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

I'm Jackie Leonard and in the early hours of Tuesday, the 23rd of April,

these are our main stories.

U.S. prosecutors have accused Donald Trump of a

conspiracy over hush money paid to a porn actress at the start of his criminal

trial in New York. Police in Ecuador have caught the leader of a powerful criminal gang at the heart of a wave of

violence that's destabilized the country and a UN report into the Palestinian Refugee Agency

UNRWA has concluded it must do more. into the Also in this podcast the search for five raccoons who've been on the run from a zoo in the Netherlands for more than a month.

They saw like dears and others and a beaver and yeah they really had good nights seeing all those animals but no no raccoons.

New York is hosting one of the most high profile trials in United States history, the first criminal trial of a

former US president.

Day one of the trial proper ended on Monday in Manhattan where Donald Trump stands accused of 34 counts of falsifying business records.

They relate to a $130,000 payment made to the porn actress Stormy Daniels to silence her about her allegation that she and Mr Trump

had a sexual encounter. It isn't the payment itself that's said to be illegal,

but the way it was described in Mr Trump's accounts.

As he arrived at court, Mr Trump made a series of evidence-free and in some cases factually

wrong assertions.

I just want to say before we begin,

these are all Biden trials.

This is done as election interference,

everybody knows it.

I'm here instead of being able to be in Pennsylvania and Georgia and lots of other places campaigning.

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