Global News Podcast - Violence continues in Gaza despite peace deal

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

The day after President Trump signed off his peace plan in Egypt - what now for Gaza? Hospitals in the territory say seven people have been killed by Israeli fire since midnight on Monday. Israel has accused Hamas of reneging on the plan by only releasing four bodies of the 28 hostages who are thought to have died. There are also videos emerging of what appear to be extra-judicial killings by Hamas. Meanwhile, aid agencies warn that the humanitarian needs in Gaza are overwhelming. Also: an elite military unit in Madagascar says it has taken control of the island after President Andry Rajoelina fled following anti-government protests. UN-backed negotiations designed to reduce the environmental impact of global shipping are starting in London, but the US is opposing an international treaty on emissions. Why British security officials are urging companies to use pen and paper to win the battle against cyber attacks. How the US state of North Carolina dramatically reduced the number of opioid-related drug deaths. And the Nobel prize in economics has been awarded to three professors for their work explaining how technology has helped drive economic growth.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]

This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson, and at 15 hours GMT, these are our main stories. The day after the ceasefire deal came into force, what now for Gaza? Humanitarian organisations say aid can't come soon enough. Who's running Madagascar? Now the President has left the country. Will efforts to reduce the impact of global shipping on the environment, discussed today at talks in London, be scuppered by the US? Also in this podcast, British security officials warn cyber attacks on businesses have surged to a new record.

The cost of some of these breaches, the financial cost, is significantly above. That's what we faced in the past in the UK. There are fears about the fragility of the US-backed ceasefire in Gaza, which came into force yesterday. As we record this podcast, hospitals in Gaza say seven. people have been killed by Israeli fire since midnight on Monday. Israel has accused Hamas of reneging on President Trump's plan by only releasing four bodies of the 28 hostages who are thought to have died, and there are also videos emerging of what appear to be extrajudicial killings by Hamas. Meanwhile, the humanitarian need is overwhelming. An estimated

80% of the strip is damaged, and the impact on the lives of children there has been almost unimaginable. Ricardo Perez is a spokesperson for the United Nations Children's Agency, UNICEF. The last two years have been a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, fixing and starting to rebuild the infrastructure that was destroyed, the lives of children that have been absolutely affected in a very destructive way. They've lost parents. They've been orphaned. They've lost loved ones. They've lost their homes, their schools. They've been killed in Maine that at a scale that we haven't seen in many conflicts, especially in the region, especially in Gaza. So the task is colossal.

Our international editor, Jeremy Bowen, spoke to the BBC's Sarah Montague about the situation in Gaza. Cease fires always start with difficulties, even ones that become successful. There are always violations of ceasefires. However, the way that people who are monitoring ceasefires and trying to make them work get over that is by having, backing them up a really good foundation of agreements and detail and procedures to make them keep going.

And this is lacking because the thing about the Trump plan for the future of Gaza, which was done really very quickly, was that it points to where they want to go, but it doesn't say how you get there. There's so much that hasn't been decided in advance, particularly things like how a his fire would work, how Gaza becomes demilitarized, you know, the list goes on. President Trump, we've obviously gone home. Who's in the, has the job of overseeing all this? Well, it's not entirely clear because a formal process of negotiation, as far as I

understand, has not commenced as yet. Now, the initial phase, phase one, which was the ceasefire and the hostage for prisoner exchange was decided with a great deal of pressure on both sides from, first of all, Trump on the Israelis, on Hamas, it was the Qataris, the Egyptians, the Turks, they've got leverage, as well as that. European allies were involved. Britain was involved. The various countries sent their heads of intelligence, their spy chiefs. It was, you know, in a sporting term, a full court press to try and make it. happened but the intensity of that cannot keep going for more than a couple of days and there

