Global News Podcast - Ecuador judge orders troops detained after children’s bodies found

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

A judge in Ecuador orders the detention of sixteen military personnel over the disappearance of four boys whose badly burned bodies have been found outside an air force base.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. World of Secrets is where untold stories are exposed. And in this new series, we investigate the dark side of the wellness industry, following the story of a woman who joined a yoga school only to uncover a world she never expected. I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this. Where the hope of spiritual breakthroughs leaves people vulnerable to exploitation. You just get sucked in so gradually and it's done so skillfully that you don't realize.

World of Secrets, the bad guru. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Hey Toronto, this holiday season let's focus on making memories, not waste. But when you do have to dispose of an item, the City of Toronto has your holiday sorting sorted. Remember that rinsed aluminum trays go in the blue bin, food waste goes in the green bin and ribbons that can't be reused go in the garbage. Curious about where that holiday waste item goes? Visit toronto.ca slash waste wizard or download the TO Waste app to find out more.

You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway and this edition is published in the early hours of Wednesday 1st January 2025. A judge in Ecuador orders the detention of 16 military personnel after the bodies of four missing boys were found outside an Air Force base. 90% of Puerto Rico is without electricity and it could take up to two days to fix. And almost 200 years on scientists unlock the mystery of a volcanic eruption which led to crop failures and famine. Also in this podcast we look ahead to the economic challenges facing the world in the

next few months. Downing Street reveals its famous visitors and You will have virtually electronic immortality, vastly superhuman IQs and you'll even start to get some basic superpowers. As we mark 25 years since the millennium, what might the world look like in 2050? The disappearance of four young boys in Ecuador in early December sparked outrage in the Latin American nation. With allegations the military was involved. President Daniel Nuboa, who's running for re-election in the new year, promised answers and said there would be no cover-up. Now the authorities have confirmed that four badly burnt bodies found near an air force base on Christmas Eve are those of the missing

boys and ordered 16 air force personnel to be detained. Our correspondent Frances Reid has been looking into this for us. Well, officials said today that genetic tests carried out on the bodies, as you said, near a military base confirmed that they are those of the four boys who were aged between 11 and 15 and they were apparently taken by soldiers three weeks ago. The boys' families think they were killed after being detained by the military while they went out to play football in Guayaquil, which is the country's largest city and economic hub, which is located in the west of Ecuador. Now the judge has ordered the detention of 16 military

personnel, so initially a military base was raided and their phones were confiscated, as well as the vehicles thought have been used to transport the children and so these military personnel are now being investigated for what they're calling the forced disappearance of the boys and that would carry a sentence of up to 26 years in jail if they're convicted. The soldiers though for their part they claimed that they'd released the boys after a brief detention and that all four had been alive at the time. Yeah and tell us more about the impact that their disappearance has had on the nation. Well there's this disturbing video which we haven't verified but it was released by Ecuador's

Congress and it appears to show a group of soldiers putting one of the boys in a vehicle and then beating him while another was seen face down. The video is very disturbing and they are clearly children. The defence minister Giancarlo Lofredo said that the soldiers who'd been on patrol were initially responding to a request for help due to a robbery. Now this whole case has caused outrage in Ecuador. There have been protests with the finger of blame pointed at the military and the government with demands for the boys to come home. Sadly of of course, we now know that won't happen. And could it be linked to the rise in violence and drug gangs seen in Ecuador in recent years? It can. I mean, Ecuador was previously seen as one of the safer countries

of South America, but in recent times it's been plagued by violence and drugs gangs. But lately, it's been in the throes of this armed struggle between narco gangs and security forces because international cartels have been trying to make it the hub of the global drug trade. So things like kidnapping, extortion and murders are now commonplace. There was an intensification of violence at the start of 2024. You may remember that a television channel was attacked by gunmen and they interrupted a live broadcast to make demands to the government. They took people hostage and a video of that was shown across the world. It was really quite a terrifying

moment. So recently soldiers have been patrolling the streets. You see them with assault rifles, they conduct anti-drug operations and they've been seen pulling people from buses and cars looking for drugs and weapons and of course potential gang members. That had support initially but human rights associations have always said that there was a serious potential for abuses and for civil liberties to be curtailed as a consequence. Frances Reid there. Recent optimism over a ceasefire deal in Gaza has faded and the fighting goes on. Adding

to the misery for civilians is the winter weather. It's particularly hard on the many thousands of displaced people living in tents. The cold has claimed the lives of at least six newborn babies in less than two weeks, according to Palestinian health officials. The BBC has worked with two freelance cameramen in Gaza to document what's been happening.

