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Global News Podcast
Syria's new leader says armed factions will come under state control
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Turkey says there's no room for Kurdish militias in Syria's future
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Nicola Coughlan
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VGW Group Void where prohibited by law 18 + terms and conditions apply. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Andrew Peach and in the early hours of Monday 23rd December, these are our main stories. Syria's new leader says he wants all weapons and armed factions to come under state control. Germany promises a thorough investigation into the Magdeburg attack. Also in this podcast we bumped into a bunch of young kids and they just decided to run with me for about 7km all the way to their school. In fact, we actually had to stop them to actually tell them to go to school because they just wanted to keep going with us. The Ugandan who's walked and run from Cape Town to London. Foreign let's start the podcast with the latest from Syria, where in the past few hours we've been learning more about the new administration's plans for defense and security. There have been concerns about the country's stability ever since the sudden fall of the Assad regime two weeks ago, including fears of the so called Islamic State group growing in power today. The new de facto leader, Ahmed Al Sharar addressed those concerns in a news conference with the Turkish Foreign Minister, Hakan Fiden. He said that armed fact would begin to be dissolved and incorporated into the Syrian army. And he announced plans to bring all weapons in the country under state control, including those held by the mainly Kurdish sdf. We will not by any means allow for weapons outside the control of the state, whether from revolutionary factions or factions in SDF areas. We need to Close this chapter as quickly as possible because the presence of rogue arms in the country is what leads to chaos and unstable security. I think there is wide agreement among the factions. God willing, things will work out well. Our Middle east regional editor, Sebastian Usher is in Beirut and told me more about Turkey's involvement. Hakan Firan is the first foreign minister to go to Damascus into the toppling of Bashar Al Assad and the taking of power, essentially for now at least, by Ahmad Al Shara and his HTS group. Now, what he was saying is in one sense a continuation of his efforts to portray himself as a pragmatist, as a moderate, as a man who wants the future of Syria to be very different from its past, to see a unified Syria after the years of conflict and division. And of course, that is something to be expected and something that would be welcomed by the rest of the world. And it is a very difficult situation. I mean, there are a number of military groups that are operative in Syria. They include HTS and other similar factions, factions down in the south, which also rose with HTS in the toppling of Bashar al Assad. ISIS is still operative to an extent and most importantly, I think perhaps is the SDF for Kurdish led forces over in the northeast. Now, that's where it gets complicated because essentially, as we're saying, Turkey was perhaps the key backer of HTS and Ahmed El Shara and it sees the SDF as simply an offshoot of the Kurdish separatists in Turkey and regards them as a terror group and has actually mounted several invasions into the north of Syria over the past years to push them back. So it's interesting that Ahmad Al Shara in this meeting with the Turkish foreign minister, should make such a priority of the SDF and that they should give up their weapons. Obviously, if Syria is to be united, that is going to have to happen. But whether taking on the SDF now endangering some of the gains that the SDF has actually made in terms. I mean, remember that this is the group that, with U.S. support, essentially defeated ISIS. And it has run the northeast of a country probably in just about the most efficient way that any part of a country has been run during the conflict. So there's a lot to lose. And the SDF certainly feels that its position is coming under more and more attack. It never really took on Assad's forces, but it's certainly now very much the focus of the attentions of Turkey and of Ahmad Al Shara. Obviously, Ahmad Al Shar will hope that there will be no new armed conflict over this. But that is a possibility because the sdf, the Kurdish administration there, feels it has a lot to lose. Our Middle east regional editor, Sebastian Usher. Officials in Gaza say a wave of Israeli attacks has killed at least 28 people, including children and 13 members of one family. A school sheltering displaced families and a hospital among the sites struck. Israel said Hamas had been using the school as a command center. Pope France Francis has again condemned attacks on Gaza, describing Israel's actions as cruelty towards children. Our correspondent Emir Nader reports from Jerusalem. In the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, wrapped bodies are lined up and funeral prayers recited after more Israeli airstrikes. Thirteen people were also killed when airstrikes struck a house in Gaza's Deir El Balah neighborhood. And at least eight Palestinians were killed, including four children. Children. When a school sheltering displaced families was hit near Gaza City, the Israeli military said it was targeting a Hamas command center that was operating there. A spokeswoman for the UN aid agency UNRA, Juliet Toomer, called the attacks horrific. Over the past 24 hours, there's been an escalation in Gaza where civilians and civilian infrastructure have been hit, and this is becoming commonplace, but it shouldn't be the case. At