Global News Podcast - Pakistan militants attack train in Balochistan

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

Armed militants in Pakistan's Balochistan region have attacked a train and threatened to harm the hundreds of passengers on board. Also: Manchester United have announced a brand new football stadium.

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Andrew Peach and at 14 Hours GMT on Tuesday 11 March these are our main stories. Gunmen in Pakistan sees a train and threaten to harm hundreds of passengers on board. Ukraine launches its biggest drone attack yet on Moscow as its diplomats are meeting the US to discuss how to end the war. Police in the Philippines arrest the former President Rodrigo Duterte in connection with his brutal war on drugs. Also in this podcast, how China is seeking to beat the US and become the global leader

in AI and... We have one billion people around the world who follow Manchester United and they will all want to visit this stadium Manchester United announced a brand new football stadium capable of holding a hundred thousand fans Let's start there in Pakistan where gunmen have seized a passenger train in the mountainous southwest I heard the latest from our correspondent in Islamabad, Azadeh Mashiri. Azadeh Mashiri, Islamabad, New Zealand An official has told us that more than 400 passengers were on board when gunmen stormed the train. And it's important to say that while we do know that there were injuries,

officials have confirmed that to us, including the driver themselves. We don't have any confirmation on any casualties. The Jaffar Express left the city of Quetta and it was headed for one of Pakistan's major cities, Raalpindi, as well as Peshawar. That train tends to go through an area with very poor cellular service and it goes through several tunnels. From what we understand, the train was stopped in between two of them. Now, we've also been told by local railway officials that a group of civilians, including women and children, were seen to be disembarking the train and leaving. So keep in mind that 400 figure may have changed by now. A militant group called the Baloch Liberation Army has claimed the attack and it's said that it's

still in control of the train. And it's also threatened to harm those on board if authorities do respond with any military operation. Right. So there's still a threat seemingly to the passengers who are still on board the train. It could still be quite a large number. Do we know what it is they want? Well, so yes, that is what the militant group is claiming. And they've carried out many deadly incidents in the province before. And a lot of this has to do with the context of that region. Balochistan is home to several separatist groups and they're all calling for independence. It's Pakistan's largest province and what they accuse the central

government of is exploiting a lot of the rich resources in the region because even though it's the least developed province, despite being one of the largest, it has a lot of rich natural resources, gas, minerals, and it's also home to a multi-billion dollar project that's funded by China called the China- the China Pakistan Economic Corridor. So the region is very important to China as well and what these groups typically do is target military personnel but not only military personnel they also go after miners as well as laborers. And obviously the authorities will be responding carefully bearing in mind there could still be people who are threatened. But what is their response looking like right now?

Well, we don't know much in terms of the response. What we do know is that a local hospital has declared an emergency. Part of that is so that they can respond to any eventuality accordingly, especially when we're talking about these numbers and we're talking about injuries already confirmed by officials. And we also have seen local videos that have been sent to us by local journalists there of military helicopters that are in the area. But that's all we know so far. That was Azadeh Mashiri with me from Islamabad. This story is still developing, the latest at BBC.com slash news. After President Zelensky's disastrous meeting with President Trump in the White House, a

lot of hope is resting on today's talks in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia between the US President's Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Ukrainian President's Chief of Staff Andrew Yermak. If it goes well, Ukraine and its allies hope it will mean the US restores intelligence sharing and military aid. Tom Bateman is our State Department correspondent. He spoke to us from the hotel in Jeddah where the talks are taking place. On the way in, the United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio swept through the lobby of the hotel here on the way to the meeting room along with his delegation.

I asked him what his expectations were for the meeting. He gave a thumbs up and said, good. That gives a sense, I think, of how upbeat the Americans have appeared in the run-up to all of this. They're framing this very much as an opportunity, as they see it, to see if the Ukrainians are committed to what President Trump wants. And that is, of course, a quick truce with the Russians. And remember, it is less than a fortnight since that Oval Office meeting where Mr Zelensky was kicked out, basically, told that he

was disrespectful and ungrateful. And we then saw that profound deterioration and acrimony with the Americans suspending military and intelligence, some intelligence-sh sharing support with the Ukrainians. Now I also asked a top aide to Mr Zelensky on his way into this meeting, Andrei Yakov, about their expectations. Now he said that they wanted this to be very constructive, that they were very open towards peace, tried to press him a bit on things like concessions, and whether they were still asking for a US security guarantee, he said yes of course they were, but this was much

more about finding a path to an immediate ceasefire. So I think the sense here is that we could be looking at a kind of rapprochement here, what the Americans I think would see as some kind of a reprieve for Mr Zelensky and that could in the end see that intelligence and military support being reinstated but we'll have to see for the outcome of the meeting. Now there's talks in Jeddah got underway just hours after Ukraine launched what seems to have been its biggest drone attack on Moscow. Our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg told us more. It was huge.

