Global News Podcast - Myanmar's military stages controversial election

Episode Date: December 28, 2025

Voting has begun in the opening phase of Myanmar's heavily restricted general election, the first since the military seized power nearly five years ago in a coup, an act that sparked civil war. The first round of voting takes place in around a quarter of the country; two more rounds are due to take place next month. Also: we look at how deportation fears in the US are driving money transfers to Honduras. A Siberian tiger gives birth to a record five cubs, it's China's first documented case of a tiger having quintuplets in the wild. Research suggests that a mysterious force called Dark Energy - which drives the expansion of the Universe - might be changing, in a way that challenges our current understanding of time and space. And Aryna Sabalenka takes on Nick Kyrgios in what's been dubbed the 'Battle of the Sexes' tennis match. We look at why it's polarising opinion.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 BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. New Year's Resolution. Own how you show up online. It's easy with a domain and matching email from GoDaddy. Now just 99 cents per month for new customers their first year. Ring in 2026 with a domain and matching email at goaddy.com slash new year. That's goaddy.com slash new year to own how you show up online. Hello, Greg Jenner here, host of Your Dead to Me.

In my new family-friendly podcast series, Dead Funny History, historical figures come back to life for just about long enough to argue with me, tell us their life stories, and sometimes get on my nerves. There's 15 lovely episodes to unwrap, including the life of Ramsey's the Great, Josephine Baker, and the history of football, plus much, much more. So this Christmas, give your ears, a treat with Dead Funny History. You can find it in the Your Dead to Me feed on BBC. or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritson and in the early hours of Sunday the 28th of December, these are our main stories. Voting is underway in the election stage by Myanmar's military leaders amid a civil war and humanitarian crisis. The poll has been labelled a sham. President Zelensky is going to Florida for a cruise. crucial meeting with Donald Trump about the Russia-Ukraine peace plan, and China proposes stricter rules for human-like AI systems. Also in this podcast, Hondurans in the US are sending home more money in remittances than ever before.

We hear from people in both countries. And tennis is set for another battle of the sexes. A lot of people think it's just going to sort of cause division and mirth. It's kind of lose-lose for Sabalenko and therefore the kind of women's tennis movement. Is this the sequel no one asked for? The polls have opened for a general election in Myanmar, the first held in the country since the military seized power in a coup nearly five years ago. It's taking place despite the fact that the country is in the grip of a civil war and humanitarian crisis.

The military government has been trying to inspire voters, but the elections have been widely slated as a charade intended to rebrand the army's rule. There are 57 parties on the ballot, but most have links to the military that ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, who's currently in jail. Our correspondent Jonathan Head spoke to me from a polling station.

People are voting here. This is quite close to central Mandalayas. In fact, it's a very big military base near here. There may be some connection to that that's possible that are military families, but actually the crowd's pretty diverse, and this is a very diverse city. The numbers aren't huge there. I mean, compared to previous elections here, the atmosphere is very, very different.

It's very quiet. There's really no sign there's an election on when you're outside the polling station. In fact, people didn't even know where the polling stations were until yesterday. I think in this area, quite a lot of people will vote willingly, though some people we've managed to speak to. It's very difficult. People are very frightened when journalists talk to them. there is this dreadful law which effectively criminalises

any kind of negative comment about the election so people don't know what they can and can't say what will get them sent to prison generally people who just mumbled to us that they feel they have no choice that they've got to vote and I think a lot of people will not vote and of course the picture I'm seeing here in Mandalay

is in many ways deceptive this is a school it's very orderly it's very quiet and peaceful the military has got electric voting machines for the first time ever So it's quite a sort of very smooth process inside. People are having to work out and use those. But you only have to travel perhaps 30, 40 minutes from landing now

to find villages that are actually controlled by armed rebels. A very, very tense situation there. We've been out close to one. Everyone is armed to the teeth. There are no elections happening there. In this first round, there are three rounds of these elections because it's so difficult to hold them because of the civil war. Only perhaps a quarter of the country will be able to vote.

