Global News Podcast - UK's Andy Burnham confirmed as new Labour leader

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

Britain's governing Labour Party has officially declared Andy Burnham its new leader paving the way for him to replace Keir Starmer as prime minister. In his first speech as leader, he pledged to 'bring back hope'. China's President Xi Jinping has called for global cooperation on the development of artificial intelligence to mitigate the risks it poses. India has begun operating its first ever hydrogen-powered train; it's hoped the green technology will help modernise one of the world's biggest rail networks. The Japanese parliament has approved a bill to relax imperial succession rules, amid concerns over the dwindling size of the imperial family. But it does not change the law barring women from ascending to the throne. An angry crowd has reportedly attacked a hospital housing an Ebola treatment centre, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, forcing patients and health workers to flee. A UK study of a minimally-invasive treatment for prostate cancer has found it is as effective as surgery or radiotherapy - but with far fewer side-effects. For the first time, astronomers have detected an atmosphere around an Earth-like rocky planet that could have water on its surface. And the great niece of the acclaimed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo expresses concern that the growing hype and merchandise connected with her image, might detract from her art. 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: Henry Nicholls/ Reuters Credit: Andy Burnham reacts as he speaks after being confirmed as the Labour Party's new leader and the country's next Prime Minister

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Growing businesses deal with the same problem, too many tools, too much back and forth and not enough time. Odu helps bring it all together. It's an all-in-one business management platform, fully integrated from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, so your team can spend less time chasing information and focus on growth. Whether you're in retail, manufacturing or service, Odu gives you one place. to manage your business. Visit Odu.com to book a demo. It's OD-O-O.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. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jean-Ulead and at 15-hour GMT on Friday the 17th of July, these are our main stories. Britain hears from its new Prime Minister in Waiting, Andy Burnham. China's President Xi lays out his vision for the future of AI. Japan tries to fix the succession crisis in its imperial royal family.

Also in this podcast, India launches its first hydrogen-powered train as part of its efforts to reduce greenhouse gases. Unlike conventional trains that burn fuel, the only direct by-product are water vapor and heat. There's no combustion, no smoke, no carbon emissions. The man who will soon be Britain's seventh prime. Minister in 10 years has been laying out his vision in a short speech after being selected as leader of the governing Labour Party. Andy Burnham will take over running the country on Monday when Kier Stama steps down. But so far, he has provided few details of what he plans to do to boost

Britain's stagnating economy and help people struggling with the cost of living. Mr. Stama was forced to stand down because of his growing unpopularity and long-running divisions in the Labour Party, many of whose members want more government spending. Mr Burnham, who only returned to Parliament a few weeks ago, said Labour was now united and would put its strength at the service of, as he put it, people and places who have been waiting too long for politics to let them hope again. I want people to say once again that Labour are for us.

I want that to just fall off people's tongues and we can do it. We can be. that party. The party that puts more power in people's hands drives good growth in every postcode and puts hope in every heart that gets the country pulling together again and moves beyond the divisions of recent years. All people and all places, public and private sectors, in a new sense of unity. Our political correspondent Rob Watson was listening to Mr. Burnham's speech. He said a lot of the things that the previous six prime ministers have said

these last two years, Jeanette, and that is that Britain needs to look after those sort of places and people left behind to try and make the society more equal to spread opportunity everywhere. But what sort of stood out for me was his promise to make this the biggest change in 40 years. And he essentially was making a broad brush argument that the privatisation in Britain and the liberalisation of the economy from Mrs. Thatcher onwards in the 1980s had been a mistake and had badly affected. working class parts of the United Kingdom. Now, exactly how he's going to achieve this biggest change in 40 years isn't entirely clear.

He said he'd set out a path when he becomes Prime Minister next week. But it is clear that he's clearly a politician of left-of-centre and thinks that the solutions lie in more public ownership, more and more public control, more state intervention and more devolution, more spreading power from London, Britain being a very centralised country to other bits of England and the rest of the United Kingdom. Yes, this all sounds very ambitious, but he hasn't yet named his top team, and he's going to become Prime Minister on Monday. Yes, he's promised to set out his team and the policies that they will be pursuing because, of course, what really marks out Andy Burnham becoming Prime Minister

