Global News Podcast - Trump leaves Middle East while strikes on Gaza intensify

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

Airstrikes in north Gaza kill nearly 100 Palestinians. Trump ends Mideast trip with business deals but no Israeli hostage breakthrough. Russia-Ukraine peace talks start in Turkey. Plus: Eurovision finalists confirmed

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritzen and at 13 Hours GMT on Friday 16 May these are our main stories. Gaza's civil defence agency says the Israeli military has killed almost 100 people in the past 12 hours in another intense wave of strikes. President Trump leaves the Middle East, his first major trip of his second term. No breakthrough on the release of hostages in Gaza but significant business deals for US businesses. Peace talks involving Russian and Ukrainian representatives have begun in Turkey with expectations are low

after President Putin declined to attend. after President Putin declined to attend. Also in this podcast. People did like the milkshake man. And as you said, some of the lyrics were quite suggestive. Some of the music video was quite suggestive, but sadly it wasn't meant to be. Who did and who didn't make the Eurovision grand final kicking off in Basel, Switzerland on Saturday.

The civil defence agency in Gaza, which is run by Hamas, says the Israeli military has killed almost 100 people since midnight in another intense wave of strikes in the north of the territory. Israeli forces have been intensifying their bombardment of what they say are Hamas fighters and infrastructure ahead of a planned expansion of their ground offensive. Meanwhile Gaza has been under a complete Israeli blockade of all food and other humanitarian supplies for the last 10 weeks. Our Middle East correspondent Yoland Nel who's in Jerusalem gave us the latest. According to local sources it does appear to be a significant new operation with powerful airstrikes and artillery shelling in Bedlahia and Jebaliah overnight

but also Israeli troops said to have advanced into a neighborhood to the west of Bedlahia. There has been more response to all of this from the Israeli side with the Hostage Families Forum, this important group representing relatives of those still held captive, expressing concern about the latest attacks, calling again on the Israeli government to reach a hostage release and Gaza ceasefire deal, saying the state of Israel is hours away from the miss of the century. They're worried, as are many Palestinians, that President Trump could be set to leave this region without a breakthrough on Gaza.

Jolande, Marco Rubio used this word trouble. There's also these reports of a rift between Mr Trump and Mr Netanyahu. Is this having an impact on the nature of the military offensive? Certainly we're getting a lot more reports of that in the Israeli media as well, talking about how there has been an evident sort of shift, a division between the Trump administration and the Israeli government with increased frustration being expressed by key figures in the Trump administration. There are Israeli media quoting different sources saying that Steve Wittkopf, the special envoy of President Trump, told regional mediators though that still Washington does not plan to force a Benjamin Netanyahu to end this war amid his staunch refusal to

do so and apparently there had been some hopes of this in the Arab world given comments by Donald Trump and others, Donald Trump saying this was a very brutal war and he expressed a desire to end it earlier in this week. Very briefly, this plan to deliver aid with private companies, how workable? I mean, the UN has been saying it's both unethical and unworkable and one point that they refer to is the fact that there are only four or five distribution areas in the south of the Gaza Strip that are being talked about under this plan, whereas at the moment there have been more than 400 to try to reach all 2.1 million people living in the Gaza Strip.

Before these land, sea and airstrikes in northern Gaza, more than 100 Palestinians were reported to have been killed on Thursday. People in the southern city of Khan Yunis said it was one of the deadliest attacks there since Israel resumed its offensive in early March. Dr Victoria Rose is a British reconstructive surgeon at NASA Medical Complex in Khan Yunis, a hospital which has been struck by Israeli bombs in recent days. The hospital is absolutely full. I'm standing on the balcony at the moment overlooking the World Health Organization's tents that have been built for the overflow.

But it's busy, it's the busiest I've seen it, talking about thousands of people. The problem has been that we've really concentrated on the life and lens saving cases. So we have a huge outpatient department here of people that probably weren't operated on in a timely fashion. So there's quite a few people with shrapnel embedded that have managed to continue walking around, that have come up to the hospital yesterday

to our outpatients, knowing that we were here to see if we could help them. So there are thousands of people in need of medical care. And this is my third trip since the war started and obviously the local teams, although they're very talented, they're absolutely depleted now and exhausted. I am slightly worried at the moment but mainly because we are the last standing hospital in Khan Yunis and certainly accessible hospital in the south. In Israel there will be disappointment among some of the families of the remaining hostages as well as in some Arab countries that President Trump has left the region without reaching a diplomatic breakthrough.

