Global News Podcast - Moscow says Ukrainian troops now up to 30km inside Russia

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

Russia's defence ministry said its forces had engaged Ukrainian troops near the villages of Tolpino and Obshchy Kolodez, as the offensive in the Kursk region entered a sixth day. Also: President Biden explains why he dropped out of White House race, and Tom Cruise abseils off stadium roof in Olympic closing ceremony in Paris.

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Thank you. Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jeanette Jalil and in the early hours of Monday the 12th of August, these are our main stories. Columns of Ukrainian armoured vehicles have been seen moving towards the Russian border

as Kiev presses on with its offensive in the Kursk region. President Biden has said he did not seek re-election because he wanted to avoid becoming a distraction in the Democrats' campaign to defeat Donald Trump. The new interim government in Bangladesh says it's determined to prevent further attacks on Hindus and other minorities. Also in this podcast, while a group of more than 50 Argentinian athletes were taking a group photo, Pablo Simonet got on his knee and proposed to his longtime girlfriend Maria Pilar Campoy. We look at some of the romantic moments from the Olympics in Paris

as the Games end. Russia has acknowledged that Ukrainian forces have penetrated deep into its territory, as far as 30 kilometres in, despite its attempts to push them out. Six days into the surprise incursion into southwestern Russia by Ukrainian forces, there are reports of a large increase in military activity on both sides of the border. Residents of Sumy in northern Ukraine are reporting a flow of personnel, carriers, tanks and supply lorries on their way to the Russian region of Kursk as Kiev presses on with its offensive, saying it has thousands of troops

on Russian soil. Moscow has vowed a tough response as it carries out retaliatory strikes. Ines Sovtsun, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, said the offensive was widely supported by Ukrainians. People are scared because the war was not going the way we expected it to go for the last year. And now we are seeing that actually the Ukrainian army can fight back and that there are vulnerabilities among the Russians. So it does boost the morale inside the country as well. And we hope it shows to the world that we can fight back

and the world should be supporting us. Our correspondent James Waterhouse sent this report from the Sumy region of northern Ukraine from where the incursion was launched. Russia briefly occupied parts of the Sumy region in the early weeks of the invasion but until recently the area has experienced a reprieve from the fighting. Russian forces have gathered on the border and increased airstrikes. The school where Lyubov works was recently hit with a glide bomb. We met her helping with the clear-up next to the giant crater it caused. She's pleased Ukrainian forces have launched a cross-border offensive into Russia's Kursk region. I think it's the right thing. They should be punished. We'll rebuild the school, but we'll never forgive them. Never. Why did they come to our land?

The flow of personnel carriers, tanks and supply trucks suggests Ukraine is committed to this battlefield gamble. All of them have been branded with a triangle symbol, suggesting they are involved in the same operation. They are fighting on a new front line, reportedly 20 miles long, and crucially for Ukraine, Russian forces are being drawn from elsewhere. James Waterhouse in northern Ukraine. Well, I asked our security correspondent Gordon Carrera for more on Ukraine's strategy in deciding to take the war onto Russian territory. It is a bold and perhaps risky gamble by Ukraine, certainly taken Russia by surprise, pushing what seem to be thousands of well-trained troops

into Russia. Provocative, I mean, that's the language Vladimir Putin used. But what is the strategy? The suggestion is part of it, I think, is to try and stretch Russian forces. Russia has been making advances inside Ukraine recently in the Donbass area. And I think the hope will be that some of those troops will then have to be redeployed to defend Russian soil. So the hope will be it will take some of the pressure off other areas where Ukraine is operating. And also, I think a psychological blow on Russia, not entirely clear whether Ukraine intends to hold that territory, because you can imagine Russia is going to come back with enormous force to try and take it back. And I think there is a question there about whether Ukraine will stay and fight or whether it will make, if you like, a kind of tactical withdrawal

at one point. We don't really know that. Yes, it's hard to see how President Putin could tolerate this. This must be very humiliating for him. But it also shows how effective President Zelensky is at getting the world's attention as well as boosting morale back home. Because the successes that Ukraine has had in the Black Sea and Crimea are not really getting the same headlines they used to. That's right. I mean, I was in Ukraine maybe about a month ago. And I think the mood was certainly a bit bleaker, a bit darker amongst the public and policymakers. There was a recognition things had not gone that well on the battlefield. And then suddenly with this one move, you can change the dynamic.

