Nigeria to recruit extra police officers after abductions

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritzen and at 18 hours GMT on Monday the 24th of November, these are our main stories. Nigeria's president announces plans to hire 30,000 new police officers after the latest abduction of hundreds of school children. America's top diplomat leaves the Geneva peace talks on the Ukraine war expressing hope, but President Zelensky is more measured. A life sentence for the leader of a Korean online sex crime group for blackmailing hundreds of victims, many underage girls. Also in this podcast. I think what really impressed me is just how innovative the Incas were in terms of the building and being able to cut stone before they had tools that really cut stone. We hear whether Machu Picchu, Peru's most lucrative attraction is in financial trouble. Nigeria's president has ordered the recruitment of a further 30,000 police officers after a series of mass abductions in recent days. President Bola Tinobu's office also says officers currently assigned to protect VIPs will be redeployed to frontline duties. The Roman Catholic Church in Nigeria says 265 people are still missing after a mass kidnapping from a school in Niger State on Friday. Authorities in several Nigerian states ordered schools to shut following the mass abduction in Niger and another smaller hostage-taking in Kebbe State on Monday when 25 people were kidnapped from a boarding school. The abductors have not been identified but are believed to be criminal gangs seeking ransom payments. The BBC heard from this man who witnessed the latest abductions. They've been moved along on foot the way shepherds control their hearts. The gunmen ride their motorbikes while controlling the girls and sarcastically tell them to run, run. And that's how they treat them. Sometimes they pick up the younger ones to run them farther ahead and then return to pick up more. They pressure those that fall on the ground because of fatigue to move on quickly. Our Africa correspondent Mayini Jones is in Abuja. The town that we're taking from is incredibly remote. It takes about nine hours to drive to from the state's capital Mina and you have to take a ferry as well to get past it so it's very difficult to get information out. And the remoteness of the area where this took place, that doesn't bode well for finding the kids, does it? Absolutely. This state is the biggest state in Nigeria by landmarks. This means that they're very ideal ground for these criminal gangs to take their victims to and hide them. And that's why the authorities are saying they want to deploy more armed forces in the area. There's an ongoing search and rescue operation. They're trying to mobilize more police officers to secure more parts of the country. They're trying to recruit 30,000 more police officers to try and reinforce the security services here. We say criminal gangs because obviously this is a horrific criminal act, but should we read anything into the fact that the children who were kidnapped were Christian? Yeah, at the moment we can't rule anything out at all. Obviously, the north of Nigeria has been home to Islamist insurgent groups linked to IS, linked to Al Qaeda for several years now, for well over a decade. And they have been targeting people of all faiths clearly at the moment. They're also very savvy. They realize when the government is under pressure and when might be a good time to try and exert ransom for them. And at the moment, President Trump's comments on Christians being targeted in the north, they know that the Nigerian authorities will be keen to try and keep the security situation on the check. And so some analysts have suggested that perhaps we're seeing this spike in abductions recently because they know this might be a good time to try and extort money from the government as they try and get victims back to avoid diplomatic problems with Washington. Meanwhile, the impact on the education of children, millions of children, is huge. Yeah, absolutely devastating. A number of states in northern Nigeria have now asked all secondary schools and colleges to close down. This is a part of the country that already has big problems with access to education, particularly for girls. And so you now have thousands, potentially millions of children in this region who find themselves unable to go to school every day. And it's not clear when the authorities will deem it safe enough for these schools to reopen. The problem with these kidnappings is once you get one and people are released and other gangs think a ransom might have been paid, that serves as an incentive for them to carry out their own kidnappings. So they do have a way of kind of replicating themselves. Mayeni Jones. The United States has described talks on a peace deal for Ukraine as productive. A 28-point plan from the White House asks Ukraine to hand over territory to Russia, limit the size of its army and agree not to pursue the Kremlin for alleged war crimes. The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there were just a couple of issues still to be resolved. He's now left Geneva where the negotiations were taking place. As we record this podcast, President Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin had not received any information on the outcome of the talks. Meanwhile, in a video address to Sweden's parliament, President Zelensky said ceding territory to Russia remained a major problem. Dimko Jelenko is a Ukrainian drone pilot in Donetsk. How does he feel about the prospect of Ukraine giving up this