Global News Podcast - Lebanon says new Israeli air strikes kill at least 22 people

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

Lebanon says Israeli air strikes in two Beirut neighbourhoods have killed at least 22 people and wounded more than 100. Also: thousands rescued in Florida after Hurricane Milton swept through the US state.

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 Valerie Sanderson and in the early hours of Friday the 11th of October, these are our main stories. In Lebanon, the health ministry says at least 22 people have

been killed in Israeli airstrikes on Beirut. A United Nations Commission of Inquiry has accused Israel of carrying out a deliberate policy of destroying Gaza's health care system. The emergency services in Florida rescued more than 4,000 people after Hurricane Milton swept through the state. Also in this podcast, remembering the assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy's widow, Ethel. I thought we'd make a dent. And I think we did. And I think that a lot of people have made some sacrifice in their lives to make it a better world. There's a lot more we can do. Who's died at the age of 96. We begin this podcast in Lebanon, where at just after eight o'clock on Thursday evening local time, Israeli airstrikes hit two adjacent, densely packed neighbourhoods

in the capital, Beirut. At that time of night, many residents would have been in their homes or on the streets. Lebanon's health ministry says at least 22 people have been killed and more than 100 wounded. The BBC spoke to a doctor outside one hospital which had received some of the casualties. Doctor, could I ask, are the people you're treating civilians as far as you can see? Every single one we received was a civilian.

And any children among them? Yes, there were children. Thick plumes of smoke could be seen rising from the scene as rescue workers used torches to search through the rubble for survivors. Our correspondent Anna Foster is in Beirut. This was another particularly large blast and the location is what is notable about this. So many nights we've been reporting these Israeli airstrikes in the southern suburbs. But this, again, for the third time now, is an area of central Beirut, very close to

downtown, very close to those towering old office blocks, very close to the UN building as well. And that plume of smoke that I was watching on the skyline earlier has dissipated now, but there is still an awful lot of activity at that site. 22 people, we know, were killed so far, more than 100 injured, because this, unlike the southern suburbs, is not an area that's emptied out, that people have largely left now. I was there this afternoon and it was busy. There was the sound of an Israeli drone very loud and low in the sky.

People were incredibly nervous. They feared another strike, and then when night fell, it came. And we understand the Israelis were targeting a specific Hezbollah leader. Yeah, the suggestion is, and we don't know this for sure yet, but the suggestion in local media is that they were targeting a man called Wafik Safa, who's a powerful figure within Hezbollah. He has a lot of influence within the group, not just, you know, the sort of the wider group, but also on the political side as well. The suggestion is that he was very involved in, you know, some of the external negotiations that were going on. So that seems is who Israel were potentially trying to target tonight. We don't know for sure. Often

Israel will come out latterly and say who it was. And then Hezbollah will often make some sort of statement themselves as well. But one thing we do know is this was a busy residential area and this strike came without any warning. Often we have these evacuation warnings, not always, particularly for the evening strikes, but there was nothing like that this evening. And separately, Anna, the UN Peacekeeping Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, is saying that three of their bases were fired at by Israel over the past couple of days and two peacekeepers have been injured.

What more has emerged about that? Because we understand that a lot of European nations are very angry about this and that the Israelis have responded. Yeah, I was talking to UNIFIL earlier. You're right to say that there has been a lot of European response about this. And UNIFIL were telling me real grave concern because these are long-established UNIFIL bases. So these are not new things that have sprung up. They are buildings that everybody in the vicinity is well aware of where they are

and what they are. UNIFIL in their statement used the word deliberately, deliberately targeted by Israel. And they are extremely concerned. And that is a concern that you're seeing echoed from other European leaders as well, because, you know, the fighting that is going on in the south is between Israel's military and Hezbollah. So UN peacekeepers should not be involved and they should not be being fired at, nor actually should the Lebanese armed forces, because this is not a Lebanese state battle either. Now, Israel, through their ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, came out a couple of hours later. He said that they were encouraging UNIFIL peacekeepers to move away,

to maybe move back and sort of pull away from that area where the fighting was happening. But there is, I think, real concern and, you know, a certain sort of anger, actually, from UNIFIL that peacekeepers are being targeted. Because, you know, whatever military sort of anger, actually, from UNIFIL that peacekeepers are being targeted, because, you know, whatever military action Israel is doing in the south of Lebanon, after we saw that ground invasion, you know, a week and a half ago now, they'd called it limited and localised. And there is starting to be a feeling now that what is being seen in the south of Lebanon is not necessarily looking like that. Anna Foster in Beirut. As well as its offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon,

Israel is still pressing ahead with its fight against Hamas in Gaza. A new UN report says Israel is carrying out a deliberate policy of destroying Gaza's health care system with actions that amount to war crimes. The independent investigators accuse Israel of relentlessly attacking medical facilities and killing, torturing and detaining medical personnel. The UN investigators also say that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups have been guilty of war crimes. Our correspondent in Jerusalem, John Donison, told me more about the report.

