Global News Podcast - Israel checking Hamas claims that new body handed to Red Cross is Shiri Bibas

Episode Date: February 22, 2025

Red Cross says it’s transferred a body to Israel, which Hamas claims is that of the Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas. Also: Trump accuses French and UK leaders of doing nothing to end Ukraine war, and how to avoid news stress.

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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jalil and in the early hours of Saturday the 22nd of February, these are our main stories. A day after Hamas returned the wrong body to Israel, it now says it has handed over the body of a mother who was kidnapped with her two young sons. Donald Trump accuses France's president Emmanuel Macron and Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer of doing nothing to end the war in Ukraine. The tech giant Apple is to remove access to its top data protection tool for British users. Also in this podcast...

Becoming consciously aware of your feet, feeling your feet on the ground. It's extraordinarily effective considering how tiny and throwaway that sounds. Tips on how to de-stress from the news. We start in Israel, where a day after Hamas returned the wrong body to a grieving family and nation, the Palestinian militant group says the body of hostage Shiri Bibas, a mother who was kidnapped with her two young sons, has now been handed over. The Israeli military says it's checking this. The bodies of the boys, four-year-old Ariel and baby Kefir, were handed over on Thursday but a body said to be their mother's was later confirmed to be that of another woman. Israel said the children had been

murdered, contrary to Hamas's claims that they died during an Israeli airstrike on Gaza. The boys aunt, Ofri Bivas Levy, said the family didn't want revenge just the return of every hostage dead or living as soon as possible my sweet nephews were taken alive from their home and murdered by a cruel terrorist organization while in captivity they didn't deserve such a fate and it was Israel's responsibility and obligation to bring them back alive. There is no forgiveness for abandoning them on October 7th and no forgiveness for abandoning them in captivity.

For Ariel and Kefir's sake and for Yarden's sake, we are not seeking revenge right now. We are asking for Shiri. Ahmed Youssef was a senior advisor to the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, who is now in a camp for displaced people in Khan Yunis. Mr Youssef said Hamas had made a mix-up and did not want to jeopardize the fragile ceasefire deal. I believe that nobody from Hamas' side, I don't think they are trying to play games. They would like to continue the truce and they would like to be trustworthy in the way they are handling the agreement that they have negotiated in Qatar and Egypt. With more on this latest development, here's our correspondent in Jerusalem, Mark Lohan. There were reports that started to come in that Hamas said it was delivering the coffin containing the body of Shiri Bebas. We've now had

confirmation from the Red Cross quoted in the Israeli media that they have received a coffin from Hamas and that they are transporting it to Israeli authorities. The Red Cross is the organization which collects the hostages, both dead and alive, over the last few weeks of the ceasefire agreement. That coffin will now be transferred to the Forensics Institute here in Israel for identification. There has not yet been a confirmation from the Israeli Defense Forces, I have to say. We are waiting for comment from Israel.

They said that they are looking into the reports. But a spokesman to the Israeli media from the Red Cross saying that they have received a coffin. Now, for the Bebas family, the turmoil just goes on because it is just a matter of hours really or a space of a day since they were told by the Israeli Forensics Authority that the body that Hamas claimed was that of Shiri Bibas, which was investigated by the forensics teams yesterday night in Israel, actually was not that of Mrs. Bibas, but indeed was an unidentified Gazan woman.

Hamas blamed what it called an unfortunate mistake for that and suggested that there had been a mix-up in remains under the rubble in Gaza. But you can imagine the kind of emotional roller coaster and whirlwind that the Bebas family are on, waiting to see if indeed this body, if it comes here to Israel, is confirmed to be that of Shiri Bebas. Mark Lowen. While Donald Trump sparked global outrage when he proposed that the US would quote take over Gaza and relocate its population to neighbouring Egypt and Jordan so that the strip could be redeveloped into what he called the Riviera of the Middle East. Now Arab leaders

