Global News Podcast - Sudanese military accused of carrying out massacre in Darfur

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

Sudanese military denies killing hundreds of people in airstrike on market in Darfur region. Also: Turkish protests continue following arrest of Istanbul mayor, and rare turtle stranded in Wales after Trump aid freeze.

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jaleel and a 14-hour GMT on Tuesday the 25th of March, these are our main stories. The Sudanese military is accused of carrying out a horrific massacre. It denies it killed hundreds of people in an airstrike on a market. A court in Japan orders a controversial religious sect whose followers are known as Moonies be stripped of legal recognition. How millions of tires meant to be recycled are ending up in furnaces in India instead causing health and environmental problems. Also in this podcast we hear about the rare sea turtle that's been left stranded by one of Donald Trump's executive orders.

It is a huge problem. It's very frustrating because obviously animals, species don't understand politics, they don't understand boundaries and borders, you know, they're doing their thing and nothing has really changed in that respect. We start with what's been called one of the worst single attacks in Sudan's two-year-long civil war. A war monitor says hundreds of people have been massacred by the army in a market in the Western Darfur region of Sudan. The emergency lawyers group said army planes carried out an airstrike and another group reported mass casualties from a bombing on Monday. The army denies it carried out the attack but civilian deaths have intensified in recent months as the military retakes territory from the rival paramilitary force the RSF. Our Africa regional editor Will Ross told us more about the attack.

So this market, Torah market attracts people from villages across that area of North Darfur and we understand that it was extremely busy when it was hit. The videos are horrific to put it mildly. I mean a lot of destruction and burnt property but also the videos show the charred remains of people who were hit during these attacks that we understand came from the air. So the Sudanese armed forces bombing from the air. As you said there, the army itself has denied carrying out the attack. It says it only attacks legitimate targets, not civilians. But throughout the war, both the rapid support forces and the army have

killed huge numbers of civilians and they certainly haven't discriminated between military targets and civilian ones. But yes, possibly the biggest single attack since the war began. It's very hard to know the numbers, but two different groups, the Darfur Initiative for Justice and Peace and the Emergency Lawyers Network are both giving details of this attack and interesting that the Emergency Lawyers Network, it's really reported abuses by both sides in this war. Even just 24 hours ago they were talking about an atrocity committed by the RSF where a mosque was attacked in Khartoum so it does sort of add to the credibility that they are pointing out atrocities by both sides. And what adds to the credibility is that it's only the army that has warplanes.

That's right. I mean the RSF do have drones so sometimes for you know people in areas when bombs are falling from the skies there can be confusion but in this case the reports are consistent that these were army planes. And it's nearly two years now since the Civil War began what can we expect because it doesn't seem that there's any sign of resolution in sight and in fact the fighting has intensified. The fighting is definitely intensified and as we've been hearing over the last few days in the capital Khartoum, the army's been making quite a lot of inroads including taking the presidential palace. It still seems that both sides are determined to fight on and of course

accusations of external interference including by the United Arab Emirates. accusations of external interference, including by the United Arab Emirates. Well Ross, it's been a rather anticlimactic ending to the past three days of talks on halting the fighting in Ukraine which have been taking place in Saudi Arabia. After lengthy discussions between American and Russian negotiators yesterday, a joint statement had been expected. Instead the Kremlin said details of the talks would not be made public. This comes after Russia rejected the 30-day ceasefire plan backed by the US and Ukraine. And talks between the Americans and the Ukrainians today have already wrapped up after the two

sides also met on Sunday. Vitaly Shevchenko has been monitoring the talks. I asked him what he made of their outcome. Well, the bottom line is that on the ground nothing has happened yet. What, more than two months after Donald Trump moved back into the White House, the fighting still continues. All we know is that the latest round or rounds of talks in Saudi Arabia, they're focused on safe shipping in the Black Sea. Now that's important because Ukraine used to export huge amounts of grain via the Black Sea.

Now that's extremely difficult because of the war ships are being attacked and that's a problem for Ukraine, for the customers of its grain and also for Russia that also used the Black Sea to export its goods. Now Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, within the past few minutes has confirmed that Black Sea shipping has been discussed but we don't know the details. The Kremlin says that these were technical negotiations and details are not going to be revealed. And of course the bigger issue that's on everyone's minds is a more comprehensive ceasefire that

involves fighting on the ground and in the air. Russia has refused to accept it unconditionally. Vladimir Putin said that before that happens, Ukraine should stop receiving new weapons from the West and should stop recruiting new fighters into its army. So that looks like a no, disguised as a yes, because he said he likes the idea. But I'll say it again, the fighting continues. This morning, Ukrainian forces claim to have targeted Russian military infrastructure in Kursk. Nat.

