Pelvic Floor: Function, Myths and When to Seek Support

"Hello! Today we're in Turkey, visiting the country's vast new criminal court complex, where some four hundred opposition figures have been put on trial. We visit a refugee camp in Djibouti, home to thousands of Yemenis who fled conflict across the Babel Mandibs straight to seek refuge. Jaguars have long been the nemesis of cattle-runchers in Brazil, but are now receiving a much warmer welcome we find out why, and we remember BBC correspondent Mark Doyle, whose trusted voice found fans across Africa and beyond. But first Xi Jinping met Donald Trump on Thursday in his first visit to Washington in more than a decade. In closed door meetings, talking points included Taiwan, the Iran War, the trade truce, which has now been extended to January, and artificial intelligence. AI is the new battleground between the two countries as they race to establish global dominance, but there have been international calls for much more rigor in controlling the technology's rapid advance. Our China correspondent Laura Bicca has travelled to Inamongolia, where Chinese data centres are being built at a rapid rate. The vast grasslands of Inamongolia is an unlikely digital frontier. Across well-painted fields, farm workers stoop to pick neat rows of plump potatoes, one of the region's biggest crops, others gather corn while a sheep dog darts excitedly at their feet. Alongside these fields, a different landscape is taking shape. Vast data centres are rising from the rolling plains, as China builds the infrastructure to power its rapidly expanding artificial intelligence industry. Hundreds of workers in yellow hard hats move heavy equipment through construction sites, as welding sparks fly from metal scaffolding, cranes swing overhead while labourers balance on ladders to plaster brick walls. This is China's speed, Jokes 1 worker, referring to the rate at which data centres are sprouting up. An infrastructure maniac halafs before disappearing through the site gates. Once completed, these enormous buildings will house hundreds of thousands of computer servers. Huawei, bite dance and deep seek are all investing here. The goal is ambitious. Beijing wants to embed AI in almost every part of society and industry by 2030. They are already moving the technology out of the lab and onto the streets. In parts of the country, AI-powered robots deliver your dinner. Others serve you coffee or a cappuccino in cafes. There are even robot cops directing traffic or working as border guards. As China expands its AI capabilities, concerns are growing in the United States about how quickly it is catching up. This week, President Xi Jinping arrived in Washington to a lavish welcome from his host to Donald Trump. Just days after leading American AI firms warned that the technology could pose profound risks to humanity. Pressure mounted on both sides to talk about potential guardrails. But amid the pageantry of the summit, a three-course banquet of yellow squash for lute and sesame-crusted seabass, and a promise of pandas from China a prized diplomatic gift by Xi, the two leaders could only agree that neither was interested in slowing down. President Xi did discuss the importance of ensuring AI is always under human control, but we didn't get much else. Mr. Trump has most recently dismissed fears of human extinction from the technology as a hoax. China is not simply trying to match the U.S. It's promoting an alternative vision for how AI should develop. President Xi has encouraged Chinese firms to develop cheaper, open source models that can be modified by developers. That contrasts with the approach favored by U.S. firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic, whose systems use closed model approaches, and their design elements are kept a secret. One reason Beijing favors this approach is that it's worked well for them. By sharing the tech, Chinese AI firms have been able to innovate quickly, which has helped Beijing overcome one of its biggest challenges, a lack of access to advanced chips, which would help unlock greater computing power. In Inner Mongolia, the contest for the future of AI is visible, in concrete, steel, and glass protruding out of the barren landscape. China is now at the forefront of the world, the middle-aged man standing alongside potato pickers in a field near the data centers told us, "This big data has absolutely nothing to do with ordinary people, one told us quietly off-camera. What benefits has it brought us?" he asked. It's rare in China for local people to voice their concerns, openly. Service in the country appeared to suggest that there's little public opposition to the development of AI, in drastic contrast to the US, where around 70% of those asked didn't want a data center on their doorstep. China is building these centers in its rural, northern, and western regions, as they have abundant sources of renewable energy. Wind turbines lend the road for miles alongside a sea of solar panels. The country hopes that 80% of its data centers will be powered by renewable energy in the next five years. We stopped to talk to another farmer as his cart trundled through a grass field. He was off to check on his sheep and his dog Huahua ran beside the wheels. Big data and all that, he shrugged. Pretty good, but it has nothing to do with me. He tells me he has no use for AI. He hardly even uses the internet. He produces