land? We think it's hilarious because we think that given the progress that they get each and every day by sacrificing hundreds of their soldiers and those endless assaults, I think it would take them a good couple more years to at least take the rest of Donetsk Oblast. And there is no point of just giving it up for free, as it stated in the initial US peace proposal. I asked Geneva correspondent Imogen folks if the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was being too optimistic. The short answer to that might be yes. If you look at the bitter and also complex nature of this conflict and the many apparent stumbling blocks in this 28 point plan, we have in it the suggestion that Ukraine should give up territory, that it should abandon all hopes of joining NATO and that it should reduce the size of its armed forces. On the other side, there's a demand that Russia hand over some of its billions of its frozen assets to fund Ukraine's reconstruction, to rebuild the cities that Russia attacked. So I think there's a lot of stumbling blocks that both sides will be looking at and saying well we've got a red line there, they've got a red line there, is there going to be any compromise, and this is why I think many people, including in Ukraine and in Europe, don't really share Marco Rubio's optimism that this is just about a done deal. And we just heard that clip of President Zelensky speaking to the Swedish parliament. He's making all the noises that you'd want him to make, but he's not really changing his position either, is he? No, and you know, you get this sense not just from Zelensky, but also from the Europeans who were also in Geneva yesterday and still into today, where they're conscious always that one misstep, one misliked or misunderstood word could launch another angry social media post from the White House. I mean, frankly, we were astonished in Geneva yesterday to see these talks just beginning and then this all-capitals post from President Trump complaining that Ukraine was ungrateful. At any point, there could be frustration or anger that could derail things, and I think this is why we see President Zelensky saying I'm very grateful and the US has been so good to me, but I don't want to give up any territory. It's not diplomacy as we know it, but everybody feels I think that they have to try. Imagine folks. So what chance is there that Ukraine and its European allies can come up with counter-proposals that might work? Yulia Osmolovskaya is a former senior Ukrainian diplomat who's now director of the Kyiv Office of the International Affairs think tank Globsec. She's been speaking to Tim Franks. Definitely, I'm confident that the version that we will see at the end as a result of the talks and negotiations would be different from this original US Russian suggested plan because the Americans are signaling that they are talking intensively with Ukrainians both yesterday and today, and they're determined to come to the common ground on the paper. So normally what we have in diplomatic practice is actually we would like to see the joint paper which would combine both the proposals and counter-proposals in a single document and this paper would be very good starting point for analysis. I understand the principle. Do you think it's at all feasible that the sort of the Russian maximalist positions on Ukraine, its territory, its abilities to defend itself and so on, that that can be squared with what would be acceptable to Kyiv because at the moment it feels as if the two sides, I mean, understandably, are very, very far apart? Yes, of course, these talks could provide a sort of a document that then will be presented to the Russian side because, as we know, Americans are determined to have the next round of talks in Moscow. However, we already have seen the remarks of the Deputy Minister for the Affairs of Russia Yarabkov saying that Russians are not stepping down from the initial demands like prohibition of any enlargement of NATO and withdrawal of all the allied troops from Eastern Europe, so not just from Ukraine. As long as Russians are still confident that they're having the upper hand in this situation, which is a bit mysterious in Russia if you see the situation on the front line, they're not advancing at such a pace that could give them the confidence that they're definitely winning. This is a perception that is currently grounded in the mind of the American president, I guess, so I think that one of the challenging and the most important psychological points right now in all these talks and discussions actually to effectively convince the American side that Russians are not winning, therefore, they can't just simply dictate their terms. Clearly, one of the big issues is over the status of the territory in the East, which Russia currently occupies. One of the other big issues is about justice and how far that is pursued after the end of hostilities. There does seem to be, in the leak of the US-Russian plan, sort of an idea of a general amnesty. How much of a red line is that for Ukraine, do you think? I think it's a very important red line for Ukraine because the society expects the justice and some of the social sentiments measurement clearly showed that for Ukrainian society, justice and punishment for war crimes rings much, much higher than even corruption inside the country. So I think if Ukrainian side is to compromise on this particular point, this would be very, very difficult then for the president and his team to sell this in the society. And one senior Ukrainian diplomat, Yulia Osmolovska. The