Global News Podcast - US judge dismisses election case against Trump

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

A US judge has dismissed the criminal case accusing President-elect Donald Trump of attempting to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election. Also: Israel and Hezbollah said to be close to Lebanon ceasefire deal..

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. You are actually radioactive and everything alive is. Unexpected elements from the BBC World Service. Search for unexpected elements wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard and in the early hours of Tuesday, the 26th of November, these are our main stories. A judge in the United States has ruled that Donald Trump will not face trial for attempting to overturn the 2020 election result. Israel's cabinet will meet

on Tuesday to discuss approval of a ceasefire with Hezbollah but a final agreement hasn't yet been reached and a major search operation has been taking place to find 16 people who are missing after a tourist boat sank in the Red Sea. Also in this podcast... It's unbelievable really and it's a fairy tale in many ways. Who would have expected a 13-year-old to be not just registered but then a bidding war breaking out between two of the biggest franchises. A 13-year-old cricketer has become the youngest player ever bought at an Indian Premier League auction.

A judge in the United States has dismissed the criminal case accusing President-elect Donald Trump of attempting to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election. Earlier, the special counsel, Jack Smith, had formally applied for the case to be dropped because of a long-standing policy by the Justice Department that bars the prosecution of a sitting President. Mr Smith also said that he would not pursue charges accusing the former President of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House. We heard more from our North America correspondent, Gary O'Donoghue, in Washington. This is all the federal criminal charges faced by Donald Trump that the special counsel is asking the courts to drop. And there's a simple reason for that, which is that there's a long-standing legal opinion

from the Office of Legal Counsel inside the Department of Justice, which says you can't indict or try a sitting president. And now that Donald Trump has won the presidential election and will become president on January the 20th, that would simply have to be put off until 2029. Now, the special counsel says that this is nothing to do with the merits of the case or the gravity of the charges against Mr. Trump. This is purely about the constitution

and what can and can't be done to presidents. So having started the year facing 44 separate federal criminal charges in these two cases, those parts of Donald Trump's legal problems have simply evaporated. And is that it then for these charges? Could a future council resurrect them in the future? Well the filing does say that they're asking for this dismissal to be without prejudice which is a sort of way of saying we're not saying it's anything to do with our case we're just saying this is a procedural thing so there is potential. I think the political likelihood of that happening is minuscule, vanishingly small quite honestly. There are of course still

other some other legal issues. Donald Trump remains a convicted felon in relation to the hush money payments to a porn star in New York. He has been tried and convicted on 34 counts in that case. The sentencing for that is still mired down in a number of motions and delays. We're waiting to see what will happen with that. And of of course there is a state case in Georgia related to January the

6th and the riots which again is completely bogged down in legal arguments about the district attorney and about the prosecuting team there. So in terms of the big ticket cases I think you could call these the federal criminal prosecutions, yes he's in the clear. And just very briefly, has there been any reaction from the Trump camp? Yes, and I think you can probably imagine what it is. They say this is a victory for law and order. They talk about the weaponisation of the justice system, which is what they've always done. Donald Trump has long said that this was a witch hunt, a hoax, all these kinds

of words that we've become used to over these years. Their joy and their, I won't say gloating, but their pure sort of unalloyed joy is not surprising and pretty justified. Mr Trump later posted on his social media site Truth Social that the federal cases were empty and lawless and a low point in the history of our country. The Israeli Security Cabinet is to meet later on Tuesday to discuss a ceasefire with Hezbollah. A final agreement hasn't yet been announced but the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reported to have agreed to its terms in principle.

The 60-day deal would involve Hezbollah pulling its fighters back behind the Lethany River, which is about 30 kilometres from the Israeli border, and an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. The Lebanese military is also expected to boost its presence in the region. Israel's ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, had this to say on Monday evening. You know, it's not going to happen overnight. There will be a few stages, a few requirements. You know the most important condition for us is the withdrawal of Hezbollah north of the Litani. We said it from the beginning that that will be our goal in this war.

