--:-- Janet Jaleel: This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jaleel.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: At 5 Hours GMT on Friday the 10th of October, these are our main stories. Israel's government approves President Trump's plan for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage and prisoner release.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Weeks after the former FBI director James Comey's indictment, another perceived foe of Donald Trump, the New York Attorney General Letitia James is also criminally charged.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Also in this podcast, new research on why naked mole rats have such long lifespans. It turns out that they have particular secrets in their DNA on how the DNA can be repaired. So that makes them very unique within mammalians. Could this help us humans live longer?
--:-- Barbara Pletasha: A day after President Trump's triumphant announcement that Israel and Hamas had agreed to the first phase of his plan to end the war in Gaza, it has been formally approved by the Israeli government.
--:-- Barbara Pletasha: The deal will see the last hostages brought home and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners released and a ceasefire taking place with a partial Israeli military pullback.
--:-- Barbara Pletasha: Israeli attacks continued before the official start of the ceasefire with several people reported killed.
--:-- Barbara Pletasha: Earlier, Hamas said it had received assurances from the United States and other mediators that its war with Israel had come to what it called a complete end.
--:-- Barbara Pletasha: U.S. officials have said a multinational force of some 200 troops will monitor the ceasefire, but that there will be no American soldiers on the ground in Gaza.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: There were celebrations in Israel and Gaza at the news of the agreement, but it was only at the end of a long day that the Israeli government finally voted to formalize the deal, in a meeting attended by President Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes elements of the Trump plan, such as its mention of a Palestinian state, but he praised the tireless U.S. efforts to bring back the hostages.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: We couldn't have achieved it without the extraordinary help of President Trump and his team. That and the courage of our soldiers and the combined military and diplomatic pressure that isolated Hamas, I think, has brought us to this point.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: The way is clear now for the ceasefire to take effect. The clock starts ticking towards the release of the hostages within the next few days, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: The military will pull back from the front line, and the UN is poised to begin sending much more aid into Gaza, where famine has been declared in some areas.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Mr. Netanyahu has been accused of sabotaging ceasefire negotiations in the past, but Mr. Witkoff said he deserved credit for this one.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: As I look back, I don't think we get to this place without Prime Minister Netanyahu. Here we are today because Hamas had to do this deal. The pressure was on them. You've got the bigger army. You were making inroads, and that's what led to this deal.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Far-right members of Mr. Netanyahu's coalition voted against the deal, demanding that Hamas be completely dismantled. One challenged the U.S. envoys, asking them if they would make peace with Hitler.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Hamas' main concern is that Israel will go back to war as soon as the hostages are freed. But a senior Hamas official said the group received guarantees from the U.S., Arab mediators and Turkey that the war in Gaza had permanently ended.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: That will be tested in the weeks ahead, as the parties tackle difficult steps to rebuilding Gaza.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Israel does not allow the BBC to report freely from Gaza. Our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson has been monitoring reactions on both sides, starting with the response of Israelis in Tel Aviv.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: The crowds here in Hostage Square have been celebrating. There's been singing, dancing, drumming, a real sense of joy and release.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: I feel like tears and a big emotion. Many people here have been coming here week after week after week for two years, demanding that their leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, do a deal to get the hostages home.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: But it's not Israel's leader who's getting the credit. It's the American one, Donald Trump. There are US flags here flying alongside the Israeli ones and a big banner saying, we love you, Trump.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Walking through the crowd, we met opposition leader Benny Gantz, who quit Israel's wartime cabinet last year.
--:-- Benny Gantz: It's very exciting days. Lots of the, you know, uncertainties are still there. It'll be good, it's still there, but I hope to be okay.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: But hopes have been raised here many times before. Even now, some of the hostage families were cautious.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Hamas still holds the body of Udi Goran's cousin, Tal. I will believe it when I see 48 people going into white ambulances, some of them walking on their feet, some of them in body bags, making their ways back to Israel.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: I'll believe it then. In return for the hostages, Israel is expected to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences in Israeli jails, including, perhaps, the man who murdered Jonathan Carton's uncle 30 years ago.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: So it's a bag of emotions. Obviously, I'm happy to see our countrymen come back home, that the current price is too high to pay.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Across Gaza, celebrations erupted amid the rubble, emotions buried since this war began, re-emerging in streets and faces.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: We have been displaced more than 20 times during this war. Everyone is happy. The cycle of displacement and extermination has come to an end. We are looking forward to a better future.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Honestly, it's wonderful. Everyone is happy about this. And we pray to God things will get better.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: But for Hala Alhanadi's family, this deal came six weeks too late. Hala died in August from malnutrition. She was four years old.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: We first spoke to her mother Yasmin in July. Today, she shared her reaction to the news.
