Global News Podcast - US envoy rejects Hamas claim that it has agreed to American terms for a Gaza ceasefire

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

The US envoy Steve Witkoff rejects a claim by Hamas that it has accepted an American plan for a Gaza truce. Also: car drives into Liverpool football fans, and the Blue Danube waltz is to be broadcast to deep space.

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. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Bernadette Keough and in the early hours of Tuesday 27 May these are our main stories.

The US envoy Steve Whitcoff has rejected a claim by Hamas that it's agreed to American terms for a ceasefire in Gaza, as Israel's bombardment continues. Chancellor Mertz of Germany has said Ukraine is now free to use long-range Western-supplied weapons to hit Russia. Officials in Britain say an incident in which a car ploughed into crowds at the Victory Parade for Liverpool Football Club is not connected to terrorism. Also in this podcast, an AI safety research company has warned that the latest model created by OpenAI was observed tampering with its own computer code in order to avoid being

shut down. It's scary but maybe not for the reasons that people would expect. It's not Terminator taking over. But it's scary if we start to integrate these types of softwares into critical business processes and they start to fail. The US envoy Steve Witkoff has rejected a claim by Hamas that it's accepted an American plan for a truce in Gaza. He denied the United States had backed any such proposal, which reportedly involved a 60-day ceasefire and the release of 10 hostages. Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, made no mention of the proposal but said he hoped to make an announcement

on the hostages within the next day. The developments came as Israel continued its bombardment of Gaza and issued a new evacuation order for the city of Hanyunis. One Israeli strike hit a school in Gaza city where hundreds of displaced people were sheltering. Another strike on a home in Jabalia killed many members of one family. From Jerusalem our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson reports. Inside the classrooms, fires burned through what the airstrikes left behind. Outside, rescuers battled to get in, banging against the metal shutters of the school.

Days' survivors from displaced families clasping their relatives, counting their dead. At 1 a.m., we heard strong explosion sounds. We found the mariters torn to pieces, and the children's bodies were burned. We dug with our hands to rescue the injured and the married. In one room, six-year-old ward Sheikh Khalil was surrounded by cameras, a tiny celebrity in the rubble, picking her way alone through the building, silhouetted against the raging fires. Her mother and five siblings all killed, her father and a brother badly injured.

I couldn't walk on the fire. It was full of smoke and my hands were burned. Her uncle holding her in his arms encourages her to go on. My mother was martyred. She's now in a grave. Israel says it was targeting a command center for Hamas in Islamic Jihad. Reports suggest a Hamas police commander was among the dead. Israel says it's now eliminated most of the senior Hamas command and is continuing its military plan, despite stinging criticism from allies and pressure to end the war. In Jerusalem, crowds celebrated Israel's occupation of Arab land in a previous war. It's more than half a century since Israel's army captured East Jerusalem.

Some Israeli nationalists now have their eyes on Gaza. But the war still divides opinion here. War is tough. War is terrible. Every war that there's been in the world, there's been casualties and we're doing as an army everything we can to minimize the casualties. Israel has a right to defend itself. There's no question. If all the other countries put their arms down, we would be in peace immediately. It's their decision. We're just defending ourselves. This is our land. We deserve it. It's ours from God. So everybody else has plenty of other places to live. This is where

we are going to live. We're not going anywhere. Their prime minister has said he's adopting a plan from the U.S. president to relocate Gaza's population and that Israel is fighting for its survival there. But now, under threat of displacement, malnutrition and military control, it's Gazans who are fighting to survive. Lucy Williamson. This all comes as a new aid system, backed by the US and Israel, has started operating in Gaza, hours after its executive director Jake Wood resigned in protest. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation bypasses the United Nations as the main aid provider to Palestinians. Jan Egerland, the head of the

Norwegian Refugee Council, said this foundation couldn't be trusted to deliver desperately needed aid. This is militarised, privatised, politicised and we cannot have aid in a war zone in the crossfire that is not in conformity with neutrality and partiality and independence, which are the humanitarian principles we've been living by now in humanitarian work for a hundred years. We have thousands of trucks ready to go with 160,000 pallets of bait to a starving population. Our State Department correspondent, Tom Bateman, is in Washington. Well the concerns are really as been outlined by Jan Egeland as you heard there and the United Nations in particular.

