This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
much more. Thrivent.
Where money means more.
Connect with us at Thrivent .com.
With the best all -inclusive vacation deals to Mexico and the Caribbean, booking your getaway with Chief Caribbean Vacations means you have more freedom to do your deal.
Whether you want to enjoy snorkeling, endless margaritas and more, or simply soak up the sun and sand in a tropical paradise, Chief Caribbean Vacations has your deal for that.
Plan and book the exact getaway you want at exactly the right price for you by using our exclusive budget Beachfinder or find a featured family -friendly all -inclusive package to Dreams Resorts and Spas and Do Your Deal at ChiefCaribbean .com.
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.
I'm Jacki Leonard. And in the early hours of Saturday the 19th of April, these are our main stories.
President Trump has confirmed he will abandon efforts to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine unless there's progress within days.
A US senator has been speaking about his meeting with Kilmar Abrego -Garcia, an immigrant who was wrongly deported last month to a jail in El Salvador and nearly 200 people have gone on trial in Istanbul over their role in huge protests against the Turkish government.
Also in this podcast on World Heritage Day celebrating Sonic Heritage The US president Donald Trump once famously promised to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office.
But now, almost three months in, it's proving harder than he expected and frustration and tough talk are coming from Washington.
On Friday, President Trump said he believed that Ukraine and Russia were what he described as enthusiastic about peace, but he had this warning.
If, for some reason, one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we're just going to say you're foolish, you're fools, you're horrible people and we're going to just take a pass, but hopefully, we won't have to do that.
President Trump's comments echoed remarks earlier in the day by the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who warned that Washington was prepared to walk away from talks aimed at ending the war if a deal can't be reached soon.
That outcome could potentially leave the Ukrainians looking even more exposed as Russia continues to launch strikes on Ukraine.
Meanwhile, people in Ukraine are preparing for their fourth Easter period while at war with Russia, so how have they been reacting to Marko Rubio's remarks?
Ina Sovson is a member of parliament.
The one bearing the costs, if the ultimatum doesn't work, that will be us, that will be Ukrainians.
Of course we are not very happy with the current developments, there is growing uncertainty about what is to come, what Ukraine can expect from the Americans in the near weeks.
So I would say that there is a very strong pressure on all of us right now.
I think that is the main feeling that everybody is having.
Meanwhile, officials said a Russian missile attack, this time on the city of Kharkiv, killed one and injured more than a hundred others.
In comments on X, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote, this is how Russia began this Good Friday with ballistic missiles.
Ukraine correspondent James Waterhouse reports on Friday's developments.
After finally agreeing an investment framework with Washington and taking part in a first round of peace talks between American, European and Ukrainian officials in Paris yesterday, Ukraine started today with the diplomatic wind in its sails for once.
That was until this intervention from the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio as he left France.
We're not going to continue with this endeavour for weeks and months on end.
So we need to determine very quickly now, and I'm talking about in a matter of days, whether or not this is doable over the next few weeks.
If it is, we're in.
If it's hot, then we'll have to, we have other priorities to focus on as well.
The threat or even prospect of America turning its back on these peace endeavors will only favor Moscow and leave Kiev even more vulnerable.
US military aid for Ukraine is set to run out.
This is a White House that hasn't signed off any more American packages yet and looks unlikely to do so.
As Russia continues to seize and occupy Ukrainian territory, the Krenin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed Moscow was open to talks and was striving for peace.
The contacts are fairly complex, complicated because naturally the topic is not simple – the topic of Ukrainian settlement.
Russia is striving towards resolving this conflict, securing its own interests and is open to dialogue.
We are continuing to do this.
The US Vice President, J .D.
Vance, has since said he's optimistic the war can be ended, but the faint Ukrainian hope was that America would slap Russia with further sanctions for dragging its feet on a ceasefire.
Instead, Washington has gone from saying, we'll end this war in a day, to we've got more important things to do elsewhere.
James Waterhouse in Odessa.
So why has diplomacy been proving so difficult?
Kurt Volker is a former US special representative for Ukraine negotiations in the first Trump administration and a former US permanent representative to NATO.
Julian Marshall asked him if the Trump administration was over -optimistic to begin with in brokering a peace deal.
I think that they may have believed that Putin actually did want to have a ceasefire.
They probably saw some of the economic data, and the military data and thought Putin would agree to that.
And so they focused on enticements for Putin, offering carrots, if you will, if they indeed ended the war, but no real pressure.
