Global News Podcast - US pledges more support for Ukraine at UN meeting

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

The US envoy to the UN has said Ukraine will get more American security help. Also: the dozens of medics on trial in Turkey over baby deaths, and a Russian company picks a seven-year-old as its future head of training.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Good, bad billionaire from the BBC World Service. The podcast exploring the minds, the motives and the money of some of the world's richest individuals. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jalil and in the early hours of Tuesday, the 19th of November, these are our main stories.

The Kremlin warns President Biden's decision to let Ukraine hit targets in Russia could escalate the war as the UN Security Council meets to discuss what more help to give. Brazil's President Lula opens a G20 summit with a call for countries to come together to end global hunger and poverty. Hamas officials in Gaza say they've killed 20 gang members who looted aid after the mass theft of UN trucks on Saturday. Also in this podcast, the seven-year-old Russian child

prodigy, who has been offered a job as head of corporate training at this company. We sent him an offer to be head of a teaching department, you know, a company. But unfortunately for us, according to Russian law, it's prohibited to work in a company before you got 14. So he'll have to wait until he's 14 before he can take up the job offer. Today, Tuesday, marks 1,000 days since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a milestone which the UK's foreign minister David

Lammy emphasized at a special meeting of the UN Security Council in New York on Monday. For a thousand days, Ukraine has courageously resisted Russians' aggression. So this is a grim milestone and I'm here at the United Nations to say to member states, unless Putin fails, the wars of conquest will be back. Unless Putin fails, our faith in international law will never return. Unless Putin fails, all of our borders will not be safe. But at the same time, the Kremlin has been warning that President Biden's decision to let Ukraine hit targets in Russia with long-range missiles could escalate the war. At the UN Security Council meeting, the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield,

said Washington would continue to support Ukraine. Let me be clear. When this war ends, a sovereign, independent, democratic Ukraine will be in control of its internationally recognized territory and continue on the path to joining Euro-Atlantic institutions like NATO. Until then, and at the direction of the President, the United States will continue to surge security assistance to Ukraine, including artillery, air defense, armoured vehicles and other needed capabilities and munitions. And we will announce additional security assistance for Ukraine in the days to come. So what to make of these words of support given that Donald Trump will soon be the US

President. Neda Taufik is a UN correspondent in New York. Now, with the election over, President Biden is deciding that he wants to get more security assistance to Ukraine, get the money that the Congress has pledged to Ukraine in before President-elect Trump gets into office. But there is a big question mark about what that means for Ukraine moving forward. You had the Ukrainian foreign minister, Andrei Sibel, here. He spoke about how he thinks that both parties, both Democrats and Republicans, will continue

to support Ukraine. But there is a big question mark because we know the Trump administration has questioned the amount of aid and money going to Ukraine. We know that President-elect Trump has said he wants the war to end immediately. So questions over how the Kremlin will react, if they'll wait for when Donald Trump comes into office, and whether the Trump administration would force Ukraine to kind of accept the situation on the battlefield. And that's perhaps why many are speculating President Biden wants Ukraine in a position of strength immediately.

And what indication have we had from Donald Trump's allies about what direction they would like to see him take once he becomes US President? Well I think when it comes to Donald Trump it's certainly he is somebody that is unpredictable, he is transactional. We know that his vice president-elect, JD Vance, has been very vocal saying he doesn't care about Ukraine. None of that really matters because in president-elect's conversations with President Zelensky, he said that they've had a good talk, he said that he was promising that they would be in a good position. He also says

that he has a good relationship with President Putin, and he's sure they're going to talk in the future. So all of it, I think, is really up in the air. What we are seeing, though, from Europe is a real effort on the international stage, including in the UN Security Council, to send a message to the international community that their commitment to Ukraine is ironclad and that they won't abandon them. Neda Taufik, well, President Biden's approval of long-range missile use for Ukraine has been met with a mixed reaction in Europe. Poland's president said it was a decisive move which would allow Ukraine to defend itself from Russian aggression. But Hungary's foreign minister has

described the decision as desperate and Slovakia's foreign minister has described the decision as desperate and Slovakia's prime minister Robert Fico called it an unprecedented escalation of tensions. As prime minister of the Slovak Republic, I express my strong disagreement with US President Joe Biden's decision to authorize the use of US long-range missiles on targets in the territory of the Russian Federation, with the clear aim to completely thwart or delay peace talks. There has been speculation that European countries like the UK and France will follow the US