Cheskow. Nat. Cheskow. Nat. Cheskow. Nat. Cheskow. Nat.

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Nat. Nat. Nat. Nat. Nat. Nat. Nat. Nat. And if possible, please record your question as a voice note. Thank you.

A BBC investigation has found that Britain is shipping millions of used tyres to India each year, where they're being cooked in makeshift furnaces, causing potentially serious risk to health. Instead of being recycled, the BBC's File on Four Investigates programme has discovered that about 17 million waste tyres are being sold on the black market. Paul Kenyon reports. Most of us drive a car and most of us at some time have to get our tyres changed. Off with the old, on with the new. And then we get the bill which includes a small charge for our tyres to be

disposed of safely and recycled. Waste tyres are supposed to be shredded, then used for things like surfacing horse arenas and children's playgrounds. But the BBC has discovered that around half of waste tyres in the UK are squashed into tightly bound rectangles called bales. It's more profitable to do this and then ship them abroad. Together with journalists from an organization called Source Material, we teamed up with an industry insider who fitted trackers to end-of-life tires to see where they ended up.

What followed was an extraordinary journey all the way to India, where instead of going for recycling they were diverted on a 1,000 kilometer journey into central India, where they ended up in pyrolysis plants. Pyrolysis is a process that heats tires to high temperatures, retrieving oil and steel. The BBC's File on Four Investigates program has been told most plants in India are unlicensed and unmonitored and it's illegal to import tyres for pyrolysis in India. The process isn't clean, it creates a dangerous cocktail of gases and chemicals. These will be oil spills I suspect from the process again or leaks even.

That's Peter Taylor from the UK's Tyre Recovery Association. We showed him footage from India of a number of pyrolysis plants just metres away from a village. And look you can see here carbon dust is penetrating the roofs of some of these sheds. Even basic health and safety rules being flouted, our tyres should not be ending up in places like this. BBC File and Four Investigates approached one of the companies. They confirmed they were processing some imported tyres but said what they were doing wasn't dangerous or illegal. The TRA estimates that 70% of tyres exported to India from the UK and the rest of the world end up in these plants.

In January, there was an explosion at a makeshift pyrolysis plant near Mumbai. Two children who had been living inside the plant were killed, along with two adults. Local authorities have since closed seven neighbouring pyrolysis plants. since closed seven neighbouring pyrolysis plants. Our team returned to the site a month later to discover some facilities still operating. Locals complained of eye problems and coughing as children played in the soot. Nearby is a mountain of tyres, many from Europe and the UK.

Our waste sold into India's black market. Back in the UK, after a tip off, we visited a tyre disposal company in Rochdale, which sells end-of-life bale tyres. Its boss, Zaheer, invited us inside. It's good of you. And where do these tyres go? They go to India, don't they? In India, yeah, yeah. Yeah? And what happens to them in India? They do for the largest plant. They are making furnace oil. They make carbons. Brother, yeah. Yeah? And what happens to them in India? They do pyrolysis plant, they are making furnace oil, they make carbons. Brother, listen, there are plenty of companies,

90% English people doing this business. Zaheer says he exports his ties to India and knows they are going to pyrolysis plants. He told me most people in the industry do it. When I asked him about the environmental damage, he replied, I am not a health minister. The government says it has rigorous controls in place for exporting waste tyres and punishments including unlimited fines and jail time for those flouting the rules. But environmental groups want stricter regulation of both dealers and of the waste itself. That report by Paul Kenyon. Since he's been back at the White House, President

Donald Trump has signed dozens of executive orders. One of them is having an unexpected impact on an endangered sea turtle called Rossi. Rossi is a rare Kemp's Ridley sea turtle who washed up on the coast of Wales more than a year ago and since then has been nursed back to health by a local zoo in Anglesey. Kemp's Ridley turtles are critically endangered with only about 7,000 females thought to exist. Rossi is now stranded because Donald Trump has paused funding for international marine turtle conservation. From Wales, George Hurd reports. In a rehabilitation tank hidden away from the public at Anglesey Seizu, Kemp's Ridley

turtle Rossi is now fighting fit. The turtle's outgrown several tanks after being found in a coma on a beach on the island at the end of 2023. It's time for Rossi to go home, and home is the Gulf of Mexico, or as the new US government would have us say, the Gulf of America. And that's where it all starts to fall apart. President Trump is signing is the rescission of 78 Biden-era executive actions, executive orders, presidential memoranda and others. One of the first acts of Donald Trump when he started his second term as president was to sign an executive order pressing pause on all foreign aid. That includes overseas marine turtle conservation work. It was a bolt from the

