Global News Podcast - BBC team reaches Khartoum and finds overwhelming destruction

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

Parts of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, are now a burnt-out shell after the army recaptured the city from the RSF paramilitary group. Also: has there been a major evolution in the design of the American baseball bat?

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles and in the early hours of Wednesday, the 2nd of April, these are our main stories. The BBC has become one of the first international news organisations to reach the Sudanese capital Khartoum since the army recaptured it and has found overwhelming destruction. A major rebel alliance in Myanmar has declared a month-long ceasefire to allow earthquake relief efforts to take place. Russia has embarked on its biggest military call-up in more than a decade. Also in this podcast…

So, what you're trying to do really is to swing the heaviest thing you can at the fastest speed you can to make contact with the ball. A redesign of the baseball bat and it's already having a huge impact. For two years now, since April 2023, Sudan has been in the midst of a devastating civil war. The fighting is between the country's army and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces or RSF. Their fight has caused a huge humanitarian crisis. Around 150,000 are estimated to have been killed and millions of people have become refugees. In the last few days Sudan's military

recaptured the capital city Khartoum for the first time since early in the war. Many of those who stayed have been celebrating the end of RSF occupation, but the core of the city is in ruins. A BBC team is one of the first media organisations to enter the city since it changed hands. Our Africa correspondent Barbara Pledashe and her team travelled with Sudan's army to the city. We're going over the bridge now into central Khartoum, just days after the army recaptured the city from the rapid support forces. We'll be driving straight to the presidential palace which the RSF occupied for nearly two years. The palace is damaged and dirty. There's dust everywhere, debris on the floors, holes in the ceiling, holes in the wall, broken glass.

Looted, even the electric cables have been pulled out of the walls, although still some of the chandeliers are hanging from the ceiling. My name is Aladdin Abu Adam Sulaiman. We are battalion came from outside Khartoum to defend our country. So this is the red carpet. We're walking into the palace. What did you think when you first came into the palace?

I was really very excited. The Republic Palace. It's my first time in this place and I waited for this place as the Sudanese in general, they wanted to be free as it is a symbol of our dignity. It's also an important symbol of power. Soldiers here sang and danced, their jubilation erupting as the Muslim Eid holiday began. But their victory came at enormous cost. Central Khartoum is a battered shell.

The level of destruction is stunning. Government ministries, banks, towering office blocks blackened and burned. The tarmac at the international airport, a graveyard of smashed planes. Further away from the combat zone, scattered celebrations for the Eid holidays spill into the street. For people here, the war is over, even though it continues elsewhere. The army has been accused of atrocities and reports say tens of thousands fled the fighting here in recent days. But in Khartoum, people celebrate the end of the brutal RSF occupation. We're celebrating Eid today. So there's a lot of people gathering after the Eid prayer and still...

Duhat Tarek is a pro-democracy activist, part of the movement that toppled the former military leader Omar al-Bashir. She's been focusing on helping her neighbourhood survive the war. It sure feels like a celebration. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. All the little girls in their Eid dresses, eh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, for the first time in two years. Everybody's dressing up, yeah, yeah, yeah, including myself.

Good news. She struggled to keep soup kitchens running during the war as food ran out. Everybody is dressing up, including myself. She struggled to keep soup kitchens running during the war as food ran out, the city looted by the RSF and under siege by the army. Food is still scarce, but there's hope now, says an elderly man, Qasem Agar. I'm feeling wonderful. I feel safe. I feel great even though I'm hungry. You know, it doesn't matter. Freedom is what's important.

Still, the weight of fear and loss is heavy. So many stories of abuse by RSF fighters, of life endangered and disrupted. Our children are traumatized, says Najwa Ibrahim. They need psychiatrists to help them. My sister's a teacher and tried to work with them but it's not enough. For the soldiers at the palace, for the army, regaining the capital feels like a turning point in the country's civil war. But it's not clear what direction Sudan will take. Barbara is still in the city. I managed to contact her and asked her how much of a turning point the taking of Khartoum is for the conflict. It has shifted the balance of power that had evolved after the beginning of the war,

because when the war began, the RSF moved quite quickly, quite quickly first of all to take the capital which was extraordinary and the retaking of Khartoum followed an advance by the army through central Sudan retaking that area and then coming up to Khartoum so in a way it's the culmination of really pushing back the RSF back into its traditional stronghold. And now the question is what will the army do? It's expected that it will refocus and shift towards Darfur. The reality that has been created more and more is different zones of control. So one of the things that could happen is a concern that the nation would split, that there would be de facto partition, which is quite a serious thing. And Barbara, we heard in your piece concerns from one woman about what kind of a nation emerges from the civil war when it ends.