Kemal Adwan Hospital in the north of Gaza, staff have been issuing desperate pleas. The hospital director, Dr. Hassam Abu Safiya, said he didn't know why they were being targeted. The IDF said it hasn't used airstrikes on the hospital, but didn't comment on reports of shelling and gunfire. The World Health Organization has called for an immediate ceasefire around the vicinity of the hospital, where 80 patients are receiving care. On 7 October last year, George Anton, an aid worker in Gaza City, moved into the compound of the Holy Family Church, Gaza's only Catholic outpost with more than 500 parishioners. George, his wife and three children have been taking shelter there while the ground invasion of the Israeli army and the ensuing conflict continued around them. George has been talking to my colleague Emily Buchanan, and told her what his children are thinking about the prospect of a second Christmas. In the church compound, they tell me about their dreams for Christmas. You know, they want chocolate, they miss chocolate. They miss the warm room in our house, they miss the Christmas tree. They tell me every time that, okay, we were doing this and that before the war, can we do it? That I try my best to give them the maximum that I can do for Christmas. But I also explained to them that this is the situation that we are living in. It's not in our hand that we can do whatever we have used to do before. For instance, we used to go to the market, to go to a restaurant, to have a Christmas dinner and then a Christmas lunch. They go to the sea, they go to visit their friends and we go to our relatives. We are missing all this. When you look at your family, do you ever regret staying? I mean, it was a big decision to make, wasn't it, at the beginning of this war, Given that it's gone on for so long, do you, do you regret staying now? Not at all. My family actually supports my decision to stay here, you know, because we believe that it's not only staying here because of my decision. They know that we have a very important duty to our church, to our Christian community in Gaza, that if everyone will leave here, so we will destroy the Christian existence in Gaza. And this is what we do not need, because Gaza is our city and this is our homeland. You know, we belong to here. And they understand this very well and they support me to this. And the Pope is in daily contact with you, I understand. I believe you wished him happy 88th birthday last week. How important is it that he is there and supporting you? You know, it's exactly like what you feel when you have your father support you every day and he hold you and he tells you that he loves you and he supports you and he stays beside you and he knows everything that you need and he's trying his best to protect you. Our Pope is our father, actually. His phone every day makes us feel like we have a f. You know, we are not left alone. And he tried his best to provide us with what we need. Through the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. It became like a routine of our daily life here in Gaza to have a call from the Pope. So we are waiting for this every evening we make sure that we are still safe and alive. The German government has pledged to conduct a full investigation into whether the security services missed warnings about Taleb Abdul Abdul Mohsen. He's the man charged with plowing a car into the Christmas market in Magdeburg, killing five people and injuring more than 200 others. The family of a boy who died have said he'll always live in their hearts. From Magdeburg, here's our correspondent Bethany Bell. The youngest victim of the attack has been named as Andre Gleisner, who was 9 years old. In a social media post, his mother called him her little teddy bear. It's also emerged he'd been a member of the children's fire brigade. In the town of Warle, an hour's drive from Magdeburg. The fire team there paid tribute to him. Four women aged between 45 and 75 were also killed. They've not been identified. The Christmas market area is now open to the public again. Police cordons have been removed, but the stands and the stalls remain closed. It's quiet and eerie. People are slowly returning to the site of Friday's attack. This man saw it happen. I was on my way home from work and was standing at the entrance of the market where the car drove in and passed me. The car didn't hit me, but the people next to me were lying on the ground. My first reflex was to run away and after a couple of seconds I realized I had to go back to try and help. The suspect, Talib Al Abdelmhsen from Saudi Arabia, has been remanded in custody. He faces charges of murder, attempted murder and dangerous bodily harm. The German Ambassador to the uk, Miguel Berger, said there had been warning signs. He was not an unknown. He was very active on social media. He had given interviews to national, to international papers. He was an activist who then turned his anger, as it looks, not only against Saudi Arabia, but also against the German authorities. And there are a lot of questions right now, but I think we need to give the authorities the necessary time to look into all of that. The Saudi authorities said they had warned about his extremist views several times, adding to the pressure on the German government to provide answers about whether more could have been done to stop the attack. Here in Britain, the Anglican Church is again under pressure because of its handling of historical sexual abuse cases. There are further revelations that a priest, David Tudor, who's at the centre of one such case, was twice reappointed by Stephen Cottrell, now the Archbishop of York. Stephen Cottrell become the church's most senior figure and head of its worldwide congregation of 85 million people. When Justin Welby steps down as Archbishop of Canter