Taiwan to boost defence spending

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Speaker 7 This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

Speaker 7 I'm Celia Hatton, and at 1600 GMT on Wednesday, the 26th of November, these are our main stories. Taiwan announces an additional $40 billion in defense spending.
Will it be enough to deter China?

Speaker 7 Parts of southern Thailand have have seen their heaviest rain in 300 years, and a huge swathe of the country's underwater. Two teenagers in Australia are fighting the country's social media ban.

Speaker 7 Also in this podcast,

Speaker 8 so after 13 years of waiting, we had to travel over 20 hours on land. Then we had to climb the mountain and descend the mountain for three hours.

Speaker 7 Researchers in Indonesia locate one of the rarest flowers in the world.

Speaker 7 Now to Taiwan, where the president Lai Ching De has said Taiwan will do all it can to resist Chinese aggression.

Speaker 7 He's announced a plan to spend an extra $40 billion on the military over the next eight years. That means by the end of the decade, Taipei will be spending more than 5% of its GDP on defense.

Speaker 7 Fei Fan Lin, the deputy head of Taiwan's National Security Council, said the spending boost reflected the changing nature of warfare.

Speaker 9 I think we must understand that the modern warfare is totally different from the previous years. I think the conventional or traditional warfare has already been changed so dramatically.

Speaker 9 And so we must think about more asymmetric in defending ourselves. I think that's a consensus also what we are building.

Speaker 7 That announcement comes as China is embroiled in a dispute with Japan over Taiwan.

Speaker 7 Japan's new prime minister, Sanai Takaichi, said a Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger Japanese military involvement.

Speaker 7 Tokyo has also said it will deploy missiles on one of its islands close to the Taiwanese coast.

Speaker 7 Beijing considers Taiwan part of its own territory, and it said repeatedly that it wants to unify Taiwan's islands with its mainland. The U.S.

Speaker 7 says China could be ready to invade by 2027, and Beijing hasn't discounted that. I spoke to Mariko Oi, and I asked her if this new defense spending by Taiwan would deter a potential invasion by China.

Speaker 11 Well, Sylvia, as you say, it is a lot of money. But if you actually look at how much China has been spending on its military and so on, I think it's almost nothing compared to what they've been doing.

Speaker 11 So, yes, it is a lot of money for Taiwan, but a lot of experts think that if China was to invade Taiwan using force, then they would have the huge military power over Taiwan.

Speaker 11 Of course, Taiwan has been allies with the United States and others and has been hoping that Washington would help them if that hypothetical situation happened. But of course, once Mr.

Speaker 11 Trump returned to the White House, the rhetoric has been a bit different. So I think from Taiwan's point of view, with recent tensions between Japan and China, because of Ms.

Speaker 11 Takaichi, the Japanese Prime Minister's comment about Taiwan, they're probably feeling a bit insecure. They want to show the United States that they're willing to spend extra money.

Speaker 7 China has reacted angrily to Japan's decision to deploy missiles on the island of Yonaguni, only about 100 kilometers from Taiwan's coast.

Speaker 7 What's the thinking behind that move by the new Japanese Prime Minister?

Speaker 11 Yonaguni Island, you know, it's been a plan for a while.

Speaker 11 You know, the Japanese government has been building up a defense system there, and it was basically confirmed that Tokyo is still going to go ahead with it, despite the recent tensions with Beijing.

Speaker 11 And the defense minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, basically said that this is not about attacking other countries, this is about defending Japan.

Speaker 7 Tell me more about what we're hearing from China, the announcement from Taiwan, and also, as you say, the the decision to go ahead with these plans by Japan?

Speaker 11 Well, Beijing has been really, really angry. You know, the reaction ever since that comment in early November by Ms.

Speaker 11 Takeoichi talking about Taiwan, basically, she said hypothetically, if Beijing was to use force to invade Taiwan, that could be considered as a survival threatening situation for Japan, which is basically a term legally for Tokyo to be allowed to use its self-defense force to defend its allies.

Speaker 11 And so far, we haven't seen either side backing down. You know, this is something that we've been discussing on our new podcast, Asia Specific, as our launch episode.

