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Negotiators close to securing Gaza ceasefire deal - White House
00:30:06
Hamas and Israeli officials are conducting indirect talks in Qatar
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Oliver Berkman
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk. Discover how to lead a better life in our age of confusion. Enjoy this BBC audiobook collection written and presented by best selling author Oliver Berkman, containing four useful guides to tackling some central ills of busyness, anger, the insistence on positivity and the decline of nuance. Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere when we weren't looking, looking. It's like busyness became a way of life. Start listening to Oliver Epidemics of Modern Life Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson and in the early hours of Tuesday 14th January, these are our main stories. The White House says negotiators in Qatar are close to securing a Gaza ceasefire deal. In the final foreign policy speech of his presidency, Joe Biden says the US will remain the world's predominant superpower and can't walk away from Ukraine. 26 men accused of mining illegally in South Africa have been rescued after spending weeks underground, but dozens more remain. Also in this podcast, remembering the Italian fashion photographer Oliviero Toscani, I think that he thought that he could break through in a way that perhaps a news photo couldn't, that he could reach people with these images through advertising. Israel and Hamas have both reportedly received the final draft of a deal to end the conflict in Gaza and to release the remaining hostages. Negotiations are ongoing in Qatar, with Israel and Hamas saying progress has been made. But 10 members of Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition in Israel say they're opposed to the deal and have sent him a letter opposing a ceasefire. At the White House on Monday, the US National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, spoke about a possible agreement. We are now at a pivotal point in the negotiations for a hostage deal and cease fire in Gaza. The President spoke with Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday and just got off the phone with the Emir of Qatar. He'll be speaking soon. Also with President Sisi of Egypt. We are close to a deal and it can get done this week. I'm not making a promise or a prediction, but it is there for the taking and we are going to work to make it happen. Then President Biden, in the final foreign policy speech of his presidency, made this comment on a possible deal to end the conflict in Gaza. We're pressing hard to close this. The deal. We have a structure would free the hostages, halt the fighting, provide security to Israel and allow us to significantly surge humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians who've suffered terribly in this war that Hamas started. Our Middle east correspondent Lucy Williamson reports from Jerusalem. Eight months after this deal was first outlined by President Biden, expectations are again rising that it could form the basis for ending the war in Gaza and exchanging the remaining Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Hamas officials have been briefing that the two sides are now very close to a deal. And the Israeli Foreign Minister, Gideon Sar, also today signalled progress in negotiations. Israel wants a hostage deal. Israel is working with our American friends in order to achieve a hostage deal. And soon we will know whether the other side wants the same thing. The upcoming inauguration of Donald Trump as US President has signalled a shift in the long stalemate over a Gaza deal, with Mr. Trump threatening all hell would break loose if the hostages were not released before he took office. Mr. Trump is seen as a strong supporter of Israel, and his election offers an opportunity for Mr. Netanyahu to sell a Gaza truce to his far right coalition partners at home. Hamas, which wants an end to the war, has been weakened by the erosion of its allies in Lebanon and Syria. And there's hope that American guarantees might now be enough to bridge the group's distrust over Israel's intentions. Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly refused to commit that he'll permanently end the war and withdraw all Israeli forces from Gaza. Negotiations over this framework deal have fallen apart before, but the signs of success and the expectations are growing. Well, our Gaza correspondent, Rushdie Abalouf, has been speaking to a Palestinian source close to negotiations. What is significant is that the people who were displaced over a year ago from their villages and towns in the north, they will be allowed to go back to the north. But there is also a lot of complication in this because people will allow to walk in their foot in the coastal road and they will be subject to X ray screening machines that will be put in place on Salahdin Road to allow cars to pass through this X ray. We understand that Egyptian and Qatari security delegation should arrive in Gaza the first day of the deal to facilitate the screening and to coordinate with the local police, which in fact belong to Hamas, who is going to take the job of organizing the return for the people. There's too many details, too many difficult details to be finished yet. But I think as we speak, the meeting is going on in Doha and they believe that this is going to be the final meeting to put the final touches for a deal that might come in the next two days. Rushdie Abalouf. As we heard earlier, President Biden has made his final foreign policy speech as he prepares to leave office next week and hand over power to to Donald Trump. After being given a standing ovation from State Department employees, Mr. Biden took aim at Iran and China, saying America is stronger on the global stage than it has been in decades. He spoke about America's support for Israel and also said the US should not abandon Ukraine following Russia's