Global News Podcast - NATO heads discuss Ukraine security plans

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

NATO military chiefs are meeting to work on security guarantees for Ukraine in the event of a peace deal with Moscow. Russia's foreign minister has called the talks a 'road to nowhere'. The Israeli Defence Ministry approves plans to call up tens of thousands of reservist soldiers ahead of an offensive to occupy Gaza City. Public offices and schools in Karachi have been closed as the city deals with deadly floods from torrential monsoon rains. Artificial Intelligence has been used to recreate the voice of a woman with motor neurone disease, by analysing seconds of old video footage of her speaking. India and China have agreed to resume direct flights and step up trade and investment flows, as they rebuild ties damaged by a deadly clash in the Galwan valley five years ago. The picturesque South Korean holiday resort island of Jeju tells tourists to mind their manners. Researchers find people can tell who their best friends may be, just by watching film clips with them... and what new research into chocolate can tell us about our tastes and our health, as well as how to make the most delicious blend.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. Ever feel like car shopping is designed to make your second guess yourself? Is this a good price? Am I making the right choice? With car gurus, you don't have to wonder. They have hundreds of thousands of cars from top-rated dealers and advanced search tools, deal ratings and price history. So you know a great deal when you see one. That's cairg-g-U-R-U-S.ca.cagurus.cagurus.ca.cagurus.ca.

Box, a delicious streamer. Collider says everyone should be watching. Catch Britain's next best series with Britbox. Streamer claim new originals like Code of Silence. You read lips, right? And Linley, based on the best-selling mystery series. Di-I, Linley. Take it from here.

And don't miss the new season of Karen Piri coming this October. You don't look, look, please. I'll do that as a compliment. See it differently when you stream the best of British TV with Britbox. Watch with a free trial today. This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. Amonga to sign at 1,300 GMT on Wednesday the 20th of August. These are our main stories.

The future of Ukrainian defence is on the table as NATO military chiefs meet, but Russia has said any conversations it's not in are a road to nowhere. The Israeli Defence Ministry approves plans to call up tens of thousands of reservists ahead of an offensive to occupy Gaza City. Most of them will be ordered to show up on September 2nd, but others will be in November, December or even in February, March, which means that this operation could last several months even into the beginning of next year. Public offices and schools in Karachi have been closed

and the city deals with flash floods from torrential monsoon rains. Also in this podcast, I was diagnosed with MND when I was 34 and pregnant with my second child. Hello, this is my voice. It's a kind of miracle, really. How a tiny snippets of one woman's voice before she was ill allowed AI to change her communication from robotic back to her old self. As we record this podcast, NATO military chiefs are meeting virtually to discuss potential security guarantees for Ukraine if a peace deal with Russia is agreed. Further talks will be hosted by the Pentagon later in the day.

But we've also heard from the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking about the war in Ukraine, saying any talks without Russia were a road to nowhere and pouring scorn on European involvement in the process. All we've seen so far is a quite aggressive escalation of the situation and rather clumsy and unethical attempts to change the position of the Trump administration and the President of the United States himself, as we witnessed when the Europeans accompanied Mr Zelensky to Washington

on Monday this week. We did not hear any constructive ideas from the European. Europeans there. A Europe regional editor, Danny Eberhard, told me more. He's basically been talking about that Russia is ready to discuss political aspects of a settlement with Ukraine and that it would raise the level of delegations in negotiations. That is something that refers to the prospects of a bilateral meeting between Presidents Putin and Zelensky, something that Donald Trump has been pushing for. But when, Lavrov talks about this. He talks it. He's also talked about it in the context of it needing a lot of preparation. So meetings between experts and before it gets to a sort of a suitable level. So there is a lot of way to go in terms of raising the level of delegations until it reaches presidential level. And it seems, or the Ukrainians would certainly read it in the way that this is a delaying tactic. The idea about the security.

guarantee for Ukraine is also a very contentious one. So Donald Trump has increased the momentum towards trying to thrash out what sort of security guarantees the US and others may be prepared to offer Ukraine in the event of a peace settlement. But Sergei Leverov says that phrase, it's a road to nowhere unless it's discussed with Russia. Russia has consistently opposed the deployment of troops from NATO countries to Ukraine as part of any peace settlement.