Then there will be other stages in the agreement. Lebanon's deputy parliamentary speaker, Elias Boussab, said he saw no serious obstacles to the proposed truce drafted by the US and France. The comments come despite Israel and Hezbollah ramping up their military activity against each other in the last few days. So just how close are we to a deal? A question for our security correspondent Frank Gardner, who's in Jerusalem. It's not there yet and I don't want to kind of rain on everybody's parade because there is a momentum of, I wouldn't say goodwill, but people wanting to make this deal happen, particularly the Americans,

because we've had Amos Hochstein, the US envoy, four piece in Lebanon, who's been shuttling between Beirut and Israel. But there are elements in the security cabinet. So Itamar Ben-Ghivir for example, who is the National Security Minister here in Israel, he has taken to social media to say it is not too late to stop this deal, it won't be signed. He's very much opposed to it because he says this is crazy when Hezbollah are on the back foot militarily, they're weakened, now we should finish them off and that anything less is just simply appeasement. And that is a view which I think in some ways is shared by some people in the north of the country

who have been voicing their fears that with Hezbollah allowed to kind of withdraw partly intact, they will simply rebuild their capacity. They'll start drifting south of the River Latani that they're supposed to stay north of, as you heard there earlier, and it'll all start all over again because this is where we were after 2006. I helped cover that war back then and it ended inconclusively. There was supposed to be a UN Security Council resolution. Well, there was a resolution, but it was supposed to keep Hespilar north of the Latane River, in other words, 30 kilometers north of the border. But they managed to establish themselves right under the noses of UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon,

who have been very bravely crewing these outposts in south Lebanon. But they've been unable to stop Hezbollah building up its forces in southern Lebanon and then rocketing northern Israel. And Israel has said this is now a war aim of theirs to drive Hezbollah away from the border and keep it that way. So the hard part of all of this isn't going to be the signing, it's going to be the implementation of it. And meanwhile these talks are separate from what is going on in Gaza. This is purely about Hezbollah and Lebanon. Yeah so this is one of the byproducts of the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah.

If you remember, just under two months ago, the Israelis assassinated him using a huge number of powerful bombs dropped from US-made or US-designed warplanes that raided his headquarters in Hezbollah headquarters in the south of Beirut. With him gone, Hezbollah no longer insisted on coupling a ceasefire in Lebanon with a ceasefire in Gaza. It's much harder to get a ceasefire in Gaza. It's hard to tell where that conflict is going because Hamas keep popping up in areas where the Israelis say that they had cleared them from those areas. Israel is very clear on this. They at least officially are not saying they want to destroy Hezbollah, which is also a political party. They do want to destroy Hamas.

That was Frank Gardner in Jerusalem. Tim Franks spoke to the Lebanese Minister of Finance, Youssef Khalil. Was he hopeful of a ceasefire? Unfortunately, I don't want to be negative on that, but it has never been very, if you wish, clear and very reliable. It's very often the case over the last past year that people were expecting an agreement and did not get it. And people want an agreement, they need an agreement, they need good, if you wish, relationships so that they can live and they can survive what has been happening for the whole year. So they're very anxious that it doesn't work and they're very unhappy that it doesn't work until the next month or the next couple of weeks where people bet on a stable situation

or an agreement. I hope this time it's going to be more serious than usual. I mean, it seems to be more stable than it used to. Unfortunately, I have lived experiences where it did not work. But given my age and my experience, I expected that very often it would not work. Am I right in thinking that your understanding is that this will be a 60-day truce to begin with and that there would be the Hezbollah militia would pull north of the Litani River and that the Lebanese military would then move into that area to try and police southern Lebanon and ensure that calm is maintained there. Is that broadly the idea as far as you are aware?

It is indeed. Yeah, indeed it is. And starting today, by the way, the details that you've been are an element of 1701, but they were talked about and discussed today. Now the 60 days to be spent by the Lebanese are being said and being announced very often. And these are the reasons, but I haven't read it yet. This deal seems to be based largely on the Security Council resolution or the idea behind the Security Council resolution 1701 which had Hezbollah move north of the Latani River and the Lebanese army provide the sort of security guarantee. To be blunt it didn't work and that's why we are where we are now. What is the guarantee that the Lebanese

army would do a better job this time around? I think I mean the economy per se and because people were very very angry about their revenues for especially small businesses and the lacking of microfinance and et cetera. These people on the medium run, even if they were very, very much pro the politics that were taken, you know, an important part of the economy would not be easily accepted if people were to suffer from low incomes and very low public revenues. So this would be a very big pressure and the two very important political parties in that, Amal and Hezbollah, are part of the discussion and it is said

that everybody is saying okay, okay, okay. So it shows as if everybody has agreed but it's too early today to make an announcement. The Lebanese Minister of Finance Youssef Khalil. A major search operation has been taking place to find 16 people who were missing after a tourist boat sank in the Red Sea. The Egyptian authorities said 31 passengers of various nationalities and 14 crew members were on board. Almost 30 people have been rescued so far. Our correspondent Sally Nabil reports from Cairo. The latest we have from the governor of the Red Sea who went to Marshalam to meet the

