Global News Podcast - Israel says troops are preparing for a possible ground incursion in Lebanon

Episode Date: September 25, 2024

The army chief told troops to be ready for a cross-border ground operation. The UN says more than 90,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon since Monday. Also: walking on the moon at Europe's lunar life simulator.

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. Life and death were two very realistic co-existing possibilities in my life. I didn't even think I'd make it to like my 16th birthday, to be honest. I grew up being scared of who I was. Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference.

It's the hardest step. But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care. To hear more stories of recovery, visit CAMH.ca. second expert witness. And an answer. What will be the solution? Explore the trends, forces and ideas shaping the world with Inquiry from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway and this edition is published in the early hours of Thursday the 26th of September. The head of the Israeli military tells troops to be ready for a possible ground invasion of Lebanon.

We hear from Beirut and northern Israel. Kenyan police are accused of using excessive force when clamping down on protesters in June and why children's eyesight appears to be getting worse. Also in this podcast... The idea long term is that we're going to use small underwater vehicles to do that job. The challenge is to scale it to the Arctic scale, so millions of square kilometres. A new plan to tackle melting ice sheets. Is Israel preparing for a ground invasion of Lebanon? It certainly looks that way,

with the armed forces calling up two reserve brigades for, quote, operational missions in the northern arena. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the fight would go on until northern Israel was safe from Hezbollah attacks. I cannot detail everything we are doing, but I can tell you one thing. We are determined to return our residents in the north safely to their homes. We are striking Hezbollah with blows it never imagined. We are doing this with full force. We are doing this with strategy. One thing I promise you, we will not rest until they return home. The head of Israel's armed forces, Herzi Helavi, was more explicit,

telling troops near the border with Lebanon that Israeli boots would soon enter enemy territory. You hear the planes up here? We are attacking all day. This is both to prepare the ground for your potential entry and to continue hitting Hezbollah. Today, Hezbollah has expanded its circle of fire and later in the day it will receive a very strong response. You will prepare. Our diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams spent the day on Israel's northern border and had this assessment of how events may unfold.

Clearly today did mark a shift because we had the head of the army, as you just played that clip, saying publicly for the first time that Israeli troops may end up on the ground inside southern Lebanon. This is something that the head of Israel's northern command is said to favour, the creation of some kind of buffer zone along the northern border. And so here we have someone on camera, the head of the army of buffer zone along the northern border. And so here we have someone on camera, the head of the army, saying that this could happen. The reason, obviously, is because I think there is a recognition that despite the absolute pounding that the Israeli Air Force is delivering and has been delivering for the last several days

on Hezbollah's forces in southern Lebanon and elsewhere in Lebanon, the notion that you can clear them away from the border adequately without sending troops in is pretty unlikely. We were in Kiryat Shimonad, just north of here, right next to the Lebanese border earlier today. We saw a town deserted. We saw rockets fired from across the border being intercepted overhead. Reminders that the situation along the border remains completely untenable. And the Israeli government is saying emphatically that its war aim, its principal war aim, frankly, at the moment, is to bring Israeli citizens back to their homes along the northern border. And it is unlikely that that can happen without some kind of either diplomatic breakthrough, or if that doesn't work,

some kind of military incursion on the ground. No one with any institutional memory within the Israeli Defense Forces will relish the prospect of going back into southern Lebanon. There was the war in 2006, but of course, before that, in the 80s and 90s, a 20-year occupation of southern Lebanon, an attempt to create an ally with the Christian forces in Lebanon. It all cost a great deal of blood and treasure. The Israeli public became profoundly disillusioned with it. And eventually, in the year 2000, the Israeli military pulled out. I remember watching the last Israeli soldier closing the gate as the troops finally left,

much to their and the Israeli public's relief. So if the government is thinking of going back in on the ground now, it is going to have to sell this in a way that the Israeli public will buy. Paul Adams in northern Israel. Over the border in Lebanon, people are desperate to get away from the Israeli air attacks. This British resident of Beirut, whose Lebanese husband is disabled, says the sense of fear in the capital is palpable. On West Beirut, from everything that you will have seen and heard about the atrocities of last week, mean that people are very, very afraid, and you can taste the fear in the air. It's all around. And of course, those who live in the south of Beirut and are having to evacuate are coming to Beirut in huge numbers to try and find family and friends or sanctuary in some sort of safe area. So it's tension. It's tension all around.

