Syria one year on from liberation

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. You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

0:46Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 16 Hours GMT on Monday the 8th of December. Syria marks the first anniversary of the end of the Assad regime. The Nigerian government secures the release of 100 children kidnapped from a Catholic school last month. And Ukraine's President Zelensky meets key European allies in London. Also in the podcast... If we offer single portion sizes, which are really to fulfil the requirements of average men, we're nudging more and more people to eat more than they need. Could cutting down portion sizes help tackle obesity?

1:26But first, it is a year since a lightning offensive by Islamist-led rebels in Syria ended five decades of brutal rule by the Assad family. The new authorities have been marking the anniversary with a military parade in the capital Damascus. A huge crowd gathered in Umayyad Square, waving flags and beating drums.

1:50However, despite that celebration of new freedoms, the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad 12 months ago hasn't brought an end to the challenges facing Syria. Dr Omar Imadi is at the Centre for Syrian Studies at St Andrews University in Scotland. I think it's important to keep in mind that what fell on December 8th, 2024 was not simply an authoritarian regime. This was a system, a 61-year-old system that used weaponised sectarian differences, committed war crimes against its own population, imposed a very extreme version of a socialist nationalist ideology on the vast majority of the citizens.

2:31So when this finally falls, it's not, I think, reasonable to expect that everything will suddenly be OK. It doesn't work that way. There's a lot of grievances. There's deep divides in society. And I think given all of this, it's remarkable really what we have achieved in one year only. Well, Syria's new president, Ahmad al-Shara, a former al-Qaeda fighter, has managed to win the support of President Trump, while millions of Syrians have now returned home. But the country is struggling with the slow pace of reconstruction, according to the outgoing head of the UN's refugee agency. Filippo Grandi, High Commissioner of the UNHCR, says Syria is at risk of going backwards.

3:13He spoke to our chief international correspondent Lise Doucette, who is in Damascus. Who would have thought just a year and a day ago that this would happen? And I think that even after the fall of the Assad regime, we thought people would return, but not in these numbers. And they keep going back, and they have gone back throughout the year. So, you know, this puts us in front of some important questions. Do they stay back in their homes and not to leave again as they might if things do not improve inside Syria? But you're already warning the situation is perilous. You know, you go back, you know, I've been several times this year to Syria.

4:01They go back to almost nothing, to houses that have become shells of what they used to be. Entire cities destroyed or parts of cities are destroyed. Services are on their knees. There are no jobs. There is no electricity. There's a lot to be done. People are patient, are resilient. They want to go back home, but that has a limit. I'm worried that unless this reconstruction is accelerated, that country can go backwards again. It is still, after one year of this new government, at a crossroad. It is still at that crossroad. So let's help it. Let's help Syrians pick the right way and not the wrong one.

4:50We still have a possibility, but the time is running out. So that means the world's capitals, the region's capitals, have to pay more attention? I think so, and pay more resources to help Syria. There's a lot of apprehension about minorities, about the rights of women. These are all very legitimate apprehensions. But you don't address them or help Syria address them by not, by depriving it of assistance or by holding it back because you're not sure that you did go in the right place. That's what I said. You know, reconstruction, peace building, this world that is a little bit out of fashion but still important, means taking some risks.

5:39If you don't take some risks, you never build peace and you prepare the ground for new conflict. As you leave UNHCR after a decade, do you worry that the organization itself is fighting for its survival, its relevance? I am more worried that the entire humanitarian aid system is under pressure. It's not just UNHCR. It's good programs. It's programs for children. It's programs for women that have suffered violence. I can give you so many examples. So that is all at risk if donors do not rally and reorganize themselves to also fill some of the gaps left by the United States and some other large donors that have also backtracked.

6:32But aid is also profoundly stabilizing. There's a lot of concern in Europe about defense, about security, and a lot of investments in those sectors. In fact, that's partly why we get less money in aid. But to take money away from aid and put it in defense, in my opinion, is not necessary. and you strengthen one sector and you weaken another that is equally important for the security and stability of vast parts of the world, including some that are strategically important for Europe. As you leave, do you fear the world is a less kind, less generous place than when you started? In my work, I meet many people who care for refugees, for displaced people, but also for unaccompanied children or people that are hungry.

7:27I meet many people who care. Their voice, however, in today's world is less strong than it used to be because the voice of those that say it's not important to care, let's focus on ourselves, our country first, those voices have become a bit overwhelming and sideline the others that are still strong numerically, but seem to have difficulty getting their message across. So I think that we need to invest in people that believe in solidarity, to bring them along, to give them space and dignity and recognition so that their voice can become again an important factor in moving their governments towards international aid.

