Global News Podcast - Trump accuses China of 'sinister election meddling'

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

In an address to the nation, President Trump accuses China of extensive interference in the 2020 elections and alleges that US intelligence covered up attempts by Beijing to damage him electorally. More than 800 wildfires are burning across Canada, with air quality alerts now extending south into multiple US states. We profile Andy Burnham who's about to become the new leader of the Labour Party and Britain's next Prime Minister. China has brought in new laws designed to stop people forming relationships with AI chatbots. The Scottish city of Glasgow is getting ready to host the Commonwealth Games. Christopher Nolan's latest blockbuster, The Odyssey, goes on release. 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] Photo: US President Donald Trump delivers an address to the nation Credit: EPA/Shutterstock

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Your sales order says one thing. Your inventory says another. Your spreadsheet says, good luck. Odu brings your business together on a single platform, from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing. Visit Odo.com to book a demo. It's ODbolo.com. The United States is about to mark its 250th anniversary. And so on the global story, podcast from the BBC, we're telling surprising tales of American influence on the world stage

and in ordinary people's lives all across the globe. We have this ability to export our story, and a lot of people have bought it. I feel like the American dream is alive, but not well. From the BBC, it's the United States at 250. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, this is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Ankara Desai, and in the early hours of Friday, the 17th of July, these are our main stories. President Trump accuses China of massively compromising the data of US voters

and alleged there was election meddling by Beijing that targeted him. Elsewhere, air quality alerts are issued to tens of millions of Canadians and Americans, as smoke pollution spreads from hundreds of wildfires. And we'll tell you how China is bringing in strict controls to stop people from falling in love and forming deep bonds with AI chatbots. Also in this podcast, the Scottish City of Glasgow prepares to welcome thousands of athletes for the Commonwealth Games. But is it ready? And... Imagine if we could bring down the cost of energy for people and businesses.

Imagine good growth in every postcode and hope in every heart. Britain is about to get its seventh Prime Minister. in 10 years, but who is Andy Burnham? US President Donald Trump has accused China of undermining the 2020 U.S. presidential election. In a speech to the nation, he announced that the White House is posting declassified intelligence documents

that show what he called the largest compromise of election data in U.S. history, accusing China of hacking some 220 million voter files. This evidence shows that the election system we have dangerously exposes and really exposes like levels never thought possible to hacking exploitation and foreign interference. Just as disturbingly this vital information has for many years been covered up and hidden from you. The American people are beautiful, our great American people. But that all changes right now. He went on to declare that what

he called the Deep State, worked to downplay China's attempts to undermine the 2018 midterm elections and the 2020 presidential election which Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden. The Democrats say Mr Trump is laying the ground to meddle in the midterms where the Republicans risk losing control of Congress. Our correspondent in Washington, Nick Johnson, told us more about what President Trump had to say. This was a 26-minute address that Donald Trump gave from the White House. The top line here is him accusing China of interfering in that 2020 presidential election, which he, of course, lost to Joe Biden.

How did they interfere? Well, Donald Trump said that Beijing managed to access 220 million US voter files, personal information, who they're likely to vote for. And he described that as the largest compromise in election data history. didn't go on to explain, though, how China accessing that information could have affected the election in any way. And we've heard in the past hour or so from a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, who said that China has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the US. Mr Trump also made other claims in his address.

He accused what he called the deep state parts of US intelligence of covering up Chinese interference and covering up meddling in the 2020 election. Now, we should say that in an assessment that was done in 2021 under the then U.S. Director of National Intelligence, John Rackleaf, who's now the CIA director, found no evidence of foreign interference in the 2020 election whatsoever. And Mr. Trump also made other claims in the speech as well. He said there were hundreds of thousands of non-U.S. citizens registered to vote. and he painted a picture of a very broken and vulnerable US election system.

What evidence is there about this impact and the alleged compromise? And what does Donald Trump, well, he's made these sort of accusations before. Why is he saying this now? Well, in terms of the evidence, he said that there's going to be a number of files that are going to be released. Documents are going to be released, which will outline more detail as to the evidence that he's referring to. We haven't yet looked at all those documents. we haven't been able to verify them. But as I mentioned, some of the examples he gave

about the way that Beijing managed to access people's data. He didn't provide an explanation as to how the accessing of that data could have any impact on the outcome of the election. And yeah, he has said these sorts of things before. I think he's saying them again now for a couple of reasons. Number one is he really wants to get the Save America Act through Congress. It's struggling to get past the Senate. the Save America Act will obligate voters in the US when they come to the polls to have proof of citizenship and proof of evidence to vote carried with them.

