--:-- Alex Ritson: This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Alex Ritson: This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritson and at five hours GMT on Friday the 19th of September, these are our main stories.
--:-- Alex Ritson: As Israel presses on with its assault in Gaza City, the US has again blocked the UN Security Council from adopting a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire. Donald Trump has floated the idea of removing broadcasting licenses from TV networks that show programs which criticize him.
--:-- Alex Ritson: France's former president, François Hollande, tells the BBC about his fears for France and for Europe. Also in this podcast...
--:-- Alex Ritson: There's something rather unusual happening in Moscow. Our Russia editor is backstage at Intervision, President Putin's answer to Eurovision.
--:-- Alex Ritson: For the sixth time during the two-year war in Gaza, the United States has vetoed a draft resolution at the UN Security Council demanding an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in the Palestinian territory.
--:-- Morgan Ortegas: As before, the text also called for the lifting of all restrictions on the delivery of aid and the release of all hostages still held in Gaza.
--:-- Morgan Ortegas: Morgan Ortegas, President Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, said the resolution failed to recognize Israel's right to defend itself as well as condemn Hamas. It wrongly legitimizes the false narratives benefiting Hamas, which have sadly found currency in this council.
--:-- Morgan Ortegas: Council members ignored when the United States made clear that this resolution was unacceptable. The council instead adopted for a performative action designed to draw a veto that extends Hamas terrorists and those who fund them and support them and gives them a lifeline.
--:-- Alex Ritson: The US veto comes as the Israeli army continues its ground offensive into Gaza City in the north of the territory.
--:-- Alex Ritson: The UN says more than a quarter of a million people have been displaced in the last month but not everyone is leaving.
--:-- Sara: We are staying in a school that has been turned into a shelter for displaced families. Life here is honestly it is just tragic. We are dealing with hunger and prices that are completely insane.
--:-- Sara: We cannot even leave. There is no tent waiting for us there in the south and the cost of getting to the south. It's over 2,000 shekels.
--:-- Alex Ritson: Israel's far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said the army had done the demolition phase and after the war, the Gaza Strip could be a real estate bonanza for Israel.
--:-- Alex Ritson: He also said that a business plan was on President Trump's table.
--:-- Nick Miles: For the latest on the ground, my colleague Nick Miles spoke to John Donison in Jerusalem.
--:-- John Donison: First of all, journalists like myself are not allowed into Gaza to report freely by Israel, but also now you've got a situation where the phone communications and internet communications in Gaza City in the north of the Gaza Strip have gone down because the main telecoms company has been damaged.
--:-- John Donison: So it's very difficult to speak to people there to find out what's going on.
--:-- John Donison: What we do know is that tens of thousands of people continue to flee Gaza City and head south.
--:-- John Donison: But as you heard from your interviewee there, there are many others who are staying put.
--:-- John Donison: Firstly, because they think, well, there's nowhere safe to go. The journey is difficult and expensive and long to get down to the south.
--:-- John Donison: And others simply want to stay by their homes.
--:-- John Donison: But you've got a United Nations official in Gaza today saying that the situation is cataclysmic.
--:-- John Donison: Another UN agency saying that mothers are having to give birth in the streets, such is the lack of medical facilities.
--:-- John Donison: And John, I hear that the Israeli finance minister has been making some controversial remarks about Gaza.
--:-- John Donison: What's he been saying?
--:-- John Donison: Yes, this is the far right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and he was speaking at a real estate conference.
--:-- John Donison: And his comments really when you contrast them with the images that are coming out of Gaza.
--:-- John Donison: So he was talking about the potential for there to be a real estate bonanza, as he put it in Gaza.
--:-- John Donison: He said he was already talking to the Americans and that the war in Gaza had cost Israel a lot, he said, and it was now time to make some money back.
--:-- John Donison: Now, Mr Smotrich is someone who has said that all the Palestinians in Gaza should leave to neighbouring countries, drawing accusations of ethnic cleansing.
