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Global News Podcast

US judge temporarily blocks Trump's freeze on federal funding

Wed, 29 Jan 2025

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A US judge has paused the enforcement of a sweeping White House order freezing federal grants and loans. Also: Israel says Netanyahu invited to meet Trump at White House next week, and should we all sleep like a caveman?

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00:00 - 00:03 Marjan Vandelaar

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What does it take to go racing in the fastest cars in the world? Oscar Piastri. Your head's trying to get rid of one way, your body's trying to go another. Lance Stroll. It's very extreme in the sense of how close you're racing wheel to wheel. We've been given unprecedented access to two of the most famous names in Formula One, McLaren and Aston Martin.

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00:53 - 01:01 Landon Harris

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01:01 - 01:05 Advertisement voice

I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1 Back at Base. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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01:08 - 01:30 Janet Jalil

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jeanette Jalil, and in the early hours of Wednesday, the 29th of January, these are our main stories. A U.S. judge temporarily blocks a sweeping White House order to pause federal grants, loans and other financial assistance that could have put trillions of dollars on hold.

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01:31 - 01:58 Janet Jalil

Rwandan-backed rebels are getting closer to taking complete control of Goma in eastern Congo. The head of the UN's Palestinian Refugee Agency has accused Israel of carrying out a relentless assault against it ahead of Thursday's ban. Also in this podcast, we hear how a pioneering computer-controlled brain implant has transformed the life of a man with Parkinson's disease.

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01:58 - 02:03 Pat

It was instant. Yeah, I just stopped shitting. My neck stopped shitting. My voice was better.

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02:07 - 02:29 Janet Jalil

It's been a chaotic and confusing start to Donald Trump's plan to pause billions, possibly even trillions of dollars in U.S. government funding. Just minutes before the government freeze on federal loans, grants and other assistance was due to go into effect on Tuesday evening Washington time, it was blocked by a federal judge who's now delayed it until next week.

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02:30 - 02:38 Janet Jalil

Democrats had said the freeze was illegal. Before the judge's decision, the senior Democrat and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer had this to say.

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02:39 - 03:07 Chuck Schumer

In an instant, Donald Trump has shut off billions, perhaps trillions of dollars that directly support states, cities, towns, schools, hospitals, small businesses, and most of all, American families. This is a dagger at the heart of the average American family in red states, in blue states, in cities, in suburbs, in rural areas. It is just outrageous.

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03:08 - 03:31 Janet Jalil

The White House had said the freeze was intended to bring spending into line with President Trump's anti-woke executive orders. The White House press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, who at 27 is the youngest person ever to hold that post, said during her debut media briefing that the freeze would not affect payments to individuals for crucial things like pensions, health care and food assistance.

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03:32 - 03:52 Caroline Leavitt

This is not a blanket pause on federal assistance and grant programs from the Trump administration. Individual assistance that includes Medicare benefits, food stamps, welfare benefits, assistance that is going directly to individuals will not be impacted by this pause.

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03:52 - 04:04 Caroline Leavitt

And I want to make that very clear to any Americans who are watching at home who may be a little bit confused about some of the media reporting. This administration, if you are receiving individual assistance from the federal government, you will still continue to receive that.

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04:04 - 04:08 Janet Jalil

I asked our correspondent in Washington, Caroline Hawley, if she could clarify the confusion.

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04:09 - 04:26 Caroline Hawley

Honestly, there is still confusion. I think why it's being done is easier than the what of it, if you know what I mean. So essentially, this has been paused so the new administration can check that government spending aligns with its conservative policies. And they've also promised to make the government more efficient.

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04:26 - 04:45 Caroline Hawley

They've made clear that there's going to be no more funding for diversity and inclusion for many environmental programmes. What the White House press secretary called transgenderism and wokeness. I had another White House official saying there would be no more funding for left-wing NGOs. But there is confusion and uncertainty.

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04:45 - 05:07 Caroline Hawley

For example, Meals on Wheels, which you can work out from the title what it does. They don't know what this means for them. So many, many people work trying to work out what exactly this means as it goes into effect. Although, Jeanette, we are just hearing now that a judge has temporarily paused part of the freeze. So watch this space for what happens next.

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05:07 - 05:16 Janet Jalil

And adding to the confusion and alarm is the report that the online portal for Medicaid, which is the public health insurance program for the poor, has suffered an outage.

