Global News Podcast - US pledges $150m in aid after Venezuelan earthquakes

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

The Trump administration is deploying military assets and a specialised team, as well as millions of dollars in financial aid to help relief efforts in Venezuela. The country's health minister says at least 235 people are now known to have died in Wednesday's powerful earthquakes, and large numbers of people are still unaccounted for. Also: hundreds arrested across Kenya as demonstrators mark two years since a deadly crackdown on youth-led protests. King Charles and Queen Camilla won't move into Buckingham Palace when a $500m refurbishment is completed next year. Scientists discover twin "super-puff" planets that are less dense than candy floss. Researchers manage to read a scroll that was burnt to a crisp in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2000 years ago. And we look at how the tiny nation of Cape Verde has invested in football... as its exceptional run at the Men's Football World Cup continues.The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail] Photo: People work to rescue casualties from the rubble of a building in La Guaira after earthquakes hit Venezuela Credit: REUTERS/Gaby Oraa

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Visit Odu.com to book a demo. It's O'Dbolo.com. The biggest men's football world cup in history is here. 48 teams and a record 104 games being played across the United States, Canada and Mexico. And the more than the score podcast is bringing you more than just the latest results, stats and fixtures. We're taking a closer look at the new teams competing,

the Cups standout stars, and the fans who are shaping the tournament. More than the score from the BBC World Service. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Chris Barrow, and in the early hours of Friday the 26th of June, these are our main stories. More than 200 people are now confirmed dead

after two strong earthquakes devastated Venezuela. Search and rescue efforts are continuing. thousands are still missing and the US has promised millions of dollars in aid. Here in the UK, it's been revealed that King Charles and Queen Camilla won't move into Buckingham Palace when a $500 million refurbishment is completed next year. Also in this podcast, we're using x-rays to be able to see inside and then software, including AI, to be able to actually read the evidence of the ink from the interior.

Researchers have managed to read a scroll that was burnt to a crisp in the eruption of Mount Vassou, nearly 2,000 years ago. A massive rescue operation is gathering pace in northern Venezuela following Wednesday's devastating back-to-back earthquakes. The confirmed number of deaths has now risen to 235, and thousands are still missing. Specialist rescue teams from the US, Mexico, Qatar, Spain and the UN are searching for survivors in the rubble of collapsed buildings. The epicentre of the tremors was to the west of the capital Caracas.

Our reporter Vanessa Silver is in the city. I'm right now in the Chakao municipality. This is one of the areas most affected in the city. It's the point where the geological fault line runs through. This area was affecting during the earthquake that hit the city in 1967 and is affecting now. The damage that were at that moment are now being repeated and we can see buildings collapse. We know that at least four in this municipality. I was around two of them where many people from the government rescue teams are gathering there, also heavy machinery, trying to remove the concrete in the hope that look for survivors. Dr. Pedro Javier Fernandez, who's involved in the humanitarian effort, told us about some of the challenges.

We have to remember that Venezuela is in the country. context of a humanitarian complex emergency. All our hospitals lack supplies, lack medicines. We are not able to provide medical attention to our people in a normal day. Now with this tragedy, the emergency is even bigger and it's more difficult to face than in the other country because not only the needs are more, the structure of the hospitals and the lack of medical Equipment makes it even harder to provide medical attention. The response to this disaster is a big test for the government of Delci Rodriguez and for the Trump administration.

Since the US military intervention in January, when the Venezuelan president, Nicholas Maduro, was abducted and flown to the United States, his former deputy has been running the country, but is heavily dependent on decisions taken far away in Washington. The United States has pledged to contribute $150 million in aid and to supply two military ships, transport planes and helicopters to help with relief efforts. But how all that pans out will be closely watched.

Until last year, it would have been the aid agency USAID that responded to a disaster like this. But as part of spending cuts, masterminded by Elon Musk, many of its employees were dismissed and those left were absorbed into the State Department. Rebecca Bill Chavez was Deputy U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Barack Obama. There's a lot of muscle memory in USAID about how to react to these sorts of natural disasters. So that is gone. And it's going to be interesting because the capacity now at the State Department, it's much thinner. It could very easily become very improvised.

