Life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule

25:03And yeah, like you said, in a really big decision, South Africa's Constitutional Court, which is our highest court, agreed with the communities and environmental or groups that the exploration right they had applied for was unlawful because they had never meaningfully consulted with the communities when they were applying for that right. And you legally have to do that. And what were those communities worried about? What sort of damage did they think might happen? Yeah. So alongside Africa's wild coast, there's generations of people who have been fishing off those coastlines for food and income, but it's also tied to their culture and their spirituality and their identity.

25:46And those communities have experienced in the past that seismic surveys have impacted the tuna catches, impacted, and then there's also like scientific evidence that seismic surveys have an impact on the marine environment. So that's what they were concerned about. And the main thing was like, yeah, these are the concerns, But you can't explore for rights in this area without and know what the impacts are when you don't involve the people who are directly affected in the process. So Shell tried to say, well, we'll just renew our application without involving the communities. And then that's when the communities took them to court again and said, this is unlawful.

26:26And the Supreme Court for seven judges to two voted that. Yeah, that's unlawful. Yeah. So did Shell presumably argued that they'd gone through all the right hoops? Yeah. So Shell's argument was that they've already invested heavily and that the companies had acted in good faith on official approvals and that a further consultation process could fix the earlier flaws while keeping an open potential economic development to benefits. but the communities and the fishes and environmental groups said that that this wasn't enough it can't be a box ticking exercise it has to be a meaningful consultation yeah so julia just in a sentence i mean is that the end of the matter that's just that it's not going to go ahead at all now this specific application is not going to go ahead but that doesn't mean shell and other companies in future can't lawfully apply for rights to explore for oil and gas on the east coast of South Africa or anywhere.

27:32Yeah, OK. So there may be another application. Julia, thank you very much indeed. The environmental journalist Julia Evans joining us there live. You're listening to NewsHour.

27:46This is the BBC in London. You're listening to NewsHour and I'm James Menendez. Well, let's return to Afghanistan now because it is five years since the Taliban swept back into Kabul amid a chaotic withdrawal of foreign forces after two decades in the country. Well, their leader is now the ultra-conservative Hibatullah Akhonzada, who, as we were hearing earlier, has reversed almost all of the rights and freedoms gained by women and girls during that period. Well, Lise Doucette's been speaking to his spokesman in the southern city of Kandahar, where the supreme leader is based. The spokesman is called Zabihullah Mujahid, and Lise began by asking him what the Taliban had achieved in the past five years.

28:27It has been five years since Afghanistan has not been under foreign occupation or at war. It has been five years since a single government has been ruling Afghanistan, something that had not happened in the previous 45 years. Afghanistan has had a good opportunity over these five years to rebuild and to restart the foundations of our economy. You keep asking for your seat at the United Nations, and the UN makes it clear that's not going to happen until you make progress on human rights, including women's rights, inclusive governance, counterterrorism. Why in five years have you not moved an inch towards resolving those issues?

29:16We should emphasize that what the UN says about these issues is not correct. The rights of the Afghan people are being insured. For about 20 years, Afghans were being killed and faced the provision. Second, there is no terrorism in Afghanistan. Claims that terrorism exists in Afghanistan are incorrect. Afghanistan is a secure country and has strong security forces. In August 2021, just after the Taliban came to power, you publicly said, we are going to allow women to work and study. Women are going to be very active in the society, but within the framework of Islam. What happened? Yes, we had said that it would be under the guidance of Islam and Islamic laws.

30:06At present, women work in places where there is a need for them. and where Islam permits it. Currently, women make up 24 % of the government workforce. You know that so many women lost their jobs. You know that the secondary schools and the universities are shut. When are they going to open? When are the schools going to open? Is it days, months? No, at present, education continues up to the 6th grade. And as for universities, the matter has not yet been finalized in a way that takes all the considerations into account. The institutions responsible for this are making their efforts. Is it better just to be honest and say they're never going to open?

30:55Naturally, we follow what Islam and Sharia law tell us. When the requirements that Sharia demands are provided, the problem may be resolved. What do you say to the Islamic scholars who have come to Afghanistan from around the world, Islamic leaders, and they say to you, Islam gives women the right to study, gives women the right to work. What do you say to them? I ask you not to focus too much on this matter, because it is related to a religious and a sharia-based position. We cannot discuss and explain all the religious matters, issues of Ijtihad and the differences among scholars in a BBC program.