--:-- John Donison: And these comments, given that President Trump himself has also talked about having some sort of Riviera in Gaza, will frankly outrage Palestinians.
--:-- Alex Ritson: And John, I gather that two Israeli soldiers were shot and killed in an attack at the crossing between Jordan and the occupied West Bank and the reaction from Israel.
--:-- John Donison: This was at the Allenby crossing, one of the main crossings between Jordan into the West Bank.
--:-- John Donison: And the Israelis have said that someone who was driving a truck delivering aid to the crossing then opened fire killing two Israelis.
--:-- John Donison: The truck driver was killed.
--:-- John Donison: We don't have many more details than that, but that crossing has been closed and obviously that affects people wanting to travel between Jordan and the West Bank, but also the supplies of humanitarian aid destined for Gaza coming across the border.
--:-- Alex Ritson: Not that that much is getting into Gaza at the moment anyway.
--:-- John Donison: President Trump has suggested that television networks which repeatedly criticise him should, maybe, have their broadcasting licences revoked.
--:-- John Donison: He said that he'd been told that the networks were 97% against him.
--:-- John Donison: Mr Trump was speaking after ABC indefinitely suspended Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show.
--:-- John Donison: It had come under pressure after he suggested that the man charged with killing the right-wing influencer, Charlie Kirk, was aligned with Mr Trump's MAGA movement.
--:-- John Donison: The former American President Barack Obama described the suspension as a new and dangerous level of cancel culture.
--:-- John Donison: President Trump has been speaking to Fox News.
--:-- John Donison: Since returning to office, he's given most major interviews to the right-wing broadcaster, which often doesn't press him.
--:-- John Donison: Mr Trump also promised to designate the US anti-fascist movement, Antifa, as a terrorist organization.
--:-- John Donison: It's a sick group, a very, very sick group.
--:-- John Donison: We have a lot of things. They love burning the American flag.
--:-- John Donison: I think it's terrible that they burn the American flag.
--:-- John Donison: We're going in and we're saying it incites riots and therefore you go to jail for one year if you burn the American flag.
--:-- John Donison: Because as you know, the free speech got us on the American flag.
--:-- John Donison: The courts have ruled free speech.
--:-- John Donison: So we're going on in the segment of rights.
--:-- Peter Bowes: I spoke to our North America correspondent, Peter Bowes, and I began by asking, can President Trump label Antifa a terrorist organisation?
--:-- Peter Bowes: Well, he can say it, but whether it has legal standing is open to question.
--:-- Peter Bowes: He wrote on social media that he was designating Antifa which he said was a sick dangerous radical left disaster as a major terrorist organisation And that he would also strongly recommend that whoever funds the actions of Antifa groups should be investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices.
--:-- Peter Bowes: Then on Fox News, he said it should have been done a long time ago.
--:-- Peter Bowes: However, in this country, the federal government cannot officially designate a domestic group as a terrorist organisation in the way that it can with foreign groups like ISIS or Al-Qaeda.
--:-- Peter Bowes: He can, as part of his social media posts seems to suggest, direct federal law enforcement agencies like the FBI to treat criminal acts by people who claim an affiliation with Antifa as domestic terrorism.
--:-- Peter Bowes: So if he calls such individuals terrorists, that is a political label. It's not legally binding.
--:-- Peter Bowes: He's also put troops on the ground in multiple states, and critics say he's now trying to take control over what's on the airwaves.
--:-- Peter Bowes: What's the reaction?
--:-- Peter Bowes: Well, the overall reaction to both the deployment of troops and this ongoing debate over freedom of speech is largely divided along ideological lines.
--:-- Peter Bowes: We've heard much about opposition from Chicago, for example, about the prospect of troops being sent to that city.
--:-- Peter Bowes: There's been a very vocal opposition from the TV unions, for example, and others to the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, something that the president welcomed.
