Revelations of how the secret police controlled society under Assad. Also: the mystery of huge drones spotted in the US, and how fidgeting can drive others mad - and what psychologists can do to help.
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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritson and in the early hours of Saturday the 14th of December, these are our main stories. More secrets of the Assad regime have been emerging as Syrians across the country continue to celebrate the end of half a century of authoritarian rule.
Francois Bayrou has admitted he has a mountainous task ahead as he becomes the fourth prime minister to take office in France this year. The management consulting firm McKinsey has agreed a settlement of hundreds of millions of dollars with the US authorities over its role in the opioid crisis. Also in this podcast.
These are large drones that are the size of bicycles, small cars. When you get close to those drones, they notice those drones kind of turn off their lights and evade police helicopters.
The mystery of the huge drone spotted in parts of the US but dismissed by the White House. We begin in Syria, where secrets of the Assad regime have been emerging since its overthrow last weekend. For more than half a century, the linchpin of the regime's stranglehold in the country was the General Intelligence Directorate, better known throughout the Arab world as the Muqabarat.
the secret police. It's impossible to overstate its grip on Syrian society. It spied on the Syrian people and others, got Syrians to spy on each other and imprisoned, tortured and often killed anyone who fell foul of the authorities. BBC Arabic's Feras Kalani visited the secretive heart of the Assad state's security apparatus. He told me what he found.
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