isn't as if there is now a series of meetings that are going on about trying to work all this stuff out let me give you an example in the deal it says that Hamas will give up its weapons Hamas have indicated they might give up some heavy weapons but they want to keep their lighter weapons the Israelis say Hamas needs to be totally disarmed now in the the deal, there's talk of an international stabilization force. And that might include, some people have said the Indonesians, maybe the Azerbaijan might send troops. Egypt has talked about it and others. But they will not be sending their people in there unless they are disarming by consent. They're not going to go in there and try and seize Hamas weapons. If Hamas agrees, and they

haven't, to giving up certain things, putting them on the ground, and here they are, then that would be an encouragement to send those troops in. they will not be sent in to fight a war against Hamas. I mean, there are other issues. I mentioned the hostages, the bodies of the hostages, who have not yet been returned. We saw 1700 Palestinian prisoners released back to Gaza yesterday, and these were people who'd been picked up in Gaza.

How many more Gazans do we know were taken and are still being detained without charge? Something approaching 1,000 who were picked, up as what Israel calls unlawful competence. Now, those include people like the directors of hospitals. There have been absolutely hair-raising and well-sourced reports of terrible mistreatment of prisoners by the Israelis, including mistreatment up to and including rape and starvation. And a lot of Palestinians have died in custody as well as that. Israel holds more than 3,000 detainees. on remand, three and a half thousand Palestinian administrative detainees.

In other words, people interned without trial. About 1,500 have sentences. These figures are quite widespread, but the one I'm looking more specifically is from an Israeli human rights organization called Hamoket. And also, there are question marks about the way that convicted prisoners are even tried, because they're tried at military courts, which don't have the same kinds of standards of evidence and procedure and representation. that you'd expect in a civil court.

So question, have all these people who have even been sentenced to have fair trials? There are massive questions about the way that Israel has imprisoned and continues to imprison a lot of Palestinians. So that goes on. Jeremy Bowen. You might think with Donald Trump

focusing his attention on the Middle East, he's had less time for some of his other concerns, including the US trade war with China. But on Tuesday, the world's two largest economies are beginning to China. large port fees on ocean shipping firms, making the high seas a new front in the trade dispute. Beijing announced the levees last week, alongside moves to tighten controls on its rare earth exports. The U.S. President responded with a threat of an additional 100% tariff on Chinese imports.

So as tensions rise, which side can hold out longer? Deborah Elms is head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore. China's been preparing for a potential conflict for quite some time. has been readying its own stockpiles, has been building up its expertise, has been trying to diversify its trade. You can see that trade volumes from China to the United States were falling before Trump came into office and that's just accelerated since then. Obviously, they would prefer not to have a trade war. But if one happens, you need to be ready.

And I think China would say they are ready. I asked our business correspondent Nick Marsh whether the latest announcements mean the trade war is ratcheting up or whether they can calm it down. They probably can calm this down. We've seen it before. We've just gone through a period of relative calm, actually. Over the summer, there was representatives, quite high-level representatives from Beijing and Washington meeting all over Europe.

And it kind of declared a truce. The agreement was that we're not going to take this any further. We're going to come down from the precipice. You know, all the really sort of inflamed rhetoric that we heard earlier this year. There wasn't going to be any more 100%, 200% tariffs, that sort of thing. You know, not the wild stuff we were hearing earlier this year. Now, as you say, things have kind of ratcheted up a little bit due to these export controls that China's put in, due to the US as well, a couple of weeks earlier, expanding its blacklist of Chinese companies, American firms, especially chip firms, were bound from selling to. So, you know, there is always going to be these sorts of pumps along the road.

And when you have Donald Trump in the White House, it's going to be quite bombastic. And when you have, you know, the Chinese leadership in Beijing, who are always pretty resolute when it comes to this issue, talking about fighting to the very end if they have to, but being prepared to negotiate if they have to as well. We're kind of getting back into slightly familiar territory where we were slightly earlier this year. So it's pretty problematic for businesses, isn't it? And consumers, because nobody knows where they are regarding prices. Yeah, it's massively problematic. I mean, you mentioned earlier the new port fees, for example. I mean, pretty astronomical when you actually dig into the numbers.

there might be different sort of loopholes that firms can get around. I mean, if a ship isn't U.S. built or registered, then they're not going to be subject to these sorts of fees. But, I mean, just so long as both sides keep invoking new regulations, then revoking them, it just leaves businesses in China, in the U.S., and all around the world, frankly, caught in between, scratching their heads, not knowing what to do and just sort of praying for a bit of calm.

