Global News Podcast: Morocco urged to accept more aid following earthquake as death toll grows

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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Jeanette Jalil and in the early hours of Tuesday the 12th of September these are our

main stories. Moroccan villagers hit by last week's devastating earthquake say aid isn't

reaching them quickly enough. Heavy floods triggered by a powerful storm in eastern Libya

have killed at least 200 people. Cocaine production in Colombia has climbed to a record level.

Also in this podcast she became spoiled. The photographers soon discovered that

sheep are even less obedient than people who are being photographed. The scientists who led the

team that cloned Dolly the sheep, turning her into a media sensation Professor Ian Willmott has died.

We begin in Morocco where there's been criticism of the speed of the official response to Friday's

earthquake which is now known to have killed more than 2,800 people. Heavy lifting equipment has

begun to arrive in remote regions of the Atlas Mountains which have been the hardest hit.

But in many areas villagers have been digging with their bare hands through the rubble of

collapsed homes. Mohsin Fala works at a hotel in a village called Mariga in the region. He described

a harrowing scene. We have a cleaning lady called Habiba. She lost eight members of her family

including her 70 years old son. There is no home for her. Her house it's completely destroyed so

she's there just in a little tent with the rest of her family waiting to find her son.

It's totally, totally horrible feeling that someone of your family just buried under the ground.

So everyone just running everywhere and trying to help. It's not just because my family are safe

so I'm fine. No all of them are my families. All of my colleagues works with me lost someone

of the families. I'm sharing the same feelings. I was there when that's happened.

A human rights activist in Rabat, Mati Monjib told the BBC he thought the Moroccan government

should have been more open to outside help. The authorities and the population are doing

their best but it is not enough and because of that I don't understand why Morocco didn't send

a request for powerful states as France, as the United States etc. Why it did accept only

some propositions from Spain, Great Britain, Qatar and Emirates? Because when it is concerning

human beings lives I don't understand these political considerations. My colleague James

Kunrasami spoke to James Coppnell who spent the day traveling in the Atlas Mountains.

First James described what he's been seeing in the city of Marrakesh which has also been

badly hit by the quake. One of the first things I noticed in Marrakesh were the number of people

sleeping outside. Even though the earthquake took place on Friday, they're still too scared

to go back indoors. I met one young woman, Bushra, and I asked her why she'd been sleeping under the

stars. She said she's sleeping outside because even though the earthquake happened three days ago

there's still the trauma from it and there's just real fear that something could happen and it's

too dangerous to stay inside, sleep inside. I mean look the conditions of sleeping out here in

the night is not great, it's not particularly comfortable, it's cold, we're trying to comfort

each other but we're also aware that you know the situation for other people in parts of the

country is much much worse, we're really happy just to be alive. Then we left Marrakesh, we headed

south into the Atlas Mountains towards the epicenter of this earthquake. All along the routes

highly climbed into the hills, we saw damaged buildings, broken buildings, rubble on the road

too, places where the car had to swerve or edge its way past landfall and then we found a traffic

jam created by just so many people traveling into the mountains to these remote villages to bring

help, not in this case the Moroccan state but ordinary people loading up their cars with

provisions and taking them to their neighbors, their relatives, in the villages, their friends,

people they didn't know even but desperate to help out. So many though that we got in a traffic jam

and then suddenly rocks started falling, shale started falling from the hillside and there have

been aftershocks over the last couple of days so a real sense of panic, people jumping out of the

cars and moving on, the sense of panic but also a sense of real determination that whatever the

risks people really wanted to go and help those less fortunate than them who'd been directly

caught up in the earthquake. And what about the government, what has it been saying and how does

that compare to what the people you've met have been telling you? Well look the government is

keen to show the work it is doing, it's been sending helicopters to remote places, we saw a

couple of those overhead today, saw a military hospital as well, a field hospital that's been

set up to treat people with broken legs and arms and facial wounds and trauma as well but at the

same time we talked to a lot of people who said look I haven't really got much from the government,

I've had support, even a tense and food from Moroccan citizens and I want more from the state.