This has been authored by the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillai. And what she has said in this report, and it's pretty damning, she's going to present it to the UN in the next few days. But she's issued a statement today saying that Israel has been carrying out relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities during the war and that that constitutes in her view a war crime she also said that Israel's military had been deliberately killing and torturing medical staff who they'd taken into custody. Now, the BBC has carried out an investigation which certainly showed evidence that doctors who were captured in Gaza had been abused while in captivity. But this is a pretty damning report. But it also says, doesn't it,

about the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza? Yes, it says Hamas has also been committing war crimes in its treatment of hostages being held in Gaza and denying them medical treatment. And I should say that this body, the UN Commission for Human Rights, is just seen by Israel as a completely biased organisation. Statements they've made throughout the past year, Israel has rejected fiercely.

And I think Israel can be expected to do the same with this one. And tell us about the UNRWA offices, which we understand Israel wants to repossess. Yes, so this has just been reported in the Israeli media this afternoon and what's being reported is that the main UNRWA headquarters in East Jerusalem are to be, I suppose, repossessed by the Israeli authorities and turned into some 1,400 housing units. Now, we did go to UNRWA for a response, and they said they had learnt about this development only from the Israeli media, and they've had nothing in writing about this matter from the Israeli authorities.

But you'll know that, of course, Israel basically is wanting to see UNRWA's operations in the Palestinian territories, including Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, shut down. John Donison in Jerusalem. Next to the US state of Florida, where rescue workers are making their way through the floodwaters and debris left by Hurricane Milton. At each 10 people reported have been killed, more than 4,000 have been rescued.

Teams of people on foot and in boats have been knocking on doors looking for survivors. One video shows a team in Tampa Bay rescuing a 14-year-old who was floating on a piece of debris in deep water. While the hurricane has moved offshore into the Atlantic Ocean, a storm surge warning remains for Florida's east coast, and some of the most severe damage is being reported there. Florida's chief financial officer, Jimmy Petronas, spoke to the BBC before heading to the area. A lot of interest and focus was on the landfall in the eye of the storm, where it made its initial impact to the state.

The outer bands at the other side of the state on the Atlantic coast in St. Lucie County, just directly north of Palm Beach, those areas were devastated 30 tornadoes touched down, about 130 tornado warnings. So to me, right now, that's where the most amount of violent damage has taken place. President Biden says Congress should return from recess to approve relief funding for the affected areas. Let's hear now from two of our correspondents in different parts of Florida. Gordon Carrera has been traveling down the west coast from the city of Tampa. Tampa was spared the worst, but just down the Florida coast, Milton's toll is clear. Country Lakes Retirement Community lies just north of where the hurricane made its landfall. Roofs have been ripped off and some of the roads here are flooded and impassable.

We found Sharon returning to her home. It was one of the worst hit. I was hoping it would have been better, but I guess it's not as bad as it could be. I could have come here and the whole thing would have been ripped out, you know. Others in this tight-knit community had decided to hunker down in their homes for the hurricane and see what it brought. Stella was cleaning up after a long night. Oh, it went boom!

And I was in the closet and I was like, oh, my God, what was that? And Russ says the window blew and we I woke up Bobby and he was like, what's going on? What the hell's going on? What the heck's going on? After apocalyptic warnings from officials all the way up to President Biden, there is a sense of relief today that the second hurricane in two weeks did not bring more damage, as Governor Ron DeSantis made clear. What we can say is the storm was significant, but thankfully this was not the worst case scenario. The storm did weaken before landfall and the storm surge, as initially reported, has not been as significant overall as what was observed for Hurricane Helene.