Nick Marsh in Singapore. And staying with the topic of shipping, negotiators from more than 100 countries are gathering in London for talks on how to reduce the environmental impact of the global industry. They were expected to adopt a treaty to slash emissions by moving away from fossil fuels. But the Trump administration appears ready to sink such a deal. Our climate and science reporter Esme Stalard told me more about the industry's impact. Estimates are that shipping accounts are around 3% of global emissions. that's according to the International Maritime Organisation.

That's the UN body that's overseeing these negotiations this week also collects a lot of data on this. 3% doesn't sound like a lot, but shipping like aviation is one of two sectors that has really struggled to curb its emissions, whilst other sectors have really accelerated their move away from fossil fuels. The reason for that is that shipping relies on a particularly dirty type of fossil fuel with what's left at the bottom of the barrel, if you like,

and hasn't really come up with good alternatives or certain, cheap alternatives that they could use instead. So that is the concern that that 3% will continue to grow. And effectively, that growth has very much been in line with global trade. 90% of global trade is now carried by ships. So that's why it's such a concern for some countries. More than 100 countries gathering in London for talks on this. What kind of deal could be worked out, do you think? So this global deal was actually agreed back in April. as you said, what it committed to was moving ships towards cleaner fuels. If they didn't do that, they will face fines that will incrementally increase over time.

It's anticipated that those fines would be paid in the early few years as ships made that transition and that would go to a central pot to kind of help developing countries invest in their own infrastructure. The meeting this week effectively was sort of to sign on the dotted line, approve that deal and then move into the kind of nitty-gritty details of how does this all work in practice? But actually, that's kind of been thrown into disarray with the US's increasing intervention in this. And there's now questions whether this deal will even be approved this week. And what does that mean if the US doesn't play ball? So it's interesting.

The US doesn't actually flag many ships, so it's not actually kind of controlling that many ships. So you'd think they wouldn't be that interested. But actually, back in April, when this deal was first being negotiated, they sent a number of letters around to embassies in London, where these talks are taking place, threatening countries that agreed to the deal with tariffs. That was ratcheted up again on Friday when the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy threatened port bans for any ships coming to the US

and visa restrictions for mariners for those that supported it. I think the reason they're so interested is going back to the fact that 90% of trade happens by shipping. Effectively, if you control the siege, you control global trade. China's pushed back on that and they've urged countries that support. to the deal back in April to stand firm. So I think really the talks this week could just be another arena for these two countries to go head to head on the issues of trade.

Esme Stalard. Still to come on the Global News podcast how the state of North Carolina dramatically reduced the number of its opioid-related deaths. I do believe that it's a combination of all those things, a curriculum that we have here, the Suboxone. I don't know that I could have done it without any one of those factors.

Now to Madagascar, the island nation off the southeast coast of Africa, where there's some confusion about who is in charge. Over the past couple of days, it was thought a military coup was underway. At least that's what the sitting president, Anj Razzuel, posted online. His whereabouts weren't clear at the time, and rumors were swirling that he left the country. Now, Mr. Razzuel has confirmed he has left. Madagascar. He says for his own safety, but he'd insisted he would not resign. Then, he said earlier

today, he was dissolving Parliament. Now Parliament has voted overwhelmingly to impeach him. Mama Rabat Nirina is an MP and Secretary General of Madagascar's main opposition party, Tim. He says there's now a political vacuum in the country. According to the constitution, it should be the president of the Senate, who replaces the president in case of vacancy. But even the president, of the Senate has been blown away by the senators very recently. And still according to the constitution, after the president of the Senate, it should be the government which should run the country. But the prime minister is just appointed a few days ago.