have been meeting in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh to try to agree an alternative plan to counter Mr Trump's proposal which many say would amount to ethnic cleansing. Our Cairo correspondent Sally Nabil is following the meeting. It's mainly the Gulf countries, the oil-rich kingdoms, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia and others in addition to Egypt and Jordan. Most probably and the most urgent thing at the moment, are the proposal, the counter proposal that the Egyptians have put forward and it discusses the possibility of starting the reconstruction in Gaza without relocating the people. We understand that it's a plan of three phases. It will provide a safe shelter for the people

in Gaza who now have nowhere to live other than the tents, while international companies with expertise in this regard will start lifting the debris and then the reconstruction plan can kick off and it will take years. Whether or not the Gulf monarchies will adopt this plan, this remains to be seen. But the Gulf participation is quite important because as far as we know, they will be the people who will have the lines share in funding this reconstruction process. Because it's going to cost huge amounts of money, billions and billions, given the huge destruction of the past 16 months,

and the countries that would be funding it, the Gulf countries, will be concerned that they could be rebuilding Gaza only for it to be destroyed again at some point in the future. This is true it will be a very costly process and a very lengthy one too and I believe that with this political uncertainty looming it's hard to predict how long and how much the reconstruction process can cost and whether or not it's worth investing in because as you said this region is quite turbulent and the possibility of confrontations happening again is not off the table. So there needs to be some sort of a resolution

for the political future in Gaza. And I believe this will be a matter of discussion among Arab leaders convening in Riyadh today and also among Arab leaders convening here in Cairo on the 4th of March in an Arab summit, because there are so many unanswered questions at the moment regarding the future of this part of the world, how post-war Gaza is going to look like. There are a lot of issues that need to be addressed. Sally Nabil, having called the Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky a dictator for resisting Russia's invasion, Donald Trump has now vented his ire against Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer and France's President Emmanuel Macron. Both leaders are due to make separate visits to the

White House next week. Speaking to Fox News, Mr. Trump accused both the British and French leaders of quote doing nothing to try to end the war. From Washington here's our North America correspondent John Sudworth. In a phone interview with the Fox News radio show, President Trump continued his now well-trodden criticisms of the Ukrainian president. Just two days after he'd called Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator on social media, Mr. Trump suggested he'd led his country to ruin, claimed that he'd spurned a good-faith US approach to broker a deal, and said that, as a result, he didn't deserve a seat

at the negotiating table with the US and Russia. But he also had some strong words for other European powers and their policy over Ukraine, with the Fox News presenter, Brian Kilmeade, raising the imminent visits to Washington of two leaders in particular. We have Macron coming to see you for France and then Stormer for the UK this week. But they didn't do anything either. The war is going on. No meetings with Russia, no nothing.

Right. You know, they haven't done anything. And I, if you know, Macron is a friend of mine and I've met with the Prime Minister and you know he's a very nice guy but nobody's done anything. Critics will see this as further evidence of an upending of the established global order with the US President turning his back on allies and building bridges with Russia. For his supporters it's a fulfillment of an America first agenda. The US President has long raised concerns over what he sees as the failure of

European powers to pay enough for their own defense. On the campaign trail last year he said he'd encourage Russia to do whatever the hell they want with nations that didn't meet their NATO spending obligations. John Sudworth. Well at the same time senior figures in President Trump's administration have been further ratcheting up pressure on President Zelensky to agree a deal to allow the US to gain access to Ukraine's rare earth minerals which are estimated to be worth trillions of dollars. The Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the Ukrainian leader of backtracking on a previous commitment. The White House National Security Advisor, Mike Walz, has told a right-wing conference in Washington he expects an agreement to be reached in the very short term, in his words. In Kyiv, the deputy head of Ukraine's presidential

office has said Russia is winning the war of words. He's been speaking to our international editor Jeremy Bowen. Telling President Zelensky again that it's not important for him to be in the room when the US talks with Russia about ending the war reinforces the already strong impression that Donald Trump believes the world's problems can only be settled by powerful leaders of big countries, like it or lump it. Mr Trump has posted an image of himself on social media as a king wearing a crown. Perhaps it's a joke, but his anger when he's challenged publicly is real. He does not like

