Global News Podcast - BBC hears of horror and hunger in rare visit to Darfur

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

The UN's humanitarian chief is calling for action to help people in the Darfur region of Sudan - we have a special report on the horrors of the civil war. Also: President Biden pardons his son Hunter.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. So a neutron star is kind of about the size of Chicago. Unexpected elements from the BBC World Service. Search for unexpected elements wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard and at 14 Hours GMT on Monday, the 2nd of December, these are our main stories. The UN's humanitarian chief has called for stronger action to help people in the Sudanese region of Darfur, which has been devastated by war. We have a special

report from Sudan. Criticism from both sides over Joe Biden's decision to issue a presidential pardon to his son Hunter and Syria's president Bashar al-Assad has blamed western countries for a rebel offensive that has reignited the civil war, accusing them of trying to redraw the map of the Middle East. Also in this podcast, 50 year old mystery over a hijacker who leapt from a plane with ransom money. You're being hijacked no funny stuff I want $200,000 in US currency I wanted in a knapsack and I

want four parachutes. So has his identity finally been revealed? finally been revealed. We begin in Sudan, which has been embroiled in civil war since April last year. The adversaries are the paramilitary rapid support forces, or RSF, which controls most of Darfur, and the Sudanese armed forces led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. Tens of thousands have been killed in the fighting, over 11 million people have had to flee their homes and many more face acute hunger. Famine was declared in the northern Zamzam camp a few months ago. The United Nations

new relief coordinator Tom Fletcher has described the violence as the worst of the worst. Our chief international correspondent Lise Doucet was one of a number of journalists to travel to the city of Al-Jana'a, the capital of West Darfur. She went there with a UN team. And a warning, some listeners may find parts of her report distressing. What's the importance of your visit into Darfur? We've got to get on the ground and see what the needs are. So it is about starvation, but it's also about protection, because these civilian populations

are under massive, massive pressure. We know about the epidemic of sexual violence, but we also know that they are being used as pawns in this terrible, terrible conflict. All right, we can move. Okay, escort to here. Everybody mount up. Now, as we move in, we can see the soldiers of the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary,

which controls this part of Sudan. Some of them in their camouflage and topsy-turvy turbines, just kids. Allegations too that child soldiers are being recruited here. Traveling into West Darfur, it's hard to call this a road, just a dirt track cutting through this semi-desert. Very bumpy, very dusty and desolate. The odd truck piled high with people and goods. And checkpoints here and there, just a tent on the side of the road and a few men with guns. and a few men with guns. Do you want to go to the Jena? No, we are going to the other side.

Ok, we are entering Jena now. Wow, wow. There is still an accurate taste in the air. The smell of this place was burning. The shops are charred. The doors blown over. This is where gunmen went on a rampage. This is where a massacre happened.

Looting, rape, killing, ethnic cleansing. Arab fighters, the rapid support forces, their allies, against non-arabs. It's been the story of Darfur. No one lives in these houses now to tell this story. But before we came to Darfur, we visited a refugee camp in neighboring Chad and met some people who escaped from here. When the war started, many bad things happened. It's difficult to explain. It's something that never happened in this world. Did you see yourself? Yes, I saw it with my own eyes. When we were fleeing, we saw dead people on the roads. When someone with you was shot, you

couldn't stop to help them because you were running for your own life. You had to abandon them. My mother didn't die, but I lost my uncle, my auntie's husband. We don't know the whereabouts of my uncle to this date. and we don't know the whereabouts of my uncle to this date. When we were fleeing, our young brothers were killed. Some were too young to walk. Our elders escaping with us were killed.

Within our family, they killed my uncles, my aunties, all the men in our family. They killed many people when we fled. My mom is here but we don't know where my father is." The RSF and their rivals, the Sudanese army, both deny they committed war crimes. Inside El Genina, the UN's first stop is a displacement camp here. We are here because we want to listen to you. I know that this situation is very, very hard, very tough. I know that sometimes you must feel that the world has forgotten you. The first speaker is a community elder, a white turban teacher.

In the past, yes, we have suffered a lot here in the East Bank. Yes, it's true that when the war started, some people supported Taf, some supported RSAF, but we as IDPs here, we are neutral. The UN recognizes General Burhan's government as Sudan's authority, and he's restricted the UN's access and presence. The NGOs based here told Tom Fletcher the UN had to do better. My name is Tarek Gribel and the head of operations for NRC in Sudan. What is your message to the United Nations?

