Global News Podcast - TikTok completes deal to avoid US ban

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

Long-running negotiations to secure TikTok’s future in the US have ended. The Chinese social media app will split its American operations from the rest of its global business. Also: Ukraine's President Zelensky says Kyiv and the US have reached a deal on post-war security guarantees, ahead of the first set of trilateral peace negotiations; the BBC is given rare access to facilities in Yemen where former detainees report being blindfolded, beaten and sexually abused; the US concludes the complicated process of withdrawing from the World Health Organisation; and a 410-million-year-old fossil may have been an entirely different form of life no longer found on Earth.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. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs.

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Celia Hatton, and in the early hours of Friday, the 23rd of January, these are our main stories. TikTok finalizes a deal to spin off its U.S. business operations to avoid an American ban. U.S. envoys meet with Vladimir Putin in Moscow for late-night talks aimed at ending the conflict in Ukraine. And the BBC gains rare access to detention facilities in Yemen inside former military bases run by the United Arab Emirates. Also in this podcast, U.S. immigration agent's treatment of a five-year-old boy in Minneapolis sparks outrage. And...

We take crude oil from Russia. We still don't know what the destination is exactly it was, you know. A BBC exclusive interview with a sailor aboard Russia's sanction-busting Shadowfleet. A deal's been struck on the popular social media platform TikTok and how it operates inside the US. The app, which is Chinese-owned, has agreed to split its American operations from the rest of its global business. The US Congress had security concerns about TikTok's influence and the US. the data it collects from its users, and it had ordered TikTok to sell its operations to American investors to avoid an outright ban. TikTok matters because it has a huge, highly engaged American

user base, 200 million people, many of whom use the app multiple times a day. It's evolved to shape cultural trends and spread information through its unique algorithm. It promotes content by closely monitoring how users are responding to videos, instead of simply promoting the most popular users, like many other apps do. Back to that U.S. deal, our correspondent in Silicon Valley, Lily Jamali, told us why TikTok was ordered to change its American operations.

They were concerned about the fact that TikTok was owned by a Chinese company, Bite Dance, and the company's ties to Beijing are what really had them worried about. Some of the things you just, mentioned whether the Chinese government might try to access American user data and also whether it might try to pressure TikTok to promote certain content that would benefit Beijing politically. We should note that to the end, TikTok would always say neither of those outcomes was taking place here. But nevertheless, in 2024, Congress signed a law that then-President Joe Biden signed and that

the Supreme Court ultimately upheld that required bite dance to divest. It's American operations or face a ban. They have now accomplished that with this divestment, this creation of a new joint venture. Bite Dance, the Chinese owner, does retain a stake. It's just shy of 20 percent. But American investors are now in majority control of U.S. operations of TikTok. And what about the deal's support? Does it have support from the U.S. and Chinese governments?

Well, you know, the White House, I mean, the U.S. government, if you talk to some members, of Congress, certainly there is concern. The White House, however, has been very involved in brokering this deal. So it absolutely had their support. It's worth noting that a close ally of Donald Trump is very involved here, Larry Ellison, who chairs Oracle. That's the cloud computing giant, which is taking an ownership stake here. Oracle is also going to be in charge of trust and safety at this new joint venture. Does China support this deal? Well, I think the fact that there's a deal at all is an indication that they have given their support. But I have to imagine they've been a somewhat more reluctant partner than the White House has, certainly.

And last, Lily, what about TikTok's algorithm that controls what content gets promoted on the app? What will happen to that? This is a question that is captivated. A lot of observers, users, as this story has unfolded in the last year. So I mentioned Oracle. They are going to be in charge of retraining the powerful algorithm that helps determine what 200 million American TikTok users see. They're going to be stewards of the algorithm in what they call the U.S. cloud environment. For people concerned about American user data and making sure it's protected, that might be nice to hear. But it's not a positive outcome for those concerned about who gets to influence the algorithm.

