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Life in Damascus returning to normal despite Israeli bombing
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An interim Prime Minister is chosen in Syria and officials begin work
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Nick Mars
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Mars and at 14 hours GMT on Tuesday 10th December, these are our main stories. Syria's new government is taking shape. A prime minister has been named and public sector staff are returning to work. The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu is on trial for corruption. He told the court in Tel Aviv that the charges against him were ridiculous. Also in the podcast, we hear from the lawyer of the French woman whose husband arranged for her to be raped by hundreds of men and a spanner in the works for Rupert Murdoch's succession plans. It is still only 48 hours since the Assad regime came to an end in Syria. But the rebel groups that have taken over in Damascus know the country needs more than just a wave of euphoria to move forward. They have started to address the basics of governing, like making sure key services, water, electricity, transport and the oil industry continue to function properly. An interim prime minister and a small cabinet have been announced to make that happen. But there's also a recognition that past crimes will have to be addressed. A list has been drawn up of Assad regime officials who oversaw torture. There have also been more than a hundred Israeli airstrikes across Damascus. Israel says, says it's trying to prevent weapons getting into the hands of extremists. Our correspondent Lina Sinjab is in the Syrian capital. So basically the leader of the rebels came out yesterday after a meeting with the former prime minister, appointing a new interim prime minister with a small cabinet, basically to get all the public institutions and services resume for people. And we've heard that, you know, some of the public employees have been contacted to come back to their work today. But we still. It's not confirmed if they've resumed work today, but, you know, it seems that they have a plan to have a soft handover of power so that they continue with the running activities for people and so that life goes back to normal as soon as possible here in the capital. It does seem extraordinarily peaceful at the moment. And from what I can gather in Damascus, particularly even in the Alawite areas, that's the sect from which Bashar Al Assad came. There must be a degree of concern about retribution in those areas. Well, certainly especially among those Alawites who supported President Assad. Now, the reader of the rebel also issued like an amnesty for everyone who worked in the army before or was part of the Assad regime before. But of course, focusing on those who you know, had torture, proof that they've been involved in torturing Syrians. He issued a list of names that they're calling for them to be arrested, to be brought to justice and prosecuted even they said that the ones who fled the country should be brought to justice. So the assurances that they're giving to minorities are giving people some sort of calm. But also, of course, it's all to be proven how they're going to act on the ground in the days and weeks to come. The United nations special envoy for Syria has said that the transitional arrangements need to be as inclusive as possible. Speaking at a news conference in Geneva, Ger Pedersen said that it was crucial all groups in Syria work together. Much of what some call rebel controlled Syria is under the control of what I would call a patchwork of groups who are coordinating well for no, but they are not fully or formally united. It's important that we don't see conflict between these groups. Let me also say that by and large we have seen reassuring statements from the HDS and the different armed groups, but there are still some issues of law and order. Our international editor Jeremy Bowen is on the Lebanese Syrian border making his way into Syria. He told us more about the potential issues in how power is being and may be distributed. It's really early days at the moment and we don't even know the degree to which they have control outside the capital. They've clearly taken the main towns. Clearly the regime has collapsed. But Syria has dozens of armed groups, some of which are jihadists. They haven't converted and changed in the way that HCS says that it has. So it has a massive job. I mean power anyway has been fractured in Syria for years because of the way that the war left the place in pieces, controlled by different authorities, different groups. But I think now with the regime gone, there is, you know, it's a moment full of opportunities for Syrian people. If they can find a way of working together, they've got some hope, a hope that they haven't had. That's why people have been celebrating in the way that they have. But you know, it's the Middle east. We have to be realistic. There are dangers ahead. And the precedent from Iraq and from Libya in The last, well, 20 odd years is the fact that when a dictatorship goes, when there is a vacuum of power in both those circumstances, the result has been a chaotic situation with people grabbing for power, settling scores, taking territory. And Iraq, you know, for many years there was a catastrophic, murderous situation and it's still a very fragile state. As we heard there from Jeremy Bowen, there are many lessons to remember from the fall of Saddam Hussein. That was regime change led by the US and the UK and their allies. Emma Skye saw that period. She was there between 2003 and 2010 advising the commanding general of US forces through a key period from 2007 to 2010. And she's the director of the International Leadership Centre at Yale University. She spoke to my colleague Michel Hussein. When you look at these images coming out of Syria and the joy and euphoria on people's faces at the fall of the Assad regime, you know, it brings back memories of Iraq from 2003, when there was such hope and optimism that the fall of Saddam would bring about a better future. So