It would see that as an escalation and one of the reasons why it says it went into Ukraine in the first place. So there seems to be two parallel processes going on here. One, a debate that seems to offer momentum in places like the US and Europe, but it's divorced from what the Russian position is. Okay, then before you go there, we're with the NATO military chiefs

and the details that they're going to try and thrash out. What will they be hoping to agree on when they meet? And what impact does this have on the peace effort? Well, the sort of thing, some countries in what's called the Coalition of the Willing, which includes NATO countries, but other countries as well. So some countries are prepared to potentially deploy troops. They see them as part of what they call a reassurance force rather than a peacekeeping force.

But there are other components. as well, so things like logistics and intelligence. All that those discussions are not as important as the one key question, which is, is Russia prepared to end the war? And so far, at least, many analysts say there is no evidence that Russia is indeed prepared to do so. A Europe regional editor, Danny Eberhardt. Israel has announced it will call up around 60,000 reservists before a planned offensive to take control of Gaza city. It could also mean up 2 million Palestinian residents being ordered to leave the area. Immanuel Fabian, who's a military correspondent for the Times of Israel,

says the Israeli plan is part of an even bigger deployment. Well, these 60,000 is on top of the reserves who are already in duty right now. So at the sort of the height of this Gaza City offensive, we will be talking about numbers of around 130,000 reservists who will be on duty. And information we're getting from the army this morning as well, they're saying that five IDF divisions will be involved in this offensive, which is tens of thousands of troops, so it will be quite large scale. But it is important to say that not all of these reserves are being called up immediately.

Most of them will be ordered to show up on September 2nd, but others will be in November, December or even in February, March, which means that this operation could last several months even into the beginning of next year. Well, the reservists are being called up as mediators from Egypt and Qatar, for Israel's formal response to a new ceasefire proposal for Gaza. Hamas has already announced it has accepted it. The details are very similar to an earlier plan from the US Special Envoy Steve Whitkoff, which Israel had accepted. Hussein Haridi, a former Egyptian assistant foreign minister,

says the plan for an Israeli offensive in Gaza city will heap even more pressure on Hamas. I'm afraid it's too late for Hamas now to change their acceptance of the latest proposal by the mediator countries. Also, there is another aspect that the position of President Trump and the American administration, yesterday the United States Special Envoy,

Mr. Steve Whitkoff, said that we want the release of all the hostages and we want to end the war. So let's wait and see how Hamas would respond to that. Ending the war is not for tomorrow, definitely. But the release of all hostages is possible, although

I doubt very much if Hamas would under the present circumstances, would say yes. Our Middle East correspondent Yolán Nell is in Jerusalem. I asked her how the Israeli public would react to so many reservists being called up. So coming into the season of the Jewish high holidays, you know, this is when many of these call-ups will actually be starting to take effect. There'll be a lot more people in uniform around that time. And, you know, Israeli society is really feeling the strain now

of having had so many young people, especially young men, being called up for active duty. The army is said to be exhausted by all that's happened, some resources running low. So that does affect public morale. And we've also had just on Sunday hundreds of thousands of Israelis involved in these big protests demanding a deal to bring the hostage. home. There are 20 of them still believed to be alive out of a total of 50 held by Palestinian armed

groups. Where does this leave the ceasefire proposal? A lot of people expecting some sort of a formal Israeli response. Can we expect that any time soon? Well, I mean, there's been no formal response so far and we've not been told about any security cabinet meeting

being scheduled in response to these plans that we've been told that Hamas signed up to. Israeli officials are being quoting the Israeli media saying that Israel is reviewing this plan but at the same time there's been this Israeli sort of government public position having for months basically pushed for a phased deal of a ceasefire to bring home the hostages in groups we then have had Israel pivoting saying that it needs to have a comprehensive deal that would be the only way forward bringing home all the hostages at once

Yoland Nell in Jerusalem. Despite a much-held peace process aimed at ending the conflict in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, there are reports that at least 140 civilians were killed last month. Human Rights Watch alleges that the M23 rebel group murdered ethnic Hutu people in 14 villages near the Virunga National Park. Clementine de Montjeu is the lead author of the report and a warning that listeners may find some of the details distressing.

