Global News Podcast - Paramilitaries pushed out of key state

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

Sudan's army says it has liberated all of Khartoum state from the paramilitary RSF. Also: the UN says new aid supplies have still not been distributed in Gaza, and rapid test could improve treatment for brain tumours.

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Andrew Peach and at 13 Hours GMT on Wednesday 21 May these are our main stories. Sudan's army says it's driven paramilitary forces out of the whole of Khartoum state, marking a significant shift in the civil war. Two days after aid began entering Gaza, the United Nations says no new supplies have reached local people. The German authorities have carried out a dawn raid on members of a suspected far-right group. Also on this podcast, researchers say wildfires are destroying tropical forests at record

levels with the equivalent of nearly 20 football pitches lost every minute. The underlying cause of a lot of this is climate change, which is ultimately fueled by human activities, but it's not just now human activity that physically destroys forests. Fires that might have snuffed out fairly quickly are now spreading further and further. And? They're only on land for about three months while they're raising their chicks, so it gives us an idea of like their health, how they're doing.

Record numbers of puffins on a small island off the coast of Wales. We begin in Sudan with the two-year conflict that's often called the Forgotten War. Video posted online seems to show soldiers celebrating after Sudan's army said it had taken full control of Khartoum state, the political and economic heart of the country. The announcement follows weeks of violent clashes with its rival, the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, who are yet to comment. So far, the fighting has claimed more than 150,000 lives and caused what the United Nations has called the world's largest humanitarian crisis,

with around 12 million people displaced. So how significant is this? A question for our Africa correspondent, Barbara Pletasha. It's a step that the army has been wanting to complete. The big advance was nearly two months ago when the Sudanese armed forces were able to retake the majority of the capital region from the RSF when they entered especially central Khartoum and pushed the RSF out. But the rapid support forces did have two holdout positions in the city of Omdurman, which is directly across the Nile from Khartoum and is part of the capital region. And those two holdout positions now, the army says, it has conquered, that it launched an offensive on Monday to clear the RSF out from these areas, from where they had been shelling parts of Omdurman. So it basically cements army control now

then over central Sudan. The end of a push that began late last year peaked with the capture of most of the capital and a push that began late last year peaked with the capture of most of the capital and now means that the RSF has been pushed out of central Sudan where it had made gains. But the war is not over of course, the focus then shifts elsewhere. Where is the RSF still strong? Well the RSF is strong in the vast western region of Darfur, that is its stronghold really. It also has quite a lot of control of Kordofan states which are in the south there. It has allies of a local militant group in particular and in fact that is where the front line is now if you're talking about active fighting. But the idea for the army is that it wants

to gain control of these areas so that it can push into the main front line in Darfur which is of course the siege on al-Fasher because this would be a strategic route. So that is where the active front line is but then again although the RSF has been losing territory it has intensified long-range drone strikes in recent weeks and months. This is deep into army-held territory and that targets civilian infrastructure which affects power, which affects water and so it is still able to make an impact from afar. And just give me the latest on the humanitarian situation in amongst all of this that you're describing. So the humanitarian crisis is most acute in RSF held areas that's where you have the UN adjacent

organization has called it several pockets of famine in those areas there's always been struggled to get humanitarian aid into those regions, partly because both sides have restricted or blocked it for various reasons. There was a real concern recently when long-range strikes blamed on the RSF hit port Sudan, which is where all the humanitarian aid comes in. Certainly the indicators continue to be dire and also if the civilian infrastructure continues to be hit that has a knock-on effect for civilians. So for example an international NGO that monitors health conditions says that this has disrupted health care, it has also reported a rise in cholera cases

because it's affected the water. Barbara Fletcher with me from Nairobi. Palestinians in Gaza are still waiting for essential supplies after the UN said it had been unable to collect the truckloads of aid which Israel allowed into the strip yesterday. Aid agencies say hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of famine, so why are the supplies not getting to the people? Claire Monera is an emergency coordinator for the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders or MSF. She's been in Gaza for the past three weeks. The aid and the way it's allowed to reach the people is still very much being controlled by the Israeli authorities. We're being given conditions on where the aid should go and how it should get there and it's not safe. It's not safe for us to deliver it that way and it's also not safe for the people to receive it in the way that the Israeli authorities

