Israel approves Gaza ceasefire plan

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

I'm Janat Jalil and at 5 Hours GMT on Friday the 10th of October, these are our main stories.

Israel's government approves President Trump's plan for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage and prisoner release.

Weeks after the former FBI director James Comey's indictment, another perceived foe of Donald Trump, the New York Attorney General Letitia James, is also criminally charged.

Also, in this podcast, new research on why naked mole rats have such long lifespans.

It turns out that they have particular secrets in their DNA on how the DNA can be repaired, so that makes them very unique within mammalians.

Could this help us humans live longer?

A day after President Trump's triumphant announcement that Israel and Hamas had agreed to the first phase of his plan to end the war in Gaza, it has been formally approved by the Israeli government.

The deal will see the last hostages brought home and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners released, and a ceasefire taking place with a partial Israeli military pullback.

Israeli attacks continued before the official start of the ceasefire, with several people reported killed.

Earlier, Hamas said it had received assurances from the United States and other mediators that its war with Israel had come to what it called a complete end.

US officials have said a multinational force of some 200 troops will monitor the ceasefire, but that there will be no American soldiers on the ground in Gaza.

Barbara Platasher reports from Jerusalem.

There were celebrations in Israel and Gaza at the news of the agreement, but it was only at the end of a long day that the Israeli government finally voted to formalize the deal in a meeting attended by President Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes elements of the Trump plan, such as its mention of a Palestinian state, but he praised the tireless U.S.

efforts to bring back the hostages.

We couldn't have achieved it without the extraordinary help of President Trump and his team.

That and the courage of our soldiers and the combined military and diplomatic pressure that isolated Hamas, I think, has brought us to this point.

The way is clear now for the ceasefire to take effect.

The clock starts ticking towards the release of the hostages within the next few days, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

The military will pull back from the front line, and the UN is poised to begin sending much more aid into Gaza, where famine has been declared in some areas.

Mr.

Netanyahu, who's been accused of sabotaging ceasefire negotiations in the past, but Mr.

Witkoff said he deserved credit for this one.

As I look back, I don't think we get to this place without Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Here we are today because Hamas had to do this deal.

The pressure was on them.

You've got the bigger army.

You were making inroads, and that's what led to this deal.

Far-right members of Mr.

Netanyahu's coalition voted against the deal, demanding that Hamas be completely dismantled.

One challenged the U.S.

envoys, asking them if they would make peace with Hitler.

Hamas's main concern is that Israel will go back to war as soon as the hostages are freed.

But a senior Hamas official said the group received guarantees from the US, Arab mediators, and Turkey that the war in Gaza had permanently ended.

That will be tested in the weeks ahead, as the parties tackle difficult steps to rebuilding Gaza.

Barbara Platusher in Jerusalem.

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

Our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson has been monitoring reactions on both sides, starting with the response of Israelis in Tel Aviv.

The crowds here in Ostage Square have been celebrating.

There's been singing, dancing, drumming, a real sense of joy and release.

I feel like tears and the big emotion.

Many people here have been coming here week after week after week for two years, demanding that their leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, do a deal to get the hostages home.

But it's not Israel's leader who's getting the credit.

It's the American one, Donald Trump.

There are US flags here flying alongside the Israeli ones and a big banner saying, we love you, Trump.

Walking through the crowd, we met opposition leader Benny Gantz, who quit Israel's wartime cabinet last year.

Very exciting days.

Lots of the

uncertainties are still there.

The good is still there, but I hope you don't think.

But hopes hopes have been raised here many times before.

Even now, some of the hostage families were cautious.

Hamas still holds the body of Udi Goran's cousin, Tal.

I will believe it when I see 48 people going into white ambulances, some of them walking on their feet, some of them in body bags, making their ways back to Israel.

I'll believe it then.

In return for the hostages, Israel is expected to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences in Israeli jails, including perhaps the man who murdered Jonathan Carton's uncle 30 years ago.

So it's a bag of emotions.

Obviously, I'm happy to see our countrymen come back home.

That the current price is too high to pay.

Across Gaza, celebrations erupted amid the rubble.

Emotions buried since this war began re-emerging in streets and faces.

We have been displaced more than 20 times during this war.

Everyone is happy.

The cycle of displacement and extermination has come to an end.

We are looking forward to a better future.

Honestly, it's wonderful.

Everyone is happy about this, and we pray to God things will get better.

But for Hala al-Hanadi's family, this deal came six weeks too late.

Hala died in August from malnutrition.

She was four years old.

We first spoke to her mother Yasmeen in July.

Today she shared her reaction to the news.

There is no happiness.

It could have been a day of celebration, a huge joy with her in my arms.

The past two years haunt Gaza's celebrations, a moment of boundless joy before counting what was lost.

That report was by Lucy Williamson.

Well, leaders around the world have welcomed the ceasefire agreement.

The UN Secretary General Antoni Guterres said his organization would support the full implementation of the plan, including the increase of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

We have all waited far too long for this moment.

Now we must make it truly count.

I urge all parties to fully abide by the terms of the agreement and to fully embrace the opportunities it presents.

All hostages must be released in a dignified manner.

A permanent ceasefire must be secured.

The bloodshed must stop once and for all.

Qatar played a pivotal role in the negotiations that eventually led to this deal.

Its foreign affairs spokesperson, Dr Majid Al Ansari, expressed optimism, but warned there was also still a long way to go.

This is an ongoing negotiation, it's an ongoing technical negotiation over every piece and every point of data when it comes to the agreement between both sides.

This is not new.

It has always been the type of negotiation we have been expecting to hold between both parties.

The devil is always in the details, but we are quite optimistic that we have a strong document in hand.

President Trump says he plans to fly to the Middle East on Sunday to attend a signing of the ceasefire agreement in Egypt.

So, how did Mr.

Trump get this deal done?

Our North America editor, Sarah Smith, says he's used what some have called bully diplomacy.

Donald Trump has managed this with a distinctive diplomatic diplomatic style.

I mean, he's often accused of bullying other nations on the world stage.

Well, it is the pressure that he put on Israel and its Prime Minister, Mr.

Netanyahu, that got us to this point.

The Israeli Prime Minister was here at the White House just last week.

And whilst he was here in the Oval Office, Donald Trump forced him to call up the Prime Minister of Qatar and apologise for a bombing strike that Israel had conducted last month on Doha, attempting to kill a Hamas negotiating team but in fact killing a Qatari citizen.

Donald Trump was furious about that because Qatar is one of America's closest allies in the Middle East and so he forced Mr.

Netanyahu to issue this apology and then release photographs of him doing so.

And then it was after that that a reluctant Israeli leader was made to sign up to this 20-point peace plan that Donald Trump had come up with and they had a press conference here at the White House announcing that.

It is remarkable to have got Benjamin Netanyahu to this point, especially from someone who says all the time he is the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House, but he's also a president who has managed to get Israel to agree to things that other presidents simply could not do.

Sarah Smith.

Well, it's no secret that part of the reason President Trump is pushing so hard for the war in Gaza to end is because of his often stated wish to win the Nobel Peace Prize, a prize that was given to Barack Obama not long after he became U.S.

President.

Mr.

Trump has said it would be a big insult if he doesn't get it too, saying repeatedly that he has ended seven wars.

This year's Peace Prize is due to be announced in Norway today, and for the first time, journalists, including the BBC's Mark Lowen, have been allowed a behind-the-scenes peek on how the winner is chosen.

Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements.

Will you get the Nobel Prize?

Absolutely not.

They'll give it to some guy that didn't do a damn thing.

They'll give it to a guy that wrote a book about the mind of Donald Trump.

Well, before the Gaza deal, Mr.

Trump was fixated on the award.

And in July, Benjamin Netanyahu realized it was the way to the President's heart.

I want to present to you, Mr.

President, the letter I sent to the Nobel Prize Committee.

It's nominating you for the Peace Prize, which is well deserved.

And you should get it.

But Jürgen Watner Friednes, the chair of the five-member Norwegian committee, seems unfazed by one man's crusade.

Every year we receive thousands and thousands of letters, emails, requests, people saying this is the one you should choose.

And so, to have that campaign, the pressure, and the media attention isn't really something new for the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

However, of course, we notice that there are a lot of media attention, particularly this year.

We have to stay strong and we have to stay principled in our choices.

They prepare the podium for the announcement, fixing a replica Nobel medal to it and giving Jürgen a dress rehearsal.

Good morning.

Nominations for this year's award closed at the end of January, so the Gaza deal is too late to influence them.

But beyond that, their decision is private, and as they get down to talks, we're asked to leave.

I think that this year might be a long stretch.

Nina Greger from Oslo's peace think tank PRIO thinks a Trump win this time is highly unlikely, but for next?

He has withdrawn from international institutions such as the World Health Organization, from the Paris Accord on Climate.

And if you look at Trump's wish to take over Greenland from Denmark, he has been very harsh on protesters against the Gaza war.

I think these are things that point in a non-peaceful direction.

Of course, if a just and sustainable peace is reached in Gaza, Trump would probably be a good contender for next year, at least a possible one.

Seagulls aside, Norway is a peaceful land, but some now fear Mr.

Trump could lash out at the country with tariffs if he's not chosen.

Beijing froze diplomatic ties with Oslo and applied sanctions when the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won in 2010.

Down in the basement of the Nobel Institute, the archivist points out the files of past awards.

For this year's, the first nominated 64 is Mark Luther King.

The odds on Mr.

Trump are still long, with talk instead of a potential win for causes in Sudan or press freedom.

And if the president wants to find out who nominated him and who didn't, he'll have a problem.

This year's papers will be locked up in here and kept secret for 50 years.

That report by Mark Lowen.

Still to come on the Global News podcast.

You would literally use the smartphone app, press a button, and then the drone would take off, go to where the bad guys are, drop a bomb there, return back, and would not even require piloting skills from the military.

How the new AI arms race is transforming the war in Ukraine.

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It was a mass rape trial that shook France and horrified the world.

For more than a decade, Giselle Pellico, a grandmother, had been drugged into a coma-like state by her husband, Dominique, who invited dozens of other men to rape her.

Of the 50 men convicted last December, only one has appealed.

He told a court this week week that he was innocent despite graphic video footage of his assault.

He had hoped that his nine-year sentence would be shortened, but instead it's been increased.

Laura Gozzi has been following the case.

The man who challenged his conviction is called Husamete Dogon.

He's a 44-year-old father of one, and a jury this week handed him a jail sentence of 10 years, so one more than he was given last year.

He argued, as he did last year, as many of his other fellow defendants did, that he couldn't be possibly found guilty of raping Gisel Pelicot because he had not realised when he came to her home that she would be unconscious.

Dominique Pelicot, who was in court as a witness, again stated that he had made it very plain to Dugon and to all the other men who came to their home that his wife would be unconscious.

Giselle Pelicot, who last year after the trial wrapped up, retreated into private life, was also present and again said that she was the only victim in this case and rejected the notion that any of the men who came to rape her had been manipulated by her husband.

Laura Gozi.

Recent weeks have seen President Trump stepping up his campaign to see those he perceives as enemies face prosecution.

Now, just two weeks after criminal charges were brought against the former FBI Director James Comey, New York's Attorney General Letitia James has been indicted on federal charges of bank fraud.

Mr.

Comey was fired during the president's first term over his investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S.

presidential election.

Ms.

James led a civil fraud case against Mr.

Trump and his real estate business.

She denied the charges against her.

This is nothing more than a continuation of the President's desperate weaponization of our justice system.

He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job as the New York State Attorney General.

These charges are baseless, and the President's own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost.

Our North America correspondent, David Willis, told me more about the New York Attorney General and the charges against her.