And I think number two is that he is not doing well in the polls here at the moment, largely because of the economy, the cost of living and also what's going on with Iran. And I think that he's laying the groundwork for a possible suggestion that there's going to be issues in the upcoming midterm election. where it's possible the republics may lose control of both houses of Congress. Nick Johnson in Washington. So how has this latest accusation gone down in China? A correspondent in Beijing is Stephen MacDonald. Well, so far the reaction has come from the Chinese embassy in Washington, basically saying that the Chinese government has never

and would never be involved in trying to rig the US elections. There will be the regular foreign ministry press briefing in four hours time. No, no doubt there will be questions there and we'd expect some comments from the Chinese government, I guess along the same lines denying these accusations. The crucial thing, though, is what it means for US-China relations going forward in a year when Xi Jinping is supposed to be going to Washington in September.

Now, might they, on the one hand, say, you know what, you're making these unfavor? grounded allegations against us, and we've had enough. We're calling it off, no trip by sheep. But another possible approach could be from them to say, well, look, really trade is number one when it all comes down to it. These allegations, no one's really going to take them that seriously anyway. They've all been made before. They're totally unsupported by the evidence. And this is just part of the cut and thrust of US politics, because Donald Trump wants to muddy the waters thinking he's going to do very badly in the upcoming midterm elections. So given that,

we can just ignore it. And the trip will somehow still go ahead. But the Chinese response, it's going to be very interesting to see how it does impact that visit from Xi Jinping. Stephen MacDonald in Beijing. Canada is used to wildfires, but in recent years, they've become more frequent and they're lasting longer. Right now, more than 850 are burning across the country. and it's led to Canada's biggest city Toronto and some cities over the border like Detroit to register some of the world's worst air quality readings. We begin tonight here with the breaking news. Growing concern at this hour over air quality, dangerous smoke from Canadian wildfires,

filling the skies across the U.S., the Midwest and now right into the... People in many areas have been advised to stay indoors. Here are some residents of Chicago, a full 450 kilometers south of the Canadian border. It's wild because when you look outside, you think it's... fog and it's completely covered the city and it's smoke because when you walk outside it burns, it stings a little bit. It's almost like smoking cigarettes all day without even having to go get Newports, man. It's insane, bro. Why does this continue to happen? It's like, I don't remember this growing up that we had smoke and fires so often. Our senior Canada reports, Nadine Yusuf is in

Toronto and described what the smoke is like there. It's thick and it's hard to escape. We've been blanketed by smoke over the last two days and it distinctly smells of Amfire outside. You can smell it immediately when you go outside. It's even seep through the buildings. I live in an apartment complex in downtown Toronto and even the hallways here smell like smoke. So really hard to escape. Most people are staying home if they can. And we know that the smoke is traveling south in the U.S. where, you know, the final of the FIFA World Cup game on Sunday is set to be held. And so there are concerns that it might affect the World Cup final. Right now we're not, you know, hearing of any impacts to scheduling. But, you know, certainly there are concerns that the smoke

will continue to linger throughout the weekend. In general, there are about 800 wildfires or so building across Canada right now, and many of them are burning out of control in Northern Ontario, so that's where the bulk of the smoke that we're seeing here is coming from. Wildfires in Canada are not unusual, but they have become more frequent since 2015. And before they used to burn out west more often, so, you know, in British Columbia and Alberta, what we're seeing over the past number of years is the frequency of wildfires is moving out east. So now you're seeing world fires in Ontario in Quebec and in the Maritimes even. And of course, firefighting efforts are ongoing, you know, across the country. But I think it's important to note that fighting fires in Canada's

vast boreal forest is very difficult. The wildfires are part of the natural life cycle of these forests. And of course, because of, you know, they've become more frequent, the wildfire fighting efforts have mostly focused on trying to get the flames away from places where people's homes or livelihoods could be affected rather than putting them out altogether. So you're just kind of seeing those efforts unfold across the country and particularly in northern Ontario. Nadine Yusuf reporting from Canada. Here in the UK, Andy Burnham has been elected unopposed

as the new leader of the Labour Party. The announcement is due to be made later today when he is to promise a new path for the country when he takes over from Sir Kirste Stama next week. So what's the former mayor of Greater Manchester? and our Britain's new Labour leader and Prime Minister in Waiting Like. And what are his politics? Here's our political correspondent, Rob Watson.