So I think of someone like Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat who has talked about his worries about seeing this algorithm be controlled by an ally of the current administration. He has told us here at the BBC, he doesn't think Americans will be any better off if TikTok were to end up in the hands of what he called Trump cronies backed by foreign funding. And he was referring there to the fact that an Emirati investment fund was also going to be taking a stake, which they have now. Our tech correspondent, Lily Jamali, to the war on Ukraine now and signs that momentum is picking up in talks to end the conflict. Ukraine's leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, said Kiev and the U.S. have reached a deal on post-war security guarantees, though he says it's yet to be signed. He met on Thursday with Donald

Trump. And top U.S. envoys, including the President's special envoy, Steve Whitkoff, have held a late-night meeting in Moscow with Vladimir Putin, their first face-to-face talks in two months. The Kremlin described the meeting as substantive, constructive, and very frank, and said they agreed on the next steps. In a few hours' time, mid-level officials from all three countries, the U.S., Ukraine, and Russia, will sit down for their first set of trilateral negotiations. All this, as people on the ground in Ukraine endure their fourth winter since the war began. The coldest one yet, as Russia continues to target Ukrainian energy supplies. This Kiev resident, Katerina Malofova, told the World Service how miserable it's been.

been. Most of our buildings don't have the heating. My friends are posting pictures on social media with the temperature in their rooms, in their flats, plus 11, plus 8, some of them plus 2. So people are trying to survive. People are buying bricks so that they could warm them up. Majority of the buildings, they don't have gas anymore. The morale is quite low because, you know, when you wake up after sleepless night and you don't have water, you don't have heating, you don't have power, I can describe how I sometimes feel like I'm a red in the corner that I've been cornered. Well, there's misery in Russia, too. NATO chief Mark Ruta said Wednesday that a thousand Russian troops a day are being killed on the front line.

So how close are we to ending this war? According to the US-on-voy Steve Wittkoff, peace talks have come down to one last issue. Russia editor Steve Rosenberg told me this was most likely territory. Russia has continued to demand that Ukraine cede to it the remaining territory in the Donbass, at eastern Ukraine, that's still under Ukrainian control. But Ukraine says absolutely not. Why should we reward Russia with even more territory after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine? And that has been a very difficult issue to resolve.

So I think when Steve Whitkoff was speaking about the one remaining, issue, it would have been territory. We're expecting mid-level talks between all three sides, that the US, Russia and Ukraine to start on Friday. How significant are these talks? Well, these talks in Abu Dhabi, I think, are going to be looking at various issues, military issues, questions of economic prosperity. Certainly, we've been seeing a lot of diplomacy in the last few weeks. But I think the fact that these trilateral meetings are going to be taking place, you know, is a sign that perhaps the sides are moving closer to some kind of deal. That's interesting you say that, because some are contending that Vladimir Putin is

still playing for time, that he has no real intention of ending the war. So do you see any evidence to the contrary of that? I think Vladimir Putin would be happy to end the war, brackets, on his terms. I think that's key. I think he believes that. he has the initiative on the battlefield. He also looks across the United States and sees a US president who he believes wants a better relationship with Russia, who he believes understands Russia's security concerns and is prepared to put pressure on Ukraine, on President Zelensky. He also will have seen what's been going on in Davos the last few days and the divisions in the transatlantic alliance.

And, you know, when the West looks weak, Russia believes that makes Russia look strong. And that will also be fueling President Putin's confidence to push on with a special military operation until he gets what he wants. What would make you really sit up and take notice and believe that we could be coming to some kind of end to this conflict? Will it be the moment, for example,

when we see maybe possibly Vladimir Putin, and Volonimo Zolensky in the same room, sitting around the same table? Well, that would be a remarkable moment, absolutely. There have been moments over the last year where we've thought that peace was close or getting closer, and it didn't turn out that way. So we've heard various officials talking about percentages that we're 90% there, 85% there. And we've learned that, you know, just talking about percentages, doesn't automatically guarantee a peace deal.

