US vetoes UN call for unconditional Gaza ceasefire
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I'm Jackie Leonard, and in the early hours of Thursday, the 5th of June, these are our main stories. The United States has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution demanding an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza. Donald Trump says President Putin told him in a phone conversation that Russia will seek revenge after Ukraine hit Russian bombers at the weekend. And the United States has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution

And the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has banned the media from reporting on the former president Joseph Kabila and his political party. Also in this podcast, we remember the pioneering gay author Edmund White, who's died aged 85. I think it would have been very annoying to the reader to read page after page of all this suffering and self-hatred. I stylized that even, and even so people find it a bit much.

The United States has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza. It was the only member of the council to vote no.

The other 14 members voted in favor of the document, which also demanded the release of all hostages and the lifting of humanitarian aid restrictions. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Dorothy Shea, called for Hamas to release its remaining hostages and laid out the U.S. objection to the resolution. It is unacceptable for what it does say. It is unacceptable for what it does not say.

and it is unacceptable for the manner in which it has been advanced. The United States has been clear. We would not support any measure that fails to condemn Hamas and does not call for Hamas to disarm and leave Gaza. After the vote, the United Kingdom's ambassador to the UN, Barbara Woodward, condemned what she described as an expansion of Israeli military operations in Gaza. The intolerable situation in Gaza...

needs to end. We are determined to see an end to this war, secure the release of the hostages held by Hamas,

and alleviate the catastrophic humanitarian situation for Palestinians in Gaza. Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, had urged the Security Council to act. After the vote, and referring to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, he had this to say. OCHA has stated that Gaza is the hungriest place on earth.

It is the only defined territory in the world where the entire population is at risk of famine. And Oce added, the aid operation is one of the most obstructed aid operations not only in the world today, but in recent history.

In Gaza, aid distribution sites were closed on Wednesday following three consecutive days in which Palestinians were killed as they approached aid points run by the controversial Israel and US-backed group the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The head of the Red Cross has told the BBC that conditions in Gaza are worse than hell on earth.

Our correspondent John Sudworth was at the UN in New York. So with the US versus the rest of the Security Council in the debate, including the UK, what's the significance of that? I think it is significant. I mean, in some ways it wasn't unexpected. All parties had been briefing widely before the vote that the US was likely to veto. But, you know, to see it there in that show of hands does, I think, very starkly underline just how significant

Deep that divide now is the U.S. on one side and all the other members of the U.N. Security Council on the other. You know, we have had, of course, plenty of draft resolutions over the past year.

year or so, calling for ceasefires, calling for the release of hostages, and the US has vetoed some of those. What was different this time round, of course, and what gave this resolution its relevance in the current crisis was the call, the demand, no less, for Israel to lift its restrictions on aid getting into Gaza. That was really, I think, the focus for the countries that brought this resolution. And once again, you really did see the divide. We know that as America has

argued all along. It doesn't like resolutions where it thinks there is somehow some sort of parity of esteem, some sort of false equivalence being given between Israel and Hamas, for example. It doesn't like resolutions, and the acting ambassador made the point again today, that don't do enough to call for Hamas's disarmament, for example. But, you know, I think on that question of the urgent need for humanitarian assistance, that's where today I think people will be really looking to see that division at its most starkest and in its

most obvious relief. And you could hear it in the language. The US was calling this resolution essentially a reward for terror. On the other hand, you had the UK ambassador, a country that back at the beginning of this war was in lockstep with America through those last months of the Biden administration.

Calling the situation in Gaza today intolerable, calling the killings of the Palestinians around those aid points inhumane. And I think that really does show just how wide that gap has now grown. So we're seeing international pressure. Is there any sign of domestic political pressure in the US shifting or indeed reinforcing the American position?