--:-- Yasmin: There is no happiness. It could have been a day of celebration, a huge joy with her in my arms.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: The past two years haunt Gaza celebrations, a moment of boundless joy before counting what was lost.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Well, leaders around the world have welcomed the ceasefire agreement. The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, said his organisation would support the full implementation of the plan, including the increase of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
--:-- Antonio Guterres: We have all waited far too long for this moment. Now we must make it truly count. I urge all parties to fully abide by the terms of the agreement and to fully embrace the opportunities it presents.
--:-- Antonio Guterres: All hostages must be released in a dignified manner. A permanency's fire must be secured. The bloodshed must stop once and for all.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Qatar played a pivotal role in the negotiations that eventually led to this deal. Its foreign affairs spokesperson, Dr. Majid Al-Ansari, expressed optimism, but warned there was also still a long way to go.
--:-- Dr. Majid Al-Ansari: This is an ongoing negotiation. It's an ongoing technical negotiation over every piece and every point of data when it comes to the agreement between both sides.
--:-- Dr. Majid Al-Ansari: This is not new. It has always been the type of negotiation we have been expecting to hold between both parties. The devil's always in the details, but we are quite optimistic that we have a strong document in hand.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: President Trump says he plans to fly to the Middle East on Sunday to attend a signing of the ceasefire agreement in Egypt.
--:-- Sarah Smith: So how did Mr. Trump get this deal done? Our North America editor, Sarah Smith, says he's used what some have called bully diplomacy.
--:-- Sarah Smith: Donald Trump has managed this with a distinctive diplomatic style. I mean, he's often accused of and bullying other nations on the world stage.
--:-- Sarah Smith: Well, it is the pressure that he put on Israel and its Prime Minister, Mr Netanyahu, that got us to this point.
--:-- Sarah Smith: The Israeli Prime Minister was here at the White House just last week. And whilst he was here in the Oval Office, Donald Trump forced him to call up the Prime Minister of Qatar and apologise for a bombing strike that Israel had conducted last month on Doha, attempting to kill a Hamas negotiating team, but in fact killing a Qatari citizen.
--:-- Sarah Smith: Donald Trump was furious about that because Qatar is one of America's closest allies in the Middle East. And so he forced Mr Netanyahu to issue this apology and then release photographs of him doing so.
--:-- Sarah Smith: And then it was after that that a reluctant Israeli leader was made to sign up to this 20-point peace plan that Donald Trump had come up with and they had a press conference here at the White House announcing that.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: It is remarkable to have got Benjamin Netanyahu to this point, especially from someone who says all the time he is the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: But he's also a president who has managed to get Israel to agree to things that other presidents simply could not do.
--:-- Sarah Smith: Well, it's no secret that part of the reason President Trump is pushing so hard for the war in Gaza to end is because of his often stated wish to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
--:-- Sarah Smith: A prize that was given to Barack Obama not long after he became US president. Mr Trump has said it would be a big insult if he doesn't get it too, saying repeatedly that he has ended seven wars.
--:-- Sarah Smith: This year's Peace Prize is due to be announced in Norway today, and for the first time, journalists, including the BBC's Mark Lowen, have been allowed a behind-the-scenes peek on how the winner is chosen.
--:-- Mark Lowen: Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements. Will you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not.
--:-- Mark Lowen: They'll give it to some guy that didn't do a damn thing. They'll give it to a guy that wrote a book about the mind of Donald Trump.
--:-- Mark Lowen: Well before the Gaza deal, Mr Trump was fixated on the award. And in July, Benjamin Netanyahu realised it was the way to the President's heart.
--:-- Mark Lowen: I want to present to you, Mr President, the letter I sent to the Nobel Prize Committee. It's nominating you for the Peace Prize, which is well deserved. And you should get it.
--:-- Jørgen Vatner-Fridnes: Every year we receive thousands and thousands of letters, emails, requests, people saying this is the one you should choose. And so to have that campaign, the pressure and the media attention isn't really something new for the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
--:-- Jørgen Vatner-Fridnes: However, of course, we noticed that there are a lot of media attention, particularly this year. We have to stay strong and we have to stay principled in our choices.
