Global News Podcast - Starmer warns US backstop needed for Ukraine peace deal

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

UK PM says US security guarantee only way to deter Russia from attacking Ukraine again. Also: Using AI to detect prostate cancer and tributes paid to Paquita la del Barrio whose songs empowered women around the world.

You're listening to the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. This edition is published in the early hours of Tuesday, the 18th of February. European leaders have insisted Ukraine should have a say in any peace deal, even as the US prepares to negotiate directly with Russia. They also stressed the need to take responsibility for their own defence. The US Secretary of State has told the Saudi Crown Prince that a deal for Gaza must contribute to regional security and could artificial

intelligence revolutionise the detection of prostate cancer. Also in the podcast. Loss of smell reaches into all parts of your life, whether that's your relationships, your willingness to interact socially. It's tightly connected to our emotions and our memory. A new treatment that could help those who lost their sense of smell to Covid. And the maestro, the mafia and a chorus of disapproval. European leaders have met in Paris to work out how to respond to America's new big power approach to Europe and the war in Ukraine.

With the US seemingly keen to scrap its post-war security guarantees for the continent, one of the big issues of discussion was how to beef up European defence. The leaders also stressed the need for Ukraine to have a say in any peace deal, even as American and Russian officials prepared to hold face-to-face talks without any Ukrainians. The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Ukraine shouldn't have to accept the result of such talks. It's completely premature and completely the wrong time to have this discussion. I'm actually a little irritated by these debates. Discussions are taking place over the heads of Ukraine about various possible results of peace talks that have not taken place and which Ukraine did not

agree to and has not been at the table. That is highly inappropriate. We do not know what the result will be." Mr. Scholz also said plans to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine were premature but the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he would be willing to do so under certain conditions. I'm prepared to consider committing British forces on the ground alongside others if there is a lasting peace agreement but there must be a US backstop because a US security guarantee is the only way to effectively deter Russia from attacking Ukraine again. The Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban who is close to both Donald Trump and

Vladimir Putin didn't attend the summit and described it as an effort to prevent peace. For more on what was said at the meeting, we heard from our Paris correspondent Andrew Harding. They have been having a fairly informal discussion about the implications of the Trump administration's blizzard of diplomacy and of rhetoric, which has made a lot of European leaders very nervous, both about the short-term issue of a potential ceasefire deal even a peace deal cooked up between Russia and America without proper input from Europe and from Ukraine. There is real concern about that and the way that the diplomacy is being handled there even though Russian and American officials

are playing that down and saying that Europe is being overly concerned, that it will be properly consulted. There's also, I think, a longer-term, bigger picture concern from Europe, which is that this American administration appears to be turning its back away from the long-term security guarantees that it's always had for Europe and that Europe as a result needs to step up and really aggressively and urgently increase its defense spending and coordinated integrate its arms manufacturing processes so that it can ultimately defend itself against Russian aggression if it comes to a point that it can no longer

trust the Americans to help out. Yeah, I mean to do that it will need to act in a unified manner and yet we are already seeing disagreements over the prospect of sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine in the event of any settlement there. Yes, I mean what we're hearing so far is the British saying we would potentially be willing to put boots on the ground. The Swedish have said they would too. Others are being mostly cautious. They're refusing to commit. We've heard indications from Germany and other countries that it's too early to say we're going to put boots on the ground. That

may be for domestic political reasons in some cases. It may be out of a genuine sense of caution. It may also be a way of putting pressure on the Trump administration to go, hang on, if you're going to try and cut a deal that involves Europe and European peacekeepers, you need to consult us. You need to slow this process down and you need to avoid above all being steamrolled by President Putin who could well manipulate the Americans if it is the case that Donald Trump is in a hurry to get a quick deal." Andrade in Paris. Well as we were hearing the British Prime Minister said

any peacekeeping force would need a US security guarantee. Shashank Joshi, defence editor of The Economist, explains why the Americans are so important. I think you need two things from Washington. If this is a tripwire force, that is, say, if the Russians attack it, then it triggers a broader intervention, you need the political backing of America, that it has your back. That's fundamental. But more specifically, you need a number of other capabilities. Air cover is one of them. You don't want to have to be doing this under threat from Russian air attack, Russian glide bombs, if they're within range of those,