What's your assessment of that? Well, it's a very serious question because you remember there was the revolution, the pro-democracy revolution in 2019 that led to the toppling of the military leader Omar al-Bashir. And then there were civilians working together with military leaders, by by the way the military leaders which then turned on each other and started this civil war but there was a progression towards trying to get at least some sort of civilian government back in power. Now I have to say again something that's really struck me on several visits here the society has

become really militarized the soldiers are heroes Little boys are taking pictures holding guns. It's really quite striking and so I think that is a little bit the concern was expressed. We did fight for all these freedoms for civilian free expression and so on but what's going to happen now? I mean what are the chances of returning a civilian government in the way that they were trying to do before? That is a real question for the pro-democracy activists and for other Sudanese as well. Barbara Pledasher in Khartoum. A month after Israel imposed a total blockade on goods and electricity in Gaza, food supplies have been running dangerously low. Now the UN's World Food Programme says it's having to shut down all of its bakeries in Gaza because of a shortage of flour and diesel. I asked our Middle East regional editor Mike Thompson how significant is this?

I think it is very significant really because when you look at what the UN has said that hundreds of thousands of people rely on this bread, which is maybe a sort of bitter bread, then you can see the need. There are 2.3 million people in Gaza. And we've had, since near the beginning of last month, we've had this blockade imposed by Israel on aid supplies going in, and that includes food, fuel, medicines, and that sort of thing. So there's all of that side to worry about for people there.

But obviously, with the food situation, the bread is the staple, and that, hundreds of hundreds of thousands of people as they said depend on it. So it's very worrying. And the bread in these bakeries would be heavily subsidised if they have to get the bread from elsewhere prices are going to be particularly high aren't they? And currency must be at a premium at the moment, natural money in people's pockets. And you can imagine after so much conflict how little most people will have to be able to source bread from other places. We've already heard in markets for instance that food prices have really rocketed so scarcity obviously means high prices.

Now Mike in another development there's news from another branch of the UN UNICEF, the Children's Fund, about the impact the collapse of the ceasefire has had on children particularly. Yes indeed quite horrifying statistics have come from UNICEF they're saying that since the end of the ceasefire a thousand children have either been killed or wounded. The number of killed is more than 300 and when you look at over 18 months of conflict, they've also said 15,000 children have been killed. Now that is, of course, according to the figures supplied by the Hamas from health ministry in Gaza. Now, on top of all that, many of these children, their

families are living in homes that are severely damaged. Sometimes they're intense if their homes have been destroyed. So there's all of that. And of course, over the last two days, we've seen these big evacuation orders issued both in the north and in the south, the biggest since in fact the ceasefire collapsed. So that means more people being displaced yet again. Our Middle East regional editor, Mike Thompson. Next to Myanmar, three key armed rebel groups in the country have announced a unilateral ceasefire for a month following last week's earthquake. Known as the Three Brotherhood Alliance, they said they wanted to facilitate the most effective

relief effort. Myanmar's military government has continued to attack militant groups, even while coordinating the response to last Friday's earthquake. Correspondents from the BBC's Burmese service have continued to speak to people inside Myanmar. Their colleague So Win Tan pulled together this compilation of their reports. The searching never stops, except when the rescuers find someone. Everyone shows respect to the dead. The sky pilar was one of the biggest buildings in Mandalay. Its collapse on Friday was devastating.

Kojo is waiting for his sisters. They were swimming in the pool on the ground floor when the quake struck. Their lives are in the hands of the rescuers at the moment. It's a massive 11-storey building. Those 11 floors collapse down on them, but they might survive if there is a hollow space down there. It's 50-50.

Uke Sira was in the monastery next door to the Sky Villa. He wants more international support. What we need is machinery, like in foreign countries, to lift this up. Only then can we complete this quickly. There are still many bodies remaining inside. With many buildings on the verge of collapse and the risk of aftershock still a danger, the living have moved outside. Even hospital patients are now being treated in tents.