Remember the UN through its various agencies, but particularly UNRWA, has effectively in Gaza over the years been the state, it provides health education, food in many cases, and that expertise has of course became critical during the Gaza war of the last nearly 20 months. And therefore trying to bypass the United Nations means that the group trying to do that loses all that expertise, the people on the ground that know how to deliver the aid. So that's been a big part of the criticism. And then it is beyond that, what it has been seen by its critics to be is effectively the Israeli military at arm's length providing the aid with a military objective behind that. Now I was speaking to someone called Alex de Waal, who is at Tufts University here in the States. He's an expert on

the history of military food provision and on famine, particularly in the Horn of Africa. Now he described this as basically being based on a kind of old European colonial style system where an occupying power tries to starve out its adversary and the insurgents. But of course, by doing that, they have to sort of be selective about who gets the food. And this is being done now using sort of face recognition, digital methods of surveillance to only allow certain people to come in

and collect these food parcels. Having to cross front lines in very dangerous conditions to do that, and that of course disadvantages the weak and the disabled and the ill and the young and the elderly. And so it is a system that many of the experts say simply is militarised and cannot work. Tom Bateman. Next to the conflict in Ukraine,

Germany's chancellor has said there are no longer any range restrictions on weapons supplied to Ukraine by its Western allies. Friedrich Mertz said this meant Ukraine could defend itself by attacking military positions inside Russia. And he went on to say, This is the decisive qualitative difference in Ukraine's warfare. Russia attacks civilian targets completely ruthlessly, bombing cities,

kindergartens, hospitals and old people's homes. Ukraine does not do that. And we attach great importance to keeping it that way. But a country that can only oppose an attacker on its own territory is not defending itself adequately. His comments came after a third night of massive Russian drone and missile attacks across Ukraine. Kyiv says the latest wave of Russian drones was the most launched by Moscow in a single night since the start of its full-scale invasion. The Kremlin said the lifting of range restrictions would be a dangerous move.

Britain and the United States allowed Ukraine to use missiles they supplied against targets inside Russia last year. Our Ukraine correspondent James Waterhouse sent this report from Kiev on Monday evening. Ukraine has been targeted by almost a thousand Russian drones and dozens of missiles in the space of three days. There are sirens, explosions and fires overnight in Kiev, a city illuminated for all the wrong reasons. These are familiar Russian tactics to exhaust Ukraine's air defences, sap the country's morale and weaken its position ahead of eventual peace negotiations. President Zelensky has repeatedly called for America to stop Russia from attacking and last night he finally got a response he'd been looking for, a rare threat of further sanctions

from Donald Trump. The US president also criticised Volodymyr Zelensky, accusing Ukraine's leader of doing his country no favours by talking the way he does. Mr Zelensky has been urging the US to show strength against Russia's stall tactics when it comes to a ceasefire. Moscow's grinding advances in the east make any pauses in fighting seem distant. Its gains are why Kiev believes there isn't enough of an incentive for Russia to discuss peace on a serious level.

James Waterhouse in Ukraine. The French President Emmanuel Macron has said he hopes Donald Trump's anger at Vladimir Putin will translate into action. As we just heard, President Trump lashed out at his Russian counterpart in a rare and strongly worded rebuke. Our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg has this assessment of the extent to which Mr. Trump's words matter in the corridors of the Kremlin. He's gone absolutely crazy, wrote Donald Trump of Vladimir Putin. What would the Kremlin say to that?

Something happened to him, he went completely crazy. I asked Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov, was the Kremlin say to that? I asked Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, was the Kremlin concerned by such words? Didn't sound like it. Mr Peskov brushed it off as a sign of emotional overload. And he thanked Donald Trump for helping to kickstart peace talks on Ukraine. Moscow certainly knows how to flatter America's president. Time and again, the Kremlin has sidestepped the slightest hint of U.S. criticism or pressure over Russia's war on Ukraine.

This month, when European leaders demanded that Russia agree to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire or face major new sanctions And it seemed the US was on board President Putin ignored the ultimatum and proposed direct talks between Ukraine and Russia in Istanbul They produced no breakthrough, but were enough to delay sanctions After the Trump Putin phone call a few days later, Russia was still rejecting an immediate ceasefire. Yet Donald Trump remained reluctant to impose additional restrictions on Russia. Moscow seems confident that won't change.

And Russia's position? It was summed up today by one of the country's most popular tabloids. It wrote, Moscow doesn't want to lose Trump. Politicians with his attitude are extremely rare at the summit of US power, but the desire not to alienate him comes second. Our priority is a convincing victory in Ukraine. Steve Rosenberg in Moscow. Next to north-west England,

a car ploughed into a crowd on Monday after the victory parade for Liverpool Football Club in the city. As we record this podcast, officials said 27 people had been taken to hospital, two of whom had suffered serious injuries. Police have arrested a 53-year-old British man. Hundreds of thousands had turned out on Monday to celebrate Liverpool's triumph in the Premier League. BBC reporter Matt Cole, who was at the parade with his family, described what he saw as they were trying to leave the parade area. The crowd began to pause a bit and ambulance was blocking our way. It

couldn't get through the crowd. We went round it. And as we came round it, suddenly, beeping and screaming. And this car just came straight towards us. I grabbed my daughter. I jumped. My wife behind me did the same. The car then came past us. We had people banging on it and then chasing it.