lead in allowing Ukraine to use their long-range weaponry. The British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, was asked whether he would approve the use of British Stormshadow missiles to strike inside Russia. I'm not going to get into operational details because Putin is the only winner in that situation. But I've been really clear for a long time now we need to double down, we need to make sure Ukraine has what is necessary for as long as necessary because we cannot allow Putin to win this war. And just as Europeans are divided in Ukraine itself opinions are also mixed about the US change of heart. Paul Adams has been

speaking to people in the central Ukrainian city of Dnieper. The list of weapons systems that Ukraine has pleaded for, waited months for and finally received is long. Javelin missiles, Heimars, tanks, F-16s, all eventually came, but only after much uncertainty among Western allies, nervous about how Russia might respond. Add to that list the Army Tactical Missile System, Atacams. Now that Ukraine has received American permission to use this formidable weapon for attacks deep inside Russia, how do Ukrainians feel?

Here in Dnipro, where the streets echoed to the sound of generators needed to keep the lights on in the city's cafes and shops, we found a mixture of hope and cynicism. I think it will be a big change, said Vladislav. If we're allowed to hit the people who live there, they'll understand how we feel, and then something might change. But Elena, the wife of a serving soldier, was dismissive. This is not a helping hand, she said. It's just some sort of gesture.

That's all. Among politicians and military analysts, Washington's move has received a qualified welcome. Maria Avdiva is a security expert. Well, unfortunately, this decision will not allow to change the course of the war drastically. But of course, this boosts Ukrainian morale and this gives Ukraine another leverage. At a time when Russian forces are edging forward in the East, cities across the country are being hit with missiles and drones. 10 people died today in Odessa.

And the commitment of America's next president is still in doubt. Anything the Biden administration can do to boost Ukraine's chances of survival is welcome here. Paul Adams in Dnipro. Well, the issue of Ukraine and Donald Trump's forthcoming return to the White House has loomed over the G20 summit of the world's 20 major economies being hosted by Brazil. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opened the summit in Rio de Janeiro with the launch of what he said was a global alliance to combat poverty and hunger backed by more than 80 countries. It falls to those gathered around this table to tackle the urgent task of ending this scourge

that shames humanity. For this reason, we've made the launch of a global alliance against hunger and poverty the central goal of Brazil's G20 presidency. Our correspondent, Ioni Wells, who's at the G20 summit, told us more about what the Brazilian president is seeking to do. Essentially he wants to get other countries to commit to putting forward initiatives, putting forward investment to try to tackle global hunger. That is something that he's made a big priority of Brazil's presidency of the G20 this year. he's made a big priority of Brazil's presidency of the G20 this year. He described in his speech when he was outlining this that he felt the world was a worse off place than it was in 2008 when the G20 leaders met for the first time.

He said that partly this was due to millions and millions of people going hungry. He said that when the world is producing so much food, that was shocking essentially, that he believed it was the duty of the leaders around the table in that room to try to tackle that. Now the question really I suppose is how exactly is he going to pressure other countries to do this? One of the things for example that he has called for is a minimum tax on some of the world's wealthiest billionaires for example. That is something which some countries have got on board with but others not so much there are certainly sort of differences of opinion ideologically in the room here which I think makes

reaching consensus on issues like that quite a challenge and one man is dominating the summit who isn't even there Donald Trump that's right I think certainly the absence of Donald Trump is as you say one of the most significant things really being discussed in the room here. And that's partly because of some of the pledges that he made during his election campaign, notably his pledge to introduce huge tariffs on international trade, to pursue a sort of America first policy around especially things like manufacturing. And I think that is particularly significant given that he in particular said that he would want to introduce very high tariffs on China

Now there is an unanswered question again here about how other countries like the US like the UK Might respond if that was the case I think the concern is particularly among for example some of the UK officials is if he was to do that without trigger a sort Of wider trade war and that is something which I think is causing concern, well of course most notably among the Chinese delegation who are here at the G20. Ioni Wells at the G20 summit in Brazil. Gaza's Hamas-run interior ministry has said its security staff have killed more than 20 criminal gang members involved in stealing aid. This comes after UN aid workers revealed that a convoy of more than a hundred trucks had

been looted on Saturday. There's little way of independently verifying the ministry's claims although medics in southern Gaza have reported receiving bodies after the operation. Here's our security correspondent Frank Gardner. This is one of the worst attacks on a humanitarian aid convoy since Israel launched its assault on Hamas in Gaza more than 13 months ago. On Saturday a convoy numbering 109 trucks carrying vital food aid and other supplies was attacked by armed men soon after entering the Gaza Strip from Israel. According to UNWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency, and the World Food Programme, at least 97 of those trucks are now missing. With Hamas' numbers now massively depleted by Israel's ongoing military campaign to eliminate them, security in Gaza has collapsed in many places, and looting has become rife.

