Global News Podcast - Trump to deploy 700 marines to Los Angeles

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

California sues Trump for deploying National Guard without Governor's permission. Also: another prisoner swap gets underway between Russia and Ukraine.

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson and in the early hours of Tuesday the 10th of June these are our main stories. President Trump says he'll deploy up to 700 Marines to Los Angeles on the fourth day of protests. Another prisoner swap gets underway between Russia and Ukraine after last week's talks in Istanbul. Also in this podcast. I absolutely have been used for biological experimentation. I have no doubt in my mind about that.

But, yeah, I'm extremely satisfied and I'm just happy to be a part of this and be able to help other people. We hear from a man with a microchip implanted into his brain. Demonstrations are underway in Los Angeles for the fourth day running as we're getting reports that the Pentagon is deploying hundreds of Marines to the city where people have been protesting against President Donald Trump's immigration and deportation policies. The latest move follows Mr Trump's controversial decision to send the National Guard to defend

federal buildings in the city. The President is now being sued for sending in the military without the permission of the state's Democratic Governor. Here's California's Attorney General Rob Bonta. I, in partnership with Governor Gavin Newsom, are suing President Trump and asking the court to set aside the president's unlawful action federalizing the California National Guard. With this order, Trump and Hegseth ignored law enforcement's expertise and guidance and trampled over our state's California's sovereignty. Speaking at the White House, President Trump criticized California's Governor Gavin Newsom and defended his deployment of the National Guard.

He's let people come in by the millions who are overrunning your hospitals, your education system, and your police are being overrun. Look at what's happened. He should only be happy I sent in the military because if I didn't send them in, you would have had a problem there, the likes of which we haven't seen in a long time. I got the latest from our senior North America correspondent, John Sudworth, who's in Los Angeles. We've been watching some of the protesters, Valerie, outside the detention centre, which has been one of the focal points for the demonstrations

over the past few days. This is a detention centre where some of the immigrants arrested in those workplace raids have been brought to. Things are generally still fairly peaceful, certainly slightly less violent and intense than yesterday. There have been some instances where the police have moved the protesters down the road, cleared junctions. But so far the protesters have been marching, they've been noisy, they've been waving banners and signs calling for the release of those immigrants who've been detained. But as yet, no repeats of the scenes we saw over the weekend with the use of tear gas and rubber bullets. But there are huge numbers of police here. This city has brought in reinforcements from outside of Los Angeles County clearly with the intent

of getting on top of the violence before it's able to really sort of escalate and so far at least although it's early here of course only just gone three o'clock in the afternoon so far it seems to be having some success. And we're now of course getting these reports that the Pentagon is deploying hundreds of Marines to the city. Yes, so conflicting reports about that. Some new sources have suggested that they are being deployed. What we know for certain of course is that the Defense Secretary had said a couple of days ago that Marines at a base in California were being put on standby in preparedness that they might need to be deployed. And it's unclear whether those news reports that we're seeing here

over the past couple of hours suggesting that they may now indeed be on their way are true or not. So very, very fluid. If that were to be the case, then of course for the authorities in this city, the mayor as well as the governor of the state, that would be seen as an even further escalation. They would undoubtedly see that as compounding the issue already. What you've been reporting, that this is essentially now a battle between state rights as they see it and California's autonomy in deciding how to deal with trouble and protest and questions over the extent of executive authority in the White House. Yes, because of course they're already suing the Trump administration over this, aren't

they? They are. So that legal action was launched today. They are essentially saying that the piece of legislation that President Trump has used to deploy the National Guard has been misinterpreted. Essentially, it does not give him the authority that it claims it does. It suggests indeed that in cases of insurrection and rebellion, he would have that right. But even then, it would need to be done, according to the wording of the legislation, through the state governor. So I think the argument in court will all be focused on what that particular phrase means. Does it need the consent of Gavin Newsom as governor of California or not? Because clearly he does not consent. He does not think this

is a good idea. He thinks that the law enforcement they have already in this city and in this state is sufficient to deal with what is happening, which he would argue falls a long, long way short of rebellion or insurrection. John Sudworth in Los Angeles. Ukraine's President Zelensky says Russia unleashed another major aerial assault overnight on Sunday, deploying nearly 500 missiles and drones. The Ukrainian Air Force says the Dubno airbase in the country's western region of Rivne was one of the main targets. Russia's defence ministry said it was in retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on its own airbases. Yet, in the midst of what looks like an escalation of violence, a multi-stage prisoner exchange has begun, with the first group consisting