invasion. Nearly three years ago, we helped Ukrainians stop Putin. And now nearly three years later, Putin has failed to achieve any of his strategic objectives. He has failed thus far to subjugate Ukraine, failed to break the unity of NATO and fail to make large territorial gains. There's more to do. We can't walk away. Our State Department correspondent Tom Bateman watched the wide ranging speech and gave me his assessment. I think it was an attempt really at a victory lap, a valedictory pronouncement on his four years of foreign policy. But of course, coming against the backdrop that he, he's in a position he never wanted to be, which is he took over from Donald Trump, thinking of himself as the man both domestically and in terms of its impact on foreign policy that could ensure there would never be another Trump presidency. And yet here he is acting as effectively the bridge between two Trump terms in the White House. So attempting, I think, to shore up his legacy when it comes to foreign policy. A lot of the focus on that was about support for Ukraine and about policy as they see it, of successfully managing competition with China. So, you know, a standing ovation among his VIP diplomats and staff in the here in the very sort of August Benjamin Franklin State dining room here in the State Department. Many outside the room, I think, might take a more critical appraisal of his impact. But that was how he wanted to set it out in front of his staff, attempting to define his legacy. I mean, the word disasters weren't there. I'm thinking really of Afghanistan. Yeah. And it was, I mean, I think that was one of the areas where his critics might say it felt like he was in the strongest form of denial because he very much portrayed that as a success in terms of the withdrawal, not necessarily the operation itself. But he was saying, you know, he was the first American president to hand over to another one in quite some time without American troops still fighting in Afghanistan. But of course, that has been something that his opponents have used as a political stick to beat him with repeatedly about what they have seen as the disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan. So I think that was perhaps pushing against what many of his opponents would see as the situation there, but also more broadly, talking about the way that he said the US had rebuilt alliances from the first Trump presidency. And that he said was very much a success story, albeit that they had these crises and emergencies that they didn't foresee. Of course, Donald Trump is expected to do things differently. Was there a message there to President Elect Trump from the current president, even though he'll just be in office for another week? The big underlying message was that they believe that President Trump's legacy from his first term was to lose the U.S. s friends in the world, to attack their allies, and not to keep hold of those multilateral alliances. So I think the big message was that they feel that they have rebuilt them. The other one, he said on two points, artificial intelligence and climate change. He thought these were the sort of, you know, fundamentals that had to be addressed and protected in order for there not to be, as he put it, an existential threat to humanity. And urging the next administration to adopt similar policies as his. Basically, when it comes to those areas, Tom Bateman and staying in the US and in the state of California, firefighters continue to tackle a number of wildfires. They're preparing for the winds to pick up again. And the National Weather Service has issued its most serious warning so far. 24 people have been confirmed dead. Thousands of fire crews have been deployed to the areas most at risk. The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, gave this statement on Monday. As we continue to go through these next few days where the fires are still a serious threat, we also want to begin to help people put their lives back together and to prepare to rebuild our city as the winds pick up. Please stay safe. Please heed the call to evacuate should you receive that. And remember to heed all public safety guidance. The Los Angeles County District Attorney, Nathan Hockman, addressed the problem of those seeking to profit from the chaos through criminal activity. We have been seeing price gouging with hotels. People are offering residence as well above the 10% addition that they can charge. We've seen that with medical supplies, other types of supplies, price gouging going on. So the criminals have decided that this is an opportunity. And I'm here to tell you that this is not an opportunity. You will be arrested, you will be prosecuted, and you will be punished to the full extent of the law. For more on the situation on the ground, our correspondent Emma Vardy sent this report from Los Angeles. The debris still smoulders. Thousands of damaged acres are still untouched by recovery teams. Today, roadblocks and patrols by the National Guard have visibly increased and there have now been more than 60 arrests in evacuated areas, mainly for looting and burglary. A number of people are still missing and teams with search dogs are going house to house looking for human remains. Robert Luna is the LA County Sheriff for the Altadena area. We are in the third day of grid searching and we unfortunately, every day we're doing this, we're running across the remains of individual community members. That is not easy work and I believe that work is not only going to continue, but I believe will continue to find remains. So please be patient with us. People are saying, I just want to go look at my house and I want to see what's left. We know that, but we have people literally looking for the remains of your neighbors. Around 92,000 people are still under evacuation orders. The largest fire in Pacific Palisades is still only 14% contained and strong winds are forecast over the next two days, once again increasing the fire risk. Emma Vardy in Los