following criticism of his handling of a different case of abuse. Here's our Religion editor, Ali Mugbool on Monday when we broadcast our investigation about David Tudor. Stephen Cottrell acknowledged that when he became Bishop of Chelmsford in 2010, he was fully briefed about the man in his charge. He learned of the abuse allegations of Tudor being banned from being alone with children, and later that the priest had paid a large sum to an alleged victim. The Archbishop of York says it was a situation that was awful to live with and manage. Yet we now find that Tudor's role as area dean overseeing 12 parishes, was renewed twice, in 2013 and 2018. Stephen Cottrell's office says he accepts responsibility for David Tudor remaining as area dean, that he acknowledges that this could have been handled differently, but that his focus was on managing the risk posed by David Tudor. The Bishop of Gloucester, Rachel Treweek, wouldn't be drawn on whether the Archbishop of York should resign. I think there are very important conversation and processes to go on that are not going to take place over public media. You asked me if it made a difference. I do think there are big questions to be looked at. I heard that news with shock and dismay, but I want the proper process to take place. One of the victims of David Tudor, a priest who was only suspended in 2019 when another police investigation was launched, says the new details only strengthen her belief that the Archbishop of York should step down. Ali macbool reporting. And still to come on this podcast, Happy Christmas. Keep strong. Keep the faith in who you are. Keep the faith in Ukraine Slavo Ukraini A Carol Service Giving a message of hope for Ukraine World of Secrets is where untold stories are exposed and in this new series we investigate the dark side of the wellness industry, following the story of a woman who joined a yoga school only to uncover a world she never expected. I feel that I have no other choice. 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Imagina tescucharto cancion favorita como sifora la primera ves te presentamos el totalment Nissan kicks consonido Bose personal plus boces una marca registrada de the Bose Corporation 88 year old iwao hakamada was once the world's longest serving death row inmate. Convicted of four murders in Japan in 1982, he spent 46 years awaiting execution in prison, mostly in solitary confinement. But his sister Hideko, never gave up on him. She campaigned for his retrial, believing the evidence used against him in court was fabricated. In 2014, as Iwao's mental state was severely deteriorating, he was released into Hideko's care and a rare retrial was granted in September this year. Finally, Iwao was acquitted. The court ruled he'd been framed for a crime he didn't commit. Our Tokyo correspondent, Shaima Halil sat down with Hideko to talk about her brother's ordeal. For nearly 60 years, Iwao Hakamada had been fighting for his innocence, and when it was finally declared in court, he wasn't there for the moment. Waiting for execution in solitary confinement for nearly half a century took a heavy toll on Iwao's mental health. He'd been exempt from attending court hearings for years. His sister and longtime advocate, 91 year old Hideko Hakamada, had been in court on his behalf. When her brother was acquitted in September, she was visibly emotional as she thanked his supporters outside the court. Hideko has been taking care of her younger brother, now 88, since he was released pending a retrial in 2014. We sat down in her home west of Tokyo, and she told me what it was like for her when Yuo was finally declared innocent. I was really happy. When the judge said that the defendant is not guilty, I was in tears. I am not normally a tearful person. And what was the moment like when you told your brother that he was acquitted? How did he react? When I got home, I told him he was acquitted on retrial, but he didn't reply. I couldn't really tell whether he understood or not. In 1968, Iwao Hakamada was found guilty of killing his boss at a soybean factory, as well as the man's wife and their two teenage children. The bodies were recovered from a fire. All four had been stabbed to death. Iwao initially denied the allegations, but later gave what he came to describe as a coerced confession following beatings and interrogations that lasted up to 12 hours a day. Two years after his arrest, he was convicted of murder and arson and sentenced to death. He changed completely and became very quiet. Once I went back to see him alone, he said there was an execution yesterday. It was a person in the next cell from Then on, he totally changed mentally. In 2014, Yi Wal was released from prison and granted a retrial. It took nearly 10 years for the retrial to begin because of lengthy legal proceedings. Then, in September, Iwao Hakamada was declared innocent. His supporters cheered outside the court when the verdict was announced. In his ruling, the Shizuoka District Court presiding judge said the evidence used to incriminate Mr. Hakamada was fabricated and that the investigators added blood stains to the clothing items and hid them in the soybean tank well after the incident took place. Few weeks after Iwao's acquittal, the local police authorities officially apologized to him for the time he spent on death row for a crime he didn't commit. At Hakamada's home, the chief of the Shizuoka police bowed in front of Iwao. We caused you indescribable anxiety and burden. We are truly sorry. This is you. As we stand at her dining table, Hideko smiles, showing me photographs of Iwao as a young man and a former professional boxer. The two are the youngest of six siblings. Ever since they were children, Hideko had always taken care of her little brother. And so it continues. I wanted to make the house