is that nobody has attained high office in recent years with so little scrutiny of exactly what his policies will be, what his team will be, what his style of governing will be. And that's because the Labour Party decided to go for a coronation rather than what they feared would be a divisive leadership contest. So we get a general sense. We get a sense to the year's proudly of the left. There's a strangely kind of nostalgic whiff, if you like, to Andy Burner with him talking as if everything had gone wrong in the 1980s onwards. So looking back to a Britain where there were still coal mines, steelworks, and a talk of re-industrialise. again, how any of these things are going to happen, how any of them are going to be paid for,

given that Britain is a highly indebted and already historically high tax, high spending country. That's all for the future. Yes, and he's going to have a short honeymoon. He won't have much time to deliver on these ambitious plans. That is absolutely right. And he's already not hugely popular. I mean, he's more popular than Kirstama, but that isn't massively difficult. I mean, he has sort of negative approval ratings.

And I think it was Tony Blair who said that, you know, your moment of maximum popularity and power is the second you walk into Downing Street. And from then on, it's downhill in terms of the way people see you. So absolutely, he's got to hit the ground running. And it won't be easy. I mean, nobody is under any illusions about the economic and social and public service challenges that Britain faces. And in which, indeed, it has faced ever since the financial crash in 2008 circumstances, of course, which have led you in this massive. turnover, seven of them so far Prime Ministers in 10 years. It's no accident. Rob Watson, let's turn to China now.

Where President Xi Jinping has called for global cooperation on the development of artificial intelligence to mitigate the risks it poses. Speaking at an AI conference in Shanghai, Mr. Xi said the technology should not be dominated by any single country. As the Chinese saying goes, a single string cannot produce a melody and a single tree does not make a forest. The development of AI should not be a solo performance by any one country, but rather a symphony of global cooperation. Mrs Xi also announced that China would provide training to developing countries to help them to also benefit from AI. This comes as China's AI startups have released increasingly powerful models narrowing the gap with the US. I asked our China correspondent, Stephen MacDonald, whether this is a pivotal moment in the AI race.

I think Xi Jinping would like to make this a pivotal moment in the AI race. I mean, there's China's leader, opening this massive AI conference in the presence of the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, no less, making this speech. And he's comparing this moment in terms of AI development to the emergence of the steam engine or electricity. and saying that for that reason, there needs to be a major global push on to guarantee that AI is, well, especially always controlled by human beings. He warned that there could be the potential of these loss of control scenarios, as he described them. So China's putting itself forward as, if you like, the global champion when it comes to AI, especially when it comes to dragging up the developing countries along with it.

And I guess the obvious contrast without even having to say it is the United States. Yes, because President Xi didn't name the US, but he's clearly challenging its attempts to dominate AI. What is his competing vision? And how do China's AI models compare to the US is? Absolutely. You're totally right. I mean, for example, yesterday China launched the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization. It's to be based in Shanghai. You've got the likes of Russia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil signing on to it, but no Western countries.

And you can see the comparison here is to the US-run Paxilica organisations. So China is setting up this, it's more of a global South type, I guess, grouping, challenging Western countries to join their vision rather than the US vision. And crucially, at the centre of all this, according to the Chinese government, is the open nature of the, the Chinese vision. That is that China's open source approach is different to the closed approach of these Western countries. I guess Xi Jinping would argue that China's companies are also more democratic and more sharing, if you like, regarding the technology. Now, you mentioned China's companies. They've got some amazing companies, including this Beijing-based moonshot AI. Now, they were set up, I think, in 2023 from memory, a bunch of Tsinghua University.

students, and they've just launched their new generation model. It's called Kimi K3, and it's supposed to be now rivaling the best of what the world can do in terms of these AI apps. And I guess this also strengthens Xi Jinping's hand, because he's not only talking the talk in terms of the big vision, but he's done all this at a conference with more than a thousand Chinese companies showing off thousands of their gadgets, their new AI gadgets. So showing, look at this China, we've got all this great new stuff, plus we're also, we have this better vision. You can see why it would be appealing for many countries. Stephen MacDonald, India famously has one of the world's largest rail networks, and it's now

joined a small number of countries which are using hydrogen power on their railways in an effort to reduce carbon emissions. The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, waved off India's first hydrogen-powered train, adorned with flowers and balloons in the colours of the Indian flag. A promotional video to coincide with the launch proudly boasts about the future of rail travel in India. The new hydrogen power train runs on a 90-kilometer long route in the northern state of Haryana. Our correspondent in Delhi, Arunaday Mukaji, told me more about the launch. This is the first and it was a big event and that's something that this government is also very particular about. Whenever launching something of this scale, it makes sure that it is communicated.

in a way in which it reaches out to the public as well, which is why we saw a huge turnout, a lot of them journalists, members of the public, and also, interestingly, a lot of school children as well, who were very, very excited, but this was obviously a government-sponsored event. Invitations had gone out. This was the first run, and I think the true test of it will be when the public starts using it on a regular basis. This is a train that is going to be running twice a day. And just explain how hydrogen power works.