of wounded soldiers and military personnel under 25 years of age, taking place on the border with Belarus. Some of those freed celebrated as they crossed back into Ukraine. Our correspondent Paul Adams spoke to the families of some of the released prisoners. When a coach bearing the newly released prisoners drew up and the doors opened, a crowd of anxious women surged forward, many of them carrying pictures of missing husbands, brothers and sons. It seemed very few had come here expecting to be reunited, most just wanted information. Their faces were not full of joy, but etched with deep, prolonged anxiety. Many have waited

years for news. We got only fleeting glimpses of the POWs as they were whisked through the crowd and into a nearby building. They were all young between 18 and 24. Most had shaved heads and looked thin. We were not allowed to ask them about their treatment but Petro Yatsenko, a government official who deals with prisoners of war, said it had not been good. When one of the returned prisoners appeared at an upstairs window, women shouted the names of regiments up at him, desperate for scraps of news.

He apologised, made a heart sign with his hands and shouted, glory to Ukraine. Paul Adams. Elon Musk makes headlines almost daily but arguably one of his most ambitious ventures flies under the radar. That's Neuralink, the company developing brain-computer interfaces, technology that sounds like science fiction but is rapidly becoming reality which involves implanting microchips directly into people's brains. Eighty months ago, the project made headlines when a man aged around 30 from Arizona was the first person to have one of those chips inserted. Nolan Arbaugh was paralysed from the neck down after a swimming accident nine years ago.

He's been speaking to the BBC's Evan Davis about his experience with Neuralink. One of my buddies from college called me up, a little bit too tipsy at 10 a.m. on a Wednesday morning and said, do you want to get a chip in your brain? And I was like, well, got nothing better going on. So he helped me apply over the phone. Four months after I applied, I was getting brain surgery. Do you understand what they did? I mean, putting a chip in a brain is a sort of sci-fi film kind of thing to do. Yeah.

So they did what's called a craniotomy or craniotomy. They cut a hole in my skull and then had the surgical robot. They built implant 64 threads with 16 electrodes on each thread into my motor cortex on my left side of my brain, specifically correlating to like my right hand movement. And essentially what is happening is the electrodes are picking up signals from the neurons in my brain as I'm firing, as I'm trying to move my right hand. Right, so it all comes down to the fact that

although your brain can't move your arm, you can think I'm trying to move my arm here in the same way you did before you lost the use of the arm. Yep, all of the neurons are still firing, they're all kicking up there, it's just that there's a break in my spinal cord so the signals just don't get through. It's a lot like controlling a mouse, that's probably one of the best ways to put it. That's it for now. I can control a mouse, but also connect my computer to different devices, a phone or a gaming console, and use the same inputs that I was giving my computer to output things

on a console or on my phone. Just out of interest, I mean, your speech has not been affected by the injury and what is the advantage of this approach to just giving you speech control over a computer up, down, left, click this, do that? I had speech control on a computer before Neuralink, a Mac. I used that for maybe a couple of years before Neuralink. Mac, I used that for maybe a couple of years before Neuralink, and it's just not very good. I can navigate around the computer, I can do things, but at a very, very lower proficiency than I can with Neuralink, it's not very good.

So to cut to the chase here, you're a satisfied customer at the moment of Neuralink. You're not feeling like I've been used here for biological experimentation. I mean, your feeling has helped. Oh, no, I absolutely have been used for biological experimentation. I have no doubt in my mind about that. But yeah, I'm extremely satisfied. I have been very, very pleased with what they've done, with what they're doing, the direction they're going, and I'm just happy to be a part of this and be able to help other people.

