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

I'm Nick Miles. And in the early hours of Sunday, the 7th of March, these are our main stories. Joe Biden has welcomed the Senate's vote in favor of his covid relief plan, saying that it will change the lives of the American people. Pope Francis has celebrated mass in Baghdad and has held an unprecedented meeting with Iraq's top Shia religious leader. The president of Paraguay has asked all his ministers to resign as anger grows over the government's handling of the pandemic.

Also in this broadcast, the plight of Yazidi women captured by ISIS militants.

They were bought and sold and their owners would rape them. Some of them became pregnant. And some of these Yazidi women were then welcome to go home. But the community was reluctant to take in the children or some of those children are finally being reunited with their mothers.

It is one of the largest legislative packages in US history. Senators have voted for President Biden's one point nine trillion dollar coronavirus relief plan. The vote was won by just one vote after Democrats made a key concession to placate a moderate in their own party and drop their attempt to raise unemployment benefits. Here's President Biden's reaction.

Look, the bottom line is this. This plan puts us on a path to beating the virus. This plan gives those families who are struggling the most, the help and the breathing room they need to get through this moment. This plan gives small businesses in this country a fighting chance to survive. And one more thing. This plan is historic. Taken all together, this plan is going to make it possible to cut child poverty in half.

More from our Washington correspondent, Labo DiCicco.

If you listen to Joe Biden, the president, he says that this is absolutely necessary to not only turn the course of the pandemic around, but also turn the economy around. So we've got in the bill, you've got fourteen hundred dollar payments to almost most Americans and then those unemployment benefits down from 400 dollars, which is what the Democrats had originally wanted. Now, three hundred dollars. There's also money for funding vaccines, testing local government, also industries like the airline industry and subsidies subsidies for health care as well.

The Republicans, as you heard Mitch McConnell saying, they think that this is far too expensive and they also accuse Democrats of kind of hiding benefits or payments to states which are run by Democrats that have got nothing to do with the pandemic in this bill.

There are a lot of Republicans will be looking at the economic figures that seem to be a little bit better this week. Employment figures looking better than they were. California is just reopening a lot of its service sector. Disneyland coming in April. So the economy's not looking quite as bleak as it might have been.

Republicans and Republicans might say, to be honest, I think we are so divided at the moment here politically in America that regardless of what the legislation had said, I doubt very much that Republicans would have supported it. And yes, there have been some improvements to the outlook, but we are certainly not out of the woods yet. And we've had warnings from, for example, Jerome Powell saying, look, more is needed in terms of stimulus for the economy to turn it around.

Republicans, by their nature, would like a kind of lighter touch when it comes to putting money into the economy. But but really, I would imagine that regardless of what it entailed, there would have been a fair amount of opposition from the minority party.

Yeah. And the fact that you've been saying it's so polarized still, it means that even though this legislation has gone through that just needed a simple majority, anything else is going to be really tough in the weeks and months ahead for the Democrats, isn't it?

Well, what really struck me is, as you said, they the Democrats push this through using the special mechanism called budget reconciliation. And basically it means that if this is to do with budget money, it doesn't need to know that by the special way of doing it. It doesn't need the 60 senators to support the vote in order to go ahead. So they just needed a simple majority and they struggled to do that. Now they struggled from within their own ranks.

There are calls from, again, more progressive Democrats to change the rules to get rid of that requirement for the 60 vote to stop the minority party blocking their their legislation. But Democrats don't even have the votes to do that within their caucus.

Labo DiCicco. To Iraq now. That was a distinctively Arab greeting, welcoming Pope Francis as he arrived to celebrate mass at the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Baghdad during his first ever papal visit to Iraq.

Earlier, he had condemned the abuse of religion to inspire extremism and violence and held an unprecedented meeting with Iraq's top Shia cleric. Our correspondent Mark Lowen is travelling with the pope and sent this report.

An Iraqi musical welcome drifted into the desert winds as Pope Francis arrived at the biblical birthplace of the prophet Abraham and the sight today of a meeting with other faiths. It was a rare moment of unity for this country, torn by sectarian conflict and in the shadow of the ancient citadel.

