Global News Podcast - Judge blocks part of Trump's USAID freeze

Episode Date: February 8, 2025

A US judge says he'll halt parts of Trump's attempt to dismantle USAID - the world's largest aid agency. Also; Ecuador chooses president against backdrop of gang violence, and the quest to map the world's seabeds.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Hello, I'm Katya Adler, host of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. Each weekday, we break down one big news story with fresh perspectives from 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. This is The Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson and in the early hours of Saturday the 8th of February these are

our main stories. In the US a judge says he'll order the Trump administration to halt some elements of its attempt to dismantle USAID, the world's largest aid agency. Voters in Ecuador head to the polls this weekend. We hear from those affected by the country's gang violence. The UK government asked Apple to provide its security agencies with access to encrypted data stored by users across the world.

Also in this podcast, for the first time in more than 20 years, the US approves a new type of painkiller. And later. We would find new animals. We would discover new things about the ocean currents and temperature and how much salt was in the water the quest to map all of the seabeds on planet earth.

As we record this podcast a judge in the US has announced he'll block parts of the Trump administration's attempt to dismantle USAID, the world's largest aid agency. The plan to shut down the agency will mean a stop to work in around 120 countries that's taken place over 60 years and is aimed at fighting epidemics, educating children, providing clean water and supporting a free press. According to the United Nations, USAID accounts for more than 40% of all humanitarian aid last year. Beatriz Grinstine is the president of the International Aid Society based in Brazil. Taking the support from USAID will truly be a disaster for HIV globally. USAID supports

HIV testing, treatment and prevention in over 50 countries. So the freeze of funding has shut down clinics and laid off thousands of health workers. This means that people cannot get their life-saving HIV treatment and prevention. The Trump administration had been seeking to put nearly 10,000 people, all but a handful of essential staff, on administrative leave by midnight on Friday Washington time, including many thousands based abroad. On Friday, the President told reporters why. When you look at USAID, that's a fraud, the whole thing is a fraud. Very little being

put to good use. Every single line that I look at in terms of events and transactions is either corrupt or ridiculous. I asked our North America correspondent Peter Bowes about the judge's decision to intervene. The judge is based in Washington. He has made an announcement that is quite limited in scope. It's a temporary restraining order. It puts on hold a US government order, clearly signed by Donald Trump, to place just over 2,000 agency employees on administrative leave. The fate, he says, of 500 who are already on leave is to be decided later, with the possibility that they could be reinstated. It is unclear to me where the remaining staff, a total workforce of 10,000, where they stand at

this moment regarding their jobs but it's very clear that there could be a further announcement later in the day. This is Judge Carl Nicholls. He is a Trump appointee and he said that the plaintiffs in this case and this lawsuit was brought by the unions had established irreparable harm in terms of the employee-employer relationship and showed enough of a success on the merits so that he would announce this decision. He said frankly there is zero harm to the government to pause this administrative leave for a short term. So how long is a short term? Do we know? We don't know. We are just waiting to see what the judge means in terms of short term. As I say,

he's indicated that there could be a further announcement before the end of the day, before the end of Friday US time. So these people were expecting to be put on administrative leave by midnight US East Coast time. We're just a few short hours away from that deadline, but it looks like there could be a further legal intervention before then. And what's been the reaction in the States to this? Because this is an incredibly important aid agency, isn't it? It is a hugely important aid agency and there has been, well there's

been a mixed reaction, certainly many supporters of Donald Trump agree with him and Donald Trump has been very outspoken in terms of his opinions of this agency. He says it doesn't represent a valuable use of US taxpayers money, he's described much of the agency's workers corrupt or ridiculous. That said, this has shocked many, many agency workers current and past and put fear into the hands of many organisations overseas who rely on the cooperation of this agency to run health programmes in many countries around the world. Just as an example, this example, this agency is involved in offering polio vaccinations in countries where the disease still circulates and it also is involved in helping to stop the spread

of viruses which have the potential to cause new pandemics. So the potential to cease work that is hugely important, especially in third world countries, is enormous. Peter Bose. In just a few years, Ecuador has transformed from being one of the safest havens for tourists in South America to the most dangerous country on the continent. Sandwiched between Colombia and Peru, the two largest producers of cocaine in the world, it's now a global hub for cocaine exports to the UK, to Europe and the US and as consumption soars so does related gang violence. Ecuador's president Daniel Noboe is up for re-election on Sunday in