I feel those similarities. And every Syrian I know is just ecstatic at the moment. And just when you see people reunited with their loved ones, going back to their homes, it's very moving. There was a key mistake by the coalition wasn't there to remove everyone connected with Saddam or his party, the Ba'ath party, and there's a link between that party and the Assad's party in Syria to remove them entirely from the equation. Can you tell us the thinking at the time? So when the coalition overthrew the Saddam regime, they didn't have enough troops there at the beginning. And you could see there was a lot of lawlessness, a lot of chaos and looting. But a couple of months after that, they then decided, in order to put the new Iraq on new foundations, to create a democratic country they couldn't build from the Ba'ath party. So they went through this process of de Ba'athification, of removing members of the Ba'ath party from, you know, from their jobs and dissolving all the security institutions. The problem was there wasn't a difference really between the state and the party. And what this did was unintentionally collapse the state. So that led to a lot of violence and Iraq's descent into civil war. So today, what would you advise the UK and the US governments to do? Wait and see or take some immediate action? Because you'd want to be in a position of some influence or at least some communication with Syria. I think it's important to really think about what's in Western interests. You know, this is a Syrian revolution that's been brought about by Syrians themselves. Now, in Western interests, what's important is that Syria doesn't become a sanctuary for isis. There are already pockets of ISIS there, and it's really important that the ISIS guys in prison don't get out. The ISIS doesn't reconstitute. The ISIS doesn't move from the countryside into the towns, because then you'll have Syria having these transnational jihadis who could pose a threat to us all around the world. So I think that is a core interest. It's also a core interest to see that Syria is stable so that refugees who are now in Turkey, in Lebanon, in Jordan can return back to their homes. And there's things that the west can do in terms of providing humanitarian aid. I think it's important to have links with this new regime. I mean, it's a bit difficult at the beginning because Hayat Al Sham is a proscribed terrorist organization. It was once affiliated with Al Qaeda. And there were also sanctions on Syria, but those sanctions were on the Assad regime. But you can already see there's outreach indirectly to these new groups to say, I suppose at one level we wish them well and people wish to see Syria a much better country than it was under Assad. This question of how you bring about stability and humanitarian aid, I mean, funding anything in Syria would require sanctions to be lifted, wouldn't it? Yes, it would, but those sanctions were on Assad. And with the overthrow of Assad, there's a whole new, you know, whole different process to be put in place of how we engage with the new regime there. You know, Syria under Assad was allied with Russia and Iran. And the new Syria, there is a hope that it won't have those alliances because Iran has been able to transport all its support to Hezbollah in Lebanon through Syria. So it's in Western interests to make sure that the new Syria has a chance to not be part of Iran's axis of resistance and to have a new relationship with Western countries. That was Emma Skye. Well, the ongoing uncertainty in Syria has caused worry in neighbouring Israel, so much so that Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes on Syria since the fall of Bashar Al Assad. It says it's trying to stop. Stop weapons falling into the hands of those it calls extremists. But the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has other pressing political concerns at home. He's just become the first sitting Israeli prime minister to take the witness stand in a criminal trial for corruption, which he calls a witch hunt. Here he is speaking before the trial. Regarding the trial, I heard in the media that they say that I want to avoid the trial. Have you heard that? Do I want to dodge you? What a sad thing. For eight years, I have been waiting to finally blow up the deluded and absurd charges against me. Our Middle east correspondent Yolande Nell is at the court. The charges relate to three cases and all of them he's accused of fraud and breach of trust. And one, he faces the more serious charge of bribery as well. And in two of the cases, he's basically accused of exchanging sort of regulatory favors for the owners of big media organizations in Israel for more positive press coverage. And then there's also a case which has been widely publicized where he's accused of accepting lavish gifts really to advance the personal interests of powerful businessmen, particularly a Hollywood producer, those gifts to the tune of $200,000. And you know, he denies any wrongdoing, has been saying that this is a brutal witch hunt. Those were the words he used in a news conference last night. That point has really been very much picked up with the opening of the defense case. His lawyer has been speaking for most of the time in the courtroom but outside the court, you know, not just very far away from me, you can see this definitive split in Israel. We have on one side of me, supporters of the prime minister very angry that this veteran leader is on trial under these circumstances. And you have the anti Netanyahu protesters who have been calling for the prime minister to step down for the past few years while he faces criminal allegations against him. And you know, this is sort of damaging division that has really been evident in Israeli politics for the past few years. And Yolande, remind us what could happen to Mr. Netanyahu if he's found guilty? I mean, this trial first of all, is expected to go on at least for another year before it reaches a verdict. He could then appeal to the Supreme Court. But yes, there are possible prison sentences here. Bribery is punishable by 10 years, a prison sentence in Israel if he was found