Global News Podcast - Archbishop of Canterbury resigns over abuse scandal

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

The Archbishop of Canterbury has resigned over an abuse scandal. Also: the six word google search that can expose you to hacking, and the female magician who pulled off a disappearing act from the all male Magic Circle.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. A search for the truth behind an international drug smuggling plot. How are we going to unravel this all? From the BBC World Service, this is World of Secrets, season five, Finding Mr. Fox. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. of the Anglican Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury has resigned over a child abuse scandal. In his latest set of appointments, US President-elect Donald Trump has picked a China hawk and a pro-Israeli Christian, and the six-word Google search that can leave you open to hacking.

Also in this podcast, she finally revealed her true identity, only to be expelled for deliberate deception. The search for a female magician who pulled off a disappearing act from the all-male magic circle. The Church of England and the 85 million strong worldwide Anglican communion are looking for a new spiritual head after Justin Welby announced he would resign as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury. The former oil executive had been under pressure over his failure to report the prolific child abuser John Smythe to the police in 2013. Smythe abused dozens of boys in the UK in the 1970s and 80s and then more in Zimbabwe and South Africa. He died in 2018 without being brought to justice.

One of his victims, Andrew, spoke to the BBC. On my 21st birthday, John Smire told me that I was still sinning and that that required what he would call a special beating. That was beatings of hundreds of lashes over cane. And I realized that I couldn't take things any longer. I firstly wrote a couple of anonymous letters to Christian leaders and to John Smythe, but when those had no effect, I decided that I would take my own life and I remember lying on my hospital bed after my suicide attempt thinking that I was free, that it was over, that I would never see him again and that I had a whole

new life to live. But the mental anguish that the beatings had brought about over the years began to play on my mind fairly quickly. Andrew there. Well, Justin Welby apologised after the report into John Smythe's abuse was published, but he said he wouldn't resign. However, his departure looked inevitable once a senior bishop called for him to go. A petition started by three members of the church's general synod was signed by more than 14,000 people. Our reporter Harry Farley has been covering the scandal. The particular criticism for Justin Welby is that he knew about John Smythe's abuse in 2013.

But he did not, in the words of the report, he did not do enough to make sure that those allegations were investigated at the time and John Smythe continued to abuse boys in Zimbabwe and South Africa up until his death five years later in 2018 and he died without facing justice. It's worth saying that he is not the only one that was heavily criticised in a report that was published last week but he said in his statement when he announced his resignation that he says that when I was informed in 2013 and told that police had been notified, I believed wrongly that an appropriate resolution would follow. And he goes on to say that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and re-traumatising period between 2013, which was when he knew, and that modern day.

Yeah, and he did try to avoid having to resign, but in the end the pressure told. Exactly, there was sort of growing pressure, I suppose, over the last few days. Bishops being asked whether they had confidence in Justin Welby and sort of ducking those questions, and eventually yesterday the Bishop of Newcastle, a senior figure in the Church of England, saying that she thought that Justin Welby's position was untenable and I suppose that was really the key moment and the Prime Minister today as well saying that, you know, while it was a matter for the Church, he thought that the victims had been failed very, very badly and I suppose there was a growing sense over the last

few days in particular that this was inevitable that Justin Welby would be forced to resign early than he had intended. Yeah, I mean what will be the impact of his departure on the Church of England and also on the wider Anglican community with its 85 million believers? Well exactly, a very significant one because as you say this is the Archbishop of Canterbury is not just the head of the Church of England they have a constitutional role here in the UK but they also lead that 85 million strong Anglican Communion that stretches right around the world and the Archbishop of Canterbury seen by many as a figurehead to that Communion so this is a

significant development not just here in the UK but right around the world. The process now begins for choosing his successor. That will not be a quick process, it will be expected to last many months and there will be questions over whether Justin Welby's successor comes from the Church of England. Archbishops of Canterbury don't have to come from the Church of England, they could come from further afield. And whether, of course, we might see the first ever woman as an Archbishop of Canterbury. And whoever takes over will have to try and heal the divisions within the communion between liberal churches, say in North America and Britain, and those perhaps in Africa. Yes, exactly. I mean, those divisions are deep within the different parts of the Anglican Communion. Those questions,

particularly, I suppose, the divisions on sexuality, the different stances around the world as to whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry in churches in different places around the world, deep disagreements across the Anglican Communion. Those have not gone away and they will not go away with Justin Welby's departure. One of the strengths, I suppose, one of the things he wanted to emphasise in his tenure was holding the Anglican Communion together and that will be a big question for whether his successor can continue to do that. Harry Farley. In contrast to the chaos when he was first elected US President, Donald Trump has been working methodically to fill his administration. Former presidential candidate and pro-Israeli evangelical Christian Mike Huckabee has been

