Global News Podcast - Houthis in Yemen target Saudi oil exports

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

The Houthis in Yemen say they've hit two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, creating a new chokepoint. Oil and gas prices rise following the strikes. In response, President Trump threatens to inflict major military punishment on the Iran-backed group. Also: in Hong Kong, a new slogan of defiance after raids and arrests at two independent bookstores. Albanian police use tear gas and water canon against protesters outside parliament. It's the latest confrontation over a tourism project linked to President Trump's family. Scaled-back Commonwealth Games gets under way in Scotland, with concerns about the cost of hosting the sporting event. And camels across large parts of North Africa are suffering from stress, fatigue and dehydration because of increasing temperatures. The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail] Photo: Tanks and oil pipes at Aramco's Ras Tanura oil refinery and oil terminal in Saudi Arabia. Credit: REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Your sales order says one thing. Your inventory says another. Your spreadsheet says, good luck. Odo brings your business together on a single platform, from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing. Visit Odo.com to book a demo. It's ODbolo.com. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritson, and at 15 hours GMT on Thursday the 23rd of July, these are our main stories. Global oil prices spike after Houthi rebels in Yemen say they attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea,

now a new danger area along with the Strait of Hormuz. India's Narendra Modi promises to punish corrupt officials involved in leaking exam papers, but it may not be enough to quell widespread angry protests against the government. Raids on independent bookstores in Hong Kong make I Am a Bookstore employee into a growing protest slogan. Also in this podcast. The goal has always been we need to match the defence. And so you need to have on the other side roughly the same amount of defence. We hear from the boss of the company that was on the receiving end of an unprecedented AI hack.

We begin in the Middle East. As the US and Iran continue exchanging strikes, yet another front in this broad conflict has opened up in Yemen. On Monday, the Iran-backed Houthis announced what they're calling a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia and the Red Sea in retaliation for a Saudi blockade of their own ports in Yemen. Now, the Houthis say they've hit two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea. The Saudi News Agency has so far confirmed that one tanker, banker was hit and that there was a fire on board. Our international editor, Jeremy Bowen, told us about the significance of the Houthi blockade. The Houthis have their own disputes with the Saudis and the way to think about them really is an ally of Iran rather than a proxy because they're very independent-minded. But one thing that they have not been doing of late

until now is blocking the very strategic Babal Mandab, which is the narrow straight at the bottom of the Red Sea. They did that during the Gaza Wall to quite some effect. Now, this is significant for the Saudis because the Saudis, because they can't get their oil out through Strait of Formos, because Iran blocks it, have been pumping a lot of it in their east-west pipeline to a red sea port and exporting it that way. So for the Saudis, this is quite serious economic. damage potentially if it goes on. And it's the case that the Saudis have a lot of military plans in place. And they certainly have been discussing the prospects of going back to war with the Houthis as a result of this. And of course, Donald Trump himself has said that the Americans

could get involved. So this is another way in which the decision to go to war with Iran, taken by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu on the 28th of February, how that is spreading war across the region potentially. Jeremy Bowen. And since the Houthi strikes, oil and gas prices have shot up. Ben King is from our business unit. Well, the rise in prices undoubtedly significant. Just a few minutes ago, the Brent crude oil price benchmark went above $99 a barrel.

That's the highest level we've seen since early June. Gas prices in Europe and Asia have also been rising steadily. the European gas prices at its highest since March. And so understandably, that's a factor of great concern. And if you look, that's here in the UK, for instance, already feeding through to petrol prices. Petro prices on the forecourts here in the UK have been rising too. So that is going to have an economic effect.

And I think if it continues, central banks will have to look at how they adjust their interest rates to control any inflationary results of these higher prices. How important is this shipping lane, particularly given the near closure of the straighter form? Can tankers still get through? Yeah, it's a very significant lifeline. The Saudis have been able to export about 5 million barrels a day from the port of Yambu. Obviously, the Asian markets are very important, and the most direct route to Asia is to go south past the Yemen.