are insisting. Israel has accused Hamas of stealing previous aid deliveries and says restrictions are in place to stop that from happening. Here's Brigadier General Amir Avivi, founder of Israel's Defense and Security Forum and former IDF deputy commander. Israel is building humanitarian zones in areas fully controlled by the IDF, enabling the Gazan society to move into areas secured by the IDF and getting straight the aid without Hamas intervening, seizing it or even selling it. But pressure on Israel has been mounting in recent days over the lack of aid and

also over the renewed military offensive in Gaza. The Hamas run health ministry says at least 82 people have been killed in the last 24 hours. To get his assessment, I spoke to our international editor, Jeremy Bowen. Essentially, the permissions to allow a small number of lorries into Gaza, an absolute fraction of what's required, seems thus far not to be designed to deal with the humanitarian catastrophe there, but in fact to give the Israeli government and its spokespeople talking points so they can say, look what we're're doing and also respond to pressure not just from the British, the Canadians, the French and others but particularly the

United States because President Trump has said he doesn't want to see people starving in Gaza. Yes I was going to ask you about the international pressure and how the Israeli government was feeling about that. Up until this point it's always felt like they're more bothered about their own coalition partners and all sorts of other issues rather than what other countries around the world are saying. Is that still true? Yeah, Netanyahu's very bothered about what his ultra-nationalist coalition partners have

to say because he depends on them to stay in power and if he loses power he faces a number of potential consequences, one of which might even include his corruption trial going ahead which might even land him behind bars, but he also has to listen particularly to the Americans. And I think a reason why so little has been allowed in is because it allows him to say, look, okay, some trucks are going in but actually it's not really significant. He's used the word minimal himself to describe it because those people, those real hardliners, Jewish nationalists in his coalition, they don't want even a breadcrumb to get into Gaza. Donald Trump's got a lot of issues on his plate. He's looking in

lots of different directions at the same time. Do you get any sense of how high up his agenda Gaza is? What the Israelis are worried about is that the signs coming out of Trump, the fact that he went to the Gulf in Saudi Arabia, in Qatar and in the United Arab Emirates. And if you look at the Israeli media this morning, there's columnists saying things like is he signaling that he's not as rock solid with Israel as we thought? Columnists are raising questions like, for example, what if a resolution critical of Israel was submitted to the UN Security Council? Would the Americans veto it? The Americans always veto in the last 30, 40 years resolutions which are critical of Israel with very

few exceptions. Would they still do that? So there is this doubt has now been seeded into the minds of people inside Israel and I think a genuine concern. They are becoming more isolated and that's something that they don't, you know, people don't like. And Jeremy what do you think happens next on the ground in Gaza and with the diplomacy around all this? The diplomacy is going nowhere at the moment. It's been reported in Israel this morning that the main members of the Israeli delegation to the very stuttering ceasefire talks in Doha have been pulled out, told to come back to Israel. The UN has said this morning, and it's a remarkable

statistic, that 80% of Gaza is now effectively off limits to Palestinian civilians and that's because 80% of this very small territory in which more than 2 million people live has either been covered by warnings to get out because of military activity or because areas have been declared as buffer zones. Our international editor Jeremy Bowen, a senior former Ukrainian politician has been shot and killed in Spain. Police in the capital of Madrid have begun an investigation into the death of Andriy Portnov. Our correspondent there, Guy Hedgeko, has been following developments.

Mr Portnov, we're told, was dropping his children off this morning at a very exclusive American school on the outskirts of Madrid in Potuelo de Alarcon when two or three assailants approached him and shot him at close range when he was just next to his car and very near the entrance to the school. And by the time the emergency services arrived on the scene he was found to be dead. The assailants disappeared immediately as far as we know they haven't been detained and the police are still looking for them and obviously the police are investigating the circumstances surrounding this killing. We know that Mr Portnov was in his early 50s

