Global News Podcast - Pakistan warns of imminent military strikes from India

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

India holds security talks and Pakistan warns of imminent military strikes from India, following the deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir. Also: Vietnam's reunification day, and a new eye test.

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson and at 1400 Hours GMT on Wednesday 30 April these are our main stories. India holds security talks and Pakistan warns of imminent military strikes from India following the deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir. A BBC investigation has found increased Turkish military presence in northern Iraq. Also in this podcast... Vietnam for the people!

Vietnam marks the capture of Saigon by North Vietnamese troops 50 years ago. In Australia, the trial of a woman accused of poisoning three relatives with mushrooms is underway. And we hear about a medical breakthrough that saved a young doctor's sight. We start with the dispute between India and Pakistan following a deadly attack in Indian administered Kashmir, which left 26 people dead last week. The Indian Prime Minister Mahendra Modi has been holding high-level talks with his cabinet in response to the attack, which it blames on Pakistan, a claim repeatedly denied by Islamabad.

Pakistan's Information Minister says his country has credible intelligence that India is planning to attack. Pakistan open-heartedly offered a credible, transparent, and independent investigation by a neutral commission of experts to ascertain the truth. Unfortunately, rather than pursuing the path of reason, India has apparently decided to tread the dangerous path of irrationality and confrontation which will have catastrophic consequences for the complete region and beyond. World leaders have expressed deep concern and urged restraint by the uneasy neighbours

who have fought several wars and who both have nuclear weapons. Our South Asia regional editor Anbarasan Etarajan told me about the rising tensions. Now, the Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is under pressure to act after this incident in Kashmir in which 26 people were killed. The Indian government describes it as a terrorist attack. And following this incident, there have been widespread anger and dismay in India. So all these ultra-nationalist television channels having a debate about India should react very quickly, decisively, because the Indian government is accusing Pakistan of supporting the militants who have been waging a war against Indian security forces in an

administered Kashmir, a charge denied by Islamabad. Now the government has been meeting security chiefs as well as the Cabinet Committee to evolve the consensus on what kind of action they can take. And last evening Mr. Modi said the armed forces are free to take their own decisions and they can choose the targets, basically giving them a green light to decide on what action can be taken. And that is what prompted the Pakistani minister whom we heard earlier about they have credible intelligence about an imminent attack.

We don't know when this attack will happen, but it is increasingly likely that the government of India will be forced to take some action at some point, but we don't know when and in what form. But I think Pakistan is saying it might be within 24 hours, is that correct? See the Pakistanis have been closely monitoring what is happening across the border. See in a country like India where if you want to move forces or mobilize forces you can't you know do it in secret. It has to be in the open because you're moving very large amount of forces and there is a real concern in Pakistan itself because any

kind of escalation will lead to consequences and any tit-for-tat attacks also can lead to major escalation and nobody knows how it will end up. So it is always easy to start a war or a conflict but we don't know how it will end. Look at the Russia-Ukraine war. It's been going on for more than three years. So Pakistan's economy is not in a great shape, and also they have active insurgencies in Balochistan and northwestern province. So this war has actually benefited Pakistan or this tension has benefited Pakistan in

a way that it has united everyone to come behind the army. But they are also worried because war is not an option for both the countries given the economic and then the human costs. And you've covered this region for many years, I'm embarrassed. I mean, how dangerous do you think this situation is at this point? Can they both pull back? See, the politicians have whipped up a lot of emotions. The television and the media, social media, they've also whipped up a lot of emotions.

So it is difficult to contain this growing public anger. And that is where you need very seasoned politicians, very mature politicians to calm things down. But because of this expectation, the government thinks it has to act. But what we saw in 2019 when there was an attack on Indian security forces, 40 soldiers were killed. India conducted a limited airstrikes. That prompted a response by Pakistan and then one of the Indian jets was shot down

and a pilot was captured. Luckily it stopped there. It did not escalate further. So that is always a danger for these two countries that if they start it they don't know how to end it. And Barisan Efrajan. North Korea has test-fired strategic and cruise missiles from its new warship. Analysts believe it was built with assistance from Russia. With more, here's Celia Hatton. North Korean state media said the country's leader Kim Jong-un had watched as the new 5,000-ton destroyer tested its arsenal, including supersonic and strategic cruise missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, and automatic and electronic jamming guns.

