Global News Podcast - European leaders to join Trump-Zelensky meeting

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

Several European leaders are to join the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, in Washington on Monday, where he's due to hold talks with Donald Trump at the White House. During a virtual meeting in Brussels, the "coalition of the willing" said they would seek robust security guarantees for Ukraine in the event of any deal with Russia. Earlier the US president's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said land concessions to Russia would be a choice for Ukraine. Also: huge crowds have gathered in Israel calling for a hostage deal and an end to the war in Gaza; and the actor Terence Stamp, who starred as Superman villain General Zod, dies aged 87. The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail]

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You don't look, let's please. I'll do that as a compliment. See it differently when you stream the best of British TV with Britbox. Watch with a free trial today. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Paul Moss, and in the early hours of Monday, the 18th of August, these are our main stories. A group of European leaders is preparing to join the Ukrainian president in Washington today, where he's due to hold talks with Donald Trump.

A national strike's been held in Israel, with protesters demanding a peace deal that would secure the release of hostages in Gaza, and human rights groups have condemned the apparent execution of a civilian by Sudan's paramilitary group, the rapid support forces. Also in this podcast, we look back at the life and career of Terence Stamp, actor, idol, and nemesis of Superman. Rise before Zod. Now, kneel. It's often said that one of the Russian president, Vladimir,

Putin's aims is to divide Ukraine and its allies in NATO. Well, he's certainly failed to break Ukraine's bond with the major European countries which give its support. It's been announced that when the Ukrainian president, Velodemir Zelensky, goes to meet his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump on Monday, several European leaders will accompany him. Germany's Chancellor, Friedrich Mertz, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and also the UK Prime Minister Kirstama. All of them will be in Washington to provide diplomatic backup, as our Ukraine correspondent James Waterhouse reports. For the first time in America's ongoing peace efforts, Europe has suddenly found itself at the table. Donald Trump's decision to bypass a ceasefire after his meeting with Vladimir Putin was a blow for the block.

But the speed at which Ukraine and its neighbours have been invited to the White House for a face-to-face of their own will be a source of optimism. Before setting off for Washington together, Volodymy Zelensky and the EU Commission's president, Ursula von der Leyen, met in Brussels. She said future security for Ukraine was crucial. As I've often said, Ukraine must become a steel porcupine, undigestible for potential invaders. We welcome President Trump's willingness to contribute to Article 5-like security guarantees for Ukraine. and the coalition of the willing, including the European Union, is ready to do its share. That option would potentially mean Western allies taking direct action if Russia tried to take more territory, and is a proposal Vladimir Putin has agreed to, according to the White House.

What is less known, as Mr Zelensky admits, is what the Kremlin has asked for in return. We have to stop the killings. Putin has many demands, but we do not know all of them. and if there are really as many as we heard, then it will take time to go through them all. It's impossible to do this under the pressure of weapons. So it's necessary to ceasefire and work quickly on a final deal. President Zelensky's return to the White House can only go better than his last when he had that row with Donald Trump.

This time, he has his European friends in the room. The question is whether they can collect. effectively convinced the U.S. President to resist the growing calls for Ukraine to simply hand over more territory for peace, a move that would be political suicide for Mr Zelensky, as well as illegal as Ukraine's constitution would have to be changed. James Waterhouse. Also Sunday saw Mr. Zelensky hailed as historic a proposal by the U.S. to offer Ukraine's security guarantees as part of a peace deal with Russia. President Trump's envoy, Steve Whitkoff, told U.S. broadcasters,

the security offer would be similar to that of NATO membership, which guarantees a collective response to any external attack. Of course, such a guarantee does require a peace deal to be reached. And when my colleague Rachel Wright spoke to the BBC's Washington correspondent, Arunaday Mukherjee, he emphasised the serious gaps which remain. Both sides have made it very clear. In terms of sort of concessions on land, you know, Steve Whitkoff had appeared on an interview earlier on today in CNN where he'd mentioned that Russia has agreed to some concessions when

it comes to territory, but Ukraine has been very clear that you cannot question or challenge its sovereignty. There was some sort of an answer from Steve Whitkoff on that as well where he said that Vladimir Putin had agreed to provide some security guarantees which he said would be robust and game-changing. We still need to understand what shape that will actually take because I think these are some of the aspects that when the leaders meet will be wanting clearer answers from Donald Trump on. And the personal dynamics will be very interesting because Donald Trump is used to or prefers, we could say, one-on-one relationship.