And they heard from Mahmoud Fassi, who found his 20-day-old daughter Sela lying motionless. In the morning I found her stiff like wood. I took her to the hospital and they told me your daughter has been dead for an hour due to the cold. I have no clothes, no food, no drink. Only God knows our condition. A UN Human Rights report says the health care system in Gaza is on the brink of I have no clothes, no food, no drink. Only God knows our condition. A UN Human Rights report says the healthcare system in Gaza is on the brink of collapse, thanks to a pattern of Israeli airstrikes on or near hospitals.

Ravina Shamdasani is a senior spokeswoman for the UN Human Rights Office in Geneva. We've seen women, especially pregnant women, who have suffered gravely. Children who have died,, children who have died, newborns who have died because their mothers were unable to attend postnatal checkups, children dying of preventable diseases. I heard more about the UN report and the wintry conditions in Gaza from our correspondent Shai Mahalil. I want to start by painting a bit of a picture really. I mean, we're in Jerusalem. The whole area is really, really cold.

Normally when we leave work here and we're out at night, we're wearing multi-layers and it's really, really cold. Now imagine these families living in tents in the open air. For example, Silas' family live in Al Mawasi camp by the beach. So it's windy, it's very, very cold. These tents are flimsy. They've used these tents many many times because they've been displaced many times So these tents have been taken down put up taken down put up and so there are holes in them It's been raining really really heavily And so imagine the water dripping through those tents and then coming in from the ground as well with the ground beneath their feet Literally submerged in water We've seen pictures today of young children taking buckets, filling them with water from their tents and trying

to empty them to no avail because then it gets really really muddy. And then imagine babies being born into these conditions with mothers not having any access to health care, any access to postnatal care. And again one of the things that will stay with me is what Sila's mother said. She said, I never thought I would give birth in displacement and I tried to keep her warm and I couldn't even do that. And so people now are talking about not just that there isn't enough food, enough water, enough sanitation, they're literally not able to keep their children warm. And the UN Human Rights Office says the reason Gaza's healthcare system is on the brink of collapse is because of

attacks by the Israelis. Tell us more about those allegations. Well, this report chronicles Israel's attacks on hospitals and health facilities from the 12th of October 2023. So very, very soon after the war started until the 30th of June 2024 so it hasn't even taken into account The the last three or four days and what we've seen in northern Gaza with the last functioning hospital being forcibly evacuated and essentially out of service the UN Human Rights Office said that it documented a hundred and thirty six strikes on 27 of the 48 hospitals in Gaza and 12 other medical facilities, but it says that the strikes claimed casualties, significant casualties among doctors, nurses,

medics, and other civilians. And they describe a pattern in those attacks. And the pattern is strike, besiege, forcibly evacuate the hospital. And patients die due to that. And of course, we've heard time and time again from the Israeli forces saying that these hospitals are being misused by Palestinian armed groups as command and control. And what the UN report says is that the information provided has so far been insufficient, too vague, too broad to substantiate these allegations. Shai Mat Khalel in Jerusalem. Well, an Israeli government spokesman David Mensah gave his reaction to the UN report.

Hamas have turned hospitals into military bases. They use them as command and control centers. They use their own people and the patients inside those hospitals as human shields, hostages as well, when they operate inside these hospitals. We, from Israel's point of view, we take very strong precautions. We are very insistent on getting people out of harm's way. But as for the terrorists, we will hunt them down.

We will always do it in accordance with international law. Israel has provided a lot of proof, including video and on many, many incidences about the use of hospitals as command and control centres. Israeli government spokesman David Mensah. It is a mystery that's lasted nearly two centuries. In 1831, much of South and East Asia suffered catastrophic weather conditions which led to widespread crop failures and devastating famines. Scientists have long believed it was caused by a volcano but they didn't know which one. Now it may have been identified.