his phone from his pocket, the screen is smashed and so many places it's hard to find a clear spot, and his Wi-Fi is a pocket dungal for which he pays just over four to you and a month. His skepticism highlights a broader challenge for Beijing. These data centers may be a symbol of this country's race towards an AI-powered future, yet some of its people wonder whether they'll be part of it. A court in Turkey recently sentenced the already jailed former mayor of Istanbul, Ekram Imamolu, to two more years in prison and banned him from politics, a ruling he's expected to appeal. Regarded as Turkey's President Erdogan's main political rival, he faces at least five more criminal charges. Rights groups have said this legal action is politically motivated, as lawyers, journalists, comedians and the LGBT+ community have also been targeted by government crackdowns. Emily Wither. There's this saying in Turkey, "Solivary Saucter." It means it's cold in delivery. It's a half-joking warning that the prisoner waits anyone who crosses the government. "Solivary is Europe's largest high-security prison complex. It's surrounded by barbed wire and fields of cheery sunflowers. They were my last visit, they were all picked or blackened, following the summer's heat. It takes me hours to reach this sprawling complex of cells and courts on the far western edge of Istanbul. Critics say it's no coincidence that the jailed opposition mayor, Ekram Imamolu's trial, is being held somewhere so hard to get to. The government says it's simply because the prison has big enough courtrooms." Imamolu has been held here since March 2025. His arrest sparked mass protests across Turkey and was part of a wider crackdown on political opposition figures that swept up hundreds of people. He's facing charges from corruption to espionage, with prosecutors seeking sentences that could add up to more than 2,000 years. Smiling in a white shirt and glasses, Imamolu strives into court to rounds of applause from his supporters, who sometimes chant "President Imamolu." He's had over 80 hearings now, it's hard to keep up. In this latest case, he faces more time in prison and a ban from politics, thanks to a defamation case, brought by a former mayor from President Tayyip Erdogan's ruling act party. For the last two years, I've been facing not only my political rivals, but successive cases and judicial processes in Imamolu told the court in his defense statement. He noted, "This was all happening after he'd won four local elections against the government party candidates and become the main opposition parties candidate for future presidential elections. I'm a political captive of the struggle for the Republic democracy and justice," he claimed in the courtroom. The Turkish government insists that its judicial system is independent that the courts are free and fair and that they're simply following the rule of law. But President Erdogan's loyalists occupy the body that governs every judge in the country. Thousands of independent judges have been sacked over the last decade, often replaced with those more ideologically aligned with the government. Outside one of the hearings, the European Parliament's Rappal tour for Turkey tells me there's no hint of an independent judiciary here. I have the list of judges that have been removed just in Imamolu's cases, he explains, "If a judge acts independently and professionally, he's going to be punished." As the government said, "The main courtroom at Celevery is big, huge in fact. I've never seen anything like it." families take in binoculars so they can actually see their relatives. Itbrew, Osdemy, tells me, as we marvel at a court as large as three sports halls that can seat more than 2,000 people. Osdemy, a deputy mayor for a district in Istanbul, was recently held in delivery herself as part of the wider crackdown. We're looking in on another one of Imamolu's cases, where he's joined by some 400 other defendants, his municipal colleagues, who stand accused of running Istanbul's city office as a criminal enterprise. In the distance, I can see documents of evidence displayed on big screens at the front of the hall, and there's an overwhelming number of jandama dotted around the building. That's Turkey's militarized police force. Osdemy is here to support some of her colleagues. In her own case, she was accused of terrorism and held in isolation for 11 months. She still doesn't have any indictment against her. Precharge attention is the actual punishment, she tells me. All the mayors are being held alone, and for me being alone was harder, she explains. She recalls that she would circle the 27 steps around the outside courtyard of her cell over and over until she made herself dizzy. In Ibrew, Osdemy's district, Shishli, on the European side of Istanbul, she and the elected mayor, like many others, detained in the crackdown, were replaced by government appointed trustees. I asked the Justice Ministry to respond to accusations, it's using its courts to target government critics and opposition figures. They didn't respond. Ibrew Osdemy explains, "It's not just the mayor, or me, or the municipal council who loses out. It's the citizens, the neighbours. I was elected in Shishli, and I'm from Shishli," she says, before adding. When a trustee is appointed, the whole municipal council is dissolved too, so the vote of the voters becomes null. A general election is expected here in 