Global News Podcast - Members of UN Security Council, except US, say Gaza famine is man-made

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

All members of the UN Security Council -- apart from the United States -- have released a statement saying the famine in Gaza is man-made. They've urged Israel to lift all restrictions on aid immediately. Also: President Trump discusses post war plans for the Palestinian territory, as his Secretary of State meets the Israeli foreign minister; the killing of two children at a school church service in the US is being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism.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]

You're listening to the Global News Podcasts from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. This edition is published in the early hours of Thursday the 28th of August. All members of the UN Security Council except the US have issued a statement that the famine in Gaza is man-made. At the same time, President Trump has been discussing plans for the Palestinian territory once the war ends. And two children are killed in Minneapolis after a gunman opens fire on a back-to-school mass. also in the podcast Back in the 1970s, the monkey's home was being destroyed by logging, so their numbers were going down fast.

Now it's being protected, and the monkey figures are really improving. How a rare species of monkey in China has bounced back from the brink of extinction. Israel is under mounting pressure at home and abroad to end its almost two-year offensive in Gaza, even as it pushes ahead with a big operation to take control of the territory's biggest city. At the United Nations, a statement issued by all members of the Security Council, bar the United States, has called for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire. It also said the recently declared famine in Gaza was a man-made crisis. The statement was read out by Treshala, Sima.

Antini Prasad from the UN mission of Guyana. We stand in front of you, especially disturbed by the levels of acute malnutrition among children in Gaza. This is a man-made crisis. The use of starvation as a weapon of war is clearly prohibited under international humanitarian law. Famine in Gaza must be stopped immediately. At the White House, President Trump hosted a separate discussion on what a post-war Gaza could look like. It was attended by the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair

and President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. We heard more about it from our North America editor, Sarah Smith. We understand that largely they were discussing what could be done to help run a post-war Gaza, so not how to achieve a ceasefire, how to end the fighting, but rather looking to the point if the fighting is concluded what would need to be done to run the enclave, not least because one stipulation

would be that Hamas could no longer be involved in the government. So putting together some planning for what the White House is calling the day after, in other words, the day after the fighting has finished. But we understand also the urgent need for food and humanitarian aid to get into Gaza, where of course they are facing a famine was also discussed in this meeting where you had

Tony Blair, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law and former Special Envoy to the Middle East as well as the current special envoy Steve Wickcoff, who himself has been making some optimistic noises about the possibility of the fighting concluding before the end of this year, he's said. Why does he think that? So in an interview with Fox News,

he said that he was optimistic because he saw signs that the Israeli government was prepared to make some accommodations in order to reach a deal with Hamas, and that he understood that Hamas also knew now what they needed to agree to and that they were under such added pressure from Israel. He thought that there was an opportunity now to achieve a deal within the next four months.

He didn't give us any more detail than that, but it was a particularly optimistic note about ending the fighting that he was giving in this interview. And this would be a future definitively without Hamas? Yeah, there's no way Israel would ever agree to a situation that would keep Hamas in the government, and neither would the US, to be honest. I would be surprised if any other countries that were involved in sponsoring this peace process would. That would be the minimum, I think, that would need to be agreed before anybody could come up with any plan for how else to run Gaza. Sarah Smith at the White House talking to Alex Ritson.

Pupils had only just returned to the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis. After the summer holidays, when just before 8.30 on Wednesday, they became the latest targets of a US mass shooting. The children were attending a church service to mark the first. first week back when a gunman approached. Two pupils died aged 8 and 10, and more than a dozen were injured before the attacker took his own life. John Sudworth reports. Parents and children visibly shaken,

leaving the scene of the shooting which took place during a church mass, meant to celebrate the start of a new school year. There was a huge police response, but the attacker carrying a number of weapons had already fired multiple rounds into the building in which the pupils from kindergarten age to young teenagers were gathered. The first one, I was like, what is that? I thought it was just something.

Then when I heard it again, I just ran under the pew. And then I covered my head. My friend Victor, like, saved me, though, because he laid on top of me. But he got hit. And I heard something, like, really loud. Like, I thought it was fireworks in the church. And then I saw the shooting.

And I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm so scared. And so a teacher laid me downstairs. As the alarm was raised, parents ran towards the church. This is what every American family fears, the kind of violence now etched into national consciousness. Those who lived nearby could hear the sound of the shooting. I know what gunfire sounds like, and I could tell, I was shocked. I said there's no way that that could be gunfire.

