Four more hostages' bodies returned to Israel

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This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Alex Ritson, and in the early hours of Wednesday, the 15th of October, these are our main stories.

Hamas hands over four more bodies of Israeli hostages, but its failure to return the others causes anger.

We also follow a freed Palestinian as he returns to Gaza looking for his home and family.

Donald Trump says a $20 billion financial bailout for Argentina depends on his ally President Ballet remaining in power.

Also in this podcast.

There's a huge buzz in the city about it.

I mean, you can see the Parthenon from most areas of Athens.

People are queuing really early in the morning to get the sunrise through the columns and things like that.

So it's stunning.

The beacon of Greek civilization, the Parthenon, is free of scaffolding for the first time in decades.

Israel says it has received four more bodies of dead hostages from Gaza as part of the latest ceasefire deal with Hamas.

There are still 20 to be returned under the agreement.

Israel has said it is reducing the flow of aid into the territory because Hamas is taking too long to return the dead.

President Trump has warned the group it would be disarmed by force if it failed to do so itself.

Barbara Platasher is in Jerusalem.

Hamas had handed back four bodies of the dead hostages on Monday, along with all of the living hostages, which is part of the deal.

But Israel had been expecting more than that.

There are 28 dead hostages, and so Israel has accused Hamas of violating the terms of the ceasefire and began to twist its arm, really, said that it would restrict aid into Gaza unless Hamas complied.

And so then President Trump weighed in and on social media said that Hamas was not keeping its promise of returning the dead.

And then shortly after that, we had the Red Cross suddenly in the dead of night in Gaza at a compound picking up more bodies.

So Hamas has handed over four more bodies.

And the security situation generally in Gaza is pretty uneasy.

Yes, it is.

So Hamas has really moved into the security vacuum that the Israeli forces left when they partially pulled out of Gaza.

Their fighters are on the streets of the cities, and they are not turning their guns on Israel.

They are targeting rival clans.

These are gangs associated with clans that were strong rivals before the war, and they've had clashes before, and now Hamas is reasserting its control.

It accuses them of collaborating with Israel.

So we've had some really deadly clashes over the weekend.

I think more than two dozen people were killed, including Hamas fighters.

And then in Hanyunis, that was in Gaza City, in Hanyunis, another gang or clan handed over their weapons, seeing that that was probably the best course for preventing more violence.

And what's going on at the border crossings?

Well, two border crossings are open, according to UN officials, for bringing aid in, and there has been scale-up in aid, not yet the 600 trucks a day that is meant to happen according to the Trump plan.

So the UN has been calling for all of the border crossings to open, including one in northern Gaza that was closed when Israel started its offensive in Gaza city.

And the Rafah, which is the key border crossings at the southern end of the strip into Egypt, there were plans to open it.

I've seen reports that it would happen on Wednesday.

I'm not sure how solid they were, but there were plans to open them quite soon, and that would not just be about more aid coming in, it would also be about Palestinians in Gaza who need urgent medical care getting out.

Barbara, last question.

You've been watching this for a long time.

Is the peace still fraying?

I'm not surprised.

I think that there are going to be many points where you ask me that question again in the next weeks and months, because there are so many things that are difficult to work through, so many obstacles that have always been there.

Just the whole question of Hamas disarming, for example, demilitarizing Gaza, the Israelis pulling back all the way to the border of Gaza and maintaining the border zone there, which Hamas and the Palestinian factions object to.

I mean, there are just so many things, fundamental issues, that have to be worked through and that weren't spelled out in Mr Trump's plan.

There was unbridled joy when the remaining living hostages held by Hamas returned to Israel on Monday.

At the same time, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees were also released by Israel.

They too had emotional reunions with their families.

Lucy Williamson has worked with freelancers in Gaza to compile this report about one freed detainee's experience, Shadi Abu Sido, as he returned home.

They told him there was nothing to come back to, Shadi said.

That his house was gone and all his family were dead.

For Shadi Abu Sido, after 20 months in Israeli detention, the arms of his wife were

The sight of his children, too much to take in.

After the lies of an Israeli intelligence officer had broken him, he said, this was the moment he came alive again.

It was an indescribable moment.

Psychological shock.

After all this destruction, after all these martyrs, my family was still alive.