Surviving Hamas members have responded to public outcry by organising a task force to tackle the looters. This has led to a confrontation today which has reportedly left at least 20 people dead and many others injured. Most of those killed are suspected to have belonged to criminal gangs operating in southern Gaza in what has become a chronic organised racket, driving up prices well beyond the means of most ordinary Gazans. Frank Gardner. Now, it's a rare sighting of a beast that is as majestic as it is terrifying. In northeastern China, footage has emerged of a Siberian tiger attacking a village. As

our China specialist, Kiri Allen, explains, the authorities have taken drastic measures to deal with the situation. A village called Changtai in northeast China, a region called Heilongjiang province, went into martial law because surveillance footage picked up at a farm a Siberian tiger, which is an endangered animal, running at an iron gate of a farming community. Residents panicked, one resident has been injured, also some livestock have been injured as well. There is concern because this is a wild animal attacking humans, so the police have been brought in, the army have been brought in to try and stop this

from happening. But it's very rare to see a Siberian tiger anyway. And why do people in China think that this tiger has attacked this particular community? Because as you say, they're usually very rarely seen, they're kind of hiding in the wild or roaming long distances away from human habitation. Absolutely, and there have been very, very rare cases of them attacking humans. There was a case in 2021 of a villager being attacked in Heilongjiang and also Russia has Siberian tigers living in the wild. There was a Russian Heilongjiang. And also Russia has Siberian tigers living in the wild. There was a Russian man who was killed last year. The Siberian tigers seem

to live off wild boar. So there's the thinking that it might be because wild boar are being depleted in the region. But also it could be due to logging that they're seeking out new habitats. Because China has invested a lot in trying to protect the Siberian tiger, which is an endangered species. Yeah, it is. In fact, there are only around between 200 and 400 in the wild. China and Russia have been working to create parks where they can monitor wild animals. In the case of China, there's a national park that covers an area of over a million square kilometres

where there's monitoring using drones and fences. And the population that were originally kept in this park, they're only between 12 and 16. It's now increased to 70. So there's been a real emphasis in China on monitoring communities using technologies like drones to be able to allow these animals to survive in the wild and to repopulate naturally. And the fact that the Siberian tiger is an endangered species complicates the efforts to try to stop this particular one posing a danger to humans. Well absolutely because in China there are laws that if you kill or injure a protected species you can get around 10 years imprisonment. So local farmers if they have a gun they're

not allowed to attack it. A message is going out that people in these local villages, if they see tracks of a wild animal and they suspect it's a tiger, to get to safety and contact the authorities as soon as possible. Gerri Allen. Still to come. I have a letter that says the cancers or the disorders you've got do not warrant a pension. In other words, I've got the wrong cancer. The soldiers contaminated by British nuclear tests still fighting for justice. A search for the truth behind an international drug smuggling plot. There's something on this boat.

A ton of cocaine. There was a lot of adrenaline. I couldn't believe what was happening. And the Man Brazilian Police believed to be at its centre. Fox. Fox. Fox called the shots. From the BBC World Service, this is World of Secrets, season five, Finding. Fox. Fox. Fox called the shots. From the BBC World Service, this is World

of Secrets, season five, Finding Mr. Fox. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. You're listening to the Global News Podcast. We've been hearing about the conflicts in Ukraine and in Gaza and another one that shows no signs of ending is a civil war in Sudan which has unleashed a litany of horrors including mass killings, rape and the displacement of millions of people since April last year. The UN Security Council in New York cast their votes on a draft resolution calling for an immediate end to the war in Sudan. Russia

was the sole member to veto it, provoking the strong condemnation from Britain's Foreign Minister David Lammy. One country stood in the way of the council speaking with one voice. One country is the blocker. One country is the enemy of peace. This Russian veto is a disgrace. And it shows to the world yet again Russia's true colours. Our Africa regional editor, Will Ross, has more details.

Permanent members of the UN Security Council have been arguing in New York about how to stop the war in Sudan. Russia accused Britain of undermining Sudan's sovereignty and said its draft resolution had a post-colonial flavour to it. The US said Moscow was playing both sides to advance its own political objectives. The Sudanese army and the RSF appear to believe they can win and with the start of the dry season the violence is likely to escalate. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates deny taking sides but experts following the war closely say these countries hold the key to ending it. Well Ross, dozens of hospital workers in Turkey have gone on trial accused of

causing the deaths of at least 10 newborn babies as part of an alleged scheme to defraud the social security system. The defendants are accused of transferring sometimes healthy babies to the neonatal units of private hospitals for unnecessary or inappropriate treatment, sometimes for weeks at a time. The alleged aim was to secure a social security payment granted to private hospitals on top of the fee charged to parents. Emre Termel from the BBC's Turkish Service told us more. 47 people are on trial in one of Turkey's biggest health scandals in recent years and defendants include doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, and stretcher bearers.