If that's no longer possible, crude tankers can still get through the Suez Canal. and go round the long way around Africa, but the capacity of that will be limited, and that adds a month to the journey. So it won't completely block that route, but it will restrict it. That will have an effect on the global oil market, and that will result in higher prices. The Saudis furious, then. I'm sure they must be, yes. You know, so far this has only been two ships that have been targeted, but I'm sure it will be a serious concern for them.

and indeed for anyone in Asia and in Europe looking to depend on that Saudi supply of crude. And presumably whatever happens, even if both shipping lanes were to reopen tomorrow, in some ways the damage is now done. That's right. Even if peace were to break out tomorrow, still many of those oil fields which have had to cease production because there's nowhere to put the oil they produce would take a while to get back into action. The Qatari natural gas plants, which are absolutely crucial for world. gas supplies will take a long time to get back up running. Also, some of them appear to have

been damaged in the earlier attack. So it will certainly take a while for the world energy markets to return to normal, even if peace does break out. And frankly, there's no sign that that's going to happen any time soon. Our business reporter Ben King. To the Indian capital now, where anti-government protests are continuing and growing. Victory to Mother India. The police will not silence us, just one of the defiant chance coming from the protesters. Many of them are students demanding action over the leak of exam papers, which meant tests had to be resat. They now want a total overhaul of the education and employment sectors. Earlier this week, police used batons to try to break up the marches, but thousands of people have been out on the streets again on Thursday.

We have come here for education reform. To protest, protest peace. and we will stay here until the education minister resigns. It's becoming common to see placards calling for the Prime Minister Narendromodi to resign too. It appears to be one of the biggest challenges to his power since he took office 12 years ago. He now says fast-track courts will be set up to deliver, as he puts it, swift and stringent punishment to those responsible for the exam leaks. And he's once again said he's ready to talk to the leaders of the protest. So will those words be enough to come?

the mood. Our correspondent in Delhi, Arunoday Mukherjee, went to the protests on Thursday. We're now seeing these comments coming out of the Prime Minister, which certainly gives you a sense that there is a worry there. And he's essentially again trying to talk to the students saying that nothing is more important than the welfare and the future of our youth. He's talked about directing concerned authorities to take necessary steps. But when we spoke to the protesters that, look, this is what the Prime Minister is saying, what do you have to say? They said, these are just words. They don't mean anything. we see the resignation of India's

federal education minister, Mr. Dharmena Pradhan, we're not budging. So they're very clear that this kind of lip service that they feel the politicians are paying is not enough. It's time for action and this is something that they need to do to hold the government accountable.

Yes, because this started with protests over the leak of the medical entrance exam papers, but it feels as so this has become much, much bigger and the issues now are much much wider. That's right. I mean, that still remains at the core of their protest. That is what

they're talking about. But essentially the larger demand is for reforms in India's education system and employment system. They're saying we need to root out corruption. We need to fix broken systems to ensure that students get a fair chance who are coming out into the job market, into the

education market. They need to ensure that the systems are fixed where these students after their grade 12, they're preparing for these very competitive exams and then if a paper gets leaked, an entire year of preparation goes in waste. Briefly, how perilous a moment is this for Mr. Modi? Look, this is a prime minister who's really been a strong political leader, given the kind of mass support he's built, and that is indicative of the number of elections he's continued to win.

But this kind of public dissent that we are seeing on the streets of Delhi, you've got to look at the optics here. This is the capital city of India. You're close to the parliament. You're close to all the ministers, residences, their offices, where you have these mass sort of movements of people and youth, that really is the first time we're seeing this level of dissent against this government. And this definitely could have a political fallout, which the BJP would be a bit concerned with, because we're talking about the youth. So they would be very cautious going forward, which is also why you're seeing these attempts at kind of reaching out to the students through posts on social media. And it remains to be seen what else the government

tries to do at the moment. Aruna Day Mukagi in Delhi. In a previous edition, of the Global News podcast, we covered a story about the tech company Open AI, which revealed that its advanced artificial intelligence systems had gone rogue and hacked another AI company to steal information it needed to pass an eternal evaluation. The AI agents targeted one of the world's largest hubs for sharing AI models known as Hugging Face. My colleague Rob Young spoke to Thomas Wolf, the co-founder of Hugging Face. What did he make of this cyber attack? When it took place roughly 10 days ago, started on the weekend before the past weekend. We were still able to rather quickly identify and stop the progression of the attacker.

At that time, we had no idea if it was a human hacker. We had no idea if it was an AI and what the attacker was looking for, basically. And so now you know that it was an AI autonomous attack, an AI system that had decided to attack yours. What do you make of that? Are you impressed? Are you wowed by the sophistication of it, or are you unnerved by it? You have to know we're really very visible in the AI world, right? And so we are really a regular source for human hacker to attack.

