'It's an honour to be your friend' - Trump tells Xi

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1:28high-stakes summit in Beijing. The Israeli prime minister says he's made a secret trip to the United Arab Emirates during the Iran war, but the UAE denies this. The man tasked with implementing President Trump's peace plan for Gaza says Hamas can survive as a political movement, but only if it gives up its weapons. Also in this podcast, three years after a murder trial that inspired this miniseries. This is Alec Murdoch. I need police and an ambulance immediately. A US lawyer convicted of killing his wife and son has had the verdict overturned because of concerns that the jury was improperly influenced.

2:17We begin in China, where President Trump was greeted with pomp and pageantry ahead of his highly anticipated meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

2:33The two leaders took part in an arrival ceremony at the Great Hall of the People before holding bilateral talks. In his opening remarks, President Xi said the two countries should be partners, not rivals. His warm words were echoed by Mr Trump. Trump. So I really look very much forward to our discussion. It's a big discussion. There are those that say this is maybe the biggest summit ever. They can never remember anything like it. It's, I can say, in the United States, it's people aren't talking about anything else. But it's an honor to be with you. It's an honor to be your friend. And the relationship between China and the USA is going to be better than ever before.

3:14Thank you very much. The summit is being dominated by the issues of trade, Iran, Taiwan and tech after Mr Trump's failed attempt to impose swinging tariffs on China, his seeming inability to end Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and amid global concerns about the economic impact of the war he started in the Middle East. Our Beijing correspondent Stephen McDonnell is following their talks. China does know how to turn on these ceremonies, even for its main global competitor on the world stage, or perhaps because this is China's main global competitor on the world stage. Maybe it's even more incentive to really show off the heart of Beijing.

4:00And certainly for someone like Donald Trump, they know how to make him feel special. So he arrives in his motorcade with all the motorbikes in front. There's the Guard of Honour, the music. And Donald Trump seemed to especially like the little crowd of kids jumping up and down, shouting out, yeah, you know, there he was doing his signature Donald Trump fist pump and giving them a little clap. So like I said, I think China does know how to make him feel special. And from the comments we heard before, he has responded in kind with his glowing praise of his opposite number, Xi Jinping. What do you make of that glowing praise?

4:39Because it's so different from the hard line he was taking when he's campaigning to be president. Is it a sign that his position is weaker than it was when he visited China last time, nearly a decade ago? Well, it is funny because Donald Trump, he does on the one hand, you know, he'll be sort of China, this China, that. Sorry about my bad impersonation of the way he pronounces the name. But He'll be criticising China one minute and then praising Xi the next. He's been doing this all along, partly because he likes a strong man figure. He brags about his friendship with authoritarian leaders all over the world.

5:14And when it comes to Xi Jinping, it's no different. But, you know, it's interesting to see his body language. Normally, he can be very bombastic, even rude in the presence of other leaders. But when he comes here, he's sitting across from a power equal and seems to realise it. So just the way that they shake hands, the way he sort of behaves in Xi Jinping's presence, it's like he wants Xi to like him and he sort of wants to feel like, here we are, we're these two great figures and we can do deals, etc., etc. So he's certainly not the show-offy Donald Trump that we see in other settings. And talking of deals, what is likely to come out that's going to be concrete rather than just warm words and handshakes and charm?

5:59The answer is possibly not much because, you know, there's this big delegation of CEOs from the US who have accompanied Donald Trump. I don't think we're going to see massive trade deals signed by them, perhaps some symbolic ones. I mean, if China agreed to buy a few more Boeing jets, that would make the US government pretty happy. But I think people should be looking out not so much for the specifics of the deals, but more the imagery associated with this and whether or not they can recast the relationship. I mean, one sign would be for them to reaffirm that the tariff war detente will continue.

6:37That, in theory, could run out in October. I know we have a few months to go, but that would be something. Like I said, the optics, though, are not nothing, and I think that is part of it for both of these governments. Stephen McDonnell. Next to a claim and a counterclaim. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he made a secret trip to the United Arab Emirates at the height of the US-Israel war on Iran to meet its president. His office said the visit had led to a historic breakthrough in relations between Israel and the UAE. But the Emirati state has denied this happened, calling the claims baseless.

7:19This comes after recent reports that the UAE had secretly carried out its own attacks on Iran in retaliation for the Iranian attacks on its oil facilities. The UAE is one of a number of Arab states that have normalised relations with Israel in what are known as the Abraham Accords. And on Tuesday, the US disclosed that Israel had shared part of its Iron Dome defence system with the UAE. Our Middle East analyst is Sebastian Usher? Well, what we have from Mr Netanyahu's office is essentially that he paid a visit during the war and it was secret and he had a meeting with the Emirati president and it talks about a historic breakthrough being achieved at that meeting.

8:07No more information on that. There is some more information that the Israeli media is giving, not confirmed officially, about where the meeting might have taken place, how long it lasted, etc. All of that, though, is undercut to an obviously to quite a large extent by the fact that the UAE foreign ministry has stepped out very quickly and denied the reports. Now, it says it denies any reports about this meeting saying they're baseless. Now, whether that was drafted while it was still being reported in the Israeli media before an actual statement by the prime minister's office is interesting, because it's It's quite different to say that Israeli media reports are based, but to say that the actual Prime Minister of Israel is lying, which is what that would be, is intriguing to say the least.

8:54And Sebastian, if this was a secret visit, why did Mr Netanyahu's office release this statement? I think this is about propaganda as much as anything else. I'm pretty sure that if this meeting did take place, and I think you'd have to say that the likelihood is that it did. Otherwise, why would Mr Netanyahu's office be putting out its neck like this? But, as you said, it's a secret meeting. But imagine the UAE very much wanted it to remain a secret meeting, didn't want it to be made public, which I think has led to that very swift response. So from the Israeli perspective, it is another way, as far as Mr Netanyahu is concerned, both for his domestic audience, elections are due to come up soon, and the world audience of just how central Israel now is to the security of the Middle East and how Arab countries are looking to Israel for their protection.

9:43I mean, this latest report comes after we heard from a US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, just a day or so ago, saying that the US essentially confirms that Israel had sent some of its anti-ballistic missiles from its famed Iron Dome system to the UAE with personnel to help UAE fight back against those Iranian attacks. And it's particularly sensitive for the UAE because there have been reports of it carrying out its own attacks on Iran. There's that, absolutely. I mean, I think the position pre-war where the UAE didn't want to stir up Iran, I think that's gone. I mean, obviously, the two sides now are at each other's throats.

10:24I think the UAE, though, has two real concerns here. One is it doesn't want to be even more in the target of Iran, which this would likely lead to. Also, I mean, although the UAE signed up to the Abraham Accords back in 2020 about her diplomatic relations with Israel, although cordial relations with Israel go back years and years, business-wise, they're very, very close to each other. Of the countries in the Arab world and Israel, I'd say they're probably the closest. But it's still a big embarrassment for an Arab country of this kind to host the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. There were a couple of times when Ms Netanyahu was due to go to the UAE over the past few years since the Abraham Accords.

11:05Those didn't happen because of anger within the UAE over things that had happened in Israel. So this shows still it's very sensitive as far as Arab governments are concerned, even ones, as I say, that have signed up to a peace deal with Israel. Sebastian Usher. Despite a ceasefire supposedly being in place in Lebanon, its health ministry says 22 people, eight of them children, were killed in Israeli airstrikes across the south of the country in the latest day of violence. Nearly 3 ,000 people have been killed since the Iranian-backed armed group Hezbollah started firing at Israel in response to its war on Iran, 400 of them since the ceasefire came into effect, less than a month ago.

11:50Israel has seized large swathes of South Lebanon, ordering residents to leave. Israeli and Lebanese officials are due to hold another round of talks in Washington on Thursday to try to end the fighting. Here's this report from our Middle East correspondent, Hugo Besheke.

12:14The ceasefire was supposed to have stopped the war in Lebanon, but it hasn't. We were standing on the hilltop, overlooking three small villages in the valleys of the south. But the explosions got louder, and the buzz of an Israeli drone sounded closer.

12:36Arab Salim is a sleepy village that has been near the front line of many wars. Mostly deserted, it's caught up again in conflict. A few men gather in front of a small shop. Phones in hand, they check the messages with reports of Israeli airstrikes. They keep coming in. The village is quiet, but not in peace. War is ugly, but when it's imposed upon you, You have to defend your country and your existence. Hussein, a middle-aged man, tall and kind, owned the only grocery here. It's now completely charred after an Israeli airstrike hit the building next door a month ago. He has now put up a Hezbollah flag outside.

13:23We are all civilians here, but the community supports Hezbollah because they're defending us. We're the ones putting Hezbollah flags over destroyed shops and buildings here in the village. Not them. They're the only ones keeping us on our land.

13:41Near the mosque, we meet two women, Fatima and Dunye. In their 80s, born here and determined to stay. How do you feel when you hear the drones overhead? I am a bit afraid. I won't deny that. But then I steady my nerves. Everyone gets afraid, but there are different levels of fear. We're counting on God. More than 400 people have been killed in Lebanon during the ceasefire. Israel says it is attacking Hezbollah for violating the deal. And Hezbollah has attacked Israel and Israeli troops in southern Lebanon with rockets and drones. We're standing at the last checkpoint of the Lebanese military on this road.

14:26and on the other side is the so-called yellow line. This is the part of Lebanon that is now under Israeli occupation. And the Lebanese soldiers have told us that Israeli troops are operating from some of the houses at the top of the hill, not really far from here. Southern Lebanon is the heartland of Hezbollah. The group has been weakened and is under pressure to disarm, but it remains popular here. Who is Hezbollah? It's me, you and her. We are Hezbollah. Hezbollah was created to defend my land. Rida lives in Tia, the largest city in the south. An Israeli airstrike destroyed his business and his house and killed his brother and a dozen of his neighbours.

15:18All civilians, he says. As long as the strikes continue, these sirens across the country will not stop. Whatever the ceasefire is, it is in peace. Not here, not yet. That report by Hugo Bersheka. Still to come in this podcast, a year after President Macron's slap from his wife made headlines around the world, a French journalist claims the reason was because she was jealous of his relationship with an Iranian actress.

16:20on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

16:31This is the Global News Podcast. The top diplomat overseeing President Trump's peace plan for Gaza has said he can see a role for Hamas in the Palestinian territory as a political movement, but only if it disarms. Speaking to journalists on a visit to Jerusalem, Nikolai Mladenov, Gaza's high representative to the US-led Board of Peace, also said it would take a generation to clear the rubble in Gaza and rebuild it. Violence continues despite the ceasefire that came into force last year, with hundreds of people killed since then, and most of Gaza's population camped out in abysmal conditions, with Israel occupying more than half of the already crowded territory.

17:15Lucy Williamson, who was at the briefing, has more details. With Donald Trump's peace plan for Gaza stalled in a fractured ceasefire, Mr Mladenov said Israel's withdrawal depended on Hamas disarming and handing over power, but that the group could survive as a political party if it gave up its commitment to fighting Israel. We're not asking Hamas to disappear as a political movement. A political party that disavows armed activity can compete in national Palestinian elections. What is not negotiable, however, is that armed factions or militias with their own military command and control systems, with their own arsenals or tunnel networks, can exist alongside a transitional Palestinian authority.

18:00In response, Israel's government said the terms of the peace deal banned Hamas from any role in governing Gaza. Hamas has said it's committed to handing over power. But the group has so far refused to disarm. and Israel, which regularly carries out strikes in Gaza, has been extending the area under its effective control. In March, it marked out new areas where international organizations must coordinate their activities with Israeli forces. Mr Mladenov said both sides now faced a choice, the peace plan or a permanent division of Gaza, something Gaza's people wouldn't want, he said, and which wouldn't deliver security for Israel.

18:38Lucy Williamson. It's the latest twist in a gruesome murder trial that has fascinated people in the United States and beyond. Three years after he was convicted of killing his wife and son by a court in South Carolina, disgraced lawyer Alex Murdoch has had his murder convictions overturned. The state Supreme Court ordered a new trial saying a local county clerk had unfairly biased a jury against him in the original one. Such was the intense interest in the trial that it even inspired a drama miniseries. This is Alec Murdoch. I need police and an ambulance immediately. Our reporter, Vern DeBussman, told me more.

19:25It's definitely a trial that I think kind of transfixed America. And even at the time of the trial, even before the conviction, It had kind of spawned a whole series of documentaries and books and podcasts and a lot of Internet discussion on Reddit. And now that's all taken kind of an abrupt turn. The South Carolina Supreme Court overturned that conviction for the murder of Alex Murdoch's wife and son, saying that a county clerk named Becky Hill had improperly influenced the jury. essentially what they said was that she had made remarks to the jury, for example, that they shouldn't pay attention to anything he said in his own defense, that they should watch his body language carefully, that this trial shouldn't take long.

