Global News Podcast - Egypt warns over Israel's support for Trump's Gaza 'takeover' plan

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Egypt warns Israeli support for Donald Trump's proposal to displace Palestinians from Gaza threatens the ceasefire. Also: the earthquake crisis in Santorini, and the "Kerrygold rush" that’s created millionaire farmers.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. What does it take to go racing in the fastest cars in the world? Oscar Piastri. Your head's trying to get rid of one way, your body's trying to go another. Let's stroll. It's very extreme in the sense of how close you're racing wheel to wheel. We've been given unprecedented access to two of the most famous names in Formula One, McLaren and Aston Martin.

I'm Landon Aris. They build a beautiful bit of machinery that I get to then go and have fun in. They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak. I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1, Back at Base. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson and in the early hours of Friday the 7th of February these are our main stories. Egypt has warned that Israeli support for Donald Trump's proposal to displace Palestinians from Gaza undermines negotiations on a ceasefire and hostage release agreement.

South Africa's President, Sirul Ramaphosa, has said his country will not be bullied after the Trump administration threatened to cut off funding in a row over land reforms. Islamist hardliners have forced the cancellation of a girls' football match in Bangladesh as the women's game comes under attack from those who think it's un-Islamic. Also in this podcast... I think Kerrygold farmers have a great bond with the land. We are caretakers through the generations. Now, many of these Irish dairy farmers are on the verge of an incredible windfall,

thanks to a groundbreaking agreement that's been dubbed the Kerrygold rush. Egypt has warned that Israeli support for Donald Trump's plan to remove Palestinians from the Gaza Strip threatens to provoke a return to fighting. The Foreign Ministry in Cairo said Israel's position undermine negotiations to extend the current ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. Meanwhile, the Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has ordered the army to make a plan for what he calls the voluntary departure

of people from Gaza. It was echoed by another member of the Israeli cabinet, the Foreign Minister Gideon Saar. Everyone that is ready to immigrate wants to immigrate from his free will. It is moral to give him that option and not to put him in prison. So everything must be based on the free will of individual and on the other hand of a will of a state that is ready to absorb. The UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, had this response to the Trump plan. Immoral and irresponsible.

It's completely irresponsible because it will make the regional crisis even worse. And I truly hope that people will stay calm, will not panic and will remember that the international community is made of 193 states. And this is the time to give the U. the US what it has been looking for, isolation. For his part, President Trump has defended his proposal saying no American soldiers would be needed to take control of the Gaza Strip which would be, he said, turned over to the US after the fighting was finished. A North America correspondent, John Sudworth, reports from Washington. Shortly after President Trump made the comments in the White House standing alongside Benjamin Netanyahu, US officials seemed to be trying to soften

their meaning with the new Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt both suggesting that any relocation of Palestinians from Gaza would be temporary. But in an early morning social media post, Mr Trump has doubled down, saying that Israel would hand control of Gaza to the US once the fighting was over, and that the Palestinians would have already been settled in new, modern homes in the region – the plan, he insisted, would not need boots on the ground. When the visiting Israeli Prime Minister was himself asked by a US reporter today if US troops would be needed to make the plan work, his answer was to the point.

The plan, although cheered by many of Mr Trump's loyal supporters, has been met with outrage elsewhere, not only for its violation of international law, but also the sheer impracticality of its aim, relocating Garzons who don't want to leave to countries that don't want to take them. Even some senior Republican politicians have been expressing scepticism. There are a few kinks in that slinky, Senator Tom Tillis reportedly told NBC News. Obviously it's not going to happen, he said. John Sudworth in Washington. Sales of electric cars made by Tesla have fallen sharply in several

