Relatives of Israeli hostages prepare for their release

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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 Monday, October the 13th, these are our main stories.

The remaining Israeli hostages are due to be released from Gaza shortly as part of a US-brokered deal.

In exchange, Israel is expected to free nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.

Fears are growing of a military coup in the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar.

Also, in this podcast, how the temperature of your nose can determine your stress levels.

We hear about a new scientific expedition to the Antarctic, and actor Tom Hollander says live performance is crucial in fighting the growing use of AI on screen.

AI is trying to achieve perfection the whole time, and what the real world will have on its side, imperfection and mistakes, which is why live performance will become more and more valuable.

We begin in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv.

As we record this podcast, large crowds, many draped in Israeli flags, have gathered for the long-awaited homecoming of of the remaining 48 hostages.

About 20 of those taken by Hamas two years ago are thought to still be alive and will be reunited with their families very soon if the terms of the U.S.

broker deal are honoured.

These women are among the crowds.

We are here because we are very excited and we're here because we are waiting in anticipation for our people to come back.

I'm not happy with the deal, but the most important thing is to get those hostages back.

They've been in hell.

The Hamas-run civil defense agency in Gaza says it's finished counting the living hostages and has transferred them to different locations where they'll be handed over to the Red Cross and then the Israeli army.

Once they cross over the border, Israel will free nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, including women and children, and receive the remains of those who died in captivity.

President Trump is on his way to Israel, where he'll address the Knesset before heading to Egypt for a peace conference.

Boarding Air Force One, he said the war is over.

Israel does not allow the BBC to report freely from Gaza.

Our international editor, Jeremy Bowen, is monitoring developments on both sides from Jerusalem.

In Jerusalem, Israelis still enjoying the Jewish holidays had plenty to celebrate.

Across the country, there's expectation and impatience to see the hostages free and the end of two years of war.

But the hostage deal is not a peace agreement.

Reservists have spent hundreds of days away from their families and jobs, and plenty of them are still in uniform.

A queue formed outside the blood donor van, among them, Daniel.

I mean, happy yesterday the hostages are coming out.

I mean,

against the background of how many are no longer with us.

So it makes it very bittersweet.

And why are you giving blood today?

Well, we've got

soldiers still

in Gaza fighting for us, and

blood's needed, so

do my duty.

Israel could not have fought the way it has for two years without American power and protection.

The Jerusalem municipality knows who to thank, draping its building with the stars and stripes.

Israel's dependence meant Donald Trump could bulldoze through the hostage and ceasefire deal once he decided that continuing the war was harming America's interests.

The hostage deal is a triumph for Donald Trump and there's been a lot of talk about whether or not he'll keep up the pressure, especially on Israel, to finish the job with his 20-point plan for the future of Gaza.

Now, irrespective of whether he does or he doesn't, it's going to be very difficult.

And that's because the next items they've got to deal with, security in Gaza, governance, whether or not Hamas gives up its weapons, go to the very heart of how the Israeli government and Hamas see the future.

The agenda is full of deal breakers.

This was Khan Yunis in Gaza, desperation after two years of death, destruction and now famine.

The UN says the only way to stop people grabbing what they can is to flood the Gaza Strip with aid and Israel has agreed to let that happen.

Prices have gone down but the food on sale is still too much for most people.

Umnada says they just don't have money.

People with nowhere to go are living in the streets.

Nobody's helping them.

Life's hard.

In this world of rubble they're finding many more dead Palestinians in areas the Israelis left.

Hamas believes it's part of the future here, insisting on keeping its weapons.

Benjamin Netanyahu responded with a barely veiled threat in a TV address.

Everywhere we fought, we won.

But to the same extent, I must tell you, the campaign is not over.

There are still very significant security challenges ahead of us.

Some of our enemies are trying to recover in order to attack us again.

And as we say here, we are on it.

Far away in the United States, President Trump has started his journey to Israel and Egypt.

This is the first time everybody is amazed and they're thrilled and it's an honor to be involved and we're going to have an amazing time and it's going to be something that's never

happened before.

