Former French president Sarkozy is given five-year sentence

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

I'm Nick Miles, and at 17 hours GMT on Thursday, the 25th of September, these are our main stories.

The former president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, is sentenced to five years in prison for criminal conspiracy.

The Palestinian president addresses the UN via video link and calls for all countries to recognize the state of Palestine.

Bolivia's former leader of the anti-drugs war is arrested after the discovery of a drug laboratory on his property.

Also in this podcast, a new deal to slash the price of an HIV drug has been described as a game changer.

And once tobacco kept Zimbabwe's economy going, we head to the new growth area.

I've come to Laweta farm.

Scores of women, trays in hand, are picking dark purple fruit from shoulder-high bushes.

They're separating the large-quality berries for export.

The former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been sentenced to five years in prison after being found guilty of criminal conspiracy.

The complex case related to efforts to obtain funds from the late Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi.

After the hearing in Paris, he expressed his outrage at the verdict.

I will assume my responsibilities.

I will obey the judicial summons, and if they absolutely want me to sleep in prison, I will sleep in prison, but with my head held high.

I'm innocent.

This injustice is a scandal.

I will not apologize for something I did not do.

Naturally, I will appeal.

I will probably have to appear in handcuffs before the Court of Appeal.

Those who hate me to this extent think they are humiliating me, but what they have humiliated today is France.

Our correspondent in Paris, Hugh Schofield, told me how significant a moment this is.

The big significance is the sentence.

You know, the sentence is what's got everyone absolutely flabbergasted because the judge has gone for the maximum for this conviction of criminal association.

When he was cleared earlier in the morning of the other charges, the bigger charges, which were of taking money and illegal financing of his campaign and so on, it was assumed that when the sentence came, it would be a sort of proportionately less than what was feared.

But in fact, the judge has gone round the other way and said, Okay, but we're convicting you of criminal association, but that's a very, very serious charge.

And so we're going to throw the book at you and give you the maximum possible on that charge.

So

what's really rocking people here is that it means that Nicolas Salkozi will be going to prison.

And no one had expected that.

Now, he may only be going for a week or two, but as I understand it, in the coming days, he will have what they call here a convocation, which means a summons.

He will have to report to a jail and clock in, probably La La Santé Prison in central Paris, after which there'll be a big battle to get him out, and I doubt he'll stay there for very long.

But the fact remains, as I understand it, for the first time, a former French president will be expected in a prison and will be incarcerated in the next few days.

And as you said, he was found guilty on just one charge.

Remind us what that was and what he was acquitted of.

The whole thing surrounded this question of whether the Libyans had financed his 2007 election campaign.

And the prosecution was saying we have evidence that they did.

We got these money transfers, we've got various meetings that took place and so on.

The court found that there wasn't enough to substantiate the charge that money had actually arrived in the campaign money box for Sarkozy.

And so the charges of illegally taking public money from Libya, of illegally financing his campaign, they were dropped.

But what the court found was that actually there was a conspiracy though.

There was a you, Mr.

Sarkozy, with your knowledge, your henchmen, your lieutenants, sought to raise money from Colonel Gaddafi and his associates, his brother-in-law Abdullah Senousi, the man charged with Lockerbie and so on, to try to get money from them for this 2007 election in return for unspecified favours.

And that was very, very serious.

Even if it failed, it doesn't matter.

It was an attempt to commit a criminal act.

And that is what the definition of criminal association is.

And we think it's particularly serious that we're going to give you the maximum sentence.

That's why it's a shock.

It's a lesser charge in a way, but it's got the full force of the law behind it.

Hugh Schofield.

Shortly before we recorded this podcast, the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Mr.

Abbas delivered his speech over a video link after he was refused a visa by the United States.

Here's a short clip of that speech.

His words are translated by an interpreter.

We want to live in freedom, security and peace like all other people on earth.

In an independent sovereign state on the borders of 1967 with East Jerusalem as our capital.

In security and peace with our neighbours.

We want a modern civilian state that is free of violence, weapons, and extremism.

Mr.

