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24:34Welcome back to NewsHour. Let's head to the Philippines now, where fire broke out on board a ferry heading from Manila, the capital, to Coron, a destination popular with tourists, on Thursday.

24:50What you can hear there are the voices of the Coast Guard rescuers as they approach the burning ship, which is engulfed in flames in the darkness about 100 metres ahead of them. At least five people have died and 86 are still missing as the rescue operation was continuing. Well, Karen Lemmer, Bureau Chief for the Reuters News Agency in Manila, spoke to NewsHouse James Menendez about those rescue efforts. It's been paused for tonight. I was just on the phone a while ago with the Philippine Coast Guard just to check the status of the search and rescue operation. So they're temporarily stopping the rescue, but at the sign of the first daylight tomorrow, they're going to resume the search and hopefully they'd be able to enter the vessel where they fear that some people are still trapped.

25:39A while ago, they told us that it's been very difficult to conduct a search given that the vessel has been charred. it's very hot and if you've seen some of the images you can see thick smoke billowing from the vessel inside but as they were saying that hopefully they could get a window and and hopefully enter the vessel tomorrow morning the weather's pretty soon as they can yeah the weather's pretty bad as well isn't it exactly um so that's not helping as well especially last night when they started when they got the report about the the fire we can see also from video and even the coast artificial saying the rescuers the waters are very it's not helpful the waves are quite strong but today they said that the waters have moderated a bit and the recent images that we've seen at least midday today we've seen a bit of calming of the waters but I think there's a bit of rain if I'm not mistaken so that's really hampering rescue efforts yeah I'm just looking at one of the pictures of the boat now.

26:43And I mean, it looks like it's almost been completely destroyed by the fire. I mean, it's just a whole... Is there any information about how it started? What caused it? Yeah, in fact, that's one of the questions we've been asking disaster officials. But as of tonight, no answers have been given. They've promised that they're going to conduct a comprehensive investigation. But one thing they noted during the press conference this afternoon is that the vessel actually passed safety assessments, passed the pre-departure assessments. They were supposed to have enough life vests as well. So in that area, that's so far the answer that was given.

27:24But I'm sure there's plenty of questions being asked, especially by the families of those victims. And hopefully we'll get more clarity and piece together what's actually happened in the ferry. Karen Lemmer, Reuters Bureau Chief in Manila, talking to the BBC's James Menendez, just to say it's about an hour until sunrise in the Philippines when, as we say, we expect that operation for recovery and Ptach defines the survivors to resume.

28:04This is NewsHour. I'm Sean Lay in London And on this half of the programme, we're going to be talking about the situation in the United States facing President Trump. Mr Trump's announcement on the first night of the Republican midterm convention that every adult US citizen would receive$5 ,000 if his Republican Party wins. Both houses in November's congressional elections is still making headlines on Thursday. He's been accused of trying to bribe American voters with their own money. Assuming, that is, it's the taxpayer who'll pick up the tab. This convention is a first, a reflection of a belief among party leaders that playing Trump is playing the Trump card in any election, even though he's not on the ballot papers in November.

28:48So he's headlining the event again on Thursday evening. NewsHour caught up with Steve Bannon, who was the Trump campaign manager when he won his first presidential election and subsequently served as White House chief strategist. I asked Steve Bannon first about one of the day's events, the commemoration marking the first anniversary of the killing of Charlie Kirk, whose organization Turning Point USA was key in helping Donald Trump win over young voters. What has Steve Bannon missed this last year about Charlie Kirk? Well, he's more than a friend. He was a colleague. I gave him his first job when I ran Breitbart.

29:24And then later we picked his show up. His podcast was on our channel, our network. In fact, he followed me for five years. every day on TV. So I don't call it a murder. It was an assassination. The country is very divided right now and is very divided on some fundamental issues. And whereas I would say half the nation is commemorating the memory of Charlie Kirk as a martyr to our cause and a saint, a secular saint, half the nation is mocking and ridiculing this, including Hassan Piker, who's got a song out that kind of, you know, mocks the memory and the death of Charlie Kirk. Let's talk about what his loss meant for the movement, because in a sense it's an important time to have somebody like Charlie Kirk with the perspective of the passage of a year.