US designation of the Venezuelan cartel, Dilos Solis, as a foreign terrorist organisation, has come into force as Washington ramps up pressure on the president, Nicolas Maduro. The designation is part of a US campaign against drugs and illegal immigration from Latin America. Our global affairs reporter, Mimi Swabey, has more details. As Venezuelans anxiously await a supposed new phase of Washington's operation, the designation of cartel, Dilos Solis, grants the US more legal power in what it insists is a fight against drugs. The Trump administration accuses the cartel of trafficking and says it's headed by President Nicolas Maduro and his officials. Venezuela's government has rejected what it called a ridiculous plan to designate a non-existent group. It says Washington's true motive is regime change. US pressure has been mounting, heightened by the arrival of the world's largest warship to the South Caribbean, adding to an already large military build-up. Several international airlines have cancelled flights to Venezuela due to heightened military activity. At least 80 people have been killed in US strikes and vessels, allegedly carrying drugs from South America to the US since early September. Mimi Swabey, Peru is home to Machu Picchu, the ancient Inca city in the Andes Mountains. It's a UNESCO World Heritage site which attracts around 1.5 million visitors every year, making it very lucrative for the Peruvian government, which receives most of the ticket money. But there are conflicts about how that money is being spent and whether it's benefitting the tourists and locals. The BBC's Jane Chambers reports from Peru. Aguas Calientes is the gateway town to Machu Picchu. These tourists come here by train and then take a 20 minute bus ride up to the site. One of them, Elizabeth Ratke from the United States, tells me what she thinks of the legendary site. I think what really impressed me is just how innovative the Incas were in terms of the building and being able to cut stone before they had tools that really cut stone. Tourists come here from all over the world. They're a major source of income for the town. As the mayor of Machu Picchu district, Elvis Ladore explains, around 95% of our economy comes from tourism. A general adult ticket to Machu Picchu costs around $45, but the mayor says the money ends up elsewhere. And 90% of all ticket sales go to the Ministry of Culture. He wants the allocation of money to change. We want to receive a bigger percentage of the money and for it to stay here in the Cusco region, so that we can improve services for tourists here in Machu Picchu and in the rest of the region. I contacted Peru's Ministry of Culture for a response to the comments made by Mayor Elvis Ladore, but hadn't yet had a reply. The train to and from Aguas Calientes is a magical journey through lush tropical landscapes with brightly-colored flowers and snow-capped mountains in the distance. Back in the former capital of the Inca Empire, Cusco, I meet Carlos Gonzalez, the president of the Chamber of Tourism for the region. Like the mayor, he's also not happy about how the ticket money is currently spent by the Ministry of Culture. The sad part is only 7% of that money, so we're talking about $5 million per year, goes to the preservation of the site, and the rest, the largest sum, 93% of it goes to the Ministry of Culture, and is used primarily for paying payrolls. But he admits it's difficult for him to get the change he wants. Peru's suffering from political instability were the high turnover of presidents and ministers. I've been a leader of the tourism sector for five years now. But I've lost count of how many ministers, vice ministers, and congresspeople I've spoken to. But we cannot cease to exert that pressure from the private sector, otherwise things are going to remain the same. Carlos Gonzalez, president of the Cusco Chamber of Tourism, ending that report from Jane Chambers. Still to come in this podcast. There is a place where wildlife rules, where humans risk their lives to protect nature, where rhinos are not a symbol of extinction but one of hope. With one in 20 rhinos killed by poachers each year, a rare success story in Kenya. A suicide bombing attack has killed several people in Pakistan at a paramilitary headquarters in Peshawar at 8am local time this morning. Police said a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to the compound, and two other attackers were shot dead. Pakistan correspondent is Caroline Davis and has been following the story. We heard from eyewitnesses that they had two explosions around ten past eight this morning. Rescue teams went to the site. We know that all of the local hospitals have said that there were five people brought in with minor injuries, but two police officials have also told the BBC that there were five soldiers and seven civilians injured. So still some lacking clarity about exactly the number of people who were caught up in this, although there is confirmation that there have been civilians injured as well. Three soldiers were killed in this explosion that's been confirmed by Pakistan's interior minister who commented in a social media post. We've also heard a little bit more about exactly what seems to have happened. We've heard from the police who said that there were two suicide explosions. The first one they say took place just at the main gate and the other they've described as being there a motorcycle stand located just inside the premises. They've also said that the attackers that came in were then shot by the forces that were guarding