Once all three rounds are completed, The general assessment is perhaps half the country will have taken part in the vote. I expect turnout will be low. And, you know, inevitably large numbers of large parts of the Myanmar population are going to quietly reject this election as illegitimate. Because there is little doubt about the likely outcome, is there? None at all. And, you know, think of the irony here.

The military's own party, the USDP, it's been around a long time. When it had to compete against Aung San Suu's party, it was pretty much wiped out. At the last three election, five years ago, it got only 6% of seats. Aung San Suu Kyi's party got more than 80%. This time around, the USDP is the only party with full institutional support of the military behind it. There are only five other parties contesting nationwide, and they will not do anything like as well. We expect the USDP to get by far the largest bulk of seats in the parliament. So in many ways, this is just applying a democratic facade to a military regime.

I mean, as some people are saying, look, you do need to look at the small bright side here, which is this country has been trapped in a brutal five-year stalemate that's killed perhaps 90,000 people, it's destroyed the economy. At least when they broaden the number of people involved in power, it might soften some characteristics of the military regime or bring some element of power competition at the top. It's a small window of optimism. I think for some people, even some who are deeply opposed to the,

selection into the military, some of them will feel there is, you know, after five years, this is the only off-ramp from this dreadful civil war and perhaps people need to go with it. But even if the military think this will give them some democratic legitimacy, it's not going to, is it because everyone can see what's going on? It won't, among all those who are opposed to the military, but where I think it will count is it will perhaps give a sense that there is some forward momentum to something else. Also, internationally, China is fully backing this election. There's a wonderful irony here. China which doesn't have elections or multi-party system

is actually giving technical assistance and advice on how to do it. Probably the first time China has done this. But China is worried about state collapse. The anarchy in Myanmar, the fragmented opposition groups, is for China, which has a huge border with Myanmar, is so risky. China feels they've got to go ahead with elections and support this regime. And I think other Asian countries will somehow reluctantly have followed. suit so the military will at least be a little less internationally isolated once this poll is over. Jonathan Head. Donald Trump will later meet Ukraine's President Zelensky in Florida following

weeks of intense diplomacy. It began after the release of a 28-point plan which came out of negotiations between Washington and Moscow. Ahead of his talks with Mr Trump, President Zelensky consulted with allies, briefly stopping off in Canada on Saturday to meet the Prime Minister Mark Carney. At a news conference, President Zelenskyy said the latest Russian airstrikes on Kyiv demonstrated that Russia didn't want peace. This attack is, again, Russia's answer on our peace efforts. And it's really a show that Putin doesn't want peace. And we want peace.

And he, the men over war, but he afraid to speak about publicly. But we see these steps. And what we need, we need to stop this war. The meeting between the U.S. and Ukrainian president, is expected to discuss the most politically sensitive parts of a US peace proposal that would ultimately be presented to Russia. Our correspondent in Washington, Sean Dilley, told us what we can expect from the meeting. The key areas that we would expect discussion on is the territory in the Dombas region of Ukraine that Russia would like for President Zelensky to hand over. That's not something, obviously,

that has gone down well with President Zelensky. Instead, the two men are expected to talk about the possibility of a free economic area or a demilitarized zone where troops from Russia and Ukraine would put out. But that's still an area that's going to be controversial with Russia because they've said that they were unhappy with some areas of the negotiations. They say it was unacceptable. And President Putin said just the day before the meeting that if there is not an agreement, then Russia would achieve its military ambitions with force. if necessary. That's the one key area, but the other key area is what any security guarantee would look like. What happens if a peace agreement is made and then there would be any reneging

technically on anyone's part? Would it be fair to say that the only way this meeting is going to achieve something as if President Trump comes out of it feeling like he's the winner? Do you know, I'm going to engage directly on that because I don't think I actually know. I think part of the reality with President Trump is that he is very adeptive. at negotiations. People can like him. They can loathe him. He's not going to enter into negotiations unless he thinks there's something in it for the United States. He's said in the past that what it is about is stopping war in Ukraine. But look, let's not forget, President Trump can't speak for President Putin. What he might be able to do is to have a very, very good idea of any backchannel discussions,