what's been called a referendum on crime. He positions himself as a law and order candidate but some say his attempts to crack down on gangs have been just as been called a referendum on crime. He positions himself as a law and order candidate, but some say his attempts to crack down on gangs have been just as violent as the gangs themselves. A South America correspondent, Ione Wells, visited Guayaquil in southern Ecuador, a key hub for drug dealing. A warning, this report contains distressing descriptions of violence. From this high viewpoint of Guayaquil, I can see the water of the estuary here stretching for miles and miles towards the ocean,

encasing the urban sprawl. Much of the world's cocaine is shipped through this lucrative water route, turning this city into one of the most dangerous places on earth. A person is killed every two hours, seven are kidnapped a day. We've come to a gated community in Guayaquil. I can't say where it is because we're trying to protect the identity of the man we're speaking

to. His father was kidnapped and brutally murdered by one of the big drug gangs. I received a video of my father tied up on the floor when they're cutting off a finger on his hand. They wanted $100,000. He managed to borrow $5,000 to author, but it wasn't enough. They left my father's body with his finger in a bottle tied to his hand as a taunt. What would you say to people who are using cocaine for leisure in the UK, in the US, in Europe? Do not contribute to the destruction of our world. That is all I can ask.

Businesses are impacted too. Here in the city of Durán, near Guayaquil, bus drivers like other workers are forced to pay fees in the city of Durán, near Guayaquil, bus drivers, like other workers, are forced to pay fees to the gangs to avoid violent threats. One I spoke to, who was too afraid to share his name, told me gangs make all 300 buses in his company pay $8 per day. The impact is not just an economic one, but also a psychological one. The knowledge that you are in danger every day. We're in a car now with armed security forces.

They're on the way to carry out a raid. Police think that they have found someone in this house. They've got a tattoo which identifies them as probably working for one of the big gangs. They're searching him at the moment. These police say the government's military crackdown is working. In this case they found evidence this man had been involved in a kidnap. The hostage was freed the next day. But what do they say to those concerned the crackdown is also enabling human rights abuses? Human rights, yes. But what about the human rights of good people? Of people who are working?

People who need to be rescued from kidnaps? That's no consolation for the Arroyo family. Sitting in the bedroom of two teenage boys, Ismael and Josue Arroyo, their father Luis clutches their football boots. Last year when they were coming home from training, they were grabbed by the military and pulled into a pickup truck over an alleged theft. Ismael wanted to fulfil his dream, a dream that was taken away by these 16 soldiers. Their bodies were later found burnt. All that was left was one finger and one foot. Members of the military have been detained and charged.

But they deny murder, saying they eventually let these boys go. Many more children are lost because of the military and the government does nothing. These stories capture this tension at the heart of the election. Some homes torn apart by gang violence, others by the government's response to it. Security is the key issue for voters in Sunday's election. The question is, which do they think is worse? Ione Wells. The BBC has learned the UK government is asking for access to secret encrypted data stored by Apple users worldwide. The Home Office isn't

confirming the request, but it's known to have been made under law to combat illegal activity, including terrorism. Organisations like the NSPCC, a children's charity here in Britain, back the government's move, saying it'll aid investigations of child abusers hiding illegal material. But others have criticised it. Matthew Feeney is from Big Brother Watch, a privacy and civil liberties campaign group. This kind of request is unprecedented, at least in liberal democracies. The worry with the creation of a backdoor key to all of the hundreds of millions of people's privacy is that that key can be stolen by hackers or foreign adversaries. It puts the privacy of law abiding people at risk.

Our technology editor Zoe Kleinman told me more. This request is so shrouded in secrecy that legally nobody can talk about it. Apple's not allowed to say whether or not it has received it and the Home Office here in the UK will neither deny nor confirm that the notice was issued in the first place but we do know from sources that are familiar with the matter that it has been issued and what it demands is the ability to access Apple user data that's encrypted that's stored in the cloud so that can be anything that is stored on an iCloud account. Now unless you opt in to

Apple's privacy tool which is called Advanced Data Protection then not all of your data is encrypted in the cloud by default but if you use this particular tool then it is and that means nobody can see it apart from you even Apple and if you lose access to your account there's no way of getting this data back it's a super secure way of storing your content. The UK government, under the Investigatory Powers Act here, wants to be able to access this sort of data if there's a national security risk.

