Global News Podcast - US appeals court rules that Trump tariffs can stay in place for now

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

US President Donald Trump can keep collecting import taxes, an appeals court has ruled, a day after a ruling found the sweeping global tariffs to be illegal. Also: Chinese paraglider survives 8,000m-high flight.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Amazing sports stories from the BBC World Service presents Bill Walton's The Grateful Team. What's going on here? It's a story of global politics. Lithuania has broken away from the Soviet Union and declared itself a fully independent sovereign state. Basketball. During the 53 year Soviet rule, Lithuania still kept a steady stream of talent in basketball. And rock music.

Basketball and the Grateful Dead. Listen now. Search for amazing sports stories wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Andrew Peach and in the early hours of Friday 30 May these are our main stories. The US Court of Appeals has temporarily halted Wednesday's ruling that would have blocked many of President Trump's new trade tariffs. Hamas has a ceasefire proposal that Israel's agreed to won't guarantee an end to the war

in Gaza or allow hundreds of trucks to bring aid into the territory. Officials in Mexico say five members of a music band whose bodies have been found following their disappearance at the weekend were murdered by drug traffickers. Also in this podcast, no equal billing for women's tennis in France. And I hope whoever is making the decision, I don't think they have daughters because Also in this podcast, no equal billing for women's tennis in France. And I hope whoever is making the decision, I don't think they have daughters because I don't think they want to treat their daughters like this. Tariffs were perhaps the centrepiece of Donald Trump's election-winning promise to put America

first. He called it Liberation Day when he presented his plans, imposing them on 57 countries two months ago. Since then, global markets have lurched up and down in reaction to further threats, negotiations and pauses. On Wednesday, a federal U.S. court ruled the tariffs unlawful. This was the response from the White House delivered by spokesperson Caroline Levitt. President Trump is in the process of rebalancing America's trading agreements with the entire world, bringing tens of billions of dollars in tariff revenues to our country and finally ending the United States of America from being ripped off. These judges are threatening to undermine the credibility of the United States on the world

stage. The administration has already filed an emergency motion for a stay pending appeal and an immediate administrative stay to strike down this egregious decision. Then on Thursday the US Court of Appeals temporarily halted Wednesday's ruling by the Specialist Court so the tariff plan is reinstated. Standing on a busy New York Street our North America business correspondent Erin Delmore. It's a nuts to give you whiplash just watching these developments come through one after the other. So the big news at this moment is that a federal appeals court has said that it will grant

a temporary pause now, a temporary stay on what the administration is seeking. And this is allowing the reimposition of some of the tariffs. And so basically what happened last night is we heard that the court said that these tariffs would have to go on pause, saying that it had been a bit of overreach for the president to be imposing these tariffs. And let's be clear about which tariffs are in focus right now. We're looking at the reciprocal tariffs, the ones that the president announced on April 2nd against certain countries. We're talking about the 10 percent baseline tariffs, and we're talking about tariffs on

Mexico, Canada, and China pursuant to fentanyl, what the president said was linked to the crossing of illegal drug into the U.S. borders. So not all tariffs, the sectoral tariffs on things like autos and auto parts are not in focus nor still in aluminum at this moment either. The appeals court has said that it's not going to have any of these tariffs paused pursuant to the lower court decision while it continues to adjudicate the Trump administration's request, which is whether this pause should go into effect at all or whether the tariffs can continue. And so what we have is a continuation of what we've been seeing while the appeals court

figures out how it will move forward and considers the administration's appeal. Now, it does mean that the administration does not have to go further up the chain. It had threatened to go to this Supreme Court on Friday if an immediate stay was not issued. That no longer has to be done. Also the lower court had said that the Trump administration would have 10 days in order to wind down the collection of these tariffs, but that now is on hold as well. So two of the big movements that we had spotted earlier in the day now no longer relevant due to the appeals court decision to pause the pause. Our North America business correspondent Erin Darmour in New York. Next to Gaza, a senior Hamas official has told BBC News that a ceasefire proposal, which

