Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney dies

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau. Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

0:46I'm Andrew Peach and at 16 hours GMT on Tuesday the 4th of November, we look back at the life of the former US Vice President Dick Cheney, who's died. Sudan's military reviews its security situation after its last stronghold in Darfur was seized by paramilitaries, and New York chooses a new mayor. Also in this podcast, archaeologists in Kenya find evidence that the earliest humans passed down technology through thousands of generations, and... One day, these cubs will be able to leap six metres and ambush their prey. But that day is a long way into the future. Drama and predators at a watering hole in Zambia The former United States Vice President Dick Cheney has died at the age of 84 Mr Cheney served two terms during the presidency of George W Bush Often described as one of the most powerful vice presidents in US history he was a leading light of the so-called neocon conservatives who dominated US politics at the start of the 21st century He'll also be remembered for the role he played in orchestrating America's controversial war on terror.

2:02In a statement, Mr Bush said Dick Cheney's death was a loss to the nation and he'd be remembered as one of the finest public servants of his generation. Our former Washington correspondent Paul Adams looks back at his life. And I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I'm about to enter, so help me God. On which I'm about to enter, so help me God. Congratulations. Richard Bruce Cheney, sworn in as vice president in January 2001, a Washington veteran returning to the heart of power after almost a decade in business. But a man whose lasting reputation would be forged in a battle that began just a few months later.

2:44In some ways, Dick Cheney was an archetype of the American West, strong, silent, more interested in action than words. He said his favourite virtue was integrity, and his vision of happiness was fly-fishing on the Snake River in his home state of Wyoming. At the age of 34, after just five years in Washington, he became the country's youngest ever presidential chief of staff, serving Gerald Ford in the White House. He went on to represent Wyoming for a decade in the House of Representatives, before George Bush Sr. appointed him Secretary of Defense in 1989. Dick Cheney oversaw the US invasion of Panama and successfully fought the first of his two wars against Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

3:25His twin associations with the Bush dynasty and Iraq would come to dominate the rest of his political career.

3:35The attacks of 9-11 and the beginning of the so-called War on Terror, a colossal challenge for a new President Bush and for the tough, taciturn man at his side, A man who, in the president's absence from the White House on that fateful day, wasn't afraid to take charge, as veteran Washington journalist Tom DeFrank recalls. Cheney was in the White House. Cheney was hustled down to the secure basement room of the White House, and he immediately started calling people. He called the president, he called the Pentagon, he started calling the appropriate government agencies. Cheney knew instinctively what had to be done.

4:13Before long, Dick Cheney was being described as the most powerful vice president in American history. At a time of national anxiety, he expressed the kind of steady resolve Americans wanted to hear. When diplomacy fails, we must be prepared to face our responsibilities and be willing to use force if necessary. Direct threats require decisive action. That decisive action included launching a war against Iraq, despite the lack of evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks of 9-11. Dick Cheney was among those who spoke with most apparent conviction about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

4:52His misplaced confidence about how quickly the war might be won and his willingness to pursue America's opponents through what he himself described as the dark side made him a lot of enemies at home and abroad. He was unrepentant on the use of extreme methods of interrogation, supported the rendition of terror suspects and the use of Guantanamo Bay as a military prison. And he insisted all along that no one had ever misled the public about the reasons for going to war. The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight, but any suggestion that pre-war information was distorted, hyped or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false.

5:31Senator John McCain put it best. It is a lie. The vice president spoke with a great deal of authority, with a great deal of certainty, and he was wrong. The Democrat Henry Waxman was one of Dick Cheney's most relentless critics in Congress, urging publication of a detailed record of misleading White House statements on the threat posed by Iraq. He was wrong on the facts. What we don't know, and maybe we'll never know for sure, is whether he knew he was wrong. And maybe he figured that, while he didn't have all the evidence, He thought it was a good guess and decided to make those claims anyway.