It would have to get a warrant, but it wants to be able to see it. The problem is that Apple physically can't show it, because it can't see it itself. And the only way in which it could make that work would be to create a back door, if you like, a kind of way in for the authorities if they needed it. The concern there is if it does that, it's only a matter of time before bad actors and criminals also find that back door. And the firm has previously said that it would rather withdraw its services from the market

than have them compromised like that around the world. Is the UK government the only one who wants access or are there others? There are other governments that would also like access. Certainly encryption is a controversial issue. People who like it say that every person has a right to privacy and that their data should be kept in a way that's only accessible to them. However, law enforcement authorities say it is a way for criminals to share data and interact in the hidden way. But no country so far has succeeded in forcing a tech company, and Apple isn't the only one of course, to bust its encryption and its security systems.

Zoe Kleinman Sweden's government has announced plans to tighten gun laws following Tuesday's mass shooting, the worst in the country's history. Police have also now released some details of the 10 people killed in the attack in Örebro. It was previously confirmed that the perpetrator, named in the media as Richard Andersson, legally owned four rifles, three of which were found at the scene. The Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristiansson said he wanted to ensure that only what he called the right people have guns in Sweden. It's about tightening up the regulations to get permission to have a weapons license at all. It's about banning certain types of these semi-automatic weapons. And we're

also adding a further proposal that the police and social services need a better opportunity to investigate whether there are medical reasons not to grant a person a gun license. Our reporter, Joel Gunther, is in Örebro and told us about Sweden's latest gun proposals. Effectively, there is political consensus around making the vetting process for purchasing a gun more robust and making it harder to get certain types of guns. They haven't gone into a huge amount of detail, but one of the weapons mentioned was the AR-15. We don't know which weapons the gunmen used in this attack, but many people will be familiar with the AR-15 from news reports about mass shootings in the US. It's a high-powered, high-capacity magazine rifle, often described as an assault rifle or military-style

weapon. How widespread is gun ownership in the country? It's pretty widespread for a European country. Another bit of information that came out today that about three and a half thousand AR-15s have been purchased since they were made legal for hunting in Sweden a couple of years ago. According to figures from the Swedish broadcaster SVT, A little over half a million Swedes have a weapons license out of a population of about 10.5 million. There was a Swiss study from 2017 which said that there were about 2.3 million guns in Sweden in total, held by civilians that is, which puts it a little bit behind Norway, but still quite far behind the US

for example. And those of course are the weapons held legally. I mean there is a problem isn't there with violence in Sweden with guns? I'm thinking of the gangs there. Absolutely. It does have a high rate of gun violence again for a European country and you're absolutely right. It's largely associated with gang violence, which has been a problem in Sweden in recent years. What we're dealing with in Orebrew here at the moment is clearly something slightly different and something we're perhaps more used to hearing about in the US, which is a sort of active shooter type situation, a

targeted mass shooting. And talking about Orebrew, the police have been giving more information about the victims there, haven't they? They have, but not much. One of the striking things here has been just how little information has been coming out about the killer, about his motive and about the victims. They have said that there were seven women and four men among the dead. We believe that includes the gunman. They gave their age range, which was between 28 and 68 years. Police say that they are being cautious about confirming details while the investigation goes on. Joel Gunter,

still to come on the Global News podcast. The challenge for all advertisers and for all brands in the world now is the battle for attention and therefore you do have to go bigger, better, more original, more unexpected than ever before if you want people to pay you any attention. Advertisers gear up for the biggest American TV event of the year, the Super Bowl. Hello, I'm Katja Adler, host of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. Each weekday, we break down one big news story with fresh perspectives from 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. Now a story of appalling abuse in Haiti. The deployment of hundreds of international peacekeepers has made little difference to the power of armed gangs, who are now estimated to control 85% of the capital, Port-au-Prince. And with that control comes the increased recruitment of children by the gangs and the horrific treatment of those recruits. Sexual violence is up tenfold in the last year that's according to the UN Children's

