Global News Podcast: Brussels bombers found guilty in murder trial

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I'm Janet Jalil and in the early hours of Wednesday the 26th of July these are our main stories.

A court in Belgium has found six men guilty of terrorist murder seven years after suicide

bombings in Brussels killed more than 30 people. Emergency teams in countries around the

Mediterranean have spent another day tackling wildfires. The Chinese foreign minister has been

removed from his post without any public explanation seven months after his appointment.

Also in this podcast. Crying as she cleared out the last of her equipment one beauty salon

owner sent the BBC a video of her stripped down parlor hair dryers and hairspray all packed away.

All beauty salons in Afghanistan have been shut down by the Taliban costing 60,000 women their jobs.

We begin in Belgium where six men have been found guilty of murder over the Brussels terror

attacks seven years ago on the Belgian capitals airport and metro system that left 32 people dead.

Hundreds more were wounded when suicide bombers targeted the airport in a metro train

in attacks that were claimed by so-called Islamic State.

One of the six is Salah Abdel Salam who's already serving a life sentence in France

for his role in the 2015 Paris attacks which targeted the Bataclan theatre and other venues

a few months before the bombings in Brussels. Two other defendants were found guilty of participating

in a terrorist group but acquitted of murder. As the hundreds of verdicts were being read out on

Tuesday evening my colleague Paul Henley spoke to Monica Prunchuk a reporter for the New York Times

who was at the court. The bombings in March 2016 were the deadliest ever in Belgium's history

and they were claimed by the same ISIS cell the attacks in Paris a couple of months earlier

and combined those assaults were the deadliest operation ever organized on the European soil

by the Islamic State. One of the attacks is known as the metro bombing in Brussels isn't it I think

another was at the airport. That's correct one of two bombs were detonated at the airport in the

departure hall another one was found later undetonated on the airport premises and then

a little over an hour later another bomb struck at the Malbec metro station which is

really really close to the area in Brussels which is home to the European Union institutions.

Now I understand the verdicts are still being read out. Yes that's it so it's going to take

another couple of hours. Right it's that complicated is it how come it's taken such a long time

for the result of this trial. So I mean the the victims of these attacks waited over

seven years for the trial and for the verdict so you know this is this is sort of the culmination

of of a very long time they've been waiting for this but what happened is a jury decided on whether

the 10 men that were accused of of varying degrees of participation in the attacks were guilty or

not and that has already been established so right now the presiding judge is reading out

loud the deliberations of the jury so they had to reply to 287 questions including detailed

motivations of their verdicts so this is what is happening right now the judge is going through

the replies of to all of those 287 questions and very very detailed about why they decided

the way they did. Has there been any particular reaction in court to the first verdicts being

read out? Well the the verdict is being read out in somber silence they're journalists they're

victims they're lawyers both of the defendants and of the victims and the atmosphere is very

somber and you know you you could see emotions on the faces of the people one of the two men

that were actually acquitted left the courtroom abruptly after he found out that he was pronounced

not guilty and he was the only one who was sitting outside a glass cubicle where all other seven

defendants were being held. Sentencing is still to come isn't it? The sentencing is going to

happen after the summer recess so the jury was now deliberating for 18 days and they were locked

in together in an undisclosed location without the contact with the outside world. Monica

Prunjuk a reporter for the New York Times in Belgium. Well Paul also spoke to Matilde Remot

who was at Malbec station in Brussels where one of the attacks took place and was also in court on

Tuesday. So what are her memories of that day in March 2016? Just to warn you some people may find

the following distressing. That day was of course a very special day let's say for me or in my life

