US media outlets take legal action after White House ban

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2:00Thousands flee Yemen as the war between the Iranian-backed Houthis and Saudi-backed forces escalates. We have a special report. And there's a new attempt by FIFA President Gianni Infantino to win back support for his leadership of global football. Also in this podcast... In case we're attacked, we will not surrender. There are plans prepared for evacuation. The Lithuanian Prime Minister tells the BBC local people feel they're under constant threat of a Russian attack and the row involving teenage darts sensation Luke Littler and booing crowds. We begin in the United States, where television networks have been staging an extraordinary collective revolt by effectively boycotting their shared coverage of President Donald Trump.

2:53They're acting in protest at his decision to ban three news outlets from the White House. Those outlets, CNN, MSNOW and Politico, have filed a lawsuit against the administration. Mr Trump, who's in New York ahead of his speech at the UN General Assembly, spoke about the boycott after he met the city's mayor, Zoran Mamdani. It's interesting because they said they were going to boycott me, but they never boycott me, so I wasn't very worried about that. Look at all that press, and I think I have an obligation not to let fake news. They're very bad for the country, very bad for national security, so I have that obligation, so we'll see how it works out.

3:33By Monday evening, the White House had launched a streaming channel in response, saying Trump TV would stream top videos, major remarks and must-see highlights 24-7. On Monday, it was CNN's turn to film White House proceedings, but because of the row, major networks kept their cameras away as President Trump opened his new helipad. Perhaps not what Donald Trump intended to happen. I got more from our North America editor, Sarah Smith. No, I don't think this is what he intended at all because we know how much Donald Trump relishes being on TV and dominating the media even more than your average politician does.

4:14And yet we've got a situation where there is no network television coverage of him at all. So no pictures of him boarding Marine One the helicopter as he was leaving the White House, no images of him arriving in New York or any of the events he's taking part in. And not only is there not any moving footage, there aren't even any still photographs because all the photographers at the White House have also agreed not to put out their images in protest at the ban. Because it was on Friday that he picked three media outlets, CNN, MSNOW and Politico, and said they were no longer going to be allowed into the White House to cover events there because he said that they put out fake news and lies.

4:55And it just so happened that it was CNN who were supposed to be the pool or shared TV crew covering the president. and the White House took them off that full rota. So the other four major television networks all said they were going to refuse to put a replacement crew in in protest at this ban on CNN. Extraordinary level of solidarity from the other TV networks, including Fox News. Is this going to continue, though, because it's fine making the gesture, but in the long term they're not going to have coverage of things they want, are they? It's definitely going to continue any day that CNN was down to be the shared pool TV crew.

5:38It's less clear what's going to happen on the days when the other major networks who have not been banned were supposed to be providing the coverage of Donald Trump. But what is obvious is that the media are pretty united in their condemnation of this ban. The three prohibited outlets have also launched a legal challenge that will be heard later this week. They say that banning them from the White House is not only an assault on the freedom of the press, which is constitutionally protected in the United States, but it also interferes with the public's right to independent journalism free from government interference.

6:11And how much does President Trump need this coverage? I understand he's already looking at ways of creating essentially his own pool coverage of his movements. Well, there was an attempt at that today. So on the White House YouTube channel and on the new White House mobile phone app, they put out some pictures of a ribbon cutting ceremony. Donald Trump was opening the new helipad that he's had installed on the south lawn of the White House. But it was utterly inaudible. You could barely see him. The camera seemed to be kept very, very far away from him. It was an example of the way in which actually you need professional television crews to provide decent coverage.

6:51But also, all the major networks, including the BBC, have said they're not going to air any of that footage supplied by the White House. And if people are filming things on their mobile phone or some of the other TV outlets were to provide some pictures, the major networks will not be using them on any day. We've withdrawn network TV coverage. Of course, the president has other ways of reaching people. He can boast on Truth Social. He can put out a video on social media channels. I think even if he does have other ways of getting his message out, he will miss being on television. Our North America editor, Sarah Smith.