The charming to his fans at any rate, Andy Burnham, is a bit trendier than recent British Prime Ministers. The Liverpool-born 56-year-old dresses fashionably, loves Brit pop, has a season ticket to Everton Football Club, and plays the guitar. As to his politics, he recently posted on TikTok, where else, that they come from his teenage dislike of the Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

and her privatising government and its effect on the industrial north of his youth. It was growing up in and around these streets that I saw what Thatcher's government did to places like this, the de-industrialisation, the draining away of economic, social and political power. Andy Burnham is both an outsider and insider. An outsider, thanks to his working class upbringing in the north, An insider because after attending the prestigious Cambridge University,

he quickly got into politics as one of the bright young talents in the new Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Despite not being that well known, he even tried for the Labour leadership in 2010, campaigning on themes we recognise today, including a claim to be more normal than most politicians. I can give Labour something that the Tories haven't got, and that's a leader that people can relate to whose background looks like their own,

but also who has the ability to inspire. He failed to win the leadership in 2010 and again in 2015. So he gave up being an MP and headed back up north to run for Mayor of Greater Manchester, again sounding now familiar themes. I am standing in this election as Labour's candidate

to bring you that change, to make our politics more accountable than it is today, to bring it closer to home, to break the London-centric nature of politics in this country. I will be a grassroots mayor for all of Greater Manchester, for each and every one of its proud towns, as well as the city centre. He quickly found himself, once elected, having to rally the city, after the bombing of a rock concert in 2017 by an Islamic extremist. This was an act of extremism. It certainly doesn't represent Greater Manchester. The spirit of Greater Manchester was those people throwing their doors open last night

at that moment of maximum panic welcoming people in, driving people away from danger. That is the spirit of this place. Despite that and despite confronting central government over lockdowns during COVID, something earning him the title King of the North, he's not massively well known in Britain. And having been crowned as Labour leader rather than challenged in debate, little is known about his politics. beyond his general left-of-centre approval of state intervention

and emphasis on the less well-off in society. His only big idea so far, and it's a vague one, is for the transfer of power and money out of London to the regions. And, of course, a plea for a bit more optimism. Imagine what things could be like if we succeed. Imagine if we could bring down the cost of energy for people and businesses and the good things that would come from that. Imagine good growth in every postcode.

and hope in every heart. Rarely, though, has someone come to high office with so little really known about them, leaving many unsure as to whether he's a likable lightweight or Labour's great northern hope. Rob Watson, with that report. Still succumb in this podcast. This is a household waiting for master.

I want you to choose me. I think his king is coming back. No, he's not. Cinema goes flock to see Christopher Nolan's latest epic The Odyssey. The United States is about to mark its 250th anniversary. And so on the Global Story podcast from the BBC, we're telling surprising tales of American influence on the world stage and in ordinary people's lives all across the globe.

We have this ability to export our story, and a lot of people have bought it. I feel like the American dream is alive but not well. From the BBC, it's the United States at 250. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News podcast. Next to Indian-administered Kashmir for our next story, where a man named Abdul Rashidwani was detained by police in 1997. He was never seen again.

The human rights group Amnesty International believes he's one of at least 8,000 people who was secretly abducted or imprisoned by the state between 1989 and 2012, a practice known as enforced disappearance. Until now, there's been no official record of what happened to them. It's believed most of them are dead. On Thursday, there was some relief for Abdul Rashidvani's family in a landmark ruling. A judge has issued a death certificate for him, admitting that he is no longer alive. Ayr Khan reports.

Abdul Ashid Wani was a timber trader who was stopped near his home in the city of Srinagar, the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir in 1997. That evening, his wife and his two children were waiting for him to return home. They were supposed to go to a wedding reception, but he never came back. At the time, Kashmir, as today, was a heavily contested territory. Both India and Pakistan officially claim all of Kashmir, and it's divided between the two of them. In 1989, after failed political struggles for self-determination, rebel groups began an armed struggle. They sought Kashmir's independence or its merger with Pakistan.

That's when people started to disappear. The police and army took them on suspicion that they were involved in the separatist movement. Now, after years of searching for Abkhul, a judge in Indian-administered Kashmir has finally declared what the family had already suspected, that Abkhul Rashid Wan-i is dead. The judgment ordered a death certificate to be issued. It also acknowledged that a police probe had identified the army officer who took Oneney into custody. It records the date of Oneney's death as the same day that he vanished, but it gives no information to where his body lies. Today, the rebellion has been largely crushed, but at least half a million soldiers remain in the Indian part of Kashmir. The authorities there claim that many of the disappeared were killed in armed clashes but could not be identified.

