This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.
I'm Nick Miles and at 14 Hours GMT on Friday the 21st of February, these are our main stories.
The Israeli Prime Minister has accused Hamas of a cruel and evil violation of the ceasefire in Gaza.
And Sweden's Coast Guard is investigating new damage to a cable under the Baltic Sea after a series of suspected Russian sabotage attacks in the area.
Also in this podcast.
I opened the window and the light shone through really bright and he squinted.
I remember welling up because that was the first time that Jace ever had any reaction to any sort of light stimulus.
We hear about the new gene therapy cure for childhood blindness.
The Gaza ceasefire agreement has always been a precarious one.
Now Israel has accused Hamas of violating the deal after it said its forensic testing revealed the body returned from Gaza on Thursday was not that of Shiri Bibas.
Three other bodies were handed over, the two Bibas children, Ariel and Kfir, and the peace activist, Oded Lifshitz.
Here's the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The cruelty of the Hamas monsters knows no bounds.
Not only did they abduct the father Yadan Bibas, the young mother Shiri, and their two small infants, in an unimaginably cynical manner, they didn't return Shiri to her small children and instead place the body of a Ghazan woman in a coffin.
We will act with determination to bring Shiri home, along with all of our captives, both the living and the fallen, and ensure that Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement.
Well, Hamas has said that it's investigating a possible mix -up of bodies and called on Israel to return the mistakenly sent remains.
On Saturday, a further hostage prisoner exchange is due to take place, in which six Israelis will be returned by Hamas and more than 600 Palestinians will be released from Israeli jails.
Our Middle East regional editor, Sebastian Usher, is in Jerusalem.
Hamas has said that there is a possibility of an error, that there might have been human remains that got mixed due to Israeli airstrikes.
Hamas has always said that the Bibas family were killed in an Israeli airstrike in November 2023, just a month or so after they were abducted on October 7th.
I mean, it's strange that they're saying that now.
If they knew that beforehand, then they were taking a huge risk, perhaps a very provocative risk.
If they still sent the body, they must have known that Israel was going to conduct a very intense forensic investigation.
I mean, there are other possibilities.
Again, it's speculation, but Hamas didn't actually abduct the Bebas family.
They were taken by another armed faction and, as far as we know, were then passed on to another after that, but not Hamas.
So we've had this before when Hamas had been asked by Israel to give a precise list of all the hostages and their condition and things looked like they were about to fall apart.
I mean, this was one of the things that broke apart ceasefire deals previously when it looked like they might happen.
And, you know, it might have been then that Hamas simply didn't know those details in the past and possibly this is the case again.
But I think what's clear is that the Israeli government and the Israeli public won't take heed of what Hamas has said in any way for now unless it provides serious evidence.
And this demand that the body of Shirib Bibas is somehow returned to Israel will continue.
So, given what you've just said, Sebastian, how likely is it that this will jeopardise Saturday's exchange and the wider ceasefire deal?
I think it might affect the wider ceasefire deal more than the exchange on Saturday.
We'll have to see. I mean, we have received the notification from Hamas, which it's given to Israel, of the six living hostages who are going to be released, who are due to be released on Saturday.
So that part of a schedule is still going ahead.
Hamas has also said that it is expecting just over 600 Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange.
We haven't yet received information about that.
We haven't received anything from Israel saying that it would delay or somehow get him away of that.
So at the moment, the expectation is that in the immediate future, the ceasefire deal, which is still in phase one, will go ahead.
I mean, after Saturday, there's one more handover that's due to happen of the four remaining dead bodies of Israeli hostages.
And then that will be all 33 alive or dead that were to be returned in the first phase.
You know, I've been saying a lot and everyone else has phase two, which is due to start as soon as one assumes phase one comes to an end.
The talks on that haven't begun in earnest.
We've heard from the Israeli government that they are due to start this week, but we've heard nothing more since.
And the issues that they have to deal with are potentially more intractable.
