Global News Podcast - Tens of thousands of Lebanese return home after ceasefire

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

A 10-day pause in the fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah has led to tens of thousands of displaced Lebanese families returning home. Despite the ceasefire, Israel has said it reserves the right to continue targeting the Iran-backed militant group. It also says civilians could be forced to move again. Also: finance ministers and central bankers express concern about a powerful new AI model that could undermine financial systems. Large crowds gather in Douala, ​Cameroon's biggest city, for a mass with the Pope. Harry and Meghan are in Australia. Is the trip about making money or for charity? And Japan unveils a new word for extremely hot summer days.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 is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritzin, and at 16 hours GMT on Friday the 17th of April, these are our main stories. As a fragile ceasefire in southern Lebanon seems to be holding, the people who fled the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah start returning home. But is it safe? Meanwhile, Lise Doucette meets people in Tehran, whose neighbourhood has been shattered by the bombing there. and the threat posed to the global financial system by artificial intelligence. Also in this podcast, the Pope holds an open-air mass for hundreds of thousands of people

in the city of Douala in Cameroon and some scepticism of Harry and Megan in Australia. There was an article in one of the papers that accused them of using Australia as an ATM as a cash machine. A 10-day ceasefire is now in place between Israel and level. Lebanon following talks between the two in Washington. But the success or not of the truce will depend to a large extent on Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant group backed by Iran that's been attacking Israel. It's already said it has its finger on the trigger in case Israel violates the ceasefire. Just hours into the truce, tens of thousands of people started returning to their homes in southern Lebanon,

even though Israel says they could be evacuated again if the fighting resumes. matters is that we're returning to our village, our hometown, our land. We will not leave our land no matter what. I don't know if my house is destroyed or not. What happened to it? If it's destroyed, it changes nothing. I will pitch a tent in front of it and stay there. It's what everyone wishes for. This is the land where I was born and we want to return at any moment. I left at 8pm and waited inside on for four hours until the road opened. Even if it to take in a day or two, the most important thing is that I'm returning. Our correspondent in Lebanon, Karin Torbay, has just arrived in a town in the south of the country.

At the moment, I'm standing in Nabatia. This was a very vibrant city in the south. It's a city famous for its landmarks, but mostly for its big market. This market now has big areas that are completely flattened. All we could see is a very large, pile of destruction and rubble. And this scene is pretty much similar to many scenes we've seen across the road as we moved into the south of Lebanon. We also saw lots of people coming back returning. Some of them are in trucks that were carrying their belongings and they were

making their way back. They know that this could be a very fragile ceasefire. This is just a 10-day halt in the bombardment. Yes, Kareen, we can hear a noise behind you that, it sounds like gunfire. What's going on? We don't really know at the moment what's happening, but we have been hearing sporadic kind of gunshots, and we don't really understand, and this is probably part of the picture of how fragile the situation is,

how super-cocious everyone is still, as they come back to see whether this is a place they would be able. able to live in again because we also went to areas that are very close to the border and that are at the moment the army is blocking the way to these areas as Israeli soldiers are still occupying parts of it and those areas remain off limits to their residents. We saw lots of people gathering around the checkpoints or the barriers that were set up by the Lebanese army. One of them told me that his house was just meters away, a few meters away, but he couldn't see it. it. He couldn't really know whether the house was still standing.

Corinne, how is the ceasefire holding up at the moment? And is Hezbollah going to abide by it? We're still in the very first hours of the implementation of the ceasefire. So far, it seems extremely fragile, but it is holding. We understand also that there is a very different perception of what this ceasefire entails. For Hezbollah, it says that basically having areas of Lebanon is still under occupation, this gives the people, as it says, the right to resist occupation. So this might suggest that there might still be military operations against Israeli soldiers in Lebanon. It also said that it is not happy with what the Israelis are claiming, that the ceasefire give them freedom of movement in Lebanon if they perceive any threat from Hezbollah. And Hasbalah said that if there is any targeting of its members, it will also not abide by the ceasefire.