and he had a fairly substantial background in business and in politics. Okay, now Mr. Portnov was an advisor to Viktor Yanukovych who had strong Russian connections when he was in charge in Ukraine and actually fled to Russia in 2014. So there's a lot of talk and suspicion around whether Russia has any involvement in this. Yes, I mean I think inevitably when something like this happens there's going to be that kind of talk and the fact that Mr. Portnov does have a substantial amount of personal baggage when you look at his career and his past. The fact that, for example, a few years ago he was facing international

sanctions. The US Treasury said that he had links to UK's judiciary and police because of bribery. And he'd also been facing some quite severe charges in Ukraine itself, linked to corruption. He was accused of treason as well. Now not all those charges against him were still pending when he was killed, but he does obviously have a pretty interesting background, certainly in Ukraine. So I think that the Spanish police, when they investigate this case, they're going to be looking very closely at that sort of baggage and his past as they try and work out exactly what happened here. That's Guy Hedgeco in Madrid. Tropical forests are one of the biggest buffers against climate change,

but new data suggests they're being lost at record levels. Scientists at the World Resources Institute, the WRI, looked at two decades of data and found that critical forests like the Amazon and the Congo Basin are disappearing faster than ever. Many researchers are concerned some regions are approaching a tipping point due to human activity like deliberate fires as well as climate change. Here's our climate and science correspondent, Esme Stallard. The researchers estimate that a record 26,000 square miles were lost in 2024, the equivalent of 18 football pitches every minute. That's 80% more than in 2023. It is no coincidence that last year was also a record for global temperatures. Climate

change pushed the mercury up on almost every continent on the planet, bringing with it dry conditions and increased fires. It was this that drove the deforestation, explains Rod Taylor, global director of the forest program at WRI. The underlying cause of a lot of this is climate change, which is ultimately fuelled by human activities. But it's not just now human activity that physically destroys forests. Fires that might have snuffed out fairly quickly are now spreading further and further. Countries in Southeast Asia, however, bucked the global trend. The area of primary forest loss in Indonesia

fell by 11% versus 2023 despite drought conditions. This has been the result, said Gabriel Obede, head of climate change mitigation at the United Nations Forest Programme, UNRED, of a concerted effort over a decade by the government to enforce no-burn laws and other protective policies. Indonesia has had a very significant success in bringing down deforestation levels because of the ban on new concessions, for example palm oil concessions. A good share of this

success is because of the actions of indigenous people, local communities, local authorities working all together. Such measures, he said, can be replicated in other countries, but the challenge is local capacity and financing. Teodol Gunchua, strategy and engagement lead for the WRI, says this rings true for the Congo Basin. In the GRC, where we have not yet seen conflicts leading directly to deforestation or tricholos, is the fact that conflict disempowers governments. And in the GRC, there is simply no state acting, all state agents in charge of addressing deforestation.

Many researchers are concerned some forests, such as parts of the Amazon, may be approaching a tipping point, beyond which they could fall into irreversible decline. Both the UN and the WRI point out that any significant reversal of the figures is challenging as there is currently no strong economic model for forest protection. They have said that communities need to be compensated if they are being asked to limit their agricultural activities. The issue is likely to be firmly on the agenda at this year's UN climate summit, which is being held in the largest tropical forest of them all, the Amazon.

Esme Stalhard reporting. And still to come on this podcast. Waiting to find out what that tumour was. it was two weeks and that was two weeks of pure hell and anxiety. The ultra rapid test which could improve treatment for brain tumours. Police in Germany have arrested five suspected far right extremists in a number of morning raids. Authorities are targeting the group called Last Wave of Defence, who describe themselves as the last resort to

defend the German nation. Our Berlin correspondent, Damian McGuinness, told me more. What we now know, Andrew, is that of these five young men, four of them are underage. So we're talking about very, very young suspects here. One is 15 years old and one is possibly, according to latest reports, as young as 14 years old. And they are accused of either attempting to attack refugee accommodation or having carried out attacks. So in one case, they attacked a cultural centre with, it was an arson attack. And in one case they attacked a cultural centre, it was an arson attack, and in another case two of the suspects are accused of smashing in the windows and again attempted arson on a refugee accommodation centre. And this is really part of this group,

please say potentially hundreds of people are in this group and they are young people often teenagers and they plan these things they radicalize each other through internet chat groups so that's what we're now seeing is a new sort of radicalization that's what police and officials here in Germany are saying and in fact a marked increase in not only political extremism but right-wing extremism in particular. And this group, the last wave of defense, is this an organization people in Germany will have heard of or new on the scene? No it's relatively new and there's quite a lot of them as

well. They all tend to have similar names, they're all about defending the homeland, Heimat, all about the Aryan race. And there's a lot of them now. And I think what this points to, and this is what officials are really worried about, is on the one hand, a more sophisticated way of networking with each other, using online technology and chat groups.

