NATO intercepts Russian jets in Estonian airspace

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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Alex Alex Ritson, and at 5 hours GMT on Saturday, the 20th of September, these are our main stories.

NATO intercepts Russian jets in Estonian airspace.

President Trump announces visa changes amid a clampdown on immigration.

Notre Dame's bell towers reopen to the public.

Also in this podcast, How Brushing Your Teeth Helps Protect Against Cancer and

Hello Kingston!

my name is Ivan

and I'm gonna make a record you know I'm gonna be a star

before

Kingston

oh yeah I really like it Jamaica's best known film turns into a play

First it was Poland and Romania.

Now Estonia has become the latest NATO member to have its airspace violated by Russia.

The defense minister Hanno Pevke told us three Russian jets were intercepted by NATO pilots and forced to flee.

We were in a very close contact with our allies, not only with Finland, but also with Sweden.

And we had the situation under the control, but yes, it is unprecedented that for 12 minutes the Russians were in our airspace.

But there was a clear, very good coordination among different countries.

Estonia is seeking urgent talks with NATO amid rising fears of Russian incursions.

The government said the Kremlin is increasingly testing its neighbours' borders.

Russia claims its fighters did not violate Estonian airspace.

But surely flying there for 12 minutes couldn't have been an accident?

That's the question I put to our global affairs reporter, Danny Eberhardt.

All indications are that this was a deliberate incursion into Estonian airspace over the Gulf of Finland.

The planes flew near an island, Windlaw, and they stayed there for a long time.

NATO jets were scrambled and intercepted the planes and escorted them away.

But it's a very long time to be in Estonian airspace.

There have been lots of incursions by Russian jets into NATO airspace since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including sometimes with more than one plane, but some of them are just single planes going in and often very briefly.

This is different.

So, what does this mean?

What it seems to be, given that the fact that on the same day two Russian planes did a very low overflight of a drilling platform in the Baltic Sea.

That Russia is testing NATO air defences and response times.

The EU's foreign affairs chief, Kayakalas, said it was a provocation, and that's the line of thinking basically that Russia is testing the response.

She said that the West must not show weakness in this regard.

So NATO has been trying to reinforce its defences on the eastern flank.

What is NATO doing?

How does NATO respond to this?

The Secretary General, Mark Rutter, said that NATO's response was quick and decisive.

Estonia has called for consultations with its NATO allies under Article 4.

Any NATO member state can have discussions in the North Atlantic Council, the main political decision-making body of NATO, when it deems, for example, that its security is threatened.

Article 4 is different, obviously, from Article 5, which is one of the big guns of the NATO agreement, which is basically an attack on one would be an attack on all.

Article 4 is definitely nowhere near that sort of stage.

Article 4 is also the article that Poland engaged NATO allies with when Russia sent more than 20 drones into its airspace last week.

And it shot them down.

Some of those drones were shot down, some of them crashed.

Those drones weren't sent on an attack on Poland.

No indication that they were actually trying to hit targets, but it was a further indication basically that Russia poses a threat and that NATO needs to respond by increasing its its own defences on the eastern flank.

Could responding mean firing at aircraft that breach NATO?

We've not seen any indication that NATO aircraft will fire on Russian aircraft.

That would be a considerable escalation if such a thing were to happen.

So it's very different shooting down, for example, a drone or a dummy drone as the ones that flew over Poland were.

So I don't think we're in that sort of territory at the moment.

Danny Eberhardt.

President Trump has announced changes to visas as part of an ongoing clampdown on immigration.

He's hiked up the fee of a temporary H-1B visa, widely used by U.S.

tech companies, from around $1,000 to $100,000 a year.

H-1Bs are for highly skilled foreign workers, and more than 70% are given to Indians.

Chinese workers also benefit.

But the Trump administration claims they're also being used to take jobs from American graduates.

President Trump signed the executive order in the White House with his aides.

One of the most abused visa systems in our current immigration system has been the H-1B non-immigrant visa program.

We need workers, we need great workers, and this pretty much ensures that that's what's going to happen.

I think, Sean, you agree with it?

Well, they're $100,000 per

year.

Train Americans, stop bringing in people to take our jobs.

That's the policy here.