European markets, most notably in Germany, the biggest market. It's thought it's partly in response to the controversial involvement of the car company's owner Elon Musk in politics. Since becoming an advisor to Donald Trump, the world's richest man has made several controversial interventions in European politics, especially in Germany. I got more on the background to this story from our regional editor, Warren Bull. First, the electric vehicle market in Europe took a big hit last year when Germany and France cut government subsidies. But in recent weeks, the market's been recovering across the continent. And for example, in Germany, which is the biggest car market, EV sales

grew in January more than 50% year on year. But that is not the case with Tesla. Trade figures from Germany show that just under 1300 Teslas were registered in January. That's a fall of 59% compared with the same month last year. In France Tesla was down 63%, Norway 38% and in fact all the key European car markets except the UK where Tesla sales were only down 8%. Warren what are the reasons for that? I mean is this all about Elon Musk? No, the analysts of the industry say

there are several reasons for the decline. One, as I mentioned, is the continuing effect of the reduction of government subsidies in Europe. Another is that consumers were waiting for the upgrade of the Tesla Y model, but there's a big feeling that the main contributor is Elon Musk himself. Now, if you're in an area where Teslas are driven, you might have seen this bumper sticker,

which says, I bought this before Elon went crazy. Now, that stick has been very popular in Europe among people who saw Tesla as a projection of their credentials, as a green, environmentally friendly person, dynamic, stylish. But since Elon Musk became a vocal advisor to Donald Trump, that credit has diminished for some Europeans who now want to disassociate from brands linked to him. And the big reason for that is that he's made several controversial interventions in European politics and particularly in Germany. There he questioned the leadership of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, but more importantly importantly he's very vocally and repeatedly backed the far-right AFD ahead of this month's elections. Now that

leaves a complicated picture for Tesla in Germany. Now this is a man, Elon Musk, who's built the only Tesla factory in Europe in Brandenburg. He created 12,000 jobs in a relatively poor part of Germany, but he also appears to espouse views many Germans consider toxic and that affects their choices when they buy cars. Warren Bull. The South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, has declared his country will not be bullied as he delivered a highly anticipated State of the Nation address. He mentioned no names, but President Trump has accused the government of unlawfully confiscating land. Mr Rammoposa told parliament that South Africa would stand up for its national interests

and sovereignty. We are witnessing the rise of nationalism, protectionism, the pursuit of narrow interests and the decline of common cause. But we are not daunted to navigate our path through this world that constantly changes. We will not be deterred. We are a South Africans, a resilient people and we will not be bullied. The annual address was the first since last year's landmark election when Mr Ramaphosa's ANC was replaced by a Government of National unity for the first time since the end of apartheid. And staying in South Africa, the city of Johannesburg has long had a reputation

for being one of the most dangerous places in the world. It's recently experienced some horrific events including a fatal building fire as well as chronic power and water shortages. But scratch the surface and there are remarkable people and organisations trying to make the city more livable and attractive to visitors from home and abroad. Ed Harbishan reports. I'm at the base of the Ponty Tower, one of Johannesburg's most famous buildings and it sort of represents what's happened to this city in recent years. It opened in 1975 and became one of the most exclusive addresses. Then in the mid-80s it

fell into disrepair as people fled the inner city for the suburbs. It's a huge cylindrical structure with a hollow centre and people started throwing rubbish into the middle until it reached around the 15th floor. But it was renovated around the time South Africa hosted the World Cup in 2010. And now, once again, it's seeing a renaissance. My name is Delight Sitole. I'm from an organisation which is called Lallanger, which is a silhouette, which means just play. You said you do a lot for the children in the community.

I know you also give tourists tours. What's the motive for that? Why do you want to show people this area? If you go to social media, you go online, and the news, and then you read about Hilpro, it only shows you the bad things, right? So we're trying to challenge that perception as much as it's bad, but then there are also normal people living around here. It's not like everyone goes around here carrying guns or feeding people drugs and doing crimes. So what do we do? We come here for a tour, we take you around and then you decide later

on whether Hillbrow is bad or not. At the end of the day you will have your own judgement. I've just come to the top of a very steep street in Hillbrow. The change is quite remarkable. If I look back down the hill, in the distance I can see Ponte Tower and what's called a hijacked building. That's a building that's been taken over by criminals But then if I look to my right The streets are almost spotless. There's a street cleaner sweeping in the street There are security cameras everywhere very little litter and I'm surrounded by lots of apartment blocks