I mean we've seen drone attacks here before but not really on this scale. First of all that the defence ministry issued a statement saying that more than 330, maybe more than 340 now, Ukrainian drones were intercepted and destroyed by Russian air defences targeting 10 Russian regions including Moscow and the Moscow mayor announced that the drone attack was the biggest on Moscow ever. But it's the area around Moscow, Moscow region, which seems to have been affected most by this. And the death toll stands at three people, and around 20 people were wounded in the attacks overnight. What are people saying about it? Well, earlier today I went to an apartment block

in the south of Moscow, one of the apartment blocks that was damaged by debris from a drone. And there was a large crowd of people just looking up at the apartment block and the damage, and some people filming it on their mobile phones. We got chatting to people in the crowd. One woman said, it's terrifying, you know, that she'd been woken up, people have been woken up at five o'clock in the morning by

an explosion. And there was a little argument that started. One woman said, only politicians can sort this out, can resolve this situation after three years of war. And then a man said, no, not the politicians, only the Russian army can do that. But I think, you know, people, after three years of this, there is a fatigue and people do want to see this over. Although some people say we want this to end with a Russian victory, other people say, well, let's just have talks, let the politicians find a way out of this. Steve Rosenberg in Moscow. Reports from the Philippines say the former president Rodrigo Duterte is aboard a plane

bound for The Hague. Earlier today, police arrested Mr Duterte as he arrived back at Manila Airport. They served him with a warrant from the International Criminal Court, accusing the former leader of crimes against humanity over his seven-year self-proclaimed war on drugs. Footage is circulating on social media showing the 79-year-old former president reacting with incredulity when the arrest warrant was served. What is the law and what is the crime that I committed? Showed to me now the legal basis for my being here. Apparently I was brought here not of my own volition.

So you have to answer now for the deprivation of liberty. Human rights groups estimate tens of thousands of mostly poor men, including innocent people, were killed in his crackdown, which began in 2016. As I heard from our South East Asia correspondent, Jonathan Het. It was a campaign that Rodrigo Duterte ran on in the election campaign in 2016, claiming that the country was ridden with drugs and it needed drastic action. Now he had a reputation then of being a bit of a tough guy. He cleaned up, in his own words, the southern city of Davao that had been crime-ridden through some pretty rough methods including the use of death squads and he applied that nationwide.

People weren't sure he would do it. He threatened to fill Manila Bay with the bodies of those he would kill. He talked all the time about killing people. Once he took office he authorized the police to go after the drug dealers and addicts very hard indeed. And that involved basically going around to arrest people but almost invariably shooting them. Often it appeared to be in complete cold blood. And then thousands of people were killed really in the space of just a few months after he came to office. And that campaign continued for about three years. The death toll in total is disputed but it's something between six and twenty thousand people and he never apologised for it. He always said to the police, go for it, do more of it. The

ICC then took up the case and although he pulled the Philippines out of the International Criminal Court's jurisdiction in 2019, the ICC prosecutors have said, well yes, but we can still investigate those alleged crimes committed while the Philippines was still a member and it's on that basis that they've issued a warrant and somewhat surprisingly, because we weren't expecting this, the Philippines government has moved very, very quickly to execute it. And that there's a row between two dynasties going on here as well, which might possibly explain why this warrant has been issued and executed. Well it certainly explains why it's

happened. I mean I don't think anyone expected it. When President Duterte's single, it was Max from the Philippines, one term, six year term came to an end he was very popular. He had already formed an alliance with the powerful Marcos clan. The clan descended from former dictator Ferdinand Marcos. And the Marcoses and Duterte's collaborated so that Marcos Jr. and now President Bon Bon Marcos won the presidency. Mr. Duterte's daughter, Sarah, who also had succeeded him

as mayor in Davao, then became vice president. But they have fallen out very badly. It's now a bitter feud between them. And whereas in the early days of his administration, President Marcos said he would not cooperate with the ICC, he is very clearly cooperating a lot. Our correspondent Jonathan Head. And still to come. In many ways, interest in Maradona never ceases. It's sort of infinite. The fascination with

him is eternal. So the interest in the sort of drama is huge. Argentina is gripped by the trial of Maradona's medical team, who are accused of negligence that led to his death. China's President Xi Jinping is pushing for the country to be a global leader in artificial intelligence by 2030 and has put advancing high-tech industries at the centre of the country's biggest political event of the year, the National People's Congress. Beijing is competing with Washington to gain the edge in advanced tech and has been encouraged by

the success of the AI chatbot DeepSeek. Our China correspondent Laura Bick has been finding out more. Head in hands, eight-year-old Timmy mutters to himself as he tries to beat a robot powered by artificial intelligence at a game of chess. This is not an AI showroom or an AI lab. This is a middle-class living room in Beijing. It's like a little teacher or a little friend, he says, as the mechanical arm moves another chess piece. China is embracing AI in its bid to become a global leader in technology by 2030 and Timmy's mum, Yan Xiu, wants to be ahead of the curve.

