Global News Podcast - Taliban in Afghanistan ban all medical training for women

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

Female students studying midwifery in Afghanistan have been told to stay away from classes. Also: Joe Biden is in Angola on his first visit to Africa as US president, and Jaguar unveils its new luxury electric car.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Andrew Peach and at 14 Hours GMT on Tuesday 3 December these are our main stories. The Taliban have banned all medical training for women in Afghanistan. Joe Biden is in Angola on his first trip to Africa as US President. The Vietnamese property tycoon behind the world's largest ever bank fraud loses her appeal against a death sentence. Also in this podcast, the British Prime Minister says the UK doesn't need to choose between the US and the EU when Donald Trump returns to the White House. And... Jaguar has no desire to be loved by everybody. It has already stirred emotions and it will continue to. After a controversial ad, Jaguar unveils its luxury electric car.

It was three years ago that the Taliban stopped girls from going to school over the age of 12. Later they also banned women from studying for degrees including medicine but they did allow some paramedical students to continue particularly in female focus roles like midwifery because they said women should be cared for by other women. Now there are reports across Afghanistan that midwifery and nursing students are being told not to go to classes until further notice. This in a country where the number of mothers who die in childbirth is already among the highest in the world. Mariam Aman from BBC Afghan told me more.

It seems yesterday some sort of order or decree, we don't know which one, has been released from Kandahar, which is the place where a Taliban supreme leader lives. And the order has come down. We do not have official confirmation saying whether it's an order or a decree. But what we know so far is that there has been some sort of a ban on further education on midwifery institutions across Afghanistan. We have spoken to multiple colleges across Afghanistan who have confirmed this ban and we have had so many reactions from different students from across the country taken to social media and being emotional that that was their last day in those institutions.

It seems so odd perhaps looking through a western lens to want to ban women from midwifery. This is because it's seen as education though, which of course women have been banned from in so many other spheres. This was the last modern education pathway for the Afghan women. Everything else was already banned in the last three years. The ban kept coming gradually, so we had the first ban we had for the secondary education. Girls from age 11 onwards were banned. And then later on we had universities banned. And the only pathway for further education that had left was midwifery. But why? What goes on

in the head of Taliban leader? Who knows? Afghanistan is already a country where the number of mothers who die in childbirth is among the highest in the world. One imagines that situation is going to get worse as the effects of this ban work their way through the system. Absolutely. The implications in five years time, in 10 years time is unimaginable. So in the last 20 years, access to health care across Afghanistan was already bad despite the millions and billions of dollars pouring in during the allied forces presence in Afghanistan. But after 2021 US withdrawal, things had already gone to worse. But now with this ban ban five years on, we don't know

what would happen to all those women who were already having issues accessing health care, basic health care. Access is not due to the presence of these health care, it's also whether they have male and female midwives around. So if you are banning female midwives, we don't know what a pregnant woman in 10 years time would do. Maryam Aman from the BBC Afghan Service. My colleague Sarah Montagu has been talking to a young woman in the west of Afghanistan who was stopped from going to university two years

ago and now secretly teaches English to girls. I have a friend, actually two friends. One was studying midwifery and she was at her last semester. She took her exams and she was near to graduate. Has she been told that she cannot graduate as a midwife? The institutes that teach girls nursing and other medicine courses, they closed them. Right. Has that just happened now? Yes, today morning. And I have another friend, she started to study mental health and it has been one semester that she was studying and now it has been closed. How have your friends reacted to this news? You know, they are hungry, they are sad, they think they cannot do anything.

Because when they raise their voices, when they say something, Taliban send them to prison. Right, because women aren't allowed to be heard outside the home. Yeah. How does that affect you now? Do you go out? Yes, I'm a teacher. You know, when I see them, I think they want to arrest me. Seriously, I think they came to arrest me and I see they go and I breath deeply and I tell myself they didn't come to arrest me.

So you're doing it underground? Yeah. I teach the girls, I teach them voluntarily and you know they don't want me to teach girls, they don't want girls to be educated. I know it is dangerous but I do it for education, for human right, for humanity, for myself, for them because I myself have sisters. I am a girl and I know that this situation is hard but it is dangerous and I just live in fear. Joe Biden is in Angola for his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa as US president. He was welcomed at the presidential

palace by a military band. During talks with his counterpart, Wael Orenko, he praised the relationship between the two countries. I'm proud, very proud, to be the first American president to visit Angola. And I'm deeply proud of everything we have done together to transform our partnership thus far. We don't think because we're bigger and we're more powerful that we're smarter. We don't think we have all the answers.

