Global News Podcast - WHO demands full access for aid into Gaza

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

The World Health Organization has demanded full access for aid into Gaza as well as a ceasefire, describing the situation there as "man-made mass starvation". Also: gaps in our knowledge of ancient Rome could be filled by AI.

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Julia McFarlane and in the early hours of Thursday the 24th of July, these are our main stories. The head of the World Health Organisation has demanded full access for aid into Gaza, describing the situation there as man-made mass starvation. The latest round of talks between Russia and Ukraine has ended in less than an hour without any major agreements. The White House has rejected a Wall Street Journal report that Donald Trump was told in May his name appeared in court files related to the dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Also in this podcast, historians face many problems in piecing together the past from ancient inscriptions. They're usually incomplete, and also their origin and date may not be known. But now a new artificial intelligence tool could enhance our understanding of human history by helping decipher damaged inscriptions from ancient Rome. for damaged inscriptions from ancient Rome. Each day, the news coming out of Gaza seems to be more desperate. On Wednesday, more than 100 aid agencies warned of mass starvation, adding that even their own colleagues are wasting away. The Hamas-run health authority says more than 100 people,

the majority children, have starved to death so far, at least 10 in the last day. So how are ordinary people in Gaza coping? Here are some messages the BBC has received. My name is Hana An-Laghoul. I live in Deir el-Balah in Gaza. I'm still alive and honestly I don't know even how anymore. These past few weeks have been brutal.

Hunger is constant. I woke up every single morning lightheaded. When I go to sleep I even go weaker. You can barely afford to have one meal a day. This is Dr. Khalid Showa. I'm a general surgeon working in a field hospital in Gaza. The situation nowadays is catastrophic, more than ever. We are receiving hundreds of patients every day.

We receive mass casualties. The medical team is very exhausted. We are facing hunger and a very difficult situation with the lack of medical supplies. But we are doing our best. I just need a clear answer. Why the world prevents me from living my life in the way I want? At this age, I should build my future.

I can't. I can't. I'm sick of living in wars for the rest of my life. Israel has rejected the accusations that it is responsible for a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. David Mensah is spokesman for the office of the Israeli Prime Minister. It's important to talk about facts, not fiction. In Gaza today, there's no famine caused by Israel. There is man-made shortage, but it's been engineered by Hamas. The problem is Hamas. Hamas loots trucks, they block distribution, they weaponize hunger. And these UN organizations, to our great regret, are actually in cahoots. They are working hand in hand with the terrorist organisation.

The Israeli Prime Minister spokesman David Mensah. So while Israel says there are hundreds of trucks of aid in Gaza ready to be distributed, aid agencies say they are being blocked from accessing and delivering that aid by the Israeli government. With more, here's Imogen Folks. and delivering that aid by the Israeli government. With more, here's Imogen Folk. In war zones, experienced aid agencies seek agreement from those fighting about when, where, and what they want to deliver. They also identify the very vulnerable, the elderly, orphans,

people with disabilities, to ensure they are not pushed aside. But in Gaza, the UN says, Israel repeatedly stops aid from entering and from being distributed. For 80 days between March and May, nothing got in at all. Now the U.S. and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is providing some food at two or three sites. But distribution has been chaotic and violent with hundreds of Palestinians killed. Tedra Sadhanem-Gabrielsis, the head of the World Health Organization, says the result

is tragically predictable. The large proportion of a population of Gaza is starving. I don't know what you would call it other than masturbation. And it's manmade. And that's very clear. And this is because of blockade. And then, of course, there is opening now. But it's not enough. It's just a trickle. And people are starving. Imagine 1026 people have died while trying to feed themselves. If they're not starving, imagine risking their lives.

The WHO's own residence and warehouse in central Gaza were attacked by the IDF just two days ago. Its male staff members stripped, handcuffed, and interrogated, its biggest stock of medicines destroyed. One staff member remains in Israeli detention. UN agencies insist they are staying in Gaza to do their job. But to do it properly, they say, they need a massive surge of aid supplies, humanitarian corridors, and cooperation and respect from Israel.