I took the metro like every morning with my husband to go to work and we've heard that they

were attacks in the airport a couple of hours before but we just didn't think of it that much

or didn't think that something similar could happen in the metro and just got on the metro to

go to work and then suddenly the bomb exploded very close to us a couple of meters away from us

actually and everything turned into a big chaos something quite similar to a war scene or a war

stage I'd say. We had to climb out of the windows of the metro to get out of the carriage. There were

many bodies around us people were dead or heavily injured we tried to see if we could help some people

it's luckily we were fine both my husband and I tried to see if we could help some people going

outside of the metro station but at the same time we didn't want to make more damage than than help

by carrying people that were injured and we came out of the metro and from there tried to help as

much as we could by providing assistance to some of the victims waiting for the emergency services

to arrive so we did what we could with the little knowledge that we had of first aid and that was

been a very intense day I'd say and clearly it sticks in your mind can you tell me what's the

reaction to the verdicts today that you heard? Well I think a lot of people have different

reactions so we all react with our own emotions our own feelings and also our history we don't have

this we don't all suffer from the same aftereffect from the attacks and therefore may have different

opinions on the verdict as far as I'm concerned I saw that the jury has been really focused

during the past seven months they have listened to everyone the dozens or even hundreds of persons

who testified in front of the court they have listened everything they've read all the file

every single piece of evidence that they had and they took 18 days to judge so I really believe that

they carefully thought about the decision and now decision is here and I believe it's a good

decision they judge based on all the evidence so I think they did well and we have to respect

the outcome. The fires sweeping across Greece have claimed their first lives on the island

of Evia two pilots died after their aircraft crashed while tackling a blaze there a government

minister has said that teams are battling fires on dozens of fronts from Corfu to Rhodes fire warnings

have also been issued for people on Greece's largest island of Crete our correspondent

Azadeh Mashiri is on roads and began by telling us more about the fatal plane crash the plane that

crashed was not part of the fire corps this was an air force plane with two air force pilots on board

and they'd jumped in to assist the firefighting operation on the island of Evia unfortunately

the fire was simply too hard to contain and they were continuing that operation throughout the day

and unfortunately it ended in the worst way possible for them and tell us about where you are

and what's going on there so I am in fact in the southeast in the village of Gennady now that is

the area that firefighters are focusing all their efforts on today on the southern part of roads

because remember these fires are not happening on all the island this is very much a localized fire

but it's a fire that's extremely difficult to respond to and that is something that my team

and I truly experienced today because as we were reporting in that area the smoke began to grow it

became so close that firefighters told us immediately to leave we went to a safer location

in Gennady where we just watched these flames and this smoke I've just seen it grow to the

point where firefighters told us to leave once again so if you do hear any noises that's us

trying to move is there any end in sight to this well temperatures will dip on Thursday that's

what forecasters have said but until then the temperatures will continue to rise and that's

not good news for the areas that are affected and I say areas that are affected because again this

isn't the hall of Greece it's just the pockets of areas on islands and mainland where these fires

are happening are extremely hard to contain and that's why if officials still say the hard times

are not over yet as a day Mishiri well on the other side of the Mediterranean the number of people

killed by wildfires raging across the tinder dry north of Algeria has now risen to 34

thousands of firefighters backed by military firefighting aircraft have managed to bring

most of the blazes under control but Yomina Saheb an Algerian author with the UN

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told the BBC that not enough was being done to help those

affected there are more than 1000 people displaced already they had to leave their places

and there are not enough resources to stop the fire and where to house them you need to know

that Algeria has a housing crisis I don't know what they are going to put these people and there

is no plan for that people are just trying to to do it by themselves which is not possible because

there is the wind the heat wave combined to the fire makes everything worse Yomina Saheb

the International Monetary Fund has upgraded its forecast for global economic growth this year

but it's warned that the tentative recovery in China and climate change are among the biggest

risks to growth Jonathan Joseph's reports the IMF expects the size of the global economy

to grow 3% this year that's better than the 2.8% forecast in April it's still low by the standards

of the last 20 years but a sign that things are moving in the right direction as the post pandemic

recovery continues the IMF says economic activity has proven resilient despite major challenges