But even with that in mind, communities like Country Lakes know that recovering from Milton will still take time. And now to the Atlantic coast where our correspondent Sumisa Mascanda is in Palm Beach County. We are in Wellington. This is a town about an hour north of Miami. And we're here because this is an area where one of the tornadoes that Hurricane Milton spawned just absolutely tore through. So we're in a neighborhood right now. You probably hear this noise, but that is a sound of chainsaws because you have really dozens and dozens of people around us here who are actually cutting through massive tree trunks, through tons of debris, and they're trying to move it away from some of these houses. The damage has been

absolutely extraordinary. We saw that the tornado tore through houses here. It's really remarkable because in this neighborhood, the majority of people working to clean up are actually people from the community here. So they're gathering fistfuls of palm trees and twigs and branches and moving it out of people's backyards. There's a real community spirit here, certainly, especially because people were expecting Hurricane Milton, a bit of wind, a bit of rain. They were not expecting this tornado. And it was really shocking to people who live here. So everyone was told to leave, and they were warned if they didn't leave, they would die. What's happened with fatalities across the state?

We have seen some fatalities, and indeed, actually, just north of where we are, in St. Lucie County, there were four fatalities. Those were actually due to two tornadoes that passed through in some of the areas along the west coast, the Gulf Coast, where the storm made impact. Police are going door to door. Authorities are going door to door to see how people are faring, those who decided to stay in their homes. We don't have a firm number on fatalities just yet.

We also know that millions of people did heed those evacuation warnings ahead of time. They headed to some of the evacuation centres. But we could see some of those numbers change. Authorities are asking people to be patient. Of course, many of them anxious to get back to their homes, but it is still simply too dangerous to do so with such high water levels. Sumi Somaskanda and before her, Gordon Carrera in Florida. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has met the Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni in Rome on Thursday, at the end of a day of visits to several European capitals to try to bolster support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. He started in London,

where he spoke to the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and to the head of NATO, Mark Rutter. Then he went to Paris to speak to President Macron. I asked our defence correspondent, Jonathan Beale, what was discussed in the meetings. We know that he is trying to rally support for his, what he calls his victory plan, which he has already presented to President Biden, and he wants European countries to buy into this victory plan. He hasn't actually publicised the details of everything in that plan. But we do know it includes, for example, clear steps towards Ukraine's membership of NATO, something which he's been demanding, and also the lifting of

restrictions of those Western supplied long range weapons, which he wants to use to hit targets deep inside Russia. At the moment, those restrictions have not been lifted. And he is saying it's essentially forcing Ukraine to fight with one arm tied behind its back. So those are the immediate concerns he's got. I mean, there is a sense of urgency in this whistle-stop tour of European capitals, because he knows that the clock is ticking in the sense that there is going to be a US presidential election. And one of the candidates has made very clear he wants to see an end to the war very quickly. And there are concerns in Ukraine and certainly in European capitals that that could

mean Donald Trump, if he won, turning off the taps as far as military aid is concerned. And America has been Ukraine's biggest military backer so far. And the Russians have been advancing, haven't they? Yeah. So if you look at eastern Ukraine, I mean, clearly there was what happened earlier this year when we saw that surprise offensive by Ukraine into Russian territory. And I think most people thought that was part of the victory plan in the sense that that was a negotiating tool, because Russia has taken sizable chunks of Ukraine and has made, as you point out, gains in the east, grindingly slow gains, but nevertheless

gains in the Donbass region. And Ukraine is on the back foot there. So you do get the sense the clock is ticking. You do not get the sense that Russia is going to throw the towel in any time soon. President Zelensky wants that guarantee of Western support and security guarantees for the longer term. Many people in Ukraine do not believe they will get all the territory they've lost back, certainly immediately or in the near future. But he still wants to have a plan for, as he calls it, victory that will give him security guarantees. Jonathan Beale. Officials in Kiev say a Ukrainian journalist who was captured by Russia while reporting in eastern Ukraine has died. They're trying to establish what happened to Victoria Roshchina. A Ukrainian official dealing with prisoners of war indicated that preparations had been underway to try to secure her release through a prisoner swap with Russia. Our Europe regional editor Danny Eberhard reports. Victoria Roschina was an award-winning freelance journalist in her

20s who reported for prestigious Ukrainian outlets and also the US-funded Radio Free Europe. Her determination to get stories out of Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine saw her detained first in Berdyansk, soon after Russia's full-scale invasion. Then, last year, Ms. Roshchina tried to return to occupied eastern Ukraine via Russia. She went missing, with Russia only confirming her detention many months later. Ukrainian officials say preparations had been underway to secure her release in a prisoner swap. To that effect, they say, she'd been transferred from Taganrog, near the border with Ukraine, to Moscow. In 2022, Ms. Rostina was given a Courage in Journalism award by the US-based International Women's Media Foundation. It said it was devastated by her death, calling her remarkable and an intrepid witness to history.