He made this brief comment to journalists before boarding Air Force One. We're looking at Gaza and we've got to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving, a lot of people are, there's a lot of bad things going on. What President Trump has achieved on his four-day tour of the Middle East is a string of lucrative business deals for US companies including the Trump Organization now run by his sons. Our chief international correspondent, Lise Doucet, is in Abu Dhabi and has this assessment of the trip. When he arrived in the region, touched down on Tuesday morning, there were so much bits

of optimism swirling in the air. There were even celebrations in besieged Gaza. Gazans daring to hope that President Trump would do something, especially while he stopped in the Gulf state of Qatar, where so many of the negotiations have been taking place. And I should mention too, there was hope that he might actually do something on Ukraine as well. He kept talking about Gaza, saying we're looking at it in Saudi. He said, well, we hope the Gazans will have a good future. But he blamed Hamas without mentioning them by name, said the groups who kidnap and kill children cannot be allowed to continue. He repeated that again. And then when he left today, he did say that people are starving in Gaza.

And he said, but we are trying to sort it, and that good things could come. But you get a sense that, yes, he could do something, but he's not doing enough, given what we've been broadcasting on the bbc is happening now on the ground Yeah concern at the humanitarian situation, but that was not criticism of the israelis. Was it? No, he doesn't he was very careful throughout this trip not to criticize the Israelis, even though just before he Left the united states his you his envoy for everything, Steve Witkoff, had made unprecedented public criticism of Israel accusing Israel of trying to drag the war on the hostages, then went to Doha for what was described as 11th hour negotiations. But when I spoke to an advisor to the Qatari Prime Minister on on Wednesday, on Thursday rather,

he was very bitter. He said the Israelis are not taking this opportunity. That was the day where there was more attacks, where there were reports of a hundred dead. And he said, you know, another massacre in his words has happened. And he said, we're trying to put pressure on both sides. And there is a sense among the Qataris and the Egyptians, who are the other medias, that this was a missed opportunity, even a comment by the Qataris that they think the United States is losing interest. Mr Trump chose not to visit Benjamin Netanyahu. Is there a rift developing there?

The relationship between Israel and the United States of America is ironclad. It doesn't matter which party's in power, it doesn't matter which president is in power. They may have differences about how they carry out this relationship but the relationship is solid. But there has been growing strange between President Trump it seems and Prime Minister Netanyahu. President Trump wants good news. He wants to make economic deals. His slogan here is peace through strength.

He wants wars to end. It's not a good look, he feels, for him as president, who sees himself as the world's best dealmaker, to have these horrific scenes in Gaza. And as I mentioned, he refers to them. But the question is, how much I mentioned he refers to them but the question is how much pressure is he willing to put on Israel and how much

Prime Minister Netanyahu is willing to do because he wants to keep his government and himself in power. Lee Stucett. Although President Trump has left the region his stance on Israel remains a contentious issue back home. A long-standing ally support for Israel among the American people is waning. A recent Gallstanding ally, support for Israel among the American people is waning. A recent Gallup poll showed it at 48% its lowest level in 25 years. Protests over the war in Gaza have been relatively small but some high profile. This week Ben Cohen, the co-founder of the billion dollar ice

cream company Ben & Jerry's, disrupted a Senate hearing at which Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was giving testimony. I'm presenting today supports these goals and reflects. What did you do? Congress pays for bonds that kills people. While the committee conducts its business, Capitol Police are asked to remove... Mr Cohen was escorted from the building by police.

He was charged with a misdemeanour offence and paid a $50 fine, while another six demonstrators were also arrested and face a number of more serious charges. The BBC spoke with the freed Mr Cohen from his home in Philadelphia. I could not feel good about my country using my dollars to buy 20 billion dollars worth of bombs and give it to Israel to go and kill a bunch of innocent people. The only way I can continue to be a citizen of my country is to protest what my country is doing. Otherwise, I'm accepting it. Otherwise, I'm agreeing with it. If Israel is so dependent on the U.S., insists that Israel let food, medicine into Gaza so that they don't starve people to death. Well I want to emphasize that I'm speaking to you now as an individual and the action I took was as

an individual, it was not, but I can tell you that for Ben and Jerry's it has a social mission and it has a set of values. You know, those stands are generally about justice. So we take those stands and, you know, some people agree with them, some people don't. It's okay. Ben Cohen. Still to come in this podcast, when an exam is a reward, not a punishment, after a boy saves the life of his classmate. And doctors say that this 18-year-old saved the life of his friend. There was a social media outcry in China and they've now relented.

