¶ Intro / Opening
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.
¶ US-Iran Ceasefire Extension Analysis
I'm Janet Jalil, and in the early hours of Wednesday, the twenty-second of April, these are our main stories. President Trump extends the US-Iran ceasefire until negotiations are concluded. but says the American blockade of Iranian ports will continue. We get the response from Iran and look at what this means for efforts to end the war. OpenAI is facing a criminal investigation in Florida into whether Chat GPT helped a gunman kill two people at a university last year. Also in this podcast...
but you won't always get the Parkinson's disease and if you have a healthy diet, at least from the data that we have here, you will reduce your risk of getting the Parkinson's disease.
A study finds evidence that eating healthily can help reduce the risk of Parkinson's and gut microbes could be an early warning signal before symptoms appear.
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After days of uncertainty about whether a second round of peace talks between the US and Iran will take place in Pakistan, and with just hours to go before their ceasefire was due to expire, President Trump has announced that he's extending the truce with Iran until their negotiations have concluded. He said the blockade of Iranian ports would also continue until Tehran presented what he called a unified proposal.
This comes after the Vice President JD Vance delayed his plans to travel to Islamabad this week to hold negotiations with the Iranians over ending the war. Here's our North America editor, Sarah Smith.
Well it's interesting, isn't it? This very rapid turnaround from President Trump, which he is framing as something he did at the request of the Pakistan government. Now I think he's doing that quite carefully so it doesn't look like a rapid climb down. But remember
Just hours before he announced this open-ended ceasefire, Donald Trump was speaking to CNBC on television, saying that he was ready to start bombing again, that he expected to have to do that, that his military were raring to go, and he was repeating his threats to destroy every bridge and every power plant in Iran. And then hours after that he has agreed to a ceasefire more extensive than the two week one that was just about to run out.
Now throughout this conflict Donald Trump has used social media and statements on television and elsewhere. to issue very aggressive bellicose threats against Iran talking about the destructive power of the US military and the damage that he could do inside Iran to try and force them to agree to a deal. But now for the second time in two weeks he is backed down from his threats of
of escalating the conflict, making it look very much as though he wants to wind this down and get out of this war rather than to extend it. And that in itself will send a message to Tehran.
Sarah Smith.
Well, Mr Trump's announcement came after Iran repeatedly said it had no plans to send a delegation to Islamabad, with the US having attacked Iran while earlier rounds of negotiations were going on last year and earlier this year. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Ismail Bagi, said Tehran simply didn't trust Washington.
During the course of the past two days they have attacked Iranian vessels and at the same time they're continuing with their uh threats of war crime, threats of genocide, bombing uh our bridges and power plants. the behaviour of a country that is really serious about a diplomatic process.
So given this lack of trust, what has the response been in Iran to mister Trump's latest ceasefire extension? Kashay Jonadi is BBC Persian's Washington correspondent.
Immediately after President Trump made this announcement, government loyalists in Tehran and other cities, including Mashad, started celebrating on the streets uh as a victory. They consider this that the president has backed down because of Iran's upper hand. in the Persian Gulf and the Hor Hormos Strait. So for them this is a clear win.
But of course the regime itself knows it's in a very d delicate and difficult position now with the extension of the ceasefire. Uh one official reaction that we had after the announcement was a statement published by the uh Khatamolambia Central Co command of Iran's armed forces, which said that Iran's armed forces are a hundred percent ready and they have their fingers on the trigger. And if the US
attacks Iran, then they will attack predestined uh targets that they've already locked on. One problem the Iranian side has here is lack of trust and lack of confidence. They've been attacked by the Americas and Israelis twice in the middle of negotiations, so they are very careful not to be surprised again with another attack
when they are not ready. But at the same time, deep inside themselves, they're happy with this extension of the ceasefire because it gives them some time to reorganize and try to rebuild those bombarded military facilities. and get ready for the next phase. At the same time, they will try diplomacy to see if they could achieve what they want. Most importantly at this moment, what makes them upset is the continuation of the blockade of Iran's port.