7:26Presidents, prime ministers and the world's top diplomats are coming together in New York for the UN General Assembly. But with the backdrop of wars in the Middle East and the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, there will no doubt be some tense exchanges. Iran is reportedly sending a delegation to the Assembly, but there's no word on whether talks with President Trump are scheduled to take place on the sidelines. Our State Department correspondent Tom Bateman said there's a lot of ground to cover. One of the things we've done here is to check out the escalators. They are working inside, because remember it was last year that President Trump, when he came to make his big speech here, got stuck on the escalator on the way in with the First Lady Melania Trump and used that really, in his view, as a symbol of what he saw as the UN's dysfunction.

8:19Then proceeded a year ago to rail against countries here and the organisation itself, particularly over the issue of immigration, saying that countries were, in his words, going to hell. Now, will we get a similar kind of sense from Mr Trump? Probably. But also there's some really important diplomacy happening here. Again, he will meet President Zelensky of Ukraine. He desperately needs some kind of resolution on the issue of both Russia and Ukraine targeting each other's energy targets. That's causing further problems when it comes to diesel and the cost of that in the United States. Political problem for him.

8:55He will also meet Gulf leaders as, again, he desperately needs some kind of resolution over oil exports via the Strait of Hormuz and elsewhere in the Middle East. And then he'll have that meeting with Prime Minister Andy Burnham, a question about how much these behind-the-scenes meetings will actually even be seen because of his current huge escalating dispute with the media in the United States. Our State Department correspondent Tom Bateman. We've reported recently on the rapid advance made by Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen to the country's Red Sea coast. It's marked an escalation in their war with Saudi-backed forces and placed the Houthis in a position to control the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a crucial shipping route.

9:41Now, the British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said the UK will provide support to Saudi Arabia in response to attacks the country has faced from the Houthis. Mr Burnham said the UK would provide what he called defensive air-to-air refueling. Here's our political correspondent Chris Mason. It's understood this refuelling support will begin in the coming days and will involve a single British aircraft, a Voyager, based out of RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. Government officials say the offer is time-limited and likely, in the first instance, to last for weeks. What is described as defensive support is seen as aiding Saudi Air Force jets attempting to shoot down incoming Houthi missiles and drones.

10:26In recent days, Houthi militants in Yemen say they have carried out attacks on the Saudi capital Riyadh as well as energy sites on the country's Red Sea coast. Meanwhile, more than 3 ,000 Yemenis have fled across the Red Sea to Djibouti to escape the fighting between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed forces and many more are likely to follow their lead. The BBC's Frank Gardner visited a refugee camp in Obok, a small port town where officials are preparing for the arrival of up to 10 ,000 refugees.

11:04I'm inside a warehouse here at a place called Obok, which is on the Djibouti, that's the African side of the Babel Mandir Strait that separates Africa from the Arabian Peninsula. And this warehouse is full of families, hundreds of people here. actually altogether more than 3 ,000 Yemenis who've come across in boats in the last few days fleeing the fighting in Yemen. There's sand and tarpaulins on the floor, goats feeding amongst everybody, but people are at least getting food. They fled hungry and literally the clothes they're standing up in. And the thing that they're terrified of most are the airstrikes, the bombs that fall on their houses, on their children, on their families.

11:50One of those I met here is Qasim Ibrahim Abzi, a former fisherman. He's old and frail. In fact, his ID card says he was born 100 years ago. I found him sitting on a tarpaulin, having arrived last Friday, and he was eager to talk. I asked him what's brought him to this place.

12:12What led us to come here, it was the plane, the sound of the plane. Sitting next to him is his wife, Aisha Abdul Qadr. She's apparently the same age, and yet, despite her ordeal, she hasn't given up on going back to Yemen and the life they had before.

12:35We are willing to go back if there's peace, and we are praying to God that peace does return. All we need is peace, even for our children's future. They get safety first, then food, water, and an education. As you see, we just fled with our clothes and left everything behind because there is no peace.

12:56Not all the refugees here in this camp are new arrivals. Just under 3 ,000 Yemenis were already here, having fled when fighting first flared up between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed coalition in 2015. Mohammed Abdel Karim has been here in this camp ever since.

13:16Most of the people here are in the worst condition, inside the tents here. I'm very touched. I'm crying for these people, for my people, for their suffering. I want our voices to be heard by the NGOs and the Djibouti government, and I'm thankful to them for accepting us.

13:36Mohammed breaks off, turning his face away. I can see he's choking back tears. This country, Yemen, was once called Arabia Felix by the Romans. Happy Arabia. Today, it's anything but. Frank Gardner in Djibouti. The FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, sparked an international outcry earlier this year with his proposal to privatise the Football World Cup. Now he's following up on that by saying he's open to reforms at football's governing body. In a letter sent to all member associations, he suggested an external review of how FIFA makes its decisions and who should have a say. Our sports correspondent Ben Croucher has been telling me more.

14:22I think there's three interesting things to come out of this letter. One, the confirmation if we really needed it, that the proposals to sell off stakes in major tournaments would not proceed. He insisted that FIFA's democratic processes and independence and sporting authority were never for sale. He added, I recognise without the full context it had caused concern and created the impression that decisions had already been taken. They had not. A couple of other things that are particularly interesting. One, he's proposing to create an independent external review into the way that FIFA is run. And perhaps the most crucial for football associations around the world is proposed direct consultation with the confederations themselves, member associations, i.e.

15:05the different countries' football associations and stakeholders in FIFA's decision-making processes. Now, this letter's been sent to all 211 member associations ahead of a FIFA council meeting on October 15th next month. He nearly lost his job over the last proposals that you just talked about there. Is this enough? Is he back in the fold? Has there been any response yet? So there's been no response just yet. The key response, I think, that we're all looking out for is the way that European football's governing body, UEFA, responds to this. They were probably Infantino's most harsh critic over this.

15:41They united all of their members, essentially slamming the initial proposals and especially the way that Infantino conducted himself. The important subtext to all of this is that Infantino is running for re-election as FIFA president next March. Now, this letter, it appears to be a slight softening of his stance. He's admitted to causing concern. He says it was only a proposal, it wasn't set in Stern, but given the level of animosity that there was for Infantino and the way he handled the initial proposals, it's going to be really interesting now to see how the Confederations line themselves up, especially given the fact that the deadline to nominate oneself for the FIFA presidency doesn't come too far away in the middle of November.

16:25Would these proposals make real changes to the world of football or if he did get re-elected, would we be just back to business as usual? I think the general assumption around FIFA at the moment is what Infantino wants and Infantino gets. We saw the way that the World Cup was run and the difficulty that FIFA got into over their ticketing policies and how their pricing was structured and the amount of money that they were generating and was that necessarily good for fans? Whereas actually, by allowing the Confederations and the football associations to have a greater say, the idea is that those fans of those particular football associations and bear in mind that the English FA and the Spanish FA may have completely different priorities to say the Jamaican FA or the New Zealand FA or some of the much smaller FIFA nations so by giving all of them a little bit more of a voice the idea is that it should become a little bit more democratic whether that works in practice only time will tell.

17:25Our sports correspondent Ben Croucher. Still to come in this podcast. I want to be clear about something right up front. This settlement is not a vote of support for this merger. It is not a blessing of the broader merger. Paramount Skydance finally cuts a deal to unlock its$110 billion merger with Warner Brothers Discovery.

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19:18This is the Global News Podcast. More than three decades after the Rwanda genocide, a doctor in Britain has become the first person to be charged in the UK in connection with the killing of around 800 ,000 ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus. Vincent Brown is from the Rwandan capital Kigali, where he is alleged to have directed and incited people to murder members of the Tutsi ethnic group. He was charged after a lengthy investigation by London's Metropolitan Police. Tom Simons has more. The 1994 killings in Rwanda lasted 100 days, during which Hutu extremists carried out a campaign of slaughter against Tutsis and other moderate Hutus.

20:07It followed a three-year civil war. The Metropolitan Police war crimes team has been investigating since 2019 at the request of the government of Rwanda. It has focused on genocide in the Regenge district of Kigali in April 1994. Dr Vincent Brown from Islington in North London, formerly Dr Vincent Virginia, has been charged with one offence of conduct ancillary to genocide and six offences of conduct ancillary to murder as a crime against humanity under international law. Senior police officers have previously stressed the UK should not be a safe haven for alleged war criminals. Investigators have been trained in international war crimes legislation, and inquiries continue into other alleged genocide offences in Rwanda.