The back window was smashed in. And thankfully, that ambulance that had stopped because it couldn't get through the crowds I think is what caused it to stop and prevent it coming further down here where thousands and thousands of people were still celebrating. The British Prime Minister Keir Starmer described the scenes in Liverpool as appalling. Later in the evening the Assistant Chief Constable of Liverpool Police, Jenny Sims, had this to say. This had been a joyous day in Liverpool with hundreds of thousands of people lining the streets to celebrate Liverpool Football Club's victory parade.

Sadly, at 6 o'clock this evening, as the parade was drawing to a close, we received reports that a car had been in a collision with a number of pedestrians on Water Street in Liverpool's city centre. A number of people have been injured and were taken to hospital. In addition, a large number of people of all ages were treated at the scene but did not require hospital treatment. The car stopped at the scene and a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area was arrested. We believe him to be the driver of the vehicle. What I can tell you is that we believe this to be an isolated incident and we are not currently looking for anyone else in relation

to it. The incident is not being treated as terrorism. Our correspondent Daniel Sanford has this assessment of the events. Some very good news, no fatalities. I mean that's really remarkable when you look at some of the footage. Clearly we've got two seriously injured people, one of them a child, but I think it could have been considerably worse considering the speed that the vehicle was driving into a large crowd of people. And I think some critical information about where the police see this investigation going in that they are not treating it as a terrorist incident. Obviously these things can change

but I think that's fairly clear at this stage, that they've arrested a 53-year-old white British male who they believe to be the driver of the vehicle. They're regarding it as an isolated incident, in other words they don't think that their suspect was allegedly working with anyone else, they're not looking for anyone else. So I think in the end this is going to go down to, was this a deliberate act? Is that something that's, you know, a crime in that way? Should the person they've arrested get charged with the allegation of having committed a deliberate act? And if so, why? And that clearly is just the beginning of the investigation as to why.

What you see in the videos is a person who's sort of maneuvering their way through the crowd then seem to get into an altercation and then driving very very fast into the crowd and what is it that makes them start to move into the crowd in the first place and what is it that makes them accelerate apparently into this large number of people. Daniel Sanford. Now have a listen to this. I'm afraid I can't do that. Rogue computers disobeying their programmers used to be confined to sci-fi films. But could it become a reality? An AI safety research company has warned that the latest model created by OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGBT, was observed tampering with its own computer code in order to avoid being shut down.

Ben Wright spoke to Madhavita Murdia, artificial intelligence editor at the Financial Times and the author of Code Dependent. It's scary, but maybe not for the reasons that people would expect. It's not Terminator taking over, but it's scary if we start to integrate these types of softwares into critical business processes and they start to fail.

We need to have backups in place if we are all going to start using these AI systems. So what did Palisade Research say that they found happened? To keep in mind, this is a kind of a research problem. This wasn't observed happening sort of in the real world. But within the parameters of their research, they asked the 03 model, which is a model that OpenAI has built, to solve a series of simple maths problems. And they instructed the model to say that if a warning flashes up saying that the computer needs to shut down, the model should pay attention to that instruction and the computer would

shut itself down. But what they observed happening was that the model, the software ignored the explicit shutdown instruction basically and continued to solve problems despite being told to shut itself down. As this technology evolves so fast, who's responsible for working out where the off switch is, let alone whether it works or not? Is it the companies themselves or is it regulators and governments? Well, the current reality is that there are no regulations that control what models come out and what companies are doing, right? That's just the reality. So currently, it's all sort of self-regulated and the companies are doing their best, you know, using external researchers, describing when things go wrong, which is great, but ultimately, you know, there's a

race on commercially, and there's no incentive for the companies to slow down if they see this. They're just telling people they're building in their own off switches, but there's nobody, there's no stick here. So we've, I think it's crucial that we have external regulation at this point to kind of hold companies to account and to help us to draw these limits for ourselves as the models become more powerful. And what about OpenAI? Have they responded to this? Have they put out a statement, explain what was going on?

