Global News Podcast - Calls for an investigation into Israeli airstrike that killed 24 people in northern Lebanon.

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

The UN rights office says the attack raised concerns about international humanitarian law. Also: North Korea blows up roads to South Korea, and we meet the Ukrainian civilians protecting the sky from Russian drones.

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Thank you. Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard and at 13 hours GMT on Tuesday, the 15th of October, these are our main stories.

The United Nations Human Rights Office has called for an investigation into Monday's airstrike by Israel that killed more than 20 people in northern Lebanon. And North Korea has blown up several roads near its border with South Korea following its decision to sever physical ties with its neighbour. Also in this podcast, we meet the Ukrainian civilians protecting their sky from Russian drones. Also... From eight years old, I wrote a letter to myself saying that I want to climb Everest. Twelve years later, I summited Everest.

Upon summiting Everest, I decided to continue with the 14 Peaks Challenge. The youngest woman to conquer the 14 Peaks over 8,000 metres. The UN's Human Rights Office has called for an investigation into an Israeli airstrike in northern Lebanon on Monday that's now known to have killed 24 people, most of whom were reported to be women and children. A spokesperson stressed that the strike on the Christian-majority village of Aitu raises real concern regarding international humanitarian law. Israel says it will continue to attack the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement. Lebanese media say there have been multiple Israeli strikes in the Bekaa Valley in the east of the country. Our correspondent Jonathan Head is in Beirut.

You can probably just hear above me the sound of an Israeli. Our correspondent Jonathan Head is in Beirut. You can probably just hear above me the sound of an Israeli drone. They're back over Beirut. In the rest of Lebanon there have been multiple airstrikes. We're trying to tally them up, mostly in the Bekaa Valley and the south. And the Israeli Air Force says they carried out 200 airstrikes on Lebanon over the last 24 hours. That's significantly more than were recorded in previous days. So you have a sense that Israel's operation against Hezbollah targets is increasing, is growing in scale and covering larger areas of the country.

Of course, we had a really devastating attack against a small Christian village in the north of Lebanon yesterday. We don't have an updated death toll for all the attacks that are going on. It's hard to get the information in time, but we just heard of three medical workers killed down in the south in an attack on a health center, but that's a health center affiliated with Hezbollah. They have been targeted before. You know, the whole scale of it, Jackie, it's just constant. It's peaceful here in the capital, Beirut. There have been no attacks here, despite the presence of the drone for the last four days. But the Israeli government has made it clear that it will be ruthless in going after Hezbollah

and it will attack wherever it sees valid targets, and that includes the capital. And what does the IDF say it's actually achieving with these operations? Sometimes they give explanations, sometimes they don't. The only explanation they've given for hitting this Christian village yesterday is they say they have been informed there were civilian casualties and they are reviewing it. Nothing more. We don't know what the target was. What we do know about this little village called Aitu is that although it's very small, with fewer than a thousand people, quite a

lot of families displaced by the fighting in the south had moved there recently and it's possible among them, these are Shia from the south, among those families, it's possible there was somebody the Israelis viewed as a target, but we simply don't know. As to success, we've had the Israeli defense minister saying he believes that Hezbollah only has one third of its massive stockpile of missiles and rockets still intact. But that's a lot of rockets and missiles. As we saw over the weekend, other forms of Hezbollah weaponry, particularly drones, can get through the Israeli defence system.

So as far as Israel is concerned, given that its goal is to ensure Hezbollah cannot fire anything lethal at northern Israel, it's clear this campaign's got a long way to go. It's nowhere near campaign's got a long way to go. It's nowhere near achieving that goal yet. And just briefly, you mentioned the people who have been displaced. What is the humanitarian situation in Lebanon at the moment? It's catastrophic. And I think the number given by the UN Children's Agency, UNICEF, saying there are 400,000 children displaced in just the past three weeks tells you

everything. This is a country with a population of just over 5 million. The damage to Lebanon is almost unquantifiable at the moment, certainly the human cost. And you have a government here that has very limited capabilities to address that. It's a moving humanitarian situation that changes all the time. But every Israeli strike doesn't just kill people and destroy houses and infrastructure. It also drives many more families to flee those areas because they just don't feel they're safe anymore. That was Jonathan Head in Beirut. Meanwhile, in Gaza, the violence is continuing. The United Nations has condemned what it calls the large number of civilian casualties caused by Israeli strikes in the north of the Palestinian territory.