any direct conversation with President Putin as to where a compromise can be met. Obviously, we know from President Zelensky being kicked out of the... over our office earlier in the year after a high profile bust up with President Trump and J.D. Vance, President Trump's vice president, that President Trump would certainly want to feel that he's won. But ultimately, there is an awful lot riding on this one. And President Trump, who speaks about having ended eight wars across the world, will be very keen to do anything that moves towards recognition for his peace efforts. Surely the underlying problem here is that essentially the position between President Zelensky and

and President Putin is irreconcilable. To a degree. I mean, President Trump has spoken about his concerns that Ukraine's elections that would in the normal run of things have been held in May of 2024 haven't happened. So we're expecting President Trump to raise the issue of elections in Ukraine. That's something that President Zelensky says could happen within months if the security of that process could be guaranteed. But actually, one thing that Donald Trump would, be very aware of. You only need to read his various writings on his negotiating tactics.

It doesn't matter whether President Putin and President Zelenskyy like each other. What matters is, is there a business deal effectively that could be done that could save lives? Sean Dilley. As artificial intelligence becomes a part of our daily life, countries around the world are questioning how the technology should be regulated. China, which is known for controlling information using state propaganda and state propaganda and censorship has issued draft rules to govern the use of human-like AI systems. Our reporter Paul Moss spoke to Oliver Conway about the proposed changes, starting with just how important AI is in China.

It's huge, you know, I mean, first of all the numbers. Last year, the number of Chinese people using AI doubled in just six months. It's now more than half a billion. But this isn't just about numbers. I think it's about the role that China thinks it can play with AI. If you could say that the modern tech era began with companies like Microsoft and Apple, well, China's only role there was to provide a low-cost labor force to make all the gizmos that these American companies were designing.

They're hoping it would be different with AI, that China can be a leader. Last year, they caused quite a surprise when they launched Deep Seeker, their own AI platform, which they say was faster and cheaper to run than platforms like Chat, GPT. And what they're hoping is that this will be the shape of things to come. Okay, so tell us about the rules that they're planning to introduce. Well, the first kind of rule are to protect people who use AI, and they are things like saying the AI platforms mustn't promote self-harm or suicide. They mustn't encourage gambling.

They also say that AI platforms should detect if users are becoming addicted to talking to these human-like platforms. And this is a phenomenon that has been noticed elsewhere. People are literally becoming addicted to it. It will be up to the companies themselves to detect whether, this is happening and if necessary, cut users off to stop them becoming addicted. But if the first type of rule announced on Saturday was about protecting users, I would say the second type of rule is about protecting the Chinese government, because I think they're coming around to realize that AI is a double-aged sword and could lead to them being criticized in ways they don't like.

So one of the rules that's been announced is AI platforms mustn't do anything to undermine national security. Well, we know that can be defined very, very broadly indeed. It has been used in passed to crack down on the free speech. Similarly, the rules say that AI platforms must not spread false rumors. Well, who's going to judge what's false, the Chinese authorities? Once again, I think people who care about free speech, they're going to worry about that. Yeah, in the US, the Trump administration has been reluctant to regulate AI. Why are the Chinese authorities doing it? I think it's because, you know, AI is so unpredictable. I mean, you look at the internet. When that arrived in China, obviously they needed to embrace it to be a modern tech-savvy country,

they could easily sensory or relatively easy. They could block web pages that mentioned, for example, the Tiananmen Square massacre or Xinjiang prisons. AI is far more difficult because the bots, the platforms generate stuff and they get material from a vast range of sources. So there's no reason why an AI platform might not start talking about how democracy is a great thing with multiple parties, or perhaps it'll start saying that Taiwan's been a great success as a de facto country. So this, I think, is about the Chinese government thinking, well, okay, we do need this, but we've got to control it. That said, I think a lot of tech-savvy people are going to say, you want to start trying to control AI. Well, good luck with that one.