--:-- Jørgen Vatner-Fridnes: They prepare the podium for the announcement, fixing a replica Nobel medal to it and giving Jürgen a dress rehearsal.
--:-- Jørgen Vatner-Fridnes: Good morning. It looks good, right? Yes.
--:-- Mark Lowen: Nominations for this year's award closed at the end of January, so the Gaza deal is too late to influence them. But beyond that, their decision is private.
--:-- Mark Lowen: And as they get down to talks, we're asked to leave. I think that this year might be a long stretch.
--:-- Nina Greger: Nina Greger from Oslo's peace think tank PRIO thinks a Trump win this time is highly unlikely.
--:-- Nina Greger: But for next... He has withdrawn from international institutions such as the World Health Organization from the Paris Accord on climate. And if you look at Trump's wish to take over Greenland from Denmark, he has been very harsh on protesters against the Gaza war.
--:-- Nina Greger: I think these are things that point in a non-peaceful direction. Of course, if a just and sustainable peace is reached in Gaza, Trump would probably be a good contender for next year, at least a possible one.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Seagulls aside, Norway is a peaceful land. But some now fear Mr Trump could lash out at the country with tariffs if he's not chosen.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Beijing froze diplomatic ties with Oslo and applied sanctions when the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won in 2010.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Down in the basement of the Nobel Institute, the archivist points out the files of past awards.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: So this is the first of 1964 is Martin Luther King. The odds on Mr Trump are still long, with talk instead of a potential win for causes in Sudan or press freedom.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: And if the president wants to find out who nominated him and who didn't, he'll have a problem. This year's papers will be locked up in here and kept secret for 50 years.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: That report by Mark Lowen.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Still to come on the Global News Podcast. You would literally use the smartphone app, press a button, and then the drone would take off, go to where the bad guys are, drop a bomb there, return back and would not even require piloting skills from the military.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: How the new AI arms race is transforming the war in Ukraine.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: This is the sound of several FPV drones striking a Humvee. The armored vehicle is packed with soldiers from the Kalinowski regiment, fighting on Ukraine's side.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: Smoke quickly covers the vehicle as soldiers check on each other to see if anyone is hurt.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: Drones have become one of the key weapons that saw death on the front line here.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: But imagine if these unmanned flying machines could hunt their targets on their own with no human controlling the process.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: Now, such weapons from science fiction are becoming a reality thanks to artificial intelligence.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: What we've built is a drone system, which is a very classic 10-inch FPV drone equipped with a terminal guidance autonomy module.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: Yaroslav Aznyuk is the founder of The Fourth Law, a Ukrainian company that develops autonomous systems based on AI.
--:-- Yaroslav Aznyuk: You would just literally use the smartphone app to tell on the map where you are and where the bad guys are, and press a button and then the drone would take off, orient itself into space, go to where the bad guys are, drop a bomb there, return back, and would not even require piloting skills from the military.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: Such systems are not here yet, but Ukraine's defense ministry claim they're close to deliver them.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: As Nuuk expects by the end of the next year there will be tens of thousands of such systems active in Ukraine.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: Serious concerns exist over automated weapons.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: I'm at an exhibition called IT Arena 2025 in a massive hall where Ukrainian startup companies display their latest military products.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: There are a lot of drones here, both aerial as well as ground robots. I can see a few vessels and these are naval drones.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: It's a really big event and one of the main buzzwords here is artificial intelligence.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: I'm Vadim, part of R&D team in DevDroid.
--:-- Vadim: So we have UGV as a vehicle to move around, and we have a machine gun turret. And UGV is unmanned ground vehicles.
--:-- Vadim: Yes, both of them could be controlled remotely.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: And how do you use artificial intelligence? What kind of role does it play?
--:-- Vadim: It just automatically finds the targets, like the people, and interacts with them so it can track them, it can highlight them.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: And when it detects people, can it distinguish that these are soldiers from the Russian side and these are the soldiers from the Ukrainian side?
--:-- Vadim: No, no, it can't because both sides, they can use the same uniform.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: Maybe it is one of the reasons why we don't apply like, like, automatical shooting.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: But with AI technologies, making fully autonomous weapons is just a matter of time.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: They can have a devastating impact and unleash terror if used against the civilian population.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: That's why President Zelensky sent this warning during his speech at the UN General Assembly last month.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: We are now living through the most destructive arms race in human history. We need global rules now for how AI can be used in weapons and this is just as urgent as preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: India's southern state of Karnataka home to Bengaluru known as the country's Silicon Valley has approved one day of paid menstrual leave per month for women working in both government and private sectors including multinational tech firms.