guilty. That was Yolande Nel, a 26 year old man has been charged with murder over last week's fatal shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of New York outside a hotel. Luigi Mangione was picked up while eating some food in McDonald's in Pennsylvania after a customer recognized him and alerted the authorities. Our correspondent Nida Tawfik is following event from New York, Luigi Mangione, by all accounts, to those who knew him, he's the last person they would have suspected. He is an Ivy League university graduate, worked as a data engineer and from a prominent Maryland family. Now, people who knew him say he was well rounded, social, smart, athletic. But it does seem like the last few months is what investigators and really the world will be looking at because he reportedly suffered from a painful back injury which impacted his life. A picture on one of his social media accounts actually shows x ray images of what many assume is his spine with surgical implants. And he was, he was asked by the judge as he was charged in Pennsylvania with an unlicensed gun charge. He said that he had been in touch with his family until recently. Now we do expect him to be extradited to New York after that process plays out. Here in New York, prosecutors have already charged him with murder. Besides casings on the crime scene that had the words defend, deny, depose, kind of a reference perhaps to the three Ds of insurance tactics used by insurance to deny coverage to people. Also, he was found in possession of a three page handwritten manifesto that officials say showed ill will toward corporate America and reportedly referred to insurance companies as parasites. It's really also interesting to underline just how much he has become a folk hero out of this because of many people's anger toward the insurance industry. But the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, said the real hero here was the person who alert. But what does the shooting dead of a person on the streets of a highly surveilled city like New York tell us about America? Security and some of the worrying subsequent reaction. Juliet Kayem is the former Assistant Secretary for Policy at the United States Department of Homeland Security. She spoke to my colleague Emma Barnett about some of the burning questions surrounding the attack. How did someone survey Mr. Thompson, the CEO of the Healthcare company, and move around most surveyed city in the United States with cameras everywhere, with people everywhere, with iPhones, and managed to escape the city for almost a week? And to me, that suggested that this was someone who was studying how law enforcement and how these cities sort of try to protect themselves, which is essentially they have lots of cameras around and he was able to evade them quite successfully. Now that we know a little bit about him, that he's a smart person, he went to great schools, he studied engineering technology, he was into electronic gizmos. Some of it is beginning to make sense. He was hunting for a person who reflected an industry that he had come to despise. When I saw the pictures of Thompson, the head of the healthcare agency, sort of walking alone, not only did he not have security, he didn't even have staff. I think a lot of that is going to change for an industry that will now view itself as a potential target from the New York Police Department and New York perspective, in the end, it was really going quite public, as NYPD did with pictures and every picture that they could find, including a later one that they disclosed where he was in a taxicab that was the trigger for the McDonald's employee to know who was sitting in that restaurant. So in some ways it's old fashioned policing which ultimately got him, which was get out to the public and ask if anyone sees this person. I suppose there's also just a much bigger point here around what didn't happen after the killing. The gun now appears to be what we call a ghost gun. And for most people know that Americans are a very armed society. Ghost guns are sort of a new factor in a very common, complicated and violent country because of course they are basically at home kits made with 3D printers. There are regulations in this country to try to stop them and it's before our Supreme Court right now. And so that is a huge factor in terms of will we come out of this thinking about this kind of weaponry differently? And the likelihood is no. We are just a country that finds it very hard to put gun restrictions on this. But I think what happened and how he, by him evading the NYPD as well as shooting the CEO of a company that is the leading healthcare company, I think it just the way that he became sort of like this Robin Hood is just a horrible part of this story. And so when you ask like what didn't happen is there just wasn't sufficient outrage. And I think we have a lot to learn from that. A society that begins to think it's going to solve its public policy problem, problems about healthcare by shooting the CEOs of healthcare companies is a country that has lost its way. Juliette Kayem still to come in this podcast, in the islands of the South Pacific, deep sea mining for rare metals, they present a huge potential for our country. Countries like us at the forefront of impacts of climate change are struggling to find ways to build resilience. There is little sign of an end to the political chaos in South Korea. President Yoon Suk Yeol has refused to step down after trying to declare martial law last week. Now his own office say even it is unable to say who's in charge of the country. I asked our Asia Pacific editor Mickey Bristow to describe what's happening. Disarray is the least word you could perhaps use. Chaos, complete chaos, really at the top of South Korean politics at the moment. What you have had over the last few days is this deepening crisis. Had Yoon Seung Yol, the president, stepped down, resigned, or had he been impeached at the weekend through Audrey and Martial law Last week there could have been an orderly transfer of power to the Prime Minister. Constitutionally, everybody would be clear where everyone stood. But that