There was so much of it. So it was sporadic. So it was a semi-automatic. It seemed like a rifle. It certainly didn't sound like a handgun. And so he must have reloaded several times for sure. A gunman approached on the outside, on the side of the building, and began firing a rifle through the church windows,

towards the children sitting in the pews at the mess. Shooting through the windows, he struck children and worshippers. The police have identified the attacker who they saw. They say died at the scene from a self-inflicted gun wound as 23-year-old Robin Westman. His mother is reported to have previously worked at the school. There's been reaction from across the political spectrum, with President Trump ordering flags to be flown at half-mast and saying he's praying for everyone involved,

as well as a mixture of grief and anger from those closest to the tragedy. We, as a community, have a responsibility to make sure that no child no parent, no teacher ever has to experience what we've experienced today, ever again. We lost two angels today. As another community is shattered, the images will once again stoke fears across this country, as well as those now all too familiar questions, ask it again and again, about how to protect children in the place where they should be the safest in school. The attacker is said to have left some sort of manifesto as well as other material on YouTube.

It contains racist and anti-Semitic messages as well as images of bullets, gun casings and magazines said to be scrawled on with messages calling for the killing of Donald Trump. That material has been taken down while the police investigated, looking for a possible motive in this crime. But meanwhile, of course, the usual debate will ensue, pitting advocates for gun control against defenders of the Second Amendment. And all this amid a sense of despair. The mayor of Minneapolis is saying that this took place in a church. Thoughts and prayers, he said, are not enough.

Our North America correspondent, John Sudworth. Donald Trump has long coveted the vast Arctic territory of Greenland. The resource-rich island is a semi-autonomous part of the Kingdom. of Denmark. But the US president has said he wants to buy it and refuse to rule out the use of military force to get it. That rhetoric has prompted strong criticism from fellow NATO member Denmark. Now, Danish media are reporting that unnamed Americans with connections to Mr Trump are behind a campaign in Greenland to whip up opposition to Danish rule. Denmark's foreign minister, Lars Lerger Rasmussen, has summoned the U.S. Charger-de-affair.

It is important that we gain some insight into this so that our populations, both Greenland and Denmark, also know what it is they may be up against. This is inherently completely unacceptable. In a separate development, the Danish Prime Minister Meda Federicksson has given a formal apology to the people of Greenland over a scheme where women and girls were fitted with contraceptive coils

without their consent or knowledge. Our Europe regional editor, Danny Abahar, told me more about that, but first the alleged American influence operation. Denmark's public broadcaster, DR, cited eight anonymous sources from different sides, speaking about at least three Americans, all of whom had close connections with Donald Trump, going around and doing things, for example, like gathering lists of people who might support Donald Trump's ambitions in Greenland and also cultivating contacts with politicians and business people. The broadcaster said it wasn't clear whether they were working under their own initiative,

or under state orders, but that it was part of what they described as a multi-phase operation by the US involving first a charm offensive, as they put it, pressurizing Denmark, but also infiltrating Greenlandic society. And Denmark's intelligence service has confirmed that Greenland is a target for various influence campaigns. In May, the Wall Street Journal reported that US intelligence services had ordered people to increase spying in Greenland, for example, on Greenland's independence movements, but also attitudes to extracting natural resources. So it's intriguing. The US hasn't responded to our request for a comment, but has in the past talked about Greenlanders' right to vote on their own independence

and also saying that the activities of individual US citizens are beyond their control. One of the aims was reportedly to exploit scandals that could so dissent between Greenlanders and Danes. What are we talking about there? Well, the coils that you mentioned, the interuterine devices, one very important element of that, a very traumatic event with affecting just between 1966 and 1970, about 4,500 Greenlandic women, indigenous Inuit women. So Mether Fredrickson has apologized for that. It's interesting the timing of this.

It comes the same day as that report was issued by DR, the Danish public broadcaster. and there are actually referred to other dark chapters in Denmark's relations with Greenland. So that was an unsaid reference perhaps to the saga of Little Danes, Inuit children who were taken to Denmark to try to dainify them and send them back to Greenland and also fatherless children. So children born out of wedlock to Greenlandic mothers who had no right to get to know their parent or inherit from them. Another painful saga in Greenland.