We found that the M23 were the same. the support of the Rwandan army blocked off a very fertile agricultural area where farmers and migrant workers come and live in the fields and work throughout the farming season and then carried out executions sometimes of entire families, including of children as young as nine months old. We spoke with a number of survivors and witnesses who described the killing, some of them seeing their whole families murdered before them. A survivor said a number of victims were made to walk to a nearby river, lined up against

the river and shot their bodies pushed into the water. We also spoke with people who buried the dead, carried out analysis of photographs and videos that we received as well as satellite imagery and consulted with forensic pathologists to confirm our findings. Medical sources in the area also confirmed receiving a number of injured people, including those with wounds consistent with gunshots or machete injuries. Clementine de Monjoy of Human Rights Watch. To Pakistan now in the city of Karachi, which has declared a state of rain emergency after deadly monsoon rains, schools and public buildings are closed.

There was an interruption in the rain in the morning, but more was forecast. Eight people are known to have died there so far, adding to nearly 750 who've been killed across Pakistan and Pakistan administered Kashmir since heavy rain began. again in June. Asda Mishiri is monitoring developments from Islamabad. Many of the main roads are still closed because the underpasses were so full of water. Markets have been closed. There's a public holiday which is allowing the emergency services and the police to continue getting cars that were abandoned in certain roads and also allowing police to respond to some of the emergency situations. Of the eight people, they've confirmed

dead so far. Three of them are children. A lot of the housing in Karachi because we're talking about urban flooding. Some of them are in poor condition and so unfortunately the majority of deaths do tend to be because of roofs collapsing on top of them. Asaday Masiri in Islamabad. We don't get to carry stories about good news often enough. So it's a real pleasure today to tell you about the remarkable case of a woman who thought she'd lost her voice for good until AI came along. Sarah Ezekiel lost her mobility and her ability to speak to motor neurone disease or M&D when she was a young mother. And although in recent years she's been able to speak with a computer-generated voice, she said it sounded robotic. Now scientists using AI technology and an old videotape recording

just a few seconds long have been able to give Sarah back her real voice. Emma Tracy reports. I was diagnosed with MND when I was 34 and pregnant with my second child, Eric. I was in denial thinking I'd be fine after I gave birth. Due to motor neuron disease, Sarah can speak only through a computer. In fact, after Eric was born, I deteriorated rapidly. Each of her words is painstakingly typed out, using a machine that tracks her eye movements. But this technology has been transformative. It wasn't available to her when she was first diagnosed 25 years ago. I felt very isolated and was struggling to communicate with my carols too. It was a very difficult time but things did improve greatly when I could use a computer.

Further advancements in technology mean that Sarah is now able to speak with a simulation of her real voice. Hello, this is my voice. It's a kind of miracle, really. Wow, that just sounds really different. After such a long time, I couldn't really remember my voice before MND.

When I first heard it again, I felt like crying and it was very emotional. Oh, gosh, I can imagine. How close is it to your original speaking voice, I think. I think it's pretty good, although I wonder if I would sound older now. Oh, well, it's no harm in being a bit Peter Pan. People didn't know I was cockney with a slight lisp. I feel a bit more exposed because I didn't really like my voice before. I don't care about that now, and I'm glad to be back.

