Global News Podcast - Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney dies

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

Dick Cheney, who became one of the most powerful vice presidents in US history as George W Bush's number two during 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, died Monday. He was 84. Also: Sudan's military government meets to discuss its response after its last stronghold in the Darfur region was seized by paramilitaries; New Yorkers vote for their next Mayor, and scientists in Kenya find evidence that the first humans used stone tools. The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail]

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Andrew Peach, and at 16 hours GMT on Tuesday the 4th of November, we look back at the life of the former US Vice President Dick Cheney who's died. Sudan's military reviews its security situation after its last stronghold in Darfur was seized by paramilitaries. And New York chooses a new mayor. Also in this podcast, archaeologists in Kenya find evidence. that the earliest humans pass down technology through thousands of generations. And...

One day, these cubs will be able to leap six meters and ambush their prey. But that day is a long way into the future. Drama and predators at a watering hole in Zambia. The former United States Vice President Dick Cheney has died at the age of 84. Mr Cheney served two terms during the presidency of George W. Bush. Often described as one of the most powerful vice presidents in U.S. history, he was a leading light of the so-called neocon conservatives who dominated U.S. politics at the start of the 21st century.

He'll also be remembered for the role he played in orchestrating America's controversial war on terror. In a statement, Mr. Bush said Dick Cheney's death was a loss to the nation and he'd be remembered as one of the finest public servants of his generation. Our former Washington correspondent, Paul Adams, looks back at his life. And I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office. On which I'm about to enter, so help me God. On which I'm about to enter, so help me God. Congratulations.

Richard Bruce Cheney swore in as Vice President in January 2001, a Washington veteran returning to the heart of power after almost a decade in business. But a man whose lasting reputation would be forged in a battle that began just a few months later. In some ways, Dick Cheney was an archetype of the American West, strong, silent, more interested in action than words. He said his favourite virtue was integrity, and his vision of happiness was fly-fishing on the Snake River in his home state of Wyoming. At the age of 34, after just five years in Washington,

he became the country's youngest ever presidential chief of staff, serving Gerald Ford in the White House. He went on to represent Wyoming for a decade in the House of Representatives before George Bush Sr. appointed him Secretary of Defense in 1989. Dick Cheney oversaw the U.S. invasion of Panama and successfully fought the first of his two wars against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. His twin associations with the Bush dynasty and Iraq would come to dominate the rest of his political career. The attacks of 9-11 and the beginning of the so-called War on Time,

terror, a colossal challenge for a new President Bush and for the tough, taciturn man at his side. A man who in the president's absence from the White House on that fateful day wasn't afraid to take charge, as veteran Washington journalist Tom DeFrank recalls. Cheney was in the White House. Cheney was hustled down to the secure basement room of the White House, and he immediately started calling people. He called the president. He called the Pentagon. He started calling the appropriate government agent.

Cheney knew instinctively what had to be done. Before long, Dick Cheney was being described as the most powerful vice president in American history. At a time of national anxiety, he expressed the kind of steady resolve Americans wanted to hear. When diplomacy fails, we must be prepared to face our responsibilities and be willing to use force, if necessary. Direct threats require decisive action. That decisive action included launching a war against Iraq, despite the lack of evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks of 9-11. Dick Cheney was among those who spoke with most apparent conviction about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. His misplaced confidence about how quickly the war might be won and his willingness to pursue America's opponents through what he himself described as the dark side made him a lot of enemies at home and abroad.

He was unrepentant on the use of extreme methods of interrogation, supported the rendition of terror suspects and the use of Guantanamo Bay as a military prison, and he insisted all along that no one had ever misled the public about the reasons for going to war. The flaws and the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight, but any suggestion that pre-war information was distorted, hyped, or fabricated by the leader of the nation is alterly false. Senator John McCain put it best. a lie. The vice president spoke with a great deal of authority, with a great deal of certainty, and he was wrong. The Democrat, Henry Waxman, was one of Dick Cheney's most relentless critics

in Congress, urging publication of a detailed record of misleading White House statements on the threat posed by Iraq. He was wrong on the facts. What we don't know, and maybe we'll never know for sure, is whether he knew he was wrong. And maybe he figured that, well, he didn't have all the evidence, he thought it was a good guess and decided to make those claims anyway. But in retrospect, a good guess is not a good reason to go to war. Over a period of 32 years, Dick Cheney experienced five heart attacks, although none of them while serving in the White House. A generally private man, there were also moments when his family was in the spotlight. His support for his gay daughter put him at odds with his own administration's policy. But as George Bush's strong, silent, right-hand man,

