Trump envoy in Israel for Gaza peace negotiations

0:00This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Celia Hatton and at 14 hours GMT on Monday, the 17th of August, these are our top stories. President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner has held talks with the Israeli prime minister as he seeks to advance a U.S.-backed peace plan for Gaza. China's leader has praised the bloody suppression of 1989's Tiananmen Square demonstrations, a rare mention of the protests that briefly threatened the ruling Communist Party. And Hayden Panettiere, best known for her roles in the TV shows Heroes and Nashville, has died at the age of 36. Also in this podcast...

0:43Was that a prank or was that much more seriously, possibly a national security service trying to compromise him? Could his phone have been compromised? Many questions that we don't know the answer. Britain's prime minister exchanges messages with an imposter.

1:00We start in the Middle East and the Trump administration's attempts to revive the floundering peace plan for Gaza. The U.S. Middle East envoy, Jared Kushner, has taken on that task. He arrived in Israel and has been meeting the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for talks. Last month, Donald Trump announced that his board of peace had reached an historic deal for Gaza, but progress ground to a halt after Israel bluntly rejected the proposal. On Sunday, Jared Kushner gave an indication of how far the US is willing to go to put the deal back on track when he had traveled to Egypt for an unusual meeting with Hamas officials.

1:39Mr. Kushner is reported to have pushed Hamas for a disarmament that would be verifiable. That's a key demand of Israel, which has refused to withdraw from Gaza until the group gives up its weapons. Earlier, I asked our correspondent Yolan Nell in Jerusalem if there are any signs of progress towards a deal. A spokesman for the Israeli prime minister only confirmed to the BBC that this meeting between Jared Kushner and the Israeli prime minister was underway earlier. But this happens after he met Hamas officials in this rare meeting in Egypt, along with other senior representatives of the Board of Peace, Nikolai Mladenov, who's the high commissioner for Gaza, and also the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

2:22They were in Egypt, along with regional mediators, meeting this Hamas delegation reportedly for about two hours to discuss Hamas' commitments. Now, Hamas has been saying that it will not implement this roadmap that it's agreed with the Board of Peace that would see it completely disarming unless Israel signs up to the deal. It involves a phased withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza And of course, the Israeli prime minister totally rejected that roadmap, speaking in meetings with his cabinet. That's quite unusual for Israel to completely defy its closest ally, the US and President Trump. So we've heard some opposition from Israel so far, but there is growing pressure from the United States for Israel to accept some sort of deal.

3:12What can Jared Kushner do to nudge Benjamin Netanyahu towards agreeing to this proposal? They will be giving reassurances from Hamas about its commitment to disarmament and about the verification process that has been agreed as part of this roadmap. I think they will also be looking to Israel to meet Hamas's demands in terms of making sure that they stick to their commitments for the first stage of the already agreed ceasefire when it comes to humanitarian matters, when it comes to stopping military attacks on Gaza. because although there was a brief lull in those about a week ago, they have resumed in recent days, with Israel saying that it is targeting what it calls terrorists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

4:03Yolande, what more can you tell me about the domestic political calculations that Benjamin Netanyahu is making? We know he's moving towards a general election for Israel in late October. That's right. And in that general election, polls indicate that the prime minister's Likud party is currently struggling in the polls. There's a lot of pressure coming from members of the coalition, the governing coalition, especially those on the far right, to take a much harsher approach when it comes to Gaza. So it's been much commented on how the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gavir, has just recently given a podcast interview in which he's calling for targeted assassinations to resume in Gaza on a nightly basis, killing 30 to 40 people.

4:52And he's specifying they don't need to be those who pose an immediate threat to Israel. So that gives you a taste of some of the political discourse right now. You'll learn now in Jerusalem. Let's go to China now. The country's leader Xi Jinping has made a rare reference to events that happened in 1989 when an undisclosed number of pro-democracy demonstrators were killed by the Chinese military near Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The BBC's Kate Adie was in Beijing then. She described at that time the famous images of an unidentified man blocking a column of military tanks. Just after midday, the tanks rolled out of the square.