But we're prepared to hear your answers to the needs you have, particularly answers to international debt financing and a whole range of other things. On Wednesday, President Biden will travel to the port city of Lubito, and that's the main focus of his visit, trade and investment, as I've been hearing from Anne Sawyer, senior Africa correspondent. It is a reset of US engagement with Africa. For the first time, the US is investing in a massive way in an infrastructure project that that is the Lobito corridor, about 1,300 kilometers or just over 800 miles, that stretches from the port of Lobito on the Atlantic

in Angola, across the country, and into the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia. Why these two countries? Because they are rich in resources, critical minerals that are essential in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles, essentially minerals that are very valuable at the moment and the focus are that they will continue to be even more valuable. So they will be transporting through this railway those critical minerals to the port and on to the US and Europe. And you and I have spoken many times on the BBC World Service about China's interest in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Is that why we suddenly see interest in that part of the world from the US as well? Partly yes, because China already had a head start. They control many of the mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, up to 80% of cobalt mines, we are told. They participated actually in the rehabilitation of part of this railway that the US and other G7 members are investing in. So this is partly to counter that influence, the growing influence of China on the continent, but on this project it looks like they're going to exist side by side with the United States.

And it sounds like no one in Angola is offended that Joe Biden has left it till his last six weeks to come. Oh, no, it's a big boost for them. This is the first sitting US president to visit the country. And many of the people that we have been speaking to are hoping that it will have a positive impact on the economy, it will draw the world's attention to Angola, and it will bring positive outcomes. So they do not mind that it is coming at the tail end of his presidency. And, you know, it's not a new, a usual thing for a U. a US president to visit many African countries. President Obama left it to the tail end of his second term in 2015 when he visited Kenya.

And you know, there were family reasons as well there. And Ethiopia, President Trump never visited. So it is a big deal in Angola. And soy with me from Nairobi. is a big deal in Angola. And soy with me from Nairobi. An appeals court in Belgium has ordered the state to pay reparations to five mixed-race women who were forcibly removed from their mothers and placed in orphanages in Congo during the colonial era.

The women were born in what was then the Belgian Congo. Each had a white father and a black mother and were taken away from their mothers and put in orphanages usually run by the Catholic Church. The court ordered Belgium to compensate the women, all now in their seventies, for what it called an inhumane act of persecution. Monique Bitterbinghe is one of the five plaintiffs who sued Belgium for compensation and won. She's been talking to our reporter Christophe Ponce. I am very happy with this verdict. We won and it's an important victory. We fought for this for more than six years and now it's over.

How old were you when you were taken out from your parents' custody? I was nearly four years old when I was taken away. But for me, these memories are just as if it was yesterday. I kept everything in my head. It is trauma, so it's something you don't forget. Did you have any idea then when you were a four-year-old kid as to why you were taken away from your mum and from your dad. When I was small, I did not understand at all. Now, long after the events, I understand why we were literally uprooted from our families.

It's because we were seen as a threat. We had been abducted because in the eyes of the state, we were a threat. In what way were you a threat? It was for racial reasons. We were mixed race and that was not acceptable. That's why we were uprooted and abandoned. That was to suppress us. Tell us a little bit what life was for you in this orphanage where you were taken?

When I arrived, I was placed in a centre where there were other girls, and I was told to do what the others did, follow these girls who were about 12 or 14. But the daily life was awful. We just had fufu to eat with vegetables. Whereas at home, at my mom's, I had everything I wanted. I was pampered. But when I arrived in that center, all that was gone. I had to conform and do as I was told.

And that was my life for years. Did you ever get to see your parents after being taken away from them? I saw my mom once three years after being taken to that place. She was with my grandmother and my uncle. They stayed for about two days and that was it. And what did she tell you then? You were a bit older. Did she explain what had happened to you? It's only much later that she explained to me that Belgium forced my family to take me to that center.

