This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.
I'm Alex Ritzen, and in the early hours of Saturday, the 23rd of November, these are our main stories. President Putin has praised his new hypersonic missile fired on Thursday at Danipro in Ukraine. A New York judge postpones indefinitely. Donald Trump's criminal sentencing for paying hush money to a porn star. The first U.N. aid convoy in months has reached a Zam Zam camp in Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people are facing famine.
Also in this podcast, when the smuggler is cut, it's a bit like the drug dealers in the cities. Then others will arrive in the next day. It happens all over again every day. So we feel our work is a bit pointless. We hear from police and migrants on the beaches of northern France as the number of crossings to the UK continues to rise.
The threat of global conflict is serious and real. The words of Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk as the West digested Russia's first use of an experimental, intermediate range hypersonic ballistic missile on the Ukrainian city of Dniepro on Thursday.
Moscow said it was in response to Britain and America's decision to let Ukraine fire their missiles into Russia. Speaking at a meeting with his defence leadership, President Putin said the missile was successfully tested and indicated that it now ordered that the weapons be put into production.
The test was a success. I congratulate you on that. And, as has already been said, we will continue these tests, including in combat conditions, depending on the situation and the nature of the security threats posed to Russia." In response, Ukraine's president, Vladimir Zelensky, has called on world leaders to respond seriously, saying that Russia's threat to use these missiles cannot be ignored. Ukraine's foreign minister, Andrew Sabiha, said it was a serious escalation.
The recent massive terrorist missile attacks, shelling of Ukraine, the involvement of North Korean troops and new threats demonstrate that only Russia is interested in continuing the war and expanding it. The world must respond decisively to Russia's threats, nuclear blackmail and the involvement of foreign military.
NATO says individual members will not be deterred from supporting Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion. We got more on this from our Europe regional editor, Danny Abahut. President Zelensky says that Russia again is trying to escalate the conflict. He's called for action as we heard there from global leaders to make President Putin really afraid of expanding the war. He has always maintained that true peace is achieved through strength.
And he said that his defence minister is in talks with allies on providing new air defence systems to protect lives from this new threat. At the same time, he's not downplaying the threat that Russian missiles pose. So he's telling them compatriots not to ignore air alerts. And when there's air raid sirens head to the shelters, when there isn't, go to work in wartime. He said there's no other way. So he's trying to galvanise.
a tired nation that's facing a difficult winter ahead. President Putin was much more brilliant. He's very talk about the pride in this new missile system congratulating the missile developers. He said tests because this was strangely
He classified this attack on Denis Pro as a test. He said that those tests would continue as alarming for any Ukrainian and indicated that the decision had been made to start the production of the missile. There's no way we have of knowing when that may happen and
and no way of verifying it at this stage. Basically, he views the impact that this missile attack has had clearly as being a great success. The context, he gave some details about the speed of the missile. That seems to be backed up by a preliminary assessment from the Ukrainian military intelligence. It moves very fast.
And also, he said he repeated a claim he made on Thursday that there's no way of intercepting this missile. That's much more difficult to work out whether that's true or not. Russia's made similar claims in the past about other hypersonic ballistic missiles that have indeed been intercepted. But it's not clear at what speed Ukraine would not be able to intercept such a missile.
One point also is that the US believe that Russia does not have many of these missiles at the current time. Poland's Prime Minister says the threat of what he puts at global conflict is real. He's talking about
World War III. Yeah, he doesn't say that, but obviously that's the, and Donald Tuskie's a man with a keen sense of historical appraisal, so his opinion is not to be dismissed lightly. He says the conflict is entering a decisive stage, and it has that feel about it, but it's also a very strange time, just
two months before Donald Trump begins his second term, promising to end a war, but without giving any details about that. Presumably, he expects Ukraine to see territory in return for a type of peace that for Kiev may well seem more like a frozen conflict or an appeasement of Russia. And you have multiple steps of escalation. So, for example, Russia brought in North Korean troops to help drive out Ukrainian troops
in the Russian region of Kursk for the Ukraine and the Western allies. That was a moment where the conflict started to globalise. It's worried South Korea, this North Korea Russian alliance, for example, South Korea is saying that Russia is now providing air defences
to Pyongyang in return for troops and weapons, as well as oil. And secondly, there's an ongoing battle for the information space here. It's a battle for public opinion. Ukraine and its allies say that basically this is an illegal war of aggression by Russia. It can end it at any point, and Russia is trying to intimidate the West into stopping support for Ukraine. Danny Abraham.