Very simple things, but actually something which is hard to detect. But also an increase in right-wing extremism, particularly among young people, which is particularly worrying. And then if you look also at political motivated violence, what we've seen also, latest figures show last year, there was a marked increase in political hate crimes. there was politically motivated violence increase or crimes in general increased by 40%. So you're talking 84,000 incidents and the majority of those were carried out by suspected right-wing extremists. So I think this has really got officials worried

because after a couple of years really of right-wing extremism sort of feeling like it was less of a danger to German society. Now ministers are saying, well this is actually becoming an increased danger, particularly over the last year or two. Damien McGuinness would be from Berlin. For the past 10 years, China has been building military bases on coral reefs in the South China Sea and in deploying hundreds of ships to enforce its claims to the strategic sea lanes there. Several Southeast Asian countries also claim these seas but few have done much to challenge

China's presence. The Philippines has started pushing back sending its coast guard out to take on the much larger Chinese ships and reinforcing the few reefs and islands it holds. The most important of these is a tiny island called Pagasa, halfway between the Philippines and Vietnam and close to one of the newly built Chinese air bases. Our correspondent Jonathan Head was allowed a rare visit to Pagasa where a Filipino garrison and a small fishing community are holding the line

against China. I'm on a Philippines C-130 military transport plane. It's standing room only, a bit like riding a bus in the rush hour. We're now approaching the island of Pagasa, a tiny speck of land in the South China Sea. And out of the window in between the coral reefs I can see a flotilla of at least 20 Chinese ships. They're there to enforce China's claims to almost all of this sea, but the Philippines is still holding on to this little island. After a dramatic stop on the short runway, which extends into the sea on either side of the island, they unloaded the plane. There is almost nothing on Pagasa. Pretty much everything

has to be brought in. But says Jonathan Malaya, Assistant Director General of the National Security Council, as one of the few proper islands in the South China Sea, not just a reef, it's worth all the effort. It can support life. There are Filipino communities there, there are fishermen living there and we have expanded the runway, we're expanding the port, dredging it. It's very important for us because given the size of the island, it generates a territorial sea of 12 nautical miles. So it is in a way a linchpin for the Philippine presence. Around 300 people call the island home. It seems idyllic. Wooden fishing boats, bob and a transparent sea, which laps against

a dazzling white sand beach. But in its isolation, this is a tough place to live. We met Melania Alohado, a volunteer health worker who was checking a baby. She's not even a fully trained nurse, yet sometimes she's the only medic at hand. The main challenge is when people, especially children, get sick. When it's a serious case, we need to evacuate them quickly to the mainland. But planes are not always available, and sometimes the weather is too rough. On the beach, we found Nary Hugo. He's a bit of a celebrity on the island,

a fisherman who's filmed his run-ins with the Chinese ships. But their constant harassment of the fishing boats makes his living much harder. Those Chinese are not fishermen. Their ships are huge compared to our small wooden boats. They threaten us, coming close and salting their horns to chase us away. Because of that, we can only fish close to the island. And the fish stocks here are much smaller." And fishing is, or was, just about the only non-government job on Pagasa.

So everyone relies on subsidised food handouts from the government and the steady improvements in infrastructure, which have now given the islanders 24-hour electricity and internet access for the first time. Yet we met no one who wanted to leave. Raeline Limbo arrived to teach here 10 years ago and is proud to have more than 100 pupils now in her school. For me it's a paradise because all our needs are provided. I'm satisfied that this is a peaceful island for me.