Speaker 11 You know, where does it go from here?

Speaker 7 Mariko, as you said, you're launching a new podcast, or the BBC is launching a new podcast focused on the region. Tell us about it.

Speaker 11 We have just launched it today, Asia Specific, which is basically a visualized podcast focusing on Asian perspectives on global issues and also, of course, stories from this part of the world.

Speaker 11 So, this recent tensions between Japan and China is something that we talked about.

Speaker 11 Also, we'll be looking at various other stories, like, you know, the battle of soft power between Japan, China, and South Korea, and other stories from the rest of Asia-Pacific.

Speaker 7 Mariko Oi, that new podcast, Asia-Specific, is available every Wednesday and Saturday on YouTube and BBC Sounds.

Speaker 7 To the Middle East now, Mohamed Ibrahim, a Palestinian-American teenager, was arrested in February in the West Bank, aged 15, when Israeli forces reportedly entered his family home and then handcuffed and blindfolded him.

Speaker 7 He's been in Israeli detention since then. He has been charged with throwing stones at settlers, according to court documents.
There has not been a trial and no evidence has been presented publicly.

Speaker 7 U.S. Embassy staff have visited him in Ofer prison, where they report he has lost a quarter of his body weight.
His family have not been allowed to visit him. 27 U.S.

Speaker 7 senators have signed a letter urging the State Department to ensure his release. The BBC's John Donison reports from the West Bank.

Speaker 14 You can ask anybody, you know, he's a real, real sweet boy, you know, just into sports, his PlayStation, school. You know, he's just a regular, fun kid that likes, that loves and respects everybody.

Speaker 15 Over coffee in the occupied West Bank, Zaha Ibrahim tells me about his son, Mohamed, who's been held in an Israeli prison with no charge or trial for nine months.

Speaker 14 He was here when he got arrested. He was here for a month and maybe 40 days.

Speaker 15 Mohamed Ibrahim was arrested in a raid on his home in the middle of the night by Israeli soldiers. They accused him of throwing stones at Israeli settlers.

Speaker 15 Unable to speak to his son for nine months, Zaha has only heard accounts of his detention through court documents and officials and says his son was forced to confess.

Speaker 14 So he told him, you know, I just woke up and found all these soldiers around me. He says on that report that I confessed from the beating.
They gave him no choice.

Speaker 15 The U.S. Embassy here assigned a caseworker who visited Mohammed in prison.
Zahr says they told him he'd lost a lot of weight and wasn't doing well. He has this message for President Trump.

Speaker 14 You know, just, you know, do what you said from day one, you know, America first. And he's an American, and he's a citizen, and he's a child.

Speaker 14 So, you know, as a president, his duty is to protect Americans. And we're not seeing that from Hamad.

Speaker 16 Well, this is a case where the U.S. does have influence.
It's just failing to exercise its influence. And that's a great dereliction of duty.

Speaker 15 This is Democratic U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen.
Along with 26 other U.S. lawmakers, he's written a letter to the State Department demanding more to be done to release Mohamed.

Speaker 16 If this were any other country, you would be seeing a much bigger effort. But for whatever reason, the Trump administration does not want to push the Netanyahu government to do what it needs to do.

Speaker 15 I'm up on a hilltop in Betunia in the occupied West Bank overlooking Offer Prison.

Speaker 15 It's about as close as we're allowed to get with our camera and our microphones, but it's where Mohammed is being held.

Speaker 15 There are also adult detainees in the prison, but there are around about 350 Palestinian child security detainees in Israeli jails.

Speaker 15 Many of them have never been charged, and some of them, according to human rights groups and the UN, have suffered abuse and torture.

Speaker 15 We asked the Israeli Prime Minister's office for comment on Mohammed's case, but we've not received a reply.

Speaker 15 It's not the first trauma the Ibrahim family has suffered this year. This was the funeral in July of Mohamed's cousin, 20-year-old Saif Mussalat, another Palestinian-American citizen.

Speaker 15 Mohamed and Saif worked together in the family ice cream shop in Tampa, Florida. No one has ever been charged with Saif's murder.
And for the family, life is on hold.

