Global News Podcast - Iran closes Strait of Hormuz a day after declaring it open

Episode Date: April 19, 2026

Iran says its forces are in full control of the Strait of Hormuz and passage through the vital oil waterway would remain restricted, unless the US removed its blockade of Iranian ports. President Trump has said the US will continue to stop ships going to or coming from Iran until a peace deal is agreed. Tehran warned any vessels approaching the shipping lane would be "targeted". Also: Hezbollah has denied being responsible for an attack that killed a French UN peacekeeper in southern Lebanon. Pope Leo says he was not seeking to debate Donald Trump when the pontiff criticised "tyrants" for spending billions on wars. At least six people have been killed after a person opened fire in Kyiv on Saturday, shooting at people on the street and taking others hostage in a supermarket. We hear about the challenges faced by people with disabilities in Nigeria. One of France's most celebrated film stars, Nathalie Baye, has died aged 77 - we look back at her career. And how China fell in love with snooker.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]

This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles, and in the early hours of Sunday, the 19th of April, these are our main stories. Iran's Revolutionary Guards say they are completely closing the Strait of Hormuz, once more because of America's continuing blockade of Iranian ports. Hezbollah has denied being responsible for an attack that killed a French UN peacekeeper in southern Lebanon. Police in Kiev have shot dead a man, said to be from Marlowe, Moscow after he shot at least six people in Ukraine's capital. Also in this podcast.

President of the United States made some comments about myself. Much of what has been written since then has been more commentary on commentary trying to interpret what has been said. Arriving in Angola on his tour of Africa, Pope Leo downplays his row with Donald Trump. For just over 24 hours, the crucial waterway known as the Strait of Hormuz. looked like it just might be getting back to normal. Iran had lifted its threat to shipping. Now ships are avoiding it once again. The Speaker of Iran's Parliament, Mohamed Baka Kalibaf,

said Iranian forces are in full control of the strait and passage through it would remain restricted unless the US removed its blockade of Iranian ports. President Trump has said the US will continue to stop vessels going to or coming from Iran until a deal is reached with Tehram. Let's get more on the latest developments from our diplomatic correspondent, James Landau. Your order to go back to your departure immediately. Do you get my message? Okay, copied your message. I will turn back.

The message from the Iranian authorities to see fair as they would not be passing through the strait of Hormuz. Iran's foreign ministry had said the seaway was fully open. The country's army and security chiefs said no, they would continue to control traffic. In a statement, Iran's Supreme National Security Council said this control will be implemented by obtaining full information on passing vessels, issuing transit permits, according to Iran's announced rules, collecting fees for security, safety and environmental protection services. This, they said, would continue until America's warships ended their own blockade of shipping to and from Iranian ports, which the U.S. says will continue both in the air and on the sea, a blockade which Iran

describes as piracy. They can't blackmail us. In fact, a lot of the ships are coming up to Texas. Donald Trump said Iran was being a little cute with the U.S., but exuded his usual confidence. Pretty good, but it's going actually along very well. But not so well for some. The U.K. maritime authorities said Iranian gunboats fired on a tank, northeastern, northeastern Voman. They said a container ship in the same area was hit by an unknown projectile. In a message posted on social media, Iran's supreme leader, Meshhtaba Khomeinay, said Iran's navy was ready to inflict new bitter defeats on its enemies. Satellite imagery showed some vessels had hoped to transit the strait only for most to turn around as it became

clear the threat from Iran remained. There is some diplomacy underway before the two-week ceasefire expires on Wednesday. Pakistan's army chief has been in Tehran and there's talk of a possible memorandum of understanding between both sides, followed by a comprehensive deal in 60 days. But Iran said no date had been set for talks and it had yet to respond to the latest US proposals. For now it seems Tehran is happy to display its confidence and its control of the seas. So, to what extent have the latest developments lowered expectations of a resolution to the conflict from the Trump administration's point of view. Sini Jula Oshul is in Washington.

Well, it doesn't seem to have dampened hopes here. Publicly, President Trump has insisted that the standoff hasn't derailed negotiations, even if the reality looks more complicated. He's remained optimistic. He's said that Iran cannot blackmail Washington, but he's also said that there are very good conversations going on between the two sides. He has acknowledged that the U.S. has taken a sort of tough stance in these negotiations.