Paul Moss. According to recent research, a mysterious force called dark energy which drives the expansion of the universe might be changing in a way that challenges our current understanding of time and space. Some scientists believe we may be on the verge of one of the biggest discoveries in astronomy for a generation. Here's our science correspondent, Palab Khoshe. What we see here on Earth and in the stars and galaxies are made of atoms. They account for just 5% of the universe. The rest is mostly something called dark energy. But what is it?

Now, it all started with a big bang. The universe expanded, and astronomers believed that eventually this expansion would slow down under the force of gravity. Some believe that it would even collapse back in on itself in a big crunch. Now, in 1998, they made a shocking discovery. Rather than slowing down, the stars and galaxies were actually accelerating away from each other faster than ever. A telescope in Arizona tracked the acceleration of 15 million galaxies to learn more about dark energy. The astronomers involved, such as Professor Offa La Havre of University College London,

were shocked again by what they saw. It's a very weird scenario. Acceleration of the galaxies had changed over time, something not in line with Einstein's theory, no less. Now with this changing dark energy going up and then down, again, we need a mechanism, right? We are in search of a mechanism which could be a shake-up for the whole of physics.

You know, maybe it connects quantum mechanics to gravity. So it's one of these things that you just never know. It may disappear or it may just get amplified and it will be a whole new theory there. Since then, the Royal Astronomical Society has published research from a Korean team led by Professor Yong Wukli of Vianzai University that seems to back this.

astonishing finding. The fate of the universe will change if dark energy is getting weakened in the future. And then this will change the whole paradigm of modern cosmology established 27 years ago. No one really knows what dark energy is or why it might be changing, if indeed it is. But here are three ideas. Number one, phantom energy. Now, this is a force that increases as the universe expands. To such an extent, the stars and galaxies get torn apart.

This idea is called the Big Rip. Number two, quintessence. This is a gentler form of energy that also expands the universe, but doesn't result it being ripped up. And finally, number three. The universal dark fluid, where there's a single substance that changes from dark matter, invisible particles spread throughout the cosmos,

and dark energy. But then it could be something. completely different, involving multiple universes. One of the ways that people think about resolving the puzzle is that there are many different universes. Professor Hiranya Peres is from the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge. In most of them, beings like us could not evolve

to actually observe a universe because the universe accelerates so fast, there's no time for matter to climb together and make galaxies and make planets and then eventually have life arise. Hundreds of scientific papers have been published on the subject and astronomers are split in what they think is the best explanation, which is no bad thing, according to Professor Robert Massey, who's the Deputy Director of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Who doesn't want to understand how the universe is going to end and how it began? It's one of those grand questions, and human beings have always been interested in that, whether you take it from a kind of religious perspective and talking about creation myths and so on or whether you talk about it from a scientific one, having a feel, having an intuitive idea about how it will end, being able to think, okay, this is how things will end in many, many, many billions of years in the future.

Wouldn't that be extraordinary? So what next? The plan is to have larger telescopes, some in space, to look at dark energy in detail, to get to the bottom of what this mysterious force really is. The results could tell us not only how the universe will end, but maybe a better idea of how it all began. Palab Ghosh.

Still to come, a Siberian tiger stuns conservationists with her litter. For a female Amor tiger or Siberian tiger to give birth to five cubs and have them survive as long as these five seem to survive, is pretty remarkable. That business idea you've been sitting on, this new year. Stop waiting for the perfect time. GoDaddy Arrow uses AI to build your website, logo, and marketing in minutes, not months. No tech skills. No excuses.