Abbas also said that Israel was committing a war crime against Palestinians and rejected Israel's expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Our North America correspondent, Neda Torfik, was listening to his speech.

He started off by saying that despite the decades of struggle that the Palestinians have suffered under Israeli occupation and aggression, that they rejected what Hamas did on October 7th, that that didn't represent the Palestinian people or their struggle for freedom.

But then he very clearly went into how he wants the international community to speak out more forcefully.

Look, there have been not only UN human rights experts, but Israeli rights experts that have said what is happening now is genocide, is ethnic cleansing, that it goes beyond the proportionality of war.

We saw a boss in that speech talk about how 80% of Gaza's infrastructure, homes, schools, is just completely destroyed.

We know that many have said the figures, more than 60,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza, mostly women, children, that that is likely a low estimate, that so many more people are underneath the rubble.

And he talked about, again, the hundreds of thousands who were injured and who can forget the images coming out of Gaza.

But despite that, he really put the blame a little bit here on the international community, talking about how there have been over a thousand thousand UN resolutions on Palestine, on the Palestinian struggle, and not one of them being implemented.

That's how he sees it.

And when you look at the United States, for example, there have been over 50 vetoes of UN resolutions in the Security Council.

They have long shielded Israel, their ally.

But, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington today speaking with President Trump.

There is this renewed push for a peace plan.

The French President Emmanuel Macron and Europeans see that it is a renewed effort by the US.

We'll see if that is the case.

It's been more than two years, so diplomats are curious if this will really result in anything that can give relief to people in Gaza.

Since the start of the Israel-Gaza war, international journalists have been prohibited by the Israeli government from reporting inside Gaza.

The BBC, in association with Agence-France-Presse, the Associated Press and Reuters, has now launched a short film calling for international journalists to be allowed into Gaza, alongside the Palestinian reporters who are on the ground.

History is told by those who report it.

The fears and the prayers of millions of people in this country.

Images of the D-Day landings showed the fight to free Europe from tyranny.

One image of a child burnt by Nepal brought home the horror of the Vietnam War.

It lights up a biblical famine.

But when it comes to Gaza, the job of reporting falls solely to Palestinian journalists who are paying a terrible cost.

The head of BBC News and Current Affairs is Deborah Turnis.

For two years, we have been calling for access to report from Gaza alongside other news agencies and news organisations from right around the world.

But here, as we approach the second anniversary of the atrocities of October the 7th and almost two years since the start of this terrible war, we wanted to do something that would reach a wider audience and have even greater impact.

We rely on Palestinian reporters, journalists, photographers, camera crews inside Gaza for everything that we gather there now.

And we are immensely grateful to them and we really recognise the work they do and their sacrifice.

Over 200 journalists have been killed in this conflict so far.

And this is about us saying saying if we can get in, we can share that burden because it is catastrophically terrible to say the numbers of journalists inside Gaza are diminishing because they are being killed.

We wanted to really state the reason why journalists, international journalists, need to be allowed into Gaza.

And that's really about reminding everybody that journalism is often called the first draft of history.

And that's what this film is trying to say.

It's saying, whether you're talking about Ukraine, where we do report from, whether it's back to Rwanda or back to the Vietnam War, the fact that journalists are on the ground, the fact that we are witnessing history, the fact that we are bringing that information and those images to the world means that history can understand what has happened.

And if there aren't enough journalists in there doing the witnessing, or if the ones that are there are being killed, we must rail against that and we must state our case for why we need to be let in.

Deborah Turnas.

Bolivia is the world's third largest producer of cocaine.

So Felipe Caceres Garcia, who led the country's anti-drug policy for 13 years, had an important and very busy job.

But now he's been arrested following the discovery of a cocaine laboratory on his own property.

Vanessa Bushluta is our Latin America editor.

She told me more about him.

During his time as the man in charge of the anti-drugs policy, for those 13 years, as you mentioned, he was very close to the president at the time, Evo Morales.

And like Evo Morales, Felipe Cáceres had been a leader in the coca growers union in Cochabamba.

Now, it's important to point out that growing coca bushes in Bolivia is legal.