And with all that going on, combined with this apparent influence campaign, are Greenlanders warming to the thought of joining the US? Well, not if one opinion poll in January is to be believed 85% of Greenlanders said they had no desire to join the US. The US hopes maybe it could shift that or go for some other arrangement, perhaps after future independence. You're a regional editor, Danny Aberhardt. The golden snub-nosed monkey lives in the remote mountains of San Francisco. central and southwestern China. The rare species was nearly wiped out because of widespread deforestation. But numbers are now bouncing back, thanks to a conservation plan worked out decades ago by a group of concerned scientists. The man behind the scheme took our correspondent Stephen

McDonnell into their forest habitat to explain how they did it. Up until the 1980s, people roamed the mountains of Sheng Nongjah hunting monkeys for their meat and fur. Even worse, poor Chinese farmers were still clearing vast areas of trees. As their environment collapsed around them, so did the population of golden snub-nosed monkeys, dropping well below 500 in the wild. This was the situation when new graduate Yang Jingyuan arrived in 1991, still in his early 20s. Back in the 1970s, the monkey's home was being destroyed by logging.

so their numbers were going down fast. Now it's being protected, and the monkey figures are really improving. These days, he's director of the Sheng Nongjah National Park Scientific Research Institute, and probably no one knows this species better than he does. Walking into this forest, it's pretty incredible to see these hilarious monkeys. They're flying through the trees, jumping from one. branch to another and then coming right up to us. They're not afraid of us today, but that's because we've come here with these scientists who took a year to get to know this group of monkeys

and now you've got this trust built up between the animals and humans, which isn't really the monkey's natural state. But it has enabled this team to be in regular close proximity with the animals. They can study their behaviours, their mating patterns, the social norms of these groups of monkeys and it's been quite invaluable for them. The beauty of this place has attracted millions of tourists over recent years. Yet, while they can visit the National Park,

they can't go into designated monkey protection zones. We followed park rangers along a rugged mountain peak inside one of these zones, passing the camera and transmitting gear they've set up to observe not only the monkeys but black bears, wild boar and many other species. Then, from a breathtaking vantage point, we were shown a valley where farmers once lived

but have now been moved to other locations to help protect the ecosystem. But it's been tree planting on a huge scale which gets most of the credit for saving these snub-nosed monkeys from extinction by significantly increasing the areas they can live in. Though female monkeys can only produce one child every two years. What was 500 of them has now become more than 1,600 in the wild.

And Yang Jing Yuan is hoping this will pass 2,000 within 10 years. I'm very optimistic. Their home is now very well protected. They have food and drink, no worries about life's necessities, and most of all, their numbers are growing. I'm a report from China by Stephen MacDonald. Still to come on the Global News podcast. This is utterly bizarre, utterly unlike anything else we've seen in other dinosaurs.

And I think one of the things that's really exciting about this discovery to me is it hints at a huge unexplored diversity of perhaps very strange in different dinosaurs that might exist out there to find and discover. One of the weirdest ever dinosaur finds. An official US delegation has just been to Syria, the first, for many years. It was led by Republican Congressman Joe Wilson and Democratic Senator Gene Shaheen. The visit came after a deadly outbreak of sectarian violence between the Bedouin and Syrian-Drews. and prior clashes between fighters close to the new president,

Ahmed Ashara, and the Alewhite community, once loyal to Bashar al-Assad. Senator Shaheen spoke to James Menendez about the visit. It was exciting to be in Syria after the fall of Assad. This is a historic opportunity, and we wanted to be there to see how the United States can support moving the country forward, ensuring that it remains a unified Syria, a stable Syria, one that respects the rights of all of the different groups in the country, and that is getting along with its neighbors. So we had very good meetings. We started with an ecumenical meeting in the hills above Damascus at a monastery where we heard from different groups, both Christian and Muslim,

about their interest. And what we heard across the board was that they want a unified Syria, a Syria that is not partitioned. They want a Syria that respects the rights of, all of the groups there, they want a Syria that holds people accountable for atrocities and for any wrongdoings. So we then relayed that information to the president and to the ministers that we met with. Yes. And in your meeting with the president, Ahmed al-Shara, given that there have been, well, at least two very bloody episodes of sectarian violence, as you well know, most recently between Bedouin and the Druze community in southern Syria, Do you think he is a man who has a grip on those sectarian tensions and sectarian conflict?

Well, he certainly indicated that he does and that they can't allow that to continue, that that's why it's important to ensure inclusiveness within the country, that groups feel like they can participate, why it's important that there are, we talked a little bit about a central army that has training and understands respecting the rights of people in the country. and about how we could support those efforts. So I think there is an inquiry into what's happened there that is going to be very helpful so that people can see that those responsible are held accountable.

