Ankur Desai

Kun hän otti CNN-televisiota maailmalle vuonna 1985, hän alkoi myöntää valtionkontrollisia mediaa, valtionkontrollisia tietoja monissa näkökulmassa. Ihmiset, jotka voisivat tarjota satelliitteja tai jollekin saivat heidän versionansa VPN-koneensa vuosien aikoissaan, voisivat nähdä erilaista kertoa siitä, mitä heidän maailmansa tapahtuu.

Ei vain kontrollista tietoa. Ja se oli iso asia. Hän oli edessä niin monissa kivissa, ei vain mediassa, vaan myös maailmassa. Ja filantropia. Hän oli ensimmäinen post-Rockefeller-Karnegie-Mellon-järjestö, joka sanoi, että minä annan miljoonan dollarin Yhdysvalloille. Ja sitten kaikki muita rikkoja seurasi. Ei kaikki, mutta paljon. Hän oli se, joka teki kaikki nämä asiat. Christiane Amanpour muistaa tehtävän tehtävän Ted Turnerin.

For more than 130 years the Venice Biennale has been synonymous with high art and culture. But this year it's making headlines for protests, resignations and boycotts over the inclusion of Russia and Israel. In the latest incident protesters from the Russian punk band Pussy Riot and the Ukrainian feminist group Femen wearing pink balaclavas set off pink smoke bombs causing the Russian pavilion to be shut down. Our correspondent Sarah Rainsford was there.

Puhutaan ylös! Puhutaan ylös!

Siinä on russin paviljoni ja tuolla on aktiiviset, jotka ovat tulleet valoklaavien ja protesteiden kanssa. He uskovat, että russin esitys tässä Biennaleissa on propagandaa, jota ei ole koskaan voinut.

Anastasia Karinieva ei ollut kiinni puhumaan. Tämä on meidän asemamme. Me tulemme meidän paikalle.

Mitä ajattelet protesista, että russit eivät pitäisi olla täällä? En ajattele protesista. En ajattele protesista. En ajattele protesista. En ajattele protesista.

Rostec is the state-owned weapons company that's arming Russian troops. The EU isn't happy that Russia is back here in Venice. The Commission is pulling a big chunk of funding for the Biennale, and Italy's culture minister is also boycotting the event. There have been daily protests too over Israel taking part, and last week the entire jury resigned, saying the leaders of both Russia and Israel are wanted in The Hague as suspected war criminals.

But the president of the Biennale is defiant. Pietrangelo Butafuoco accuses his critics of intolerance and of supporting censorship. If the Biennale began to select not works, but affiliations, not visions, but passports, it would stop being what it has always been.

He just stepped outside into the beautiful paved streets of Venice. And I'm here with an art critic from Ukraine, Zoya, who's come to show me what they're calling the invisible biennale. This is Nika Kozhuska. She was 18 years old. A writer and artist in Kharkiv. We're standing in front of a poster for an imaginary event marked as cancelled because the author was killed by Russia. And this writer isn't the only one.

That's why there are protests, some of them noisy like this, and some quietly symbolic, like the main exhibit that's been brought to the Biennale from Ukraine. It is a concrete statue of a deer that was evacuated from Pokrovsk in the east to escape the advance of Russian troops. It's now hanging from a crane just a few meters from the Russian pavilion, displaced by war like millions of Ukrainians.

Sarah Rainsford reporting. In France, celebrity watchers have been tracking the latest romance linking the worlds of royalty and politics, revealed in the carefully choreographed pages of Paris Match magazine. The young presidential hopeful Jordan Badela from the hard right National Rally Party has revealed his relationship with Maria Carolina of Bourbon to Sicily's.

She's the heiress to a historic noble family that once ruled southern Italy. So how is this alliance of the populist and the princess going down with French voters one year ahead of a presidential election? Hugh Schofield reports. Saint-Denis, the gritty, multi-ethnic North Paris neighborhood from where the young Jordan Bardella emerged unknown on his ascent to political fame, is also the home of this architectural gem.

As for Bardella, the obscure Saint-Denis commoner, with a decent shot at being next French head of state, he says they decided to go public with their affair because they were being besieged by paparazzi.

Ja he ovat erittäin onnellisia. Mutta poliittisesti puhuvat, ihmiset kysyvät, onko tämä niin hyvä tehtävä? Sen jälkeen hän on oikeanpuolustuspaikasta, joka pitäisi puhua kaupungista. Ei se, että hän liittyy jet-setiin, saa ihmisiä pois?

Even this non-Bardella supporter said that nabbing a princess could only help his political fortunes. It all helps him because it lets him come across as a human being. He's the little guy who manages to get the princess and people adore that sort of stuff.

Back in the Royal Basilica, a guide is showing visitors around the tombstones of Maria Carolina's ancestors. Could the fairy tale end with a fairy tale wedding here, with the gothic rose windows looking out over the multicoloured streetscape of what some call New France, House Bourbon and House Bardella, two worlds. Hugh Schofield reporting from Paris.

Robots have been taking over roles performed by humans for decades now, from factory work to cleaning and even some types of surgery. But here's a new one. Robot monks. That's right. For the first time a humanoid robot has become a Buddhist monk. Garbi, as the machine is known, has just been ordained at a ceremony in South Korea. Helena Burke has the story.

Robot monk, please reply with palms together. Yes, I will devote myself. Yes, I will devote myself.

And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag globalnewspod. And don't forget our sister podcast, The Global Story, which goes in depth and beyond the headlines on one big story.