Rising above me and they look almost brand new and that's because of a property company called Atemba that is trying to turn around a lot of the buildings in downtown Johannesburg. They buy up these old apartment blocks, do them up, renovate them and then rent them out. And for them business is booming. We're in an area called Jewel City. In the heydays it used to be the area where all the diamond dealers used to operate from. I've travelled south through the city to meet Alan Tate from Atamba. We launched dual city about five years ago, just as COVID was hitting. So the timing was a little bit out.

But as soon as COVID lifted, the buildings were filled up quite quickly. So currently 7,200 flats that's under our management. And we're going to double that in the next two years, through acquisitions and also through additional development as well. So quite an exciting time to be working for Yatenda. It is at odds with the streets nearby, wander not too far away, and dangers do lurk.

But there are also signs of improvement. So we've now reached the end of the precinct. We've passed all six blocks. If you look under the bridge, you'll see brand new white cabling and lighting. This is part of the Josie My Josie project. So Josie My Josie is an association. Josie My Josie was formed just two years ago, a collaboration between some of the biggest

companies in South Africa to improve the city. Generally there's a much more vibrant atmosphere in the city. Mia Swannepall is the CEO. The whole aim of Josie My Josie is to bring hope back to the residents of the city and by bringing hope back we need to show some visible improvements and impactful projects so that they can see there's a way out of where we are currently and to live in the city of the future where people can be safe and where they can thrive and where there are jobs.

To be totally blunt Johannesburg has a pretty bad reputation overseas. Can you ever see this city being spoken about in the same way that say London, New York, Paris is spoken about? Well that is the intention. We have a long way to go. I mean there's no doubt about that but it's not impossible. Be in Swanapul ending that report by Ed Happershen in Johannesburg in South Africa. Officials in northern Bangladesh say they've been forced to cancel a women's football match because of objections from Islamist hardliners. It's the third such match to be abandoned in the

past week after the extremists said it was un-Islamic for women and girls to play football. Our South Asia regional editor Anbarisan Atherajan has more details. Shortly before the match between two district women's football teams began, a religious group, the Islamic Andolan Bangladesh, had announced a protest rally against the event in Rangpur's Taraganj area. After efforts to resolve the dispute failed, police imposed a restriction on gatherings of people, and the women's teams that had arrived to play were forced to leave.

Analysts say previously French Islamist groups have grown noticeably more prominent in the South Asian nation after the overthrow of the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India in August. Last week, Islamists forced the cancellation of two women's football matches in northern Bangladesh. One of the protests led to a clash in which four people were injured. Local authorities have started an investigation into the vandalism of the football field, where a match was scheduled to be played.

Following the recent incidents, the Bangladesh Football Federation said the game was for everyone and urged the authorities to take necessary steps to ensure that women can play football. And Barisan Ethirajan. A state of emergency has been declared on the Greek island of Santorini following a series of tremors which have led to thousands of people leaving a place known primarily for its idyllic setting, with rows of white houses perched above the harbour, blue domed churches and picturesque sunsets. But Santorini is also part of the Hellenic volcanic arc, a chain of islands created by volcanoes where the last major eruption occurred

back in the 1950s. Dr. Grasimos Papadopoulos, a seismologist and professor at Hellenic Mediterranean University in Crete, is monitoring the situation in Santorini and he gave us this update on Thursday. About 5,000-6,000 people left mainly Santorini, not so much Amur wars, along with their families, kids, because they are afraid of something stronger to come. But I would like to clarify that certainly the level of seismic hazards has increased in the last days. The good news of the day is that all these earthquakes take place

in sub-Burin environment at distances which range from about 10 kilometers to 40 kilometers from Amorgos and from Santorini. Future earthquakes may occur but for having as an important impact on the island we may consider large earthquake magnitude. We understand the schools are closed. Yes, of course. This is a decision of the central government to close the schools and this terminates tomorrow but we expect tomorrow new decisions to be taken by the government. And on the other hand, it is very important that rescue teams are already on the island. Of course, no casualties, no fatalities, nothing. People is not feeling very good because of the frequent earthquakes.