nominated as ambassador to Israel. Congressman Mike Waltz will be the US National Security Advisor. And Florida Senator Marco Rubio is widely expected to be chosen as Secretary of State, meaning two foreign policy posts are going to China hawks. Jessica Parker has been reporting from outside Mr Trump's home in Florida. I asked her what these picks say about his possible foreign policy plans. Well, as you say, we've had the formal announcement that Mike Waltz will be the national security

adviser for Donald Trump. And we know Mike Waltz, he's a veteran. He takes a tough line on China. He said things like the US needs to do more to prepare for conflict in the Pacific. And then you look at this potential pick for Secretary of State, the US's top diplomat Marco Rubio, also a China hawk. So there's definitely a pattern there.

But of course, Mr. Rubio's appointment or pick has not been confirmed, and it's also being reported alongside his name that Donald Trump could change his mind. So we'll have to see how that one develops. But on Ukraine as well, he would hold Marco Rubio a key role there if he were to become Secretary of State. And his remarks recently on that have been quite interesting. I mean, he's praised Ukraine's bravery on the battlefield, resisting the Russian invasion, but also actually sort of been echoing

Donald Trump's language around this as well, saying that the war needs to be concluded. And he described US funding as basically funding a stalemate on the battlefields. And of course, there are fears that under a Donald Trump administration, the US could curtail aid to Kiev. It's never been quite clear how Donald Trump would bring the war to an end, as he says he would do or has claimed he would do quickly.

So obviously, these foreign policy picks, whether they're confirmed, whether they're kind of being floated, do have huge implications far beyond the US shores and certainly far beyond the shores of Mar-a-Lago where I've been. Now many evangelical Christians in America are staunchly pro-Israel. What does the choice of Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel mean? Yeah, so as you say Mike Huckabee former Arkansas governor He's going to be nominated to be the US ambassador to Israel in a statement Donald Trump said that mr. Huckabee loves Israel the people of Israel and likewise He said the people of Israel love him another

staunch Israel ally, Elise Stefanik, she's heading to the UN as the US ambassador to the United Nations. And you might remember she made her name grilling university presidents about their handling of campus protests. So clearly two staunch Israel backers there heading into those key positions. And Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was one of the first to congratulate the president-elect Trump, saying, congratulations on history's greatest comeback, he said. But we also know that Trump has been urging Israel to finish the war in Gaza quickly and he has put a big emphasis during the campaign on ending conflicts. Now people will of course be watching

whether and what he can deliver on that whether that's in Ukraine or indeed in the Middle East. Jessica Parker in Florida. Cyber criminals are getting ever more inventive in their attempts to steal our data. Experts have discovered a search term that's been hijacked by hackers to gain access to computers. Typing the words, are Bengal cats legal in Australia, into Google, delivers search results that are potentially disastrous for users. Evan Davis asked our technology editor Zoe Kleinman to explain. This is a really interesting example of an old trick which is people setting up a fake website that looks like it's something else and then trying to get you to either download

some malware off it which then gets into your computer and infects it and is able to access everything you have on it or convinces you to fill in some form preferably with your bank details on it. It is a very common malware trick. What is interesting about this particular example is how niche it is. It's a very, very specific phrase that I'm imagining really would not be Googled by very many people. And for that reason, I'm slightly skeptical about it because it doesn't seem to have any victims that we're aware of and it has come from a company which sells security software so there are those elements to it. That said it is definitely always a good idea to be aware of the links that you click on. So if I put in the search are Bengal cats

legal in Australia that on its own can't infect my computer? No don't panic just writing the words into Google or any other search engine will not infect your computer. What would come up would be a list of links to try to answer your question, I suppose. And the suggestion is that somebody has put a load of advertising behind one that is a false one, designed to get people to click on it

and then to either download some malware as they're clicking on it or to share their information. The fact that it happens shows that there are things that slip through the net. I also think Google and the other big search engine companies like Microsoft which runs Bing for example they monitor these things very closely and they don't tend to last for very long. But the thing is this is something that doesn't really need a lot of people to fall for it. You know, you only need one person's bank account and you've potentially got hold of quite a lot of money. You only need to infect one computer and you've got access to quite a lot of personal data. So that is the law, if you like, of cybercrime

and scamming. You have to push this out a lot and there won't be many people that will fall for it, but some people will. Personally, I would be more concerned about checking the link to your bank and making sure that it's spelt correctly, making sure that the link isn't a slightly different version to what the official link is. It might look the same. If you're looking for the BBC website and you get BCB for example, don't click on that. That's probably not us and that's kind of basic cyber hygiene isn't it that I think we should all be aware of. I would worry more about the everyday sites that you use all the time than something as specific as Bengal Cats unless of course you are a member of the Bengal Cat community and you're particularly interested in Australia.