We have seen evidence in Europe, for example, of public opinion shifting over the course of the war. I think in America it has been, of course, it hasn't been entirely static, but I think there is less evidence that

that you've seen any sort of marked change. And I think the Trump administration feels very strongly that in certainly in terms of its base, that there is advantage to sticking to its guns for standing firmly behind Israel as an ally. You can see in some of Trump's own appointments that

his choice for ambassador to Israel, etc., you can see in some ways a hardening of the line. So again, I don't think for those who were hoping that those who hope that there may be public pressure on the on the US administration to shift its views. I don't think there are many signs of it yet. Don't forget this. You know, Donald Trump won an election in which some people were suggesting that the issue of Israel-Gaza agreement.

may have been a crucial deciding factor. In the end, I don't think it was. I don't think the polling suggests it was. And I don't think there's much to suggest at this stage anyway that US public opinion is moving one way or another in any sort of significant direction. John Sudworth.

Before the deadly Hamas attack on the 7th of October 2023, the big story in Israel was an attempt to overhaul the judiciary by the most right-wing government in its history. It prompted a wave of mass protests against what many Israelis saw as an attack on democracy. But another big transformation was already underway, which critics have described as a hostile takeover of independent media.

Krassi Ivanova-Twig reports on how the Gaza war has changed Israeli media. Israeli TV reports present a distinctive picture of the war in Gaza. Well, you know a lot about what the army wants you to know about the war in Gaza.

Shaina Oppenheimer is an Israel media analyst for BBC Monitoring in Jerusalem. There's almost nothing about the civilian impact in Gaza. And if anything, there are questions about how genuine the humanitarian crisis is. A lot of the rhetoric, it's about the hostages of what happened on October 7. In the past couple of years, people have felt the rise of

right-wing media outlets, and Channel 14 is a really prime example of that. It was supposed to be a Jewish heritage channel. And then Netanyahu pushed for the channel to start doing news. There was a study that found that the channel had called for genocide more than 50 times.

And they made 150 statements calling for war crimes since the start of the Israel-Gaza war. Channel 14 said these allegations are untrue and that any quotes to the contrary are either taken out of context or were made by guest interviewees who had voiced the same opinions on other channels.

Central to recent changes in the media landscape is the man who's been described as Israel's first TV prime minister. In 1999, Netanyahu had lost an election and said, next time I'm back, I'll have my own media outlet.

And in 2007, Israel Hayom is established. It is this right wing free newspaper. Netanyahu wanted some counter to Idiot Akhranod, which was this mass circulation newspaper. So Israel Hayom is created, giving favorable coverage to Netanyahu. And then he goes on and he makes a deal with Wallah, which is a news site.

And these are two key cases Netanyahu is currently standing trial for. Netanyahu has been accused of trading benefits to outlets in return for favorable coverage. He has denied any wrongdoing. The media moguls behind the Yediyat Aharonot media group and the news website Wala deny any wrongdoing.

While some news outlets were nurtured, others were deprived of funding. Haaretz has kind of long been seen as the champion of Israeli left, of opposition to Netanyahu. It has repeatedly covered the current war, shedding light on the humanitarian crisis. Since the war started, they got to the point where the Haaretz publisher, Amal Shokin, referred to Hamas as,

militants as freedom fighters. And this caused huge uproar. The communications minister Shlomo Kari stopped advertisements from government agencies and newspapers. They cancelled all subscriptions any government employees might have. Amos Shoken later clarified that he didn't mean that Hamas are freedom fighters, but the damage was done.

The Union of Journalists decried the cabinet order suspending public advertising in the newspaper. A couple of weeks ago, Shlomo Kari unveiled a detailed plan to transform the broadcasting landscape, including reforms that could reduce the independence of the regulator. This fueled yet more fears about press freedom and government influence on independent media. That report by Krassi Ivanova-Twig.

The US President Donald Trump says his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin told him over the phone that Moscow would seek revenge after Ukraine hit Russian bombers at the weekend. That attack was said by an unnamed senior NATO official to have damaged or destroyed more than 40 Russian planes. The White House described the call as a good conversation. The Kremlin said it was positive and productive. Our correspondent Gary O'Donoghue reports from Washington.