You can make the Russian people question the costs of the war. You can make the Ukrainian people feel they've had a victory. And you can send a message to allies to suggest it's not as simple as Ukraine is going to be on the back foot permanently and may have to enter into negotiations on the back foot and concede territory. But it might be able to build up bargaining chips or put pressure on Russia as well. So I think there are lots of ways in which, even if it doesn't last that long, or even if it doesn't necessarily end that well, can still have some advantages for Ukraine.

At the same time, this is quite uncomfortable for NATO because its equipment, it seems, is now being used in Russia, and that would be another threshold crossed. It looks like some equipment is being used. We don't know about the high-end weapon systems and that's where the most controversy has been. Some of the rocket and missiles that have been supplied by the West which have been supplied with restrictions on their use in Russia and so for instance the US originally said they could not be used at all in Russia. And then they, for instance, when there was an offensive by Russia against the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, they said that they could be used just over the border from Kharkiv to stop that offensive. So you've seen some shifts in positions, but we don't really know here what discussions

there have been and what weapons are being used exactly. And I think that is an important question because I think there is the suggestion that Western officials might not have known that much about this operation by Ukraine either. So you'd imagine there'll be discussions going on now about what's happening and using what systems. Our security correspondent Gordon Carrera. In his first interview since pulling out of the US presidential race, Joe Biden has stressed that Donald Trump must be defeated for the United States to maintain its democracy. Mr. Biden said he'd stepped aside because he was becoming a distraction to achieving this. He endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to take over from him after a faltering performance in his first and only debate with Mr. Trump and intense pressure from his own party. In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, Mr Biden said Mr Trump would be a real danger if re-elected.

I give you my word, I think that I mark my words. If he wins this election, watch what happens. It's a danger. He's a genuine danger to American security. Look, we're at an inflection point in world history. We really are. The decisions we make in the last three, four years and the next three or four years are going to determine what the next six decades look like. Julian Marshall spoke to Mia Camel McCarthy of Politico magazine. So Mr. Biden is still continuing to insist he was simply having a bad day in that infamous TV debate with Donald Trump. He had his first sit down interview today and we saw a little bit of a shift. You know, he did reiterate that he believed that it was a very bad debate performance. That's something that he has said over time.

But he also kind of talked a little bit about how he was a transition president, which is something new that we haven't seen. He kind of pointed to that back in 2020, not directly saying those words, but saying that he was here to kind of bring in the new generation for Democrats. So that was what he kind of said today and kind of leaning away from this was just a bad night to, you know, I am this transitionary period for the presidency. He also vowed to help Kamala Harris to win. But how? One of the newsier parts of the interview was he announced he's actually doing a campaign tour in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is one of the battleground states that Joe Biden won in 2020. And he's originally from there. He's from Scranton, Pennsylvania. And so during this interview, he announced he would be doing a campaign tour to help Kamala

Harris, specifically alongside Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who was one of the potential running mates for Kamala Harris. Does the Democratic Party hierarchy think that's a good or a bad idea? The campaign trail, this is a place and a demographic that Joe Biden knows well. And so having him there, you know, could hurt in some states, but in other states like Pennsylvania, it absolutely would help. So, you know, even though he is stepping aside from the presidency, he's still a big name and he still is the current president right now. How's Kamala Harris currently doing in the opinion polls? So we've definitely seen a little bit of a boost, at least compared to when Biden was in the running post that debate

that we talked about. But at the same time, it's still going to be a very close race. You know, we're seeing Kamala come a little bit ahead in a lot of these states that matter, these battleground states that are ultimately going to decide the presidency. So those are the states that we're going to have to be keep an eye on. But I mean, regardless, it's going to be a neck and neck election. Mia Camille McCarthy of Politico magazine. Bangladesh's interim government says it has grave concerns about attacks on Hindus and other minorities since the former Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, was ousted. The authoritarian leader fled Bangladesh last week after weeks of protest in which hundreds of people were killed, many of them shot by the police. The new interim government,

