Final rallies are held before Venezuela's presidential election 30:09

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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nigel Adderley, and in the early hours of Friday the 26th of July, these are our main stories.

The candidates in Venezuela's presidential election have been holding their final rallies amid concerns over whether President Nicolás Maduro will accept the outcome on Sunday. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has met President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to discuss efforts towards a ceasefire for hostages deal in Gaza. A humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Tigray in the north of Ethiopia. We hear from our reporter.

Also in this podcast... This is an industry that's been under attack in Washington, disproportionately so, and so I think it's completely valid for the industry to stick up for itself and defend its interests. Why cryptocurrency is having its say in the US election.

In a year of election campaigns across the globe, Venezuela's has been particularly combative. Nicolás Maduro of the Socialist Party is confronting his toughest electoral challenge since taking office 11 years ago. Opposition leader Edmundo González is leading many opinion polls, promising a return to what he calls genuine democracy.

Mr Gonzalez became the surprise opposition candidate after leading political figure Maria Corina Machado was barred from standing. She has spent the last few months travelling the country, calling on people to vote for him.

This moment we are living in is an end of a cycle and the beginning of a new era, the end of a cycle of chaos to begin an era of order, stability and security, and an end to violence and a start of an era of peace and respect. However, President Maduro has promised to win by rain, shine or lightning.

Speaking to supporters in the country's second largest city of Maracaibo before his final rally in Caracas, he asked what kind of president Venezuelans wanted. Do you believe in a weak president without energy who's easy to manipulate?

Do you believe in a savage capitalist president who will privatise the education system, the right to healthcare, and who will privatise the whole of the economy? Our America's editor Leonardo Rocha is following these final rallies. I think it's been a very odd campaign and very tense, especially from the perspective of the opposition.

As you mentioned there, Maria Corina Machado, basically she campaigned for Edmundo Gonzalez, not only because he's someone with no previous political experience and she is the well-known name, but also because the opposition were scared that he would be arrested for some reason. And wherever she went...

She felt intimidated, for example, where she stopped. If she went to a restaurant, hours later, police would come and shut up that restaurant and ask the people to go to the police. There was all sorts of intimidation. I think there was tension also on the government side.

because they know it's not going well for them. And everyone is wondering if President Maduro, he's been in power for 11 years, his party has been in power for 25 years. It's only natural that he's unpopular. Now, if he loses, will he relinquish power? Many people think that might not be the case. And that's the big question. Should he lose? Will there be that peaceful transition?

Well, the warnings we're getting from the government is when he talks about there'll be a bloodbath. And just now, not long ago, he gave a televised address where he said, ask people to vote for him. And that amounts to voting for peace and stability. So it's all sorts of veiled messages about what could happen.

There are many people who say he will go or many people who say he won't go quietly. You have the United States watching. But an interesting thing here is that there's been a split between the right and the left side.

The opposition is right-wing and they're conservative. But what's been happening here is that President Maduro has been losing in the past month or so the support, even from his traditional allies. President Lula of Brazil has now criticized him. The former Argentine left-wing president, Alberto Gonzalez, has been uninvited to watch the elections. He's seen as suspicious. And...

President Maduro has the support of Russia, of China, of Cuba. And it's very interesting for the whole region because it's an oil-rich country and we want to see where the United States will stand on that. If President Trump wins, it will be a different scenario there for Venezuela. Leonardo Rocha. We've got a lot to talk about. That's how President Biden welcomed Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House on Thursday.

This was their first face-to-face meeting since President Biden flew to Israel last October, just days after the Hamas attack, to show his staunch personal and political support to Israel. That backing hasn't changed. But in recent months, he's become more critical of Mr Netanyahu's approach to the war in Gaza, which has caused a huge number of Palestinian deaths and still hasn't brought all of the Israeli hostages home.

After speaking to Mr Netanyahu, the vice president, Kamala Harris, who will most likely be the Democratic candidate in the U.S. election, said it was time for the war to end. What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating. The images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time.

We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent. Thanks to the leadership of our President Joe Biden, there is a deal on the table for a ceasefire and a hostage deal.

And as I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done. Our correspondent in Washington, Will Grant, gave me this assessment of what the meeting between President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu was trying to achieve. So at times he's had a very, very close relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu. Obviously, in the current state of affairs, it isn't absolutely

as aligned in that he is trying to make sure that the final months of his presidency aren't a lame duck presidency, that he actually achieves something that he is clearly very keen on achieving in the time he has left, which is a ceasefire agreement and Benjamin Netanyahu's role in making that happen.

There is great distance between them in certain areas, and I think the majority of the discussions the two men will have held will have been about trying to make sure that certain demands laid late on by Mr Netanyahu are eased, that there is an understanding that this is potentially the best opportunity for a ceasefire agreement.

We heard from family members of hostages outside the White House afterwards and there did seem to be some positivity from them. Yes, they said that the talks had been the most productive and honest they've had, that they're more optimistic now than they have been since the very first days in January after Hamas took their family members and that there were no more excuses, no more time. Hamas might say yes now, obviously putting the emphasis back

on Hamas, putting the ball back in their court to accept the deal in its current shape. The Prime Minister has also met Kamala Harris today and will meet Donald Trump on Friday. How significant are those meetings? Well, in terms of Kamala Harris, with her becoming the presumptive candidate for the Democratic Party, it does seem like she has a very difficult path to tread in some regards. She doesn't want to alienate the progressive wing. She is

pretty well aligned with the Biden administration's policies, of course, but she is also at a moment where she's energising her base, where young people who have perhaps been opposed to the Biden administration's policies on Israel are warming to her. So she has quite a difficult balancing act in that regard. With Donald Trump, of course, the two men were very, very closely aligned for a long time during his presidency, and then they fell out spectacularly at the end. And

It will be very interesting to see the body language, the way the two men speak to each other. Whatever comes out of that meeting will make for some interesting watching, with his campaign also emphasising his relationship with Israel, emphasising the importance of freeing the hostages. And, yes, it's going to be the remaining...

the remaining hours of what has been an extremely controversial visit here in Washington. Of course, just the protests outside the White House today show that the emotions still run very, very high on both sides. Will Grant.

One man who met both President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House today is Jonathan Dekel-Chen. He is the father of Israeli-American hostage Sagwe Dekel-Chen, who was captured by Hamas on October 7th and has been held in Gaza for the past 10 months. Jonathan is part of a delegation of hostage families who have travelled to Washington, and before the meeting, my colleague John Donison asked him what message he would be bringing.

My message, and I believe the message of all hostage families, is that the conditions have been met for Israel's security.

to complete this deal as it is currently constituted. The Israeli military and intelligence communities, up to and including our own defense minister, have spoken with one voice that it is time now to sign this deal. There is no added value in delaying any more in terms of Israel's security. And every day that passes puts the lives of the hostages who may still be alive in danger and makes it

even more difficult for the IDF to recover the bodies of the many hostages who have already been murdered. Also, by completing this deal, of course, at least signal the beginning of the end of the suffering of millions of Palestinians in Gaza.

So that is now an issue. It's not about the details. It's about Yecheh Senwar, the Hamas side, and Benjamin Netanyahu on Israel's side to really stand out as leaders of their nations, looking out for the best interests of those people. Now, I think you've already met with the prime minister earlier this week in Washington. Was that meeting fruitful? No, absolutely not.

We were invited to – the hostage families that are in Washington this week were invited to a – what was supposed to be a sort of intimate meeting with the prime minister. It was anything but.

And honestly, over the course of nearly 10 months now, since October 7th, we'll say since October 8th, the day after, it was one of the low points for me. He unfortunately refused to answer any of the questions that the hostage families put to him and instead used it as a kind of, I would say, dress rehearsal, perhaps, for his address to a joint session of Congress yesterday. Okay.

What did you make of that address to Congress? That was not in the room. I chose to not be present in the gallery. For me, it was political theater that was mostly directed towards a domestic Israeli audience to convince his own base and his coalition partners how widely accepted and strong he is in the United States. I found it embarrassing, quite honestly, as an Israeli.

Now, he would argue, he has argued, that the way to secure the release of the remaining hostages is to keep putting pressure on Hamas. What do you say to that? Again, I do not consider myself a military expert. His military and intelligence experts...

All patriots are saying loud and clear that the added value of perhaps more pressure that may have marginal gains in terms of, you know, eliminating another few Hamas terrorists is no way measures up to the risks of continuing this and the losses of continuing this, this kind of pressure. We're 10 months into it.

Rafah has been conquered by Israel. It is time to finish this now. And just a final question. How are you doing? How is Segi's wife, Avital, their children, how are they doing? We're doing the best we can. Avital is a true hero in all of this. There are three daughters, one of whom Segi has yet to meet. Avital was seven months pregnant at the time of the massacre. She miraculously survived with her

two daughters while seven months pregnant. They want their father back. And my purpose is to get my son, their father, back home, along with the now 115 hostages still being held by Hamas. Jonathan Dakel-Chen, the father of a hostage held in Gaza. A year after the military coup in Niger, which had been seen as a key ally of the West, the Sahel region of Africa faces growing uncertainty.

It's sometimes described as Africa's coup belt, given the number of governments which have come to power via force. And now, as US and other Western countries withdraw from the region, Wagner mercenary groups are seeking to conquer new zones of influence for Russia, all in the face of a persistent jihadist threat. Krassi Twig from BBC Monitoring reports. Nigerian, Nigerian...

A year ago, Niger's President Mohamed Bazoum was deposed in a military coup. It's just the latest in a series of military interventions in the Sahel, a region that's been battling an Islamist insurgency for over a decade. Since the coup last July, there's been a sharp uptick in mass casualty attacks. Dozens, often, of Niger troops have been attacked and killed.

And that's illustrative of the power vacuum. Jacob Boswell is one of our jihadism experts. 50% of terrorism-related deaths in 2022 came from the Sahel. But there are other threats as well. There's climate change. And so you see a kind of confluence of weak governance, of genuine local grievances, of resource competition, of

tribal dynamics as well that make it a very easy place for jihadists to thrive and to spread their extreme version of Islam. While the threat from jihadism kept growing, the forces meant to counter it kept shrinking. Beverly Ochiang is one of BBC Monitoring's Africa security analysts.

France has completely pulled out its forces from Niger. Its troops left in December just after the coup. And the U.S. forces who had been supporting an entire region are now being forced to draw down. The last 12 months in the Sahel have seen a continuation of a recent trend.

Western and international forces mainly out, Russia and some other newcomers mainly in. The West has lost a massive footprint in the region. Niger was the backbone of that.

We know that Russia has been expanding its footprint in the region. We also know that Iran is coming in fairly aggressively. And it's because Niger has one of the most significant uranium reserves in the region. Washington itself has already alleged that Niger has signed a secret deal with Tehran to be able to transport about 300 kilograms of uranium, which is fairly significant.

The rapid withdrawal of the Americans and the swift arrival of the Russians ended up creating an unlikely house share at Base 101. Different parts of the U.S. drone airport close to Niamey are now occupied by U.S. and Russian troops at the same time. And the U.S. finally conceding that they're going to leave the country. And it's a big loss for them, you know, symbolically, instrumentally, that this ready-made drone base, state-of-the-art, will be ready-made.

The Russians have made strides in the Sahel in recent years through the Wagner Mercenary Group.

But the death of its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in a plane crash last year, threw the group into uncertainty. Our expert on all things Wagner is Gleb Borshevsky. Wagner itself has been split into at least two groups that are semi-independent of each other.

One of them is a group that inherited Wagner's operations in Ukraine. The other side of Wagner, they call themselves the Long Distance Branch. It is actually active in Africa, namely in Mali, the Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, and also in Chad. Things, however, do get a bit muddy when we introduce a new name into the equation, the Africa Corps.

They are linked to the Russian military intelligence, the GRU. Potentially, there are now two different competing organizations in Africa. Gleb Borshevsky ending that report by Crassy Twig from BBC Monitoring. And you can hear more about this story on the team's podcast feed. Just search for The Global Jigsaw wherever you get your podcasts.

Still to come on this podcast. We're effectively run in this country via the Democrats by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made. And so they want to make the rest of the country miserable. Why Donald Trump's running mate is losing friends. It's that time of the year. Your vacation is coming up. You can already hear the beach waves, feel the warm breeze.

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That's BlueNile.com to find the perfect jewelry gift for any occasion. BlueNile.com. A humanitarian crisis is unfolding in the north of Ethiopia, driven by drought, crop failure, and the continued insecurity in the aftermath of a brutal war.

Local officials warn that more than two million people are now at risk of starvation. The BBC has gained exclusive access to some of the worst affected areas in Tigray province and analysed satellite imagery to reveal the full scale of the emergency the region now faces. I heard more from BBC Verify reporter Peter Amwai, who is based in Nairobi.

We have been looking at imagery to see whether we could map the extent of the humanitarian situation in the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia, because we have had concerns about the drought and the food crisis there. And what we discovered is that it has been an extreme situation where we identified reservoirs that people rely on for irrigation, and we noticed that they didn't have any water.

But then when you compare a similar period last year, we noticed that they had water. And that corresponds with data that we got from the Ethiopia's meteorological agency that shows that for the main planting season last year, which is between June and September, some parts of Tigray and the neighboring Afar region to the east had below normal rainfall.

And what that meant is that reservoirs that should have filled up with water did not get enough water. And that affected farming activities around those reservoirs. So we sent a reporter there who talked to some farmers.

And some of them talked about how desperate they were. In some cases, they had to switch their activities. There was one farmer who had been forced to go to temporary jobs in the construction sector to just earn a livelihood. You've mentioned the issues that people are having to cope with there. And it does appear to be, from a distance, a very desperate situation for them.

Yes, yes, because this is the beginning of the main planting season. And then I spoke to an original official in Tigray who told us that this is the peak of the hunger season. So this is when the people there are a little desperate and in need of food aid. But because of the conflict that was there, farmers don't have fertilizer and the seeds for them to be able to successfully plant. And then you have thousands of farmers who had been displaced during the conflict and they have been living in camps and don't have access to their land.

And what has been happening is that the government has been on a campaign to try and resettle these people, and they have managed to resettle people in some parts of South Antigua and the Northwestern region. But you still have thousands of people who could be on their farms, farming and growing their crops, but they're having to rely on food aid for several months until a solution is found. Peter, and why?

One of the biggest events in the cryptocurrency industry, the annual Bitcoin conference, started today in the American city of Nashville. The event culminates with a keynote speech on Saturday from Donald Trump.

He's been seen as the pro-crypto candidate during the US election, and the digital donations have been flooding in. Nick Carter, the co-founder of Coinmetrics, a company that offers analysis of crypto economic data, explains why. This is an industry that's been under attack in Washington, disproportionately so. And so I think it's completely valid for the industry to stick up for itself and defend its interests.

But Donald Trump hasn't always been a supporter of cryptocurrency. Our New York Business correspondent Erin Delmore has the story. Not money. Volatile. Based on thin air. That's how Donald Trump used to talk about the world's leading cryptocurrency. He called Bitcoin a scam.

But now Trump is running as the pro-crypto candidate for president, calling for domestic Bitcoin production, choosing a running mate with six figures in Bitcoin holdings, and being rewarded with millions of dollars in cash and crypto donations from Silicon Valley's giants. They're betting on the Trump-Vance ticket in hopes that pro-crypto talk turns into pro-crypto policy if the duo makes their way to the White House.

There's nothing new about political donations from outside groups. Big money is a big force in presidential elections. But crypto's outsider status in the finance industry and its targeting by regulators under the Biden administration make the appeal toward Trump strong and deep-pocketed.

What we're seeing now is basically a continuum of the crypto industry doing whatever it has to do to buy political friends so that they will prioritize crypto's interest and not the interest of the American people.

Dennis Kelleher runs a public interest nonprofit in Washington and says that the crypto enthusiasts stand to benefit as much as Trump, if not more. Crypto should be heavily regulated and prosecuted. And instead, what we have is the industry firing a money cannon to buy politicians to prevent that from happening and to get a very favorable regulator with very weak regulations.

Trump's keynote address at this year's Bitcoin conference could solidify his status as the crypto candidate. Erin Delmore. Video footage of Donald Trump's vice presidential nominee, J.D. Vance, referring to Democrats supporting childless cat ladies, has sparked a backlash and has been branded sexist and misogynistic.

This is what he said on Fox News three years ago. We're effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made. And so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. And it's just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris.

Pete Buttigieg, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?

The video has now gone viral and the Hollywood star Jennifer Aniston is among those who have responded strongly. Our North America correspondent Nomi Iqbal has more details. In the interview with Fox News, J.D. Vance criticised Vice President Kamala Harris because she has no biological children. Ms. Harris is stepmother to her husband's two children. But Mr. Vance attacked her and other members of the party who don't have kids.

Friends actress Jennifer Aniston, who has spoken about her struggle with having children and infertility, posted Mr. Vance's interview on social media and said, I truly can't believe that this is coming from a potential VP of the United States. All I can say is, Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day.

Mr Vance has a two-year-old daughter and two sons. Last month, J.D. Vance voted to block Democrat-proposed legislation to guarantee access to IVF across America. Nomiya Iqbal. Scientists studying chickens in France have found that they blush when they're scared or excited.

The researchers are suggesting the discovery could be used to improve animal welfare in farming. Theo White reports. The scientists at the University of Tuer chose two breeds of chicken known for their calmness around people. They then studied them in a range of scenarios, some stressful, such as being picked up, and some pleasing, for example being fed.

When scared or animated, the uncovered skin on the hens' heads became red. This includes the comb on the top and the wattles, which are the flaps on the bottom. Conversely, when relaxed, the hens fluffed up the feathers on their crown.

The researchers believe their findings open a path to exploring the emotional lives of birds, something they say is critical for improving poultry welfare. They conclude that Charles Darwin's assumption that blushing is the most human of all expressions has been seriously weakened. Theo White.

It's that time of year when the nominees for the Mercury Prize hit the headlines. It recognises the best UK or Irish album of the last 12 months. Among those nominated are rap artists, indie bands and even a pop singer or two. The prize was won last year by jazz group Ezra Collective. The BBC's music correspondent Mark Savage told me a similar genre could be taking the title once again.

Well, there is another jazz act, a Scottish musician called Corto Alto, which is Spanish for short, tall. He is the youngest ever graduate of one of Scotland's biggest music schools, a jazz trombonist.

That kind of sells his music short a little bit. It's not just jazz. He chops it up with elements of DJ Shadow and A Tribe Called Quest. It's got a really eclectic feel to it. And then you've got more mainstream people. You've got Charlie XCX, who, of course, has become involved in the US presidential election this week, with Kamala Harris rebranding her social media campaign in the garish green of Charlie's album Brat.

And then Corinne Bailey-Ray, who people probably know from Put Your Records On, a song from about 15 years ago, but she has changed completely on her new album. It is called Black Rainbows and it was inspired by a visit to a museum of black and African-American cultural history in Chicago. You mentioned the Charlie XCX and her role now in the American election campaign. Yes, of course.

sort of high profile general appeal isn't often part of the Mercury Music Prize. I mean, there's always nominations for pop artists. You know, the Spice Girls were nominated, Dua Lipa was nominated. They very rarely win. This isn't a prize about commercial success. It's about artistic achievement. And there is still a slight snobbery about pop music. Charlie's album is really cutting edge. And this record features a lot of very vulnerable and introspective lyrics that kind of set it a

But very few of these records have had commercial success. Only one of the shortlisted records has sold 60,000 copies in the UK. So what does the Mercury Music Prize mean? Well, yeah, 60,000 copies, by the way, is significant because that's what you need to get a silver disc. Yes.

And, you know, normally in 10 years ago, you would have expected people on the Mercury Prize to have got gold discs or platinum discs. What happens now is people listen to singles and not albums. And that makes the Mercury Prize more relevant because artists are very invested in creating bodies of work that tell a story and have a narrative. And so this prize shines a spotlight on 12 records that have really achieved that. At the same time, you could also argue that the prize is becoming less relevant because that's not

what music fans want and that's not what they're listening to. The BBC's music correspondent, Mark Savage. 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 globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on x at globalnewspod.

This edition was mixed by Nora Hall and the producer was Daniel Mann. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nigel Adderley. Until next time, goodbye. I'm Katrina Perry from the Global Story podcast. Kamala Harris announces her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. But do the vice presidential candidates really influence the election? And how will Tim Walz and J.D. Vance impact the final months of the race?

The Global Story brings you unique perspectives from BBC journalists around the world. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.