Sudanese military denies killing hundreds of people in airstrike on market in Darfur region. Also: Turkish protests continue following arrest of Istanbul mayor, and rare turtle stranded in Wales after Trump aid freeze.
Chapter 1: What are the main news stories covered in this episode?
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jalil and at 14 hours GMT on Tuesday the 25th of March, these are our main stories. The Sudanese military is accused of carrying out a horrific massacre. It denies it killed hundreds of people in an airstrike on a market.
A court in Japan orders a controversial religious sect whose followers are known as Moonies be stripped of legal recognition. The How millions of tyres meant to be recycled are ending up in furnaces in India instead, causing health and environmental problems. Also in this podcast, we hear about the rare sea turtle that's been left stranded by one of Donald Trump's executive orders.
It is a huge problem. It's very frustrating because obviously animals, species don't understand politics. They don't understand boundaries and borders. You know, they're doing their thing and nothing has really changed in that respect.
We start with what's been called one of the worst single attacks in Sudan's two-year-long civil war. A war monitor says hundreds of people have been massacred by the army in a market in the western Darfur region of Sudan. The emergency lawyers group said army planes carried out an airstrike and another group reported mass casualties from a bombing on Monday.
Chapter 2: What happened in the alleged Sudanese military massacre in Darfur?
The army denies it carried out the attack, but civilian deaths have intensified in recent months as the military retakes territory from the rival paramilitary force, the RSF. Our Africa region editor, Will Ross, told us more about the attack.
So this market, Torah market, attracts people from villages across that area of North Darfur. And we understand that it was extremely busy when it was hit. The videos are horrific, to put it mildly. I mean, a lot of destruction and destruction. burnt property, but also the videos show the charred remains of people who were hit during these attacks that we understand came from the air.
So the Sudanese armed forces bombing from the air. As you said there, the army itself has denied carrying out the attack. It says it only attacks legitimate targets, not civilians. But throughout the war, both the rapid support forces and the army have killed huge numbers of civilians and they certainly haven't discriminated between military targets and civilian ones.
But yes, possibly the biggest single attack since the war began. It's very hard to know the numbers but two different groups the Darfur Initiative for Justice and Peace and the Emergency Lawyers Network are both giving details of this attack and interesting that the Emergency Lawyers Network it's really reported abuses by both sides in this war even
Just 24 hours ago, they were talking about an atrocity committed by the RSF where a mosque was attacked in Khartoum. So it does sort of add to the credibility that they are pointing out atrocities by both sides.
And what adds to the credibility is that it's only the army that has warplanes.
That's right. I mean, the RSF do have drones. So sometimes for people in areas when bombs are falling from the skies, there can be confusion. But in this case, the reports are consistent that these were army planes.
And it's nearly two years now since the civil war began. What can we expect? Because it doesn't seem that there's any sign of resolution in sight. And in fact, the fighting has intensified.
The fighting's definitely intensified. And as we've been hearing over the last few days in the capital Khartoum, the army's been making quite a lot of inroads, including taking the presidential palace. It still seems that both sides are determined to fight on. And of course, accusations of external interference, including by the United Arab Emirates.
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Chapter 3: What is the controversy surrounding tyre disposal between the UK and India?
Vitaly Shevchenko, we have another Q&A with our colleagues from Ukrainecast coming up soon, and we'd like your questions to put to the team. Our email address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. And if possible, please record your question as a voice note. Thank you.
A BBC investigation has found that Britain is shipping millions of used tyres to India each year, where they're being cooked in makeshift furnaces, causing potentially serious risk to health. Instead of being recycled, the BBC's File on 4 Investigates programme has discovered that about 17 million waste tyres are being sold on the black market. Paul Kenyon reports.
Most of us drive a car and most of us at some time have to get our tyres changed. Off with the old, on with the new. And then we get the bill, which includes a small charge for our tyres to be disposed of safely and recycled. Waste tyres are supposed to be shredded, then used for things like surfacing horse arenas and children's playgrounds.