Israel has agreed to, doesn't include a humanitarian protocol to allow the entry of hundreds of trucks into the Palestinian territory. The official said although the group was still considering the proposal it contradicted discussions Hamas had had with US officials. Here's our State Department correspondent Tom Bateman. What appears to be the framework of that would be a 60-day ceasefire in which Hamas would release 10 living hostages and the bodies of 18 dead hostages in return for an unknown number of Palestinian prisoners who are held by Israel. The proposal is now with Hamas and we heard the White House say that the discussions are

ongoing. Earlier this week, Hamas had said that it had agreed to an American proposal that was put out there. Now there appears to have been in the time in between basically confusion over exactly what the terms on offer are. So Hamas agreed to one thing and they say that what came back in terms of what the Israelis have accepted is something else and so now they're saying that it doesn't meet what they were told would be the agreement. And fundamentally, this all comes back to the same issue, which is that Hamas have always

said that they demand an American guarantee that during a 60-day or 70-day ceasefire process, that if when those negotiations continue during that ceasefire, there no further agreement that the war would not resume and Prime Minister Netanyahu has always said that you know he reserves the right for the war to continue so I think we're still at that standoff although clearly there is a lot of engagement at the moment the Americans are saying they're still talking Hamas is saying that you know they're prepared to still engage in this so it feels like things are very slowly shifting closer to the potential for an agreement, but once again we're not there yet.

Meanwhile, civilians in Gaza have spent another day queuing for food at the new aid distribution centres in southern and central Gaza. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has the backing of the US and Israel but is being boycotted by the UN, says it distributed nearly a million meals on Thursday. The UN said one of its own warehouses in Gaza was stormed by large crowds a day earlier. Flour waiting to be given to bakeries was taken. Israel is preventing journalists from reporting independently from Gaza, but BBC News uses trusted freelancers who are based there. This report from our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson

begins with events on Wednesday. As dinner time approached in Gaza, the UN warehouse in Dera Bala was devoured by hungry crowds, the walls of the building torn open by Gaza's sharpening hunger. Barely a pausing glance for the gunfire. As sacks of flour destined for bakeries were carried away. Today a third aid distribution site opened under an Israeli-backed scheme designed, it's said, to stop aid being looted by Hamas. Israel's army radio said the location in central Gaza was meant to encourage people in the north to move south. The UN has refused to take part. Many Gazans,

like Sobhi Arif, raged against the undignified trek for food. SABHI ARIF, Israeli Army Commander, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army Commandant, DPRK Army What's happening to us is degrading, it's humiliating. We go there and risk our lives just to get a bag of flour to feed our children.

A single site for a million people? You need 20 sites. Um Muhammad Abu Hajar said everyone there was fighting for the food and she left empty-handed. There is no work or shelter, just bombing. You see people killed and then you go searching for food. You forget to mourn, just to look for food, to let the living survive. Israel is continuing its campaign to take and hold territory in Gaza. In Jabalia today, the Azzam family prepared to bury seven members, among them children, mourning silently over

the bodies. No protest, no vocal grief, just the sound of the engine as they loaded the bodies for burial and the constant taste of dust and tears. Lucy Williamson, who's in Jerusalem. Israel's defence minister has welcomed a major expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, saying it will block the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Israel Cats described the approval of more than 20 new settlements, which are illegal under international law, as a strategic move. Peace activists say it's the largest

such expansion in decades. Israel Medad is an Israeli settler who's lived in the West Bank since 1981. He refers to the West Bank as the Judea and Samaria area and gave my colleague Rebecca Kesby his reaction to the latest news. Well, of course, I welcome it. I think it's long overdue. Some of the, in fact, most of the communities that are being recognized and legitimized have been in existence, some of them perhaps close to 20 years already. So it's about time. I don't see anything wrong with Jews living in what they think and what the League of

Nations granted us the right to be in the Jewish national home. So I'm very satisfied with it and it's long overdue. You're aware though, of course, that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are widely considered to be illegal under international law. What do you think should happen to the Palestinians though? Because you share this area, many say illegally, with Palestinian local people who want their own territory, who want their own state. And now the Israeli government wants to take more land from them.