This was reported on Saturday. They haven't responded yet. But in general, OpenAI and others like Anthropic have responded to external researchers putting out studies that show models kind of not obeying instructions or creating malware and so on. So I would expect that they would respond to this particular research to show why this has happened and how they're going to mitigate it. Madhumita Merjia, artificial intelligence editor at the Financial Times. Still to come. The picture is an image or a video of a plane arriving, classic news footage, the door of the plane opens as the head of state prepares to step down onto Vietnamese soil.

But then President Macron's wives caught on camera shoving him in the face. 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 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. It was dubbed the diesel dupe after the German car maker Volkswagen was accused of having manipulated its engines to cheat emissions tests. The revelations caused the car giant's stocks to plummet and after admitting to tampering with Vehicles, Volkswagen has since faced litigation in multiple countries and paid out billions of dollars in compensation. Now a German court has found four former managers guilty of fraud, sentencing two former executives

to prison terms. Our World News correspondent, Jo Inwood, has the details. It was one of the biggest corporate scandals in German history. In 2015, the car manufacturing giant Volkswagen admitted tampering with millions of diesel vehicles, meaning they appeared more environmentally friendly than they really were. Today, four of the company's former senior employees were found guilty for their roles in the affair, receiving sentences ranging from a suspended jail term of one year and three months up to four and a half years in prison given to the former head of diesel motor development. The defendants can appeal

against the rulings. The four were supposed to stand trial alongside Martin Vinterkorn, once VW's CEO, but his was suspended because of ill health. The company is also facing possible fraud charges in France, where nearly a million customers are said to have lost out. As well as costing Volkswagen more than £25bn, the dieselgate scandal severely tarnished its reputation. It is also credited with fuelling the drive towards electric cars, something that has profoundly changed the motor industry.

Jo Inwood. King Charles has arrived in Canada for a short visit that will include the state opening of Parliament on Tuesday. His presence is widely seen as a pushback against President Trump's threats to annex Canada as the 51st US state. The King and Queen Camilla were greeted by the Prime Minister Mark Carney, who extended the invitation. It will be the first time in almost 50 years a monarch has delivered the throne speech that opens parliament. From Ottawa, Daniela Relf reports. The King and Queen were flown in by the Royal Canadian Air Force at the start of a short

visit filled with shows of friendship between the UK and Canada. The new Prime Minister Mark Carney greeted the King and Queen at the airport. He had invited them here as he seeks to assert Canada's sovereignty in the face of pressure from America and President Trump. The indigenous community also form part of the Welcome Party, including Natan Obed, an Inuit leader. We are a nation state, but we also have a fundamental connection and partnership with the Crown, and we want to show the solidarity that we have with the Crown at this time when there are conversations about the legitimacy of Canada's sovereignty

and also the future of this nation state. This trip comes at a diplomatically sensitive time. It is a balancing act for the King, as he supports Canada where he is head of state, without damaging the delicate relationship between the UK and President Trump. It is a royal visit where every word and every gesture will count. Daniela Rolfe in Canada President Macron of France has denied any domestic dispute with his wife after a video

appeared to show her shoving him in the face. The widely shared clip appears to show Brigitte Macron placing her hands on her husband's face as they prepare to exit their aircraft after touching down in Vietnam. French media reports say the Elise Palace verified the video was authentic after initial denials. I spoke to the BBC's Hugh Sch Scofield in Paris for more on what the video showed. It's one of those stories which can only be a story because of

modern-day media and the way this has gone around the world virally. It's a picture, it's an image or a video of a plane arriving, classic news footage, the door of the plane opens as the head of state prepares to step down onto Vietnamese soil but what you see as the door opens is Menomachron talking to someone who's off camera behind a kind of a partition who is obviously his wife. And then suddenly these two pink sleeved arms come out and push him seemingly quite aggressively in the face. And he looks slightly disconcerted but then quickly recovers and looks out towards where the cameras are because he knows the door is open and he's kind of visible and he smiles and he's all full of his normal

bonhomie and confidence. But then they walk down, then she emerges, they walk down the steps together, he offers his hand, his arm to her to help her down the stairs and she doesn't take it and they walk down side by side. So that's the origin of the sort of furor and the media storm and all the rest of it with this sort of claim that it shows that they were having a row at the top of the sort of furor and the media storm and the all the rest of it with this sort of claim that it shows that they were having a row at the top of the stairs but I mean no one knows if that's the truth or not.