And this for the first time was a very different type of traces. We had like very short time, 17,000 events coming for various IP. And focusing on one of the things that I would say human attacker don't really tackle so much, which is the data set and the place where we store. private evals, right? So I think the first thing for us is it helped us understand what happened when Open AI reached out and say, hey, this was actually our model. But the second thing is, I expect this to become just more frequent in the future, right? This is going to be one of the most common type of cyber attack we'll see. On the positive side, what we saw is the defense that we use,

which is based on open source model. You just have to be able to use them fast to deploy them, Because when an attacker starts to be inside your infrastructure, it's a matter of reacting. But just to be clear what you're saying there, you are saying that as artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, and it appears to be getting more sophisticated almost by the week, these kind of attacks where companies' data is infiltrated, stolen, is just going to become more commonplace. And so is it the case then that no data is actually safe if it is held on a computer? To be honest, in cybersecurity, it's just a regular development, right? We've increasingly had more and more complex tools that enable hacker to attack more and more complex systems.

And the goal has always been we need to match the defense. And so you need to have on the other side roughly the same amount of defense. The main problem right now is some of these models are closed source, so you need to apply for access. And so you don't really have time when you're under attack. go and basically apply for a veto access. So for us, we were fortunate that we know and we use regularly open source model that you can freely download. So we had a lot of defense. That's something that more and more companies will need to have as part of their regular cybersecurity toolbox. And what is your experience of how well defended many companies, many public institutions

actually are from this new breed of cyber attack? Yeah. I think it's also a way of call, right? Thomas Wolfe speaking to Rob Young. In Hong Kong, independent publishing has come under attack after raids and arrests at two bookstores last week, but there's been a response in the form of a slogan. I am a bookstore employee,

which is being shared by booksellers, politicians and activists. The raids are part of the continuing campaign to crush free speech and dissent in Hong Kong. Our correspondent, Stephen MacDonald, is in Beijing. You can't protest in Hong Kong, really. To give you an example, even if you were busking and you sang a song that the government didn't like, where you could find yourself thrown in prison. And the latest hotspot has been bookshops because they were holding out against the broad crackdowns going on by just selling certain books.

And now five people have been arrested in two different bookshops over the last week. Just the third time in recent months, the bookshops have been raised. and it's these little independent bookshops. So bookshop chains are more easy to be contained, if you like, because they're putting their book orders through the censors in Hong Kong and making sure they're not putting books up on the shelves that the government doesn't like. And there are a number of people, presumably quite brave people, who are now walking around the city wearing T-shirts,

saying an innocuous slogan, I am a bookstore employee. Yeah, well, what happened is that there's a photo of one, of the staff of one of these bookshops being taken out of the bookshop, hands behind her back, but looking quite defiant and wearing a black t-shirt with the writing, I'm a bookshop employee. I mean, in Mandarin, it would be Wausha Shru Dian, the Dianyanuan. And it has become a bit of a meme online, especially in Taiwan, which is now the remaining place in the Chinese-speaking world, which,

has these freedoms and people in Taiwan on social media have been spreading this sort of slogan around and actually another spin-off of this has been the sales of a particular book. These independent bookshops that have been raided are said to have been guilty of selling so-called seditious books. Police in Hong Kong haven't said which books but there's been widespread speculation that one particular book entitled let only red flowers bloom identity. and belonging in Xi Jinping's China. Now, this is a book by Emily Fong. As a result of the news that it's that book that's gotten these bookshops into trouble,

in Taiwan, sales of this book have gone through the roof, and the publisher has had to publish 10,000 extra copies this week. And how do people feel in Hong Kong, more widely in China, about the restrictions that they live under? Well, you know, the thing is that in mainland China, people have been used to this for some time. But in Hong Kong, it's a huge change. Before 2019, there were protests all the time there. I went there. We'd regularly cover the candlelight vigil. I went to the last one, the final candlelight vigil marking the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square

crackdown. Now, the idea that you could have a candlelight vigil in that city now, marking Tiananmen Square, is just unthinkable. So the city has completely changed. Stephen MacDonald. Still to come in this podcast. Scientists are telling me that is where the mechanism camels have breaks down. That makes them very weak. So heat waves are cleaning so many camels now. How extreme temperatures are making it too hot, even for camels, in parts of Africa.