Imogen folks in Geneva. Our chief international correspondent, Luz de Sete, has been looking at the growing concern for the plight of people in Gaza. Wars are always fought on two fronts, on the ground and for the narrative of who's winning, who's losing. In Gaza now, in the midst of what so many Palestinians say is a daily battle to find any food to eat, there's an unseemly war of words over whether people are starving. Israel insists 1,100 trucks are entering Gaza daily. Eight agencies say there's only 28.

Israel blames Hamas, but more and more countries worldwide say Israel's new and controversial system to deliver food isn't working. Even in Israel itself, where media haven't focused much on the plight of Palestinians, there are now small protests over Gaza's starving children. The left-wing Haaretz newspaper in its lead editorial called Israel's Minister of Foreign Affairs the Minister of Starvation for refusing to accept what it called the UN's credible figures. Gaza's humanitarian crisis is on the world's agenda like never before. But the evidence still keeps mounting that food still isn't on the plates of so many of its people.

Lise de Set. To some other news now. The meeting lasted less than an hour. The third round of direct talks between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey. They ended on Wednesday without any major announcements on the two countries' vision on how to end the war. Both sides are reported to have agreed to exchange some prisoners, but there was no agreement on when the two leaders of their respective nations would meet. Vitaly Shevchenko is the Russia and Ukraine editor for BBC Monitoring. He spoke to me from Istanbul shortly after

the talks ended. After the meeting at the news conferences, the two teams, they preferred to speak of their proposals and demands rather than specific agreements. For example, the Ukrainian team said that they're still trying to get Russia to agree to a full and comprehensive ceasefire lasting at least a month. And another priority for the Ukrainians is still a meeting between Vladimir Zelensky and Vladimir Putin. Instead, the Russian team of negotiators said that it's too early to organize that. A lot of work needs to be done before they are potentially able to meet and the teams focused on humanitarian issues such as further prison exchanges. What was absent from those two news conferences was any indication that

progress had been made on the persisting and fundamental differences between the two countries. Vitali, we heard pretty tough words from President Trump recently, and his most recent position is to threaten Russia to agree to a peace deal or they'll face new sanctions. Is that threat not providing the leverage needed to spark some action in these talks? Not with Russia. Before the talks, they kind of shrugged off these threats. And then they said, we've seen it before these deadlines, they come and go, we don't really care. But Ukrainians, they're trying to use this ultimatum put forward by Donald Trump to their advantage.

When they said that they see a meeting between Podemyslenskyy, Vladimir Putin, possibly Donald Trump as well as a key objective, they said they had proposed to the Russians that this meeting take place in August, i.e. within that deadline set by Donald Trump. So he is looming large in these talks, even though he's not there, Ukrainians are appealing to his authority and America's might, but it doesn't really seem to have much effect on the Russians. Next steps. I've got the feeling that these talks are petering out. They're getting shorter. The number of announcements resulting from them is getting smaller. There's talk of some sort

of online or remotely conducted negotiating process. So if the fourth round of talks held by Russia and Ukraine, I would expect even less, unless something major changes in the whole equation, unless Donald Trump takes specific practical action to help Ukraine or force Russia to rethink its negotiating position. But as things stand next steps, I don't think they're going to bring us any closer to the prospect of peace in Ukraine. Vitaly Shevchenko in Istanbul. Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been taking heavy criticism for signing a bill that critics say would severely curtail the independence of anti-corruption bodies

in Ukraine. Following vast protests across the country and criticism from overseas, including from allies, he's now backed down and said he'll submit a new bill to Parliament. Mr Zelensky gave no details on the new law. I will propose a bill to the Ukrainian Parliament that will ensure the strength of the legal system, and there will be no Russian influence or interference in the activities of law enforcement. And very importantly, all standards for the independence of anti-corruption institutions will be in place.