5:31A lone young man stood in front of the first one. The tank faltered, came to a stop, the others behind. On Monday, Xi Jinping made a speech to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of the former leader Jiang Zemin, who died four years ago. In it, he praised the ruling Communist Party's decision to clamp down on the Tiananmen protests, events which eventually fueled Mr. Jiang's elevation to the highest office in China. Addressing thousands of party officials and delegates in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, which is right on Tiananmen Square, Mr. Xi also called on his country to show a fighting spirit as it faced what he described as tough times.

6:14Our China correspondent Steve McDonald joined us from Beijing. Really what this is all about is Xi Jinping trying to neutralize the impact on his government from another leader who's already dead. Now, the reason is that this is the anniversary of Jiang Zemin's birth. And there've been these documentaries on television. Now, he came in and took control of China immediately after those Tiananmen Square events. But following that, the period of his leadership is considered by many people in China. It's been a fantastic time, reform and opening up. Everything's getting better and better. the economy's improving, everyone's freer.

6:58At least, you know, that's the imagery of it. And the contrast, of course, will be to the current leader and his style. When things are seen to be being more clamped down, the economy is not going as well. What's made this even worse is that Jiang Zemin's number two leader, Zhu Rongji, he died just a couple of days ago and his funeral is tomorrow. And so this puts even more emphasis on that previous government, their way of doing things. And so for Xi Jinping, he doesn't want people to be talking all about the reform and opening up, how good the economy was. He wants to try and refocus attention on the fact that Jiang Zemin was a tough communist leader just after Tiananmen Square.

7:47Now, people will debate about whether or not he was or he wasn't. But you can see he's trying to sort of make out that there's this unbroken connection between the great things that Jiang Zemin did and the great things that I'm doing instead of people focusing on the differences. Interesting, though, but Xi Jinping did mention some serious challenges facing China right now without going into detail. Do we know what he was referring to? Nobody can deny that the economy is not going great for China, even though it's weathered the storm of tariffs from the US pretty well. I mean, look, youth unemployment, the property crisis keeps going.

8:29There's just such an overall problem with domestic demand and just not a spirit of optimism. He's got to acknowledge that because otherwise it would seem like he's in la-la land. Now, it's not desperation stakes, but the problem is all the things that are going really well with the economy, all the new stuff, whether it be robotics or electric vehicles or AI, they don't employ that many people. And so they're not soaking up all the graduates. They're not putting money in the pockets of that many ordinary Chinese people. And while things are going OK, they don't feel like they're getting better and better and better and better as they were during Jiang Zemin's time.

9:09hence the need to, as I said before, neutralise that threat. Stephen, just briefly, do you think it's a bit risky for Xi Jinping to bring up the events of 1989 to revive people's memories of what happened back then? Because right now it's quite taboo to mention it in China. As you know, it hardly ever gets mentioned. And he didn't really specifically, he didn't use the word Tiananmen Square or uprising or anything or crushing that or anything like that. He just spoke about the problems during that time. So it was pretty opaque, although most Chinese people would get the reference. Stephen McDonnell in Beijing.

9:45Around the world, people in the film and television industry are paying tribute to the American actress Hayden Panettiere, who's died at the age of 36. It's not yet clear how she died. Ms Panettiere's career spanned three decades. She began when she was a young child and went on to score roles in hit television shows and films, including the Scream horror franchise and the TV series Heroes and also Nashville. She spoke to BBC Breakfast in 2013 about Nashville and the difficulties she faced in the spotlight. There's a lot of judgment, which is interesting because people ask me all the time where I pull this character from, whether it's a country music artist.

10:25Actually, just because I didn't grow up in the country music industry, you know, we're all in the same lunchroom. We're just eating at different lunch tables. I still grew up a young person in the spotlight, dealing with a lot of scrutiny. Our cultural reporter Yasmin Rufo told me more. She really did have such a varied career, but also a career that spanned almost her entire lifetime. Back in May, she told CBS News that she was just eight months old when her mum was taking her to auditions. By the time she was five, she'd appeared in 50-odd commercials. Like you mentioned there, she was four when she appeared in the US soap One Life to Live.

10:59She then went on in her teenage years to star in A Bug's Life and Remember the Titans with Denzel Washington before becoming that household name as cheerleader Claire Bennett in that hit sci-fi series Heroes. Then in Nashville, like you heard in that clip there, it was a totally different side of her playing an up and coming country singer Juliet Barnes. She actually performed the songs on the show as well, which ended up in charts at the time, and she earned two Golden Globe nominations. And then, you know, she was in countless other films, the screen franchises, the Bring It On, All or Nothing and, you know, various other TV and film throughout her career.

11:33I mean, she did so much in her career. It's hard to believe that she's now died just at the age of young age of 36. Can you tell me more? She talked about struggles going on in her life. I think one of the important things is that her legacy isn't just being this incredible actress, but also being someone that was very open about some really extremely difficult periods in her life. She published her memoir in May, This Is Me A Reckoning, it's called. And in that, she really details things like growing up in the industry and how difficult that was for her, addiction that she battled, substance abuse and her later recovery.

12:07She also spoke a lot about the postpartum depression she experienced after giving birth to her daughter in 2014. And then later, her decision to give her daughter's father, Ukrainian boxer Vladimir Klitschko, full custody of the child. and I think one of the reasons that she's been so vocal on this is that she said she's always wanted other people to know that they weren't alone in that situation so she opened up about postpartum depression as a way to help other people talk about it similarly she's spoken about things like the domestic abuse she's experienced in her life as a way to help inspire other people so I think it's really important to see her legacy not just as one of a successful actress who was in all of these brilliant tv and film shows but as someone that really wanted to talk honestly and willingly about some of the experiences and the challenges that come with growing up in the spotlight.

12:54Our culture reporter Yasmin Rufo on the legacy left by the actress Hayden Panettiere. Still to come in this podcast. It didn't have that combustion engine roar of a sports car. It had five seats, for goodness sake. It was just any other car. It's a Ferrari, but not like you've previously known it.

13:23The rapper Tupac Shakur was gunned down on the Las Vegas Strip nearly 30 years ago, becoming an unsolved killing that has haunted the world of hip-hop for three decades. Now, Dwayne Keefe D. Davis, a self-described former gang leader, is standing trial for his murder. The BBC's Shaima Khalil is following the case. In 1996, Tupac Shakur was everywhere. California Love was an anthem. All Eyes on Me was selling millions, and he was starring in films. At 25, Tupac was at the height of his career. At 25, he was gunned down. Because everybody still wants to know what happened. There's been no movement in 30 years, which is wild to me.

14:06I sat with Tupac's older brother, Moprim Shakur, who described receiving the news that his brother had been shot in Las Vegas. I know it's a long time ago, but what do you remember thinking? worry. I was just worried how bad it was. All I had known, he got shot. So until I reached Vegas, I didn't know the status of things. And Pac was a tough little dude. He had already survived being shot five times. And I was just praying that it wasn't as worse as it was. He had already survived one near fatal shooting, but he couldn't survive a second. Rap star Tupac Shakur died last night after a brief life in a rough business.

14:44He was 25. Tupac's murder has long been associated with the bitter East Coast-West Coast rap feud, but prosecutors say the shooting grew out of a confrontation involving rival Compton gangs. Nearly 30 years on, Dwayne Keefe D. Davis is on trial for murder. You have the right to have the jury sentenced you if they come back on a first-degree murder verdict, and you have decided to waive that right. Is that correct? There's not. And at the heart of the case are his own words. Accounts he gave in interviews and his memoir about his alleged role in the killing. Legal analyst and attorney Sean Kent says it will be an uphill battle for the defense.