And they have been accused of trafficking infants to extort as much money as possible from the Turkish social security system and the families. According to almost 1,400-page indictments, with the complicity of 112 emergency operators, doctors involved presented false diagnosis to the families in distress and justified the transfer of newborns to intensive care units in private hospitals. In Turkey, keeping children in intensive care earned the network 8,000 Turkish Liras a day. The profits were shared among the gang members and their practices were motivated by pure profit. They rejected claims and some of them could be sentenced to as many as 589 years in jail if found guilty. Obviously these accusations are

below to the government because its health reforms in early 2000 promoted the use of private hospitals and Turkey's main opposition, Republican People Party, called on the Health Minister Kemal Memişoğlu to resign in light of the allegations. Emre Temel from the BBC's Turkish Service. In the 1950s and 1960s, tens of thousands of British and Commonwealth servicemen witnessed atomic and hydrogen bomb detonations and radioactive experiments. It led to many of them suffering from debilitating health conditions that have blighted their lives. Now there's a new BBC documentary about their experience.

It's called Britain's Nuclear Bomb Scandal, Our Story. The world doesn't know. I've been fighting this battle for 63 years. The development of nuclear weapons marched ahead. 60 seconds. It was really frightening. We thought we were going to die. John Morris was one of the men who

were stationed at Christmas Island in the Pacific in 1956. He spoke to Amal Rajan about how he came to be stationed there. I was on national service and you were ordered to go to wherever post and they sent you. And I finished up on Christmas Island, age 18, never been out of a place called Little Leaver in all my life. I didn't even know where Christmas Island was. And I was a laundry operator washing the clothes for the servicemen that were building, as we were told initially, a runway for planes. I read that you lost a son Stephen who was just, was he just four months old? He was four months old.

So sorry. When you've watched the documentary you will see so many stories that are similar of people who've lost children, wives that have had miscarriages but Stephen died aged four months. I was arrested for possible murder under caution, three days later they said it was a cop death. Shortly after I got the death certificate and it was pneumonia. I mean what would you like to see by way of compensation now? I appeal for a war pension. I could not get my blood records or my urine records and I

know that I had those taken at least five times. I was in an isolation hospital on Christmas Island along with about 200 others and I wanted to get those records so I could prove that I'd been contaminated. I have a letter that says, yes we agree John you were contaminated with radiation but the cancers or the disorders you've got do not warrant a pension. In other words I've got the wrong cancer. Susie Boniface is a journalist who's been investigating what happened and who presents the documentary. 70 years ago someone somewhere made a decision that these

men should be used in what amounts now to I can see as a human experiment. And when I started reporting on this nearly 20 years ago the veterans all said to me, well we were guinea pigs. And I thought well there's no evidence of that really. I can understand why you think that. You've obviously been used negligently but there was no evidence of human experimentation. But then a couple of years ago I was passed a secret document from 1958 about the blood tests of a squadron leader who was sent into the mushroom clouds to sample the clouds for evidence for the scientists.

And from that, we had a trail of breadcrumbs which now over the past two years, we've got to the point where there are serving officials currently in high up jobs in Whitehall who are implicated in a multi-departmental cover-up. So far we've got the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Italian Weapons Establishment and the Government Legal Department all with questions to answer about potential crimes of misconduct in public office because officials have given sworn false testimony to multiple courts over decades that these blood tests never took place and we now have evidence that they did.

Susie Boniface, the slender-billed curlew, a species of wading bird once found around the world, has now formally been declared extinct. The last irrefutable sighting of the bird was nearly three decades ago. Dr Alex Bond is senior curator of birds at the Natural History Museum here in London and co-authored the research into the fate of the curlew. Every species of course is unique. The slenderbill curlew was about a foot tall. It's a large weighting bird that would breed in wetlands and winter along the coasts and it had a fantastically long bill that curved down that helped it probe in the pools for little invertebrates to eat. A really

