BBC News Briefing

25 July, 2025

Sofia has long brown hair and brown eyes and is earing a green top

Sofia Lotto Persio

Hello. French President Emmanuel Macron has announced the country will officially recognise a Palestinian state. Chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet explains the move's significance. In the Philippines, we take a look at why flood management problems mean some couples are getting married in waterlogged churches. And finally, explore the largest cave system discovered in Britain a decade.

TOP OF THE AGENDA

US and Israel condemn France's decision

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (left) and French President Emmanuel Macron during talks in Paris in July 2022

France will become the first G7 nation to recognise a Palestinian state. Credit: Reuters

President Macron said France will formally recognise a Palestinian state in September, at the annual UN General Assembly. Recognition of Palestinian statehood is largely symbolic but profoundly political, writes Lyse Doucet – for some Palestinians, it boosts fading hope that their decades-old aspiration can one day succeed. The US and Israel have condemned the move. In separate developments, they also withdrew their teams from ceasefire talks in Qatar. Humanitarian conditions in Gaza are deteriorating rapidly, as freelance journalists employed by the BBC in the strip told Middle East correspondent Yolande Knell. Aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières says one in four young children and pregnant women it screened are malnourished.

Get the latest

Georges Abdallah: The Lebanese teacher who became a left-wing symbol for the Palestinian cause is to be freed after 41 years in jail in France.

Killed getting aid: The BBC has been speaking to people in Gaza about the loved ones they've lost in the past week.

Behind the camera: A photographer in Gaza has told the story of how he captured a series of harrowing photographs showing an emaciated child.

WORLD HEADLINES

$The fractured friendship behind the fight at the Thailand-Cambodia border$

Behind the fight at the Thailand-Cambodia border

Correspondent Jonathan Head explains why a border skirmish has spread into something much larger.

Read his analysis >

Gareth Ward has short platinym blond hair and eyebrows and blue yes. He is wearing glasses and a suit and tie.

Australian politician found guilty of rape

Gareth Ward has been found guilty of sexually assaulting two young men in New South Wales.

Read more >

US President Donald Trump points to a sheet of paper held by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell as they tour the Federal Reserve’s $2.5 billion headquarters renovation project. Both wear suits and white hard hats.

Trump bickers with Powell over Fed renovation costs

An awkward moment between the US president and the head of the US central bank has played out in front of the media.

Watch the exchange >

Donald Trump on his Turnberry golf course in 2023. He has just teed off and his golf club is behind his head. He is wearing a dark casual tracksuit type affair and a red Make America Great Again hat. Two other golfers and a security guard stand behind him

Trump takes time out to open Scottish golf course

Donald Trump flies into Scotland later to visit two golf resorts that he owns in the country where his mother was born.

What to know >

A big screen shows a man with grey hair, wearing a white polo shirt, hugging a woman from behind. She has shoulder-length light hair and is wearing a black top. Her hands are holding the man's hand around her waist. They both look startled.

Woman filmed in Coldplay concert embrace resigns

Astronomer's chief people officer, who was apparently caught embracing the US tech company's CEO, has resigned.

What happened >

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Philippines floods mean wet weddings

Bride wades through flooded church with a man dressed in cream and a woman in a blue gown by her side. The bride wears a white veil and a chiffon gown and holds a large bouquet of baby's breath.

Shortly after the ceremony, the couple took antibiotics to prevent flood-borne diseases. Credit: Barasoain Church

A couple in the Philippines got married despite the church being flooded by heavy rains brought in by a seasonal monsoon and a typhoon. The same church was flooded in 2023, when another wedding took place in knee-high water. But submerged weddings aren't just a tale of determination - they highlight a festering flood problem that continues to bring misery to millions, write Joel Guinto and Virma Simonette.

Read now

A large area of forest and open grassy areas and ponds are seen from the sky.

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

Buried 'white gold' fuel

A naturally occurring fuel could help power the clean energy gold rush.

Here's how