8:15Filippo Grande talking to Lise Doucette and you can hear more on that story on YouTube from our correspondent Lina Sinjab in the Syrian city of Aleppo. Search for the BBC News channel on YouTube, select podcasts and then the Global News podcast and we do a new one every weekday. Last month, gunmen stormed a Catholic school in Nigeria and abducted more than 300 pupils and members of staff. 50 managed to escape, leaving 265 still in captivity. Now, 100 of the remaining children have been rescued or released. I heard more from our global affairs reporter, Richard Kagoy. Details are still emerging.

8:53What we do know so far is that 100 students have been released. That's the information that we have from the proprietor of the school, who also happens to chair the Christian Association of Nigeria in Niger State. So the details in terms of how they were rescued or how the release took place is still not known. Not known, but is it likely that ransom money was paid? Well, that's quite difficult to tell because you don't know whether there were any negotiations or maybe this was done by force by security agents because a major operation has been underway since this incident was reported. And this has really been sanctioned from the highest office in Nigeria.

9:36So you should know that payment of ransom in Nigeria is illegal. It's outlawed. Yeah, but You know, there are all these indications that possibly in some instances ransom could be paid. But for this one, we don't know yet. And perhaps even attempts to get a comment from the authorities regarding the circumstances has not been forthcoming. And the remaining children and members of staff are new negotiations going on to try to get those released as well? What the authorities have said is that the operation is underway to secure their release. So we don't know whether there have been any negotiations behind the scenes that have been taking place because Nigeria says they cannot negotiate with criminal gangs who are said to be behind the speed of abductions.

10:23And what they do this mostly is possibly just to get ransom payments. But what the authorities said is that they have reassured, and this is from the national security advisor. He told the schools authorities that they would secure the release of the students and this will be done in batches. So this perhaps then points to maybe what is expected to happen, maybe possibly in the next coming days or even weeks. Richard Kugoi talking to me from Nairobi. A woman and a man have been found guilty of blackmailing South Korean football star Son Heung-min for$200 ,000. A South Korean court sentenced the woman to four years in jail and her male accomplice to two years for extorting the Los Angeles FC goalscorer.

11:05Our correspondent in Seoul, Jake Kwon, has been following the story. I think many of our listeners probably remember him as the former captain of Tottenham. And what we are learning today is that the South Korean court has sentenced the woman to four years in prison for essentially blackmailing the football star. And to go back a little bit, you know, this young woman in her 20s have approached Son last year saying that she is pregnant with his child. Now, we do not know whether the child was his. It seems that the woman herself did not know whether it was his. And, you know, according to local reports, she got an abortion soon.

11:44So we will never find out. And the court could not find out. But still, Mr. Son still provided her with around 200 ,000 U.S. dollars for her to stay silent. Now, South Korea is a place where these kind of scandal, they're very much hushed. And Mr. Son does have a very squeaky clean image. And he really wanted this to not go out. Now, when the woman and her accomplice reached out to him again this year, asking for even more money, that's when he went to the police. Now, she was arrested and the police investigation followed. And what the judge had found is that, you know, she and her accomplice try to use Mr.

12:25Son's fame and celebrity to really exact this pain on him. they said that, you know, it seems that Son had suffered an immense amount of mental anguish due to this thing, and that she must be punished. You mentioned his success at Tottenham. How big a figure is he in in Korea? Well, he is really a national hero here. He is probably one of the best kind of celebrated football player here. I mean, just to illustrate from my house, and you know, the 20 minute walk to the bureau here, every morning, I think I run into him maybe three times on the billboards and signs he's the face of one of the biggest bank here.

13:04And for a bank to really adopt him as their main kind of model, you know, you need to have a really good, perfect image. And he is really one of the most well beloved figure here, despite this single scandal. Jake Kwon in South Korea. Could offering smaller, cheaper portion sizes in restaurants help tackle obesity. That's the recommendation from the head of the British government's obesity programme, Professor Naveed Sattar. Women on average need fewer calories than men and Professor Sattar says they and others could benefit from the availability of alternative options. Not just women, anybody who wants a smaller portion.

13:43So that could be smaller men, it could be, for example, if you go out with family children. But it was prompted by the fact that actually obesity levels are higher in women in nearly every part of the world now, or many of the super regions of the world. They're also higher in more people who are from deprived communities, who tend to be shorter. So people who are smaller, generally women more than men, people from less affluent versus more affluent are shorter. Therefore, they need less energy for their body's requirements. And if we offer single portion sizes, which are really to fulfill the requirements of average men, we're nudging gradually and progressively nudging more and more people to eat more than they need.