The President has also introduced a new gold card visa with his face on it, which will see companies sponsor workers for a $2 million price tag.

Mr.

Trump said it will allow people of exceptional value to stay in the U.S.

One of the biggest problems we have is that people they go to the best schools and they do great and they get great marks and then they're thrown out of the country.

You're not allowed to stay.

This way a corporation will be able, sort of like a signing bonus in baseball or football, a corporation will be able to get them to stay in the country.

People will also be able to sponsor themselves for $1 million,

which will provide a fast-track option for wealthy foreigners who want to live and work in the U.S.

Our North America correspondent, Peter Bose, told me more about the H-1B visa.

This charge is going to kick in almost immediately from this weekend, midnight on Saturday, the new H-1B applications.

These are from people outside of the U.S.

seeking entry.

And it's going to happen quickly because this is a presidential proclamation, not a law passed by Congress.

So that means it takes effect on the date the President chooses.

And the administration says it's urgent to get this started to protect American workers, as we've just been hearing.

And the idea is that companies in this country will be encouraged to train graduates from American colleges, universities, rather than bringing in talent from overseas.

The tech sector was one of Donald Trump's biggest backers when he sought re-election.

How will the tech sector take this?

Well, there's a lot of concern within the tech industry, which was supportive of President Trump's re-election campaign.

And it is true that the U.S.

faces a growing shortage of talent in technology feels some of these companies struggling to fill roles in software development, especially AI, data science, that kind of thing.

These visas have helped to bridge the gap, really, between the talent gap in this country and what is on offer from overseas by allowing companies to hire the best talent from around the world.

And without them, many businesses may well experience slower growth.

There could be increased operational costs and some significant challenges in remaining competitive.

So, to fill that gap, I think we're going to see greater efforts enforced on them by these companies

to help to retrain their own employees to take on new roles, especially in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, retraining in the long run that may prove more cost-effective, but that's going to take time.

We used to talk about American green cards.

Donald Trump has now unveiled the gold card and there were pictures of it in the Oval Office.

It features a portrait of President Trump.

So it looks the part, but are corporations really going to stump up $2 million for

a visa for one person?

Or even an individual forking out $1 million dollars to fast-track their entry into the US.

Clearly, many corporations will not be in a position to do this for their employees, but I think some companies may see it as a worthwhile investment if they're seeking to attract and to retain, I think that's a key thing, to retain the best talent from overseas.

But it'll be a calculation that they'll have to make, long-term benefits versus the immediate cost of the program.

Now, the Trump administration hasn't revealed details, but it does seem to be convinced that there are enough companies and individuals prepared to pay these high fees to come to america in fact the commerce secretary howard luttnick has suggested that the program could raise over 100 billion dollars for the u.s treasury and in fact he's also said that as of june this year nearly 70 000 people individuals worldwide have registered their interest in the gold card program peter bowes meanwhile president trump claims to have struck a deal with his chinese counterpart xi jinping which would allow TikTok to continue operating in the US, the popular social media platform is facing a ban over national security concerns.

It was a major talking point on a phone call between the two leaders.

Our Beijing correspondent Laura Bicker reports.

This is only the second call between the two leaders since Donald Trump returned to office, and it appears to have laid the groundwork for a meeting next month.

The US President wrote on Truth Social that they'd made progress on a number of of important issues, including on the approval of a deal to keep TikTok operational in America.

But a summary of the call from Chinese state media did not confirm this agreement.

The report only said that President Xi would support consultations to properly resolve the TikTok issue.

Mr.

Xi also urged his US counterpart to refrain from unilateral trade restrictions.

There are concerns in Washington that TikTok is a national security issue and that Beijing could use it to influence American viewers.

Along with trade tariffs, it's become another source of tension between the two superpowers.

Officials from both sides met in Madrid this week and agreed a framework to sell TikTok's US operations to American investors.

But the details of any deal still remain vague.

Laura Bicker.

Here's another reminder to brush your teeth and floss regularly, because a a new study suggests poor oral hygiene could triple your risk of developing pancreatic cancer, one of the world's deadliest diseases.

Anna Aslam has the details.

Medical experts have long believed that people with poor oral hygiene are more vulnerable to diseases.

