Global News Podcast - Trump ends Canada trade talks over anti-tariff advert

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

Donald Trump calls off trade talks with Canada over an anti-tariffs advert. Also: Kim Jong Un attends a ground-breaking ceremony for a new memorial to honour North Korean soldiers who died fighting for Russia; doctors in Gaza struggle to identify bodies sent back from Israel as part of the ceasefire deal; we look at cloud seeding in Delhi; find out what happened when nearly all of Iceland's women went on strike; and how one German firm is making the most of some unlikely publicity after the multi-million dollar robbery at the Louvre museum in Paris.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]

You're listening to the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 15 hours GMT on Friday the 24th of October. President Trump scraps trade talks with Canada, accusing officials of misquoting Ronald Reagan in an advert against his tariffs. The North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attends a memorial ceremony for his soldiers killed fighting against Ukraine. And India tries cloud-seeding to wash away air pollution. Also in the podcast? The dinosaurs were not declining. They were going very strong. They were still dominant animals up until that shock of the asteroid.

The fossils believed to be some of the final dinosaurs to roam the Earth. Trade negotiations between the US and Canada have had quite a few ups and down since President Trump announced new tariffs at the start. of his second term. The latest twist in the relationship between the two neighbors and big trading partners followed an advert put out by the Canadian province of Ontario, featuring one of Mr. Trump's predecessors, fellow Republican Ronald Reagan. When someone says, let's impose tariffs on foreign imports, it looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while

it works, but only for a short time. But over the long run, such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer. President Trump said the advert was a misrepresentation and accused Canada of egregious behavior. The Ronald Reagan Foundation said it was reviewing its legal options. But according to the official transcript from the Reagan Presidential Library, it is what the 40th President said, albeit a cut-down version, after he'd imposed levies on. on Japan for what he said were sound economic reasons. In the past few hours, President Trump posted that Canada had fraudulently said that Ronald Reagan didn't like tariffs, when actually he loved tariffs for our country and its national security, all in block capitals.

But Canada's Prime Minister, Mark Carney, sought to play down the row. Our officials, my colleagues have been working with their American colleagues on detailed, constructive negotiations, discussions, on specific transactions, specific sectors, steel, aluminum, and energy. And a lot of progress has been made. And we stand ready to pick up on that progress and build on that progress when the Americans are ready to have those discussions because it will be for the benefit of workers in the United States, workers in Canada and families in both of our countries.

Mark Carney embarking on his first official trip to Asia. We heard more about why President Trump had reacted so strongly from our business correspondent, Nick Marsh. What I would say stings, really, is that it's Ronald Reagan, you know, the hero of the Republican Party, the Patriot, someone whom Donald Trump possibly sees himself an heir of, or at least would like to be talked about in the same way by Republicans. And what Reagan said in that clip we just heard there is the exact argument that Donald Trump's critics have been using for years now when it comes to his tariffs. It is essentially the basic argument against tariffs that in the long run it is going to hurt your own workers and it's going to hurt prosperity in general. So if you put all those factors together, you can kind of see how that's happened with this big outburst on truth social. Yeah, and it came despite an apparent improvement in relations when the Canadian Premier Mark Carney visited the White House a couple of weeks ago.

Yeah, and we do see this again with Donald Trump, you know, that seesawing of relations, you know, that personal aspect when he gets face to face in the same room. the leaders. They tend to get on pretty well, maybe a couple of notable exceptions. But there is an argument to say that Mark Carney is in his position largely thanks to Donald Trump, you know, in the stance that Mark Carney took against the tariffs. So it's not like, you know, the issue ever went away. Another important thing, though, is that this is an advert run by the province of Ontario and the Premier of Ontario is Doug Ford. And Doug Ford and Donald Trump have a bad history. There's bad blood there. So again, that personal aspect. And in the week, a few days ago, Doug Ford was telling reporters, oh, I heard Donald Trump has seen that

advert and he doesn't like it in an almost triumphant tone. Again, something that's definitely going to rub Donald Trump up the wrong way. So again, another reason for Donald Trump to want to terminate these trade talks. Yeah, I mean, how important is it for the US and indeed for Canada to get this trade dispute sorted? Pretty important, I would say. I mean, we focus a lot on China with good reason. World's second largest economy in the relationship with Washington there. But Canada's American's second largest trading partner after Mexico. In fact, no one buys more American goods than Canada. So it's a vital economic relationship. It was protected by all kinds of free trade agreements for a long time. Donald Trump has looked to reverse a lot of that. He's put big

