This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.
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The Kremlin says there's been no breakthrough in talks to end the war in Ukraine.
On the anniversary of the failed coup in South Korea, President Lee Jae Myung praises those who saved democracy.
Tensions are mounting in Honduras, where there's still no result from Sunday's presidential election.
Also in this podcast There's a lot of workshops, there's a club to promote Bitcoin and everything.
I personally... don't use any cryptocurrencies.
The Swiss city aiming to become Europe's Bitcoin center.
Donald Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the US President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who both helped to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, were at the Kremlin for five hours on Tuesday for much-anticipated talks with President Putin on ending the war in Ukraine.
They were discussing President Trump's plan for peace, proposals that appear to have been amended after lobbying by Ukraine and its European allies.
Would President Putin accept the changes?
One of his aides, Yuri Ushakov, said the negotiations with the two American envoys would remain confidential, but they were positive.
The conversation was very useful, constructive and highly substantive, and it lasted not for five minutes, but for five hours.
This allowed us thoroughly to discuss the prospects for further joint efforts aimed at achieving a long-term peaceful resolution.
There's been no apparent breakthrough, even if the Kremlin said the door to a solution remained open.
The big issue appears to be Ukrainian territory held by Russia, as the BBC's Will Vernon, who's reported from Moscow, explained.
That does seem to be the kind of crucial sticking point in all this.
And Mr Ushakov said in his comments that the territorial question was discussed at the meeting.
As you mentioned, in an earlier version of this draft peace plan, Ukraine would have been forced to give up large parts of the Donetsk region that it still controls, and that was unacceptable to the Ukrainians and the Europeans.
So what was presented in this meeting, we think, is a kind of amended, or you could say even watered down version of the plan.
Mr Ushakov also mentioned that Vladimir Putin commented on quote the destructive actions of European countries over the Ukraine peace process.
And Mr Putin also quite indignantly said, criticise the Europeans before the meeting, saying that they basically are sabotaging peace.
So you kind of build a picture of how these talks went.
Yeah, quite scary sabre rattling towards Europe.
Yes, he said that if Europe wants war... then we're ready right now.
And what critics of Mr Putin and Mr Trump, in fact, would say.
This shows that Vladimir Putin thinks he can do a deal, wants to do a deal is perhaps maneuvering to do a deal over the heads of the Ukrainians and the Europeans directly with Mr Trump, a deal that's favourable to Russia and is definitely not favourable to the Ukrainians.
Yeah because, although Russia has said that no compromise has been reached, the process well.
It's not over, is it?
No, the Kremlin said that contacts We'll continue.
Look, I think all sides really want to do a deal.
We know how keen Mr Trump is to do a deal to claim power.
In fact, you know, his critics say that he's perhaps too eager to do a deal and that the Russians know that.
And you know Mr Putin does what Mr Putin always does, and that is go in from the outset with maximalist ideas demands, knowing that that is more likely to kind of yield results that are more favourable to Russia later on.
And, you know, time is on the Kremlin side.
Russian forces are advancing on the battlefield, although pretty slowly.
The Ukrainians are losing ground.
They have a manpower shortage.
And also the Kremlin doesn't have to worry about pesky things like upcoming elections, which Western governments do have to worry about.
So, you know, they can afford to sit it out and wait for a better deal.
Will Vernon.
We want to bring you an update on the floods and landslides on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, with a voice from the heart of the devastated region.
Officials now say more than 750 people have died and hundreds of thousands have been evacuated from their homes.
Villagers have told the BBC they've had to walk for hours to find clean water, rice or a phone signal.
We managed to get through to one man living in North Sumatra, Ludwig Mapu Ong, who sent us some videos and they're pretty shocking.
In this one, you see a road transformed into a raging river.
Well, Ludwig told us he didn't speak much English, but what he did tell my colleague Rebecca Kesby about the plight facing him and others in his vicinity was very powerful.
The road is broken in my region.
Many people hungry.
Electrical is black out.