James Karpnall, well James Kumrasami also spoke to the Moroccan Senator Larson Haddad,

a former tourism minister. What did he make of the claims that much of the help reaching the

villages worst affected had come from ordinary Moroccans rather than from the authorities?

I think the response has been incredible, I think it was heroic and when the earthquake happens and

because it's in the high Atlas mountains then most of the roads become blocked and then some of

them are blocked for kilometers and kilometers, the longest one was blocked for about 26 kilometers

so you need like a herculean effort in order to deal with that. Are there still areas which haven't

been accessed? The last areas were accessed yesterday, a midday and that's what contributed to the

figure of the death toll. It's expected probably to rise as they go through the rubble and then

find out about those villages which are close to the epicenter. The government has accepted aid

from a few countries hasn't it? The UK being one of them, Spain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates.

There has been concern expressed though by some that other countries that were ready to offer aid,

France and Germany, their aid has not been accepted. Can you explain the thinking there?

I don't think that it has not been accepted. What the Moroccans are saying, look we know the

terrain, the army knows the terrain because it has been dealing with the high Atlas. We know how to

get to the population, we have the means now to be able to do that. If we have like something specific

where we don't have the expertise then we're going to call on our friends. For example, like we said

okay we need dogs, trained dogs and all of that. We have some but I think the Spanish have expertise

in that and they're very close by. They could like just come in very quickly and that's what we did

with the Spanish. There's no sense then that geopolitical concerns have played into this tool.

I mean that's the media trying to read some sort of geopolitics into that. If I am telling you

that only yesterday they got to certain communities you can appreciate the fact that they are only

taking stock of what is the loss, what happens. But I mean I think later in each one of those

hundreds of communities those kinds of camps need to be run, need to be managed, need to be

provided food, maybe we need tents, maybe we need people who have expertise in dealing with that.

The king has given instructions that the reconstruction will start right away. I think

we need all the possible aid we can get like from the French, from the Germans.

The accusation from some was the response was slow and it could have been quicker

if there had been more international help. How would you respond to that?

Well if anyone could explain to me how a rock that weighs like 10 tons would have been quicker to

like remove from the road, they need to be my guests. I mean I think that the army engineers

and the army corps, the civil protection and the public works, they have all the means and the

machinery. So it's not like we don't have machinery to do that. It's not like we don't have engineers.

That was the Moroccan senator Larson Haddad. Further east along the North African coast,

a deadly storm has brought its own trail of destruction to Libya. The port of Derna has

been submerged by floodwater as torrential rain and raging winds ripped through the east of the

country damaging buildings and homes. The Libyan Red Crescent says at least 200 people have died

but local authorities have said that the real figure may be much, much higher. Mike Thompson

has been monitoring events in Libya. It's a scene of devastation from what we're hearing.

In the city of Derna, which is around 240 kilometers east of Benghazi, there are reports

of as many as 2,000 people having died and thousands more missing. Now that is unconfirmed but that

is what the Prime Minister of Libya's parallel eastern government, Osama Ahmad, has said. So it

has been growing and growing and growing and of course when you've got such utter chaos which

is inevitable, as of course as we saw in the earthquake in Morocco and here too, when you

have this sort of devastation, it's very hard for people to know what's going on and to know who's

missing, who's died and in fact going back to the comment by the Prime Minister of the eastern

Libyan parliament, I mean he doesn't say what his sources are to arrive at this figure which

makes you wonder how he got them and what's supposed to have happened there is that two dams,

the municipality says two dams have collapsed and four bridges as well and completely swamped

that that city in water and it's not the only place of course right across the the east there

there's been devastation including in Benghazi and several other places too and the floods

have caused landslides which have swept some roads away severely damaged houses and it's

led to schools being closed, public institutions being closed and four major oil terminals as well

but obviously going back to the most important thing, the loss of life. Now if it is as high as

2,000 people that is simply terrible it's hard to find words for that.