And there are only three ministers appointed so far. So there is no complete government yet. The BBC's Sami Awami, who's in Madagascar, gave us the latest. It's quite chaotic. Because, like you say, the events here are happening extremely fast. I was with a kind of at 2 p.m. I asked him, is the army in charge? Will it take power?

And they say, no, they are not interested in that. And then one hour later, here they've announced that they've taken power now. They've said they're going to suspend key institutions, such as the Senate, the high constitutional court and their high court of justice, but they're going to retain the National Assembly, which earlier today, they engaged the president. Now, they've said they've waited for a while now, but there's been repeated violation of constitutions, and they feel like now they need to move in and do that. But a lot of people here believe as well that they've tried their best to exercise restraint,

but they feel like the void is just going on and they need to step in. Okay, so for total clarity, you're saying that it seems the army chief, and I think this is the chap that runs the Kapsat elite military unit that we've been speaking about the past couple of days. It seems as if they are keeping the lower House of Parliament, that's going to stay in place. But everything else, the Senate, the high constitutional court and other institutions. And what about the president? The president's way about are known. He addressed the nation last night. Many people here had hoped that he would say where he is. But at least he confirmed that he is out of the country. Again, there were

lots of rumors about where is he in the country, is he outside. But he didn't say away. he is. Now, that came after he said that he decided to leave the country because his life was in danger. I asked the carno earlier today, were they planning anything, you know, to harm the president? He said that claims is absolutely not true and that they've never planned anything to harm the president. So he dismissed those claims as well. So the president is not in the country. And the cano said, because he's in the country, even his speech for them is almost nothing. And Sammy, do we know whether the lower House of Parliament will accept these moves by the military? That we are not sure, to be honest, because even themselves, we're not

sure how even to do this impeachment. Early in the morning, I'd spoken to the lead of the opposition, and he wasn't even sure how they're going to go about, because for them to launch this impeachment process, they needed a proof from the government, which government does not exist. So they are really in a very difficult and very new situation. They've never been in this kind of situation before. And so there are a lot of things which they're just taking us stay calm. So I'm not even sure whether they're going to accept this or not. Samiawami in Madagascar speaking to Rebecca Kesbby. In the US, the opioid crisis has wreaked havoc on families and killed hundreds of thousands of people. But some states seem to have turned things around, with fewer people

dying from using synthetic opioids such as fentanyl in 2024 than in the previous year. North Carolina has seen a dramatic drop, and many credit the so-called harm reduction approach practice there, which includes allowing patients to come off hard drugs with the help of medication like methadone. But it's a controversial approach. Linda Presley visited Healing Transitions, a rehabilitation clinic for women, in the wooded suburbs of the state capital, Raleigh. When Healy transitions opened, it was based on a philosophy of abstinence. So you go cold turkey and stop taking illicit drugs literally overnight.

If you have an opioid use disorder, you can get very sick from withdrawal, vomiting, diarrhea, pain, anxiety and insomnia in varying degrees. Chris Budnick, the executive director here, says abstinence didn't work for everyone. Some of the people that we serve weren't being helped and recognizing that if you've died, there's no way to pursue any type of change. And so the focus shifted to harm reduction. That is allowing residents to take medication to treat their addiction, to stem cravings and stop an unpleasant withdrawal.

But this is controversial in some circles. You are replacing an addictive product with another addictive product. It is still addictive. This is Mark Pless. He's a member of the North Carolina legislature and believes abstinence is the only way to tackle addiction. Mark Pless believes addiction is a choice. It's a conscious decision.

At a point whenever folks were taking these narcotics and they were saying, oh, I got this because of a surgery I had. But there's a conscious point to where you choose to continue. At healing transitions, Alicia tells a different story. She says one of the keys to her recovery was Suboxone, a medication that eases withdrawal. I had tried other avenues and I was not successful. So you tried abstinence before, had you?

