This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Valerie Sanderson, and at 13 hours GMT on Thursday the 26th of June, these are our main stories.

Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei has said U.S. strikes on his country's nuclear facilities achieved nothing significant,

a claim strongly refuted by the U.S. Defense Secretary.

After nearly two weeks of war, what do Iranians want from their leaders?

Put your microphones in front of the people, go and ask them what they really want.

What do they want?

Freedom. It's simple is that.

Ukraine's top general says the army has stopped a Russian advance in the Sumi border region,

but there's an urgent need for more fortifications.

Also in this podcast, North Korea opens a huge beach resort and...

The genie is out of the bottle.

If an organization who has access to the appropriate machinery decided to just simply start

synthesizing anything, I don't think anybody could stop them.

Scientists begin work on a controversial project to create artificial human DNA.

The Supreme Leader of Iran has been in hiding ever since Israel began its attacks two weeks ago.

In the past couple of hours, he's given his first televised address since the ceasefire

in the form of a video recording broadcast by state media.

Ayatollah Alechameney claimed victory over Israel and said Iran had delivered a heavy

slap to the U.S. And he gave his take on the big question of the moment, how much damage did the

U.S. bombing at the weekend do to Iran's

nuclear program? He acknowledged that the Americans had attacked the Iranian nuclear facilities,

...