survivors who were rescued earlier in the day. He said that investigation is underway to know what exactly caused the boat to sink. But according to stories told by the survivors is that the weather might be the reason because there was a huge wave overnight that caused the boat to capsize. We are not sure yet that this is the only reason, but these are the initial reports we're having. The governor also excluded the possibility of having a technical error behind this incident saying that the boat was safe and sound and it didn't have any problems. But the important question here, will they be able to find the people missing? They include four Egyptians

as far as we know and two British. And the other question is the impact such an incident would have on the tourism industry in this part of the country. This is the impact such an incident would have on the tourism industry in this part of the country. This is the high season for the Red Sea shores in Egypt and Mars Alam where the incident took place is a very popular destination for European tourists who go there for diving because of the clear waters, colorful coral reefs and the warm weather. So we are still waiting for the rescue and search operations to be concluded and we are also waiting for the investigation

to tell us what exactly happened. Salina Beale in Egypt. Germany's Foreign Minister says serious questions must be asked about whether a cargo plane crash that killed a pilot in Lithuania was an accident. Annalena Baerbock said the very fact that sabotage was being considered highlighted the volatile situation around Europe. The aircraft was carrying parcels for the German logistics firm DHL. Gabrielle Sungeleiter of BBC Monitoring reports. The aircraft slid along the ground for a few hundred metres before colliding with a building

and bursting into flames. The authorities are searching for answers. Lithuania's minister of foreign affairs, Gabrielos Landsbergis, said no scenario had been ruled out. But the defence minister said there was no evidence linking the crash to recent sabotage incidents in central and eastern Europe, which saw three packages, believed to be sent from Vilnius, explode. Western countries had linked the blasts to Russia, claims Moscow has denied. Gabrielle Sunkerleiter. Next to the conflict in Ukraine, the German defence minister says five European countries

will step up their support to strengthen Ukraine's defence industry as the country heads into the third winter at war. Boris Pistorius was speaking after meeting his French, British, Polish and Italian counterparts in Berlin on Monday. Their talks follow recent comments by the Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia had the right to target the military facilities of countries supplying weapons to Ukraine. For its part, Poland has always insisted that Ukraine has every right to use Western-sent missiles against Russia in self-defence.

Poland hosts several US military facilities, including one that Russian officials have identified as a possible target if the war were to intensify. Our Eastern Europe correspondent Sarah Rainsford reports from Poland. There were celebrations in northern Poland this month as the ribbons were cut and flags raised at an American missile defence base. As Poland's president pointed out, the base was first planned when NATO was most worried about ballistic missiles from Iran or North Korea. Those were the days of George Bush and his axis of evil. Now it is Russia that's threatening

to attack the West after Ukraine's allies supplied Kiev with rockets that are hitting Russia. Vladimir Putin has warned he has the right to hit any military facility of those countries, and the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman has been pretty specific. Maria Zaharova said the new American base in Poland could be a priority target for Russia's newest missiles. So, I headed for Rijaková to see how people there were taking the threats. There's a small yellow concrete chapel here, just next to the green fence and barbed wire of the military base.

The bells are ringing and there's quite a crowd of people heading now towards the main morning mass. Regina told me she and her family were worried. It's all they're talking about, she says. But Joachim was clear. There is no way Putin would attack the United States here, he told me. It would be suicide. Standing looking through this barbed wire and the fencing towards the American base here. It is extraordinary to think that relations with Russia are so hostile now that officials in Moscow can openly talk about targeting sites like this. But that's what Moscow wants. It wants the West to worry about just how far it could escalate things. And yet here in Poland, they've been living with the idea

of Russia as a threat for a very long time now. Poland has suffered a lot from the Soviet times and from Russian imperialism. And Putin as our neighbour has been really sending threats to the entire region for a while already. Back in Warsaw, I met Aleksandra Wyszniowska, an MP with the Governing Coalition. She's been to eastern Ukraine herself, delivering aid from Poland. And she is sure that the West has to go and help in Kiev, whatever the warnings from Vladimir Putin. We cannot right now sacrifice the fate of Ukraine, which is desperately in desperate

need of more military support, of increased humanitarian support. Do you think that the West should continue to respond and to escalate its support for Ukraine given that Vladimir Putin has made such open threats that he won't allow that? What he's currently saying is not credible. I think that if we were to appease him in any way, shape or form, that would only strengthen the Russian aggression. Polanoat believes it's already under attack, not with rockets, but with actions meant to destabilise as well as cause damage. This was a giant shopping mall. It's now just a few heaps of bricks and rubbish and a couple of charred black walls.