We believe that more needs to be done in the country. We see people starving, we see people dying, even now with the floods, bodies have come up just because they are recently buried. I mean it's literally, it's so visceral the suffering. That report by our Chief International Correspondent Lise Doucet in Sudan. Now to the US. And Joe Biden has done something that he promised not to do. He has pardoned his son Hunter. He had been due to face sentencing this month for federal gun and tax convictions. In June, President Biden was still maintaining he wouldn't intervene.

I'm extremely proud of my son Hunter. He has overcome an addiction. He is one of the He is one of the brightest, most decent men I know. And I am satisfied that I'm not going to do anything. I said I'd abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him. Our North America editor is Sarah Smith. So Joe Biden is trying to justify the fact that he has gone back on his word here. He had repeatedly said he had no intention of pardoning his son Hunter Biden. And now he's saying that he felt he had to do it because basically the charges against

Hunter Biden, he was saying, were politically motivated, that he had faced unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution, as Joe Biden put it, and basically saying nobody else who had committed similar, very low-level offenses would have been prosecuted for them. But he went on in his statement to say that they were trying to break Hunter and tried to break me, meaning Joe Biden. And then the key thing is, he said, there's no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough. So I think not only is he pardoning Hunter for the crimes of which he's already been convicted, but

possibly trying to take pre-intivation in case Donald Trump and his allies want to investigate other things that Hunter or anybody else has been doing. Well, you would expect to hear from Donald Trump and Republicans, wouldn't you, that they think that this is rank hypocrisy? And of course they can point to all the times that Joe Biden had said that he had no intention of pardoning his son. But they also say it just shows how politicised and weaponised the Justice Department is. The failed witch hunts against President Trump they talked about in a statement from his

spokesperson. So you basically now go both sides saying, you know, if I'm being prosecuted then it's a political witch hunt. If you're being prosecuted then that's just the justice system working the way it ought to. And this is the real problem, I think, for Democrats and for Joe Biden here. People might very well understand his family impulse to pardon his previously very, very troubled son. But at a point when Democrats know that they're going to be fighting against Donald Trump and his allies coming in and trying to raise investigations and prosecutions into all manner of his political opponents and enemies. This rather undercuts

their arguments against it because the Republicans will simply point to them and say, well you too have politicised the justice system. That was Sarah Smith. The spade-toothed whale is incredibly rare. It's so elusive that only seven have ever been recorded. Now scientists in New Zealand have started dissecting the body of a spade-toothed whale that washed ashore earlier this year, as our Asia-Pacific editor, Mickey Bristow, reports. The spade-toothed whale was found dead on a beach on New Zealand's South Island in July. It was winched away and stored in a freezer until now. Scientists are dissecting the five-meter-long mammal, hoping to find out basic information about the species behavior, diet and anatomy. What they

find might also benefit humans, as one of the researchers explained. What we are interested in is not only how these animals died, but how they lived. And in discovering how they lived, we are hoping to find discoveries that we can apply back to the human condition. Because there are some diseases that mimic these extreme environments. And if we could see how these whales survive in places we cannot, we might be able to trace some of those diseases. The spade-toothed whale comes from the family of beet whales, which spend much of their

time deep underwater and out of sight. That's why no one knows much about them. As their name suggests they have a beak like jaw not unlike dolphins. The scientists began their post-mortem excitedly walking around the mammal carefully pointing out its unique features. They'll spend a week examining what is one of the world's most elusive and reclusive animals. Mickey Bristow. One of America's biggest criminal mysteries may finally have been solved. A hijacking which saw a mystery man leap

out of a commercial flight with a $200,000 ransom never to be seen again. The identity of the man who called himself DB Cooper has remained a mystery for decades, perhaps until now. This report by Paddy McGuire. The identity of the person behind a 53 year old hijacking mystery could soon be solved. We are going to begin tonight with a potential break in one of the greatest mysteries in all of American history. The true identity of D.B. Cooper could soon be solved. On the eve of Thanksgiving in November 1971, a smartly dressed man calling himself Dan Cooper

bought a one-way plane ticket from the city of Portland to nearby Seattle. Once on board the Boeing 727, he put on a pair of dark sunglasses, ordered a bourbon and lit a cigarette. As the plane was taking off, he handed the flight attendant a note. William Ratajcek was the co-pilot that day on Northwest Orient Flight 305. The flight attendant, Florence Schaffner, then came through the cockpit door and put a note on the console that was between Captain Scott and myself. And it said, you're being hijacked, no funny stuff. I want $200,000 in U.S. currency.

I want it in a knapsack. And I want four parachutes. The man claimed to have a bomb. His instructions were clear. Land the plane in Seattle. Bring the cash and the parachutes on board. He would then let the passengers go. He and the three crew members would remain on board and fly on to Mexico. If he was going to jump, the crew would jump with him. It was his insurance to make sure the chutes weren't rigged to fail.