Israel says it does not target civilians and is attacking Hamas positions. Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner is a spokesman for the Israeli Defence Forces. What Hamas was planning on the 7th of October, just last week, on the anniversary of the massacre of last year, was to launch another attack against Israel from northern Gaza, specifically from the areas of Jabalia. So we are currently in the effort of dismantling and preventing them from regrouping, and it is happening in northern Gaza. So that's where we have to operate. And I would say we will continue to operate anywhere we need to in order to protect Israeli lives. The Hamas-run health ministry says more than 42,000 people have been killed and 95,000 injured in the past year.

Several people have been documenting their lives for the BBC World Service from the first days of the war in Gaza for a documentary, Life and Death in Gaza. Khalid is a physiotherapist with five children and Aya a recent law graduate. BBC Eye's Lara El-Gabali has their story and you might find some of her report distressing. On a table in his apartment Khalid is dressing the wounds of a young boy. When the war started, I opened a medical centre in my house. I'm a physiotherapist, not really a doctor. This was a big change for me. Khaled lives in Jabalia, in northern Gaza,

one of the areas worst affected by the war. A week into the war in October 2023, the Israeli army told people to evacuate the area and head south. Khaled's four-year-old daughter, Haloum, says she doesn't want to leave. Because, she adds, I'm scared of the missiles. With hospitals stretched, Khaled feels that he has to stay and help. Today I dealt with a child. He was still breathing. If we'd had the means, we would have operated on his brain because he had a hemorrhage.

But unfortunately, we had to let him die. There was nothing we could do for him. Aya was also in northern Gaza, but as the fighting got closer, she moved with her parents and seven siblings to the centre. I came to this shelter school in October. The school seems like the safest place to be at the moment. In Gaza, nowhere is safe for long. A building next to the school is hit.

There, they've got someone out. Oh my God, body parts. Khaled and his family in the north are also under threat. In December, a nearby airstrike rocks Khaled's house. I'm afraid, his daughter Halloum says. The war is ever-present, even in their games. Khaled watches as his son, Hamoud, pretends to perform surgery on a tiny doll. She's injured, he says. Rubble fell on her.

When I see them like this, my heart breaks. These are not games children should play. Aya and her family have had to move south to Rafah, where a million people are sheltering. We're literally living like animals here. We've just received news that our house was destroyed. What do you mean I won't go back to my home, my bed, my room or anything? By April, food is running dangerously low.

Aeroplanes begin dropping aid. The amount of aid that falls is very, very small. They are chasing the aid drops. People are fighting each other. People are trying to get aid from the parachutes that were dropped into the sea. Someone's being dragged out now. He was trying to get the aid.

With no food, Khaled's family have to resort to desperate measures. Khaled's children are eating raw weeds. We eat things knowing that they might poison us, but we do it because there is no alternative. In June, Eya receives some devastating news. I lost one of my ankles right now. She posts a video to social media, speaking English this time, so the world can hear. No one cares about us.