He'll be allowed to take the test. To Istanbul, where there appear to be positive signs for Russia and Ukraine in their peace talks. No doubt a symbolic moment in the war, the city where East meets West and, more importantly, the first face-to-face meeting in three years. However, no one expects any breakthrough when it comes to ending the conflict. President Putin named the date and the place but he didn't turn up on Thursday when the talks weren't to start. The Russian leader didn't even send one of his senior ministers. The EU's foreign policy chief Kaya Kalas said Russia wasn't committed to the process. Putin doesn't dare to come really so I think downplaying this shows

that they are not serious about the real peace talks. This is clear for everybody. And I think it's important to see, also, that the whole world sees that Russia is playing games. President Zelensky is also not in attendance, instead sending his defense minister. Speaking from a summit in Albania, the Ukrainian president said he was closely following developments at the talks in Turkey.

Ukraine is ready to take all realistic steps to end this war. I call on Putin to give his delegation real authority and we need a full stop to the killing long enough to give diplomacy a real chance. Secondly, we must build at least a minimum level of trust in the negotiation process. This can be done by releasing prisoners of war, returning Ukrainian children taken by Russia and releasing civilian hostages currently held by the Russian side. Vitaliy Shevchenko, Russia editor at BBC Monitoring, is in Istanbul. As we speak, Alex, they've been talking to each

other for more than an hour, which is a good sign. Nobody's walked out. They are prepared to listen to each other. They are at the negotiating table. It's a completely different matter what they will be able to achieve because their positions are very different. The Ukrainians, they've been saying that they need an immediate ceasefire lasting more than 30 days. The Russian position is different. They say they want to address what they call the root causes of this crisis and that means the reasons why they started this war, i.e. the very existence of Ukraine as a sovereign state. So there's progress, there's movement, at least they're talking

to each other, Alex. Briefly, Vitaly, it sounds as though the two sides are a long way apart. Is there any chance that anything could be agreed at this? I'm really sceptical, to be honest. The bottom line is that the Russian army is still killing civilians in Ukraine. Just this morning I've seen reports of at least two civilians killed, one in Kharkiv region, another in Kherson region. That's what matters really. There's no will on Russia's part to stop it. Vitaly Shevchenko. Data centers are the factories of the future. They are air-conditioned warehouses stuffed

with powerful computers which were away 24 hours a day. They are the grey matter in the brains of artificial intelligence. The world's biggest cloud computing firm, Amazon Web Services, has more than 300 across the world and has announced a $10 billion investment in news centres in the UK over the next four years. The chief executive, Matt Garman, has been speaking to our business editor, Simon Jack. We're making huge investments in renewable energy. In fact, we're the single largest purchaser of brand new renewable projects around the world for each of the last five

years. And I think the world is going to have to continue to build new technologies. I believe nuclear is a big part of that as we look, particularly as we look 10 years out, that is going to have to be one of the solutions that are likely the world is going to need for the electricity demands that we're going to have. We've just seen big blackouts in Spain and Portugal, which were blamed on the Iberian peninsula's over-reliance on renewables. And I'm guessing your data center needs an uninterruptible power supply, because it's mission critical to so many functions

that you talked about. Is renewables the answer to that, or is it nuclear? What are you doing in the US? I think it's gotta be a combination of some of those things. In the intermediate term, it's renewables, some of that is supplemented with natural gas and other fossil fuels. And nuclear is a great solution for that in the future,

because obviously it's an excellent source of carbon zero 24 by 7 power. I think there's lots of also research going into batteries and other storage facilities that allow you to do 24 by 7 and capture more of the solar and wind power but I think it's going to be a combination of those and it's a portfolio effect. It cannot be one technology that's going to solve all of those things. You talked about security we've just had in the UK I don't know if you've been aware of this, a number of big retailers get hit by ransomware and whatever. And if AI is so smart, what's to stop the bad guys mobilising it to get as good at attacking you as you are defending, I guess?