Off to the west, the Chinese ships are constantly in view. A big new military air base constructed on a reef lies less than 20 miles away. China could probably take Pagasa if it wanted. But for now it remains a lonely outpost flying the flag for Filipino claims to these waters. Jonathan Head reporting. Now some positive news from the world of science. The time it takes to diagnose types of brain tumours could be reduced from weeks to hours because of a new test developed by researchers in the UK. There are more than

100 different types of brain tumour and knowing which sort doctors are dealing with can alter the way they treat it. So this ultra rapid test could improve patient outcomes and certainly shorten the worrying wait time. Gemma Dakin's two year old daughter Nancy had two operations to remove a brain tumour. she's optimistic about the research. I'd say ground breaking because from Nancy's first surgery to waiting to find out what that tumour was, it was two weeks and that was two weeks of pure hell and anxiety. But to have it done that quick, it could have saved her that extra brain surgery. Until now samples of tumours were extracted during surgery. They were then sent to labs for examination which could take up to eight weeks to diagnose the type of

tumour being dealt with. But the research from Nottingham University used nanopore genetic sequencing, enabling scientists to choose which parts of the DNA to look at in detail and delivering results in as little as 90 minutes. The study also showed the method has already been used in 50 operations with a 100% success rate in diagnosing the exact type of tumour. Stuart Smith is a consultant neurosurgeon at Nottingham University Hospital. I think it's a really big step forward. I think for all sorts of reasons. Firstly, if we can get the information back within an hour or two,

then that information could be fed directly to the surgeon in theatre and that may alter surgical strategy. We've had cases where we think we could have prevented second operations in patients even if this technology was standardly available. But also perhaps most importantly, it's really important for a patient having your results back within a week is clearly a less stressful experience than having to wait eight weeks or more. So reducing that anxiety at what is already a very stressful time for people with brain tumours is important and also allows them to get onto their next stages of their treatment more quickly such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Brain tumours are a hugely diverse group of tumours with over 100 different types and our colleagues in neuropathology have the

unenviable task of trying to decide which type it is and that clearly has huge implications. They range from very slow growing tumours to very aggressive, some of the fastest growing cancers known to man and so deciding that is critically important in getting people to the correct treatment and clearly the quicker we can get them to treatment hopefully the better the outcome. Dr Stuart Smith, a small island in Wales is celebrating another record-breaking year for its puffin population. With their bright orange feet and rainbow-coloured bills, puffins are surely one of the most distinctive and recognisable seabirds.

This year's count has logged more than 43,500 of them. Stephanie Prentiss reports. 43,500 of them. Stephanie Prentiss reports. The sound of puffins on the cliff edges of the Skoma Island Nature Reserve. Flocks of colourful seabirds head their area to breed and despite being on a red list for concern by conservationists, these puffins and their chicks, known as pufflings, are thriving. Puffins tend to mate for life, returning to meet the same mate most of the time. Keris Aston, assistant warden on Skoma Island, keeps an eye on the couples. It's pretty beautiful.

You've got thousands of puffins swirling around, some of them rubbing beaks, which is known as spilling. I mean, you know, like humans, there's the odd exception, but mostly they somehow find their way back to the same burrow year on year and re-encounter their partner bird. Puffins spend most of their lives at sea, so breeding season is a rare opportunity to see and track them. Sophia Jackson is an area ranger for the National Trust in the UK and at this time of year, official puff encounter.

It's really important to get all the data we can while they're here with us. So they're only on land for about three months while they're raising their chicks. So it's a really short snapshot, but all the other seabird breeding areas around the UK and around the world submit their data into big international databases. So it gives us an idea of like their health, how they're doing and then this means we have the power to influence government decisions at that level as well. This year's success a reminder of the importance of factors like policy on supporting conservation areas so populations can flourish. But for Skoma's puffins, it's just a time to focus

on family before they set off to the open ocean again in August. And that's a report from Stephanie Prentice. That's all from us for now. There will be a new edition of Global News to download later. If you'd like to comment on this edition, drop us an email, globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk or on X, look for at BBC World Service and use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Rebecca Miller, the producers were Julie Frankel and Stephanie Tillotson, the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Andrew Peach, thank you for listening and until next time, goodbye.