It seems that the US is simply continuing to apply economic pressure on Iran until they get a deal that they're satisfied with. And in the meantime, ships are turning back from the strait off Homoos, as we speak, worried about being fired upon by Iran, possibly spiking oil prices as well. That's going to put pressure economically on Donald Trump as well, too, isn't it? Yes, indeed. We know that the Strait of Hormuz was a sort of central pressure point for President Trump throughout this war.

It kind of made it difficult for him to end this war on his own terms. So we know it's kind of propelled him to get these talks going, to get a negotiation done. He's been put under pressure here in the US as well because global oil prices rising also affects oil prices here in the US. Now, he has continued to receive support for the US. Republicans and members of his own party, but Democrats have continuously criticised this war instead that President Trump isn't focused on affordability and that this war has made it worse.

That was Simi Jula Oshul. Meanwhile, for people living inside Iran, they have now been in a government-imposed internet blackout for seven weeks. Back in February, Tehran effectively shut down internet to everyday users, with traffic consistently reduced to, below 1% of normal levels. That's leaving over 90 million people confined to a tightly controlled government-approved intranet.

Hadi Nili is technology correspondent for BBC Persian. So what are people in Iran seeing when they try to access the internet? You hit Eval. What exists is something closer to a domestic nationwide intranet, a government-approved system with domestic apps,

local search engines, banking services. but the global internet largely gone or barely trickling in. For most of these 50 days, data traffic, meaning the actual connectivity to the world, drop to around 1% of normal traffic for your own. So imagine opening your phone and nothing loads. No WhatsApp, no Instagram, no independent news. And it's not just an inconvenience, I should say, like what you feel when you have a glitch in your network at home or in the office.

It's information isolation. More than 90 million people been kept in dark about what's, happening in their own country during such an intense conflict, the Israeli-U.S. war on Iran. All internet traffic flows through state-controlled infrastructure. They can simply order a shutdown, and it's implemented in minutes. Second, high-tech filtering. They use AI to inspect users' data and how they are connected, like if they're using VPN and anti-censorship tools or using satellite internet via Staling terminal, which are all criminalized in Iran now. And most effectively, throttling speed to unusable levels so users just give up, frustrated.

Third, physical control. Seeing cards of activists and citizens who post on social media platforms get cut off entirely. My mom, who is a retired teacher, is tech savvy because she needs to have anti-filtering tools on her phone to be able to connect to me on WhatsApp to have a video call so she can see her grandson growing up here in London. But millions of people have been using these tools. It's becoming more and more strict and more hard to make them work because the VPN are getting more and more expensive.

A friend of mine told me they had to forget about buying new clothes for the Iranian New Year and instead buy these anti-Sik convention tools. Hadirnili, three days into the ceasefire in Lebanon and it remains fragile. A French soldier in the south of the country with the United Nations Peacekeeping Force Unifil has been killed in an attack which the UNR. France has blamed on Hezbollah. The Iranian-backed armed group denies any involvement. Antonio Guterrej, the UN Secretary-General, has called for such attacks to stop and for Israel and Hezbollah to respect the ceasefire. According to the Lebanese health ministry, more than 2,100 people

were killed in Israeli airstrikes during the six-week war. Israeli forces are still occupying parts of southern Lebanon. They say to stop Hezbollah fighters returning to attack northern Israel. The BBC Arabic's Karin Torbay sent us this report from southern Lebanon. This is one of the main entrances to Chiam. It is a border town between Lebanon and Israel. That's so very heavy fighting throughout the 45-day war between Hezbollah and Israel, as the Israeli army was trying to advance into it and to occupy it. At the moment the Lebanese army is erecting this barrier to stop the residents,

from going back into the town as it is still partly under Israeli occupation. But this town and other towns in the area have seen very intense explosions. And the thud of these explosions were heard in large parts around it. And they are believed to be coming from detonations carried out by the Israeli army to houses and structures inside the. those villages. Of course, parts of the normal life are coming back to the south of Lebanon or to parts of the south of Lebanon after the ceasefire came into effect. And as part of this, the UNIFEL, the UN Peacekeeping Forces in South Lebanon, has resumed its patrols in parts of the south. This

has stopped due to the hostilities in the past weeks. On the political, level, there is still a very strong division about the way ahead. And this division came to light after the Lebanese president has announced that he is ready to go whatever is necessary to liberate the land and to protect the people. Of course, he was alluding to some sort of direct negotiations with Israel. And this is a very deeply divisive subject in the country. in Torbay reporting. Pope Leo seems to be downplaying his dispute with President Trump, who accused him of being weak on crime. The Pope is now in Angola on his tour of Africa, but en route he said that comments he had made in Cameroon about abuse and tyranny had been misinterpreted.