blue for Sisu owner Frankie Hobra, back on Anglesey. So for Rossi, we've been started the paperwork process, we're waiting on the paperwork process and that has all completely stalled because of this process and this funding all being put on hold. It is a huge problem, it's very frustrating because obviously animals, species don't understand politics, they don't understand boundaries and borders, you know they're doing their thing and nothing has really changed in that respect. The agency overseeing the conservation work in the States is the US Fish and Wildlife Service as well as being told to implement the White House orders. It's also under pressure from billionaire

Elon Musk and his government's efficiency drive with 400 posts already axed. The former director of the service is Martha Williams, appointed to serve during Joe Biden's presidency. I didn't expect this administration to necessarily be friendly toward conservation. I have been surprised at the speed and the degree to which they have undermined, you know, decades of goodwill and work in the conservation sphere. This administration's pulling the funding out from under the rug, you know, just pulling it away with no warning when we thought that contracts that were in

place would be okay. BBC Wales has asked the Fish and Wildlife Service to comment on its international programmes. In the meantime, Martha Williams has this advice for those back on Anglesey looking after Rossi. Don't give up. Don't give up because we all know that the power of this work transcends one administration. We can't give up. Back at the Sisu, Frankie Hobra is now looking at how they can move forward and get Rossy home.

We do have other options, so we have the option possibly of working through Mexico, which is something that we could do in the future and for future turtles, but that would be a shame because we've got these great relationships now with these wonderful sort of whole conservation programs for the species in Texas and people that we've been working with. So Rossi will get repatriated but it's just very frustrating that that process was well underway and now we've had this huge setback and really it's on hold. Of course back in their tank Rossi is blissfully unaware they've become a casualty of international politics. But the Sisu is

confident it's more a matter of when not if this turtle finds its way back home to America. That report by George Heard and you can see a photo of Rossi if you go to the BBC website and look at the BBC Wales pages. Still to come. It is already making a difference to my hands in particular and I'm not taking as many painkillers. Sometimes my joints are quite swollen and they're not now. We hear about a pioneering medical trial that could switch off rheumatoid arthritis.

Vast crowds of protesters have taken to the streets of Turkey's cities for the sixth night running to demonstrate against the jailing of Istanbul's mayor in the biggest challenge to President Erdogan's rule for more than a decade. Many fear the arrest of the mayor, Ekrem Emamoglu, which happened just days before he was due to be nominated as a presidential candidate, is designed to stop him challenging Mr Erdogan's long-time grip on power. Since the demonstrations began nearly a week ago, well over a thousand people have been arrested. This woman told the BBC the protests were about a lot more than the jailed mayor. We're here because of the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Memoğlu. But after, everyone realised how bad the country's situation is because of the economy, inflation, and because of the justice,

because of the femicides. There's a lot of things, we have a lot of problems about our country. But given that President Erdogan shows no sign of backing down, even calling the protesters evil, where do they go from here? Hilke Mboran is from the BBC Turkish service in Istanbul. We're expecting protesters to take to the streets once again tonight after the head of the main opposition Republican People's Party, Özgür Ozer, has called them to gather in front of Istanbul City Hall in Saracane for one final time because tomorrow the Istanbul City Council will convene to choose a replacement for jailed Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and since the opposition has

a majority in the council, we are expecting an opposition-appointed person to take over Imamoglu's post as he's jailed pending trial. And Mr Erdogan has faced protests before. What can the opposition do to try to make him give ground and to allow a freer democracy in Turkey? So there have been a couple of demands by the opposition. Notably they have called for early elections, saying that Erdogan's legitimacy was now in question after Imamoglu's arrest and his declaration as the presidential candidate for the main

opposition party, because those two things happened at the same day, and almost 15 million people went to the ballots to elect Imamoglu as the presidential candidate of the main opposition party. And after this, the main opposition party leader said that now it was time for Erdogan to face Ekrem Imam Olu in another election, because under normal circumstances, the closest election is slated for 2028. And how much of a challenge is this for Mr. Erdogan, given the scale of the protests? The last time we've seen street protests on this level was almost a decade ago during

Gezi protests. These were anti-government protests in the 2010s. But this has been very widespread. People have been going out in numerous provinces across Turkey. And also we have seen students, organisers, civil society, and these people are not out there just to support imamola. The people that we've been talking to have been telling us that they're out there to defend democracy, to defend their rights and to defend their future freedoms. Hilken Boran, a controversial Japanese religious sect has been ordered to disband as a religious corporation by a court in Japan. The Unification Church

has been accused of pushing its followers known as Moonies into giving huge donations, in many cases causing them severe financial hardship. It came under intense scrutiny after the former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated three years ago as his killer who held a grievance against the church blamed Mr. Abe for promoting it. Our Tokyo correspondent Shime Khalil told me more about the court ruling. Well, it's a significant development really regarding the secretive religious entity and it stands accused of corruption and that so many people here in Japan blame for ruining their lives and the lives of their families and loved ones.