And one of the things that President Shiraz said that I thought was telling was he was saying that people who committed atrocities should be held accountable, even if there are people who are close to me, who worked with me in the fall of Assad. I thought that was a positive statement. Now we'll have to see how they move forward. Let's get to the meat of your visit, which was essentially to get sanctions, the U.S. sanctions lifted altogether. Why is the moment to do that, do you think? I think because we have a historic opportunity in Syria, as I've said, one that we haven't had in decades,

for the country to unify, to move forward, to provide opportunities for the Syrian people, that in order for that to happen, we need to lift the sanctions that are preventing foreign countries and the private sector from coming in and investing there. So we had, this is part of a bipartisan bicameral. There's Congressman Joe Wilson from the House, a Republican from the House, is with me. He is supporting legislation in the House. I'm sponsoring it in the Senate. We think it's very important to move forward. President Trump has indicated he's willing to lift the sanctions, he's done that, but Congress has to act now in order to really make it happen in a way that allows people to come in and invest.

Senator Jean Shaheen. A Korean-inspired animated movie about singing teenagers battling the forces of evil has become the most watched film on Netflix. K-pop Demon Hunters chronicles the adventures of a girl group who take on monsters and a demonic rival boy band. The American-made movie has been viewed more than 230 million times. It's also breaking cinema records with the sing-along version shown in theatres and its lead song Golden has reached number one in the music charts.

This report from Jean McKenzie in Seoul. The animated film follows the adventures of a South Korean K-pop band who play music by day and fight demons by night. Children and adults across the world have fallen in love with both the film and its catchy music. Some of the tracks have been written by the biggest K-pop songwriters and producers with four songs currently in the top ten of the US music charts. Vans have praised the film for showcasing traditional and modern Korean culture. South Korean pop music and culture have gripped the world over the past decade.

Their popularity seems to be unstoppable. And here in Seoul, people are surprised by this latest success, but delighted. Gene McKenzie reporting. Now, it's been described as the punk rocker of the dinosaur world, thanks to its huge spikes. Scientists have just discovered the fossilized remains of a creature named Spico-Mellus Apha, and they say it has significant implications for our understanding of how such dinosaurs evolved. Richard Butler co-authored the study. This is utterly bizarre, utterly unlike anything else we've seen in other dinosaurs.

And I think one of the things that's really exciting about this discovery to me is it hints at a huge unexplored diversity of perhaps very strange and different dinosaurs that might exist out there to find and discover. So what exactly did this dinosaur look like? Palab Ghosh is our science correspondent. It looks like a gigantic hedgehog. Some of its spikes are a metre long coming out of its neck

and its hips. Quite a scary and imposing figure. These spikes are actually connected to the animal's bone and that's never been seen before in any animal's. that's extinct or living today. Why might these spikes have been connected to the bones? Who knows? And I think it speaks volumes for the fact that this experiment hasn't been repeated

because it probably didn't work as time went on. Because can you imagine if you had so many spikes attached to your bone and just travelling around, it would have been quite an encumbrance. The later fossils showed that this group of dinosaurs called ankyosaurs had simpler spikes, simpler armour. So this is the oldest known ankyosaur that's been discovered, the one we're talking about today. That's 165 million years old.

But then as time went by and large predators, like the T-Rex evolved tens of millions of years later, spike amelicus didn't really have need for these big spikes, which may have been used for mating and display. Instead, it wanted to run away. And if it did get caught, it wanted effective armour to protect it once those gigantic jaws of the Tyrannosaurus rex wrapped itself around it. And tell us where these fossils were found?

Well, this is the first ankyosaur found in Africa. It was found in Morocco, in the Atlas Mountains. But it does suggest that if you've got this one, then there might be many more in Africa. And it was a big surprise to find that in some ways evolution had run this way because the idea had been that the ankyosaur gradually developed its spike and gradually developed its armour, but they found the reverse to be true. They had quite spiky, elaborate display-type armour,

and then as things got rough for it by the predators, it decided to simplify its armour. So it's the reverse of what currently scientists believe. Palab Ghosh. Now, the longer the thumb, the larger the brain. That's the conclusion of a new study, into the link between manual dexterity and brain power that looked at nearly 100 species of primate.