Russian long-range missiles. So you would need air cover. You would need air defences, ground-based air defences, which we have in small numbers in Europe, but not in adequate numbers across Europe, but not in adequate numbers across Europe for the scale of this front. And you would need a host of other enablers. I'm talking here about things like intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance planes, logistics, electronic warfare, all kinds of things. It's a long list, but you

need America to do those. Otherwise, your forces are exposed to Russian military capabilities. So the only way that this can work is with some sort of integrated force that involves the Americans even if they haven't actually got boots on the ground? Correct and that depends on the purpose though. If your purpose is simply to put a symbolic force, an assurance force in the rear of Ukraine, somewhere in Western Ukraine, perhaps doing training, perhaps helping with other tasks, freeing up Ukrainian troops to go to the front. You can do that in a more limited way. But that kind of force isn't going to deter the Russians from attacking again. If

you have a tripwire force like we do presently in Eastern Europe, the so called enhanced forward presence battle groups, there's about eight of them, I think strung out from Estonia to Romania, then absolutely absolutely it needs American support. No Europeans are going to take the risk of a force like that without American backing. That's just a fact. The Economist, Defence Editor, Shashank Joshi, talking to Sarah Montagu. Well, ahead of meeting his Russian counterpart in Riyadh later today, America's top diplomat, Marco Rubio held

talks on Monday with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. According to the US State Department, Mr. Rubio stressed the importance of an arrangement for Gaza that contributes to regional security. He's been trying to win support for President Trump's plan to take over the territory, forcing Palestinians to resettle in neighboring countries like Egypt and Jordan. Arab nations have rejected the idea and are putting forward an alternative plan. So what might it look like? Faisal Abbas is editor-in-chief at the Middle East English Language Daily Arab News. It has to be Arab blood and in a way the Arab League, Saudi Arabia, countries that are surrounding Gaza are taking

charge. So I think you will hear from the Arab League. There are consultations that are about to happen in Saudi Arabia involving a number of concerned countries such as Jordan and Egypt, as well as a number of other Gulf states. And there will be a counter proposal now, whether or not the other side, i.e. the Israelis, accept to it is a different story. What Saudi Arabia brings, perhaps compared to other countries who have signed Abraham Accords or have signed normalization deals with Israel, is Saudi Arabia is in a league

of its own, given the religious, given the political and the economic clout and leadership, the position that it has in the Arab and Muslim world. So what it brings is not at all, but more of leverage because with Saudi Arabia comes a stamp of approval from the custodian of the two holy mosques and that will be a sign for the rest of the Muslim and Arab world. Specifically, what are the red lines that you believe need to be respected for the Kingdom to resume any normalization talks with Israel? The Kingdom has made it very clear over and over again that without a recognition of the Palestinian state, the conversation simply cannot be happening. This is why the Kingdom

of Saudi Arabia has not joined the Abraham Accords. This is why we've been trying for the past two years in efforts spearheaded by the foreign minister to form a global coalition for the two-state solution because we believe that is the only way to guarantee Israel's security needs and also give Palestinians what they rightly deserve, which is a state of their own. Faisal Abbas from Arab News talking to Krupa Padi. Meanwhile, it's been announced that the bodies of four or five hostages held in Gaza will be released by Hamas on Thursday. Israel will be informed of their names beforehand. Another three living hostages are due to be freed on Saturday.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer among men with global cases expected to reach 3 million by 2040. The standard method of testing has long been considered unreliable, missing some cancers and giving false positives in others. Now scientists in the UK have developed what they say is the most accurate tool yet for detecting prostate cancer using artificial intelligence. Chantelle Hartle reports. The current standard PSA test for prostate cancer measures only the amount of a particular protein, prostate-specific antigen, in a man's blood. but it has a low accuracy rate of around 45%. Some men who

have a positive PSA result are required to have invasive scans, only to later discover that they don't have cancer. By contrast, scientists in Cambridge claim this latest test, which requires a blood and urine sample, has between 96 and 99 percent accuracy. It measures not only prostate-specific antigen but analyzes 100 other data points for specific genes and proteins that have been shown to increase the risk of prostate cancer. Professor Chris Evans, the Chief Scientific Officer of EDX Medical, which has developed the test, said it was truly game-changing. Our algorithm will throw out all this result and tell you cancer is present in this sample or cancer is not present and it is a slow-growing prostate cancer or it is an aggressive prostate cancer and it is a hereditary germline genetic cancer. This is very valuable information."

The findings by the team in Cambridge have not yet been peer-reviewed. Scientists will now focus on collecting more data before seeking approval from medical regulators. But confidence is high. The team expect to launch this test in the UK later this year, or early in 2026. If approved they say it would revolutionise prostate cancer screening for men aged 45 to 70, adding that it would first be available to private patients. Chantelle Hartle reporting. Smell loss was a defining symptom of Covid and for some people a curse.