He'd been lying when he told me.

He killed your family, we killed your children.

His words were stuck in my head when I saw them.

Shadi arrived back in Gaza yesterday, one of almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners exchanged for Israeli hostages under the first phase of Donald Trump's peace plan.

A photojournalist himself, he was filmed by TV crews taking his first steps back on home soil, looking lethargic and drained.

Today we filmed him again, a different man.

Shadi said an Israeli officer showed him proof his family house had been bombed.

The prison service said they operated in line with the law and were not aware of any such incidents taking place.

Shadi also accuses Israeli forces of physical abuse, beginning with his detention at Shifa Hospital while reporting there in March last year.

He tied me up naked and started beating me.

I have broken ribs.

They healed the wrong one.

That was the first type of torture they did to me.

They kept me naked for more than ten hours in the middle of winter.

We put his allegations to the Israeli army, which said it needed more information and that it obeyed Israeli and international law.

This morning, Shaddi woke in terror at 5 a.m.

The war around him has stopped, but his own battle for peace and security has just begun.

Lucy Williamson.

Another man trying to make the transition back to normal life is Omri Miran, who was seized by Hamas from a kibbutz on the 7th of October 2023.

Left behind were his wife and two young daughters.

Omri's brother-in-law, Moshe Lovey, told my colleague Clive Myri about the family's reunion.

We embraced each other.

I told them

at first I didn't have any words, to be honest, but I told them how much I'm eventually how much I'm happy.

Yeah, I cried a little, I will admit.

I think those were tears that I held back for two years.

And I will cherish that moment for the rest of my life.

A family man,

the house husband,

and it's a role he loved the most, and you could see it yesterday.

How he played with the girls, how he interacted with them immediately.

That's the first thing he wanted to do, just to play with them, be a father again.

He missed two birthdays,

Alma's birthdays.

Those were the only birthdays she had in this world until now, because he's only two and a half years old.

Yesterday we showed him, my sister showed him a video we prepared as a family of Roninama growing during those two years.

It was important to us that he watches

those critical moments he missed.

We wanted him to come to the first meeting with the understanding that they look different,

but also with the understanding that they went through so much without him.

But there is a future ahead, those happy moments

he missed.

There will be more happy moments in the future.

I can't begin to imagine what it must have been like to see that first video of him in captivity.

We saw a man who is deprived of his liberty

of his humanity

who is under duress, suffering,

possibly starving,

and him delivering a speech he would never deliver

if it wasn't at at gunpoint.

And now, the future, what do you think that holds?

I think the first priority for Umri and all the hostages who return is to close this chapter.

And right now there are still 24 deceased hostages in captivity that Hamas has yet to release.

And learning from other hostages who returned in the past, until this chapter is completely closed and we can truly move forward,

I don't don't think you'll be able to move forward truly.

Moshe Lovey, speaking to my colleague Clive Myri.

On a recent edition of this podcast, we heard from the head of the UK Space Command who said that Russia was trying to interfere with British satellites on a weekly basis.

He said they're making attempts to jam military ones and have also been stalking the satellites to find out more about what they're doing.

It was an intriguing warning and a reminder of how space may be seen as a battleground in any future war.

So what might it look like and what kind of defense can occur in space?

Evan Davis has been speaking to Neil Buchanan, the chief executive of a company called Lodestar Space, that is developing software for robotic systems to defend and repair satellites in orbit.

I think that right now we are seeing the start of space becoming that warfighting domain.

And what we're seeing other countries work on are kind of the initial parts of saber rattling, being able to show this is what I can do, poking vulnerabilities.

Right now, that threat is around about things like jamming, close flybys.

I think it's just the beginning.

These things can pretty easily be destroyed, can't they, in space?

You can send something up, can't you?

Fire a gun.

There's something else up there.

The trajectories are presumably fairly predictable.

Bam,

you've taken it out.

With air, something drops out of the sky.

With a submarine, it sinks.

With space, these things turn into projectiles.

They fly in different orbits.

They start to spread out like a cloud.

That can cause harm to other satellites.

So there's a very different way of thinking about tactics and strategy in space where you want to be able to prevent any of these kinds of shots being fired in the first place.

I think that's the really key part of thinking about what the future of space warfare might look like.