And as one advisor to the Iranian parliament speaker, Mohammed Bogar Ghalibof mentioned, is that the continuation of the blockade itself is a violation of the ceasefire.
And Cashier, we've heard a lot about tensions between pragmatists and hardliners. How real is that or or is it more for show?
Well, uh there is a good cop and bad cop show, but at the same time there is some tension and fraction. But uh let's make it clear, this is not between the hardliners and the uh moderate. It's between different hard line groups. So within the heartliners, we have more pragmatic forces, people like Mohammed Bogar Khalibah, who at one time President Trump considered to be the de facto ruler of Iran. They're willing to talk. For them diplomacy is a tool to achieve what they want.
But the hardliners who wanted to fight till the very end. People who were celebrating the end of this it's ceasefire tonight before the announcement by the president and they do not believe in diplomacy. They wanted to fight till the end. Between these different groups
there is a lot of pressure and a lot of fraction and they're putting the pressure on Ghalibov himself That's why there was hesitation on the Iranian side and President Trump understood that and you could m see that in his statement where he talks about the fragmentation of the Iranian government.
¶ Middle East Regional Tensions Flare
Kasheya Jonadi of BBC Persian Well the conflict in Iran has also had devastating consequences for Lebanon after the Iranian backed Lebanese group Hezbolla started firing into Israel in solidarity with Iran. The Israeli military, after weeks of intense bombing, is still occupying a belt of Lebanese territory on its border, and now the fragile ceasefire imposed by President Trump on the two sides last week is under threat.
Hezbollah said it fired rockets at Israel in response to what it described as Israeli violations of that truce. This comes two days before a second round of direct talks between Israel and Lebanon is due to take place in Washington. Hugo Bashager reports from Beirut.
This is the first attack by Hezbollah since a ceasefire came into effect last week. The Israeli military said it had responded by striking the launcher from which the rockets were fired. Israel continues to occupy around five percent of Lebanon's territory, with officials saying the aim is to create a so called security buffer zone along the border.
Despite the ceasefire, the Israeli military has been carrying out demolitions in the area, saying it is destroying Hezbollah infrastructure. It has also accused the group of violating the deal. Thousands of Lebanese who were forced to flee because of the war remain displaced.
Hugo Becheca. Well, two Israeli soldiers have been removed from combat duty and jailed over the destruction of a statue of Jesus in South Lebanon after a picture emerged over the weekend showing one of them using a sledgehammer on the icon. In the latest deadly violence in the Israeli occupied West Bank, two Palestinians, one of them a child, have been killed in an attack on a village involving Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers, according to Palestinian officials.
The Israeli military says it's looking into the incident. John Donison sent this report from Jerusalem.
Gunfire in the Palestinian village of Al Mugair in the Israeli occupied West Bank. The mayor told the BBC around ten Jewish settlers approached the village along with Israeli soldiers and started shooting towards the local school. There was panic outside the school gates as medics tried to get to the dead and injured.
The Palestinian Red Crescent says a thirteen year old boy and a man in his thirties were shot and died. The mayor said they were killed by Israeli soldiers. Four other people were injured by gunfire and taken to hospital. In a statement, the Israeli military said soldiers had been dispatched to the area after reports of a violent confrontation and of Palestinian youths throwing rocks at an Israeli car.
The military said an army reservist was in the car who got out and started shooting. It said the incident was under review. It is the latest attack in what the United Nations has called a surge in settler violence. At the end of last month, The UN said on average there were six attacks happening every day, and that more than fifteen hundred Palestinians had been displaced by the violence.
¶ ChatGPT Faces Criminal Investigation
John Donovan We've all heard about how AI has helped people write essays, deal with projects at work, and even get therapy. But now OpenAI's chat bot chat GPT is being investigated in the US over shocking claims that it advised a man on the best way to carry out a mass shooting. The Attorney General in Florida has opened a criminal inquiry after reviewing messages between Chat GPT and the man who went on to kill two people at Florida State University last year and wound several others.
James Uthmayer said his prosecutors had told him if the messages had come from a person they would have been charged with murder.