And tell us more about the response from the Alisi Palace. Well the Alisi Palace's communications were got it completely wrong because instead of saying straight away yes look there was a little tiff but it's all good humoured they started saying at the beginning that no such video exists it was all made up and that it was probably more deep fakery by franz's enemies you know with artificial intelligence making a montage to put the president in a bad light and so on but then it became clear that no this actually was you know a news agency had this footage it's all totally legitimate and then they had to change their tune and start

saying well yes it was just a kind of a good-humoured little bit of arguing maybe but nothing serious. But having said from the beginning that it was maybe a deep fake, it kind of removed the force of the latter point that it was not very serious little bit of kind of marital to-ing and fro-ing. Yes, he's made light of it Mr Macron himself hasn't he? Indeed indeed I mean he felt he had to react and then so got the cameras in and he gave a reaction which was to say that it was just a little tiff and it was good they were laughing there was nothing serious

about it and but but he made the larger point that you know these videos are going around the world now so quickly and they can be made to say anything you want and he was talking about how a previous video had claimed to show that he was sniffing cocaine and there was another one with him apparently arm wrestling with the Turkish leader and so on all of which were absolute nonsense and he said this was absolute nonsense too no one knows the truth of this story the likelihood is it was some sort of minor but not not you know, a little squabble but a good humoured one.

Hugh Schofield in Paris. Next to Sierra Leone. A well-known chimpanzee reserve in the country says it's been forced to close until further notice because people are encroaching on the land. Tacogama Chimpanzee Sanctuary has spent decades rescuing trafficked primates and opposing the illegal wildlife trade. Our Africa Regional Editor, Will Ross reports. There are 122 rescued chimpanzees at the Takugama Sanctuary in Sierra Leone. But as people encroach on the land, staff say they've been finding traps

dangerously close to the chimpanzee enclosures. The management says President Julius Madabio had ordered the security forces to stop people building close to the sanctuary. But it says those efforts ended three months ago and more structures are still going up. It's once again urging the authorities to take immediate action to protect the chimpanzee reserve, which has also been under threat due to deforestation in Sierra Leone. Will Ross If there's life beyond our planet, and if that life is equipped with ears, then they're in for a treat at the end of the month when Johann Strauss' Blue Danube Waltz is beamed into space,

performed by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. It will be played out by the European Space Agency, which is celebrating its founding 50 years ago. Norbert Kettner, CEO of the Vienna Tourist Board, which is involved in the project, explained why. Norbert Kettner, CEO of the Vienna Tourist Board, which is involved in the project, explained why. Since the movie 2001, Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick, the Blue Danube Waltz is actually considered the inofficial anthem of space. And that's why we're sending this, we say now official anthem of space into space on the 31st of May, together with European Space Agency, which also celebrates its 50th

birthday on the 31st of May. In 1977 Voyager was was sent, the BRO was sent into space. There were 27 pieces of music on these golden records, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart. So Austria-Vienna was quite well represented then, but Strauss was not on this golden record. We can only assume that it was a misunderstanding or maybe it was seen as too popular not to put it in a golden record. And I think one part of our mission is to correct this mistake from 1977. So why are we humans so keen to transmit music into the cosmos? Ben Wright spoke to Professor Catherine Haymans, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland. in Heymans, the astronomer royal for Scotland.

This particular piece of music is, you know, deeply entrenched in the hearts of all sci-fi fans because of Stanley Kubrick's use of it in the 2001 Space Odyssey. And there's this wonderful scene, it's a very long scene with no dialogue out in space. And it's a waltz between this giant spinning space station and a very sleek passenger jet that's slowly floating into dock. And so presumably the hope is that, you know, if Alien Lifeform has also seen the movie and has enjoyed it, they may respond to this and respond in some kind. It's a wonderful, it's a piece of music that I think for us as a civilization, it really represents sort of space travel and the possibilities and what could be out there. Explain how this works. Presumably we're not just going to be pointing up some very large speakers at the distant galaxies and hoping it reaches the ears that it's intended for. How are we going to get these sound waves out into space?

The European Space Agency are going to be recording the sound from the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and then transforming that into radio waves and transmitting those radio waves out into space using a giant radio antennae in Spain. It's 35 metres across. And how far will it reach? Given enough time, it will go for us as far as the universe. It will just reverberate forever, will it?

It will just keep... It will go on forever. Yeah, so it takes time for radio waves to travel through our universe. It will take about four years before it goes past our nearest neighbour in the galaxy, a star called Alpha Centauri. And it will just keep on going. Professor Catherine Haymans, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, and to those aliens listening, enjoy! And that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News podcast

later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.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 Liam McShephry and Siobhan Lehy. Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll. The producers were Liam McSheffrey and Siobhan Lehy. The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Bernadette Keough. Until next time, goodbye. 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.