And failing to do so would have led to my uncle being taken to jail even further away. He was the head of the family, so they had no choice really. Years later, when I had my own family, I met my mother again. She had started a new life, she had remarried and had more children. But my mom was only 15 when she was forced to leave me, so I couldn't bear a grudge against her really because she was not responsible for all this. The state of Belgium abducted me and she suffered too. She had cried and grieved over losing me, but I could not possibly criticise her. Monique Bitterbinghe, Jaguar has officially revealed the first car of its much vaunted

new full electric era, Art Miami. It follows a widely talked about rebrand which began with a 30 second ad for the car brand which featured no cars at all. Just a diverse group of eight human models and the tagline, copy nothing. This was Chief Creative Officer Gerry McGovern at that launch. Jaguar has no desire to be loved by everybody. Jerry McGovern at that launch. because that's what fearless creativity does. This is the original essence of Jaguar. And for me, it's been an honour to lead the creative reimagining of this great British brand. Ginny Buckley was among a small group of journalists

who got a private viewing of the car. She's been talking to my colleague, Tim Franks. In over 25 years as a motoring journalist, during which time I have seen many, many car reveals, I can tell you that no vehicle has made my jaw drop quite like this 100,000 pound plus all electric new Jaguar. Jaw drop in a good way or a bad way? Initially it was both.

It's quite an extraordinary thing to see. I actually think the car is very fresh. It's very different. It was interesting because Jaguar Chief Creative Officer, Gerry McGovern, said to me that he believed the car will make people feel uncomfortable. It will polarise. And actually, it's going to do that in the same way that Jaguar's recent rebranded. But goodness me, if the aim is to get people talking, they've succeeded with it. I mean, it's one of those things about, you know, that old cliche of all publicity is good publicity. But I mean, that ad campaign really did set some people's teeth on edge, didn't it?

It was quite an extraordinary reaction. You know, Jaguar is reinventing itself as a luxury car brand, and they've done it in different stages. First of all, they wanted to set the story for the brand and what they were going to stand for going forward in this new future and then they would follow. Jaguar had to do a rebrand and it had to be extraordinary and different because it's clear that what they've been doing wasn't working. They've been trying to set themselves up as a rival to large premium German car makers like BMW and Audi, yet they're not selling cars. They only sold 64,000 cars globally in 2023. Jaguar Land Rover's total was 432,000. So their volume is similar to really small niche car makers. It's simply unsustainable. Their MD told me that with this reinvention they're betting the house

on electric. It's the road they're going down and they have to try something different. Motoring journalist Ginny Buckley. Still to come? European conservation officials downgrade the protected status of wharves after a surge in the population. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Katie Watson in the Cook Islands where we're taking a deep dive into the Pacific. This small island nation has grand ambitions to mine its seabed for metals used in green technology.

But a community that's defined by its ocean has found itself at the centre of a global debate. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get to your BBC podcasts. one of Vietnam's largest banks. Images online show the 68-year-old sitting calmly in court, dressed in a blue shirt, flanked by police officers. She's now in a bizarre race against time to return billions of dollars or face death. Our Southeast Asia correspondent Jonathan Head told me more about her. She was well known as a property developer, although she tended to keep out of the public eye. She started life as a market vendor in Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, and really started to expand her property

portfolio as Vietnam's economy sort of broke free of its one-time state-led socialist underpinnings when it was a very poor economy and embraced the world market and started this spectacular economic growth for which it's known. Saigon was the heart of this boom and she started speculating on property and something over a decade ago she got control of this bank. Now technically you're not allowed to have more than 5% control of a bank as an individual in Vietnam but she got around that by having an incredible network of proxy companies that she controlled that had stakes in the bank and then used it essentially according to prosecutors as her own personal piggy

bank, simply demanding loans, sometimes even sacks of cash that were taken out and often then siphoned out through this network of other companies that she had to the tune of what you mentioned a figure of 44 billion dollars. That's what she took out of the bank. I mean it's a staggering sum. It's 10 percent of Vietnam's GDP of that 27 billion the authorities say has not been able to be recovered the regard that has been misappropriated and she's now facing execution and it's quite rare for white collar crime for this to be especially for a woman. The court upheld the death penalty in April the The prosecutor said the crime was so serious they had to do that. That's the sentence as it stands. She does have an out.