Is there a way I can click on something, a setting on any of these big search engines, and I get safe search. It's always a game of whack-a-mole, you know, these sites spring up and then they disappear. There are some stories that I perennially do, for example, if you're applying for a visa to go and visit another country. There are loads of websites that come up, often before the official ones, which offer to do it for you for a hugely inflated amount of money and every now and then I report them and then they disappear but they always pop up again so despite all of the safety tools that are out there it is slightly a case of you having to take responsibility and try to be aware

yourself. The BBC technology editor Zoe Kleinman. The great white shark is the ocean's top predator around six meters long and able to swim at 25 kilometres an hour. While attacks on humans are rare, they can be fatal and surfers can be at risk because their silhouette is similar to that of a seal, the great white's favourite prey. But researchers in Australia have found a way to deter sharks from attacking surfers, as Sophie Smith reports. sharks from attacking surfers as Sophie Smith reports. No surfer wants to see a large grey fin sliding its way through the water towards them, especially if it belongs to a great white shark and there's not a lot you can do to defend yourself.

While more shark attacks happen in California, it's the Australians who are the most likely to be killed while on the water. So it's no surprise that marine biologist and keen surfer Dr Laura Ryan from Macquarie University in Sydney has been looking for a way to deter Great Whites from attacking her and her fellow wave riders. She and her colleagues towed decoys shaped like seals and made a foam on a line behind a boat to bait the sharks, while testing methods to discourage them from biting. And we've been using lights on the bottom of these decoys, stripes being horizontal,

which if we imagine on a seal from one shoulder to the other, seems to be most effective. The sharks still saw the fake seals, but they didn't attack them. So what we're doing is we're changing the shape of the silhouette. And when we're not covering the entire decoy in LEDs and just doing these horizontal stripes, this remaining section looks more like multiple small objects. The dissected foam seal looks less tasty to a hungry great white and more like random pieces floating on the water. The lights do have to be horizontal though, they can't be longitudinal going down from the top to the bottom. Like that, the shark can still make out the silhouette of the steel and it will still bite. Dr Ryan and her team hope the discovery can be used to create a device

to protect surfers from shark bites without impacting marine animals like the sharks themselves. So is she ready to jump in and replace the fake seal? I don't think I'd still wouldn't paddle a surfboard through the seal colonies, but we're sort of working on building a prototype at the moment. This could well be the future for shark-free surfing, but until the technology is up and running it's probably best to be cautious and stay near enough to the shore. You don't want to meet a massive hungry pair of Jaws. Sophie Smith.

And still to come... Bring us some figgy pudding, bring us some figgy pudding, bring us some figgy pudding. But apparently Christmas pudding has fallen out of favour. Witness the stories that have shaped our world. On the launch pad, in the dawn light, a towering symbol of an ambitious nation. 3, 2, 1. The symbol of an ambitious nation. Told by the people who were there. I still don't regret that I was part of the Rose Revolution. I was a witness of very exciting

days. Witness History, from the BBC World Service. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts. In our earlier podcast we heard from aid agencies in Gaza saying conditions there remain awful largely because of a lack of supplies. The Biden administration had set Tuesday as a deadline for Israel to improve the desperate humanitarian situation, with the implication that if it didn't happen, the US might stop military aid to Israel. However, the US State Department has said it is not going to reduce military assistance for the time being, adding that Israel had not violated US law on allowing aid into Gaza. More details from our State Department correspondent

Tom Bateman. The US government says Israel has taken a number of steps to address its demands to surge supplies into Gaza and therefore it doesn't assess Israel to be in violation of US laws about blocking humanitarian aid. The finding essentially means Washington will continue its weapons supply to its ally uninterrupted despite the growing urgency of warnings from aid groups about the rate civilians are being killed and displaced by Israel's assault on the north where the Israeli military says it has been routing a Hamas resurgence.