This is the first time the president and Vladimir Putin have spoken since their two-hour call last month, after which Donald Trump sounded a note of optimism about the two sides getting together to agree a ceasefire. The tone of this call seemed much more pessimistic, with Donald Trump saying it was a good conversation, but not a conversation that would lead to immediate peace. He

He also indicated that Russia would respond strongly to Ukraine's attacks on its airfields deep inside the country. The Kremlin, in its account of the call, did not reflect that particular sentiment, but accused Ukraine of trying to disrupt negotiations.

Separately, Donald Trump may also be signalling his willingness to consider further sanctions on Russia. He reposted an article from several days ago outlining congressional efforts to pass a new bipartisan package that would choke off Russian oil and gas exports.

The US has been threatening to walk away from its diplomatic efforts to end the war, with President Trump saying he has a red line in his head. What he hasn't said is where that red line is and whether it looks likely to be crossed any time soon. That was Gary O'Donoghue. In southern India, scenes of jubilation turned to panic.

At least 11 people are reported to have been killed as thousands of cricket fans gathered outside the gates of the cricket ground in the city of Bengaluru to celebrate their team's first ever Indian Premier League title. Footage filmed outside the stadium captured dozens of fans scrambling over walls and fences in the ensuing melee.

Fans had packed the streets in the hopes of seeing their heroes from the Royal Challengers Bengaluru. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the deaths were absolutely heart-rending. We heard more from our reporter Janhavi Mule.

After 18 seasons of wait that Royal Challengers Bangalore, the team based in the city of Bangalore, has won and there were celebrations across the country, so fans thronged to the venue. According to eyewitnesses, there were thousands who came with flags and banners and they were chanting.

The metro trains and all public transport editing was so jam-packed and one of the BBC reporters on ground couldn't even enter the compartment. So there were a lot of people outside stadium and we are told by one of the police officers that there were twice as many people that turned up

And everybody was there to see the team. The crowd tried to push through a small gate in the stadium. That is when the incidents happened. And unfortunately, there were fatalities. And it sounds like far more people turned up than the authorities had banked on. What are the authorities actually saying about what happened? So we are told by some of the officials and some people from the BCCI, that is the board

the Board of Cricket Control in India, that this could have been planned better. They didn't expect such huge crowds to turn up, but this being a work day and the team had won after 18 seasons, the emotions were very high and huge crowds gathered and that is when it happened. We were told by one of the security experts that they could have waited for maybe another day or two

to celebrate and have a proper planned route and parade. And just give us an idea, if you can, about how much organisation and safety measures go into mass events like this in India? India has a mixed record when it comes to managing huge crowds. Just a couple of months ago, in a religious gathering called Mahakumbh in northern India, there was another unfortunate event and

Several people died in that one as well. But if you look at the last year, there was another cricket parade when India Indian team won T20 World Cup. After that, there was huge crowd that gathered in Mumbai, but they properly managed it. So when there is a lot of planning involved, usually there are lesser incidences that happen. But this time I spoke to an expert in crowd management and they said that

Possibly the authorities, not just police, but everybody didn't have enough of time on hand or they could have just planned it ahead even before the team won the trophy. Janhavi Mule in India.

The Congolese government has long accused the former president, Joseph Kabila, of supporting the Rwanda-backed M23 militia, something he denies. But last week, Mr Kabila was photographed in Goma, the eastern city held by the rebels, after two years of self-imposed exile. The Kinshasa government had already said it wanted to charge him with treason. Now the authorities have banned the media from reporting on any activities involving the former president.

Africa regional editor Will Ross told us more. The head of Congo's media regulator has been on several radio stations talking about the ban.

and they're really pinning it on what the government sees is an illegal party. That's Joseph Kabila's party, the PPRD, which was banned a few weeks ago because the government accused it of basically being in cahoots with the M23 rebel movement in the east of the country. And of course, President Felix Tsitsikidis' government has also accused the former president, Joseph Kabila, of being linked

to the M23, something he's denied, but it's clearly an order that's come from the government itself. And this covers all publicity about Joseph Kabila? Yes.