6:09But in retrospect, a good guess is not a good reason to go to war. Over a period of 32 years, Dick Cheney experienced five heart attacks, although none of them while serving in the White House. A generally private man, there were also moments when his family was in the spotlight. His support for his gay daughter put him at odds with his own administration's policy. But as George Bush's strong, silent right-hand man, Dick Cheney showed just what the much-derided office of vice-president could be, whether people liked it or not. Our correspondent Paul Adams on the life of Dick Cheney. The city of El Fasha in Sudan was, until just over a week ago, the military's last remaining stronghold in the Darfur region.

6:51It's now under the control of the paramilitary rapid support forces and the reports of mass slaughter that have been compared by war monitors to the genocide in Rwanda. Sudan's military government is now meeting to discuss the security situation there. As I heard from our global affairs reporter in Nairobi, Richard Kagoe. There are reports of mass killings. There are reports about sexual violence, attacks targeting aid workers, widespread lootings, reports of people being abducted, and also starvation. And a lot of people who've been trying to flee from the city of El Fasha en route to a town called Tawila, which is about 37 miles west of El Fasha.

7:32We're hearing reports of the elderly women and children who are also exposed to sexual violence and some young people have been forcefully conscripted to fight along the RSF. And this has really caught the eye of the International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor's Office, who's saying that they're currently collecting evidence because of these reports and saying that possibly some of these do amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. It's all very well the Sudanese government talking about the security situation, but what could it possibly do to improve it? What could anyone do? I mean, that's really the million-dollar question here, because they're coming to meet, and top on the agenda would be the security situation in the country, and this is in reference to the fall of El Fasha.

8:17And just next to El Fasha, there's the Kodofan region. There have been reports of ongoing clashes, and the RSF captured a city called Bara, which is also very critical in terms of supplying aid and life-saving assistance. But what we're hearing is that this possibility that the issues of a possible truce that has been pushed by the Quad Initiative, which involved the U.S., Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, are seeking possibly to have a humanitarian truce and then followed by a possible permanent ceasefire and then a nine-month transition. Now, that proposal had been rejected by the Sudanese military government, simply because of the involvement of the UAE, and they're saying that they don't really quite have a voice, and everything has to be factored in the issues that do affect the Sudanese people.

9:05So we're hearing that this is possible, but we saw Trump's senior advisor for Africa, Mossad Boulos, saying yesterday in Egypt that he's received positive responses from both sides, the Sudanese army and the RSF. But it looks like there's need to put international pressure on both sides because the SAAF, the Sudanese army, has been accusing the UAE of barking the RSF. And there are observers saying that the Sudanese army has been receiving support from some of the countries like Egypt, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Just maybe thinking in terms of international pressure, maybe this will bring things to bear.

9:40Richard Kugoy with me from Nairobi. Next to Gaza, and after nearly two years of war, hunger and displacement, A degree of normality has returned for almost 1 ,500 students in Gaza City who are having lessons again in a new tented school. Ahmad Aburiak is an English teacher from the NGO Gaza Great Minds Foundation which organised the school's opening. He's been talking to my colleague Rob Young. The first day was an astonishing day. It was a day of hope, if we can say so. After a very long time without getting back to their school, Now the students are coming not just to receive education, they are coming to see their classmates.

10:19They are coming to see hope again. They are coming to be treated as children, not going here and there and doing the chores, the very hard chores that they have to do from getting water, from getting food for their families, from the bubbly kitchens, etc. So the children are coming to school to find it as another home, as a place they can play freely, feel comfortable and laugh. And are they turning up to school having had a meal that day? Yes, most of them don't have meals during the day. And this is why we are trying to focus more on bringing them daily meals when it's available. But because things here are really challenging, like regarding money, regarding the items on the market, etc.