31:37As someone who promised the girls that they would go to school, when you hear reports of young girls committing suicide because they don't see they have any future, how does that make you feel? We will do everything within our ability to find a solution to this problem. But we see that girls also have alternative ways to address this problem to some extent. However, we are still obliged to follow the Sharia's rulings. Many countries, including countries from the West, say they're making so little progress in their discussions with the Taliban. What's not working? Is there another way to do it?

32:25Western countries should change their policies. Unfortunately, their policies are the same as they were during the war and when they had no relations with us. They imposed sanctions and prevented us from moving forward with what we wanted to do. They're following the same policy now. We want diplomatic contact so that things can become clear and the problems that arise can be resolved.

32:53The Taliban's chief spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, talking there to our chief international correspondent, Lise Doucette. The AI company Anthropics says that its autonomous agents often get embroiled in what the firm describes as destructive turf wars when they're set loose on the same project. Instead of working together, it says they sometimes assume that another agent or agents are trying to undermine or even sabotage their work and then respond in kind. Let's turn to Gina Neff, who's Professor of Responsible AI at Queen Mary University at London. Gina, as ever, very good to talk to you. I have to say, when I read this, I was a bit sceptical.

33:34I mean, the firm's called Anthropic, but are they ascribing human motivations to these AI agents, do you think? Well, they're testing their latest models to see how they function as AI agents. So agents, as you know, are these pieces of software code that can actually do more complicated things and can be given a task and not told all the steps. So they go out and do these jobs. And so this test was to see how well they might cooperate in one space. So multiple of these pieces of software based on the opus and ethos models that have been in the news were given the task to go out and given the same task.

34:21And lo and behold, they didn't coordinate. I think what's really interesting here for us to underscore is this notion of cooperation, which is so important for how our economies function, for how our societies work. isn't natural behavior. It's actually learned. And these agents haven't learned that yet. It's like, imagine bright toddlers who have been raised in the wild by wolves, and they suddenly find themselves in a university research lab being asked to cooperate on some of the biggest scientific questions. Why would we expect that they would know how to do that? They don't. And that's where we are now.

35:03So can't you just sort of reprogram them and tell them to cooperate better? Well, it's interesting. You know, Anthropic, in their own assessment of what happened, said, you know, coordination doesn't naturally emerge from stronger intelligence or what they call alignment at the individual level. So they're saying, you know, we can't just tell these agents to stick close to human values. We're going to have to do something else. I disagree, however, with how they've analyzed that problem, which is they say they need better environments, better tests that really help these agents have social pressure to evolve and different kinds of systems designed for that evolution.

35:45I think we need a new kind of sociology. If I can raise a flag for social sciences, we actually need to understand behavior of people and agents together. And that's going to get us to some really interesting new ideas. Yeah, interesting or possibly dark if, you know, some of the outcomes where they work against each other and we're told that they're autonomous. I mean, that's a bit worrying, isn't it? That's absolutely right. So, I mean, And think of it this way. If I give you a task, buy me new shoes, you've got in your mind something about me, hopefully not too bad about me. You probably imagine a small British cupboard rather than a big American walk-in closet, a budget.

36:37The shoes are for me, my size. AI agents don't have any of that, what's called theory of mind. And those things are implicit constraints on how action happens. So when we tell them to do something, they may not stop until they buy me all the new shoes in the world, for example. So we've got a two-pronged problem. We've got to be better at designing. Companies need to be better at designing these tools so that they're within very clear guardrails. And we have to be really clear on how we're using powerful AI. I'm not worried they're going to run off and change the world just yet. But these tests show us that there are challenges that we need to fix.

37:23Gina, thank you very much indeed. Professor Gina Neff there. Now, a group of construction workers in Belgium got a glittering surprise this week when they stumbled across a huge trove of gold. The building where it was found belongs to an organisation offering social support and advice. its general manager is Geert Hillert. We're building some new constructions in Dendermonde and one of them is a former brewery house from the brewer and that's completely stripped and only the outside walls are standing and the building company found the treasure in this sort of a shell. Okay so when they were stripping back the walls they found what it was a chest was Is it containing the gold?