However, you know, we're now coming up to four years of this war, and both sides will be getting tired, and the casualties are enormous on both sides. Also, there are economic pressures on both sides, too. So it will be interesting to see whether the latest rounds of diplomacy lead to anything concrete. Steve Rosenberg in Moscow. Well, we've heard a lot recently about shixtaping.

Shadow Fleet vessels, aging merchant ships which are used to evade international sanctions by transporting illicit goods. Russia's accused of using ships like these in order to make money by selling sanctioned oil. But in recent years, it's become harder for such vessels to operate, leading to owners abandoning them. And many of these ships are now stranded at sea with their crews on board. This week, in what the BBC understands to be a world-first shadow fleet interview, our reporter, David Waddell, has made direct contact with one sailor still aboard his stranded oil tanker. David gave me the background to his exclusive interview. It's a huge problem. It's been getting much worse over the past decade.

By an order of magnitude, there were 20 abandoned ships in 2016. That was up to 410 last year. And with it, a human cost, over 6.000. 6,200 seafarers stranded with their ships, typically without pay, disconnected from their ships operator, poorly provisioned and without the means to get home. Why is it getting worse? It's huge geopolitical instability in recent years, not least widespread conflict, the COVID pandemic, triggering supply chain disruption, wild variation in freight costs, meaning some operators struggle to stay afloat, for one of a better expression. And it's been compounded in recent years by the prevalence of shadow fleet operations. The International Transport Workers' Federation say they've been hearing increasing reports from sailors who believe their vessel is transporting sanctioned goods. So you spoke to one seafarer. What can you tell me about his circumstances?

He's aboard a Shadow Fleet vessel. It's an oil tanker currently at anchor in East Asia. I know the name of the ship. I know its exact location. Out of respect for the sailors' welfare, I've agreed to spare the details, including his own identity. but he is a senior officer on a mid-sized oil tanker flying a false Gambian flag, essentially unregistered. I understand this is a world-first broadcast interview from a Shadow Fleet vessel. He told me about the conditions he and his crew are experiencing. We have a problem with dependent celery. Now we already receive for the November and are waiting on this week for December. We have shortage with meat, grain, fish, with simple things for surviving.

we have shortages, you know. This is effective on our health, on our operational atmosphere. Crew was hungry, crew was angry, and we tried to survive only day by day. We spoke for about 10 minutes and then his internet connection cut off. I couldn't reach him for about 12 hours, so their provisions are limited. He tells me their data too is limited. And what about the ship's cargo? Why can't they get it delivered somewhere?

This ship's carrying 100,000 tons of oil, nearly three quarters of a million barrels. ordinarily that would be worth around 47 million US dollars, but it's Russian sanctioned oil. In effect, it's untradable. And as we've seen over the past couple of months, the US is getting much more proactive about tracking down shadow fleet ships like this. They can't just dump the oil, they can't sell it either. We are taking crude oil from Russia and proceeding to discharge this east side of China. We still don't know what the destination is exactly. Exactly it was, you know. Our official letters, no one reply. It is also very difficult to us because we don't know what we will expect, what the next provision comes, when a salary come, when the vessel will go to discharge. So totally quiet, totally silent from the ship operator. And we'll see more of this. On Thursday, the French Navy intercepted a Russian tanker in the Mediterranean, suspected to be operating in breach of sanctions. For years, Russia has been selling its oil at a time.

discount, increasingly, that's looking much more tricky. David Waddell. The BBC has been given rare access to detention facilities in Yemen that are located inside former military bases belonging to the United Arab Emirates. The existence of these centres appears to confirm long-standing allegations of a network of so-called black sites run by the UAE and forces allied to it during Yemen's decade-long civil war. Former detainees at the centres have told the BBC they were blindfolded, beaten and sexually abused there. The UAE denies the allegations, arguing the centres are simply military facilities. More details from our correspondent, Noel al-Maghavi.