This is an inevitable trend. We will coexist with AI. Children should get to know it as soon as possible. This is what the Communist Party hopes to hear as it pushes AI development to revive the economy. At an exhibition in Shanghai, you get a glimpse of the kind of developments they're looking at. So I'm watching two teams of robots play one another at football. Now it's not perfect when they fall over,

they do need a little help getting back up. One's just tumbled there. Humanoid robots also walk among us alongside back-flipping dog-like bots made by a rising star in China called Uni Tree. But there's one name on everyone's mind. DeepSeek. DeepSeek.

DeepSeek. DeepSeek. DeepSeek was a breakthrough Chinese chat bot that caught the world's attention in January. It was seen as proof that Chinese companies can overcome US export controls on advanced chips. I want to go forward. This is the back wheel.

Can you make the dinosaur move? Interest in AI is now fostered at an early age in China. What you can hear is a moving brick dinosaur built by an eight-year-old. He's also learning to code to make it move forward and back and of course roar. These bots are sold to children as young as three across the world, but made here in China. Abbot Liu is the vice president of Walesbot. Other countries have AI education robots as well, but when it comes to competitiveness and smart hardware,

China is doing better. DeepSeek is worth 10 billion yuan of advertising for China's AI industry. It has let the public know that AI is not just a concept, that it can indeed change people's lives. It has inspired public curiosity. China has more graduates in science, technology, engineering and maths than anywhere else in the world, giving it an edge. The game is abnormal. I'll restore it. You cannot cheat.

But that's a natural reaction when human intact with a, interact with a robot, they try to find out whether there's a bug. Yeah. Tommy Tang is CEO of Sense Robot that makes the chess playing bot. Now, before artificial intelligence, this robot could cost around $40,000 because of the mechanical arm. But they've used artificial intelligence in the manufacturing process and that has reduced the cost to around a thousand dollars. She's not happy with me.

Do you think one day we will have such a robot that will be able to read our emotions? Do you think that's possible? For the international version, we do not record the face for the privacy issue. But we do have the capability to determine your emotion from voice, but we do not put it here yet. As companies plan their next move, President Xi continues to invest heavily in AI, in robots and advanced tech, in preparation for a race against the US that he hopes China will eventually win. Thanks for the game but you've made great progress. I look forward to our next game.

Laura Bicka reporting. A former senior Facebook executive has told the BBC that the social media company worked on ways to allow the Chinese government to censor content while it was trying to gain access to the Chinese market. Sarah Wynne Williams, who is Facebook's global public policy director, said the company worked closely with Beijing on the matter. Facebook's parent company Metta says she was fired for poor performance. Sarah Wynne Williams has been talking to our culture and media editor Katie Razzle. The former Facebook executive, who worked for the company between 2011 and 2017,

makes the claims in a new book. She's also filed a whistle-blower complaint with the US market's regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, alleging Metta misled investors. In a book, she says, in return for gaining access to the Chinese market's hundreds of millions of potential users, Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, considered agreeing to hiding posts that were going viral in China until they could be checked by the Chinese authorities. He was working hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party, building a censorship tool, working to develop sort of the antithesis of many of the principles that underpin Facebook. What is your evidence for that? My evidence, I have many, many hundreds of documents.

Facebook's parent company Meta says Ms Wynn Williams had her employment terminated for poor performance. It is no secret we were once interested in operating services in China, it adds. We ultimately opted not to go through with the ideas we'd explored. Ms Wynne Williams said she was let go after she had complained about inappropriate comments by one of her bosses, Joel Kaplan, who is now Meta's chief global affairs officer. Allegations, Metta says, are false. Seven members of the medical team that treated the Argentinian football legend Diego Maradona before his death have gone on trial for involuntary manslaughter. Maradona was recovering from surgery when he died from a heart attack in 2020 at the

age of 60. A year later, prosecutors concluded his death could have been avoided and blamed medical negligence. The medical team deny the charges. Tim Franks has been talking to the Argentina-based football journalist, Marcela Mora e Arroyo, and asked her why it had taken so long to bring this case to court. A combination of factors, I guess. One is just that trials tend to take a long time in Argentina to get going but actually this was due to start last year and eight people are being accused and the trial is brought forward by five of Maradona's children so that

the various defense teams have asked the postponement at various points and there's been issues with evidence, as well as just general sort of Argentinian court times available and so on. But it has finally kicked off in the last hour. We've been able to see the various people arriving at the court, lawyers discussing things. One of the people bringing the charges against Maradona is his young son, whose mother is representing him, Veronica O'Hara. She's been screaming abuse at one of the psychiatrists that's being accused and swearing.