It's been linked to Alzheimer's and diabetes, and researchers had already identified three types of bacteria in the mouth that cause gum infections and in turn increase the risk of pancreatic cancer.

Now though, a study from the NYU School of Medicine has discovered another 24 species of bacterian fungi that effectively hitch a ride in swallowed saliva to the pancreas.

Researchers say the entire group of harmful oral microbes could triple the risk of developing cancer.

The team examined data from 900 Americans over 9 years and accounted for other factors known to increase cancer risk such as smoking, aging, and race.

They note that at this point their findings cannot confirm a direct cause and effect link, but rather a correlation.

However, they hope that studying oral microbiomes could help develop a tool that estimates individual risk and flags up those in need of pancreatic cancer screening.

And there's a simple way to help protect yourself.

Brush and floss regularly.

Anna Aslam.

The French President Emmanuel Macron has climbed up to the belfry of Notre Dame to officially reopen the cathedral's bell towers.

Later today, the public will be allowed into the towers for the first time since the Paris landmark was destroyed in a fire, and there are some brand new features, as Hugh Schofield reports.

You could visit the towers before the fire, but now everything is changed.

In the words of one curator, what we don't want anymore is just a long climb to a nice view.

The climb is certainly still there, 424 steps overall, but much of it is on a superb new double spiral staircase, especially constructed from oak, which rises inside the south tower.

It's a chance to see the interior of the belfry and the massive bells named Emmanuel and Marie, which ring out on special occasions.

On top of the tower, nearly 70 meters up, there's also still an incomparable view over Paris, but also an opportunity to look through a panel at the new roof beams, the so-called forest that replaces what was lost in the fire.

It's a paying visit, and numbers are limited to a thousand a day.

Booking is done online, and demand will be huge.

Hugh Schofield will be climbing those 424 steps later today.

Still to come.

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The United States shows no sign of ending its support for Israel and its war on Gaza.

The Trump administration is reportedly seeking congressional approval to sell the country around $6 billion worth of military equipment.

News of the proposed sale coincides with Israel's announcement that it will use what it called unprecedented force in its continuing assault on Gaza City.

Much of the world is deeply opposed to what Israel is doing in Gaza and the continued occupation of Palestinian territories.

The BDS movement believes international isolation is the best way to make a dent in the Israeli war chest, calling for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions.

Its co-founder, Omar Baghouti, spoke to Tim Franks.

Since the beginning of Israel's genocide in 2023 until now, the movement has grown exponentially.

Everyone knows today what's happening in the sports field, the calls for excluding Israel from all kinds of sports.

Now, this is being endorsed by key figures in the sports world.

In the cultural sphere, you just saw a few days ago, thousands of film artists, many of them in Hollywood, have pledged not to work with complicit Israeli film institutions, corporations, festivals, and so on, for the first time in history.

At the divestment level, we've seen some of the largest pension funds in the world, like the Norwegian Sovereign Fund, divesting from Israel bonds, a vote of no confidence in the Israeli economy, as well as divesting from many Israeli banks and corporations because of their involvement in the apartheid system, as even the Norwegians have called it, or the illegal occupation and settlements.

But there is a question as to how far a boycott should go.

And I mean, there was one particular example earlier this year where there was the Oscar-winning film No Other Land, which was produced by an Israeli and several Palestinians.

And I think most people who saw it, and indeed it got a lot of criticism from inside Israel for this, but most people who saw it around the world saw it as a devastating indictment of the occupation of Palestinians being forced off their land in the southern Hebron hills.

But BDS put out a statement saying that basically it couldn't back people sort of going to watch the film.

It didn't call for an outright boycott, but it did say that there is a risk of this film to quote, it's a rather contorted phrase, but normalizing normalization in Israel's regime of oppression.

I mean, you would have thought that it would sort of rather chime with the things that you are concerned about.

In the Arab region and in the Palestinian context, normalization means very quickly making something that is inherently abnormal appear deceptively normal.

So, any project that even may be against the occupation, let's say, but where the recognition of our basic inherent rights under international law are not recognized, that poses a real problem of dehumanizing us, as if we're not equal humans that deserve full equal rights to every other human.