We lost our families, our friends, and no one cares about this. That report by Lara El-Gabali of BBC Eye. And no one cares about us. with warning shots. Last week, Pyongyang said it would cut off the roads and railways, once seen as a sign of inter-Korean cooperation. Our correspondent Shaima Khalil is monitoring events from Tokyo, and she told us that the roads weren't important for traffic, but they were symbolic. They weren't getting a lot of use, and essentially they weren't open for general traffic or used by people. They were only open for special envoys or VIP visits. But what we're seeing from Pyongyang is really not surprising. It is consistent with their policy to separate themselves from the South. Last week, we've again heard Pyongyang saying that it will completely separate itself from South Korea. And they say they've mentioned this move to the United

States. The manner by which they conducted destroying these roads today has ramped up already heightened tensions. But over the past year, we've seen North Korea fortifying its border area. We've seen them use heavy equipment to dismantle roads connecting the South to the North. Today, it has used explosives on those main roads, prompting South Korea, as you've mentioned, to fire warning shots, but also prompting the reunification ministry to strongly condemn this move, saying that it was backwards, abnormal, and deplorable. Because essentially, for many previous governments in South Korea, these roads have been seen as a symbol for reunification efforts, something that the North have time

and time again said is not on the table. They're just not interested in it. And you mentioned the growing tensions between North and South. Just where are we at the moment? Look, we've been seeing a steady growing of those tensions from, you know, months ago when we've seen these leaflets being flown to the North and then the North replying with rubbish balloons in the south. And just last week, we've heard North Korea accusing the south of flying drones carrying anti-north leaflets over Pyongyang, calling it a provocation, calling it an active war. The South Korean military first denied it and then said that they wouldn't comment on the drone issue. You can't draw a straight line

between that claim and what happened today. But I think generally, it's a worrying picture of ratcheting up rhetoric, ratcheting up this tension. Japan is watching this quite closely. Obviously, China has just said that this tension between North and South has to ease. But I will also bet that all the way in Washington, DC, even though they're in full election mode, they're watching this quite wordly. That was Shaima Khalil. It's close to a thousand days into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and there's a drone attack almost every night.

Across Ukraine, the Air Force relies on a network of volunteer patrols to help protect its skies. And with many men now being called up to the front line, more women are stepping in to take on the task. Our Eastern Europe correspondent Sarah Rainsford joined One Patrol. When Russian drones swarm over Kiev, their sound is unmistakable and it's nerve-wracking. Then, usually, comes the boom of Ukraine's air defences.

The number of drones is increasing. So one night we went on patrol with a team of volunteers who are helping the Air Force to protect the skies in the Bucha region, just outside the capital. There is a total of 25 drones at the moment over Ukraine. So the mobile air defence team have just stopped their car ahead of us about 200 metres. We just got out. We're walking through the middle of a pitch black field, up a dirt track towards them where they're getting into position. The unit call themselves the Witches of Bucha

because, with one exception, they're women, stepping up now that so many men have been deployed to the front lines. Ukraine is short of weapons too. The machine guns that the witches are assembling were made in 1939. They have to pour in bottled water as a coolant. So Valentina is saying that the drones could see the light and could respond to that. They don't know how the drones are going to behave.

So they're saying we need to work in the dark, essentially. Of course, it's nervous work because we need to be focused to react to the slightest sound. Valentina is a vet. The commander, Yulia, has a day job as a manicurist. Her team have downed three drones so far. She says there are more in the air these days. And when I ask why, she shrugs. I think they want to kill us. The women joke a lot here, but they're all from Bucha. And at the start of the all-out invasion, they lived under occupation, when Russian forces killed and brutalized civilians here.

Anya is an office manager who tells me how she felt totally useless during the occupation, unable to defend her family. And that was terrifying. And this is Ina. She's a maths teacher. You cry and suffer for the people who are no longer here, those taken by this stupid war. Then they were recruiting women here, and I tried it and didn't fall apart.

Back at base camp, Valentina stokes the fire in a hut as rain hammers down on the roof. She's on patrol duty, waiting for the next air raid. She tells me the men who used to defend the skies here are now in Pokrovsk in the east, where the fighting against Russia is fiercest. So we try to smile and stay cheerful, she says. But we're just waiting for them to come back alive. That report by Sarah Rainsford in Ukraine. Still to come in this podcast, we'll be talking about the nominees for the BBC Women's Footballer of the Year.