just gorgeous bird. And it hasn't actually been spotted for many years I was reading. That's right. The last confirmed sighting was 1995 on the wintering grounds in Morocco so there hasn't been a sighting now in about 30 years. What has now driven you and your colleagues to the point where you think, actually, we can say with pretty much eye uncertainty that actually the slender Bill Kelly is extinct? So the chance of it existing today is smaller than the chance of you being hit by lightning during this interview. What we did was we compiled about 1200 records and that's sightings,

photographs, and museum specimens going back to the mid-19th century. About two-thirds of those we were able to verify were slenderbilled curlews. We can put those into a model that estimates the probability that the bird exists today. So you have something like a sighting which is, you know, oh I saw a slenderbilled curlew out on my farm last week. Well, nobody else knows that. We can't go back and look. You might have confused it for something else or you could have just made it up. You've got photographs which are alright but they're only a 2D representation. You can't interrogate them further. You have

the photo and that's it. And then you have museum specimens which are sort of the gold standard because you can look at it, you can hold it, you can see, ah that's where the black is on the underside of the wing. And you can be absolutely certain. You put all these in a model with these different levels of certainty, and it estimates the probability that the bird still exists today, combined with surveys that have been done on the breeding and wintering grounds since that 1995 sighting that you mentioned. And we're pretty sure that unfortunately they're gone. Do you understand why?

It's a combination of two things. One is hunting. So they were hunted on migration. They would breed in Kazakhstan and southern Russia, migrate over the Euro mountains through Europe and winter in North Africa. And as a sort of a large wading migratory bird, they're going to be pretty tasty. You could purchase them at markets in Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. By the 20th century, they were noted as being not terribly common. And then probably land use changed, conversion of wetlands to arable crop fields in the Soviet Union. And the legacies of that was probably what ultimately drove them over the brink. Am I right in saying that it's quite unusual for a bird to be declared extinct in Europe?

Well, Tim, you're exactly right. This is the first official bird extinction in Europe in 500 years, mainland Europe. But the important thing to remember is that in that same 500 years globally, we've lost 200 other bird species. And today, there's 1,400 species that are globally threatened with extinction. So the Slenderbilt Cur bill curly may feel like a unique case for us, especially in Europe, but unfortunately it's the norm for what birds are experiencing in the world today. Dr Alex Bond talking to Tim Franks. Let's end the podcast with the news that the Russian software company Pro32 has announced the appointment of a new head of corporate training.

Sergey from St Petersburg has built a name for himself, uploading videos that explain how to write computer software on his YouTube channel. He teaches thousands of followers how to code in multiple networks. So an impressive CV then and an obvious choice to join Pro32's management team. What is not usual though though, is the age of the new head of corporate training. He's just seven years old. Pro32's chief executive, Igor Mandik, told Leanna Byrne about Sergey's unique skillset. In addition to the developer skills that are absolutely unique for this age.

But he has an equally unique or useful skill of teaching others. You can see how he teaches other people on his YouTube channel. It really is unbelievable. How would you imagine him working in your company? We sent him an offer to be head of a teaching department in our company. But unfortunately for us, according to Russian law, it's prohibited to work in a company before you got 14. So we will be waiting for him to get 14 and we'll join our company. So he'll be a big boss in your company. Of course, of course.

And I'm absolutely sure that when he gets 14, he'll be a guru of teaching and guru of developing. And that is why we're really looking forward for this time. What could some of your staff learn from someone like Sergei? I think that absolutely everything, but we will definitely start with developing skills, not just for our developers, but for the rest of the company, like for example, accountants or maybe even sales managers. Why not? Because I think that today, nowadays, it's incredibly important to understand something about developing software products.

And did you have to explain this job offer to Sergey's parents and what was their reaction? Of course we did and his father Kirill was surprised and he said that, wow, we are really happy and we are looking forward to being able to join the company. And now we are looking for any possibilities how to cooperate before he gets 14. And have you had to do negotiations about salary, how much he'll earn? Not yet. And I don't think that we should do it right now because once again, we have to wait for seven years. And I think that his salary can grow before, in this time. And that is why we should maybe wait until he got 14 and then we will definitely start

conversation about his third. Imagine having a 14 year old boss. That was Igor Mandic talking about seven year old prodigy, Sergey. And that's all from us for now. But there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or topics covered, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcastatbbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll, the producer was Alison Davies, the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janet Jalil. Until next time, goodbye. A search for the truth behind an international drug smuggling plot. There's something on this boat. A tonne of cocaine.

There was a lot of adrenaline. I couldn't believe what was happening. And the Man Brazilian police believed to be at its centre. Fox. Fox. Fox called the shots. From the BBC World Service, this is World of Secrets, Season 5, Finding Mr. Fox.

Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.