Just your idea made real. Get started at goaddy.com with GoDaddy Arrow. Hello, Greg Jenner here, host of Your Dead to Me. In my new family-friendly podcast series, Dead Funny History, historical figures come back to life for just about long enough to argue with me, tell us their life stories and sometimes get on my nerves. There's 15 lovely episodes to unwrap, including the life of Ramsey's the Great, Josephine Baker,

and the history of football, plus much, much more. So this Christmas, give your ears a treat with dead funny history. You can find it in the Your Dead to Me feed on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Many undocumented immigrants in the United States are from the Central American State of Honduras, and they're sending home more money in remittances than ever. During the first nine months of this year,

they sent back in excess of $10 billion. That makes up an astonishing one-quarter of the Honduran economy. But President Trump's harsher immigration policies mean many of these migrants are being rounded up. Others are being put off from attempting to get to the US in the first place. Our correspondent Will Grant sent this report from Honduras. Donald Trump's relentless crackdown on undocumented immigration shows no sign of letting up. Chicago, Charlotte in North Carolina and communities in Minnesota the latest focal points of raids by the Immigration Agency ICE. Authorities say scores of

immigrants with criminal records were detained. In each city, though, ice was met by protests. Yet even as their numbers dwindle in the US, Honduran migrants have been sending more money home than ever. Between January and October this year, there was a 26% rise in remittances to Honduras compared to the same period the previous year. Hello. Hello.

I spoke to one. undocumented Honduran migrant, who I'll call Marcos, on the phone from a major U.S. city where he has lived for five years working in construction. Marcos said he's currently sending home every spare dollar he has to his wife in Tugusigalpa, while he lives on as little as possible in the U.S. This way, he reasons if he is picked up on the streets by ice, at least he'll return to a little money set aside. Marcos has gone from sending home around $500 a month to more like $300 a week, he explains,

partly so his family will have funds if he's held in a detention center for months. Remittances remain key to Honduras, worth around 25% of GDP. But the Trump administration has also begun to target those funds. The Treasury Department has issued an alert to money services businesses, like Western Union and others, saying there must file a suspicious activity report for transactions that involve at least $2,000, in which they suspect involves the cross-border transfer of funds derived from unlawful employment. That could hit many migrants where it most hurts, sending money home. In conjunction with the ICE raids, at schools, churches and at places

of work, the Trump administration's aim is to both remove people from U.S. soil and detention others from even trying to reach the U.S. in the first place. In the case of Elias Padilla, it worked. An Uber driver in Tugosi Galpa, he says he often makes as little as $12 a day. Elias had planned to make the journey north this year. Now, though, he says the images of his countrymen with their wrists in zip ties being dragged away has made him change his plans, at least for the time being.

I wanted to go to improve my life conditions, because here we earn very little. In this line of work, for example, an Uber driver in the U.S. is well paid. They make in an hour what I'd make in a day. Also, so I could send remittances home. But then I see what Trump is doing, and it's made me think twice. It's taken away my desire to go. Elias had even saved funds for a people smuggler, a man like Jimmy, though that's not his real name. For two decades, Jimmy made a living out of taking people across Mexico.

considered the most treacherous part of the trip to the U.S. He claims he's given up that life. But he explains President Trump's draconian immigration policies aren't just affecting the legal economy in Honduras via remittances, but the illegal economy too. Many coyotes or people smugglers, says Jimmy, are charging double, as much as $25,000 to $30,000 per person. Whether it is migrants deported by ICE or self-deporting,

the Honduran government has a responsibility towards them when they return. The left-wing administration of President Silamara Castro launched a support program called Brother-Sister Coming Home, involving some clothes, health checks and a small stipend. One thing is clear. The Trump administration's policies are undoubtedly having an impact in Honduras. And while it's partly in the form of more remittance, is the economic boost may only be temporary.

Will Grant. Cameras in a national park in China, located near the border with Russia, have spotted something remarkable, a Siberian tiger family that includes five cubs. It's China's first documented case of a tiger having quintuplets in the wild and comes after careful conservation work to protect these endangered animals.