The thousands of families of the missing are not sure they'll ever find out what happened to their loved ones or whether anyone will be prosecuted for their disappearance. Ayre Khan reporting. In just a few years, the idea of human falling in love with a robot has gone from sci-fi film plot to reality. And now China has become the latest country to try and do something about it. As part of a string of new laws, Beijing has put in tight controls, designed to stop people forming deep bonds with AI chatbots. A reporter Will Chalk has been looking into this one.

The idea of falling in love with an AI chatbot may seem outlandish to some people, but it is a thing that happens. And what data we do have suggests that it's much more common among younger people and vulnerable people as well. And if you think about it, it's not too hard to see why, because these AI chatbots, you know, they tell you that any idea you have is a great idea. They're constantly validating your feelings. I think those are qualities that many people would actually love in their real life partner.

Like I say, data on how widespread it is is severely limited. A few isolated surveys, but it is hard to know how much you can trust them. James Muldoon, though, has written a book on AI relationships. Well, you download the app. You often customize your own character so you can choose what they look like, what their personality is. Often you can write a backstory so that you can have this quite, developed role play with your AI character. Sometimes you can choose if you want friendship,

something platonic, something romantic, and then most of these services are text-based. So it's just like texting any of your friends on WhatsApp. So that covers the kind of inner relationship angle, but that's not the only problem here. There's also the idea that if young people especially get used to having conversations with this bots that never disagree with them, then actually real-life human interactions where the human being can disagree with you, they then become uncomfortable for you. Which brings us on to these rules in China. So they explicitly ban virtual intimate relationship services for minors. For adults, these regulations require that AI services avoid fostering emotional dependency. Companies will also have to let a person's emergency

contact know if they detect an emotional crisis and they'll have to run any new models through government mandated tests. As for why China is so concerned, I asked Matt Sheehan, specialist in Chinese AI at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The government is really concerned about the impact of AI companions on the population. That's out of a concern for the actual people involved. There's also sort of a macro-level element of being concerned that these chatbots are going to feed into China's declining birth rates. China already faces a major demographic crisis over the long term, and they don't like

the idea of a large portion of their population kind of being sucked into these digital relationships rather than the real world. And, well, how does this compare to other countries? Well, New York and California are two U.S. states who've passed similar laws. The EU has some regulations too. But the general consensus among the experts I've spoken to is that these laws in China are the strictest yet. One of those experts, Caitlin Fennessy, is from the non-profit AI research group, the IAPP.

So many of the light-touch laws that we saw early on, including in the United States, States focused primarily on transparency, so informing users that they were, in fact, engaging with a chatbot. The laws in China go a whole lot further, and they put requirements on the providers not only to avoid addictive and manipulative behaviors, but also to put in place protections when they detect and they are required to detect signs of emotional distress or crisis. Now, as for how concerned, you know, society, the world, different countries should be, that's a trickier question. But I think the fact that the Chinese government is so concerned about this

does tell you a bit of a story about how widespread this problem might be. Will Chalk reporting. The Commonwealth Games gets underway in Glasgow in just underwent. a week's time. Three thousand athletes from 74 nations have started arriving in the city, which is currently undergoing a big regeneration program. Scotland's largest city stepped in after the state of Victoria in Australia dropped out. It has had less than two years to prepare, and the City Council says it was always known that work would still be ongoing while the games take place. Well, Lorna Gordon has been speaking to people in Glasgow to see whether they think

The city is ready to host the smaller, more compact games. Coaching the next generation at Kynak boxing gym in Glasgow. Sean Lazarini won a gold in boxing in Birmingham four years ago. He remembers when the games were hosted in Glasgow back in 2014 and is looking forward to them returning. I was working in a clothes shop. I think I was like 15 or 16. You know, like the athletes and that stuff all over the place

and people were getting photos and all the stuff for them. and then obviously it winds up being in the Commonwealth Games, winning it. Excited about it? Yeah, of course, I'm excited about it, yeah. You won't be arrested on the section, 21 of the antisocial behaviour scottled. But the city does have challenges. Anti-social behaviour has led to police dispersal zones in parts of the city centre. There was a devastating fire near central station,

and the city's George Square has become a giant building site. That and road closures throughout Glasgow, part of a long-running regeneration project which has been causing disruption. Nadibai, who owns a restaurant near the city centre, says his business has been hit hard. Through COVID, through snowstorms, rain, everything, I kept the doors open. And this work is now putting a big question mark on the longevity of my business. Is Glasgow ready for the Commonwealth Games? I hope so. But with the lack of, what can I say, proper planning, proper leadership,

I don't think it will be ready. Glasgow was asked to step in at short notice when the Australian state of Victoria dropped out. The council says it has always made clear that significant redevelopment work would not be finished before the sport begins. This is an incredibly welcoming safe city. Phil Batty, who is chief executive of the Glasgow 2026 organising committee, is confident the city and its people will deliver. Glasgow is an incredibly experienced major event city. And when we needed someone to step in and host the games,

there was no other place in the Commonwealth could do this. But what we've basically done is invited ourselves to someone else's house to put on in incredible games when they were having a makeover. And that's something to be celebrated. We're getting the city ready for the future so that it can host more major events for years to come. Oh, what a short. Shots again.