So unlike conventional diesel trains that burn fuel to generate mechanical power, a hydrogen train carries a small power plant on board in the form of a small fuel cell. Hydrogen is stored in the train cylinders and that combines with oxygen from the surrounding air inside the fuel cell. That produces electricity, that powers the traction motors and the train starts moving. The only direct byproducts of this chemical reaction are water vapor and heat. combustion, no smoke, no carbon emissions. So basically, in short, if you look at it, if you picture an equation, it's hydrogen plus oxygen, gives you electricity and water vapor, and the train moves. Yeah, that could really change carbon emissions, but how likely is that to happen right

across the country, the vast railway network, given the costs involved? Well, absolutely. You know, according to some estimates, it's cost about $12 million, significantly more expensive if you look at conventional comparisons. And experts say that these costs are good fall as the technology improves, but it is definitely a big investment. Now, India's also home to a 70,000 kilometre vast rail network, one of the largest in the world. It ferried over seven billion passengers last year. So it is going to be a challenge in that sense, cost and logistics, but this is essentially the government saying, look, this is a small step. We are demonstrating intention and ability. The train showcases India's efforts at transitioning to cleaner fuels,

moving away from fossil fuels. You know, you're looking at northern India, which is more than half of the year, it is completely covered in smog and pollution, which is a huge issue. So in recent years, Delhi has been spending a lot of money to try and figure out alternatives. And as far as the railway network is concerned, billions have been poured into trying to upgrade infrastructure. India's introduced made in India high-speed trains as well. It is also currently involved in a Japanese Chin Kanan technology project as well. So they are looking to try and make some strides as far as railways is concerned. Arunaday Mukaji. Japan may have its first female prime minister, but when it

comes to the imperial royal family, the rules are much stricter. Women cannot ascend the throne and they lose their royal status if they marry outside the family. This has led to a succession crisis as a number of heirs has dwindled. The Japanese Parliament has now approved a bill to relax imperial succession rules. Karumi Mori in Tokyo told me what it changes. There are really two major changes with this bill. The first is that women in the imperial family will no longer automatically lose their royal status after they marry a commoner. And we saw that happen a few years ago. So then they can keep carrying out official duties as imperial family members. And then the second major change now allows the imperial family to adopt male descendants from 11 former

imperial branches. They were removed from the family after World War II. So the adopted members won't inherit the throne themselves, but the male descendants of these adopted members will be eligible. But we have to point out the key issue here that remains quite untouched in this revision. It's that Princess Eiko, the current emperor's only child, still as a woman, she cannot inherit the throne. So this really leaves the ban on female succession and having an empress unchanged. So will this be enough to save the Japanese monarchy, do you think? Well, it really helps address one immediate problem, but not the bigger one that we're all talking about here on the ground. The Imperial family has been shrinking for a while now, for decades. And there are currently

only three men currently eligible to inherit the throne. And two of them are over 60 years old. So the revised law does help expand the number of family members that can carry out official duties, make those public appearances. But it doesn't solve the longer term succession issue. So unless the law really changes to allow a woman to take on the throne, uh, or, the line of eligible male heirs expands. The questions about the monarchy's future, they're really likely to continue. And Japan's first female prime minister, Sanei Takahichi, surprisingly, perhaps to some people, opposes allowing a woman to become monarch empress. How do people in Japan more widely feel about this issue? Yeah, well, we had a look at a number of

public opinion polls over many years, and they've consistently shown quite strong majority support for allowing a woman to become emperor. And it's often around 70 to 80 percent of people are in favor of having a woman as empress. Princess Eichol, the emperor's current only child, she's also quite popular with the public. But conservative politicians are saying that they want to maintain this unbroken male line. And it's really central to the tradition and legitimacy of the imperial house. So we're seeing a clear gap between public opinion and the political consensus that has really shaped the law today. Kuruumi Mori.