He then called for his navy to accelerate its ability to launch nuclear attacks. North Korea's military capabilities are booming. After signing a mutual defense pact last year, Russia is believed to have supplied the once isolated military with technological assistance while Pyongyang has sent troops to fight in Russia's war on Ukraine. Celia Hatton. 50 years ago, North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon bringing down the US supported regime in the south and ending more than two decades of war.

In Saigon, now officially renamed Ho Chi Minh City, they've been celebrating Reunification Day with parades and fireworks. Our Asia correspondent, Rupert Wingfield Hayes, is in Saigon to witness an incredibly dynamic country which still tightly restricts foreign media reporting. In the center of Ho Chi Minh City soldiers of the People's Army of Vietnam are marching to commemorate the day their grandfathers defeated the greatest military power on earth. They are marching along the very same street North Vietnamese tanks rolled down as they

made their final assault on the city. In front of me is the old presidential palace building of the South Vietnamese regime. When North Vietnamese tanks came rolling down this road and smashed through the gates in front of me here on April 30th 1975. It brought a dramatic end to the South Vietnamese regime, to the country of South Vietnam and to more than 20 years of incredibly bitter and brutal conflict between the North and the South that had taken anywhere between two and three million lives. Most locals still call this city Saigon. In a narrow back street, I've come to meet 75-year-old veteran Le Thanh Gien.

He points to the places on his body where he was hit by shrapnel and bullets. One in his hand, another in his lower back, another in his leg. Lê survived four years on the front lines, including the final assault on Saigon. Many of our comrades were lost, he tells me. There were battles where it seemed like we would all be killed. But somehow, some of us survived. And in the end, we achieved victory. But we won. We are now in the middle of an air raid on the palace.

Here comes the plane again now. They achieved victory, but their country lay in ruins. In just four years, the US had dropped a greater tonnage of bombs on Vietnam than it did on Japan and Germany in World War II. Some of those bombs are still exploding, still taking lives and limbs. Back in Ho Chi Minh City, the festivities are now in full swing. My grandparents, they are fighting in the war and we have many years to get this future today.

Now we can look at the sky and see the plane and not scared at all. And I heard more on how Vietnam has fared since reunification from Rupert. Initially, I think in the initial decade after the unification in 1975, it did really rather badly as the northern regime in Hanoi, the communist party regime in Hanoi, tried to implement central planning policies here in the south. But then they began to reform, and that has accelerated in recent years and accelerated even faster since the beginning of this year. And they are a very ambitious country with an ambitious government.

Growth rates have been around 5 or 6% per year for the last 10 years. So it is developing incredibly fast and as I say they are very ambitious to become a high-tech centre to really transform Vietnam into the next Asian tiger. And what is the relationship like now with the United States? Yes, surprisingly when you talk to people here, they say there is no Continuing animosity. What happened was in the past They want to have a good relationship with the United States. President Obama in his second term Visited Vietnam, the first president, sitting president to do so. Relations have got much better and they are very dependent on US

Trade with the United States, exports to the United States. The big worry right now is this tariff war that has been declared by President Trump because they've been slapped with 46% tariffs. They have been suspended but those would really put in jeopardy the economic reforms and the economic plans that the government has here for the future of Vietnam. Rupert Wingfield Hayes. In Australia, the long-awaited trial of Erin Patterson is underway. She's accused of killing three relatives and seriously injuring another

by serving a lunch with poisonous mushrooms at her home in Leongatha in the state of Victoria, something she denies. The case has drawn attention from the world's media, so much so that jurors are being kept isolated for fear of being influenced. The trial is taking place in the small town of Morwell in Victoria's La Trobe Valley. Locals have mixed feelings about the attention it's brought to the area. I think everybody's got an interest in it because it's a bit unusual and everyone seems to have an opinion on it. So there's a lot of discussion, there's a good talking point in that sense.

There's not really much to do here usually, so I think people just sort of see it as a rural ghost town really. Anything that happens in the Crow Valley is generally seen by the media in Australia as being negative. There's a lot of positive things about this region and we get negative press all the time. Our correspondent Katie Watson reports from outside the court. This is a case that's gripped Australia and gained global attention. Prosecutor Nanette Rogers began by setting out details of the fatal lunch in July 2023.

In the dock watching on, mother of two Erin Patterson. Jurors were told that Miss Patterson had invited relatives for lunch at her home with the intention of telling them she'd been diagnosed with cancer. Attending were her in-laws Don and Gail Patterson, along with Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson and her husband Ian. It was here the court heard that all of the guests sat down to eat individual beef Wellingtons served with mashed potato and green beans. But within hours, all four fell ill.