They feel five, ten, maybe more earthquakes every day. They complain about that. Psychologically it's not the best for them, but myself and my team we are working very intensively. And since last Sunday we have announced publicly that these earthquakes are what we call in seismology foreshocks. They are foreshocks, which means that a stronger earthquake is very likely to come. And I would say that this is the first time, not only in Greece but internationally, that we try to clarify such issues during the ongoing seismic activity. Greek seismologist Dr. Gerasimos Papadopoulos. Still to come...

How 400 languages spoken across Asia and Europe have a common link. to get your body trying to go another. It's very extreme in the sense of how close you're racing wheel to wheel. We've been given unprecedented access to two of the most famous names in Formula One, McLaren and Aston Martin. I'm Landon Ars. They build a beautiful bit of machinery that I get to then go and have fun in. They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak. I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1 Back at Base. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. The French birthrate has fallen to its lowest level for more than a hundred years since just after the end of World War I in 1918. Government statistics show the rate now stands at 1.62 babies per woman and in the southwest of the country it's even

lower. Chris Bachman has been to one town near the city of Toulouse to find out why. Colomier has recorded one of the sharpest falls in births across the whole country, down 31 percent since 2018. I head to a surgery near the town hall where two midwives are seeing newly born babies for regular checkups. Margot Biscay speaks to a lot of young women who come to her for contraceptive advice. There are more and more young women between the ages of 20 and 30 who I see for check-ups and having children is not a priority or simply don't want any often because of the world we live in right now. It's not a very optimistic period.

Maybe they will change their minds, but maybe not. They're pretty adamant they don't want children. Laurent Oiseau has been a midwife in Columbia for 30 years and seen the demographic changes. While the trend is clearly towards less kids, she still sees families with three or four children from poorer and immigrant backgrounds. We still see a lot of families with lots of kids. They're more likely to be from immigrant backgrounds, but also people from more economically deprived backgrounds. And another thing is that France provides a lot of support for families.

The latest French government statistics underlined her observations. Cultural factors and generous pro-family tax breaks and child allowances may play a role. The number of primary school children in Colombia has fallen by 10 percent in the past seven years. It's not surprising. The birth rate here now stands at 1.53 per woman, compared to 1.62 nationally. Xavier Rudier, father of one child, is in teaching management at the Victor Hugo school in the town. There's definitely been a falling number of kids in schools. We've had confirmations from the local authorities. It's mainly affecting primary schools, but of course there'll be a knock on effect on secondary schools within the next four to five years.

Colomiers is part of the administrative region of France known as Occitanie, with just over 6 million residents. Government statistics show the region has the second biggest decline of the birth rate across France, except for the island of Corsica. Catherine Sour is from INSEE, the French National Statistics Office, and studied the issue. People may choose to delay having children or have none at all for economic reasons. It can be due to inflation or like we saw with the sharp fall in births in 2008 with the financial crisis. Some are deterred from starting a family by rising property prices and there are other

wider issues of uncertainty like international crises and climate change which puts off some people from having kids. Early last year, French President Emmanuel Macron called for a demographic rearmament, with reforms making it easier for people to have children. But a year on, there is no evidence the demographic decline is about to end. Chris Bachmann in France. Teammates of the Spanish footballer Jenny Hermoso have been giving evidence in the sexual assault trial of the former National Federation president Luis Rubiales who kissed her moments