--:-- Peter Bowes: But now he's gone a step further.
--:-- Peter Bowes: Speaking on Air Force One, returning to Washington from the UK, he bemoaned the fact that, as he saw it, the TV coverage of him by the networks, the television networks here, was 97% negative.
--:-- Peter Bowes: And then he suggested maybe their licence should be taken away.
--:-- Peter Bowes: And he added that it would be up to Brendan Carr, who he appointed to be in charge of the body that regulates TV stations.
--:-- Peter Bowes: So really this creeping control of the airwaves is a fair fear, as has been expressed by some people.
--:-- Peter Bowes: Some people believe it is a real possibility and something that, should it happen in an extreme way, could have quite a chilling effect on free speech in this country.
--:-- Peter Bowes: He would probably see it, though, as what he said over the last day or two, is simply him exercising his right to free speech.
--:-- Peter Bowes: He, I think most people would agree, even his opponents, that he has a right to free speech.
--:-- Peter Bowes: But whether he has a right to impose restrictions on others for expressing their freedom of speech, that is questioned.
--:-- Alex Ritson: The French Interior Minister has said that just over 300 people are arrested during Thursday's demonstrations against President Macron's austerity plans.
--:-- Alex Ritson: Trade union organisers said that one million people turned out to protest, while the Interior Ministry put the number at half of that.
--:-- Alex Ritson: In central Paris, police in riot gear used tear gas to disperse crowds after some protesters damaged a small number of businesses and buildings.
--:-- Alex Ritson: Scuffles were reported elsewhere, including in Lyon and Nantes.
--:-- Alex Ritson: The former French president, François Hollande, spoke to the BBC's Andrew Harding about this tumultuous period in French politics.
--:-- François Hollande: France is experiencing a political crisis like Britain and many other countries.
--:-- François Hollande: There's the rise of the far right, parties fragmenting.
--:-- François Hollande: We're in political and parliamentary deadlock, and so there will be demonstrations, but not a revolution.
--:-- François Hollande: People are angry about different things that add up to doubts about democracy itself.
--:-- François Hollande: That's the biggest danger.
--:-- François Hollande: And now the far right could come to power here.
--:-- François Hollande: The defences we've built against that are collapsing because of foreign meddling, social media and the issue of migration.
--:-- François Hollande: Do you see a way through the next, not just years, but months and weeks for France and a way out of this total political deadlock?
--:-- François Hollande: There are two options.
--:-- François Hollande: It is still too early to say which one will win.
--:-- François Hollande: If the government makes the rich contribute more and protect the poor, then a compromise could allow it to survive until the presidential election in 2027.
--:-- François Hollande: The second option is no compromise from the government, and it's overthrown.
--:-- François Hollande: If that happens, the president will surely have to call new parliamentary elections.
--:-- François Hollande: And if the result of that is the status quo or a win by the far right, then the crisis deepens and the danger is at its greatest.
--:-- François Hollande: And do you see President Macron completing his term?
--:-- François Hollande: There is already pressure growing for President Macron's dismissal or for his resignation.
--:-- François Hollande: I want to believe he understands how dangerous that would be.
--:-- François Hollande: So I believe he will seek, as is his duty, to promote compromise.
--:-- François Hollande: But it's a possibility.
--:-- François Hollande: Yes, the president, his prime minister and the socialists need to understand that they have nothing to gain from this crisis.
--:-- François Hollande: Those who will gain are the far right.
--:-- François Hollande: They are provoking it and trying to exploit it.
--:-- François Hollande: And they're winning.
--:-- François Hollande: They can win.
--:-- François Hollande: Do you get the sense in France and across Europe that the public understand and are ready to accept the price of securing both Ukraine and Europe?
--:-- François Hollande: Donald Trump is the one person who can exert the necessary pressure on Putin.
--:-- François Hollande: And he's not doing it.