Our climate and environment correspondent Jonah Fisher has the details. In the late summer of 1831 the sun dimmed and for days appeared a bluish green. Temperatures fell, rain patterns changed and crops were ruined. Famine followed in India and Japan. It's long been clear that the culprit was a volcanic eruption that had fired a huge amount of ash and gas into the atmosphere. But it's not been clear which volcano was to blame. Until now. This is Will Hutchison from St Andrews University. When you get very large volcanic eruptions what happens is ash and kind of sulfurous gases ultimately end up in a package of ice. And so what we did at St Andrews is we found the ash from this mystery eruption

in 1831 in the polar ice and we were able to extract it and chemically fingerprint it. As part of their search for a matching fingerprint, the researchers requested ash samples from a volcano in the Kuril Islands, a largely uninhabited archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, north of Japan. Comparison of the tiny ash fragments revealed a perfect match. It was, the scientists say, a eureka moment. Nearly 200 years on, this hottest of cold cases appears to have finally been solved. Jonah Fisher Along with the Houses of Parliament, Number 10 Downing Street is probably the best known political address in Britain.

It is the official residence of the Prime Minister. Now the National Archives Office has released three volumes of visitors books dating from the 1980s and a Sancho Berg reports they make a unique historic record. We want it! We want it! We want it! Edward Heath, Prime Minister between 1970 and 1974, seems to have been the first to set up a visitor's book in number 10, an impressive red leather guilt-tooled volume. Ted Heath kind of started to practice. Dr Jack Brown, lecturer at King's College London, points out that

unusually Heath lived alone in Downing Street. So I think who he hosted and who he entertained was probably of great interest to him. It's just a personal kind of prerogative as to whether or not you want to ask your particularly special guests to leave a little record and whether that's just a signature or in some cases a lovely little note which historians like may get very excited about. The book was not left out for just anyone but presented at the Prime Minister's request. The three volumes are a kind of record of Britain's changing priorities in the world. Flicking through the first heavy cream-laid paper pages, you notice many names from Asia

and Africa, including General Ay Amin Dada in slightly uneven handwriting. That was in July 1971, six months after Idi Amin seized power in Uganda in a military coup and before the nature of his brutal regime became clear. Her Majesty the Queen has asked me to form a new administration. Margaret Thatcher entering number 10 in May 1979. Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Staying more than a decade, she became a familiar figure to other leaders.

In 1989 1989 President George Bush wrote in the book with respect friendship and gratitude for this relationship that means so much. His wife Barbara added me too. That same year the French Prime Minister Michel Rocard wrote it was always an extraordinary occasion to confront with the Prime Minister. Dr Jack Brown again. I thought that was wonderful. I think you did confront with Thatcher. I think particularly if you were a socialist French Prime Minister towards the end of her term. She's having a lot of difficulties with what she sees as an increasingly nearly federal Europe with

France at the heart of it. So I can imagine that that meeting was a little bit fractious. By the time of Tony Blair, it seems the visitors book was rarely used, though there are some warm messages from Rudy Giuliani and Dick Cheney a few months after the 9-11 attacks. The three volumes are, at some some level a historical curiosity. And that report on the Downing Street visitors books by Sancharberg. Still to come on the Global News podcast, tensions over the future of land around Cambodia's Angkor Wat temple. I'm Nicola Coughlin and for BBC Radio 4 this is history's youngest heroes. Rebellion, risk and the radical power of youth. She thought right I'll just do it. She thought about others rather than herself. 12 stories of extraordinary young people from across history.

There's a real sense of urgency in them. That resistance has to be mounted, it has to be mounted now. Follow History's Youngest Heroes, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey Toronto, as the holiday season approaches, let's make it a time of giving not just gifts. This year, the City of Toronto is asking all of us to do our part to reduce holiday waste. Instead of traditional gifts, consider low-waste, high-impact options like donating to a charity on behalf of a loved one. Try new ways to swap disposable items for reusable ones, such as using newspaper or fabric for gift wrap. Curious to learn more ways to reduce holiday waste? Visit toronto.ca slash reduce dash reuse.