Mike Thompson. Ukraine says it successfully retaken control of four gas drilling platforms

in the Black Sea close to Russian-occupied Crimea. The platforms were apparently being used by Russia

for military purposes. With more details here's Paul Adams. The video and statement released

by Ukraine's military intelligence offer a rare glimpse into a contest that's been going on away

from the cameras since last year. Ukraine says the gas platforms established more than a decade ago

and occupied by Russia in 2015 have been used as helicopter launch pads and radar stations

part of an ongoing battle for control of the northern Black Sea. In the video which the BBC has

not been able to verify Ukrainian special forces can be seen removing military equipment and being

fired upon from the air. There's no obvious evidence of any further combat but a spokesman

for military intelligence said Russian troops on one of the platforms had been killed.

Paul Adams. The North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has reportedly set off for a much anticipated summit

with the Russian President Vladimir Putin. South Korean media says the armored train Mr. Kim uses

for foreign visits appears to be heading towards the Russian Far East. The two men are expected

to discuss the possibility of Pyongyang supplying Moscow with weapons for the war in Ukraine.

The summit could take place as soon as Tuesday although the train does travel at a rather

sedate 48 kilometers per hour. So why has Mr. Kim chosen this mode of transport for his first

trip abroad in four years? Evan Davis heard more from Gene H. Lee who was the first Pyongyang

bureau chief for the Associated Press News Agency. Aside from being able to control the security

on the train I think it's also important to remember that there's a huge propaganda element

to this for Kim Jong-un. This is his big re-emergence after four years of self-imposed isolation

and the train is hugely symbolic in North Korea. I was just looking at some pictures of his father,

his late father Kim Jong-il who also took a train to Russia in 2011 and they put out a whole

magazine devoted to this train trip to Russia. So there's a lot of propaganda around it that and

so what Kim Jong-un wants to do is to evoke that Kim family legacy by making this big train trip

to Russia. But his father was someone who was a bit scared of flying I think which would explain

why he took the train. Yeah absolutely he was notoriously afraid of flying and so he took the

train everywhere inside the country and abroad and so I think that was a way for the North Koreans

to use his fear of flying and turn it into something that they said was proof of his devotion to the

people. So it's pure propaganda. Now Kim Jong-un, his son, his young guy, is not afraid of flying.

What he wants to do is establish his family's hold on power and also show his people, the North Koreans,

that he's following in his father's footsteps, his grandfather's footsteps and also that this

traditional ally, Russia, has not forgotten about North Korea and still considers North

Korea an important country. So there's a lot of I think a lot of propaganda wrapped up in

this trip, travel by train as well of course with the deliverables that we're expecting or

thinking they may get out of this summit. Yeah now have you seen the train? So I have seen

the trains that Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung, his father and grandfather took and I've written one

of Kim Jong-un's special trains and I can't say that I wrote this special train that I have

but I have written one of his special trains so I know that it is very different than the

usual train in North Korea. I'm not surprised to hear that. We're talking Orient Express like

Porsche or what are we saying here? I mean I would say yeah for North Korea pretty posh,

all the seats were covered with this kind of brocade, turquoise brocade fabric and you can see

a picture from the inside of the train on my Twitter feed, on my Twitter profile because it's

the background image for my Twitter, my Twitter handle is news jean but that was the picture

that was taken you'll see one of the women who was serving us and you know one of these women

who's who's brought on board to serve us and so it was it was interesting too you go you go through

this countryside that's completely bereft and devastated and you have soldiers lining that

route all the way facing outward to protect the train from any attack so it's certainly an unusual

way to travel in some ways the North Koreans may think that they can control the security better

by train. And that was American journalist Jean H. Lee. The scientist who led the team that created

the world's first cloned mammal Dolly the sheep has died. Professor Ian Willmott was 79. Dolly's

arrival more than a quarter of a century ago here in the UK was hailed as a groundbreaking scientific

development. Reflecting on her life in 2016 Professor Willmott described how Dolly quickly

gained global celebrity status. She became spoiled the photographer soon discovered that

sheep are even less obedient than people who are being photographed and if you want her to go to a

particular place you'd have to offer her food so a result of people doing this several times a day

over the period of months she actually became overweight she caught the attention of politicians

all the way around the world. Not always in the most positive way along with the giddy excitement

there are also fears that humans would be next to be cloned sparking visions of doomsday scenarios

such as an army of super soldiers. Well shortly after Dolly's creation the then US president