2028, opening the way for Erdogan to potentially extend his rule into a third decade. International observers called the last elections in Turkey "free but not fair," and with Erdogan's rivals in prison, some are asking whether the next national vote will be free at all. Emily Wither, next to Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, which has seen an influx of thousands of Yemeni refugees in the space of a week. The regional conflict has escalated, a Saudi-backed Yemeni forces tried to regain territory recently won by the Iran-backed Houthis. More than 100,000 people are estimated to have been displaced within Yemen, according to the UN. And Gardner has been to a refugee camp in Djibouti and reflects other countries' past and the challenges that lie ahead for those who fled there. Have you ever spent time with the French foreign legion? This wasn't a job interview, some probe into a past career best not talked about. No, it was a casual question from the French woman, sitting next to me on the short flight across the Red Sea, from Jeddah to Djibouti. I was intrigued by the prospect of visiting this former French colony, close to the Horn of Africa, and sandwiched between Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. Back then on my first visit here thirty years ago, it was still home to the foreign legion, and my fellow passenger at Turned Out had a brother who was a captain in the legion. Tomorrow we're all going on a picnic till Lake Asal, she said, "It's the lowest lake in the world. Come with us. We'll collect you from your hotel at 8am sharp." The arrivals hall at Djibouti's airport felt like something out of the 1939 film Bojeste. Deeply tanned legionnaires dressed in white socks and their traditional capy hats stood against the back wall as French horned arms checked lists and eyed the disembarking passengers with suspicion. Djibouti had gained its independence from France in 1977, but it certainly didn't feel like it. We drove out of town the next morning in a long convoy of cocky coloured trucks and open-top jeeps, where men from Germany, Britain and former Yugoslavia sat cradling the machine-guns mounted on the sides. As we entered the scorched volcanic country of the Rift Valley, we passed nomadic families on the move. Their lean camels were loaded with the skeletal structures of their round huts dismantled for the journey as they moved on in such a posture. Out of the heat haze a checkpoint emerged. Djibouti and soldiers dressed in shorts and carrying ancient-looking rifles wanted our convoy to turn back. Beyond here they told us it was not safe. They had a point. I'd seen landmine craters in the road, and every signpost we passed was peppered with bullet holes. But the lesionaires were having none of it, and the convoy pressed on to a vast shimmering salt lake, where people wallowed in the buoyant water or hacked off chunks of salt crystals to take back as souvenirs. I'd been back to Djibouti a couple of times since then, reporting on the US military here in their former French base at Camp Lemonier. But this time was different. We were here this week to cover the spillover from the war across the water in Yemen, where Saudi-backed forces are battling the Iranian-backed Houthis. On a blazing hot afternoon we drove west, circling the edge of a glittering blue bay, where cliffs plunged down sheer to the waterline. This was the gubertle harb, the gulf where the French naturalist Shakusto undertook much of his research. To our right lay the extraordinary natural dome of Il de Diabl, Devil's Island, the core of an extinct volcano. To our left a solitary male baboon, watching us with bad teeth and an even bearer read behind. As the light faded in the condition of the road worsened, we passed more wildlife, a pair of dorkers gazelles, bounding away on elegant legs done a dried-up waterbed. Our accommodation in the coastal turn of Obok was basic, little to no running water and extreme heat to contend with. But we were the last people to complain, as the following morning we drove up to the nearby Marcosy Camp, where close to 6,000 Yemeni refugees have escaped the war in their country. In a cavernous, open-sided warehouse, I met Yemeni families who just arrived in boats across the nearby bubble-mandip strait, fleeing this month's airstrikes that the Saudi back coalition has carried out, trying to reverse the recent gains made by the Houthis. Here they had food, they had shelter, they had safety, but little else. We had to work quickly, a delegation from the Djibouti government was about to arrive, we were told, and then it would be impossible to move around. I approached an elderly man named Kossim Absi, who fixed me with glazed eyes. A former fisherman from the coastal town of the Bab, his bare, wisdomed legs were stretched out before him on a black tarp all in. It was the planes that forced us to come here, he said, his gnarled hands gesticulating wildly. The sound of the plane's boom, we flayed for the sake of our children. We don't know which side they are from, but they're bombing everywhere in the mountains on the roads. Kossim's identity card said he was a hundred years old. Whether that was true or not was irrelevant. What matters, I thought, as he looked at me with imploring eyes, is whether this man, and the thousands of others here in this camp, will ever see their homes again. Frank Gardner Brazil's upcoming election in October could