He's coming here to celebrate a diplomatic victory.

To make the rest of his 20-point plan for Gaza a reality, he will need another.

Jeremy Bowen.

Since Friday, when the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect, hundreds of thousands of Gazans have been returning home.

But in most areas, it's a scene of utter destruction.

Many are digging through the rubble for missing relatives and have described seeing Israeli drones still hovering over the city.

As the IDF begins withdrawing, there's been fighting between rival Palestinian factions.

Twenty-seven people have been killed in fierce clashes between Hamas and an armed Klan in Gaza City.

And the humanitarian situation across the Strip remains dire.

UNRWA's Tamara al-Rafai told us the promised surge of aid can't come soon enough.

It's been two years of devastation.

Gaza is in ruins.

Humanitarian assistance has been manipulated during this conflict.

So there has been very little food, clean water, fuel, medicines, tents, blankets, clothes, hygiene kits, hygiene items for women and girls, you name it.

Everything is lacking in Gaza.

If the agreement goes on as planned and Gaza is flooded with these supplies, then the next urgent need would be education or learning, at least, for a generation of Gazan children who have been out of school now for the third year.

clearing the rubble, making sure that unexploded ordinances are out of the way.

These are all priorities.

But for UNRWA, the largest aid organization in Gaza, hope is the operative word.

And hope is what's going to push Gazans to want to go back, to want to rebuild both their homes, their lives, and their futures.

Tamara, I'll refer from UNRWA.

The Palestinians of Gaza and those living in the occupied West Bank see themselves as one people, but they've been governed for years by two competing administrations.

Now, as Clive Meyer has been finding out in Ramallah, there's hope that the ceasefire deal could at last lead to a united Palestinian future.

It is a shared pain.

That of the Palestinians in Gaza and those here in the occupied West Bank.

Separated by geography and history, they are one people.

And the desperate hope is that the current ceasefire deal might lead to one government.

We are only one country.

Listen to Azam Ayash Shaofit.

Why do we want to

separate between Gaza and West Bank?

It's our country.

So we hope one government for Gaza and West Bank.

That's what we hope.

But the ceasefire plans are sketchy on how much control Palestinians will have in running Gaza, at least in the short term.

This group of West Bank activists are alarmed that a supreme supervisory body, a so-called Board of Peace, led by Donald Trump, will for now be the new overlords.

The future of Gaza has to be in the hands of the Palestinians and no other.

Not international, not Arab, not anyone.

There is no need for anyone else.

Just leave us alone.

The West Bank activists have found their voice.

They see this moment in history as a real opportunity opportunity to right past wrongs.

This woman's t-shirt reads, We are all Gaza, we are all Palestine.

We have been let down so many times.

Ezeh Hassan is a 29-year-old architect.

This is the first time that I feel the world has opened up its eyes to what's happening in Gaza and Palestine.

I mean, are you hopeful then?

Yeah, we're all hopeful.

Palestinians speaking to Clive Myri in the West Bank.

With anti-government protests continuing in Madagascar, the country's military appears to be taking on a more prominent role.

The leader of an elite army unit that sided with demonstrators has now been sworn in as the chief of the armed forces.

One of the protesters calling for President Andri Raja Elina to go is the 23-year-old student Haja Michael.

What we really want is the democracy and we want freedom.

We want the resignation of the president because he is not good anymore.

He has been taking an advantage of our country.

Our correspondent, Sami Awami, gave me this update from the capital Antan Ana Rivo.

There have been a lot of activities going on in different military barracks here.

One unit which sided with the protesters, it's called Kazbat, has announced that it is taking control of all the military command in the country, but also they have appointed a new chief of staff for the army.

But we haven't had any official confirmation yet with regards to any changes in leadership in the country.

Yeah, the protesters are calling for the immediate resignation of President Rajo Elina.

Will he step down or will he try and cling on?

Well, so far he has insisted that that is not the right way to go.

He says dialogues could solve all the problems we have ongoing in the country and he's held a few of them since the protests have started.

But the young people who have been leading this protest have dismissed them and saying, you know, the president has been in power since 2009 and that these problems cannot be solved by dialogues.

And all they want now for him to go so that they can have another president.

So we're waiting to see how that will change.

We know the president has released a statement saying the president is still in power, but we haven't seen the president since Wednesday when he held his last dialogues with various groups of people here in the country.

It's all rather ironic, isn't it?

Because he seized power in a military coup.

How did we get to this stage?

Yes, it's a lot of issues I'm hearing from economists and other experts.

They say Rojeledin is responsible for a lot of issues like corruption, mismanagement of funds, etc.

And they are pointing out, particularly on the cable car project here in the country, The government spent 150 million euros, which was a loan from France, on that project.

They're saying the government hoped that it would ease congestions in the city and issues to do with pollution, etc.

But this cable car entirely relies on electricity that the country doesn't have.

So, this is just one example of how the government spends a lot of money on projects that not only don't make any sense, but also can only be accessed by a few people in the country.

How different would Madagascar be under military rule?

It's a question that many people really don't want to imagine because it's military rule.

And I've spoken to protesters here and they say that's not what they want.

They want the country to go to civilian rule.

But others are saying, well, we've given this country to civilian rule and then they've gotten where we are here today.

But many hope that it would remain in civilian rule instead of going to the military.

Sami Awami in Antan Ana Rivo.

Being able to measure your stress levels can go some way to helping to manage them.

Gauging them could be as simple as measuring the temperature of your nose.

That's according to psychologists at the University of Sussex in England, who found that the human nose drops in temperature by about two degrees when someone is under severe stress.

Our science correspondent Victoria Gill has been taking a stress test.

Starting from twenty twenty three, can you subtract 17 until you reach zero as fast and as accurately as possible?

Oh, eh?

Probably not.

That's me in a scientific stress test, being asked to perform an impromptu mental arithmetic task in front of a group of strangers.

I could feel my heart rate increasing, palms sweating, but a thermal camera also revealed that the temperature of my nose dropped by about two degrees.

That test was carried out by a research team who found that thermal cameras can be used to measure stress levels, picking up this nasal temperature dip.

It's caused by our nervous systems pushing blood flow to our eyes and ears so we can look and listen out for danger.

It's a new non-invasive way to measure stress and monitor our response to it, so the researchers hope it will lead to new ways to help people recover and regain their calm.

Victoria Gill

Still to come, the South African shamans offering psychedelic drugs to the mentally ill.

We are very aware aware that we're working in illegal circumstances, but we believe that it is righteous civil disobedience.

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The British actor Tom Hollander, who's best known for his TV and film hits, including Rev, The Night Manager, and The White Lotus, he is convinced that live performance could help save actors and audiences from the creeping use of artificial intelligence or AI on screen.

In his latest movie, The Iris Affair, his character is enthralled to a mysterious supercomputer.

Iris, you've got a brain that's off the scale.

I need you to come and work with me.

What's the puzzle that needs solving?

One that matters.

In the film, Hollander plays Cameron Beck, a millionaire who must track down a code-cracking heroine, Iris Nixon.

But he's also won acclaim for his stage performances, including Patriots, where he played Boris Berezovsky and Tom Stoppard's Travesties.

The actor told the BBC's Paddy O'Connell that these roles in particular have made him less fearful of AI.

It's replacing everything.

It's replacing accountants, it's replacing travel agents, you name it.

But I don't know whether you can really replace it because you can't replace the mistakes.

I did wonder yesterday if actors will stop making themselves up or something to just sort of fight AI.

Because obviously, what AI does is sort of trying to achieve perfection the whole time, and what the real world will have on its side imperfection and mistakes, which is why live performance will become more and more valuable and will become a rare and precious thing, which because it's irreplaceable, I think it's irreplaceable I know there's the ABBA show but I thought that there'll be some sort of reaction against AI I don't know whether people will want to watch it it's yet to be proved that it's interesting to watch an AI based plot and you can obviously do images which are convincing but they're not really satisfying and you would know your brain would know that you were watching something if you knew that it was ai and maybe there'd be a law about having to tell you that it was ai just in the way that you have ingredients and when you buy something in a supermarket if the consumer knows then the consumer will only engage in it as a piece of AI, and they will engage in something that's not AI in a completely different way.

And I don't think it's all over.

The link here is that Charlie Big Potatoes is a massive AI force, a sort of computer-style brain that directs a lot of the humans throughout the Iris affair.

Yeah, it may or may not have started to do that, yeah.

But yeah, there's a fight in it between the evangelist for tech, which is my character, and the Luddite, which is Iris, who is, but she's not a Luddite.

She's a person that's terrified by the potential.

At the heart of that is the tussle with our anxiety about AI and what's coming.

British actor Tom Hollander.

Britain's flagship polar research vessel is preparing to set sail for a high-profile expedition to the Antarctic.

The scientists are on board the RSS Sir David Attenborough, named after the celebrated British naturalist and broadcaster, and they'll spend the next few months carrying out important research into what is is still a relatively undiscovered part of the Earth.

British Antarctic Survey spokeswoman Athena Dina is taking part in the expedition, and she's been telling the BBC more about the ship and its mission.

The ship is the UK's polar research vessel, and it's a real game changer for polar science, understanding how the polar regions are changing.

We'll be spending about six months in that region doing experiments, taking samples, and really trying to understand how the region region is changing.

Antarctica is still largely very unknown.

It contains 90% of the world's ice, 70% of the world's fresh water.

And so, any changes there have a massive impact on all of us in terms of sea level rise and changes to ocean patterns.

Now, you might say, well, how does ocean patterns affect us?

Well, actually, it affects our weather systems, it affects extreme weather events, so it affects all of us in lots of different different ways.

Now that ice in Antarctica, the warmer ocean is getting underneath it and it is melting it from beneath.

And so the changes are happening and we're trying to understand

how much and how quickly it might change in the future so that governments can really adapt to these changes for all of our benefit.

We take ocean samples, we release weather balloons every day.

This is what we call long-term monitoring.

And this is where we get the data sets that tell us that the changes we see today are unusual and they are different to what was happening 20 years ago or 30 years ago.

But we've also got some other projects where we'll be looking at how ice falling off the glaciers creates waves within the ocean that changes the ocean circulation.

We'll be looking at animals and how they're changing with their environment.

They're under threat from pollution, microplastics, food availability because the ocean temperatures are changing and their food is changing where it is.

So some of those amazing animals that we think of in Antarctica are really under threat from climate change.

British Antarctic Survey spokesperson Athena Dinah.

According to the World Health Organization, around one in two people will experience some form of mental illness.

Help can come in the form of medication, such as antidepressants or talking therapies.

There are those who are taking psychedelic drugs, as is the case in South Africa, where where self-styled shamans or healers have been offering them.

Some studies suggest that, together with therapy, these drugs might help, but medical professionals are urging caution due to side effects and limited clinical evidence.

BBC Africa Eyes Claire Moisa has been finding out more.

Her report starts with rare access to a healing ceremony in Cape Town.

Stuart Dodd sits in the middle of the floor looking expectantly upwards to a woman who is chanting and swirling slightly while she beats a drum.

He's hoping she can help him with his anxiety and depression, not by conventional counseling, but by what this woman calls a journey.

Mom passed away suddenly, so that was a hell of a thing.

And then my ex, I had a 17 and a half year relationship.

That broke off a year after mom died as well.

So that's kind of when the rub got pulled out a little bit with the healing journey I've I've been on is trying to unlayer these layers of finding out why I have these separation anxiety issues.

Megan describes herself as a medicine woman and this journey she is conducting, which costs 2,000 US dollars, includes giving Stuart illicit substances which he consented to.

We are very aware that we're working in illegal circumstances, but we believe that it is righteous civil disobedience.

What has qualified you to come to those doses?

My own experience and my own learning and research.

How are you sourcing your medicine?

In the underground.

So there is such a fertile world of people who are engaging with medicines in all ways.

What Megan is doing is not a one-off.

Spend a few minutes online scrolling and there is a vast selection of self-proclaimed healers who make profound promises, yet there is very little oversight.

Dr.

Marcel Statsny, the convener of the South African Society of Psychiatrists, warns about the danger.

There's quite a lot of science behind something before it's called a medicine.

You can't use it to treat mental illness if you haven't diagnosed and assessed the mental illness.

Do you think that these shamans, self-proclaimed healers, know the dangers?

No, they've got no clue.

They don't know what they don't know.

They just know that they took a trip, felt great and want to help people.

Stuart's journey is continuing with intense movements made, and it's pointed out to Megan that he seems uncomfortable.

It looks like we should be worried about his condition or his state.

Perhaps things not going as smoothly as expected.

Okay, no, not at all.

So it's just a part of the process.

Megan offers him more MDMA.

He comes across as unsure, but does eventually take it.

He had given consent for a top-up of MDMA before the journey.

However, Dr.

Statsny of the South African Society of Psychiatrists says that a person already on drugs is not able to give consent.

In order to give consent, you have to be in touch with reality.

If a person has already had psilocybin and MDMA, they aren't in touch with reality.

They're intoxicated.

They're high.

These so-called journeys don't always go smoothly.

Sunette Hill is meditating on a beach.

She's a self-appointed psychedelic guide who gave a client, Ibergain, a powerful West African drug.

He grabbed me by my throat.

He wanted to kill me.

Something came over him and he just wanted to kill me.

Her husband had intervened and saved her.

Despite this, she justified not having suitable qualifications.

Well, you're not a qualified medical professional, but you're not.

But I don't have any faith in the medical world.

I honest to God think psychedelics can heal the world.

Two weeks after Stewart's journey, he told the BBC that although he wasn't fully healed, he felt he had made some progress.

I can feel that it's kind of opening stuff up where I probably will do another journey as well after this.

Self-proclaimed healers like Megan and Sunet claim this is the new frontier of mental health treatments.

But to the experts in the medical profession, this illegal, unregulated industry remains dangerous territory.

Claire Mawisa, and you can watch her Africa Eye documentary, Shadow Healers, South Africa's Psychedelic Journey, on BBC iPlayer in the UK and on the World Service YouTube channel.

It's not unusual to have airport-style security at major global sporting events, but the arrival of metal detectors at the World Conker Championships in England this year was a first.

Winning the contest involves skewing a horse chestnut and dangling it on a string to make a conker, and then using it to break the conkers of anyone else taking part.

Last year, the men's champion was accused of winning by illicitly using a conker made of steel, hence the security checks, Nick Johnson reports.

The nut-on-nut thwacking thrums around the garden of the Shookburg arms.

Each brandishing a conker attached to the end of an eight-inch length of lace, pairs of contestants climb atop knee-high platforms to face off against one another.

Last year's competition was plunged into controversy after the champion, or King Conker, David Jakins, was spotted with a steel conker following his victory, sparking rumours of cheating of which he was cleared.

This year's security has been tightened with the introduction of a makeshift steel conker detector.

First-time player, 37-year-old Matt Cross from Lincolnshire, was crowned world champion.

And then, yeah, every rounder's like, oh, I've got through, let's give it another go.

And

snowballed.

There were fears that the event might have to be cancelled after a hot, dry summer caused conquers to drop from their trees earlier than normal, sparking concerns of a shortage.

It could have been a tough nut to crack, but a donation of conquers arrived from Windsor Castle, as well as from France and Italy, ensuring the competition's 60th year could go ahead as planned.

Nick Johnson with that report, and congratulations also to Margaret Blake, who won the women's contest.

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.

We'd also love to hear from you if you think there's a story that we've missed or one that you want us to revisit.

Please do send us your ideas.

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

Use the hashtag Global Newspod.

This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll and produced by Muzaffar Shakir and Wendy Urquhart.

The editor is Karen Martin.

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

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