Agency UNICEF their spokesman in Geneva is James Elder. A staggering 1000% increase in sexual violence against children in Haiti has turned their bodies into battlegrounds so the tenfold rise between 2023 and last year comes as armed groups inflict unimaginable horrors on children. Now remembering of course that these are verified reported incidents so the real number is likely to be much worse. He cited the horrific case of one young girl abducted by armed men. She was beaten, drugged and raped repeatedly for about a month and only released when the armed group realized she had no one to pay a ransom

for her. Geeta Narayan is UNICEF's representative in Haiti and Julian Marshall asked her how typical that case is. I think it's quite typical. I think it does happen with quite some frequency because the the armed groups they need resources and one of their ways of getting resources, financial resources, is through the payment of ransoms. And so we do see peaks over the few months of abduction of different people. You know, often it's women and girls, just because they may be an easier target. But it's also, we've seen adult men, we've seen children,

so it is something that does happen a fair bit in Port-au-Prince in particular. This is abduction in the hope of obtaining a ransom, but there is also forcible recruitment of children to work as child soldiers. Yes, that is correct. We see in the streets of Port-au-Prince, for example, we see children not going to school. About 1,000 schools across the country have closed. And so as you drive through the streets of Port-au-Prance, you can see children who are just on the streets, you know, they're passing the time.

And this, of course, makes them vulnerable to being taken by the gangs or being lured by the gangs in some cases. These are often children who not only are not in school, but they don't have any other alternatives. They may be children living in extreme poverty, they don't have an option. And so for them, joining the gang may seem like a good option in terms of having safety and security, getting money, in some cases, you know, having some power once they are a member of the gangs. There's many, many reasons why children are in the gangs, including they're abducted, including being lured by the promise of a better life in some way. But safety and security is not what they get, is it? They get subjected to violence, to

sexual violence. They get subjected to all kinds of abuse and exploitation. For the girls, it often starts with domestic chores such as cooking for the gang members or doing their washing, et cetera. And then as the girls have been in the gang for some time, then they may be taken as wives. They will experience often sexual violence,

gender-based violence, rape, sexual assault, all of that. For the boys, it's a bit different. Depending on the age, sometimes they may start out as spies or messengers on behalf of the gangs and then as they get older they may then end up carrying weapons and actually being involved in active shooting and fighting. So no, it is not safety and security. Any safety and security they may have really is just due to the weapon in their hands. Geeta Nare, speaking there to Julian Marshall. We may be discovering more about space,

including mapping Mars and plotting new trips to the moon. But it's still the case that a huge amount of our own planet remains unexplored. Three quarters of the bottom of the Earth's oceans still haven't been mapped in detail. Victor Vescovo, who became the first person to reach the deepest point in each of Earth's five oceans back in 2019, is trying to change that by advocating a project to map the entire global seabed. He told Evan Davis what researchers

have already learned through their exploration of the seas. We would find new animals. We would discover new things about the ocean currents and temperature and how much salt was in the water. Many things that are very important for understanding climate models because 71% of planet Earth is ocean, which we just don't seem to remember. It's really not about life on Earth in any respect. It's what happens in the ocean. It really matters. I mean, you have entire areas of the ocean and coastal regions even in the Pacific where the last time anyone mapped them was Captain Cook in his ships using a weighted cable, seeing how deep it was. And I'm sure that those have changed a little bit. And so the issue is that the ocean is opaque. And so kind of out of sight, out of mind kinds to happen, tends to happen with

humans where you can plainly see what's on the moon and what's on Mars. But the ocean is not just difficult to see through in their format, but I think that people, some, are a bit afraid of the ocean. And you're not going to use a piece of string with a weight on the bottom. What are you using to do it? So there are two sets of technologies for the coastal areas. Typically, people would go out in small boats and use sonar, bouncing sound waves off the bottom to map the ocean.

But that can be very slow and quite expensive. So we're trying to use new technology using satellites that can actually see through the water and reflecting light to see how deep it is. But in the very deep ocean, we have to use different techniques. I'm trying to develop and build what I hope is the most efficient deep ocean mapping vessel ever constructed. When will we do think, you said 2030 would be very ambitious, I mean, will we ever really map the ocean floor given the scale of it, the cost of it? It's a good question, but I imagine the same question was posed to the explorers in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Will we ever map this incredible world? And it is a question of resources. We could map the seafloor within 10 years if there was a multi-billion dollar effort to do so like there is in space. With just a single ship, it would take maybe 100 years, but with 10, we could do it in maybe 10 or 20 years. I'm hoping that using all the tools of modern technology we might be able to map the entire sea floor, hopefully by 2050.