tariffs in on things like cars and aluminium and steel. So it is a very, very important relationship there. I think both sides are clearly, as is the case with China, going to want to have some kind of agreement. There aren't that many tariffs in place. It is only specific sectors at the moment. But what's interesting, if I can just say very quickly, the Chinese embassy in Washington also ran a clip of Ronald Reagan, the same clip in the past. And either Donald Trump didn't see or he pretended not to see because he didn't come up with any termination there. Business correspondent Nick Marsh. Russia has suffered an estimated million casualties since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Last year it had some of its

manpower shortages filled by troops from North Korea. And today the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said Pyongyang will always be with Moscow. Our friendship and unity will last forever. He was speaking at a groundbreaking ceremony for a new memorial for the North Korean soldiers who died fighting for Russia. Frontline unit sent by Mr Kim suffered thousands of casualties. Military experts say they were unprepared for the realities of modern warfare. I heard more from the BBC's Jake Kwan in South Korea. We're about a year into North Korea's deployment of its troops to Russia's Kursk region, where the troops were fighting against the Ukrainian forces alongside the Russians.

So North Korea is holding many memorial service or some ways to celebrate and to remember the troops, the 15,000 estimated number of troops that were sent there. And we understand, according to the South Korean spy agency, that around 2,000 of them have been killed. So this is a memorial to kind of remember those who were killed in Russia. And what the North Korean state media and Kim Jong-un, the leader, are saying is that this will be a symbol of the brotherhood between those two countries. And the spilled blood of those troops will tie the two countries together. And what Kim Jong-un also have said is that Pyongyang will always stand down. by Moscow. And just tell us why exactly Kim Jong-un sent North Koreans into the firing line in this

war between Russia and Ukraine? I think we just need to set the scene a little bit. We are coming out of the COVID time, which was very, very tough on North Korea. They have been target of sanctions on which Russians and Chinese, you know, the traditional allies have also added pressure. So, you know, North Korea was a global pariah. And now with the economic hardship, you know, they had to find a way to come out of this difficulty. And what they've done is that when the Ukraine war happened, they started contacting Russia to offer them their support. And in exchange, you know, Russia will be standing by North Korea,

you know, evading the sanctions, sending whatever, you know, either whether it be technology, fuel, food that North Korea needs, the Russia could supply them. And in exchange, North Korea can supply them with troops and artillery shells. and other ammo. Now, this had really brought North Korea out of this hermit status. And North Korea, you know, after it became a bit of a global player, now even China is trying to kind of thaw and warm up towards North Korea. So, you know, Kim Jong-un is really, with that master stroke on a strategic level, by sending their troops to Russia to fight alongside Russians, he's really having

a time that's probably the best since he got into the office. He's feeling, quite strong, he's feeling quite confident. And you could see that in a lot of the propaganda that we're seeing out of North Korea. Jake Kwan in South Korea. Doctors at NASA Hospital in Gaza say the bodies of Palestinians handed over by Israel under the ceasefire deal have signs of torture and abuse. Israel's army says it acts in accordance with international law. The bodies of almost 200 Palestinians have been returned in exchange for those of 13 Israeli hostages. Our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson has been speaking to doctors, officials and forensic experts and found a lack of resources is making it difficult to confirm the identities of the dead

Palestinians. The desperate families gathered at Gaza's NASA Hospital this week were looking for their relatives, not among the wards of patients, but in the gruesome remains sent back by Israel under the ceasefire deal. Some of the bodies were naked, decomposed, and bearing what doctors say, are signs of torture. Dr. Ahmed Dare is head of the hospital's forensic unit. When a person is found naked with hands tied behind their back, invisible restraint marks on the rest and ankles,

it indicates that they died in that position. Likewise, the multiple injuries, bruises and marks found across the bodies or blindfolded with bindings around the neck. Dr Dare said his team was working out of a single room without proper facilities to store the bodies or carry out post-mortems or DNA tests. So far, only around 50 of almost 200 bodies brought back to Gaza during the ceasefire have been identified.

I'm just looking through dozens of photos of the body shared by Gaza's health officials. Some show deep indentations and can. cable ties around limbs, along with other injuries. But establishing what happened to the bodies before death and whether injuries are due to combat or abuse isn't always easy. We showed these photos to several forensic specialists who said they raised questions that were very difficult to answer without post-mortems. Human rights groups and whistleblowers have told us that detainees held without charge in Israeli jails were heavily restrained, especially at the

start of the war. Najee Abbas is head of the prisoners and detainees program at Physicians for Human Rights in Israel. At least in the first eight months of the war after October 2020, 23, detainees from Gaza were held when they were restrained and cuffed and their eyes were covered the whole time. 24 hours, seven days a week, for months that people developed serious infections on their skin, on their hands, on their legs, because of the cuffs. Israel said all the bodies returned to Gaza so far were fighters and denied tying anybody's before release. Shosh Pedrosian is a spokeswoman for the Israeli Prime Minister's office.