Yes, anything to do with his activities, what he's up to. It's hard to know whether a media outlet can get away with just mentioning his name. But what the authorities are clearly worried about is that since he returned to the country recently, and he's now based in Goma in the east of the country, a rebel held area, he's been holding meetings with

religious leaders, with women's groups. It sort of appears that he's trying to regenerate his political control again and build up a base. And they're obviously trying to sort of deprive him of that oxygen by putting this

ban in place. So the media watchdog made it pretty clear that there would be suspensions if people contravene the ban. And you mentioned the possibility of suspensions. I mean, are media companies going to comply with this order? What will it mean for them if they don't?

Well, yeah, I mean, the threat of suspensions is a very real problem for these media houses, and I think it's likely that they will comply. But, of course, there are these places now where the rebels are in charge, where Joseph Kabila is based currently.

And there we've already heard from a spokesperson for the M23 saying, no, this ban doesn't apply to us at all, what he called the liberated areas, he said were nothing to do with this ban whatsoever.

Everybody's kind of looking at this and wondering, you know, what's going to happen next when it comes to Joseph Kabila's next move? Because, as I say, he's back in the country. People are, you know, wondering, is he there trying to add to the rebellion that's happening or is he there for more peaceful means? And we don't know at the moment, but it certainly looks like he's preparing for something with all the meetings he's having. That was Will Ross.

Astronomers say they found a big new planet which, unusually, is orbiting around a very small star. The planet's thought to be about the size of Saturn, but the star it travels around is only about a fifth of the size of our own sun, as Paul Moss reports.

There have been thousands of planets discovered over the past few decades, but the one named TOI-6894 is something of an enigma and has upended a few scientific certainties. Planets are thought to be formed out of dust and gas from the star they orbit.

But the star this planet circles doesn't seem big enough for that to occur. The planet's also cooler than others like it. Its surface not much hotter than a saucepan of boiling water. If planets like this can form around relatively small stars, there may be vastly more of them out there than previously thought. That was Paul Moss.

Still to come... I'm a massive fan of the chickpea. I get this thing about them being really good for us. Then they all are. Chickpeas might be top of the pile, but all these pulses and beans, they're super good for us. Now new research shows that chickpeas can actually help lower your cholesterol.

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Again, jeansight.com for more information and to move forward on your journey to mental wellness. More than a million Muslim pilgrims are in Saudi Arabia for the start of the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, Islam's holiest site.

Temperatures are expected to exceed 40 degrees Celsius. That's 104 Fahrenheit this week. And that's important because last year, 1,300 people died in the sweltering heat of the pilgrimage. So what are the authorities doing to prevent that from happening again?

James Menendez spoke to Stephen Callen, Middle East correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, who's based in Saudi Arabia. There have been a number of measures. The authorities are trying to keep the numbers of pilgrims to their approved levels.

And they're also implementing a number of infrastructure changes, trying to change some of the road services to keep temperatures down, increasing the number of fountains and sort of showers and mist showers to cool off the pilgrims and keeping an eye on them with drones so they can respond to any issues quickly.

And quite a lot of extra shade as well, I think. 50,000 square metres of extra shade? Sounds right. Yeah, they're always trying to find, you know, to expand the areas around the mosque and the areas that are involved in the pilgrimage so that there's more space and, yeah, more shade. Just talk us through the permit system, how that works, because that was a big issue last year as well, wasn't it? Yeah, the authorities have really cracked down this year. Usually access to Mecca for Muslims throughout the year is pretty...

open, but it becomes more restrictive during the Hajj season. There's about 2 million pilgrims who typically visit each year. And so that's already a large number. But I mean, more above that is beyond usually the capacity of the Saudis to handle. And so they have done an awareness campaign.

They have increased the fines and punishments for people who are in violation. And they shut down the city a bit earlier than usual this year to try to keep people from overstaying. Recently, a Saudi official said that more than a quarter of a million people had been turned back and prevented from overstaying or violating the terms of their visas. Yeah, and it's the point that lots of people come to Mecca or try to get to Mecca because...

I mean, they obviously want to do it, but they can't necessarily afford to buy the permits because, I mean, it's not cheap and it makes Saudi Arabia quite a lot of money, doesn't it? Yeah, that's true. I mean, one of the issues that the Saudi authorities identified last year was that there were tour operators. So there are a lot of tour operators who operate normally in cooperation with the Saudi authorities and bring pilgrims in, you know, in a pretty organized fashion. But there were operators who were sort of working with pilgrims at a cheaper rate, but without

all the valid permits. And so obviously there's an incentive there for people to try to find a more affordable way to participate, but it does have some pretty dangerous effects. Stephen Callan of The Wall Street Journal.

Fans of chickpeas will be delighted to hear of the role they can play in lowering cholesterol. Chickpeas are a key ingredient in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines, used in hummus and falafel and much, much more. Now, a study involving 72 people with pre-diabetes suggests that just 160 grams a day of chickpeas can significantly lower cholesterol.

Johnny Diamond heard more from the chef, writer and broadcaster Hugh Fernley Whittingstall. I'm a massive fan of the chickpea and all pulses and legumes and lentils. And although I've enjoyed them for a long time, I pile into them with greater enthusiasm right now than I ever have.

I get this thing about them being really good for us. Then they all are. Chickpeas might be top of the pile, but all these pulses and beans, they're super good for us. Full of soluble fiber, healthy protein. But they're also brilliant ingredients. You know, they just go into so many dishes in so many ways. Obviously, there's the hummus. But I mean, wherever you've got a sauce or a soup or a curry, you can stick some chickpeas in there or some beans.

I mean, I try to think of trying to find reasons not to put them in because there's so many things you can put them in. OK, can we talk about a main dish? I mean, is there a main dish that is centred on the humble chickpea or is it more of a side dish or even an addition to other dishes? I think there are many main dishes that will welcome chickpeas. I mean, in Spanish cooking, you've got all sorts of things with chorizo and greens and chickpeas or fish and pork and chickpeas.

They're thrown about very generously. And of course, in curries, you know, a dal is sometimes made with lentils, but sometimes chickpeas. But I just think any good old veg curry, but especially if it's got a little bit of coconut milk, welcomes chickpeas. The chef and broadcaster Hugh Fernley Whittingstall. The influential American writer Edmund White, known for his pioneering and prolific work exploring gay life, has died at the age of 85.

He examined his experiences of repression and liberation in semi-autobiographical novels, memoirs and essays. His friend and fellow novelist Joyce Carol Oates said there was no one like Edmund White, describing him as darkly funny with astonishing stylistic versatility. Lizo Mazimba looks back at his life.

Throughout his career, homosexuality was at the heart of Edmund White's writing and he was regarded as one of the most influential authors of gay literature.

His early works included The Joy of Gay Sex, a guide and manual aimed at young gay men, and his best-known novel A Boy's Own Story. It charted the progress of an unnamed homosexual narrator born and raised in the puritanical American Midwest, a character whom White said was in many ways a simplified version of himself.

And the author admitted that he personally experienced much of the misplaced shame and guilt that the character lives with in the novel. Yes, very much so. Even worse, actually. I mean, I had to tone it down because otherwise I think it would have been very annoying to the reader to read page after page of all this suffering and self-hatred. I stylised that even, and even so people find it a bit much.

Through his books, short stories, articles and essays, he chronicled what it was like to be homosexual, from the 1950s, when being gay was considered by some to be a mental illness, through to events like the Stonewall Riots in the 1960s and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.

He himself was directly affected. He was diagnosed HIV positive in 1985 and lived with the condition for 40 years. His final work, The Loves of My Life, was published earlier this year. In it, he recalled all the men he had loved and how they had made him the man that he was. Lizo Mazimba on the life of Edmund White.

Now, are you familiar with the world's smallest violin? Not the actual musical instrument, but a phrase used to express, sarcastically, very limited sympathy. It's thought the expression was first used in the 1970s television show MASH. Charles, you know what this is? What? The world's smallest violin, and it's playing just for you.

Well, not satisfied with it just being an expression, scientists in the UK have now created what they believe may actually be the world's smallest violin. And it is super tiny, small enough to fit within the width of a human hair. Sadly, it's so small that it isn't playable.

Evan Davis heard more from Professor Kelly Morrison from Loughborough University in England. So what we've actually created is kind of the line art, I would say, or the tracing of a violin out of platinum on top of a silicon sheet.

chip. So silicon is quite commonly used in electronics, such as in your phones and computers. We're playing with the different types of technologies to see what we could achieve while we were commissioning a new system. The serious purpose of this is not to make tiny violins, which no one is ever going to be able to play. It's what? It's about getting chips more and more powerful at smaller and smaller sizes.

Yeah, in essence, I'm a physicist, which means we're often looking at the kind of the edges of what's possible. And that means exploring new materials, new effects, new things that we can make materials do. And in our instance, that's new computing technologies. The length scales that we're looking at, they may not necessarily be what is currently rolled out. So some of the records for smallest features of transistors or the bits

that store information is of the order of nanometres. A nanometre is a thousand times smaller than a human hair. Our strings on the violin are of the order of 100 nanometres. So it's a bit larger, but it still allows us to test the capabilities of the system. How do you go about making things at that size? Because it's obviously not going to be by hand. There's quite a few steps involved.

The core of it, so the patterning that we do, the main aspect, is using this bit of equipment called, we call it nanofraser, which is effectively, the way I simplify it is to talk about a hot needle, very, very small hot needle that we're dragging through this gel-like material or polymer. And that allows us to draw what we want. And then you could think of it very similar to a lot of screen printing techniques, where they draw this outline.

And then they kind of push paint along it to transfer the outline onto the thing that they're interested. It's similar, but not quite to that. And that will fill these holes that we've created with the material that we're interested in. In our case, that was platinum. And then there are a bunch of steps around that to make sure that we can remove stuff we don't want, that we don't break it, that it transfers in the right way.

And of course, the violin was part of our testing regime that we had to figure out what the best way of patterning other things with this system would be. And the violin or the tracing of an image of a violin pattern,

It's just because you physicists like to have fun while you're doing your physics. I mean, obviously, it's a kind of a good shape to play with. Yeah, there were various different shapes that we have been testing, and that was one of them. And it was very good. We actually had two patterns that we were playing with. So they allowed us to test different features, such as the smallest things we could put down or very large objects.

thick edges and yeah it was a good mechanism for that. And that was Professor Kelly Morrison and before we go some unusual sports news well sort of. Two TikTokers have revealed the extreme lengths they went to in order to watch the Champions League final on Saturday in Germany without tickets and

As Tyler Dunn reports, the pair camped out in toilet cubicles ahead of the match in Munich. You had to be pretty flushed to get tickets to last weekend's final. Most fans paid between 90 and 950 euros to see Inter Milan lose to Paris Saint-Germain at the Allianz Arena in Munich.

But Belgians Niel Remery and Sen Averbijk say they got in without spending a penny. In a video on TikTok, they say they hid in two cubicles in the stadium's toilets for 27 hours before kick-off and used homemade out-of-order signs to make sure no one walked in on them. The men said the game was the most beautiful football match they had ever seen, but admitted their time in the toilet was physically and mentally difficult.

Tyler Dunn, reporting.

This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll. The producers were Liam McSheffrey and Peter Hyatt. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jackie Leonard, and until next time, goodbye.