Speaker 15 Mohamed's parents have extended their trip to the West Bank indefinitely, whilst thousands of miles away in the U.S., his brothers and sisters, wait for news.

Speaker 7 John Donison and the West Bank Moscow says it's now seen President Trump's revised plan to end the war in Ukraine.

Speaker 7 The details about what's in the proposal are unclear, though it's reportedly been amended after Ukraine and its European allies objected to some of the original suggestions put forth a week ago.

Speaker 7 Will President Putin accept the changes? Donald Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, will travel to Moscow next week for talks with Russian leaders. Meanwhile, Mr.

Speaker 7 Witkoff has been making the news in his own right. A leaked audio recording obtained by Bloomberg appears to reveal him coaching a Russian official on how best to appeal to President Trump.

Speaker 7 Paul Adams is our diplomatic correspondent.

Speaker 17 In terms of Witkoff's visit, the fact that he's going again shows that this is still a process that is unfolding. He is a regular visitor to Moscow.
He's had many, many meetings with Vladimir Putin.

Speaker 17 And so even though the cast of characters surrounding this process does seem to change from one week to the next, the fact that he's going, I think, is key here.

Speaker 17 Whether this means that we're getting close, as Donald Trump has indicated in the last couple of days, well, we just don't know.

Speaker 17 I think it's probably wiser to say that we're still in the middle of a process with an awful lot of unresolved issues still lying ahead ahead of us.

Speaker 7 Thanks for helping us to read the tea leaves on this, Paul. I mean, do we have any idea what's in this amended peace plan?

Speaker 17 We really don't.

Speaker 17 All we know is that it is shorter than the 28-point plan that was leaked last week, and that the Ukrainians seem to be a lot happier than they were before the two sides, the Americans and the Ukrainians, that is, sat down in Geneva at the weekend.

Speaker 17 President Zelensky said the results of that meeting were significant.

Speaker 17 Ukrainian officials said that some of the gaps had been narrowed and that some of the things that had worried the most about the twenty eight point plan, particularly this demand that Ukraine give up even more territory, had been addressed.

Speaker 17 They also said that some of the really tricky stuff, including territory, would have to be discussed by the leaders themselves.

Speaker 17 The Russians haven't said a whole lot, although Yuri Ushakov, Kremlin adviser, has said this morning that Russia has seen the latest draft, views some of it positively, but needs to have some serious analysis before coming up with a response.

Speaker 7 So, Paul, I mentioned at the top of the program this leaked audio recording that was released by Bloomberg that appears to show Mr. Witkoff coaching a Russian official.

Speaker 18 What do you make of it?

Speaker 17 Well, look, I don't think it makes a great deal of difference in the long run. I mean, we know that Witkoff has a different way of conducting diplomacy.

Speaker 17 It's rather more off-the-cuff, rather more personal than perhaps seasoned U.S. State Department officials are used to.

Speaker 17 And this is the kind of report, the kind of transcript that will cause people to shudder somewhat, because as you say, it does rather imply that there's a cozy relationship between Witcoff and his Russian interlocutor.

Speaker 17 I think Donald Trump's view is this is how my team conducts diplomacy. There's nothing to see here.

Speaker 17 But certainly to the critics of the Trump administration, it does rather underline for them this uncomfortably close relationship that Steve's Witkoff appears to have with the Russians.

Speaker 7 Our diplomatic correspondent, Paul Adams.

Speaker 7 To the rainforests of Indonesia, where researchers have located one of the rarest flowers in the world that's not been seen in the wild for more than a decade. It's a biggie.

Speaker 7 Its flowers grow up to one meter in width. And the discovery has made one man, in particular, very happy indeed.
Pete Ross has this report.

Speaker 19 That's the moment Indonesian conservationist Septayan Andriki ended his 13-year-long search for the rare Rafflesia hacelti.

Speaker 19 The plant is a subspecies of the famous corpse flower known for its pungent smell. The last time scientists recorded seeing one in its native habitat was back in 2011.

Speaker 19 Andriki told the BBC he and his partner Chris Thorgood from the University of Oxford trekked through the jungles of western Sumatra for almost an entire day to make the discovery.