11:07It's really hard to give a child what he really needs, his right to have a meal in the morning. Most of our students are still suffering from starvation and famine. And they are still living in tents, living in the streets, living in a very dire situation, missing all things related to life. So we are hoping through our organization to give them what they need or the minimum things that they need. And actually, we can do a lot because, you know, our resources are not that big. But we hope to get bigger and help more children. In Gaza, we're not just rebuilding homes. We need to rebuild their mines because those students are the future of Palestine.

11:52And we believe that if we invest on children's mines, this will give peace and freedom to Palestine. Ahmad Abu-Riyak from Gaza Great Mines Foundation. For five years, the cameras of the BBC's Natural History Unit have been focused on four animal families. leopards, hyenas, wild dogs and lions. Now we get the chance to see what they've been seeing in Kingdom, a major new wildlife series narrated by Sir David Attenborough. This is Nsefu in the heart of Zambia.

12:29Part of a national park on the banks of the Luangwa River. Here for five years, we've been following the remarkable story of four rival families. Matt Becker is chief executive of the Zambia Carnivore Program in Nsefu. He's been telling my colleague Nick Robinson about the value of studying animals over a long period, like five years. These animals are really complex. They're the most social of all the carnivores and they're highly intelligent and they're also highly interactive as anyone who watches the program will see. And so studying them for that long was basically what was required to capture these dynamics.

13:12And also the BBC Natural History Unit was able to plug into our longer-term studies that go almost two decades now, studying these individuals that were featured in the films, but also their great-grandparents and sisters and brothers and parents. And so long lineages stemming from a long-term study that was ongoing and joined forces with the BBC to produce this. It's fascinating hearing you talk in that language, talking of them as families, grandparents, all the rest of it. But these families, these different species, they are interlinked intimately, aren't they? Yes, they are. I think while they're very diverse, as you'll see in the show, everything about them evolved with competition between each other.

13:57So lions, hyenas, leopards, wild dogs, their behaviour, their diet, their activities, everything about them is to coexist and successfully compete. We tend to focus, and inevitably, I guess, documentaries focus on the predators rather than the prey, but they're a pretty crucial part of this story. Absolutely. Predators, they are the top, we call them apex predators in ecosystems. So they have an inordinate influence, important to understand them. But when we look at the prey, is there an issue highlighted by this series that there is fewer of those prey, there is less food available as there is habitat loss in Zambia and elsewhere?

14:38Absolutely. I think Nsefu is a paradise, but like everywhere on the planet, it's a paradise at risk. and it has a lot of human impacts. And this is characteristic for predators worldwide. There's a lot of different human impacts and they're losing habitat, they're losing prey, and they're having a lot of direct impacts from humans. And so understanding what those impacts are is a critical component of our work. And I think this series illustrates how highly interactive and interdependent the species are. And that's something that's so complex to disentangle and understand. and then understand how we are influencing that.

15:18And as we've said before, these things evolved over three and a half million years of evolution, these interactions, and in the last 35 years, we're starting to unravel them, and we don't know what the consequences of this could be. Matt Becker, Chief Executive of the Zambia Carnivore Program. Still to come. It represents so much. It represents equality, it represents freedom, It represents equal pay for equal work. I knew I had to win. More than five decades after tennis legend Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in the famous Battle of the Sexes, a modern-day version is being planned.

16:02If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, Hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

16:41New Yorkers have been voting today for their next mayor. The election is one of several races in the US, including in New Jersey, Virginia and California, but it's New York which is getting most attention. The political newcomer, the Democrat candidate Zoran Mamdani, is leading the polls ahead of the former New York governor and Trump-endorsed Andrew Cuomo. If successful, Mr Mamdani, a 34-year-old, could become the youngest mayor in more than a century. A correspondent in New York, Nedda Taufik, has more. As Zahran Mamdani walked the streets of the Upper East Side, he could barely take a few steps without being stopped.