So basically, we're here in a very fragile situation. We don't really understand whether there is a common understanding of what's coming next. And everyone is waiting cautiously every hour as it goes by to see if we are just in front of a very fragile hold in hostilities. Karin Torbay. So that's the view from Lebanon. What about Israelis? A few hours in, how do they view the ceasefire? Yoland Nell is our correspondent in Jerusalem. This is something that's filling the Israeli media, lots of analysis of it. And there's criticism of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, particularly from residents of northern Israel. Some cabinet members indicating that they only heard about this ceasefire from President Trump himself, from his announcement. We did have the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu putting out a video message last night

where he talked about how Israeli forces were going to remain on the ground in southern Lebanon. That's where they've been occupying this wide area. It says it's creating a security zone there to protect the citizens of northern Israel who endured rocket fire over these past six weeks, including right up just two minutes before the midnight deadline when this ceasefire came into force. And in his message, the Israeli Prime Minister was saying, that's where we are, we're not leaving. So deep inside Lebanese territory.

Residents of the north, though, really believe this is some kind of a betrayal from the government. That's what local mayors there have been saying. And they're very disappointed about this ceasefire. They believe that it will not lead to sort of conclusive action against Hezbollah and that the failure in the past to take conclusive action is what has led to these rounds of renewed fighting over the years. Yoland Nell in Jerusalem. To Iran now, where there's less than a week to go

until another ceasefire between Iran and the US expires. The big question for Iranian people is, will the bombing resume? BBC's chief international correspondent, Lees Doucette, has made it to the Iranian capital Tehran. She's seen some of the damage already caused by the Americans and Israelis. Lees is reporting from Iran on the condition

that none of her material is used on the BBC's Persian. service. We've come to this one narrow street in this leafy, seems to be largely residential neighborhood in the heart of Tehran, and in front of us a huge gaping hole. Whatever stood here before is completely gone. There's just heaps of concrete and twisted metal. And you can hear excavator at work carrying away. rubble of this building. Now there's obviously sensitivity around these sites. We've had to wait more than an hour as security people kept coming up to us asking whether we had permissions to work. Now that we do, let's try to find out what was here before and what happened that day.

There's on the other side of the street. The facades have all been blown out by the impact of these attacks and one man opening this door. And this is your house. What's left? of it. Yeah. Peron is just showing us what's left of his home here. Why do you think they attacked here? I don't know.

This owl is here for normal life. Women, children, and normal. Here, not the army. More than 25 years, I'm here. Were you here that day? No, I was 10 minutes ago, I'm here. You were 10 minutes away? Yes.

You were here and then 10 minutes later, it happened. Yes, yes. But Israel and the United States say they're only. attacking military targets. The time is I told us. We're hearing the same story from everyone who comes up to us, people who live in another building

on the street, people who've known this neighborhood for a long time. They say there were no military people living here, there were no security offices. It's impossible for us to know why this particular building was targeted. Now someone's come

up to us. Do you know what happened? I was there. suddenly hear explosion and come out from the building and see, wow, nothing left. It's amazing. You're alive. We escaped from the building, come to the street. Everyone just escaped. The people crowded. That was terrifying. President Trump says he's doing this for the people of Iran, to help the people of Iran. What do you say?

You can see the help of president to our people, ruined buildings, killed people and children. There are now negotiations between. the United States and Iran? Do you think a deal can be done and it will be good for the people of Iran? I suppose that diplomacy is better than war. We should do this diplomacy one year ago. If President Trump, if the United States care about this, but as JCPOA in 2015, we make a deal with the United States, President Obama. And two years later, three years later, President Trump tore everything and gone left. You think the ceasefire will hold? I hope ceasefire will hold if Netanyahu and Israel stood to beat it.

But I doubt about it. We may not have all the information about why this attack happened. But what is clear is that down a whole stretch of this street, people's homes were destroyed, lives were lost. This is just one building on one street in one city. the cost of this war to civilians and the risks if this fragile ceasefire collapses. The BBC's least is said, with a ceasefire in place between Israel and Lebanon and a pause in fighting with Iran, some hope that there could now be a deal to end the fighting across the Middle East.

