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Global News Podcast
Guterres opens UN Assembly accusing countries of 'flouting international law'
00:27:23
Donald Trump tells the UN General Assembly the organisation has lost its purpose.
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- [00:00]
Nick Marles
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Nick Marles
This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick MARLES and at 17 hours GMT on Tuesday 23rd September. These are our main stories. The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has opened the 80th General assembly in New York with a warning that some countries are flouting international law. Denmark's prime minister says she's not ruling out Russian involvement after Copenhagen and Oslo airports were closed by drones flying by. Also in this podcast, As a mother.
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Stephanie Hanrahan
Of two autistic children and a former labor and delivery nurse, I know how dangerous that retort can be if it's just made as a sweeping statement and not backed by science.
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Nick Marles
We hear from the families affected by Donald Trump's claims about autism. We begin this podcast in New York where the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres has opened the 80th General assembly with a warning that some countries are not adhering to international law. We have our work cut out for us as our ability to carry out that work is being cut from us. We have entered in an age of reckless disruption and relentless human suffering. Look around. The principles of the United nations that you have established are under siege. Listen. The pillars of peace and progress are buckling under the weight of impunity, inequality and indifference. Sovereign nations invaded. Hunger weaponized truce, silence rising smoke from bombed out cities, rising anger in fractured societies, rising seas, swelling coastlines. Shortly afterwards, the US President, Donald Trump took to the stage. During his speech, he highlighted American power and success and his diplomatic efforts worldwide, listing the seven wars he said that he'd helped to end. He proceeded to tell world leaders that his track record underlined the ineffectiveness of the UN and who failed to help in the negotiations. As we record this podcast, he is still speaking, but will bring you full analysis in our next edition of the Global News podcast. President Trump in his speech also criticized the countries that have recognized Palestinian statehood over the last few days, saying it was a reward for Hamas. The UK Australia, France and others say granting that recognition is an important way to maintain the prospect of a two state solution as a way of ending the conflict between Israel, Israel and the Palestinians. Mr. Trump is due to meet Arab and Muslim leaders later to discuss alternative plans once the war comes to an end. Paul Adams, our diplomatic correspondent, told us more about the significance of today's events.
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Paul Adams
At the UN this is a remarkable opportunity for an awful lot of people to meet an awful lot of other people and, you know, in between times go and listen to a lot of frankly, often rather boring speeches. But the stuff going on in the margins can be very important. You know, Donald Trump is going to be meeting President Zelenskyy at some point during today. He'll also be meeting the head of the European Council, Ursula von der Leyen. So these are important gatherings. And this one later on today involving Arab and Muslim governments is intriguing because there are reports around that Donald Trump has some new proposals to offer them for what happens in Gaza if and when a ceasefire can be achieved, including post war governance, what happens to Hamas, how and in what circumstances Israeli troops withdraw. So all of these things, I think will be of acute interest to those Arab and Muslim governments. They obviously want some undertaking from the United States that it's prepared to underwrite an end to the war in Gaza. They're conscious that Donald Trump has advanced various slightly outlandish proposals in the past. And so I think, you know, that's going to be a key gathering coming in the wake of obviously a couple of days in which all the focus has been on recognizing Palestine as a state.
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Nick Marles
And Paul, what leverage do Arab nations have over Donald Trump?
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Paul Adams
Well, there is leverage. Clearly, Donald Trump has a great interest in his relationship with the Gulf, with Saudi Arabia, with the United Arab Emirates, with Qatar. And don't forget that the Abraham Accords, which saw the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and other countries normalizing relations with Israel, was something that was done under his watch during his first term in office. And the UAE has said that if Israel responds to this current move towards recognizing the state of Palestine, by annexing parts of the west bank, then that could jeopardize the Abraham Accords, in other words, could undo something which Donald Trump sees as part of his case for winning, ultimately winning the Nobel Peace Prize. So I think that is a specter which is definitely hanging in the air, and I think they will hope to use that to. To try and persuade Donald Trump to persuade Benjamin Netanyahu, who is going to be in the United States later in the week and over the weekend, not to respond in the way that certain members of his government have threatened to respond.
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Nick Marles
Paul Adams On Monday night, the airports in Copenhagen and Oslo, two of the busiest in the Nordic region, were forced to shut down temporarily after drones were seen flying in the area. Danish police said they were likely to be flown by what they called a capable operator. The BBC's Risto Pico told me more about what happened.