There's been a certain narrative that has not been accurate in all of its aspects, but because of the political situation created when on the first day of the trip, President of the United States made some comments about myself. Much of what has been written since then has been more commentary on commentary trying to interpret what has been said. Our global affairs reporter Richard Kagoy told Valerie Sanderson more about the Pope's comments. Well, he said that his remarks that he's made regarding issues to do with exploitation, leadership, which is very tyrannical.

You know, he's talked about issues to do with corruption. were not necessarily targeted at President Trump. He says that he is just promoting a message of peace based on the observations and the issues that he's been able to observe around the world. So he sort of set the record clear that anything that he's been saying has not been necessarily directed at President Trump because part of the messaging or the speeches were prepared well even before the criticism by the US leader.

He's now in Angola. What are the preparations there for him? Well, there's been lots of preparation and quite a lot of anticipation. If you walked even through the streets of the capital, Luanda, you know, you could see the pictures on the billboards of the Pope. People have just been lining up on the route, you know, from the airport leading into the city with a lot of expectation. There's going to be a huge mass. We're expected to about 200,000 people attending, celebrating Mass with a Pope on Sunday, has been prepared. And kitchens have been set up just to cater.

for lots of people who would be doing even a night vigil as they prepare to attend a mass on Sunday. And this is the Pope's third stop in his tour of Africa. What is the impact he's having, do you think, on the continent? I think the fact that a lot of people are seeing his visitors being very symbolic and also strategic in the sense that it does reflect the importance of Africa in Catholicism. Because if you look at, you know, Africans in terms of the population of people who do identify as Catholics, it's about a fifth of the world's Catholic population. And for them to see the Pope really taking his time for close to about 10 days,

his second trip since he took the position is very symbolic because just saying that Catholicism in Africa is very important to the Vatican. And a lot of people do really appreciate this, even for the very times that even his predecessors have made in the continent itself. Richard Kagoy in Nairobi. Still to come in this podcast. The discipline and the hard work and the fact that it's a very technical and very mental sport, it just seemed to suit China very, very well.

Why the Chinese excel at snooker. At least six people have been killed and more than a dozen others were wounded after a gunman opened fire in Kiev. Video shows the attacker running in the streets of a suburb of the Ukrainian capital, shooting at random from an automatic rifle. He then entered a supermarket where, he took hostages and continued shooting. Ukraine's interior minister is Iho Klimenko.

Police negotiators spoke with him for around 40 minutes. We tried to persuade him, realizing that there was an injured person there. We offered to bring in tourniquet to stop the bleeding and so on, but he did not respond. So the order was given to eliminate him, especially after he killed one of the hostages. Our correspondent in Kiev, Jessica Parker,

was at the scene of the attack. There's a cordon up around, the supermarket that an armed unit has stormed earlier as part of the response to this shooting. Now, in terms of the suspect, what we've been told is that he's a 58-year-old man, originally born in Moscow, but a Ukrainian resident. So that's what the authorities have been saying about the suspect so far. I think for people in Kiev, this has been a huge shock. Of course, it's a city within a country.

that is used to drone attacks, missile attacks, sirens going off at night. But a shooting like this is extremely rare. And I think a lot of people are going to be watching closely as investigators, try and find out exactly why this happened. Jessica Parker. Nigeria has the largest population of any African country, more than 240 million, according to some estimates. According to the United Nations,

this figure is predicted to reach 360 million by, 2050. But as the population saw, tens of millions of Nigerians with disabilities are being left behind because they're living in a country which remains inaccessible to them. Toda Opanieri has this report. I am currently in Ibao-Oyo states in southwestern Nigeria. Over the past few weeks have been speaking with people living with disabilities in different states across the country. And while each person faces unique challenges, one issue keeps coming up. Accessibility. or the complete lack of it. In Nigeria, an estimated 15% of the population lives with a disability

that is roughly 35 million people. Yet, the spaces they're expected to move through streets, schools, government offices, banks, hospitals are largely built without them in mind. But there is not designed for persons with disability. In many places where persons with disability can go. Abiyosir Faladay is a 43-year-old. author based in Oyo State, living with a physical disability. She has learned to map her city, not by distance, but by what is reachable.