the headquarters and that they're sort of suggesting has managed to foil the attack according to the words of the interior minister. Do we know who's behind this? We haven't had an official claim of responsibility and I would also say that when we had a relatively recent incident here just earlier this month in Islamabad, although there was an initial claim that was being circulated by local media and was circulating on social media that it had been the Pakistani Taliban, that is for the Islamabad incident. We then heard that the Pakistani Taliban spokesperson was telling local media distancing themselves. So even when we start hearing claims, there's also quite often a lot of confusion about exactly who might be behind these, so we're waiting to hear if anyone does claim it and if that claim then sticks. Because this is far from a one-off issue, isn't it? Yes, we've seen an increase in militancy across Pakistan but that's quite often more in the sort of border areas, particularly with Afghanistan. We of course, earlier this month as I mentioned, saw a suicide bombing referred to as by the authorities here at a judicial complex in Islamabad. That is quite unusual. We've not seen a suicide blast for several years in the capital and this is significant as well because this was an incident that happened with these paramilitaries in this particular area which was a highly secure area and so it will be interesting to see what further response we get from the authorities here. Caroline Davis in Pakistan. It's six weeks since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, while more aid is now entering Gaza. This program says it's been getting in only about two-thirds of the volume of food, supplies it hoped, and that there are still access constraints. With the help of our freelancers in Gaza, we spoke to an aid worker at a community kitchen run by the U.S. aid organisation and they're here to see what's changed. Here's our Middle East correspondent, Yolanda Nel. The garlic is simmering in huge pots set up in a long line heated over open wood fires. What's being prepared here isn't just lunch, it's a lifeline. This community kitchen opened in Azaweda in central Gaza after the ceasefire. Forty cooks now serve up food daily per thousands of displaced people living in nearby camps who rely on it. We increase up to 120 pots in a day, targeting more than 30 IDD camps, serving more than 4,000 families compared to just 900 families six months ago. Taste testing the dish, Sami Matar works for American Near East Refugee Aid, a nearer, which runs two kitchens, working with another U.S. humanitarian organisation, World Central Kitchen. But while more food is getting into Gaza than it did before, there are vital ingredients missing to improve people's diets. We are mostly confined to cook just three types of meals in a week, rice, pasta and lentil. We need the food to be more diverse and to secure essential protein like meat and chicken. Those essential are not allowed to enter Gaza for humanitarian aid distribution. On the menu today, it's spaghetti, made with canned vegetables and tomato sauce and flavoured with herbs and spices. An increase in fuel allowed into Gaza means the nearer can use a lorry to get the meal to camps where children are already queuing for the handouts. The pasta is a popular choice. A little red-haired boy shows his delight. I'm happy because of the kitchen, he says, because there's sweet corn and everything. Other children grinning sit on the ground and start tucking into their families' rations, eating with their fingers. A nearer has a list of those vetted to receive aid in the tent camps. Most people like Aida Salha come from northern Gaza, they've had their homes destroyed in the war, lost loved ones and have no savings left. We eat the food available from the soup kitchen, we live off it. I swear, nothing's changed since the ceasefire. We were only happy because the constant bloodshed had stopped. The UN has already confirmed famine in parts of Gaza. With the onset of winter, life has been getting harder. A week ago, camps were flooded by heavy rain. Aid agencies are pressing for all the border crossings to be opened by Israel to bring in more supplies. For now, aid workers like Sami Mathar do their best. The compensation we have with the family in the camps are heartbreaking. The overwhelming feeling is one of the deep uncertainty and exhaustion. Most of them are focused on survival, from one day to the next. How to keep their children warm and fit, especially in the winter season. The ceasefire in Gaza remains shaky and Palestinians are skeptical about the international peace plan. Still with no other good options, they desperately need it to work. Yolanda Nel. South Korea's most prolific online sex criminal has been sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of exploiting dozens of people by spreading thousands of sexual abuse materials using an encrypted messaging app. Kim Nock 1 was head of a pyramid-style gang that blackmailed victims, many of them underaged girls, into sharing explicit content. I got more details from our correspondent in Seoul, Jake Kwon. Telegram, the messaging app that really prides itself on the privacy, the encryption. They shared for the very first time in the history the information around their users with the South Korean police. Now until this point, the South Korean police had really had trouble finding this person. They've been investigating this case for a whole year, but it was really dragging on. And how this crime works is the perpetrator, they