Letitia James Jeanette is the woman who led a civil fraud investigation against Donald Trump, which led, of course, to the president being found liable for falsifying records to secure preferential loan deals.

Now, she's been accused of making false statements to a financial institution in regard to a mortgage loan on her house in Virginia.

Prosecutors allege that Miss James used that house as a rental property contrary to the conditions of the loan.

And she's been indicted on charges of bank fraud by the same U.S.

attorney, Lindsay Halligan, who brought charges against the former FBI director James Comey.

Now, Ms.

Halligan previously served as Donald Trump's personal attorney.

And how strong is this case against Letitia James?

Letitia James is due in court in just over two weeks' time, and in a statement she called the charges baseless, and she accused President Trump of seeking political retribution, what she called a desperate weaponization of the U.S.

justice system.

And she bases that claim on the fact that Donald Trump publicly called for her arrest in a post on his Truth Social social media platform less than three weeks ago.

And in that post, he called on the U.S.

Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to indict three of his political enemies, Letitia James, James Comey, who led the FBI when it investigated contacts between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russian government, and the Democratic Senator Adam Schiff.

Now, Mr.

Schiff, you may remember, led impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump in the House of Representatives.

Adam Schiff has yet to be indicted, but James Comey was indicted within days, actually, of that social media post from Donald Trump.

He's been charged with lying to Congress, and he appeared in court yesterday for the first time and pleaded not guilty to those charges.

David Willis.

With countries on Russia's border alarmed by recent violations of their airspace, one of them, Estonia, is hosting a meeting today of EU heads of state to discuss the growing role of artificial intelligence in transforming how we fight wars.

In Ukraine, engineers are working on developing an autonomous weapon based on AI that can find and destroy targets on its own.

But many are worried that such weapons could prove a disaster for the civilian population.

Abdujalia Abdu-Rasulov reports from Ukraine's capital, Kyiv.

This is the sound of several FPV drones striking a Hamvi.

The armoured vehicle is packed with soldiers from the Kalinovsky regiment fighting on Ukraine's side.

Smoke quickly covers the vehicle as soldiers check on each other to see if anyone is hurt.

Drones have become one of the key weapons that saw death on the front line here.

But imagine if these unmanned flying machines could hunt their targets on their own with no human controlling the process.

Now, such weapons from science fiction are becoming a reality thanks to artificial intelligence.

What we've built is a drone system which is a very classic 10-inch FPV drone equipped with a terminal guidance autonomy module.

Yaroslav Arzniuk is the founder of the Fourth Law, a Ukrainian company that develops autonomous systems based on AI.

You would just literally use the smartphone app to tell on the map where you are and where the bad guys are and press a button and then the drone would take off, orient itself in the space, go to where the bad guys are, drop a bomb there, return back, and would not even require piloting skills from the military.

Such systems are not here yet, but Ukraine's defense ministry claims they are close to deliver them.

Arjnuk expects by the end of the next year, there will be tens of thousands of such systems active in Ukraine.

But serious concerns exist over automated weapons.

I'm at an exhibition called IT Arena 2025.

I'm in a massive hall where Ukrainian startup companies display their latest military products.

There are a lot of drones here, both aerial as well as ground robots.

I can see a few vessels and these are naval drones.

It's a really big event and one of the main buzzwords here is artificial intelligence.

I'm Vadim, part of RD team in DevDroid.

So we have UGV as a vehicle to move around and we have a machine gun turret.

And UGV is unmanned Grand Dec.

Yes, yes.

Both of them could be controlled remotely.

And how do you use artificial intelligence?

What kind of role does it play?

It just automatically finds the targets, like the people, and interacts with them so it can track them, it can highlight them.

And when it detects people, can it distinguish that these are soldiers from the Russian side and these are the soldiers from the Ukrainian side?

No.

No, it can't, because both sides can use the same uniform.

Maybe it is one of the reasons why we don't apply automatical shooting.

But with AI technologies, making fully autonomous weapons is just a matter of time.