Let's make this season not only festive, but environmentally friendly too. Puerto Rico became a hot topic in the US presidential election when a Trump supporter described it as a floating island of garbage. The Caribbean Territory whose residents are non-voting American citizens is one of the poorest parts of the US. The self-governing archipelago has long had problems with its infrastructure, made worse by Hurricane Maria in 2017. Now 90% of the three and a half million inhabitants are without power after the electrical grid failed. Just before we came on air I got an update from our correspondent in Washington, Rowan Bridge. At the moment they are trying to restore power to much of the

island which is still without it. These problems started about half past five in the morning and initial indications from the energy company Luma suggest it was caused by an underground cable but they're still investigating what the cause of that was. But it has a significant impact on the island. At one point almost 90% of it was without power. Now some of that has now been restored but we're talking about the energy companies are saying up to two days for the island to get all of its power back. People are saying that the infrastructure on the island has been deteriorating and that

it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. Yeah, I mean this isn't the first power outage we've seen on Puerto Rico this year. I mean not on this scale previously, but in June for example 300,000 people were left without power. In August 700,000 people lost electricity after a hurricane hit the island. The island has suffered from sort of years of underinvestment in its energy infrastructure and really Hurricane Maria hit in 2017 and that really crippled the energy network and it's never really fully recovered from that. Now federal money has been sent

in to kind of shore up the system but not all of that's been spent. There have been issues around starting construction, for example, and clearly there's still work to do because we're seeing the scale of the problems that we're seeing today. Yeah, now when he was president, Donald Trump was criticised over a five-hour trip he made to Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria, in which he was filmed throwing paper towels into the crowd. Will the current US administration step in to help people? There is federal money that has been promised to Puerto Rico. In terms of the situation as of today, what's interesting is that you can tell the sense of frustration there

is amongst political leaders on Puerto Rico with the energy companies who they are pointing the finger at blame over this. The current governor of the island says he's going to demand answers and solutions from the two main power companies and the incoming governor of Puerto Rico they're about to change over has said that the island can't continue to put up with an energy system that fails its citizens so often. So really it's the energy companies are very much in the spotlight over this at the moment. Burnbridge in Washington. On the 20th of January Donald Trump will return to the White House as the 47th president of the United States.

Politicians and business leaders around the world have been scrabbling to prepare for what a second Trump administration could mean for them. Mr Trump is committed to a big increase in tariffs on goods imported into the US. So how will exporting nations handle that challenge, along with rising debt, inflation and all the social and political tensions that could come with them? Ed Butler has been speaking to the BBC's economics editor Faisal Islam and our chief economics correspondent Darshini David. If you look at what happened last time around it's really fascinating because you could see for example when we saw less extreme tariffs being applied the market share for China in some areas shrunk quite dramatically. Things like textiles and leather goods for example

are often quoted. But there are also some winners as well. The EU increased its market share when it came to imports into the US. So we'll have to wait and see what happens exactly how they are applied. But yet again there are likely to be into the US. So we'll have to wait and see what happens exactly how they are applied. But yet again, they are likely to be winners and losers. Keeping with that subject, it's not just the US of course that will be considering tariffs, particularly if these come from America. We're talking about the EU as well, right, which has its own issues with China, for example. What is Europe's thinking right now?

I'm going to start with you, Dajia. What are the risks facing Europe? The risks are colossal, aren't they? When we talk about where we are right now, and we're looking over at what's going on in France, and particularly in terms of fiscal policy there, and the risks to the economy, we're also looking at what's happening in Germany. And those questions are very alive right now, aren't they, about whether or not the German model is broken. That whole sort of model that was built on the idea of exporting quality to the rest of the globe seems to be fracturing and fraying around the edges. And then you get Trump coming in

and saying, right, I'm going to do this. I'm going to hit you with tariffs over there. Faisal. Let's focus in on Germany. One could argue, and I should say I'm channeling the off the record, a run off the record chat I had at the beginning of this year with a G7 leader. And their assessment was that the German model, as has existed and thrived for 20, 30 years, is totally broken. So that is not just the exports to China, which they did very well on increasing China's capital base. It is obviously the cheap Russian gas. It is cheap labour. I say cheap labour as in cost effective labor.