have created these chat rooms on Telegram where they lure the victims to come and ask for some like a deep fake sexual images to be made using the latest AI technology to create these sexual pornographic images of people that they know. And the person, Kim, he has offered to do it for them, but in exchange he says, I need to see your ID. And once the victim shows the ID, that's when Kim turned and used that ID, used this identity to blackmail the victim and saying that I will leak your information to people that you know, or I'll take this information to the police. And at that point, the person is on the hook. There have been other high profile cases of this nature in recent years in South Korea, haven't there? That's right. I mean, some of the listeners might be familiar with the nth room case, which had gotten a lot of coverage, because it was, you know, what came to be known as a sex torsion case, that these few people who are anonymous on these social media app is this messaging app. And then essentially they hold this Compromat and control their victims who are often under age and making them do really heinous, you know, either ask them to self harm or have sex with somebody they do not want to, or take, you know, videos of these things happening and share it with the perpetrator. And some of these, these perpetrators has even sent these, these terrible videos to the victim's family members or other people really trying to exact the most amount of psychological damage. I know it's impossible to get inside the heads of the perpetrators in these kinds of things, but is the motivation financial or sexual? Well, I think there has been multiple motivations here. One thing I do notice is that a lot of these perpetrators are quite young. This case today, he was 33, and it seems that he had told the investigators that he did it because of the thrill that he was really answering his sexual urges. Jake Kwan in Seoul. The German actor Udo Kier has died at the age of 81. Over six decades, he amassed more than 250 credits, collaborating with some of the most celebrated filmmakers of his time, including Reina Fassbinder and Werner Herzog, as well as other artists like Madonna and Andy Warhol. Sebastian Usher looks back at his life. Udo Kier's piercing stare featured in films by some of the most taboo breaking directors of the past 60 years, including Reina Fassbinder, whom he met when the two were teenagers in a bar in Cologne. From the start, he was all but tight-cast as an unsettling presence, with his breakout role in the horror film 'Mark of the Devil' in 1970. Two of his most memorable performances came about by chance when he sat next to Andy Warhol's director, Paul Morrissey, on a plane, who then cast him as both Dr Frankenstein and Dracula. In a prolific career, he said 100 films were bad, 50 needed to be seen with a glass of wine, while 50 others were good. Sebastian Usher. Black rhinos are among the world's most critically endangered species. The animals once roamed much of sub-Saharan Africa, but relentless poaching driven by demand for their horn has pushed them to the brink. Now, conservation efforts in Kenya are starting to reverse that trend, winning a fight that much of Africa is losing. That struggle is at the heart of a new documentary out in cinemas here in Britain this Friday, following the relocation of 21 black rhinos to protect them from poachers. Among the extraordinary footage, there are images that capture for the first time ever one of the black rhinos giving birth in the wild. Here's a clip from the documentary. There is a place where wildlife rules, where humans risk their lives to protect nature, where rhinos are not a symbol of extinction, but one of hope. Tom Martinsson is the film's director. Kenya has done a really remarkable job of dealing with the poaching crisis of 2009-2010. As a result, they've had a huge population growth in the number of black rhinos that are critically endangered species. And so now as the population outgrows the size of the habitats, they're having to find new places to move them to, the areas immediately around the conservancies where they currently are. They still have issues with cattle, banditry and organized criminality. And so you can't simply open the fences and let them out because the poaching crisis would resurgence. So you have to move them to completely new habitats. Black rhinos are solitary, extremely aggressive. And in order to film kind of natural behavior, you have to do everything on foot and make sure that they don't know you're there, which involves being the right side of the wind, being silent and trying not to be seen by them. You've got this huge, very aggressive, very dangerous animal, sometimes 10 meters away on foot with cameras that weigh 30, 40 kilograms. It can be interesting at times. The conservation efforts that the rangers in Northern Kenya have done, they're essentially, they are winning a war that in almost every other country in the continent, they're losing that same fight. And so those people need a recognition and you know, the work that they're doing can stand as a kind of blueprint for other places. Tom Martinson. And that's all from us for now. But there'll be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is [email protected]. You can also find this on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag #globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Chris Cuzares and the producers were Carla Conti and Arian Cochi. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritzen. Until next time, goodbye.