It's thought the letter was born in June, Jonathan Slat is the original director of the Wildlife Conservationist Society's Asia program. He told Paul Henley more about the discovery. For a female Amor Tiger or Siberian tiger to give birth to five cubs and have them survive as long as these five seem to have survived is pretty remarkable. Usually a litter is two to three, sometimes four. And, you know, in order to, first of all, give birth to any cub, even one, a tiger's has to be an incredible physical condition, right?

She needs to be at the top of her game. There needs to be enough prey to feed her through the process of the pregnancy. And then once cubs are born to then not just feed herself, but also to feed these cubs. And so that there are five of these cubs, you know, pitter pattering around northeast China right now, suggests that there's sufficient habitat for this family there and there's sufficient prey. Like she's able to actually catch enough deer or boar to feed this large family. Although given how much roaming territory an adult Siberian tiger needs to survive, the cubs are not out of the woods yet, are they?

Yeah, that's correct. So a female like one photograph in the video from northeast China, she requires up to about 400 square kilometers of a home range in order to meet all her needs. And there's all kinds of threats to these cubs. There's brown bears in this area. There's other male tigers who might be interested in breeding with this female, so they might come in and try to kill these cubs.

if they're not the father. And there's humans, right? There's roads so there can be vehicle strikes. Tell us more about Siberian tigers. They're very rare, aren't they? They are. It's actually a pretty remarkable conservation success story. I mean, these tigers were almost extinct about 100 years ago. It's the only tiger subspecies that was able to show a positive population trajectory throughout the 19th century. So going from a low of just a couple dozen in Russia in about 1940 to a total population about 500, 550 today. And the story in China is even more remarkable. They were written off as basically extinct.

In about the year 2000, some surveys have been done that found only about a dozen left. And now today there's thought to be between 70 and 80. So it's a really remarkable turnaround for these cats. And what is it about them that so draws you to them to concentrate on them for such a large amount of your professional life? Well, tigers are considered what we call in conservation biology an umbrella species. So it's a species that garners attention.

And if you're able to protect that one species, it protects many other things. It's sort of like an umbrella protects a body from the rain. Again, because these animals have such large territories, I mentioned 400 square kilometers for female, males require up to 1,400 square kilometers. If you're protecting enough habitat for a functional population of amor tigers, that means everything. else in the whole landscape is essentially also being protected. So it's a really good species to focus on. Conservationist Jonathan Slat. A controversial tennis match is taking place later in Dubai. On one side of the net, Arena Sabalenko, the Women's World Number One, and current US Open champion. On the other, Australian Nick Kirios, a former Wimbledon finalist who's now ranked

more than 650th in the world. The one-off exhibition match has drawn criticism from some for belittling the women's game by putting the leading female tennis player of the day against a male player well past his prime. The match has been dubbed the Battle of the Sexes, but it's not the first time such an encounter has taken place. In 1973, when one of the greatest players of all time,

Billy Jean King, took on a former men's Wimbledon champion called Bobby Riggs. King won the match. In an interview with the BBC afterwards, she described it as one of the most important wins of her career. The women who saw it have come up to me and empowered them and gave himself confidence. And the men come up to me and they go,

they're the ones that are very emotional. And sometimes I have tears in their eyes and they'll say, I was 12, 13, 20, 25. I have a daughter now. And that absolutely changed my whole. outlook on how I'm going to raise my children. Some of the rules have been changed to balance out the differences between the way men and women play the game, but Arena Sabolenko and Nick Curios have defended the encounter.

Whoever wins wins, and I think I'm not damaging this fight for equal prize money and for bringing women's sport on another level. I think this event is going to only help to bring women tennis on a higher level because it's not going to be an easy match for him and I'm just going to be there competing and showing that women are strong and powerful and actually very entertainment to watch. I think it's just amazing for the sport.

100% gets more eyes on it and I think it probably will be one of the most watched sporting events this year or if not in the last probably decade, let's be honest. So I think this is something moving forward that will be pretty special in sport of tennis but also just in sport in general. My colleague Joe Pike spoke with Charlie Eccleshare tennis correspondent for the athletic, who began by explaining some of those rule changes.