Dick Cheney showed just what the much derided office of Vice President could be, whether people liked it or not. Our correspondent Paul Adams on the life of Dick Cheney. The city of El Fasher in Sudan was until just over a week ago the military's last remaining stronghold in the Darfur region. It's now under the control of the paramilitary rapid support forces and the reports of mass slaughter that have been compared by war monitors to the genocide in Rwanda.

Sudan's military government is now meeting to discuss the security situation there. As I heard from our Global Affairs reporter in Nairobi, Richard Kigui. There are reports of mass killings. There are reports of about sexual violence, attacks, targeting aid workers, widespread lootings, reports of people being abducted, and also starvation. And a lot of people who have been trying to flee from the city of Elfasha, en route to a town called Tawila, which is about 37 miles west of Elfasha,

We're hearing reports of the elderly women and children who are also exposed to sexual violence and some young people have been forcefully conscripted to fight along the RSF. And this has really caught the eye of the International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor's Office who's saying that they're currently collecting evidence because of these reports and saying that possibly some of these do amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. It's all very well the Sydney's government talking about the security situation, but what could it possibly do to improve it? What could anyone do? I mean, that's really the million-dollar question here, because they're coming to meet, and top on the agenda

would be the security situation in the country, and this is in reference to the fall of Elfasha. And just next to Elfasha, there's the Kodafan region. There have been reports of ongoing clashes, and that the RSF captured a city called Barra, which is also very critical in terms of supplying aid and life-saving assistance. But what we're here, hearing is that this possibility that the issues of a possible truce that has been pushed up by the court initiative, which involve the U.S., Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, seeking possibly to have a humanitarian truce and then followed by a possible permanent ceasefire and then a nine-month transition. Now, that proposal had been rejected by the Sudanese military

government simply because of the involvement of the UAE and they're saying that they don't really quite have a voice and everything has to be factored in the issues that do affect the Sudanese people. So we're hearing that this is possible, but we saw Trump's as senior advisor for Africa, Assad-Bolo, saying yesterday in Egypt that he's received positive responses from both sides, the Sudanese army and the RSF. But it looks like there's need to put international pressure on both sides because the Safa, the Sudanese army, has been accusing the UAE of barking the RSF and their observers saying that the Sudanese army has been receiving support from some of the countries like Egypt, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Just maybe thinking in terms of international

pressure, maybe this would bring things to bear. Richard Kugai with me from Nairobi. Next to Gaza, and after nearly two years of war, hunger and displacement, a degree of normality has returned for almost one and a half thousand students in Gaza City who are having lessons again in a new tented school. Armad Abariak is an English teacher from the NGO Gaza Great Minds Foundation, which organized the school's opening. He's been talking to my colleague Rob Young. The first day was astonishing day. It was a day of hope, if we can say so. After a very long time without getting back to their school, now the students are coming not just to receive

education. They are coming to see their classmates. They are coming to see hope again. They are coming to be treated as children, not going here and there and doing the chores. the very hard chores that they have to do from getting water, from getting food for their families, from the public kitchens, et cetera. So the children are coming to school to find it as another home, as a place they can play freely, feel comfortable and laugh. And are they turning up to school having had a meal that day? Yes, most of them don't have meal during the day. And this is why we are trying to focus more on bringing them at the day. daily meals when it's available. But because things here are really challenging, like regarding

money, regarding the items on the markets, et cetera, it's really hard to give a child what he really needs his right to have a meal in the morning. Most of our students are still suffering from starvation and famine, and they are still living in tents, living in the streets, living in a very dire situation, missing all things related. to life. So we are hoping through our organization to give them what they need or the minimum things that they need. And actually we can do a lot because, you know, our resources are not that big. But we hope to get bigger and help more children. In Gaza, we're not just rebuilding homes. We need to rebuild their minds because those students are the future of Palestine. And we

believe that if we invest on children's minds, this will get peace and freedom. to have a sign. Armad Abu Riyak from Garza Great Minds Foundation. For five years, the cameras of the BBC's Natural History Unit have been focused on four animal families. Leopards, hyenas, wild dogs and lions. Now we get the chance to see what they've been seeing in Kingdom, a major new wildlife series narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

This is Nsefu in the heart of Zambia. part of a national park on the banks of the Luanghua River. Here for five years, we've been following the remarkable story of four rival families. Matt Becker is chief executive of the Zambia Carnivore Program in Insefu. He's been telling my colleague Nick Robinson about the value of studying animals over a long period like five years. These animals are really complex. They're the most social of all the carnivore. and they're highly intelligent, and they're also highly interactive, as anyone who watches

the program will see. And so, studying them for that long was basically what was required to capture these dynamics. And also, the BBC Natural History Unit was able to plug into our longer-term studies that go almost two decades now, studying these individuals that were featured in the films, but also their great-grandparents and sisters in brothers and parents. And so long lineages stemming from a long-term study that was ongoing and joined forces with the BBC to produce this. It's fascinating hearing you talk in that language, talking of them as families, grandparents, all the rest of it. But these families fate, these different species, they are interlinked, intimately, aren't they? Yes, they are. I think

while they're very diverse, as you'll see in the show, everything about them evolved with competition between each other. So lions, hyenas, leopards, wild dogs, their behavior, their diet, their activities, everything about them is to coexist and successfully compete. We tend to focus, and inevitably, I guess, documentaries focus on the predators rather than the prey, but they're a pretty crucial part of this story. Absolutely. Predators, they are the top, we call them apex predators in ecosystems. So they have an inordinate influence. It's important to to understand them. But when we look at the prey, is there an issue highlighted by this series that there is fewer of those prey, there is less food available as there is habitat loss in Zambia

and elsewhere? Absolutely. I think Insefu is a paradise, but like everywhere on the planet, it's a paradise at risk, and it has a lot of human impacts. And this is characteristic for predators worldwide. There's a lot of different human impacts, and they're losing habitat, they're losing prey, and they're having a lot of direct impacts from humans. And so understanding what those impacts are is a critical component of our work. And I think this series illustrates how highly interactive and interdependent the species are. And that's something that's so complex to disentangle and understand, and then understand how we are influencing that.

And as we've said before, these things evolved over three and a half million years of evolution, these interactions, and in the last 35 years, we're starting to unravel them, and we don't know what the consequences of this could be. Matt Becker, Chief Executive of the Zambia Carnival Program. Still to come. It represents so much. It represents equality. It represents freedom.

It represents equal pay for equal work. I knew I had to win. More than five decades after tennis legend Billy Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in the famous Battle of the Sexes, a modern-day version is being planned. New Yorkers have been voting today for their next mayor. The election is one of several races in the US, including in New Jersey, Virginia and California, but it's New York, which is getting most attention. The political newcomer, the Democrat candidate Zora Mamdani, is leading the polls

ahead of the former New York governor and Trump endorsed Andrew Cuomo. If successful, Mr. Mamdami, a 34-year-old, could become the youngest mayor in more than a century. A correspondent in New York, Ned Atalfic, has more. As Zahran Mamdani walked the streets of the Upper East Side, he could barely take a few steps without being stopped. Through viral videos, laser-focused on making America's most expensive city more affordable. Make the city affordable. Tackle government waste. And outreach to content creators.

New York State Assemblyman has successfully courted young and disaffected voters, but a wider electorate as well. It's voted today. To those skeptical of a politician who identifies as a Democratic socialist, he's explained in interviews what it means to him. There has to be a better distribution of wealth for all of God's children in this country, and that's the hard way. I asked him out on the campaign trail why he believed his approach was the right one for Democrats in the Trump era. Our legacy is going to be transforming the most expensive city in the United States into one that's affordable. And it's time for us to understand that to defend democracy is not just to stand up against an authoritarian administration. It is also to ensure that that democracy can deliver on the material needs of working class people right here.

His supporters say they finally feel energized at a time when faith in the Democratic Party is at an all-time low. I have been disappointed time in again by sort of the, lack of bravery within the party. I think that Zoran specifically has been showing up in spaces that other politicians have now shown up. But some skeptical New Yorkers worry about the 34-year-olds perceived an experience and whether he can deliver on his promises to freeze rents on subsidized units and make buses and universal child care free.