Well, you can be sure that they will likely try. I mean, I think that's true of any new technology that has come out, whether it's the internet or whether it's computers or whether it's AI. And our job is to stay ahead of that. And we invest a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of research into identifying patterns, figuring out where customers are going. One of the interesting things that we do, actually,

because of our global footprint, we have a service that we call, it's the interesting things that we do actually, because of our global footprint, we have a service that we call, it's an internal service that we call Madpot, where we actually can look at the global set of traffic and we have honeypots out there and we can see patterns and using AI detect when people are trying to do security infiltrations of customers and we take that information, match those traffic patterns that we see in these honeypots that we build to try to identify where there's, you know, nefarious agents out there. I've seen Bill Gates say recently in an interview that humans might not be needed for a lot of tasks.

Is there any part of you which has misgivings about the direction we're headed? Does anything keep you awake at night and say, boy, we're about to unleash something which we may regret, almost like an Oppenheimer-like responsibility? I feel responsibility for our customers every single day. So every day I wake up, I worry, how are we doing the right thing for our customers? What about the whole human race? Well, I'm not sure if I'm responsible for the whole human race, but I think it's all of our responsibilities to think about that. And so with regards to this technology, absolutely.

We try to think about what are the belts and suspenders that we can put on this technology to as best to our ability prevented from being used for some bad purpose? Matt Garman from Amazon Web Services speaking to Simon Jack Australia's most highly decorated living soldier has lost an appeal against a landmark court ruling that he committed war crimes in Afghanistan Ben Robert Smith who was awarded the country's highest award for bravery in battle Afghanistan. Ben Robert Smith, who was awarded the country's highest award for bravery in battle, the Victoria Cross has always denied the allegations. Our correspondent in Sydney, Phil Mercer, gave us the details. These allegations date back well over a decade and a half in Afghanistan. Back

in 2018, three Australian newspapers published a series of stories alleging that Ben Robert Smith, Australia's most decorated living soldier and a former corporal in the Special Forces, was a war criminal. In response, Mr Robert Smith launched a very high profile defamation case against the media in Australia at the end of that defamation trial in 2023. The judge threw out the former soldier's case, insisting that on the balance of probabilities, he was involved in the murders of four unarmed Afghan prisoners. And Mr. Robert Smith, in response, launched an appeal. And that brings us to today's hearing at the federal court. It has

unanimously thrown out Ben Robert Smith's appeal but it's not over. We are hearing from his legal team, the former soldier's legal team, that there could well be a high court challenge saying that he vigorously denies what he describes as egregious and spiteful allegations against him. Phil Mercer in Sydney. Now to a good news story from China. A rethink from the education authorities after a heroic student sacrificed his exam to save a classmate. He was initially barred from taking the test until a successful social media campaign came to his defence. I heard more from our Asia Pacific editor Celia Hatton. This story goes back to the moment when two young men, two 18 year olds, were on their way to an exam. They hailed a taxi in order

to get to the exam hall and they've actually released the video that was taken from inside the taxi. You suddenly see one of the young men just collapse onto the lap of his friend. And his friend jumps into action. He tells the driver to call the hospital and to also just get to the hospital as quickly as possible. And you see him start to give chest compressions to his friend who's collapsed in the back of the car. This goes on for some time. The two are racing towards the hospital. The taxi driver actually went through seven red lights in order to get there in record

speed time. And it turns out that the taxi driver and this 18-year-old boy worked together to rescue the life of this young man who had collapsed. He'd actually been having a heart attack. And doctors say that this 18-year-old saved the life of his friend. The problem was he missed the exam that he was supposed to be taking. And at first, the exam board said was supposed to be taking and at first the exam board said no, you're going to have to wait another year to be able to retake the exam. We're not going to allow you to take it. But there was a social media outcry in

China and they've now relented. He'll be allowed to take the test. Celia Hatton. We now know the full line-up for Saturday's Eurovision Song Contest after the second semi-final in the Swiss city of Basel. The last country to compete in the grand final on Saturday is... Greece! The Greek delegation's success signalling the shock elimination of the Australian entry Milkshake Man, one of the more entertaining acts of the night, dressed in a jumpsuit adorned with glitter and sparkles. Montenegro, Ireland, Georgia, the Czech Republic and Serbia also failed to qualify. The BBC's Charlotte Gallacher is in Basel and has been talking me through what to expect

and why the cheeky Australian exit came as such a surprise. People did like the Milkshake Man and as you said, some of the lyrics were quite suggestive, some of the music video was quite suggestive, but it was one of those classic Eurovision pop songs. We certainly thought here, lots of Australians had come here as well. They'd made the journey all the way from Australia to Switzerland to come and support their act, but sadly it wasn't meant to be.