--:-- François Hollande: That's why the Russians continue.
--:-- François Hollande: Despite the image the American president wants to convey, Trump is the weakest figure in the world right now.
--:-- François Hollande: He is to blame for these global problems because when the US sets Putin an ultimatum and he ignores it, then Putin gains.
--:-- François Hollande: And when Trump doesn't even condemn an intervention by Israel's Netanyahu in Qatar, it means America is powerless, or rather not the US, but its president is powerless.
--:-- Alex Ritson: With gold prices nearing record highs, the precious metal is increasingly becoming a target for thieves.
--:-- Alex Ritson: In France this week, gold samples with a street value of $700,000 were stolen from the Natural History Museum in Paris, which is one of several French museums to have been robbed over the last year or so, with the clavar money pointing to organised crime.
--:-- Paddy Maguire: The French media are there reporting the break-in which happened in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
--:-- Paddy Maguire: The well-planned heist targeted the museum's geology and mineral gallery.
--:-- Paddy Maguire: The thieves are believed to have used angle grinders and a blowtorch to force their way in, making off with four to six pieces of native gold, an alloy containing gold and silver.
--:-- Emmanuel Skoulios: This was a perfectly professional team, perfectly aware of where they had to go and using professional equipment.
--:-- Emmanuel Skoulios: It was absolutely not a coincidence that they went to these specimens.
--:-- Paddy Maguire: One police source said the museum's alarm and surveillance systems had been taken down by a cyber attack in July and that the thieves had been aware of the museum's vulnerability.
--:-- Arthur Brand: In the last couple of months, several public collections in France have been targeted.
--:-- Arthur Brand: Earlier this month, there was a robbery in Limoges in France. a museum porcelain was stolen, Chinese porcelain from the 14th century, with a combined value of 9.5 million euros.
--:-- Arthur Brand: Less than a year ago, snuff boxes were stolen from a museum in Paris with a value of around 1 million euro.
--:-- Arthur Brand: So it seems that the last year France has been targeted, but these things are happening in the last decade more and more in Europe.
--:-- Arthur Brand: But it's not just Europe. In Egypt this week it emerged that an ancient gold bracelet linked to the pharaohs had gone missing from a museum in Cairo in this case it was taken by a conservation worker who had sold it to a local jeweler for nearly
--:-- Arthur Brand: So is it just the price of gold that is fueling this surge?
--:-- Arthur Brand: Why they target precious metals like gold and silver and diamonds and stuff like that?
--:-- Arthur Brand: You know, you can melt it down.
--:-- Arthur Brand: If you steal a Van Gogh, you have to shove around, you know, you have to offer it.
--:-- Arthur Brand: And people know this Van Gogh has been stolen.
--:-- Arthur Brand: But with gold, with silver, you can melt it down.
--:-- Arthur Brand: The biggest gold card was in a museum in Berlin.
--:-- Arthur Brand: It had been stolen seven, eight years ago.
--:-- Arthur Brand: It has been melted down.
--:-- Arthur Brand: So it's the price of gold, of course, but also there are no traces.
--:-- Alex Ritson: Paddy Maguire.
--:-- Alex Ritson: Still to come in this podcast.
--:-- Alex Ritson: The doctor said it doesn't look too good.
--:-- Alex Ritson: It's going to be a fight in the future, and I hope I'm going to be OK.
--:-- Alex Ritson: I might be OK.
--:-- Alex Ritson: I might not be OK.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Tennis champion Bjorn Borg says that he's battling cancer like a Wimbledon final.
--:-- Asma Khalid: America is changing, and so is the world.
--:-- Asma Khalid: But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval.
--:-- Asma Khalid: It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
--:-- Asma Khalid: I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C.
--:-- Asma Khalid: I'm Tristan Redman in London.
--:-- Asma Khalid: And this is The Global Story.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Paul Moss: A momentous peace deal ended the civil war in Colombia a decade ago, but the country is still trying to deal with its legacy.