There will be fewer sports than in previous games. Bowling made it in. Can come in and draw a second shot. Here, Peter, you'll get through that port. Martin Gray, Adam Marchbank, and Anne Lang, out on the Greens at Shettleston Bowling, have mixed feelings about the games coming back to Glasgow. I just don't think the city's ready for it.

I think the state of Glasgow City Centre is a disgrace just now. It's a good thing. You get to see one of the major cities being presented to the world yet again. You're going to go? You're tempted? I'm actually going on holiday, so no. They're not going to Melbourne, are you? A challenging games in a changing city, but hope that Commonwealth sports will be the winner.

Lana Gordon reporting from Scotland. Now to this. This is a household waiting for master. I want you to choose me. His king is coming back. No, he's not. That's a clip from The Odyssey, the Oscar-winning British director Christopher Nolan's latest film,

which has just had its first screening at the IMAX cinema in London. The three-hour-long movie has had rave reviews, and that screening was sold out. The Odyssey, an adaptation of Homer's ancient Greek epic, is the first feature to be shot entirely on IMAX 70mm film with IMAX cameras. 70mm film is the multi-award-winning director's preferred way of working, but it's seen as old technology because most cinemas moved to digital about 10 years ago. Sean Coughlin asked Matt Craig, who writes for Forbes magazine on the business of Hollywood,

just why Christopher Nolan wanted viewers to see it in this format. Well, I think it's all about differentiating the experience from watching movies at home. IMAX is one of just several emerging premium options at the movie theater. Dolby has a very good one, and really each theater chain is trying to come up with their own as kind of a way to incentivize audiences to leave the couch at home, come out to the theater, and see an experience a movie in a way that you can't. It has a slightly different aspect ratio and some other high quality elements to it. But there's nothing special or particularly revolutionary about IMAX over these other premium formats.

It's just a very, very good format to watch a movie. Now, if he's going to shoot a movie and this Odyssey is the first movie ever shot entirely in 70 millimeter IMAX format, then he would like people to watch the movie in the exact way that he created it. And that's why he has made a big push to try to get people to come to the 70-millimeter IMAX screenings for The Odyssey this week. He seems to be becoming an increasingly powerful figure in the film world. Why? Yes. You know, folks have been telling me since Oppenheimer's released in 2020, that he is the biggest movie star in all of Hollywood, more than any A-List actor, more than any other director or producer. And there's a pretty clear reason for that, which is that his name and his name alone above a title can get hordes of people to come out to watch movies in a way that, you know,

maybe in decades past, big movie stars, whether it's a Tom Cruise or a Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, might have had that same power. And today, you know, it doesn't feel like that same market power exists for actors in the way that it does for big-name directors. And when you're talking about big-name directors, there is no one else in the league of Christopher Nolan at this point. So, yeah, with that power comes the ability to make what movies he wants to make. And he likes making the biggest possible, most epic movies possible. And The Odyssey is his most ambitious project, yeah. Do you think we could see a revival of the movie theater as a result of not just him, but other kind of big spectacle movies?

Yes, I think it's slightly different from that in that I don't think we'll ever get back to people going to a movie theater and then deciding what they want to watch or going to the movie theater two, three, four times a month habitually. I think the difference is now you need to have a huge can't miss event movie like The Odyssey in order to draw not just hardcore movie fans out, but the casual movie fans who maybe come out two, three, four times a year. So I think going forward, what you will see is even more investment into these huge can't-miss movies.

Matt Craig speaking to Sean Coughlin. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at global podcast at BBC.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 Chris Ablaqua,

and the producer was Emma Joseph. The editor is Karen Martin and I'm on criticise. Until next time, goodbye. The United States is about to mark its 250th anniversary. And so on the Global Story podcast from the BBC, we're telling surprising tales of American influence on the world stage and in ordinary people's lives all across the globe. We have this ability to export our story,

and a lot of people have bought it. I feel like the American dream is alive, but not well. From the BBC, it's the United States at 250. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.