The Swedish European Parliament member Jonas Hröstedt warned that any moves to hamper the work of Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies would play into the hands of its enemies. All those who don't want to give support to Ukraine that fights for its freedom of its people but also for the freedom of Europe, you can be assured by tomorrow they will have used this as an argument for not supporting Ukraine. Well, for more on this story, here's our Europe regional editor, Paul Moss. President Zelensky has been criticised by political leaders from across Europe and seen protests on the streets of Ukrainian cities, all prompted by his decision to put the country's prosecutor

general in charge of fighting corruption, a man he himself appoints. Mr Zelensky's now said that he's heard society and he promises a new plan for fighting corruption within two weeks. But the heads of Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies insist they want their independence back. Others have warned the controversy is jeopardising international support for Ukraine and its fight against Russia. Paul Moss. moss. It can sometimes take years of painstaking work for scientists to make sense of engravings found at Roman or Greek archaeological sites, but a team from Nottingham University in central England working with specialists from Google's DeepMind have now developed an AI tool that could revolutionise this area of research. The system is named Ineos after a character

from Greek legend and as our science correspondent Pallab Ghost reports it's being tipped to transform the study of Roman history. Historians face many problems in piecing together the past from ancient inscriptions. They're usually incomplete and also their origin and date may not be known. Researchers attempt to fill in the blanks by drawing on texts that are similar in wording, grammar, and appearance. These are called parallels. Ancient inscriptions tend to be formulaic,

so historians can infer what the missing part of the sentence is saying from similar inscriptions. The process is painstaking and can take months or years. Enius does this in the blink of an eye by drawing from a database of 176,000 ancient Roman writings. Dr Thea Somershield, an historian at Nottingham University who co-developed the system, believes it will speed up research. What a historian can't really do is access these parallels in a matter of seconds across tens of thousands of inscriptions. And that is, I think, also the future value of this work, being able to not just do faster or better what we were already doing,

but try to do something that we weren't doing before. Dr Somershield stresses that AI won't be rewriting human history. Dr Somershield stresses that AI won't be rewriting human history. INEOS produces a range of options and it's up to the qualified historians to decide which version of events makes the most sense. Pallabh Ghosh. Still to come on this podcast. The credit crunch was on and cash was scarce. Actually, banks wouldn't tell the truth about how much they were really having to pay to borrow funds on the wholesale money markets because they

were afraid it would make them look weak and vulnerable like they were running out of cash. Now two former bankers convicted of manipulating interest rates after the global financial crisis of 2008 have their convictions quashed in the UK. A long-awaited ruling by the International Court of Justice has cleared the way for countries to sue each other over climate change, including over historic emissions of planet-warming gases. The court's president, Yuji Iwasawa said industrialized countries had an obligation to take the lead on tackling greenhouse gases. The court concludes that the duty of states to prevent

significant environmental harm applies in the context of climate change and that this duty forms part of the most directly relevant applicable law. Concerning the duty to cooperate, the court recalls that it lies at the core of the Charter of the United Nations. Our correspondent Anna Holigan was at the International Court of Justice for the judgment and sent us this explainer. This advisory opinion is being celebrated by the Pacific Island students who came up with the idea of bringing their battle for climate justice right to the top, the UN's highest court. And those

students from the most vulnerable nations on the front lines of the climate crisis hope developed nations responsible for the most emissions will be paying particular attention to this. So the UN's top judges said this was more than a legal problem. It was an existential problem of planetary proportions daunting and self-inflicted. And according to their guidance, this is a kind of legal compass, countries are obliged to protect the planet and show due diligence in meeting the Paris climate targets. And those that don't could be found to be committing a wrongful act. And thus, if a nexus can be established between their failures to protect the climate from dangerous greenhouse gas emissions and the harm suffered by another nation as a result,

then they may be obliged to pay reparations. This is of course guidance. It's not legally binding, but it does come with legal weight and moral authority and it's likely to be used as a blueprint in climate-related lawsuits, which means the opinion is likely to have a real world impact. The ICJ judges added that a lasting solution requires human will and wisdom to change habits and the current way of life for ourselves and those yet to come. Our climate correspondent Georgina Ranad told us more about how countries had reacted to the ruling. For many people in countries that are vulnerable to climate change, this is such a huge win and a historic day. And it turns what have been moral arguments they've made for a long time

into legal ones. One lawyer told me the opinion went far further than most expected. Another, she texted me and she just said, I'm delighted. And Vanuatu was the lead country in this case at the ICJ and its climate minister, Ralph Regan Vanu, gave this reaction outside the Hague's Peace Palace. We didn't expect it to be this good in our favour. And to be a unanimous decision, that was very unexpected as well. And to be so strong in terms of creating legal accountability and saying there is legal accountability and there are consequences and that actions that contribute to climate change, greenhouse gas emissions are internationally wrongful acts.