22,000 hectares are allowed to be grown every year nationwide.

And Felipe Catres was such a grower.

But when he then became the man in charge of the anti-drugs policy, he was also the man who appointed a number of people, a number of chiefs of counter-narcotic police, who have been found to be corrupt, who are actually in jail now for smuggling drugs.

So how did his arrest come about?

On one of his properties, not only were coca bushes found, which of course is illegal, but a laboratory to convert those coca leaves into

cocaine, which is of course an illegal drug.

So, that's a process where the cocaine leaves are turned into hydrochloride, and that is that addictive drug which is banned in Bolivia as well as in most countries in the world.

And you mentioned the background of this: Bolivia wants coca leaves to be made legal worldwide.

That's right.

For millennia, Bolivians have been chewing coca leaves because the leaves in themselves are just a mild stimulant.

But there has been for decades a move to make that leaf in itself legal because it can be used in teas, it can be used in sweets.

And next month, in October, the World Health Organization is due to review whether that coca leaf should continue to be banned in most countries of the world or whether that ban should be loosened somewhat, which would allow Bolivia to export tea and sweets.

But of course, there will be critics who say the fact that a former anti-drug czar has just been found to allegedly have been having a cocaine laboratory on his property, shows that coca and cocaine, in some cases, are closer than they should be.

Vanessa Buschlutter.

Now, are you familiar with Laboo-Boos?

They're toy dolls based on cartoon characters with mischievous, grinning faces, pointy ears, and spiky claws.

Well, the figures have become very collectible amongst adults and children, but there's a big black market.

They make up 90% of all fake toys seized at UK borders so far this year, worth around $4 million.

And there are warnings, many imitations contain harmful chemicals and choking hazards.

Our reporter James Alexander told us more.

There have been loads of big toy frenzies over the years.

Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, remember them?

Beanie babies, Furbies.

There's a long, long list of must-have toys that were all the rage once upon a time.

These laboo-boo dolls are the current craze, not just among children, Nick, but adults as well.

They have like a plastic face and furry bodies.

They've got big eyes and a toothy grin that,

you know, I think looks a bit creepy, to be honest, but fans find them extremely cute.

And yeah, they're really, really popular.

But they are expensive and a black market has grown up.

Tell us about that.

Well, yeah, because supply is limited, a lot of these are limited editions and fans say they're really, really hard to get hold of there's been a big rise in the number of counterfeits counterfeit laboo boos sometimes called lefufus I'm not making this up that's actually what they're known as UK border forces are telling us that so far this year they've seized over three million pounds worth of fake laboo boo dolls 236,000 of them arriving in crates and cardboard boxes and what's worrying and what's really serious is that most of them almost three quarters failed basic safety checks.

So some contained banned chemicals linked to cancers, obviously not good.

Others had small parts, bits of plastic that came off, eyes, feet, things like that.

And yeah, it goes without saying a real choking hazard if that ends up in a small child's mouth.

So yeah, real warnings around safety.

So what are the authorities saying about what people need to look out for to make sure that they're not getting those dangerous ones?

Well, yeah, the advice is to make sure it's got the holographic pop mark sticker on it.

Also count the teeth.

I know that sounds like a strange bit of advice, but it should have nine teeth like fangs, and some of the fakes have the wrong number of teeth.

Above all, think about the price you're paying.

You know, if it seems too cheap, you know, something you've seen maybe in a novelty shop or a garage, you know, be aware it could be a resale item and it could be a fake.

James Alexander.

Still to come.

A Spanish woman who lived until she was 117 put it down to eating three pots of yogurt daily.

Scientists have been studying whether this really could be the secret to a long life.

They discovered that she had a very young microbiome containing the kinds of bacteria that you often find in very young children, and these are the bacteria that you get from yogurt.

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The head of the United Nations program on HIV and AIDS has said a new deal to slash the price of the prevention drug Lenacapovir is a game changer in reducing the spread of the disease.

The treatment, which is due to be available as early as the end of this year, costs $28,000 per person annually.