including the war in Ukraine and higher interest rates that's been one of the key tools central

banks continue to use in their battle against inflation Jonathan Joseph's China has removed

its foreign minister from office less than seven months after his appointment Qinggeng was once

regarded as being close to President Xi Jinping but hasn't been seen in public for a month officials

have said Mr Qin had health problems but there's been speculation on social media about his

relationship with a female TV presenter our China correspondent Stephen MacDonald sent this report

from Beijing it's been major news here that one of the most visible figures in the Chinese government

no longer holds his position but the announcement of his departure came typically without fanfare

on the main evening television news bulletin there were only a couple of sentences

chairman Xi Jinping has signed an order implementing the decision taken by the

national people's congress standing committee announced the presenter that Qinggeng be removed

as foreign minister to be replaced by the communist party senior foreign affairs official Wang Yi

and that was it no further explanation no more details about where Qinggeng is now

he's been out of sight for a while a month ago his absence from normal duties was explained officially

as due to a health mishap but as the weeks went on and he hadn't reappeared speculation turned to

the possibility that it was being punished for political reasons then on social media

rumors of an extramarital affair with a television presenter began to take hold especially given

that Xi too had disappeared from public life it could be a combination of these reasons and health

may or may not have played a role but given the opaque nature of China's governance such changes

just happen and the Chinese public has to accept them without knowing why a decision has been made

Qinggeng's name is already being scrubbed from the foreign ministry website

salvage experts are beginning to pump oil from a rusting super tanker moored off the coast of

Yemen to try to prevent a disastrous spill which could cause an environmental catastrophe

the vessel has been used as a storage facility and is anchored close to the Houthi

rebel controlled port city of Hureida it has not been serviced since Yemen's civil war erupted eight

years ago my colleague Rebecca Kesby spoke to David Gresley the UN humanitarian coordinator for

Yemen who was on a ship nearby overseeing the operation right now i'm in the port of Hureida

where the vessel has been lying unmaintained for the last eight years and it's decaying quite

steadily and threatens to spill over a million barrels of oil not only into the port of Hureida

but into the Red Sea more broadly affecting potentially hundreds of thousands of people

that would have contaminated the port of Hureida preventing shipping from coming in

including food but would not have been limited to the port of Hureida it was spread along the

coast of both Saudi Arabia and Yemen it would have affected we estimate 200,000 fishing families

that would have lost their livelihoods for up to a generation it would potentially go all the way

south to the Bob Elmandab blocking the exit from the Red Sea into the Gulf of Aden effectively

making the Suez Canal unusable it could have affected ports in Djibouti or Eritrea because

the oil is massive enough to go that far affecting access to those ports and of course one can imagine

the damage to the beauty of the Red Sea these are some of the most pristine waters in the world some

of the greatest diving areas in the world fortunately we've been able to mobilize the

resources and the political will by all parties including in Sana'a and Aden and have been able

to bring in a salvage vessel and a replacement vessel to store the oil and today we actually

were able to overcome all the technical problems required in carrying out the salvage operation

to start pumping oil into the new vessel it's called the Yemen and we hope over the next three

weeks to be able to complete that transfer and secure that oil so that it's no longer a threat

to the people of Yemen or the Red Sea more broadly it is a lot of oil isn't it but I think there is

a dispute over who would actually own it once it is retrieved whether it would be the Houthi

rebels or whether it would be the Saudi-led coalition what's going to happen to the oil once

it's retrieved from the stricken ship legally most of the oil almost all of it in fact is owned by

state-owned oil companies of Yemen of course the two sides dispute who owns those companies

but those are legal issues that can be worked out that was David Gressley the UN humanitarian

coordinator for Yemen going to get your hair or nails done is something that women all over the

world take for granted but from now on it's another freedom that has been stripped away from the women

of Afghanistan the Taliban has fulfilled its threat to shut down hair and beauty salons

across the country leaving tens of thousands of women without work Caroline Davies reports

as much as I would get if then two more locks crying as she cleared out the last of her equipment

one beauty salon owner sent the BBC a video of her stripped down parlor hair dryers and hair

spray all packed away the front doors had been sealed with a strip of paper stating that the

authorities had closed it down sources from Afghanistan's chamber of commerce have told

the BBC that an estimated 60 000 people mostly women will lose their jobs from the closures

Afghan women have seen the number of places they've been able to visit dramatically reduced in

the past few months they're barred from classrooms gyms and parks the Taliban authorities have also

imposed strict dress codes and limits on the ability to travel alone they've also been banned

from working for international aid agencies beauty salons were last shut down when the

Taliban ruled between 1996 and 2001 but did initially stay open when the Taliban retook power

two years ago Caroline Davies

still to come a positive development in the battle to end malaria deaths what's been different with

this particular vaccine was that instead of trying to create antibodies it's instead actually

creating cells which can then kill off the parasite itself a new malaria vaccine is approved for use

in Burkina Thassa

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you win their arts you win their wallets welcome back to the global news podcast

the Indian state of Manipur has been embroiled in ethnic conflict since May at least 130 people

have been killed and tens of thousands more forced from their homes in the clashes between the

mainly Hindu Meite majority and the mainly Christian kooky minority yet the Indian Prime

Minister Narendra Modi had remained silent until a video emerged last week showing two

kooky women being paraded naked by a group of Meite men before one of them is allegedly gang

raped Mr Modi said the incident shamed India and that no guilty person would be spared

that many are asking why it took him so long to speak out about the violence in Manipur

Divya Arya reports from the small northeastern state

19-year-old Chin Sian Ching shows me the police reports filed following her assault

when two kooky women were being paraded naked by Meite men in a village in Manipur in a

now notorious viral video Chin and her friend were facing another mob outside their hostel

in the capital city in Phal she says they were shouting that they wanted revenge for attacks

on their women they beat us one one man is staying in Varanda and then he is bringing

gun and then he tried to shoot us with gun if they use that one we are going to die easily

i thinking like that i was scared and i was crying i was praying to god i can't do anything

i can't run away there is lot of people chin and her friend were beaten unconscious

and the mob ran away thinking they were dead but some women face an even worse fate

like the daughter of the mother i'm going to meet she was abducted from a street in Imphal

gang raped overnight and left badly beaten on a doorstep

the attack is threatened that they'll kill my daughter if she spoke about it

but after the video of two women became viral i thought if i don't do this now

i would regret it for life the arrests of several suspects from the viral video attack

have sparked hope that the silence over the violence women have faced in the ethnic clashes

will be broken it compelled the prime minister mr. Narendra Modi to speak about the Manipur

conflict for the first time since it started more than two months earlier

i assure the nation the law will take its course with all its might

what happened with the daughters of Manipur can never be forgiven

the video has become an embarrassment for the Mehtai community Manipur has a long tradition

of women playing a powerful role in civil society protesting about the abuse of power

by the state and army now in a bid to distance themselves from the attacking mob

a group of Mehtai women burned down the house of one of the suspects who has been arrested

he's worth punishing that's why his house was burned down

and we have banished his family from our community

both communities are counting their losses a wall of remembrance has been created

which features the pictures of dozens of people who have been killed in the violence

Gracie Howkip is one of the student leaders helping survivors and their families

yes of course we have to be we have to be strong but then

uh some of the other way our voices need to be heard

they had not the viral the viral video been you know circulated

widely we wouldn't have to get this kind of attention we didn't get any attention from

like any elsewhere be it from the prime minister be it from whoever leader

it's a sentiment echoed by many that the government has not done enough to resolve the conflict

and only a lasting solution can end the violence and begin the long road to recovery and justice

Divya Arya reporting from the Indian state of Manipur

nearly half of the world's population lives in areas at risk of malaria

the disease kills more than half a million people a year

even after dramatic progress with prevention measures and drugs

and a vaccine that was released a couple of years ago

now a new R21 vaccine developed by scientists at the University of Oxford

has been approved for use in Burkina Faso after getting the green light in Ghana and Nigeria

with more on this positive development here's our Africa regional editor Will Ross

this is good news and really what people have been waiting for is a result of a trial that was

carried out in Africa of this new vaccine involving around five thousand children

most of them in Burkina Faso but also in Kenya Malawi and Tanzania

and although the result of that trial hasn't been made public

we understand that it's gone pretty well and to such a degree that the authorities in Burkina

Faso have now said yes we're satisfied that it's safe and the scientists are saying it's also very

effective we'll go ahead so Burkina Faso is the latest country we've already had Ghana and Nigeria

it's the latest country to say let's start vaccinating children they're starting with infants

from five months to 36 months because those are the ones most at risk of catching malaria

yes because malaria is the leading cause of infant mortality in Burkina Faso and many other

African countries so this could potentially save millions of lives in the years to come

that's right and for you know a long time people have wondered why on earth more research hasn't

gone into finding a vaccine for malaria and there are many reasons for that partly economic

it's been estimated that it costs sort of roughly a billion dollars if you wanted to start trying

to find a vaccine right from the early research stage so what's happened over many years is

there's been a reluctance by say big companies pharmaceutical companies to get involved until

there's evidence that the vaccine is effective and we're at that stage now so it's quite possible

that a lot of money will be poured in with the help from organizations like the WHO

and other organizations that that help with vaccines in countries where money's an issue

but what has been different with this particular vaccine which was developed at Oxford University

was that instead of trying to create antibodies it's instead actually creating cells

which can then kill off the parasite itself at the very early stage the stage when it first

enters the body so it's it's seen as pretty effective and they're talking about sort of

75 success that's the kind of benchmark they're looking at

Will Ross President Biden has announced the creation of a national monument to Emmett Till

a black teenager who's lynching in the 1950s consolidated the civil rights movement

after a white shopkeeper said the 14 year old had whistled at her he was tortured murdered

and his body dumped in a river in Mississippi on Tuesday on what would have been Emmett Till's

82nd birthday Mr Biden said he still felt anger at the injustice of the killing

I can't fathom I can't fathom what it must have been like

it's hard to believe I was 12 years old and I just you know I know no matter

how much time has passed how many birthdays how many events how many anniversaries

it's hard to relive this the monument will also be dedicated to Emmett Till's mother

Mammy Till Mobley who campaigned for justice the national monument will cover three separate

sites in two states Illinois and Mississippi one will be where Emmett Till's body was found

the second at the church where his funeral was held and the third at the courthouse where his

killers were acquitted changing a well-known brand's logo and possibly its name and whole

identity is a brave thing to do as we've been hearing in recent days Elon Musk is doing that

with Twitter out goes the bluebird and in comes the X Elon Musk has also registered the new website

x.com but X may be a problem for him because other companies use X quite a bit too like XBox for

example my colleague Evan Davis spoke to Martin Grasser who was one of three people who designed

the initial Twitter logo in 2012 he started by asking him how that famous bird shape came about

in 2011 a team of three Todd Waterbury who was the executive creative director myself and Angie

Cheh were given a very open brief to make the bird as good as the Apple or Nike logo we started by

drawing birds with a pencil drawing all kinds of birds sitting you know flying doing all different

things and found this sort of round form in the shape of a hummingbird and we took that into the

computer and started using circles to guide our curves of our drawing and pretty soon found that

we really liked the way this bird constructed of just circles Todd showed that to Jack Dorsey who

also liked the idea and we spent three months perfecting this bird made out of circles and what

you have for the last 11 years is the Twitter logo and what did Twitter have before because

it had versions of birds before they hadn't been a yeah it started I think the first logo was sort of