We're talking about actions that are pretty much in the gray zone, where things are deniable.

I think that's where we see this much more closely aligned to the intelligence community activities that we've never seen before.

Okay, now tell us about what you can do in principle to defend satellites in space and defend their capabilities.

What we're trying to do as a company is actually create bodyguards.

We're making orbital bodyguards to protect and defend autonomously really high-value assets in space.

At the very baseline, this is about putting a doorbell camera on top of a satellite so that you can actually attribute blame to who's actually doing stuff.

That's level one.

Being able to go beyond that and starting to actually show I can move and block and do things like that.

That takes in another level.

But I think the key part about what we're doing is actually putting kind of the brain of a space fighter pilot on board a satellite, being able to do these maneuvers, not with someone controlling it on the ground, but someone actually on a satellite itself.

An actual brain that can perceive a threat, figure out what it's going to do next.

An artificial intelligence brain we're talking about.

Not sending

little people onto fighter jet-type spacecraft and fighting it out there.

And sort of laser fighting and that kind of thing.

That's still a long, that's a long way away from where we are.

It's where things are going in the future.

Again, there's only so much I can confirm publicly, but I think that what we've seen being done by other nations and other capabilities being tested, there's a lot up for grabs here.

We're at that saber-rattling point.

Where we go next is being able to not just see what's going on, but do something about it.

This could be stuff that's done at afar, this could be stuff that's done up close.

The key part is that you have a brain, you have the intelligence to be able to decide when to do something and when not to do something.

Eila Buchanan.

Still to come in this podcast.

It's not kind of the focus of the session.

You know, you're there, you're having a great time, you're singing, but you know that these people are also experiencing what you're experiencing.

Treating postnatal depression with singing lessons.

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President Trump has praised his Argentine counterpart, Javier Millay, after meeting him at the White House.

Mr.

Trump didn't shy away from throwing his support behind Mr.

Millay, a right-wing populist, ahead of midterm congressional elections in Argentina.

The U.S.

President said that a victory for his political soulmate would be very important and that President Millay's chances would improve after the the U.S.

agreed a $20 billion currency swap with Argentina's central bank.

At the meeting in the White House, the U.S.

Treasury Secretary Scott Besant explained why the Trump administration made this offer.

Many governments in Latin America went center-right and the U.S.

ignored them.

We are not going to ignore our allies.

We're using our economic strength to create peace and it is much better to form an economic bridge with our allies than have to shoot at narco gunboats.

So we think that this is an opportunity for the Argentinian people and the President of Malay is the one to do it.

Our South America correspondent Ioni Wells gave us her analysis.

Donald Trump made no secret about the fact that he sees this $20 billion currency swap with Argentina as a move that will potentially, in his view, bolster Javier Malay's prospects in the upcoming midterm elections.

Now Javier Millais himself isn't up for election.

These are congressional elections, but there are a lot of seats in both houses of Congress that are up for grabs.

And this matters to Javier Millais because if he doesn't gain more seats or if he indeed loses seats, then that could make it a lot harder to pass economic reforms, some of his agenda that he wants to push through.

He's already had some significant vetoes overturned by Congress.

Congress in the last couple of months as a result of not having a majority there.

Now Donald Trump said that victory for Javier Millais was something that was important but also I think gave a sort of veiled threat really to Argentine voters saying that US support for the Argentine economy would depend on election results, depend on Javier Millais being elected and in his words not having socialist candidates elected.

Whether or not that really makes a difference though to ordinary Argentines I'm not so sure.

I think polls suggest that Javier Millet's popularity has dipped in recent months.

Firstly, because there are suggestions that people are tiring of some of his austerity measures, the sharp cuts that he's implemented, but also suggestions too, that people are not happy with the fact there have been various corruption scandals that have rocked his party.

Indeed, after this meeting between President Trump and President Millay, the peso actually fell, suggesting that investors aren't also convinced that this support package will necessarily make a huge difference, especially because Trump has seemingly hinged it on whether or not Javier Millais can gain more political support.

Ioni Wells.

The Bergruen Institute Prize for Philosophy and Culture is given to a thinker who's helped people find wisdom and direction in their lives.

This year's award has gone to Professor Michael Sandel, the Harvard philosopher.

He's written a book about the negative side of something most people think is a good thing, meritocracy.

Professor Sandel thinks it could have contributed to the rise of populism, as he told my colleague Owen Bennett-Jones.

The book is called The Tyranny of Merit, which most people find

puzzling, surprising.

We normally think of merit as a good thing.

If I need surgery, I want a well-qualified surgeon to perform it.

That's merit, being well-qualified for the job.

So how can merit become a kind of tyranny?

I think it has become that.

If we look at over recent decades, the divide between winners and losers has been deepening, poisoning our politics and setting us apart.

This has partly to do with widening inequalities of income and wealth, but it's not only that.

I think it's also to do with the changing attitudes towards success that have accompanied the widening inequalities.

Those who've landed on top have come to believe that their success is their own doing, the measure of their merit, and that they therefore deserve the bounty the market bestows upon them, and by implication, that those left behind, those who struggle, must deserve their fate too.

This way of thinking about success brings out the dark side of meritocracy.

It's corrosive of the common good because it leads to hubris among the winners and humiliation among the losers.

And I think this is a big part of what's provoked the angry populist backlash against elites.

Uh-huh.

But I mean, you are the archetypal winner.

I mean, you're a Harvard professor and just won this enormous prize and are known all over the place for your high intelligence.

So you don't look down on people just because you feel like a winner, do you?

I don't.

But put it this way, the diploma divide has become one of the deepest divides in our politics.

There's a sense among many working people that credentialed elites, academic elites, look down on them, don't respect the work they do, don't honor the dignity of work.

So I think everyone who's landed on top needs to avoid our tendency, and I'll say our tendency, to meritocratic hubris, not to forget the luck and good fortune that help us on our way, not to forget our indebtedness to those who make our achievements possible.

This comes at a time when the Trump administration is trying to change the nature of American universities, thinking that they are full of liberals and that it's not fair and it's not right and that their side of the argument doesn't get a fair shout on the campuses.

First of all, could you just tell us what's the current state of the conflict between the administration and your university, Harvard?

So I think that Harvard, my university, should resist this attempt, which is not to say that we don't need to make improvements, particularly with regard to

serving the public good.

I think what's opened the way for Trump's attacks is that a large portion of the public has lost confidence in American higher education, at least, as an instrument of the public good.

If all we do or what we mainly do is equip young people who manage to win admission to get good jobs and lucrative careers, then I think it's going to be hard to claim public support.

We need really to be instruments of the public good, not just of private privilege.

Professor Michael Sandell talking to Owen Bennett Jones.

A three-year study has found that specially designed singing classes can help mothers with postnatal depression.

Researchers at King's College London say the classes could be cost-effective at a time when many mental health services are stretched.

Our health reporter, Jim Reed, has been to see one of the classes in action.

At a children's centre in South London, a dozen mums are sitting together in a circle with babies on their laps.

The singing all starts with a simple call and response.

Everything here from the songs to the layout of the room has been designed to help those at risk of postmatal depression.

Other baby classes are great to meet mums but it doesn't have the same sort of calming influence especially when you've had issues with anxiety or stress.

This is really nice when mums to come together, when mums out to be improved things to relate and sing and seems very healing.

So if you come to a Breathe Melodies for Mums session it's not your usual mum and baby singing group.

It's not nursery rhymes.

Yvonne Farkarsen is the founder of Breathe Arts Health Research, the non-profit behind the idea.

This is an intervention that is very much focused on the mental health and well-being of the mother.

Practically how is it different?

How do you design that in a way to address that particular need?

So, for example, we choose a group size of about 10 to 12 women, so that creates a good sense of community.

We sing songs in multiple languages, in four-part harmonies.

The reason we sing in rounds is to encourage eye contact amongst mothers.

So, through singing, we're getting them to make that kind of social connection.

The organisers say these classes don't have to replace therapy or medication, but they can be an option for some when waiting times for other support can be lengthy.

Hi, my name's Holly, and this is Eti.

For me, the hardest part was actually pregnancy.

Post-birth, I was actually a lot better than I thought I would be, but I did feel very vulnerable and very anxious and quite lonely.

I'd never heard of anything like this, and after the very first session, I walked in and I was like, oh, I'm safe here.

Yeah, it did make things a lot easier.

The project is now part of a major study to research how arts interventions might improve health.

My name is Rebecca Bend and I'm a postdoctoral research associate at King's College London.

So by postnatal depression we mean mothers who are experiencing symptoms of low mood, sadness, feelings of guilt or worthlessness, and this can even start in pregnancy and continue on.

Dr.

Beans and her colleagues followed 200 mothers with those symptoms, comparing those assigned to the singing course with those offered more typical support, like play classes.

What we saw was that the mothers and their babies who participated in the singing intervention experienced a really nice and steady decline in their depressive symptoms.

And more importantly, what we found was that that actually lasted up to six months.

So not only did they experience immediate effects, but they also had long-lasting antidepressant effects.

The study showed the dropout rate from the singing course was much lower, and researchers believe the songs and the skills were brought home afterwards.

Jay is here with her son, Ezra.

Just being able to be with people

who you know are also kind of struggling, that's not kind of the focus of the session.

You know, you're there, you're having a great time, you're singing, but you know that these people are also experiencing what you're experiencing.

That report from Jim Reed.

And finally, to Athens in Greece, where visitors are being treated to a site not witnessed in two decades, an unobstructed scaffolding freeview of the Parthenon Temple.

It's one of the most recognisable buildings from the ancient world, but for the past twenty years the western façade has been hidden for restoration work.

Now, for a short time only, it can be seen in all its glory.

For those who can't make it, we got a local guide to give us a quick tour.

Hello, my name is Ioanna.

I'm an official guide in Athens, and I am now with my group in front of Parthenon.

That after so many years, we can see it again without a scaffolding.

It will only be for a month, but it is really something not to miss.

It's amazing.

As we see it just with the sky behind it and no scaffoldings all around it.

Magnificent view.

And everybody who's here, there are lots of people here, all of them very, very happy about it.

Evan Davis has been finding out more from Rebecca Sweetman, a professor of ancient history and archaeology at the British School in Athens.

First of all, it's a stunning monument.

It's a brilliant innovation in terms of the architecture itself.

So it was the brainchild of the Athenian statesman Pericles.

It has these architectural innovations put into the temple that really hadn't been seen before in terms of this kind of curvature of the stylobate.

The three corner columns on each side are a little bit closer together.

And there's a bulging in some of the columns.

So it doesn't appear to be squished from a distance.

So it's a kind of optical refinement in the temple.

And the other thing was that it wasn't just a temple to Athena, who was of course the patron goddess of Athens, but it was a monument to the greatness of Athena, a monument of the greatness of the Athenians and the Greeks altogether.

And as such, it just absolutely sang to the greatness of these people in terms of the architecture, in terms of the sculpture, and the innovation of the whole place.

Do you know why it has to have scaffolding on?

I mean, I presume there's always somewhere, some little piece of it that needs some work, and then that's going to require a bit of scaffolding.

But it does seem seem like just a very long time.

It has the 1970s was when the restorations of the Parthenon really began, this new restoration project and at least two generations haven't seen the Parcinon without the scaffolding around it.

The scaffolding is necessary because the restorations take such a long time.

So they're not just cleaning up the you know years of dirt and stuff on the Parson on itself and the columns itself, but they're also undoing a lot of the really old-fashioned restorations.

So taking out bits of old iron and concrete from previous restorations too.

So they, and the scaffolding hasn't always been in one area, it's been moving around and now it's all gone for a short period only at the moment anyway.

And has the fact that it has become uncaged Has that been much reported in Greece?

I mean, are people in Athens excited that

this great symbol is free again?

It's hugely exciting.

And everybody everybody now is talking about trying to get up there.

So it'll be free from the scaffolding for at least a month.

And then some scaffolding will go up again towards the end of the year, but it will be slightly more sympathetic to the architecture.

And then they're going to hopefully remove the scaffolding by mid-2026.

But there's a huge buzz in the city about it.

I mean, you can see the Parson from most areas of Athens.

And people are kind of queuing really early in the morning to get the sunrise through the columns and things things like that.

So it's stunning.

And yes, it's a very important thing for the Greeks and the Athenians in particular.

Professor of Ancient History and Archaeology, Rebecca Sweetman.

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 Pete Wise, and the editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Alex Ritz, and until next time, goodbye.

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