after Spain won the Women's World Cup in 2023. He denies wrongdoing. Guy Hedgeco has the latest from Madrid. Jenny Hermoso's teammates told the court about the pressure they say she was put under by Luis Rubiales and other officials to play down the kiss as the backlash against the federation president snowballed. Alexia Poutilas spoke of Ms Hermoso's astonished reaction to the kiss itself. She also said that within hours of the World Cup final, Misermoso was visibly upset by repeated efforts to persuade her to say in public that the kiss had been consensual. She wanted to have fun and we even tried to cheer her up, saying,

forget about it, we're world champions, let's celebrate. But Jenny wasn't her usual self. Another member of the World Cup winning team, Laia Codina, said that when the players went on holiday together to Ibiza to celebrate, Ms Enmoso's state of mind appeared to have deteriorated further due to the alleged harassment and she broke down crying on more than one occasion. Mr Rubiales, who is due to be questioned in court next week could face a jail sentence of up to two and a half years. Three former colleagues are also on trial for coercion. All four men deny any wrongdoing. Guy Hedgeco in Spain. A DNA study has solved a centuries-old mystery about the origin of 400 languages spoken across Asia and Europe.

Indo-European languages all have a common link. This is what it might have sounded like. Until now, tracing of the common ancestor of Indo-European languages has been a challenge, but new genetic research is shedding light on its origins. Evan Davis spoke to David Reich, a population geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, who co-led the latest studies. There's a more than 200-year-old problem of the origin of these languages known as Indo-European. One of the first people

who recognized this was William Jones, who was a British judge working in colonial India and Calcutta. And he noticed that the Greek and the Latin that he learned in his schoolboys days was related to the ancient liturgical languages of northern India like Sanskrit. And he realized that they must descend from some common source. And since that time, people figured out that all sorts of languages are closely related, not just Greek, Latin and Sanskrit, but also the Germanic languages, which include English and Armenian and Persian and all sorts of languages. And so the question was, where did the first people who spoke these languages speak them?

And there's people who've been trying to figure this out for more than 200 years. Right. Now, you're a geneticist and you have applied your methods to get an answer. Tell us what you've found. So, genetics can't tell you what language people spoke. People of any ancestry can speak any language. But what genetics can do is document large-scale movements of people and migrations and population mixtures that would be potential ways that language could spread. And what genetics has yielded in the last 10 years is a huge surprise.

Prior to 2015, we did not think that there was a plausible movement of people from far Eastern Europe into central and Western Europe after 5000 years ago. But beginning in 2015 with two papers, we found that there was a huge migration from the steppes north of the Black and Caspian seas into central Europe. These people are known as the Yamnaya and they're the world's first extreme mobile pastoralist, people who didn't live in settled villages anymore. And what they had done was they took advantage of the newly invented wheel and probably the first domestication of the horse to move out into the open steplands and exploit the biomass of the steppe that hadn't been accessible before because they could now take out their supplies like water. And because of these innovations, they expanded explosively from what we show in this paper was just a few small villages about 5,500 years ago, all

the way in the West to Hungary and in the East, Eastern China. Yamnaya was the big spreader, but what we do here is we roll back to the group that gave rise to the Yamnaya and that we show also gave rise to the ancestors of Anatolian speakers like Hittite. And we find a common population that contributed to both, that contributed 80% of the DNA of the Yamnaya and also contributed to the ancestors of Hittites who are different genetically than the people amongst whom they lived. And so we now have a common link. David Reich, a population geneticist at Harvard Medical School in the United States. Now to the lush green fields of County Kerry in Ireland where more than a hundred hardworking

farmers are on the verge of an incredible windfall. Thanks to a ground breaking agreement, their dairy cooperative has sold its shares in the Kerry Group, one of the country's most prominent food giants. Leanna Byrne explains. In 1973, dairy farmers in County Kerry formed a cooperative to sell their milk together and get a better deal. That co-op set up a business to market milk under the name of Kerrygold, and that brand made Irish butter famous. I think Kerrygold farmers have a great bond with the land.