As well as being a visual artist, Sarah wrote a play earlier this year, where she explored, sometimes humorously, the difficulties of communicating with a synthesis. voice. You just can't pull off a punchline. And then shared her new personalised voice with the audience. I can even be me again. And my children who couldn't remember my voice was so happy to hear the real me. So Sarah was a trickier case than we expected. We were approached by Simon Poole. He's part of the team that recreated Sarah's voice. I was hoping she'd have loads of old audio recordings of her voice, but she lost her voice so long ago. All she could find was a short VHS recording that had eight seconds of her voice with lots of background noise. Let me play

you the video that Sarah sent me. Despite it not being perfect, that is good enough for an AI voice creation tool to work with. It just needs a small sample of your voice and then it knows what voices normally sound like and it can use that to fine tune its model to sound like your voice. Let's hear the final version. She wasn't getting enough milk and she looked miserable. I thought, you know, I gave her a bottle one night and she was so much happier. That is incredible. Really incredible.

I'm with Sarah's children, Aviva and Eric, who are reminiscing over some old home videos. Do the one where I pour water over Eric's way. For them, their mom's new voice has been a revelation. Well, I knew she was East London, but I don't know she had a cockney accent. It's made me really happy and quite emotional. It's really made her present in the space. Like, mum isn't just a disabled person in the corner with a robot that doesn't relate to her. She's here.

We can hear her. We can feel who you are as a person. I would say the best thing about her new voice is how much emotion comes through and how it's so much clearer what mum's feeling and what she's trying to get across, what mood she's in. I'm always grumpy. Not really. Emma Tracy, with that lovely report from the BBC's Access or Disability News Pod. So what's to come in this podcast?

I think what's great is to get people to think about flavour, because if you want to eat more healthily, eat more mindfully, eat more socially, you need to focus on flavour. How new research on chocolate could teach us all a lesson about eating well. This podcast is brought to you by Wise, the app for international people using money around the globe. With Wise, you can send, spend and receive up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps. Plus, Wise won't add hidden fees to your transfer.

Whether you're buying souvenirs with pesos in Puerto Vallata or sending euros to a loved one in Paris, you know you're getting a fair exchange rate with no extra markups. Be smart. Join the 15 million customers who choose Wise. Download the Wise app today or visit Wise.com. T's and C's Apply. Who's abducting 100,000 children. in China each year, and how was a cult where paedophilia, murder and torture were commonplace, allowed to operate in Chile for nearly four decades? At True Crime Reports, a new video podcast

from Al Jazeera, we'll investigate these stories from the Global South and beyond, true crimes that often haven't reached the headlines in the West. I'm Halemohydine. In each episode, we'll take you to a different country. You'll hear from experts and firsthand accounts from those right at the heart of these stories. True crime reports. Find us under Al Jazeera's YouTube channel podcast tab and wherever you get your podcasts. India and China have agreed to resume direct flights

and step up trade and investment flows as the neighbours rebuild ties damaged by a deadly clash in the Goulwan Valley five years ago. 24 soldiers died following violent hand-to-hand combat on the mountainous eastern border where Indian and Chinese patrols overlap. From Delhi, the BBC's Davina Gupta reports. Before the ban, over 500 flights operated every month. But the restrictions along with tight visa rules hit airlines, passengers and trade hard.

Now with pressure mounting from US tariffs, Delhi and Beijing are trying to reset ties. During Chinese Foreign Minister Wangi's visit to Delhi this week, Both sides agreed to finalize on air services agreement to start direct flights at the earliest, ease visa rules and continue border talks. Davina Gupta reporting from Delhi. The South Korean Holiday Resort Island of Jeju is promoted as an island paradise for tourists. Happiness. The warmth and the light stay in memory with a radiant sun in a clear sky.

It's time to meet Jeju. But if you do meet Jeju, you'll have to mind your body. manners. Police there have had leaflets produce telling tourists how to behave. They're printed in Korean, English and Chinese. Point one of the notice reads, welcome to Jeju. After that, it becomes rather less

friendly. Our East Asia regional editor Jason Lee, told me more. Well, as we just listened there, and we've as I've seen this notice, it's quite welcoming, as you say. And then there's no hesitation. They straight go on to the minor fences you could be fine for. And

these are a number of infractions could you know, include littering, smoking and non-smoking areas and urinating or defecating in public spaces even. Now, if you get caught for that last offence, you'll have to pay 50,000 South Korean 1. That's about $35. So there's about 10 minor offenses you could be faced if you could face fines for. Okay. And what are the police and local authorities going to do to take this further as well? Is this necessary? Well, officers say it is. And officials there, they say they are, they are grappling with many tourists, you know, disrupting public order. So that's why they're having to, you know, hand out these leaflets.