Still to come in this podcast, the discovery of an Earth-like planet with an atmosphere and the conditions for life just 49 light years away. It is called LHS 1140B. Really cool name, I know. And this is the first time we've ever discovered an atmosphere on a rocky Earth-like planet that's in a habitable zone outside of our solar system. Is the American dream still possible? I'm Asma Khalid, one of the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC.

One of the most successful exports of the United States has ever sold the world is the American dream, that tantalizing promise of a better, freer, richer life. But is it still attainable? I feel like the American dream is alive, but not well. For more, listen to The Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast. Reports from the Democratic Republic of Congo say an angry crowd attacked a hospital, housing and Ebola treatment center, forcing patients and health workers to flee. A health worker at the hospital said relatives of a pregnant patient stormed the facility, throwing stones and damaging the perimeter fence.

Our Africa correspondent, Richard Kugoy, told me more. There was an angry mob that has stormed at this facility. It's called Anyakunde. It's just southwest. of Bunia, the regional capital of Ithuri province. And so they came in on Wednesday afternoon. So there are two instances. So the first one is when people got to learn about the death of this patient. It's a woman who had gone to give birth, but then later developed severe anemia.

And what happened is that the family had offered to donate blood. But hospital officials said it was not possible because it's prohibited to that during an outbreak, like the one which is gripped at that particular part of DRC. And so as a result of that, there was anger and they began, you know, throwing stones. They damaged the perimeter of the hospital. And this forced medical workers to be evacuated inside the facility itself. There was an area where Ebola patients were being treated. They were being isolated.

So they fled in the process. And this is far from the first incident of this kind. And there is huge mistrust in this region, isn't there, of health workers who are trying to help patients who've got Ebola? Absolutely. So the mistrust, there are still, especially remote communities who still believe that Ebola is nonexistent and view the Ebola outbreak or the disease itself as something that has been imported. And so they deem and look at a lot of health workers with a lot of suspicion because they say that the ones who import it into the, the area, they infect the local population, and they want to benefit from that because of the kind of funding that, you know, accompanies the emergency response.

Richard Kugoy, a UK study of a minimally invasive treatment for prostate cancer has found it is as effective as surgery or radiotherapy, but with far fewer side effects. Focal therapy uses heat or cold to destroy diseased cells. Researchers followed nearly 3.5,000 men who'd had prostate cancer treated in this way. Ten years on, only two had died from the disease. Professor Hashim Ahmed is from Imperial College London. The side effects were five to tenfold lower if you simply just target the areas of cancer within the prostate rather than treat the entire prostate.

And that means you cause much less collateral tissue damage. What we now have is three. and a half thousand men almost, with 10-year outcomes showing it is as effective as surgery and radiotherapy and cancer control. So that's what's new today, Professor Aramette, and you think therefore makes, you presumably think, an unarguable case for spreading it more widely? I think so. We urgently need to look at the guidelines. We need to disseminate this and we need to make sure that this treatment is now accessible. We've been waiting for the last two decades for 10-year outcomes. That's what my colleagues want to see. We now have those 10-year

outcomes. We know it's much less in terms of side effects, five to tenfold lower risk of side effects and now just as effective. So we now need to move on and get this accessible to all of those thousands of patients every year who could have it. Professor Hashim Ahmed speaking to Nick Robinson. Now to an exciting discovery in the search for life on other planets. Astronomers have for the first time detected an atmosphere around an earth-like rocky planet that could have water on its surface. Dr. Colin Cherubin is an astrophysicist at Harvard University and the lead author of the new research published in the journal Science. He told Nick Robinson more about the discovery. The planet is called LHS 1140B, a really cool name, I know. It is located about

49 light years away from Earth, which is actually considered to be relatively nearby for galactic standards. And it is a relatively rocky planet, exoplanet, that's a planet outside of our solar system. And it sits in what we call the habitable zone, meaning it's the right distance from its star to be the right temperature to support liquid water, which is really exciting because we know liquid water is required for life, at least for life like on Earth. And so this discovery is about the atmosphere of that planet. We have discovered an atmosphere on this planet, and this is the first time we've ever discovered an atmosphere on a rocky sort of Earth-like planet that's in a habitable zone outside of our solar system. The next question then is how? How did you discover that?