So that's already gone viral in a kind of Maradona style way. And everything about the man was was was on such a remarkable scale from his talent to the scandal and the interest around him. Just, I mean, if you can, briefly tell me what it is about the treatment that he received that is deemed to be potentially breaking the law. So in a nutshell, he had a brain surgery he was clearly very unwell and when he was discharged from hospital following the surgery for medical reasons it was suggested that he should be perhaps in under psychiatric care

and in a psychiatric unit but this is a kind of it happens everywhere in the world when you're medically discharged, that hospital can't do anything further other than suggest. Now, his physician, Leopoldo Luque, who is the main person accused in this instance, apparently forged some papers in order to get the discharge and set up a sort of home hospital attention scenario in a rented house, in a sort of rented villa. And there it became apparent after various leaks of audio messages and texts and emails, Maradona was not being looked after under hospital conditions, but was in fact eating, you know, jamon crudo sandwiches and things and drinking beer and perhaps even having a spliff now and again. So the family or the children are saying

who was in charge of making those decisions and I guess the main tenet is would he still be alive if he'd been looked after differently. Now Old Trafford has been the home of Manchester United since 1909. Perhaps then it's no surprise the club's owners think it's time for something new. A 100,000 seater stadium costing about $2.5 billion. Here's the co-owner, Sir Jim Ratcliffe. We have one billion people around the world who follow Manchester United and they will all

want to visit this stadium. United is the world's favourite football club in my view, it's arguably the biggest and it deserves a stadium befitting of its stature. The Premier League is indisputably the best football league in the world, maybe the best sports league in the world and it must have a stadium that's at least the equal of the best in Europe. And today it has some great stadiums, but it doesn't have a Bernabeu and it doesn't have a new camp. Let's get more from Jane Dougall from BBC Sport. If these plans were to come to fruition, the club hopes that that would be the case in five years time, then Manchester United's ground would be the largest capacity football stadium in the country at least.

And it's not been made clear just how the club would actually pay for that because currently, and we've already heard about cost-cutting schemes that co-owner Sir Jim Radcliffe has made many redundancies, however they did look at redeveloping Old Trafford. It's been the club's home since 1909 and it's been in dire need of repairs. We've seen lots of shots of water pouring from the roof of Old Trafford but it was decided that that would not happen and that they would create this state-of-the-art stadium next to it instead. The fans have been very concerned and in a statement the Manchester United Supporters Trust has said while investment is much needed and welcome, fans remain anxious about what it means and also what the consequences will be. Will it

drive up ticket prices and force out local fans? Will it harm the atmosphere, which is consistently fans' top priority in the ground? Will it add to the debt burden, which has held back the club for the last two decades? The trusts say we look forward to further consultation with supporters discussing these vital issues with the club. If they are able to produce a new stadium, as stunning as the plans suggest, this could be very exciting. So of course we're yet to know where the money for this stadium will come from and the fans are very concerned about what it will mean for Manchester United's legacy. And if you'd like to take a look at what the future stadium might look like you'll find the

pictures and all the details on the BBC News website bbc.com slash news. Now before we go Ollie's here with a quick question. Yeah thanks Andy. The question is are you interested in space? We're thinking of doing a collaboration with our colleagues from BBC Weather looking at what's known as space weather. So is that something you'd like to hear about? The reason we're thinking of doing it now is that things are pretty active at the moment up in the sky. The Sun is at its solar maximum so there's an increase in eruptions which can lead to the appearance of the aurora or northern lights as well as geomagnetic storms

which can affect telecommunication signals. There are also a number of meteor showers coming up and a lunar eclipse and a partial solar eclipse and the weather here on earth will affect how we see those. We're aiming to record something around the equinox which is next week so if there's anything you'd like to know about space weather please email globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk or find us on x at BBC World Service using the hashtag globalnewspod and it will be great if you could send your question as a voice note. Thank you. Thanks Oli.

And that's all from us for now. There will be a new edition of Global News to download later. This edition was produced by Judy Frankel. it was mixed by Mark Pickett, the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Andrew Peach, thanks for listening and until next time, goodbye.