30:13How big a loss do you think he's been for the movement? Talent like this comes along once in a generation, and you just can't replace it. So the reality is we are where we are. Now, I will say some of his message is trying to be muddled. You know, Charlie was very adamantly opposed to a regime change conflict with Iran and for America's involvement. I know that because I went back to the White House a couple of days before the bombing that ended the 12-day war and really worked and coordinated with Charlie about making sure voices were heard that talked to President Trump and put the facts in front of President Trump that showed that, you know, it would be a very big misstep for America to get involved in Israel's regime change war.

30:57But you can never replace an individual like Charlie Kirk. I want to come to the war, if I may. But just before that, he was a motivator as well as an organiser, particularly of young men, to support the president. There's quite a lot of polling suggesting that young men have, to some extent, soured on Donald Trump in the last year or so. Last month, some 32 % of men aged 18 to 29 approved of the president's performance, down from 43 % in February 2025. I think in the election, he got 46 % of male voters in that age group. Should the white house be worried by that? Listen, if you get back to Trump, basic populist nationalist policies will be fine.

31:38When you get off populist nationalist policies, you should be concerned. And part of that is the forever war. Now, the president's goal and objective of making sure the Persians can't get a nuclear weapon. I think people support. But most people believe the president that that was taken care of at the end of the 12 day war. So there's been a lot of consternation, not just among young people, but that, you know, it's across the board. It's a big issue with MAGA overall. That being said, with the young people, it's actually I think the immigration policies, the no mass deportations. I mean, we have a lot of work to do.

32:13The inflation's numbers out. So if we go back and stick to populist nationalist policies, we'll be fine. The president made quite an eye-catching announcement. Everyone's talking about it today, really, in his speech on Wednesday, that pledged to pay every American$5 ,000 if the Republicans win the midterm. Should we believe it? with 40 trillion dollars in debt and two trillion dollars deficits every year i strongly believe that if there's excess of tariff money that that should go back to pay down the debt and you know you're going to talk about five thousand dollars cash payments which are just never going to happen right i mean because the doge payments never happened did they and the the tariff payments we were told would happen didn't i mean i just wonder if that's just part of the theater part of the the circus that exists around donald trump part of how he keeps himself in the headlines It's not a certain – listen, he's a unique in American history as far as a political figure because he didn't come up through politics.

33:07You can see with the convention – I can tell one thing to the haters, of which I include BBC, of the mega movement. The vibe and the energy coming out of this convention is going to be quite extraordinary. We are going to have – we have a very tough path ahead of us, but it's going to come down to about 20 seats in the House. And it's going to come down to a handful of seats in the Senate and a couple of governorships. I strongly believe right now that we will hold the House by a seat or two as I see it. Oh, yeah, it's going to be very tough. Don't get me wrong. But this is this election. And I'm so glad the president we have advocated for the beginning for President Trump to take charge here and put himself on the ballot.

33:43The reason is the Democrats in the DSA have very smartly and they are running a very smart campaign. They've nationalized this election around Donald Trump. Well, if they're going to do it, the advisers around President Trump continue to have this like it's a persuasion election. This is not a persuasion election. This is all about turnout. Fine, but as he left it too late. No, because it's a handful of it's like 20 to 25 House seats of those over half. He won overwhelmingly in 24. So you have to win about half of those seats to hold the House. And I'm saying hold the House by one or two one or two seats.

34:18And in holding the House, remember, you're not going to have a massive legislative program. I'm talking about just hanging on so that the House does not turn into an impeachment machine. Well, that's what I was going to ask you, because that's the risk, isn't it, if you don't succeed in the way you hope. And at the moment, the polls suggest, and of course, they are only polls. They're not votes, but they suggest a similar outcome to 2018. I mean, that would be a pretty miserable last couple of years. Sean, if they win by even a seat or two, the White House will become Fort Apache. It'll be an onslaught every day from every different direction.