Tom Bateman reporting. Britain has condemned what it said were Israeli restrictions on aid while the acting head of the UN's humanitarian agency has said that acts reminiscent of the gravest international crimes are being committed by Israel in Gaza. The branch of the Israeli military responsible for coordinating aid deliveries is called COGAT. Its international spokesman is Shimon Friedman. What is his response to the criticism of Israel? Obviously, the situation in Gaza is very difficult. and I'm not here to say that the situation is amazing. It's not. Israel has worked since the beginning of the war and COGAT specifically

has worked to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid, to increase the access to medical care, to bring in food, water, medical supplies and shelter equipment. And we work together with the international organisations to facilitate the entry of this aid. That doesn't really tally with reality though, does it? Because I mean before the war started 500 trucks were going in per day. The US has said a minimum of 350 is needed right now. It's a matter of a few dozen at most that are going in. So I mean it's all very well to say that you're sort of facilitating and you're doing all that you can, but you've got senior UN officials

saying that it is not a place for humans to survive. It seems as if the way you are seeing what's happening in Gaza and what the reality is, is two different things. G. First, I just want to address this number of 500 trucks that you mentioned from before the war. The 500 trucks coming in before the war were not humanitarian aid. They included food, but they included other things as well, goods, commodities, lots of different things that were coming into the Gaza Strip. That's not what we're talking about right now. We're talking about four main categories, food, water, medical supplies and shelter equipment. Which the US still says you need 350 trucks a day and you're

nowhere near that. And also the numbers that you mentioned in terms of dozens are incorrect and we release those numbers and you can find those on our website as well. It's close to around 50 trucks in northern Gaza a day and between 100 and 150 trucks in southern Gaza. Those numbers, we're working to increase them. The issue right now, the main obstacle in getting much larger numbers of aid into the Gaza Strip are with international organisations. Because if we were to bring in additional, those would just be, not that there's room right now on the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom, because there are so many trucks waiting there. Kerem Shalom is just one of the many crossing points there could be into Gaza.

That is part of the problem, is that you have decided that you are going to only allow very limited access points and you have also decided that inside Gaza, absolutely, it is a war, but it is a war zone in which the Israelis are not doing all that they could in order to facilitate the humanitarian organisations to get to these places. You're right, Kerem Shalom is only one crossing. There are five crossings right now. There is Kerem Shalom, there is Kisufim, which opens today, Crossing 96, Erez West and Erez East. These crossings are operational and we are delivering, we are facilitating the entry of humanitarian aid through

all of them. So the reason I keep bringing up Kaleb Shalom is because that is the crossing that has the largest capacity. But we are absolutely using the other crossings as well. And we've gone to great lengths in order to increase our capacity there. Shimon Friedman of Kogat talking to Tim Franks. Is the Iraqi parliament about to lower the age of consent from 18 to just nine years old? That is what sheer conservative groups

are hoping for. They've proposed an amendment to the personal status law, which could also see changes to a woman's right to inheritance, divorce and even the custody of her own children. Exactly who is proposing these changes and why? A question Rebecca Kesby asked Amnesty International's Razo Salhi. They're proposed by a coalition of MPs which are from one of the Shia parties and they have previously proposed laws that have been restrictive in terms of gender-related rights or sexual orientation rights. It is part of this campaign over the past two years that we've seen in Iraq to really what we like to call swapping bullets on the streets for laws in Parliament to restrict civil society, restrict freedoms

guaranteed already under law and it's really an exertion of power. So at the moment in Iraq, like in most countries actually around the world, the legal marriage age is 18 and that's been in place I think since the 1950s. This was under secular law and so how would this change? Yes absolutely. So actually it's worth mentioning that Iraq has one of the most progressive personal status laws in the region, in the Middle East, in that the personal status law encompasses every person of every religion in the country, so it's for all Iraqis. What this would do is open the door for religious clerics of the Shia sect and the Sunni sect and their respective religious authorities to put down codes that may allow those as young as nine to get married. And the fear of that stems from the

fact that the amendment explicitly recognizes the Jaffari school of thought for the Shia sect. And those who interpreted the dogmatic way could allow girls as young as nine to get married and boys as young as 15 to be married, which is a complete disaster and Allah really opens or exposes girls to sexual violence and other types of violence, notwithstanding the fact that they'll be excluded from education and any type of meaningful ways of building a life. So, I mean, just to be clear, is this law, this would be coexisting alongside the secular law, would it? So this would be a branch of religious law that families could choose to adopt?