17:18Through viral videos laser-focused on making America's most expensive city more affordable. Make the city affordable. Tackle government waste. And outreach to content creators. The millennial New York State Assemblyman has successfully courted young and disaffected voters, but a wider electorate as well. To those skeptical of a politician who identifies as a Democratic socialist, he's explained in interviews what it means to him. There has to be a better distribution of wealth for all of God's children in this country, and that's the hard part. I asked him out on the campaign trail why he believed his approach was the right one for Democrats in the Trump era.

18:00Our legacy is going to be transforming the most expensive city of the United States into one that's affordable. And it's time for us to understand that to defend democracy is not just to stand up against an authoritarian administration. It is also to ensure that that democracy can deliver on the material needs of working class people right here. His supporters say they finally feel energized at a time when faith in the Democratic Party is at an all-time low. I have been disappointed time and again by sort of the lack of bravery within the party. I think that Zoran specifically has been showing up in spaces that other politicians have not shown up.

18:39But some skeptical New Yorkers worry about the 34-year-old's perceived inexperience and whether he can deliver on his promises to freeze rents on subsidized units and make buses and universal child care free. It's typical snowflake democratic policies. They're not realistic. Government run grocery stores. People think everything's for free. Wall Street leaders are hardly celebrating a democratic socialist potentially leading the world's financial capital. Howard Wolfson is a counselor to the former mayor, Michael Bloomberg. I think that the public safety is really kind of the prerequisite for either success or failure.

19:16I think if people feel safe here, they can tolerate an awful lot of other challenges. Despite his popularity in liberal New York, Democratic leadership in Congress seems worried about the implications of his victory as tensions between moderates and progressives persist. He's got to do the right thing. I mean, he's a communist and going to be mayor of New York. Donald Trump has taken a special interest in the New York race, even threatening to cut federal funding to the city if the new progressive superstar wins. I asked Mamdani how he will handle opposition and those who seek to block him. There is no doubt that there will be opposition as we see that opposition today.

19:54And what has allowed us to surmount the unbelievable amounts of money that has been spent against this campaign, be it in the primary or the general, has been the mass movement that we have created. Zahra Mamdani ending that report by Neda Tafik in New York. Now, the European Convention on Human Rights is 75 years old. The convention had helped create a common legal and political culture of human rights, democracy and the rule of law through Europe. The treaty is now under increasing pressure from nine EU states and the UK over the issue of migration. Our legal correspondent Dominic Khashani told me more.

20:29The European Convention on Human Rights is a document which is at the heart of many of the constitutions of European nations. It was signed initially in 1915. The UK was the first to do so as part of an attempt largely led by Winston Churchill and his allies in the post-war period to try to impose across the whole of continental Europe standards and rights which would prevent any dictator ever coming to power again. And that effectively meant coming up with some basic rules, a right to a fair trial, a right not to be imprisoned without due process, a right to family life, a right to free speech, these kind of things.

21:08It's entirely separate to the European Union. So this is the European body that the UK is still part of. And fundamentally, it gives the UK an opportunity with other countries to come together to try and work through these issues. Now, the controversial thing, Andrew, with the whole setup is the European Court of Human Rights, which sits in Strasbourg, right on the border between Germany and France as a symbol of reconciliation. Its judgments have become increasingly contested in recent years, particularly around migration, as some of the European nations feel they're struggling to get the balance right between the rights of individuals, but also their right to manage their borders.

21:46And people listening in European countries will know there's an awful lot of talk among politicians at the moment about the European Convention on Human Rights and whether it needs to be changed. This has started maybe five or six years ago, and there have been a couple of key moments along the way. Listeners will remember we've had the row over sending asylum seekers to Rwanda in the UK. The ECHR in Strasbourg blocked that temporarily, and then the scheme never happened because of the British general election. More recently in May, nine EU nations led by Italy and Denmark effectively signed an open letter to the court and to the institutions in Strasbourg saying we need reform because we feel that the way the laws, the rights have been interpreted in the moment are standing in the way of us deporting criminals, they're standing in the way of common sense and that's eroding confidence in politics and the law.