34:52they're going to come after the White House, the administration and the MAGA movement. There'll be open political warfare if the Democrats take the House. And like I said, the White House will be Fort Apache. Right. And you've made that point very clearly. I want to ask you about the war within the context of the foreign policy challenges America faces. You've been very clear you're opposed to this war continuing. How do you think it's going to end? I mean, we had the president say yesterday, oh, lend as soon as the midterm elections are over. Really? I have adamantly opposed this war from the beginning.

35:26The good news, I think, is that we've now turned to economic warfare, which we should have done in the first place. We're going to enforce secondary sanctions. Scott Besson is going to destroy their currency. Against anyone who trades with Iran already. And by the way, banks that deal with them, and not just in England, but in Europe. China is the big one, and Xi is coming at the end of September. This is all about China's support of it. So Scott Besson is a safe pair of hands. He's in charge of the economic warfare. I think the kinetic part, I hope, is behind us. I'm an advocate of America first and hemispheric defense.

36:00We've got enough from the Arctic to Latin America and the Western Pacific to deal with. It's time the Middle East has been a sideshow, and the Greater Israel Project is a sideshow to a sideshow. I'm a strong advocate that we just wipe our hands of the whole mess and focus on those areas we need to focus on. Donald Trump is prepared to do that because in a sense his pride is now on the line isn't it? I think President Trump is a realist a very practical person look he's been trying to get to peace in Ukraine he's been trying to get to peace with the peace board in Gaza he wants some sort of accommodation with the uh with the Persian regime he says this over and over again you know President Trump's a man of peace and so I hope well he wants the peace prize doesn't he he's quite honest about that.

36:47Well, I happen to believe a big advocate that he sure had gotten it. On Wednesday's NewsHour, I spoke to Geoffrey Hinton, man often described as the godfather of AI. He's really concerned about some of the developments in artificial intelligence right now. I know you are too. One of the things he said to me, though, was maybe the United States and China could work together on this to try to control this new technology to ensure that it isn't a threat to the future of humanity. What do you think? I would love to have a thought that we could have some sort of Geneva Convention or something about AI.

37:18It's impossible. All these tech oligarchs that are trying to put up data centers in the United States, these oligarchs and the venture capital firms they work with are the ones that have built the Chinese ecosystem for AI. They are bald-faced liars. You cannot reach an accommodation, to my point of view, with the Chinese. America has to stop selling advanced chips, and we have to take all the Chinese students out of American universities. Many of these people are innocent, but it doesn't matter. A bit paranoid, isn't it? It must be out of the frontier lens. Every Chinese person is a threat? No, not at all.

37:49Not at all. The Chinese—we've fueled the—look, Hinson's smart. He's saying, hey, can you reach a—can you reach an agreement like a Geneva agreement with the Chinese Communist Party? They've never fulfilled any agreement they've ever signed. As we've seen over the last couple of days who should control the ai profession so who should control it right now we have to have some guardrails i have been a strong advocate because you're you're believing freedom that was listen you we had freedom in this country in the 1950s and 1960s and we had an atomic energy commission that was created after the atomic and hydrogen bomb to have some modicum of regulations remember every major industry in the united states has some modicum of government regulation.

38:33And I'm a deconstruct the administrative state guy, but I'm not an anarchist. Oligarchs hate me more than anybody, because I'm arguing this from the right that we need to have some rational guardrails to this. We can't let these accelerationists are the worst people on earth. Why would we possibly allow them to set their own rules and regulation, which are no rules and regulation? Can I take you back finally to the economy? When you look at the economy, 41 % of Americans saying they are concerned or very concerned about buying groceries. They've endured the highest inflation since April 2023 was in May of this year, 4.2%.