We're talking about a small minority of Arabs who have been given numerous times proposals for peace and security and coexistence and refused. Well, that's not true. Sorry, that's not true that they've refused. What do you call the Oslo Accords? Well, there's an agreement on the table that has been stalled with the two-state solution, which many Palestinians, not least the Palestinian Authority, has signed up to. So to say that they're against that is not accurate, is it? I would suggest that perhaps you're rereading history. It was Mr. Ehud Omert, who's now an

extreme leftist, who offered the Palestinian Authority over 97% return of land. Mahmoud Abbas picked up that map drawn on a napkin, walked away and never came back. The defence minister says this move is deliberately to block the creation of a Palestinian state. But how does blocking a two-state solution make Israelis such as yourself any safer? A two-state solution would endanger not only my existence here where I live in Shilo, however the state of Israel itself because of the topographical advantage they have by sitting in the mountains. If Hamas did what it did to Israel on October 7th on a flat piece of land, imagine what the PA could do to Israel dominating the hill country of Judea and Samaria. For a Palestinian perspective, Rebecca spoke to Noor Ordeh, who's a Palestinian political

analyst based in Ramallah, and asked her for her response to the major new Israeli settlement plan for the occupied West Bank. Well, look, we have to remember that the coalition agreement that formed this government, the most right-wing in Israel's history, put at the front and center as the major priority, the expansion of illegal settlements, the takeover of the West Bank, the annexation of that territory. And what we've seen since the formation of this government under the shadow of the ongoing genocide in Gaza is the Israeli government keeping its promise to its right-wing constituents and taking very concrete steps to take over the West Bank.

In effect, what is happening is that these announcements will divide and carve up the West Bank, take over the natural resources, the water reserves, the agricultural land, and really make it very difficult to disconnect Israel itself from the settlement regime. Well, the Israeli government is saying today, though, that a Palestinian state is a threat to the security of Israel. And given the Hamas attacks of October the 7th and the fact that Hamas was elected by the public, albeit some time ago. That is a concern that Israelis have, isn't it?

If a government like Hamas became in charge of the West Bank, it would be a security risk to Israel. Well, imagine how Palestinians feel. By using the same logic, imagine how Palestinians feel with a right-wing government indicted for genocide. It's prime minister wanted with an arrest warrant by the ICC for using starvation as a weapon of war along with other war crimes. The idea that the existence of Palestinians free from foreign domination is a threat to anybody is not only racist, but it's also factually incorrect. Palestinian independence is not a threat to anyone except those who are so ideologically connected and married to the idea

of subjugating the Palestinians, taking over their land and driving them out. That's really the simple equation of it all. And that was Noor Oda, a Palestinian political analyst in Ramallah. Nour Odeh, a Palestinian political analyst in Ramallah. A Chinese paraglider who has accidentally propelled more than eight thousand meters or five miles up into the sky by an air current has been banned from the activity for six months. This after a video of his ordeal went viral. Peng Yujing was testing equipment at a mountain range in northern China when he suddenly found himself at an altitude normally reserved for aircraft. Will Vernon takes up the story.

Lost in the clouds at 27,000 feet, Peng Yujiang is struggling to breathe. A video from a camera mounted on his glider shows him covered in icicles hurtling through the sky. Mr Peng had started the day intending to take some secondhand kit out for a low-altitude test flight in China's Qilian mountain range. But a freak updraft called a cloud suck caused him to be flung far into the sky with no oxygen supply and little control over his glider. He told Chinese media of his terrifying detour. Everything around me was white.

Without the compass I wouldn't have known which direction I was heading. I thought I was flying straight, but in reality I was spinning. Despite briefly losing consciousness, Mr Peng was eventually able to land. But the Chinese authorities, after initially praising his miraculous survival, promptly banned Mr. Peng from flying for six months. The reason? He'd failed to file flight plans for his unexpected journey upwards. Mr. Peng, though, seems unfazed by the ban,

saying in any case he's intending to lay off the flying for a while. Well, Vernon reporting. And still to come in this podcast, what do people in Moscow think of their new statue of Stalin? He was a tyrant. Still, he proved his mettle as a leader. But again, there is good and bad in everyone. Amazing sports stories from the BBC World Service presents Bill Walton's The Grateful Team.

What's going on here? It's a story of global politics. Lithuania has broken away from the Soviet Union and declared itself a fully independent sovereign state. Basketball. During the 53-year Soviet rule, Lithuania still kept a steady stream of talent in basketball and rock music. Basketball and the Grateful Dead.

Listen now. Search for amazing sports stories wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Next to Argentina, and it's the trial that's been captivating the country, did health professionals cause the death in 2020 of their football hero Diego Maradona. The trial started back in March and has already heard from more than 50 witnesses but after one of the judges was found to have taken part in a documentary about it the trial has now been declared invalid. Maradona's medical team have been charged with negligence and homicide. Mario Brodri is the lawyer for Maradona's son and partner.