20:58Tom Simons reporting. European leaders are warning of the possibility that Russia might attack NATO territory with drones or missiles in the coming months. One country that's seen as a possible target is Lithuania. It borders Kaliningrad region, the heavily militarised westernmost exclave of Russia, and just last week, NATO fighter pilots shot down a drone that entered its airspace. Now, the Lithuanian Prime Minister says his country has made evacuation plans in the face of military threats from Russia. Mindagas Sinkavuchis was speaking in a BBC interview. We're threatened, constantly threatened, not just by drones entering our airspace, but also there's attempts previously with meteorological balloons and smuggling cigarettes, but also a threat on our civil aviation.

21:54If a drone flies in and enters Lithuanian airspace, people in the area receive either yellow or red alarm to go to the shelter. So it's an alarming thing, you know, when you're in the middle of the night, you receive an alarm. That's not a good emotional situation. In case we're attacked, we will not surrender. There are plans prepared for evacuation. There will be groups of people, handicapped, elderly people, that will be priority, that will be needed to be assisted. And there will be routes that we're thinking over. Because, of course, the evacuation starts from major cities. In the worst case scenario, we have to think it over how we will proceed and how we will make it smoothly, not be stuck in a traffic jam, not moving anywhere.

22:45So we're thinking about a variety of scenarios. Not all of them are being discussed publicly. We face concrete threats, not on a daily basis, but it's a true reality for us. Drones flying in with 10 kilos of explosives, and we have to counter fight it with jets, attack it and hit the drone. So that's a real threat. That was the Lithuanian Prime Minister, Mindagas Sinkavucis, talking to the BBC's Newsnight programme. After months of legal wrangling, the media giant Paramount Skydance has reached a settlement with a California-led group of US states and a Hollywood writers' union. They were suing it in order to block its proposed$110 billion merger with Warner Brothers Discovery.

23:33Announcing the agreement, the California Attorney General, Rob Bonta, said he still had misgivings. I want to be clear about something right up front. This settlement is not a vote of support for this merger. It is not a blessing of the broader merger. But opponents of the settlement have accused Rob Bonta of caving in to wealthy interests. Ioni Wells reports on the background to the dispute and what this settlement deal will mean. So these 12 US states were unhappy about the idea of a merger between Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery, essentially arguing that it would impact competition and also film production as well.

24:20The states were pretty clear that this deal that's been reached now doesn't mean that they endorse the merger. They would still rather the merger didn't take place. But it has met certain criteria for them that will now pave the way, essentially, for this merger to continue. Some of what Paramount has agreed to includes meeting certain minimum thresholds of film production to try and make sure that a minimum amount of film production is kept within the United States, but also that a minimum number of films are produced. And this includes committing to producing at least 30 films in the first two years of the deal and 32 films for the next three years.

25:01A certain percentage of those will have to be independent films, a certain percentage also blockbusters. Now, another aspect that was a concern for these US states was about editorial independence for some of the news brands, notably CBS News and CNN. So another part of this deal is that Paramount have agreed to essentially establish a independent editorial board to ensure that those two newsrooms retain their editorial independence and can still report impartially on the news. Ione Wells. As most professional athletes will know, dealing with hostile crowds is a big part of the job. But when does booing stop being part of the fun and cross over into unacceptable abuse?

25:48It's a question being asked in the world of darts right now after comments from the world champion, Britain's Luke Littler. Will Chalk told me more about him. If you're not a darts fan, I'd say here in the UK, actually, he's bordering on being a household name. I think if you went into a pub where people were watching sports on a Saturday, most people would have heard of Luke Littler, which is slightly unusual for someone in the kind of relatively niche sport of darts. But then he is an unusual athlete. I mean, he turned pro at 16, won the PDC World Championship at 17. that's the youngest anyone has ever done that, is now still just 19 years old and has won almost every major darts trophy there is.

26:32If you want a sense of how well he's thought of in the world of darts, this is from a trailer from a BBC documentary about him. There is certainly nothing that's ever been seen like it in darts before. What have you made of Luke's journey so far? Sick of talking about it. Every 17 years a star gets born and he's one of them. He has taken darts into the stratosphere. So lots of massive praise there but he is also a controversial figure in some circles and over the weekend he was once again targeted by boos and whistles when he was playing at the World Series of Darts in Amsterdam It got so bad that the ref had to stop at one point and tell the crowd to calm down He eventually got knocked out of the tournament but crucially he's now said that he might not ever play in the Netherlands again Now you might be thinking, empty threat Well, maybe not because he's got previous for this.