--:-- Paul Moss: One of the biggest challenges is bringing justice to victims without jeopardising peace.
--:-- Paul Moss: With that in mind, this week a judge ordered seven members of the former rebel group to make reparations to the victims instead of going to prison.
--:-- Paul Moss: But not everyone is happy about that.
--:-- Paul Moss: Our global affairs reporter Paul Moss explains.
--:-- Paul Moss: It was a remarkable moment in Colombia's history.
--:-- Paul Moss: In 2016, after a decades-long civil war, the leaders of the country's left-wing guerrillas, the FARC as they were called, signed a peace deal with the country's government.
--:-- Paul Moss: A key aspect of the peace agreement was that the FARC guerrillas and those they fought against would be tried in special courts.
--:-- Paul Moss: And those convicted would not be sent to prison.
--:-- Paul Moss: Rather, they'd be given the opportunity to carry out reparation work in the communities where they'd operated.
--:-- Paul Moss: On Tuesday, the first batch of these restorative justice sentences was handed down.
--:-- Paul Moss: Seven FARC leaders were ordered to carry out work, which includes building roads, planting trees and also helping clear landmines.
--:-- Ingrid Bettencourt: I felt indignant, I felt humiliated, mocked.
--:-- Ingrid Bettencourt: We have been waiting for justice to be served for many years.
--:-- Ingrid Bettencourt: We have not had justice in any of its forms.
--:-- Paul Moss: It's rarely easy for any country to emerge from conflict.
--:-- Paul Moss: Peace deals often require messy compromise.
--:-- Paul Moss: Crimes may go unpunished.
--:-- Paul Moss: Those who committed them sometimes given political power.
--:-- Paul Moss: The judge who handed down those restorative sentences in Colombia, Camilo Suarez, said he understood the pain this caused to victims.
--:-- Paul Moss: There's an aspect that's absolutely undeniable and that we acknowledge.
--:-- Paul Moss: We're in a scenario where there are crimes that are impossible to repair because they are irreparable.
--:-- Paul Moss: The loss of a person, the loss of life, lost time, is absolutely irreparable.
--:-- Paul Moss: Ingrid Betancourt and other victims of the FARC have said they'll try to challenge the sentences handed down at an international court.
--:-- Paul Moss: Meanwhile, more than 200 other participants in Colombia's civil war are still due to face their own trials, each of which could potentially be as controversial as this first one.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Vladimir Putin likes nothing better than to show the West that attempts to isolate Russia have failed.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Sometimes he does that through summits with Xi Jinping or Donald Trump.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: This weekend, he's doing it with music.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: On Saturday night, 23 countries from Qatar to Cuba will be taking part in Intervision.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Our Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg, went behind the scenes of a competition conceived as a political project of the Kremlin.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: There's something rather unusual happening in Moscow.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: A singer from Uzbekistan, Shokhruh Mirzo Ghaniev, is rehearsing for an international song contest.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: But it's not Eurovision.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Put your legs together like a man, the choreographer says, and arms out wide.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Shokhruh Mirzo sings about love and his motherland while beating the doira, the ancient drum of Central Asia.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: He's excited to be here.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: My mother's very proud, Shokhruh Mirzo tells me later.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: I've come to Moscow, to Russia, to compete in the Intervision Song Contest.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Intervision was a Soviet-era song fest, Eurovision's Cold War rival.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Now it's back, summoned from the grave of Song Contest's past.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: But why?
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: And how will Intervision be different from Eurovision?
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Well, for a start, less kitsch, more Kremlin.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Intervision.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Vladimir Putin revived Intervision by presidential decree, officially to encourage international cultural cooperation.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Now Russia has a song contest it can actually take part in.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Russia was banned from Eurovision over its war in Ukraine.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: To learn more about the contest, I attend an Intervision press conference given by President Putin's deputy chief of staff, the Russian foreign minister, and by the deputy prime minister.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: That's a lot of politicians for a few pop songs.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: I ask Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the fact that you're here with someone from the Kremlin and the government, doesn't that prove that Intervision is a purely political project?