And Putin read that exactly the opposite way that the Trump administration intended.
He viewed that as a green light to continue fighting the war, and to continue emphasizing his maximalist demands.
And it does appear that flattery of Mr Putin was a part of the Trump administration strategy?
Yeah, I think so. I think this was an flattery or an effort to reach out, to engage, to promise that we'd have a better bilateral relationship.
There would be summit meetings, there would be economic benefits for both sides.
That was all part of the enticements for Putin to engage in negotiations and aim at ending the conflict, at least having a ceasefire.
But as I said, Putin is not interested in that.
Putin wants to continue the war and that kind of approach leaves him thinking he can continue to do so.
President Zelensky didn't get a lot of carrots though, did he?
No, he didn't. He got a lot of pressure.
President Trump wanted to make sure that the US and Ukraine are in alignment, he wants to be able to tell the American people that Ukraine is paying its way, that we're not spending hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money on Ukraine.
That's what this minerals deal is all about.
And Ukraine of course agreed with the Trump administration to an immediate ceasefire if Russia also does so that was something that was very difficult for Ukraine to swallow because it means Russia will occupy a lot of Ukrainian territory.
But it is at least moving in the direction of a ceasefire from Ukraine side and exposes the fact that Russia does not want to do that.
Kurt Volker, a former US Special Representative for Ukraine.
The The case of Kilmar Abrego -Garcia has become symbolic of the Trump administration's immigration policy.
He was one of a group of alleged gang members deported to a high -security prison in El Salvador despite an immigration judge saying that he had the right to remain in the US.
He has never been charged or tried and US courts have since ordered his return.
The White House has accused Mr. Abrego -Garcia of being a member of the criminal gang MS -13 and insists he will never live in the US again, the democrats say the case shows a lack of due process.
On Thursday, US Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen managed to meet Mr Abrego Garcia during a visit to El Salvador.
Now back in Washington, the senator has given a news conference.
As the federal courts have said, we need to bring Mr Abrego Garcia home to protect his constitutional rights to do process.
And it's also important that people understand this case is not just about one man.
It's about protecting the constitutional rights of everybody who resides in the United States.
If you deny the constitutional rights of one man, you threaten the constitutional rights and due process for everyone else in America." Our correspondent in Washington, Jake Kwon, told us more about what Senator Van Hollen had to say.
The senator, after his meeting with Kilmar Bergwargarsee was saying that he initially tried to meet him in this maximum security prison, Secot, and he was denied, and Mr. Bergwargarsee was brought by the Southern Solidarian authority to the hotel he was staying And there they had a meeting at a restaurant where he was telling them that people outside were fighting for him for his return, that the judges in the U .S. have ordered the government to facilitate his return.
So all these things seemed to be a surprise for Mr. Abreguar -Garcia. He had been kept in the dark.
He was kept in a cell with 25 other inmates who were taunting him, even though Mr. Abreguar -Garcia said that he was not scared of these other inmates.
But the condition is, of course, not ideal.
This is considered a notorious prison.
And after these kind of mounting pressure to release Mr. Ab drives Garcia about a week ago, he was moved to a different prison, a different detention center, he said, with somewhat lighter security parameters.
So he has also said that he had delivered the message of love from his wife and, you know, and Mr. Ab drives Garcia has also related his concern for his family and his supporters outside in the US.
President Trump has been very scathing about Senator Van Hollen's visit, hasn't he?
Yes, Mr. Trump has tweeted out on Truth Social, calling Mr. Van Hollen a fool for visiting Bregu Garcia and saying that he is a grandstander, saying that the senator is simply trying to gain attention by doing this, what he considered a stunt.
So Mr. Trump's, in his view, the Democrats are defending a man who is a member of a violent criminal gang who deserves to be in prison in El Salvador and doesn't seem to be helping out or care for Americans who, in his view, are being threatened by illegal migrants who are going around and committing crimes.
Jake Kwon in Washington.
The trial has opened in Istanbul of 189 people who were arrested in protest against the Turkish government.
The suspects were arrested over demonstrations triggered by the detention last month of the city's mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu.
Warren Bull reports.
Dozens of students were among the defendants who stood trial at Istanbul's Chaliyan Court House.
They faced charges including involvement in illegal rallies.
Eight journalists were also in the dock.
Human Rights Watch says they were simply doing their job of reporting, but Turkish police argue they didn't make clear that they were at the protests for journalistic purposes.
The demonstrations were the biggest show of dissent against the Islamist AKP government since the coup of 2016.
They were sparked by the arrest of the mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, considered the biggest political rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Warren Bull. Thousands of people have gathered in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, to protest about a deadly US strike that's reported to have killed at least 80 people.
In retaliation for the attack on the Red Sea port of Rassissa, the Houthis said they had fired missiles at two US aircraft carriers and an Israeli military site.
Israel says it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen.
Protests were also held in several other Yemeni cities aimed at showing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Iona Craig is a journalist specializing in Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula.
Tim Franks asked her for more on the US strike.
Well certainly from the footage that's come out from Rasisa, there was obviously a major fire and explosion because they targeted the fuel port, but also some very graphic images of people having been burnt and burnt bodies lying on the ground, people receiving medical care who were severely burnt as well.
The Houthis claimed that this was a double tap strike, i .e. there was initial bombing which was then followed up once the first responders had got there and the civil defence had got there to try and rescue people, that there was another attack on them and therefore they were the members of Civil Defence and rescue teams that were also killed and injured in the second strike.
And it is an oil facility which, presumably, is important to the Houthis?
Yeah, well, RAS ISR, it's refined fuel as opposed to oil really.
It's not the first time it's been hit.
Israel did target it in strikes against the Houthis earlier this year and at the end of last year, but it is an important storage facility for the fuel supplies in Houthi -controlled territory.
More recently, there have been incidents of vessels still coming in, particularly Russian and Iranian vessels, coming in with fuel for the Houthis.
It is a revenue stream for them, but it's also important for the civilian population, of course.
That's also a troubling factor.
I mean, I've spent quite a bit of time in Hodeidah, and it is one of the hottest places on the planet.
You need that fuel to run generators for electricity.
And without electricity, you can imagine in that kind of heat, it gets unbearable pretty quickly, and anybody with sort of underlying health conditions in that kind of heat when it doesn't drop much below 40, even at night, it becomes a real struggle and a threat to life quite quickly when there's limited access to fuel.
And in terms of the hoofies themselves, how far are they still causing disruption in the Red Sea?
how far are they still able to fire missiles at Israel?
Well, already in response to this strike, they have fired missiles at Israel.
They would have been ballistic missiles.
They've also attempted to attack.
They've been doing on a regular basis now, the USS Harry S.
Truman and its strike carrier group that are stationed in the northern Red Sea.
And where most of, if not all of these air strikes that have been going on since the 15th of March now have been launched from.
So, there's been strikes on a daily basis by the US since the 15th of March. And this is a change because we saw obviously an escalation since Trump relaunched this American bombing campaign in the targeting of the Houthi leadership, which hadn't happened before.
This is the first time really that there have been strikes in an attempt to target them economically to something that is essential to the war economy like fuel and really try and cut off their revenue streams, which hadn't been attempted before.
How do you think this fits into the talks that are going on between the US and Iran over Iran's nuclear program?
Certainly Iran has already condemned this strike and called it a war crime but I think that's probably as as much as they will do.
I don't think there's likely to be any response directly from Iran on this whilst these talks are going on.
Iona Craig. Hospitals in Gaza say at least 23 people were killed on Thursday night, and dozens more were injured in Israeli strikes across the territory.
Israel says it's continued to hit targets as it dismantles what it calls Hamas's terrorist infrastructure above and below ground.
Gaza's Hamas -run civil defence agency said at least 40 people were killed.
Most were said to be living in camps for displaced Palestinians.
On Friday our correspondent Gary O 'Donoghue in Jerusalem sent this report.
It's a month to the day since Israel resumed airstrikes on Gaza bringing the fragile ceasefire to an end.
Each day local health and civil defence officials from Hamas say dozens are being killed, with the United Nations saying that the number of children killed in recent days should shock everyone to the core.
Israel says it is targeting what it calls terrorists, claiming it killed the man responsible for smuggling arms for Hamas earlier in the week.
It insists it takes every precaution to avoid civilian casualties.
Negotiations to resume aid flows into the strip and to end the war are at a standstill with Hamas formally rejecting an Israeli offer of a 45 -day ceasefire in return for the release of ten of the remaining hostages and saying it is no longer interested in interim deals.
Israel is also continuing near daily airstrikes in Lebanon, with the killing of what it termed a Hezbollah communications expert near the southern city of Sidon.
Gary O 'Donohue in Jerusalem.
Friday was World Heritage Day, celebrating some of the sites around the world, deemed by the UN to be of huge cultural importance.
And to coincide with the day, a website was launched called Sonic Heritage, which aims to deepen our appreciation of those places and pieces of cultural heritage.
Stuart Foulkes is the founder of the site.
We've collected together from contributors around the world, 270 of these World Heritage Sounds from 68 countries and it's just a huge variety of everything from the iconic monuments that you might think of like Machu Picchu or the Eiffel Tower or the Great Wall of China through to natural soundscapes, and then maybe some, some less expected sounds like the sounds transportation or work or some of the cultural heritage sounds are really interesting you know things like textile weaving or agave cutting or dance those sorts of things.
I recorded that one myself so the the sounds are a combination of being a crowd source from anyone that could send anyone that had those sounds could send them in.
And I also did a few recording trips myself to places like Italian or Budapest or around London and in this case in Quimbra in Portugal to recall the sounds of Fado.
So Fado is an urban popular song of Portugal.
There are various variants of it.
So the Lisbon version is different from the Quimbra version.
And what I found interesting about the Quimbra version is a lot of the songs are related to love and loss and longing.
But in Quimbra, they're often about love and attachment to the city itself.
That's really interesting to hear this musical practice, which is really about how this is contributing to a sense of identity and a sense of connection to the city itself.
Obviously, we all know what the Sistine Chapel looks like, we can all conjure up this postcard like image of usually the ceiling, and you would imagine it to be a place of extremely quiet reverence as we all kind of gaze up at Michelangelo's works and collective wonder, which obviously is but at the same time you have attendants there whose job it is to shout Silencio or silence in various languages.
Everyone will drop into silence and then what will happen is one person will start whispering, two or three people will start whispering, the whispers will turn into mutters.
And before you know it, you've got this cacophony of just general talking noise that fills the entire space and then the attendant shout Silencio again.
So what happens is this sonic pattern that repeats through the day of peaks and troughs and dips of and fallings of noise.
So I found it to be a really interesting sonic experience.
It's an example of where the recording really helps you feel like what it is like to be in the space as opposed to the image that you're more familiar with.
This was recorded by an artist called Giannina Castro from New Zealand, that is from Okarito.
It is a dawn chorus after two days of hard rain and it's in the Te Wahipunamu region.
That's a sacred place to the Maori people, there's all kinds of world -building legends about how that part of the world came into being in the first place and I think that's another kind of aim of the project just to help people think about what the same space might mean to different groups of people.
Stuart Foulkes, the founder of the Sonic Heritage website.
Still to come I was dreaming about Star Wars before I ever saw it.
I think it framed my idea of what a movie even was.
The actor Ryan Gosling on playing the lead in a brand new Star Wars film.
for some of us, personal finances aren't just personal, they include a lot more people than ourselves, loved ones, neighbors, the communities we call home, and the causes we hold in our hearts.
At Sprivet, we help plan your financial picture with the bigger picture in mind.
Because even though our business is helping guide your finances, our ambition is to make it means so much more.
Thrivent, where money means more.
Connect with us at thrivet .com.
Spring has officially sprung and we're craving even more sunshine.
The solution? A cheap Caribbean beach vacay.
Cheap Caribbean is all about finding you the best beach deals for your budget.
Check out their semi -annual sale and take an extra $200 off site -wide vacation packages of four plus nights to your favorite tropical beach destinations.
Don't wait! This awesome offer won't last forever.
Go to CheapCaribbean .com to start your search for paradise and book before April 30th to save big.
Senesta Travel Pass is THE most rewarding way to travel.
Sign up at senesta .com for instant savings, bonus points and perks like early check in and late checkout, room upgrades and free stays.
Choose from 1 ,100 hotels across 13 brands and unlock their best rates when you book with Sonesta Travel Pass.
Hear today, roam tomorrow.
Join now at sonesta .com.
That's sonesta .com.
Terms and conditions apply.
Hi, I'm Cindy Crawford and I'm the founder of Meaningful Beauty.
When Dr. Sabah and I decided to do a skincare line together, he said to me, we are gonna give women Meaningful Beauty.
And I said, that's exactly right.
We wanna give women Meaningful Beauty, which means each and every product is meaningful.
It has a reason to exist. It's efficacious, you're gonna get results.
And then you just go out and live your life.
Meaningful beauty. Confidence is beautiful.
Learn more at meaningfulbeauty .com.
Pakistan is currently engaged in an effort to deport Afghan migrants en masse.
More than two million are expected to be deported to Afghanistan in the coming weeks.
Yama Bariz of the BBC Afghan service has been given rare access to those at the border and sent this report.
Sadness is written on every face.
Men, women and children are crossing back into Afghanistan after spending years, even decades, in Pakistan.
Their lives are uprooted overnight.
and some carrying a little more than a bag or two.
The people here are some of the first to be deported.
Sahih is one of them.
He sits in an empty tent, his eyes filled with tears.
Our children have never seen Afghanistan.
He holds his children close to his chest. And even I don't know what it looks like anymore.
We feel helpless. Pakistan has intensified efforts to expel undocumented Afghan refugees claiming that the country can not cope with the sheer numbers and that some of the Afghan refugees present a security threat.
With up to two million Afghans expected to be expelled in the coming days and weeks, there is a concern that the already struggling country will be overwhelmed.
I just saw a call probably from the Taliban.
They were announcing on a loudspeaker that two children are missing.
Atmosphere here is dense.
Nearly everyone here carry a story pain and separation.
One elderly woman told us she was separated from her three sons.
Every day I come back here to look for my son.
As we talk, Armena's eyes search the crowd.
She looks tense. She tells me, we spent 40 years in Pakistan.
This is the I find them.
No one here knows what lies ahead, and there is an ease about the safety and rights of those forcibly returned.
Saleh, who has three daughters, is worried about their future.
I want my children to study so their previous school years are not wasted.
In Afghanistan, girls over the age of 12 are banned by the Taliban government from receiving an education.
They should allow both girls and boys to get an education.
They should open schools for the newly returned Afghans and the people who were here before.
They have the right to education.
Yet, amid the despair of displacement, one rare moment of relief.
Three days after we met, Amina was reunited with her sons.
Her son describes that moment.
Our children spotted us and we rushed towards each other.
The moment I saw my kids was the happiest of my life.
My mother was so relieved.
It was a beautiful moment.
Now we are all living together happy.
As this family digs deeper into Afghanistan they like thousands of others who must learn to once again call this land home.
That report by Yama Bares.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Talal Chaudhry has condemned a series of violent protests against the fast -food chain KFC in cities across the country.
Activists opposed to the war in Gaza have been urging a boycott of the chain, calling it a symbol of the United States and Israel.
Azadeh Mashiri reports from Islamabad.
Talal Chaudhry told the BBC most of the vendors involved are Pakistani and the profits go to Pakistanis.
Police say they cannot connect all these incidents to anti -Israel sentiment, but they do sense a pattern to the violence.
An angry crowd entered a KFC store in Islamabad armed with iron rods, threatening to burn it down before police arrived and arrested several protesters.
In Karachi, groups carried out their threats and set two KFC stalls on fire.
These attacks are happening as influential figures in Pakistan continue to condemn the war in Gaza.
Azadeh Moshiri. Now has China just made a bit of a breakthrough on a new form of clean energy?
News reports inside China say that scientists have successfully refuelled a thorium reactor.
So what exactly is thorium?
Tim Franks heard more from Simon Middelborough, professor of nuclear materials at Bangor University in Wales.
Thorium is an element on the periodic table, just like uranium, just like hydrogen and everything else.
It sits at the bottom of the periodic table next to uranium and that line often gets missed off the actinide.
It's a couple of protons lighter than uranium, it's a bit lighter and it can be used within a nuclear reactor, just like uranium does.
Now instead of going into a nuclear reactor and creating energy straight away, what thorium does is you need to sort of pre -treat it.
You need to cook it first to turn it into uranium and that's what thorium is really good at and then it turns into uranium and then you can make energy out of it.
Is it useful also because it's in a sense easier to manage than uranium, or has sort of less baleful byproduct?
I think there's some easy things about it.
There's some things that thorium does better and there's some things that thorium, we need to just work on a little bit with thorium.
For example, just mining it, so digging it at the ground, given its chemistry on the periodic table, is it just a little bit more difficult to get at the ground than uranium.
Uranium is a bit easy to extract but there's lots more thorium on the underground.
There's find which is why people like China and India are really excited about using it inside nuclear reactors and some other places around the world.
There are pros and cons to it all as always.
I'm gonna give you a straight answer because that's my role as a scientist I suppose sometimes.
No indeed but am I right in also saying that it does produce less radioactive waste?
It can produce less radioactive waste.
Just looking at what happens when you split thorium into, the radioactivity is slightly less it's not massive amounts less, we're still going to be producing nuclear waste and it all depends on how you package the thorium up.
So if your thorium is packaged up in solid pellets that can be kept away from things and not irradiating other things and turning them radioactive, the volume of waste goes down there and sometimes with thorium you package it in specific ways that means that there is a lot more nuclear waste, not necessarily high level, very high level nuclear waste, but there's a bit more nuclear waste in terms of volume to deal with.
again it's a balance of technologies and ultimately will come down to what is safest and and what makes economic sense Simon Middleborough from Bangor University in Wales a trial of a daily weight loss pill has found that it helped people to lose weight and reduce their blood sugar levels, making it a contender to join the new wave of medications that combat obesity and diabetes.
Orfagliperon is made by Eli Lilly and has been through a clinical trial of people with obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Laura Heisler, who's a professor at the Rowlett Institute at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and an expert in nutrition, explained more about the medication and how it works.
Obesity has been historically, as we all know, pretty difficult to treat and that's not only a problem on a personal level but also on a national scale because obesity predisposes to a wide range of medical illnesses, there's a new class of drugs that mimic a hormone that's made in the gut called GLP -1, and that's revolutionizing obesity treatment.
But the drugs can still be better and that's what this new drug called Orforgliparone aims to do.
And it is an oral medication instead of the injectable, but it's the same idea as Wigobi.
The reason why the original drugs weren't pills is because they are poorly absorbed and broken down too quickly in the digestive system, and that has reduced their effectiveness and so that's why they were developed as injectables.
So there's been really rapid advances in the formulation of these different GLP -1 drugs.
The first drugs were administered twice a day and then once daily, now once a week.
And so, the next steps are to get an oral formulation, which is what this drug does.
The problem with the injectables is that they're single -use.
They're made of plastic, which creates a lot of waste.
They have to be refrigerated, which takes up quite a lot of space in pharmacies.
It makes them more difficult to transport, more difficult to distribute to those in need.
So, all this increases costs.
And the injectable drugs are also more costly to make.
So, having the drug in a tablet form makes it easier to produce, so actually can be much more widely disseminated, easier to store, and also it's expected that these drugs will then be cheaper.
This is not the only company producing or trying to produce an oral formulation.
There are people working on this all around the world.
There's a lot on the horizon, not just this one medicine, we're really only at the beginning.
Professor Laura Heisler.
The actor Ryan Gosling has confirmed he's to play the lead in a brand -new Star Wars film due for release in May 2027, 50 years after the first one Star Wars Starfighter will be a standalone film meaning it won't be following the storylines of the main protagonist so far but as Ed Brown reports it's almost certain to be set like the other films a long time ago in galaxy far, far away.
Since the franchise was acquired by Disney in 2012, the list of Star Wars spin -off titles has been ever growing.
Films and TV series set in the Star Wars universe have explored new themes and characters with varying approaches in tone and maturity.
The cast of this upcoming title will include the Oscar nominated actor Ryan Gosling, who is perhaps best known for his critically acclaimed roles in Barbie and the musical La La Land.
But he's also no stranger to blockbuster sci -fi movies, having taken the leading role in the 2017 sequel to Blade Runner.
He said Star Wars had always had a special place in his heart.
I was dreaming about star wars before I ever saw it.
It's always been there.
It's sort of in the DNA of the culture, myself, I think it framed my idea of what a movie even was.
As a standalone title, Star Wars Starfighter won't follow the well -established Skywalker family, who were the central focus of George Lucas's original films, but little else is known about it.
It's director, Sean Levy, who's known for comedies and action films including Deadpool and Wolverine, has said Starfighter will be set in a period of time that we haven't seen explored yet.
Ed Brown reporting.
And that's it from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.
If you would like to comment on this edition or the topics covered in it, do please send us an email.
You know the address by now its globalpodcast .c .co .uk.
You can also find us on x at BBC World Service, just use the hashtag globalnewspod.
This edition was mixed by Pat Sissons.
The producer was Liam McCheffrey.
Our editor is Karen Martin.
I'm Jacqui Leonard and until next time.
Goodbye. our ambition is to make it mean so much more.
Thrivent, where money means more.
Connect with us at Thrivent .com.