a a glob of green slime that said TWTR and then in 2008 they bought a cartoon bird off of a stock

website and then it was redrawn maybe once or twice and we got the brief in 2011 to professionalize and

update the bird to a more singular icon it's a very simple logo Larry the bird and a very

distinctive one though and a very recognized one I think any logo that Twitter puts out would

this just the scale of the company would make it recognizable but I think it's an optimistic

round cheerful form that people became emotionally attached to over time tell us what you think in

your professional opinion what you think of the new the new X from what I've heard this is a temporary

logo right now and so I'm excited to see what they come up with I think X is a really interesting

letter form when you look at it they're going to have a challenge because it's a little bit

sharp and angular and I think TWTR needs a logo that feels approachable and so I think they'll

they'll be trying to find ways to to add some softness to it you wouldn't say the bird is

necessarily a round form but we made it work you know and so I think that's the designer's

challenge and what a fun one it'll be yeah why does he need to change the the name though to X

so why does he have to have X as the as the stamp for Twitter I think anytime a company changes its

main activity it's a good idea to update your logo it's the quickest way to communicate to the

market that you're doing something different they have an incredible opportunity to own this letter

and to define what it means and so right now we all see it as a sharp angular thing but I think if

they do this right in you know five ten years much like we all came to love the bird we can have a

completely different relationship with the letter X that's an incredible opportunity designer

martin grosser meanwhile the video sharing app tiktok says it's giving users the option to create

text only posts it adds to the other choices of videos and photos in a bid by the chinese app

to keep up with competitors image and james has more details text posts are the latest change to

the world's most popular app the messages can be up to a thousand words long and users can add

location tags different backgrounds and music to the posts tiktok says it hopes these elements

will keep it interactive and creative the move comes as social media giants battle to stay relevant

with changes being introduced across many favorite platforms earlier this month tiktok launched a

music streaming service to take on spotify and apple music elsewhere twitter has rebranded as X

abandoning its original bird logo and meta has launched a new platform entirely called threads

all are competing to catch up with tiktok and it's more than one billion users image and james

the women's world cup which kicked off last week has already seen some dramatic matches

including a stunning defeat for the co-host new zealand who were beaten by debutants the philippines

in front of a home crowd in wellington with sellout stadiums and estimated two billion viewers

expected worldwide football's power brokers are looking at how they can leverage this tournament

to grow the game and make lasting returns katie silver reports from the other co-host australia

where the national team are known as the matiltas last thursday when the matiltas took to the field

they couldn't play here they had to play at another stadium on the outskirts of town

because demand for tickets was so strong 76 000 people turned up to watch them and at home almost

five million australians a fifth of the population tuned in to watch but it's not just for the home

france jamaica played here on sunday night and the stadium was full there too so the question is

with this level of interest can it be converted to real financial gains for the local league

and if you go to a match it is nick garcia is the commissioner of the a league the national

soccer league of australia he says despite this growth the women's game doesn't yet break even

i think in the women's game um it is about investing for the future the losses aren't

dramatic uh and i think it'll be interesting to see how teams really capitalise on this woman's

world cup i mean you've only got to look at look at the euros in england recently and the 80 000

they packed wembley out with for the for the women's f a cup final um so i think it's a real

mark and you probably look at it in the women's game globally it isn't a kind of invest for the

future i think it's really important that club owners see it that way it's not a cost center

it's an investment and i'm i'm 100 percent sure it'll pay off and there's a hope that this world

cup will generate those investments and leave a lasting legacy at both the professional level

and the grassroots as well that report by katie silver and that's all from us for now but there

will be a new edition of the global news podcast later if you want to comment on this podcast the

topics covered you can send us an email the address is globalpodcastatbbc.co.uk you can also

find us on twitter or should i say x at global news pod this edition was mixed by nick randell

the producer was leon mcchefery the editor is caron martin i'm janette jadeal until next time goodbye

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.