This is the Global News podcast. Now to the west coast of Africa and what is the latest tragedy on the Atlantic migration route. More than 140 migrants are now feared dead or missing after their boat ran out of fuel and drifted in the dangerous waters. The authorities in Mauritania say the boat left the Gambia and drifted for several days before their coast guard was able to reach it and rescue 36 people. The United Nations says the route to Spain's Canary Islands is one of the world's deadliest. Rob Young spoke to Ali Neuahead, the head of the field office for the UN's refugee agency in Mauritania.

As you reported, more than 140 refugees and migrants reported dead or missing last week. And actually, they were all-on-one boat with the size of a school bus. It's a bit larger than that, but almost sized like a school bus. They left the Gambia, hoping to reach Spain, but it drifted in the Atlantic for nearly 25 days. And only 36 people have survived.

The latest information that we have last night, as my team and I were following the situation. We received reports from local fishers that additional bodies were still being covered at sea. Unfortunately, this is a painful reminder that even with all the offers of Gossal authorities, humanitarian partner to save lives, the Atlantic Roots remains one of the deadliest crossing in the world. That's quite unfortunate. And so is your assumption then that when the boat set off, it just didn't have enough fuel to make that journey to the country to the country? Canary Island. Well, this is definitely, definitely the main reasons based on the accounts or

testimonies of the survivors. But actually, there is as well another reason behind that as well is the lack of food. This is as well another reason. So that's why people, based on what they told us, they started drinking water from the sea. So this is unfortunately just aggravated the whole situation. And among the survivors, there were children, there were women. I still remember actually that's quite striking to see two children trembling, being helped out of the boat. They were the only ones left of the families. Everyone they had set out with was gone. And what do you know of the 140 who are missing, feared, dead?

Unfortunately, we have very limited information about them, but we do know there are from multiple, from various nationalities, mainly Senegalese, Gambian, millions. The reason, yeah, unfortunately, we don't have a lot of information about that. But the latest one that the bodies are still being recovered until now, even after one week of the incident. Ali Nui had from the UN's refugee agency. To Southeast Europe, where Albanian police have used tear gas and water cannon against protesters outside parliament, it's the latest confrontation over a tourism project linked to President Trump's family. Scientists and activists say the project, The project to build luxury hotels has already caused irreparable damage to a once pristine coast.

The protests have now been going on for more than 50 days. The protesters are calling for the Prime Minister, Eddie Rama, to resign. Emilio Krikio has this report from Tirano. This has been the sound in the streets of Tirana every evening for the past two months. Protesters gather outside the offices of the embattled Prime Minister, Eddie Rama, and then march throughout the various neighbourhoods in the city. No more dictatorship, they shout. This is the final battle, Rama to prison.

What originally sparked over environmental concerns around a proposed luxury resort project backed by Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has evolved into a wider movement against corruption, democratic backsliding, and calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister and his government. I'm here, I'm protesting against the government. Our land has been sold.

Our hospitals, we have no medicine. Our governments corrupt Albanian. It's been suffering so many years. We're here for the people, for the country. We need a new government. We need to bring this government down. Arlind Kori is the head of one of the parliamentary opposition parties backing the protests. One of the main and most important slogans of this protest has been Albania's not for sale.

And it is also a message to the international community, the US, but also in the European Union, which means that, of course, Albania is eager to become. part of the European Union, Ordenia, needs its international partners, but we also need respect. We need to be treated as equals. And we need that our, for example, EU accession process be delivered on basis of merit and on basis of real democratizing reforms, and not only as a geopolitical gift to our corrupt politicians. Prime Minister Edirama is so far refusing to resign and says the president, protests are a sign of a healthy democracy.

Gressahasa, a researcher at the Faculty of Law and Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz, explains, however, that this is the most pressure he has been under throughout his 13 years of rule. What we're seeing since two months now is an accumulated anger of 35 years. Albania emerged from one of the harshest communist dictatorships in the Eastern Bloc. and what replays that dictatorship during these 35 years has been just different forms of semi-arocracies and people have had enough of that. Though it is yet to be seen whether these protests can actually bring about governmental change,

they are certainly the centre of political attention in the country now and there is a sense that the coming weeks and months will be consequential for the country's future. Emilio Cricio in Tirana. After a tumultuous and uncertain build-up, the Commonwealth Games are here. The sporting event was supposed to have been held in the state of Victoria in Australia, but it backed out after deciding they weren't worth the escalating cost. So a scaled-back event has been quickly organised in Glasgow, Scotland.