There's a list of places I can go, and a list of places I can go. Luckily, I'm someone who doesn't even like going out to start with. For 19-year-old over Friday, living in Nasarawa State, the barriers took on a different shape. He lost the use of both hands at 13 after being subjected to ritual by a family member who were accused him of witchcraft. When he later tried to register for Nigeria's university entranx examination, the system had no accommodation for him.

Fingerprint checks locked him out. I was supposed to write the exam two years ago, but because of the hands, like the don't print, like I have to stop. It took a journey to Nigeria's capital and sustained pressure before officials agreed. to accept his two-print instead. He is now a first-year English student, but the fight to be included did not end there. I wish I have my five fingers complete here.

That would be maybe easy for them, but I didn't have like a five fingers complete. In 2019, Nigeria passed the discrimination against persons with disabilities prohibition act, but years later, the man charged with leading its implementation says the pace has been a struggle. To a large extent, it has been more or less of a snail speed, but the journey of a thousand miles, they say, begins with a step.

Ayuba, Buruki, Gufuan, Executive Secretary, National Commission for Persons with Disabilities. I wouldn't say categorically that Nigeria is accessible yet. It's a work in progress. We still have a lot to cover in making Nigeria accessible to all persons with disabilities. Across different cities and states in Nigeria, I spoke with people whose lives look nothing alike. But the frustration they described was the same.

The wish, too, is simple. They want the quiet dignity of moving through their country and sitting for exams without having to fight for it. And the institutions still waiting to catch up. Toda Opiemi reporting. France's president, Emmanuel Macron, has led tributes to one of the country's most celebrated film stars, Natalie Bay, who has died at the age of 77. He described her as an actress with whom we love, dreamed and grew up. Natalie Bay, who had been ill with a neurodegenerative disease, was a four-time winner of the Cesar Awards, the French equivalent of the Oscars.

And she received the Legion D' Honour, the country's highest order of men. She was also known to international audiences for her roles in the period drama Downton Abbey, a new era, and Stephen Spielberg's Catch Me if you can. Jeanette Vincent Doe, Emeritus Professor of Film Studies at King's College London, specialises in French film. She said it was Natalie Bay's work with great directors like Spielberg, for which she will be best remembered. I think what made her unique is a very long and very distinguished filmography and her ability to make a great deal of great movies with quite a range of directors. So she worked both with really eminent figures in French cinema like Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Goddard, Maurice Pialla. She also worked with a few Hollywood directors and also a number of great women directors.

I would call her generally a cinephile star, somebody who made films that will remain as part of French cinema history, but also a few popular films. In 1982, she made a film called La Balance by Bob Swain, actually an American director working in Paris, for which she got a Cesar Prize. And that was really a popular thriller, which had quite an international career. The same year, she also made the return of Martin Guerr, co-starring with Gerard de Pardieu. But then she appeared in field by Diane Curis, Tony Marshall, a number of great women directors. We also find her in some popular television series, Call My Agent D'Pourson in French, about stars. She appears in one episode with her own daughter, Laura Smet. She was her daughter with Johnny Allende.

In 2022, she's in Downton Abbey, too. the film. So it's such a great range of different kinds of films, somebody who made really great choices in the film she made. Because she didn't exactly fall into the sex symbol category, did she, although she was very beautiful. And she wasn't your typical celebrity, although she was married to the darling of the French tabloids, Johnny Alliday. She was hard to pigeonhole. Yes, she was not a kind of celebrity. Let's say she had a celebrity moment in the early 1980s when she met Johnny Halliday, the singer. I think in France at the time, I remember it was really perceived as two worlds coming together.