headed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, now faces the challenge of how to stop such attacks when many police officers have disappeared, fearing reprisals. Mr Yunus said restoring law and order was his priority. Farida Akhtar is a member of the new interim government in Bangladesh. First of all, the law and order situation is not very much in order. Also, I think the past regime was so corrupt and there were so many problems. So there are a lot of things that needs to be corrected. And also because of some international, you know, moves also, particularly from our neighboring country, you know, they're trying to create a situation that is like communal violence. And that matters to us very much because Bangladesh is a country

which has a tradition of living in harmony with different religious communities. So when they say that the Hindu people are being targeted and killed, of course there have been some incidences like that, which is very unacceptable. And we are very much concerned about that. But we want to make sure that the people of all religion, of all castes, they should be safe. Farida Akhtar. A spectacular closing ceremony for the Paris Olympics has taken place in the Stade de France. The French swimming star, Léon Marchand, extinguished the Olympic cauldron before athletes paraded into the packed stadium, waving the flags of every nation involved.

The Hollywood star, Tom Cruise, abseiled into the stadium to accept the Olympic flag. Los Angeles will now host the next Games in 2028. The BBC's Marion Mishiri watched the closing ceremony. We've had athletes, volunteers, leaders and fans all gathering to mark the end of the Games and it is, as it was so promised, a celebration of France, of French culture and indeed of Olympic history. So we started the evening at the Olympic flame in the Jardin de Tullierie to the tune of Edith Piaf's classic song, Sous le ciel de Paris, under the Paris sky. We saw the French swimming legend, superstar, Leon Marchand, take a portion of that flame and start its journey all the way back to the Stade de France. Once there,

we welcomed in the athletes whose hard work, dedication and pursuit of victory has entertained all of us. For them, tonight, the work is done. It's time to party. The stadium was then plunged into darkness and the Golden Voyager, it's called, the figure clad from head to toe in gold, going through what we're told was an exploration of history of the Olympic Games. And then through music and dance and some pretty brilliant acrobatics, the Olympic rings are unearthed and raised to the sky to huge applause. It really was an amazing ceremony organised by the same people who organised the opening ceremony. Marion Mishiri, well, the event brought to an end a fortnight of sporting excellence that saw the United States edging out China to come top of the medals table by winning gold in the final event, women's basketball.

Sports World's Lee James has been in Paris for it all. It's all this action we've had over the last couple of weeks, and it went down to the very final second of the very final event. Gabby Williams of France with an opportunity to take this final into overtime, but it was a two-pointer and not three. It therefore left the US to celebrate their eighth successive gold medal in women's basketball. And it meant, as you say, that the USA finish on top of the medals table. 40 gold, the same as China, but they have 126 medals overall compared to China's 91. Some other standout moments from the final day.

Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands winning the women's marathon, adding the gold to her bronze medals in the 5,000 and 10,000 metres earlier in the week. And Elise Andrews, who became the first cyclist from New Zealand to a track sprint title at the Velodrome. She'd already won gold in the Kieran. It has been another incredible Games for New Zealand, as it has for the host, despite that loss in the basketball final. They finished fifth on the medals table with 16 gold, 64 overall, their best performance since they hosted back in 1900.