the fact that President Zelensky has pushed back hard against Mr. Trump's untrue allegations that Ukraine started the war and could have ended it by now. It is now hard to see daylight between Donald Trump's view of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin's. In the presidential offices in Kiev, I asked one of Mr. Zelensky's top advisers, Ihor Brusilov, about the way Mr. Trump has demolished the old certainties about US support for Ukraine. It is alarming. I believe that not only for us, but for the world in general, but I believe that the position of a person is conditioned by the information that he receives. So you think if Zelensky speaks to Trump, he might be able to persuade him to change

his mind on these things? I'm sure about that. That's what will happen once they meet again to talk about how to end this war. It is not at all clear that the meeting will happen, at least not until President Zelensky accepts some of Mr. Trump's demands. One is a deal said to give the U.S. control of up to half of Ukraine's rare earth minerals. Mr. Trump's national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said the Ukrainian president would have to sign.

Here's the bottom line. adviser Mike Waltz said the Ukrainian president would have to sign. Here's the bottom line. President Zelensky is going to sign that deal. And you will see that in the very short term. And that is good for Ukraine. And you know what? We have an obligation to you all, the American taxpayer, to recoup the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been invested in this war.

This week, President Zelensky refused to sign what appears to be a very one-sided deal, saying, I can't sell our state. Jeremy Bowen there in Ukraine. A dispute between Apple and the British government over data access has resulted in the tech giant announcing that it will stop all UK customers from using its top level of security. Ministers had been demanding to be allowed to see some encrypted files stored by Apple users on its cloud service. But rather than allow that, Apple has taken this unprecedented step in the UK.

To explain, here's the BBC's technology editor, Zoe Cliemann. The BBC understands that a few weeks ago the government said it wanted to be able to access encrypted data stored by Apple users all around the world in the cloud. And Apple is unable to comply with that because if its customers are using this top level tool, it's called advanced data protection, then Apple itself doesn't have the keys, if you like, to that data. It can't see it. And it has always said it will never build in a back door to its encryption services because it thinks it's only a matter of time before criminals also find the back door and then its encryption is completely bust. And so neither the Home Office nor Apple would confirm that this notice had been received and actually it's against the

law for them to be made public. But what has happened today is that Apple has said it is blocking access to this advanced security tool to new users in the UK. So if you have an Apple device and you try and sign up you have to opt into it, you can't. And over the coming weeks probably access will be disabled for people who had already signed up to it. Now that's only in the UK, it's not happening in other countries. So other Apple customers around the world will have the option of this extra protection for their data, but UK users will not.

So what sort of reaction has there been to these special measures for Brits? Well as you can imagine, it's a very controversial move. Privacy campaigners are saying it's a very sad day and that it's a sort of government owned goal and that UK citizens are now suffering as a result because it's UK citizens' privacy rights that are being compromised here. But it's also worth saying that there are safety campaigners who say that encryption is the front line of child abuse. That's what the children's charity, the NSPCC, has called it in the past. It says because it's so easy to hide this illegal content, it's easy to

share it and store it and distribute it in this hidden format. And actually, it doesn't think that encryption has a place in protecting children online. Zoe Kleinman. Still to come... He's put his way into his business, getting into politics, becoming president, to silence the media, to get the oligarchy on his side. We speak to the director of The Apprentice, a film about Donald Trump's early career, which has been nominated for two Oscars.

In every harvest we make, we are telling a story. Money and work are at the heart of so many of the dramas that we experience every day. This is a life or death matter. We have a fundamental problem and it needs to be fixed. In Business Daily, we tell stories about those dramas. We tried the nice way, it didn't work, so we tried the guilt. Because stories about money are also stories about life. It showed me that the people wanted the same exact change

that I wanted to see for my life as well. Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm telling you, you won't see for your eyes. Search for Business Daily wherever you get your BBC podcasts. You're listening to the Global News podcast. For more than a decade, West Africa has been in the grip of an opioid crisis. Thousands of lives have been ruined by powerful and illegal pills packaged as medicines and sold on the streets. But no one has ever exposed the pharmaceutical executives behind this deadly trade. BBCI has been investigating the companies which are making and shipping these pills

and the men profiting from addiction. Yaha Masahudu reports. Here in my home town of Tamale in northern Ghana, illegal opioids are destroying young lives. The problem has become so bad, locals have set up a task force to stop the dealers. We have to try all our best as a community to see the best we can do. That is what we are doing. Dikoko runs a local bakery.