This is going to be a different dynamic. Do you think there might be some sense that he might feel ganged up on? Well, I mean, that's one way of perhaps viewing it would be, you know, would be one line of thought. And, you know, what's interesting, if I can take you back to that truth social post that Donald Trump had put up on Saturday after the summit in Alaska, He essentially talked about just Ukraine's president, Vladimir Zelensky, visiting on Monday. There was no mention of European leaders. We only started seeing those developments when we got those confirmations from the European leaders coming in over the last 24 hours.

And then by way of these interviews that have come in from Marco Rubio to US networks, from Steve Whitkoff to US networks, they've talked about the presence of European leaders who are coming in. So, you know, it's interesting because there's still not been any kind of official communication, which is detailing how exactly it's going to be structured, whether we're going to have. have one-on-one talks first, whether we're going to have a sort of a conversation with other leaders later on. But what it looks like, and this seems to be sort of the larger line of thought, is that it is likely to be a bilateral first, and then there will be larger conversations where it will be opened up is how we're looking at it. But again, having said that, we still

haven't received any kind of official structure, which again goes to suggest how unprecedented this is and how hurriedly this has kind of been put together as they try and race against time to reach this. Remember Donald Trump has now said that he, you know, he's looking at a full sort of peace agreement rather than a ceasefire because he feels it may not hold, which is why it begs the question, how long is it going to take to actually negotiate all these contentious points to get to that full peace agreement? It could take weeks, it could take months given that both sides are adamant on their stands. Arunaday Mukherjee. Sunday is a normal working day in Israel.

at least it would be usually, but not this one, because the country has seen a national strike and demonstrations to go with it. It was organised by some of the families of hostages still being held in Gaza. They want the Israeli government to secure a peace deal which will lead to the hostages being released rather than attempting to occupy more Gaza territory. Our correspondent to Jerusalem, Eminada, sent this report. Across Israel, workplaces shut down and high. were blocked. Protesters have burned tires in the street, clashed with police and been dispersed by water cannon. This campaign, led by hostage families, has escalated its tactics in response to

the Israeli government's intention to escalate the war by invading Gaza City. This woman was among the crowds in Jerusalem. This is our last chance to stop the insanity, stop the war, stop the government from sacrificing our hostages, sacrificing many more soldiers, sacrificing basically, us and the Palestinian people for its own political gain. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused the protesters of jeopardizing the lives of the hostages. He said calling for an end to the war without the defeat of Hamas only hardened the group's position.

Those comments prompted a furious response, with the mother of one hostage accusing him of a toxic and detached statement that showed the protests scared him. Mayanada in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the devastation in Gaza continues. Thousands of residents in Gaza City's Southern's iTunes neighborhood have had to flee their homes after six days of relentless Israeli airstrikes. The cities, Hamas-run municipality, described the conditions there as catastrophic. And over the last weekend, nearly 60 people were killed by Israeli attacks across the territory. That's according to the Gaza's civil defense agency. Someone who's witnessed the suffering in Gaza close up is Ahmed Yussa.

He's an American doctor who's just left the strip after volunteering with a charity, Heroic Hearts. He described to my colleague Martin Croxel his work at the Al-Sheifa and Al-Axa hospitals. What I saw was pure devastation. This is the second time I visited, Ghaz I visited about a year ago. I'm exasperated by continuing to have to speak on behalf of the Ghazan people because nobody listens to them. They currently are under 22 months of absolute devastating. military bombardment, displacement, and now starvation. And I don't know how many physicians and aid workers have to scream on their behalf before the world begins to listen.

For anybody to be talking about anything except for starving children in Gaza is a travesty. Nobody's children deserve to starve, and there's two million people sitting in a death trap called Gaza. And every day that I was there, I saw children down the floor in that ER. I saw mothers and fathers worry about the sounds of their children's stomachs as they searched for where food was going to come from and just the desperation and hopelessness was immense to experience as a health care worker. How did the conditions then this time, which you've just described, compared with a year ago, how has things shifted?

What I would say is that when you take people and destroy their homes, treat them like animals, displace them over and over again and then speak about the displacement as if it's no big deal, It's just a strategy, a political strategy, or a negotiation tactic. I met those people. I met human beings who deserve every bit of dignity and humanity. And the entire world, media included international governments, my own government, has treated them with a level of inhumanity that I never would have imagined was possible.