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Risto Pico
Late on Monday, two or three big drones were spotted, first at Castle Airport in Copenhagen and later at Gardemoen in Oslo. And this led to a total shutdown at both airports in Copenhagen. This lasted for about four hours. So until a bit after midnight, no action was taken against these drones for security reasons. I mean, shooting down drones over an airport is very dangerous. The drones then left of their own accord, but we don't know where. And police said that they were operated by what they called capable actors who were almost showing off what they can get away with.
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Nick Marles
And the Danish Prime Minister has responded, yes.
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Risto Pico
Mit Herzen has been surprisingly blunt about this. She called this the most serious attack on critical Danish infrastructure so far and said that it was aimed at creating fear and testing the country's reactions, seeing how far one could go. And she also linked this to incidents of similar nature. Quite recently, we've seen drones over Poland and Romania and via violations of Estonian airspace.
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Nick Marles
And Risto, hard question, do we know who's behind this?
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Risto Pico
We don't know. But Mette Fredriksen once again didn't mince her word. She said it was utterly impossible to rule out Russian involvement. There is no proof yet, but this incident follows a pattern that Moscow has been increasingly following. There's been cyber attacks and other incidents like the ones we mentioned earlier, aimed at testing a country's defenses and its ability and willingness to take action against hybrid warfare. Now, we need to add here that Russia, of course, has denied any involvement in this. But we must also add that Russia always denies any involvement in incidents of this nature.
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Nick Marles
Aristo Pico as we record this podcast, Hong Kong and southern China are bracing for Super Typhoon Ragasa with schools and businesses closed and shelves reportedly stripped of many goods, the typhoon has already passed over the Philippines, where at least one person was killed when the storm triggered a landslide. The BBC's Laura Bicker is in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province in South China, where the storm is expected to arrive on Wednesday morning. She spoke to Paul Henley about the situation there.
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Laura Bicker
The winds are really beginning to pick up. You can hear it howling around where we're staying here, and we're quite far back from the coastline. We've had a look round Zhuhai today. This is right down on the southern coast of China in Guangdong, this very densely populated province of southern China. And it's where many of the things that China sells are made. And then of course, course, you've got, just up the road, you've got the technology hub of Shenzhen. And today it was, I mean, the city just slowly, hour by hour, became a ghost town. You had people taping up their windows, you had restaurants and businesses making sure that they had sandbags around the door in case of tidal surges. This is an area that is prone to these kinds of typhoons, but this one has authorities worried and that is because these winds are extremely high and also they're expecting around a month's worth of rain in just a day and that's going to fall on already saturated ground. So there's a lot of concern here, authorities taking it very seriously. And I think around 400,000 people already have been evacuated from low lying areas.
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Nick Marles
And you say the area is relatively used to storms, but how equipped is it when the authorities order mass evacuations? Where are people supposed to go, for instance?
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Laura Bicker
Well, so China here, they're very well organized. We've seen hundreds of evacuation centres in schools and many of them have been moved into hotels. They're nearby where we are at the moment. Families kind of slowly moving in out of low lying areas. It's a very well organized operation. And then of course, if you go anywhere near the coastline, you'll have dozens of police with megaphones moving you away in case of these coastal surges. And then even further tonight from just the last hour, for instance, they are saying the roads are closed, there are road closure operations in force. China is used to this kind of mass mobilization event, trying to make sure that everybody stays inside. But still you can tell that they are concerned because the rainfall that's going to happen, it's difficult to predict how that or basically how areas will react when a lot of rainfall happens on very saturated ground and that could cause landslips and that's something that you can't really prepare for. So they're doing their best to make sure that everybody's staying inside and hunkering down.
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Nick Marles
Laura Bicker, still to come in this podcast, 10American Men and women will begin their basic training that spans two years.
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NASA Narrator / Sian Cleaver
To eventually earn their wings and join.
- [11:54]
Nick Marles
NASA's active astronaut corps. As NASA races to return to the moon, the agency announces its new class of astronaut candidates.
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Asma Khalid
America is changing and so is the world.
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Tristan Redman
But what's happening in America isn't just the cause of global upheaval.
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Nick Marles
It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
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Asma Khalid
ASMA I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C.
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Nick Marles
I'M Tristan Redman in London. And this is the Global story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story.
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Asma Khalid
From this intersection where the world and America meet.
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Nick Marles
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. President Donald Trump has delivered an impassioned speech about the rise of autism, calling it amongst the most alarming public health developments in history. Joined by several federal officials, including the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Mr. Trump made a series of unsubstantiated claims linking the use of paracetamol during pregnancy to an increased risk of autism in children, which contradict decades of medical consensus. So what does these scientific data say? Professor Brian Lee is one of the researchers involved in a study in Sweden that looked into the links between paracetamols use during pregnancy and autism or ADHD in children. He spoke to the BBC's Sharma Khalil.