The chat bot advised the shooter on what type of gun to use. On which ammo went with which gun, on whether or not a gun would be useful in short range. Chat GPT advised the shooter on what time of day would be appropriate for the shooting to interact with more people and where on campus would be the place to encounter a higher population.
OpenAI has described the killings as a tragedy, but said that Chat GPT was not responsible as it only gave out information that was readily available online. So in what could be a potentially groundbreaking case, I asked our North America technology correspondent, Lily Jamali, if a chatbot could be found guilty of murder.
I think we are gonna find out as a result of this criminal probe that's been undertaken by Attorney General Uthmeyer. You know, he acknowledged that his probe is straying into uncharted legal waters, there's just not a lot of precedent for holding an AI chatbot liable for a crime. And that's why I think there's so much attention on what he is doing. The attorney general of Florida saying Chat GPT offered guidance, which you just laid out a moment ago on how this person could have maximal impact.
And you also heard him say, you know, a person doing that would be charged with murder. So we're gonna find out, can a company that makes a technology that's counseling someone be charged with something like that? The stakes are very high here.
And Lily, it really does seem incredible that Chat GPT doesn't have safeguards or didn't have safeguards to prevent something as horrific as this happening.
Well, they will argue that they have put safeguards in place. So the major AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic and Google. They are constantly adjusting their chat bots and how they work and how they interact with us. And OpenAI notably made something called GPT five that came out towards the end of last year. They made it less sycophantic than the previous version. And actually it was interesting because a lot of users didn't like that very much.
But I think the thinking was they were being confronted with the reality that people were having these parasocial relationships that felt very real with these platforms and that they had to do something. But the concern is that these Changes are happening after you hear about someone being coached in a mass shooting situation like what happened in Florida or young people being coached to kill themselves.
That's why a lot of people argue we need regulation, that these companies shouldn't be just doing this on their own, making these adjustments as they go.
And briefly, even on a lower level, people's mental health is being affected.
It is. And, you know, I was actually just at a news conference yesterday of a mom speaking about her son who died of suicide, who killed himself She says he was coached by Chat GPT. There are so many efforts to regulate these chatbots at the state level. California is one of those places leading the way.
Lily Jamali Still to come in this podcast.
She may want those items to be in a Madonna museum or at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. For any artist and really for any person to have their Belongings come up missing, stolen or otherwise can be very stressful.
Madonna offers a reward for the return of the purple corset and other vintage items she wore at the Coachella festival last weekend, which have since disappeared.
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This is the Global News Podcast.
¶ Parkinson's Disease and Gut Health
A new study led by University College London suggests microbes in the gut can reveal whether a person faces an elevated risk of Parkinson's disease before they have any symptoms. Scientists found that people with Parkinson's have a distinctive makeup of gut microbes, as do healthy individuals who are genetically at risk of the disease. Paul Henley asked Professor Tony Shapira, who led the research at UCL why his team focused on the gut.
This GBA gene, which uh is the commonest cause of Parkinson's disease, we see it in ten to twelve percent of people in the UK with Parkinson's. um, doesn't always cause a disease. Only about one in five people get the disease. So it must be something else that's going on. And the microbiome has recently been shown to influence some brain disorders.
Including Parkinson's to some degree, but uh definitive work hadn't been done on it. So we wondered, is there a particular microbiome signature in the gut that causes the Parkinson's in people that have the gene.
And just to be clear at the moment you're at an early stage of establishing a correlation, you're many steps away from a cure.
Oh yes. Yeah. Uh but I think the the finding of this uh very distinctive microbiome signature I think is providing some useful information into the cause. as well as an early potential diagnostic test. And ultimately, of course, we'd like to investigate it for trying to reduce the risk or slowing the progression of Parkinson disease.
Gut health is talked about more and more. Are we talking about a link between bad gut health, if you can say that, and the disease, or just a certain type of of gut flora?
We found that those with, as you put it, bad gut health are much more likely to have this uh distinctive Parkinson signature. And those with the signature with Parkinson's disease. had more severe disease. So yes, there's a there's a clear link here between um the onset and severity of the disease and the quality, if you will, of the microbiome and the diet.