I mean, so much good stuff to come out of this decision. But of course, these are really contentious issues, Juliet. Developed countries have long really strongly argued against the concept of compensation in their submission to the ICJ nations, including the UK, the US, Saudi Arabia. They all said the existing treaties like the UN Paris deal are actually enough to tackle climate change and they didn't want further legal provisions. So I'm certain there'll be lots of people in those governments quite nervous now watching this and thinking what could be coming down the road. There's still a question of legal accountability. Is this actually going to make governments

take more decisive action on climate change? Well, I think this is the really big question. The judge in the ICJ himself said that untangling who is responsible for which bit of climate change would be extremely difficult. And's hard to see how you could prove that one degree C temperature rise, for example, that created a cyclone somewhere can exactly be linked to a single incident of greenhouse gas emissions. But he did say a few other things, strong statements about the need to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 Celsius, that countries should submit the most ambitious possible climate action plans. And5 Celsius, that countries should submit the most ambitious possible climate action plans. And he also suggested that countries that fail to regulate private

fossil fuel companies could be at risk. And I think it's those elements that have more potential to influence climate action. They might be used in international climate negotiations to get as a bargaining tool to get stronger agreements. So I think the day when we see a large climate compensation case is a long way off, but we could see the effects of this trickling down into domestic cases and perhaps pushing developed countries to be more ambitious for fear of being held accountable in the courts. Georgina Renard, staying with climate change,

let's see how it's affecting the waters around Australia. With temperatures rising because of climate change, let's see how it's affecting the waters around Australia. With temperatures rising because of climate change, the oceans are warming too, with devastating consequences. This year, the Great Barrier Reef off Australia's northeast coast has seen huge areas of corals bleached by heat stress. And on the other side of Australia, the Ningaloo Reef has suffered major bleaching too. Our Australia correspondent Katie Watson has been to Ningaloo to meet the scientists assessing the damage and trying to come up with solutions. A vibrant turquoise sea, bright white sand, just a few hundred metres from where I'm standing is the most incredible coral reef teeming with fish feeding off that coral.

This is Ningaloo where underwater a lush oceanic forest spreads out for hundreds of kilometres, attracting manta rays, reef sharks and whale sharks too. It's the longest fringing reef in the world, but it's in danger. Some of the things that we were afraid of seeing have indeed come to pass. Dr Kate Quigley is the principal research scientist at Minderoo Foundation. She's a regular visitor here and takes me out onto the reef where she points out the damage being done by a marine heat wave that's travelling across the world.

We spent an hour or so snorkeling on the reef and it's really impressive, shocking if you like, because you're swimming along seeing these dark purple blue brown corals and then all of a sudden there'll be this white column some of the corals two three meters wide and these are huge corals that have been bleached in recent weeks, months. The hotter water makes corals expel the algae that lives within their tissues and gives them their colour. While some corals may recover as the waters cool,

many cannot. So parts of the reef have become a graveyard. And unfortunately, what we did see is that there were many colonies that did have that partial mortality. Dr Kate Quigley's worked on the Great Barrier Reef too, all the way across the other side of Australia. The damage there this year is also unprecedented. The corals have been under really catastrophic amount of stress. In previous warming events, water temperatures might have increased for a little bit of time and then gone back down again, so the corals can essentially recover.

But what we're seeing and what we're really afraid of seeing is really high levels of death. So we've had months of warming, a lot of heat stress, and so what we're starting to see now is that mortality, that death. So the corals can no longer hang on, so to speak. Much work is also being done inside laboratories. Dr Quigley and her colleagues are trying to come up with ways of saving the reef. They're growing coral, for example, that's more heat resistant. It's a sticking plaster solution though, and doesn't fix the long-term challenge of rising carbon emissions that are heating up the planet.

We're now here, and we're going to do this transit. Back on the water, scientists are also pouring over data coming out of the reef. So you look at the colours of the coral and if they're bleached or not. Dr Chris Rolf Semmer is associate professor at the University of Queensland. He and his team are mapping Ningaloo by taking photos of the corals and linking them with drone images. That way they can track their health. Ready?