Victor Vescovo speaking there to Evan Davis. The United States has been in the grip of a full-blown opioid epidemic for years, with hundreds of thousands of people dying from overdosing since the 1990s. The crisis had its origins in both illegal sources and medical prescriptions of strong, addictive and inexpensive opiates, including Oxycontin and fentanyl for pain relief. For the first time in more than 20 years, the US Food and Drug Administration has approved a new type of painkiller from Vertex Pharmaceuticals which could be a game changer. Michelle Roberts is the BBC's health reporter.

There are other drugs out there that can block pain but this one's special because it's doing it by looking at the pain sensing cells so it's not acting within the brain, it's stopping the signals before they even get there and that's what makes it unique. Now, you've probably heard of lots of other stronger painkillers, opioids, particularly very effective medicines, but they can be addictive and that's because they do act in the brain and they can cause some euphoria, so feel-good chemicals which can then make it addictive. So the hope is that having this type of treatment available could be another option to help people who have pain. But importantly this one at the moment is

just for acute short-term pain, it's not for chronic pain. And crucially it's non-addictive, is that the main difference? Yes, it shouldn't be addictive because it's blocking the pain before it even gets to the brain. And what will it mean for pain management then? Because you said it could only be used short term. Yeah, so in the trials they looked at people who'd had an operation either for bunions or for tummy tucks and they were just trying to see if it would work as well as some other painkillers. So they gave some people a fake dummy drug, they gave other ones this new one and some more conventional medicine and compared them and it seemed to

be working really well for that kind of post-op pain. What about side effects? Any drug as we know can have some side effects. This one's no exception. So some people did get a bit of a rash, there were other things like muscle twitches or itching, but by and large in the trials it looked safe and the FDA, the US regulator, has now approved it for this specific type of use. It's been approved as you said in America, so will other countries do you think follow suit? Is that what usually happens? So it's Vertex that make this drug. They often will look at one country to launch it in and then contact regulators in other countries. We don't know whether that paperwork

has been put in but I wouldn't be surprised if they've been speaking with the European and the UK regulators to tell them. And this doesn't happen very often, does it, that they come up with a new drug? I see that it's the first approved medication for pain in more than 20 years. That's the thing, the pain is quite complex so you obviously get different types of pain in different parts of the body so trying to get in the way of those pathways can be tricky. And you've been talking to lots and lots of medics, is it your sense they're really excited about this?

Obviously there are lots of people out there with different types of pain and it's a really important area so having anything new that seems to be safe and effective is really important. Michelle Roberts. The NFL Super Bowl will be played in New Orleans on Sunday between the Philadelphia Eagles and the reigning champions the Kansas City Chiefs. Ticket prices average more than $6,000 US dollars each, but that's still much less than the cost of TV ads during breaks in the game. Big brands pay as much as $8 million for a 30-second slot at what's the most watched television event in America. Some of the ads have been previewed and have received lots of attention already, such as

Meg Ryan recreating the iconic restaurant scene from When Harry Met Sally. The singer Seal is doing one ad as, wait for it, an animated seal. Matt Edwards is from the creative agency Big Small. Being named a Super Bowl ad puts a tag on your commercial that elevates it beyond others, even before people have seen it. So people are interested to see the Super Bowl ads. And what it means is it allows you to treat the commercial as more like a movie release.

So nowadays it's not that only the people watching the Super Bowl are gonna see that spot, but they're gonna see your trailer. They're gonna be watching it on YouTube maybe the day before the Super Bowl even. So it's almost treated like a movie event, these are launchers of these commercials. So it's not just the people that are watching the Super Bowl spot, it's all of that circus that goes with it. Certainly David Beckham and Matt Damon in the same commercial doesn't come cheap. There are other ways of doing it and it was interesting that Doritos,

they actually use user-generated content, so they run a big contest ahead of the Super Bowl. They get users to create what they think the Doritos Super Bowl ad should be and they've narrowed it down now to three commercials and whichever one goes out will win a million dollars. The challenge for all advertisers and for all brands in the world now is the battle for attention. We're so saturated with incredible TV shows, movies, computer games, books, that it's really, really hard to get someone to spend their time looking at your brand. And therefore you do have to go bigger, better, more original, more unexpected than ever before if you want people to pay you any attention. Matt Edwards.

And that's it from us for now but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, 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 at global news pod. This edition was mixed by Ricardo McCarthy. The producer was Stephanie Zakrisson. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson., host of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. Each weekday we break down one big new story with fresh perspectives from 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.