And you can't shake the the gene from your system, but you can control how it develops within your gut, is that what you're saying?
Exactly right.
Just explain that a bit more.
So you carry the gene, but you uh won't always get a Parkinson disease. And if you have a healthy diet, at least from the data that we have here, you will reduce your risk. of getting the Parkinson's disease. But that same message may apply to everybody.
And the healthy diet message is just a general one. I mean give some basic examples.
It is. So diversity is the key. So all eating lots of different things, uh and particularly things like high fiber from plants and vegetables and fruit. um things like garlic, asparagus, eating yogurt, berries, olive oil, and f oily fish like mackerel and sardines. Those are the real key to a a good healthy diet. And on the other side Keeping away from lots of processed foods, high sugar, excess alcohol.
Is dairy the the big key here?
No, I don't think dairy is the big key. I think the big key is fibre, uh, high fibre diet from diverse sources.'Cause that's what the bacteria in the gut thrive off.
And to be clear, the advice to eat healthily gets much more urgent if you're already displaying symptoms of Parkinson's.
Absolutely. And you know, from the research it seems that even those with the disease, maybe early on in the ons in the onset of the disease who switch that diet to a really healthy one, might find that disease progresses more slowly. But we need more research to confirm that.
Professor Tony Shapira on yet another reason to eat healthily.
¶ Russia-Italy Diplomatic Row Escalates
A diplomatic row has broken out between Italy and Russia after a well known Russian television host made offensive remarks about the Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Malone. The Russian ambassador was summoned to Italy's foreign ministry in Rome in the latest sign of tensions between the two countries over the war in Ukraine. Carlo Conti report.
Vladimir Solovyov is one of Russia's most recognizable TV personalities. Famously sharp tongued and ruthless, Solovyov frequently launches vulgar and offensive attacks against the West and Europe. often threatening countries that offer military support to Ukraine with nuclear action. Mr Solovyov's latest target was the Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni. Speaking during an episode of one of his programmes, he began insulting Miss Meloni in Italian.
Vergogni della razza umana, bestie naturali, idiota!
Calling her a disgrace to the human race, a beast, a certified idiot, and an ugly little woman. He then proceeded to switch back into Russian, describing her as a fascist creature who had betrayed her voters, and he claimed and even betrayed the US President Donald Trump. The remarks have now triggered a formal diplomatic dispute. Italia summoned the Russian ambassador in Rome, with foreign minister Antonio Tajani describing Solov's outburst as extremely serious and offensive.
Giorgio Meloni herself later hit back on social media, saying that a quote regime propagandist was in no position to offer her lessons in either freedom or consistency. Across Italy's political spectrum, the Both government allies and opposition figures have rallied behind Miss Meloni. This latest outburst is another sign of how far relations between Rome and Moscow have deteriorated. Miss Meloni has been a staunch supporter of Kyiv,
and the insults came just days after she again reaffirmed her support for Ukraine. Solovyov also seized on another vulnerability her worsening relationship with Donald Trump. Once seen as one of his closest ideological allies in Europe, Miss Maloney has recently distanced herself from him, including by publicly backing Poplio after mister Trump lashed out at the pontiff.
¶ Circus Tiger Attacks Audience
Carlo Conti A criminal investigation is underway after a tiger leapt into the audience at a circus in Russia. A video has emerged of the animal climbing over a barrier. Joanna Keane takes up the story.
The terrifying incident at the circus in the southern city of Rostov on Don has been circulating on social media. Several tigers can be seen sitting on individual platforms on the stage. They're performing to music when suddenly the circular barrier separating them from the crowd collapses.
People can be heard screaming as one of the tigers calmly climbs over the metal barrier and into the audience. Fortunately it heads for an empty row of seats at the back of the tent. Some people grab their belongings and leave while others look on as a trainer follows the tiger. He's reported to have managed to steer it through an exit and into a secure container. No injuries have been reported, but an investigation into safety violations is underway. This isn't an isolated incident.