didn't happen. He's decided to hold on to power as long as he can. He's been supported by his party who refused to vote with the opposition for the President's impeachment. So he's still in power but of course authority is drained away from him. And over the last couple of days it's been unclear exactly what power he does exercise. The Ministry of Defense said he was still in charge of the armed forces. He was commander in chief. The Foreign Affairs Department suggested he's still in charge of diplomacy. South Korea's foreign affairs. But if the President's own office is today saying it is unclear who is in charge of the country, then that really is something. Remember, we're talking about South Korea for the last few decades it's been a stable and reliable democracy. If the President's office doesn't know who's in charge, then who does? And Nikki, some details have been coming out about that very brief period of martial law last week and how it all happened. Yeah, there have been lots of other things happening inside and outside Parliament today, a flurry of activity. Perhaps the most eye catching is the chief of the Special Warfare Command, essentially the person in charge of sending troops into Parliament last week to effect martial law. Previously we believed that the order for martial law came and the order for the troops to move came from the Ministry of Defence. It now appears from this testimony from this army commander that it was Mr. Yoon himself who on several occasions called the commander, demanded he send troops to Parliament. And also whilst legislators were gathering inside Parliament to vote down martial law, the President called the commander and said get those people out, break down the doors, drag the legislators out, stop them from voting before there's a quorum, before there's enough of them to vote for martial law. The commander said he refused to do that. The politicians gathered, they voted down martial law. The President accepted that. So real details about the cutened, frustrating and the difficulty that existed in South Korean politics and really how it could have gone either way had this commander not decided to refuse the order from President Yoon. Mickey Bristow, a powerful media patriarch, a chosen son and his squabbling siblings. It is a succession battle worthy of Hollywood fiction and it is being played out in a US court. The 93 year old media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has failed in a legal bid to change his family trust so that his son Lachlan gets editorial control over his media empire. The trust currently splits power to control news corps and fox news among Mr. Murdoch's four eldest children. When he dies, a court in the US state of Nevada said Rupert Murdoch had acted in bad faith. Our North America business correspondent Michelle Fleury reports. Rupert Murdoch tried to amend a 1999 family trust to give his son Lachlan more control over the family media empire, bypassing siblings Prudence, Elizabeth and James, who don't necessarily share his conservative views. This ruling, guaranteeing a save for all of the children, could change the editorial stance of the Murdoch family's many media assets. These include controlling stakes in the Times and Sun newspapers in the UK and perhaps most significantly, Fox News in America, the powerhouse conservative network that's had a huge influence on Republican politics and right wing audiences. James, Elizabeth and Prudence welcomed the decision, saying in a statement obtained by the BBC that they hope to move beyond this litigation to focus on strengthening and rebuilding relationships among all family members. Michelle Fleury to France now. And a disturbing legal case that's made headlines around the world. Just a warning. You may find the following details distressing involving a woman called Giselle Pellico. Her husband of 50 years is accused of drugging her into unconsciousness and allowing strangers to rape her. Ms. Pellico waived her right to anonymity in Paris. Her lawyer, Stephane Babonneau, speaking with his client's permission, has been telling my colleague Victoria Derbyshire about the impact the case has had, not just on her own wellbeing, but on how French society has reacted to the case by listening to the victim herself. We were immediately convinced that this woman was telling the truth, that she was genuinely unaware of what was happening to her. She explained to us how for 10 years she's been trying to understand what was happening to her by consulting with doctors, by talking with her family, with her environment, and no one was able to find any explanation. What were your fears, your concerns, before telling Giselle Pellicow exactly who this involved, what it involved and the scale of it over almost a decade? Well, that she could have a nervous breakdown, of course, because we were all very worried that a human being who has been exposed to hundreds of extreme sexual abuse without knowing that after being told what had happened to her, she couldn't accept to watch the videos or even to continue the discussion about the extent of the rapes, how many, how long? She wasn't ready for that. It took her almost three years to be able to accept, to have this very straightforward conversation about what was in the case. And she accepted that because at that time she was already thinking to allow the public into the courtroom. So she felt that she needed to be fully aware and fully informed of the case, even if, as many others, she would have preferred to live without knowing if it was possible. But it wasn't. And she, as you say, it took her four years to watch the footage, the videos that her husband had filmed. How did she respond? How did she deal with what she was viewing? She felt extremely humiliated by what she was seeing. Extremely humiliated. And she was extremely shocked of seeing herself becoming an object. And I think that this achieved to help her deciding that she wanted a public trial because she felt that it was important that people understood what happened to her. Let's talk about Madame Pellico's decision that that she didn't want to be anonymous, that