He is also one of the task force leaders. Let's go. Today, they've had a tip-off. We are heading to one of the poorest neighborhoods in Tamale. Let's go, let's go. We are heading to one of the poorest neighborhoods in Tamale. What is happening right now is the task force is here to arrest the drug dealers. As we pass through the tight streets, you see addicts who are clearly under the effects of these addictive and highly dangerous drugs. Some take them as painkillers, some to help them get through hard physical work, but many

use them simply to get high. This place is being invaded by the drug peddlers. So that's why we are here this afternoon to see their source of fuel, where they are getting the drugs. The task force detains several men and seizes hundreds of opioid pills. I'm told that this is an almost daily occurrence. So where are the pills coming from? All we have to go on are clues on the packets seized, a made in India stamp and in the corner a logo and A with a leaf at the bottom. It's the same logo turning up on opioid pills on the streets of Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria, pills that are a

particularly dangerous combination of opioid and mazzle relaxant. We tracked the manufacturer back to India in a company called AVEO Pharmaceuticals. An undercover operative agreed to go inside AVEO's factory posing as a businessman looking to supply opioids to Nigeria. Hello ladies, we're here to see Mr Sharma. Vinod Sharma is one of the directors of AVU. He manages his factory outside Mumbai. After giving them a tour of the factory, they sit down to talk business. I can clear from our custom, you can clear from your side. Every client working like this, they are very powerful.

Suppose you can use the two or three tablet at the same time, you can like this. This is what the kid likes. That's what he likes. This is very harmful for the health. But the customer cannot understand. Now this is a business. It's business. In India, any drug made only for export must comply with the requirements of the importing country. Ganesh Drug Authority told us this product does not meet their import requirements. By shipping these drugs to Ghana, EVEO is breaking Indian law.

Back in Tamale, it's left for groups like the Citizens Task Force to tackle the opioid crisis. That evening, they gather in the local park to burn the drugs. But as they burn, production lines in India chain out millions more, driving a public health crisis across the whole of West Africa. We put these allegations to Vinod Sharma and Evio Pharmaceuticals. They did not respond. The Indian drugs regulator, the CDSCO, told us India recognizes its responsibility towards global public health. It said the country's drug regulatory system is strong and strict action will be taken against any pharmaceutical

firm involved in malpractice. It called upon important countries to support India's efforts by enforcing similarly strong regulations. That report by Yaha Masahudu. A man who repeatedly stabbed the renowned British Indian author Salman Rushdie at a literary gathering three years ago has been found guilty of attempted murder. The attack in New York State left Mr Rushdie with severe injuries, including the loss of vision in one eye and a paralysed hand. The author has faced countless death threats and was forced into

hiding for years after Iran's religious leader issued a fatwa against him over a novel. Mr Rushdie's attacker Hadi Mata now faces a potential sentence of more than 30 years. Our reporter Nomiya Iqbal told us more. In 2022, Sir Salman Rushdie was at the Chautauqua Institution in south-western New York. He was on stage, ironically giving a talk about how to keep writers safe. Now, 27-year-old Hadi Matar was in the audience. He had purchased a ticket to go to the event, but he rushed onto stage and attacked Mr. Rushdie multiple times. The author had to be airlifted to hospital. It took him weeks to recover and he chronicled the incident in his latest book. In terms of this trial, it took less than two weeks and less than two hours for

the jury to come back with their verdict. I was in court when Sir Sillman himself took to the stand and he went into vivid description of what happened that day and he removed his glasses to show the jury how he'd lost his eye. Now, this was never a case of whodunit. This incident had been witnessed by many people in the audience, they gave evidence at the trial, it was also live streamed, the event, and so people saw it online. So the prosecution's case was quite clear cut. The defence had argued that the prosecution hadn't proven the intent that Hadi Mattar had gone to the event and that this was more of a chaotic incident, not a premeditated

attack. But that was rejected by the jury. As I said, it took them less than two hours to come back with their verdict. Mattar will be sentenced at a later date. He's facing up to 32 years in jail. Nomiya Iqbal. A few months ago a film about Donald Trump's early years as an aspiring real estate mogul, The Apprentice, was struggling to get distribution in the US after Mr Trump's lawyers threatened legal action. But now it's two stars who play Mr. Trump and his friend the New York lawyer Roy Cohn have both been nominated for Oscars. The director is Ali Abbasi. He was born in Iran, but is now based in Denmark and he spoke to Vincent Dowd.