--:-- Carla Conti: The state cabinet says the policy is about creating a more humane and inclusive workplace, one that recognises that for some women, periods can bring debilitating pain and fatigue.
--:-- Carla Conti: With one of the highest female labour participation rates in India, Karnataka's decision could set a powerful president for the rest of the country.
--:-- Carla Conti: However, the policy has also faced some criticism. Some have argued that a blanket rule assumes all women's experiences are the same and could actually do more harm than good.
--:-- Carla Conti: There are fears that employers might see women as a financial or logistical burden, potentially hesitating to hire or promote them, and undermining the very equality that the policy is meant to advance.
--:-- Carla Conti: Across the world, menstrual leave remains rare and divisive.
--:-- Carla Conti: Spain allows up to five days of paid leave with a doctor's note. Japan and South Korea introduced similar laws decades ago, though few women actually use them because of lingering stigma.
--:-- Carla Conti: In Vietnam, women can take three days each month or receive extra pay if they choose not to.
--:-- Carla Conti: Ultimately, the policy's success in Karnataka will largely depend on how employers handle it, as a gesture of trust or as a move that deepens existing gender biases in the workplace.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: The naked mole rat may not be the most beautiful of creatures. It's been described as looking a bit like a sausage with teeth, but it does have one enviable quality.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: It lives much longer than other rodents for up to 40 years, compared to, say, a mouse that only lives about three years.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Now scientists in China have discovered that naked mole rats have evolved a DNA repair mechanism that could explain their longevity and why they're resistant to age-related illnesses like cancer or arthritis.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: We all know there is a direct correlation between ageing and the rate of death. In other words, the older you are, the more likely you are to die.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: But the naked morats don't respect that law. So throughout their life, they have the same probability of dying, either young or old.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: So that makes them very unique within mammalians. And it turns out that they have particular secrets in their DNA on how the DNA can be repaired.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: And I really think this is just the tip of the iceberg. I think we're going to find out more, both through research in other places of the world, but also here in Cambridge with us.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: Just explain for us, because this is the, from what I gather, this is the nub of it, that if cells in their body sense danger or damage, they repair themselves in a slightly different way to us.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: And explain how that is significant.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: Yeah, so we know that the protein that the researchers were looking at in mice and humans, actually it's impeding DNA repair. So it acts against DNA repair by binding to the DNA.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: But it turns out that in the naked morat, it does the opposite, and it helps DNA repair. So that was quite counterintuitive and kind of shows how probably throughout the evolution, these animals have evolved to rewire their pathways.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: So I think the questions to come are, is this the only protein? Most likely not. And if it's not the only one, can we understand a bit better how the naked morat DNA repair system works towards reverse engineering to use it for us humans?
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: Why do you think a random, subterranean, quite strange-looking creature has developed this way when many others haven't?
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: So the other particular part about naked morat is that they have a unique reproductive way. So they have a queen. They have only one reproductive individual in the colony.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: So I think because the evolution works through keeping reproduction alive, I think they have evolved to live longer so that they keep this queen alive. Otherwise, they would have risk of becoming extinct.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: If you want to comment on this podcast, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: This edition was mixed by Zabi Hula Karush and the producers were Arian Kochi and Anna Aslam.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: The editor is Karen Martin.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: I'm Janet Jaleel. Until next time, goodbye.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: America is changing and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Laura Gozi: The man who challenged his conviction is called Housam Etienne Dogon. He's a 44-year-old father of one.
--:-- Laura Gozi: And a jury this week handed him a jail sentence of 10 years, so one more than he was given last year.
--:-- Laura Gozi: He argued, as he did last year, as many of his other fellow defendants did, that he couldn't be possibly found guilty of raping Giselle Pelicot because he had not realized when he came to her home that she would be unconscious.
--:-- Laura Gozi: Dominique Pelicot, who was in court as a witness, again stated that he had made it very plain to Dugan and to all the other men who came to their home that his wife would be unconscious.