Bill Clinton rapidly announced a ban on human cloning experiments. It has the potential to

threaten the sacred family bonds at the very core of our ideals and our society. It is our moral

obligation to confront these issues as they arise to act now to prevent abuse. So how big a scientific

breakthrough was Dolly the sheep? Palab Ghosh is the BBC science correspondent. It was a huge

scientific development and it causes wave of euphoria but also incredible panic as you heard

from Bill Clinton there about whether humans were next. It was something that was on the front

pages and the leads of news bulletins not just for that day but for days and weeks as people

wondered what was going to happen next. So explain to us exactly what his role was because he was

part of a team. What the team did in order to create Dolly was that they took an adult cell and

took the DNA out of it and put it into an empty sheep's egg. They zapped it with a little bit

of electricity and that turned back the clock of the DNA inside and made it into an embryo that was

the exact genetic duplicate of the donor material and so that was re-implanted and Dolly was born to

term. She was the first cloned mammal. What has the impact of her creation been now that the

initial euphoria and the initial fears have died down? Well clearly there have been no

cloned human beings. Thankfully there have been all sorts of regulations and prohibitions

to try and stop that. Professor Wilmot and the team in Edinburgh who came up with the idea

didn't want to clone humans. What they wanted to do was to grow tissue that could be used to treat

diseases. So for example if someone had a brain disorder their tissue from any part of their body

could be turned into embryonic material but rather than it grow into a clone of the person

it could be coaxed to become the tissue that the brain needed like nerve cells and re-implanted.

So that was the idea but the initial hope of using the technology for medical breakthroughs

hasn't yet appeared but progress is being made. Palakosh. Still to come. Remember the force will

be with you always. For Star Wars fans everywhere a rare model of an X-wing fighter used in an

action scene is up for auction next month. Unexpected Elements is all about finding the

surprising science angles to everyday news. I love that this show has the scope to discuss both

emergent AI nuclear in Ghana and also what those stringy bits are on a banana and joining the dots

between their global connections. Nature does pack a lot of surprises for us. An invisibility cloak

in the acoustic domain. So called that's Unexpected Elements from the BBC World Service.

Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Welcome back to the Global News podcast. The

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has pledged to defend the UK's democracy in the face of what

the government has called a systemic challenge from China as ministers come under more pressure

to officially designate Beijing a threat. Some members of the governing Conservative Party have

demanded a full review of Chinese influence in Britain after it was revealed that a parliamentary

researcher had been arrested in March on suspicion of spying for Beijing. The opposition Labour

Party has called on the government to explain whether the foreign secretary James Cleverly

was aware of the arrest before his recent trip to Beijing. The researcher says he's innocent and has

branded the accusations against him as misreporting. In parliament Mr Sunak told MPs what he'd said to

his Chinese counterpart when he met him at the recent G20 summit and why. The whole house is

rightly appalled about reports of espionage in this building. The sanctity of this place must be

protected and the right of members to speak their minds without fear or sanction must be maintained.

We will defend our democracy and our security. So I was emphatic with Premier Li that actions

which seek to undermine British democracy are completely unacceptable and will never be tolerated.

China has described the allegations that its intelligence services ran a spiring inside

the British parliament as malicious slander. Our security correspondent Gordon Carrera

looks at how espionage has changed in the 21st century. Spying used to be fairly straightforward.

An agent would steal a document, stamp top secret and pass it on at a clandestine meeting.