And what's really enhanced these Games has been the number of iconic locations that these events have been taking place in. That's right. If we think back to the opening ceremony, in the rain but along the River Seine, it was very ambitious and lavish, and it really set the tone for these games, from the beach volleyball under the Eiffel Tower to the elegant surroundings of the Chateau de Versailles for the equestrian events, the grand splendour of the Grand Palais

for the fencing and the taekwondo and iconic sporting venues like Roland Garros used for tennis and boxing. It really has been outstanding and it's produced some wonderful moments from Léon Marchand making his mark in the pool for France, winning four individual gold medals. Noah Lyles, picture perfect photo

finish in that 100 metres to one of the greatest Olympic comebacks from Simone Biles to win three golds. And Teddy Rina for the French nation, winning gold in the judo and Pauline Ferrand-Privo, some real standouts for me as well from this fortnight covering the Games. Lee James, so what legacy will these Olympic Games leave? The French Minister for Sport is Amélie Oudia-Castera. We have invested in a number of sports infrastructure and equipments all across France. Since 2017, we've been investing more than 1.2 billion in those sport equipments. We have also transformed the public transport system and deployed services for the disabled people

so that we improve really the level of accessibility. There is also the big legacy, which is going to be the ability to swim in the River Seine starting next summer. And this will change the quality of life at a time when we have that, you know, climate warming, global warming. So that's a big element too. But, you know, I think more importantly, it's a real great demonstration of the power of sports and the power and the capacity, I would say, of France to achieve great things, to really work in a united way with high ambitions to deliver something

that the country can be proud of. And that is an invaluable legacy. Amélie Oudier-Castera, the French minister for sport, and we'll have more on the Olympics later in this podcast. Still to come... Until now, Assam's government has recommended installing electric fences to keep elephants away from towns and villages. Now an app that could help elephants and people live together in India. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News,

AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. You're listening to the Global News Podcast. Some disturbing statistics now from northern Nigeria.

4.4 million children there under the age of five are acutely malnourished. That's more than double last year's figure, according to the World Food Programme. Families are grappling with high food inflation and banditry, and many can no longer afford to feed their children the way they used to. Madina Mashainu has been to the main city of Katsina State to find out more. It's a chaotic scene as a crowd of parents and children push their weights at the front of an open building. This malnutrition clinic in Katzina City is run by aid group Doctors Without Borders, or MSF. As the situation calms down,

I spot Murja clutching two small babies. It hurts me to see other kids looking chubby and healthy, but she keeps getting smaller by the day. As well as her own baby, Murja cares for her seven-month-old niece, Umi, an orphan. Now she's struggling to make enough breast milk for them both. On days that I find food the babies can eat, but on days that I don't get to eat, they'll keep sucking and cry because of hunger. The World Food Programme says 2 million children under 5 were acutely malnourished in northern Nigeria last year.

And that number has more than doubled to 4.4 million this year. I'm in a huge crowd of people right now at MSF's Ambulatory Treatment Centre at Ofomaruta in Katina State. And I can hear crying babies everywhere, mothers clutching to their crying babies. It's a bit chaotic, to be honest. It's hot and dusty at the same time right now. Across town, MSF runs another inpatient clinic for severely malnourished children.

Some are offered a highly nutritional paste called Plumpy Nut. That is the sound of a mother trying to give her child the plumpy knot to see if the child will accept it so that he can be given more of these sachets to take home. Dr. Muhibba Kangiwa has been working with MSF for almost two years. Seeing them in that condition do affect me mentally because you make all provisions for the patients to be better but yet still you have mortalities and patients will give up right in front of your eyes. In a medical tent, I come across Jamila. She brought her baby here a few days ago, after his body kept swelling up and the general hospital couldn't help. He became malnourished right after I weaned him.

He used to be fine. Now we lack food. We used to live in the village, but bandits forced us to leave. We used to farm, but now we can't do that anymore. A Nigerian army spokesperson recently said they have re-strategized the national fight against the bandits to help farmers return to their land. And in response to this report, Katsana's deputy governor, Farouk Lawaljobi, disputes that malnutrition is rising in the state. He tells us they are tackling the root causes of hunger. The short-term strategy that we have embarked upon was procurement of assorted grains, which

we sold at highly subsidized prices, and there are some that we gave out free. We recently conducted a joint security operations in the frontline local governments, where we have synergy with all the security agencies. And we're able to clear most of the camps of the bandits so that our people can go back to their farms. So you're basically disputing the numbers gotten from international organizations? The season has just started. Why are you getting the numbers? That you can't allow one to say that the number is on the increase. Go to the villages now. Find out from the villages. But families like Jamila's