I know that it is unpleasant for the court to have to annul a process like this and step aside. Not everyone wants to, but they did the right thing. We must now quickly send the official letters to the court and the president of the chamber so that a new court can be appointed. I heard more from our correspondent in Buenos Aires, Veronica Smink. The court actually saw footage of this documentary last Tuesday. The other two judges announced that today they were going to decide what happened and basically they decided that it all has to start again. They called for a retrial. That doesn't seem surprising. What does seem surprising is that no one mentioned this before.

Well, yes, actually everybody is really surprised here in Argentina. They really don't understand what this judge, Julieta McIntosh, could have been thinking. She at the beginning denied the charges. It wasn't until the court actually saw this footage. She just said, I said yes to an interview the day before the trial started and that was it. But then they showed this footage showing images of her and also of the day that Maralona died. Other people came out, some of the lawyers for the defense

saying that they had seen someone filming during the proceedings. And now this judge has been suspended and will probably face a trial herself. And this has been going on for a couple of months. So actually, we've learned quite a lot about what happened, or at least we've heard quite a lot of evidence presented. Yes, that's right. The first day of the trial in March, the prosecutor showed a very shocking image of an extremely bloated Maradona saying it was impossible that the medical team weren't aware of how serious his condition was. Remember, this all happened during the pandemic. Maradona had undergone surgery for a blood clot and had decided to get well recuperated at home. So he rented

out a house and it turned out a panel of experts later concluded that the footballer's death was completely avoidable. And the defendants deny the allegations. What's going to happen now? We're going to go back to the beginning. That's right. They start again from scratch is what was decided today. We don't have a date as of yet. Some people are hopeful they can start again this year. Others think that it will take longer. But basically the 49 people who had already given testimony, including Maradona's daughters are going to have to speak again, unfortunately, and everybody else as well. And everything starts from zero. Just give me a sense of what people in Argentina are saying about it.

Well, they're extremely embarrassed because it's not the first time that Argentina's judicial system has botched a trial, but I believe this is probably the most international case. They are well aware that the eyes of the world were on this trial, and so there's huge, huge embarrassment and disappointment. Next to Mexico, officials there say five music band members whose bodies have been found following their disappearance last weekend were murdered by drug traffickers. During a press conference the public prosecutor said nine alleged members of the Gulf cartel were arrested on suspicion of

killing the musicians. They were last seen in a bar in the city of Reynosa near the US border on Sunday. I found out more from our Mexico correspondent Will Grant. According to reports from relatives of the members of the band, they'd been booked in essence for a gig in the city of Reynosa. Now that's in the north eastern state of Tamaulipas, a both a violent city and a violent state. It's suggested that essentially when they went to this event, expecting obviously to find a party or something that they were supposed to be playing in they found an empty car park. Some relatives then received ransom demands and now the Attorney General's office in the state has confirmed that five bodies are those of the missing musicians and that they had been murdered and nine people have been

arrested in connection with those killings. The authorities say they are part of a faction of the Gulf cartel. And one thing that's unusual about this awful story is the idea of musicians being the target of criminal gangs. It is a very, very disturbing idea, the idea that the entire band, all five members of the group of Grupo Fugitivo, men aged between 20 and 40 were taken at once and were killed together. Now there is a popular type of music in the North called corridos. They are ballads essentially, which often pay homage to drug cartels or individual cartel leaders. Criminal gangs have been known to take retribution against musicians and

artists for the songs that they craft about their rivals and so it's not unheard of in northern states of Mexico for bands and musicians who are involved in Ortenio music and who write narco corridos to get caught up in the violence themselves but it is still nevertheless very shocking. And of course the authorities are still trying to establish the full motive involved in the deaths of the members of this group. And well you mentioned it's a violent city in a violent part of the country. If we think back to what's broadly considered the start of the modern drug war in Mexico,

and that's 2006, Somewhere towards half a million people have been killed, certainly tens of thousands every year. You and I have spoken so often about stories that touch upon the drug war, but every year there are homicides. One gang might be up, another cartel might be down, then that swaps. Background music in Mexico if you like. Although Claudia Sheinbaum, the president in Mexico, is trying to enforce a new strategy which is showing at least some signs of stabilizing things, some reductions in violence in some parts of the country, it is a daunting and awesome task that is

in front of her administration. Will Grant in Mexico. Here in the UK and the issue of young people using electronic cigarettes, otherwise known as vaping. Alderhay Children's Hospital in Liverpool in north-west England opened a clinic in January to help people stop vaping. Nothing unusual, except this one was the first such clinic in the country aimed at 11-15 year olds. The latest data from health officials in England suggests a quarter

of children in this age range have tried vaping and nearly one in ten do it frequently. Katie Hazeldean has been to the vaping clinic. I'm Professor Rachel Isbar and I'm a consultant in paediatric public health medicine at Alderhey Children's Hospital. I'll call them in, I'll have the room set up so that it's more like a conversation rather than like me, the doctor, at the desk. We've set up a stop vaping service for 11 to 15 year olds who have become nicotine dependent as a result of their vaping.