Yeah. Okay, go. But what's also needed are more permanent answers. People ask me, what can we do? I say, well, the first thing you can do is choose politicians that are considering reducing fossil fuels and are for renewable energies. But you can also reduce by drive less, go with public transport, don't have your air conditioning on all the time.

These are all things that can help reduce our footprint. As someone who knows Ningaloo and loves the place dearly, it's very distressing to see this level of bleaching and this level of damage. Paul Gamblin of the Australian Marine Conservation Society says the government needs to step up. Along this coast of Western Australia, there are some of the biggest fossil fuel projects in the world. Just recently, the government extended one gas plant for another 50 years. The Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo are sources of deep wonder. They're the equivalent of Antarctica or the Serengeti or the Amazon. At a time when places like Ningaloo are clearly

suffering the consequences of climate change, For government even to contemplate opening up new fossil fuel projects, it shouldn't happen and governments need to draw a line in the sand and make a clear commitment not to make the situation even worse. What's happening here may be unprecedented, but scientists are in no doubt these kind of events are expected to happen much more regularly if nothing is done. That report by Katie Watson in Australia. A US federal judge in Florida has turned down the Trump administration's request to release additional grand jury documents from the investigation into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Judge Robin Rosenberg said that her hands were tied as the Justice Department had only made the request due to extensive public interest and not as part of judicial proceedings. In another development, the Wall Street Journal is citing senior administration officials to report that the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, told President Trump back in May

that his name appeared in the Epstein files. Nomiya Iqbal reports. For nearly two weeks, the Jeffrey Epstein saga has consumed the White House in a way that the President doesn't want. And now the Wall Street Journal claims that the US Attorney General, Pam Bondi, told Mr. Trump in May that his name appeared in Justice Department files about Epstein. The BBC has not been able to independently verify the allegation. The White House has dismissed it as fake news.

The President has not been accused of wrongdoing related to Epstein, but for years he stoked conspiracy theories that the convicted sex offender might not have killed himself and was in possession of a list of powerful figures involved in crimes. Last month his administration said there was no basis to continue investigating it, sparking a huge backlash among Mr Trump's political base, which for nearly a decade has been loyal to him. Polls suggest nearly two-thirds of Americans overall disapprove of his handling of the case.

Nourmia Iqbal, a doctor from California California has pled guilty to supplying ketamine to the Friends actor Matthew Perry in the weeks leading up to his death in 2023. Salvador Plasencia will be sentenced in December. Dr. Plasencia admitted selling Matthew Perry the drug for thousands of dollars and that it was not for legitimate medical purposes. Peter Bose is in Los Angeles. He has acknowledged supplying this drug, which is normally used in a clinical setting. It is sometimes used to treat people with anxiety or depression, but it was ruled to be the primary cause of Matthew Perry's death,

who drowned in his hot tub. He has appeared in court after initially pleading not guilty. That changed about four weeks ago when we were told that he'd reached a plea deal with prosecutors in return for some of the charges against him being dropped. Peter Bowe. The UK's Supreme Court has quashed the convictions of two former city traders who were jailed for manipulating the interest rates used for loans between banks known as LIBOR. It's the culmination of a 10-year battle by Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo who'd argued they were victims of a series of miscarriages of justice. The pairs were among 37 people prosecuted in Britain and the US between 2015 and 2019 on

charges of fraud. Nine were jailed. Judges said the original trials had been unfair. Andrew Peach had more from the BBC's financial investigations correspondent Andy Verity, who said this all started around the time of the global financial crisis back in 2008. The credit crunch was on and cash was scarce. No one was lending. And actually banks wouldn't tell the truth about how much they were really having to pay to borrow funds on the wholesale money markets because they were afraid it would make them look weak and vulnerable like they were running out of cash. So all the banks were collectively doing something called lowballing, massively understating the cost of borrowing cash, putting in lower

interest rates publicly than they were really paying. Now the interesting thing about that is the guy who blew the whistle on it is a Barclays trader called Peter Johnson, who ended up being one of the very people who was prosecuted for manipulating LIBOR rates, but actually he was the whistleblower. And then you had other traders who came along later. So what then happened is in 2012 there was all this suppressed public anger around the world really, but especially in the UK, towards the banks, that no senior bankers seemed to have been held accountable. The worst that had happened was Sir Fred Goodwin of RBS losing his knighthood and James Crosby of HBOS.