William Ratajak described the moment D.B. Cooper jumped at low altitude, somewhere over southwest Washington. So we slowed the airplane down, and then I got back on the interphone and said, now try the stairs, they should lower for you. And he never responded and I could feel the stairs coming down. We then felt a big bump in our ear. After he left from the aircraft, the man calling himself Dan Cooper was never seen again. Did he survive? If he did, where did he go? The FBI closed the case in 2016. The story

has inspired books, films and of course a Netflix true crime series as well as legions of amateur sleuths. So has the case finally been solved? Well a pair of siblings in North Carolina have come forward with a claim that they found the parachute used in the hijacking in their shed after their mother died. Shontay and Ricky McCoy III say their father, Richard McCoy Jr, was the man who carried out the hijacking back in 1971. A retired pilot who's been investigating the case for decades has claimed the FBI has effectively reopened the case and is searching for a positive DNA connection. The FBI has not commented, but it might just be they're on to something.

McCoy, a Vietnam veteran, had in fact carried out a very similar hijacking in April 1972, just six months after D.B. Cooper's heist. He'd leapt out of an aircraft with $500,000 in ransom but he was caught and sentenced to 45 years in prison. McCoy had been discounted as a suspect in the earlier hijacking because he didn't resemble the physical description given by the flight attendants. He escaped from prison in 1974 but was killed after three months on the run. Perhaps he did indeed take the legend of DB Cooper to his grave.

Paddy McGuire on a mystery dating back to a time when you could still light up a cigarette on a flight. Still to come, the growing trend in wearable fitness gadgets. I wear it for steps mainly, calories. I actually bought the watch following, getting a bit of a heart rate scale. It just helped me kind of monitor and know when that was happening.

But how much can we really trust what they tell us? The show is a collection of stories about the incredible life of the world. The show is a collection of stories about the incredible life of the world. Unexpected Elements is the show that revels in the constantly unexpected wonder of the universe. These are some of the most beautiful cells that I have ever met.

And every one of them, you have a lifetime of puzzles to figure out. And it's also the show that revels in the unexpected things that scientists get up to. You want to know what molecules these blobs are made from. So the first thing that you do is you touch them, you smell them. If you're a little bit courageous, you taste them. You taste them! Unexpected Elements from the BBC World Service. Search for Unexpected Elements wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has blamed the US and other western countries for a rebel offensive that has reignited the civil war. He accused them of trying to redraw the map of the Middle East. A new wave of fighting began last week after the rebels seized the city of Aleppo. President Assad has welcomed support from Moscow and Iran. Ismail Al-Abdallah is a volunteer with the White Helmets, an organisation that operates in parts of opposition-controlled Syria and in Turkey. He is currently in the countryside north of Aleppo and told Michelle Hussein about what's been happening.

The bombing started and increased actually in Aleppo city. Yesterday there was an airstrike targeting the University Hospital of Aleppo, which is the biggest hospital in Aleppo. The result of this attack, more than 10 people were killed. All of them were civilians. Our teams on the ground responded to this attack and recovered the bodies and transported the injured people to the hospitals out of Aleppo city. The death toll of attacks on Aleppo city yesterday reached about 30 people were killed, including the

people that were killed the day before that we were able to recover their bodies. At the night they were attacked by an airstrike that targeted one of the crowded places in Aleppo city, which is the entrance of the Aleppo city. And are people trying to get out of Aleppo? And if so And are people trying to get out of Aleppo and if so are they able to get out of Aleppo if they fear there is more of this to come? Many people are evacuating, going out of Aleppo city toward the north. Me including me that there is bombing and there is some fighting so I decided to go back to the North countryside. Ismail Al-Abdallah of the White Helmets Organisation.

Now as we record this podcast, the Georgian government says more than 240 people have been arrested during four nights of anti-government protests. The country's pro-EU president says many of those detained have facial injuries, including broken bones. Demonstrators are angry at a decision by the ruling Georgian Dream Party, which won disputed elections in October, to put EU accession talks on hold. Brehan Demetri is in Tbilisi. The protests continue till this morning. Some people were arrested at about 8 or 9 a.m. So the police were chasing some of the protesters. Last night there were again massive crowds protesting outside the parliament.

Protesters were launching fireworks at the riot police and the riot police in turn were spraying them with water cannons, tear gas and pepper spray. And at about 2am the riot police moved in with the warning and started clearing the streets and pushing the protesters away from parliament. But the protesters refused to disperse, they erected barricades, then they moved to other adjacent streets and it went on till 8 a.m. There has been some confusion about suspending moves towards joining the EU. Let's hear two different clips from the Prime Minister Irakli Kobachidze.