Speaker 8 So, after 13 years of waiting, we had to travel over 20 hours on land. Then we had to climb the mountain and descend the mountain for three hours just to reach the habitat.

Speaker 19 Difficult terrain wasn't the only problem the pair had to contend with.

Speaker 8 And we know it's night. We have to get out of there immediately, as quickly as possible, because the the tigers are hunting at night.

Speaker 19 Dr. Chris Thorgood described the flower to the ABC News Network.

Speaker 20 There are 40 or so species of Raphalisia, the world's largest flowers, but this one is a super rare one. Hardly anyone has seen it.
And to my mind, it's the most beautiful.

Speaker 20 It's kind of like white with these big red spots, and then the reverse of that on the petals.

Speaker 20 It's just crazy. The buds of this flower take several months, up to nine months actually, to mature.
And then when the flower opens, it only actually stays open for a few days.

Speaker 20 So the chances of having this encounter that we did are so unlikely.

Speaker 19 The discovery brings to an end years of research from a multinational team of scientists who'd been looking for the flower that's likely been seen by more tigers than people.

Speaker 15 And here it is.

Speaker 7 Chris, are you better lucky, Chris?

Speaker 5 I'm very lucky.

Speaker 20 I'm the luckiest guy alive.

Speaker 7 Pete Ross.

Speaker 7 Still to come in this podcast.

Speaker 21 I was gobsmutt in our came in.

Speaker 5 And I thought, yes, this is our place.

Speaker 7 A couple in the UK takes one last turn around the dance floor.

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Speaker 7 To Australia now, and an incoming law that's already received a lot of attention even before it's come into effect.

Speaker 7 Starting next month, a social media ban will force the likes of Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to remove all users under the age of 16 or face hefty fines.

Speaker 7 The ban was justified by the government as necessary to protect children from harmful content and algorithms. Now, that law is being challenged in Australia's highest court by two teenagers.

Speaker 7 Mickey Bristow tells us how they're arguing against the ban.

Speaker 10 As you say, two teenagers, an unusual group of people to launch illegal action, they're 15-year-olds, Noah Jones and Macy Nalen.

Speaker 10 They are being backed by a rights group called the Digital Freedom Project. Macy essentially outlined what their argument was.
Young people deserve to be engaged in political communication.

Speaker 10 If you stop them going on social media completely, then they won't be able to do that. They're the voters of the future.

Speaker 10 And she compared this ban to George Orwell's book 1984, in which a pressive government tries to stop people speaking their mind.

Speaker 10 I think the argument is from the Digital Freedom Project is not that it's wrong to try and protect children, but they should do that with safeguards, not with silence, that they're educated, savvy, and robust enough to be able to deal with things themselves.

Speaker 10 So the Australian government, they argue, is just going too far.

Speaker 7 Some pretty strong words if they're bringing up 1984 as an example. Remind us about the government's thinking behind the need for this law.

Speaker 10 Well, you mentioned some of those things. It's social media, parents across the world worry, and I've got children myself, worry about the effect social media has on young people.

Speaker 10 The government says they could be subject to misinformation, cyberbullying, and see inappropriate material. And there's also a level of control that the media companies could have over young people.

Speaker 10 So the government laid out this law. There could be a fine, as you mentioned earlier, of 30 million US dollars.

Speaker 10 And after this case was launched, the government said they'd they'd still carry on pursuing this proposed legislation.

Speaker 10 They would not be intimidated by people with what they said were ulterior motives. And they suggested that big tech companies were behind this push to challenge their legislation in the High Court.

Speaker 7 How watertight would this law be if it comes to effect without any changes?

Speaker 10 Hard to say, but it's going to come down to proportionality, whether the courts decide people in Australia's right to political communication outweighs this kind of silence that the government is trying to put on under-16s.

Speaker 7 Mickey Bristow.

Speaker 7 Parts of Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia continue to battle devastating floods. 33 people are now known to have died in southern Thailand.

Speaker 7 The Thai city of Hatiai recorded its heaviest rainfall in 300 years. Most of it's been submerged.

Speaker 7 A viral social media clip shows children walking along power lines, inching to safety to avoid the rising water below.

Speaker 7 Our Southeast Asia correspondent, Jonathan Head, told us more about the flooding in Thailand.

Speaker 1 This part of Thailand gets floods every year. It's used to them, but the amounts of water are on a different scale.

Speaker 1 And so you've got the fifth largest city in the country, Hatiai, the economic hub of the entire south of Thailand and connected to Malaysia. completely underwater.

Speaker 1 I mean, in the city centre, only the very tops of the roofs of houses are visible. And the only way to get to them is by boat.

Speaker 1 There are not enough boats, so the army is putting out a public appeal across the country for people to travel down if they've got jet skis or flat bottom boats, anything that can be used to reach the thousands of people who are still stranded, many cases sitting on their roofs.

Speaker 1 They've had to punch holes in the roof, in the tiles, to clamber out onto the roofs. They've been there in some cases for two or three days.

Speaker 1 You've got elderly people, children, pets up there and it's taking time for officials to get round and retrieve them. Thousands more have had to leave their homes and have evacuated to higher ground.

Speaker 1 The main university campus is one place. There are two or three evacuation centers in Hachai.
But it's kept on raining.

Speaker 1 So the water is still pouring down from the hills and keeping these flood levels pretty high.

Speaker 1 Officials have reckoned that it's probably going to be several days, maybe 10 or longer before these floodwaters go down. So there's a city of 200,000 people where almost everybody needs help.

Speaker 1 A lot of people need evacuating and the rescue effort is incredibly complicated simply because of these amounts of water and the fact you can't do it without boats.

Speaker 1 It's something that some people are saying Thai authority should have been better prepared for.

Speaker 1 That will be a debate that goes on after this, but obviously everybody knows that with climate change, these annual tropical storms are becoming more intense, and we are going to get events like this one where much more water is dropped than the surrounding hills and land can absorb.

Speaker 7 Jonathan Head.

Speaker 7 Does it pay to be a man? Some women are trying to answer that question this week week by experimenting with the career-focused social media network LinkedIn.

Speaker 7 A group of female users changed their gender on the LinkedIn site to male and also gave themselves male names to see if it would boost their visibility.

Speaker 7 Anecdotally, it has, as has what they called brocoding their posts. Zoe Kleinman, the BBC's technology editor, explains.

Speaker 24 One woman, she's an entrepreneur. She's very high profile.
She's called Cindy Gallup.

Speaker 24 She's got 140,000 followers on on LinkedIn and she says she shared a post which was viewed 401 times which just seems quite strange doesn't it the maths don't quite add up yet so some women decided to experiment by changing their gender making their profiles male and they said that they saw results this they called the bro boost and others said they started using ai or doing it themselves to rewrite their posts using more kind of masculine business jargon-y sort of focused language and this is called bro coding and they also said that they noticed that those those posts got more invisibility so what exactly is going on here well LinkedIn has written a blog post in which it denies that its algorithm has you know in any way uses gender or age or race as a signal but it does use hundreds of others including your job your industry who it is that's in your network and how active you are and it also says that a lot more people have joined the network in recent months certainly this year and so there's just a lot more noise a lot more content that's vying for that attention but that doesn't stop these experiences from happening does it i spoke to a number of social media consultants who said they didn't think that linkedin which is owned by microsoft was in any way deliberately targeting gender but that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't happening by accident so one man he's a social media consultant called matt navara and he said he thinks maybe what happens to a post in its first hour so how many people see it and engage with it and share it that dictates how well it floats if you like across the rest of the network so that key first hour is really important.

Speaker 24 And he's also said, maybe more men have more powerful networks and they're more likely to comment and share each other's posts. So, they're kind of fueling that network amongst themselves.

Speaker 24 I guess it's that sort of boys' network that we might be familiar with. And maybe the algorithm is reflecting is something that's actually happening in society.

Speaker 24 What I think is really interesting is that a number of the women who tried the bro coding and bro beasting said they didn't like it.

Speaker 24 They didn't actually enjoy presenting like men and they wanted to go back to being who they actually were on the platform.

Speaker 7 Zoe Kleinman. And I can give you more of LinkedIn's response.

Speaker 7 It said: Our algorithms do not use gender as a ranking signal, and changing gender on your profile does not affect how your content appears in search or feed.

Speaker 7 We regularly evaluate our systems across millions of posts, including checks for gender-related disparities, alongside ongoing reviews and member feedback.

Speaker 7 And let's end this edition of the Global News podcast here in the UK. Blackpool Tower is a tourist landmark on England's northwest coast.

Speaker 7 Inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris, it opened in the 19th century and became famous for ballroom dancing. For Ron and Marilyn Hill, it's a special place.

Speaker 7 They're now in their 80s and live a long way from Blackpool. But for many years, Ron worked in entertainment in the town, and the couple used to dance at the Tower Ballroom.

Speaker 7 Recently, Ron has started to be affected by dementia, and he's due to go into a care home. His granddaughter, Olivia Watts, wanted to give her grandparents one last dance in Blackpool.

Speaker 7 She put out an appeal on TikTok for them to be able to dance at the Tower Ballroom, and it happened. Ron also played the Wurlitzer organ.
Our reporter, Alice Soufield, was there.

Speaker 25 What a magical morning.

Speaker 26 I know. And it's not even 10am.

Speaker 21 Fantastic. It's home from home to me.

Speaker 26 I've heard and I can see that you're quite the entertainer.

Speaker 21 Well, yes, I mean, and I've done that a lot in Blackpool, where there's been a hotel, they've been let down, no one there to do it. So me and my father, we did all the entertainment for them.

Speaker 21 It was so successful, they booked us then for the next 10 years.

Speaker 5 20 years. 20 years, 20 years, yes, to entertain them.

Speaker 26 And how did it feel entering the ballroom today, walking down and then dancing with your beautiful wife, Marilyn?

Speaker 12 How did that feel?

Speaker 21 I was gobsmacked. You know, I came in, and I mean, I was watching this on TV not long ago, of course, and I thought, yes, this is our place.

Speaker 26 And you've played the organ today?

Speaker 21 Yeah, now that really is something.

Speaker 21 I mean, I'm really honoured to actually sit at it, let alone play it.

Speaker 21 Marilyn,

Speaker 26 how do you feel being here in the tower ballroom today?

Speaker 27 Absolutely love it.

Speaker 27 And it's just exactly the same, and it's absolutely fabulous.

Speaker 27 This is a beautiful, beautiful ballroom. There's no words for it.
This sprung floor is, well, it's just fabulous.

Speaker 26 And your granddaughter Olivia, she kind of was the launch of all this.

Speaker 12 She said, she said all this up.

Speaker 27 Yes, she did.

Speaker 12 You have a very special family.

Speaker 27 Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 5 And of course, I didn't know anything about this.

Speaker 21 It was all done without my knowledge.

Speaker 26 On TikTok, are you on TikTok? No, not on TV.

Speaker 13 Not now. Not now.

Speaker 26 Doesn't even know what it is, do you?

Speaker 13 No, not really.

Speaker 26 Olivia, only a few days ago.

Speaker 25 You didn't know whether this was going to happen. No, not at all.

Speaker 26 And you are now watching your granddad

Speaker 13 play

Speaker 2 in the Blackpool Tower Ballroom. Incredible.

Speaker 25 Absolutely incredible. I was just saying a minute ago how, because of his dementia, he's not been able to play the piano very well, and there's only been like one tune that he's been able to play.

Speaker 25 And even again, they were dancing a minute ago. Last night he wasn't able to dance, and we were like, oh no.

Speaker 25 But he came, he was dancing amazingly. Now he's sat playing.
And we're like, where's this all come from? But it is the power of music with dementia.

Speaker 25 It brings your memories back and it means that you can,

Speaker 25 you know, there's a snippet of you that comes back, and that is the power of music with dementia. It's incredible.

Speaker 7 Alice Soufield witnessing that last spin in a special place by Ron and Marilyn Hill.

Speaker 7 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 or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.

Speaker 7 The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.
Use the hashtag Global NewsPod.

Speaker 7 This edition was mixed by Louis Griffin, and the producer was Stephanie Tillotson. The editor is Karen Martin.
I'm Celia Hatton. Until next time, goodbye.

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