The research published in the journal Communications Biology was led by Dr Joanna Baker of the University of Reading here in the UK. Two of the kind of key cornerstones of humanity that are often spoken about are the idea that we have really dexterous hands and that we have really large brains. But no one's really investigated whether these two things actually arose together. And so what we did is look across all primates and discovered that wherever a primate has a long thumb, it also has a large brain.

So actually, these two things have been co-evolving for millions of years across all primates. Right. So you were able to track this through evolution, were you? And I guess that means looking at fossils as well as primates alive at the moment. Yeah, correct. So we had just under 100 species, including a number of fossil taxa. So a number of species very closely related to our own, so extinct hominins, but also extinct gleamers and things as well. so a number of fossils, but then also many of the primates that you see around the world today as well. From a layman's point of view, there seems to be some logic that if you have a longer thumb and you're able to do more things with it, you're going to need a bigger brain to sort of process that information.

But, I mean, what you found was that it was a different part of the brain dealing with the thumb than you might expect. Tell us a bit more about that. Absolutely. So, I mean, that was our main logic was that you'd expect that larger brains would go hand in hand with longer thumbs. pardon the pun, but also, yeah, we decided to investigate the particular brain regions because we'd have some pretty strong expectations about the cerebellum, which is largely responsible, very heavily involved in motor control, but we actually found no link between that region of the brain and thumb length at all. What we did find was a neocortex was strongly linked to thumb size. So the neocortex communicates extensively with the cerebellum, so it's not

completely independent, let's be clear on that, but it's a region that is largely responsible for a lot of cognitive processing and sensory communication and interpreting our actions in respect to the world around us. So these two brain regions, we would have expected to work together to manifest dexterity, but instead we've actually found that just the neocortex is responsible. So what particular region of that is driving this change? We have yet to understand, but it certainly wasn't what we were expecting to find.

And what does that say about human development? The implications of brain variation are such that we don't still know what the brain regions mean exactly within any individual species. It's better to look at a course level of something that we understand in greater detail. So in terms of humanity, what it does mean is that we still can't really pinpoint when tool use arose. So there's absolutely no difference between the thumb length and brain size relationship in humans or our ancestors compared to any other primates. Instead, this kind of relationship between dexterity and cognition or dexterity and brain size has been evolving for millions of years. Joanna Baker of the University of Reading, talking to James Menendez.

Megan, the Duchess of Sussex, has sparked plenty of comment in the media over her latest remarks about the royal family. In a Bloomberg interview, she said she felt inauthentic when she was a working royal, especially because she had to wear nude tights. I think probably it was different several years ago. where I couldn't be as vocal and I had renewed pantyhose all the time. Let's be honest, that was not very myself. I hadn't seen pantyhose since movies in the 80s.

But why all the fuss about this article of clothing? Sophie Smith has this report. It's probably the most we've heard about women's tights, otherwise known as pantyhose, in a very long time. Does anyone still wear them? Here's Laya Gathia Fetade. Senior Fashion News Editor at Vogue Runway in New York. They really are no longer a thing.

New tights are very much a thing from our grandmother's generation. They grew up being told that they had to wear them. It was part of the uniform of femininity. And it was part of a proper uniform when one went to the office especially. So they're definitely not something that young people are wearing today. So it seems a decline of the nude-colored tight has come with people, more comfortable seeing women's bare legs. Back in the late 1960s,

tights were booming in popularity as plastics like nylon became more widely available and things like the rise of the miniskirt under which women were still expected to cover their legs. They were also good for keeping your legs in shape. Advice given in this edition

of the BBC's Women's Out programme from the 1970s. What's the question of stockings? How's that going to be sorted out? Are we going to wear tights still? I think most of us will. wear tights because they're comfortable. And they are in the shops now?

Just beginning to come into the shops, yes. What about all the patterns on them? The patterns. Well, that depends on the legs that's going inside. Patterns do draw attention, don't they, to one's ankle? So now they've been outdated. Are they completely off the shelves? It is something that is still seen as appropriate ladylike clothing.

So I feel like lawyers, I feel like might still wear them people that go to court or like politicians. Like it creates a very tidy image of womanhood, you know. You have sort of perfect-seeming legs. It's all part of a uniform so that you look your best. It probably depends on how well you can stand them. For what it's worth, I tend to agree with Megan Markle. Sophie Smith.

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 Richard Hamill. and Paul Day. Our editors, Karen Martin, I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.