Yeah, so the observation was motivated by a computer model that I developed for my PhD when I was doing some theory work. And I specifically predicted a helium-dominated escaping atmosphere from this planet, which might sound kind of exotic, but part of my thesis was sort of arguing that these helium-dominated atmospheres might actually be quite common and sort of natural stepping stones in the evolution over time of these small planets over like billions of years. And could even affect, you know, Earth-like planets and potentially even Earth in its past. So, yeah, that motivated the prediction, and we went out, and I got some telescope time, and we observed this planet passed in front of its star, and some of that starlight filtered

through the atmosphere, and lo and behold, we... And the significance of this is that maybe one day something like this might reveal that there's life outside our solarism. That's the hope. That's the hope. I mean, when we think about life and habitability of a planet, we, we kind of consider three sort of high-level things. One, the planet has to be primarily rocky.

It can't be, you know, a gas giant like Jupiter or something. Two, we believe it needs to be the right temperature to have liquid water on its surface. And three, it really needs an atmosphere to keep that water there and to shield the surface from ionizing radiation. And so with this discovery, we now know that this planet has all three of those things. and it just happens to be relatively nearby, so it's easier to study, and it happens to be orbiting a star that's relatively quiet. So this is a star that's not flaring too much or has too much x-ray or ultraviolet radiation. So that kind of makes this planet, I think, the best place currently to look for life outside of our solar system.

Dr. Colin Cherubin. The interest in the Mexican artist Frida Callow is so intense it's been dubbed Frieda Mania. Huge cues line up to see exhibitions of her paintings, many of them self-portraits. The latest have been at the Museum of Fine Art in Houston in the US and now at the tape modern here in London. This exhibition is called The Making of an icon, and it's that tendency that troubles Christina Callow, the painter's great-niece, herself, a successful photographer. She's been telling Sean Lay why. I have the feeling that for next generations, Frida Callow will be not

exactly the great artist that she was. I think that more than that, she will become kind of an image because in many cases I have asked to people who have a t-shirt, for example, and I ask them, tell me two paintings by Frida Calo. And they really do not know. They know the image, know the personality, the face, etc. But not Frida as an artist. artist. And I think that all these merchandising and products will in some way change the point of view of attention on Frida. In the other hand, all these merchandising in a museum, I have noticed that people do not read the explications on the walls. They just look to the things, to their objects, to the paintings. So, if,

If you don't take the time to read the explanation why those things are in the context of a museum, then people can think that those objects are art also. Got you. So it can give a misleading impression. I know you never met your great aunt because she died before you were around, but your father, who was her nephew, I think he told you stories about his aunt, didn't he? Well, my father passed away when he was 42 years old, so we didn't have enough time to talk about Frida. And at that time, Frida was not as famous as she became today.

And one of the stories I remember very well because it was like shocking. It was this day that Frida and my father went to the cinema and they were in a line waiting to buy the tickets. And the woman behind them started to. laugh and to talk to her companion. And she was saying something like, look, this ridiculous woman with flowers in the hair and the dress of Tijuana. It's not a way to come to a cinema.

And we have to think about that because the way Frida used to dress, it was not common in Mexico City. So she turned to the woman and slapped her on her face and said, whatever you have to say about me, you tell me in my face. So my father was shocked about the situation. But that makes us clear that Frida Kahlo was a very strong woman at the same time that she was fragile because of her health and so.

She didn't mind attracting attention. And I just wonder whether she might quite have liked all these different representations of her on things every day. Obviously, she was someone who wanted attention on her person, but I think that it depends on how the image of Rida Kahlo or depends on which objects her image is on. Because we have to remember that she had a very strong political idea. And in some way, I think that for her, it will not be nice to be in objects or products from selling. companies because in my way of thinking, all these products do not have anything to do with art. The relation is with money only. Christina Callow, the great niece of the Mexican artist Frida Callow.

And that's all from us for now. Just before we go, thanks to everyone called Juliet, who got in touch, including two from Luxembourg and another two from Wellington in New Zealand. It prompted Neil from hearing the UK to suggest that the collective noun for Juliet's is a balcony. Any listeners called Romeo may have a view on that. If you want to get in touch, whatever your name, you can email us here at global podcast at BBC.co.com. This edition of the Global News podcast was mixed by Vlodmere Muzitschka. The producers were Bernadette Keough and Adrienne White, and the editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Jeanette Jal. Until next time. Goodbye. How did the United States build the largest soft power empire in the world with the help of some tiny metal objects? I'm Tristan Redmond, one of the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. To mark 250 years of the United States, we speak to Roman Mars of 99% invisible. This soft power, this influence, was an incredible invention. For more, listen to the global story on BBC.com.

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