as bright as possible. I painted the door pink. I believe that if he is in a bright place and lived a cheerful life, he will eventually heal. But it has been 10 years and he is not better. Maybe it can't be helped. This is what happens when you are locked up and crammed in a small prison cell for more than 40 years. IWAO has a quiet life now and goes on daily outings with volunteers who help with his care. Hideko refuses to look back. And when I ask her who she blames for her brother's suffering, astonishingly, she says, no one. I have no feeling of anger. If I got angry, the retrial would never started. Holding a grudge will not get us anywhere. I don't think about that anymore. I don't think about the past. I don't know how long I'm going to live. I just want Ewa to live a peaceful and quiet life. A report from our correspondent in Tokyo, Shaimahalil Carol. Services are a time to come together and commemorate the year gone by. But for Ukrainians, Christmas can be a bitter reminder of what and who they've lost. London St. Pancras Station has been hosting a charity service, Carols of Hope. Our reporter Olga Malchevska was there, and she spoke to the British actor, writer and comedian Stephen Fry. So I'M here at San Pancra station and we can hear the. With beautiful music, which is performed by Ukrainian refugees. Now we can see now the beautiful Ukrainian choir is replacing the music and they will sing some Ukrainian songs for us. And we will have a special guest, Stephen Fry, who came kindly to support here today these beautiful events. And why do you think it is important for you to come here and support the event? When I had. I had the extraordinary experience two years ago, I was invited by Madame Zelenska, the wife, the first lady of Ukraine, the wife of the president, who holds every year a conference, and two years ago she wanted to hold a conference on mental health, which is a subject that I'm very involved in over here. I'm president of mind, the largest of our mental health charities. And I was so fascinated that a country that's at war could have the honesty and the openness to talk about the mental health of its citizens. They care about their people and they care about the mental health of their soldiers, the soldiers coming back, and of the families and of the children and the citizens of Ukraine. And they were very anxious to discover more about what could be done to help and to be honest and open and to encourage Ukrainian people who are not used to it. Just as we in Britain, we never talked about it 20 years ago. It's quite new to talk about mental health with openness and without shame or stigma. And the Ukrainian people are starting to do this, and it's very healthy to do it. That's the paradox. It's healthy to talk about ill health. If you don't talk about it, it gets worse. I know you went to Ukraine and what was one thing which impressed you the most, or maybe surprised? Oh, the. The humor, the laughter. Although there is a terrible situation, of course, they are people of great strength. And again, a sign of health is to laugh. They laugh. I mean, it's black humor, dark humor sometimes, but it's also humor that connects them to each other and reminds them who they are. Ukrainians fighting to be Ukrainians, to stay Ukrainians, not to be invaded. I mean, most British people are not aware of the history of your country. Things like the Holodora, the unbelievable suffering that has been undergone by the Ukrainian people over the past 150 years in their fight to be an independent people. And yet, as you were saying, humor is so important for Ukrainians that they once even elected a president who used to be an actor, working as a comedian before. The most popular comedian in the country. Right. And they identify. Just wanted to jump on that as well. And just to ask you, well, you have here in Britain, all generations who are united in the love to you and your art. You have people who remember you about your masterpiece, a bit of Lori and Fry. Right. And you also have people who are watching you on Tik Tok today, younger generation. And what would be your message to Ukrainians? A very short one. And then we'll jump into the choir. Happy Christmas. Keep strong, keep the faith in who you are. Keep the faith in Ukraine. Slava, Ukraine. Thank you so much. And now we are. Well, let's listen to the beautiful Ukrainian choir who will sing Silent Night for us, which is the Silent Night in Ukrainian and it is called Svartanich. Let's listen to them. And that was my colleague Olga Marcheowska at St Pancras station in London. Now, they tend to know their way from one end of a city to another. But could taxi drivers, geographical knowledge, be providing them with a very different benefit? Scientists have discovered that cabbies are less likely than average to develop Alzheimer's disease, a piece of good fortune which may be down to their distinctive cognitive powers. So how did researchers work this out? Chris Smith from Cambridge University explains. This is what we call an observational study. So what you do is you don't randomise people to something and then see what happens to them. You look at all the people doing different things and see what their outcomes are. And it is subtly different, because when you look at the rate of outcome disease across the population, you can say, well, we expect this number of people in the population to get Alzheimer's disease. Then you break them all up into what they do for a job and you see if any job is higher or lower than that average number. And taxi drivers, ambulance drivers, they turn out to be right at the bottom of the risk list, 1% compared to some occupations that seem to be associated with an 8% risk. And you could say, ah, right, well, I'll go and be a taxi driver and I will immediately reduce