Most regained it as their infection faded but some never recovered. Now there is hope for sufferers of the condition known as anosmia here in the UK with trials for a new treatment. Chrissie Kelly is the first patient to receive the treatment. She spoke to Nick Robinson. It is much more than just not being able to taste your food. Loss of smell reaches into all parts of your life, whether that's your relationships, your willingness to interact socially. If you imagine you're a young mother and you pick up your baby and you can't smell that wonderful baby smell, these are things that really affect us. Smell is located in the limbic system and it's tightly connected to

our emotions and our memory. Let's not describe in detail the treatment. Lots of people hate injections but it involves injections, taking stuff from your own blood. Exactly. So some blood is drawn, it's a centrifuge to separate the constituent parts of the blood and then they take a bit of blood that's full of goodness and all the things that can help cells to grow and it's injected deep inside the head right at the top of the upper airway where the olfactory epithelium as it's called is located. And you are hopeful this is going to make a real transformation to your ability to smell? Yes, let's see. I work with thousands of patients all over the

world. We talk about our problems and we've all been waiting for this very thing. I'm hugely honored to be the first person in the country to receive it, not just to see whether or not I improve, but also so that I can talk to people who ask me about it, you know, what it's like. You, I know, lost your sense of smell, not because of COVID, but for another reason. How many people are we talking about?

Oh, it's a lot of people. So I think something like 24 million cases of COVID in the UK, and of that, half of those people, so 12 million, lost their sense of smell as a result of the virus. And of those 12 million, some smaller percentage, maybe five, maybe 3%, have persistent loss this many years later. And Osmia, Sufra, Chrissie Kelly. And still to come on the Global News podcast. You're getting rid of your natural soundscape so your brain is not having to discriminate

speech or whatever you're listening to in background noise. And that's quite a high level processing skill. Are noise cancelling headphones ruining our hearing. Next to Mexico and the singer they call the Queen of the People. Paquita La Del Barrio, who became a feminist icon in Latin America, has died at the age of 77. She sold more than 20 million records during her career and in 2017 her life was dramatised in a TV series. Andrea Ortega Lee played Paquita in the show. It's a very sad loss for Mexico and the world and the world of music in general. She had She was born into poverty in an isolated community far from Mexico City, and yet she was able

to break through into Mexico's entertainment business, which was not at the time very generous to either women and even less women who were not conventionally attractive. And her music was very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, which was not at the time very generous to either women and even less women who were not conventionally attractive. And her music was very new and very different at the time, even though she sang rancheras. The topics and the way that she spoke and managed herself on stage was very new for the times. She was a victim of various forms of abuse. She was married very, very young to a man who turned out to be already married, who was a bigamist.

She had children, she lost children, and then she remarried and she suffered from infidelity and all sorts of other machista abuses from not only her husbands, but other men in her life and that informed the way that she sang about men and relationships always in a very humorous and satirical way where she created a safe space for every woman who listens to her songs that can identify with not only heartbreak, but with being a victim. And every time a Paquita song plays in a public place, what happens is a sense of community and catharsis amongst women,

where we are telling each other, I know what you've been through sister, and let's laugh at the men who have tortured us. ["Rata de Dos Potos"] It's a genre of sorts. We call it the musica de ardidas, where all heartbroken women can sing from the bottom of their hearts, this very intense feelings of pain, but also desires for retribution and mockery. Mexican actress Andrea Otegueli on the legacy of singer Paquita La del Barrio, who has died at the age of 77. Police in the US state of Florida have detained a Jewish American man on suspicion of attempting

to kill two people he believed were Palestinians. Police said the incident happened over the weekend on Miami Beach. The details from Lipick-Appellum. That 27 year old suspect Mordecai Brafman told the police that while driving his truck on a scenic avenue in the wealthy resort city he saw two Palestinians in a car and shot and killed both. Police said Brafman fired 17 times using a semi-automatic handgun but had in fact only injured the two passengers. A local social media site then posted a video showing one of the men with a bullet wound in his left shoulder through a bloodied T-shirt.