It is pretty strange looking at it to think that this fire could somehow be linked to Russia. But that is what the authorities are investigating and not just here, but acts of arson and sabotage right across the country. And they describe it as part of a hybrid Russian war. When I ask a group of pensioners sheltering from the icy wind whether they're worried about Russian missile attacks, this lady just laughs. She tells me Putin's not the only one with rockets. But from the ruins of the shopping mall behind her,

it seems like Russia's hybrid war on Europe has already escalated. Sarah Rainsford in Poland. Still to come. Both fists and accusations flew in the debating chamber of Serbia's National Assembly. We'll have more on that fight that broke out during a session of Serbia's parliament. Science is done by people who constantly expect the unexpected. That thing that we couldn't figure out, we figured it out. But now you're like, OK, this is like a whole other can of worms.

Unexpected elements brings you the most unexpected bits. At the origin of the lightning discharge, we have a temperature which is even higher than the surface of the sun. Unexpected elements from the BBC World Service. It's not Jurassic Park, is it? It's Cretaceous Park. All of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park came from the Cretaceous period. Search for unexpected elements wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Next to France where prosecutors have requested a 20-year jail sentence for Dominique Pellico who admitted drugging

his wife and encouraging dozens of men to rape her. The trial of Pellico and 50 others in the southern city of Avignon has provoked widespread shock. But there's been praise for Giselle Pellico's decision to testify and waive her right to anonymity. Our Paris correspondent Andrew Harding reports. Twenty years is the maximum sentence for rape in France. In court one prosecutor argued that it was too little given the seriousness of Dominique Pellico's crimes. Outside the courthouse in Avignon, Dominique Pellico's own lawyer,

Beatrice Zavaro, made mention of her client's advanced age, but did not press the point. For us, this comes as no surprise, even though Dominique Pellico was devastated when he heard it. But it was to be expected and there were no surprises. There's no doubt that Pellico will get a heavy sentence for the extraordinary abuse to which he subjected his wife Gisèle. It's less certain how the court will seek to punish the 50 other men accused of raping her. Ten men returned up to six times to the Pellico's bedroom in southern France. 35 men still maintain that what they did was not rape,

arguing that they believed they were participating in a consensual swingers' fantasy. Almost all of the accused were filmed at the time by Dominique Pellico, that graphic footage shown in court. Verdicts and sentencing will come late in December. It will be a moment of reckoning for France after a trial that has raised profound questions, not least about the issue of consent. Andrew Harding in France. Zimbabwe says it will pay compensation for more than 400 formerly white-owned farms

seized by the government over the last 25 years. Officials say the total payout will be over 300 million dollars but they haven't provided a timeline. From Harare, here's Shinganyuka. The Zimbabwe government announced today that it set aside 55 million US dollars this year alone as part of a broader plan to pay for the foreign and local white farmers. The compensation pledge is part of a raft of demands made by Western lenders to secure their support for a debt clearance strategy. Zimbabwe has not received loans from the World Bank and the IMF in 25 years.

Creditors want arrears cleared, but they also want to see political and economic reforms. Today, a European Union representative said the country's political environment continues to deteriorate. Shinganyoka in Zimbabwe. Here in the UK more women are dying from alcohol related liver disease than ever before. Women aged between 35 and 44 are eight times more likely to die from the disease than 50 years ago. The BBC's Hazel Martin, who's just 32, was diagnosed with the condition last year. She's never been dependent on alcohol, but doctors told her she could die if she didn't change her social drinking habits.

She's been looking at how she became one of a growing number of young women surprised to discover that they've been putting their lives at risk. to discover that they've been putting their lives at risk. From my late teens through my twenties, I did what many young people do, enjoyed nights out in clubs and bars with my friends. I drank to be sociable, but I never believed that the amounts I was drinking could do me lasting damage. could do me lasting damage. What's a pig say? I'm cruel.

Hmm? Have a kiss. At 31, a working mother with a small child, I was in for a shock. A blood test for tiredness led to a liver scan. So a normal score should be less than 7. Your score was 10.2. Sjoerdendatta is a consultant at the new Victoria Hospital in Glasgow.