Nolan Darboer talking there to Evan Davis. The Ocean Conference is taking place in Nice in the south of France, bringing together 56 heads of state and government. The aim is to protect the deepest oceans and to implement the High Seas Treaty, which was adopted by UN member states two years ago. Some countries have still not ratified the agreement and no US delegation is attending the conference. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said the EU would also introduce

its first ever ocean pact. Jacques Cousteau once said, the sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, we are all in the same boat. But by working together, we can make it happen to have a good future of the ocean. It's in our hands. I heard more about the High Seas Treaty from our climate and science correspondent Esme Stallard who's in Nice. A few years ago countries agreed that 30% of the land and ocean needs to be protected. Now obviously in your own national waters that's easier said than done but for the

high seas or international waters there is no one country that controls those so the High Seas Treaty was developed and in that countries agreed that they would put 30% of the oceans, the international waters into marine protected areas by 2030. Now that's all well and good, but you need 60 countries to ratify that for it to come into force. Now, coming into this conference, as of last week, there was only 32 countries that had ratified that. But President Macron, who is co-hosting with Costa

Rica shared some positive news this morning that 15 more have signed overnight and in fact we're hearing from ministers here they're a little bit delayed but I'm sat outside the plenary here and we're expecting to hear that more might have signed up so we are creeping up to those 60 at the moment. So is it considered a success so far and what more is expected from the talks that are ongoing this week? Well there are many issues on the table, as I mentioned deep sea mining but also plastic pollution over fishing is another one, climate change, they're not all going to be solved in this week but the UN very publicly has said the High Seas Treaty is one of their

key aims and I think for the other issues around bottom trawling and deep sea mining what countries will want to see is at least some level of agreement in terms of direction. So for those marine protected areas, does that mean we try and stop the worst types of fishing in those areas? Does that mean we stop deep sea exploitation? So I think having some consensus on what the future of that might look like. Esme Stallard in Nice. A referendum in Italy to ease citizenship rules and improve the protection of workers' rights has been declared invalid. After two days of voting, turnout was about 30%, well short of the 50% threshold required to make the vote binding.

It's a win for the right-wing government of Prime Minister Giorgio Maloney, who'd urged people to boycott the vote, saying they should go to the beach rather than the polling station. Our correspondent in Rome, Sarah Rainsford, gave us this update. In the end it was around 30 percent of whom 64 percent voted yes for this change and for the other questions on the ballot paper which were about labour rights. I mean I was in a polling station and that seems about right, but basically there was a government boycott. The government didn't even want to talk about this issue and they certainly didn't want to change the rules. And in the end, the government essentially won. The vote would certainly have brought Italy more in line with the majority of EU countries. But I think the way it was argued here, although there wasn't a huge amount of argument about it, was that the rules were fine as they were. We did eventually hear from the Prime Minister, Georgia Maloney,

who came out last week and said that the law on citizenship right now was excellent, she said, and it did not need to be changed. But for those who were affected and for the left-wing groups and the trade unions and the activists who were pushing this, they had multiple reasons for it. One of them was the sort of human version, which is that there are many people who were born to foreign nationals in Italy and many years later still are not citizens. So people who were born and lived their entire lives in Italy who don't qualify for citizenship and this was to help them. But also there's an economic argument that supporters of the referendum

were making, which is that Italy needs workers. And these people that would have been affected by the law, by the change, potential change in the law, are people who are here legally, working legally and, you know, not undocumented migrants. Sarah Rainsford. Still to come on this podcast. Still to come on this podcast... What is the best way to count monkeys? We hear why Sri Lanka may be making a wild miscalculation.

China's Vice Premier, Hailey Feng, has held a brief meeting in London for a second round of talks with US officials aimed at ending the ongoing trade war between the world's two biggest economies. More from our Asia Pacific editor Celia Hatton. The latest round of negotiations comes as both the US and China are feeling the pinch from tariffs and restrictions they've imposed on one another Fresh data out today shows that China's export growth slowed to a three-month low in May Mostly due to existing US tariffs American companies are hoping Beijing will release the rare earth metals

They need to manufacture a host of items, including most cars. Beijing, which has a monopoly on the crucial rare earth sector, restricted exports to the U.S., but recently eased shipments to the EU and Japan. It's unclear whether China will give the U.S. the same treatment. President Trump's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is part of the US delegation. He's in charge of export controls on advanced computer chips, suggesting restrictions on their sale in China will likely be raised during the meeting.

Celia Hatton. President Donald Trump's sweeping new travel ban has come into force, blocking entry to the US for citizens from 12 countries, including Haiti. More than a million people of Haitian descent live in the United States. So what could the ban mean for them and for their relatives still in Haiti, many of whom are desperate to escape escalating gang violence in the country? Jacqueline Charles is the Haiti correspondent for the Miami Herald and she's been speaking to the BBC's Rebecca Kesby. The concerns is that this is going to separate families. I mean, Haiti hasn't had regular visa processing since before COVID.