Something else that USAID had was that it had long-term partnerships with organizations like the UN, with the international community of the Red Cross. So it's going to be very telling, I think, to see, it's going to be a challenge. I asked our Washington correspondent Hal Griffith, whether the American aid is a significant amount. I think it is compared to some of the nations, whether it will be enough, I doubt. It will be the only amount that they will need to spend. As you said, a total of $150 million. Now, 50 million of that will go towards NGO spending in the area, partly to the World Food Programme,

to international medical corps to Samaritans, people who have a presence already, and then a further hundred million contributed to the UN office, which is coordinating the international response. So while it is a start, I'm sure more will be needed globally, but certainly there may be even an expectation that the White House will be prepared to spend even more in the coming days. Yeah, I imagine that in Caracas,

with the US having intervened so strongly at the beginning of the year and removing Nicholas Maduro, that they would be looking to the United States to say, come on, we're sort of deferring to you now? Yeah, when you consider the US to control of domestic politics in Venezuela in January and then control of its oil sales since then, perhaps there's a need for the US to be seen domestically to be stepping in and owning this and responding to the disaster. Now, for his part, the Defence Secretary Pete Hex has said that when lives of our friends are on the line, America moves. So clearly

casting this as a relationship, a friendship and a bond between the two countries where they can call on each other. And we know that Secretary of State Rubio spoke to the interim president, Delci Rodriguez, in the hours straight after the earthquake,

pledging support. She responded on social media to thank him and also responded directly to a message from President Trump saying that it was something that the nation would never forget that helping hand being extended to the Venezuelan people during difficult time. So from her part and her administration's point of view, the interim

administration, we must remember in Caracas, they want to keep this relationship healthy and happy in their time of need. I wanted to ask you about what the reality of this help will look like now that USAID has been dismantled. That was the organisation which would have picked up on this. We talked about some of the cuts that Elon Musk made to staff their employees were dismissed. So how is the reality of this now on the ground working out now that USAID is no more? Yeah, it's almost 12 months since the US Agency for International Development closed its doors. And we were told at the time by President Trump that the spending should be more aligned with America first. Now, arguably in Venezuela, there is now a situation where his worldview might be.

fit with that in that they want to remodel the politics and the economy in Venezuela and they're in a time of need. So this money, the new money being pledged, can be seen as that sort of reshaping domestically of the political situation. Clearly, there was need there before the earthquake. However, we've heard at the BBC from people talking about the healthcare crisis in Venezuela, which is already under strain before the earthquake. And so, you know, You can see how, as we said at the start of this conversation, more than the original 150 million may be met if that need is going to be met as well.

Howard Griffith in Washington. The US Supreme Court has ruled that Donald Trump can end legal protection for Haitians and Syrians and potentially deport hundreds of thousands of them. A second ruling also clears the way for the administration to turn back asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border. Our correspondent in Washington, Bern de Bissman, told Valerie Sussman, told Valerie Sanderson why Haitians and Syrians were originally given this legal protection.

Temporary protected status is a program that started way back in 1990, and essentially it's granted to individuals from very specific countries that are pre-approved by the U.S. government, who are unable to accommodate many of these migrants because of war, natural disasters, for example. So Haitians were granted temporary protected status or TPS, as it's known, initially after the major earthquake that took place in 2010. Syrians for their part, many of them receive temporary protected status after the country's civil war began in 2012. But those two aren't the only nationalities that have received this

status, but they're the ones that are subject to the Supreme Court's ruling. And why is President Trump so keen on getting rid of this legal protection? Well, President Trump, of course, has a very hardline view towards immigration from other countries. He in particular has repeatedly spoken against Haiti. And more broadly, the Trump administration is of the view that temporary protected status was always meant to be temporary. Now, the initial policy is for 18 months, but that's subject to extensions. And many of the Haitians, for example, have been here now since 2010, 2011. And there are many other cases of nationalities that have been here of a very extended timeframes. The Trump administration

