Global News Podcast - Venezuelan opposition leader speaks to BBC

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

María Corina Machado, Venezuela's Nobel Peace Prize winner, speaks after her first public appearance in 11 months. She has mostly been in hiding since the country's disputed presidential election in 2024. She confirms the US helped her escape the country. She says President Maduro's regime is weaker than ever - partly as a result of the actions of President Trump, who announced the seizure of a tanker off the coast of Venezuela. Also: France battles to control violent drugs gangs that are exploiting children. In the worst affected city, Marseille, the number of teenagers caught up in the drug world has risen six fold in recent years. Victims of a typhoon, that battered the Philippines four years ago, sue the oil company Shell, accusing it of contributing to climate change and therefore making such weather events more severe. A BBC investigation discovers endangered species - including tigers and sharks - are offered for sale on Facebook. Research finds that living in extreme heat can severely affect children's development. And the last letter written by Mary Queen of Scots is going on public display for the first time in a generation in the city of Perth, Scotland. The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. You're listening to the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 16 hours GMT on Thursday the 11th of December. The Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado says the Maduro regime is weaker than ever. Survivors of a typhoon in the Philippines are suing oil giant shell saying carbon emissions made the storm worse. And we report on the children caught up in drug war. Wars in Marseille. Also in the podcast.

200 US dollars for kilo. So, 200 US dollars for kilo. Investigating the trade in endangered species on Facebook. The Venezuelan opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, may not have made it to Norway in time to receive her Nobel Peace Prize, but once she arrived, she wasted no time in calling out the authoritarian leader. of Venezuela, Nicholas Maduro. She said his regime was now weaker than ever, partly as a result of

the actions of President Trump, who on Wednesday announced the seizure of a tanker off the coast of Venezuela, and she confirmed she'd had US help in getting out of the country, where she's been living in hiding. Because of delays on her journey caused by rough seas, her prize was collected by her daughter. But she was given a warm welcome when she finally appeared in Oslo in the early hours of Thursday, her first public appearance in nearly a year. A short while later, she spoke to the BBC. It certainly has been a very profound sentiment, suddenly, in a matter of a few hours, to be able to see the people I love most on their eyes and touch them and cry together and pray together. Then I had a chance to meet also with hundreds of Venezuelan people,

that are outside the hotel. You must be so proud of your daughter today. Oh, I've been proud of her all her life and I'm my sons as well. They have taken a really hard part because I had to send them out of the country. They didn't want to leave, but I forced them to go

because I couldn't do my job and at the same time protect them. So, you know, they were the only ones in their classes at graduation to be without her mother and she married, I wasn't with her and my son just married, and I wasn't with him. So it gives me a big sense of guilt, but at the same time, I have so much support from them.

And there's a reason why you do it, as well of all of and so on children. Were you thinking of those other daughters, those other mothers in Venezuela and around the world who have not had this moment that you've been able to have. Oh, absolutely. Look, the Chavista regime has tried to divide us. What brought our country back together

is that we want our families back home, we want our children back home. So I were thinking the mothers of the political prisoners. We do my talk every week. But I know that soon they will have this immense joy that I had today. I have to ask you about your escape, that you had to wear a wig, a disguise.

You went through 10 military checkpoints, a fishing boat to Girisar, a private jet, Miami, to Oslo. Venezuela has turned into a nation, a country in which the state applies terrorism. The regime that has control of all institutions has applied state terrorism towards innocent people. and committed crimes against humanity,

and everybody that dares to speak out, to defend any of your basic rights, takes a huge risk and probably ends in prison. Just for posting news about the Nobel Prize, you will get in prison. And if they go looking for you and they don't find you in your house, they will take your family, even children. So they had

say that I'm a tourist, that I have to be in jail for the rest of my life, and they're looking for me. So certainly living Venezuela is very, very dangerous. So I just want to say today that I'm here because many men and women risked their lives in order for me to arrive in Oslo. I came here on behalf of millions

of anonymous Venezuelan heroes to receive the prize and to take it back to them because it's theirs. What about the next thing for you, though? Because you know that the Venezuelan government is now calling you a fugitive, that you will be arrested if you go back.

Do you intend to go back to Venezuela? Of course I'm going back to Venezuela. The Venezuelan government would have disappeared me if they found me when I was in Venezuela. And I know exactly the risks I'm taken. And what I've said to the Venezuelan people from the beginning is I'm going to be in the place where I am more useful for our costs. And until very short time ago, the place where I thought I had to be was Venezuela. The place where I believe I have to be today on behalf of our cause is Oslo.

Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado talking to Lucy Hawking's. France is battling to control violent drug gangs that are exploiting and even killing children. In the worst affected city Marseille, the number of teenagers caught up in the drug world has risen sixfold in recent years. President Emmanuel Macron has urged police to treat the multi-billion dollar industry in the same way as terrorism. Our correspondent Andrew Harding has been to visit the southern French port. Bursts of automatic gunfire

filmed from the window of a French apartment block. On the street below, rival drug gangs, heavily armed, often just teenagers, are fighting over turf. We're going to kill you all, he says. Night after night, some neighbourhoods in the ancient port city of Marseille are being transformed into war zones. Footage of the dead circulating on social media. Victims as young as 14, 15. The cumulative effect of all these killings here in Marseilles has created what people locally describe as a kind of sikour,

a nervous panic, a terror that has gripped the city. He's lifting up his vest here, t-shirt to show me the scars. He's got a big scar on his back. Yusuf, a gang member, shows me where he was shot by rivals. In the last few years, he says the bosses are using young people, paying them next to nothing. It's chaos. I'm heading now to meet a local lawyer, somebody who's been active for years, supporting the victims of gangland killings. But in the last week or so, she's become so afraid for her own safety that she's taken a step back. And she's going to talk to

us now, but only if we hide her name. We are all afraid here now. It's clear that the drugs gangs are in control. I have to protect my family. We're seeing increasingly youngsters, teenagers, involved in the gangs now. Yes, so many youngsters are forced into it. They're forced into debt, locked up, made to work, beaten. It's a form of slavery. In a big convoy, French police drive towards the outskirts of Marseille, to an area where the drug gangs are dominant.

The aim is to disrupt. their trade. Okay, we're just running with the French police here around an apartment block. They're trying to seal off to make sure that there are no drug dealers here. We're in a stairwell now. There are maybe six or seven policemen.

They've surrounded one young man. They've got him up against the wall. They're searching him. We understand he's 18 years old. The youngster then begs the police to arrest. him so he can escape the gang. They take him away. The French police are making hundreds of arrests like this,

but despite the crackdown, they are, it seems, losing the war against a network of chaotic gangs that are staffed to some extent by a growing army of brutalised children. We've come down into the cellar now. Police searching for places where drugs might have been hidden. They find cocaine, hashish, traces of a drug industry now worth up to 7 billion euros across France. A far-right MP, Frank Aliccio, talks of the need for a state of emergency. And he blames uncontrolled immigration.

It's the number that's the problem, he says. We're no longer able to integrate, to assimilate. But Marseille, on the Mediterranean, has always been a diverse city, a city of immigrants. The prevailing view here is that they should not be scapegoated, that teenagers running riot here and in other cities are still children, that they need, above all, rescuing from a violent industry, bringing terror to their streets. Andrew Harding, reporting from Marseille. Four years ago, Typhoon Rai battered the Philippines,

killing around 400 people and destroying hundreds of thousands of homes. At the time, it was the most powerful storm to ever hit the archipelago. Now victims of the disaster are suing the oil and gas company Shell, accusing it of contributing to climate change and therefore making such weather events more severe. I know that we can do something. about this. I know that this will be a long journey for us. This will be a tough journey, but we are here ready to wait and ready to fight.

I call on Shell to pay. It seems like you want to be the only ones to survive, leaving the poor to be poorer. I heard more about the case from our business correspondent, Nick Marsh. This is a group of 67 victims of Typhoon Rye, known as Super Typhoon, Adet, locally. in the Philippines. We're talking exactly four years ago, actually, is when this typhoon formed and caused all the devastation that you mentioned. Their argument is that the science shows that this particular storm would not have been as powerful, were it not for climate change. In fact, they say it was twice as powerful due to climate change, and who has contributed to that? Well, the fossil fuel companies, of course, and they have decided to single out shell and sue them in the United Kingdom,

the company's headquartered with the aim of getting a significant amount of compensation and ultimately, you know, if you listen to the environmental groups who are backing these claimants, kick off a series of similar lawsuits against other companies in the future. And what does Shell have to say about this? Shell's called the claim baseless. It's pretty clear they're going to be fighting this quite hard in the court. Their argument essentially is that their production of oil and gas didn't contribute to this individual typhoon. I mean, the Philippines does get a lot of powerful typhoons,

and that ultimately, Ollie, is what the court will need to be convinced of. Another important claim in this lawsuit is that Shell has known for decades, so since the 1960s, in fact, that burning fossil fuels is the primary driver of human-led climate change, but instead, for a long time, chose to hide this information and misinformed the public and the wider industry. Now, again, Shell says that's simply not true that it had any kind of unique knowledge about climate change. It doesn't dispute the fact that burning fossil fuels

contributes to climate change. I think that's not up for debate at all. But Shell says that everyone's known this for a long time, and the debate has been how to tackle it, and that's been a public one that's been going on for many years, decades even. It's going to be interesting to see which way the court may be convinced on this or not. Yeah, scientists say it's difficult to link cause and effect to particular storms in regards to climate change.