--:-- Laura Gozi: Gisele Pelicot, who last year after the trial wrapped up, retreated into private life, was also present and again said that she was the only victim in this case and rejected the notion that any of her men who came to rape her had been manipulated by her husband.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Recent weeks have seen President Trump stepping up his campaign to see those he perceives as enemies face prosecution.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Now, just two weeks after criminal charges were brought against the former FBI director James Comey, New York's Attorney General Letitia James has been indicted on federal charges of bank fraud.
--:-- David Willis: Mr. Comey was fired during the president's first term over his investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
--:-- David Willis: Ms. James led a civil fraud case against Mr. Trump and his real estate business.
--:-- David Willis: She denied the charges against her. This is nothing more than a continuation of the president's desperate weaponization of our justice system.
--:-- David Willis: He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job as the New York State Attorney General.
--:-- David Willis: These charges are baseless, and the president's own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Our North America correspondent, David Willis, told me more about the New York Attorney General and the charges against her.
--:-- David Willis: Letitia James, Jeanette, is the woman who led a civil fraud investigation against Donald Trump, which led, of course, to the president being found liable for falsifying records to secure preferential loan deals.
--:-- David Willis: Now, she's been accused of making false statements to a financial institution in regard to a mortgage loan on her house in Virginia.
--:-- David Willis: Prosecutors allege that Miss James used that house as a rental property, contrary to the conditions of the loan.
--:-- David Willis: And she's been indicted on charges of bank fraud by the same US attorney, Lindsay Halligan, who brought charges against the former FBI director, James Comey.
--:-- David Willis: Now, Miss Halligan previously served as Donald Trump's personal attorney.
--:-- David Willis: And how strong is this case against Letitia James?
--:-- David Willis: Letitia James is due in court in just over two weeks time and in a statement she called the charges baseless and she accused President Trump of seeking political retribution, what she called a desperate weaponization of the US justice system.
--:-- David Willis: And she bases that claim on the fact that Donald Trump publicly called for her arrest in a post on his Truth Social social media platform less than three weeks ago.
--:-- David Willis: And in that post, he called on the U.S. Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to indict three of his political enemies, Letitia James, James Comey, who led the FBI when it investigated contacts between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russian government, and the Democratic Senator Adam Schiff.
--:-- David Willis: Now, Mr Schiff, we may remember, led impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump in the House of Representatives.
--:-- David Willis: Adam Schiff has yet to be indicted, but James Comey was indicted within days, actually, of that social media post from Donald Trump.
--:-- David Willis: He's been charged with lying to Congress, and he appeared in court yesterday for the first time and pleaded not guilty to those charges.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: With countries on Russia's border alarmed by recent violations of their airspace, one of them, Estonia, is hosting a meeting today of EU heads of state to discuss the growing role of artificial intelligence in transforming how we fight wars.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: In Ukraine, engineers are working on developing an autonomous weapon based on AI that can find and destroy targets on its own.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: This is the sound of several FPV drones striking a Humvee. The armored vehicle is packed with soldiers from the Kalinowski regiment, fighting on Ukraine's side.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: Smoke quickly covers the vehicle as soldiers check on each other to see if anyone is hurt.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: Drones have become one of the key weapons that saw death on the front line here.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: But imagine if these unmanned flying machines could hunt their targets on their own with no human controlling the process.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: Now, such weapons from science fiction are becoming a reality thanks to artificial intelligence.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: What we've built is a drone system, which is a very classic 10-inch FPV drone equipped with a terminal guidance autonomy module.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: Yaroslav Aznyuk is the founder of The Fourth Law, a Ukrainian company that develops autonomous systems based on AI.
--:-- Yaroslav Aznyuk: You would just literally use the smartphone app to tell on the map where you are and where the bad guys are, and press a button and then the drone would take off, orient itself into space, go to where the bad guys are, drop a bomb there, return back, and would not even require piloting skills from the military.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: Such systems are not here yet, but Ukraine's defense ministry claim they're close to deliver them.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: As Nuuk expects by the end of the next year there will be tens of thousands of such systems active in Ukraine.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: Serious concerns exist over automated weapons.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: I'm at an exhibition called IT Arena 2025 in a massive hall where Ukrainian startup companies display their latest military products.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: There are a lot of drones here, both aerial as well as ground robots. I can see a few vessels and these are naval drones.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: It's a really big event and one of the main buzzwords here is artificial intelligence.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: I'm Vadim, part of R&D team in DevDroid.
--:-- Vadim: So we have UGV as a vehicle to move around, and we have a machine gun turret. And UGV is unmanned ground vehicles.