The pope pleaded for peace and interreligious dialogue of extremism and hostility. Extremism and violence are not born of a religious heart. They are betrayals of religion. We believers cannot be silent when terrorism abuses religion.

Let us not allow the light of heaven to be overshadowed by the clouds of hatred that are reaching out to other faiths was indeed the theme today.

Pope Francis this morning meeting Iraq's top Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, one of the country's most powerful figures, a hugely symbolic moment. The pope spoke of mutual respect, the ayatollah of the need for Christians to live in security in.

That will be a source of hope for a dwindling Christian community celebrating mass today with a pope determined that they remain here. Iraq's patchwork of communities were brought together today, but as this country knows too well, that spirit of coexistence can quickly fade.

Mark Lowen. We heard there how the pope's visit to Iraq is highlighting the plight of Christian groups in the region while another religious minority to suffer horrendous abuse at the hands of the Islamic State group with the Yazidis, it included the abduction and mass rape of many hundreds of Yazidi women by ISIS fighters, part of what the UN called a genocide. Now, Kurdish officials in northern Syria have returned 12 children who'd been fathered by the jihadists to their mothers.

I asked our Middle East analyst, Alan Johnston, how these children came to be separated.

Think back to the summer of August 2014 when the Islamic State group was racing across the plains of northern Iraq and visited there for brutality on the vulnerable ethnic minority, religious minority, the Yazidi people in the area around the Sinjar Mountain in western Iraq. They killed thousands of Yazidi men and they captured and enslaved thousands of Yazidi women and girls. They went through something comparable to events in the Middle Ages. They were bought and sold to militants, sometimes multiple times, and their owners would rape them.

Inevitably, some of them became pregnant.

And then when the caliphate collapsed, many people associated with the jihadis, family members, children, wives were scooped up and put in detention by the Kurdish forces, which had defeated ISIS at that point. And some of these Yazidi women who'd been enslaved were then welcomed to go home. But the community was much more reluctant to take in the children who might have been fathered by ISIS militants. And so you would get mothers and children being separated at that point.

So, Alan, do we know the fact that these children are now being returned to their mothers? Is it that the Yazidi community is perhaps welcoming them back so often in their life?

The honest answer is, at this stage, we just don't know. Does it mean, as you say, the fact that these 12 children are returning to Yazidi mothers, the communities with the passage of time more willing to take in these children? It's not their fault that they were fathered by these men. But is it also possible that actually there hasn't been any great softening of that sort of taboo and perhaps these mothers are finding some ways to raise their children outside the community?

The honest answer is we just don't know at this stage.

Whatever they are doing, life is going to be incredibly tough economically and socially for them, isn't it?

In every way the Yazidi community was shattered.

It experience nothing short of what the UN described it as, having gone through a genocide. In everything you hear about the Yazidi community, you get a sense that it has barely begun to heal from that vast trauma.

Alan Johnston, the actress Gwyneth Paltrow, has been using her company's website goup to explain the treatments she'd been using to treat her own after effects from a coronavirus infection.

These are what are usually called alternative therapies.

The website was already controversial because the Treatments MBS, Paltrow recommends are often treatments which she herself is selling. And now one of Britain's top medical officials has weighed in. He's told the BBC that celebrities owe a duty of care to those who follow their advice.

And he's criticised what he called quackery, as Paul Moss reports.

It is a very frank blog on the website of her company Goup, the actress Gwyneth Paltrow explains that she's suffering from the after effects of the coronavirus. We asked a colleague to give voice to Gwyneth's words and some of the treatments she recommends.

One of my favorites is clip the incredible herbal non-alcoholic cocktails.

Sorry to interrupt, but just wanted to let you know that by lucky chance, you can buy those Sealab cocktails Gwyneth Paltrow recommends from her own website 89 POIs ago.

There's my daily Madam Ovary supplement, and those supplements are ninety dollars for a month's supply.

Anyway, I'll let Gweneth continue. I even get more zinc and selenium along with the antioxidants vitamin C in my detox detoxifying super powder, which is another sixty dollars for a month's supply.

