CIA chief holds talks with Cuban officials in Havana
Global News Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 8.2K Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The head of the CIA has visited Cuba as the island struggles with a severe energy crisis - made worse by a US fuel blockade. John Ratcliffe reportedly said Washington was prepared to engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba made fundamental changes. Also: tens of thousands of Israelis have taken part in an annual religious nationalist march through Jerusalem's Old City. Before it began, a far-right Israeli minister broke long-standing rules by unfurling an Israeli flag at a site holy to both Jews and Muslims; a BBC investigation reveals a new nationalist vigilante group is spreading across Russia; a new dinosaur has been discovered in Thailand that was twice the size of a T-Rex and weighed as much as nine adult Asian elephants; and how a horde of peacocks is ruffling feathers in an Italian seaside resort.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Global News Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:12.2 | I'm Janet Jalil and in the early hours of Friday the 15th of May, these are our main stories. |
| 0:18.7 | The head of the CIA holds talks in Cuba |
| 0:21.2 | as the island struggles to keep the lights on |
| 0:23.8 | because of a US fuel blockade. |
| 0:26.6 | Fuel saving measures are introduced in the Indian capital Delhi |
| 0:29.7 | to combat the fallout from the US-Israel war on Iran. |
| 0:34.3 | We have a special report on the rise of a new nationalist vigilante group across Russia. |
| 0:42.6 | Also in this podcast, an animal like this would have been around 25 metres long. We imagine three double-decker buses lined up in a row. |
| 0:51.8 | A massive new dinosaur is discovered in Thailand. |
| 1:01.0 | As Cubans struggle with rolling power cuts and shortages of fuel |
| 1:06.0 | have forced schools and universities to shut down because of a month's long US energy blockade, the director |
| 1:12.8 | of the CIA has gone to the communist-run island for talks with his Cuban counterparts. |
| 1:18.9 | The visit to Havana by John Rackcliffe comes after the Cuban president, Miguel Diaz-Cannell, |
| 1:24.6 | rebuffed a recent offer from the US of $100 million in aid, saying it would be better for |
| 1:30.6 | Washington to lift its blockade instead. This was imposed in January shortly after American forces |
| 1:37.6 | captured the Venezuelan president, Nicholas Maduro. Venezuela had supplied much of Cuba's fuel. |
| 1:46.4 | Mr. Trump has threatened to slap massive tariffs on any country that sends oil to the island, where many people live in abject poverty. |
| 1:53.2 | Louise Fahado from BBC monitoring told me more about the meeting between the CIA director |
| 1:58.0 | and Cuban officials. The Cuban state media announced that high-level officials from the Cuban government |
| 2:04.6 | had met with Radcliffe an extremely unusual visit by the head of the CIA to Cuba. |
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