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: If the governments of some countries make no effort to create mechanisms for supporting culture, that's their choice, Mr Lavrov replies.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: In our country, the state is engaged in the promotion of arts.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Your question is rooted in the fear of competition.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: If you want, fear of competition.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Something else Russia has been engaged in promoting is the idea of a new world order, challenging the political power of the West.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Intervision fits into that as an attempt to challenge Western culture
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: At Indivision you hear ballads from China and India Cuban rumbas and Vietnamese rap.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: And the emphasis is on cultural identity and national traditions.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: South African group Mazansi Yikalele explained their entry.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: It's a newly composed song, brand new, brand new.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: We're all from different races and cultures and we wanted to show you how we are united as a country and how we embrace each other culturally and we embrace other people's cultures as well.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: We were comforted saying that, just come guys, nothing's wrong.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: We're just going to have a good time.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: But Ukraine can take no comfort from a song contest in Russia.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: The Ukrainian foreign ministry has dubbed Intervision an instrument of hostile propaganda, an attempt by Russia to whitewash its aggressive policy.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: But welcome to Russia has limits.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Unlike at Eurovision, LGBTQ themes are not welcome here.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Russia has criminalised public expressions of LGBTQ identity.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Russian officials point out that the 23 participating countries have a combined population of more than 4 billion people.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: That's hardly isolation.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: In any case, Russia will use Intervision to try to amplify its role on the world stage, whether the world watches the contest or not.
--:-- Victoria Gill: Neuroscientists in Scotland say they've discovered a mileage clock inside the brain which helps us navigate.
--:-- Victoria Gill: It's hoped their findings based on the brains of rats could help in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.
--:-- Victoria Gill: More from our science correspondent Victoria Gill.
--:-- Victoria Gill: Scientists found this internal mileage clock by recording from a part of the rat's brains, known to be important in navigation and memory, as they moved around a small rat-scaled arena, essentially a rectangular box with no lid.
--:-- Victoria Gill: They trained the animals to run a set distance and then return to the start for a food reward, and found that cells in their brains fired or ticked almost like a pedometer with every 30 centimetres they travelled.
--:-- Victoria Gill: But when the scientists changed the shape of that box, moving the walls, that regular ticking pattern stopped and the rats were no longer able to work out how far they'd moved.
--:-- Victoria Gill: The scientists then asked human volunteers to do the same distance estimation task in a much larger 12 metre by 6 metre box.
--:-- Victoria Gill: And when they moved the walls, the volunteers started making mistakes.
--:-- James Ainge: Professor James Ainge from the University of St Andrews said the experiment suggested that our own brains have the same internal mileage clock.
--:-- James Ainge: So we had people start at one end of the arena, we'd have them walk to a specific point in the arena, and we'd do a bunch of training trials where that point was specified for them.
--:-- James Ainge: And then over time we'd run trials where the specification points the the marker for where they should go that that was removed and we'd ask okay first of all can people estimate distance and it turns out that yes they can not very surprising but then when we do the same manipulation that we did with the rats so when we change the shape of the room we see exactly the same pattern of behavior
--:-- Victoria Gill: The scientists say the findings could also help in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.
--:-- Victoria Gill: The cells they recorded from are in part of the brain that is one of the first areas to be affected in Alzheimer's, which could explain why people with the disease sometimes start losing their way before they lose their memory.
--:-- Tim Muffet: Bjorn Borg, the Swedish tennis ace whose ice-cool image, long blonde hair and winning streak made him one of the sport's greatest ever stars, is fighting one of his toughest ever battles, prostate cancer.
--:-- Tim Muffet: Borg, who was a Wimbledon champion five times in a row and won the French Open six times, was idolised like a rock star in the 1970s.