But the BBC has discovered that around half of waste tyres in the UK are squashed into tightly bound rectangles called bales. It's more profitable to do this and then ship them abroad. Together with journalists from an organisation called Source Material, we teamed up with an industry insider who fitted trackers to end-of-life tyres to see where they ended up.
What followed was an extraordinary journey all the way to India, where instead of going for recycling, they were diverted on a 1,000-kilometre journey into central India. where they ended up in pyrolysis plants. Pyrolysis is a process that heats tyres to high temperatures, retrieving oil and steel.
The BBC's File on 4 Investigates programme has been told most plants in India are unlicensed and unmonitored, and it's illegal to import tyres for pyrolysis in India. The process isn't clean. It creates a dangerous cocktail of gases and chemicals.
These will be oil spills, I suspect, from the process again, or leaks even.
That's Peter Taylor from the UK's Tyre Recovery Association. We showed him footage from India of a number of pyrolysis plants just metres away from a village.
And look, you can see here, carbon dust is penetrating the roofs of some of these sheds. Even basic health and safety rules being flouted. I should not be ending up in places like this.
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Chapter 4: How is Trump's executive order affecting a rare turtle in Wales?
Kemp's ridley turtles are critically endangered, with only about 7,000 females thought to exist. Rossi is now stranded because Donald Trump has paused funding for international marine turtle conservation. From Wales, George Hurd reports.
In a rehabilitation tank hidden away from the public at Anglesey Sea Zoo, Kemp's ridley turtle, Rossi, is now fighting fit. The turtle's outgrown several tanks after being found in a coma on a beach on the island at the end of 2023. It's time for Rossi to go home, and home is the Gulf of Mexico, or as the new US government would have us say, the Gulf of America.
And that's where it all starts to fall apart.
Sure. The first item that President Trump is signing is the rescission of 78 Biden-era executive actions, executive orders, presidential memoranda and others.
One of the first acts of Donald Trump when he started his second term as president was to sign an executive order pressing pause on all foreign aid. That includes overseas marine turtle conservation work. It was a bolt from the blue for sea zoo owner Frankie Hobra. Back on Anglesey.
So for Rossi, we've started the paperwork process, we're waiting on the paperwork process and that has all completely stalled because of this process and this funding all being put on hold.
It is a huge problem, it's very frustrating because obviously animals, species don't understand politics, they don't understand boundaries and borders, they're doing their thing and nothing has really changed in that respect.
The agency overseeing the conservation work in the States is the US Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as being told to implement the White House orders. It's also under pressure from billionaire Elon Musk and his government's efficiency drive, with 400 posts already axed. The former director of the service is Martha Williams, appointed to serve during Joe Biden's presidency.
or I didn't expect this administration to necessarily be friendly toward conservation. I have been surprised at the speed and the degree to which They have undermined, you know, decades of goodwill and work in the conservation sphere.
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Chapter 5: What is the potential new treatment for rheumatoid arthritis?
Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.
Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.
He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Vast crowds of protesters have taken to the streets of Turkey's cities for the sixth night running to demonstrate against the jailing of Istanbul's mayor in the biggest challenge to President Erdogan's rule for more than a decade. Many fear the arrest of the mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, which happened just days before he was due to be nominated as a presidential candidate in
is designed to stop him challenging Mr Erdogan's long-time grip on power. Since the demonstrations began nearly a week ago, well over a thousand people have been arrested. This woman told the BBC the protests were about a lot more than the jailed mayor.
We're here because of the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Memoğlu. But after, everyone realized how bad the country's situation is because of the economy, inflation, and because of the justice, because of the femicides, because of a lot of things. We have a lot of problems about our country.
But given that President Erdogan shows no sign of backing down, even calling the protesters evil, where do they go from here? Hilken Boran is from the BBC Turkish service in Istanbul.
We are expecting protesters to take to the streets once again tonight after the head of the main opposition, Republican People's Party, Özgür Özer, has called them to gather in front of Istanbul City Hall in Saracane for one final time because tomorrow the Istanbul City Council will convene to choose a replacement for jailed Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu.
And since the opposition has a majority in the council... we are expecting an opposition-appointed person to take over Imamoglu's post as he is jailed pending trial.
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