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05:17 - 05:37 Caroline Hawley

That's right. But I think you heard Caroline Levitt say there that Medicare was not affected. So there's been this is kind of added to the chaos. And you heard from the Democrat Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who said that this was causing cruel, nasty and illegal chaos. Chaos it certainly is.

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05:37 - 05:39 Janet Jalil

He was talking about how it affects Americans.

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05:39 - 06:01 Caroline Hawley

What about foreign aid? Good question. Well, all foreign aid has been paused. And that is an absolutely huge deal because the US is the biggest foreign aid donor in the world. I spoke to somebody. He didn't want to be identified, but he's a longtime aid worker. And he said this had caused an earthquake in the sector. And a couple of things that Caroline Levitt mentioned in her press conference.

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06:02 - 06:25 Caroline Hawley

She said that there was money about to go out for the World Health Organization, $37 million. She said that had been halted. And then she spoke about $50 million, bizarrely, that she said was going to go out of the budget for condoms for Gaza. That's also been halted. So those were the two things she specifically mentioned at that press conference today on foreign aid.

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06:25 - 06:45 Janet Jalil

Caroline Hawley. Well, this comes as the Israeli prime minister's office says that Benjamin Netanyahu has been invited to a meeting at the White House in Washington with President Trump next week. Mr. Trump has repeatedly taken the credit for the fragile Gaza ceasefire deal, which came into effect the day before he took office.

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06:45 - 07:01 Janet Jalil

And in recent days, he's floated the idea of Egypt and Jordan taking in most of the population of Gaza to the outrage of Arab countries and Palestinians. Wira Davis in Jerusalem says the announcement of the visit is a big coup for Mr Netanyahu.

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07:01 - 07:18 Evan Davis

It's difficult to interpret this as anything other than a huge boost for Netanyahu. He'll be the first foreign leader to be welcomed by Donald Trump in his second term. So it just shows the closeness of their relationship, how much I think Mr Netanyahu can rely on Donald Trump's support.

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07:19 - 07:38 Evan Davis

Publicly, I think we'll hear calls for an end to the war, certainly calls for all hostages to be released by Hamas unequivocally. What I think a lot of people, observers, would like to hear what the two men talk about is the future for Gaza and the future for Iran. Israel's relationship with Palestinians.

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07:38 - 08:00 Evan Davis

Donald Trump, of course, said the other day that he thought one of the ways that Gazans could be helped, at least in the short term, was for neighbouring Arab countries to take them in. That would be welcomed by hardliners in Mr Netanyahu's government. Arab countries and other countries around the world have said that simply can't happen. So will Mr Trump... That idea.

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08:00 - 08:25 Evan Davis

He's also, remember, appointed an ambassador to Israel in Mike Huckabee, an ambassador to the UN, people who believe personally that Israel should be given full or at least partial control over what the rest of the world regards as the occupied Palestinian West Bank. Now, will Mr. Trump say anything about that to Mr. Netanyahu? So it'll be fascinating.

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08:25 - 08:34 Evan Davis

But the first thing to say is that this is a huge coup for Mr. Netanyahu because he's the first foreign leader to go to the United States to be invited by Mr. Trump.

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08:35 - 08:54 Janet Jalil

Wira Davis. Well, this comes as the head of the UN's Agency for Palestinian Refugees has condemned what he describes as Israel's relentless assault against it. Philippe Lazzarini was speaking at a UN Security Council meeting called to discuss Israel's ban on UNRWA working in Israel and East Jerusalem from Thursday.

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08:54 - 09:01 Janet Jalil

Mr. Lazzarini said the move would cripple the organization's ability to work in the occupied territories and jeopardize prospects for peace.

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09:02 - 09:23 Philippe Lazzarini

The Knesset legislation defies the resolution of this Council and the General Assembly. It flouts the ruling of the International Court of Justice. It disregards that UNRWA is a mechanism established by the General Assembly to provide assistance to Palestinian refugees pending a political answer to the question of Palestine.

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09:24 - 09:37 Janet Jalil

Jonathan Crix is the head of communications for the UN's children's charity UNICEF in the region and is currently in Rafah in southern Gaza. Rebecca Kesby asked him if they've been able to get the aid they need to into the territory.