And I think what breaks my heart is that I have to do this, that I and every other health care worker because we're the only ones allowed in, and you aren't allowed in, right, the BBC and other news media agencies are allowed, is that we're trying to verify that what's happening is an ethnic cleansing and genocide. And all we would hope is somebody would go verify what we're saying because we're not politicians and we're not media people, we're just doctors and aid workers. And so the situation is worse than you can imagine. Every video and every story I tell you will not do justice to how severe the humanitarian aid crisis is there

and how brutal the military strategy of starvation and destabilization of health care infrastructure and stability of residential homes, I could never do it justice with the words in a short interview if you hear. Dr. Ahmed Yusuf. Human rights groups have condemned the apparent execution of a civilian by Sudan's paramilitary group, the rapid support forces. A video appears to show the killing, although the BBC hasn't been able to verify it independently, but the RSF has repeatedly been accused of ethnic killings throughout Sudan's two-year civil war.

This report from my Africa regional editor, Will Ross. The Darfur Network for Human Rights says the video was filmed close to the city of El Fasher. An RSF fighter is seen interrogating a man who's sitting on the ground. He's then shot dead at close range. The rights group condemns it as an ethnic killing because the man had said he was from the non-Arab Bertie tribe. Whilst the Sudanese army has also carried out many atrocities, the sheer volume of war crimes committed by the RSF is staggering. Despite plenty of evidence confirming a link,

the United Arab Emirates continues to deny. backing this brutal paramilitary force. Will Ross. Even by the standards of film stars, Terrence Stamp came a long way. The actor, who's just died at the age of 87, was born in one of the poorest parts of London, yet it would go on to take leading roles

in films like Superman and Priscilla Queen of the Desert, not to mention being linked to some of the world's most glamorous actresses. But his was not a straight career trajectory, rather one characterised by setback, side steps, and some very interesting digressions along the way, as Charlotte Gallagher reports. You're the enemy, right? No. You're not scared, are you?

No. Terence Stamp, as the dangerously attractive Sergeant Troy, opposite his former girlfriend, Judy Christie, in far from the Madding Crowd in 1967. Is it very sharp? No, got no edge at all. He would become known for playing rogues, but his first starring role had been as the nesting.

naive sailor, Billy Budd. It's calm tonight, isn't it? It won him an Oscar nomination. But as suddenly as Stamped Star had blazed, it died. And when the 1960 supermodel Jean Shrimpton ended their relationship, he moved to India. I'd lost this young love of my life. I had no work to distract me. I was thrown back on myself.

I am General Zod, your ruler. Stamp returned to mainstream movies. as the Kryptonian supervillain General Zod in Superman 1 and 2. These humans are beginning to bore me. In the 1990s, he was a transgender drag queen in the adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. They never spoke to me again after I'd had the chop. He dusted off his portrayal of a Cockney hard man in the Limey. Tell me about Jenny.

Tell me about Jenny. Then he broke hearts again as a grieving husband in song for Marion. Good night, my angel. Time to close your eyes. Terence Stamp was a charismatic character actor who commanded the screen. He refused to be typecast by Hollywood and leaves a fascinating film legacy. Charlotte Gallagher on the life of the actor Terence Stamp, who's died at the age of 87. Still to come, the botched Virgin Mary statue that has Seville up in arms. Look, because it's not her, it's very painful to see her like this.

She's not the same as before. We live in a world where the news is on our fingertips. But how often do we stop scrolling and just listen? I'm Malika Bilal and this is The Take, Al Jazeera's Daily News podcast, where we bring you the context and the people behind the global stories that matter. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

They were the Afghans who had a lucky escape. Four years ago, when the Taliban seized control of the country, some of the local people who'd helped American troops, managed to get away. And many ended up emigrating to the U.S. Now, though, they fear being deported as part of President Trump's crackdown on immigration. And U.S. military veterans are among those trying to prevent that happening. From San Diego, California, Regan Morris has this report. I work with the U.S. military. Just tell to the one. You could come with us, sir. Provide the warrant.

Syed Nassar is handcuffed by federal agents outside a courtroom, where he just attended a routine immigration hearing. I work with the U.S. military back in my home country. I have all the documents. He's telling them they've made a mistake. He worked as a translator with the U.S. military in Afghanistan. He's here in the U.S. legally. But now he's been locked into detention for two months.

Mast agents of the federal government are snatching up our friends, people who took life in our name, and have done nothing wrong. Navy veteran Sean Van Diver started battle buddies. a volunteer network of veterans to come and stand alongside wartime allies during court hearings and appointments with immigration and customs enforcement, known as ICE. You're not here armed. You're not going to fight. What are you going to do?

We're not here to do anything other than stand there. Be seen by many of, you know, the ICE folks, many of them are veterans. Pretty hard to go through and see your fellow veteran and be like, all right, I'm going to penetrate this wall of people around these folks and go and snatch this guy up, who enabled our mission. We have 900 volunteers across the, the country, about 100 here in California. You know, it's really been inspiring to see, even after all these years, all these veterans stand up and say that this is wrong, that what we're seeing right now is what happens in Banana Republics.

It's what happens in places where rule of law doesn't matter. And rule of law still, at least for now, matters here. We're going to courtroom number four. I joined the veterans as they escorted Abdul, a journalist who fled Afghanistan. I'm whispering because we're not supposed to be allowed in court. We're allowed to be in here in the hallway. So the battle buddies are here as a show of force, they say, to protect those who stood with them during a wartime in Afghanistan. It was fairly tense and quiet as the 10 volunteer veterans waited outside in the hallway with about half a dozen masked federal agents.

It was the same hallway where Sayyed was detained two months ago. U.S. Army veteran, Monique Labar, was one of the volunteers. I came here because I think it's just unconscionable. and I think that it's short-sighted to think that we can do this type of stuff and not lose our credibility and that ultimately is going to affect our national security going forward. President Trump would say, you know, so many Americans support this mass round-up of immigrants. I don't think that's actually true, and I think what people voted for was border security, people crossing the border illegally, and this is not in any way what we are supporting.

What we are supporting is the legal process, these people were vetted. They put themselves at substantial risk by supporting the United States government. About 200,000 Afghans have come to the U.S. since 2021 on a variety of different visas. But now many of them are living here in fear since the Trump administration terminated programs which had shielded them from deportation. When asked about Afghan allies earlier this month, President Trump said those who helped the United States would be allowed to stay. We know the good ones and we know the ones that maybe aren't so good.

you know, some game over that aren't so good, and we're going to take care of those people, the ones that did a job. But the President did not elaborate, and Afghan refugees say they're living in limbo, afraid of being swept up in immigration raids or outside their own asylum hearings. Regan Morris in California. Hong Kong's government has criticized foreign countries which give refuge to pro-democracy activists who fled the territory. Two of them have just announced that they've been granted asylum abroad.

Mickey Bristow reports. Over the weekend, the activist Ted Huay revealed that he and his family had been granted asylum in Australia. Another pro-democracy campaigner Tony Chung then said he'd been allowed to stay in Britain, whose government said he risked persecution back home. A Hong Kong government spokesman dismissed this viewpoint. He said some of those who'd fled were simply criminals who'd committed serious offences that had endangered national security. But in Hong Kong now, those kind of offences ensnare anyone who criticises the Chinese authorities.

Mickey Bristow. Now, to the sounds of the rainforest. That was a howler monkey, one of thousands of the species living in the Great Meyer Forest of Central America. It's the second largest rainforest in the Americas, covering almost 60,000, square kilometers across Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala. And now those three countries have signed what they're calling a historic decree to preserve the forest, a decree which has implications not only for the wildlife there, but also for the forest's two million inhabitants. As my colleague Julian Warwicka heard from James Deutsch, he runs the campaign group,

the Rainforest Trust. These are extraordinary places. It's this huge jungle rainforest, very, very, very tall trees. with extraordinary animals everywhere, howler monkeys and scarlet macaws. But the other thing about it is that you've got these extraordinary Mayan ruins that have been completely taken over by the jungle. It looks like something out of a movie. I had a chance to fly north over this vast, vast forest.

And you're flying and suddenly looming up out of the forest is the ruins of this civilization that was there a thousand years ago. It's truly extraordinary place. Give us a roll call. of what we might bump into if we were walking through this forest? I mean, the first thing, if you're there at dawn or dusk, the first thing you'll notice is the howler monkeys screaming through the forest. Then probably you'll catch a glimpse of an incredible brightly colored bird,

like a Scarlet McCaw, which often fly over in pairs at sunset. It looks like something out of Walt Disney. or a keel-billed toucan. And then, of course, the animals you don't see, there are five species of large cats, most famously jaguars, the king of the forest. You probably won't see them, but they're lurking outside of your sight.

I'm imagining a few spiders and snakes might be in there as well. Absolutely. They have their share of spiders and snakes. Many people worry a bit about Ferda Lance, which is the most famous poisonous snake. people would say you better wander around in gumboots and not sandals. Now, what about the people living there?