--:-- Tim Muffet: Now 69, he's been opening up about his struggles with alcohol and drugs after he quit the sport at such a young age and his cancer diagnosis in a new memoir, Heartbeats.
--:-- Tim Muffet: Borg is in remission following an operation last year.
--:-- Tim Muffet: That's it! A Swedish-Bienborg dominated tennis in the late 70s.
--:-- Tim Muffet: Borg arrived last year at Wimbledon for the first time to scenes of near-riot.
--:-- Tim Muffet: Borg's arrival in Britain in the early 70s had a huge impact on and off the court.
--:-- Tim Muffet: I've never seen this before in my life.
--:-- Tim Muffet: And they were running out from the stands.
--:-- Tim Muffet: Maybe I'll come in Swede, come with a blonde hair.
--:-- Tim Muffet: I have no idea what happened.
--:-- Tim Muffet: Something happened in tennis during that time.
--:-- Tim Muffet: There were five consecutive men's singles titles at Wimbledon.
--:-- Tim Muffet: And then, in 1983, a decision that stunned the sport.
--:-- Tim Muffet: Borg announced he was quitting tennis, aged just 26.
--:-- Tim Muffet: Do you regret that?
--:-- Tim Muffet: I had enough.
--:-- Tim Muffet: I lost the interest in that way, the motivation.
--:-- Tim Muffet: If I knew what was going to happen the years after, I would continue to play tennis, of course.
--:-- Tim Muffet: In the book, you describe how at times your life was a dangerous mix of drugs, pills and alcohol.
--:-- Tim Muffet: How bad did things get?
--:-- Tim Muffet: I had no plan.
--:-- Tim Muffet: This was a huge problem.
--:-- Tim Muffet: People today, for instance, they have guidance.
--:-- Tim Muffet: I had nothing.
--:-- Tim Muffet: I didn't know what to do.
--:-- Tim Muffet: I was lost in the world.
--:-- Tim Muffet: It was more drugs, it was pills, it was alcohol.
--:-- Tim Muffet: I was close to dying many times.
--:-- Tim Muffet: In the book, you reveal that you've been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
--:-- Tim Muffet: I've always been checking myself for prostate cancer.
--:-- Tim Muffet: 20, 23, checked myself again, and the doctor said, it doesn't look too good.
--:-- Tim Muffet: And in the book, you describe it as extremely aggressive and at its most advanced stage.
--:-- Tim Muffet: And you also say that you're going to fight every day like it's a Wimbledon final.
--:-- Tim Muffet: I spoke to the doctor, and he said, this is really, really bad.
--:-- Tim Muffet: OK, but it's done.
--:-- Tim Muffet: And he said, but you have these sleeping cancer cells in your body.
--:-- Tim Muffet: It's going to be a fight in the future.
--:-- Tim Muffet: And I hope I'm going to be OK.
--:-- Tim Muffet: I might be OK.
--:-- Tim Muffet: I might not be OK.
--:-- Alex Ritson: And that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.
--:-- Alex Ritson: If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.
--:-- Alex Ritson: The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.
--:-- Alex Ritson: You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.
--:-- Alex Ritson: Use the hashtag Global News Pod.
--:-- Alex Ritson: This edition was mixed by Zubihala Karush and produced by Daniel Mann and Wendy Urquhart.
--:-- Alex Ritson: The editor is Karen Martin.
--:-- Alex Ritson: I'm Alex Ritson.
--:-- Alex Ritson: Until next time, goodbye.
--:-- Asma Khalid: America is changing.
--:-- Asma Khalid: And so is the world.
--:-- Asma Khalid: But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval.
--:-- Asma Khalid: It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
--:-- Asma Khalid: I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C.
--:-- Asma Khalid: I'm Tristan Redman in London.
--:-- Asma Khalid: And this is The Global Story.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