she wanted to waive her right to anonymity and open up the case to journalists and to members of the public. Why was that important to her? She realized it wouldn't be possible to understand the extent of what happened and that this story could be useful to others and that in order to ensure that this would not happen again to anyone, it was important for the public to know how this could happen. What kind of men are on trial here? We heard many times that they are ordinary men. They're ordinary men because they are well integrated men. For most of them, they have jobs, families, friends. But they're not ordinary in the choices they made. So what this trial is trying to achieve is to understand what has led to this horrendous story. Stephane Baboneau Pacific islands are often small in landmass, but vast in terms of the ocean waters and the seabed they control. So deep sea mining is a huge opportunity. For many of them. It's the process of removing rock like nodules packed full of metals from the ocean floor. The tiny Pacific island nation of the Cook Islands is looking at how feasible it is for them, but at what environmental cost. Our Pacific correspondent, Katie Watson now reports from the island of Rarotonga. My name is Alana Motomaru Smith. I am the current director of the Epokaya Society, a local non government environmental organization based here in the Cook Islands. We want to show the world that there is actually opposition to deep sea mining here in the Cook Islands and not everyone is in support or would prefer a significant amount of time being put into this space before any big decisions are made. Low lying Pacific islands are among the nation's most vulnerable to climate change. With rising sea levels, the ocean remains Their greatest threat, but it's also their greatest provider. They fish in it. They live off tourists drawn to their turquoise waters. Now the Cook Islands wants to dig deeper to the ocean floor, where there are millions of rocks or nodules, packed full of some of the most in demand resources in the world. Cobalt, manganese and nickel, crucial elements in things like electric car batteries and mobile phones. The Prime Minister, Mark Brown, is leading the Cook Island's push to mine the ocean. Such is life on a small island. He wears more than one hat. He's the tourism minister and the Seabed Minerals minister too. They present a huge potential for our country. Countries like us at the forefront of impacts of climate change are struggling to find ways to build resilience against the increasing impacts of climate change in our countries. You think you're finding a way forward that's different, but yet people are saying this is risky, you shouldn't do it. We know that for the last 20 years we haven't been able to get the financing from the larger emitting countries. So we've got to look to ways to how we can protect ourselves and our seabed minerals provides an opportunity for us to be able to look at how we can potentially exploit this resource. It's a hot and sunny day here on Rarotonga and we've come to the main port on the island and we've boarded the Anua Nua Moana, which is the research ship owned by Moana Minerals. South African Hans Smit is the CEO of Moana Minerals, which has an exploration license in the Cook Islands. We have a couple of ways of sampling nodules. The best way to explain it is a cookie cutter. You've got dough and you press a cookie cutter into it and you lift it out. And what's really important about that is it's undisturbed. So when we look at it at the surface, that's what it looks like on the seafloor. The worry, though, is that if they start mining, this untouched area of the ocean will be disturbed. To scoop up the nodules on a large scale, a robot will move along the seafloor, hoovering up the rocks. The sand that's brought up as a byproduct will then be put back into the sea. And that's one of the sticking points, how best to discard that material without disturbing marine life. Nothing we do in life is risk free. So if we want to have this lifestyle, we want our cell phones and we want our electric vehicles and the like. We need the metals. The Cook Islands sees deep sea mining as giving this nation some security in an uncertain future, future income that will give its people better healthcare, education and opportunity. The downside, though, isn't yet clear. Internationally, there's a growing call for a halt on deep sea mining while more research is done and this island is split. Katie Watson and that's all from us for now. But there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast. 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 X at globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Nora Houle. The producer was Rachel Wright. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Marles. And until next time, Goodbye. Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation. It felt a really safe and welcoming space after yoga classes. I felt amazing. But soon that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker. A journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders. I don't have my passport. I don't have my phone. I don't have my bank cards. I have nothing. The passport being taken, the being in a house and not feeling like they can leave. World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry, where the hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually and it's done so skillfully that you don't realize. And it's like this. The secret that's there. I wanted to believe that, you know, that whatever they were doing, even if it seemed gross to me, was for some spiritual reason that I couldn't understand. Revealing the hidden secrets of a global yoga network. I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this and to put my reputation and everything else on the line. I want truth and justice and for other people to not be hurt, for things to be different in the future, to bring it into the light and almost alchemize some of that evil stuff that went on and take back the power. World of Secrets Season 6 the Bad Guru Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.