The Games originally started as the British. Empire Games in 1930 for countries that were then part of the British Empire. They changed to the Commonwealth Games when those nations started to get their independence. Despite rebranding efforts, some have questioned their relevance in the modern world. Athletics correspondent Ed Harry will be at the opening ceremony. It's 10 sports this time. Six of those will integrate parisport events. Compare that 10 to the 19 sports we had in Birmingham four years ago. There were 280 medal events in 2022. Here in Glasgow will have 250. We know why it is a slim down games because Glasgow really wasn't supposed to be hosting

it at all. I was here in 2014. They did a fantastic job. They used and they filled iconic venues like Hamden Park. It was the home of Scottish football, but for a glorious week or so, it became home instead to Usain Bolt, David Radisha and the like. This time, Glasgow agreeing to step in, genuinely secured the immediate future of the games. There was a change of governance in the Australian state of Victoria. The new Premier pulled them out of their contract. They had to pay sizable compensation to get out of it, but it led to a period where there was no host at all. And then in September 2024, Glasgow was announced. Since then, in recent months, has come the news that India is going to be hosting the centenary edition of the games in 2030. We can expect that to expand

back to the kind of size that we would usually expect. But for a while, it appeared that Birmingham 2022 could have been the very last Commonwealth Games. Thankfully, that wasn't the case. No Hamden Park this time. They've had to be pretty creative with some of the venues they are using. But look at those core sports like athletics, swimming, track cycling, basketball, boxing. It feels like a Commonwealth Games. It's going to look a little bit different, but it's finally here. Ed, Harry, and Ed was mentioning there the slimmed-down nature of the Games. Laura Kenny, a former British cyclist and a multiple Olympic and Commonwealth Games gold medal winner, sees the way the Glasgow Games are being run as a template for the future.

What Glasgow have done here by packaging it, by using infrastructure and using facilities and hotels instead of having a village, and putting it together that way and saving money that way, it can actually, it's going to show people, not just the competition, World Games. It's going to show the Olympics and other sports, actually, how it can be run. Laura Kenny, and the Games will be officially opened by Britain's King Charles in a ceremony at the Hydro, Scotland's largest indoor arena in Glasgow on Thursday night. Camels are known as the ships of the desert. They're one of the most resilient animals in the world when it comes to extreme heat. It seems even they are no longer immune to rising temperatures.

Camels across large parts of North Africa are now suffering from stress, fatigue and dehydration. High temperatures are also causing foot blisters and skin burns, as well as a rise in camel deaths. Our environment correspondent Navin Singh Khadka is following the story. We're talking about 45 plus, 50 plus degrees Celsius of temperature, you know, at daytime and nighttime as well, and then the intensity. So when you have this extreme temperature condition, then scientific. Scientists start telling me that is where the mechanism camels have breaks down. That makes them very weak. So heat waves are claiming so many camels now. Because it's part of what camels are. They're able to store water in their humps. They're able to walk for incredible distances through the desert. They get there safely because of the way their bodies have made.

You're suggesting that their bodies aren't working, aren't built for what is out there now. Yes. So scientists are telling me the heat is already the catalyst and not to forget water availability. Because of heat, water is becoming scarce, as is vegetation, food. So what happens is, if they can't have water for so many days, they become weak too. And that fighting mechanism against heat, that is a challenge. You've been speaking also to camel herders. What have they been telling you? In Horn of Africa, in Somalia or in Ethiopia, the herders are telling us that it's mainly the calves that are dying

because calves are very vulnerable. And then also disease prevalence, less milk, all kind of infections, even veterinary doctors start confirming this. What they explained to us is they never now get cool air. It's all hot air. In Ethiopia, for instance, the herders were telling us, they have moved on to places south where there is comparatively vegetation and water. But again, the question is if the warming continues and its drought condition, mind you, this region is seeing another round of drought. If this continues, it is about where do they go for good? That's the question. Navin Singh, Khadka.

And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at global podcast at BBC.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global NewsPod. And don't forget our sister podcast, the global story, which goes in-depth and beyond the headlines, on one big story. This edition of the Global News podcast was mixed by Alana Bowles

and the producer was Ed Horton. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritson. Until next time, goodbye.