It gives us an opportunity to reflect back on how much the sport has progressed since 2015 when we awarded our first BBC Women's Footballer of the Year, Asasat Lashwala. Plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. They're called the 8,000ers and now a British climber, Adriana Brownlee, has become the youngest woman to summit the 14 highest mountains in the world. She completed her feat on the 9th of October, three years after she reached the top of Everest. She's only 23. So what was her 14th 8,000er?

Sarah Montague spoke to Adriana Brownlee. Shishapangwa was an absolutely incredible climb. It was very difficult this time. I chose to climb without supplementary oxygen. So the summit push, which was 1,000 metres of ascent, it was very challenging. It was cold. When you're climbing without oxygen, your mind doesn't think clearly. And so you're totally self-sufficient. I had the support of my shepherd guide as well. But it's all about looking after your body, trying not to get frostbite, trying to keep one from the other. But it was all worth it in the end to be able to summit Shishapangwa and complete my 14 peaks.

And in beautiful conditions, I understand. It was absolutely stunning. We had the most incredible sunrise coming up towards the summit, which was so special because most of our team summited in the nighttime before us. So to have that 360 panoramic view of all the mountains below us was, it made it extra special. Why? Where did all this start, Adriana? It's a great question. So it all started actually when I was about eight years old so my father was the one who loved to do mountaineering and he was always climbing and so when he came back home from his expeditions to me he was like the most incredible human being

and I wanted to replicate that in my life and so from eight years old I wrote a letter to myself at primary school saying that I want to climb Everest, and I want to inspire other people and I want to be the youngest to do it. And so 12 years later, I summited Everest. It was my obsession for all those 12 years. And then upon summiting Everest, I decided to continue with the 14 peaks challenge and summit the 13 others. And so here I am today. Which was the hardest of the 14? The hardest of the 14 was probably Nangapabat for me because it was the most technical of all the peaks. And it's got a large 200-metre wall, a rock wall,

which is like a grade 8A in rock climbing. It's very difficult. But obviously we have ropes and we have some support there to climb it. But with a big backpack on of about 10 to 15 kilos and massive, ginormous 8,000 meter boots on and crampons, it's a very technical climb. So that was definitely the hardest. Adriana Brownlee. Singapore has a zero tolerance policy on drugs. Around the globe, trafficking narcotics is a serious crime. But in Singapore, if you're convicted of trafficking

drugs like heroin, methamphetamine, or even cannabis in large enough quantities, you could face the death penalty. And it's also illegal to consume drugs in Singapore. If you're caught using any illicit narcotic, including puffing on a marijuana cigarette, you could find yourself in compulsory rehab. Linda Presley was given access to the state's austere drug rehabilitation centre, where drug users often spend months. Singapore's drug rehabilitation centre, or DRC, is located in a huge complex in the east of the island. There's no private residential drug rehab facility in Singapore, so no swanning around in fluffy bathrobes

with accommodation provided in cosy ensuite bedrooms. When drug users are picked up, they may spend months here. I'm Rabin Singh. I'm the second superintendent of Institution S1, which is primarily for first- and second-time drug abusers. There are about 500 or so of them. Superintendent Singh of Singapore's prison service shows us around. He takes us into an unoccupied cell that usually accommodates seven or eight men.

At the back, there are two squat toilets and a shower behind a waist-high wall. There are mounted cameras in the ceiling. There are no beds. There are no beds in any of our prisons, only in our medical wards. But this is drug rehabilitation. It's not prison. So whilst it is rehabilitation, it is still a very deterrent regime. So while we rehabilitate you, we also want you to remember that it's not an offence that you should repeat. And you come into... This is effectively a prison, right?

Well, it looks like a prison, but like I said, you'll see that the inmates are a bit more free-roaming, their movements are not so tightly controlled. A normal stay at the DRC gets you a criminal record, a recognition that drug users aren't simply bad people, they often need rehabilitation. At the DRC, inmates spend up to six hours a day in a classroom on psychology-based courses.