But under the new agreement, 100 lower and middle income countries will be able to access it for just $40 a year.

Winnie Bianjima, the executive director of UN AIDS, has been speaking to Catherine Bjaruhanger about the difference Lena Capovere will make.

This is a watershed moment in the HIV response because for the first time we have a game-changing long-acting prevention option that's available at just $40 per person per year.

This is affordable.

This price point removes one of the biggest barriers that we've had to access and open doors to a new, new era of prevention.

Remember, last year we had 1.3 million people newly infected and most of them in Africa.

Now we could move rapidly to stop that type of new infections.

So we are excited.

It's fantastic news.

But Catherine, there is a whole region, Latin America and the Caribbean, which is still excluded.

This region we are seeing new infections rising.

So we need Gilead to move quickly and license companies there to make generic Lena Capavil that can also be priced at $40 per person per year.

Then we'll know we are on our way to controlling new infections.

But it's a very important moment in the response.

Give us a sense of the people you would like to target with this drug and how would they be exposed to HIV?

If Lena Capavavir, these injections that offer almost complete prevention are not given to the people who need them, those at risk, we can fail to reduce the new infections.

We know, for example, that if you give to the right people

in South Africa, which has the highest number of new infections on the continent of Africa and in the world, if you give the right people 5% of the population, but the right ones you are targeting, you could reduce new infections in that country by 35%.

But if they go to those who don't need it, then you will not reduce new infections that much.

So targeting is critical.

Winnie Byanyima.

To the Himalayan region of Ladakh in northern India now, where security remains tight following violent demonstrations on Wednesday in which four people died.

The protesters were calling for greater autonomy for the region and quotas for jobs for its tribal communities.

Our correspondent Ambarasan Etarajan has more details.

Troops in riot gear have been deployed in Leh, the capital of India's Ladakh region, a city usually bustling with tourists.

It appeared deserted as a curfew has been imposed, most main roads blocked by coils of razor wire.

A crowd attacked the local office of India's India's governing BJP and set fire to a security vehicle a day earlier.

Police fired bullets and tear gas to disperse protesters.

Dozens of people were injured in the clashes.

The protests have been going on for months, demanding greater autonomy for the Himalayan territory and constitutional protection for its tribal communities.

A well-known activist, Sonam Wangchuk, has appealed to the youth protesters to maintain calm.

Mr.

Wangchuk, who has been leading peaceful protests, said the violence only damaged their cause.

At the same time, he said there was a growing frustration among young people due to lack of employment opportunities.

The Buddhist Muslim enclave bordering China lost its autonomy after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government carved it out of the state of Jammu and Kashmir to be placed under the direct administration of Delhi.

Many in Ladakh fear that losing its farmer's special status has left the region vulnerable to outside economic interests and diluted local control over culture and resources.

Amrasan Etarajan.

Zimbabwe is on a quest to become Africa's blueberry capital.

It recently signed a tariff-free export deal with China, one of the largest consumers of the fruit.

That's made Zimbabwe one of the world's fastest-growing producers.

The BBC's Shingai Nyoka reports from a farm near the capital, Harang.

In the cool of the early morning, workers file into a blueberry plantation to begin work.

It's peak harvesting season, and tons of berries must be reaped and packed today before temperatures rise.

Europe and the Middle East are major markets, but a trade agreement with China could make Zimbabwe a more significant global player.

I've come to Laweta Farm.

Scores of women, trays in hand, are picking dark purple fruit from shoulder-high bushes.

They're separating the large-quality berries for export.

At another part of the farm, the land has been cleared and a new dam installed.

Huge capital investment in anticipation of Chinese orders.

So, from cricket to blueberries.

Yeah, I know.

She would have figured that.

Former international cricketer Alastair Campbell is determined to put Zimbabwe on the map, this time with blueberries.

Because of this China Protocol and pending India Protocol, this is where the growth is, tangible growth and can happen very quickly, providing the sort of the decks are cleared insofar as regulation is concerned and ease of doing business.

So you attract foreign money, and if you attract foreign money, we'll be able to expand.