Yes, exactly. So what it does is it establishes a parallel sectarian judicial authority that essentially makes women or children, Iraqi women and children, unequal before the law. It allows for men to shop around for the best situation, be it in marriage or be it in divorce settlements, be it in inheritance settlements and even custody of children. And this really would be a break with what we've seen in Iraq legally over decades. Absolutely. It is a devastating blow to years of women's rights NGOs, of progress in human rights, and I have to mention those pushing this law have demonised the opposing voices in parliament and outside parliament. They have called them Western influences as well as morality that is not in line with

Iraq's moral standards. That is completely untrue. They are coming from the streets of Iraq. They are not coming from outside at all. Razo Salhi from Amnesty International. Now it's a bit early but have a listen to this. Well figgy or Christmas pudding is a traditional yuletide dessert in English-speaking countries, but here in Britain a survey has found that more than half of adults who celebrate Christmas say it is not an essential feature of their celebrations. The food historian, Penn Vogler, told us how the pudding has evolved through time. It wasn't actually called Christmas pudding until Dickens anchored it to the day with

the Christmas Carol. So we thought about it as plum pudding and it was festive, something you gave somebody as a kind of special treat, but it wasn't always the thing that we had at Christmas. It has quite a history from medieval times when we didn't have puddings but they would kind of posh up their potage as they called it at the time or porridge with expensive fruits and nuts and spices if they could afford it. And then some genius invented a way of kind of turning that into a pudding by kind of sticking it in a pudding cloth. And so yes, it was given as charity. So if you wanted to kind of show your benevolence to a whole group of people, you'd give them roast beef and plum pudding. And it was quite a

sort of big kind of symbolic thing, a nice gift and treat. Although quite a palaver. I mean, even the reheating it is hours long. Yes, but as Pembroke says and as Dickens said, people were so used to doing that, they'd been boiling up their clothes in the copper for a few hours on wash day anyway. Yeah, so boiling a pudding was quite a normal thing. Just a quick thought, is it the kind of thing that could come back in? Someone will come in, I don't know, put an orange in the middle and sunny it's back in favour. Things go in and out of fashion and I've just been thinking about pumpkins and squash and

a few years ago we'd not been eating them at all and Halloween has brought them back onto our plate. I think the Christmas pudding will come in and out maybe thanks to the Muppet and the Christmas carol bringing it all back to us again. Food historian Penn Vogler talking to Sarah Montague. The Magic Circle is the world's most famous society for magicians, escapologists and illusionists but a few decades ago, when it was still male only, the organisation was itself fooled when a woman called Sophie Lloyd joined disguised as a man called Raymond. When she eventually revealed her identity, she was kicked out. Now the society wants to track her down and apologise. But in true

magician fashion, she seems to have disappeared. Will Vernon takes up the story. ...the secrets of our top conjurers like Alan Shaxson in the act he does with his wife Anne. For most of the Magic Circle's 109-year history, women were little more than glamorous assistants. See if you can spot the way he does it. Female magicians were not allowed, as it was thought women couldn't keep secrets.

But they were finally admitted in 1991, when the rules were changed. That's when it emerged that a young actress, Sophie Lloyd, had pulled off perhaps the greatest deception of all. For a year and a half, she had been masquerading as Raymond Lloyd, a bespectacled male magician, fooling the entire society. She chose to reveal herself only after the female ban was lifted. The expertly executed trick led to Ms Lloyd being expelled from the Magic Circle, with the honorary secretary, Christopher Pratt, refusing to see the funny side.

Now, the first ever female chair of the Magic Circle, Laura London, has launched an appeal to find Ms Lloyd and re-admit her. Things of course have changed since then. We are an inclusive and diverse club. So now we would just love to track Sophie down and hopefully invite her back if she's willing. The Magic Circle has been trying to conjure up more female members in recent years. Today, just 5% of its magicians are women. As for Sophie Lloyd, the last known mention of the covert conjurer was in a local newspaper in 1997,

after which she appears to have vanished into thin air. Will Vernon. And that is all from us for now, but the Global News podcast will be back very soon. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll and produced by Alison Davis, our editors Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye. When we left, there was this wonderful feeling, But it was only the beginning of a nightmare. This is a story that started with a job advert. A yacht owner looking for a crew to sell his recently renovated boat from Brazil to Europe.

For me, it was going to be a great adventure and an opportunity to gain a lot of experience. But when police raided the vessel and discovered drugs... Cocaine hidden under one of the beds. It can't be! a lot of experience. But when police raided the vessel and discovered drugs. Cocaine hidden under one of the beds. It can't be. A key suspect was miles away. Everything revolved around him. Who's the boss?

A British guy. Fox. Fox. This is World of Secrets from the BBC World Service, season five, Finding Mr. Fox. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.