The first was from yesterday. Let's hear it. So we have not suspended anything related to the European integration. It's just a lie. And there are the opposition leaders, there are the media outlets linked with the opposition for just lying to these people. But this is what he said last Thursday when he announced moves towards joining the EU were shelved for four years. Today we have decided not to put the issue of opening negotiations with the European Union on the agenda until the end of 2028.

So Rohan, what are we to make from this? Is there a change in direction? It was rather confusing to hear from Prime Minister Kobahidze denying that his government made this statement. He himself personally made the statement on November the 28th. It is true that he said that Georgia is still committed to joining the European Union by 2030, but he said that the Georgian Dream Government made the decision to hold any negotiations on Georgia's future membership on hold for four years. It is true that currently the process of accession is on hold from the European Union side as well. And that was in response to the Georgian Dream government

passing legislation, quite a controversial one, which drew huge protests to the streets of Tbilisi back in the spring. And that is the foreign influence law or the so-called foreign agents law, which was seen by the European Union as being anti-Western and seen by the opposition and protesters as being a copy paste version of the Russian law. Therefore, people were saying no to the Russian floor at the time.

So the problem is Georgia was granted EU candidate status in December 2023. And that status came with a number of recommendations from the European Union to move country further into its kind of democratic developments. The prime minister's response also came after the European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution, quite a critical one of October parliamentary elections in Georgia. The same resolution called for new elections and called for sanctions against the Prime Minister and other high officials in Georgia. So that resolution clearly angered the Georgian Dream government and they made a decision to put any further negotiations with the EU on hold. That statement from the Prime Minister drew so many people

out to the streets, not only in the capital but country-wide. That was Rehan Demetri in Tbilisi. A BBC Eye investigation suggests that tomatoes produced with forced labour in China are likely to be finding their way into supermarkets in Europe. Forensic testing on tomato puree sold by major British and German retailers indicates they contain tomatoes produced in China. The investigation found that suppliers in Italy are importing huge quantities of tomato paste from companies that use coercive forced labour in the Xinjiang province of China. Three years ago, major supermarkets told the British Parliament

that they had stopped using products from the region. Runako Salina reports. Even on the streets of another country, those who dare speak out about forced labour in the tomato fields of Xinjiang don't feel safe. We've come to a secret location in neighbouring Kazakhstan to meet a man we're calling Mehmet. They told me if I don't do the job we tell you to do, you'll be sent back to prison camp. There's a job for you in the tomato fields. Mehmet is one of 14 people the BBC has spoken to who've endured or witnessed forced labour

in Xinjiang's tomato industry. One told us how they were forced to pick 40 sacks of tomatoes a day and beaten or given electric shocks if they failed. It's hard to verify these claims, but they are consistent. China denies any use of forced labour in Xinjiang and says accusations of human rights abuses there are disinformation. But the United States has banned all imports from the region, including tomatoes. Europe and the UK have not.

The tomato industry in Xinjiang is absolutely huge. It's so big that you can see it from space. Investigative journalist and Xinjiang specialist Alison Killing, using satellite imagery and shipping data, helped us track where these tomatoes go with the paste packed in blue barrels. So we managed to trace these blue barrels coming from Xinjiang, passing through Kazakhstan and into Georgia, where they were handled by a shipping company who sent them onwards to Italy. We traced millions of kilos of this tomato paste to one major tomato manufacturer in Italy,

the Petit Group. The Petit Group told us they'd stopped importing from one of Xinjiang's biggest tomato producers after it was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2020 for forced labour. producers after it was sanctioned by the US in 2020 for forced labour. But filming undercover at one of its factories, we discovered around a dozen blue barrels. One was clearly marked with the name of that Xinjiang producer, dated 2023. Posing as a potential client, we met with a senior executive from the company. The Petit Group produces tomato products under its own name. It's also a key supplier to supermarkets in the UK and Europe. It's really hard to know if tomato paste sold to consumers at supermarkets are made with

tomatoes from Xinjiang. So we're collecting samples from supermarkets to test them and see where they come from. We sent 64 samples from the UK, Germany and the US to a leading forensic testing company called Source Certain to compare them with samples from China. Cameron Scadding is Source Certain's CEO. Trace Alamo analysis can give an indication as to where a product has come from. What we use that analysis for is to build a pattern or a fingerprint which are unique to the country of origin. Our testing showed that 17 tomato purees sold in supermarkets

appeared to contain Chinese tomatoes. And we can't be certain that they come from Xinjiang, but most of China's tomatoes are grown in Xinjiang. So we can be fairly confident that some of these tomatoes are made with forced labour. The supermarkets all said they take the allegations very seriously, but they disputed the BBC's findings. Some said their own testing and audits show no evidence of Chinese tomatoes in their products. The petty group said they regularly purchased tomato puree from a supplier who assured them they did not engage in forced labour.