So officers will carry them during patrols and they hand them out when they see people, you know, committing these minor offenses. They've already printed about 8,000 of them on Monday. And they hope this will, you know, bridge the cultural gaps and help foreign visitors grasp local laws and customs, especially when many police officers on the island don't speak English or Mandarin Chinese. So, you know, they hope that this will make it easy. for them to communicate these offenses to the people who break them. And are people in South Korea really as orderly as these notices appear to suggest? And how protective are locals over their area?

I've previously lived in Southeast Asia. I lived in Japan and in islands like Okinawa. People are very protective about securing their local area and protecting it. Well, Jeju is known to have a very distinct culture and cuisine, even within South Korea. So obviously, the locals are very protected. You know, as we've touched upon, it's a very popular. popular tourist island. It has about 700,000 people and it already received seven million visitors already this year just alone. And it's especially kind of very popular among Chinese

tourists. It's known sort of as the Hawaii of South Korea. And the reason why it's so popular among Chinese tourists and the reason why the leaflets are printed in Chinese as well, mainly for two reasons. Well, the island has a visa-free policy for Chinese tourists where they can visit island for up to 30 days without a visa. Secondly, I think more importantly, South Korean culture we see, you know, is dominating the world. You know, we talk about K-pop and K content. And there have been two very famous South Korean dramas

which were filmed on this island, which were very popular for Chinese tourists, so Chinese visitors. So I think that's why, you know, you see a lot of Chinese tourists on the island right now. Yes, like that Game of Throne effects, affected that it had in Croatia. You've also been there before

and you've got a family connection to this island, right? That's correct. So my parents actually went for their honeymoon on the island. It's within South Korea, within domestic visitors, it's sort of known, as I mentioned, Hawaii of South Korea is known to be the Love Island. You know, you have pristine beaches and beautiful waterfalls and mountains. So, yeah, it's basically a paradise for a lot of South Koreans. Our East Asia regional editor, Jason Gle there. Now, do you ever meet someone and after a few hours know that you'll be friends? Or not?

Well, a new study from the University of California says the process can be sped up. up by watching part of a film together. They looked at brain scans of strangers watching movie clips, and the results were conclusive. Caroline Parkinson is from the University of California and explained all to Oliver Conway. We invited a group of brand new graduate students to take part in a study right after they moved to a new town for school. And so within the first few days of arriving before they had the chance to get to know anybody, each person watched the same short video clips while we measured their brain responses. And then over the course, of the school year, we tracked how friendships naturally developed. So who became close,

who drifted farther apart. And in particular, we looked back to see whether people who ended up as friends had shown more similar brain responses right from the start, even before they met one another. And when you're talking about brain responses, what exactly do you mean? We look at activity within many different regions of your brain. And within each of those regions. We can look at how the responses ebb and flow or fluctuate over time. So we can see how you're reacting to a video that you're viewing, for example. So at what moment in a clip from a comedy, for example, are you getting the joke? What that tells us, in part, is that our brains don't just react in isolation. They reflect our shared ways of seeing. And really the most remarkable

thing that we saw was that even before people had met, similarities in their brain responses could predict who would become friends several months later. And so this suggests that our brains could play a hidden role in social chemistry, so to speak. So they're capturing shared perspectives and values and ways that we might not be consciously aware of. And those similarities could lay the groundwork for new friendships. And how might you be able to use this in future in terms of practical applications? We're not at the point yet where we'd be doing things like scanning people to pick their teammates or do some matchmaking.