A third of Lebanon's population come from families that have already fled their homes at least once, either in Syria or many years ago on land that now forms part of Israel, Gaza or the occupied West Bank. They're now being joined by thousands of internally displaced Lebanese. Jan Eglen, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, says Lebanon is on the brink. This society will break. Beirut is so overwhelmed, so are the other cities. It has to stop. This madness has to stop. We are, as aid organisations, incapable of meeting the new needs. It's unbearable. There is no real options but to end this enormous aerial campaign against Lebanon and, of course, Hezbollah to stop with these indiscriminate rockets going into Israel.

And he had this warning for the Western world. Hezbollah said that they started with the rockets in solidarity with Gaza. I mean, it's not a good way of showing solidarity to send indiscriminate rockets anywhere. But indeed, yes, it's a ripple effect. And the rest of the world does not understand that the West doesn't treat occupation of Palestinians like the West is treating occupation of Ukrainians. It's seen as industrial-scale hypocrisy.

Jan Egland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council. For more on the plight of those caught up in the fighting in Lebanon, I spoke to our correspondent in Beirut, Hugo Bechega. People are exhausted. It's been almost a year of this conflict. And I mean, the images of those airstrikes, people believe that residential areas are being hit, are being targeted, that civilians are again being targeted by these attacks. And obviously we've seen that tens of thousands of people are now trying to leave southern Lebanon, and they're coming to places like Beirut,

where schools have been turned into shelters, putting a lot of pressure on public services, hospitals as well under a lot of pressure. I actually interviewed the health minister yesterday, and he talked about the pressure on the health service, hospitals, places that are struggling to cope with everything that's been happening. So far, it seems that the authorities have been able to respond to what's happening, but if these attacks continue, the public services may become overwhelmed

because of the sheer number of people who are in need of help. And if it gets worse, if Israel does send in ground forces, how will the civilians respond and how will Hezbollah respond? We're seeing now that the attempts by civilians in southern Lebanon to leave and to come to places like Beirut continue. And for Hezbollah, we haven't heard from the man making those decisions, Hassan Nasrallah. He hasn't given a speech. He hasn't really reacted since these airstrikes started. Last week, he gave a speech. And essentially,

he said, you can invade and we are ready to fight. And Hezbollah has been saying they have surprises ready for the Israelis if there is an invasion. But I think it's a very difficult situation for them because they've been weakened, they've been degraded, their communication network has been infiltrated, their military leadership has essentially been decimated. So I think it's going to be very difficult for them to try to organise any kind of significant response if there is a ground invasion. But we'll see. It does feel tonight, though,

that we're closer to this possible ground invasion by the Israeli military. Hugo Bochega in Beirut. The Ukrainian president has accused Russia of planning attacks on Ukraine's nuclear power facilities. Volodymyr Zelensky was speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York. He's hoping to use the visit to secure continued support from international allies. Russia hasn't commented. Our correspondent in Kiev, Jessica Parker, has more details. The message was designed to be stark. President

Zelensky used his UN address to emphasise a claim by Kiev that Russia has been obtaining images and information about Ukraine's nuclear power plants. He said Moscow may be plotting to attack these sites to disconnect them from the energy grid. If, God forbid, Russia causes a nuclear disaster at one of our nuclear power plants, radiation will not respect state borders. And unfortunately, various nations could feel the devastating effects. Mr. Zelensky is trying to refocus the world's attention on the Russian invasion. Tomorrow, he'll have talks with US President Joe Biden in a likely bid to ask for more weapons support, financial assistance and future security guarantees in what's being billed as a victory

plan. It's a timely meeting as Donald Trump has again suggested he could curtail vital US support for Kyiv if he returns to the White House. Jessica Parker in Kiev. Well, the US announced a further $375 million worth of military aid for Ukraine on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Donald Trump doubled down on his opposition to support for the country, accusing Vladimir Zelensky of refusing to make a deal to end the war with Russia. He was speaking at an election rally in North Carolina. His Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, is also on the road, setting out details of her economic policies at a campaign stop in the vital swing state of Pennsylvania. And that's my cue to remind you that we are doing a special Q&A podcast on the US presidential election in a couple of weeks. So if you have a question

you'd like to put to our AmeriCast colleagues in Washington, then please send us an email to globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk or tweet us at Global News Pod. And thanks to those who've already sent in voice notes. The 25th of June was a dark day for Kenya. Six people were killed when police opened fire on protesters outside Parliament in Nairobi. They started shooting after failing to disperse the demonstrators with tear gas and water cannon. Some protesters, who were calling on President Ruto to step down over planned tax rises, managed to storm the parliamentary building. Now Amnesty International says an independent investigation into the shooting is urgently needed, as I heard from Richard Kugoy in Nairobi.