have an impact on the rest of the world in terms of tackling climate change. Not only is Brazil the custodian of the Amazon, it's also the world's largest producer of beef. The country is split between those who believe in light regulation and further exploitation of the country's natural resources, and those who want to preserve Brazil's rich natural ecosystems and wildlife. Kirstie Lang has just come back from one of the country's major cattle-producing regions, where it deals being struck to please locals on both sides. They call it the "Pontanal" from the Portuguese word for swamp. It's a floodplain in the Midwest of Brazil near the border with Bolivia and Palaguay. During the rainy season, from October to March, it turns into wetlands. When the rain stops, a lush grassland springs into life, perfect for cattle-runching. The locals with their wide-brinned hats and leather boots are proud of their "Pontanero Cowboy" culture, which goes by 300 years. But long before the Cowboys came, the "Pontanal" was home to a huge array of birds and wildlife, which have struggled to survive as their habitat shrinks. The Alpha Predator in this region is the Jaguar, the largest big cat in the Americas. Back in the day, we used to see them as a threat, one of the Cowboys tells me. Because they attacked the cattle, now we understand. We are on their territory. This surprising attitude is not down to some environmental epiphany, just simple economics. Visitors will pay a lot of money and a $100 environmental tax to see jaguars in the wild. Pico Tourism is now providing an alternative income for the ranchers and more jobs for the local population. I set off at 5.31 morning in an open-top jeep as the sun is starting to poke its head over the horizon, with me as Karen, a young biologist in Sao Paulo, and Junior, a tracker of indigenous descent who grew up in the area. He says many of the local trackers grew up in families that used to hunt jaguars. The poachers have become gamekeepers. Born in Junior work for a non-profit organisation called Onsafari, which operates in the Pantanal and the Amazon, monitoring jaguars through GPS colours and camera traps. This morning they are tracking an 8-year-old female called Suria, who has a 6-month-old male cub. Most of the Pantanal is below sea level. This flat savannah dotted with lakes, rivers, watering holes, and small hummocks covered in trees, which in the red season turned into small wooded islands. After about an hour of searching, we spot Zudia, slouching elegantly out of one of these thickets, followed closely behind by her cub. She did have two, but the other was killed by a new dominant male, trying to take over the territory. A female jaguar takes up to two years to raise her young, and they only become fertile again once that job is done, by killing her cub, the dominant male, hoped to impregnate her. We stop the jeep, and Karen puts her finger to her lips, mother and son, cross the grassland, and stroll within meters of us. Syria doesn't seem bothered by her presence, but the cub's jumpy, glancing nervously towards us. It took us years to habituate them to our presence, but now they know we're not a threat, explains Karen. When we started, there only about 35 sightings a year, but now we have over a thousand. The On safari project was set up by a former Brazilian racing driver called Malio Harbourfeld, who went on a South African safari holiday and was inspired by seeing how money from eco-tourism had changed local attitudes towards big predators. The Brazilian elite is small, and it just so happens that one of his childhood friends had inherited a cattle ranch in the panter now. Roberto Clabine, a businessman and committed conservationist, had already carved out a section of his land to create the Kaiman Ecological Reserve, providing a perfect base to start the racing driver's Jaguar Conservation Project. Clabine then persuaded other local landowners to join the association, providing wildlife corridors to the region and negotiating agreement whereby if they lose over 3% of their cattle to Jaguars, they get compensation. It's taken us about 30 years to change attitudes here towards nature, says Marcia Reed, the CEO of Kaiman. But the younger generation recognised that it's bought more employment to the area, particularly for women. I'd like to say, this story has a happy ending, but the wildlife of the Pantanal now faces a new threat, wildfires. Karen and Junia point out burnt tree stumps, left over from a big fire two years ago, which swept through 80% of the reserve, forcing the tourists to evacuate and claiming the lives of many animals, including one of the Jaguars they'd been monitoring. This is what the future holds if global warming is not halted. Drought has come to the Pantanal, and with it, more fires. One immediate solution is building underground tunnels where the animals can shelter. Another more ambitious plan supported by the conservationist is to create a transcontinental wildlife corridor, which would stretch from central America through Brazil and down to Argentina, allowing these magnificent creatures. To roam free once again. Kirstie Lang. And finally, the BBC's world affairs correspondent Mark Doyle died this week. He was best known for his reporting from across Africa, and some of the continent's most brutal convict zones, including the Rwandan genocide and civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. His