But all this is at least convenient because those products, which Gwyneth recommends to treat the lasting effects of covid are products which she can sell you with just a few clicks of your mouse and a credit card number.

Now the website does have small print at the bottom of one page, which says they may make money out of the products they recommend, but that can still leave many customers in the dark, according to Adam French, consumer rights editor for the magazine, which it's increasingly hard as a consumer to know if you're reading something online to be informed or whether you're being marketed to whether you're being sold, something we've seen in cases like with Gwyneth Paltrow, where you're offering that kind of advice, expertise that they have.

There are no rules really in place at the moment to make sure consumers aren't potentially misled.

I'm just looking at the group website now, and what strikes you is the sheer range of treatments it recommends and sells not only dietary supplements and detox juices. It tells you where to buy an infrared sauna to help cure cancer. And there's also advice from a man called the medical medium. Apparently, he's in touch with a spirit which reveals medical discoveries to him 20 years before they're made. Now, a more conventional medical man has taken goup and its owner to task for the claims they make about treating covid.

We know that many people are suffering from long term effects of covid so-called long covid. If you have those symptoms, if you're told to follow a particular diet or herbal remedies, don't do it.

That's Professor Stephen Powis, medical director of the English National Health Service.

covid as a really serious disease which is affecting large numbers of people. And it's important that we look after those individuals correctly, not through quackery. And celebrities are followed by large numbers of people and they have a real responsibility, a duty of care. We had a seizure this morning, Beth.

Gwyneth Paltrow has had a previous brush with a deadly virus in the 2011 Warner Brothers feature film Contagion.

It was the year after she dramatically died on screen. The Gwyneth Paltrow set up goup and then turned it into a multinational multi-million dollar company. But she's certainly not alone in touting alternative remedies for covid. Highly poisonous chemical cleaners like bleach have been suggested in many countries to prevent or cure infection, whereas in fact, drinking even a small amount can kill you. South Africa has seen people recommend lemon juice, less toxic, but still totally ineffective. And in Britain and the US, there's been a particular surge of interest in products which supposedly boost your immunity to the coronavirus.

These two represent a risk, according to Tracy Brown, director of the campaign group Sense about Science.

The danger is that people may think that they have some protection. They may think that their immune system leaves them protected if they go out and about in society. But not really anything you can do through your diet or through this kind of micronutrient dosing to stop you from catching it.

We wanted to speak to goup about the suggestions on its website for treating long covid we contacted them, but still haven't had any response. However, Gwyneth Paltrow, whose own words suggests she seems to think the treatments are working.

I have energy. I'm working out in the mornings and I'm doing an infrared sauna as often as I can. All in service of healing. Paul Moss reporting.

Still to come, a young man in an apron approaches and delivers a kariobangi to the pilot.

The young man gives a thumbs up and the aircraft takes off the 130 kilometre trip to pick up a sandwich. Police in north west England are investigating whether a helicopter pilot broke coronavirus travel restrictions.

Go to Paraguay now, where President Mario Alberto has asked all ministers to stand down. He says that he's going to appoint a new cabinet to deal with the demands of protesters angry at the government's handling of the pandemic.

All Fiona Akino is a reporter for the ABC TV channel in Paraguay.

She told the BBC's Julian Marshall, what exactly is exercising the protesters?

People are protesting because we don't have many scenes like a drug trial and meaningful in the hospitals. And people have to spend six hundred dollars per day to be able to buy these medicines.

We are like six million people and we got 4000 vaccines last month. Right now, the hospitals are collapsing. We have like 1000 in 200 cases per day. And like three hundred people are in the intensive care unit. We can't get any more people sick because we can and give them the attention they need.

Why hasn't Paraguay got enough vaccines?

The government said at first we got like an agreement with the Kovács facility. We were supposed to receive four million vaccines for two million people because they have like two shots. We were waiting for those of scenes, but we never got them. The government did not made all the deals to buy those vaccines for the Paraguayan people. That's the main problem.

I see that there are accusations that the government has been stealing millions of dollars that could have been used to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.

We got five hundred million dollars for the health ministry. We don't have the medicines we need in the hospitals. So we even know that some people, some poor families had to buy medicines that were originally from the health ministry.