In a bizarre turn of events, it said the victims were an Israeli Jewish father and son who originally thought it was an anti-Semitic attack. Lippika Palam. If you struggle to cope with loud environments, you might be a fan of noise-cancelling headphones. But can prolonged use of these devices actually make it harder to hear? That's one possible explanation for the experience of a 25-year-old woman called Sophie, who was struggling to understand her classes at university. The lecturer would be speaking into a mic which would be put in speakers all around the hall. It just sounded like jumble. I couldn't really work out a lot of the sentences. It can be quite over-simulating when I'm in really, really really busy loud environments where there's lots of noises going on I just don't really often know what people are saying

around me I have to really really hyper focus in those environments. So what could be causing these types of problems? Claire Benton is president of the British Academy of Audiology. What tends to happen with the noise cancellation is you're getting rid of your natural soundscape. So your brain is not having to discriminate speech or whatever you're listening to in background noise. And that's quite a high level processing skill that you need to kind of exercise to still be able to use. So you're almost creating this false environment to listen in. So when you go out somewhere noisy, you're going to your restaurant

and there's someone set opposite you talking to you, you're really struggling to listen to them and pick their noise out from the general conversational babble or noise of cutlery, people moving around. So we're getting more younger people thinking they've got a hearing loss, going to see an audiologist to have a hearing test and your standard hearing test doesn't show processing ability. So they're coming out with normal hearing, but still struggle in the real world. It's a bit like you stop going to the gym, your muscles start to go. It's the same with your brain processing skills. There are things you can do. I mean, there's apps out there that exercise your processing skills that seem to be getting really good

results, just naturally out and about in background noise. We also think it's partly because a lot more people are working from home, so you're doing things by teams, you're doing things by yourself and not really experiencing what we used to say was a normal listening environment. Audiologist Claire Benton. It's one of the world's most secretive and consequential meetings, the conclave to elect the new leader of the world's billion plus Roman Catholics. As we heard in our last edition, a movie based on a fictional gathering of cardinals to choose a new pope, Conclave, won four British Film Awards on Sunday night including the BAFTA for best film.

It is based on a novel by Robert Harris and he's been telling us about its inspiration. I was writing another book at the time when the present Pope was elected and you know you appear on the balcony to reveal who the new Pope is to the world and the windows just before the appearance on the balcony fill with the faces of the cardinal electors and I saw all these crafty sly elderly benign faces and I thought, my God, look, that's the Roman Senate. That's what it would have looked like.

And then I thought there must be some politics behind this. So I started researching it and sure enough there was. Politics is my great interest. And there was a wonderful book published in the 50s called The Masters by C.P. Snow. At the time a very famous author, now mostly forgotten. It was all about the election of a master in a Cambridge college in the 1930s. And I thought that whole power dynamic of colleagues who know one another in a sort of enclosed institution, how it would work, how it would play out, was this a way of universalizing

politics in a way? That's what drew me to it. And then there's the marvelous ritual of the church and the fact that this is an election for God's representative on earth. And the great thing for any dramatist or novelist is if all the dialogue, nobody's ever saying quite what they mean. It's all sort of slightly aimed off. So everyone has to say they have no personal ambition. Obviously, they hope the chalice passes to someone else. There's something about the ancient rituals of the Catholic Church shrouded in this mystery. And, you know, the Sistine Chapel was built for the election of a pope. That's what it's there for. And it's the way that they're locked in. So you've also got a slight Agatha

Christie locked room dynamic. I mean, I wrote it without any thought of it becoming a film, but it was quickly bought, the film rights, it's taken eight years. It's a pretty long shot that anyone would ever have made, Conclave, if you think about it. There's 118 elderly men. There's a vote and then it resets. There's a vote and then it resets.

And everyone thinks, oh, that's boring, isn't it? But it's not. There's a dramatic device. They all come back and do it again. And now a front runner is being squeezed out because the moment you've got a front runner, everyone of course wants to pull them down. Novelist Robert Harris. Finally, one of the world's leading conductors has apologised

for comments he made during an interview in which he likened Italian choristers to warring mafia families. Edward Gardner, principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, was threatened with a defamation lawsuit by singers at the San Carlo Opera Theatre in Naples. Stuart Hughes has the story. When Ed Gardner, conducting here during a recent US tour, gave an interview to The Times newspaper last month, he quipped that the chorus of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples was made up of two rival mafia families,

who after one performance had a fight and put each other in hospital. The comments might have been meant lightheartedly, but they caused grave offence in Italy. Chorus members brought in lawyers. They said the San Carlo Opera House, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was a pillar of Italian and European culture. They called Ed Gardner's accusation unacceptable and unfounded.

This afternoon a message reached Naples. I sincerely apologize. Mr Gardner said he was more than happy to retract the allegation that the choir were members of the Mafia. He regretted anything suggesting otherwise because he'd experienced first-hand the professionalism and excellence of the choir. It seems a truce has been declared between the British conductor and the Neapolitan singers. Stuart Hughes reporting.

Stuart Hughes reporting. And that is all from us for now, but the Global News podcast will be back very soon. This edition was mixed by Derek Clark and produced by Nicky Verrico. Our editor's Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.