39:08The trend is downwards. It's going down, but people aren't feeling it. Has the White House got the tone right, or does it appear to Americans right now to be tone deaf on this issue? The inflation numbers this morning were not particularly great, and I think there has to be a big focus on this. This is driven mainly by government spending, and we are on an unsustainable path. $40 trillion and$2 trillion a year is unsustainable. It's coming up in the 10-year Treasury. People's lives are getting more expensive because their credit card, their student loans, their house loans, when the 10-year Treasury gets close to 5%, you've got a problem.

39:43And isn't that ultimately the most damning criticism of the current administration? $40 trillion of debt, not just down to the Trump administration, by any means successive administrations, but for all the promises that were made during the Doge period at the beginning of this second term. The president has become distracted. He's more interested in foreign policy. He's much more interested in triumphal arches and naming buildings after him and having a new ballroom in the White House and his legacy and his identity than he is about the day-to-day pressures that the American people at all kinds of levels are experiencing.

40:16I could not disagree with you more. Let me tell you why. President Trump has been maniacally focused on particularly, and let's forget Doge, because I think Elon Musk is a dangerous clown. What we have in the United States, because of Congress, remember, our Constitution is Congress, particularly the House, that the Democrats can stop any type of spending cuts. And this is what we have. We have not cut federal spending. We have about five and a half trillion dollars we take in of all sources in cash, we put out, we spent about seven and a half trillion dollars. That two trillion dollars, that seven and a half trillion has not come down a penny.

40:55Steve Bannon in Dallas.

41:03I'm Sean Lane, you're listening to NewsHour. Drug stores and pharmacies contain not just medicines, but the tools of the global wellness industry, supplements promising all sorts of benefits, often at considerable cost, better sleep, less indigestion, reducing the symptoms of menopause. Add to that the proliferation of services, private blood tests, tailored nutritional programmes, wearable fitness monitors, I could go on. It's the subject of a new book by one of the UK's best-known broadcasting doctors, Dr Zand van Tulleken, a public health professional, an academic, who makes award-winning medical programmes for children, as well as a popular podcast along with his brother.

41:44When NewsHouse James Menendez spoke to Dr Zandt, he asked him what wellness means to him. Wellness does have a really buzzwordy, slightly obnoxious quality in many ways, but that is because of the kind of wellness industrial complex that's selling us lots of dodgy stuff. But the core idea of wellness, I'm really in favour of. So one of the big distinctions I was trying to make was between healthcare, which is a highly regulated industry that uses evidence-based practices to try and chase down very measurable things, whether it's your cholesterol, your blood pressure, whether or not you have a cancer or an illness.

42:19That's the practice of healthcare, and it's very regulated. And then wellness is everything about your body, your experience of being you, how you feel, whether you have a glow, whether your skin and body feels good. I think that's really important. So that's what I was trying to do right in the book, It was chased down who to trust and what other solutions are. And did you set out to do this because you feared that people were being sold a pup when it comes to some of these supplements? Or did you have an open mind when you began? I'm 48. I've got small children. My knees hurt. I'm as tired as everyone else.

42:54I have the brain fog. You know, I'd had some major health problems in my 40s. So I was really focused on health and wellness and I was finding the wellness industry very seductive. seductive. So that was what drew me in. And I knew it couldn't all work because it's, you know, one person would say fiber is important and the other person would say, no, no, you need to worry about glucose or magnesium. So I knew it was contradictory, but I believed surely they couldn't all be making it up and some of it must work. It felt very persuasive. You cover a lot of ground in the book and we can't talk about all the sort of supplements that there are out there, but let's deal with some of the main ones and some of the ones that I found particularly striking.

43:32We're going to talk about vitamin D because you devote a whole chapter to that and it's definitely something that people think about. I know lots of people who take it, particularly in a country in the northern hemisphere where people worry about not getting enough light and so on in the winter. Should we be taking it? Is it worth it? Vitamin D is a helpful place to begin asking about supplements because it is the one where the doctors and scientists were not sceptical. There are lots of grumpy doctors talking about the wellness industry, but this is a place where everyone was like, it should work.

44:01We want it to work. And I interviewed one of the scientists who had run some of the huge trials, giving vitamin D supplements to large populations to see if it would benefit their health and large populations with low levels of vitamin D. He'd spent 20 years doing this. And when I interviewed him, he was really heartbroken. And he said, you know what, we've reached the end of the road. The jury is in. Vitamin D does not do all these different things. This is not a grouchy doctor, but we have spent a billion dollars trialling vitamin D over the last couple of decades. And the results are in that, yes, a small dose in the winter months will stop you getting severe health problems from vitamin D deficiency.

44:39But the bigger doses, which are so common on the high street and they're expensive and they're marketed as sort of the pro dose, the max dose, the ultra dose. Those doses are associated with harm and they will not give you the benefits. It is not the miracle thing we hoped it would be. Let's talk about the menopause. I mean, talking about a huge market and supplements that cost a lot of money and obviously marketed to half the population. How effective are they? And just tell us how it fits in with some of the problems or some of the worries that have been associated, rightly or wrongly, with HRT.

45:14So in the late 90s, the Women's Health Initiative is a big study of HRT, which is a very popular drug. 80 % of postmenopausal women are taking HRT at that time. And basically, they publish a big increased risk of cancer. And this is very, very poorly communicated. And it means that HRT prescriptions plummet and people go straight to the supplement aisle because menopause is really, really difficult. And the wellness industry is offering you hundreds of different supplements. And there are two big problems with these supplements. The first is that some of the ingredients are dangerous. So black cohosh is one of the most common menopause supplement ingredients.

45:54our drug regulator in the UK is probably the best drug regulator in the world the MHRA and they say it should have a health warning on it because it is associated with liver failure we do not put a health warning on black cohosh supplements in the UK there's no legal requirement to do it so that's the first problem the second problem is that they don't work in general that all the research says menopause supplements are not helpful and actually HRT is much safer than you think on that point though. I mean, I found it particularly striking the way, as you say, that it was communicated, the risk of developing cancer, and communicated in the press.

46:30I just wonder whether the press has a role to play in the way it addresses some of these things. We're bombarded every day with claims about various ingredients, various things that we could be drinking, eating, taking, and the way that the statistics are manipulated. Is that a problem? As a doctor, I would love to blame the journalists and not the doctors. I feel like that would be great. But it was the scientists and the doctors that stopped the trial early and that communicated with the journalists. And if you buy, the way of thinking about it is if you buy a lottery ticket in the UK, your odds of winning the lottery are about one in 50 million.

47:04If you buy two lottery tickets, you double your chances of winning the lottery and doubling your chances sounds like a really good thing to do. But your chance is still one in 25 million. You're still not going to win the lottery. well that was very similar to the breast cancer risk so your breast cancer risk increased by 26 which is a devastating headline it makes it sound like a quarter of people are going to get breast cancer in fact that is a 20 increase of a very small risk so it's a relative yeah and in fact the trial was designed to include a population of people who were probably slightly at higher risk and hrt is valuable as a bridge through the menopause symptoms so most people are not exposed to that risk.

47:44I'm not saying there's no risk. These things are very serious for people to consider, but they're risks that we do take with other products all the time. So is your overall conclusion that broadly we're wasting our money on supplements? Wellness is great. And the place I get to in the book is that pursuing wellness is really important. And the best way of doing that is not to buy these products, no matter how scientific they sound, the supplements, the wearable tech, the testing, they may do you harm and they won't do you good but there are loads of things you can do that will help you to lead an important life that's meaningful for you and the lovely place that I got to is my colleagues at UCL have got great research to say that engaging with the arts engaging with things you love that you find joyful and meaningful is good for you in lots of ways so that that can be join a choir learn a language learn an instrument I do pottery learn to knit expand your brain it'll be good for your mind it'll be good for your social world and it'll be fun and cheap.

48:43That's Dr Zand Van Tullican talking to James Menendez about his book Make Me Well The Truth About the Wellness Industry Supplements and Personalised Health. That's our news hour all wrapped up. Goodbye.

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