Now this decision made by the Tokyo District Court to dissolve the Unification Church comes after a government investigation that lasted for months. And the dismantling means, one, that the church will lose its corporation status, so it will lose its right to get tax exemptions, but it will also have to liquidate all its assets. It can still operate in Japan, and we understand that it will likely be able to appeal that decision. But it comes after the interviewing of 200 people by officials from the culture and education ministry and it found that the church had coerced the followers into making huge donations, giving expensive gifts leading to the financial ruin. But the

officials also found that the church manipulated followers interfering for their spiritual wellbeing. And the church has been the focus of much controversy since the assassination of Shinzo Abe. That's right. The assassination of Shinzo Abe shocked the nation really in 2022 when the Unification Church has come under fire and under intense scrutiny in that same year after the alleged assassin had confessed that he had deep grievances against the late Mr. Abbey for his connections to a church that

he blamed for the bankruptcy of his family. An investigation found that nearly half of the lawmakers in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party had connection with this controversial sect and this involvement and the extent of the influence varied from attending church events, receiving donations from the church, and or election support. And that really has cost the Liberal Democratic Party dearly politics-wise,

because these revelations shocked the people of Japan. And they have told us that it's one of the big reasons people have lost their faith in the government and in politics, which is something that the ruling party is still trying to recover from. Chyma Khalil, medical trials are underway which could make it possible, according to scientists, to switch off rheumatoid arthritis, a condition which affects an estimated 18 million people worldwide. Rheumatoid arthritis occurs when your immune system, which usually fights infection, instead attacks the cells that line your joints by mistake, making them stiff, swollen and in some cases extremely painful.

What these trials are setting out to prove is that it's possible to train some white blood cells, the key players in your immune system, to stop other cells attacking healthy tissue. One of the participants in the trial, Carol Robson, told us about the impact it's had on her already. It is already making a difference to my hands in particular and I'm not taking as many painkillers. Sometimes my hands, my joints are quite swollen and they're not now. Professor Isaac's explanation is this is a one-off procedure so if it works that's it. I am hoping that somewhere down the line I will be told I can stop the immunosuppressants

because I shouldn't need them any further and I hope that I will be pain free. I also hope that this study will result in the process being rolled out and taken on to the next stage when it can be applied more generally to other people who have autoimmune diseases. And the professor she refers to is John Isaacs, Professor of Clinical Rheumatology at New castle University in England who's leading the research. Julian Warreka asked him how close we are to switching off the condition. I think at the end of this trial we will have a good idea of that. One of the difficulties with this sort of treatment is how do you measure

the outcome. Now you may think that that's an obvious question because as you've just heard from Carol they hope that their disease will get better and and their symptoms will go away but that can actually take quite a while that could take several months to really switch off and in the meantime we need to have some tests which tell us that we are actually affecting the parts of the immune system that are causing the disease. So if at the end of this trial, when we've analysed all the blood samples, we see that change in the blood, then that's really exciting because it tells us we're on the right track. And it will give us markers with which to design future trials.

Mason But in terms of those future trials, I mean there's still a lot to examine, more people to involve before you can arrive at any conclusions presumably. Yes absolutely. I mean if the question is when will these treatments reach the you know standard care, I've been saying five to ten years, probably close to ten years because it takes a long time for the regulatory processes and the proof that we need absolutely that the treatment is working. But it's carrying on in the background all the time.