The actress from films by great hauteur's like Jean-E Goda, who was together with a very, very popular rock singer, and it felt like it was incredible that they were together, and they produced a daughter. The relationship didn't last very long, but it was quite intense. The rest of the time, yes, she was much more dismal. And as you say, somebody who was very pretty, very attractive, very seductive, and yet wasn't playing the sex bombs, wasn't glamorous in that way. And I think that her great talent was this kind of discretion and a versatility which

enabled her to range across all these films, but also a subtlety in her performance, a kind of naturalism, which made her, I suppose young people now would say relatable the characters she played. Jeanette Vincento, speaking to Paul Henley. 57 years ago, the BBC launched a programme called Pot Black. It showcased a largely unknown sport called Snooker and helped turn a minority game, played by just a handful of professionals

into one of the UK's most popular sports. This year, 500 million people are expected to tune in to the World Snooker Final. The contest got on. underway on Saturday, but the championship is no longer dominated by British players. Instead, 11 out of 32 are from China. The chairman of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association is Jason Ferguson. He says the game is surging in popularity there. China just fell in love with the sport. It's something about its very Britishness, but also the discipline and the hard work and the fact that it's a very technical and very mental sport. It just seemed to suit China very, very well.

and it's really booming there, to be honest. China is a very big country, with many very big cities. There are now 300,000 snooker clubs in China. And snooker has just become on state broadcast the number one watch sport on state sports channel CCTV 5, so it's amazing. So when did snooker become so popular in China? Ed Harry is the BBC's snooker reporter. I think if you look for a pivotal moment,

it came 21 years ago when the then-teenage Ding Junwi beat Stephen Hendry, the record seven times world champion to win the China Open. He did it in Beijing and he was watched by an estimated television audience of 100 million people. Ding, who is still a member of the Sports Elite Top 16, he was the real trailblazy. He based himself in the UK. When the academy he was part of folded, he set up his own here in Sheffield for overseas, predominantly Chinese players.

A second academy has since followed. That one is owned by the manager of the reigning world champion. And meanwhile, World Snooker, as a government, body has taken more and more tournaments to China, much bigger venues, and they have been filling them over the last two decades. And then 12 months ago, Zhao Zing Tong became China's first world champion, and it is kicked on once again from there. And what about other countries around the world? I mean, is it growing popular elsewhere too? Yeah, in 2023, Belgium's Luca Brescel won the world title here. He was the first player from mainland Europe to achieve that feat. That was

another real watermark moment, if you like. This afternoon, we've been watching the first Polish player ever to play in the World Championship, a 22-year-old called Anthony Kavalski. Neil Robertson of Australia, he won the world title in 2010. He has been an ever-present in the game for as long as Ding-shun-we has. And I was speaking to Robertson about the fact that back then in the early 2000s, it was Robertson and Ding who really allowed you to call Snooker an international sport because it was so dominated by, if you want to call them, the Home Nations of the United

Kingdom. Robertson, who like Ding, is based in the UK, also told me that he believes that Britain needs to now learn from China and set up similar academy structures of its own, because those traditional routes into the game for UK players, the snooker clubs have been closing in such great numbers in recent years that that more traditional route into the sport really no longer exists and those clubs are no longer a part of our high street. And who are the stars do you think that might shine in the world's snooker final? Zhausing Tong, at the outset of 17 days of competition, has the unenviable task of attempting to beat something called the Crucible Curse. Since the World Championships moved here in 1977, no first-time winner has successfully defended the title.

20 have tried. They've all failed. Zhaozing Tong, despite a nervy start this morning, is well placed in his match to stick around, and he is many people's favourite to achieve that feat. And he was the huge favourite coming into this as well. And any British player? Oh my goodness. They call them the class of 92. Ronnie O'Sullivan, John Higgins and Mark Williams. And Judd Trump as well, you can add him there a little bit younger than those three. Mark Selby as well. Multiple winners of the world title. That is why there are only maybe five Chinese players in the top 16 at the moment.

Because up near the top, there are still these ever presents who, some of them with 30 years experience in the bank are still winning things. Ed Harry, speaking to Valerie Sanderson. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in time, you can email us at global podcast at BBC.co.com. UK. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global NewsPod. And don't forget our sister podcast, The Global Story, which goes in depth and beyond the headlines on one big story. This edition of the Global News podcast was mixed by Derek Clark and the producers were Chavonne Leahy and Daniel Mann. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles and until next time, goodbye.