But what could be the impact of this case? Environmental groups, including Greenpeace, they're one of them backing this claim. They're hoping that if it's successful, then they can basically sue other big fossil fuel companies. And you do see these sort of test cases popping up now and again. There is clearly, though, an appetite for a kind of reckoning, you know, when it comes to the oil and gas companies and when it comes to climate change. But with these very highly legal issues, the devil's in the detail of the specific case and of the specific interpretation of the science.

Our Asia business correspondent Nick Marsh. The illegal trade in wildlife is estimated to be worth up to $20 billion a year. An investigation by BBC News has found body parts of endangered species, including tigers and sharks, being offered for sale on Facebook. The site's owner, Meta, says it doesn't allow the selling of endangered species and removes such content. Britain has strict laws on what animals can be imported, but our reporter Angus Crawford found that companies here in the UK were illegally supplying products like dead seahorses for use in food and traditional medicines. Here's his report.

A cage tiger roars in pain and fear. Bread for its body parts advertised on face. Imagine a global criminal trade, where endangered species can be bought over the phone from Africa. So, 200 US dollars for kilo. To be honest, it makes me sick to my stomach. The authorities, though, say they are hitting back. Here, a video of rare tortoises seized by police in Bangladesh, footage released by Interpol to mark the global success on.

of Operation Thunder. So there were over 2,000 live transistors seized during Operation Thunder. Yes, you heard that right. Thousands of tarantulas seized by Border Force in the UK during the initiative in September and October. Wow. This is where we keep all our seized exhibits. At a secret location near Heathrow Airport,

I'm shown a room full of past seizures. Danny Hewitt from Border Force says organised crime is behind the trade. but some customers here don't even realise what they're doing is illegal. When we see the movement of people and the settlement of communities in the UK, it drives a certain demand for traditional items, medicines, cultural items that may not have been illegal in other parts of the world but are illegal in the UK. A trade increasingly driven by social media.

Back to the Caged Tiger on Facebook. A Chinese seller offers me a tooth for 280. $180. A hand sifts through pangolin scales, Facebook again. The price, $150 for one kilo. And a phone call to a man who wants to sell me dead seahorses for use in food or traditional medicine. How much for a kilo? There are sellers right here in the UK. I contact one in the north of east. England, and they're happy to sell me a pack.

I've just picked up my package from a post office box. It only took two days to get here. If I look inside, well, there's three packets full of dead, dried seahorses. Now, selling them to me like this in the UK, that's against the law. Sad to see, isn't it? I'm just going to rip along the top here, see if we're going. I take the packet to Neil Garrick, make it. who runs the charity the Seahorse Trust.

He identifies several pregnant specimens. This one pack is probably representing five, six, maybe 700 seahorses are dead. I could probably find seahorses in a couple of minutes on Facebook. It's that easy. What do you think of that? Tragic. Absolutely awful, tragic. One of the reasons I started Facebook was that it's... Mark Zuckerberg explains his vision for Meta, which owns Facebook.

I asked the company what it was doing about the trade, and in a statement was told, we do not allow the sale of endangered species on our platforms and we remove this content as soon as we become aware of it. Despite the work of the authorities around the world, our rarest animals remain at risk for sale and just a click away. Angus Crawford. And you can hear more on this story on our YouTube channel.

Search for BBC News, then select podcasts, and the Global News Podcasts, We update it every weekday. Still to come. Her emotion just burns through this, and it is her last letter, and we wouldn't have it if it hadn't been smuggled out. The final letter written by Mary Queen of Scots is revealed to the public. How do you have future proof of business when you can't predict what's coming next?

and change is taking place at breakneck speed. I'm Chip Klinexel, host of Resilient Edge, a business vitality podcast, Hayden presented by Deloitte. Decision making nowadays, I would say, is much, much harder than it was maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago. Jan Gilg from SAP sees it everywhere, the complexity, the pressure, the stakes. But here's what I discovered about transformation.