Angeles. The Italian fashion photographer Olivero Toscani, who is behind provocative advertising campaigns for the clothing brand Benetton, has died. He was 82. Oliviero Toscani's work often drew attention to social issues, with one advert featuring a photo of a man dying of AIDS prompting a boycott of Benetton. Our arts correspondent David Sillitoe looks back at his life. Patricia Rexroad, USA Greg Bredman, Australia it's easy to forget that when Oliviero Toscani launched his United Colours of Benetton ad campaign featuring models with a variety of skin tones, this was so unusual. The phrase Benetton ad became, for a while, a byword for any representation of diversity. However, Toscani had no interest in photographing knitwear or traditional ways of selling goods. What he wanted to show was how a company thinks. I'm not an artist. I think photography is a political action. However, sometimes the message was hard to decipher. One advert featured an image of a man dying of aids. Another, a priest and a nun kissing, while a picture of a newly born baby with an umbilical cord still attached set a new benchmark for complaints. Even within Benetton itself, he was controversial. The company was my biggest enemy. All the managers, they hated me. Eventually, he was dropped by Benetton, only to be brought back 17 years later and then dropped again. But he had no regrets. Looking back, he said he had no doubt about whose adverts would be remembered. David Sillitoe on the life of the Italian fashion photographer Oliveiro Toscani, who's died at the age of 82. Still to come, the party usually goes on until the early hours of the morning. I think the lessest I've been to we're still going at 11am the next day. Residents of a remote part of the Shetland Islands in Scotland have been holding their New Year celebrations almost two weeks later than the rest of the world. But why? Discover how to lead a better life in our age of confusion? Enjoy this BBC audiobook collection written and presented by best selling author Oliver Berkman, containing four useful guides to tackling some central ills of busyness, anger, the insistence on positivity and the decline of nuance. Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere when we weren't looking. It's like busyness became a way of life. Start listening to Oliver Epidemics of Modern Life Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks. In South Africa, the authorities have begun a long delayed operation to rescue illegal miners who are stuck underground. Some were brought up on Monday after being trapped for weeks in a disused gold mine near Stillfontein, 140km south of Johannesburg. The authorities were forced to start the rescue following a court order on Friday. Wright's groups say they believe more than a hundred miners have already died and several hundred others remain trapped. Gruesome videos have emerged showing the harrowing conditions underground. Our correspondent in Johannesburg, Maney Jones, told me more. The rescue operation is ongoing at the moment. The authorities, upon closing business today, said they were able to get out 26 miners alive and nine bodies. It's tricky because this was an illegal operation. We don't know exactly how many miners are down there. Estimates from advocacy groups puts the number of miners down there between 4 and 800. Authorities say they can only bring them up in small groups in this kind of makeshift metric lift that they've got that goes deep into the mine, takes people and brings them back up. So they say it will take at least a week and potentially up to 16 days. Why have they been trapped for so long? I mean they've been there for what, two months? Initially the authorities took a very hard stance because the miners were very legally so their initial tactic was to prevent any food and water from getting down to the shaft in the hope that the miners would then emerge by themselves. As it turns out, a workers union representing the miners says that they're unable to get out by themselves and what this has happened is standoff between the police and the miners. What this has caused is for many of them to die. According to one of the main unions representing them, they claim that 109 miners have died and that the others are in a really poor state and they just need to get out of this mine as soon as possible. Videos have emerged. What do those tell us about what's been happening underground? This came after some miners actually wrote a letter late last week describing the conditions as unbearable and begging for masks to deal with the smell of the rotting corpses. And the videos just show a group of men. It's hard to tell exactly how many, but there are definitely dozens of them. Some are shirtless, they look emaciated, and there's a voice narrating the whole time saying that these people are hungry, they're in desperate need of help. There's also another video that shows rows and rolls of what appears to be dead bodies wrapped in plastics down in the mine shaft. Now, because these videos were shared on social media and a lot of the geolocations been stripped away, we haven't been able to verify that. But this is coming from the mining union and this is what they're using as an argument to say that this operation needs to happen and needs to happen faster. What's been reaction there? Because on Friday, the High Court actually ordered the government to get the miners out, didn't they? Absolutely. The reaction in South Africa, honestly is a mixed one. I think advocacy groups and union representatives argue that these are people, you know, they may have been involved in illegal activities, but they have human rights and they shouldn't be denied food or water, they should be rescued as soon as possible. But I think a lot of ordinary South Africans feel that they've put themselves in this situation, they've engaged in illegal activities and perhaps if there's a deterrence of some sort, sort like help isn't coming as quickly as they would like, then perhaps this might deter