Although I had no symptoms, these tests revealed I was on the brink of doing permanent damage to my liver and my health. In your case, we worked out that we felt this was most likely to be alcohol, and if you continued to drink, then I was worried that you were going to go on and develop cirrhosis of the liver. So the most important thing for you at that time was to stop drinking. I remember walking through this park feeling shell-shocked, thinking,

God, I can't believe I've done this to myself. I've never been dependent on alcohol. I was mostly drinking at weekends and was otherwise fit and active. So what went wrong? It came as a shock to discover that what was normal to me was actually what doctors define as damaging binges. When you think about binge drinking, people have a vision of people sprawling out of bars

and clubs and falling around by bus stops. That's not what we mean biologically. Dr Gautam Mehta from the Royal Free Hospital is the author of a report looking at the links between binge drinking and liver disease. What is a binge? So for a woman, it's six units of alcohol at one sitting. Six units could be two large glasses of wine. So if you have two large glasses of wine and you're a female, you're at your limit. Do people have a hard time believing that that is real and that that will cause you harm if you exceed that?

Yeah, I think they do. Binge drinking on its own, even with a weekly consumption of less than 14 units, will increase your risk of liver disease. According to figures from the Office for National Statistics, more women under the age of 45 are dying from alcohol-related liver disease than ever before. The British Liver Trust says seven out of ten people with liver disease don't know there's anything wrong with them until they turn up at A&E. Consultant Debbie Shawcross is from King's College Hospital in London.

What we're seeing is a huge proportion of younger individuals who present with liver disease and liver failure, sometimes as young as 20. One of the groups we see are actually highly successful women. And they've maybe got young families, they've got other things going on. They're not alcoholics, they've never probably even been drunk. But they are just drinking too much as a habit, really. It wasn't always like this. There's been an eight-fold increase in the number of women aged 35 to 44 dying from liver disease

compared to 50 years ago. Abstaining hasn't been easy. Months after my diagnosis, a repeat scan revealed my liver has recovered. I feel incredibly lucky. I could so easily and unknowingly have carried on with the way things were, facing a very different outcome. have carried on with the way things were, facing a very different outcome. Hazel Martin reporting. A session of Serbia's parliament has been suspended after fighting erupted between MPs over a deadly roof collapse at a train station earlier this month. The opposition accused the government of failing to take responsibility for the accident in which 15 people were killed. Here's Guy

de Lorne. Both fists and accusations flew in the debating chamber of Serbia's National Assembly. Opposition MPs chanted killers and held a placard reading, blood on your hands. Members of the governing coalition confronted them and the disagreements turned physical. It was the opposition's latest effort to hold the government responsible for the disaster at Novi Sad railway station earlier this month. They say a culture of impunity and corruption caused the deadly collapse of a concrete canopy. They want Prime Minister Milos Vucic to resign. The parliamentary session was abandoned as Mr Vucic described the opposition MPs as

thugs. Guy Delornay. Cricket now and a 13-year-old boy has become the youngest player to be sold in the Indian Premier League auction. Vaibhav Suryavanshi is a left-handed batsman and spin bowler and becomes one of the youngest first-class cricketers ever. Indian cricket commentator Prakash Wakhanga told us more about him. It's unbelievable really. I mean it's a fairy tale in many ways. Who would have expected a 13-year-old to be not just registered but then a bidding war breaking out between two of the biggest franchises, the Delhi Capitals and the ones who finally got him, the Rajasthan Royals, fetching him a prize of $130,000, imagine, at the age of 13. And to just put that in context,

he played his first Ranji Trophy game for his state of Bihar at the age of a little over 12 years. Remember Sachin Tendulkar only made his first class debut at the age of 15. So how much younger can you get is the question that people are asking and yet when you look into this young lad's life at the age of four his father seeing how well he was hitting the ball apparently created a little play area for him in his backyard and at the age of nine he joined his first cricket academy where the gentleman that he credits to be his coach, a gentleman called Manish Oja, who played first class Ranji Trophy cricket for the state of Bihar, took him under his wing.

And as this boy blossomed, unbelievably capping off that brilliant 58 ball 100 against the under 19 Australians, he's unbelievably talented, it would appear. On current form, the way he's been picked now in the under 19 squad, it just looks like he is going to get his batting to really blossom. And I'm really pleased that in spite of being so young, the good thing is he's going to have a person like Rahul Dravid, none better than him to coach and nurture talent at Rajasthan Royals. Prakash Wakanga on Vaibhav Suryavanshi, a name to watch out for.

And that's it from us for now. There will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later if you would like to comment on this edition or indeed the topics we have covered in it. Do please send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll. The producer was Liam McShaffrey. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jackie Leonard and until next time, goodbye. What are people around the world doing to help tackle the climate emergency? Climate shocks that we are experiencing. Trouts, floods, decimated agriculture and so on. The climate question from the BBC World Service looks for answers to those challenges posed

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