really wanted to end this because they no longer saw it as being a temporary measure as in the name. But, Brown, what is the wider implication of this ruling? Because many of these people who've been there, as you said since 2010, will have children born in the U.S.? Well, that's a huge complication, of course. If children are born in the U.S., they are American citizens. Now, that's also something that the Supreme Court is debating, and we're expecting a ruling on that any day or any week now. But this could create a situation, for example, in which families are separated. The Trump administration has shown a willingness to do that, and it could create a situation where TPS recipients from other countries could also face the same. There's TPS recipients from places in Africa,

for example, Sudan, South Sudan, rather Ethiopia, Myanmar, Ukraine, El Salvador. Several countries around the world could now feasibly, because there's a legal precedent, they could also, in theory, be facing expulsion and potentially a family separation if they have children or American spouses. Bern de Bussman. On the 4th of July this year, the United States will celebrate its 250th birthday, marking the anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. And in the run-up to the celebrations, we'll have a special podcast looking at the State of America today. And if you have thoughts or questions on that subject, we would love to hear from you. Please email us, it's global podcast at bbc.c.c.c.com.

And if you can include a voice note, that would be fantastic. Thank you so much. Now, royal families the world over are not legally obliged to pay tax, but those in the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom do make voluntary tax contributions on private income, although those details are rarely made public, until now. The annual accounts for the British royal family show that King Charles paid $17 million on his private income in the last financial year.

Prince William paid $10 million. It's also been revealed that the King and Queen Camilla won't move into Buckingham Palace once costly renovations are completed next year. Our senior royal correspondent Daniela Ralph spoke to me from outside Buckingham Palace. It's been 10 years since the start of the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace and it has cost just under $500 million.

There's been new cabling, refurbishment of all the rooms, electricity has been looked at, the plumbing, everything has been modernised. But now it will not have this building a royal resident because the king and queen have decided not to move in here. And it will be the first time that a monarch has not permanently recited at Buckingham Palace since the reign of Queen Victoria. So it is a really significant moment.

It's also a really personal decision on the part of the king and queen. They will stay at Clarence House, which is just across the road from Buckingham Palace. It's where they have both lived for more than 20 years. It's much smaller. It's much homelier. It's a cosier building. and I think two people in their late 70s just did not want personally the upheaval of moving themselves and their staff to a whole new building. But Buckingham Palace will remain very much monarchy HQ and the business of royalty will still be focused in the building. So there'll be grand events, state dinners, banquets at Buckingham Palace.

It's just the king and the queen will not permanently live there. A cynical person might say that the king's tax bill was revealed at the same time and in the same announcement as this to try and perhaps. soften the blow. Is there some suspicion that that's the case? Or do you think that it is really the king just wanting to be more transparent about his finances? I think he definitely wants to be more transparent about his finances. You can always wonder quite what is the thinking and the timing of royal announcements. But this has come because basically there has been such scrutiny over royal finances in the past few months, particularly after the situation with Andrew Mount Batten Windsor moving and losing his titles. It's kind of opened up a closer look at

the way royalty works. And I think both Buckingham Palace for the King and Kensington Palace for Prince William were very understanding of that and knew that they need to perhaps give more to show transparency and openness and accountability. So that is behind us getting those figures for the amount of tax that both the King and Prince William are paying for the first time. It is part of a strategy from Buckingham Palace to be more open. The slight problem with that is that although we now have the figures, which is new information, we don't have any detailed understanding of how they reach those figures and the breakdown of how they got to those tax bills.

We understand that the King is in the top 100 taxpayers in the UK, which really puts him up there on the list. Does that kind of knowledge change the public's opinion of the Royals? I don't think so necessarily, but I think there is a definite shift in mood around what the public want to know about the royal family, the sense of the royal family being a little bit at arm's length, in the distance, something that just sits there that's always been there. That mood is shifting.