Just to be clear about this, in order for there to be any project that involves Israelis at all, there needs to be a prior declaration from those Israelis to say that they uphold

the three UN payments.

It can be in any form.

And do you think that that should be extended internationally?

Because if people are considering doing projects or inviting, I don't know, speakers to their university campus or whatever, who aren't necessarily Israelis but who are Jews.

This doesn't apply.

Any kind of act that requires of Jews anything special, exceptional would be discriminatory.

BDS opposes all discrimination against all people, regardless of their identity, and this includes anti-Semitism, which we categorically reject.

Omar Baghouti from the Palestinian-led BDS movement.

The UN Security Council has voted to re-impose the sanctions on Iran that were in place before the 2015 nuclear deal.

Several countries have accused Iran of violating the agreement.

Khazra Nagib reports.

The vote at the UN Security Council effectively draws a line under the 2015 nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, a deal between Iran and five world powers that took three years to negotiate.

It suspended US, European, and UN sanctions against Iran in return for a considerable reduction in Iran's nuclear program.

In 2019, Iran abandoned the agreement, a year after then-President Donald Trump had done the same.

Since then, Iran has expanded its program at a rate that has alarmed the international community.

It has kicked out UN nuclear inspectors and has refused to account for more than 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, enough to build 10 nuclear weapons.

If all the UN sanctions return as a result of today's vote, it will be a calamity for Iran, which is already reeling from US sanctions and threats to war.

Kazra Naji from BBC Persian.

German trains used to be a watchword for efficiency and punctuality, but for many years now, that reputation has been lost with huge delays and great anger from passengers.

Now, Der Spiegel newspaper is reporting that Deutsche Bahn has been resorting to unorthodox methods to improve its record.

Serafin Reiber wrote the article.

In my investigation, it has come to light that

The reasoning behind this approach is to avoid further worsening to overall punctuality figures for the rail services in Germany.

A train is only classified in Germany as delayed if it arrives more than six minutes late.

If a train is cancelled entirely it is excluded from the statistics altogether and from Deutsche Bahn's perspective this means that a cancelled train is effectively treated as a punctual one.

And on Tuesday I came across a train that was scheduled to run from Munich to Hamburg and due to various issues it came to a halt in Cologne central station and the senior dispatcher then decided to cancel the train altogether and wrote in the system, train counseled from Cologne onwards to improve the statistics.

And that obviously caught my attention.

I started digging further, found other similar cases and realized that this madness is part of a system.

I think it's mostly done by bad management.

In some ways, Deutsche Bahn is kind of East Germany in its final days.

But of course we had the problem in Germany that the German government didn't spend enough money for years, which we can see in the infrastructure as well.

This is a very crazy way to run run a railway, but that's how we do it in Germany.

The Spiegel journalist Serafin Rieber Deutsche Bahn dismissed the claims in his article as incorrect and pointed out that it makes sense to cancel a late train so passengers can switch to one that's running on time.

If you are the type of owner that thinks your dog is pretty smart, you might want to listen to our next guest.

Researchers in Hungary have found that some dogs are able to group objects according to what they're used for, a kind of abstract thinking previously thought to be unique to humans.

Dr.

Claudia Fugasi from Elta University explained the findings to Oliver Conway.

We know that there's a group of dogs that have the ability to learn hundreds of toy names, and we wondered whether they would extend those labels because humans, that's what we do.

We extend the label, for example, mug to anything which can contain a liquid and we can drink coffee.

And we wondered whether this dog would do the same.

And so you divided the toys into ones that were used for pulling games like Tug of War or ones that were used for throwing games.

And what did you discover?

Exactly.

So we did that and we discovered, first of all, that they could learn the same label.

So all of the toys that were used for pulling and the owner would call them pull when playing with them, the toys were identified with the pull label and another group of toys were identified with the fetch label.

But then we gave the dogs a new group of toys that they'd never seen before and we asked the owners to play consistently with them either pull or fetch without saying any name.

And we found that the dogs were able to classify those items into the pull or fetch verbally identified categories when asked bring me a pool or bring me a fetch.

And so what does this tell you about the level of dogs intelligence?

Well I don't use the word intelligence because it's hard to measure and hard to define.