How did we get to the point where taking this approach was considered a viable option that led you scientifically into this particular area of treatment? Yeah, it's been something that's interested me for many years and this work has been funded by the charity versus arthritis for many years. It's around how the immune system works and I would say over the last 25 years we've gained a much better understanding of the interactions between different types of cell in the immune system. We understand quite a lot about the cells which I call the generals of the immune system. We understand quite a lot about the cells which I call the generals of the immune system which which organize and tell

other immune cells whether to attack or ignore and once you've got that idea then you can take patients own blood cells and grow them in the laboratory and effectively train them to become the cells that switch off disease. It's a process that's been going on for many years and every experiment gives us more ideas. In the laboratory we can make these cells and they do the job that we want them to do. The question is when we put them into the complex human body, whether they can still do that task. And does it have potential wider implications for other conditions, other arthritic conditions, but beyond those? Yes, rheumatoid is an autoimmune disease and basically as I kind of,

I hope I've explained it, it's a disease where the immune system attacks its own joints. Now, many autoimmune diseases, common ones that people will have heard of are type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis. And ultimately, the mechanisms are very similar. The way the immune system goes wrong is similar. And indeed, you may find families where one member has rheumatoid, somebody else has diabetes, someone else has autoimmune thyroid disease. So the processes that we are developing in the laboratory with a little bit of tweaking, if they work in rheumatoid, then we should be able to translate that into these other ultramian diseases. FRA altering our understanding of life in Britain 2,000 years ago. The collection of around 800 objects includes parts of chariots, wagons and ceremonial spears.

It was discovered by a metal detectorist near a village in Yorkshire in Northern England four years ago. Tom Moore is professor of Iron Age Archaeology at Durham University who's been leading the excavation of the site. It's not just the scale of the find, which is unprecedented, but it's the range of material. So there are actually two deposits, but the largest of the deposit is a mound of vehicle parts, so from chariots and actually also possibly wagons,

so 28 iron tires from the wheels of chariots and wagons, a huge amount of horse harness, which is beautifully decorated with coral, with glass inlay, also two vessels, one a cauldron, wine mixing bowl. So it's an exceptional quality of material that's there which really tells us about the wealth of the people at that time in North Yorkshire and those who buried it. We're really excited by the fact that we've got these four-wheeled wagons which most people are probably more familiar with the two-wheeled chariots from the Iron Age but the fact that these four-wheeled vehicles, which are clearly highly decorated with

bronze metalwork and other decoration, are not known from Britain, although we do have parallels on the continent. So this is really kind of intriguing for us as to why we got them in Yorkshire. Another expert, Professor Alice Roberts, who presents television programmes on archaeology, says the discovery will teach us much more about what life was like in England at a time when it was being invaded by Romans. It's another chance to learn more about the people of Iron Age Britain on their own terms, because of course this is prehistory, there's no written documentation from these people themselves. The Romans tell us something about the Iron Age Britons, the people of Northwest Europe,

and generally they viewed them as barbarians. I mean, they did awful things like wearing trousers, they tell us, and drinking undiluted wine, and also having women as leaders, which they thought was utterly abysmal. So it's fantastic to use archaeology to actually look at these people in their own right. You know, we'll learn so much about the craftspersonship from this new horde, the importance of horses. We know that horses were really important. They were symbols of power, but also obviously incredibly functional in this society. And it all just feeds in. We're at a point where we're learning a lot more about the Iron Age. Professor Alice Roberts, now if you're partial to bacon sandwiches or pork chops the following story may not be for you. Two pigs adopted by a French woman

who features them in numerous online videos have won the hearts of many. Alice Adderley reports. When Manon Raux, a lab technician from Western France, first met 6-year-old Gustave, it was love at first sight. He was an abandoned piglet who'd been taken in by neighbours when she was living in Montreal in Canada in 2018. When Gustave was abandoned by his first family, my neighbour took him in. I went to see him out of curiosity and I fell in love with him. So I adopted him and I've never left him since. I even made him travel to France to come home with me.

She says adopting the pigs is a way of encouraging people to change their view of them as animals for human consumption She's now adopted a second pig named Leon and both pigs now live inside her home She says every person who has met them Realizes that a pig is a very interesting animal and she would like people to see them as more than just animals used for their meat. These are very intelligent, very curious animals so they can easily learn how to open drawers, push down rubbish bins, have access to what's inside or even make dishes fall over if they're within reach. Actually when you adopt a pig and have it living with you, you kind of have to rearrange the house as if you have a child that's it living with you, you kind of have to rearrange the house

as if you have a child that's learning to move around and is starting to touch everything. Gustave also regularly visits Manon's workplace at the local university, where her desk is decorated with pig pictures. She says this allows the pigs to become less wary of other humans, as pigs usually have a reaction of fear being prey animals. The sight of the animal delights her colleagues. It's always such a joy to see him. He's really the mascot here now. All the students love him and give him carrots. And he's so cute too, so it's always a pleasure. That report by Alice Adley.

And that's all 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, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcastatbbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Chris Hansen. The producer was Vanessa Heaney. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janet Jalil. Until next time, goodbye.