But if you go to the drugstore, you can buy Dudd Entrepreneurial or midazolam. That was from the Gulf Ministry. So that's why people are talking about corruption. We even talked to some families. They show us photos of the medicines and it has imprinted in them. This is from the health ministry. And you cannot sell this, but people were buying those medicines.

The president says that he's going to appoint a new cabinet to deal with the demands of the protesters. Is is that going to keep people off the streets, do you think?

I don't think so. Actually, people are right now going to the downtown Washington scene once again because people are fed up. Everyone wants the president and the vice president to go. Phiona Akino.

Poland has fared better than many other European countries during the pandemic, but there's concern there now because the number of new cases has risen by almost a quarter in the last week.

On Saturday, almost 15000 new positive tests and 250 covid related deaths were recorded. There's a growing worry, too, about the pressure on hospitals, and many public buildings are being closed in the worst affected areas. That's in the north of the country.

Adam Easton reports from Warsaw. Poland's deputy health minister, Valdemar Krasker said the country's third coronavirus wave was accelerating. He expressed concern about the growth in new cases and the increasing number of occupied hospital beds.

In the past week, new daily infections have risen to levels not seen since November, and officials expect them to continue rising throughout March into northern provinces of Poland with the fastest growth in new cases. Shopping centers, hotels, cinemas and sporting facilities have been or are being closed. Mr. Carrusca said households would most likely once again have to celebrate Easter on their own in neighboring Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The third wave started earlier, and the Czechs now have the highest number of new cases per million people in the world atomisation in Warsaw.

Events have been held in Afghanistan to mark the 20th anniversary of the destruction of the 6th century Buddhist statues at Bamiyan, the giant sandstone figures were blown up by the Taliban, an act that shocked the world. The Taliban made local farmers pack explosives around the statues.

Farmers like this one as the Taliban leaders were standing with their guns ready to fire if we made a mistake.

I myself moved tons of explosives.

What more, when they blew up the Buddha, I was inside a small mosque facing the biggest statue at the mosque. We were covered in dust and rubble. The Taliban were dancing and cheering.

They said we've destroyed the idols just like Abraham.

Well, one of the statues was more than 50 meters tall. They had been carved into a cliff face.

Nearly one and a half thousand years ago, local officials organized a protest march as well as a meal in one of the ancient painted caves once used by meditating monks.

Our South Asia editor, Jill McGivern, told my colleague Jackie Leonard more about what happened 20 years ago.

They started off trying to just attack the statues with artillery and realize they didn't get very far. And then there was a sustained effort to destroy them that took several weeks and involved a lot of local workers being taken every day at gunpoint to the statues to drill holes in them, pack them with explosives, and then they'd set off two or three blasts each day. That went on day after day after day until they were reduced to rubble. So there was plenty of time for the world to watch what was happening and get reports there.

They tried pretty much everything. They were countries who offered to take the stones and find a way of removing them somehow to another country, to a place of safety to preserve them. There were countries who offered a lot of money to the Taliban, and there were countries, Islamic countries like Pakistan, who sent envoys to try and reason on religious grounds, saying there is no need for you to destroy. There's nothing under Islam that says that we have to destroy religious artifacts.

And none of that made any difference. In fact, some people at the time suggested the more people were upset about it and the more they begged and the more they tried to persuade them, the more determined the Taliban leadership seemed.

So in the intervening 20 years, how have the Taliban changed their position, their influence, their aims?

It was only later that year that we saw them forced from power. And at the time, the international community that went in militarily was suggesting that the Taliban was then a spent force, that they'd fled, that they'd been disrupted, captured or killed. And that was the end of the Taliban. Well, of course, it wasn't another key moment as they continued their fight over the last two decades was the death of Mullah Omar, who was then their leader.

He was thought to have been the man who personally put out the decree to get rid of the Bamiyan statues. Since then, we had fighters who were very radical, whose positions have become closer to people, groups like the Islamic State group. There have also been a group emerging which is trying to present a slightly more moderate face to the world, and they are the leaders who are now engaged in international diplomacy.