So what would that mean for Zimbabwe's economy?

Well, huge.

If we can expand to the level that we need to get to.

We need patient capital.

We need seven HM money.

There are funds out there that have money exactly for what we require, but we've been marginalised up to now.

The farmers need over $100 million in order to double the acreage under berries to 1,500 hectares.

But investors remain jittery about land tenure policies and perennial currency woes.

It's time for tea and a roll call.

I'm struck by the fact that almost all the reapers are women.

50-year-old Rebecca Bonzo, a supervisor, explains to me that the farm has transformed a community plagued by high unemployment.

Hundreds of women, many who are sole breadwinners, can now take care of their families, she said.

Zimbabwe will need to pass Chinese inspections before it can begin exports, but it will also need to build investor confidence in its quest to become Africa's blueberry capital.

Shingon Yoka.

Now, from blueberries to yogurt.

The dairy product could hold the secret for a longer and healthier life, it seems.

Researchers in Spain have been studying how Maria Brañas Morera managed to reach the incredible age of 117.

The American Catalan woman was the world's oldest person before she died last year.

The theory goes that her thrice daily yogurt habit may have been a factor, primarily because of the high amounts of healthy bacteria contained in the food.

Dr.

Chris Van Tulliken is professor of infection and global health at University College London.

He unpacked the study with the BBC's Emma Barnett.

I have to say, they discovered a lot more than just yogurt.

She did eat yogurt three times a day.

Let's deal with that first.

What's really good from my perspective, from a public health perspective, is that yogurt is quite a good food.

They discovered that she had a very young microbiome containing the kinds of bacteria that you often find in very young children.

And these are the bacteria that you get from yogurt.

Of course, you can't say that caused her to live a long time.

This was just one of many, many hundreds of parameters, thousands of parameters actually they measured about this individual.

She also ate a Mediterranean diet.

What I will say is, I suspect if the yogurt had anything to do with it, it's not clear from her dietary reports what kind of yogurt.

I don't think it was a pot of modified cornstarch, artificially flavored yogurt.

I think it was plain yogurt three times a day.

It's got loads of protein in it and of course these healthy bacteria.

But there were lots of other things they discovered that are actually pretty useful as well.

And when you put that together what are the sort of ingredients that they could they could take from her lifestyle because she she wanted her life to be studied.

When she was you know nearing the end she said please look at me help others.

She did.

This is a study of one person and all the usual caveats apply but it is a very elegant study because she was especially important because she lived around 40 years longer than we do on average in the UK.

And in the UK, we spend about a quarter of our life living with chronic disease.

And she lived to old age without catastrophic illness.

And that's what made her interesting.

So they built up this picture of everything from the structure of her genes to the information on her genes, in her genes, how the genes were being used, and then the proteins, the metabolites, and finally the bacteria.

So that was the microbiome is just one of the layers of her that they studied.

And whereas they might have seen that everything just just aged at the same rate, they found that in some respects she was 117 years old.

You know, her DNA was really old, but she compensated in other areas.

What I think it really speaks to, though, is not that we need more personalized medicine, but that we're all given a different set of genetic cards at the beginning of life, but we can play them very differently.

We could argue for healthy food to be affordable and available, for better restrictions on smoking and alcohol.

So, government has a role to play in allowing us to play our genetic cards cards a bit better from the beginning of our lives.

That was Dr.

Chris Van Tulleken.

And that's all from us for now.

But there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later.

But before we go, it's almost been two years now since the war in Gaza began after the Hamas attacks on October the 7th.

And to mark the anniversary, we're going to be making a special Global News podcast.

We'll examine all aspects of the conflict, from the situation on the ground in Gaza to public opinion in Israel.

But we also want to hear from you.

What questions do you want to ask our Middle East correspondents in Jerusalem?

Please send them in, either written in email form or attached as a voice note.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

If you want to comment on this podcast meanwhile or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email to the same address, globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.

Use the hashtag globalnewspod.

This edition was mixed by Vladimir Muzetchka.

Produced by Judy Frankel.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Nick Miles, and until next time, goodbye.

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