The food is empty now in my region.
Many foods not be distributed to my country.
You're saying that the road is impassable.
Nobody can get through on the road.
There's no power.
And you're running out of food in that area.
The food is by helicopter.
So many people in my region... will be hungry for two or three days.
I know that the military are trying to drop food by helicopter.
As you say, but we've also heard that people have got so desperate.
There's actually been some looting and some people have been injured in the scramble to get through to whatever aid is being distributed.
The situation now is chaos.
Many citizens are hungry.
Is there a fear that there could be disease spreading as well?
Because when there's a lot of floodwater and possibly you know dead bodies in the water, that could be a health risk, couldn't it?
Yes, yes, miss.
The government now find many helpers to get food in this area.
So the government work fast. in my area so people can be connected to another area.
Ludovic, good to speak to you.
I'm so sorry you're going through this.
Good luck with it and thank you so much for helping us understand the situation there.
Ludwig Ma Paung in Indonesia.
The Liberal candidate, Salvador Nasralla, has taken a narrow lead in the presidential election in Honduras.
With just over 60% of the vote counted, he's slightly ahead of his conservative rival, Nasri Asfura.
Votes are being counted by hand.
The delay in the results following Sunday's election has caused rising tension in Honduras.
Meanwhile, the country's former president and convicted drug trafficker, Juan Orlando Hernandez, has been released from jail in the United States after receiving a pardon from President Trump.
A lawyer for Mr Hernandez Renato Stabile, was asked whether the former leader would remain in the US.
I think it's premature to figure out what he's going to do next.
His name is clear.
He received a full and unconditional pardon from President Trump.
So there is nothing left.
It has been wiped away completely and absolutely.
In terms of what he's going to do next, like I said, I think it's just too early to tell.
I don't know if he's going to return to politics.
I don't know what his next thing is going to be.
Our Central America correspondent Will Grant joined us from the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa.
First, the pardon.
Why was he freed from prison?
I think, in essence because Donald Trump has been persuaded of the argument that Mr Hernandez's family has been making since the moment he was arrested in 2022, that this was all some kind of politically motivated attack against him, revenge supposedly for having clamped down on drug traffickers himself, and that the entire case was just simply built on the testimony of convicted criminals and didn't stack up.
The key in terms of Mr Hernandez's family was getting that argument to Donald Trump and then him agreeing with it to the point that he would issue a pardon.
They have managed to do that, in part with support from certain key MAGA figures, to actually bring the case to Mr Trump's attention.
It does seem like a contradiction though, for Mr Trump to be releasing a convicted drug trafficker while at the same time using what you might call gunboat diplomacy over supposed drug trafficking incidents.
And that has been noted not just by journalists but also by members of Congress, members of the Senate.
Questions have been raised, of course, by people on the streets of Tegucigalpa, around Honduras, who are scratching their heads and wondering how.
This makes sense.
The argument from the Trump administration from that is that there is a key difference that, in essence, Mr Hernandez was, as Donald Trump himself put it, set up by the Biden administration, whereas Nicolas Maduro, in Venezuela, has lieu of allegations and indictment waiting for him over his own involvement in the supposed cartel, the cartel of the Sons.
Now the difference for many ends up being more political than actual because, of course, despite the pardon, Juan Orlando Hernández was found guilty of being at the very centre of a conspiracy to bring in over 400 tonnes of cocaine into the United States while president.
Will, while we have you, the election, when are we going to know the result?
And are Hondurans feeling nervous about the outcome?
They are feeling nervous.
It's been going on now since Sunday night, once polls closed.
It is still on an absolute knife edge.
It is... getting there.
So two thirds of the votes have been tallied.
As you said in your introduction, the former Vice President, Salvador Nasralla, now has a very slender vote over Nasri Asfura, who's Mr Trump's favourite candidate, but there's still a good number of votes left to go.
That control, that lead could change hands yet again.
Will Grant in Honduras.
The top 20 most read pages span politics, religion and entertainment.
Technology editor Zoe Kleinman has the details.
The US conservative activist Charlie Kirk was Wikipedia's most read page of 2025, viewed nearly 45 million times.
In the 24 hours after his murder in September.
The page was viewed an average of 170 times per second.
Second on the list was Wikipedia's ongoing compilation of 2025's notable deaths.
But two names on that list Ozzy Osbourne and Pope Francis had their own places in the top ten, with nearly 18 million viewing Wikipedia's article about the late Black Sabbath frontman.
The entry about Pope Leo, who was appointed in May, was read over 22 million times.
The top 20 most popular pages skews heavily towards American personalities, with President Donald Trump, Vice President JD.
Vance, YouTuber Mr. Beast and the multi-billionaire Elon Musk all on the charts.
The page for Zoran Mamdani, the newly elected mayor for New York, received only 60000 fewer views than that of the Tesla boss.
There are no individual women amongst them, but there are two superhero movies, Superman and The Fantastic Four.
First Steps.
The articles on the TV series Adolescence and Severance were also accessed by millions.
Wikipedia marks its 25th birthday next month and has a global team of 250000 volunteer writers and editors.
The Winter Egg is one of 50 Imperial Easter Eggs that Faberge created for the Romanovs.
Only 43 still exist.
I think it's the best.
It's a true masterpiece.
Absolute joy.
A Fabergé egg commissioned by Russia's final czar sells for a new record.
South Korea is a young democracy but admired across the globe for its vibrant politics.
But a year ago the country descended into political chaos when the then president, Yoon Suk-il, tried to impose martial law.
It failed in part because thousands of people came out onto the streets of the capital Seoul, to stop the soldiers.
To commemorate the anniversary, the man who's now South Korea's president, Lee Jae-myung, praised residents who'd come out to defend democracy.
The South Korean people confronted armoured vehicles heading towards the National Assembly, with just their bodies.
They protested against the police who'd blockaded Parliament and helped lawmakers climb over the Assembly fence so they could fulfil their constitutional duties.
It was thanks to the people stepping forward themselves that the National Assembly was able to vote to lift martial law, and our military faithfully complied with that decision under democratic civilian control.
President Lee Jae-myung also warned that there is still much to do to ensure the events of one year ago do not happen again.
Our Seoul correspondent, Jake Kwon, spoke to me from outside South Korea's National Assembly and told me more of what the president had to say yesterday in his national address to keep the democracy, and he said that South Korean people also deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for their valiant effort.
At the same time, he changed gear a little bit, saying that there needs to be a harsh punishment against those who, what he described as the designers of the coup d'etat and the insurrection.
Yesterday he said that those who had organized this needs to be punished like what had happened to the Nazi Party, which are quite strong words from him.
And this is something that he had compared to a wound that needs to be cut out of the South Korean society.
There has been some of a...
The elements of the South Korean right who had justified the martial law, who the main opposition party is still, having fully divorced itself from the former president who launched the the martial law attempt.
So, you know, there are signs to suggest that this divide seems like it is entrenching itself.
Of course, former President Yoon was forced from office and put on trial.
Where are we in that process?
Well, the president, Yoon So-kyo, former president, is now standing trial for five different charges, as well as the former first lady.
And many of members of his cabinets have been arrested or have been indicted.
And this is a trial that has been going for months now.
Now we're going to see the result of one of the first trial against his prime minister for not being able to stop the
You know, the charge being insurrection.
And we're going to see the results around next month.
That is going to be the first kind of result of this this whole insurrection trials.
And that will kind of give us a steer on what will be the verdict on the rest of.
President Yoon and his cabinet.
But this is one of the most serious charges in South Korean law criminal law and the punishment is either life in prison or death.
So this will be very much a big historical moment in South Korea's democracy.
But the result?
We may not see it for many months and it is surely expected to go all the way up to the Supreme Court and global news podcast.
There's a new story in Vision, available every weekday.
The Swiss lakeside city of Lugano is aiming to attract businesses and investment by becoming Europe's Bitcoin capital.
You can still pay for everything in Swiss francs, but in hundreds of shops and restaurants you can use Bitcoin instead.
Our reporter John Lawrenson went to check it out.
In a McDonald's by the lake, in the centre of Lugano, a customer orders coffee.
The salesperson holds up what looks like a credit card payment terminal, but which is in fact a special crypto one distributed free to businesses by the town council.
The customer pays contactless from the Bitcoin wallet on his telephone.
0.00008629 Bitcoin it comes to.
A figure constantly changing because of the currency's notorious volatility. are receiving.
Bitcoin.
This purely digital currency that uses encryption to control, manage and issue units, as opposed to so-called fiat money used by central banks or governments.
People often buy it as an investment, a gamble, in other words, on its value going up as opposed to down, as it has quite a lot recently.
But how many even think about using it to buy actual things, like a diamond ring or a pizza?
Well, in Lugano, it's different.
I want to talk about an experiment I did this July.
I have a problem with my bank.
I had to live in Bitcoin only for 11 days.
Mia Liponi runs the Plan B Hub, a meeting place for people who work in the Bitcoin sector.
You can survive in Bitcoin only.
It's missing public transportation at the moment, which is really important.
Another one is fuel.
Groceries are okay.
I got things delivered at home, even plenty of medical places, but not the dentist.
And another big things are bills.
You cannot pay bills with Bitcoin.
Although you can pay for municipal services.
If you get a parking fine, you can pay it in Bitcoin.
Yes, you can also pay taxes in Bitcoin, which is probably not why Bitcoin enthusiasts move to this town, but still.
I wander along the lakefront and into a park where there's a square block of metal, a plinth upon which stood a statue of Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious person who brought Bitcoin into being in 2009.
Playing on the mystery.
The statue, made of slats of metal, is transparent when you look at it from the front.
And it is now completely invisible because this summer some equally anonymous individual or individuals unscrewed it, broke it into bits and threw it in the lake.
Not everyone here, it seems, is keen on crypto.
In front of the empty plinth, I get talking to a few passers-by like Lucia.
It's interesting because not that many things get vandalized around here.
This is a quiet place.
Yeah, it's quiet.
People are usually fairly well behaved.
And you don't see often people having very strong political opinions either.
Yeah.
Like I'm from the University of Lugano and there's a lot of workshops, there's a club to promote Bitcoin and everything.
I personally don't use any cryptocurrencies, so I don't feel like it impacts me at all.
But I do find it surprising that institutions such as my university would promote it so much.
I think it's associated to crime, to the dark web and speculation like cryptocurrencies in general.
A lot of people lose their money because they invest in it and then it crashes.
I asked the mayor.
Michele Folletti, if he is concerned that Lugano will become a mafia magnet.
No, because mafia people are more interested to use fiat for money laundering.
And the risk for Switzerland is this, with the Swiss franc, not with the Bitcoin.
Because when they sell drugs or something like this, they receive fiat money, not Bitcoin, because the most anonymous is the cash.
You can use fiat money to do something good or something bad.
The same with Bitcoin.
Lugano is though, a Bitcoin magnet, with almost 110 crypto sector companies moving or starting up here.
John Lawrenson with that report.
Work, work, work, work and work.
That was the election phrase of Japan's new Prime Minister, the first female in the job, Sanae Takaichi.
She's pledged to abandon her own work-life balance for the duration of the job.
She famously only sleeps for around two to four hours a night.
But she's also said, I will have everyone work like a horse.
Japan already has a reputation for long working hours.
The work slogan has just won Japan's catchphrase of the year.
Rebecca Kesby has been talking to one young mother in Japan.
She's an office worker. and only wants us to use her first name, Hero.
So what does she make of it all?
Our generation was surprised and a little bit shocked.
Can you explain that a little bit for us?
Because I know in the past, I mean, there's even been, there's a word for it, isn't there?
Is it karoshi?
Death from overwork has been a thing or that's been discussed in Japan, and such long working hours for many decades?
There was a move, wasn't there to try to reduce that and to give people a better work life balance, especially people like you trying to bring up children?
Yes.
I think the nowadays conditions in Japan, working hours has become considerably shorter.
In case of me, nearly 10 years ago, it was quite common to work from 7am until 11pm.
Sorry, from when?
7 a.m. until 11 p.m.
7 a.m. till 11 p.m.?
For me, for me.
And my colleague working like that and so hectic.
But I now get home before 6 p.m.
Especially since I have a child, my company is considerate toward me.
That said, many of my colleagues still work overtime.
What about specifically the gender issue?
Because obviously she's the first female prime minister and no doubt lots of women you know thought that would be a good option.
Do you think this will turn off female voters?
Many people think that because she's prime minister, prime minister need to work so hard to change our country.
So some people accept the phrase from her.
But in case of me I don't think like a big prefer from her, just her, just one sentence, like working so hard.
But the problem is that more old generation think that half race is so welcome.
Do you think there is a sort of generational gap then?
Yes.
So like our generation, 30s, we understand that working-hall culture.
But younger generation really buried the work-life balance and Work style.
Reforms are progressing within large corporations, so young people are increasingly reluctant to join companies where work-life balance is not properly established.
And politically, do you think this is a message that will get support?
I understand this is only her message for herself.
So we believe and we hope this is only herself.
So you're basically saying she can work however hard she wants, but as long as she doesn't make the rest of us do the same, especially young people.
Young generation and women who need to care for young children wanted to work shorter than before.
So just one comment won't change the society quickly.
That was Hiro, a young mother in Japan.
Now, let me tell you about the winter egg.
It has wood anemones carved from white quartz and has just sold at Christie's Auction House in London for more than 30 million.
I should say that price includes fees and it's much higher than the previous auction price for a Fabergé egg.
The winter egg once belonged to the Russian imperial family and was commissioned from the House of Fabergé in St.
Petersburg by Tsar Nicholas II in 1913.
Margot Oganesian is from Christie's and she's been speaking to James Kumarasamy.
The winter rack is one of 50 imperial Easter eggs that Faberge created for the Romanovs.
But out of those 50, only 43 still exist, and most of them are in museums.
So, in fact, the winter rack was one of only seven imperialist racks left in private collections.
Incredibly rare piece and a rare chance to acquire such a rare work.
What does it look like?
The winter rack is carved from rock crystal quite a fragile stone, but the craftsmanship is amazing.
If you look at the egg, it opens.
Inside there is a basket of spring flowers, which symbolizes the revival, the spring that comes after winter.
And the egg sits on a beautiful base, which looks like melting ice, also carved from rock crystal.
And what is it about the egg that is so attractive to collectors?
The rarity and the provenance, the fact that it was made for the Romanov family and it was a gift from Nicholas II to his mother.
Secondly, craftsmanship.
I think that's what Faberge is really known for and that's what collectors really appreciate.
When you look at the winter egg, it's really hard to comprehend how they've made it.
It's such a timeless design and inspiration came from nature and it's really beautiful.
And the fact that one has not been up for sale for months, more than 20 years.
What was the sense of anticipation like do you think?
Well, there was a huge amount of excitement on the market and in fact, over the six days that we were open for public viewing, we had nearly 4000 people came to see and lots of excitement on the market but also among the general public who wanted to see this masterpiece, because things like that do not come up very often.
Most of them are in museums.
It was great.
This one, has it gone to a private collector?
We are not commenting at this time.
So we will see if the buyer would like to make it public.
But at the moment, it's confidential.
If it were my egg, I would gaffer tape it to the wall.
Margot Oganessian from Christie's Auction House.
Thank you very much.
You can send us an email.
Was mixed by Russell Newlove and the producer was Mickey Bristow.
The editor is Karen Martin.
I'm Alex Ritz, and until next time, goodbye.