Since the statues were destroyed 20 years ago, when are the sites of historical or cultural value have been attacked? There have been efforts to try to rebuild. Is that something that could ever happen with Bamiyan?

There's been a lot of discussion about that. There are people who are in favor of trying to recreate something very similar in the image of what there was before to fill those empty niches. And there have also been things like a 3D light recreations which look stunning. And they've done as a temporary show. And they're doing something similar this week to mark the 20 years. And there are other people who say, you know what, leave them empty because there is already a lot associated there.

So the sense of Bamiyan is importance won't go away. And some people say maybe it's best that we leave those spaces to remind us of the sort of destruction that is possible.

Jill McGilvray. There is growing evidence that vitamin D could boost our immune systems and now some people are suggesting that it could even help protect us from the worst of coronavirus, although this is far from certain at the moment. But much of the world's population is deficient in vitamin D because it's hard to get enough of it naturally from our food.

So what's the best way to make sure we are getting enough? Emily Thomas investigates.

In Ulan Bator, Mongolia, charity workers distribute food. Almost half of the country's population is crammed into the city. Many of them live in slums.

They have no running water. The families are living in some huts. All their families are using coal to heat their home. And they have what we call long drops, you know, their wooden toilets. That's just the hole on the ground.

Amirabad is operations manager at the Christina Noble Children's Foundation, which helps vulnerable communities in the capital. She says vitamin D deficiency is a big problem.

Quite often we do receive a child with rickets or vitamin D deficiency. And, you know, we had a two year old girl on our program. She couldn't actually walk and she had really no leg. She was malnourished.

The charity provides some families with vitamin D supplements, but public awareness about deficiency is low. And in the coldest capital city in the world, sunbathing is rarely an option. The Mongolian government, though, has plans to make the fortification of wheat flour with vitamin D and legal requirements.

The main ingredients in our meal have always been flour and meat salt. If they have a flour, they make buns, they make some doughnuts. And I believe that we will get sufficient amount of vitamin D if we start to fortified the flowers.

Mongolia will become one of just a small number of countries to fortify a staple food with vitamin D. Finland in Northern Europe chose a different product. Cristel Lamberg lot works on the country's vitamin D enrichment program.

Everybody uses milk in some form. Many people are having milk with the food or main meals, so most of people will get enough without thinking about what they eat.

In the last 20 years, Finland's rate of vitamin D deficiency has fallen from around 12 percent to less than one percent. So is this a strategy other governments should emulate? Kevin Cashman thinks he's professor of food and health at University College Cork in the Republic of Ireland and says the coronavirus pandemic has made it more likely that governments around the world will follow suit.

We've been shining a torch for probably 10 or 20 years. Along comes a coronavirus pandemic, and it's actually turned on the floodlights. It's pushed vitamin D deficiency as a public health issue up along the curve. It'll be interesting to see how do they respond to it.

Emily Thomas reporting. And you can hear her full story in this week's episode of The Food Chain available on the BBC World Service and as a podcast this Thursday, March the 11th.

Police in north west England are investigating whether a helicopter pilot broke coronavirus travel restrictions when he flew a round trip of 130 kilometres, also to pick up a sandwich.

Current lockdown measures allow aviation for work, but not for leisure. And they don't mention airborne lunch trips. Anthony Birchley has the story.

A video posted on a social media account of the chipping farm shop in the rebel valley shows the helicopter standing in a field with its rotors whirring. A young man in an apron approaches and delivers a carrier bag to the pilot. The young man gives a thumbs up and the aircraft takes off in its post, promoting its selection of savory roles.

The firm says when your customers are literally flying in for your roast beef and caramelized onion gravy balms, a flight tracking website shows the helicopter making the journey from Salford City airports to the village of chipping and back again on the 27th of last month. An almost identical flight takes place the next day, a local councillor said it appeared to be a flagrant abuse of travel restrictions.

Neither the shop nor the helicopters owners have commented. Anthony Birchley.

And that's all from us for now. But there will be an updated version of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics we've covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is Global Podcast at BBC dot com dot UK today, studio manager was Rohan Madson. The producer is Alison Davies and the editor Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles. Until next time. Goodbye.