The law says if she can pay back three quarters of what she's stolen under this charge, the one she got the death penalty for, then she will have her sentence commuted to life imprisonment. But of course that means in effect she's now in a race against the clock to raise the money before she's executed. That must be a most unusual legal situation. Has she got any chance of coming up with tens of billions of dollars to return in order to spare her own life? Well she does according to her lawyers. I mean she is spectacularly wealthy and she owns some of the most spectacular properties in Ho Chi Minh City. I mean, really, great tower blocks, really impressive projects. She could sell those, she could sell the property, she could sell stakes in businesses.

Her lawyers are very confident she can raise the sum. The death penalty covers $12 billion of the money that went missing, so she's only going to raise $9 billion, a mere $9 billion. The other thing that she has on her side is time. Vietnam is incredibly secretive about the death penalty. It's one of the world's top executioners. There are more than a thousand on death row but usually people wait many years on death row before executions are carried out and so for that reason she probably has enough time to raise the funds but it must be a pretty nerve-wracking time for her because as things stand The clock is ticking.

My correspondent Jonathan Head with me. The British Prime Minister, Sakir Starmer, has rejected suggestions that the UK will have to choose between closer ties with the US or the European Union when Donald Trump returns to the White House next month. In a speech setting out his foreign policy aims at the Lord Mayor's banquet in London on Monday, Sakir said the world faced dangerous times and pledged to strengthen links with both allies. Our diplomatic correspondent, James Landale, was listening. There's long been speculation Donald Trump may launch a trade war against Europe and reduce support for Ukraine, even NATO. In such circumstances, analysts suggest Britain would come under pressure from both sides to take sides. In his speech, the Prime

Minister said he would do no such thing. The idea that we must choose between our allies is plain wrong. I reject it utterly. Attlee did not choose between allies. Churchill did not choose. The national interest demands that we work with both. So he praised Mr Trump as gracious and promised to invest more deeply than ever in the trans-Atlantic bond. And he promised to rebuild and renew ties with Europe, which he said were vital to Britain's security and prosperity. Such words may be tested come January

if the US imposes tariffs on European goods and demands the continent trades less with China, all while forcing Ukraine to cede territory. Replicas of a sword from the Harry Potter films are being recalled in Japan because they break strict laws on weapons. Apparently the tip is too sharp. The story from our Asia-Pacific editor, Mickey Bristo. In the Harry Potter films, the magical Gryffindor sword was made a thousand years ago by goblins. The replicas, nearly a metre long, are made of stainless steel and come in a wooden display case. More than 350 have been sold at the Harry Potter theme park in Tokyo.

Japanese regulators say this recreation is a little too authentic and potentially dangerous. So in what some might see as a victory for bureaucracy over magic, they want those already sold returned. European conservation officials have approved a proposal to downgrade the protected status of wolves. The decision means European Union countries will be able to draw up quotas for an annual cull of the creatures. The number of wolves has increased in Europe in recent decades and farmers are complaining there are risk to livestock and pets. Conservationists are against

the downgrading saying wolves do relatively little harm and play an important role in keeping down the number of deer and wild boar. Nick Thorpe reports from the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. It's midnight in Transylvania, an almost full moon outside and the first frost of autumn stiffening the grass on the high mountain meadows. Christy Popp, the head of the large carnivore programme of the Worldwide Fund for Nature in Romania, is playing me one of his wolf recordings. In Romania the wolf is a national symbol actually because it used to be the flag of the Dacians. The indigenous tribe which fought and was eventually overcome by the Romans.

Christy contrasts the public image of the wolf with that of the bear, which has a bad reputation at the moment because of bears which raid bins in towns and villages in the mountains. But some farmers in Romania too, as increasingly across Europe, believe wolves should be less protected. We always feed the dogs at midday before the milking, and we check to see they're all there. And that's when we noticed Moody was missing. So we knew for sure that was the end of him. Jozef Rácz is a shepherd in the village of Csík-Szentmárton, who cares for 500 ewes. From April to November, he spends days and nights with his flock on the upland meadows,