Two years ago a bear riding a hoverboard at a circus in Russia suddenly attacked its trainer as children and parents watched the show, and eleven years ago in Southwest Germany a man taking his regular morning walk was killed by an elephant which had escaped from its enclosure. Stricter welfare laws mean that wild animals are now banned from circuses in a growing list of countries including Britain, but others, including Russia, still allow them to be used for performances on a regular basis.
¶ Pope Leo's African Tour for Justice
Joannakin. Pope Leo, on the fourth and final leg of his tour of Africa, has been addressing adoring crowds in Equatorial Guinea. He denounced the colonization of the continent's minerals and the lust for power in a country whose leader has been in office for forty seven years. Our correspondent in neighbouring Cameroon, Paul Engier, told Anchor Desai more about why the Pope had chosen to go there.
Equatorial Guinea is very symbolic and significant because um it has a very huge Catholic population and so the Pope w is there to also reassure the church, especially because they have been waiting for a papal visit for over forty years. And also because the country is currently what some analysts have described as authoritarianism and so the Pope was there to address some of the social ills which he felt that
uh, you know, bringing down the country. He did speak about the exclusion and social inequality and the need for the government there to address it. He also spoke to the local authorities there about you know the need to ensure that the country's resources are equitably distributed and that those are also felt and relished by the population. As it stands now, the country is very rich in oil since it was discovered in the mid in the mid nineteen nineties.
But um some observers have said that it has not, you know, gone down to the people who do not also benefit from that. As a matter of fact, the World Bank says that nearly half of the country's population is living in poverty, so you can imagine. why the Pope today put out a very strong message in the presence of the country's President Teodoro Obiangema Basogo, saying that there is need for so for justice, for social equality.
You're right, the Pope has been quite outspoken throughout the tour. What do you think that he's achieved during his visit to Africa?
Well I think that the Pope's visit to Africa sends a message across to governments that uh despite the fact that he is a religious figure, he he has that moral voice to correct the wrongs and the ills of society and he demonstrated that without blinking When he was in Cameroon he did speak outrightly against corruption, against lack of transparency and the need for the government to look into the the challenges or problems facing young people, women and the civil society.
And he did repeat that today in Equatorial Guinea. And we also know that he's been involved in some sort of a spat with US President Donald Trump, just essentially trying to say that.
they are immoral voice and they have that obligation to correct what's going wrong in in society. So Pope Leo I think what he believes is in this in the course of this trip He is going to be ensuring the international community that Africa, which is a promising terrain for the Catholic Church, would be seeing uh some sort of development going forward and especially because he has preached peace, reconciliation, dialogue. And of course interfaith dialogue of course.
¶ Madonna's Missing Coachella Costume
Paul Ngier Madonna is offering a reward for the return of the costume she wore when she joined Sabrina Carpenter on stage at the Coachella Festival in California on Friday. The vintage purple corset, purple stockings and lavender gloves were also worn for her first appearance at the festival twenty years ago. In a post on social media, Madonna revealed that other memorabilia also went missing after the show, and she's desperate to get her stuff back.
doctor Matthew Donahue, who's a musician and a professor at the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, says Madonna's outfits are as famous as she is.
Her wardrobe is such a big part of her performance space and style. And for any artist to lose a part of their history, it can be very stressful, very traumatic. She may want those items to be in a Madonna museum perhaps in the future or at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
For any artist and really for any person to have their belongings come up missing, stolen or otherwise, it can be very stressful. And of course she's well known for her wardrobe in reference to her This performance with Sabrina Carpenter. In many ways it it's sort of like a continuing of her passing the torch. Like she really passed the torch also to artists like Britney Spears and then of course to
Lady Gaga, you could certainly say Taylor Swift has taken a page out of Madonna's handbook. And now a Sabrina Carpenter of Madonna is still working it, and you have to give her credit. She's a living legend, the queen of not only pop music, but also of pop culture. And she has shown longevity in her career and she'll be remembered for a very, very, very long time.
Dr. Matthew Donahue And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at globalpodcast at b. This edition of the Global News Podcast was mixed by Charlotte Hattori Tozymska. It was produced by Arian Kochi and Wendy Erkert. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janat Jalil. Until next time. Goodbye.
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