Because, I mean, one of the things that's emerged about this pact that the three countries concerned are clearly very happy about, is they're saying that this will benefit more than two million inhabitants because of various projects that will go on as a result of this decree. So tell us about the people living there. The Maya people, after whom this forest are named, the Maya civilization, some of your listeners may remember, was one of the great civilizations on earth around 500,000 AD. And it disappeared almost without a trace around 12, 13, 1400 before the Spanish arrived. But the descendants of the Maya people are still there. And they live mostly relatively traditional lives. There are many people who farm or keep small-scale cows. Of course, some of them are now involved in tourism. In general, the Maya people in Mexico and

Guatemala and Belize are not the most advantage people in the country. They've been left behind by many aspects of development. And so certainly one vision one might have for protecting this land is to protect the extraordinary cultural heritage of the people and provide opportunities for them while also saving the rainforest. James Deutsch of the Rainforest Trust. You may have heard of the so-called superbug MRSA that's been a major concern in hospitals for years. It's widespread, and it means some people go into hospitals with

one problem, but end up suffering something far worse, a potentially fatal MRSA infection. Well, here in Britain, there's a new development. MRSA is also apparently spreading in gyms. My colleague Owen Bennett-Jones spoke about this to Dr Simon Clark, associate professor in cellular microbiology at the UK's University of Reading in England. It asked him first what exactly MRSA is and why it's so dangerous. It's long been known as a pathogen, a bug that causes disease in hospitals, in hospital environments. And classically, it's been regarded as something which kills older, unwell, sick people in those environments. And of course, you can go in for a minor procedure and come out with an infection that you may not have had when you went in.

I say may because a quarter to a third of the population in the developed world carry it round in their noses and that is often usually what goes on to cause the infection in somebody but around 20, 25 years ago it changed or started to change so that we still started to see new strains which were much more likely to infect younger, healthier people who'd never been near hospitals. Right, so what is going on with that then?

Where are they getting it? They're getting it from one another. It is spreading in the community. We call it C-A-M-R-S-A, community-acquired M-R-SA. So they're passing it round from one to another. And that's why places like gyms are thought to. And I also stress it's not a done thing we know for certain, but places where younger people congregate,

like college dorms, gymnasiums, military barracks, you're more likely to get infections we believe in those environments. amongst young people. How can people protect themselves? By good hygiene. But like I say, this is a normal part of the bugs we carry around with us at any given time. You know, a quarter to a third of the population, right now have this stuff, in the developed world, that is, have this bug living up their nose. Dr Simon Clark from the University of Reading in England. Now, do you remember the Spanish painting which earned itself the unfortunate nickname the Monkey Christ? This was a 17th century fresco, an elderly amateur painter tried to restore in her local church in the town of Boca in Spain

back in 2012, but which ended up looking more like an ape than a Messiah. Well, it seems Spain's restoration curse may have struck again. This time, it's a statue of the Virgin Mary, which was supposed to be given just some minor treatment to get it back in shape, but has come out looking very different, as Carla Conti reports. The Virgin of Macarena, or simply La Macarena, is the patron saint of bullfighters, but to the people of Sevilla,

she's a symbol of local identity and religious devotion. The 17th century wooden statue as an embroidered mantle and heavy golden crown, on her sorrowful face are five crystal teardrops. Sevillaeans are fiercely protective of her looks, so when back in June she was sent out for a small touch-up, only to emerge a month later with long, dark eyelashes and a new smokier look, people were up in arms.

Devotees were left distraught by what they saw as a botched restoration, not least because the men responsible was Francisco Arquillo Torres, who had regularly worked on the image over the years, to earn the nickname Doctor of the Virgin. This was the reaction of some of the worshippers. Look, because it's not her, it's very painful to see her like this. She's not the same as before. It's true that her look has changed quite a bit compared to how it's always been.

They've rejuvenated her. They've given her a facelift. The Brotherhood of the Macarena, entrusted for centuries with protecting the Virgin and the group behind the restoration, knew they had to quell the outrage. When the restored statue was first revealed in July, they issued an apology and closed the Basilica for an hour, after which the Virgin emerged with shorter eyelashes. But devotees were still unhappy. Another attempt was made soon afterwards, but that only altered their expression more.

Now, the fate of Lama Carina rests in the hands of a single restorer, Pedro Manzano, who will attract the close scrutiny of all civilians, devout or not. Speaking to the newspaper at Paise, Mr. Manzano said this would be one of the most complex and delicate projects he's ever undertaken. And that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcasts later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is Global Podcast at BBC.co.com. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll, the producers William McSheffrey and Judy Frankel.

The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Paul Moss. Until next time, goodbye. Thank you.