milking them three times a day. He has 17 dogs in all, but the loss of his best herding dog to the wolves last year was a heavy blow. The trouble with wolves is they're very clever animals compared to a bear, which comes through the forest and crunches branches underfoot, giving a warning to the dogs. If a bear gets into the enclosure, he might take one sheep. But if a wolf gets in there, he might kill dozens. Wolf numbers are growing because they're strictly protected. Slovakia is home to about 300, and the government wants to reintroduce an annual cull. But Michal Haring, a Slovak biologist,

says wolves do a lot of good by eating wild animals affected by African swine fever. Shooting wolves could actually increase the number of attacks on livestock, he believes. If you fragment the wolf pack, if it's fragmented to the smaller ones, it's not able to hunt the big prey like red deers and wild boars, and then it's going for the easier prey, which is the livestock, sheep and the cows. So also this is not helping to prevent the damage. Luxembourg is possibly the only European country where no wolves have been sighted yet. But the authorities are preparing for them.

Loren Schley is head of the government department for wildlife management. Especially Western Europe, we have very high densities of deer, wild boar, so the conditions for the wolf are there. Of course there is some behaviour that cannot be tolerated. Let's say if individual wolves start killing too much livestock, if individual wolves or individual packs were to show aggression towards humans, of course human safety always comes first. Back on Jozef Ratz's farm in Romania, he's already brought his pigs into the stable for

the winter and the sheep will soon follow. Across Europe, the wolf has become a bone of contention between rural communities who want more protection from it and activists who welcome the rewilding of the continent. Nick Thorpe in Romania. Now, if you're a regular listener to the Global News podcast, you'll know we love it when you get in touch with an email or a voice note. My name's John Holloway and I live on my sailing yacht in Brittany. I listen to the Global News podcast every day to keep up with world events and I particularly look forward to

the Happy Pod on Saturday afternoons. I was fascinated to hear the report on orca whales wearing dead salmon on their heads this morning. However, there was one burning question which wasn't asked or answered, namely, how does an orca wear a dead salmon? Balancing a slippery dead salmon on its head is quite an achievement in itself, but how on earth does the orca keep it there whilst moving through the water? I'm sure they don't have chin straps. I can't be the only one wondering this, so please put us out of our misery and tell us. We will. Let's talk to Lucy Baby from Orca, who originally appeared on the Global News podcast when we covered this story. Hi Lucy. Hello. How does the orca wear the salmon on its head? This is a really good question and one I'm really pleased has been asked.

So you would think that the skin of whales and dolphins is slippery, but in fact orca skin is rubbery to the touch. So this means that items such as salmon can be held on their heads due to the texture of the orca's skin. So they stick on it as though they've got sort of suckers on them. Yeah. So if you think of like a rubber mat, if you put something slippery on that mat, it would sort of stick to it. It would hold some grip and some texture. But in addition to that, it's the fact that these animals are so highly intelligent, they're able to swim whilst balancing items on the head.

They're able to work out that sweet spot on their rounded head where items can remain in place. And that's what makes them so fascinating. And we do see this in other whale and dolphin species, some balance sponges on their head, and there's even some that create hats out of kelp. Wow. I suppose if the waves were of sufficient ferocity, then it would knock them off, like in any climate. There could be conditions that would prevent this, but in normal situations, on a normal day. This works just fine.

It does. And you'll see, if you look at the footage, the orcas do actually swim with their heads out of the water to keep that salmon on their head. But when items do fall off, they just swim under the water, balance them back on their head, push it back up to the surface and carry on swimming with their head out of the water. Where does your love of orcas come from Lucy? They're just so fascinating. I think the marine environment is incredible. There's so much we've still got left to learn. And these are some of the most intelligent animals on the planet. They're mammals just like us. But there's so much we can learn about them. And every time I get to see them out at sea,

it just brings so much joy. Lucy Baby, Head of Science and Conservation at Orca, which is a marine conservation charity. Thanks to John for his question. And if you'd like to comment on something you hear, if you have a question you'd like to ask about something that comes up in the Global News podcast, the email address, globalpodcast at.bbc.co.uk.

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 and mixed by Martin Williams. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Andrew Peach. Thanks for listening. Till next time, goodbye. nation has grand ambitions to mine its seabed for metals used in green technology. But a community that's defined by its ocean has found itself at the centre of a global debate. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.