other people from wanting to go into illegal mining. So it's a very divisive issue here. Myannie Jones In South Africa, around the world, many people are dealing with daily cost of living pressures, including the price of food and accommodation. In Australia, young people are said to be more concerned with these issues than with climate change and the environment. That's according to a national survey from the Christian charity Mission Australia. It's the first time financial pressures have been the key consideration in the annual Youth Survey report, which surveyed 17,400 Australians aged between 15 and 19 in Sydney Phil Mercer spoke to some young people who are having a hard time. If you don't have a roof over your head, you don't have a home type of thing. And that comes first before an issue like climate change. Making ends meet is a constant struggle for Piper and her flatmate Callum, who are university students in Sydney. They both work long hours, but after paying for rent and food, there's not much left. It's a lot of planning to try and, like, keep up with your own wage because, like, you don't really know, especially being a student and being casual, you don't know what you're going to get every week. Honestly, I think the hardest part is splitting up your paycheck and then realizing that you don't have pretty much any money to put away for a rainy day fund or for travel or for something that you want to save up for like a car. It's less of a stress and more of just a dread. And those fears are shared by 17 year old Ruby, who's about to leave home for the first time. I do think that I'm going to have to work very hard to keep affording rent and everything and food and everything. On top of study, the number one concern for young Australians is the cost of living that's overtaken climate change and the environment. The annual survey by Mission Australia, a Christian charity, sought the opinions of more than 17,000 teenagers and young adults. Crime and mental health are key concerns, but for the first time, economic anxieties are top of the list. Sharon Callister, chief executive officer of Mission Australia. Young people are having a tough time. They are facing cost of living pressures just like the rest of the community. And if you're looking to get where's your next meal? Or am I going to have a safe roof over my head tonight, then clearly you can understand why climate change isn't the number one priority. Doesn't mean that it's not important for them, but they've got more urgent issues that they need to be considering. Unlike their parents, many young Australians are entering adulthood with a sense of trepidation about money. What should be carefree days of starting work or study have become far more serious. Stuart Jackson is from the University of Sydney. It means that people's vision for the future has been shortened to the next two weeks. It means that people aren't thinking about, well, where will I be in middle age? But it does mean that they've shortened their horizon. It's not, I'll finish my degree and then I'll get a good job It's, I have to think about getting another job now to be able to pay my rent or I will have to go down to a food bank to try and get, get some food. That's a really shortened horizon. It means people don't look to the future. So politicians who talk about visions for the future are not speaking to them whatsoever. It's important that, you know, this group enters the labor force as strong as possible. And that's, you know, for today, but also for the future. Angela Jackson is an economist. She worries that many young people are starting their working lives feeling apprehensive. So we know that, you know, labour force scarring is a real concern when, you know, you have a generation that's entering into the labour market during weaker economic times, that can have really long term repercussions in terms of the earnings of that generation and of that cohort. With an election looming, many young Australians will be voting for the first time and will have their say on efforts to ease cost of living burdens. That report by Phil Mercer in Sydney. The UK has announced its ambition to be an artificial intelligence superpower. Britain is currently the third largest AI market in the world, after the United States and China. The Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, said he wanted AI to help working people and to boost growth. And he outlined how it might transform areas of the public sector, such as health and education. AI can help teachers plan lessons tailored to your children's specific needs. If you're worried about waiting times, aren't we all? AI can save hundreds of thousands of hours lost to missed appointments. It can spot potholes quicker, speed up planning applications, reduce job center form filling, help in the fight against tax avoidance, and almost halved the time that social workers spend on paperwork. The United States is also concerned about staying ahead in the AI revolution. It's unveiled tough export controls on advanced artificial intelligence chips in an effort to limit access to China. So could the UK's plan for AI help it rival China and the US? Artificial Intelligence Correspondent Mark Chislak went along to listen to the UK Prime Minister's speech. He outlined the government's strategy for AI. Last year, they commissioned an AI entrepreneur to come up with an action plan. And there's 50 recommendations in this action plan. The government has said it's moving forward with every single one of them. Some of the headlines from that are things like AI growth zones. These will be areas of the country where they'll have enhanced access to the power grid and streamlined planning permissions so that they can build things like data centers. There'll be a new supercomputer which will sort of pump up the UK's raw computing power. And there's going to be a new energy council now that's going to try and take care of some of the huge energy demands that artificial intelligence makes. It's going to affect a lot of different things, from employment to education to health care. And as a consequence of that, it creates quite a bit of risk. And that risk is being skirted over, perhaps by. By the government when we talk about safety. The government want to make Britain the market leader here. How do they actually hang on to any initiative, any idea that so often in the past has been bought up by the Americans and the tech companies? Yeah, this is this idea of sovereign AI or homegrown AI. This is a perennial problem with tech talent and with innovative companies this country, that quite often they will end up bought by a big tech giant overseas. Google DeepMind is an excellent example. It was born in the UK, but the active part of what I've just said is Google. That company was purchased by Google in 2014. It's now one of the top three AI companies in the whole world. It is at the absolute forefront of Google's AI research. Now, the government says that it wants to address this by creating more homegrown AI companies, but that is going to require enormous capital investment and if that investment is available in the uk, well, we've not seen it so far. It's more likely that that sort of investment will come from huge tech giants overseas. The BBC's AI correspondent, Mark Czislak. The Peruvian president, Dina Boluate has appeared before the country's Attorney General after prosecutors said she'd effectively abandoned her role as head of state while having plast surgery on her nose. Ms. Boruti kept the procedure a secret from Congress for more than a year. She insists the surgery was done for health reasons and that she didn't neglect her duties. Anna Hanson of BBC Monitoring told me more back in July 2023, she underwent a nose surgery and she failed to inform the Congress about her absence and she didn't appoint a caretaker president for the period of her absence. So the accusation is basically abandoning her post. And what did she say? She said that this was necessary for her health and because she's been accused of, you know, leaving because it was a cosmetic procedure and she said it was essential for her health. And also she says that she is not going to resign and that she's going to leave, you know, when her time is up. In July 2026, quoting her, she said, I'm just. I'm gonna leave through the doors of the palace. She's insisting that she was still at work, wasn't she? I see that. Her lawyer insists she signed over 90 legal orders during the time when she was apparently having this surgery. Yeah, they said that her surgery didn't have, you know, enough repercussions for her to be unable to do her duties. So she was virtually working while recovering. That's what her team says. And there have been other controversies regarding her, haven't there? Yes, her government has been very controversial. Prosecutors also accused her of accepting bribes in the form of Rolex watches and jewelry. And she's also been investigating over the deaths of more than 50 protesters during a crackdown on demonstrations. Her presidency in 2022. So what's the view of her in Peru? She's only approved by 6% of Peruvian people, according to polls. So she's pretty unpopular. Yeah, she's pretty unpopular. You know, she's been facing a lot of accusations lately, but she keeps arguing that the nose surgery was not an impediment to perform her duties as president. Anna Hanson of BBC Monitoring as we record this podcast, the residents of the remote Shetland island of Fula in Scotland are probably still taking part in their New Year celebrations, almost two weeks later than the rest of the world. The quirk is a result of following some of the traditions of the Gilian calendar, which is still used by nearly all Eastern Orthodox churches. Our Shetland reporter, John Johnson, explains Fula is home to fewer than 40 people. It lies 20 miles west of Shetland in the Atlantic Ocean and lays claim to being Britain's most remote island community. Most islanders are crofters and make their living from sheep farming, breeding Shetland ponies and bird watching tourism. The residents also adhere to a version of the Julian calendar, having refused to change to the more modern Gregorian calendar when the rest of the UK made the switch in 1752. This sees the community celebrate Christmas on 6 January rather than 25 December. A new year on 13 January. Robert Smith, who grew up in Fula, says the new year celebrations will last throughout the night. Can be a bit challenging with such a small population. Everyone's out visiting at the same time, so you might come across an empty house and have to go back later. The party usually goes on until the early hours of the morning. I think the latest I've been to, we're still going at 11am the next day. The residents of Fula don't follow the Julian calendar every day due to the practicalities of island life, as they have to fit in with things such as the plane and ferry timetables. But islanders insist they're determined to carry on the centuries old tradition of marking Christmas and New Year later, saying they wouldn't have it any other way. John Johnston in Scotland 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 of the topics covered in it, send us an email. The address is globalpodcastbc.co.uk you can also find us on X at globalnewspot. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll. The producer was Liam McSheffrey, the editor editor is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time, Bye bye. Discover how to lead a better life in our age of confusion Enjoy this BBC audiobook collection written and presented by best selling author Oliver Berkman. Containing four useful guides to tackling some central ills of modernity, busyness, anger, the insistence on positivity and the decline of nuance. Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere when we weren't looking. It's like busyness became a way of life. Start listening to Oliver Epidemics of Modern Life Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks.