US government shutdown begins

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

Among criticism at 5 o'clock GMT on Wednesday, the 1st of October, these are our main stories.

In the US, a partial government shutdown comes into effect.

The UN Security Council approves a much larger international security force to combat Haiti's crippling gang violence.

And leaders of the European Union will discuss how to protect their countries from drone attacks during meetings in Denmark.

Also, in this podcast, the UN appeals to the Afghan Taliban to immediately restore telecommunications across the country, leaving people helpless.

We used to stay updated on news and technology through the internet.

We dreamed of finishing our education and helping our father financially, but now we all sit at home doing nothing.

We start in the US, where a partial government shutdown has just come into effect after Republicans and Democrats failed to agree a spending bill because of disagreements about cuts to healthcare.

In practice, this could mean everything from museums to courthouses closing, and millions of federal workers, from soldiers to air traffic controllers, either going on furlough or working without pay.

The arguments leading up to this moment have been fierce, with both sides vehemently blaming blaming each other for the stalemate.

First, speaking for the Republicans, Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

I'm hoping there are Democrats out there who are reasonable and understand what's at stake here.

And as they have articulated many times in the past, the costs associated to the American people with the government shutdown.

This is totally avoidable.

It is a decision they're going to have to make.

And if the government shuts down, it is on the Senate Democrats.

For the Democrats, here's Minority Leader Chuck Chuck Schumer.

If you want another indication of how serious Republicans are about funding the government, look no further than the deep fake AI video

the president tried to put up last night after our meeting when we were actually trying to fund the government.

His video was dumb.

It was childish.

It was petty.

It's something that a five-year-old would do, not a president of the United States, but it shows how unserious they are.

As you can hear, it got heated and President Trump even went as far as to threaten the Democrats with consequences if they didn't find a solution.

We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.

So how did this deadlock come about?

Our North America correspondent is Peter Bose.

Well, this is a long-running dispute between the Republicans and Democrats, and at the heart heart of this is a disagreement about cuts to healthcare, with the Republicans wanting this what it is now a short-term spending bill agreed as, as they describe it, as a clean bill without any additional issues like health care added.

But the Democrats are insisting that healthcare benefits that are a part of Obamacare, that are due to expire at the end of the year, should be extended as part of any deal.

So there's a philosophical, there's a political disagreement here over spending that goes to the root of really why this is dragging on so long.

But there will be some categories of workers who will be asked to go to work.

I'm thinking of security staff at airports.

Go to work but not be paid during the shutdown.

Could you dive a bit deeper into the practical implications, how this could affect everyday citizens?

Well, let's take the airport example.

If you're flying, and we know from the example of the shutdown about six years ago, a similar situation.

And airport workers are the security workers, these are the screening workers that everyone has to confront as they pass through security at an airport.

They are government workers, they are essential workers.

And what happened last time was as the shutdown continued day after day, week after week, many became disillusioned, some suffered

difficulties in terms of their own finances, Some suffered from stress and depression and left their jobs, which meant that there was a shortage of workers, which resulted in long queues at airports.

So that's just one example.

There are various other aspects of government services, like the federal parks, for example, not essential services, and they would close immediately.

And just briefly, before you go, politically, I guess this will depend on who voters blame.

Yes, and it's interesting looking at some of the surveys of public opinion that most seem to say that they will blame the Republicans for this, although there isn't a huge distinction between Republicans and Democrats, and a lot of people say they blame both parties.

Our North America correspondent Peter Bose reporting.

A ban on internet services in Afghanistan has led to huge disruption, encompassing banking, health, and emergency services.

The UN is now appealing to the ruling Taliban to restore nationwide communications.

The BBC has spoken to some people about the impact of internet shutdowns on them.

We voiced up what they had to say.

Zabi is an English teacher who set up an education centre which had to go online when the Taliban authorities imposed their restrictions.

I had men and women in my classes, up to 70 or 80 students at a time.

My students were happy, and our lessons went smoothly.

They were all preparing for the IELTS.

That's a standardized English test.

And all their learning depended on the internet, the research, the practice tests, the official exams, everything.

This young woman, Fahima, also said that she felt helpless.

My two sisters and I were studying online.

We used to stay updated on news and technology through the internet.

But now we cannot keep up or learn new skills.

We dreamed of finishing our education and helping our father financially.

But now we all sit at home doing nothing.

Our chief international correspondent Lise Douset has covered Afghanistan extensively.

People are trying to make sense of what seems to everyone, including the majority of Afghans, an inexplicable decision.

How would authorities anywhere in the world cut their whole country off?

And so, of course, the rumours are swirling.

What is this really about?

When the reports first emerged not long ago that they were cutting off the fiber optic, the speedier internet connections in the provinces because of morality, because the accusation was that Afghans are accessing pornography, Many said, oh, but they wouldn't do that in Kabul because that would be against their interest because they wouldn't be able to function as a leadership.

And now that it has come to Kabul, there's a lot of discussion going on.

None of it has been confirmed.

We don't know to be true.

But what do we know to be true is that there are reports of growing tension among Taliban leaders.

More than two years ago, when I was last in Kabul, one of the founding members of the Taliban, Willa Zaif, said to me on the record that 95% of Talibs did not not agree with the harshest of edicts.

They're conservative, but they believe that Islam gives women the right to be educated and to pursue opportunities, to pursue develop their potential.

Fast forward to now, Afghans in desperation are saying, what is it going to take to be able to bring Afghanistan into the modern world, to allow girls to be educated, to develop the economy, to allow more engagement with the international community, to remove the sanctions?

Afghans know that this turbulent history of a Soviet intervention for 10 years, which didn't work, US-led international intervention, which didn't work.

It has to come from within Afghanistan.

The rumor, the speculation is that this is not just about morality, this is about control.

To be able to stop any kind of communication among Taliban leaders, to stop any possible communication between Talib leaders and the outside world, to maintain control for the clerics of Kandahar.

But I think even with this interruption in communications, I think we will start finding out out more if this was a power play, whether this is a move to consolidate control, to stop any threats to their power, or whether indeed this is something about just simply purifying the society of any immorality.

It's hard to believe it's just the latter.

Our chief international correspondent, Lise Douset.

Official military forces have been fighting a losing battle against gangs in Haiti for four years, during which time parts of the country have descended into lawlessness and life there has become characterized by daily violence and death.

With no solution in sight, the UN Security Council has pledged a new security force, much larger than previous missions and with greater powers.

Stephanie Prentice, tell me more.

For some time, it has been too dangerous to enter Haiti, so it is hard, as you said, to know exactly what's happening on the ground.

But everything we do know is bad.

So when we get reports from witnesses, their stories are of gruesome, barbaric acts in the capital, Port-au-Prince in particular.

Gangs control the streets, violence is rife, sexual violence is rife, kidnapping is common, and basic amenities like electricity, clean drinking water are scarce.

So the violence there has escalated significantly since a number of the gangs joined forces in early 2024 under gang leader Jimmy Barbecue Charizie.

Since then, accounts of extreme brutality against women, children, even babies have increased.

Daily life for many is living in poverty, and that's actually something a UN report in 2024 said was a catalyst for these gangs, recruiting child soldiers.

And they estimated that children joining gangs was up seventy percent.

So fast forwarding to Nalan, what are the UN proposing?

Well, Haiti still has a skeleton government, a sort of transitional council, which is internationally recognised, and it's been begging foreign governments for help.

An earlier mission of 2,500 international troops actually ended up being around 600 Kenyan soldiers going in earlier this year as a sort of support force with a relatively small operational budget.

And it just struggled to establish a strong presence.

So now the UN has approved this bigger force.

It's 5,500 troops with a more direct objective.

It's called the Gang Suppression Force and it will have new powers like the right to operate independently from Haitian police and to use more force on the ground.

Now this plan is US-backed and speaking at the United Nations the US ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz said he was confident.

And briefly would it work?

Well if we look at the success of that last mission the challenges those Kenyan forces face like getting equipment in mobilizing effectively in a volatile region, they still remain, and the capital is estimated to be around 90% gang-controlled.

But the new mission does reflect a greater focus on Haiti by the international community, a recognition of just how out of control that situation has become, and a greater sense of urgency in resolving it.

Stephanie Prentiss reporting.

Next, security is tight ahead of a meeting of European leaders later in Denmark.

Several countries have sent support to counter drones disrupting the summit in Copenhagen.

Several recent airspace breaches have sparked warnings that Europe must do more to defend itself against hybrid attacks.

From Copenhagen, here's our Europe correspondent Jessica Parker.

Europe has been left rattled by a series of drone incursions.

In Denmark, last week, unexplained sightings led to the temporary closure of airports, including at Copenhagen.

Suspicion has fallen on the Kremlin, something the Russian embassy here described as absurd speculation.

Danish ministers have spoken of hybrid attacks being part of a new reality.

Now, leaders from across Europe are due to descend on the capital for two summits over two days, so security has been stepped up.

All civilian drone flights have been banned for the week.

Additionally, surveillance and anti-drone technology has been sent from countries including France, Germany, and Sweden.