38:09Yeah, yeah, yeah, indeed. The chest where they founded the treasure of 59 bars of gold and more than 4 ,000 coins. That's extraordinary. Have you seen it? Did you see it before it got taken away? I've seen it, yeah. Tuesday morning, the building company phoned me and asked to go as quick as possible to Dendermonde because I'm working in Ghent. And when I arrived over there, the police was also over there. and I just had half a minute, a minute or a minute to look at it just because we wanted to bring it as quick as possible and safe and secure as nobody knew it. Yeah, I mean, what was your reaction?

38:48I mean, it must have been amazement. Yeah, of course. It's once in a lifetime. You don't even think about that. But you also think immediately not only about security but as we see what the problems are on the housing sector in Flanders where our clients have a really big problem to find housing then that gives some a bit of money because seven million euro ten million dollar is not that much it's it's a lot but it's not but you can do it with something with it of course yeah I mean that assumes of course that the money from the gold comes to you I mean what is the process for that what's going to happen now I mean it's in the hands of the police as you said yeah the public prosecutor has to investigate whether the gold that is found has been stolen that that can take some time that can say take some some years but yeah we're we're waiting we we didn't expect it so we don't have plans already as well so we have time yeah as you say it could take years i mean is it possible that the gold had been there for many many years i mean maybe for decades perhaps before the war we don't think so because one of the coins the the police saw it was dated at 19 1962 ah okay right so not that long no it's not a historical uh treasure from the medley's or something of that kind no no no no i mean just as a you know as a member of the public i guess i mean is your assumption that this was stolen gold and someone was trying to hide it i mean is that the working assumption i don't have any assumption i think the prosecutor has to do his work.

40:27It might as well be that the former owner, the rich brewery family, put there some money just in case there was a new war or something of the kind. You know, gold is always useful then. It might be that. It might be something else as well. Yeah. Presumably, it's going to be possible to find descendants of that family. I mean, are you hoping at the very least that there might be a nice donation to your organisation? Indeed. Indeed. We can use every euro. We can use every pound. No problem. Yeah, Indeed. We'll see. We'll see. We're waiting here. And that was Kjert Hillert, who's general manager of that social welfare organisation, which owns the building where lots of gold, millions of dollars worth of gold were found.

41:10He thinks it probably was hidden sometime, perhaps sort of in the 1960s or 70s. But as he said, the public prosecutor hoping to get to the bottom of all that. You're listening to Nisa.

41:29A reminder of our main story here on News Air. Five years after the Taliban swept back into power, our chief international correspondent Lise Doucette has returned to Afghanistan. As we heard earlier, Lise has been speaking to one girl who's continuing her studies in a secret school despite the Taliban ban. I'm turning years old and it's two years and I'm studying in a secret school and we are so happy to have a school like this. There's some fear that what will happen if they find us. But even with this fear, we're coming to study and learn something. Also this hour, Zambia has suspended ballot counting after Thursday's election over violence targeting polling station staff.

42:14And Indonesia's presidents condemn corruption and promise more state intervention as questions grow about his handling of the faltering economy.

42:27This is James Menendez with NewsHour live from the BBC. Well, let's head to Japan now, where extremely heavy rainfall overnight has led to the deaths of several people and caused major disruption to roads and transport close to Tokyo. The local authorities issued a Level 5 emergency warning on Thursday, its highest level of alert. Kurumi Mori is our correspondent in the Japanese capital. So far now, eight people at least have been confirmed dead, according to local broadcaster NHK, with dozens of others injured. Weather officials say the downpours also may not be over, so we could see that number even go higher.

43:04It's evening here in Tokyo now. It's a bit past 8 p.m., but they're saying that we could see more of this rain into tomorrow. There are power outages now and issues with running water. We just got an update within the past hour by government officials who say roughly 18 ,000 households in Chiba Prefecture are still without power. Officials are also warning of landslides, more flooding, overflowing rivers across Chiba and the wider Kantho region, including Tokyo. But one thing I want to point out is the poor timing for many here in Japan because this week is the Obon holiday. That's when we traditionally travel back to our hometowns and spend time with our families.

43:45So the storm also having an impact with travelers being stranded at Narita Airport, which is in Chiba. It's one of our biggest and busiest airports. Usually more than a million residents travel through this airport. It's generally very busy, but the storm wreaking havoc on travel plans there, too. So we had reported about 7 ,000 people being stranded overnight, stuck in those terminals. And it is an extraordinary amount of rain that has fallen, isn't it? Yeah, Japan's official weather agency, which is called the JMA, has declared this an unprecedented rainfall, a record rainfall in Chiba Prefecture, which really is close to Tokyo.