They say that the Kenyan police violated the law, applied excessive force against the protesters, which led to the deaths of six people and hundreds of people who were injured. And so they're saying the conduct of the police is in question, and that's why they're saying they need a judicial commission of inquiry. So then they can establish those who are responsible and they can be held to account. And is that likely to happen? Are the authorities expected to agree to an independent inquiry?

That's the big question, because so far, the Office of the Attorney General, the police have not responded even to questions, inquiries from Amnesty International and the six human rights groups that were investigating this matter. It's difficult to see how the police will respond to this because the police have been defending themselves, saying that they did what they could within their ability at the time. Because they were saying that people who were criminals had infiltrated the protest. And so it was in their interest to protect businesses and ordinary Kenyans who were exposed to this threat. So police have been really very defensive about this. And I guess it's just a wait and see. Now, we're three months on from the events of the 25th of June.

What is the situation like in Kenya now? I think I would describe it realistically as a sense of unease. The fact that of course we've had a semblance of order and quietness across the country. It seems like the issues that the protesters were raising have not been adequately addressed, despite the fact that the current government seemed to have found a political solution. But the issues to do with the economy, and especially majority of the young people who are so disenfranchised because they feel there are no prospects, especially for employment, because of the state of the economy. They feel that their grievances were not really hard. And so we're hearing from analysts saying that we're sitting sort of like on a ticking time bomb. And that's why the political establishment really needs to hear, listen and to respond to the issues. And do the police in Kenya have a reputation as being particularly violent when dealing with demonstrations? Historically,

the police have been known to respond to protesters with excessive force. They don't really have a very good reputation and that's why they've been subjected to countless initiatives to reform the police force in Kenya. Richard Kugoy in Nairobi. Expert witnesses have told a hearing into the Ocean Gate sub-disaster what might have caused the Titan submersible to break apart. The US Coast Guard inquiry is entering its final days. Five people were killed last year when the craft suffered a catastrophic implosion on its way to see the wreck of the Titanic. Here's our science editor Rebecca Murrell. The evidence presented focused on the Titanic. Here's our science editor, Rebecca Murrell. The evidence presented focused on the submersible's hull, the part of the craft where

the passengers were. Much of it was destroyed by the implosion, but investigators have been analysing some of the remaining pieces that were scattered across the seafloor. The hull was made from layers of carbon fibre, a highly unusual material for a sub because it's not reliable under pressure. Images of the wreckage show how those layers of carbon fibre had separated, a known problem called delamination, and in some places the material had also cracked. It was not confirmed that the hull was the first part of the sub to fail, but the details suggest it's now the focus of the investigation. The US Coast Guard also heard evidence about a loud bang that passengers heard during a dive in 2022. At the time, it was suggested this was made by the metal frame around Titan

but a new analysis of sensors on the sub suggests that the noise signalled some kind of change to the fabric of the hull and the way it was able to respond to the pressures of the deep. Science editor Rebecca Murrell. And still to come on the Global News Podcast. They are our direct cousins with whom we share an ancient relative with chimpanzees about six million years ago, with gorillas about eight million years ago. Spain considers giving new rights to protect great apes.

Life and death were two very realistic coexisting possibilities in my life. I didn't even think I'd make it to like my 16th birthday, to be honest. I grew up being scared of who I was. Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference. It's the hardest step. But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care.

To hear more stories of recovery, visit CAMH.ca. What does Hezbollah want? Why is Kenya getting involved in Haiti? What can the world's biggest iceberg tell us? The Inquiry. One big question. Can we trust Google? Four expert witnesses.

Time for our second expert witness. And an answer. What will be the solution? Explore the trends, forces and ideas shaping the world with The Inquiry from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. The UN chief, Antonio Guterres, has told a high-level meeting at the United Nations that rising sea levels threaten to create a tide of misery for millions,

with intense storm surges, coastal erosion and flooding. Part of the problem is that melting in the Arctic creates a vicious circle. As the ice vanishes, it exposes the darker ocean surface, which absorbs more of the sun's energy, which in turn accelerates warming. But scientists are working on a possible solution, pumping seawater onto the ice to make it thicker. I spoke to Andrea Ceccolini, head of the British firm Real Ice. So this is called ice thickening, and it consists in pumping seawater at the beginning of the winter from under the sea ice to the top of the sea ice.

