Israel and US critical of ICC arrest warrant
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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. A search for the truth behind an international drug smuggling plot. How are we going to unravel this all? From the BBC World Service, this is World of Secrets, Season 5, Finding Mr Fox. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Alex Ritson, and in the early hours of Friday 22nd November, these are our main stories.

Israel's prime minister accuses the International Criminal Court of anti-Semitism after it issued arrest warrants for him and former defence minister Yoav Galant. It wasn't an intercontinental ballistic missile after all, but Russia uses a new and experimental ballistic missile against Ukraine. Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump's controversial pick to be US Attorney General, pulls out.

Also in this podcast, the winners at this year's Video Game Golden Joystick Awards in London. And a dying star meets the scientist watching it from afar. We were really lucky to catch it because the changes we're seeing now might mean that it's much closer to its death. Possibly just mere years or decades. MUSIC

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given a furious reaction to the International Criminal Court's decision to issue arrest warrants for him and his former defence minister, Yoav Galant, over their conduct in the war in Gaza. Mr Netanyahu described as absurd and false the ICC's claim that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that he and Mr Galant were guilty of using starvation as a method of war against Palestinian civilians.

The warrants have also been issued because the two men are suspected of crimes against humanity, murder, persecution and other inhumane acts. Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant deny any wrongdoing and insist that Israel's war against Hamas is just following last year's October 7 massacre, which sparked the conflict. The Prime Minister said the ICC wanted to harm the Jewish state.

This is an anti-Semitic measure that has one goal, to deter me, to deter us from exercising our natural right to defend ourselves against our enemies who rise up against us to destroy us. The International Criminal Court also issued an arrest warrant for a Hamas military commander. I heard more about him and Israel's reaction from our security correspondent Frank Gardner in Jerusalem.

The senior member of Hamas, that's Mohammed Daif, the military commander, is thought to have been killed back in July by the Israelis. Certainly Israel thinks that he's dead. Hamas have never confirmed it.

So really, this announcement only really applies to Israel, which is partly why it's been absolutely slammed by Israelis, senior Israelis, and welcomed by not just Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, but also by ordinary Palestinians. So one of the first people to react to it was the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, who said that this was a dark day for justice and humanity.

He accused the ICC of having double standards. Then there was a furious statement from the Prime Minister's office talking about anti-Semitism or that it was anti-Semitic. But the statements from Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and also from ordinary Palestinians in Gaza have been absolutely unequivocal in welcoming it. They've said that at last, words to the effect of at last, the world is paying attention to us.

And I think we shouldn't forget that while all of this is going on, while there's diplomacy and accusation and counter accusation, the war in Gaza continues. At least 70 people are reported to have been killed in Israeli airstrikes in northern Gaza and central Gaza in the last week.

36 hours. And the humanitarian situation is absolutely dire in northern Gaza because not enough food or medicine is getting in. Hospitals don't have ambulances. They are scrabbling with their bare hands to rescue people from rubble. But back to what people are saying here in Israel, I think perhaps the strongest condemnation of this

of all has come from Yoav Galant, the recently fired defence minister, Netanyahu fired him, and he's furious that the ICC should equate Israel, the state of Israel, which he considers to be fighting a very clean fight in Gaza, that's contested by pretty much the whole region, and the fact that it's being equated with Hamas, which...

which, of course, is a prescribed terrorist organisation by many governments, including that of Israel. Is this going to make it very hard for Mr Netanyahu and Mr Galant to travel? Well, yes, I think it is. I mean, let's not forget that there are three very important countries that are not signatories to the ICC, so that's the US, Russia and China. And the last overseas visit that Benjamin Netanyahu made was in July to the US. So he could still go to the US with impunity...

It would probably be controversial given that he is a wanted alleged war criminal, as is President Putin, in the sense that he has also been indicted by the ICC and that has, I think, curtailed his travel plans.

So you've got the whole of the EU, the UK, Canada and scores of other countries which are all signatories to the International Criminal Court and therefore obliged to arrest either of these two if they set foot in their countries. So it's a pretty bleak day for Israel which feels that the world has discriminated against it. Frank Gardner in Jerusalem.

At the time we recorded our last podcast, Ukraine's president and foreign ministry were claiming that the city of Dnipro had been struck by an intercontinental ballistic missile. That would have been the first time such a weapon had ever been used in anger by any country. The good news is that hasn't yet happened. However, the city was rocked by huge explosions.