So whether these developments to do with the body of Shiri Bibas and also the accusation from the forensic investigation that her two children were murdered by those who were holding them captive, I mean, that, of course, raises the temperature, too.
Sebastian Asher. The U .S.
Secretary of State has said a possible meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin will largely depend on progress on ending the war in Ukraine.
In an interview on Ex, Marco Rubio said there wouldn't be a meeting until the agenda was clear.
Meanwhile, the U .S.
National Security Advisor has urged President Zelensky to tone down his criticism of Donald Trump.
The BBC's James Waterhouse in Kiev gave us this update.
You have to imagine what it must be like for President Zelensky at the moment in terms of the political position he finds himself in.
You have an America which is criticising him for not accepting a deal which would have given it access to half of the country's natural minerals which Washington says should be used to pay it back for the military aid it's given to date and to pay for future security guarantees.
You have European allies scratching their heads as to how they could plug a gap left by America.
There is division over whether they will send troops to Ukraine after a ceasefire is signed to enforce that agreement.
And, of course, overall, you have Washington warming to Russia, warming to Moscow, prioritizing it in these peace negotiations that President Zelensky is not part of at the moment.
So he has a tall order.
In the past, he could rely on battlefield success, but that was a long time ago now.
And I think the sort of status quo of Russia both keeping hold of Ukrainian territory and making grinding gains, notably in the east of Ukraine, that's fed a fatigue that has now crept into certainly American politics.
And I think what we're hearing from the White House goes beyond strategy.
This is a change in values, which leaves Ukraine very much isolated at this moment in time.
James Waterhouse or the Trump administration has stunned Europe with its decision to start talks with Russia about ending the war in Ukraine.
Now American allies in the Asia -Pacific region are nervously waiting to see what Washington has in store for them.
The US still underwrites the security of Japan and South Korea, with tens of thousands of troops still based there and the US Navy's Pacific Fleet almost constantly in the region, often conducting exercises with other navies.
Our Southeast Asia correspondent Jonathan Haidt was invited to visit one of the Navy's largest aircraft carriers as it took part in an exercise with the French and Japanese carriers.
We're heading out to the USS Carl Vinson, one of the world's largest aircraft carriers.
It's currently out in the Pacific, off the coast of the Philippines.
We'd been invited to observe the Carl Vinson on a joint exercise with the French and Japanese navies.
US fighter jets thundered down the flight deck with a deafening roar.
Good morning ladies and gentlemen and thank you for joining us here today aboard USS Carl Vinson.
We were welcomed by Rear Admiral Michael Walshi, who commands the Carl Vinson Strike Group.
It is a beautiful day out here in the Philippine Sea, and it's great to be here with my fellow strike group commanders.
And sitting alongside him were fellow Rear Admirals from the accompanying French and Japanese carriers.
Carry Strike Group 1 team is honoured to be sailing alongside our French and Japanese allies as we participate in Pacific Stellar 2025.
There was a bonhomie and warmth between the three men that seemed a world away from the recent bitter exchanges between President Trump's men and US allies in Europe.
Our network of strong alliances and partnerships, such as those that we share with France and Japan, is a key advantage of our nations as we confront our collective security challenges.
So we're down in this incredible hangar, surrounded by some of the most advanced fighter planes you can find anywhere in the world.
and there's no other country that can project this kind of military force over such long distances.
But it's a very expensive operation and there are questions being asked whether this kind of technology, this massive size, is still relevant in 21st century warfare.
You have been nominated to be the Secretary of Defence.
At the Senate confirmation hearings for new Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth last month, he was asked about the administration's military priorities.
President Trump has said definitively that shipbuilding will be one of his absolute top priorities of this administration.
If we're going to defend our interests, our allies, and put America first, we're going to have to be able to project power.
That means shipbuilding.
It means historic investments in our defense industrial base there.
Good afternoon. I'm Lieutenant Commander Yaccarino.
I am the aircraft handling officer on board here.
In the flight deck control room on the Carl Vinson, there's a board on which small model aircraft in various colours are arranged to show which planes are taking off, which are landing and which need fuel.
So as you see, all the green pins mean that that's a first -go aircraft.
It is an intricate task manoeuvring 60 war planes around a space the size of three football fields.
As they come into land, the pilots must ensure their arrestor hooks catch the steel cable pulled taut across the deck, and they slam to a halt in just 100 metres.
For all of the unpredictability of today's America, out in the vast expanse of the Pacific, giant supercarriers like the Carl Vinson remain at the heart of US strategy.
Jonathan Head with that report.
Surgeons in London have become the first in the world to successfully preserved the sight of four young children born with one of the most severe forms of childhood blindness.
Jace, who's now six years old, was diagnosed with a condition that weakened his retinas when he was a baby.
He underwent experimental gene therapy at Moorfields Hospital in London and is now able to recognise objects a few metres away.
His father Brendan spoke about the moment when it began to have an effect.
It was the morning I took Jace down to our living room.
at the time we had a big back bay window and it was a sunny day and I was holding him he was still an infant or baby at that point to me and I opened the window and the light shone through really bright and he squinted and he kind of pulled himself back it wasn't just even an eye shot it was kind of a more
of a physical reaction and I remember welling up and getting really emotional because that was the first time that jace ever had any reaction to any sort of light stimulus or or anything of the sort.
James Bainbridge is an eye surgeon and he was one of the team treating Jace.
Some children are affected by blindness from birth because their eyes lack a gene that's essential for normal sight.
In its severest form, their sight's limited to seeing light and dark and they face losing all sight in the first few years of life.
This lack of sight at an early age can impair their general development.
So we found that by providing our eyes with healthy copies of the gene that's otherwise lacking, their sight can improve remarkably and this seems to affect their help, their normal development.
And when you say, I mean, you make it sound simple, the fact is a gene that's lacking, what do you actually do?
Where does the material come from and how do you transfer it?
So we prepare normal healthy copies of the gene in the laboratory and are able to package these into virus particles, disabled virus particles, which can be safely injected into the eye and targeted to the retina, to the cells that are needing those genes.
And what kind of a difference has it made?
So we heard there from Jace's dad, is able to recognise objects a few metres away now and couldn't see at all before.
So, I mean, this is a really dramatic difference.
Absolutely. So these kids would normally expect to see very little, as they light and dark at birth, and they lose that sight very quickly.
But children like Jason and these other children we've treated have shown really remarkable improvements in sight to the extent where they can navigate safely, they can run around without bumping into things, they can play with their friends, pick up small objects off the floor.
This is a particularly rare condition, but it's important is that it shows that this approach can help in a condition that's really very severe.
The hope is that this will give further confidence that this sort of approach, this treatment can offer hope to people, to children with more common blinding diseases.
And you've done it here.
This is a first in the world, is it, here at Moorfields and UCL?
Absolutely. So this is a very rare condition.
In fact, we already have a genetic treatment for a similar condition which is less mild but as I say this particular condition is more severe and the improvements are really spectacular.
To what extent do you think you can now get it out to the outside world?
Given the impressive changes we've seen so far in these four children and indeed in additional children who have subsequently been treated, we're very hopeful that marketing will be possible and that licensing will enable the treatment to be available to other children very soon.
Professor James Bainbridge speaking to Justin Webb.
Still to come in this podcast.
Happy birthday, Runa.
You know, I couldn't imagine life without her.
Yeah, she was my best friend.
The UK's oldest horse celebrates her 46th birthday.
Yet another undersea cable in the Baltics has been damaged.
This time it took place just to the east of the Swedish island of Gotland.
It's part of a cable that was severed completely last November and December.
At the time, NATO considered the damage the result of Russian sabotage attacks.
So has the same happened again?
I've been speaking to our Europe regional editor, Sascha Schlichter.
It was discovered a couple of days ago, but it wasn't highly publicised.
There were some media reports in Finland and Sweden.
This morning, the Swedish prime minister said he was aware of those reports.
Simultaneously, the Swedish Coast Guard issued a statement saying that a vessel was being deployed to an area east of Gotland Island, which is inside Sweden's exclusive economic zone.
At the same time, Finland's telecom operator said it detected minor damage to its fiber optic link to Germany.
It's called C -LINE -1.
But the Finns insist that there was no impact on the cable's functionality.
It mostly carries data.
So basically, this hasn't impacted any communications today or yesterday.
But this cable is quite notorious because it was completely severed twice in November and December.
So there's been a lot of concerns in Europe over the vulnerability of such vital infrastructure.
And when it was severed last year, late last year, patrols were increased in the area.
And now we're hearing from the EU that they're going to increase surveillance.
security in the area.
It's going to be incredibly difficult though, isn't it, to secure all these cables?
And it's a regional problem, not just a problem for Sweden or Finland.
What's happening today, maybe it's a case of better late than never, is that the European Commission has announced the formation of a task force that will survey the seabed.
And these ships will be technically equipped to repair any damage caused.
Ironically, this all coincides with a statement out of the blue in Moscow by the Security Council, by President Putin's Security Council, warning that NATO is preparing for a full -scale war on the seabed of the Baltic Sea.
And if you know anything about Russian propaganda, what it often does is that it accuses the West of engaging in stuff that it itself is doing.
So basically, it's almost like Moscow admitting to doing that, but it is transferring the blame straight away onto NATO.
So I have no doubt that once this task force is complete, Russia will say, look, this is part of the preparations for NATO's war.
Sasha Schlichter. If the opinion polls in Germany two days before the general election are to be believed, the next chancellor will be the Christian Democrat leader Friedrich Metz.
But little is expected to change because he'll have to form a coalition with at least one of the parties currently in government.
That is because he's ruled out any cooperation on any matter with the far right alternative for Germany or AFD.
Mr Merz made his fortune as a corporate lawyer in the city of Düsseldorf in North Rhine -Westphalia, in the heart of the prosperous German West.
On Friday he went back there to speak to voters.
The BBC's Nick Robinson is also in the city.
I've come to the Schlüssel, one of the oldest beer halls in Dusseldorf where the beers are being lined up on the bar.
One thing not on the menu for most people is conversation about the election.
Because politics divides people here, scares people even in a way it hasn't for many decades.
In the last years, you know I'm 23 years old, I've recognised a big change in our country.
It doesn't make me happy.
You know, I have to pay way more money.
And five years ago, I don't have to think about, oh, it's after eight, should I go into the city?
Oh, it could be dangerous.
Maybe you get stagged by a knife or something else.
Like, everything was all right.
Who are you going to vote for?
I'm charging the Hafti.
It's not because I'm bad about immigrants or bad about our land at the moment.
I think we have to change, yes.
You're his friend, but you don't agree.
I love him. I love him.
He has political decision, I have my political decision and that's fine by me.
Even here in a city that is a symbol of German prosperity, home to the country's fashion industry and to many European multinational headquarters, even here in Düsseldorf, voters are anxious.
Anxious about what's coming next for this country, anxious about the divisions visible everywhere, not least in the Hitler moustaches added to election posters.
Today, the Christian Democrat's Friedrich Mertz, the man everyone expects to be Germany's next chancellor, is coming home for an even poll rally to the city where he made a fortune, to the region he was born in and now represents.
On stage at the Mertz rally today introducing the man expected to be Germany's next chancellor is Thomas Yatzenbeck the CDU MP for Dusseldorf for the past 15 years.
We have very poor situation here economy is going down third year in a row right now and so we need a total shift when it comes to economy and to gain again optimism and growth.
Does the fact that Friedrich Mertz is himself a successful a wealthy man help with that message?
Absolutely he is a businessman he understands how business goes and i think this is what's necessary this time friedrich mertz may lead the same party as angela merkel but that is where the connection ends they couldn't be more different he a self -confident even brash and wealthy businessman who likes
to fly around the country in his own private plane she a low -key scientist from the East who prides herself in doing, not talking.
He blames her for many of Germany's biggest problems.
Who wins the election here on Sunday isn't in much doubt, unless, of course, the polls are hopelessly wrong.
What is in doubt is pretty much everything else.
German prosperity, German unity, German security.
Even here, in oh -so -comfortable Dusseldorf, The old certainties are being shaken and shaken for good.
Nick Robinson. France is starting random bag checks outside schools in order to fight against a growing problem of knife crime amongst teenagers there.
The Education Minister, Elizabeth Bourne, said the bag searches would be carried out by police officers.
Hugh Schofield reports.
In recent years, France has watched nervously the growth of knife crime among adolescents in the UK.
and now it fears the plague is spreading across the channel.
There are regular reports now of attacks with knives by teenagers, normally on other teenagers.
The most shocking recent case was of a 14 -year -old boy in Paris stabbed to death by two older boys who wanted to steal his mobile phone.
The new measure means that from the spring, police officers will conduct spot checks outside certain middle and secondary schools.
Elisabeth Bourne said she was very worried about the growing use of knives among the young.
The Canadian national ice hockey team has beaten the United States in a match with unusually strong political overtones.
Canada triumphed by three goals to two in the Four Nations face -off final in Boston.
Peter Hyatt reports.
Ice hockey is well known for the fighting on the ice.
In this tournament, most of the fighting has taken place off the ice.
President Trump has infuriated Canadians by saying they should join the US as the 51st state and threatened them with crippling tariffs.
Ahead of the game, he called the US team with a pep talk.
The US crowd booed the Canadian national anthem, just as the Canadian crowd booed the Stars and Stripes last week.
The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whom Mr Trump mockingly calls Governor Trudeau, gloated afterwards, you can't take our country and you can't take our game.
Peter Hyatt. The UK's oldest horse has celebrated her 46th birthday this week.
Rona, the mixed breed pony, was once a competitive show jumper but is now enjoying her retirement in Northern Ireland.
Our correspondent Chris Page has been to meet the elderly pony and her owner, Keris Brown.
Happy birthday, Rona.
Oh, what's this? Very few horses reach the age of 46.
And what better way to celebrate than a cake made of linseed mash, grass pellets and grated carrots?
Rona's owner first got to know her more than 30 years ago.
It's like family. You know, I couldn't imagine life without her.
She, I just knew her inside out.
She knows me inside out.
We've grown up together.
She's always there.
She's always been there.
Yeah, she is my best friend.
So I'm sure a lot of people have asked you this.
What do you think is the secret to Rona's longevity?
Oh my goodness. I think it's a mixture of a lot of things.
Good care, good feeding.
she's had lots of exercise but not too much and also just good genetics Just good solid stock Yeah, they don't make them like her anymore Rona's cantered through all the significant moments of Kerris' life Kerris' grandmother bought the pony for her when the riding school closed Kerris had been saddling
up with Rona since she was just 6 years old When I was a kid I was always the kid that had treats in my pocket like i do now um and rona likes traits and that's how we kind of became friends during the trickier times in life that we all have how has rona helped you during those times oh gosh rona has meant
a lot rona i was diagnosed with croons and when i was 18 and obviously i had rona on another horse at the time um and just having them to get me well again you know the drive to get well again just gives you a reason to get up and get out in the morning sometimes so I really couldn't be without her
What is she like? What's her personality like would you say?
Stubborn, knows her own mind does what she wants when she pleases and even at 46 she's not slow she just wants to be out doing stuff and having fun Keris Brown And that's all from us for now but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later on If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it you can send us an email.
The address is globalpodcast at bbc .co .uk.
You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.
Use the hashtag GlobalNewsPod.
This edition was mixed by Chris Lovelock and the producer was Stephanie Tillotson.
The editor is Karen Martin.
I'm Nick Miles, and until next time, goodbye.