44:28It's neighboring Tokyo, just to the east. So it's not that far. We got some impact of that here in Tokyo as well. There was on and off rain. We kind of got caught in the rain today as we were trying to bring updates throughout the day. But it's just extreme. The bright blue sky suddenly turning into really, really heavy rain. And then it's gone again. So, again, a story about extreme weather here. And when we say an unprecedented amount of rain, I mean, they're talking about, what, three times what Japan would normally expect in the month of August was falling every hour. Is that right? Yes, something like that.

45:09I mean, it is way more than we're used to. I do have to point out that Japanese summers, we have really high heat, really high humidity, which combines for a really uncomfortable time to be spending outdoors. So that's not the part that is super unusual. What is different this time is just the amount of rainfall, the extreme amounts of the water coming in and then just going away. I'm just curious to know whether there was any warning given that this rain was coming or did it just come out of nowhere? There were warnings. So we've had a few tropical storms throughout this summer. We did have warnings from the official Japan Meteorological agency and they did warn of landslides and to take precautions.

45:57I just don't think that the residents of Chiba expected it to be of this scale. I mean, they were telling me that last night it was hard to go to sleep because just the sound of the rain pounding on their roofs, it was just a bit scary. Our Tokyo correspondent Karimi Mori there.

46:20A law in Ghana which would hand prison terms to members of the LGBT community and those seen as promoting homosexuality is awaiting final sign-off by the country's president. Earlier this year, the law was approved by Ghana's parliament with cross-party support. But critics say it puts lives at risk. Our religion editor, Ali McBool, sent us this report. There are more than 60 countries in the world where homosexuality is a crime. Around half of them are in Africa, and Ghana is in the process of becoming another that sends gay people to prison. We are criminalising, and I want to use that word advisedly, people who carry themselves to be in that society.

47:10People who are gay. Gay. If you are attracted to another man and you express it openly and you are indulged in the act of kissing a man, it's unnatural for us. I mean, that is uncultural. That's Emmanuel Bezra, Ghanaian member of parliament and one of the architects of a bill that doesn't just outlaw being gay, but also outlaws being an LGBT ally. We thought the spread of all this comes from people who are allies, who support it. And so if you are an ally or you are promoting it, it means you want it spread. It's a criminal. And if you're seen as an ally, if you're seen as somebody who expresses being gay, that could lead to prison terms.

48:00Of course, you should be in prison. More from Mr. Bezra later. The bill he sponsored has been passed by Ghana's parliament and is now waiting to be signed into law by the president. But some gay Ghanaians have already fled the country, like Bediak Boateng, who hears from those left behind. Sometimes I'm drawn to tears because I've had my fair experience of what they are going through. When you are going out, you have to check, oh, is this person that I'm talking, is he safe? Can I trust this person with who I am? Do you feel now not only that you can't live in Ghana, but how do you feel about even visiting Ghana?

48:43Visiting Ghana will be difficult. It's a sad situation for me, especially having a family there, but I can't visit because I really want to live who I am without needing to tell, without needing to pretend, without needing to lie to anybody. And it's very sad. Our society frowns on some of these things. And so back to the MP, Emmanuel Bezra. A fairly obvious question, I think, is how can you criminalise something that people can't control in themselves? I'll just give you a scenario. I'll just give you one example that people sometimes have desire to steal. But this is very different. This is about living their own lives, expressing themselves.

49:33So there's a boundary in every society. One of the boundaries that don't steal. But is it a crime that somebody is born in a way that they feel affection for somebody that is of their own gender? Born in a way. Who born them in that way? You were born in men. So you accept that if somebody is gay, they were born that way? No. So we don't accept it at all. So don't even go there. Karni NMP Emmanuel Bezra, ending that report by our religion editor, Alim Mbool. And that brings us to the end of this edition of News Out from me and the rest of the team. Thanks for listening. Until the next time, bye-bye.

50:28The U.S. has long been suspected of trying to sway elections in other countries. But is something more brazen going on these days? I'm Asma Khalid, and I'm one of the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. Brazil has accused the U.S. of meddling in its upcoming vote. The U.S. has dismissed the allegation. But how do these claims fit into the long legacy of American electoral interventions? Check out the Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.