The vaping thing has sort of snuck up on us in children and young people and it is now so widespread that it's sort of normalised. What happens when they get here then? I'll ask them about their vaping habits. They might have had periods of time where they've not vaped at all. And then I'll make a formal assessment of their nicotine dependence. One of the questions I'll ask them, for example, is after you wake up in the morning, how long is it before you vape?

There are a few reports now in the literature of children vaping before they get out of bed, so they keep the vape under their pillow. What I'll then do is spend some time talking with the young person about how dependent it appears that they are on nicotine, what that means for their body, for their health, for their wellbeing. If they are showing a level of dependency that would benefit from nicotine replacement therapy, we might have a conversation about that as well. For me, one of the great joys of this clinic is that we can actually craft it around individual children and young people.

I don't know what kind of support is out there really for adults to stop vaping, but would you treat that differently? A lot of these children are not smoking and then vaping. They're just going straight to the vape. How does that compare? You're right, more than half of the children and young people that vape have never smoked.

So actually it's a completely different approach. There actually isn't that much evidence yet as to how you support adults to stop vaping. There's just, as with all these things, even less for children. From a physiological perspective, it's a different impact. But actually from a psychological perspective, I think children and young people are vaping for very different reasons than adults are. There are probably tens of thousands of children and young people who want to stop vaping and we don't have the services to support them. If people want to stop doing something they

know is not good for them then we should absolutely be supporting them to do that. Well one young person who would like help to stop vaping is 17 year old Bella. She's been vaping for three years now and says if there was access to support to stop vaping at school she'd take it up. Instead vaping is usually met with punishment. I've come to meet her and her mum, Lindsay. I wake up and then reach me vape and then feel like I'm ready. How easy is it then for you to get a vape because you're under 18 so it is illegal for you to be sold bit because you're under 18 so it is illegal for you to be sold

Vaping products there's a shop that I go so I've been going to him for a good few years now And does he know how old you are I used to go through and like school uniforms like so I'm human so It's really hard and I wished she wasn't doing it But when she's stressed out and she is addicted to vaping, because I've gone into a room some mornings and she goes into this state of panic if she can't find the vape, it's the first thing she does. I think it's good that the Bannon disposable vapes because it's harder to get reusable one, so now more kids can't start.

People probably will be, like, stockpiling them. One Christmas, I said to Bella, what would you like for Christmas? And she said, can you just buy me a box of vapes? Because it saved her going in to buy them. And I just shook my head and walked away from her. Do you think that there is enough support out there for young people like yourself to stop vaping? I haven't really heard of any.

They don't advertise heard of any. They don't advertise it in school. Maybe they need to because I've seen really young people vaping in the toilets. And it's always just like, oh, detention. And that's it. There's no support to be like, OK, this is how you can stop. There are many parents just like Lindsay struggling

to know how best to manage their child's vaping habits. For Professor Isber it's important to simply start the conversation. Come from a place of support not judgment which is really hard as a parent myself it's tricky because you want your child to be as healthy as they can but actually my experience has been that supporting them and guiding them to a decision or a choice rather than just saying you're not allowed to vape, you're not allowed to smoke, don't do it. I think it is a really great place to start. That report from Katie Hazeldeen in Liverpool in North West England.

Now to tennis, have you been watching the French Open? If so, you may have seen the Tunisian tennis player, Anjabeur, criticising the Roland-Garros tournament for not scheduling women's tennis in prime-time evening slots. In Europe it's unfortunate for women's sports in general and I hope whoever is making the decision, I don't think they have daughters because I don't think they want to treat their daughters like this. It's a bit ironic, you know, they don't show women's sports, they don't show women's tennis and then they ask the question, yeah, but mostly they watch men. Of course they watch men more because you show men more.