The COVID epidemic, that slowed things down. The embassy was closed, it was opened, they had created a backlog, and then the security situation made things worse. So you actually have people in Haiti who have been waiting now for several years and the first available appointments weren't even available until 2026. We know clearly with this travel ban is that all of that processing has now been suspended.

Meanwhile, today what we are waiting to see is whether or not people with valid visas that were issued before the eighth of June, whether or not they will be allowed in. There is a flight that's scheduled to land this afternoon from Haiti. We have teams that are out both in Haiti and here checking to see whether or not individuals will be denied entry. The State Department has made it very clear they are not canceling visas, but it's going to be up to the Department of Homeland Security to determine whether somebody will be allowed in or out.

The reality is that you have families that have already separated, where one parent came to the United States, and they're here, they're with their kids, they may even have legal residency and maybe their kids do or their kids don't, or it's a mixed immigration family. But the other parent is in Haiti and they come back and forth regularly despite the difficulties of doing that. Also with commerce, you know, Haiti is so dependent on the United States for trading and that the idea that Haitians would be, you know, prevented from freely being able to access the U.S. has, you know, potentially detrimental effects, especially on the economy. Haiti will basically be isolated. Remember that the FAA has a ban on US commercial airlines into Port-au-Prince. There is only

one regular airline. It's a charter plane where you can access the two countries. And what authorities there are in Haiti have been appealing for some time for the US authorities to do more to stop the smuggling of arms and weapons from the states into Haiti to the gangs. Exactly, so Haitians feel that they are being punished with a problem where the US is not completely immune from, that the guns are coming from Florida, that's what the gangs are using to create this violence and a humanitarian disaster. Over 5 million people, almost half the population today that's going hungry and this is a transitional government that was put in place by the United States. It's a police force that the United States heavily funds so it's a lot of issues.

Jacqueline Charles speaking to Rebecca Kesby. Extreme heat can have a huge impact on people's lives and in recent years southern Europe has been hit by severe heat waves. Now the Spanish city of Seville has carried out a pilot scheme aimed at naming heat waves in order to raise awareness about them. The scheme uses an algorithm that forecasts heat waves and categorises them based on how damaging they might be. Ashi Sharma reports from Seville. In the summer this city is one of the hottest in Spain and this has an impact on many local

businesses especially in tourism. Daniel gathers his group of 12 international tourists. They're about to go on a three hour bicycle tour of the city. We've been on two tours and the guides even say that the place shuts down in July and August. They were telling us that, saying there's nothing open, there's no point coming, it's 45 degrees. The pilot scheme, the first of its kind, was called Prometeo.

By the time it ended last year, several severe heat waves had been identified and named in Seville. My name is Adriana Llanos and I'm the manager of Seabai Bike. So during winter time and summer time we focus on doing office work because we don't have many bookings and during high season as spring and fall we are usually only focused on tours because we have lots and lots of customers. So during summer time what we do is changing our tours. So instead of starting the tour at 2.30, we start at 9 a.m. For us, it would be very useful to name the heat waves.

That would mean that we are talking more about the heat waves. That way we could organize easier the changes we have to do and never cancel. We always stay in the shade. I know every single shade in town. Heat waves don't have names unlike storms or hurricanes which are also categorized but for all natural weather phenomena they can have the greatest impact on people's lives on overall public health and the local economy. The algorithm was established by the Atlantic Council and worked upon in the city by the University of Seville in

cooperation with the local government. Jorge Gastelamundi is a senior director of the Atlantic Council's Climate Resilience Center. In Seville, people usually assume, you know, I'm used to hot, this is nothing new, but the fact that they were named alerted them that this was something probably different to what they were used to. We also found that women were more attuned to the fact that they needed to take action similar to more wealthy neighborhoods as well as the elderly. Were there any aspects of the project which you looked at afterwards, which you realized really could serve companies or local economies in some way. We realised that this same algorithm that connects all these different factors could be used for the insurance sector because they need triggers.