colleague and fellow-Africa correspondent Andrew Harding first wrote this tribute to Mark for from our own correspondent when he left the BBC in 2015, a tribute which still resonates today. Roadblocks can be tricky things, not least for journalists. Grenades brandished at car windows on narrow roads, bored kids with big guns looking to make a point. Sometimes a piece of official paper will get you through, or cigarettes, or lots of smiles. But often, and without wanting to sound too melodramatic, the difference between safe passage and something much nastier can boil down to a word, a name. Saying BBC has helped me plenty of times, certainly more times than it's hindered. I've shouted it out in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Somalia. But saying BBC is only a small fraction of the story. If the name carries any magic on empty roads in troubled countries, it is only because of the journalists associated with it. A few months ago, I was in Sierra Leone, covering the Ebola outbreak and driving around with a man called Umaru Fafana. In Britain, some may have heard his reports on the BBC, but in Sierra Leone, his is an altogether different level of fame. At any spot nationwide, he is instantly recognised, soldiers grin, demand a photo with him, then wave us past. Over decades, during Sierra Leone's civil war when he was shot and jailed, Umaru has earned the respect that visiting journalists like me now sheltered beneath. And there are plenty of Umaru's across Africa reporting for the BBC World Service. But there is also another name, a British one. It greeted me at the airport in Liberia just last month, as it greeted me over the years in Abijón, Cano, Mogadishu, Bamako. Mark Doyle. Are you Mark Doyle, the taxi driver, asked, hopefully, BBC? Ah, Mr Doyle, where is Mr Mark? Do you know him? Send him our greetings. It happens every time. Mark has been reporting on and in Africa for the past 26 years, not just parachuting in for the big stories, but living here, seized by an impulse to question, to understand, to get to the bottom of things. He's a tall, forceful, but self-effacing character who will probably find all this rather embarrassing. Too bad. For his is the sort of foreign reporting that matters, that endures. Mark covered the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, a deployment like no other. He stayed longer than any of us. Canadian General Romeo Dalé was in charge of the United Nations peacekeeping force trying to stop the genocide. He remembers a friendship forged under the constant threat of snipers, mortar, artillery. Courage, determination, street smarts, a stute and ethical beyond reproach. That was Mark Doyle, the general told me. So David Richards has his own stories. He was in charge of British forces struggling to stop Sierra Leone's civil war in 2000. He describes how Mark and Alan Little's reporting helped convince his bosses of the need for a more robust military intervention. Hence, he said, "The saving of thousands of Sierra Leone in lives that would otherwise have been at huge risk." Another of Mark's BBC colleagues at the time, Paul Danahar, describes how they made an experimental journey across the country to test the strength of the new ceasefire. Child soldiers waved them down at a rebel checkpoint outside free-town. Guns were pointed. And then Mark said, "Good morning," and the mood changed. They recognised the voice. In a country where children were being forced to murder each other, the man in the car represented a quality that had almost entirely vanished. Trust. No wonder Mark himself tells of being ushered unexpectedly to meet African presidents who, having heard him so often on the radio, felt like they knew him as a friend. I could go on, but you get the point. And lurking behind the nostalgia of this, there is a broader point. Africa is changing fast, booming in some places, Twitter, mobile phones, a glut of information in more and more hands. But this is still a monstrously unequal continent, and there is no substitute for the journalist who knows that you don't find real news online behind a desk. You find it down unnamed paths beyond unpredictable roadblocks. Andrew Harding, remembering Mark Doyle, who died this week. From a rink correspondent who was produced by Serena Tarling at Polly Hope, the editor was Richard Fenton-Smith. I'm Kay Dady, and if you enjoyed today's program, why not give us a rating and a review wherever you get your podcasts? You can hear more stories from around the world on from our own correspondent on BBC Sounds, including a dispatch from Seoul on the North Korean soldiers who fought alongside the Russians in Ukraine, and a visit to the Mugger Outpost town on Ireland's West Coast. We'll be back with a new episode next Saturday. 25 years on from the deadliest terror attack in history, why are thousands of grieving families still fighting for answers? In early 2000, two young Saudis arrived in San Diego. They'd never been to America, spoke almost no English, and had no idea how to open a bank account or rent a flat. Within weeks, they'd done all of it. 20 months later, they hijacked a plane and crashed it into the Pentagon. Jane McMullen investigates the hidden story of a man who helped two of the hijackers and reveals a story that the US and Saudi governments have fought to keep secret. From Radio 4, this is Intrigue, a 9/11 story. Listen first on BBC Sounds.