Today, EU leaders will discuss support for Ukraine, sanctions on Russia, and European defence.

While there is much talk of a so-called drone wall, crucial details on how such a thing could be built, financed, or coordinated are far from being decided.

Jessica Barker reporting.

Still to come on this podcast.

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A negotiation team from Hamas are in Doha discussing the peace deal put forward by the U.S.

and Israel, alongside officials from Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar, who are trying to persuade the group group to accept the plan.

Gaza though continues to be bombarded with Israel's offensive aimed at the total destruction of Hamas and conditions there have been described by the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as a living hell.

Dr.

Mohamed Abu Muhasib is a senior figure with the medical charity MSF.

After working in Gaza for two years, he took a rare chance to be evacuated.

Caroline Hawley met up with him in Dublin, where now safe and fed, he was able to reflect on his time working in increasingly dire conditions, on the dilemmas he faced, and why he eventually left.

I don't still believe that I am here.

It's very strange that there is people living normal life, there is life, and I'm not used to life.

And it will take time to get used to that.

There is life still.

It's the civilians, the population, me, my friends, my colleagues, my neighbours.

They are not Hamas, and we are the ones who were killed and injured and running from one place to another and starving.

It's hard to imagine a bigger contrast between where Dr.

Mohammed has come from and the peace, the birdsong, the beauty of this park in central Dublin, where we're talking just a few days after Dr.

Mohammed arrived here in Ireland.

There is no more health system.

There is no more health system in Gaza.

The hospitals you enter, you smell the blood.

You know, it's not anymore hospitals.

You know, hospitals are a holy place.

I mean, it's a very sterile place.

And I hope that one day, I mean, you can have an access to enter during the war to see what's going on in these hospitals in Gaza.

What was the hardest decision you had to take as a doctor?

Every hour, hard decision.

You know, it's which patient to admit, not to admit.

And you tell me, okay, let's admit children, but it's mostly children.

Which one to admit?

Which one would you prefer to take care of, and the other one to find a way to refer him, which there is no space to refer.

I never imagined that I will starve.

I had the money, but I was not able to buy nothing in the market, and I starved.

Literally, I starved, and I had abdominal pain and stomach ache because I was starving and I couldn't find food to buy.

That's when I said it's enough.

Dr.

Mohammed said he was also frightened every single day.

This was gunfire close to the MSF office.

But the biggest fear was being caught in an airstrike.

In Gaza, you don't feel safe.

Every time I was going out in the street, I was

very terrified.

I was looking beside me, okay, this guy, maybe he's wanted.

Maybe they will target him, they will kill everyone around him.

What went through your mind when you realized what Hamas had done on October the 7th?

In any world war, to attack civilians, to kidnap civilians, whatever, but it is not acceptable at all.

I thought that there will be a huge retaliation.

It will take a few months, two to three months, and then things will end, but it didn't end.

And this was beyond what I expected.

We didn't expect that we will leave our homes.

Dr.

Mohammed showed me a video taken by a friend as drones hovered over the head of his home in Gaza City.

So this is the tanks.

Well, the tanks, you know, this, you can see the tank

prints going and they parked here because they destroyed the fence from the other side.

He says the Israeli army took it over as a military base and it was then looted by local people.

I lived in different places.

I lived in a tent, I lived in the hospital, I lived in an MSF office, I lived in a...

There was a restaurant.

I was living in this old electricity room, so I put my mattress and

luckily he'd managed to get his family out of Gaza.

But a year and a half without seeing them was torture.

Do you feel you'll return?

You'll be able to go back?

That's a very difficult question to answer.

To go back for what?

I mean, they destroyed everything.

What's the hardest part about leaving?

To leave, leaving all your memories because we were not allowed to take nothing with us.

This is the condition of the evacuation and the order from the Israeli side to the people who want to evacuate not to take any the sand you're not allowed to take.

Next, scientists in the US are developing a technique that could someday use almost any cell in the body as the starting point of life.

They've made early-stage human embryos by manipulating DNA taken from skin cells and fertilizing them with sperm.

In the future, it could help people overcome infertility and allow same-sex couples to have a genetically related child.

Professor Richard Anderson is from the University of Edinburgh.

Making eggs or sperm from cells that aren't naturally born to become those cells has been a holy grail in medicine for a long time.

And actually, this is a significant step towards doing that, which would allow people who don't have eggs of their own, perhaps, to be able to make them and use them for treatments and have children of their own.

So yes, it's an impressive step forward.

Fergus Walsh has the details.

This is astonishing science, which rewrites the rules of fertility.