The next day, in hospital, they were diagnosed with death cap mushroom poisoning. Don, Gail and Heather all died within a few days. Ian Wilkinson eventually recovered after spending a substantial time in hospital. The court heard that Heather Wilkinson spoke to her nephew Simon Patterson as she waited for an ambulance. I noticed Erin put her food on a different plate to us. Her plate had colours on it. I wondered why that was, Ms Wilkinson said, according to the prosecutor.

Does Erin have a shortage of crockery? I've been wondering about it since yesterday. Much of the first full day of this trial was spent listening to the prosecution's case. They accused Erin Patterson of deliberately poisoning the four guests with murderous intent. That she invited the guests over on the pretense that she'd been diagnosed with cancer, which was a lie. The defence opening statement was much shorter, but her lawyer said that what happened at that meal was a tragedy, a terrible accident, but that Erin Patterson was innocent of the charges. Colin Mundy accepted his client lied to the police about having never foraged for mushrooms, but maintained she never sought out death cap mushrooms.

He also accepted she'd lied about coming here to her local tip and dumping a food dehydrator that had been used to prepare the fatal meal. The jurors were shown a CCTV picture of her carrying a black box later found to contain the device. Might someone panic in a situation like that, he asked the court. Is it possible people might do things that are not well thought out and might make them look bad? Is it possible a person might lie when they find out people are seriously ill from food they served up? On Thursday, first witnesses will give evidence. The trial is expected to last six weeks.

Katie Watson. Still to come, we hear why one Italian Cardinal has withdrawn from the conclave process to elect a new Pope. On Tuesday President Trump celebrated the first 100 days of his administration. Speaking in Michigan he insisted that he was experiencing the most successful first 100 days of any administration in the history of the United States. BBC Verify has been checking his claims regarding his achievements from inflation to immigration. BBC's Lucy Hawkins spoke to Luke Horton. Bringing the price of everyday goods down for Americans was a

key issue in the campaign and it's been a key issue for his administration in the first hundred days and specifically on the price of gasoline, so petrol, President Trump said this last night in his rally. So gasoline prices are down by a lot. We just hit 198 in a lot of states. Think of it. So both of those things are not accurate. So gas prices in the US on average are actually up slightly since Trump came into office.

So on the 20th of January, Trump's first day in office, the average price across the nation for regular gasoline stood at about $3.13. And this week it's about $3.16. So it's ticked up just slightly, but it's certainly not way down as Trump claimed in his rally last night. And he also made the quite specific claim that in a lot of states it hit $1.98. And there's no evidence for this either. So the American Automobile Association, which tracks gas prices, says the lowest it is in any state is actually in Mississippi, and that's the lowest across the US and there it sits at $2.67 currently. So quite a way off that $1.98 that Trump called out in his rally last night. One of his big promises has been on tackling immigration. What do you say about that?

So yeah, another key issue for his administration and in his rally last night, he boasted about their record in their first three months in office. And this is what he said on immigration. We've set all time records for the lowest number of illegal border crossings ever recorded. Think of that, ever recorded. So that is actually backed up by Border Patrol statistics at the US southern border. In the first two months, the first two months of data that we have from the Trump administration, so February and March, they have reached record lows.

So in March, they stood at just over 7,000 encounters of migrants illegally crossing the US border with Mexico. Now that is the lowest on record as far back as 2000 when monthly records began. And to give you some context, in the Biden administration in March last year, immigration over the southern border for comparison stood at 140,000 for the month of March. So it's a significant drop off from the two administrations. However, think tank, migration think tank, think tank policies experts who track these sorts of things say that it's not the lowest ever recorded.

They say that in the 1960s, if you look at the monthly average, it was lower then, but it's certainly a significant drop off for current records. It's been controversial, the Department of Government Efficiency along with President Trump's relationship with Elon Musk, did he tackle that last night? Yeah, so this is all about the Elon Musk initiative to dramatically cut US government spending and when he talked about that he praised Elon Musk and said this in his rally last night.

They've saved 150 billion dollars on waste, fraud and abuse. Doge. So Doge and Elon Musk in the campaign said they aim to cut about $2 trillion of US federal government spending. They since halved this target to about $1 trillion and its website at the moment says they've so far cut an estimated $160 billion. So around about the ballpark figure that President Trump gave last night. But BBC Verify, we've looked into this and we found that a lot of these figures are not actually backed up by any solid proof. You can see that overall $160 billion claimed estimated saving, but only about $61 billion of this is backed up by individual items. And even less of this, about half of that is backed up by individual items. And even less of this, about half of that, is backed up by proof in the form of a receipt

or a government contract attached to those individual items. So it's very hard to independently verify exactly how much Doge has saved when they provide very little evidence for most of their claim savings. Luke Horton. Israel has struck what it calls extremists in Syria amid an outbreak of sectarian violence in mainly Druze areas near Damascus. Israel said it was a message to the Syrian authorities to take action to prevent harm to the Druze.