are still waiting to go home to their farms. Until the country's security and economic issues are overcome, vulnerable children are suffering the consequences. That report by Medina Mashanu in northern Nigeria. Three months after Iran's hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, was killed in a helicopter crash, the man who's replaced him, a more moderate figure, Massoud Peseshkian, has presented his new cabinet to parliament for approval. Mr Peseshkian has nominated a Western-friendly diplomat to be foreign minister, but only one woman for a cabinet position, with all the other posts going to men. Sirvash Adlan from BBC Persian told me more about the new cabinet and what it means for hopes of a thaw in Iran's relations with the West.

So there are 19 portfolios in this cabinet. Most of them have gone to moderate figures, but some are still occupied by hardliners or conservatives. We use the terms interchangeably in Iranian politics because it's so factional. On one hand, you have pragmatists and moderates, and the other hand, you have hardliners. And this president, President Pesachian, won on a reformist pragmatic ticket. So a lot of his constituencies and people who voted for him are very unhappy about some of those portfolios,

important ones that have gone to the hardliners. And also the fact that there's only one ministry that's been given to a woman, the second time in the history of the Islamic Republic. And also the fact that none of the religious or ethnic minorities are represented. I suppose this reflects the fact that the Iranian president is trying to please his supporters, those who wanted more moderate policies, but also trying to find a way to work with the supreme leader and hardliners who hold the real power in Iran. Absolutely. That's the dilemma that he has. So the question everyone is asking is whether a government cabinet should be a shareholder limited or should it be a government of national unity? And there are different approaches that you can talk about. Previously, when you had a president usually belonging to

the reformist faction, when they took over, the politics was very factional. So everyone who came into the government, you know, represented that viewpoint of the reformist faction. But now this government has decided to take a different approach. It doesn't want to be so confrontational. It recognizes the need to – there's no such thing as coalition building in Iran. So this might also be considered by proponents of his approach to be an exercise in coalition building. But there are also some critics as well who say that a president really doesn't hold the levers of power and the person who's really in charge is the supreme leader and the revolutionary guards. Siavash Adlan from BBC Persian. A draft law that would allow girls as young as nine to be married has sparked protests in Iraq over the past week.

Women's rights activists say the proposal, which is backed by conservative Shia Muslim politicians, would legalize child rape. If it becomes law, Iraqis will be allowed to choose between the religious authorities or the civil judiciary for decisions on family affairs. The age of marriage for boys will also be lowered to 15. I heard more from Christina Lam, the chief foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times newspaper. At the moment, the minimum age for marriage in Iraq is 18, which it has been since 1959. But in fact, a lot of marriages are happening younger than that. And those marriages are not legal marriages that are being conducted by religious authorities. So what the idea of this bill is, is to try and almost legalize those marriages which are not legal

by giving people a choice of whether they go to the judiciary or religious authorities. But I mean, the fact is, it will mean that girls, because the religious authorities will marry girls as young as nine, that you're basically legalising child marriage. The people that are favouring it, Iraq's parliament, is dominated by conservative Shia politicians who really have been doing a number of things which look to be rolling back rights of women and also the LGBTQ community. And they've also sparked protests. There's been quite a backlash to this in Iraq. Yes, absolutely. There have been protests in the streets, in Baghdad, in other cities, a lot of outcry on social media. People are very worried about it.

One of the things that's going on in Iraq, too, is there's a lot of children out of school in Iraq. 3.2 million children do not go to school. So the two things are connected, really. If girls were still in school, that would give them a measure of protection. And that's the key to it, isn't it? There's a lot of poverty in Iraq. And in the 20 years since the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, child marriage has been steadily increasing there. Yeah, it has. And that's why some people are arguing that it's better to do this. I mean, it's quite complicated in that all these girls who are being married through religious authorities and don't have a civil marriage certificate are then denied a whole lot of other rights because, for example, to give birth in a state hospital in Iraq,