President Trump seems optimistic, but can he turn that optimism into a permanent agreement? A question I put to our Middle East analyst, Sebastian, Well, the question is, is there substance behind that or not? I mean, sometimes President Trump is essentially through his position is able to will substance into something where maybe it didn't exist. I mean, I think analysts will wonder how in the space of just a few days there could be a move from J.D. Vance, the vice president, who, after leaving the talks in Islamabad, said that the final offer from Washington had been rejected by the Iranians. They've now moved to a position where President Trump is able to say that the Iranians have accepted that they will hand over there in rich, URAB. to the US. Now, there's been no big kind of official comment from the Iranians over this, but in one of the media linked to the Iranian regime, an unnamed official is said, you know, as quoted as saying, that didn't happen. We haven't had those negotiations. I mean, it all comes down in the end to how much both sides need this deal and therefore, you know, what kind of concessions and how they can finesse it. I think it's more on the side of President Trump how

much he can finesse it in terms of selling it as a victory because that's what he's used to from the Iranian side, I think they'll still maintain a harder line. The concessions from them could actually be harder to get. Briefly, you've watched every conflict in the Middle East going back a very long time. What are the prospects for peace in the Middle East? In the whole of the Middle East, I mean, I've been doing this for quite a long time. One reason that I've managed to keep going is I haven't made any really rash predictions. What there is, you know, the cost, people in Lebanon would like to get rid of Hasbullah, people in Iran would like to get rid of a regime, they've seen in the past few weeks is just how heavy that cost is. It's that balance between

the two. How much they're willing to go down that line in order to see change? At the moment, I'd say not enough. Sebastian Asher. Still to come in this podcast, climate change prompts the invention of a new word in Japan. This word is a koku shobi, and you can do this in Japanese. You can connect Chinese characters together to make a new term. And it connects the characters that mean cruel, hot day. So it's a cruelly hot day. This is the Global News podcast. In what could be a significant moment for the planet, scientists say the vital system of Atlantic ocean currents that help regulate the climate could be much closer to collapse than previously predicted, something that would have catastrophic consequences

for Europe, Africa and the Americas. My colleague Anna Foster spoke to Tom Rivett Karnak, former political strategist for the United Nations Framework Convention on climate change. What's called the Atlantic meridional overturning circuit, or Amok, is a major ocean current that carries warm water north across the Atlantic. You can think of it as a conveyor belt for ocean circulation. And crucially, this conveyor has two stable states, a strong mode, which we live in now, and a much weaker one that has existed during ice ages. And the concern is that we're pushing it from one state to the other. And if it does go into the weaker mode, it's not just a question of us being colder. It affects all kinds of things, including quite crucially

agriculture. Absolutely. So agriculture in particular could be severely disruptive. The OECD has predicted that half the land used for wheat and maize around the world could become unsuitable. So the impact of that on humanity overall would be devastating. And one of the things that's come out of this report is not only that the models that were previously used, now that they have combined real world observations, they can see it's the more pesting. It's the more pesting. pessimistic scenarios that are more likely. And if we did trigger it, the cooling could happen very quickly. Tom Rivett Karnak.

Some of the world's most senior bankers and financial officials are warning artificial intelligence now poses a threat to the global financial system. They're in Washington for the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund where discussions have been dominated by the ease with which a system called mythos made by Anthropic was able to find weaknesses in the most secure banking networks. The Canadian finance minister is Francois Philippe Champagne. The issue that we're facing with Anthropic is that it's the unknown unknown. We are not necessarily fully able to assess today what could be the impact.

And that's why you see this is requiring a lot of attention so that we have safeguards and we have process in place to make sure that we ensure the resiliency of our financial system. The governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, says he's also worried. The consequence could be that there is a result. a development of AI, of modelling, which makes it easier to detect existing vulnerabilities in sort of core IT systems. And then obviously, cybercriminals, the bad actors could seek to exploit them. So we've got to take this very seriously.