The companies that will thrive aren't trying to predict the future. They're building something more powerful. The way we create value is evolved. It used to be around how do we create more efficient and more standardized processes. Now it's about how do we use AI in a more meaningful way to do that. How does data play a huge role in enabling AI to create value? Vadi Narasem Hermudi from Deloitte has watched this evolution across hundreds of transformations. The rules of business are being rewritten in real time.

It's almost like a digital brain for your business. So we really talk about autonomous business processes rather than just automating business processes. That's not just clever technology. It's a fundamental reimagining of how business works. We have a whole framework at our original value. You're investing a lot of money in this transformation journey. You really want to understand how to plan it.

Futureproofing is about connecting your strategic vision and the value you actually deliver. So how do winning companies stay focused while everything shifts around them? Find out by listening to NT plus O.P. The first episode of Resilient Edge, wherever you get your podcasts. You'll have to listen if you want to find out what NT plus OP equals the EOP means. It'll be life-changing. I promise. This is the Global News podcast. Research has found that living in extreme heat can severely affect children's development. A study looked at data collected by the UN Children's Agency

UNICEF from six mostly African countries. Richard Hamilton has the details. It's long been known that excessive heat affects physical health, but this study shows that children who are regularly exposed to temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius tend to know fewer words, letters and numbers. It suggests that global warming is harming human development at its earliest stages. An average monthly maximum temperature of 32 degrees or more reduces the likelihood that three- and four-year-olds would be developmentally on track by up to 12%.

The lead researcher is Professor Jorge Quattas from New York University. The significance is that exposure to excessive heat can make it less likely that a child meets basic developmental milestones in literacy and numeracy skills. We know that even a small impact can cascade into lifelong learning, mental health, and development. So we're really concerned about those impacts early in life

and how much that at a population level as well can affect millions of children, especially children who are already experiencing poverty, lack of access to education, lack of access to clean water and sanitation, and also lack of access to other cooling strategies that can help them deal with excessive heat. Professor Quartas and his colleagues studied data from nearly 20,000 children

who'd been surveyed by UNICEF in countries such as Madagascar, Malawi and Sierra Leone. The research has compared this information with climate records from earlier years in which heat waves had not occurred, making sure that the children came from similar backgrounds to take into account factors that might otherwise distort the study such as poverty and mother's education. The researchers also found that the effect of heat extended to before birth

as they looked at the impact of temperatures on pregnancy. Given that the planet shows no sign of cooling, the plight of millions of the world's poorest children is only likely to get worse. Richard Hamilton. The reality of life in Afghanistan for women and girls is going to be put in the spotlight today by the People's Tribunal for Women of Women of Europe.

Afghanistan. Although it's not a legal court, it aims to document and expose gender persecution under Taliban rule. Today it will present its findings after hearing testimony from Afghan women in October. Shahazad Akbar, who previously served as chair of the Independent Human Rights Commission in Afghanistan, is one of the organizers. We heard 22 testimonies in October and we have received evidence and everything points to the worsening human rights situation, and particularly women's situation in Afghanistan. Women are even banned from seeking a medical education that would allow them to treat other women. In a situation where they are not, men are not allowed to treat women. So women can die from preventable deaths. Girls beyond 11 can't go to school. They are not

allowed formally to go to school. So their aspirations, their dreams for the past years have died. Women who are on the verge of graduating from university have been banned from going to university. All aspects of women's rights and freedoms are restricted. And women are, only allowed, essentially, to be at home and care for the male members and female members of the family. Beyond the four walls of the house, they have no right to a public and social existence. Are you frustrated that the outside world doesn't make more of these awful things that are happening? Doesn't publicize it more, doesn't put more pressure on the Taliban? Extremely, because as the situation gets worse, Afghanistan is fading from the public memory outside Afghanistan,

and Taliban are being normalized. I was talking to young women and girls in Afghanistan who said not only we are being forgotten and abandoned, but also the criminals who are perpetuating all this atrocities against us, all this repression against us. They're being normalized. They're being welcomed. Taliban were in India recently, you know, being received very warmly there. Germany has allowed Taliban to come and then the consulates in Germany because they want to ensure they can deport Afghans back to Afghanistan. So not only that Afghan women are forgotten, their plights forgotten, things are getting worse. But also, Stalin are being treated like a normal government. And this is a really chilling message to women of Afghanistan. What would you like to see Western women's groups and women's campaigners do to try to put pressure on their governments not to go down the road you've just described? This is exactly why we organize the people's tribunal, because we want people across the world, women's groups, youth groups, social justice movements in the West

to stand up in solidarity with women of Afghanistan, to push their governments not to normalize and not recognize the Taliban unless they change their repressive policies. And also to pressure their governments to continue humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, to continue support and asylum and protection for women, human rights defenders, women and men who are at risk because of the Taliban, and to continue to push for justice and accountability for Afghanistan. So Taliban are actually held accountable in international courts.