For years, human rights groups have documented allegations of so-called black sites in southern Yemen, based on testimony from former prisoners, but they've never been captured on camera. That changed after the United Arab Emirates pulled its forces out of the country earlier this month, following a bitter split with its former ally Saudi Arabia. The Saudi-backed Yemeni government invited the BBC to inspect military bases it had recently retaken in the port city of Moukela, once controlled by UAE-backed forces. At two sites, we saw cells built from brick and cement, as well as shipping containers, their interiors painted black with little ventilation.

names and dates were scratched into the walls, some as recent as December. Former detainees the BBC spoke to independently said the containers could hold up to 60 men at a time. They said prisoners were blindfolded, cuffed and forced to sit upright, with no room to lie down. One man said he was beaten for days and sexually abused, as interrogators tried to force him to confess to being a member of Al-Qaeda. Another mother told the BBC her son was detained. as a teenager and had been held for nine years. She said she saw scars from torture when she was briefly allowed to see him. The UAE did not respond to us but had previously denied running secret prisons, calling the allegations deliberate fabrications and insisting the sites were

ordinary military facilities. But what's striking is the timing. Saudi-backed officials are now escorting journalists to sites once controlled by their former ally, as a widening political and military rift between the two Gulf states spills into the open. As Yemen's war enters its second decade, the exposure of these facilities has not only revived allegations of abuse, but laid bare the deep fractures between the foreign powers who once claimed to be fighting on the same side. Nowell Al-Maghaffi. Still to come in this podcast. This is an entirely different way of being a complex organism on land. Scientists may have the answer to a 150-year-old mystery surrounding a very unusual fossil.

If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs.

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News podcast. It's a powerful image from the U.S. city of Minneapolis, a five-year-old boy wearing a blue hat with bunny ears standing in the cold. Next to him, an immigration officer holds onto his backpack. School officials say he was used as bait, arguing he was forced to knock on the door of his own homes so immigration or ICE agents could detain those inside. It's a charge they deny. The city's been tense since another ICE agent shot dead a 37-year-old mother, Renee Good, just over two weeks ago.

The U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance is visiting Minneapolis, and he defended ICE agents over the detention of the little boy. I see this story, and I'm a father of a five-year-old, actually, a five-year-old little boy, and I think to myself, oh, my God, this is terrible. How did we arrest a five-year-old? Well, I do a little bit more follow-up research. And what I find is that the five-year-old was not arrested, that his dad was an illegal alien, and then when they went, when they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran. So the story is that ICE detained a five-year-old. What are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death? Well, school officials say the five-year-old is one of four children detained by ice agents in Minneapolis in the last few days. Our U.S. correspondent, Helena Humphrey, has the details. As you were just hearing there, he was saying that the child was left behind when his father fled agents. That's not something that the BBC has been able to verify. But his presence there, he has said, has been an effort to bring down the temperature. And he met with local leaders and ice agents.

But those demonstrations, they continue over ICE operations, also over the fatal shooting of René Nicole Good over two weeks ago. And J.D. Vance has been defending the ICE operations. He said that he thinks they're doing an incredible job and he called for more cooperation with local officials. And he also said that he didn't think that President Trump would need to use the Insurrection Act right now. You may remember that he had warned about that it's a centuries-old law. it would allow troops to be deployed to quell unrest. Vance said he didn't think the president would do that right now, but he could change his mind. But generally there, there is a general strike in the state which is scheduled for tomorrow. Protests could continue. One thing I will say is it's expected to be very cold there. There is a big storm on the way here in the United States. So we'll see whether that also has an impact. Helena Humphrey. Well, right after President Trump came back into office a year ago, he started signing executive orders, including one to remove the United States from the World Health Organization. That withdrawal process is now complete. The Trump administration claimed the WHO mishandled the COVID pandemic and failed to adopt reforms they said were urgently needed. The organization has denied those accusations. Wendy Urquhart reports. The U.S. gave the world's. Health Organization enormous amounts of money and was one of its biggest donors. The Trump administration