The Foundation said, regardless of the cause of her death, it could say with certainty that her life had been taken because she dared tell the truth. Danny Eberhardt. Still to come in this podcast, scientists solve a mystery in our understanding of the largest bug that ever lived. 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 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. Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy, has died. She was 96. The Kennedy matriarch was one of the last remaining members of a generation that included President John F. Kennedy.

She was by her husband's side when he was assassinated in 1968 and went on to champion social causes long after his death. Here she is speaking in 1988. I thought we'd make a dent, and I think we did, and I think that a lot of people have made some sacrifice in their lives to make it a better world. There's a lot more we can do. Our North America correspondent, Rowan Bridge, told us more about her. Ethel Kennedy is part of what is the closest thing America has to royalty.

You know, they are sort of political royalty, the Kennedy family, the Kennedy clan. If you look at their history, Ethel Kennedy's husband, Robert Kennedy, was the Attorney General of the United States in the 1960s. Her brother-in-law was John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States. But that was a gilded life that was marred by tragedy. You know, her husband and her brother-in-law were both assassinated. She was by her husband's side in 1968 when he was shot and killed as he himself was running for the presidency. Two of her 11 children died prematurely.

One of them died from a drugs overdose, one in a skiing accident. And her son, Robert Kennedy Jr., has sort of been marred in political controversy over his views around vaccines. But also he made an independent bid for the presidency in this current electoral cycle, ultimately dropped out and endorsed Donald Trump. So it's been a family that's been at the forefront of politics over generations, really. And what's been the reaction to her death there? Well, I mean, there have been fulsome tributes from the former President Barack Obama and the current President Joe Biden. Joe Biden described her as an American icon, a matriarch of optimism and moral courage and an emblem of resilience and service. I mean, he's referring there, I think, in part to how she acted in the aftermath of her husband's death and the fact that she took up many of the causes that he had championed herself.

She set up a centre in her husband's memory and kind of campaigned on a lot of issues of poverty and human rights that he himself had taken up. And then President Obama again referred to her generosity and grace, said she was an emblem of enduring faith and hope, even in the face of unimaginable grief. Again, talking there about the deaths that she's dealt with over her life. And she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama, wasn't she, for her own work? The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian honour in the United States. And Ethel Kennedy was awarded it by Barack Obama for her work championing those causes that her husband had pushed on, on human rights, on environmental issues, on tackling poverty. She campaigned on those issues her entire life. As late as 2018, she joined a hunger strike to protest against the then-Trump administration's separation policy on the US-Mexico border.

So she had a life which had been dedicated in one form or another to public service, really. Ethel Kennedy was really the last living link to that generation of people who were part of that era when the Kennedys were sort of political royalty on a level that we just don't see today. Rowan Bridge. Portugal has a problem. Too many of its young people emigrate because of poor pay and high taxes and housing costs. Now the country's right-of-centre government wants to tackle the problem with new legislation which will offer a decade of tax breaks to young people aged up to 35.

The government lacks a parliamentary majority but it hopes the largest opposition party will back the plan or at least abstain and allow it to pass. Alison Roberts reports from Lisbon. In its draft budget for next year Portugal's right of centre coalition government is greatly expanding a measure already in place under the previous socialist administration aimed at keeping young talent in the country. Since the eurozone debt crisis of a decade ago, hundreds of thousands of Portuguese have emigrated, most of them younger and better qualified than the average worker. Governments are desperate to stem the outflow. Under this new plan, anyone aged up to 35 who is resident and working in Portugal could seek exemption from tax on income up to 28,000 euros, about $30,000. Over the

following 10 years, rather than five as at present, the exemption would gradually taper down to zero, so avoiding a sharp jump in tax for workers at 36. Many young people welcome the change, but cite other factors such as low salaries and high costs pushing them to leave. Here's Marta Silva, who works in Lisbon. Bottom line is that in other countries in Europe, they have more attractive career paths, better wages that allow them to actually save money. So I think the issues that we face here are difficult to solve,

but for example, I don't think that we are tackling the housing crisis almost at all. Although the plan was hammered out in talks with the main opposition Socialist Party in recent days, with the government throwing out its own initial proposals, the budget's passage through Parliament is not guaranteed. But its chances do now look better than even a week ago. Alison Roberts. There are more than 100 million people living in sub-Saharan Africa who are nearly or completely blind.