22:38The month after that, the UK effectively waded in, sending a minister to Strasbourg to deliver a speech saying you must evolve, otherwise this entire project could potentially one day die. So these messages have been sent very, very strongly to Strasbourg. So last week I went to see Alan Bursay. He's the head of the Council of Europe, effectively the political guardian of these human rights laws in Strasbourg. And he told me that countries shouldn't abandon this landmark agreement. I am ready, absolutely ready, and really open to engage in all political discussions and let us engage on migration issues and to see what we need to address and maybe to change.

23:19We have two major parties in the UK, the Conservatives and Reform, who say that they think the best thing to do is to pull out of the European Convention. To achieve what? They say they can take control back. The opposite is true. And what I see is more the risk to be a bit isolated. The question is with UK or without. I do prefer to have with UK because the experience that you have and the importance of the country would make us highly legitimate to be part of the discussion and to take an influence. I'm Berset from the Council of Europe talking to Dominic Kashani. The very first humans may have been inventors, according to a discovery in northwest Kenya.

24:02Researchers have found that primitive humans who lived millions of years ago used stone tools continuously for 300 ,000 years, as our science correspondent Pallab Ghosh told me. These tools were state-of-the-art devices. They were specifically made, sought out and sharpened. They were so sharp that the scientists who discovered them cut their fingers on some of them by mistake. And so this discovery, this is not the first time that stone tools this age has been found. But the remarkable thing is that by examining different archaeological layers, they found that they've been used continuously for 300 ,000 years.

24:43So that's thousands of generations. Now, what this means is that previously, we thought that our ancient ancestors, there was some genius that came up with the idea of using stone tools, and it was forgotten in a generation. The fact that it was passed down through so many generations meant that it was a skill that was either learnt or observed, which changes the whole nature of our species. The fact that we were innovators, as you said, right from the very beginnings, because these were very 2.75 million years ago. These were tiny brained creatures, the very first humans. But what they must have been doing is either training each other how to do this training members of their family or people around them or at the very least observing what was going on with other people in order for it to have this continuous line and that is a sign of an advanced species so these people as i was saying were a little different to chimpanzees who also use tools but for some reason didn't develop a way of creating sharp tools and using them So these tools enabled these humans to survive because the geological survey also shows that the climate varied wildly at the beginning of that 2.75 million years.

26:00It was lovely. It was green and moist and a lovely place to live. But then it became a desert. But because they had these tools, they could acquire food, whereas in the past they wouldn't. Under normal circumstances, they would have had to evolve or move away. But what these tools meant was that they were able to control the world around them rather than the world around them control them. Our science correspondent, Paleb Ghosh, with me. In 1973, Billie Jean King made tennis history by winning a challenge match against a male former Wimbledon champion called Bobby Riggs. What was known as the Battle of the Sexes was watched by a global TV audience of nearly 100 million people and is credited with improving the credibility of the women's game.

26:45It represents so much. It represents equality. It represents freedom. It represents equal pay for equal work. I knew I had to win. Now an attempt is being made to recast the tennis battle of the sexes. A match is planned for later this year in the United Arab Emirates between the women's top-ranked player and a man ranked 652nd in the world. Jonathan Ureko told my colleague Paul Henley about it. The two players are Irina Sabalenka, who is the women's world number one and a four-time Grand Slam champion. And on the opposite side of the net will be Nick Kyrgios, who is a controversial and polarising Australian player who, let's as we'll remember, reached the Wimbledon final a few years ago, but has been beset by injuries since.

27:28It doesn't sound a particularly evenly matched match. No, at this stage, we don't know what the format will be and we don't know if there'll be any rules in place which will kind of even up the physicality of the game. And it's been a split opinion at the moment. Some people think it's a bit of a harmless entertainment, which will successfully attract new eyeballs to the game, especially in this era of social media content. You'd imagine a battle of the sexist style event would really fly on social media and get people engaged. But others believe it's a misguided adventure. It's been organised by an agency which both players share.