It's typical snowflake democratic policies. They're not realistic. Government run grocery stores. People think everything's for free. Wall Street leaders are hardly celebrating a Democratic socialist potentially leading the world's financial capital. Howard Wolfson is a counselor to the former mayor Michael Bloomberg. I think that the public safety is really kind of the prerequisite for either success or failure. I think if people feel safe here, they can tolerate an awful lot of other challenges.

Despite his popularity in liberal New York, Democratic leadership in Congress seems worried about the implications of his victory as tensions between. between moderates and progressives persist. He's got to do the right thing. I mean, he's a communist and going to be mayor of New York. Donald Trump has taken a special interest in the New York race, even threatening to cut federal funding to the city if the new progressive superstar wins. I asked Mumdani how he will handle opposition and those who seek to block him. There is no doubt that there will be opposition as we see that opposition today.

And what has allowed us to surmount the unbelievable amounts of money that has been spent against this campaign, be it in the primary or the general, has been the mass movement that we have created. Zora Mamdani ending that report by Neda Tafiak in New York. Now, the European Convention on Human Rights is 75 years old. The Convention had helped create a common legal and political culture of human rights, democracy and the rule of law through Europe. The treaty is now under increasing pressure from nine EU states and the UK over the issue of migration. Our legal correspondent, Dominic Ashani, tell me more. The European Convention on Human Rights is a document which is at the heart of many of the constitutions of European nations.

It was signed initially in 1950, and the UK was the first to do so as part of an attempt, largely led by Winston Churchill and his allies in the post-war period, to try to impose across the whole of continental Europe standards and rights which would prevent any dictator ever coming to power again. And that effectively meant coming up with some basic rules, a right to a fair trial, a right not to be imprisoned without due process, a right to family life, a right to free speech, these kind of things. It's entirely separate to the European Union. So this is the European body that the UK is still part of. And fundamentally, it gives the UK an opportunity with other countries to come together to try and work through these issues. Now, the controversial thing, Andrew, with the whole setup is the European Court of Human. rights, which sits in Strasbourg, right on the border between Germany and France as a symbol of reconciliation.

Its judgments have become increasingly contested in recent years, particularly around migration, as some of the European nations feel they're struggling to get the balance right between the rights of individuals, but also their right to manage their borders. And people listing in European countries will know there's an awful lot of talk among politicians at the moment about the European Convention on Human Rights and whether it needs to be changed. This has started maybe five or six years ago, and there have been a couple of key moments along the way. Listeners will remember we've had the row over sending asylum seekers to Rwanda in the UK. The ECHR in Strasbourg blocked that temporarily and then the scheme never happened because of the British general election.

More recently in May, nine EU nations led by Italy and Denmark, effectively signed an open letter to the court and to the institutions in Strasbourg saying, We need reform because we feel that the way the laws, the rights have been interpreted at the moment, are standing in the way of us deporting criminals. They're standing in the way of common sense. And that's eroding confidence in politics and the law. The month after that, the UK, effectively, waded in, sending a minister to Strasbourg to deliver a speech saying you must evolve otherwise this entire project could potentially one day die. So these messages have been sent very, very strongly Strasbourg. So last week I went to see Alan Bersay.

He's the head of the Council of Europe, effectively the political guardian of these human rights laws in Strasbourg. And he told me that countries shouldn't abandon this landmark agreement. I am ready, absolutely ready and really open to engage in all political discussions and let us engage on migration issues and to see what we need to address and maybe to change. We have two major parties in the UK, the Conservatives and Reform, who say that they think the best thing to do is to pull out of the European Convention on the human rights.

To achieve what? They say they can take control back. The opposite is true. And what I see is more the risk to be a bit isolated. The question is with UK or without. I prefer to have with UK because the experience that you have and the importance of the country would make us highly legitimate to be part of the discussion and to take an influence. I am Bersay from the Council of Europe talking to Dominic Kashani.