We are caretakers through the generations. Kerrygold, which later became the Kerry Group, went on to become one of Ireland's biggest food companies. But now, over 50 years later, the cooperative and the food business are separating, with the proceeds from the sale going back to the descendants of some of the original farmers who set up the co-op. We're actually producing butter now that's going all over the world. It's a lovely cycle of life.

More than 100 co-op shareholders, including small farmers and their families, have each received shares worth more than $1 million. Not everyone is getting that much, but with an average payout of $1,400, for the 12,000 Kerry co-op shareholders, it's quite the Kerry gold rush. Well, Sam Fenix booked to Pat O'Tooole, the editor of the Irish Farmers' Journal and asked him for more background on the so-called Kerry Goldrush. In 1973 Kerry Co-op was set up in a caravan and Dennis Brosnan actually cycled to farms. He had a car but in order to coax farmers to sign up and to invest in the fledgling co-op, he chose to cycle around to show just how grounded he was.

And he remained grounded. He built a business which became a PLC in 1986, now has a market cap of 16.5 billion. And the co-op is now separating, as you say, from the PLC, but in an unusual way. What they're doing is they're actually buying the Irish dairy business back off the PLC. And in doing so, they're divesting about 350 million euros worth of PLC shares back into the PLC to pay for the purchase of 60% of the co-op. And the remaining shares, 1.6 billion at current value, are being shared% of the co-op and the remaining shares 1.6 billion at current value are being shared out among the co-op shareholders about 12,000

people most of them dairy farmers or descendants of dairy farmers and like you say some millionaires being created in this. And you've spoken to some of these farmers haven't you what they told you we'll share some of their personal stories and reactions. There's some amazing stories. I was at a meeting about six years ago, a co-op meeting, when this was being floated first. And one co-op member told me that his postman had come to him and said, we have a few shares in the drawer at home. My dad milked a few cows back in the day. Would you mind having a look at them? So the few shares were worth 800,000. They were sitting in an envelope in the drawer in the kitchen for 50 years. So the initial shares cost a pound, they're now worth a hundred pounds. Well,

the initial co-op shares were worth a pound. They were actually worth 500 pounds in see-through value because shareholders effectively got just under five shares in the PLC for each co-op share they surrendered so it's a phenomenal story we're talking about over a billion in county Kerry alone. I was going to say that's a large concentration of millionaires in rural Ireland now. Yeah and but being farmers trust me that money will be spent on land on sheds on equipment There's been a huge amount of dairy expansion since the ending of milk quotas 10 years ago. Irish dairy production has expanded by 50% because farmers have been able to tap

into Ireland's natural ability to grow grass, turn that into milk and sell it all over the world. Kerry have 21,000 employees and they sell product to 135 countries. So it's a global conglomerate mainly based in America. Now the farmers are buying back the Irish business and cashing in. Pat O'Toole, the editor of the Irish Farmers Journal. Now let's end the Global News podcast on another foodie topic, that of sausages. Croatian

anti-corruption police have arrested a former mayor on suspicion of using public money to buy a ton and a half of the meat product. Davao Milicovic is accused of purchasing large quantities of kulin, a popular spicy product. Here's our Balkans correspondent, Guy Delaney. Police have been grilling Davao Milicovic since his arrest in an early morning raid. He was a long-serving mayor of Zupania, a town in Croatia's Slovonia region famed for its production of kulin. That's a sort after sausage that can sell for more than 65 euros per kilogram. Anti-corruption investigators believe Mr. Milicevic bought around one and a half tons over a three-year period, spending at least 100,000 euros. They

allege the former mayor used public money for his sausage spree. Police are also investigating claims that he had a stake in the artisanal butcher shop that crafted the coolin. Guy Delaney. And that's it from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, send us an email. The address is globalpodcasts.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag at globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Chris Hanson, the producer was Liam McSheffrey. The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time, Bye bye. We've been given unprecedented access to two of the most famous names in Formula One, McLaren and Aston Martin. I'm Landon Aris. They build a beautiful bit of machinery that I get to then go and have fun in. They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak. I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1, back at base. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.