my risk of getting Alzheimer's disease. Now, that might be true, but actually, statistically that might be a fallacy, because what might be happening here is that people who are at low risk of Alzheimer's disease because of the way that their brain is wired up also happen to have all the right neurological attributes to be a really good taxi driver, store lots of spatial information, know their way between A and B incredibly well, and therefore having that sort of brain composition selects for being a taxi driver and means you're at low risk of Alzheimer's. Disease. So we don't know if it's cause or effect. And you've got to be really careful about attributing cause when it's not causal, it's an association. It does make a difference because about 24 years ago, Eleanor McGuire, who's a researcher in London, published a paper that got headlines all around the world when she showed that taxi drivers brains do change in response to being a taxi driver, that she looked at people who hadn't and then had completed the knowledge. The amazing tests that taxi drivers in London have to go through to learn literally thousands of routes right the way across London. She found that this affected a region of the brain that we know is uniquely bound up with being able to find your way around and have a really good three dimensional map of the world inside your head. That's the hippocampus. And one region of the hippocampus in these taxi drivers was bigger after they finished the knowledge. Therefore, one argument is, well, if you can flex your brain in this way, in the same way that building muscles in the gym, if you build brain power by doing cognitively demanding tasks, perhaps that does mean you are at lower risk of developing certain memory eroding conditions like Alzheimer's disease. Against that theory is that Alzheimer's tends to. While it does start in regions like the hippocampus, this area I'm talking about, it actually is a global brain shrinkage. So it's harder to argue that flexing one bit of the brain more ought to then have a protective effect everywhere. Which is why scientists are saying we're not sure if it's cause or effect. Dr. Chris Smith from Cambridge University, a runner from Uganda, has finished an epic journey of more than 13,000 km on foot to draw attention to racism. De Ocato ran or walked from Cape Town in South Africa back to London where he lives, sparring a few sections where he had to cross seas or avoid the war in Sudan. He told the BBC he wanted to profile the history of human migration out of Africa and that he experienced racism when his journey reached Europe. Danny Eberhard reports. I run because it helps me to feel free, because it takes me back to my childhood of running in Uganda, in Kampala, that childhood play of not having any worries. It just kind of roll and roam he has over deserts, grasslands and mountain ranges. In July last year, Deocato set out from the long March to Freedom Monument in Cape Town that commemorates South Africa's long liberation struggle. More than 500 days later, he finished in West London to the cheers of supporters. He told me how finishing felt. I was really blown away being able to cross the finish line with my mother. I never imagined it. Dayo conceived this personal odyssey as a way of profiling the history of human migration out of Africa to show we all come from the same place. He's been using running to highlight racism since the murder of George Floyd by a US policeman. On this journey, there were physical hardships. In recent days, he's had to walk due to back pain. And there were other tough times. A three week spell in a South Sudanese jail left him in frail health. And he experienced racism firsthand in Europe in some hostile encounters where he was treated as an illegal migrant. But there was human kindness too, and joy. Meeting his father and younger brother and sister in Uganda for the first time in years. And when school children joined him in Kenya. One particular day I was feeling low. I woken up, been waking up at 3, 4 in the morning and really tired, covering about 50 to 60 kilometers at a time. And then we bumped into a bunch of young kids around the ages of 5 to 10 and they just decided to run with me for about 7km all the way to their school. And in fact we actually had to stop them to actually tell them to go to school because they just wanted to keep going with us. And that really uplifted me so much and gave me the incentive to keep going despite the trials and exhaustion it had, he told the BBC, all been incredibly worthwhile. So what's Dayo looking forward to now? To sleep and wake up in the morning, not having to feel like I need to get up again to go for another run in the morning so I can be able to rest and then to be able to enjoy Christmas with the family and loved ones as well. After nearly a year and a half of running to be free, De Ocato's now free not to run. Danny Eberhard reporting. And that's all from us for now. There'll be a new edition of Global News to download later. If you'd like to comment on this edition, drop us an email GlobalPodcast podcast@BBC.co.uk or on X. We are at Global Newspod. This edition was mixed by Abby Wiltshire. The producer was Richard Hamilton. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Andrew Peach. Thank you for listening and until next time, goodbye. Hello, I'm Katya Adler, host of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. Each weekday we break down one big news story with fresh perspectives from journalists around the world. From artificial intelligence to divisive politics tearing our societies apart from the movements of money and markets, to the human stories that touch our lives. We bring you in depth insights from across the BBC and beyond. Listen to the global story wherever you get your BBC podcasts.