15:22This is what makes the case so fascinating. The two biggest pieces of evidence against Keefe D. came from Keefe D. However, this doesn't mean that they're going to be presented to the jury as admissions of guilt. Keefe D. has the right to take the stand and say, I made all this up. I lied to sell copies of the book. I lied to the police. I'm a liar. But I did not murder Tupac. If he does decide to take the stand and give this kind of testimony, then he'll be cross-examined using his own words. It's fired! Mike Tyson! On the night of September the 7th, 1996, Tupac and Death Row Records boss Suge Knight watched Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

16:02Afterwards, security cameras captured Tupac and members of his entourage attacking Kifidi's nephew. Later that night, Tupac left with Suge Knight in a black BMW. At a junction near the Las Vegas Strip, a white Cadillac pulled alongside them. Tupac was shot four times. He died six days later. Tupac was just a fascinating character. I mean, every aspect of him. He was talented, he was complex, he was complicated. Santi Elijah-Holy is the author of An American Family, the Shakurs and the Nation They Created. He provides good just dance tracks, just make you feel just like you want to just, you know, cruise with your windows down.

16:42But he also makes you want to stop and think about, you know, social justice issues and sit down and actually parse his lyrics. Hey, Keith, Metro Police, come over here. For decades, the murder investigation barely moved. No arrest, no trial. Then, in 2023, Keith E.D. was arrested. Nope, we're going to put it down. He's now charged with first-degree murder, accused of helping organize the attack, although prosecutors don't claim he fired the gun. He's pleaded not guilty. Mupreem Shakur says he's cautiously optimistic about the trial. But after nearly 30 years, he says no verdict can give him what he truly wants.

17:20The justice I would like, I would never get. I want my brother back. Period. I want my little brother back. The amount of pain, distress, heartache that the family has gone through and Pac's fans have gone through is unmatched. The trial may finally provide some answers about what happened that night, but no verdict can fill the years of silence or fully explain why after all this time, all eyes are still on Tupac Shakur. Shama Khalil. Now to a potential hoax involving the British Prime Minister Andy Burnham. He's reported to have exchanged messages with someone posing as a senior member of the US government, the White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

18:12But that person was not who they were pretending to be. Our political correspondent Damian Grammaticus is following this for us. Well, Celia, this is intriguing and raises some of those exact questions. Now, what we do know is that Andy Burnham engaged in some sort of message exchange and it appears that he was responding to something and, as you say, thought that that was Donald Trump's chief of staff. Officially, the government here will not comment because they say that this is a national security matter. But what we understand from conversations is that we're told that nothing of significance was exchanged, there was no verbal communication, and that this was then reported to security authorities as soon as suspicions were raised.

19:01But real important questions. Why did Andy Burnham engage with someone he seems he didn't know? Why then did he sort of exchange messages with them? Was that a prank or was that much more seriously, possibly a national security service trying to compromise him? Could his phone have been compromised? Many questions that we don't know the answer to. And I'm sure some embarrassment on the Burnham side as well. But this isn't the first time, is it, that a UK high level politician has been tricked into messaging with someone who isn't who they thought they were? No, absolutely. And that is also, I think, instructive here, because two years ago, the then Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, who had been Prime Minister, he messaged and then took part in a video call with someone who he thought was a prior Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko.

19:53Now, he became suspicious after that. Two years before that, the then Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, also had a video chat with someone he thought was a Ukrainian Prime Minister and even discussed UK possible deployment of warships, a nuclear weapons issue with Ukraine. That was blamed on Russia. A video was released online, an edited video. The interesting thing here, I think, is that all those were calls that were put through from switchboards and government departments. This was something that Andy Burnham seems to have engaged in, again, why there are questions. Interesting. And Andy Burnham is keen to come across as someone who's very approachable.

20:31But moving forward, do you think his team is going to have to change how they do things, perhaps, and maybe do a little bit more vetting before he engages and messages with someone? Well, that certainly has been his sort of public profile, if you like, has been someone who's keen to talk, keen to engage, keen to listen and hear from people. I think the issue that this raises exactly is that why did he do that in this case? But it appears to have happened since he entered Downing Street, perhaps in the early days, And it appears that I'm sure his team will have learned messages from this. Usually in this instance, I think you'd expect a government to government communication to come through a dip through an embassy, through diplomatic sources, through the foreign office.