Earlier today, a minute's silence across the country to mourn the dead. The official death toll is 2,700, but everyone here knows there are more bodies to be found. That report by Sir Wintan of the BBC's Burmese Service. Our correspondent Rebecca Henschke, who covered the region for many years, tell me more about the rescue effort. The key countries that have been able to get rescue teams in quickly are China, Russia and India because they have maintained a relationship with the military government after it seized power in a coup four years ago. Also Malaysian teams have been quite effective in some of the rescues.

Very noticeably the Myanmar military has been absent from the rescue. So, I mean, I lived in Indonesia for many years, covered lots of earthquakes there, and the first to be deployed would always be the military. In this case that has not happened. And this may be because the military is stretched elsewhere and is continuing to attack rebels. That's right. The Myanmar military, according to the United Nations, has made quite an outrageous decision. Amnesty International was putting out a very strong statement saying that with one hand you're asking for aid, with the other hand you're bombing because we have received reports again

that the Myanmar military is carrying out ground offensives in Sagai region which is the epicentre of the quake and also carrying out aerial bombings in other parts of the country. A number of rebel groups have said that we're going to observe a ceasefire. What pressure will that put on the authorities to do likewise? So what we've heard from the National Unity Government, which is this ousted opposition group, they very quickly announced a ceasefire in the earthquake affected areas. And I was speaking to a rebel leader that comes under them today and they were saying

that they were coming under attack, but he claims that they were not fighting back, that that ceasefire is holding. And then today we've heard from the Three Brotherhood Alliance which has been the most effective alliance of ethnic groups. They've defeated the military in huge areas of land up the Chinese border but they also have control over rebel groups around Mandalay. So their decision to have this month-long ceasefire is important because they control trade routes between China and Myanmar. But as you say it's also politically important because it's a stark contrast isn't it to say on one hand we're stopping the ceasefire

because this humanitarian disaster is so grave we all need to be focusing on that and on the other hand you have a Myanmar military continuing to bomb. In places like Mandalay, a very large city over a million people living there, these are the kind of places that need vast amounts of military aid. Quite frankly, is it there? It isn't there, yeah. And I think very sadly we've passed that golden period after an earthquake where rescue workers typically believe that people can stay alive under the rubble. So while the focus moves away from the rescue, sadly perhaps the focus now is on how do

we keep those that survived it alive. Rebecca Henschka, now what could be in the words of one major US news website, the most aggressive overhaul of the global economic system in decades? The US President Donald Trump has been signalling for a while that he wants Wednesday, April the 2nd, to be what he calls Liberation Day. It is then that President Trump is expected to announce sweeping tariffs, affecting trillions of dollars of US imports. This is how the White House press secretary Caroline Levitt previewed things.

Looking ahead, April 2nd 2025 will go down as one of the most important days in modern American history. Our country has been one of the most open economies in the world and we have the consumer base hands down, the best consumer base. But too many foreign countries have their markets closed to our exports. This is fundamentally unfair. The lack of reciprocity contributes to our large and persistent annual trade deficit that's gutted our industries and hollowed out key workforces. But those days of America being ripped off are over.

Now exactly what form the tariffs will take at the moment we don't know. President Trump will reveal more on Wednesday afternoon Washington time. Tim Frank spoke to Ernie Tedeschi, Director of Economics at the Budget Lab at Yale University and a former chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers under the Biden administration. So a lot of uncertainty regarding the forthcoming tariffs? I think that that's really where a lot of the market effects that we've been seeing have been coming from. You know, look, all taxes exact an economic cost. Tariffs are

a particularly inefficient and economically damaging type of tax. But I think that you would have seen a lot less market reaction if the Trump administration had laid out a tariff agenda at the beginning and just said, you know, this is it. And this is going to be the agenda going forward with no further changes. Instead, it's the uncertainty, as you said, it's the chaos of not knowing what the tariff rate is going to be at the end of the week or even the end of the day, that I think is creating a chilling effect

on business investment in the meantime as they await for further clarity. Although, I mean, of course, and I've, you know, I realise I do not need to tell you this, that, you know, the markets are not the real economy. And there is a clarity to the argument that the Trump administration is bringing here, which is, look, in the first instance, this will raise a lot of money.