cited a number of reasons for leaving the WHO. It accused it of downplaying the severity of the COVID pandemic and bowing to Chinese influence. The administration also said it disagreed with how American donations had been used. By law, a WHO member must give the organization a year's notice and pay all outstanding fees before it leaves. Donald Trump did give notice, but Washington is refusing to pay back around $260 million that it owes in WHO fees for 2024 and 2025. Dr Judd Walson, who's a professor at Johns Hopkins University,

says the loss of American money is already having a huge impact. There are less resources available to support countries around the world with technical assistance. There's less resources for data monitoring, for potential threats such as pandemics, emerging disease threats. There's less resources for helping to support supply chains. All of those direct impacts of the financial consequences of our withdrawal. As countries no longer have access to support their health systems, we are starting to see them disintegrate. Thousands of US staff and contractors have lost their jobs at WHO headquarters in Geneva and elsewhere in the world as a result of the American.

American withdrawal and numerous US WHO collaborations have either been suspended or thrown out altogether. The WHO Director-General Tedra Sarthanem Gabriesses called the withdrawal a loss for the United States and the rest of the world. The Department of Health and Human Services said Washington would continue disease surveillance and pathogen sharing with a number of countries but would not say which nations would be involved in future partnerships. And now an amazing discovery in Scotland, centering around a 410 million-year-old fossil found there. Before trees came along, our planet's landscape was dominated by towering spire-shaped organisms. Prototexieties were once thought to be a type of fungus, but a new study backs the theory that they were in an entirely different form of life no longer found on Earth. The lead researcher, Dr. Sandy Hetherington from the University of Edinburgh,

spoke to Jane Hill about the findings. Prototaxitis is an enigmatic organism which ruled the earth for roughly 60 million years from 420 million years ago to 360. It was an organism that could grow to roughly 8 metres in size and was therefore the largest thing on land when all the rest of the animals and plants were just tiny, only centimetres in size. So this was the giant on land at the time. And since its discovery 150 years ago, it's been highly debated about what on earth these fossils were.

So in our recent study, we were able to investigate fossils of prototaxitees and compare them to other organisms that lived at the time. So other animals and plants and fungi. And what we found is that these fossils of prototact cites were both anatomically and chemically distinct from all other organisms. And therefore, we can't assign it to any known group of living organism today. And therefore, it must have been an extinct member of a group which is now entirely extinct. And can you, did you, why it went extinct? So it's still highly debated why it went extinct. There's two theories.

One is that it went extinct around the time when plants were evolving into forests. And given that these large trees were roughly similar in size to prototocytes, there's a chance that somehow the origin of these forests led to the decline of prototacitis. The other option is that actually around this time as well, we're actually getting a huge increase in animal life on land. There is a chance that animals were actually eating prototact cites leading to their decline. So interesting. And I know you've explained that proprotocytes are an organism. For a layperson, what were they?

What were they actually made of? They were made of a intertwined mesh of tubes, relatively similar to how if you investigated a mushroom and you looked inside under a microscope at a mushroom, you'd see that it was made of these fine filaments. This is what Prototacitis was also made of. And that's one of the reasons why we previously thought it was a type of fungus. I see. And so one of the things that's so exciting about this is we are talking, are we, about an entirely different. form of life to anything that we know today? I mean, that seems so fundamental to me. It's actually quite hard to get your head around it. Yes, this is an entirely different way of being a

complex organism on land. So using high-powered microscopes at the University of Edinburgh, we were able to look in detail at the fine structure, the internal structure of these tubes and identify that again, these were completely distinct to what we find in the similar tubes that exist in Fungy today. Dr. Sandy Hetherington. And that's all from us for now. But there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. And don't forget our sister podcast,

The Global Story, which goes in-depth and beyond the headlines on one big story, available wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topic's covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is Global Podcast at BBC.co.com. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global NewsPod.

This edition was mixed by Derek Clark and the producer was Stephen Jensen. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Celia Hatton. Until next time, goodbye. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story.

What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.