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09:38 - 10:04 Jonathan Beale

I mean, since the beginning of the implementation of the ceasefire, UNICEF managed to get 350 trucks entering inside the north and the south of the Gaza Strip. It's way more than what we have witnessed in the past weeks and months of the war. And this is really absolutely crucial because the needs are immense. Children are still suffering from malnutrition. There is not enough water.

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10:04 - 10:16 Jonathan Beale

And the level of destruction, especially in the north, is so huge that, yes, it is absolutely critical that all of the hostages are released. And it's critical that humanitarian aid can continue to enter at scale immediately.

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10:17 - 10:25 Rebecca Kesby

Yeah, you mentioned the north there and hardly any aid has got there over the past few months, has it? What sort of conditions are you finding there?

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10:26 - 10:43 Jonathan Beale

Last time I went to the north of the Gaza Strip a few months ago, I really witnessed with my own eyes the level of destruction and you have entire neighbourhoods which have completely been flattened. And yesterday when I was among those families who were walking back to their homes in the north of the Gaza Strip, I could

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10:43 - 11:03 Jonathan Beale

really wonder what are they going to find because many of them have probably lost their houses. And when I was asking them that, they were saying that they prefer to have a tent built on the rubble of their houses instead of having that tent elsewhere. So the level of destruction and the lack of services are really a challenge.

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11:03 - 11:17 Jonathan Beale

What is really key is that we are ramping up our support to the north of the Gaza Strip. We are bringing in tarpaulins. We're bringing in warm clothes. We are organising water tracking to distribute water.

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11:17 - 11:33 Rebecca Kesby

So there are many challenges facing aid workers trying to bring in aid and also distributing that aid to pretty desperate people. One of the challenges, I guess, would be things like unexploded ordnance. Is that a concern you have for your workers?

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11:33 - 11:51 Jonathan Beale

This is first and foremost, I would say, a concern for the children. And yesterday when we were on the road among the people who were walking up north, we were distributing, for example, leaflets to raise the awareness of the parents and the children on the dangers of unexploded ordnance and remnants of war.

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11:51 - 12:14 Jonathan Beale

We know that between 5 and 10 percent of the ammunitions which have been dropped on the Gaza Strip have not exploded. And we know the injuries, the terrible injuries that this can provoke to children. So this is really the first preoccupation. And then in addition, for our trucks and for our missions to go in the different parts of the Gaza Strip, this is also a concern.

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12:14 - 12:33 Jonathan Beale

A second concern is the fact that The roads are heavily damaged. That is very often limiting our capacity to move from one area to the other. The infrastructure has been damaged so much in the Gaza Strip that, for example, it's not necessarily easy to find a warehouse to store all the supplies,

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12:33 - 12:53 Janet Jalil

That was Jonathan Crix of UNICEF. Let's turn now to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where in a country scarred by decades of conflict, Rwandan-backed rebels who say they've captured the airport in the key eastern regional hub of Goma are continuing to battle Congolese government forces on the streets of the city.

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12:57 - 13:18 Janet Jalil

Days of intense fighting involving mortars and gunfire have left many bodies lying on the ground and hospitals overwhelmed. The UN says there have been reports of rapes carried out by fighters. On the other side of this vast country in the capital Kinshasa, a string of embassies has been attacked, including those of Rwanda, the United States, France and Uganda.

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13:19 - 13:41 Janet Jalil

Congo has accused its tiny neighbour of trying to steal its mineral wealth. Rwanda denies the claim, saying it's fighting an armed group formed in the wake of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Both countries are being urged to restart peace talks that broke down last year. Alona Sienko is a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

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13:41 - 14:00 Alona Sienko

It's been very chaotic several days. We are seeing people who are fleeing the conflict and also our surgical team that is working in Dosha Hospital has been receiving dozens and dozens of wounded people, a lot of women and children. And what is extremely worrying is that

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14:00 - 14:16 Alona Sienko

These people, they come with severe wounds from explosive devices, and this shows that there is a lot of fighting and a lot of artillery used in heavily populated areas, and that is creating a lot of casualties, and especially among civilian population.

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14:17 - 14:23 Janet Jalil

Well, as the rebels advance in Goma, our reporter in Kinshasa, Emery Makumeno, told us what he'd been able to find out.

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14:24 - 14:46 Emery Makumeno

What I can tell you is that Goma is still under one part, under the control of the regular army, and the other part is under the control of the M23. It's been five days that people have been locked inside their homes without electricity, without running water. these last two days without internet.