They can have a devastating impact and unleash terror if used against the civilian population.

That's why President Zelensky sent this warning during his speech at the UN General Assembly last month.

We are now living through the most destructive arms race in human history.

We need global rules now for how AI can be used in weapons, and this is just as urgent as preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

Ukraine's President Vladimir Zelensky, ending that report by Abdu'l Jalil Abdul Rasulov.

India's southern state of Karnataka, home to Bengaluru, known as the country's Silicon Valley, has approved one day of paid menstrual leave per month for women working in both government and private sectors, including multinational tech firms.

it's been hailed as a step forward for women's rights, but it's also been questioned as a policy that could backfire.

Carla Conti tells us what this new rule could mean in practice.

The State Cabinet says the policy is about creating a more humane and inclusive workplace, one that recognizes that for some women, periods can bring debilitating pain and fatigue.

With one of the highest female labor participation rates in India, Karnataka's decision could set a powerful precedent for the rest of the country.

However, the policy has also faced some criticism.

Some have argued that a blanket rule assumes all women's experiences are the same and could actually do more harm than good.

There are fears that employers might see women as a financial or logistical burden, potentially hesitating to hire or promote them and undermining the very equality that the policy is meant to advance.

Across the world, menstrual leave remains rare and divisive.

Spain allows up to five days of paid leave with a doctor's note.

Japan and South Korea introduced similar laws decades ago, though few women actually use them because of lingering stigma.

In Vietnam, women can take three days each month or receive extra pay if they choose not to.

Ultimately, the policy's success in Karnataka will largely depend on how employers handle it, as a gesture of trust or as a move that deepens existing gender biases in the workplace.

Carla Conti.

The naked mole rat may not be the most beautiful of creatures.

It's been described as looking a bit like a sausage with teeth, but it does have one enviable quality.

It lives much longer than other rodents for up to 40 years, compared to say a mouse that only lives about three years.

Now, scientists in China have discovered that naked mole rats have evolved a DNA repair mechanism that could explain their longevity and why they're resistant to age-related illnesses like cancer or arthritis.

Professor Gabriel Balmus from the University of Cambridge studies aging and DNA repair in humans.

He told Tony Livesey that this research could help identify ways of improving our longevity.

We all know there is a direct correlation between aging and the rate of death.

In other words, the older you are, the more likely you are to die.

But the naked morats don't respect that law.

So, throughout their life, they have the same probability of dying, either young or old.

So, that makes them very unique within mammalians.

And it turns out that they have particular secrets in their DNA on how the DNA can be repaired.

And I really think this is just the tip of the iceberg.

I think we're going to find out more both through research in other places of the world, but also here in Cambridge with us.

Just explain first, because this is the, from what I gather, this is the nub of it, that if cells in their body sense danger or damage, they repair themselves in a slightly different way to us.

And explain how that is significant.

Yeah, so we know that the protein that the researchers were looking at in mice and humans, actually, it's impeding DNA repair.

So it acts against DNA repair by binding to the DNA.

But it turns out that in the naked morat, it does the opposite and it helps DNA repair.

So that was quite counterintuitive and kind of shows how probably throughout the evolution these animals have evolved to rewire their pathways.

So I think the questions to come are: is this the only protein?

Most likely not.

And if it's not the only one, can we understand a bit better how the naked morat DNA repair system works towards reverse engineering to use it for us humans?

Why do you think a random subterranean, quite strange-looking creature has developed this way when many others haven't?

So, the other particular part about naked morat is that they have a unique reproductive way.

So, they have a queen, they have only one reproductive individual in the colony.

So, I think because the evolution works through keeping reproduction alive, I think they have evolved to live longer so that they keep this queen alive, otherwise, they would have risk of becoming extinct.

Professor Gabriel Balmus.

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 podcast, you can send us an email.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

This edition was mixed by Zabihula Karush, and the producers were Arian Kochi and Anna Aslam.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Janet Jalil.

Until next time, goodbye.

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