I think there is a bit of a clamour in some places to understand more of how they work, how they are paid for, are they value for money, which is why we're getting a little bit more of the financial information now around tax and around how they are publicly funded through a mechanism called the sovereign grant. If you don't like the monarchy, are you going to change your mind because you know how much tax? and Prince William Pei, probably not. But it is a shift and a move to a degree of greater openness.

Daniela Ralph. Astronomers have discovered two planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets. Both of them are about the size of Jupiter, but less dense than candy floss. Researchers say that the two super puff planets orbit a star that's more than a thousand light years away. Their atmospheres are thought to be rich in hydrogen and helium, according to the study published by the British Royal Astronomical Society. James Kumarasami has been speaking to George Dransfield, an astrophysicist from the University of Oxford,

and lead author of the study. Super Puff Planet is a planet that's really, really big, but very underdense for its size. So, I mean, you know, things that are roughly the size of Jupiter, we might expect them to be the density of Jupiter, but these things are about 20 times lighter than Jupiter itself. So it's a very, very surprise. find. Two of them together. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, we've discovered so far about 6,300-odd planet. Of those,

about 37 of them are superpuffs, but only four other systems contain more than one super path. So this system is really special because it's not just multiple superpuffs, but they're the biggest ones you've ever found, and the star is nice and bright. So that means that we can actually do a deep dive to, you know, investigate the system further. I was going to say the brightness, is that how you found them? Because the star, nice and bright, but what, more than a thousand light years away? Yes, definitely, over a thousand light years away. The brightness of the star helped, but we actually discovered them using the transit method, which is when a planet passes in front of the star along our line of sight and blocks out a small amount of light temporarily.

So we get that dip in brightness that allows us to infer the presence of a planet. Interesting. I'm not sure if this is your turn of phrase, but it's a rather lovely one that they are comparable to a nice blob of shaving foam. That is indeed my turn of phrase. Yeah, if you squirted some shaving foam into your hand, then that's the kind of density that we're talking about for these planets overall. Wow. And what do we learn from them?

Whenever we find something that's an outlier that doesn't kind of fit our understanding of planet formation, it allows us to kind of extend our understanding of how planets can form and the diversity of the outcomes of planet formation. I mean, if you look at the solar system only, then you really wouldn't think planets are that diverse, but exoplanets have shown us that some very weird and wonderful things can happen out there. And super puffs, especially double super puffs,

they're huge outliers. So it really allows us to understand our place in the cosmos. George Transfield, who's an astrophysicist from Oxford University. And still to come in this podcast, This training centre is living proof that it was built with the future in mind. We look at how the tiny nation of Cape Verde has invested in football as its exceptional run at the men's football World Cup continues. The biggest men's football world cup in history is here.

48 teams and a record 104 games being played across the United States, Canada and Mexico. And the more than the score podcast is bringing you more than the score. In just the latest results, stats and fixtures, we're taking a closer look at the new teams competing, the Cups standout stars and the fans who are shaping the tournament. More than the score from the BBC World Service. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. He's widely recognised as one of the greatest footballers in history.

He's won the prestigious Ballandeur Award five times. He's the all-time leading goalscorer in professional football. And according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he's the first active footballer in history to achieve billionaire status. Guess who we're talking about yet? That's right. Good Bad Billionaire is exploring the life and fortune of football icon Cristiano Ronaldo. That's Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service.

Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast. Demonstrations have been held in several cities across Kenya to honour those killed during the Gen Z anti-government protests two years ago. Security was tightened in the capital Nairobi, where police fired tear gas outside the central police station after detaining activists. One of the protesters, Manez E Ahmed, said it was important to remember the anniversary. I'm here today because we have a responsibility. We have a responsibility to our country, to our ancestors, to those who came before us,

to the youth who are murdered here on these streets, murdered for the simple reason that they were asking for a better Kenya. Our reporter Richard Kagoe is in Nairobi. There was a heavy deployment across Nairobi and especially around the Central Business District. We had anti-rout police who had positioned themselves in key locations. They mounted barricades restricted the flow of traffic into the city centre. Central of Nairobi was quite deserted. Shops were closed. Employers told workers to work out from home.