But this tells me that these dogs can do something that was considered typically human and also typically related to language learning.

And in the case of humans, it is debated how much language influences the way we think, the way we form categories.

I mean, this is a very first step in studying how dogs can categorize items and how dogs extend verbal labels.

And especially, this is a very limited group of dogs that have this talent.

But this at least tells us that this capacity is not only present in humans, then it can develop naturally in the life of a human family with the dogs.

Do you think dogs have picked up this skill through the generations because they have become used to the way humans talk and the way humans act?

No, I don't think so because this is an ability that is extremely rare.

If it was that the dogs have evolved in the human environment, then many more dogs would show the skill.

And it is not the case.

So, there's probably a bunch of factors.

We don't exclude that there might be a genetic background to it, we don't exclude that there might be developmental factors, maybe very early exposure to some specific types of talking to the dog or playing with the dog.

We still don't know what are the factors that make it emerge.

Dr.

Claudia Fugazzi from Elta University in Budapest.

It's more than 50 years since the release of the Jamaican film The Harder They Come, the first movie to look at the island's criminal subculture.

But it had gentler moments too, and the soundtrack introduced many people to reggae.

Now, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Susan Laurie Parks has written a new version for the theatre.

Vincent Dowd went to meet her.

In 1972, Jamaica, with almost no film industry, had a hit movie.

You can get it if

The Harder They Come was the first Jamaican film many people had even heard of.

The sometimes violent story starring Jimmy Cliff did not deal in tourist clichés.

You have any money left at all?

Don't worry about money, man.

After my record.

You sold out the record to Hilton for $20.

You don't have any more to get.

I only have $2 left.

Now, the story has come after a New York run to the Stratford East Theatre in London.

The same actor, Natie Jones, plays Ivan, who becomes entangled in crime but has other ambitions.

Hello, Kingston!

My name is Ivan,

and I'm gonna make a record, you know?

I'm gonna be a star of Funky Kingston.

Oh, yeah, I really like your style, Funky Kingston.

Susan Laurie Parks has reworked the story.

A major ambition is to make it less male-dominated with more focus on characters such as Ivan's girlfriend, Elsa.

Still set in the early 1970s in an era where, yeah, in a lot of cultures, the women were in the background, police, it was, were seen very differently.

Updating it, we have, I mean, I have a theory that if you lift one character, all characters will rise.

So that we're lifting up the story of Elsa.

I mean she's really the unsung hero and Daisy as well, his mother.

They're these touchstones if you will that he revisits.

He gets to experience true love which I think is a great thing to bring to the story.

The director in London is Matthew Zia.

He thinks the original film from the 70s was a response to the blaxploitation movies coming out of America.

It's full of machismo, it's full of bravado.

Actually, I don't think that works in the same way in 2025.

I mean, the relationship with the police is a very different thing now in a kind of post- or continual Black Lives Matter world.

So I think they're the questions that are being pushed through this work now.

When I was interviewed for the job, which is how these things come about, I said if I am privileged enough to get my hands on this production, I will bring an almost entirely Caribbean team of people together to make it because I think there's something about kind of personal relationship with the work.

I want everybody to care about it as much as I do.

The video designer, the lighting designer, the costume designer, the set designer, everybody.

I just think it means that people handle the work with a different degree of sensitivity and care and pride.

For many fans, the harder they come will always mean, above all, the songs on the soundtrack, which Susan Laurie and Matthew have expanded for London audiences.

This is such an inspiring bunch of actors and production team and working with Matthew, so inspiring.

So we got to that point.

An inspiring bunch inspires bunches.

And I was inspired to write a song for the, another song for the show.

Hunky Kingston, we've added by Tootson and May Tals, which are all coming out of the same period and time.

Got hard road to travel.

You can get it if you really want.

The harder they come, many rivers to cross, rivers of Babylon.

I mean, multi-generational Caribbean families bringing their children in their teens and their grandparents in their teens.

People were singing along with the songs.

That was really beautiful.

That report by Vincent Dowd.

And that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News podcast later.

If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.

Use the hashtag globalnewspod.

This edition was mixed by Holly Smith, and the producers were Anna Aslam and Wendy Urquert.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Alex Ritson.

Until next time, goodbye.

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