That was the world in which the UK's 1911 Official Secrets Act was passed but much has

changed since then. Now there's cyber espionage stealing online and the information might be

held by companies or universities. There's also greater concern about interference operations

in which spy services try to shape policy and debate. In this new world China poses a particular

challenge. A report from the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee this summer

suggested the UK had been slow to wake up to it. The government stresses it is taking action,

including a new National Security Act to update the Official Secrets Act. For the first time it

will be illegal to be an undercover foreign intelligence officer. But that power will not

come into force until the end of the year officials say. And a new foreign influence

registration scheme will not come into force until next year at the earliest. The Deputy

Prime Minister said it was possible China would be placed on the enhanced tier for that register

requiring extra checks. That means it may take some time for there to be a clear review of what

China is up to and how far the authorities will go in confronting it. Our security correspondent

Gordon Carrera. Rui Pinto is a man that shook the world of football but not in a way the sport

would have wished for. The Portuguese computer hacker is behind the biggest league of information

in the sports history, publishing millions of confidential documents online. The leaked files

included alleged cases of tax evasion and potentially dubious deals involving some top football

clubs and star players. Their release has sparked criminal investigations in a number of European

countries. Now after a three-year trial, Rui Pinto has been given a four-year suspended prison

sentence for attempted extortion and illegal access to data. Pinto's lawyer Francisco Teixeira

Damota spoke to reporters after the verdict. Rui Pinto did not expect to be acquitted because he

himself had recognized illegality and he had shown his regret. What he expected was that the public

service he provided would also be taken into account and I believe that this decision recognizes

the existence of this public service. Our reporter Nigel Adelie told us more about the man behind the

leaks. Rui Pinto is a remarkable character in many ways, only 34 years of age. He calls himself a

self-taught computer expert and he managed to hack into various sources and he revealed a treasure

trove in many ways of over 18 million documents and they were given to a number of very prominent

publications across Europe and as a result of these leaks, a number of football clubs and

world famous football stars were hugely inconvenienced to say the very least. Among the people,

a number of clients from the world famous football agent George Mendez were investigated for tax evasion

and Cristiano Ronaldo was forced to pay a fine of 20 million dollars to the Spanish tax authorities

in the end. There were allegations that football clubs such as Manchester City

had infringed UEFA's financial fair play rules. A lot of the information leaked by Pinto was used

in an investigation from UEFA which ultimately banned Manchester City from the Champions League

for two years until that was overturned on appeal. But whose defence is that he was acting as a

whistleblower? Yes and it will certainly I think make many future whistleblowers and all walks of

life think very hard before they choose to reveal their information because he has always said

that he did this in the interests of football and when he was asked before his sentencing whether

he believed it was all worth it, he basically shrugged his shoulders and said we'll have to

wait and see but he's not just focused on football he was also behind the famous Luanda leaks.

That was around 700,000 emails and other documents which really explained how the daughter of the

late Angolan dictator José dos Santos built up her business empire and became the wealthiest woman

in Africa so he's clearly somebody who was very good at being a whistleblower but the way he carried

out his hacking was viewed by many people as extortion. Nigel Adley, a UN report says cocaine

production in Colombia, the world's biggest producer of the drug, has reached a new record.

It rose by nearly a quarter last year to more than 1700 tons. Here's our America's regional

editor Leonardo Russia. In its annual report the UN Office on Drugs and Crime says cocaine output in

Colombia is higher than any time since monitoring began more than 20 years ago. Half of the coca

leaf crop which is the raw material for the drug is grown inside indigenous reserves or national

parks. Colombia's left-wing president Gustavo Petro has been critical of the war on drugs policies

sponsored by the United States in previous decades. He said they led to an increasing violence

and victimized vulnerable people in rural areas but a year after taking office he's yet to come up

with an effective plan to address the problem. Leonardo Russia. On Monday Chileans mark the

50th anniversary of the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet against the

democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende.