Likewise, no one had been to prison. So when Barclays was fined £290 million for manipulating interest rates in 2012, you had this explosion of suppressed public rage. And politicians in Westminster demanding that bankers be jailed, condemning something they didn't really fully understand. Let's hear from Carlo Palumbo, one of the people whose conviction was quashed today. And all of a sudden you think like you exist in a different world, where you try to speak to the world, then you can't, because they speak a different language, a language of emotions that are unrelated to anything that's real.

And now for me this is the beginning of trying to see if that rupture can be healed somehow and trying to go back to a world where you can actually talk to people and not just being seen as the monster by a system that can only construct and deal with monsters. One of the things that's really interesting about this case Andy is how the authorities went after traders rather than governments or central banks even though they were all involved. Well that's right and in fact what the governments and central banks were involved in was much bigger than anything the traders were accused of.

You can measure it actually, the maximum change in the LIBOR average of the cost of borrowing cash that could have been obtained by the traders was one-tenth of one-hundredth of one percent. So tiny. Whereas the orders from central banks and government in the financial crisis were 400 times the size. Now I know for sure because I've seen the transcript the Federal Bureau of Investigation was told all about the interest rate rigging ordered from the top and decided not to investigate it. It's awkward to pursue central banks and governments. Instead, they went after traders. But the thing is that what the traders were doing was actually really just normal commercial practice,

approved of and encouraged by their bosses. So when these people were prosecuted for it, like Carlo Palumbo, they had this strange surreal experience of being accused of things which they didn't really understand why they were wrong and then going to jail. So it's been psychologically torturous for them as well as just an incredible injustice that they fought for 10 years to overturn. The other thing that the Supreme Court said today was something's going wrong with the criminal appeal system in the UK because they applied five times to the Court of Appeal and each time the Court of Appeal blocked the path to the Supreme Court. When it

finally got there the Supreme Court agreed with their defense that the case against them was misconceived but that could have happened years earlier. So there were 19 convictions in total in the US and the UK. What are the broader implications now of the fact that these convictions are being quashed one by one? Well we've just had two convictions quashed so far in the UK. There's another seven people who are jailed for supposedly manipulating interest rates. One of the implications is that they're bound to go to their lawyers now and see if they can get their convictions quashed too. But more importantly, perhaps, they've been called to have a proper inquiry

into it that will get to the bottom of what's gone wrong here. What's gone wrong, what's been covered up about what the authorities did during the financial crisis and also what's gone wrong with the criminal justice system ever since then. It seems as if the traders have been the victims of a series of miscarriages of justice and a cover-up. Andrew Verity, to the battle of the sexes. Well, regardless of what side you're on, it's provided plenty of fodder for comedians around the world. But you might not hear those sorts of jokes anymore if you're in one Chinese province. It's imposed strict rules on stand-up comedians, telling them not to stir up trouble between

the sexes. As our China correspondent Stephen Macdonald reports, that's because some female comedians have attracted new fans by telling jokes based on the flaws of Chinese men. The life of a stand-up comedian can be pretty tough in China. Your scripts must be vetted by officials before a performance and there are many subjects you're not allowed to tell jokes about. Now if one provincial government has its way, women will ease up on the gags ridiculing men, instead switching to constructive

criticism of male behaviour. The warning that comedians need to be more careful and which described some shows as like a battlefield between the sexes, was published on social media by the government in Zhejiang in China's East. Though it didn't specifically criticise any one performer, a woman who goes by the stage name Feng Zhuren has recently gained a widespread following for a show lambasting her ex-husband. In fact, there was a standing ovation at a performance after she announced that she'd left him. I told my mom that he gambled away all our money so I have to get a divorce. And she replied, oh, it's not like he's having an affair. Why can't you just live with it?

Fans of comedy have made fun of the government directive, with many asking why, all of a sudden, such jokes have become sensitive, just because they're coming from a female perspective. For comedians, though, they're used to such crackdowns here. They'll no doubt find a way to moderate their material till it all blows over. Then the knives will come back out again to the delight of audiences. That report by Stephen MacDonald in China. 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 any of the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Rosamund Durell. The producers were Leah McShephry and Steven Jensen. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Julia McFarlane. Until next time, goodbye.