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14:46 - 15:01 Emery Makumeno

So today, even if there were still fighting and gunshots and everything, but you do have some people who have managed to go out, fetch water and try to find some food within that intense fighting going on.

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15:01 - 15:12 Janet Jalil

And Emery, in Kinshasa, where you are, there have been a number of attacks on Western embassies and African embassies allied to Rwanda. Tell us about those.

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15:13 - 15:41 Emery Makumeno

Today was supposed to be what we call here a dead day or a ghost day, where people were supposed to stay home in solidarity with the residents of Goma. So the city was very much paralyzed. And as they, here in the city center where I am, which is also the embassy area, the protesters went to the French embassy and started burning tires in front of the embassy. And then they also managed to

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15:42 - 16:06 Emery Makumeno

climb the walls and put one section of the embassy on fire before the embassy managed to put that off. Then they proceeded to the Ugandan embassy where they invaded the premises and entered the embassy and vandalized and many of them have been seen going out with the stationery, with the chairs and everything they could find.

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16:06 - 16:27 Emery Makumeno

There have also been some shops that have been vandalized, looted here and there. So all the afternoon, the Kinshasa police was busy dispersing and we don't know how many people might have been arrested. But the governor of Kinshasa, as we speak, has banned any protest here in Kinshasa until further order.

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16:28 - 16:40 Janet Jalil

Emery Makumeno. Well, Michaela Rong has written extensively about Congo and Rwanda. She says many in Congo blame the international community because of its close relationship with Rwanda.

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16:41 - 17:08 Michaela Rong

The Congolese are furious because this has been going on for three years. The M23 first started reactivating. I mean, it was active 13, 14 years ago, but it began to reactivate three years ago. And throughout, people have been saying to the West, you can stop this because Rwanda is your close ally. It gets millions of dollars of aid from you. It gets military support from countries like the US.

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17:08 - 17:33 Michaela Rong

It is very aid dependent. You can stop this if you want to. And the Congolese are aware of that. And there's been really no muscular response from the international community. And so there's this huge fury on the part of the Congolese population that sees Rwanda as the donor darling that is helping itself and possibly attempting to annex the mineral rich part of eastern Congo.

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17:33 - 17:53 Michaela Rong

There's going to be a Security Council meeting. And we know that the Congolese government is pushing for really tough sanctions because so far we've only seen strong words and it's pushing for sanctions. Rwanda, for example, is a state that regularly provides peacekeepers to UN forces that go into action across Africa, but also elsewhere.

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17:54 - 18:15 Michaela Rong

And Congolese are saying, you know, you cannot have it both ways. I mean, a Rwandan-supported rebel movement has been opening fire on the UN peacekeepers. There have been deaths. Monusco and South African peacekeepers have been killed by the M23 and by its Rwandan supporters. So you can't have it both ways. You can't then also be a contributor to UN peacekeeping operations.

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18:16 - 18:35 Janet Jalil

Michaela Rong. Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic has said he'll decide in the next 10 days whether to hold parliamentary elections or form a new government following the resignation of the Prime Minister on Tuesday. Miloš Vucevic stood down after months of anti-government protests.

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18:35 - 18:52 Janet Jalil

They were sparked by the collapse of a train station roof which killed 15 people and led to allegations of widespread corruption and incompetence. Serbia's main opposition party has dismissed the resignation as an attempt to buy time. Our Balkans correspondent is Guy Delaunay.

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18:53 - 19:13 Guy Delaunay

Prime Minister Miloš Vucevic said that he was resigning not in response to the protests or the blockade as such, but rather in response to an attack on some students in Serbia's second city, Novi Sad, because overnight some students were there putting some stickers on

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19:14 - 19:27 Guy Delaunay

near the building which houses the local office of the governing progressive party, and people emerged from that building and attacked the students, and one of them, the least, was hospitalised with a suspected broken jaw.

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19:27 - 19:39 Guy Delaunay

And Mr Vucevic said this was not acceptable, that he was going to be resigning in order to calm the passions that had arisen in Serbia, and called on people to return to dialogue.

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19:42 - 19:58 Miloš Vucevic

After last night's incident in Novi Sad, my irrevocable decision is to resign as Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia. I had a long conversation this morning with the President. We talked about everything and he accepted my decision and accepted my arguments.