So what this does, it creates an extra layer of ice because the water in contact with the very cold air temperature will freeze very quickly. In addition to that, what we are doing is, because there's normally a layer of snow on top of the sea ice, by freezing that layer of snow, we also reduce the insulation between the air and the bottom of the ice. So the ice will naturally continue to grow thicker through the rest of the winter. So there is an extra gain that we can observe at the end of the winter. And how does this work practically?

Do you have boats there or do you put pumps on the ice itself? You make a hole in the ice and you use a submersible pump to actually draw the water from under the ice to the top of the ice. So the water only needs to travel a few centimetres. Just pumps which have a very high flow and very little power consumption so we can be very efficient. This is how we're testing it now. But the idea long term is that we're going to use small underwater vehicles to do that job, because obviously the challenge is to scale it to the Arctic scale, so millions of square kilometres. That will be quite a feat. How's it going so far in terms of your results?

They've been very promising. We've been in the Arctic twice, in February 2023 in Alaska and in January this year in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Canada. We re-iced last time we went an area, if you want, of a football pitch for around 25 centimetres on top of the ice by just flooding the area with water. So we created roughly, to give an idea, 1,000 tons of new ice. And this was just a few days of pumping. Then we went back in May to check the final measurements. And we found that the area we re-iced was actually 50 centimeters thicker than the control area. So there was an extra 25 centimetres extra growth compared to the non-re-iced area that we gained, which was the promising part that we wanted to validate. So it sounds like it's made a big difference there. When might this be able to be

scaled up across the Arctic? It will take a few years. First of all, we need to make sure that we can actually go to bigger areas where we can observe that the ice at the end of the summer actually lasts a few more weeks or months. So it can expose its bright surface to the sun and reflect a lot of solar radiation to keep the world cooler, if you want. So we'll try this winter with a one square kilometer area. But then we also need to demonstrate that there's no side effects. We need to show that wildlife, environment, local populations are not affected by our work, and once that is done, we can give it to whoever wants to use it as a tool to cool the planet.

Andrea Ceccolini, head of the firm Real Ice. Children's eyesight is steadily getting worse, with one in three now short-sighted, unable to see things in the distance clearly, according to a new study. It warns that short-sightedness is a growing health concern around the world, set to affect millions more children by 2050. Victoria Uwunkunda asked Professor Kathy Weiss, a paediatric eye specialist from the University of Alabama in the US, why this is happening.

You know, researchers aren't exactly sure. We do know that this increase in the number of people and children who are getting more nearsighted precedes, you know, the widespread use of electronic devices. And so, you know, we're not really sure exactly why it could be related to not getting outdoors as much. There's certainly a genetic component to short-sightedness, but it doesn't explain what the environment seems to be doing to the eye. So what are the worst affected areas or places? There are several Asian countries where 90% of the population has nearsightedness. So we're not sure if that is because those heavily populated areas tend to have people indoors more,

people in high rises, or if it's that genetic influence to it. In the US, we know that in the early 1970s, about 25% of Americans had nearsightedness. And in around 2000, about 42% had it. And so almost half. We also know that good research done in Australia suggests that by 2050, 50% of the world population will be nearsighted. So it's happening everywhere for the most part. You'll see it less in countries where outdoor work is primary. In Australia, actually, they have less nearsightedness and more skin cancer because they're outdoors more. What could promote healthy eyesight? How could we reverse this issue? Because this has tripled between 1990 and 2023, up to 36%. First, early detection is going to be important. The nearsighted eye is too long, so we can't

actually reverse nearsightedness yet. We do know that much literature suggests that we can slow down this short sightedness and slow down the growth of the eye, which is great. And that's with interventions like special contact lenses, multifocal contact lenses. Atropine is often used. That's an eye drop to help slow down nearsightedness. And there are special spectacle lenses that may help as well. We would love to prevent the onset or delay the onset of nearsightedness. We're not quite there yet, but there is emerging research that suggests that we could do that. I think what families can do first is get their preschoolers outside, get the two and three and four-year-olds outside to get that good outdoor light that the eyes seem to like. And then, you know, before school or when they start school, you know, kids should have, you know, pretty good vision, 20-20 vision. And if you see kids squinting or, you know, holding up things very close to their eyes, then that's a suggestion

that their eyes may be short-sighted. So getting a vision screening or a comprehensive eye exam would be really important. And because the earlier we can identify near-sightedness in a child, the better we can treat it. Professor Cathy Weiss of the University of Alabama. Spain is considering giving new rights to great apes, paving the way for them to be protected from harmful commercial and scientific exploitation. This group of primates, which includes gorillas, orangutans, bonobos and chimpanzees, is thought to be close enough to us humans to warrant a change in the law.

If approved, the legislation would be a world first, going much further than recognising animals merely as sentient beings. Gillie Forrester is a professor at the University of Sussex here in England, specialising in the behaviour and brain organisation of human and non-human great apes. So how closely related are they to us? Incredibly close. There's this common misconception sometimes that chimpanzees and gorillas are like a version of our ancestral selves, but they are incredible species in their own right. They are our direct cousins with whom we share an ancient relative with chimpanzees about 6 million years ago, with gorillas about 8 million years ago.

So our brains, our behaviors, our bodies are all very similar. It's true that our ape cousins don't have human language and they can't tell us what we're thinking or they're thinking, but this doesn't really make them less intelligent. And we know that many different animal species have different ways to communicate. They use a lot of sign language. They use a lot of body posture. And in fact, we even know from human studies that most of what we're communicating isn't really through our verbal speech. It's through the way we move our eyes around our bodies, our faces, and we get more information about people's intentions from their body language than we do from their actual words. You know, I'm a great ape, you're a great ape, we're all primates. And from my perspective, we're all people, human or non-human great apes.

And I know from my own research and from research of my colleagues, that great apes share a very similar experience of the world to us, not just like how they see and hear, but also how they feel and how they think. So they have joy, they laugh, they grieve, they can deceive. And in fact, they're evolved to be very intelligent in their environments. And they could beat you and me hands down in a test of spatial mapping, for example. Jilly Forrester. A large, rather ordinary-looking warehouse in the German city of Cologne is the closest you can get to walking on the moon without leaving Earth.

The European Space Agency says its facility, known as Luna, is the world's most faithful recreation of the lunar surface. And as Richard Hamilton reports, it's just been officially inaugurated. Inside the nine-metre-high warehouse, encased in black walls and ceilings, lies a replica of the soil that covers the lunar surface. The 700 square metre terrain is strewn with craters, lumps and rocks and smothered in a fine pale grey powder. More than 50 years ago, astronauts on NASA's Apollo missions worried that their spacesuits would not protect them from this fine material on the moon,

which was the result of being repeatedly hit by asteroids. Inside this building, the simulated dust has been ground from a volcanic rock found in a mountain range near Cologne. Matthias Maurer is an astronaut with the European Space Agency and has served as an advisor for Luna over the past decade. So this facility is worldwide the best facility to prepare missions to the moon. We have everything that we need to test and prepare ourselves for the moon. It's a facility that not even NASA has or any other international partners. So we believe that in the future, many people will come to Cologne before flying to the moon. I hope also all the NASA astronauts will train here before their

mission to the moon. The facility will also soon be home to a roving artificial sun and an intricate harness system dangling from the ceiling to allow astronauts to experience the bouncy reduced gravity of the moon. Luna's floor will also be frozen to a depth of three meters to let astronauts practice drilling in search of water ice. Alexander Gerst, who's another European astronaut, says the more we understand about the moon, the more we understand about the Earth. The moon is very special in that it's crucially important for our understanding of our own planet Earth, of ourselves, of where we come from. The moon is basically a twin of planet Earth. We don't know quite how it got into existence, probably by a big cosmic collision.

And it contains a lot of rocks that are billions of years old that are similar to the ones on Earth, which we don't find on Earth anymore. We cannot study them here. If we go to the moon, we can study, we can read it like a history book. This facility has opened several years later than planned, delayed by the pandemic and the discovery of protected lizards at the site, just as construction was about to start. The project is part of a joint venture between the European Space Agency

and NASA for their upcoming Artemis mission. The Europeans are building the service module for the Artemis spacecraft, as well as the living quarters for an orbiting space station. As the world sets its sights on the moon once again, the hope is that this will play a critical role in preparing for humanity's return. Richard Hamilton. And that is all from us for now, but the Global News Podcast will be back very soon. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll and produced by Stephanie Tillotson. Our editors, Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye. Transcription by ESO. Translation by — answer. What will be the solution? Explore the trends, forces and ideas shaping the world with Inquiry from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.