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Asma Khalid
We did a study of 2.5 million pregnancies, the moms and their kids in Sweden over 20 years. And we found no good evidence to suggest that acetaminophen use, or paracetamol, as it's called in Europe, is associated with risk of autism and adhd.
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Laura Bicker
Have you found any, any link at all?
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Asma Khalid
We did. So this is where it gets a little bit tricky for folks, because when you compare kids who are exposed to acetaminophen versus kids who weren't exposed, you see a slight statistical association, but as we know, association is not causation. And the example I like to use is eating ice cream and drowning. So these two things, eating ice cream and drowning, are statistically associated, but it's actually due to a third variable, hot weather, which causes you to eat more ice cream and to go swimming, which causes drowning.
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Nick Marles
In other words, there are many other factors that go into this, not just.
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Laura Bicker
The fact that a pregnant woman uses.
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Nick Marles
Tylenol or paracetamol with that active ingredient, acetaminophen, that then causes autism.
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Asma Khalid
Exactly. So no one takes acetaminophen for fun. You take it because you are in pain, because you are sick, because you have a health condition that needs treatment. Some of these very health conditions, like an infection during pregnancy or a fever, are actually themselves known to be associated with autism or other adverse outcomes in the child. But then the other big factor at play here is that autism and ADHD and other neurodevelopmental disorders, these disorders are highly heritable. What that means is that a lot of this is due to family genetics that are passed down. A lot of the studies that have worked on this topic, you know, that have found an association have not actually taken into account genetics. For example, for autism, I believe scientists estimate around 70 to 90% heritability. And not skipping over the technical mumbo jumbo, what this means is that this is a highly genetic condition. Of course, environment can still play a factor in this. But if you don't account for the elephant in the room, you're going to see signs of evidence that are possibly not real.
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Nick Marles
I've never been pregnant myself, so I can't claim any personal knowledge on that. But I know in my sister's three pregnancies and from friends that doctors have said that paracetamol was the safest pain reliever option for them and for pregnant women. If the advice changes in the United States, what are the alternative and how safe are they? But also if women are advised or banned from taking paracetamol or Tylenol when they're in pain, what are the implications?
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Asma Khalid
I think that's a very tricky question. I'm not a clinician, first of all, but if Tylenol is removed from the alternative list, there's few others to go on. Opioids during pregnancy are not exactly a first line recommendation. NSAIDs are contraindicated against high dose aspirin as well. And so this leaves really few options on the table other than Grin and Barrett.
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Nick Marles
So how do the families of children with autism feel about the President's advice? Stephanie Hanrahan is an activist and a mother of two autistic children.
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Stephanie Hanrahan
As a mother of two autistic children and a former labor and delivery nurse, I know how dangerous that rhetoric can be if it's just made as a sweeping statement and not backed by science. And so this was not new information to the autism community. We have previously been told that autism has been linked to medications or immunizations, even to nutrition, environmental factors, genetics, so that's not new news, but the definitiveness in which it was presented and the decisiveness was. And what I was really searching for was some kind of science to back those sweeping statements. And that was what was lacking. So my heart really went to the autism families like my own, and especially those who are newly diagnosed who may be hearing this information for the very first time. And it's creating cycles of fear and shame and that type of spiral that places blame on the families when we, we are only talking right now about correlation and not causation.
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Nick Marles
Stephanie Hanrahan NASA has announced 10 new astronaut candidates. Selected from a pool of 8,000, they'll undergo two years of training in the hope of joining the first manned mission to the moon in more than half a century. Ten American men and women will begin their basic training that spans two years.
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NASA Narrator / Sian Cleaver
To eventually earn their wings and join.
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Nick Marles
NASA's active astronaut corps.
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Grainger Advertisement Voice
The next two years will be spent studying and training in our world class facilities. They will take classes in geology, land and water survival and space health. They will even get to train in our high performance jets. They will engage in a variety of technical activities to prepare them for the missions that will help NASA push the boundaries of exploration, travel to new destination destinations in the solar system and inspire the world through discovery.
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Nick Marles
NASA is unveiling the next phase of the Artemis program today with the ultimate aim of reaching Mars. Nick Robinson spoke to Sian Cleaver, power and avionics lead on the Artemis Orion European Service Module Project Adairbus.