My name is Lau Kuan Lee. I'm a deputy director for Correctional Rehabilitation Services. So the aim is to motivate inmates to want to change. In this case, it's to want to stay away from drugs, to renew their lives without drugs, and to address the negative attitudes, negative thinking regarding drug use. OK, should we go in? Yes. We're doing the exercise. I try to focus on my tapping, but...

Inside the bright, spacious room, there's a mindfulness session in progress. Around 15 men sit in a horseshoe around a course leader. The prison authorities have selected two inmates to speak to us. They're not cannabis smokers. They both have a history of methamphetamine use. Meth is a powerful, synthetic, highly addictive stimulant and the most commonly abused drug in Singapore. And for a young man I'll call Jack,

reeling from a romantic breakup earlier this year, his drug use became more than a little problematic. I was in public. I hadn't eaten or slept in four days. I was basically having a psychosis episode and the police were informed. During my time of use, I never thought it would ever happen to me. This is Jack's second time in the DRC. He was here before in 2021. The first time was, I'm never coming back to this hellhole. This time I felt like because of the circumstance of how I was caught this time around, I felt that it was a big eye

opener. Scary, right? Scary. Very scary. Coming back here, although being away from family, being away from friends is painful, right? Coming back here, I really needed to understand, to learn, to live a better life. So I cannot say that I will not come back, but I will do whatever it takes to stay on this journey of sobriety. That report by Linda Presley in Singapore. Now, we hear a lot about artificial intelligence and how it could change our lives. And AI uses vast amounts of energy. Now, the technology giant Google has signed a deal to use small nuclear reactors to generate power for AI data centres. Rob Young spoke to Xiaolei Ren, who's an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Riverside. He took part in a United Nations panel

on the environmental sustainability of AI earlier this year. Clearly, this increasing demand for AI has driven up their energy demand. And although these nuclear power plants have a lot of safety concerns, but it is one of the options for meeting Google's energy demand without violating their sustainability goal. So they can use coal-based power plants, fossil fuels, but those are not sustainable.

And renewable energy in the form of solar and wind is not stable, cannot provide the energy 24-7 as Google needed. Right. Could they not just get more energy from the regular power grid? The problem is in many parts of the world, let's say Virginia, California, it's really hard to get the large chunk of power capacity they need. So that's why they are also moving out to other countries like Uruguay, Chile, South Africa, to look for available power capacity. Why does artificial intelligence

need so much more energy than regular internet searches? When we talk about the huge energy demand of AI, we typically refer to generative AI, such as large-language models. So these models, each model contains many billions of parameters. So each inference to generate just one word requires many billions of calculations. And this will translate into a huge amount of energy. If you just write, let's say, a few short emails using Lama 3 70 billion model, the amount of energy is enough to give you a full charge on iPhone 16 Pro. Right. So artificial intelligence then is just very energy hungry.

And you're saying that renewable energy, solar and wind, just isn't up to the job of powering AI. That has potentially big implications, doesn't it, for the future power needs of companies and of countries? Yes, yes. So although technically these AI systems can be powered by renewables directly, it has a lot of challenges, mainly because this renewable energy is not available 24-7. So that's basically making the system really hard

to run on renewables directly. So that's why they are plugging their data centre into some power grid or nuclear power plants, which can provide the reliable power they need. So do you think we are likely to see more companies doing this kind of deal, the like of which Google has done, maybe more countries developing nuclear power because of artificial intelligence?

I think we're going to see more of nuclear power plants being started or restarted to satisfy the end amount. And at the same time, they could also even delay the retirement of some of the coal power plants. So if you look at parts of the US, some towns are not shutting down their coal power plants as scheduled because they want to use that power to supply the power capacity to AI's data centres. Charley Run, who is speaking to Rob Young. Now the five nominees for the BBC Women's

Footballer of the Year award have been announced. Here they are in action. We don't have enough of that kind of music on, do we? Brian Hansen's done it again. False disappear. It's not bad in the goal. We don't have enough of that kind of music on, do we? Anyway, the quintet have been chosen by a panel of experts, including coaches, players, administrators and journalists. And who decides the winner? Well, you do. It's a public vote.

