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Global News Podcast
BBC follows journey of Gazan child
00:25:22
Palestinian baby evacuated to Jordan for medical treatment is back in hospital in Gaza
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- [00:00]
Paul Moss
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
- [00:06]
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- [00:39]
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- [01:11]
Paul Moss
This is the global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Paul Moss and in the early hours of Tuesday, December 23, we hear about a desperately ill one year old child who was evacuated from Gaza but is now back in the Palestinian territory. Donald Trump suspends all US offshore wind power projects claiming they're a national security risk. Amazon says it's blocked North Koreans trying to sign up as tech company employees. Also in this podcast, the 19th century slave who escaped from the US and the letter she wrote to her mother back home.
- [01:50]
Keza MacDonald
It's a really poignant story about how.
- [01:52]
Paul Moss
Her daughter is okay.
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Narrator/Advertiser
Her daughter made it and now she's free.
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Paul Moss
Back in June, the BBC reported on a one year old girl from Gaza with severe nutritional problems. After that broadcast, Siwa Ashur was evacuated to Jordan for medical treatment. She's now back in the Palestinian territory, but she's also back in hospital. Our correspondent Fergal Keene has been following her story.
- [02:19]
Fergal Keene
She arrived in Jordan last June, frail and frightened looking. Siwara Shore has a medical condition that stops her absorbing enough nutrition and which doctors in Gaza said threatened her land. Five months later, this is her first birthday party in a man surrounded by her mother, father, grandmother and Jordanian health workers. Medical treatment had improved her condition.
- [02:52]
Dr. Mohammad Al Mamani
But.
- [02:52]
Fergal Keene
Siwar is now back in Gaza and back in hospital.
- [02:57]
Narrator/Advertiser
Siwar returned from Jordan approximately 10 days ago.
- [03:01]
Abir
She changed for the worse around, I mean, the third day she started having.
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Narrator/Advertiser
Diarrhea and vomiting and her situation keeps getting worse.
- [03:09]
Fergal Keene
It's Jordan's official policy that patients must return when their treatment is finished. Siwar was among 45 children sent back this month. I spoke about her case with Jordan's Minister for Communications, Dr. Mohammad Al Mamani. Do you understand how people might find it hard to accept that a child in such a vulnerable state would be sent back to Gaza? In the current conditions there, no patient.
- [03:37]
Dr. Mohammad Al Mamani
Is sent back before they finish their medical treatment. Upon the conclusion of the treatment, they are asked to go back for two reasons. The first reason is that this will allow us to bring more patients from Gaza. We cannot take all of them at once. We have to take them in batches. The second reason, honestly, we don't want to contribute in any shape or form to the displacement of Palestinians from their left.
- [04:10]
Fergal Keene
For Siwar's family, the journey back to Gaza was traumatic. They'd been given 12 cans of special milk formula essential to Siwar, only to have many of them confiscated by Israeli officials. As her mother Najwa explained.
- [04:27]
Carla Conti
They kept saying, it is forbidden for you to take them. I had 12 cans with me. They took nine from me and left me three cans. The three cans don't suffice. Sewer at all.
- [04:39]
Fergal Keene
I asked the Israeli authorities why this happened. This was their response.
- [04:44]
Paul Moss
Due to security restrictions, the return of the families was approved, subject to their arrival at the crossing with minimal luggage, including baby food and clothing. In cases where the luggage exceeded the approved scope, its entry was denied.
- [04:59]
Fergal Keene
After 90% of the population was displaced during the war. Infections and disease are hitting hard. Here's Dr. Khalil Al Daqran from Al Aqsa Hospital where Siwar is being treated.
- [05:15]
Paul Moss
Since the ceasefire was announced, the number of child patients arriving at Gaza Strip hospitals is three times the capacity. The situation at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital is no different from other hospitals in the Gaza Strip. It suffers from a severe shortage of medicines and medical supplies and a major shortage regarding electric generators, which are the main artery to keep hospital going.
- [05:39]
Fergal Keene
Siwar's family now has some supplies of milk, formula and money donations, including from Jordan. But they're working to evacuate her again from a place the UN calls a wasteland.
- [05:52]
Paul Moss
Fergal Keene and the Sauri of Siwa Ashur in Gaza. Since the ceasefire in Gaza was agreed in October, at least 400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, which does rather put the very meaning of the term truce in question. Meanwhile, Palestinians there continue to live in camps and shattered homes amidst flooding, low temperatures and food shortages. Abir is a teacher whose home in Gaza City was destroyed during the conflict. She spoke regularly to the BBC. My colleague Krupa Pardi asked her whether she feels that war in the territory has truly ended.
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Abir
It didn't stop, first of all to the media. Yes, it has stopped, but still danger exists on the areas that are called the buffer zones or near the so called yellow zone. So we still hear bombardment on daily basis. What we are seeing is chronic collective PTSD due to the previous aggressions and to this war. So this is not a single traumatic event people are recovering from, but years of repeated trauma, bombardments, displacement, loss of loved ones, hunger, fear and uncertainty. We need to deal with all of that. We are all tired, we all need psychological attention. And I have seen children showing signs of severe anxiety. They have sleep disorders, aggression and withdrawal. Believe it or not, the rates of divorce have raised during this war and after it, and the mental health services are extremely limited.
- [07:27]
Suranjana Tiwari
Considering the unimaginable challenges that you are.
- [07:30]
Carla Conti
Facing right now from so many angles.
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Narrator/Advertiser
And how hopeful are you that this.
- [07:35]
Paul Moss
Ceasefire will reach the next stage?
- [07:38]
Abir
Well, if you ask me or anyone else in Gaza, we will answer you the same response. We still have hope. Part of our belief in God is to have hope. So we have hope for the future, but we are disappointed from the current pace that this ceasefire is moving on or the stages of the deal is moving on. We hope that we could see the next stage where everything will go to normal, where the rebuilding starts, will opening the crossings will start when everything really starts, like building schools again, building hospitals, etc. So we have hope for the future, but the signs on the the ground are not very promising.
- [08:24]
Paul Moss
Abir, a teacher from Gaza City, describing the situation on the ground and her hopes for the future. The US Has a habit of naming Navy ships after its presidents. There's been a Franklin D. Roosevelt aircraft carrier and one called John F. Kennedy. There was even a Thomas Jefferson submarine. But what these all had in common is that the ships were given these names after those presidents had died. Donald Trump, though, has decided to break with this tradition. It's less than a week since the Kennedy Arts center, he's chairman of, and announced that it would in future be called the Trump Kennedy Center. And now the President has decided to extend his brand to matters maritime with a decision to build the Trump class of battleships. There's never been anything like these ships These have been under design consideration for a long time. And it started with me in my first term because I said, why aren't we doing battleships like we used to? The announcement came in a wide ranging news conference at his Mar a Lago residence in Florida. And there was another significant policy announcement from his administration that it was suspending all offshore wind farm projects. Now, the President has never been a fan of renewable energy, certainly not for its green credentials, as he's repeatedly suggested that climate change is a hoax. There were five large scale windmill projects underway, all of them now on hold. I talked about this with our White House reporter, Bernd Debusman. Who's that? Mar a Lago.
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Bernd Debusman
According to the administration, these wind projects present national security concerns. Specifically, they said that the towers and the blades of the windmills themselves caused what is called radar clutter, in which certain items might not be caught on radar or there might be false positives on radar, which they say could be a concern going forward. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burnham specifically gave the example of drone warfare between Ukraine and Russia as an example of why this is a concern to them. Given the potential threat of drones from other states or from non state actors as well.
- [10:35]
Paul Moss
Is there any scientific evidence that wind farms interfere with radar?
- [10:41]
Bernd Debusman
Well, if there is any scientific evidence, they certainly didn't present it. They based this finding purely on national security memorandum, which isn't available to the public about this. Now, there was one public document that they cited which did say that there could be false positives. And even if adjustments were made to radar systems, that again could cause false positives. And perhaps radar operators would see a target that isn't actually there or misinterpret that target. But they presented very little scientific detail in today's announcement.
- [11:16]
Paul Moss
I guess we should mention Donald Trump's general antipathy towards renewable energy.
- [11:22]
Bernd Debusman
Indeed. Actually, since the first day of his administration, getting rid of these wind projects is something he's wanted to do. He signed a memorandum on the first day in office halting permits and new leases until a federal review could be undertaken. And a few months later, five months later after that, 17 US states led by New York sued the administration, saying that that memorandum posed an existential threat to the US Wind industry. Donald Trump also has had other concerns about wind that he says it's expensive and unreliable and he generally doesn't like the aesthetic of it. Many listeners in the UK for example, will remember he was quite opposed to Scottish wind farm being anywhere near his property in Scotland.
- [12:05]
Paul Moss
It's been quite a busy day for Donald Trump, he gave this wide ranging speech in Mar? A Lago, which you watched. What did he have to say?
- [12:13]
Bernd Debusman
Well, the main purpose of the speech was to unveil something they've dubbed the Trump class battleship. Now, this is a new, heavily armored, heavily armed ship that will form part of what the administration is calling a golden fleet, kind of a revamped US Navy. They've said with some evidence behind it that the US Is lagging far, far behind China in terms of shipbuilding capacity and output, which in any future conflict or any future tensions in the Pacific, for example, could pose a problem to the U.S. navy. And that's something that President Trump has wanted to address for a very long time, stretching back to his first administration. But he also did speak about the ongoing tensions with Venezuela. He expressed that the strikes on boats alleged to be carrying drugs would continue and could expand to targets and not necessarily just in Venezuela. He had some quite harsh remarks about Colombia's government as well. He certainly didn't take any steps to de escalate those tensions. And he certainly seems intent on Nicolas Maduro's government either bending or falling in the long term.
- [13:22]
Paul Moss
Bernd debusman she was a slave in the United States, escaped to Britain in the 1830s and ended up living in a small fishing town just outside Newcastle in the north of England. Now, historians have discovered a letter from Mary Ann Mackham. It was buried in the archives of a Virginia museum and her words have been written down by a local vicar. Jo Lonsdale has been looking at her remarkable story.
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Narrator/Advertiser
Marianne Mackham endured years of brutality before escaping from a plantation in Virginia and stowing away on a ship. On arrival in Britain, she was taken in by a Quaker family and lived to the age of 92. Her story was largely forgotten until a local historian in North Shields stumbled across it in 2016. An exhibition followed and last month a statue was unveiled to her. The resurgence of interest in her story led the Virginia Museum of History and Culture to check their archives, where they discovered a letter written in 1831 from Marianne. She'd asked a local vicar to pen it to try to send word to her still enslaved mother of her survival. In the letter, Marianne admitted she knew she'd never see her mother again, but wanted to send assurances of her warmest love, Joe Lonsdale.
- [14:37]
Paul Moss
Still to come in this podcast, Spain's El Gordo lottery winners are announced. A whole village celebrates.
- [14:56]
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- [17:02]
Paul Moss
North Korea has found all sorts of illicit ways of earning foreign currency. Despite being subjected to extensive United nations sanctions, it stands accused of involvement in cyber hacking, printing counterfeit cash, not to mention being paid millions to send its soldiers to fight for Russia in its war against Ukraine. Now, the head of security at the technology giant Amazon has revealed that the company has detected a growing number of North Korean job applicants. Stephen Schmidt offered assurances that Amazon had managed to block all but one of these applications, but he warned they weren't the only firm being targeted. Our Asia business correspondent, Suranjana Tiwari, has been following the story.
- [17:43]
Suranjana Tiwari
This came through in a LinkedIn post from Amazon's chief security officer, and he said that the technology giant has blocked more than 1800 job applications from suspected North Korean agents. He added in the post that North Koreans try to apply for remote working IT jobs using stolen or fake identities. And then they typically get hired, get paid, and funnel those wages back to Pyongyang to fund the regime's weapons programs. That were his. Those were his words, rather.
- [18:17]
Paul Moss
How exactly do these applicants disguise themselves? I mean, presumably they don't apply for a job at Amazon with an address in Pyongyang.
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Suranjana Tiwari
Yeah, it seems that these kinds of operatives typically work with people managing what's called laptop farms, which refer to computers based in the US that are run remotely from outside of the country. Now, then, they use a combination of artificial intelligence tools and verification by its staff to screen job applications. And the strategies used by such fraudsters have become more sophisticated. That's according to Mr. Schmidt's LinkedIn post as well.
- [18:55]
Paul Moss
How important is it for the North Korean economy to make foreign currency by these various illicit means?
- [19:02]
Suranjana Tiwari
Yeah, well, North Korea is possibly the most reclusive country in the world, as you can imagine. It can't trade normally with other countries. It can't pay wages. It doesn't really have much of an economy to speak of for its citizens, and therefore, it has to make money through other means, often illicit. And actually, back in July, a woman from Arizona was sentenced to more than eight years in jail for running a similar laptop firm. And it was found that she was helping North Korean IT workers secure these kinds of remote jobs at more than 300 US companies. And at the time, the DOJ, that's the Department of Justice in the US said that the scheme generated more than $17 million in illicit gains for her and Pyongyang. So you can see the kinds of numbers and figures that can be generated from these types of schemes.
- [19:58]
Paul Moss
Has Nigeria come up with a new way to tackle the scourge of kidnapping? Mass abductions have become so common there, they sometimes don't even make the news. Only last month, hundreds of children were taken from a Catholic school. Though they have now been rescued. And what the government has done is to redesignate kidnappers as terrorists, it's not clear what practical difference that will make, but as our reporter Richard Kogoi told Ankar Desai, they're putting them in the same category as a host of other Hostile actors.
- [20:28]
Dr. Mohammad Al Mamani
It's a designation because previously acts such as kidnapping were widely regarded as just ordinary criminal acts. But now this now signals the intention by the government to address this problem, which, you know, has been described by analysts as one of the things that do pose existential threat to the country. So President Bolatinobu last week said that these measures were sort of like resetting, you know, the country's security architecture and it now will be able to help them tackle banditry, kidnapping and terrorism.
- [21:04]
Paul Moss
And do we know why this has been happening or who's behind it?
- [21:07]
Dr. Mohammad Al Mamani
Well, we've witnessed a surge of kidnapping incidents from 2014. This is when we had the chibo girls who were abducted, close to about 250 of them. That really got global attention. But we've seen that over the years this has been taken up by groups that are locally known as bandits. So these are armed men who normally target schools, they target churches. You know, those are soft targets. And they basically seize people particularly for ransom. But then, you know, payment of ransom in Nigeria is outlawed. And that's why the government said that those who have been released, especially in the past couple of days, has been as a result of military police led intelligence operations.
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Paul Moss
Okay. And as you mentioned, this does come on the day that 130 school children.
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Keza MacDonald
And teachers have been released.
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Paul Moss
Has there been relief, I guess in the country?
- [21:58]
Dr. Mohammad Al Mamani
Absolutely. I mean it's a huge, huge relief. I mean 130 children who had been held up the last batch according to the authorities there. The parents are really delighted. A lot of them who spoke to the BBC said they're really looking forward to be reunited with their children who've been away for close to about a month. I mean, so this ending a month long ordeal for these children who have been held in captivity. So just seeing this is really quite positive progress. And to see them now coming back and possibly being reunited with the families, it's a relief not just for their relatives, but even for the entire country. I mean this whole issue has really captured the imagination of the nation.
- [22:38]
Paul Moss
Richard Kogoi, Even if you don't play video games, you'll probably at least have heard of Call of Duty. It was one of the most popular games created by Vince Zampella who's died in a car crash at the age of 55. Keza MacDonald is video games editor for the Guardian newspaper here in the uk. Had interviewed Zampella multiple times. She told Krupa Pardi that his death had sent shockwaves through the gaming industry.
- [23:05]
Keza MacDonald
He was a very outspoken Game creator. He was a really strong creative voice and he was someone that a lot of players knew of and was aware of as well. So the person behind the game was. He was quite well known as game developers go. I think I met Vance a couple of times, maybe three times. He was always someone you looked forward to interviewing at games industry events and someone you look forward to speaking to because he spoke very energetically and with a great deal of excitement around video games and around what they mean to people and what they can do for people. He was well liked and he really cared about the player experience. He cared about making games, he cared about how people felt when they played. And that really came across whenever you spoke to him.
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Narrator/Advertiser
For those who aren't familiar with the franchise, tell us more about Call of.
- [23:49]
Carla Conti
Duty and what's unique about it.
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Keza MacDonald
So Call of Duty has been going since the early 2000s, and it was one of the first shooting games that really felt like war stories. They felt more like war movies than the kind of more simplistic military shooters that had come before. It also really set the template for multiplayer games. These are games that really emphasize playing with your friends, playing in a squad. And there's a sense of camaraderie and kind of shared experience that really. Call of Duty set a template for in the earlier days of online gaming. There's no online game and shooter that does not have some of Call of Duty's DNA in it really now.
- [24:26]
Suranjana Tiwari
It became a huge cultural phenomenon, didn't it?
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Carla Conti
It wasn't just a game. No.
- [24:31]
Keza MacDonald
I mean, so more than 500 million call of Duty games have been sold now in total, and every single year it has been enormous, enormous deal. When a new Call of Duty comes out, it's something that people get together for and, you know, people reunite friends that have maybe been playing since high school or playing since university and who are, you know, in their late 30s now. They'll still get together, win a new Call of Duty installment comes out, and they'll still play as a squad. So it's something that people do feel very strongly about. I think Call of Duty will be his. It was one of the most famous games in the world. It will be the thing that he's best known for. But, you know, players of his other games, such as Titanfall, which is an incredibly brilliant first person shooter that came out later in his career, basically everything that he touched was. Was quite a special game. And I think that lots of people, especially fans of shooters, will have a less well known favorite game of his. Minus is Definitely. Titanfall, I think that was Titanfall 2 particularly, was A. A brilliant testament to his talent and to the Telenifer Studio Keza MacDonald on.
- [25:26]
Paul Moss
The legacy left by Call of Duty creator Vince Sampella. If you were listening to this podcast yesterday, you'll remember us telling you about El Gordo, literally, the fat one. That's the name given to Spain's annual Christmas lottery, one of the biggest in the world, for total prize money. As we explained, it's a cherished tradition more than 200 years old. But what we didn't know yesterday was that this year's lottery might just make the history books. The winning numbers were announced today, and one group of victorious ticket holders comes from a part of Spain which had previously suffered great loss. Carla Conti has that story.
- [26:10]
Carla Conti
People across Spain spend the morning of December 22nd glued to their TV screens, watching the annual tradition of school children singing out the winning numbers in the country's famous Christmas lottery, El Gordo. This year, the top prize went to number 79,432, and a huge share of the winning tickets were sold in the northwestern province of Leon. The biggest winners were residents of the town of La Baneza, where locals shared out around 468 million euros, or $550 million. Not surprisingly, celebrations spilled out onto the streets, with local football club players among those holding winning tickets. It's an especially poignant win for the people in Leon. Many towns there are still recovering from a brutal year. The summer's wildfires were especially destructive, and the jackpot win has been described by locals as an injection of hope.
- [27:18]
Narrator/Advertiser
The best thing is the joy in the village, in a village that is emptying and where young people are fighting for it.
- [27:25]
Carla Conti
Nearby Villa Blino also took a major share, around 200 million euros, with many of the tickets sold through a local Alzheimer's association. For some winners, it still hasn't sunk in, including one man who says he's already planning to mark the moment permanently.
- [27:44]
Paul Moss
Yes, yes, I'm going to tattoo it. I'm going to tattoo it big. Besides, I like tattoos. The number, the ticket. I'm going to tattoo the whole thing.
- [27:54]
Carla Conti
In a draw where tickets are often shared between neighbors, friends and colleagues, this year's El Gordo win belongs to the whole community.
- [28:02]
Paul Moss
Carla Conti and that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcastbc.co.uk. you can also find us on XBCWorldService. Use the hashtag Global Newspod. This edition was mixed by Pat Sissons. The producer was Buzaffa Shakir. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Paul Moss. Until next time. Goodbye.
- [28:42]
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