The very first humans may have been inventors, according to a discovery in northwest Kenya. Researchers have found that primitive humans who lived millions of years ago use stone tools continuously for 300,000 years, as our science correspondent Palab Ghosh told me. These tools were state-of-the-art devices. They were specifically made, sought out and sharpened. They were so sharp that the scientists who discovered,

them cut their fingers on some of them by mistake. And so this discovery, this is not the first time that stone tools this age has been found, but the remarkable thing is that by examining different archaeological layers, they've found that they've been used continuously for 300,000 years. So that's thousands of generations. Now, what this means is that previously, we thought that our ancient ancestors, there was some genius that came up with the idea of using stone tools and it was quickly forgotten in a generation. The fact that it was passed down through so many generations meant that it was a skill that was either learnt or observed, which changes the whole nature of our species, the fact that we were innovators, as you said, right from the very

beginnings, because these were very 2.75 million years ago, these were tiny-brained creatures, the very first humans. But what they must have been doing is either training each other how to do this, training members of their family or people around them, or as you say at the very least observing what was going on with other people in order for it to have this continuous line. And that is a sign of an advanced species. So these people, as I was saying, were little different to chimpanzees

who also used tools, but for some reason didn't develop a way of creating sharp tools and using them. So these tools enabled these humans to survive because the geological survey also shows that the climate varied wildly at the beginning of that 2.75 million years. It was lovely. It was green and moist and a lovely place to live. But then it became a desert. But because they had these tools, they could acquire food, whereas in the past they wouldn't, under normal circumstances, they would have had to evolve or move away. But what these tools, tools meant was that they were able to control the world around them rather than the world around them control them. Our science correspondent, Palab Ghosh with me. In 1973, Billy Jean King made tennis history by winning a challenge match against a male former Wimbledon champion called Bobby Riggs. What was known as the Battle of the Sexes was watched by a global TV audience of nearly 100 million people and is credited with improving the credibility of the women's game.

It represents so much. It represents equality. It represents freedom. It represents equal pay for equal work. I knew I had to win. Now an attempt is being made to recast the Tennis Battle of the Sexes. A match is planned for later this year in the United Arab Emirates between the women's top ranked player and a man ranked 652nd in the world. Jonathan Yureko told my colleague Paul Henley about it. The two players are Arena Sabalenko, who is the women's world number one and a four-time, Grand Slam champion. And on the opposite side of the net will be Nick Kiroos, who was a controversial and polarising Australian player who lessons will remember reach the Wimbledon final a few years ago, but has been beset by injuries since. It doesn't sound a particularly evenly matched match. No, at this stage, we don't know what the format will be, and we don't

if there'll be any rules in place which will kind of even up the physicality of the game. And it's been a split opinion at the moment. Some people think it's a bit of harm entertainment, which will successfully attract new eyeballs to the game, especially in this area of social media content, you'd imagine a battle of the sexist style event would really fly on social media and get people engaged, but others believe it's a misguided adventure. It's been organised by an agency which both players share, so that's why they've been brought together. But people fear that it sets up an opportunity for women's sport to be belittled, if Sabalenko, who is the outstanding player in the women's game and has been for the past 18 months,

is beaten by a player who's been injured and some consider relatively washed up. That is the contrast, isn't it, with 1973, when the match was supposed to improve the credibility of the women's game. Some say this could do the women's game untold damage. Yes, there is a concern about how this will play out. I mean, it seems difficult to understand what Sabalenko gains, really. I mean, clearly there's going to be a financial reward and a boost to her profile. And the venue suggests that that might be an important factor too. Yes, that's correct.

Yeah, it's going to be held in Dubai. That's somewhere where Sabalenko lives actually. And I think so from her perspective, she holds that place dear to heart. But there is a financial impact and an incentive there. What she stands again from an uncourt perspective is difficult to gather at the moment, especially if she does lose to a man who's not being fit for a long time. and given the differences in physiology and game style then there's a strong possibility she may do

but we need to see what the format will be and if there's any kind of restricting factors put in place we don't know that at the moment but we're certainly trying to find out what they will be and an eagle anticipated to hear what they are Jonathan Eureko with Paul Henley and that's all from us for now there'll be a new edition of global news to download later if you'd like to comment on this podcast drop us an email

Global Podcast at BBC.co.uk. On X, we are at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global NewsPod. This edition was mixed by Charlotte Hadroyd-Himsked. The producer with Julie Frankel. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Andrew Peach. Thank you for listening. And until next time, goodbye.