And now we appear to have an answer. In a televised address to the nation, Russia's President Putin said his country had used a new weapon, one he called an intermediate-range ballistic missile. He described it as a test. Combat testing of the Arechnik missile system is being conducted in response to the aggressive actions of NATO countries against Russia.

The question of further deployment of medium and shorter-range missiles will be decided depending on the actions of the United States and its satellites. We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities.

Our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg reports. In an address to the nation, President Putin said that after American and British long-range missiles were used against Russia's Bryansk and Kursk regions, from that moment a regional conflict in Ukraine had acquired elements of a global nature. In response, Russia had launched an experimental hypersonic medium-range ballistic missile at a military target in Ukraine.

The Kremlin leader said Western missiles would not affect the outcome of Russia's special military operation, the phrase he continues to use for Russia's war in Ukraine. President Putin said Russia has the right to use its weapons against military installations of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against Russian facilities.

In the event of an escalation, he added, Russia will respond decisively and symmetrically. Vladimir Putin had said previously that Moscow would view Ukraine being allowed to strike Russia with Western long-range missiles as the direct participation of NATO countries in the war. This is his clearest, starkest signal yet that Moscow is prepared to hit back. Steve Rosenberg in Moscow.

Federal police in Brazil have formally accused former President Jair Bolsonaro of an alleged coup conspiracy after he lost the 2022 election. A police statement said an investigation found Mr Bolsonaro and 36 others planned a violent overthrow of the democratic state. For more details, I spoke to Yara Diniz from BBC Mundo.

The elections in 2022, it was an election that was very chaotic. During the whole process, the whole campaign, Bolsonaro and his allies were sharing conspiracy theories and disinformation. A lot of Bolsonaro supporters went to Brasilia and they broke into the government buildings, the Supreme Court, the Congress, and the government falsely claiming there was a fraud.

because Bolsonaro lost the election. Yeah, there were comparisons with the January 6th riot in the United States after Donald Trump lost the election. And similarly, there were claims which are echoed by the prosecutors here suggesting that Mr. Bolsonaro was behind it.

Yeah, there was suspicions that he could be involved in this plan, especially because he was pushing this narrative about the fraud. So the police started doing an investigation on the 8th of January attacks. And during a search at the house of the former minister of justice of Bolsonaro, they found a draft of a document planned for a state coup.

And then they start investigating to see who was involved on planning a coup. And if other people were involved, if Bolsonaro knew they were planning something. And at the moment, these are accusations. But if this goes up to the Supreme Court, this could become charges.

Yeah. So right now, this investigation is going to send to Alexandre de Moraes, who is the magistrate of the Supreme Court, who is responsible for that investigation. But then he needs to send to the attorney general office. And if they decided there are evidence, the next step is to go to the Supreme Court. If he is convicted for the crimes related to this crime,

he can face a sentence of 23 years in prison. And he right now, he's ineligible to run for the elections for eight years. But if he is sentenced to prison, he will get at least 30 years without being able to run for elections again. Any response from Mr. Bolsonaro? Yeah. So Bolsonaro has post on Axe, his account on Axe.

He focused his criticisms on the magistrate, Alexandre de Moraes, saying that he is acting against the law, that he has been conducting this entire investigation, arresting if out charges. So he didn't say, I am not involved or I didn't know this plan. He's basically focused on, you know, criticisms on Alexandre de Moraes. Attacking the process. Yes, attacking the process. Yara, Denise.

It's two months until Donald Trump is sworn in as America's 47th president, but he's just lost his controversial choice for attorney general only a week after he was picked. Matt Gaetz said that he was withdrawing himself from leading the Justice Department...

because his confirmation for the job was becoming a distraction. There have been allegations against him for sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, which he denies. Mr Gates, a former congressman, is the subject of a long-running investigation by a congressional ethic panel into a number of

of those claims. I spoke to our Washington correspondent, Gary O'Donoghue, who's following the story. Matt Gaetz had a day of meetings on Capitol Hill yesterday with Republican senators, and bear in mind the Senate has to vote to approve Donald Trump's pick for his cabinet posts.

And he said he appreciated what he called the thoughtful feedback from senators, which could be, I think, a euphemism and incredible support from many of them. And he said, while the momentum was strong, his statement says, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump-Vance transition.

there is no time to waste, he says, on a needless, protracted Washington scuffle. So I think the reality was coming home that there was enough doubt among enough Republican senators to make this look like a real bun fight over the next few months. But Matt Gaetz was particularly controversial because the allegations that have been swirling around against him are both

financial impropriety, sexual impropriety, relating to possibly allegedly paying young women for sex, maybe having sex with underage girls as well, all of which was criminally investigated and no charges were brought. But nevertheless, the Health Ethics Committee continued to investigate him before trial.

his resignation last week after his nomination. Now, he denies all these charges against him. He denies all the allegations. But this wouldn't go away. And also, I think you've got to remember that Matt Gaetz lacked friends on Capitol Hill. He'd been part of a very small number of people who had ousted the previous Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy. He'd blamed Kevin McCarthy, indeed, for starting this ethics inquiry into him.

And so he doesn't have the sort of the money in the bank, if you like, to call on people when he was up against it on this nomination. I think that has become very clear very quickly. Yeah. And it means that Donald Trump has lost his first big political fight since winning the election. He has. I mean, he's not president yet.

You know, in a few months time, this may all be forgot if he gets another attorney general who is prepared to do his bidding, as Donald Trump clearly wants. He wants someone to take hold of the Department of Justice, which he mistrusts implicitly.

and dislikes and distrusts and has done for years. So we'll see. But this, again, may not be the first fight or the last fight, rather, over a nominee because what this does tell people is that the transition team and nominees are prepared to cave if there is enough opposition. And that will be noted by those on Capitol Hill who have doubts about some of the others too. Dario Donoghue.

Coming up, where does your old tech go once you throw it away? We speak to our environment correspondent. What they do is they conceal them, hide them, misdeclare them and transport them mainly to many poor countries. And then, you know, it makes it inside those countries. And then that's where they're either dumped or burned. And that has a massive, massive impact.

A search for the truth behind an international drug smuggling plot. There's something on this boat. A tonne of cocaine. There was a lot of adrenaline. I couldn't believe what was happening. And the man Brazilian police believe to be at its centre. Fox. Fox. Fox got the shots. From the BBC World Service, this is World of Secrets. Season 5, Finding Mr Fox.

Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Let's return to the war in Ukraine and an investigation that raises questions about the effectiveness of the sanctions regime imposed on Russia since the start of the conflict. Customs documents seen by BBC News suggest that more than £1.5 million, around $1.8 million worth of high-tech lenses made by a firm in England, has been shipped to companies in Moscow connected with the Russian military. The

The UK manufacturer, which has worked on British Challenger 2 tanks and F-35 fighter jets, says it has not breached sanctions and knows nothing about the shipments. Angus Crawford has this report. This is a story about war and high-tech parts made in Britain. Shadowy companies in a small country far away.

And a young woman living the highlands. Beck Optronic Solutions Limited, based in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. A British company which makes specialist top-end infrared lenses. The Challenger 2 tank, Storm Shadow missile and the F-35 fighter jet are all projects it's worked on.

It's cold and grey. In front of me, a dark brick building with blue window frames. These are the offices of Beck Optronic Solutions. Most of the high-tech products made here can't be sold to Russia. That would be a breach of sanctions. But customs documents indicate that more than £1.5 million of Beck products may have reached Moscow since 2023. So what's going on?

The answer lies 4,000 miles away here in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. That sound? Well, that's the presidential guard changing every hour on the hour, marching along the concrete pavement. This is a former Soviet state and it's one of the many back doors into Russia. In a park in the city centre, I meet Murat Karapov, who runs a local human rights group.

The British, the Europeans have asked Kyrgyzstan to shut this, to stop this trade. Why does it continue? Yeah, because some people in our country, even if they don't support the war in Ukraine, anyway, they are interested to get some financial profit. And that's the main reason. And corruption? Yeah, and also corruption. I have pages and pages of customs documents. I'm going through them in a cafe, looking out at the view of the city, the

mountains around all covered in snow and the documents show me that there are two companies based in the city which bought the Beck equipment and sent it to Moscow. The challenge now is to find out where they're based, knock on the door and get some answers.

Hello. We track the companies to a city centre office block. Hi, from BBC. The office manager says there's no-one we can talk to. The directors are overseas on a business trip. But what we do have is a woman's name. And posts on social media from glamorous locations around the world, made by 25-year-old Valeria Bygashina, a part-time swimwear model and founder of one of the companies.

She's now in Belarus, an ally of Russia, unreachable for us. So all we can do is call. We have customs documents showing equipment going through your company to Russia for the military. I'm not a military person.

She denies it happened when she was the owner, tells us she sold the company and has nothing to do with it now. Then hangs up. Back in the UK, we contacted Beck Optronics Solutions. It says it's had no dealings with Russia or Kyrgyzstan, hasn't broken sanctions and knows nothing about the shipments. It believes some of the equipment listed wasn't even made by the company and that customs documents may have been falsified. BOOM

Ukrainian cities are under constant attack from missiles, drones, aircraft, weapons often built with Western electronics. Olena Tregub is an expert on sanctions still living in Kyiv. Those companies should know when they sell this technology to a client who is potentially a Russian end user, they fully should understand that this is to kill people. This is the reason why Russia needs this.

Sanctions expert Elena Tregoob ending that report by Angus Crawford. Five people have died from suspected methanol poisoning in Laos in Southeast Asia. A 28-year-old British woman, Simone White, became ill and died after consuming alcohol in the popular backpacking town of Vang Vieng. Earlier, Australian authorities confirmed the death of 19-year-old Bianca Jones. Nearly a dozen more remain ill in hospital. Simon Jones has the details.

Laos is a magnet for young backpackers from around the world, enjoying the scenery and the nightlife. But for Simone White, a lawyer from the UK, the trip cost her her life. It's thought she unknowingly consumed a drink laced with methanol, a deadly substance found in bootleg alcohol. She is the fifth person to die. Earlier, the family of Bianca Jones from Australia confirmed she had lost her life. She was 19.

Her friend Holly Bowles was also taken ill. Her father Sean gave this emotional update. Right now our daughter remains in intensive care unit in critical condition. She's on life support. We'd just like to thank everyone from back home for all the support and love that we're receiving. Tributes to Bianca Jones were led in the Australian Parliament by the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Bianca's trip.

It should have been a joyous time and a source of fond memories in years to come. Memories that she should have carried with her into the long bright future that lay ahead of her.

Bianca Jones had been staying at a backpackers' hostel in Vang Vien. It's now been closed for a police investigation. Guests say they were given a shot of vodka on arrival, but it's unclear where any poisoning may have taken place. Fatah Nawong Shampong is a police superintendent. The cause of death is likely from the consumption of methanol, from fake liquor. It's poison and cannot be consumed. It causes swelling of the brain and causes the death.

Two Danish women aged 19 and 20 and an American man are also known to have died. It's left backpackers concerned. You think about it more. It's not that we don't drink anymore, but you just have to really be careful. The Foreign Office in London said it was supporting the family of the British woman who had lost her life. It's advising visitors to Laos to be beware of establishments offering free drinks or alcohol that tastes strange. Simon Jones.

Have you ever wondered what happens to your old phone, laptop or USB cables once you throw them out? Ideally, they should be disposed of in a very particular way because they contain parts that could be harmful to people and the environment. But that doesn't necessarily happen. Instead, these items are often being illegally trafficked from developed countries to poorer ones.

and it's become a lucrative business for organised criminals. The BBC's environment correspondent, Navin Singh Khadkar, has been looking into what happens to our e-waste.

If there are responsible contractors, middlemen, they might dispose them properly. But the point here is that doesn't happen many times. That's why the World Customs Authority organization, they brought this thing out that it's the most frequently seized item now. So many contractors tell authorities or whoever gives them those waste that we'll dispose them properly.

But then what they do is they conceal them, hide them, misdeclare them and transport them mainly to many poor countries. And then, you know, it makes it inside those countries. And then that's where they are either dumped or burnt. And that has a massive, massive impact. And this is organized crime, isn't it? And you've been on the trail of this and you've ended up in Ghana. Yes.

Yes. So this is the country, Accra. There are a few places, but this one particular dump site, which was actually closed by the government in 2021 because of the massive reputation as a dump site. But it's come back again. So we saw all these things there, dumped.

There's a mountain of it, and then you can smell it from miles away. And as you go there, you'll see that these workers, they literally climb up that mountain, and then they dig, and then they bring out all those plastic. So plastic cases of TV, for example, computer, washing machines, things like that. And they burn them. They burn them to get the copper and other precious metals from e-waste. And this is really dangerous for their health, isn't it? Very, very dangerous. Imagine, like, this toxic fume coming out all the time.

I lost my smell sense for three days. I was there for, what, three, four hours? And imagine they're there. So I asked them how they live and they said, well, this is how it is. They agree that it's very bad. It's very, very bad. And authorities, they told me that it's a massive public health issue. There's two problems here, aren't there? What's being done to try and clamp down at the end of the rubbish trail, but also on the crime groups that are making this happen?

The UN authorities, we investigators, we spoke to, they say that, you know, these crime groups, they are using cryptocurrency, for example, or they turn the beacons of the vessels off in the middle of the ocean if they sense that they're going to be detected. And then they even empty these kind of waste right in the middle of the ocean.

So that kind of thing. And then there is another quick, you know, amendment that's happened in an international treaty. Many people, many authorities are pinning their hope on that because it's coming into effect from January. And that means people will have to declare everything and the recipient countries will have to be pre-notified. Consent will have to be obtained.

But here's the thing. Not all the countries have signed up to this convention. It's called the Basel Convention. Major exporters like U.S. even. And that is why there's still fears that, you know, the movement of e-waste will still carry on. Navin Singh Khadkar.

The Chinese action-adventure game Black Myth Wukong has won Game of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards in London. One of the oldest and biggest public-voted gaming accolades, these awards come at the end of a difficult year for the global games industry with thousands of job losses and an actor's strike in America. From the red carpet, Andrew Rogers reports.

There's no shortage of glitz and glamour at this year's Golden Joysticks. And if you're into your games, it's a great place to spot a famous face or two. This is Patricia Somerset. You may know me as the voice of Princess Zelda. My name is Neil Newbon. I play TikTok's most accessible vampire, Astarian. Hello, darlings. There are plenty of smiles on the red carpet celebrating a sector that's grown to rival the global TV and film industries.

But it's not been an easy year for everyone in the sector. Thousands of workers have been laid off around the world, including plenty here in the UK. Consumers have been spending less on new games and consoles after a boom in sales during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Ben Starr won Best Lead Performer last time and is hosting this year's awards. I think it is a tough industry to be a part of and it certainly this year has proven to be a tough industry to stay in. There is this real sense of camaraderie of if you're still doing it, we all just kind of want the best for each other. The Golden Joysticks have now been running for 42 years, making them a decade older than the very first PlayStation.

But just as the way we play games has evolved, so too have the categories here. There are now ones for game expansions and live service online experiences, reflecting a shift in popularity towards playing not just the latest releases, but games that are constantly updated for longer. Fortnite, Minecraft and GTA, just some of those still dominating the market years after their launches. Andrew Rogers. There are more than 200 billion...

trillion stars outside our galaxy. For decades, astronomers have struggled to take a close-up picture of even one. Until now. A dying red supergiant has been captured by the European Southern Observatory's Super Telescope, located in Chile's Atacama Desert. Our very own stargazer Ella Bicknell has been finding out more.

W-O-H-G-64 is its official name, but 2,000 times bigger than our sun, it's been nicknamed the behemoth or monster star. It sits in the large Magellanic cloud in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, 160,000 light years away from Earth.

Although scientists have known about this star for decades, it is only now that technological advances have made it possible to see it up close. And the images did not disappoint. A bright core surrounded by an egg-shaped cocoon of dust and gas. Some say it looks like molten lava. Others, the eye of Sauron from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Not only is this the first image of a star beyond our galaxy, it's a star in the very final stages of its life.

Jaco van Loon from Kiel University in the UK worked on the project. He says it was well worth the wait. We thought we would just measure its size. And then we got the images and it turned out that actually it's been blowing a cloud around it. And so that was quite a surprise and exciting. We were really lucky to catch it doing that because the changes we're seeing now might mean that it's much closer to its death.

possibly just mere years or decades. Over the next few years, Dr Van Loon's team will return to Chile's Atacama Desert to take more images of WOHG64. While some red supergiants take tens of thousands of years to explode, they say this one could blow relatively soon. Ella Bicknell.

And that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. This edition was produced by Harry Bly and mixed by Martin Baker. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritz, and until next time, goodbye.

A search for the truth behind an international drug smuggling plot. There's something on this boat. A tin of cocaine. There was a lot of adrenaline. I couldn't believe what was happening. And the man Brazilian police believe to be at its centre. Fox. Fox. Fox got the shots. From the BBC World Service, this is World of Secrets. Season 5, Finding Mr Fox.

Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.