According to reports, not since 2023 has a women's singles match occupied the prime time evening slot. Catherine Whitaker is co-host of the tennis podcast. So what does she think the problem is? Well, the organisers of the French Open and the heads of the French Tennis Federation have told us exactly what the issue is. Amelie Mauresmo, the tournament director, back in 2022 when she was asked about the lack of women's matches in the night session, a session that is advertised

by the tournament as the match of the day, she referred to the relative attractivity of men's tennis over women's tennis. It was a jaw-dropping moment. And then this year, Gilles Moritton, a couple of days ago, the president of the French Tennis Federation, he said, for the night session, we choose the better match. So the French tennis authorities here

are not trying to hide. They are telling us loud and proud that they value men's tennis over women's. It's astonishing to hear it said that explicitly in 2025. There are four major tournaments in tennis, the Grand Slams, the US Open, the one in New York. They introduced equal prize money for men and women in 1973 and Billie Jean King and her activism was critical in that. The French Open was the last of the four to follow suit

and that didn't happen until 2007. There has been traditionally more unpredictability in women's tennis and that could be viewed as tremendously exciting but so often it's viewed as a negative women's tennis, and that could be viewed as tremendously exciting, but so often it's viewed as a negative women's tennis. They're weak, they're unpredictable, they're inconsistent, you know, why can't they do what Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal have been doing for the past 15 years and show up and just win everything week after week. But I personally find that that unpredictability incredibly entertaining. A lot of men's tennis is very

serve and power dominated. Well, that's less the case in women's sport. And like everybody is entitled to their personal preferences. But I watched equal amounts of men's and women's tennis and I quite often enjoy them in a different way. But there is no superior product there. Women's tennis as a product is every bit as good as men's. Catherine Whittaker, the French Tennis Federation has so far not responded to those remarks from Angeboe. Now to Russia. A few weeks ago the BBC reported that a replica of a long-removed monument to the former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was unveiled in a metro station in Moscow. It's all part of his rehabilitation under President Putin.

Our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg has been to see the statue and hear the opinions of people who live in Moscow. So I'm going down into the Moscow metro because somewhere here, deep underground, a ghost of Russia's past has reappeared. T-1. And there he is, Joseph Stalin, a brand-new statue of the Soviet dictator. Now, there was a time after his death

when all the Stalin statues in Russia were removed, were knocked down, when Stalin's cult of personality and his crimes against the people were officially condemned. The great terror, the millions sent to the Gulag, the hundreds of thousands of people executed. But Stalin monuments have been popping up again all over Russia. Today, the authorities are focusing on Stalin the strongman, Stalin the victorious wartime leader.

Stalin is being rehabilitated. What do young people today think about Stalin? Well, I think that Joseph Stalin is unfairly hated. He did a lot to our nation that we still use. Of course, he was a tyrant. Still, he proved his mettle as a leader. But again, there is good and bad in everyone. But it's not just Joseph Stalin who's making a comeback. So would you believe it's the USSR.

But I mean, the Soviet Union. It's long gone, right? Just a few days ago, one of President Putin's advisors suggested that legally the USSR still exists because when it was being dissolved, allegedly there were procedural violations. And he said that to try to make out that Russia's war in Ukraine is an internal matter for Moscow. And then a former Russian prime minister came out and backed him up. By Red Square there are some ultra-nationalists who agree and who want the Soviet Union back. The dissolution was illegal, therefore it should be cancelled. We want to return

to the borders of 1945 to put an end to these wars. I'm not saying we're definitely going to wake up one morning to find that the USSR is back, but it's interesting that the idea is being planted. Now, Moscow accuses the West all the time of rewriting history. What's happening here does feel like an attempt by the Russian authorities to reshape the past to try to justify the present. That's a report from Steve Rosenberg in Russia. And that's all from us for now. There'll be a new edition of Global News to download later. If you'd like to comment on this podcast, drop us an email globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk

or you'll find us on x at bbcworldservice, use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Martin Baker, the producers were Liam McSheffrey and Alice Anderle, the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Andrew Peach, thank you for listening and until next time, goodbye. It's a story of global politics, Lithuania has broken away from the Soviet Union and declared itself a fully independent sovereign state. basketball, During the 53 years of its rule Lithuania still kept a steady stream of talent in basketball. and rock music. Basketball and the Grateful Dead.

Listen now. Search for amazing sports stories wherever you get your BBC podcasts.