There's been an indefinite delay in the sentencing of the US President-elect Donald Trump in his criminal hush-money case. In May, he became the first former US President to be convicted of a felony when the trial ended in New York. Mr. Trump was found guilty on charges of falsifying business records. This stemmed from an attempt to cover up a potential sex scandal involving the porn actress Stormy Daniels, ahead of his successful election bid in 2016.
Mr Trump denies having an affair with her, his transition team is claiming victory as our Washington correspondent, Jessica Parker, explained.
They will be happy the sentencing is off. It had been scheduled for next week, now paused indefinitely. And they're saying his team that this is a decisive win for them. However, remember the defense team have been arguing for the case to actually be thrown out based on a Supreme Court ruling around presidential immunity and because of Donald Trump's impending return to the White House.
That hasn't happened. However, the judge has granted a request for Trump's legal team to file a motion to dismiss the case. And then the judge has given the prosecution a week to respond. So all of that's happening now in December. So I think it's still quite a lot of uncertainty hanging over this case. Yeah, Donald Trump essentially wants to wipe the slate clean. And when it comes to all of the cases stacked up against him, remind us what he is up against at the moment.
Yes, there's that case, and then there is the alleged mishandling of classified documents, alleged attempts to
thwart the transfer of power of the 2020 presidential election when of course Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden and then also alleged election meddling in Georgia. Two of those federal cases reportedly being wound up anyway. And Donald Trump of course said during the election campaign that he would fire the special counsel leading that case within two seconds. And then the third case in Georgia
That's become very bogged down. So no trial on the horizon for the moment. So I think, look, overall, Donald Trump's legal position has certainly improved compared to some time ago. And his legal teams are trying to battle these cases.
in every way they can and certainly two of them look set to be wrapped up entirely before he heads back into the White House. And that's the thing, isn't it? He is going to be heading back into the White House and people, the voters, knew about these cases. That's where they want him. Yeah, I mean, he's won what
people I think on all sides are describing as a decisive victory versus Kamala Harris. I think even people I've spoken to in and around the Trump campaign were not amazed, but maybe didn't expect that he would take all the swing states, make inroads into different demographic groups, whether it's Hispanic voters or Black voters. So he is certainly in a huge position of power. And of course, actually,
In certain federal cases, he could have the power to even pardon himself, but it's not even clear he'll need to, given the direction of travel at least a couple of these cases. Jessica Parker in Washington. If it had all gone to plan, all 50,000 delegates at this year's UN Climate Summit would be leaving Azerbaijan and making their way back to their respective countries, many.
via private jet. However, COP 29 will overrun into the weekend as arguments persist about how much rich countries should pay to help poorer countries combat global warming. The highly disputed agreement proposes that $250 billion should be provided annually by 2035, from Baku, our climate editor Justin Rollitt, gave us this update.
Trillions, not billions. That's what developing countries are demanding here in Baku. But this afternoon, the opening gambit from the richer world was well below that. $250 billion a year. It's a lot of money, yes, but developing countries were furious. Panama's climate representative said it's as if the developed world wants the planet to burn. And this is what Mohammed Adao of the African Climate Organization Power Shift Africa had to say.
Our expectation was law, but this is a slap in the face. We needed an ambitious climate finance goal, and what they are far in us is a fifth of what developing countries are asked for. And in his first comment on progress here, Yeltsin Rafiev, the lead negotiator for COP 29, the Azerbaijan team running this summit, seemed to agree that richer countries do need to dig deeper.
Is 250 enough? It doesn't correspond to our fair and ambitious goal, but we will continue, of course, to engage with the party. What does that mean? It means it's back to the negotiating rooms with discussions running late into the night to try and find a compromise. We're told we won't know the results.
until the morning. Johann Rockstrom is the director of the Pottsdam Climate Institute based in Germany from where he's been attending COP 29 remotely. He told Julian Marshall what he thought about the criticisms that have already been made of the draft agreement. You know, you have to, I think, take a step back here and look at the wider picture on the damages that we are already today, scientifically verifying in terms of climate damage.