It's still very early stage, but could have huge implications in years to come.

In the laboratory, the nucleus from a human skin cell was placed inside a donor egg that had its genetic information removed.

So far, this is the same technique that was used to create Dolly the Sheep, the first cloned mammal.

But now for the innovation.

The team at Oregon Health and Science University manipulated the nucleus to discard half of the 23 pairs of chromosomes.

They've called this technique mitomyosis.

82 of these eggs were created.

Then sperm was used to fertilize the eggs so that half the chromosomes and half the DNA would come from each parent, as in natural conception.

9% of the eggs became embryos after fertilization.

There were lots of errors and abnormalities in the process, so it's unsafe to be used in the clinic, but scientists say it is impressive.

The consequences of this research are profound.

If perfected in a decade or more, it could allow same-sex couples to have a child genetically related to both partners.

It could help those made infertile by cancer or old age.

But it will raise ethical concerns about how far science should stretch the boundaries of human reproduction.

Fergus Walsh with that report.

Official figures show Switzerland's glaciers have lost a quarter of their total volume over the past decade.

There are warnings the rapid melting will lead to more rock falls and landslides across the Alps.

Imogen Folks reports from the Swiss city of Bern.

The United Nations named 2025 the year of the glacier, hoping to draw attention to their importance to our environment.

But the latest figures reveal that Switzerland's glaciers lost 3% of their volume this year alone.

A winter with little snow, followed by an exceptionally hot June, meant the glaciers began to melt earlier than usual.

A relatively cool and wet July saved the bigger glaciers, but a thousand smaller Swiss glaciers have already disappeared.

Scientists say the link between global warming and the thawing ice is clear.

They warn that losing the glaciers brings big risks, from a loss of fresh water to the growing instability of the mountains themselves.

Finally, the debut of an AI-generated actress has drawn criticism across the entertainment industry.

After the British-based studio Particle 6 played a parody video which featured her at the Zurich Summit, an industry strand of the Zurich Film Festival.

The sketch is about a production team making an AI TV show.

Who did it cast?

Tilly Norwood, 100% AI generated.

She'll do anything I say.

I'm already in love.

Girl Next Door vibes.

Like if a Sunday Roast went to drama school and got BAFTA optimized.

Three seasons and a podcast.

That voice at the end is Tilly Norwood, an actress who who doesn't exist.

So is she about to be the next big thing, or is this really all a big stunt?

The newsroom's Ira Khan spoke to Rachel Wright.

Tilly Norwood is the world's first AI actor.

She's essentially a bunch of code that has this wavy brunette hair, perfectly proportioned face, and your average female height.

Her creator is marketing her as the next Scarlett Johansson, but she's reminiscent as more of a girl next door.

She has her own Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube account.

Her Instagram has over 36,000 followers.

So, how would this AI-generated actress Tilly get a job as an actress in films?

Well, we don't really know, and that's sort of the point.

Tilly was effectively born this weekend at the Zurich Film Festival.

Her creator, who's an actor and technologist, Elene van der Waalt, created her using her own AI production company.

We've never had an AI actor before, so it is unprecedented.

But AI is not a new thing in Hollywood.

It helped fine-tune Adrian Brody's Hungarian accent in The Brutalist.

It de-aged actors like Harrison Ford in the Indiana Drone sequel.

So for Tilly, after she was unveiled at the film festival, her creator says that many talent agents have been in contact with her and are interested in signing AI's first creation.

Particle 6, the company where Tilly was made, now has this offshoot called Shikoa, which is here to represent the next generation of AI talent.

They're actually looking for 40 AI stars who they want to work across TV, production and podcasts.

So we have the actors, we have these agents who are interested.

Tilly Norwood has already made some clips and skits.

But how we manage to get this on actual television and cinema screens,

that's still to be determined.

And surely this will put real actors out of work.

So what are the real human actors saying about it?

Well, they're almost all unhappy.

And the backlash is, of course, as you said, coming from actors whose jobs AI actors could replace.

They raise a bunch of important issues.

They talk about hundreds of women whose likeness are used to create actors like Tilly Norwood.

Why would those people just not instead be hired themselves?

And we have to also think about how this is coming off the back of two years ago when AI protections were a big part of the Hollywood labor strikes.

Many are also saying that AI cannot replace these creative fields that require a human element, a human touch to bring a movie or a show or bring certain emotions to life.

But ultimately, it's the audience who decides.

Ira Khan reporting.

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 episode or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

And you can also find us on X at BBC World Service.

And you can use the hashtag Global NewsPod.

This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll, and the editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Uncle Desan.

Until next time, goodbye.

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