Hello, this is Donald Trump from Mr. Cohn. Thank you so much. Donald who? Yeah, you're brutal. Donald Trump from Mr. Cohn, thank you so much. Donald who? Yeah, you're brutal. Ha ha ha. Work on a feature film on the pre-politics Donald Trump began in his first White House term.

In the Biden years, the idea progressed, but then, says director Ali Abbasi, some financial backers developed cold feet. The closer we got to the elections, the more jittery they became. And at some point, you know, some of the financiers, they wanted to pressure us into cutting scenes that they felt could make him angry. Basically, we had to buy out our reluctant American investors. When eventually the film was released, Donald Trump branded it a sheep, defamatory and politically

disgusting hatchet job. But there's been praise for actor Sebastian Stan, Academy Award nominated for playing Mr Trump in his twenties. From the sea to the sky, some say the age of Trump has begun. Trump Tower, Trump City, Trump Plaza, Trump Castle. At first, Stan makes him sympathetic as Donald Trump finds a much-needed mentor in wealthy New York lawyer and businessman Roy Cohn. Portrayed as slightly naive, Trump is taken aback to realise that Cohn is gay and at his

ruthless business methods. This is the most important rule of law. No matter how beaten you are, you claim victory and never admit defeat. Never admit defeat. Playing Cohn is Jeremy Strong, star of the hit series Succession. He's nominated as best supporting actor as the hugely forceful lawyer feared and admired in the New York business world. Would you say that the relationship between Trump and Cohen is the core of the movie in

a funny sort of way? It's almost like a love story. Yeah, it is a love story. When I read the historical accounts of how they met and, you know, knowing that young Donald would fit perfectly actually as Roy Cohen's type, tall, blonde, sort of a little bit innocent and provincial, it could have started as almost like, you know, Roy had a crush on him. But then, as it develops, I think there was genuine love and affection, you know, and by that I don't mean it necessarily in a sexual way. And Donald in

son Roy, a mentor figure or father figure. The dysfunctional relationship with his father Fred suggested by the film may be a reason why Donald Trump has so disliked it, along with a scene of violence against his first wife Ivana. The story ends before Trump finds fame on American TV. But by then, says Ali Abbasi, the cinema audience can see what lies ahead. He's put his way into his business, getting into politics, becoming president to silence

the media, to get the oligarchy on his side. And I think it's really dangerous to start to adapt to a bully mindset. I know certainly what I'm talking about in that respect because I come from Iran and the bully mentality rules in Iran, but it doesn't matter how I feel about President Trump of United States right now, but it was certainly not the plan to do a political hit job or a critique of him,

but to depict these people as human beings. And I think the more important thing for me, at least, was to be in conversation with what's going on. Mr. Trump's lawyers described the Apprentice as a concoction of lies that repeatedly defames President Trump and constitutes direct foreign interference in America's elections. But the fact it has two performances nominated at the Oscars on March the 2nd

has given it a media profile in America which had appeared unlikely. Don't you forget I made you. Vincent Dowd reporting. Now, President Trump has only been back in the White House for just over a month, but the flurry of jaw dropping announcements and major news alerts Now, President Trump has only been back in the White House for just over a month, but the flurry of jaw-dropping announcements and major news alerts he's unleashed since then can sometimes seem overwhelming. The journalist Oliver Berkman suggests keeping nature and family and friends at the centre of our lives and to switch off news notifications in order