20:10And now the five members of South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously agreed that that pressure was improper on the jury. And then now they need to have a new murder trial again. And this county clerk also published a tell-all book about the court proceedings just a few months after the trial, which was then pulled because it had plagiarized other material. Large portions of that book were plagiarized, often from news stories about the trial itself. She ended up facing charges for those and pled guilty to perjury charges and obstruction of justice charges. She was eventually sentenced to three years of probation and her career was essentially ruined by that.

20:55But it was really quite controversial at the time that someone who was a county clerk would then publish a tell-all book about a trial in which she was present. It's become something of a trend for these kind of high-profile court cases in the US, but it was still considered legally very dicey and very controversial. So now a new trial has been ordered for Alex Murdoch. Tell us more about him because he was a big figure in his local community. The Murdoch family was something of a dynasty in his little corner of South Carolina. Since the 1920s, they were considered kind of perhaps the most high profile family in the area.

21:31Everyone knew them. They were extremely influential in local politics and generally in local life, which is part of why the case got so much attention, because it was kind of this family legal dynasty had come crashing down with very lurid details of the crime he was accused of, of murdering his wife and son to cover up financial improprieties that he was using then to feed his addiction to drugs and to fund a very lavish lifestyle. There will be huge interest, won't there, when this new trial starts. And he's still serving two separate prison sentences of 27 years and 40 years for financial crimes, which also emerged during the investigation into the murders.

22:17But he will have to be retried for the actual murder of his wife and son. And I think that'll get enormous interest, not just in South Carolina, but across the U.S. and around the world, just given the details of that and how many twists and turns we've already had. And now to have to kind of go through what was initially, that was a six-week trial, quite a lengthy one, to have to go through that all over again, I think it's going to get enormous interest. And I think we'll likely see the same sort of social media following and Reddit threads about the ins and outs of the trial as we did in the first one.

22:52Berne de Bussman. The French president's marriage has been the subject of intense interest since his ascent to power a decade ago, because of the 24-year age gap, the fact that she was a teacher and he her pupil when they met. And last year, video of President Macron apparently being slapped by his wife Brigitte as they were about to disembark from a plane went viral. They insisted they were just joking around. But now a French journalist has claimed that Brigitte Macron slapped her husband in a jealous row over texts that he was exchanging with an Iranian actress. Carla Conte reports. It was a moment that made headlines well beyond France.

23:36In May last year, as Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron arrived in Vietnam, cameras caught the French first lady pushing her hands into the president's face as the doors of the presidential plane opened. The Élysée initially suggested the video might be fake, before President Macron accepted it was genuine and insisted he and his wife had simply been joking around. Brigitte Macron later said she'd been tired after a turbulent flight and had pushed him away as he tried to make her laugh. Now, a new book by Paris Match journalist Florian Tardif offers a different account. In Un couple presque parfait, an almost perfect couple, he claims the incident followed an argument over messages allegedly exchanged between President Macron and Golshifte Farahani, an Iranian-born actress who lives in exile in France.

24:26Farahani is one of Iran's best-known film stars, and has been an outspoken critic of the country's theocratic regime since leaving Iran in 2008. According to Tardif, the relationship was platonic, but some of the messages allegedly went further than friendship. In an interview promoting the book, he claims the president had sent Farahani messages, including one saying, I find you very pretty. The book says Brigitte Macron was upset not so much by one message itself, but by what it suggested. Her team denies that account and says she never checks her husband's phone. Farahani also denied rumors of an affair between herself and President Macron.

25:07The episode had already been revived by Donald Trump last month, when the US president mocked Mr. Macron over it, saying he was still recovering from the right to the jaw, in his words. Comments dismissed by the French president as neither elegant nor up to standard, in which were badly received in France. Carla Conte. And we end the podcast with a look back at the life of an inspirational figure in the world of basketball. Jason Collins, whose death was announced on Tuesday at the age of 47. He'd been suffering from an aggressive form of brain cancer. He was the NBA's first openly gay player.

25:46Paying tribute, the NBA commissioner, Adam Silva, said Collins' impact and influence extended far beyond basketball to make sports more inclusive. Collins first came out in 2013, writing an essay in Sports Illustrated. He began it with the words, I am a 34-year-old NBA centre, I am black and I am gay. Two years later, in 2015, he spoke to Lee James on Sports World on the BBC World Service about the reaction to him coming out. My life is exponentially better, and I didn't know what to expect when I did make the announcement. I'm so glad that the support has been there not only for me but for so many other people, and I feel like that's part of my job right now is to help create that environment so that other athletes feel comfortable to continue to step forward.