homeschools are also equally closed, despite the assurances by the government that everything will be okay. And so there was this tension that was really permitting in the air since morning because of abundance of caution. A lot of people decided to stay away because of how the events of last year marking the first anniversary of the protest turned out, turned out very bloody. The whole protest became very chaotic, very violent because of clashes between demonstrators and the police. And that's basically the situation in Nairobi. But there are also demonstrations in other parts of the country, in the coastal city of Mombasa. There are processions that were done there, various marches across the city, though they passed on now very

peacefully. And also in central Kenya, there was a bit of an incident where a couple of demonstrators were also arrested. But largely you would say in some areas, especially the western part of the country, it was really business as usual. A lot of people didn't quite regard the anniversary commemorations. Richard Kagohe. Now it sounds like an impossible challenge. How to read a 2,000-year-old papyrus scroll that was burnt to a crisp when Mount the Suvius erupted in what's modern-day Italy. Now, though, with the help of AI, a team have managed to virtually unroll the scroll from the library of a luxury Roman villa in Herculaneum. It's one of hundreds of incredibly fragile roles that the Vesuvius Challenge project are working on.

Brent Seals is a professor of computer science at the University of Kentucky and one of the founders of the project. You don't have just the volcanic damage, but you have aging for 2,000 years, the archaeology. And then the last 250 years, I mean, bless everyone's heart, but people did the best they could at, you know, trying to hold off and not everything got preserved. I mean, a lot of things are fragmentary or even completely destroyed. So we're operating on three or 400 of the worst of the worst, which is why we're using x-rays to be able to see inside,

and then software, including AI, to be able to actually read the evidence of the ink from the interior. You can map the entire internal structure using what's called x-ray tomography. It's essentially a three-dimensional map of everything inside the scroll, but at a very, very fine resolution. And once you get that, you can see where all of the folds are, not just the outer ones, right, but the interior wraps. And then the software lets us localize those folds and unwrap them. We can actually read coherent, complete manuscripts.

What we've found are original books that were on the shelf in AD 79 when the volcano exploded. First of all, we have some titles and authors that no one expected. For example, Philidemus on the gods book eight. You know, it's kind of a shocking surprise to realize Philademus wrote a series of at least eight books on the gods. It's a little bit like, you know, realizing that there were more Harry Potter books than just the first two. I mean, it's an esoteric world, right, of ancient literature and classical study. But that's the kind of stunning thing that's coming out now. Professor Brent Seals.

Now, you may or may not be interested in football, but the men's football World Cup is underway at the moment, and it's a fascinating case study in tournament design. Normally, for the maths to work nicely, you want a number like 32 or 16, because it halves and halves again until you're left with two teams in the final. But this World Cup has started off with 48 teams.

So to get back to a nice number, like 32, you've got to knock out 16 of them, which is pretty awkward. And there's a match on Saturday between Austria and Algeria that's taking place that both sides probably want to lose so that their draw for the rest of the tournament is better. There was also a famous match in 1982, West Germany versus Austria again. Both teams wanted Germany to win by one or two goals. The statistician David Spiegelhalter has been telling Avon Davis

why 48 teams is just not a good number. I should first of all say I'm not particularly interested in football, but this is absolutely gripping. Austria and Algeria are currently second and third in Group J, both on three points. Austria had on goal difference. But the point is that the winner of the match will end up a runner-up in Group J, and they will have to play Spain in the first round of the knockout competition when they're down to 32, which isn't a match that either team particularly one to face.

And the loser of the match will end up in third place. But because of this odd 48 teams doesn't go nicely, and they want to get 48 down to 32. Out of the 12 third place teams, they're letting eight go through. The top eight of the third place teams go through into the knockout round. And they will play winners of other groups. So, you know, they're quite a tough matches they're going to have when they do go through.