The numbers are staggering. We see today that already with the global warming that we've committed already today, we are in for an income loss over the next 25 years of 38 trillion US dollars per year by 2050, just by the commitments that we have already caused, meaning that roughly 1.5 degrees Celsius warming. And here we're talking impacts on
Life threatening heat reductions of life productivity work productivity extreme events of the droughts and floods food insecurity so of course when we then debate currently a price tag of 0.25 trillion meaning to the 50 billion you could easily say scientifically that that is a very small number for the damage that we have already scientifically proven that we are committed to so in that sense
I think one should really recognize that the critique is well justified. But the damage that you were talking about just now, is that global or have developing nations been affected disproportionately?
These are global numbers, but developing countries are disproportionately impacted. So unfortunately, that is well verified that the most vulnerable developing countries in the global south are also the prime victims of climate change predominantly caused by the rich minority northern hemisphere.
countries. That said, we see also today that the entire world is impacted. We have the floods in Valencia. We have the two massive hurricanes hitting Florida. We have the floods in Germany two years ago. We have a massive, massive droughts in Europe.
in 2018. Nobody is going free here and the costs will impact all economies, but developing countries are hit hardest and particularly low-lying island states, for example. For them, it's existential. I mean, one has to recognize that here we're talking of potentially eradicating livelihoods. We are at a point where
All the tropical coral reef systems on planet Earth are likely to collapse if we go beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius. That's livelihood for hundreds of millions of people. So, yes, there is a special case for developing countries. You don't sound very optimistic about the outcome of the UN climate summit in Baku.
No, unfortunately, I was pessimistic already before the meeting and there's been over these two weeks very little reason for any added optimism, I'm afraid. We will probably see a number coming out in the end on compensation for damage, but if we don't get a firm statement on mitigation, on reducing fossil fuel emissions, I would consider this definitely a failure.
Johann Rockstrom, the director of the Potsdam Climate Institute in Germany. A new type of plastic has been developed, which could help produce the amount of plastics littering our oceans. The team of researchers say the new material is just as strong, but breaks down in seawater. Our environment correspondent, Jenna Fisher, explains.
The United Nations estimates that every year about 20 million tons of plastic ends up in our seas and oceans. That's the equivalent of a rubbish truck dumping its load in the water every minute through the day and night.
So the invention of a plastic that breaks down when it's in salty water is on the face of it an attractive one. And that's what a team of mainly Japanese researchers say they've developed. Their new material, they say, has very similar strengths and properties to normal plastic, but if it ends up in the sea, it will quickly melt away. Interesting stuff.
But a game changer, perhaps not. This is Professor Richard Thompson from the University of Plymouth. He's an expert in marine plastics. It's not just the plastic polymer. Recent reports suggest that over 16,000 chemicals are associated with the plastics we produce today. And all of those, many, many thousands are known to be potentially harmful to human health or to wildlife.
And many of those additives are also used in biodegradable plastics. So the question to me is not just about the polymer and its degradability, but what additional additives will be included for functionality? And if the polymer does indeed break down quickly in seawater, what will be the fate of those chemicals that are then actually, ironically, more rapidly released and more bioavailable than they would have been with a plastic that was slow to degrade?
Professor Thompson is on his way to South Korea, where next week negotiators will try to finalise a legally binding global treaty to tackle plastic pollution.
Jennifer Fisher. A teenager from Australia has become the sixth person to die from a suspected mass poisoning in Laos in Southeast Asia. It's believed Holly Bowles and several other Western tourists had been served drinks tainted with deadly methanol. They'd all been staying in Vang Vying, a popular destination for backpackers in central Laos. Our correspondent Rupert Wingfield Hayes, who's in Bangkok, is following developments. He spoke to James Menendez.
We actually do not know how many other people might be affected by this poisoning and how many people are in hospital or are not and have left because they have recovered. The hospital here in Bangkok is saying they cannot tell us any information because it is privacy issues. What we do know today is that the sixth person who was very, very ill and in hospital here
has died, and that is Holly Bowles, a 19-year-old Australian, and she was travelling with her best friend Bianca Jones, also 19 years old, who died in another hospital in Northern Thailand yesterday. Those come on top of, of course, the British woman Simone White, who we understand died in a hospital in Vientiane, and there are these other cases of two young Danish women and an American man,
who are reported to have died under similar circumstances, but we really don't know where, when or how that happened. They're just being reported by their governments that their citizens have died and that they had visited Vangviang in Laos. Is it becoming any clearer how this methanol got into the drinks?