Firstly, each player will only get one serve, so that's kind of designed to mitigate the fact that Kirios has a huge serve. So the idea is that that makes it a bit fairer, a bit more competitive. The other is that based on some science, apparently, and don't shoot the messenger here, male athletes cover ground about 9% quicker, the women ones, or that may be men and women in general. and so the court dimensions are slightly smaller. And so Kirios will be hitting into a court that's 9% smaller than the one Sabelenko will be hitting into. So they'll stay on the same side.

They'll still have kind of change of ends in inverted commas where they sit down every couple of games but they won't actually be changing ends. And how have the tennis world reacted to this since it was announced? I'd say it's been divisive might be generous. I mean, as Nick Kirios said, it certainly generated a lot of talk and chatter and I think a lot of people will watch it.

But I think there's a sense that it's kind of lose-lose for Sabalenko and therefore the kind of women's tennis movement and women's movement in general because, you know, we're talking about the women's world number one, playing against a guy who's been injured for most of the last three years, really, ranked 6701. And if Sabalanka wins, then it's kind of like, well, okay, you beat a guy who's basically 700 in the world and hasn't played for years. Or she loses and it's, oh my gosh, the world number one lost to this guy who barely plays and is so lowly ranked. So why is she doing it, Charlie? well I think you know she thinks it will be fun she you know she said there as you heard that she thinks as well that it could help promote the women's cause by showing that they can compete and that they're entertaining you know and she spoke I've spoken to her before in a one-on-one interview about how much equal prize money is important to her because that's not the case across the board

in tennis it is at the grand slams but yeah a lot of people think it's just going to sort of cause division and mirth, and the fact that Kirios has made a number of disparaging comments about female tennis players before or kind of female tennis. It makes people feel pretty uncomfortable. Charlie Eccleshare of the Athletic. It's been described by Prime Minister Georgia Maloney as Italy's demographic winter. The country's birth rate has been in decline for the past 16 years despite efforts by Ms Maloney's right-wing government to reverse that trend. On average, women give birth to just 1.13 children, far below the rate needed to keep the population stable. So perhaps it's no surprise that the birth of a baby girl in a small village in central Italy

has become a symbol of hope, even attracting tourists. Carla Conti reports. There is a place in Italy where cats far outnumber people. Nestled in the mountains of the Abruzzo region, the ancient rural village of Pallara de Marcy and its inhabitants, and not witnessed the birth of a child in almost 30 years. But everything changed in March of 2025 when a baby girl by the name of Lara Busy-Drabuco was born, becoming the town's 20th resident. Such is the novelty that the whole village turned out for Lara's christening and her mom, Chin Trabuco, says news of the birth has even drawn tourists. While Baby Lara has brought hope, Italy's demographic crisis extends far beyond the confines of this ancient village.

Eostat, the National Statistics Agency, says births hit a record low in 2024, with just 370,000 recorded. Despite Georgia Meloni's efforts to encourage childbirth and much talk of family-friendly politics, her right-wing government has been unable to stop what it has described as the country's demographic winter. Meloni's government has introduced cash incentives for parents, such as one-off baby bonuses, but many Italians say the bigger barriers are structural, insecure work, high living costs, insufficient childcare and young people moving abroad. In regions like Abruzzo, the decline is already hollowing out services, from nurseries to schools. So in Pallara, Baby Lara is a celebration as well as a warning.

Carla Conti. And that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast, 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. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global NewsPod. This edition was mixed by Rosenwyn Dorrell. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritson. Until next time, goodbye. Hello, Greg Jenner here, host of Your Dead to Me. In my new family-friendly podcast series, Dead Funny History,

historical figures come back to life for just about long enough to argue with me, tell us their life stories, and sometimes get on my nerves. There's 15 lovely episodes to unwrap, including the life of Ramsey's the Great, Josephine Baker, and the history of football, plus much, much more. So this Christmas, give your ears, a treat with Dead Funny History. find it in the You're Dead to Me feed on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.