Israel, of course, adheres to all international law when it comes to any actions inside of the Gaza Strip. These types of reports that come out, it's just more evidence and more efforts to demonize Israel. Gaza's forensic team told us that Israel provided ID numbers for six of the bodies, five of which proved to be wrong. This week, Gaza buried 54 unnamed bodies because of a lack of space. Families of those missing in the war gathered for the funeral, unsure if they were burying a stranger or their nephew, brother or son. Women like Huayda Hamad. We are looking for my sister's son.

Every day I go with her to try to identify the body. But there is nothing to indicate if it's her. If there was DNA testing, we'd know. We'd know whether the one we're burying is really her son or not. Bodies without names, buried by families without relatives, at a funeral without closure. The war in Gaza has stopped, but a new battle for the truth has begun. That report by our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson. Still to come on the global news podcast.

Aintag zonder o'erlaub for the completeer marketing uptailing. One day's special leave for the whole marketing department. and a business trip to Paris. How one German firm used the robbery at the Louvre as a marketing opportunity. Now an update on a story you may have heard a few days ago on the podcast, the dangerous spike in air pollution in Delhi as a result of Diwali fireworks, stubble burning and colder weather.

Officials in the Indian capital are now trying a new tactic to clear the smog, creating rain through a process known as cloud seeding. I heard more from Sanjay Descupta. What happens is this. One uses an aircraft to add particles of silver iodide to an existing rain cloud. Now, silver iodide has a structure similar to that of ice. Water droplets in the cloud cluster around those bits of silver iodide and the cloud becomes heavier. And ultimately, there is rainfall.

People have tried it. differ in their opinions as to how effective it is. Beijing famously tried it during the Olympic Games, not to induce rain, but to keep rain from falling in its stadiums. And will this rain wash away the smog? That is the theory, or better to say, the hope. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party that now runs the government in Delhi, they have been elected recently, have always said that this is the way to go,

that you have to induce rain, the rain will wash away the dust particles from the air. Now, it is a fact that if there is heavy rain during the monsoons, for instance, the air does clear up. But as to whether you can induce rain to do this is an open question. So have they actually begun to do this in Delhi? Yes. What has happened is they have taken a Cessna light aircraft and started spraying the clouds. This was done on an experimental basis. It will be rolled out fully next week. And the Delhi chief minister is saying she expects rain on the 29th of October.

Quite how she can be so certain no one knows. But she has said that on 29th of October there will be rain. And does everybody buy this idea that cloud seeding will help get rid of the pollution in the city? No, of course not. This is a political idea which many scientists actually do not buy into. Two professors at Delhi Centre for Atmospheric Sciences have written an article in a newspaper today. They have condemned this plan as a gimmick, and they've gone on to say that snake oil solutions will not clear the air in Delhi or indeed anywhere in northern India. And just to remind us about why there is so much smog in Delhi at the moment.

It's partly these Diwali fireworks, but also the time of the year. It is the time of the year. it's winter when the smog happens because I think winter is when the fog mingles with the smoke and it becomes smog and it settles down. Winter is also the time just after the harvest when farmers across northern India start burning the stubble on their fields. So it's a deadly combination of crop burning, stubble burning at chili and factory pollution and of course Diwali fireworks. Though again experts have pointed out that fireworks are the least of the problems. The other problems are much bigger in scale.

Sanjay Descopter. When the dinosaurs were wiped out 66 million years ago, were they already in terminal decline. Some theories suggest that after dominating the planet for well over 100 million years, they were on their way out, even before the massive asteroid strike. But fossils found in modern-day New Mexico in the United States, and dated to just before the extinction event, suggest these creatures were, in fact, thriving, included in the discovery with the bones of the huge alamosaurus.

We heard more from Professor Steve Broussarty. Dinosaurus were going strong right up until that fateful moment one Friday morning, let's say, when this six-mile-wide rock fell out of the sky. And we think that because we have this growing list of fossils that we've been collecting, especially these new ones from New Mexico in America, and these were dinosaurs that we can date very accurately were living right before the asteroid, and there were a lot of these dinosaurs, including some of the very biggest dinosaurs that ever lived, the size of jet airplanes, they were there when the asteroid hit, and they wouldn't be there much longer.