you have to prove that you're married. If you want to apply for, you know, inheritance or any kind of spousal allowances, you can't get those unless you have a civil marriage contract. What they would actually be doing is legalising marriages that in many people's views, certainly in my view, should not be legal. It shouldn't be OK to marry a girl of the age of nine. Christina Lam. Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame, has been sworn in for a fourth term. He won over 99% of the votes in

last month's election, in which he faced no meaningful opposition. Mr Kagame has been in charge of the country since the end of the 1994 genocide. Our Africa editor is Will Ross. A 21-gun salute as Paul Kagame begins what's effectively his fourth decade in charge of Rwanda. Many African heads of state were at the ceremony, but not the leader next door, Congo's Felix Chisikedi. There have been peace talks to try to end the animosity between the two men because it's been fuelling conflict in eastern Congo. Paul Kagame appeared to criticise Mr Chisikedi for failing to help defeat Rwandan rebels based there. Will Ross. Wild elephants and humans are increasingly coming into conflict in parts

of India as the habitats for the huge mammals are shrinking. Hundreds of people and elephants have died in recent years as humans encroach on territory the animals have traditionally roamed on. Now a new app has been launched by the state of Assam to try to reduce such deaths. It will warn people of approaching herds of elephants to help them get out of the way. Stephanie Prentice reports. Assam in India's northeast has one of the highest populations of wild elephants of any of India's states. A source of pride but also of concern. While most interactions between humans and elephants are peaceful, the results when they're not can be catastrophic and even fatal,

with an average of 80 elephants and 70 humans killed each year. Until now, Assam's government has recommended installing electric fences to keep elephants away from towns and villages. Now it's stepped up its approach with a new app giving people a number of tools based on an early warning system. First is a tracking element that works in real time so communities can be alerted to approaching herds. Second is advice on how people can take evasive action. And there's also a logging system for incidents so villagers can apply for compensation quickly if their property is damaged. The app was designed by a team of conservationists

and will initially be given to areas with high-intensity human-elephant conflict before being rolled out across the North East. Stephanie Prentice. Now let's return to the Olympics, which have ended in the French capital with a spectacular closing ceremony on Sunday. As well as an impressive medals hall, Paris has also held into its title as a city of love.

We saw the five Olympic rings, but there have been quite a few other rings as well, as several athletes proposed after competing. Harry Bly looks back at some of the game's love stories. This summer of Olympic love began even before the opening ceremony. While a group of more than 50 Argentinian athletes were taking a group photo, handball player Pablo Simonet got on his knee and proposed to his longtime girlfriend, field hockey player Maria Pilar Campoy. Then came the opening ceremony on the River Seine. But for Italian high jumper Gianmarco Tamberi, it did not get off to a good start. While waving the Italian flag on his team's

boat, cruising along the water in the rain. His wedding ring fell off and bounced off the boat into the Seine. In a post on Instagram, Tamberi apologised to his wife, Chiara Bontempi. He suggested that there might be something poetic about what happened, and that if she wanted to, she could throw her ring in too. He wrote that then the rings would be together forever, and they'd have one more excuse to renew their vows. During the games, there have been plenty of moments between loved ones cheering each other on, consoling each other after a loss or celebrating together with videos of athletes running straight into their partner's arms all over social media. And it seems the city of love inspired something extra

for some of those moments. The American rower Justin Best took Team USA's first gold for rowing this Olympics after receiving his medal surrounded by family and friends, and live on the Today show on NBC, he proposed to his girlfriend, Lainey Duncan. And in her home country, after breaking the European record for the 3,000-metre steeplechase, the French athlete Alice Fino took one of her Olympic pins as a makeshift ring and proposed to her boyfriend, the Spanish triathlete Bruno Martinez Barguiela. Fino said she told herself that if she ran in under nine minutes, with nine being her lucky number and that she and Bruno have been together for nine years,

she would propose. And of course, he said yes. Harry Bly on the love stories at the Olympic Games. Don't forget the Paralympics begin in Paris on the 28th of August. 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 or the topics covered, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll. The producer was Liam McSheffery. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janet Jalil.

Until next time, goodbye. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts.