In May, Ghana’s parliament approved a new bill criminalising homosexuality and the promotion of LGBTQ+ activities.

It proposes that identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer be punished by up to three years’ imprisonment.

One of the bill’s co-authors, Emmanuel Bedzrah, spoke to the BBC’s religion editor Aleem Maqbool about it.

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US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy and son-in-law Jared Kushner is in Israel, where he is expected to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

It comes after Kushner held rare talks with Hamas to discuss the implementation of the US-backed Gaza peace plan.

Last month, Trump’s Board of Peace said it had reached agreement for the “complete disarmament” of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza. Last week, Israel rejected Trump’s 15-point plan, which also calls for Israeli troops to withdraw and for Gaza to be rebuilt under a new civilian Palestinian administration.

In a statement, Hamas later called on mediators and the Board of Peace to “compel” Israel to approve the roadmap for the next steps.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a tough October election to try to hold onto power, with a coalition that includes ministers in favour of taking a harsher line on Gaza.

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Benjamin Netanyahu has been a major figure in Israeli politics for a long time. You could have just turned 30 years old and never known a time when he wasn’t either prime minister or somewhere near the top of Israeli politics. But could that be about to change?

With less than three months until the Israeli general election, Netanyahu is struggling in some polls. His rival is a man who is little known outside of Israel – former Israeli military chief Gadi Eisenkot. In some international media, Eisenkot is being dubbed the ‘anti-Netanyahu’. But is that accurate?

Asma Khalid and Tristan Redman, from The Global Story, speak to David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, who has spent time with Eisenkot for a major profile piece.

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00:00 Introduction
01:05 Who is Gadi Eisenkot?
05:25 Eisenkot’s role in Netanyahu’s war cabinet
10:22 How Israel’s political system works
12:50 What is Eisenkot’s platform?
17:52 The difficulties facing Netanyahu
20:31 How might US public opinion help shape this election?
22:48 The divisive views at the heart of the US-Israel relationship debates

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has fired one of his top aides, Iryna Mudra, who is reported to be the target of a corruption investigation. This comes as the former defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, called for Ukraine to hold elections – which have been put on hold since martial law was declared at the start of the war with Russia. Around two hundred people gathered outside Ukraine’s parliament in Kyiv on Wednesday to protest against Mr Fedorov’s replacement.

Also in the Global News Podcast:

05:48 Israel opens up bids for the construction of more than 1,000 homes in the occupied West Bank

09:11 More than 1,200 Palestinians are missing and presumed dead in Gaza, says the health ministry there

12:31 London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) project has improved children’s health, a new study says

16:23 The US cuts short military exercises with South Korea after President Donald Trump criticises the drills

19:45 Nearly 2 million children face malnutrition in Somalia, UNICEF says

21:53 A SpaceX rocket is drifting in the ocean off Christmas Island
25:54 The international Water Lily Weigh-Off

The Global News Podcast brings you the best of the BBC’s news coverage and analysis from around the world. You can watch us on YouTube every weekday – and find the audio version wherever you get your podcasts.

If you would like to get in touch, you can email us at globalpodcast@bbc.co.uk.

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Russia is systematically seizing tens of thousands of homes across four illegally annexed regions of Ukraine – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Documents analysed by the BBC show that 34,000 properties have been taken – or been earmarked for confiscation – so they can be given to Russian passport holders.

Olga Robinson of BBC Verify tells us how the Kremlin has used the strategy of “Russification” in occupied Ukraine.

The practice of seizing homes was formalised in a law signed by Vladimir Putin last year. Moscow says it is part of a “legal framework for integrating the reunited regions” into the Russian system. But critics have described it as “demographic engineering” – an attempt to transform the social and political fabric of occupied territory, and make it harder, and less desirable, to ever reintegrate these lands with Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine will not accept any peace deal that cedes territory to Russia.

New episodes of the Global News Podcast are published twice a day. You can listen here: https://link.mgln.ai/GNP-YT

And you can find more of our YouTube episodes here: https://bbc.in/GlobalNewsPodcast

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00:00 Introduction
00:22 How Russia seizes homes in occupied Ukraine
01:26 Who are the Ukrainians losing their homes?
03:22 Why are the Russians seizing homes?
05:01 What is “Russification”?
05:44 Living in a “mixed Russian-Ukrainian household”
07:32 Where does this leave Ukrainians?

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