So I think that was one of the real surprises of the two semifinals. I mean, also Australia, they went first last night, which is always difficult. You've got to open the show, you're not going after someone else who's made a good or bad impression, it's all on you. So I think they were unlucky as well to have to go first last night. And Charlotte, what else is making a good impression this year? People really liked Finland last night, so that's a singer called Erika. She's well known already in Finland. She had an incredible performance.

And I think with her, it's half about the song and it's half about the performance because she was on top of a golden microphone as it was lifted on the stage. It was really high energy. When you saw it, you thought, yes, I can imagine that winning. It's a real winning performance. But of course, on the night, the votes are split between the jurors, so they are music industry professionals who cast some of the votes and then also people at home who are casting votes. And you don't have to live in Europe in order to vote, you can live anywhere in the world and you can still vote at watch and join in with Eurovision. Organisers say six protesters were removed from a dress rehearsal on Thursday after attempting to disrupt a performance by the Israeli entry, who will be competing in Saturday's final.

The world's biggest song competition has extensive security measures in place, along with hundreds of people working behind the scenes, creating the hair, the make-up, the lighting, the pyrotechnics and so much more. John O'Callaghan is a Canadian working for the EBU, which organises the entire event. He's been giving us a backstage tour. I'm still finding my way around this, the Warrens of this place. In fact, I got lost the other day and found myself backstage. But here we are again. We're just about to go through sort of the great concrete back Warrens along the delegation walkway.

And if we find our way, we will pop up near the stage. My name's Kate. As soon as you get that email, my God, I'm going to be part of Eurovision. And I didn't, you know, I didn't care what I was gonna be doing, you know, sweeping floors, emptying bins. And we've had a great time because we've been able to escort the media to the dress rehearsals. On the Sunday, we were all shipped out to Basel itself

and where they were doing the turquoise carpet. But you could see how professional they all were. I mean, they worked really, really hard. Well, we went through that final door around the back and just racks and racks and racks of equipment and a big black curtain. And we come around the corner and we are now standing just on the very edge of the stage

going up to the ramp. And we can see the whole arena now and they're testing all of the lights. So it's very, very colorful. My name's Tim Routledge. I'm the lighting designer for this year's Eurovision. This is the biggest lighting rig in Eurovision history by a long way.

I was blessed with a beautiful set by set designer Florian Vida, which is this amazing portrait frame, the mountains and the huge transparent screen. I was then responsible for integrating four and a half thousand lights into that. So integrating all the moving lights around the frame, our three dimensional grids,

and then the 30 huge trusses that move and change the architectural stage for every performance. My name's Hayley Seward. I'm the lead person for the whole of the stylist here at the bubble. We have over 28 stylists here with us this week doing hair for all of the delegations. Do you want to know how many appointments we've had already? Yes please, I do.

Okay so today as of this minute we are at 670. There's a lot that's gone into it, yeah. I'm Francesca Owen, I'm a vocal and performance coach with the Luxembourgish delegation. I very much look at the artists keeping themselves at their best for the competition, working with them through any challenges that they're going more from a psychological perspective. So they hired us then to come out to Eurovision to work not only with the artist, but actually with the whole delegation from that perspective as well. Well, here we are back in the arena and we're up on the side. All of the house lights are up and on. We have the audience in here now and we're looking out across at the delegation areas

where everybody will be sitting very expectantly waiting the final vote and the final count to see if they're the champions of the grand final. John O'Callaghan with a behind the scenes look into the 69th Eurovision Song Contest, the grand finale on Saturday in Basel. And that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at BBC dot co dot UK.

You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Holly Smith and the producers, Rebecca Wood and Ella Bicknell. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritzen. Until next time, goodbye.