Sebastian Usher reports from Jerusalem. In recent days armed clashes between forces linked to the new Syrian authorities and fighters from the Druze community have left at least 13 people dead in an area near Damascus, raising fresh concern over the security situation in Syria. Israel regards the Islamist group that toppled Bashar al- Assad as a potentially hostile force on its border as it emerged from al-Qaeda. Israel says its latest strike in Syria is a warning to show its commitment to defending the Druze who represent a minority group not just in Syria but in Israel too. Since the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, Israel's military activity

inside Syria has grown increasingly aggressive. Sebastien Asher. A BBC investigation has exposed the full scale of Turkey's growing military presence in Iraq, which has forced farmers off their land. Turkey says it's in Iraq to pursue the PKK, a Kurdish militant nationalist group which is based in the Iraqi Kurdistan mountains. BBCI investigations from the World Service has gained access to this area known as the Forbidden Zone and can reveal the huge number of recently established

Turkish military bases there. As Simona Fulton reports. We're venturing into the Forbidden Zone, a mountainous area in northern Iraq near the Turkish border. It's often targeted by Turkish airstrikes against the PKK, a Kurdish nationalist group hiding in caves beneath the mountains. The PKK is banned by the UK and other governments. Two years ago, Hashem Shakir, an Iraqi Kurdish civilian, was injured in a strike. His 24-year-old cousin, Alain, was killed. Here's Hashem speaking to the BBC from his home shortly after the attack. The flames on the cover like something out of hell. I stayed calling him for a while and looking around but I didn't see anything.

I said that's it, he's dead. Hashem says his family has nothing to do with the PKK. The family is now working with a human rights group called Community Peacemaker Teams to try and get justice for Alain. All those killed in warfare in the region have the right to be recognized as martyrs and to receive compensation. We spoke with the group's coordinator, Kameran Osman. Since 1991 until now 711 people have been killed and injured only in the Turkish military operations. There were not any PKK guerrillas, there were not any armed people inside the farm. It is the Iraqi government role to investigate, arrest these people and then having a fair court hearing.

The BBC has seen documents suggesting the Iraqi Kurdish authorities may have covered up the true cause of Alain's death. The original police report blames the Turkish drone, but as the case progressed, all references to Turkey vanished. Alain's death certificate cites explosive fragments as the cause. Kamaran also claims to have gathered 250 similar death certificates. In most of the death certificates, they only wrote in Fijar, which means explosion. Explosion can be a bottle of gas exploding, it can be a mine exploding, it can be anything exploding. So they don't want to write the right cause of the death.

Kurds in Iraq live in a largely autonomous region. The government there is dominated by the Kurdish Democratic Party or KDP, whose close ties with Turkey have contributed to Iraqi Kurdistan is expanding. By examining open-source satellite imagery, we found 136 Turkish military bases on Iraqi soil. 89% were built in the past seven years, and all but one were in KDP-governed areas. When we put this to Hoshiar Zebari, a senior member of the KDP, he told us that Turkey's main concern is the PKK, not detaining or harming the local population. Back in the Forbidden Zone, Hashem would disagree. Of course it was a Turkish plane. Kurdistan in northern Iraq gets a struck only by Turkey. He has to be registered as a martyr because he was unjustly killed. It's a terrible crime and there is no justice.

The BBC asked the Turkish Ministry of National Defense for more information about the incident. They denied having carried out a strike on that day and declined the BBC's repeated requests for an interview. Hashem is still fighting for compensation for his cousin's death, or at least for the KDP government to acknowledge that he was another casualty of Turkey's hidden war. And if you want to watch the full documentary from BBC Eye, Turkey's Hidden War, The Forbidden Zone, you can find it on BBC iPlayer or the BBC World Service. There are more than 250 Cardinals in the Catholic Church, but only 133 of them will determine

the future of the papacy. Anyone over the age of 80 is ineligible to elect a new Pope. Some have withdrawn due to health reasons and one won't be taking part due to scandal. Despite initially suggesting he would vote, the Italian Cardinal Angelo Becce has now formally withdrawn from the conclave process, saying he's doing so to obey the will of Pope Francis. Ella Bicknell told Alex Ritzen all about it. Cardinal Becce was once a very senior figure in the Vatican, Alex. He rose to prominence under Pope Benedict XVI and was also a close advisor to Pope Francis as the head of the Vatican's saint-making