They said in future the group will not import Chinese tomatoes. That report by Renako Salina. Now finally, are you the sort of person who likes to monitor your health with wearable fitness tech like smart watches and fitness bands? And if so, how much can we really trust what they tell us? We heard from these people in the English city of Leeds who explained how they use their own wearable tech. I wear it for steps mainly, calories. I think it looks nice as well. I do my heart rate usually twice a day in the morning and at night and it's quite good.

I would trust it. You can always get an opinion off your doctor and if it's wrong it's wrong but if it's right then it might pick up a problem. I actually bought the watch following getting a bit of a heart rate scan. It just helped me kind of monitor and know when that was happening. BBC technology editor Zoe Kleinman has been testing a smart ring designed to track health data and it had some surprising results. It's not got a screen on it, it's just a ring that sits on your finger. If you like chunky jewellery, you might like it, it's quite chunky. And what it does is it collects an amount of data about you,

it syncs with an app on your phone and you can choose to subscribe to have other bits of data tracked if you want to but it tracks things like your heart rate, your sleep quality, your activity, that sort of thing. And I had an experience where I woke up one morning and it said your sleep was restless and your temperature's raised a little bit, you might be coming down with something. And had you been aware of that yourself? No, no, no. I felt totally fine. And I'm also a woman in perimenopause and I thought to be honest this is not unusual, leave me alone. But actually two days later I was in bed with the flu and it really got me thinking, I didn't need any medical help but I thought if I did, would

the data from this ring be helpful in some way? And then I thought we're sitting on this gold mine of people with mainly watches because that's the established industry, isn't it? And they market themselves as being health trackers. We're sitting on this gold mine of patient-generated data. Why are we not using it routinely? Why don't you just go to the doctor and plug in your watch and they look at, you know, what your body is doing? Presumably, there are all kinds of privacy concerns over this. You do have to trust the company, don't you? Obviously, this is very personal, confidential patient data. But a lot of people do. It's a multi-billion dollar industry. I started

looking into this thinking, well, why aren't we doing this already? And what I found out was quite surprising. And there are a couple of things that stuck out for me that almost everybody I spoke to said. And the most important thing was there's no international standards for wearable. So that means there's kind of no benchmark for what's inside them, the sensors they use, the hardware that's in them, the software that's used to interpret the data, the format that the data itself is stored in. There's kind of, there's no benchmark for them. So, you know, it's very difficult to compare one from another or to know if one has been made in a better way than another one.

And the other thing had to do with their possibility. If you think about it, if you're being monitored in a GP surgery or in a hospital, first of all, you're sitting still or lying down. You're not moving about. Whereas with the wearable, of course, you're moving about all the time and your heart rate's changing all the time. I've just walked up the stairs to come here, so my heart rate's probably higher than it was five minutes

ago. And the other thing of course is that these machines in hospitals and GP surgeries are plugged into the wall because they're power hungry. But by default something that you're wearing that's mobile is battery operated. So you've got software and AI tools sort of filling in the gaps if you like of that continuous monitoring. But these things can throw up all sorts of glitches. Is there any evidence that wearable tech like this makes us healthier and encourages healthier habits in our lives? I spoke to one GP who actually said, you know, fundamentally, they can do quite a lot of

harm, they can create anxiety. There can be many reasons why you have a blip in, say, your heart rate that doesn't need investigating. But what they do really well is encourage good habits, you know, sleep more, eat less, move more. But guess what? Doctors have been saying that to us for free for years. It's actually not new information, is it? BBC technology editor Zoe Kleinman and she was talking to Rachel Burton. And that's it from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you would like to comment on this edition or the topics covered in it, do please send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on x at global news pod.

This edition was mixed by Sid Dunden. The producer was Tracy Gordon. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jackie Leonard and until next time, goodbye. Unexpected Elements is the show that revels in the constantly unexpected wonder of the universe. These are some of the most beautiful cells that I have ever met. And every one of them you have a lifetime of puzzles to figure out. And it's also the show that revels in the unexpected things that scientists get up to. We want to know what molecules these blobs are made from. So the first thing that you do is you touch them, you smell them. If you're a little bit courageous, you taste them.

You taste them! Unexpected Elements from the BBC World Service. Search for Unexpected Elements wherever you get your BBC podcasts.