--:-- Valerie Sanderson: This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Saks Off 5th is your secret to fashion's most wanted deals at up to 70% off.
--:-- Saks Off 5th: On the hunt for designer steals that'll turn heads and leave a trail of envy? Uncover Gucci, Valentino, Versace, Stuart Weitzman and more. With new arrivals dropping weekly at prices too good to stay confidential. Lux layers, statement boots and tailored essentials from Saks Off 5th will put your wardrobe on the most wanted list. Head to SaksOff5th.com or SaksOff5th store near you for a style lineup you won't want to miss.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: This message is sponsored by Greenlight. With school out, summer is the perfect time to teach our kids real-world money skills they'll use forever. Greenlight is a debit card and the number one family finance and safety app used by millions of families, helping kids learn how to save, invest, and spend wisely. Parents can send their kids money and track their spending and saving, while kids build money confidence and skills in fun ways. Start your risk-free Greenlight trial today at greenlight.com slash iHeart. That's greenlight.com slash iHeart.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson, and in the early hours of Wednesday, the 13th of August, these are our main stories. President Zelensky vows to reject any proposal from Russia that would mean Ukraine giving up territory or withdrawing troops from the eastern Donbass region.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The US has issued charges against a gang boss who controls most of the capital of Haiti and offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture. The wife of South Korea's jailed former president has been arrested on charges of stock manipulation, election meddling and bribery. Also in this podcast.
--:-- Jonathan Beale: A lot of what he was saying was restating what he said when he heard about those talks first between President Trump and President Putin in Alaska, which is that essentially he's not been invited and he's not sure exactly what they will be speaking about. He said it was a personal victory for President Putin to be invited on US territory. He's already stated, President Zelensky, that any deal without him, in his words, is a dead deal.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: He also has made clear that ceding Ukrainian territory goes against the Constitution. Today, he was more emphatic, saying he would not give up the Donbass. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have lost their lives there, the areas of Lhansk and Donetsk.
--:-- Jonathan Beale: And the reason why President Zelensky said he would not give up the Donbass is because he says he believes in future it could be used as another launch pad for Russia to launch another attack in the future, just like he said Crimea was used to launch the full-scale invasion.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: So that is essentially what he is saying ahead of that meeting with Donald Trump, who is talking about land swaps. Certainly, President Zelensky at the moment not entertaining thoughts of a land swap. He welcomes Donald Trump's efforts for a ceasefire, but he wants a ceasefire before negotiations start.
--:-- Jonathan Beale: Well, you mentioned the Donbass and there are reports coming in that Russian forces have breached Ukrainian defences in the strategic area of Pogrovsk in Donbass. Is that what you're hearing where you are?
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Yes, so President Zelensky again addressed this. And what he said had happened was that small groups of Russian soldiers, I think he said three groups in all of about 20 to 30 Russian troops, had made an advance of about nine to 10 kilometres. One of those groups, he said, had been hunted down, had killed or captured. He said the other two would be hunted down as well.
--:-- Jonathan Beale: But he admits that the situation in Percost is difficult. He says the city of Percost has not been surrounded, as some people have suggested, but he admits the fighting is difficult and he is sending more troops there. And he is also clearly worried that Russia will be sending more troops to take more territory in that part of eastern Ukraine in the future, because he says their focus was for some time Russian forces retaking Kursk. Troops are now being deployed to that Pekosk region.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: And clearly, in his view, he thinks President Putin wants to show President Trump ahead of those Alaska talks that Russia is winning this war and Ukraine is losing. Now, he says that's just information warfare, but that is clearly his concern.
--:-- Jonathan Beale: Jonathan Beale, President Trump's former national security advisor, has warned him about President Putin ahead of Friday's summit. Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster told the BBC that it could be a mistake if the president fails to directly convey to Vladimir Putin the concerns Mr. Trump has already been airing in public.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: General McMaster warned that President Putin knows exactly how to flatter his U.S. counterpart to serve his own agenda. Here's our security correspondent, Frank Gardner.
--:-- Frank Gardner: Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, a highly decorated former U.S. Army general, served in the first Trump administration as his national security advisor for 13 months. Speaking to the BBC today, he voiced his fears that Friday's Trump-Putin summit risked playing into the Russian leader's hands.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: I hope that the people preparing President Trump for this are saying, hey, don't engage in this serial gullibility with Vladimir Putin, because Putin will try to appeal to your ego. He will flatter you. He will hold out the prospect of a big deal.
--:-- Frank Gardner: Frank, what he'll say is, would it be great, Donald, if we could work together on nuclear weapons and reduce nuclear weapons and maybe I can get China to come in? Reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles and reducing global tensions would certainly be a welcome byproduct of any future ceasefire or peace deal in Ukraine.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: But European leaders worry that any deal reached with Putin should not come at the price of Ukraine's freedom. Asked if he thought those leaders still had the ear of the U.S. president, he said they did, especially Sakhir Starmer and the NATO Secretary General.
--:-- Frank Gardner: But H.R. McMaster added that they must convince Donald Trump that the outcome of the war in Ukraine was inextricably tied to Europe's security and that what he called the axis of aggressors, i.e. Russia and its allies, were working together to help it prevail.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Frank Gardner.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Security forces in Myanmar are systematically torturing people according to a new investigation by the United Nations. Its latest report says there significant evidence of widespread torture.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The Burmese army overthrew the elected government in 2021 and is thought to have detained tens of thousands of people in order to crush dissent. The UN team leader, Nicholas Kumjian, says the testimony they've gathered makes it possible to identify who committed some of the atrocities.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: We have an awful lot of evidence and an awful lot of names in our database. And so much information is on social media and on the internet. We've downloaded these videos of executions. I hope that every perpetrator of those crimes is concerned that their name is in our files and in our evidence.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The UN report was published in Geneva, where our correspondent Imogen Foulkes gave us more details.
--:-- Imogen Foulkes: This report is really, really shocking, the amount of repression that has been taking place. We hear reports of terrible, terrible torture in prisons, things like electric shock treatment, people having their fingernails pulled out, sexual violence, gang rape, people being strangled, many people who have died as a result of torture, and also the kind of fear that is being instilled in the population.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: For example, that children are sometimes detained and tortured to put pressure on their parents, who were perhaps seen as dissidents. And we're talking about what, tens of thousands of people being involved? Many, many thousands, yes.
--:-- Imogen Foulkes: But I think one of the most interesting things about this report is that the UN investigators, although they were not allowed in by the regime into Myanmar, they have 1300 sources and over 600 eyewitnesses. They also have really extensive electronic evidence from social media.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: They've had videos of people being executed inside detention. So they know and they have also been able to identify some of the perpetrators. They're not naming them in public, but they know that the people committing these violations are very often Myanmar security forces. They know their names. Some of them are senior.
--:-- Imogen Foulkes: And this is evidence which they say they will pass to international courts like the International Criminal Court. And the government in Myanmar, it was overthrown, wasn't it, back in 2021?
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: That's right. But we shouldn't forget that UN Human Rights has been investigating Myanmar, keeping its eye on Myanmar, long for 2021. We had an investigation team set up after the events of 2017 when a million Rohingya Muslims were hounded out of Myanmar.
--:-- Imogen Foulkes: And they are still living in Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh. And all the reports show that terrible violations took place then. So Myanmar, to put it bluntly, has a very poor human rights record.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: What the UN investigators on this latest report are offering to do is share their new evidence, which continues to show systematic, patterned, planned human rights violations of the most serious, serious nature.
--:-- Imogen Foulkes: Imogen Foulkes.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: A prolonged heat wave in many European countries is stretching resources, with firefighters scrambling to tackle outbreaks that are devastating huge swathes of land. Portugal reached a new national high of 46.6 degrees Celsius in June, and Spain also set new records, with temperatures topping 44 degrees Celsius in several regions.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: Helicopters dumping water over the town of Tarifa in southern Spain trying to put out the second major fire there in a week Further north near Madrid scorched earth in the city of Tricantos where a fire that's still active has killed one man It's one of many active blazes across Spain with thousands of people evacuated and firefighters working through the night.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Across Europe, it's a similar story. An early onset of heat waves, record-breaking temperatures and fires that are difficult to contain. In Italy, an intense heat wave is sweeping across the south, with planes trying to put out fires on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius for a fourth day, and thousands more fires reported by officials than last year.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: Marta Friguerio, a climate and environmental journalist based near Milan, says the government is moving too slowly on climate goals, but the impacts of global warming can't be ignored. Some people and the government are still denying the impact of climate change, but the point is that tourists are choosing new destinations in Italy, such as lakes and mantas over sea.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: So it's also having a very big economic impact. impact. Seasides are empty and tourists are choosing other destinations. Parts of Croatia have been battling fires since the middle of June. Vedrana Simicevic is a Croatian climate journalist and mountaineer.
--:-- Vedrana Simicevic: One of the biggest consequences of heatwaste in Croatia is the warming of the Adriatic Sea, which is quite dangerous for the species in the sea. She's just been climbing Mont Blanc, a regular trip with a big difference this year.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: I have to say that it's really concerning and I'm talking specifically not only about glacier melting but also about permafrost melting. The ice inside of rock walls, six or seven metres deep inside and now because of the heat waves, this ice is towing, melting and because of that we have really large rock falls all over the place.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: In France, temperatures of up to 44 degrees have also been recorded, with some areas offering free entry to swimming pools. Paris is one of many European cities that residents say are not built for extreme heat, with historic architecture and limited air conditioning.
--:-- Peter Young: I think particularly in Paris, there's more of a feeling of being sick and tired of the sea. It's not something that is pleasurable at this point. and I'm particularly reporting in a neighbourhood called Aubervilliers, a very poor suburb where there's a high number of immigrant communities.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The housing is often all, it's quite a bleak picture and people are often sort of lacking any sort of resource. Europe is warming faster than any other continent at twice the speed of the global average since the 1980s, according to experts.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: Scientists warn of a dangerous cocktail of climactic conditions fueling the wildfires across the Mediterranean with warm weather predicted until the end of August.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Stephanie Prentice.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Still to come, a surgeon operating in Gaza tells us he has to recycle surgical parts from dead bodies to save the living. External fixator pins are being taken off of patients that have died or have had their X-Fixes removed and reused.
--:-- Adil Khalil: The spinal equipment is incredibly limited and the screw sizes are completely random. The amount of equipment that has been getting in is very insufficient.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Right. So you're effectively recycling things like pins and screws and the sorts of things that you use to fix these injuries from patients who have already deceased? You're having to do that?
--:-- Adil Khalil: Yeah, yeah. You say you're being restricted. Can you just clarify exactly where those restrictions are happening?
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: At the border. Okay, so you're responding to the advice from the WHO and they're responding to the rules coming from the Israeli authorities?
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The orthopaedic surgeon Adil Khalil speaking to Rebecca Kesby from Gaza City.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The Israeli military says it examining reports of civilians being harmed while approaching aid distribution centers in Gaza run by the U and Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: South Korea's former First Lady Kim Kan-hee has been arrested after a court-issued a warrant. It means she and her husband, former President Yoon Suk-yeol, at the first presidential couple to be jailed.
--:-- Jae Sung Lee: Kim Keon Lee is the first wife of a South Korean president to be arrested. She's been accused of stock manipulation, election interference and bribery and she's said to have accepted luxury gifts from a shaman from the very influential Unification Church in exchange for business favours.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Kim Keon Lee is the wife of the former president, Yoon Sung-yeol, who was impeached over that botched attempt to impose martial law last December. Now he's already in jail. He's charged for insurrection.
--:-- Jae Sung Lee: Jae Sung Lee.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: A US woman who was hired as a killer and tried to shoot a man in the UK at point-blank range while using an Islamic headscarf to hide her identity has been found guilty of conspiracy to murder.
--:-- Jill Black: Resembling a scene from a film, CCTV shows Amy Betrow wearing a niqab to disguise her face as she walks up to Sikanda Ali and points a gun at him. She tries to shoot him at close range, but the gun jams and his car can be seen screeching away as he seizes the opportunity to flee.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Hi, can I get a taxi? Hours later, this is Betro ordering a taxi so she can return to the scene. Speak it up from where? Letters, fish and chips. I'm on the corner opposite of Asda.
--:-- Jill Black: And in the darkness of the early hours, she is picked up again on CCTV. This is her second attempt as she shoots three rounds at the windows of Sir Kanda Ali's family home. But the property is empty.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The would-be assassin flew to the UK as part of a revenge plot orchestrated by two men, Mohamed Aslam and his son Mohamed Nazir, wanted to attack a rival family.
--:-- Jill Black: The court heard they were involved in a feud with Sir Kanda Ali's father, Aslat Mahoumad, and wanted to kill him or a member of his family. Aslam and Nazir were found guilty at a separate trial.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Petro's defence was that it was a coincidence that minutes after the attempted assassination, she happened to be near the area. And the perpetrator was another American woman who sounded like her, used the same phone and wore the same sort of trainers.
--:-- Jill Black: She said she had been in the UK to celebrate her birthday and attend a boat party. The jury didn't believe her.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Joe Black.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Wildlife officials in southern India say they've prevented dozens of elephant deaths after installing AI-powered early warning systems along railway tracks.
--:-- Anbarasan Etharajan: Forest Department officials in two jeeps are trying to push a wild elephant away from a busy road in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It's not only on the main roads. Similar incidents happen along railway tracks as well.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: When elephants cross the track, any speeding train can hit them. In the past decade, 36 elephants were killed by trains in Tamil Nadu state alone. Then came the AI-powered early warning system.
--:-- Anbarasan Etharajan: Dozens of AI camera towers were established along accident hotspots in November 2023. When elephants are detected within 30 metres of the railway track, alerts are sent to forest and railway officials.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: They then coordinate to slow down trains and guide the elephants away to prevent collisions. Since their installation, no elephant deaths on rail tracks have been reported in that area.
--:-- Anbarasan Etharajan: The early warning system has been installed in other parts of India as well as in some African countries.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: And Barasan Itharajan.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Every day around the world, tens of millions of gamers log on to Fortnite to fight huge battles in a virtual world. But in the real world, its developers, Epic Games, have been fighting battles of their own and they've just scored another victory in a court in Australia.
--:-- Will Chalk: Ladies and gentlemen, Fortnite fans from around the world, wherever you are watching from, welcome. Since its launch in 2017, Fortnite has become less a game, more a huge ecosystem. them. Merchandise, tournaments, streamers. It feels like it's everywhere. We got fans up in the building. We got the players on site.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: But back in 2020, its dominance was put under threat. Now, bad news if you like playing Fortnite on your phone. The game has been removed from Google and Apple's app stores. In a row over money, both Google and Apple booted the app off their stores, meaning it could no longer be played on phones or iPads.
--:-- Will Chalk: Why? Well, Fortnite is free to download and play but makes its money by selling different appearances for people's in-game avatars. Usually when you buy something on an app on your phone that payment will go through Apple or Google who take a commission.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Five years ago Fortnite tried to bypass this and let people buy content cheaper direct from them. Fortnite have said that they will sue the phone makers. And sue they did. For five years now Epic Games has been fighting legal battles against Apple and Google around the world, arguing the phone companies were misusing their market power, which lessened competition in app development.
--:-- Will Chalk: And they've been winning. Last year, the game made it back onto the app store in the EU. Earlier this year, it was reinstated in the US. And now it's won a partial court victory that looks set to pave the way for the same thing to happen in Australia.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: To a cynical degree, anything that isn't Apple or Google getting their way is progress. Joost van Drunen is a games business professor at NYU Stern School of Business in the US.
--:-- Joost van Drunen: They are, in fact, in a David versus Goliath kind of battle, because even though Epic makes about $5 billion a year, that's a drop in the bucket for Apple. That's a drop in the bucket for Google. These are trillion dollar companies.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: What they do is extract a rent, and it makes it very difficult for any company, including the Robloxes and the Microsofts that sit in these ecosystems, to have any kind of leverage.
--:-- Will Chalk: We've got no word yet on exactly when the game is likely to return to app stores in Australia, but it's unlikely to be soon. The judgment, which hasn't been fully released yet, ran to 2,000 pages, and on many of the charges, Epic Games weren't successful.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: In statements, Apple welcomed that some of the charges were rejected, while disagreeing on the ones that were successful, while Google said it will assess its next steps once it's read the full decision.
--:-- Will Chalk: Still, Epic Games has described the ruling as a win for developers and consumers in Australia. And as any gamer knows, you've got to take the wins when you can get them.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Will Chalk reporting.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: And that's it from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global News Pod.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll. The producers were Alison Davis and Peter Hyatt. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time, bye-bye.
--:-- Asma Khalid: 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.
--:-- Tristan Redman: 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. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