It will raise a lot of revenue of these import taxes, trillions of dollars. In the longer term, they're saying it's a way of bringing manufacturing back at scale to the US. Well, but those two goals are at odds with one another, aren't they? The more success that this policy has at encouraging Americans to buy domestically, that is buying fewer imports, the less money it's going to raise over the long run. Conversely, if it raises a lot of money as a tax, a tax on imports, that means it's not doing a good job of encouraging Americans not to buy imports, right? And to buy domestically.

So, these two goals are at cross purposes with one another. I think what's gonna happen at the end of the day is that no matter what they announce, very likely the American economy is going to end up smaller as a result of it. Probably other countries around the world, their economies are going to end up smaller as a result of it.

The same domestic politics that are driving the United States to impose these tariffs are present in other countries like China, Europe, the UK, Canada, Mexico. It's going to drive them to impose retaliatory tariffs. And that's just going to heighten the economic damage the world over. Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Budget Lab at Yale University. The Trump administration has admitted making a mistake

after deporting an immigrant with protected status. It has described the deportation as an administrative error. Kilmar Armando Abrego-Garcia was among more than 200 suspected gang members who were deported to El Salvador in March. Our Central America correspondent Will Grant has more. Mr Abrego-Garcia's lawyers have said he received protected legal status from an immigration judge after originally being slated for deportation in 2019. His legal team have urged the US government to ensure his immediate return to the United

States from the mega prison, calling it a notorious detention chamber. In a post on X, Vice President JD Vance called Mr. Abrego Garcia a convicted MS-13 gang member. Mr. Abrego Garcia's legal team firmly denies the claim, stating that he has no criminal convictions either in the US or El Salvador. Will Grant. Still to come. We are today supplying more than 80 synthetic training programmes across NATO, many of them in Europe. How the war in Ukraine has boosted defence technology in Finland. Russia has conscripted another 160,000 men for military service, the highest figure since

2011 for its annual call-up. The move forms part of Vladimir Putin's plan to expand the country's armed forces to a total of almost 2.4 million, as our Europe Regional Editor Paul Moss reports. It's always been Russia's grim source of military power that however many of its men are killed in battle there are plenty more where they came from. Some estimates suggest nearly a quarter of a million Russian soldiers have died fighting in Ukraine. So Vladimir Putin has raised the maximum age of conscription to 30, meaning a record number of recruits will be

putting on uniform this year. Russia says the move is necessary because of the Ukrainian conflict, but also as a response to what it claims is a growing threat from the expansion of NATO. Poor Moss. Finland has said it will pull out of an international agreement on landmines, meaning it could begin stockpiling the weapons and deploying them along its border with Russia. More than 160 countries are signed up to the Ottawa Treaty which bans landmines. But Finland's Prime Minister, Petteri Orpo, said his country was looking to bolster its defence.

The security situation of Europe and Finland has fundamentally changed. Russia is and will remain as a threat to whole Europe. Finland and Europe need to evaluate all measures to strengthen our deterrence and defence capabilities. Today the Government of Finland has proposed that Finland starts to prepare withdrawal from Ottava agreement. Last month Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania also said they would withdraw from the Landmine Convention because of the increased Russian threat. Meanwhile, Finland has experienced a boom in defence technology companies since the start of the war in Ukraine. And amid the current geopolitical tensions between President Trump's administration and the European Union, there's a renewed focus on the role of the tech sector in helping

Finland improve its defense capabilities. Maddie Savage reports from Helsinki. That's the sound of a J-16 fighter jet flying above a mountain range. But it's not a real plane, it's a pilot training simulator developed by Vario, a big name among the hundreds of companies in Finland that help countries protect themselves from war. The firm's CEO is Timo Toikinen. The war in Ukraine just kind of put everything on steroids, you know, things started happening a lot faster and I guess we're all aware, at least here in this part of Europe, of the new reality, which is that the world

is a lot more insecure than it used to be. Finland, with a population of just five million, has 368 defence tech companies, according to research for TESI, a state-funded venture capital company. 40% are start-ups and scale-ups, with many growing at rates of 30 to 40 percent, especially if their tools can also be used in other industries. Helsinki is now among the top five cities in Europe for defence tech investment, and Varjo's CEO says he's expecting the scene to keep expanding due to the current tensions between Europe and the US.