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19:59 - 20:11 Guy Delaunay

She's trying to make it seem like he's doing the honourable thing and not responding to any of these protesters' acts of pressure on him. But I don't think anybody's going to be particularly fooled by that.

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20:12 - 20:21 Janet Jalil

And what about this claim being made by the authorities that foreign powers are backing the student protesters? Is there any evidence for that?

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20:21 - 20:43 Guy Delaunay

No, there's no evidence for it whatsoever, but they have been doing their best to make out that these things have been happening. So, for example, last week they deported people from a number of different European countries, including several from neighbouring Croatia. And all of those people had been attending a workshop for non-governmental organizations in Belgrade.

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20:44 - 20:56 Guy Delaunay

They were removed from Serbia by the internal security forces on the grounds that they represented a threat to the security of the country. And this has been part of a narrative which has been building up for weeks.

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20:57 - 21:20 Guy Delaunay

that's been emanating from the Progressive Party and Mr Vucic that somehow the protests, even though at various points we've had more than 100,000 people on the streets of Belgrade, for example, in one protest just before Christmas, that somehow these protests weren't indigenous, that they were imposed externally or stirred up by external powers, that they weren't a true representation of

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21:20 - 21:35 Guy Delaunay

of the feelings of a large section of Serbian people. It's obviously a move which is attempting to appeal to both the progressive party's base of supporters and also to discredit the protesters and what they're calling for.

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21:37 - 21:55 Janet Jalil

Now to a new development that may help those suffering from Parkinson's disease. A man fitted with a pioneering computer-controlled brain implant here in the UK says it works so well that he's sometimes able to forget he has the condition. Kevin Hill started getting symptoms in his 40s.

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21:55 - 22:12 Janet Jalil

He was shaking so badly that his wife wouldn't allow him into the kitchen because of fears he might hurt himself. Now at the age of 65, after years of sleepless nights and uncontrollable shaking, he can once again do many of the things he used to, including going for a drink with friends.

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22:13 - 22:23 Janet Jalil

Surgeons in Newcastle in northern England hope the implant that's worked so well for Kevin will help many others. Our health correspondent Sharon Barber went to meet him.

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22:24 - 22:52 Sharon Barber

Kevin has his life back, thanks to a computerised implant in his brain. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2017. Struggling to hold a pint of beer, he stopped going out altogether. And at home, he was banned from the kitchen. I dropped things, spilled things, hot water. Who banned you? The wife. Kevin had first noticed something was wrong with his thumb.

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22:54 - 23:03 Sharon Barber

And then my arm was shaking, and what's next? Then his hands started to shake, and he recalls being told what it was.

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23:04 - 23:12 Pat

Well, it was Parkinson's, obviously, and there was no cure for it. I was shocked, very shocked. You don't know what's in store for you.

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23:13 - 23:41 Sharon Barber

But he'd heard about a new treatment, deep brain stimulation, and around a year ago, he underwent surgery. Well, Kevin described it as like a Jaffa cake inside his chest wall. But what it is, in fact, is a battery with a computer inside. And that sends signals to his brain to control his Parkinson's symptoms. But the newly approved programme does more than just send signals deep into the brain.

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23:41 - 24:00 Sharon Barber

It can read a patient's brain signals and response by sending the exact electrical pulses needed to control Parkinson's. When Kevin first had his computer in his chest switched on, he couldn't believe what happened. The violent shaking of his arms and legs stopped.

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24:00 - 24:05 Pat

It was instant. Yeah, I just stopped shitting. My legs stopped shitting. My voice was better.

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24:06 - 24:18 Sharon Barber

But even during our interview, his legs started to shake. A reminder of the Parkinson's he still has. That report by Sharon Barber.

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24:21 - 24:21 Janet Jalil

Still to come...

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24:24 - 24:34 Hugh Schofield

The creation of these new rooms should enable the Mona Lisa to be installed in a special area, accessible independently from the rest of the museum.

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24:34 - 24:38 Janet Jalil

We'll tell you why the Mona Lisa is getting its own room in the Louvre.

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24:46 - 25:06 Advertisement voice

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25:16 - 25:33 Advertisement voice

What does it take to go racing in the fastest cars in the world? Oscar Piastri. Your head's trying to get rid of one way, your body's trying to go another. Lance Stroll. It's very extreme in the sense of how close you're racing wheel to wheel. We've been given unprecedented access to two of the most famous names in Formula One, McLaren and Aston Martin.