Jahazad Akbar, talking to Jhazah, Akbar, Talking to Justin Webb, the boycott of what is usually one of the world's biggest TV events of the year, the Eurovision Song Contest, is growing. Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland and Slovenia have already dropped out because of Israel's involvement. Now Iceland is following suit. Nick Johnson has the details. Eurovision is always a big moment in Iceland's TV calendar. The majority of its population consistently tunes in to the annual grand final. even when their entries, including this year's by Pop Duo Vibe, don't deliver the Poet. It puts into sharp focus the Icelandic state broadcasters' decision to boycott next year's contest.

In a statement, RUV said the participation of the Israeli national broadcaster had created disunity among both members of the European Broadcasting Union and the general public. Israel's presence at Eurovision has been an increasing source of. attention because of the war in Gaza and concerns about the voting and campaigning processes, including accusations that Israel's government tried to influence the public vote at this year's event. Early this month, broadcasters, including the BBC, attended an EBU meeting where they were asked to back new rules, intended to discourage governments and third parties from organising such campaigns. BBC News understands that voting to accept those measures was tied to a clause, where by

members agreed not to proceed with a vote on Israel's participation. As a result, Spain, Ireland, Slovenia and the Netherlands announced their withdrawal. Next year's Eurovision Song Contest will take place in the Austrian capital Vienna. Nick Johnson, finally to a letter from 1587. Tonight, after dinner, I have been advised of my sentence. I am to be executed like a criminal at eight in the morning. The words of Mary Queen of Scots written hours before she was beheaded. After being imprisoned for 19 years, she was executed on orders from her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. Now, the whole of her final letter is to go on display at Perth Museum in Scotland. Philippa Gregory is a historian and expert on the Tudors. It's incredibly important

at so many levels. I mean, there are so few letters by Tudor women that survive at all. It talks of her personal feelings, which the Tudor women and Tudor people don't generally tend to put in writing. But her emotion just burns through this. And it is her last letter. And we wouldn't have it if it hadn't been smuggled out. She was, as she says, to be executed as a criminal, she believed that she died as a martyr. And it was the decision of Elizabeth I first government and probably Elizabeth I first that a fellow queen and a cousin should be killed. Do you think we have a different view of her? Have we taken a different view of her? And how important, I suppose, is a testimony like this in shaping what we know of these major

historic figures? It's really important as a testimony because it tells us what she thought of herself. I mean, we do know more of her than the Elizabethan propaganda and then the subsequent Victorian propaganda because the Victorian historians were very keen on Elizabeth I first and tended to build this reputation of Mary Queen of Scots as a rather frivolous French alien woman who didn't take responsibility for the duty of queenship. Whereas in fact, what you see from her letter is that she's deeply serious and she understands completely that she is dying for political and religious reasons. And we know from there's a very, very good biography of her by the historian John Guy

who speaks of her as a serious leader and a serious queen in Scotland. Who engaged greatly with the work and in very different way, in the way that she's been described, it's very different, isn't it, how she comes across? Well, absolutely. He actually counted the council meeting she attended and showed that she attended more council meetings than any previous monarch. Of course, she did her needlepoint at the council meetings. So people say, well, she's being completely frivolous and French about it.

But, you know, why shouldn't she? She's there listening. She's doing her job as a ruler of Scotland. How shocking is it, I suppose, to read that testimony, those last words in light of what was happening, although beheadings were not normal at that time, but they were much more normal than they are these days, certainly in our parts of the world. Well, you would not expect as a monarch to be beheaded. I mean, that doesn't happen in England until Charles I first two generations after her. and then it is unbelievably shocking and it's only made legal by the fact that he stood trial in front of a parliament. She is accused of rebelling against the Queen

and trying to raise a revolution against Queen Elizabeth I, which she probably did some part of, but the evidence before the court was almost certainly forged. So it's an extraordinary, an extraordinary death for a woman at the time and for a monarch at the time. Historian Philippa Gregory. And that's all from us for now, but the Global News podcast will be back very soon. This edition was mixed by Gabriel O'Regan and produced by Alison Davis.

Our editors, Karen Martin, I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.