Our economics editor, Faisal Islam, is at the IMF meeting. The world's finance ministers and central bankers meeting here in Washington, obviously preoccupied with what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz. But some are arguing there's another issue as important, perhaps more important, which is this new AI model from Anthropic, who make Claude. It's called Mythos. And the fear is at the highest level of the financial system that this could create vulnerabilities for security for the entire banking system. For a long time, we've known that the world's most advanced computers like quantum computers will be strong enough eventually to break Bitcoin, to break the banking system effectively. But this is happening

much more quickly than expected. The developers Anthropics say they've found major vulnerabilities in every operating system, in every type of web browser. And it's certainly true that finance ministries, bankers, they want access to this model now to see what it can do. It is an astonishing example

of how technology is advancing so quickly that it's questioning the safety of systems we frankly just totally take for granted. And that could be the seeds. of the next crisis. Faisal Islam. Pope Leo has been celebrating mass in Cameroon's economic capital,

Duala, in an open-air ceremony attended by hundreds of thousands of people. Many of them spent Thursday night camped outside the city's Jopoma Stadium to try to get a prime position to see the pontiff's address, with some waiting in line for more than 24 hours. Pope Leo's 11-day tour of Africa

has been overshadowed by a war of words with President Trump, who called the pontiff weak on crime and terrible for foreign policy, following the Pope's criticism of the US-Israeli war on Iran. The BBC's Paul NGA is in Douala. I'm standing outside the Japhoma Stadium in Cameroon's economic capital, Douala. And just behind me are thousands of people who have congregated here to listen to Pope Leo. He's holding a holy mass here in Douala.

And there is some sense of eagerness here. We are even told that a good number of people spent the night in this space on this ground just to be able to participate in Pope Leo's mass this morning. On Thursday, Pope Leo headed to Bermenda in the rest of the northwest region, which is the epicenter of the Anglophone armed conflict. There he called for peace and reconciliation and criticized those he tempt tyrants and mongers of war. Pope Leo's visit in Cameroon had been highly expected, especially because people felt that it would bring an end to the war.

the conflict that has been raging for nearly 10 years. But this city of Duola is also symbolic because it is where post-electoral violence was happening last year when President Paul Beer was declared winner of the 2025 presidential election. Ahead of Pope Leo's arrival here, civil society members have urged him to push for a freedom or liberation of political prisoners who were arrested during that period. And Pope Leo is finishing his tour in Angola and then Equatorial Guinea. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Harry and Megan, are in Australia on a four-day tour. The couple are no longer working royals and are visiting the country in a private capacity on a trip that's included visits to charitable causes alongside private money-making engagements.

Here's the reaction of some people in Australia to the couple's visit. Can I be honest and tell you I really don't think about them at all? They're very much about self-promotion. They probably would be my least favourite royals. Let's put it that way. Honestly, I kind of feel a little sorry for them. I feel like maybe they're just trying to live their lives under heavy scrutiny and speculation. I'm sorry that they left the royal family, but they went about it the wrong way. I spoke to Simon Atkinson, who's been following the couple on their trip.

They are here in Sydney. It's the fourth day of their trip. And you mention those commercial engagements. Let's start with that. I'm standing outside a hotel at the moment in Sydney where the Duchess of Sussex is the star attraction at a weekend retreat for about 300 women. It's a women-only event who've paid up to $2,300 US dollars for tickets, which does include a photo with Megan, by the way,

and they're going to have in-person conversations. They've been told to leave their phones away so they can live in the moment. And it all seems like very, very exciting and luxurious indeed. But this is one of the things which the Duchess and her husband, Prince Harry, couldn't do when they're in the royal family. like you say Alex, they're no longer working royals. So this trip has been a combination of community engagements

and causes which they really care about, but also those money-making opportunities. We know the Duke gave a speech at a conference yesterday where tickets were also very expensive. It's been quite hard to work out whether he was paid for that or not or whether there was some other kind of financial arrangement. But these are things, like I say, that they couldn't have done on previous tours.