The labor costs in Germany have been low. They've gone up since the pandemic. And then the security umbrella offered by NATO. So essentially Germany didn't have to pay much of its fiscal balance on what you would expect to given its geography. All of those are gone. Germany faces an election. That is a revolutionary change.

Does Germany have the sort of capacity to make the sorts of changes given the geo-economic surrounding? And then you layer on top of that this massive strategic change, because I think it's important. It's not just the US acting bilaterally against people who have, as I said, quote unquote, ripped off America in terms of trade,

in terms of manufacturing. They will want to some degree to see Europe come in behind them in terms of containment of China, if that's the policy. So you now have this very curious situation. So the natural response to the US policy, if it goes down the hardest form of what they've announced, would be for the G6, the G19, everybody apart from America to say, listen, we don't want to do this. We like free trade. Everyone gets richer with free trade. But if you do this, here are the consequences. You will get 25% tariffs in this state, in this come, you know, focus on the congressmen, focus on the senators. And then you get the beginnings of a massive trade war, right? The rational response is for everybody to

go in in a coordinated way and make America's political system think again about the consequences of such a radical action. And then you sort of slightly lose control of exactly where it goes. I saw Islam and before him we heard from Darsheedi David, they were talking to Ed Butler. The temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia is a global tourist attraction and a UN World Heritage site but ambitious plans to develop the area around it are causing conflict with tens of thousands of villagers who live there. Many accuse the Cambodian authorities of trying to force them off land they farmed for generations.

Jill McGivering reports. Sok is showing me what's left of his home. That was the kitchen, he says, pointing. That over there was the bathroom. I can only imagine the traditional wooden stilt house that used to stand here because all that's left is a slab of concrete floor. to stand here because all that's left is a slab of concrete floor. He shows me where he and his wife are living now, in their old cattle shed. They were forced to knock down their house, they tell me, as part of a mass relocation scheme. It's supposed to be voluntary, but Sok's wife chips in to say it was anything but.

to say it was anything but. They asked if we wanted to volunteer to go and we said no we didn't want to. She said this is my land, my parents land, my grandparents land. Then a senior government official came. He asked why didn't we want to go and we explained and he said I don't care you have to put your names down for a plot of land. Sok took me to see the land they were allocated half an hour's drive away. It's a vast area of cleared jungle with rows of around 6,000 small plots. It looks deserted. People complain there's no work,

so like Sok they've left, bunking down with extended family or renting a room in the city. So why are local people being forced out of their villages? One theory is that the authorities want to clear this whole area to develop it as a tourist attraction. They didn't respond to our requests for interview. Many villagers said the authorities blamed the UN cultural body, UNESCO, saying they insisted on the relocations in order to protect Angkor Wat and other ancient temples. That's

something UNESCO's Assistant Director-General for Culture, Ernesto Otono-Ramirez, strongly denies. We have published many times, communication saying that UNESCO has neither requested, supported nor participated in this reclamation programme and we are deeply concerned. Not concerned, deeply concerned by the allegation of human rights violation. Angkor Wat is the main temple around Angkor. My empire of Angkor started from the 9th century to the 15th century. Angkor Wat is often described as the eighth wonder of the world. It is stunning. UNESCO and the Cambodian government do agree on the importance of protecting it after decades

of looting and war. But the Cambodian authorities are now being accused of going much further and in the name of development disrupting the lives of communities who've lived alongside the temples for generations. Their report from Cambodia by Jill McGivering. At the turn of the millennium, futurists suggested a technological revolution would see the world change rapidly in the years ahead. This was the BBC programme Tomorrow's World. By 2025, we can expect big changes.