Yes, ma'am, but I was not terribly committed to it the way that I am now. I do believe that it's a combination of all those things, a curriculum that we have here that's the box on. I don't know that I could have done it without any one of those factors. Because we've met somebody here who was talking about abstinence, the only way drug use is a choice, and then you have to choose to stop. I do not believe that.

At some point, it stops being a choice. There are many times that you don't want to use or you don't want to drink, but you can't not. Alicia's recovery was going well. She's no longer being treated with Suboxone, and she's looking forward to going home. Brittany, Brittany. At healing transitions, they run regular overdose drills

in the same way you might have a fire drill at work. Grab me some Narcan's. Narcan's the trade name for naloxone. sometimes described as a miracle drug. It brings people back if they overdose on an opioid. The wide availability of naloxone is believed to be another reason why the number of fatal overdoses

has plummeted in North Carolina. It comes as a simple nasal spray. I'm going to go up the right nostril. She still is not responding, so I'm going to go with my second one, do the left, two breaths, 30 chest compressions. And would she normally start breathing by now?

What happened? It really could take as many narcanes as it could take. Sometimes it could take up to 12. Sometimes it could take one. It just depends on how much the person is used. And have you ever had to do it for real? I had a friend that overdosed. I did have the narcan her six times before she came back.

But you saved her life? Yes, ma'am. And in this opioid overdose roleplay at healing transitions, Abby seems to have saved Brittany's life too. There she is. She's back. That report by Linda Presley. British security officials say the number of significant cyber attacks

has surged to a new record this year. There's been a raft of high-profile hacks here in the UK causing major disruption and costing global brands millions of dollars, such as the carmaker, Jaguar Land Rover, the supermarket chain co-op and the retailer Marks & Spencer. Professor Kieran Martin is a former CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre. I think one of the things that really has, hit home this year is the cost of some of these breaches,

the financial cost of Jaguar Land Rover when it's fully known of Marks and Spencers of the co-op, is significantly above. That's what we faced in the past in the UK. Now, officials have urged businesses to turn to low-tech methods to protect themselves, including using pen and paper when computer systems are compromised. The BBC's cyber correspondent, Joe Tidy, told us more about the increase in attacks. I think what we're seeing at the moment is, I wake up calling, in a sense, to the general public, because every single week there is a major attack.

I think this year, with MNS and Co-op and Harrods and JLR, I think the public here's sort of going through a bit of a realisation of just how impactful these attacks can be. In terms of where the attacks are coming from, there's two real areas, I suppose. The first would be the creme de la creme of hacking groups. We call them advanced persistent threats. They are run by governments. So the Chinese government, Russian government, yes, the UK government, yes, the US government. They have APT teams that will be hacking everything and everyone, but using a kind of rules-based system of what's allowed and what's not.

This is kind of cyber espionage, power projection, that kind of thing. Then you've got the far bigger problem from organizations out there, which is ransomware, extortionware, criminal gangs, and they are the ones that are making hundreds of millions every year from hacking companies around the world. And they are, we think, because of a lot of evidence, largely based or headquartered in countries like Russia, Russian-speaking countries, former Soviet countries. But we know, of course, there has been a resurgence in the last year or so of teenage hacking, culture, subculture, English-speaking gangs are out there. They're very active, especially this year. And we've seen

already this year seven arrests of British teenagers. It isn't new, this idea that we need to prepare for when the hackers get in, not just try and stop them getting in with cybersecurity products, but actually prepare for when an attack brings down your computers. So, Can you operate without any email? Can you operate without any systems that keep your production lines going? Can you operate with essentially pen and paper? That's what they're saying. They are arguing companies to have those sorts of things in place, the contingency plans.

So that's the message from the NCSC today is to get those, as the phrase describes, resilience engineering, try and build into your system a way to bounce back quicker if and when they get in. I always remember I went and covered a major cyber attack on a Norwegian aluminium producer called Norse, Hydro. And they were fantastic. Ever since the beginning of the attack, it was a gang called Locker Gogro, I think it was, and they were asking for 100,000 euros to unencrypt the servers and everything of this production company. And they didn't comply. They said from the beginning, we're not paying the criminals. We're going to try and get back on our feet. In the end, it costs them about 40 million euros to get back on their feet in about two years. But the hero of

the hour for Norse Kydro was this quite an old worker who was down in the warehouse, down in the kind of the bowels of the production line, and he loved paper, and he kept reams and reams of the different shapes and moulds that the company was producing for all their clients around the world. And when everything went down, he became the guy that they went to, because he had the plans to bounce back and get the production lines moving again. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways. Joe Tidey. The Nobel Prize for Economics was announced on Monday. The news was rather overshadowed on our output by the events in the Middle East. But it's gone to three economists, Philippe Aguon,

Peter Howitt, and Joel Mocker for their work on sustained economic growth that's improved living standards, health and quality of life for people around the world. We heard from Professor Philippe Aguon from the College de France in Paris and the London School of Economics. And he started by telling us about the moment he found out he'd won. I got a phone call at 10.30 yesterday, And it came at a complete surprise. I could not. I was totally speechless. So, and right away, you move into another world.

And you feel that you're the spectator of a happy story, but you see it from outside first. You don't realize you are part of it. Well, the Prize Committee, absolutely glowing about your contribution to economics. This is all about the relationship between technological progress and sustained economic growth. And they said,

that they were awarding you and the others the prize. Yes. With the hope that your work could be steered in the direction to support humankind, can you tell us a bit more about it? I thought there was a way to boost prosperity, a prosperity which is inclusive, which is consistent with a good social model, and at the same time, which is consistent with fighting the climate change.

Some people believe that the only way to fight climate change is to have de-growth. No, I mean, you can have growth, but you need to have the right kind of growth. growth, what kind of growth you need. Also, the people who said, well, you know, it's true, growth is very much driven by creative destruction. But they're concerned that that might mean a lot of layoffs, a lot of, you know, social unrest and social on happiness. And that has been always my concern. To reconcile growth and prosperity on the one hand with having a harmonious

social model and a true commitment to green transition. We can't go into the exact details of your work. In a nutshell, what do you understand? advise then? Growth is driven by having all the time new talents, new entrants that challenge incumbent firms, that challenge incumbent interests. Yesterday's innovators, they turn into incumbents, incumbent firms, and they need to be challenged constantly by new entrants, new talents coming in. And the dynamic economy is an economy where all the time you have this new entry, refreshing, you know, renewing the blood, you see what I mean? So then the policy is to unleash the forces that favour growth. So first,

you want to have a good education system. When you have a good education system, you are more likely to have more innovators. So that's one thing. And then you need policies that favor the entry of new firms and the growth of new firms. But you want to make sure that as they grow, they don't prevent entry of new firms.

You see what I mean? So that's where competition policy is important. So I believe that the main pillars are a good education system, good competition policy, good financial ecosystem of innovation, good mixture between competition policy and industrial policy. Philippe Aguant from the College of France, speaking to Rebecca Kesbby. And that's it from us for now, but before we go, a message from a listener.

This is Barry McLeod Hughes, now a US citizen on Simone living in the States. I am also someone who hasn't been a Trump supporter so far. The President Trump wants more credibility at a peacemaker, left them donate at least one million dollars. of his personal wealth into a Gaza restoration fund. If there isn't one, less than creative, they will continue in great publicity and stung thin in the game to help make us peace plan successful.

And Barry got us thinking, how will the world rebuild Gaza? We're taking your questions and ideas for a special global news podcast. As ever, you can send us an email or a voice note. The address is Global Podcast at BBC.com.com. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service using hashtag Bluewell NewsPod.

This edition was mixed by Jack Wilfen and the producers were Richard Hamilton and Stephen Jensen. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time, bye-bye.