14:21and that is contributing to widening obesity disparities. Clearly, costs should be proportioned to the volume of food. I mean, if you're getting 75%, I suppose the cost should be 75 % of the 100 % cost. So the issue of cost then means that places that make food or make various products, probably their profit margin might be somewhat less. But actually, the reality is there's far too much food all over the place. Food companies, drinks companies are making huge amounts of profit. that perhaps they need to make slightly less profit to make healthier versions, both by portion or by composition. And that's the direction of travel we need to go in if we're going to seriously tackle the obesity pandemic.

15:02I mean, I'm not saying that's the only solutions. Clearly, the sugar tax is helping, but certainly portion sizes. You know, when I was sitting with my wife and she got a huge portion of breakfast cereal, porridge actually, and she felt guilty not being able to eat even half of it and over-consumed so that the plate didn't look as full so she wasn't wasting food. So there's multiple issues with high food portion sizes and actually having a variety will definitely help many people. I think that would be a great additional attribute within various restaurants and even many supermarkets. They have a vast range of ready-to-eat options and they're usually single portion sizes and that needs to change as well.

15:39Professor Navid Sattar of Glasgow University in Scotland. And still to come on the Global News Podcast, If doctors can use motion capture data, such as walking patterns or posture, they can intervene earlier. Using tech to combat dementia in Japan.

16:01If 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.

16:40The Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is continuing his diplomatic push for European support in the face of American pressure to make painful concessions to Russia. President Zelensky is meeting key European allies in London today, as well as NATO and EU officials in Brussels. Late on Sunday, President Trump said he was disappointed in his Ukrainian counterpart and accused him of not reading the US proposal. Russia, I guess, would rather have the whole country when you think of it. But Russia is, I believe, fine with it. But I'm not sure that Zelensky is fine with it. His people love it. But he hasn't read it.

17:19The latest meetings come after three days of talks in Florida, where Ukraine's chief negotiator pushed for changes to the White House plan, which is widely thought to favor Russia. I heard more about President Zelensky's diplomatic offensive from our World Affairs correspondent, Joe Inwood. He has just arrived at Downing Street. We've seen him turn up and get a warm embrace from Sir Keir Starmer. He's there to meet as well as the British Prime Minister. He's meeting Friedrich Mertz of Germany and Emmanuel Macron of France. These are the three biggest European backers of Ukraine. And this is Europe putting a sort of metaphorical arm around Ukraine's president and its people and saying that whatever their diplomatic travails with Washington, that Ukraine still has European backing.

18:02Yeah, tell us about that pressure on Ukraine from the US. For weeks now, there have been this sort of back and forth sets of negotiations taking place between the US and Moscow and the US and Kyiv, coming up with various forms of a peace plan, some sort of deal that will bring the war to an end. Now, the first version of that, people have referred to many times, this 28-point plan was seen as being heavily weighted in Moscow's favour. Some people said it was even written by the Russians. There has been a back and forth since then, but really there's intensifying pressure from Washington on Kyiv to accept some sort of peace deal.

18:39Now, the latest form that's taken is these three day talks in Miami. We've seen high level Ukrainian and US delegations trying to hammer out some form of new plan. Now, we don't know, unlike in previous iterations, we don't know what the details of that are. But we did get a sense from President Zelensky over the weekend when he said the conversations were constructive, but obviously very difficult. And then there was that clip of President Trump that we heard just a few moments ago, in which he was pretty critical of President Zelensky. We're seeing him returning to his quite often position of being, frankly, relatively hostile to the Ukrainian leader, saying he'd not even read the latest proposals.

19:17Now, we understand that those proposals have been put to him in person today and that what we assume that they will be discussed with the European leaders. But as you say, there is a sort of a building pressure from the Americans to try and force Ukraine into some sort of concession. And that will take many forms, but most notably, I think, limits on the size of their armed forces and the idea of ceding territory in the east of Ukraine to Russia in order to get some sort of peace deal. Joe Inwood. Meanwhile, Britain is unveiling how it plans to combat what it sees as an increasingly serious undersea threat from Russia.

19:52There have been a series of incidents recently in which Russian vessels have been accused of operating suspiciously around British waters. Our diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams has been looking at how the Royal Navy may respond. In the hunt for Russian intruders, the Navy is looking for solutions. off the west coast of scotland an underwater glider like a torpedo with wings dives under the waves and drifts off into the darkness bristling with sensors the sg1 fathom is capable of patrolling for months on end it's designed to operate autonomously in large packs it's made by the german defense technology company helsing but it's here being trialed for the Royal Navy.

20:36Katie Rain is the programme manager. The glider operates under the waves, it patrols through the depths of the oceans, monitoring and listening for adversaries that might be in the area. The AI actually embedded in the glider processes and identifies those threats more quickly than we've been able to do previously. It's all part of a network the Navy is calling Atlantic Bastion, a system which links drones, warships and surveillance aircraft in an effort to protect vital undersea cables and pipelines. At 10, the UK is exploring military options if a Russian spy ship sails closer to British shores.

21:17The urgency of the project was underlined recently by the activities of a Russian research vessel suspected of secretly mapping Britain's critical undersea infrastructure. Part of a wider pattern of Russian activity at sea and in the air, causing ripples of alarm across Europe.

21:38In Portsmouth, on the day Britain and Norway announced their navies will be working together in the North Atlantic, the Defence Secretary John Healy and his Norwegian counterpart are piped aboard an experimental ship, the Patrick Blackett, used as a testbed for new technologies. This is about keeping us ahead of the Russians. John Healy is clear about what all this is for. The past two years have seen a sharp increase in the number of Russian vessels poking around in British waters. We know the threat that Russia poses. We track what their ships do. We track what their submarines are doing. We know that they are mapping our undersea cables and our networks and our pipelines.

22:19And we know that they are developing new capabilities all the time to put those at risk. This is the operations troops, the first operating centre. Looking on as the politicians are briefed is the man charged with supervising Britain's response, the First Sea Lord, General Sir Gwyn Jenkins. He faces a daunting challenge, keeping up with an opponent who hasn't declared war but is investing heavily and behaving aggressively. Despite the cost of the war in Ukraine to them, they continue to put hundreds of billions of dollars worth of investment into their submarine fleets. I would say we, the Allies, we're still ahead in the Atlantic, but it's not by as much of an advantage as I would like.

23:01Russia says it's Britain that's being provocative, even hysterical, but the military says it's clear-eyed about the current dangers, and it's working closely with industry to address them as quickly as possible. Our diplomatic correspondent, Paul Adams. The latest economic data from China shows that while exports to the US have crashed in the past year, exports overall have actually gone up. In fact, China's annual trade surplus has topped a trillion dollars for the first time, an amount no country has ever reached, as Chinese manufacturers find alternative markets. Nick Marsh spoke to William Lee Adams.

23:38Well, this data focuses on goods specifically. And it is pretty remarkable because it shows that between January and November this year China exported a trillion dollars worth more goods to the rest of the world than it imported. That's the first time that their export trade surplus has gone over a trillion dollars for goods and if you look at November specifically exports rose there six percent compared to the year before. Interestingly if you look at how much China is selling to the United States. Well, in November, there was a drop of 29%. So nearly a third less that China is selling to the US compared to the same time last year.

24:27And it's interesting, isn't it, William? Because, you know, we talk so much about the trade war with the US and the tariffs and so on. Less is being sold to America. But it turns out China still has plenty of willing customers more than ever in other parts of the world. So despite all this talk of a trade war with the US, it seems like China is doing pretty well regardless. It really does. And to be honest, this was always the argument made by trade experts and by the Chinese government itself. You know, China is such a manufacturing powerhouse. Few can compete with the scale of its workforce, the efficiency of its supply chains, just how much can be produced at a certain standard for a certain price.

25:12Even though it would be potentially losing an incredible consumer market like the United States, there are other markets that are very, very happy to step in and buy Chinese goods. Southeast Asia, where I am, you're talking about 500 million people. You've of course got Europe. It's not great from the point of view of the domestic manufacturers of the world and in Europe if a big flood of very cheap Chinese goods that might have been destined for the US are now coming to this part of the world but it does mean that there is the chance of buying lots of cheap Chinese goods and China has clearly managed to plug that hole left by the drop in US orders with other regions and if you look at it from the point of view of the Chinese exporters themselves you know Chinese businesses they're looking at the geopolitical situation and they're thinking to themselves yeah the American market's incredibly important the biggest market that China has typically sold to.

26:07But is it in our interests to be partnering and investing in selling to the US, you know, in the medium and the long term? And clearly, the answer for many exporters has been no. Our Asia business correspondent Nick Marsh. Finally, to Japan, where it's estimated that one in five people over the age of 65 is living with dementia or early symptoms of the condition. The challenge may seem overwhelming, but as Surinjana Tiwari reports, local tech companies are trying to help. The robots being developed at Waseda University hope to be future caregivers for those seeing a decline in capabilities and to solve a chronic shortage of care workers.

26:52AIREX stands for AI-driven robot for embrace and care. It's being developed to handle several tasks from nursing like changing positions to daily housework Let's see if it can find my foot Oh yeah there we go What happens with dementia patients is they sometimes have issues with hand-eye coordination or they have muscle weakness So the team here is hoping that by developing robots like this, they'll be able to help them with these simple tasks. Tech companies are also developing new ways to screen for dementia. Shuffling while walking, slowing down or difficulty in turning, changes in how a person moves can be some of the earliest signs of the condition.