But what we found is really that shared ways of seeing and interpreting the world really seem to matter. So, for example, in workplaces, that means that team building, for example, isn't just about putting skilled people together. It's about creating chances for people to align their perspectives. So more broadly, it suggests that community. might bring people closer and bridge divides by creating environments where people can experience things together, swap perspectives and really build common ground. And so the brain data help us

to see why that matters. And they point us towards the kinds of activities that would be most likely to spark real connection. The neuroscience professor Carolyn Parkinson. Many will already know that origami, the Japanese art of paper folding, is a practice that stretches back centuries, so you'd be forgiven for thinking that every possible crease had been tried out. But researchers in the United States have set out to prove otherwise and their findings could be well out of this world. Michael Daventry explains. It's been well over a thousand years since paper was introduced to Japan from China

and a culture of folding it to use as decorations or for religious ceremonies began to develop. Surely after all that time, there are now simply no new folds left to discover. Well, Jean-Ewan Wang, a student, at Brigham Young University in Idaho, says he's found a new class of origami. He's working with a team on what they're calling bloom patterns, and the clue is in the name. The folds look like flowers, but are set in a rotational pattern that makes them symmetrical around the centre. That makes the structure strong when it's opened up and flat when it collapses. Robert Lang is a physicist and origami artist.

Everything, no matter how big it gets at the end, collapses into... stacked layers above a flat disk. And that's really powerful. That's especially useful for things like space structures where the packing is extremely important. And space might well be the next frontier. The team have made bloom patterns not just out of paper, but plastics and aluminium. They've 3D printed them as well. And Larry Howell, a professor with the team, is working with NASA on an origami design to be used for a future space telescope. Michael Daventry reporting there. now have breaking news from the forefront of chocolate production. Yes, the team from Nottingham University in England says it's worked out which factors influence the

flavour of chocolate during the cocoa bean fermentation process, a discovery that could offer producers a powerful tool to craft consistently high-quality flavour-rich chocolate. Spencer Hyman is a cell-style chocolate expert, lovely, and co-founder of Cocoa Runners, a members club which sources what it calls craft chocolate from around the world, and told Tim Franks what he makes of this new research. And for our international listeners, the word scoffing in this context means devouring and happily. It's fantastic to have more work done on fermentation because often chocolate's just treated as another commodity product whereby what you're really just trying to do is just get people to consume that snack as fast as you can. And anything which gets

people to sit back and savour the flavour is great. I suppose looking at things in a slightly sourer fashion, it could potentially lead people to think, well, if we've got the ingredients for how we can make chocolate more universally appealing, you know, by adding a few microbes here or balancing the pH there, that we can do it in a way that is extremely controlled because we have now the scientific understanding behind what makes, in quotes, perfect chocolate, that it could take some of that craft out of it? I think that's a little bit of a stretch of a suggestion because the things which really give rise to flavour. What you're looking for is length and complexity in flavour. And what happens

there is everything from different beans have got radically different flavours. If you've got different soils, if you have different pesticides, if you have different fertilisers, and then, of course, the fermentation. And we've known for quite a long time, for example, if you ferment in boxes, as opposed to on heaps on the ground, you're going to get a completely different flavour. Then when you think about the different box types that you've got in Brazil, for example, they use round boxes because then the temperature control is a bit easier than in a square box. I'm going to haul you back to the news of this research that's come out. Is there a danger that as we get a greater understanding into how these processes work,

that some big manufacturers will think, aha, we've got a way of producing the magic bar? No, I don't think that's going to happen. And I think the reason why it's not going to happen is that what big chocolate focuses on is getting you to scoff. And that's done through taste, sugar salt and fat. They are brilliant on sugar, salt and fat and texture. Flavour, candidly, is very, very under-researched.

And the complexity of flavour, whether it be in tea, whether it be in wine or whether it be in coffee, we're just starting to do. I think what's great is to get people to think about flavour. Because if you want to eat more healthily, eat more mindfully, eat more socially, you need to focus on flavour. Spencer Hyman of Cocoa Runners is one of the best jobs in the world. 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, all the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.

The address is Global Podcast at BBC.co.uk. And you can also find us on X at BBC World Service, and you can use a hashtag Global NewsPod. The edition was mixed by Andrew Mills, and the producers were Stephanie Prentice and Peter Hyatt. The editor is Karen Martin, and I'm uncriticine. Until next time, goodbye.