--:-- Vadim: Yes, both of them could be controlled remotely.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: And how do you use artificial intelligence? What kind of role does it play?
--:-- Vadim: It just automatically finds the targets, like the people, and interacts with them so it can track them, it can highlight them.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: And when it detects people, can it distinguish that these are soldiers from the Russian side and these are the soldiers from the Ukrainian side?
--:-- Vadim: No, no, it can't because both sides, they can use the same uniform.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: Maybe it is one of the reasons why we don't apply like, like, automatical shooting.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: But with AI technologies, making fully autonomous weapons is just a matter of time.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: They can have a devastating impact and unleash terror if used against the civilian population.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: That's why President Zelensky sent this warning during his speech at the UN General Assembly last month.
--:-- Abdujaliya Abdubasulov: We are now living through the most destructive arms race in human history. We need global rules now for how AI can be used in weapons and this is just as urgent as preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: India's southern state of Karnataka home to Bengaluru known as the country's Silicon Valley has approved one day of paid menstrual leave per month for women working in both government and private sectors including multinational tech firms.
--:-- Carla Conti: The state cabinet says the policy is about creating a more humane and inclusive workplace, one that recognises that for some women, periods can bring debilitating pain and fatigue.
--:-- Carla Conti: With one of the highest female labour participation rates in India, Karnataka's decision could set a powerful president for the rest of the country.
--:-- Carla Conti: However, the policy has also faced some criticism. Some have argued that a blanket rule assumes all women's experiences are the same and could actually do more harm than good.
--:-- Carla Conti: There are fears that employers might see women as a financial or logistical burden, potentially hesitating to hire or promote them, and undermining the very equality that the policy is meant to advance.
--:-- Carla Conti: Across the world, menstrual leave remains rare and divisive.
--:-- Carla Conti: Spain allows up to five days of paid leave with a doctor's note. Japan and South Korea introduced similar laws decades ago, though few women actually use them because of lingering stigma.
--:-- Carla Conti: In Vietnam, women can take three days each month or receive extra pay if they choose not to.
--:-- Carla Conti: Ultimately, the policy's success in Karnataka will largely depend on how employers handle it, as a gesture of trust or as a move that deepens existing gender biases in the workplace.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: The naked mole rat may not be the most beautiful of creatures. It's been described as looking a bit like a sausage with teeth, but it does have one enviable quality.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: It lives much longer than other rodents for up to 40 years, compared to, say, a mouse that only lives about three years.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Now scientists in China have discovered that naked mole rats have evolved a DNA repair mechanism that could explain their longevity and why they're resistant to age-related illnesses like cancer or arthritis.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: We all know there is a direct correlation between ageing and the rate of death. In other words, the older you are, the more likely you are to die.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: But the naked morats don't respect that law. So throughout their life, they have the same probability of dying, either young or old.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: So that makes them very unique within mammalians. And it turns out that they have particular secrets in their DNA on how the DNA can be repaired.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: And I really think this is just the tip of the iceberg. I think we're going to find out more, both through research in other places of the world, but also here in Cambridge with us.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: Just explain for us, because this is the, from what I gather, this is the nub of it, that if cells in their body sense danger or damage, they repair themselves in a slightly different way to us.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: And explain how that is significant.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: Yeah, so we know that the protein that the researchers were looking at in mice and humans, actually it's impeding DNA repair. So it acts against DNA repair by binding to the DNA.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: But it turns out that in the naked morat, it does the opposite, and it helps DNA repair. So that was quite counterintuitive and kind of shows how probably throughout the evolution, these animals have evolved to rewire their pathways.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: So I think the questions to come are, is this the only protein? Most likely not. And if it's not the only one, can we understand a bit better how the naked morat DNA repair system works towards reverse engineering to use it for us humans?
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: Why do you think a random, subterranean, quite strange-looking creature has developed this way when many others haven't?
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: So the other particular part about naked morat is that they have a unique reproductive way. So they have a queen. They have only one reproductive individual in the colony.
--:-- Professor Gabriel Balmus: So I think because the evolution works through keeping reproduction alive, I think they have evolved to live longer so that they keep this queen alive. Otherwise, they would have risk of becoming extinct.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: If you want to comment on this podcast, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: This edition was mixed by Zabi Hula Karush and the producers were Arian Kochi and Anna Aslam.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: The editor is Karen Martin.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: I'm Janet Jaleel. Until next time, goodbye.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: America is changing and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
