is
[00:21:03] moving too, it has been moving about the meters per year, two
[00:21:07] years ago, now it's down to 5 cm, so it has slowed
[00:21:10] dramatically due to the effects of the
[00:21:13] tunnel,
[00:21:16] in the first eight months of 2026 there were
[00:21:19] and... dented number of rock falls in Europe's high
[00:21:22] mountains. This is part of the Mata horn
[00:21:26] on the Swiss Italian border, collapsing in
[00:21:29] August.
[00:21:34] We're doubling back now to town just over the mountain from
[00:21:38] Blatton.
[00:21:45] One in six Swiss Homes is in what's called a
[00:21:48] hazard zone. It cost. the swiss government one and a half
[00:21:51] billion dollars a year to protect and in some cases to
[00:21:55] rebuild.
[00:21:59] Kandasteg has one of the country's busiest railway tunnels
[00:22:03] used to transport thousands of vehicles each day so that a
[00:22:07] long journey around the mountains is avoided. Up
[00:22:10] above the towering Spitzerstein is
[00:22:13] slipping at up to 7 every
[00:22:16] year.
[00:23:22] It's all this talk about the red zone unnecessary, it's important to
[00:23:25] know what happened, but it's necessary to know
[00:23:28] that it's not a dangered place, it's not the same
[00:23:31] place as Plattan, it's a very different
[00:23:35] position here, it's a very different danger, and what
[00:23:39] about rockfalls, is that the people exaggerate it? that's
[00:23:42] normal, rock fall is normal, all the way you
[00:23:45] have everywhere a little bit rockfall, sometime a little bit
[00:23:49] more, then it's dangerous. but a little bit rockfall is everywhere, the
[00:23:52] day a day like this, beautiful day, we have 8 to 10,00 people per
[00:23:56] day, only here in Kanderstake, they come in the morning, they
[00:23:59] go away in the evening, so can't be so
[00:24:03] dangerous, despite the shadow their living under,
[00:24:07] we're told that no one thinks of moving
[00:24:10] out.
[00:24:22] This once was a way of issuing warnings across vast
[00:24:25] distances, and if there are now modern ways of trying to head
[00:24:29] off further disasters, then there are also those
[00:24:32] resourceful enough to find the means to protect one of
[00:24:36] Switzerland's biggest earners, alpine
[00:24:39] sports.
[00:24:48] In Davos, artificial is made when it's cold enough, then
[00:24:52] covered in a blanket of sawdust through the summer, they
[00:24:55] lose only 20% through evaporation, even
[00:24:59] when temperatures reach 30 degrees as they did on
[00:25:02] the day of our
[00:25:03] visit.
[00:25:08] this hill of snow means a 4 kilometer cross country
[00:25:12] ski track in Davos is in use much earlier than similar
[00:25:16] runs in other resorts. it's been a very hot.
[00:25:50] and then a return to briance of the oh so
[00:25:53] close rock fall. those
[00:25:56] whose families had called this home for generations were forced
[00:25:59] out for more than year until recently. they've been
[00:26:03] given 48 hours
[00:26:05] notice.
[00:26:09] when George and Bonifazi was at the school here, he says
[00:26:13] landslides were considered fun to watch and not really
[00:26:17] danger.
[00:26:20] he's back now on his farm after having had to leave
[00:26:23] for 18 months and
[00:26:27] sick
[00:26:28] cow.
[00:26:31] has anybody been a
[00:27:02] absolutely without any support.
[00:27:06] I understand the people who don't come back. I mean, they've been
[00:27:10] away for a year and a half now
[00:27:13] and some have already settled elsewhere and found other
[00:27:17] ways and you can't force them to come
[00:27:20] back, that's very clear. My hope
[00:27:24] is that as few buildings
[00:27:28] as possible will be torn down, that means only buildings with major damage
[00:27:31] and the other buildings
[00:27:34] and that they will be re-inhabited
[00:27:38] most preferably, and that the lights will be on everywhere again
[00:27:42] as before and that we can live normally in peace
[00:27:45] again, that would actually be my greatest
[00:27:48] and my biggest
[00:27:51] wish.
[00:27:56] from his home is as natural as the forces of
[00:27:59] nature themselves and if the scientists the
[00:28:02] glaciologists, the engineers and all those protecting
[00:28:06] Switzerland can further tame those forces than
[00:28:09] tomorrow, should hold no fear, he
[00:28:12] says.
[00:28:16] Not just for him, this farmer believes, but also for
[00:28:19] those still waiting to return to Briance, and others who
[00:28:23] may yet decide to make their homes in this
[00:28:27] vast, dramatic and ever-changing
[00:28:30] landscape.
[00:28:50] The Balkans is at the crossroads of
[00:28:53] history, foreign influence has always weighed
[00:28:57] heavily on the people,
[00:29:00] the war in Ukraine has tested. the fragile
[00:29:03] car.
[00:29:08] as global powers consider their next steps, few
[00:29:12] take into consideration what the people here
[00:29:14] want.
[00:29:20] across the balcans on TRT
[00:29:22] World.
[00:29:25] more than just the facts, we reveal the
[00:29:29] realities behind them. fueled by curiosity.
[00:29:33] and never content with the answer,
[00:29:36] we question in pursuit of a broader view, we
[00:29:40] never make assumptions, but inquire and listen,
[00:29:44] because no voice is trivial,
[00:29:48] people are not numbers, titles, names or
[00:29:52] faces, they are the
[00:29:54] story.
[00:30:10] Saudi Arabia strikes in Yemen's Taiz
[00:30:13] after Hothi attacks injured 13 civilians as fighting escalates
[00:30:17] across Yemen. Hello
[00:30:19] and welcome to TRT World's coverage live from Istanbul with me Neil
[00:30:23] Harvey. Also this hour Iran's revolutionary guard says an oil
[00:30:26] tanker has exploded and caught fire after hitting mines
[00:30:30] while sailing through the straight of Horamos.
[00:30:34] Ukraine's president says his country is ready to de-escalate the war
[00:30:38] if Russia does the same. President Trump says that both sides have
[00:30:41] agreed to halt strikes on energy sights.
[00:30:45] And we'll see how Gazza's only animal shelter struggling to keep pets and
[00:30:49] strays alive under Israel's ongoing
[00:30:51] siege.