We are today supplying more than 80 synthetic training programmes across NATO, many of them in Europe. And we definitely have seen over the last month or two much more ambitious plans in ramping up synthetic training for various things in European countries. Finland borders Russia, and the government here spent a greater proportion of its budget on defence than many other European countries even before the war in Ukraine. There's also military

conscription here. Many experts believe these factors have encouraged Finnish entrepreneurs and investors to focus on defence tech rather than other fast-growing industries like energy and financial technologies. There's a phrase I like to leverage which is the tyranny of geography. The closer you are to a threat the more likely you are to perceive it as more apparent and indeed more existential. That's Nicholas Nelson, a US defence tech investor based in Europe. They also have a memory of the Winter War which transpired during World War II where they were invaded by the Soviet Union.

Another factor behind Finland's defence tech success is its strong start-up ecosystem. This is Maria 01, a former hospital that's been transformed into the largest start-up campus in the Nordics, a place where entrepreneurs, founders and others in the tech scene can collaborate. I'm meeting Kursi Kokko from Business Finland, a Finnish government agency that promotes investment and innovation. She's the head of a $130 million programme supporting defence and resilience companies. Our current government, they are really enforcing us to this kind of public-private collaboration for supporting the research

and development initiatives, especially the small, medium and start-up companies. She says the sector is facing challenges though, like recruiting the global talent needed to help build defence tech companies in Finland. Its salaries and weather can't usually compete with tech hubs like Silicon Valley or even London although she says it's still attractive due to its flat hierarchies and culture of innovation. Another issue is one affecting all defence tech businesses eyeing European expansion, a fragmented market. Here's Nicholas Nelson again. So different requirements on how to do business there, different security frameworks, different

rules and restrictions on how they establish and how they work with various ministries of defence makes it a less attractive proposition. Business Finland says it is helping to support start-ups with internationalisation strategies. And in the last few weeks, the EU's promised to simplify regulations and encourage better cooperation between member states. Another sign of geopolitical tensions fuelling growth in this booming sector. Maddie Savage in Finland. Baseball equipment is beautifully simple. A white leather ball and a wooden bat.

It's been played in roughly its current form since the 1880s. But with the 2025 season now underway, Major League Baseball could be on the brink of a drastic change. A handful of players have had great success with the new shaped bat. It is believed to be the first significant evolution in bat design for more than 100 years. Peter Goffin has been looking into the science

behind what's being called the torpedo bat. Goffin has been looking into the science behind what's being called the Torpedo Bat. The crack of the bat is as timeless a part of baseball as the roar of the crowd and the smell of hot dogs in the bleachers. The shape of the traditional bat seemed, at least, to be optimal for making solid contact with the ball, the type of whack that launches home runs and makes that satisfying snapping sound. But to start the 2025 season, five members of the New York Yankees have been swinging a very different piece of lumber, developed by a physics professor turned professional

baseball coach. The new torpedo bat is shaped like a bowling pin. Instead of starting narrow at the grip and widening into a straight cylinder like a standard bat, it bulges at the sweet spot. That's the ideal point on the bat for making contact with the ball. And then it tapers to a narrower top. It seems to work. Those five Yankees have hit a combined nine home runs in their first three games of the

year. Staggering numbers. So what's the science behind this potentially potent new piece of equipment? DJ Pesano is a professor of astronomy and physics at the University of Cape Town who's written about the mechanics of baseball. He says the key to hitting home runs, on paper at least, is to strike a fine balance between the mass of your bat and the speed of your swing. So what you're trying to do really is to swing the heaviest thing you can at the fastest

speed you can to make contact with the ball. If you picked up a 10 pound iron rod, which is not a legal bat, you would have a hard time controlling the end of that as you're trying to swing it. Similarly, if you picked up a fishing rod, you could swing it, but you're not going to make very good contact. With that bulge near the middle and the narrow top, the torpedo bat maximizes mass where it hits the ball, without adding unnecessary weight that could slow down a swing. And it moves the center of mass, where the bat would naturally balance, closer to the

contact point, improving the transfer of momentum from bat to ball. Of course, this all comes with a caveat. You couldn't hand me a torpedo bat and send me out onto a major league playing field and have me hit a home run. You know, ultimately it does come down to the players swinging that bat. And if they feel better with it, then it probably is going to work better for them. So the bat doesn't work miracles. But baseball players around the world will be watching the Yankees home run totals closely

this season and maybe picking up torpedo bats of their own. Peter Goffin reporting. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later on. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag

globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll, the producer was Leah McSheprie. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles. Until next time, goodbye.