In Uganda alone, more than 3 million people have severe sight impairment. While many Ugandans benefit from access to medical facilities, those living in rural areas struggle to receive adequate eye care. Our reporter Agnes Penda visited a community of blind and visually affected people on the shores of Lake Victoria in eastern Uganda. They've decided to come together and to help each other. Sitted on the patio outside their home, 53-year-old Moses Mugabe is teaching his children how to read in Braille. I pray to God. Thank him for the gift of life he has given me. After becoming blind, Moses decided to set up the Lubu Group

of the Blind, a community of about 25 people affected by blindness or other forms of sight loss. They live together in a compound of 10 houses in the town of Lubu along the shores of Lake Victoria. Losing my sight upset me. I struggled with my mental health because I thought it was the end for me. I worried about losing friends, about all the things I could no longer do. The group of the blind gathers weekly to discuss the issues that matter most to them. We formed the Lubu Blind Group after realizing that the town was isolating us

just because we are blind. We face a lot of challenges, from thieves who target us because of our disability to unfair treatment when it comes to dividing family assets. And for some of us, finding a marriage partner is difficult.

We talk about how we can support ourselves and keep our children in school, how we can feed and clothe them. In sub-Saharan Africa, more than 100 million people suffer from NIA to complete blindness, according to data from the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. Vision loss could be prevented in at least 90% of cases, but for that to happen, treatment needs to become regularly available to communities like the one in Lubu. We are training doctors. The government is encouraging many doctors to go for masters in ophthalmology

so they can become specialists in eye care. Dr. Alfred Mubangezi is a tropical disease expert at Uganda's Ministry of Health. He says the government is incentivizing trainee doctors to specialize in eye care. As I talk now, there's still scholarship. Scholarship, government puts up money there. People go and study for free. Uganda is facing a shortage of eye doctors. The deficit is particularly acute in rural areas. Back in Lobu, Moses is optimistic that the younger generation stands a better chance.

The only hope and prayer I have for my children, I want them to complete their education. I need them to graduate with degrees, masters and even PhDs. When they're educated enough, nobody will notice that they are blind. People will look at their achievements and they'll be a source of inspiration for others. Moses Mugabe ending that report by Agnes Penda. Now what's worse than finding a worm in your apple? Finding half a worm, or so the joke goes. Some of us aren't keen on creepy crawlies at the best of times,

but at least we won't have to face the largest bug that ever lived. At nearly three metres long, weighing more than 50 kilograms, with several dozen legs, it is the stuff of nightmares. And our scientists have solved a long-standing mystery, what this extinct monster's head actually looked like. Paddy McGuire has the details. Let's start with the body. The largest arthropod, a type of arthropod, roamed or wriggled the Earth 300 million years ago during the Carboniferous period, about 100 million years before the first dinosaurs.

At the time, the Earth was covered in hot, humid swamps and rainforests. These bugs were part of the group that includes crabs, spiders and insects, with the features of modern-day centipedes and millipedes, but much, much bigger. Back then, a significant increase in oxygen levels is one of the factors that seems to have allowed insects and animals to grow much larger than now. Michael Leretier is a paleobiologist from the Université Claude Bernard Lyon in France. It's very famous because it's one of the biggest land arthropods that we found in the history of Earth,

with the biggest specimens that could reach around three metres in length, moreover for like 70 centimetres in width. So that is its gigantic size. The fossils that have been discovered mostly in Europe and North America in the last 150 years have been a footprint or fragments, parts of headless shells left behind when these giant bugs molted, wriggling out of their exoskeletons through the head opening so they could grow even bigger. Scientists have discovered that while their bodies were like those of a millipede, the head was more like that of a centipede. They've produced an image by modelling it on the complete and well-preserved

fossils of juveniles of a different, much smaller type of Arthroplura found in a French coal field in the 1980s. It's been described as a round bulb with two short bell-shaped antennae and two protruding eyes like a crab. The mouth was small relative to the size of the head, useful for grinding leaves and bark, and maybe the occasional apple. Paddy Maguire. And that's it from us for now, but there'll 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 globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. And you can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by David Evans. The producer was Stephanie Tillotson. The editor, as ever, is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time, bye-bye. 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 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.