21:15Of course, leaders nowadays do communicate back and forth on WhatsApp. But certainly I think they will be much more cautious here about who he does engage with. Damian Grammaticus. To Zambia now. Let's get the latest on the aftermath of the presidential election last Thursday. With more than half the votes counted, officials say the current president, Hakunda Hitchilema, is pulling ahead. But while the counting is going on, there's political turmoil unfolding elsewhere. The government says the security forces have arrested 11 people involved in an alleged insurrection plot. They say the main opposition candidate was found at the scene of the raid where they seized weapons.

21:52Dingandaba Boyoya is in Zambia for us. The raid happened in the capital, even if the details of this are quite scanty at the moment. The government issued a statement yesterday simply saying that they found a group of people who were in position of what they've described as high-grade military equipment, military weapons. And as a result of that, there was some sort of exchange of fire. There are no details on whether or not anyone was injured from there. But the opposition NRP-UP leader, Brian Munduille, says that some of his team members were shot and their whereabouts are unknown. In fact, they've gone to the extent to suggest that some of these people actually died.

22:34The government had initially refused that there was any such thing. Yesterday did come out to issue a statement saying that a raid did in fact happen on Friday. Now, this is just the latest chapter and what's been quite a dramatic election with some criticizing how it's been carried out. Can you take us through the campaign and through some of the challenges that we've seen with the vote? The observers that have spoken out now have said that the campaign period was fairly peaceful, even election day itself. However, there were concerns around how the election was conducted with regards to fairness.

23:10The Electoral Commission of Zambia had put out a schedule within which presidential candidates would campaign in various parts of the country. But that schedule was not applicable to the president and vice president who would go anywhere at whatever time. And some of these stakeholders felt that that wasn't fair. Voting day itself brought its own issues while it was largely peaceful. You know, counting of votes on Friday was suspended and it was suspended by the Electoral Commission of Zambia across the country because they said there were some polling stations where ballot papers had been stolen, ballot boxes had been stolen.

23:46Now, there are no details of where these ballot boxes were stolen from and where this violence occurred. And some observers have said this lack of detail is creating the impression that, you know, the Electoral Commission may be hiding something. And now the incumbent is pulling ahead in the vote count. Will that help settle things? At the moment, the situation in the country is pretty calm. There's police presence in a lot of densely populated areas because there was some sort of unrest on Friday, on the 14th of August, when Brian Mondewille had claimed victory of the election. Some of his supporters had taken to the streets.

24:25And so there's been a deployment of heavy police presence and military presence, actually, in a lot of the streets of densely populated areas. With regards to whether the vote has credibility, there's already a dispute. The opposition, NRP, UP, are saying that what they're describing as industrial-scale rigging, that's what they're calling it. They've not brought forth any evidence of it at the moment, but they are clearly disputing what is being announced by the Electoral Commission of Zambia. And since we spoke to Dinkindaba Boyoya in Zambia, the main opposition party has rejected government accusations that its members were involved in plotting an insurrection at the time of the election.

25:06Now, when you think of a Ferrari sports car, you might imagine this sound.

25:15the roar of an engine usually accompanied by a tiny number of seats and a slick exterior but now something new for the italian car company a very quiet electric car and the first one off the production line is making headlines after being sold at a charity auction mora fogerty is our asia business editor in singapore and she told me how much that car sold for the luce which means light in Italian, at an auction in California over the weekend, sold for 40 million U.S. dollars. Now, that's the highest price ever at an auction for a brand new car with higher prices, of course, for kind of vintage cars.

25:54But for a brand new car just off the production line, this was the highest price ever. Now, this Luce was designated as a chassis zero, meaning it's the first of its kind of this new series of electric vehicles that Ferrari is unveiling. So So it was quite surprising that it sold for this amount of money. And I'm sure Ferrari is feeling pretty good about it as well. All the proceeds from the sale, according to Sotheby's Auction House, goes towards the Ferrari Foundation's educational programs. So I guess this was a bit of welcome news as well for Ferrari, because the car company did receive a bit of backlash when it first announced it was going to be making these cars.