The point is that it could be in the best interest of both Austria and Algeria to lose in that case and just become a high place, third place team. There have been lots of situations before where oddities come up about tactical play. But the thing that FIFA did after that Germany-Austria game back in age two is they said that the last game in each heat, those games are going to be played simultaneously. So you don't really know necessarily what your rank is going to be in the group because something is going on simultaneous to the game you're playing. It's a little bit more complicated where you've got a third place team coming in. It's harder to make it tense right to the end of the group.

I think that's really what's going on here. Yeah, ironically, Algeria was the team that was eliminated because of Germany and Austria, signing a non-aggression pact in 1982. And it's always rankled in Algeria. So personally, I think they're going to be playing to win, even it means facing Spain. But I've been checking all the rules. And as far as I can see, there's nothing in the FIFA disciplinary code that teams have to try to win. If they unlawfully try to fix the match, then obviously that's against the rules. but there's nothing in the actual disciplinary code.

But there is a fair play code that says they're supposed to play to win until the final whistle. Now we know. Meanwhile, underdogs Cape Verde have become something of a World Cup sensation after holding football giants Spain and Uruguay to a draw. Now, their next match is against Saudi Arabia on Friday, and it's an important one because it will determine whether they go forward to the knockout stage of the tournament.

The BBC's Paul and Gia has been to see how the team trains. At a training facility in the capital prior, young aspiring players are honing their football skills. They are passing the ball to one another, controlling, shooting, and running around separate parts of a refurbished artificial pitch. Several years ago, football was mostly played on the bare ground.

But thanks to the technical support and funding from FIFA, some sports facilities here were modernised. One control, one attempt. So now do two attempts. Let's go. Bola Prafrente, Academy founder and head coach, Sylvaria Nedio, says such projects are laudable. This training center is living proof that it was built with the future in mind. I started working here in 2010 two years or so after the place was opened.

I founded the academy and today kids that were here back then at the age of eight and nine and now part of the Blue Sharks team. I never stopped offering training here. I've been doing this for 15 years and haven't trained players in any other facility. Among the key players in the academy is a 12-year-old striker called Gianluca Marcolin, who coach Nedia describes as a rare case. He may look small for his age, but I'm told he's quick, dribbles well, and has impressive goal-scoring abilities.

Football has always been a dream. While growing up, I saw many players playing. I got inspired, I started playing, then I decided to join Bola Frontier Academy. The player that inspired me the most since I started playing is messy. I like him a lot. Without the academy, I wouldn't have played in tournaments, I wouldn't have won the prizes that I got.

I believe without it, I wouldn't be the person that I am today. Academies play a crucial role in nurturing young players in the country. But despite efforts from the government and the football Federation, analysts say more needs to be done to develop the sport locally, including making the Football League more professional. Mario Semedo, President of the Kepvedian Football Federation, tells me he's got a plan. I think it will not just create motivation around local football, but another advantage of our World Cup participation is that we will.

also invest part of the FIFA bonus into developing local football. We will boost training, especially in football academies, and improve local competitions. So this is how we can leverage our World Cup participation. Cape Verde's exploits were perceptible during the World Cup qualifiers were the edged continental football giants Cameroo. But few people would have imagined they would hold Behemoths, Spain and Europe way to a draw at the global tournament. The Blue Sharks play against Saudi Arabia on Friday in a crucial game to book a ticket to the second round. Although the outcome is hard to tell, both sides will likely approach the game with much more intensity. That's Paul Njiae reporting.

And that's all from us for now. If you'd like to get in touch though, do email us at Global Podcast. BBC.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Just use the hashtag Global NewsPod. And don't forget our sister podcast, The Global Story, which goes in-depth and beyond the headlines on one big story. This edition of the Global News podcast was mixed by Charlotte Hadroyd Tausimska and produced by Paul Day and Wendy Urquhart.

The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Chris Barrow and until next time, goodbye. The biggest men's football world cup. in history is here. 48 teams and a record 104 games being played across the United States, Canada and Mexico. And the More Than the Score podcast is bringing you more than just the latest results, stats and fixtures. We're taking a closer look at the new teams competing, the Cups standout stars and the fans who are shaping the tournament. More than the score from the BBC World Service. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.