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25:33 - 25:41 Landon Harris

I'm Landon Harris. They build a beautiful bit of machinery that I get to then go and have fun in. They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak.

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25:42 - 25:46 Advertisement voice

I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1 Back at Base. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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25:51 - 26:09 Janet Jalil

NATO's Secretary General has said the alliance needs to strengthen its defences in the Arctic. Mark Rutte was speaking after a meeting with Denmark's Prime Minister where they discussed Donald Trump's threats to take over Greenland despite it being under Danish sovereignty. Here's our Europe regional editor, Paul Moss.

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26:09 - 26:26 Paul Moss

The timing of this announcement means everything. Donald Trump says the US should take over Greenland because its Arctic location is strategically important. So having America in charge there would, as he put it, protect the free world. Greenland is Danish territory.

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26:27 - 26:45 Paul Moss

Denmark's Prime Minister, Meta Fredriksson, spent Tuesday racing round European capitals, shoring up support for its sovereignty over the island. Now, she and NATO's Secretary General have emphasised the alliance's defence of the Arctic region, implicitly negating the need for a unilateral American takeover.

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26:46 - 27:07 Janet Jalil

Paul Moss, after a turbulent year, the US planemaker Boeing has reported annual losses of nearly $12 billion. It's the company's worst performance since the pandemic. Boeing is grappling with a number of issues, including concerns about safety after a series of accidents and a strike by its factory workers in the US.

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27:08 - 27:17 Janet Jalil

Its chief executive says the firm is making progress in restoring stability to production lines. Andrew Peach heard more from Judson Rowlands of Lehm News and Analysis.

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27:18 - 27:35 Judson Rowlands

The financials are even worse than anyone could have expected. You cannot overstate what an annus horribilis 2024 was for Boeing. You had the door plug that blew off the Alaska Airlines plane. You had the commercial crew spacecraft that were stranded at the International Space Station.

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27:36 - 27:55 Judson Rowlands

You had a CEO change, 777X flight testing program ground to a halt, a union strike, which crippled their production plants. And then the capstone was a massive equity sale in October. And what really the upshot of that equity sale was Boeing almost literally ran out of cash in the fourth quarter of last year.

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27:56 - 28:03 Andrew Peach

So it's still one of the huge names in aviation. It's just when these individual incidents happen, it makes people less likely to invest.

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28:04 - 28:21 Judson Rowlands

That's right. And investors are showing a lot more skepticism than they ever would have before COVID. And I would say probably even immediately after COVID. There's just a real lack of belief that even the new CEO can pull off the turnaround that's required.

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28:21 - 28:26 Andrew Peach

Is this all about Boeing, or does it tell us something about the aviation sector more broadly?

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28:26 - 28:49 Judson Rowlands

I would say this is a story that is 80% about Boeing and 20% about the sector. The sector is, of course, prone to materials and supply chain shortages, driven in part, although not entirely, by the war between Russia and Ukraine and the sanctions on Russia. But even with the supply chain issues, the vast majority of Boeing's problems would still have existed.

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28:50 - 29:08 Janet Jalil

Judson Rowlings of Leeham News and Analysis. For the first time since the fall of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, a Russian diplomatic delegation has been in Damascus for talks. The Kremlin was a key ally of Mr. Assad's and is trying to retain its military presence in Syria, as Lina Sinjab reports.

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29:09 - 29:28 Lina Sinjab

Russia's deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Bogdanov, along with President Putin's special advisor on Syria, are in Damascus. There's been no direct confirmation from the Syrian authorities on who they are meeting. Relations between the two sides are tense. Many Syrians want Bashar al-Assad, who's been given asylum in Russia, to be prosecuted.

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29:29 - 29:45 Lina Sinjab

It's hard to tell whether the Syrian government will raise this issue or discuss the money the ousted leader fled with, leaving the country in poverty. The Russians will probably focus on their naval presence on Syria's coast, as reports suggest Moscow's military equipment has been removed from the port of Tartus.

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29:46 - 30:00 Janet Jalil

Lina Zinjab. It's probably the world's most famous painting, and now in recognition of the huge crowds it draws, the Mona Lisa is to be moved to what's been described as its own special space within the Louvre Museum in Paris.