No, it isn't. There's two ways the methanol could end up in alcohol. One is by making home spirits, amateur distillers getting methanol in as well as ethanol, so by accident as a by-product. The other, which is widely reported but not confirmed, is that in various places in Southeast Asia, including in Van Gien, there is a practice in some places of adding
small amounts of methanol to alcoholic drinks, to spike them and make them have more of a hit, and also because it's just cheaper than buying ethanol. The thing is, according to medical specialists, you don't need very much methanol at all to make you very, very sick and it is potentially fatal in very small quantities. I've seen quotes saying between 25 and 100 milliliters can be fatal to an adult.
I know you're in Thailand, you're not in Laos, but is this now a police investigation?
Yes, it is. And there are some reporters in Van Vying, and the police said people have been detained for questioning. Those include hostel owners and bar owners, we understand, how many we're not sure. But Laos is a very difficult country to get any information out of. It is a secretive one-party state. It does not welcome foreign journalists. And so far it's not clear at all what the centre of this poisoning may have been, whether it is the hostel that some people have said it was, or whether it's somewhere else.
Rupert Wingfield Hayes in Bangkok. Still to come on this podcast? It's kind of a bit of an evolutionary mechanism. We're wired and ready to spot danger and deal with it. And that's why loads of us love engaging with negative news. Don't do it in the bedroom. It will just impact the rest of your life. Why so called doom scrolling, watching negative news on social media, can be very bad for your mental health.
The first aid convoy in months has reached a Zam Zam camp in Sudan where famine was declared in August. The camp in North Dafur is home to tens of thousands of people displaced by the conflict between Saddam's army and the paramilitary rapid support forces. Two more convoys are on the way to deliver food to remote areas in the region. Annabelle Cimington, a spokesperson for the World Food Programme, told the BBC that the aid delivery reaching Zam Zam is vital for people who are struggling to survive.
This is a really positive step for us and one that we hope we're going to see replicated because ultimately that is what we need. We need regular convoys to be getting in to Zam Zam as well as all other areas of Sudan. If we are really going to turn the tide of famine, famine is already confirmed in Zam Zam Camp and unfortunately there are 13 other areas across the country where it's also at risk of slipping into famine.
They are urging for safe passage of the trucks and sustained international support to reach those in desperate need. Months of fighting near Al-Fasha and heavy rains of severely damaged roads delaying aid deliveries. The Sudanese government has extended the use of Adriq Corito, a key route for bringing aid from Chad into Darfur.
This year has been the deadliest on record for migrants trying to cross the sea from France to the UK. At least 68 people are thought to have died. The British government is paying the police along the Northern French coast $650 million over three years to stop crossings, but the number of successful journeys is up again. Nick Beak reports from Dunkirk where he spoke to people hoping to make the voyage across the English Channel.
My name is Ubaid, I'm from Afghanistan, 23 years old, yeah. I was working with a telecommunication company, then Taliban comes, they torture us, they told us, you're not Muslim, you were working with the American army. And can you just tell us your story, how you ended up here in Calais?
It's very hard. I come from Bulgaria slowly, slowly. I serve here one month and like this I came to Italy and then I came to Germany. And then finally I came here. All those countries that you mention on your long journey, they're safe democratic countries. Why do you want to go to the UK specifically?
Specifically because I speak English, I can find a lot of opportunity there, more than here. Do you know that this year, they say about 70 people have died in the channel, trying to make the journey that you want? I know it's very risky, it's very dangerous, 100% it's risky, 100% it's deadly, deadly way to go UK, but I don't have any other choice. If I stay here, I know the France, the German, they don't help the refugees as the UK help.
We've come down to one of the beaches from where the migrants set off. It's absolutely freezing today, despite the bright sunshine. What happens is that the migrants hide in the sand dunes, then they dart out towards the shore, trying to evade any police, and then squeeze themselves onto a boat. And this year has been the deadliest yet for people dying at sea. Hi, Martha. I work for 256, which is an NGO working at the border.
Last year, there were 30 deaths in the sea. This year, we are already at 70. I think there are many reasons. The main one, the more the police is in Calais, the more the people on the move go south. The boats were going off the beaches in Boulogne, in Lautouquet, and in Le Havre recently. So migrants are having to take a longer journey to try and avoid the police, essentially? Yes, that's right.
Here on the promenade it can feel tantalisingly close to the UK. In fact, you can see the English coast on a clear day like this. This year, already nearly 33,000 people have successfully crossed. The French police say they're doing all they can at sea and on land with the resources they're being given.
There are many words to describe our work. You name it, impossible, crazy, incredible. Yes, it's never ending. Marco Lagra is a police officer in Calais and a union official. When the smuggler is cut, it's a bit like the drug dealers in the cities. Ten others will arrive in the next day. It happens all over again every day, so we feel our work is a bit pointless.
That is a police helicopter flying overhead. But what happens on and around these beaches is not just a policing issue, of course, but a significant political one. This week, the various mares from across this stretch of the French coast held a press conference in Paris saying enough is enough.
Natasha Boucher, the mayor of Calais, says it's pure hypocrisy that the UK demands France be tough on illegal migration when the British are anything but. When the migrants arrive in British territory, they work easily without documents. And so the British government must stop being in denial. Because in reality, it accepts migrants passing through Calais. So they have to change the system so that the UK is stopping people, not us.
This centre-right mayor says the UK's inaction on illegal migration has helped fuel the rise of the far right, notably Marine Le Pen's National Rally or RN Party. We think that the French government and Europe are not being aggressive enough on this throughout the British government. That report by Nick Peake.
Japan has signed off on a $140 billion stimulus package designed to ease the burden of inflation on citizens. The new spending comes after Japan's main-state Liberal Democratic Party suffered huge losses in an election last month. Here's James Wickham.
Japan has a minority government, and this stimulus is largely being seen as a political move in an effort to boost new Prime Minister Shigeru Shiba's coalition. It says this package includes handouts of almost $200 for low-income households, fuel and energy subsidies and help for small businesses.
It's the second such package in as many years, and comes as government data on Friday put headline inflation last month at a modest 2.3%. But showed rice, an important staple food in Japan, up nearly 60% year on year, showing cost of living is still an issue.
James Wickham. Doom scrolling on your phone not only makes you depressed, it can trap you in a downward cycle according to researchers. The team from University College London found that people with poor mental health are prone to spending more and more time seeking out negative content on their social media feeds then feel even worse. Will Giat, as a British technology journalist, these are his top tips on how to beat back so-called doom-scrolling blues.
You need to be really strict on the time limits on your phone. We can all spend hours wasting time using our feeds. Set the amount of time you're going to use before you get on your device. Interact with stuff you really like is my next tip. My six-year-old is really demanding at the moment I show her funny animal content. And the more of that I'm engaging with, the more of it I'm getting shown. So unsubscribe or unfollow stuff that is depressing you.
the stuff that drains your energy you're going to see more of it the more of it you see on your feeds so you can remove it and that can help stop that doom scrolling link create a phone free zone in your house my wife would love to hear me do that myself but having a phone free zone in the property
Definitely be something everybody should adopt. Another one, a really important one, buy an alarm clock. Don't have that phone next to your bed. Most of the doom scrolling takes place when you're getting ready to relax and you spend a long time scrolling through your phone. It's kind of a bit of an evolutionary mechanism. We're wired and ready to spot danger and deal with it. And that's why loads of us love engaging with negative news. Don't do it in the bedroom. It will just impact
the rest of your life. And also, finally, knowing you're doing it is the first step to breaking the habit. If you realize your doom scrolling, you can take these steps and stop doing it. We'll go ahead.
A plaque honoring the life and achievements of the actor Carrie Grant is to be unveiled by Historic England at his early childhood home in Bristol in the southwest of the country. Born into poverty as Archibald Leach, he left the UK for America and reinvented himself as Carrie Grant. He went on to make more than 70 films appearing alongside some of Hollywood's biggest stars such as Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn. Rebecca drought has this report.
Sometimes, Henry, angels must brush in where fools fear to tread." By 1947, when he played the angel opposite David Niven and the bishop's wife, Cary Grant was the quintessential Hollywood leading man. But as Ouchie Leach in early 20th century Bristol, he was living an unhappy poverty-stricken childhood. He ran away at 14 to join an acrobatic troupe before reinventing himself in Hollywood. I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be, he said.
until finally I became that person, or he became me. But despite his fame Grant regularly returned to Bristol to see his mother Elsie. The new blue plaque has been unveiled at the home in Barclay Road in Bishopston, where he lived around 1909 or 1910. Rebecca drought.
And that's all 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, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Nick Randall and the producer was Stephanie Tilitson, the editor
is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritzen. Until next time, goodbye.