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NASA Narrator / Sian Cleaver
We are about to see the launch of Artemis 2 that will happen in the first part of next year. It's such an exciting mission because it's the first time that we will have returned astronauts to the moon in over 50 years. So there's really a lot of groundbreaking missions ahead of us and it's just, well, one of the first really to get us there.
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Beverly Ochieng
Now, I don't want to spoil it.
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Nick Marles
But there is talk of delays, isn't there? That SpaceX are building the starship, are.
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Risto Pico
Struggling to meet their deadline.
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NASA Narrator / Sian Cleaver
When you're in the space industry, you're quite used to hearing about delays, but they're for good reason. I mean, particularly on a program like this. We're sending people up there into space. And so the organizations, NASA, the European Space Agency, they're not going to take any risks. So it's not unheard of to hear of delays whilst we wait for everything to be perfectly in position to do the mission successfully.
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Nick Marles
Why the excitement about returning a place we've already been.
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NASA Narrator / Sian Cleaver
Yeah, so it's a bit more than that this time. So the Artemis program is all about going to the moon, but going to the moon with a view to then going on to Mars. So we want to sort of build up a sustainable human presence on the lunar surface. We want to build up infrastructure. We want to have like an orbiting gateway, gateway around the moon. And these things will allow us to then make that next step and go on to Mars because it's very difficult to do that directly from Earth.
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Nick Marles
Nick Robinson was speaking to Sian Cleaver. Now to West Africa, where Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have decided to withdraw from the International Criminal Court. The court was established to prosecute the most serious offenses like war crimes, when countries lack the will or capacity themselves. But the three Sahel countries, all ruled by the military, say the ICC is a tool for neo colonialist repression and has anti Africa bias. This follows the country's increasingly close ties to Russia, which is not a member of the court. Beverly Ochieng, Sahel analyst with the Control Risk Consultancy, told us why they pulled out.
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Beverly Ochieng
They termed that the ICC is a neocolonial outfit. They have misgivings over how it allegedly only tries suspects who come from the continent and the fact that there is some, according to them, foreign influence. But it is a preemptive step. It's only going to take a about one year for this to be effected after the UN Secretary General has been notified. It's not the first time there's been misgivings, not just by the Sahelian countries, but even various other countries. In Kenya for instance, when there were post election violence cases being tried to the icc, there were some discussions around the country withdrawing. Burundi did formally withdraw from the ICC nearly a decade ago and also other countries like the Philippines. There are ongoing cases in the icc, including some that were filed by Mali at the time when the insurgency had broken out in 2012. So it just feels like a select thinking around international institutions. When it works for them and when it appears not to be working for.
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Tristan Redman
Them, does it matter whether they are members of the International Criminal Court or not? Because the United States, Russia, China, Israel are not and there are indictments out against the leaders of Israel and Russia.
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Beverly Ochieng
Yes, it's true. It doesn't really make much of a difference. I mean, even if the ICC is for instance investigating any ongoing allegations of rights abuses or war crimes in the three countries, it makes very little difference. Other parties can still file suits against them. It's only that the ICC itself will not be as empowered to continue conducting investigations. They do have personnel present in Mali, in Bamako, so it's likely that we will see calls for them to possibly withdraw from the country, which would then hurt any ongoing investigations if there are any, or even the cases that are currently at the court. But the ICC has largely been seen as not necessarily following through with some of these jurisdictions. Some of the investigations, in many instances, cases do take quite a bit of time. So this will mostly appear to be symbolic and a statement for these countries, although they are in the process of establishing their own, what they're calling a Sahelian criminal court that will look into war crimes and human rights allegations, abuses.
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Nick Marles
Beverly Ochieng we broadcast this programme from London. It is one of those cities that attracts talented, ambitious people from around the world looking for greater opportunity. But what happens to the places they left behind? A growing number of countries are offering incentives to lure back their citizens living abroad. Daniel Rosny has been looking at the massive tax breaks proposed by Cyprus to reverse its brain drain.
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Paul Adams
Tonight marks a turning point.
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Nick Marles
This initiative, led by the government of.
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Paul Adams
Cyprus, is not just a call to.
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Nick Marles
Action, it is a homecoming.
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Tristan Redman
In May this year, the Minds in Cyprus program, taglined the Brain Gain Initiative, was launched in the UK, where it's estimated more than 300,000 Cypriots live together.
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Nick Marles
We can reverse the brain drain into a brain game.
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Tristan Redman
Cyprus wants its talent back as it's making waves in the business, technology and innovation sectors.
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Beverly Ochieng
We have been experiencing a very strong growth.