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30:00 - 30:20 Janet Jalil

It's all part of a plan to renovate the world's most visited museum, announced by the French president Emmanuel Macron as he stood in front of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece. Mr Macron also said a new entrance would be designed through an international competition to reduce the huge crowds of people beneath the famous glass pyramid.

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30:22 - 30:42 Hugh Schofield

The creation of these new rooms should enable the Mona Lisa to be installed in a special area, accessible independently from the rest of the museum, with its own access ticket. but it will also create conditions that will enable it to be visited in a different and perhaps more peaceful way.

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30:43 - 30:45 Janet Jalil

With more, here's Hugh Schofield in Paris.

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30:46 - 31:08 Hugh Schofield

This is President Macron's new grand projet, big cultural plan. And it's been drawn up in response to warnings from management that right now the Louvre is cracking under the strain. Visitor numbers have shot up to 9 million a year. That's a person a second, while the building and its infrastructure are ageing badly. The main announcement is an architectural competition to design a new entrance.

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31:08 - 31:30 Hugh Schofield

which will be at the eastern end of the museum, where there's now a wide classical colonnade. Inside, there'll be new underground spaces, one of which will be for the rehoused Mona Lisa. The painting is by far the Louvre's biggest attraction, but visitor numbers are simply too big. So it'll get its own exhibition room, hopefully relieving pressure on the rest of the Renaissance collection.

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31:31 - 31:44 Janet Jalil

Hugh Schofield. The panel of scientists behind the symbolic doomsday clock that shows how close humanity is to a global catastrophe has announced that it's ticked one second closer to our destruction.

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31:44 - 32:00 Janet Jalil

They say concerns about the risk of nuclear war, rapid climate change, the rise of disinformation and President Trump's radical policies have led them to set the time to one minute and 29 seconds to midnight. Richard Howes reports.

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32:00 - 32:15 Richard Hamilton

The doomsday clock started ticking, metaphorically, in 1947. It was started by a group of scientists in America worried about the threat to humanity from the nuclear arms race and the Cold War. But they started the clock at seven minutes to midnight.

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32:16 - 32:37 Richard Hamilton

Now the scientists who monitor the trends and events which guide their decisions about how close to annihilation the planet is have set the clock closer to catastrophe than ever before. Professor Daniel Holtz, one of the scientists involved in setting the clock, said the new time was a stark warning to everyone about how close to the precipice of destruction the world has recently moved.

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32:38 - 32:58 Janet Jalil

Richard Howes. Now, if you're a shift worker, like many of us 24-hour news journalists, you may worry that you're not getting enough sleep. And even if you're not a shift worker, it's sometimes hard to turn off the screens, go to bed early and get that solid eight hours of rest that we're all told is essential to health.

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32:58 - 33:07 Janet Jalil

But one sleep scientist, Marjan Vandelaar, says it might not matter as much as we think. He's the author of a new book, How to Sleep Like a Caveman.

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33:08 - 33:26 Marjan Vandelaar

The thing about the sleep of cavemen is we don't know how they slept exactly, but what we do know is we studied people in Tanzania, so the Hanzo tribe, and they still live in the same circumstances as probably we did when we were cavemen. And what you can say is that they were actually quite a lot awake during the night, so that being awake during the night was quite normal.

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33:27 - 33:43 Marjan Vandelaar

Also, if you look at data from the Western population, you see that actually being awake up to 20% of the time that you're in the bed is quite normal. But we've lost touch with that. And I think there's a lot of perfectionism going around around sleep. And sleeping between six and eight hours per night is actually quite average.

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33:44 - 34:03 Marjan Vandelaar

And I think the rule really stems from Robert Owen, who was a social reformer. And he said, you have to work for eight hours, sleep for eight hours and rest or leisure for eight hours. So If we keep on saying that everybody needs to sleep eight hours without any interruptions, then I think a lot of people will get more stressed out. And a lot of people are very active before they go to bed.

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34:03 - 34:17 Marjan Vandelaar

They look at their social media. They're still very busy with a lot of things like on television. And for some people that works quite well, because if you have a very busy mind, then actually getting a little bit of distraction can help you fall asleep quicker.

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34:18 - 34:42 Janet Jalil

So there you go. If you like watching some TV or looking at your phone just before you go to bed. That was sleep scientist Marge and Vandala. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this one, 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.

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34:42 - 34:50 Janet Jalil

This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll. The producer was Liam McSheffery. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janet Jalil. Until next time, goodbye.

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