This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.
I'm Celia Hatton and at 1600 GMT on Wednesday, the 26th of November, these are our main stories.
Taiwan announces an additional $40 billion in defence spending.
Will it be enough to deter China?
Parts of southern Thailand have seen their heaviest rain in 300 years and a huge swathe of the country's underwater.
Two teenagers in Australia are fighting the country's social media ban.
Also in this podcast.
So after 13 years of waiting, we had to travel over 20 hours on land.
Then we had to climb the mountain and descend the mountain for three hours.
Researchers in Indonesia locate one of the rarest flowers in the world.
Now to Taiwan, where the president Lai Ching-de has said Taiwan will do all it can to resist Chinese aggression.
He's announced a plan to spend an extra $40 billion on the military over the next eight years.
That means by the end of the decade, Taipei will be spending more than 5% of its GDP on defense.
Fei-Fan Lin, the deputy head of Taiwan's National Security Council, said the spending boost reflected the changing nature of warfare.
I think we must understand that the modern warfare is totally different from previous years.
I think the conventional or traditional warfare has already been changed so dramatically.
And so we must think about more asymmetric in defending ourselves.
I think that's a consensus, also what we are building.
That announcement comes as China is embroiled in a dispute with Japan over Taiwan.
Japan's new prime minister, Sanae Takeuchi, said a Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger Japanese military involvement.
Tokyo has also said it will deploy missiles on one of its islands close to the Taiwanese coast.
Beijing considers Taiwan part of its own territory and it said repeatedly that it wants to unify Taiwan's islands with its mainland.
The U.S. says China could be ready to invade by 2027, and Beijing hasn't discounted that.
I spoke to Mariko Oi and I asked her if this new defense spending by Taiwan would deter a potential invasion by China.
Well, Sylvia, as you say, it is a lot of money.
But if you actually look at how much China has been spending on its military and so on, I think it's almost nothing compared to what they've been doing.
So, yes, it is a lot of money for Taiwan.
But a lot of experts think that if China was to invade Taiwan, Taiwan using force, then they would have the huge military power over Taiwan.
Of course, Taiwan has been allies with the United States and others and has been hoping that Washington would help them if that hypothetical situation happened.
But of course, once Mr. Trump returned to the White House, the rhetoric has been a bit different.
So I think From Taiwan's point of view, with recent tensions between Japan and China because of Ms.
Takachi the Japanese prime minister's comment about Taiwan.
They're probably feeling a bit insecure.
They want to show the United States that they're willing to spend extra money.
China has reacted angrily to Japan.
Japan's decision to deploy missiles on the island of Yonaguni, only about 100 kilometers from Taiwan's coast.
What's the thinking behind that move by the new Japanese prime minister?
Yonaguni Island, you know, it's been a plan for a while.
You know, the Japanese government has been building up defense system there.
And it was basically confirmed that Tokyo is still going to go ahead with it despite the the recent tensions with Beijing.
And the Defense Minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, basically said that this is not about attacking other countries.
This is about defending Japan.
Tell me more about what we're hearing from China, the announcement from Taiwan and also, as you say, the decision to go ahead with these plans by Japan.
Well, Beijing has been really, really angry.
You know, the reaction ever since that comment in early November by Ms.
Takayuchi talking about Taiwan.
Basically, she said hypothetically, if Beijing was to use force to invade Taiwan, that could happen, be considered as a survival-threatening situation for Japan, which is basically a term legally for Tokyo to be allowed to use its self-defense force to defend its allies.
And so far, we haven't seen either side backing down.
This is something that we've been discussing on our new podcast, Asia Specific, as our launch episode.
Where does it go from here?
Mariko, as you said, you're launching a new podcast, or the BBC is launching a new podcast focused on the region?
Tell us about it.
We have just launched it today Asia-specific, which is basically a visualised podcast focusing on
Asian perspectives on global issues and also, of course, stories from this part of the world.
So these recent tensions between Japan and China is something that we talked about.
Also, we'll be looking at various other stories, like you know, the battle of soft power between Japan, China and South Korea, and other stories from the rest of Asia-Pacific.
Mariko Oi.
That new podcast, Asia Specific, is available every Wednesday and Saturday on YouTube and BBC Sounds.
To the Middle East now.
Mohammed Ibrahim, a Palestinian-American teenager, was arrested in February in the West Bank aged 15, when Israeli forces reportedly entered his family home and then handcuffed and blindfolded him.
He's been in Israeli detention since then.
He has been charged with throwing stones at settlers, according to court documents.
There has not been a trial and no evidence has been presented publicly.
U.S.
Embassy staff have visited him in Ofer Prison, where they report he has lost a quarter of his body weight.
His family have not been allowed to visit him.
27 U.S.
Senators have signed a letter urging the State Department to ensure his release.
The BBC's John Donison reports from the West Bank.
You can ask anybody.
You know he's a real, real sweet boy, you know just into sports.
His PlayStation school.
You know, he's just a regular, fun kid that likes, that loves and respects everybody.
Over coffee in the occupied West Bank, Zaha Ibrahim tells me about his son Mohammed, who's been held in an Israeli prison with no charge or trial for nine months.
He was here, when he got arrested, he was here for a month and maybe 40 days.
Mohammed Ibrahim was arrested in a raid on his home in the middle of the night by Israeli soldiers.
They accused him of throwing stones at Israeli settlers.
Unable to speak to his son for nine months.
Zaha has only heard accounts of his detention through court documents and officials and says his son was forced to confess.
So he told me I just woke up and found all these soldiers around me.
He says on that report that I confessed from the beating.
They gave him no choice.
The US embassy here assigned a caseworker who visited Mohammed in prison.
Zaha says they told him he'd lost a lot of weight and wasn't doing well.
He has this message for President Trump.
You know, just, you know, do what you said from day one, you know, America first.
And he's American, he's a citizen, and he's a child.
So, you know, as a president, his duty is to protect Americans.
And we're not seeing that from Hamad.
Well, this is a case where the U.S. does have influence.
It's just failing to exercise its influence.
And that's a great dereliction of duty.
This is Democratic U.S.
Senator Chris Van Hollen.
Along with 26 other US lawmakers, he's written a letter to the State Department demanding more to be done to release Mohammed.
If this were any other country, you would be seeing a much bigger effort.
But, for whatever reason, the Trump administration does not want to push the Netanyahu government to do what it needs to do.
I'm up on a hilltop in Batunia in the occupied West Bank, overlooking Offa Prison.
It's about as close as we're allowed to get with our camera and our microphones, but it's where Mohammed is being held.
There are also adult detainees inside in the prison, but there are around about 350 palestinian child security detainees in israeli jails.
Many of them have never been charged and some of them, according to human rights groups and the un, have suffered abuse and torture.
We asked the israeli prime minister's office for comment on muhammad's case, but we've not received a reply.
It's not the first trauma the Ibrahim family has suffered this year.
This was the funeral in July of Mohammed's cousin, 20-year-old Saif Musalat, another Palestinian-American citizen.
Mohammed and Saif worked together in the family ice cream shop in Tampa, Florida.
No one has ever been charged with Saif's murder.
And for the family, life is on hold.
Mohammed's parents have extended their trip to the West Bank indefinitely whilst, thousands of miles away in the US, his brothers and sisters wait for news.
John Donison in the West Bank.
Moscow says it's now seen President Trump's revised plan to end the war in Ukraine.
The details about what's in the proposal are unclear, though it's reportedly been amended after Ukraine and its European allies objected to some of the original suggestions put forth a week ago.
Will President Putin accept the changes?
Donald Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, will travel to Moscow next week for talks with Russian leaders.
Meanwhile, Mr. Witkoff has been making the news in his own right.
A leaked audio recording obtained by Bloomberg appears to reveal him coaching a Russian official on how best to appeal to President Trump.
Paul Adams is our diplomatic correspondent.
In terms of Wyckoff's visit, the fact that he's going again shows that this is still a process that is unfolding.
He is a regular visitor to Moscow.
He's had many, many meetings with Vladimir Putin.
And so, even though the cast of characters surrounding this process does seem to change from one week to the next, the fact that he's going, I think, is key here.
Whether this means that we're getting close, as Donald Trump has indicated in the last couple of days.
Well, we just don't know.
I think it's probably wiser to say that we're still in the middle of a process with an awful lot of unresolved issues still lying ahead of us.
Thanks for helping us to read the tea leaves on this, Paul.
I mean, do we have any idea what's in this amended peace plan?
We really don't.
All we know is that it is shorter than the 28-point plan that was leaked last week and that the Ukrainians seem to be a lot happier than they were before the two sides, the Americans and the Ukrainians that is sat down in Geneva at the weekend.
President Zelensky said the results of that meeting were significant.
Ukrainian officials said that some of the gaps had been narrowed and that some of the things that had worried them most about the 28-point plan, particularly this demand that Ukraine give up even more territory, had been addressed.
They also said that some of the really tricky stuff, including territory, would have to be discussed by the leaders themselves.
The Russians haven't said a whole lot, although Yuri Ushakov, Kremlin advisor, has said this morning that Russia has seen the latest draft, views some of it positively but needs to have some serious analysis before coming up with a response.
So Paul, I mentioned at the top of the program this leaked audio recording that was released by Bloomberg that appears to show Mr Wyckoff coaching a Russian official.
What do you make of it?
Well, look, I don't think it makes a great deal of difference in the long run.
I mean, we know that Witkoff has a different way of conducting diplomacy.
It's rather more off the cuff, rather more personal, than perhaps seasoned US State Department officials are used to.
And this is the kind of report, the kind of transcript that will cause people to shudder somewhat because, as you, as you say, it does rather imply that there's a cozy relationship between Witkoff and his Russian interlocutor.
I think Donald Trump's view is this is how my team conducts diplomacy.
There's nothing to see here.
But certainly to the critics of the Trump administration.
It does rather underline for them this uncomfortably close relationship that Steve Witkoff appears to have with the Russians.
Our diplomatic correspondent, Paul Adams.
To the rainforests of Indonesia, where researchers have located one of the rarest flowers in the world that's not been seen in the wild for more than a decade.
It's a biggie.
Its flowers grow up to one meter in width.
And the discovery has made one man in particular very happy indeed.
Pete Ross has this report.
That's the moment Indonesian conservationist Septayan Andriki ended his 13-year-long search for the rare Rafflesia hasselti.
The plant is a subspecies of the famous corpse flower known for its pungent smell.
The last time scientists recorded seeing one in its native habitat was back in 2011.
Andriki told the BBC he and his partner Chris Thorgood from the University of Oxford trekked through the jungles of western Sumatra for almost an entire day to make the discovery.
So, after 13 years of waiting, we had to travel over 20 hours on land.
Then we had to climb the mountain and descend the mountain for three hours just to reach the habitat.
Difficult terrain wasn't the only problem the pair had to contend with.
And we know it's night.
We have to get out of there immediately, as quickly as possible, because the tigers are hunting at night.
Dr Chris Thorgood described the flower to the ABC News Network.
There are 40 or so species of Rafflesia, the world's largest flowers, but this one is a super rare one.
Hardly anyone has seen it.
And to my mind, it's the most beautiful.
It's kind of like white with these big red spots and then the reverse of that on the petals.
It's just crazy.
The buds of this flower take several months, up to nine months actually, to mature.
And then when the flower opens, it only actually stays open for a few days.
So the chances of having this encounter that we did are so unlikely.
The discovery brings to an end years of research from a multinational team of scientists who'd been looking for the flower that's likely been seen by more tigers than people.
And here it is. are you very lucky please i'm very lucky i'm the luckiest guy alive pete ross still to come in this podcast i was gobsmacked you know i came in and i thought yes this is our place a couple in the uk takes one last turn around the dance floor To Australia now, and an incoming law that's already received a lot of attention even before it's come into effect.
Starting next month, a social media ban will force the likes of Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to remove all users under the age of 16 or face hefty fines.
The ban was justified by the government as necessary to protect children from harmful content and algorithms.
Now that law is being challenged in Australia's highest court by two teenagers.
Mickey Bristow tells us how they're arguing against the ban.
As you say, two teenagers, an unusual group of people, to launch a legal action the 15-year-olds Noah Jones and Macy Nayland.
They are being backed by a rights group called the Digital Freedom Project.
Macy essentially outlined what their argument was.
Young people deserve to be engaged in political communication.
If you stop them going on social media completely, then they won't be able to do that.
They're the voters of the future.
And she compared this banter George Orwell's book 1984, in which an oppressive government tries to stop people speaking their mind.
I think the argument is from the Digital Freedom Project is not that it's wrong to try and protect children, but they should do that with safeguards, not with silence that they're educated, savvy and robust enough to be able to deal with things themselves.
So the Australian government, they argue, is just going too far.
Some pretty strong words if they're bringing up 1984 as an example.
Remind us about the government's thinking behind the need for this law.
Well, you mentioned some of those things.
It's social media.
Parents across the world worry and I've got children myself worry about the effect social media has on young people.
The government says they could be subject to misinformation, cyberbullying and see inappropriate material.
And there's also a level of control that the media companies could have over young people.
So the government laid out this law.
There could be a fine, as you mentioned earlier, of 30 million US dollars.
And After this case was launched, the government said they'd still carry on pursuing this proposed legislation.
They would not be intimidated by people with what they said were ulterior motives.
And they suggested that big tech companies were behind this push to challenge their legislation in the High Court.
How watertight would this law be if it comes to effect without any changes?
Hard to say, but it's going to come down to proportionality.
Whether the courts decide people in Australia's right to political communication outweighs this kind of silence that the government is trying to put on under-16s.
Mickey Bristow.
Parts of Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia continue to battle devastating floods.
33 people are now known to have died in southern Thailand.
The Thai city of Hatyai recorded its heaviest rainfall in 300 years.
Most of it's been submerged.
A viral social media clip shows children walking along power lines inching to safety to avoid the rising water below.
Our Southeast Asia correspondent Jonathan Head told us more about the flooding in Thailand.
This part of Thailand gets floods every year.
It's used to them. but the amounts of water are on a different scale.
And so you've got the fifth largest city in the country Hachai, the economic hub of the entire south of Thailand and connected to Malaysia, completely underwater.
I mean, in the city centre, only the very tops of the roofs of houses are visible.
And the only way to get them is by boat.
There are not enough boats.
So the army is putting out a public appeal across the country for people to travel down.
If they've got jet skis or flat bottom boats, anything that can be used to reach the thousands of people who are still stranded, many cases sitting on their roofs.
They've had to punch holes in the roof, in the tiles, to clamber out onto the roofs.
They've been there in some cases for two or three days.
You've got elderly people children, pets up there and it's taking time for officials to get around and retrieve them.
Thousands more have had to leave their homes and have evacuated to higher ground.
The main university campus is one place.
There are two or three evacuation centres in Hachai.
But it's kept on raining, so the water's still pouring down from the hills and keeping these flood levels pretty high.
Officials have reckoned that it's probably going to be several days, maybe ten or longer, before these floodwaters go down.
So there's a city of 200000 people evacuated where almost everybody needs help.
A lot of people need evacuating and the rescue effort is incredibly complicated simply because of these amounts of water and the fact you can't do it without boats.
It's something that some people are saying.
Thai authorities should have been better prepared for.
That will be a debate that goes on after this, but obviously everybody knows that with climate change, these annual tropical storms are becoming more intense and we are going to get events like this one, where much more water is dropped than the surrounding hills and land can absorb.
Jonathan Head.
Does it pay to be a man?
Some women are trying to answer that question this week by experimenting with the career-focused social media network LinkedIn.
A group of female users changed their gender on the LinkedIn site to male and also gave themselves male names to see if it would boost their visibility.
Anecdotally, it has, as has what they called brocoding their posts.
Zoe Kleinman, the BBC's technology editor, explains.
One woman, she's an entrepreneur.
She's very high profile.
She's called Cindy Gallop.
She's got 140,000 followers on LinkedIn.
And she says she shared a post which was viewed 401 times, which just seems quite strange, doesn't it?
The maths don't quite add up yet.
So some women decided to experiment by changing their gender, making their profiles male.
And they said that they saw results.
This they called the bro boost.
And others said they started using AI or doing it themselves to rewrite their posts, using more kind of masculine business jargony, sort of focused language.
And this is called bro coding.
And they also said that they noticed that those posts got more invisibility.
So what exactly is going on here?
Well, LinkedIn has written a blog post in which it denies that its algorithm has you know, in any way uses gender or age or race as a signal.
But it does use hundreds of others, including your job, your industry, who it is that's in your network and how active you are.
And it also says that a lot more people have joined the network in recent months, certainly this year.
And so there's just a lot more noise, a lot more content that's vying for that attention.
But that doesn't stop these experiences from happening, does it?
I spoke to a number of social media consultants who said they didn't think that LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, was in any way deliberately targeting gender.
But that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't happening by accident.
So one man he's a social media consultant called Matt Navarro, and he said he thinks maybe what happens to a post in its first hour, so how many people see it and engage with it and share it, that dictates how well it floats, if you like, across the rest of the network.
So that key first hour is really important.
And he's also said maybe more men have more powerful networks and they're more likely to comment and share each other's posts.
So they're kind of fueling that network amongst themselves.
I guess it's that sort of boys network that we might be familiar with.
And maybe the algorithm is reflecting is something that's actually happening in society.
What I think is really interesting.
A number of the women who tried the bro coding and bro boosting said they didn't like it.
They didn't actually enjoy presenting like men and they wanted to go back to being who they actually were on the platform.
Zoe kleinman And I can give you more of LinkedIn's response.
It said, our algorithms do not use gender as a ranking signal and changing gender on your profile does not affect how your content appears in search or feed.
We regularly evaluate our systems across millions of posts, including checks for gender-related disparities, alongside ongoing reviews and member feedback.
We'll be right back.
They're now in their 80s and live a long way from Blackpool.
But for many years Ron worked in entertainment in the town and the couple used to dance at the Tower Ballroom.
Recently, Ron has started to be affected by dementia, and he's due to go into a care home.
His granddaughter, Olivia Watts, wanted to give her grandparents one last dance in Blackpool.
She put out an appeal on TikTok for them to be able to dance at the Tower Ballroom, and it happened.
Ron also played the Wurlitzer organ.
Our reporter, Alice Sofield, was there.
What a magical morning.
I know.
And it's not even 10am.
Fantastic.
Fantastic.
It's home from home to me.
I've heard and I can see that you're quite the entertainer.
Well yes, I mean and I've done that a lot in Blackpool where there's been a hotel, they'd been let down, no-one there to do it.
So me and my father, we did all the entertainment for them.
It was so successful, they booked us then for the next ten years.
20 years?
20 years, yes, to entertain them.
And how did it feel...
Entering the ballroom today, walking down and then dancing with your beautiful wife, Marilyn.
How did that feel?
I was gobsmacked, you know, I came in.
I mean, I was watching this on TV not long ago, of course.
And I thought, yes, this is our place.
And you've played the organ today.
Yeah, now that really is something.
I mean, I'm really honoured to actually sit at it, let alone play it.
How do you feel being here in the Tower Ballroom today?
I absolutely love it.
And it's just exactly the same and it's absolutely fabulous.
This is a beautiful, beautiful ballroom.
There's no words for it.
This spring floor is, well, it's just...
Fabulous.
And your granddaughter, Olivia, she kind of was the lunch of all this.
She was.
She set all this up.
Yes, she did.
You have a very special family.
Yes, absolutely.
And, of course, I didn't know anything about this.
It was all done without my knowledge.
On TikTok.
Are you on TikTok?
No.
Not now.
Not now, yeah.
Doesn't even know what it is, do you?
No, not really.
Olivia, only a few days ago, You didn't know whether this was going to happen?
No, not at all.
And you are now watching your grandad play in the Blackpool Tower Ballroom.
Incredible.
Absolutely incredible.
I was just saying a minute ago how, because of his dementia, he's not been able to play the piano very well, and there's only been one tune that he's been able to play.
And even again...
They were dancing a minute ago.
Last night he wasn't able to dance and we were like, oh no.
But he came, he was dancing amazingly.
Now he's sat playing and we're like, where's this all come from?
But it is the power of music with dementia.
It brings your memories back and it means that you can.
You know, there's a snippet of you that comes back and that is the power of music with dementia.
It's incredible.
Alice Sofield witnessing that last spin in a special place by Ron and Marilyn Hill.
And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.
If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.
The address is globalpodcasts at bbc.co.uk.
You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.
Use the hashtag Global News Pod.
This edition was mixed by Louis Griffin and the producer was Stephanie Tillotson.
The editor is Karen Martin.
I'm Celia Hatton.
Until next time, goodbye.