office and was actually once tip-to-be a future pope. But in 2020, Pope Francis forced his resignation after allegations came through of embezzlement, extortion, corruption, money laundering and all sorts of financial crimes related to this huge scandal involving Vatican spies and property investments in the ultra-rich London Borough of Chelsea, as well as accusations of Betsu sending Vatican money to his brother in Sardinia. And in 2023 he was tried and sentenced to five and a half years for these financial crimes, a sentence that he's still appealing.

Despite being disgraced, it was believed he was going to participate in the Conclave. When all of this happened, this sentence for these financial crimes, Pope Francis let Betu keep his title and his Vatican lodgings, which created actually a lot of confusion of whether or not he could participate in the conclave. And it was revealed that Pope Francis wrote him two letters before his death saying that he should withdraw from the process, which he has now done. But he was attending pre-conclave meetings as late as Monday. So this is somewhat a last minute decision. But in a statement through his lawyer, he says he will be obeying the will of the Pope while in his words remaining convinced of his innocence and he's doing all of this for the good of the church. And you might think what difference does this

make but only 130 or so cardinals get to choose who the Pope is and being a conservative and Italian, it does mean one less vote for someone of that demographic vying for the papacy. Financial scandals though, Ella, nothing new in the Catholic Church. No, Alex, the most famous one is the Banco Ambrosiano affair of the early 1980s when banker Roberto Calvi scammed the Vatican of vast swathes of its reserves and he was later found dead, initially thought to be suicide and later in quest said it was probably murder. And there have been financial scandals

since and that is something that did weigh heavily on the recently deceased Pope Francis and he really wanted to lead by example as a more humble pastoral pope. In 2013 he declared that the church should be poor and for the poor and try to reform the Vatican's finances, bringing in external financial experts, all sorts of cost-cutting measures including reducing the salaries of cardinals. And although those efforts did help, problems of trust and high expenses within the Catholic Church still exist and will certainly be on the plate of whoever is voted to succeed Pope Francis. Ella Bicknell, and we're preparing a special Conclave edition of the Global News podcast

answering your questions around how the new Pope is chosen, the timetable and who may succeed Pope Francis as Pontiff. Just send us your question in a voicemail or an email to globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. And finally, a cutting edge test has saved the eyesight of a woman from the UK who was left contemplating having an eye removed after she developed a mysterious infection. Ellie Urban, a young doctor, suffered pain and blurred vision for five years after swimming in a river in the Amazon rainforest. Standard tests failed to identify what was causing it, but then she was offered a type of analysis called metagenomics. Professor Judy Brewer is Professor

of Virology in London and helped design the test that saved Ellie. It's a test that allows us to look for any bug without having a prior idea of what it might be in a patient with suspected infection. And it uses genetic sequencing of all the material in the sample and then it looks at the sequences and compares those to a database and that allows us to make the diagnosis. And normally when we get a sample we have to sort of culture it, grow the bacteria in the lab, we have to decide what specific tests we want to do by PCR, and it's when those are negative that our test becomes really important.

Professor Judy Brewer. Ellie Irwin spoke to Catherine Bjerrehanga about the struggle to find answers. By far the most challenging thing I've ever been through. I started off getting blood vision and redness in my right eye and despite multiple treatments, hourly steroid drops every single day, we just couldn't get on top of things. I just felt so frustrated and tired at the fact that nothing was working. We'd done so many tests to try and look for the cause of things, including infections, because it did always feel slightly odd that it was just affecting one eye and that it was so resistant to all the treatments

that normally work against autoimmune conditions. However, all of the tests had come back negative and no infection was ever found. So I was really at breaking point when Metagenomics kind of first entered the picture. There are so many people who are dealing with undiagnosed illnesses. Have people reached out to you since the story was published? And what's the reaction been to it? I think it is really important. It's obviously got to be used in the correct setting

and for the correct patient group. But I think for those patients where all other tests haven't found anything, it can be really transformative. And it certainly was in my case. It allowed us to find that I had leptospirosis in my eye and that was so important because I then was able to have the correct treatment, which is three weeks of some antibiotics, which just made all the difference. Dr Ellie Obert.

And that's it 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 in it, send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Louis Griffin. The producer was Marion Strawn. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time, bye-bye.