On September the 11th 1973 fighter jets roared over the capital Santiago firing their rockets at

the presidential palace. Tanks patrolled the surrounding streets while soldiers rounded

up hundreds of civilian prisoners. Inside the palace President Allende made his final appeal

to the Chilean people. History is ours it is made by the people workers of my homeland I have faith

in Chile and her destiny other men will overcome this gray and bitter moment in which treason

seeks to impose itself continuing the knowledge that much sooner than later the great avenues

that lead to the construction of a better society will once again be open. That was at nine in the

morning five hours later he was dead having taken his own life. General Pinochet had seized power

and would hold on to it for the next 17 years. James Menendez spoke to someone who remembers

that fateful day all too clearly Sergio Bitter was Allende's mining minister after imprisonment by

the junta and exile in the US he went on to serve again most recently as minister for public works

under President Michelle Bachelet. What does he remember of that day 50 years ago?

Well the strongest thing I remember is first the bombardment of the government palace

on the one side the second is that I was having lunch with President Allende the day before so

less than 24 hours before he died so we had agreed on some things we were four or five ministers

that we were discussing with him for his speech next day the day of the coup

so I was in the hot place all those hours and then the day following the coup I was called by

a military announcement asking me to to present myself to them. When you were with Salvador Allende

the day before the coup what was he and indeed you were you expecting it to happen did you have

any idea that that was what was going to happen? That was a discussion and rumors that were taking

place for months so that discussion was the last analysis we were doing with the minister of defense

on his conversations with the every general and admiral at the time to explore if that was imminent

or we could avoid this thing and solve it through a political decision

and he felt he had no choice but to take his own life did he? Well I would say those things when

they become so polarized and you are not able to solve it before to reduce tensions your range

for maneuvering is very narrow the situation was extremely violent and the decision from

from the very beginning with the Nixon administration and his group was to avoid

Allende taking the presidency and later to overthrow him. The Nixon administration thought

that Chile was going to become or was becoming another Cuba didn't they I mean what was Salvador

Allende trying to do what was he a communist? He was not a communist if you have to define him

in his character he's a democratic socialist he was a democrat all his time he was deputy

member of the house three-time senator president of the senate minister in the 40s of health so all

his trajectory is the trajectory of a democrat so the main element that has to be discussed

historically and had so much impact in Europe is if it was possible to look for a road for

big transformations in a democracy in a poor country so the discussion was not if it was

or not a democrat but if the democratic institutions in a in a poor country with very strong opposition

from different forces as I described made them that viable or not that was the discussion

Sergio Bitter a minister in the ousted government of Salvador Allende now the star wars films

particularly the first three have spawned a whole memorabilia industry devoted fans collect anything

associated with the movies made by Lucasfilm so there's great excitement about a rare model of

an x-wing fighter that's being put up for auction next month bids for the model used in a climatic

battle scene start at four hundred thousand dollars vb copson reports for decades nobody knew the

location of a long-lost model that played a pivotal role in the original star wars film from 1977

the x-wing fighter was used in the final battle including the famous trench run of star wars

new hope it was built by george lucas's visual effects company industrial light and magic

but was discovered in a box that belonged to the late oscar nominated model maker greg gene

friends of mr gene have been sifting through his collection that also included an original

stormtrooper costume from a new hope and an astronaut suit from stanley cubrick's 2001 a

space odyssey its intricate detail makes it just one of four models known as hero models the 50

centimeter model has articulating wings working light and battle marks it means it could be used

for close-up shots at a time when special effects technology was struggling to keep up with the

demands of film directors great shot kid that was one in a million remember the force will be with you

always now the x-wing fighter's next mission is an auction next month in dallas bidding starts at

400 000 dollars and prices could soar high as some consider it the pinnacle of star wars artifacts

to ever reach the market phoebe hobson reporting

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 or the topics covered you can send us an email the address

is globalpodcastatbbc.co.uk you can also find us on x formerly known as twitter at global news pod

this edition was mixed by caroline driscoll producer was leon Mcsherry the editor is caron

martin i'm janette juliel until next time goodbye

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.