But today they started the day in Bondi here in Sydney, and they went to visit victims and survivors of the terrible attack on the Jewish community in December. They've also visited children's hospitals while they've been here. They've done a lot of work around mental health, a lot of the issues which the couple have related to, their passion projects, if you like. But it's only four days that they're expected to leave Australia tomorrow and head back to the US where, of course, they're now based. Yeah, it is in the old days the idea of paying money to have a weekend with the Royal.

I mean, it just would never happen. Things have really changed. What are people in Australia making of that? I've asked this question to pretty much everyone, you know, do you think it's right that they come over here to make money? There was an article in one of the papers that accused them of using Australia as an ATM as a cash machine. The people I've spoken who generally think that's a pretty unfair criticism. They're private citizens now.

They have to make a living, is how a few people have put it to me, and this is a way they're doing it. And I think if you look at what they've been doing over the last four days, if we're being very fair to them, majority of their time has been on those engagements with the charities, talking a lot of kids, and they really are in their element in those situations. But like you say, it is very different to trips of old. And I think because it's had these elements of a royal tour, going to hospitals, getting deeper into Australia's indigenous culture, the sort of things that we've seen

King Charles do when he was here last year. And in fact, the Duke and Duchess, when they were here eight years ago, just after they got married, that's kind of why people find it a little bit jarring, I think that there are these commercial opportunities alongside the more traditional visit. Simon Atkinson. As more parts of the world grapple with extreme heat as a consequence of climate change, Japan has unveiled a new word for summer days

that reach over 40 degrees Celsius. There to be known as cruelly hot days. Once a rare event, this high temperature, is now breached almost every summer in Japan. Our reporter is Will Leonardo. This word is a koku shobi, and you can do this in Japanese. You can connect Chinese characters together to make a new term.

And it connects the characters that mean cruel hot day. So it's a cruelly hot day. And this will now mean days that reach over 40 degrees Celsius, which is becoming far more common in Japan because of climate change, as you mentioned. And this word was kind of, it's announced with a certain amount of fanfare at a press conference this morning

by a Japanese government minister in charge of the Japan meteorological agency. He said that there was a survey that was put out which had maybe half a million respondents. are the terms that we're kind of in the running with things like extremely fiercely hot day, which may be a bit clunky, intensely hot day, and then some less serious suggestions including covered in sweat day, sauna day, stay-at-home day. And this is another term that Japan's now using.

It's already got three for days that reach over 25 degrees, which is a summer day, 30 degrees, which is a middle of the summer day, and 35 degrees, which is a fiercely hot day. And these terms are used across media and in everyday life. you know, summers are often measured in terms of how hot they are by how many fiercely hot days they've been. And they're often a kind of signal to people to take measures to counter things like heat stroke, which is getting worse in Japan because of climate change. Every year, hundreds of people are hospitalised because of heat stroke.

And while 40 degrees might not seem very hot for some of our listeners in kind of drier climates. In Japan, it's fiercely humid and it really is cruel is the right term. A 40 degree day in Japan is very unbearable for many people living there. And official new words, when they happen, that signifies an important thing in Japan, doesn't it? Well, yes, indeed. I mean, it's kind of, this is a signifier of a way of making sure that people are taking measures against the hotness that comes with extreme climate change. Because last year we saw in Japan, this hottest day is 41.8 degrees Celsius. And these temperatures just didn't exist in that part of the world. You know, 35 is quite normal. It's very humid. So it feels a lot.

hotter, 40 degrees is really something that's come about in the last 10 years or so. Well, Leonardo. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at global podcast at BBC.co.com. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global NewsPod. And don't forget our sister podcast, The Global Story, which goes in-depth and beyond the headlines,

on one big story. This edition of the Global News podcast was mixed by Ricardo McCarthy and the producer was Richard Hamilton. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritson. Until next time, goodbye.