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Tristan Redman
Irene Pickey is the Deputy Minister to the President. She's tasked with coordinating the government's program.
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Beverly Ochieng
Nearly the size of our population, the.
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Nick Marles
People that live in the country, we.
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Beverly Ochieng
Have a similar number of people living abroad.
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Nick Marles
We thought it was the right time.
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Beverly Ochieng
To bring back our people, our talented professionals.
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Tristan Redman
As well as having a small population of around 800,000, Cyprus also has one of the smallest economies in the European union, contributing just 0.2% of the total block's GDP. It wants to change that and to do so, it needs more companies moving there and is hoping some from Silicon Valley could be persuaded to move to the Mediterranean Sea.
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Beverly Ochieng
The first question they were asking was what type of talent you have in the country.
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Tristan Redman
The government has come up with a plan. If you've been living away from Cyprus for more than seven years, come back and you'll get some tax cuts. One includes raising the tax exemption from around US$10,000 to roughly 30,000.
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Nick Marles
If bigger companies, more higher paid roles are opened up in Cyprus, I think that will definitely make it more attractive for me to return.
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Tristan Redman
Nicholas is a 28 year old paralegal working for a shipping firm in London. He'd qualify for the financial rewards under these proposals and is weighing up his options.
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Nick Marles
It is a positive change. It is something I will consider. It's my career that dictates my next move at the moment. Ask me in three years time and maybe I change my mind.
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Tristan Redman
Other nations are offering similar schemes. Croatia also provides financial benefits to returnees if they resettle in less developed regions, while Portugal is slashing taxes for under 35s to try and prevent them from leaving in the first place. Katja Batista is a professor of economics in Lisbon and specializes in this field.
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Beverly Ochieng
This is something that I've seen being done by a variety of countries. I mean low income countries like in Africa. Those are the ones that are most affected by the so called brain drain and those are the ones where policy responses are harder.
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Tristan Redman
Follow your way home. Your future awaits is what the targeted adverts for the Mines in Cyprus program say. Housing on the small nation may be an issue if large swathes do move back, but when pushed, the government says it's hoping only around 5,000 will take up the offer, although there is no limit. So it could be a very expensive bill and a very crowded Mediterranean island if those tax savings appeal to huge numbers of the diaspora.
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Nick Marles
Daniel Rosny reporting. Now, have you ever got in trouble at work for taking something from the office fridge that you thought you were allowed to have? Well, a case in South Korea has sparked public outcry after a man was prosecuted for taking a snack without permission, Commission Pete Ross explains.
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Grainger Advertisement Voice
The case came to prominence after a security guard at a logistics firm was found guilty of taking two snacks worth less than a dollar from an office refrigerator belonging to another firm. The man argued that eating such snacks after overnight shifts was a common practice amongst employees and denied any intent to steal. However, the firm filed a formal complaint and prosecutors charged the security guard with theft. The dubbed the Choco Pie incident, the name of one of the stolen snacks, it stirred a national debate about whether officials should have sought prosecution. Critics argue that given the relatively low value of the stolen goods, the cost of dragging someone through the courts was a clear waste of public money. In response, prosecutors say that if the victim of a theft insists on prosecutions, they have to proceed. At an appeal hearing last week, the judge remarked remarked, how harsh do we really need to go this far? The Jeonju District Prosecutor's office says it's now considering a review.
- [27:58]
Nick Marles
Pete Ross and that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. But before we go, it's almost been two years now since the war in Gaza began after the hamas attacks of October 7th. And to mark the anniversary, we're going to be making a special global News podcast. We'll examine the conflict from lots of different angles, from the situation on the ground in Gaza to public opinion in Israel. But we also want to hear from you. What questions do you want to ask our Middle east correspondents in Jerusalem? Please send them in, either written in an email or attached as a recording. The address is globalpodcastbc.co.uk and if you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email to that same address. Dress. You can also find us on X@ BBC World Service. Use the hashtag global newspod. This edition was mixed by Chrisa Blaqua, and the producers were Carla Conti and Charles Sanctuary. The editor is Karen Martin, I'm Nick Mars, and until next time, goodbye.
- [29:08]
Asma Khalid
America is changing and so is the world.
- [29:12]
Tristan Redman
But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval.
- [29:16]
Nick Marles
It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
- [29:20]
Asma Khalid
I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.
- [29:23]
Nick Marles
Tristan Redman in London, and this is THE Global story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story.
- [29:28]
Asma Khalid
From this intersection where the world and America meet.
- [29:32]
Nick Marles
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.