They need to understand when, when they're insuring a particular route or service, that, you know, they will have the right data to understand when they need to pay or when they don't need to pay. Heatwaves are silent killers. They catch out the vulnerable and quietly devastate the economy through their impact on health. Finding ways to combat them, be it by naming them or categorizing them, could be one answer to deal with the future in which our urban centres become even hotter. That report by Ashish Sharma. Sri Lanka is famous for its wildlife, with humans sharing

the island with noisy creatures like this. Well that's the sound of the peacock and this. And that's the top macaque monkey. But for those working in agriculture in Sri Lanka, wild animals can cause problems as they ruin their crops. The authorities conducted a nationwide survey in March of wildlife that destroys crops. But now the government is withholding the results of the study, saying the data collected by some farmers appears to be unrealistic. As Scythasia regional editor Anbarasen Etherajan told us more.

According to the deputy environment minister, some of the figures were unbelievable unrealistic. What they did in mid-March was, it was not very scientific, they gave a small questionnaire printed in Sinhala and Tamil languages and given them five minutes time, get out of the house, go near the farm or next to you in a garden, look around, see how many monkeys are there, peacocks are there, just note it down and hand it over. But there was a lot of criticism because this was not very methodical and how far you can really trust this over. But there was a lot of criticism because this was not very methodical and how far you can really trust this survey.

But the government accepted it was not very scientific, but this was the most cost effective way and getting the entire communities involved in this whole project because nearly one third of the Sri Lankan population, about eight million people, are involved in agriculture. And these are a huge problem. These are like peacocks, wild boars,

and squirrels, and monkeys are a huge problem. But this particular survey focused only on animals which you can find during the daytime. That means elephants, wild boars, and porcupines are not included. So now the government says they're going to reassess the whole survey, and then

come out with a decision so that they can prepare a national plan on how to tackle the problem of increasing these animals coming and eating agricultural products. So how did they know the figures were so wrong? Were people talking about millions of monkeys and peacocks and boars? Because in some areas where the numbers are very high, you can't even estimate that so many monkeys were there. So the officials believe that probably the villagers or the farmers exaggerated the numbers so that there'll be more attention to their own area. So this has become turning into a tragic comedy where they were expecting some positive results,

but then it ended up people coming out with some inflated figures, and that is what is throwing them back. Sri Lanka is going through a difficult economic situation, so they don't have enough money to conduct an extensive survey at this point. So they thought by involving the communities, they can get them interested in the subject,

number one, number two, it doesn't cost them any money, except for printing these questionnaires and giving it to them. So now they're trying to work out how best they can use the numbers, because the whole nation participated. It was like an event for five minutes. Everyone was so excited, kids, families.

But if the numbers are wrong, then it is. But the numbers are wrong. So that's why a lot of people, like opposition groups are saying, it's a total waste of money and time. And Bereson, if it are wrong. So that's why a lot of people like opposition groups are saying it's a total waste of money and time. And Barasan Ethirajar. And finally, one of Britain's most successful thriller writers, Frederick Forsyth, has died following a brief illness. He was 86. He's thought to have sold more than 70 million copies of books such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa

File and The Fourth Protocol. Peter Hyatt looks back at his life. Frederick Forsyth was a journalist for the Reuters news agency in Paris and then the BBC before turning his hand to thriller writing. He left the BBC when he said it wanted to stop him covering the Biafran War in Nigeria when hundreds of thousands of people died. He remained in Biafra and went freelance. But he was broke and staying with a friend in London when he wrote up an idea he'd had in his Paris

reporting days about an attempt to kill President Charles de Gaulle. In desperation the OAS terrorists hired a professional killer. His code name, the Jackal. This is a once-in-a-lifetime job. Whoever does it can never work again. How much do you want? Half a million. What? In cash. I'd like to know how you expect us to find half a million dollars so quickly. Written in 35 days on a bullet-scarred typewriter, The Day of the Jackal became a bestseller and a hit movie. It set the template for a series of future successes based in part on his own life experiences and the techniques he'd picked up as a reporter. His forensic attention to detail meant they often read like journalistic reconstructions, except with more sex. In a later autobiography, he revealed what many of his readers had long suspected, that he'd

had a sideline working for British intelligence, though he insisted he never took a penny for it. Peter Hyatt on the author Frederick Forsyth who's died at the age of 86. And that's it from us for now but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll. The producers were Richard Hamilton and Alfie Halburschen.

The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time, bye bye.