to tackle the news at our own pace. Or you could listen to our happy pod which is produced every Saturday by the Global News podcast team. Oliver Berkman and fellow journalist Libby Purvis spoke to Paddy O'Connell who began by asking for their thoughts on the current news agenda. It just seems like there is so much going on but also that it feels unignorable in a different way. It feels like it has no longer been possible to sort of sit on the sidelines and watch the news as an interesting spectator sport. And that's the real change, I think, that I find so sort of discombobulating. Yeah. So we've got scale, scope, and Libby, we've also got an angry tone. So we used to

kind of disagree a bit better. I think it's broadly agreed. In your career, we now go into silos. We'd sort of think the same thing broadly speaking, get very cross with people with other views. There is a big risk of that, certainly, especially when you've got very noisy and extreme public speakers like Trump and Vance and Elon Musk. But it goes back, I can remember my mother in the Iraq war, we're going right back to the beginning of the century, she was being angry. She was saying this is terrible because she couldn't sort of switch on the television or listen to the radio without another bulletin. She said, in World War II, in the war, we knew it was serious. We knew it was serious. We knew we must all do our best. We knew we must all sort of stand together. She said, but

we were not beaten around the head with it all the time. I think that was really interesting. She felt a kind of anger that stuff had begun to roll over her. And goodness, it's 16 times worse now. I think there is some potential here, right, to sort of not be living in a situation where your default assumption is that you just kind of live inside the news cycle and you sort of marinate in it all day long, but rather that it's something that you choose to visit, that you sort of situate yourself in your real life, in your life of your friends and your family and your neighborhood, and then you sometimes sort of pay a visit to the world

of the news. It's obviously made incredibly difficult by the attention economy, all sorts of dynamics that make this not just an easy thing for a person to do on an individual level. But I think there's something to be said for that idea that we can step outside of the news. We don't have to sort of live in it. Libby, there are lots of things coming together here. And one of them perhaps is this sense of anxiety and anger. The algorithms are deliberately driven to make me feel anxious and angry. I was less anxious when I had small children. The fact is that when you have a very sort of fierce domestic life going on, which I did have also the second half of the 1980s, you know, I would sort of glance at the news.

I knew about the miners' strikes and I knew about things. I remember being a bit excited when the Berlin Wall came down, but I didn't feel overwhelmed by it. The interesting thing is I've been talking to people lately, younger relatives and friends, who've got small children now or growing children at school, and they say the children come back from school and they are full of stuff, especially about the environment and how the world is burning. And this means that that kind of anxiety can now grow and grow and grow more than it ever did before. It's very hard now to grab back that sense that the Cold War was over, that the Soviet Union was gone, that Mandela was free. You know, there was a great deal of optimism around for a

period of some years and it's only sort of now we're in a period of great pessimism. Well you've linked it together because Oliver's newsletter is about this feeling we have of living through history. So we're grappling to put names on eras, we're knowing that the plates are shifting. So finally, Oliver, what worked for you? What's the simplest tip? Two very quick, radically different things. One is an old mindfulness technique, which is very, very down to earth, literally, which is just the practice of becoming consciously aware of your feet, feeling your feet on the ground. It's extraordinarily effective considering how tiny and throw away that sounds. Secondly, I think it's worth remembering that we have

lived perhaps through a period, as Libby was saying, of things feeling very relatively secure. But the norm for human beings throughout the whole of history has been that we live on a precipice in the middle of complete uncertainty. It's not in itself that new. And I do actually find some comfort in that in that reflection. Can I just add one one other tip? Thinking about your feet is very good, but also read novels. Journalist Libby Purvis and Oliver Berkman speaking to Paddy O'Connell. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. This edition was produced by Alice Adley. It was mixed by Masoud Ibrahim Kale.

The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janet Jalil. Until next time, goodbye. In every harvest we make, we are telling a story. Money and work are at the heart of so many of the dramas that we experience every day. This is a life or death matter. We have a fundamental problem and it needs to be fixed. In Business Daily, we tell stories about those dramas. We tried the nice way, it didn't work, so we tried the guilt.

Because stories about money are also stories about life. It showed me that the people wanted the same exact change that I wanted to see for my life as well. Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm telling you, you go and see for your eyes. Search for Business Daily wherever you get your BBC podcasts.