Some of these are very exciting, and some are alarming. Today our personal details are stored on a microchip the size of a grain of rice. The chip is enclosed in glass and injected under the skin of the arm. Latest reports suggest a Chicago man has had an interface chip connected directly to the base of his brain. It's rumoured that simple thoughts have already been passed directly into a computer. Well, a quarter of a century on, not all of the forecasts have proved accurate. Ian Pearson was a full-time futurologist for the British telecom company

before he set up his own Futures Institute at Edinburgh University. He's been telling the BBC's Sarah Montagu how his predictions fared. I'm most proud of one of my first predictions, which was text messaging. We're back in 1991 and I came up with this idea that you could send a message, you know, sorry I'll be late home, won't be home till six. And you know, that's exactly what we used them for. When I had that idea, all my bosses rubbished it and said, don't be stupid, you could just leave a message on the answer machine.

So why would you bother doing that? OK, is there one you're prepared to own up to that didn't go so well? Yeah, about six months after that one, I came up with probably my worst prediction of all time, which was that virtual reality would overtake TV as an entertainment by about 2000. And I did that by calculating just how much computing power you needed to do virtual reality and so on, and worked out that it could happen by about 2000 and it spectacularly didn't and even nearly 25 years later it still hasn't. So that was my worst ever mistake by a mile. Right, let's look forward. Can you paint a picture for us of what if we survived, perhaps

we will in this new world to 21, 25, what our world would be like? Well, let's just look at 2050 first because that really gives us a good clue just as to how far away 100 years is going to be. 2050 is only 25 years away. We will have direct links between our brains and computers by then, and by then the computers will be hundreds or maybe even millions of times smarter than we are with their very advanced conscious AIs. And if you've got access to that, it basically multiplies your IQ by about a thousand. You just add an extra two or three digits onto your IQ. In the same timeframe, we have the ability to link your brain to the computer so well that 99% of your thoughts will happen inside the computer and when your body dies of old age and you get cremated, it doesn't really matter. You can just

carry on using the 99% which you've already got running in the computers, go back to work on Monday morning, hire an android and you're back in the real world. So that's the kind of world we're looking at in 2050. You will have virtually electronic immortality, vastly superhuman IQs and you'll even start to get some basic superpowers because we can modify your genetics in the 2050 time frame too. Ian Pearson talking to Sarah Montague. As we record this edition of the Global News podcast, much of the world has already taken its first steps into a brave new year. Some of our listeners have been sending in messages saying happy new year in their own languages. Here are some of their greetings.

Hello everyone, this is Ole from Iceland. We wish you all a happy new year. Glædeligd nýtt år. Hi there, this is Herman. Niltje from the Netherlands. Hello, my name is Majid and I'm from Boga in the Upper East Region of Ghana and the language you are hearing is Gurone, which say Arroh Foo Oma. Thank you. Happy New Year. That was in Malaysia. And this is Jerry. Greetings from Borneo, Malaysia. Thank you. Happy New Year from New Mexico in the United States. I am Milena.

Happy New Year. I live in Tabilin. Good morning from Queens, New York. This is Akmal Parwiz. Happy New Year, Punjabi. Namaste. Happy New Year. Namaste.

Happy New Year. Thank you. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Thank you. Happy New Year. Thank you. Happy New Year.

Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New York. This is Akmal Parwiz. Happy New Year Punjabi. Nama Sal Mubarak Hovey. Hi BBC. Ibrahim Tseerawali from Sierra Leone. Happy New Year to each and every Sierra Leonean. Here is a Happy New Year in Arabic, my Arabic. Every year you are good, my dear ones. God willing, the year 2025 will be the year of peace. Peace, oh Lord of Peace.

Bye. God, noor. That's Swedish. This is Vivica in Shetland. Happy New Year. I am Francis from Uganda. For us in Uganda, in Attezo language, we say, Yoga e Karloetetet.

Hi, in Kolmo, in Cornish, it's Bliss and Navistar. Ubedgi i Gamanyan Mabeer, 2025, Eroka Mano. Isena Taiba. We're in Bahrain and we were speaking Arabic. Kolomo Aetom Beheel. And a Happy New Year to all of you too. And that's all from us for now, but the Global News podcast will be back very soon. This edition was mixed by Daniel Fox and produced by Mark Duff, our editors Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye. journalists around the world. From artificial intelligence to divisive politics tearing

our societies apart. From the movements of money and markets to the human stories that touch our lives, we bring you in-depth insights from across the BBC and beyond. Listen to the global story wherever you get your BBC podcasts.