Ever since the first dinosaur bones were discovered and described by scientists more than 200 years ago now, the obvious question is, what happened to these things? Where did these giant reptiles go? And over time, it became clear that there was this huge asteroid that hit the Earth right around the time that dinosaurs like T-Rex and Triceratops disappeared. But, of course, there were then contrarians to that view that held that the asteroid was wrongfully accused, that the real killer was this long-term decline in dinosaurs over time because of climate change and other things. But the work we've done here at the University of Edinburgh, where I teach and I study this big project we've done with international colleagues in America. we're seeing that's not really the case. The dinosaurs were not declining. They were going very strong. They were still dominant animals up until that shock of the asteroid. T-Rex itself was alive the day the asteroid hit. The biggest long-neck dinosaurs that weighed more than 50 tons. They were alive when the asteroid hit. And the climate and the environment changed so quickly that they couldn't adapt. Now, of course, out of that carnage came our mammal ancestors that were there, that stared down the asteroid, they were small, they could grow quickly, they could adapt easily, and they were the ones that made it through. And that's

why we're here today. So ultimately, this story of dinosaurs, it is connected to us. Paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Steve Broussate. Now, here's a question. What happens when almost all the women in an entire nation decide to go on strike? Well, 50 years ago today, 90% of women in Iceland walked out of their jobs and stopped doing housework, taking a stand for gender equality. The Women's Day off paved the way for Parliament to pass a law guaranteeing equal rights the following year. 50 years on, Iceland leads the world in gender parity.

And for the first time in history, every national leadership position is held by a woman. But Icelandic women, including the president, say there is still work to be done and have gone on strike again today. Anita Rani spoke to Tatiana Latinovich, president of Icelandic Women's Rights Association, and first to Christine Ausgirzda, former director of the Icelandic Centre for Gender Equality, who took part in that first strike. Me and my fellow student, we decided to go downtown and see what was going on. And it was an amazing experience. Coming down to this square and seeing women streaming to the square from all directions, it was really a really fantastic feeling this solidarity. You have to have in

mind that, well, now here in Iceland, we are only about 400,000 people. And well, what was it, 250,000 at that time. You know, it means that it's easy to reach people. You know, you phone, your friends, your relatives, and so on. And little by little, this atmosphere was built up. Tatiana, did this begin change for women in Iceland? Definitely. It's one of the milestones. I wouldn't say that it was a breaking point. But it did bring change.

Our first former president of Iceland is Fimbledo, the first democratically elected head of state in the world that came to power in 1980. She did say that it wouldn't have happened. if it hadn't been for the strike. And after that, several other women started participating more in the politics. So I think that even though as one event, maybe, it didn't solve everything, but it was a very important milestone. Christine, Iceland's considered a global leader in gender equality.

It's the only country to have closed the gender gap by more than 90%. You've got female president, prime minister, police chief, also women. So why are these marches still needed? What more needs to be done? Today, we are stressing two main issues. It's the situation on the labour market. Still, we haven't bridged the gender pay gap. And women's jobs, you know, jobs or professions where women are the majority,

they are undervalued. We are talking about teachers, nurses, you know, those who are taking care of the elderly, which are extremely important jobs. The labor market on one hand and on the other violence against women. Because although we have made some very important steps towards gender equality, gender-based violence is about the same as in other countries. Why haven't we done better in fighting violence against women first and foremost? But if I may go back to 1975, as I see it, what happened was first and foremost raising of consciousness, making women aware of their situation. You know, if we are going to change the world, if we're going to change our society, we have to do it ourselves.

Christine Ausgiers-Dottier and Tassiana Latinovich. A German company inadvertently became embroiled in the robbery at the Louvre Museum in Paris on Sunday when one of its furniture lifts was used in the heist. But the firm is making the most of the free publicity, as David Lewis explains. So how best to advertise your product to the world? Well, one German company isn't letting the small. all matter of a multi-million dollar robbery at the most famous museum of them all get in the way of getting their name out there.

Werner-based firm Burka has put out a message on their Insta, featuring the now famous image of one of its furniture ladders extending up to a balcony outside the gallery of Apollo. When you need to move fast, said a banner under the photo, the Burka Aguilo transports your treasures weighing up to 400 kilograms at 42 metres a minute, quiet as a whisper. The company's managing director, Alexander Berker, described the crime as absolutely reprehensible. But, he insists, when it became clear no one was hurt in the heist, it had used a touch of humour to draw attention to the family-run business, he told News Agency AFP. And who said the Germans had no sense of humour?

As a reminder, on Sunday, thieves made off with $102 million of France's crown jewels. A video has emerged of the alleged crooks escaping on the mechanical ladder. The hunt for that gang goes on. But the ploy seems to be a hit with those who've seen their socials. Give that marketing team a good raise, read one comment to the post. Another wrote, One day's special leave for the whole marketing department and a business trip to Paris.

That report by David Lewis. And that is all from us for now, but the global news podcast will be back very soon. This edition was mixed by Zabi Hula Karushan, Produced by Camilla Mills. Our editors, Karen Martin, I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.