BBC Sports' Maz Faruqi told us more about this milestone moment. The 10th year of the award, and it gives us an opportunity, doesn't it, to reflect back on how much the sport has progressed since 2015 when we awarded our first BBC Women's Footballer of the Year, Asisat Ashwala, with the award. The World Cup was played that year on artificial pitches. Some of the teams our players on our shortlist played for weren't even professional at that time. The sport simply didn't have the platform, the support network, the investment it does now.

Now, when we reflect in 2024, a couple of months on from what was a brilliant Olympic football tournament, the European Champions League gets crowds of 91,000 at times, huge crowds following teams in that competition. So things have hugely moved forward in the decade of our award. And our five nominees have been a big part of that progress, will continue to be a big part of that competition. So things have hugely moved forward in the decade of our award. And our five nominees have been a big part of that progress, will continue to be a big part of that progress. When we spoke to them all, they all talked about the need to keep pushing the game forward and their role in helping to do that. And you mentioned the Olympics.

The USA won gold at the Olympics for the first time since 2012. Two of its stars have been shortlisted. Yeah, just 12 months on since an incredibly disappointing World Cup campaign in 2023 for the USA. They won the gold medal in Paris in August. And we've included both Sophia Smith and defender Naomi Germer in our shortlist. They were key members of that Olympic roster. Sophia Smith scoring in a very tight, nervy semifinal against Germany. And she's part of that front trio of the USA team, which is arguably the most exciting front three

in the World Game right now. And defenders don't always get the headlines, but Naomi Germer's performances over the last 12 months, both for the USA and for her club side, San Diego Wave, really stood out for our panel as well. She's so consistent, named USA Soccer's Player of the Year earlier this year as well. The first defender as well. She's so consistent, named USA Soccer's Player of the Year earlier this year as well. The first defender as well to win that honour.

And Barcelona have once again been a dominant team, the dominant team in Europe this season. They won the Champions League. And we also have a nominee from Africa for the first time since 2016, I think. Yes, another hat-trick and an Olympic Games for Barbara Banda, who again is another of our nominees,

who's just been scoring with such consistency over the last 12 months, both for Zambia, as we saw at the Olympics, and also for her club side, Orlando Pride. And it's great as well, 10 years on from Assasat Ashwala's win in 2015, to have another African player on the shortlist, only our third African player to be on a Women's Footballer of the Year shortlist. And Barbara Bander as well is the first player, man or woman, from her country as well to be nominated for the prestigious Ballon d'Or award.

And what more can we say about Barcelona, Jackie? Another quadruple of trophies last season, including defending their European Champions League title. And Etana Bomati and Carolina Graham-Hanson, huge players once more in that team. Such leadership from Bonmati, the 2023 Ballon d'Or winner. And Graham-Hanson really adding so many goals to her game over the last 12 months. Assists as well, top scorer in the Spanish League last season. So those are our five nominees.

Etana Bonmati, Naomi Germer, Carolina Graham-Hanson and Sophia Smith. And as you say, Jackie, it's up to our listeners now to decide. They've got to go to bbc.com slash women's football to vote. That was Maz Faruqi. Now that's almost it from us. But before we go, Nick Miles has a request for you for a special edition of the Global News podcast ahead of the UN's climate conference in Azerbaijan next month. A record breaking hurricanes in America, droughts and floods in China and around the world, the highest sea temperatures on record. Climate change has never been so clearly with us, but sometimes it can be confusing to say the least about what the UN Climate Change Conference is trying to achieve and what it delivers, which nations are leading the way and which are dragging their heels. We need your questions to put to our experts. Just email us

globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. Thanks. find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Tom Bartlett. The producer was Ed Horton. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jackie Leonard. And until next time, goodbye. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free.

Simply subscribe to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts.