Global News Podcast - Second wave of device explosions in Lebanon

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

Hezbollah's walkie-talkies were targeted in another day of blasts in Lebanon killing at least 20 and injuring hundreds. Also: first US interest rate cut in four years, and scientists discover that gibbons like to dance.

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 Andrew Peach, and in the early hours of Thursday 19th September, these are our main stories.

Israel's defence minister says the focus of its year-long war is moving north, with an army division that was recently in Gaza moving to the border with Lebanon. The comments came after another day of explosions across Lebanon, this time involving walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah. The US Federal Reserve has cut its lending rate by half a percentage point, its first reduction in four years. Also in this podcast... Sentinel's strong, strong, it grasps you and didn't want to let go. And I tried to get off of it once myself. Well, I couldn't. While the US state of

Oregon is recriminalizing drugs like fentanyl just four years after they were decriminalized. Now, just 24 hours ago, we were reporting that 12 people had been killed and 3 000 had been injured after handheld pages used by hezbollah fighters exploded in lebanon on tuesday then on wednesday as some of the dead were buried there were more explosions this time it was walkie-talkie sport by hezbollah a few months ago at the same time as the pages. 20 more people died, 450 were injured. Now Israel's defence minister has said the focus of its year-long war is moving north with an army division that was recently in Gaza moving to the border with Lebanon. Here's a recording of one of the blasts on Wednesday posted by LBCI News in Lebanon.

Nafisa Konovaad of BBC Persian was in Beirut for the funerals of those who died on Tuesday. Here's what she told me. While we were there, we heard quite a strong explosion and we found out that the explosion happened not far from us inside one of the ambulances that was parked near the funeral area and then right after again as well as our PM members tried to manage this atmosphere they asked people to calm down and And then after that, we heard other explosions, and news started to come that, again, a new wave of explosions happening across Lebanon, and especially in Dahiyeh, which is controlled by Hezbollah,

and it was where we were at for funeral of three members of his bloodline that were killed yesterday in these explosions, and an 11-year-old boy that lost his life again because of these explosions. And give me a sense of what people's reaction was at the time. No one's expecting this. They're at a funeral mourning people who died only yesterday. How did they react to the sound of the explosion that you heard for the few seconds of course there was a panic

and you could see that still there was a shock in everyone's face from yesterday and that explosion sound made everyone panic for a few seconds but But then after that, because it was funeral, everyone sat and continued as if nothing was happening. But you could feel that that atmosphere is not normal. Everyone was waiting for something bigger, and some people decided to leave. And what about people's reaction as the news started to spread that this was another wave of attacks with it happening in lots of lots of different places like yesterday. Shock. Everyone is shocked. You could see in everyone's face. And it's now it's not only people close to Hezbollah or Hezbollah members. I can tell you from the reaction that we see on social media and the reactions from even anti said that they are supporting people that were affected in this wave of attack.

But of course, the new wave of attack is more worrying. It is a sign that something bigger may happen. My colleague Nafisa Kunnivan of BBC Persian. The attacks have renewed fears of an escalation of the conflict. They'll be discussed by the UN Security Council. World leaders have been responding. In a reversal of his position before the Gaza war, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

said his country would never normalise ties with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state were established. As we heard in our earlier podcast, Iran called the blasts mass murder. Speaking in Egypt after the first attack, America's top diplomat Antony Blinken said Washington had had no prior knowledge of what was going to happen. But as our State Department correspondent Tom Bateman now explains, the US later changed its tune. That message has been tweaked a bit, I have to say, in the last few hours with officials briefing anonymously that in fact they did have some

advance warning in that the Pentagon was told by the Israelis, according to these briefings, that the Israelis were going to do something in Lebanon yesterday, but they didn't give any details of what that operation was. It's a slightly bizarre admission, this, I think, because it just begs the question, well, why didn't the Americans ask them what they planned to do when this piece of information was given to them? So I think that will be the focus of a lot more questions for the Pentagon and the State Department over the next day or two. There's been no official comment from Israel. Our diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams is in Jerusalem. Several theories have been circulating since yesterday

about the timing of these mass attacks on Hezbollah members. One is that Israel chose this moment to send a devastating message to the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia following a gradual escalation of violence along Israel's northern border. The other is that Israel did not necessarily mean to put this highly ambitious plan in motion just now, but found its hand forced by the possibility the plot was about to be exposed. After today's second round of explosions, both explanations are still possible, but more than ever this feels like a concerted effort by Israel to cripple Hezbollah literally and figuratively. With all pages and handheld radios now seen as potentially

lethal devices, Hezbollah's ability to communicate with itself is being dramatically eroded. Israel may be hoping that by demonstrating just how compromised Hezbollah's communications are, the group will hesitate or find it simply too difficult to launch any further cross-border attacks, at least for now. Or Israel is preparing the ground assiduously and terrifyingly for its own major operation inside Lebanon. Not all Israelis are convinced such an escalation would be a good idea. An opinion poll published last night suggested that 52% of Israelis favoured a wider war in Lebanon, but 30% were against, with 18% undecided. One big question is where the pagers used by Hezbollah and targeted on Tuesday and the

walkie-talkies came from. Who made them? They were carrying the branding of a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo, but that's not where the trail ends. Our Asia correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes has more on what we know. I am fairly sure that before today, very few people anywhere had heard the name Gold Apollo or knew of the little Taiwanese company behind it. Today, its name has been making headlines around the world, and for all the wrong reasons. It stands accused of being the company that manufactured the electronic pages that on Tuesday began exploding across Lebanon, injuring thousands of people. At the company's office in a nondescript business park in a Taipei suburb, the atmosphere was a mixture of panic and denial. This is nothing to do with us, the company's founder, Xu Qingguang,

told a gaggle of journalists who had turned up at his door. Soon he was back with an explanation. Those are not our pages, he said. We signed an agreement with a company in Europe three years ago to use our brand name on their pages. The ones in Lebanon must have been made by them. It all sounded a little implausible. Photos of some of the exploded devices clearly showed the gold Apollo name and looked pretty much identical to a model that until Tuesday had been proudly

displayed on Mr Xu's company website. That website is suddenly impossible to access. Still, Mr. Hsu insisted, and by early afternoon, he produced a statement naming the European company BAC Consulting, and an address in Budapest. It took several more hours, but eventually an American news network managed to track down the CEO of BAC Consulting, a young British-educated woman who denied her company has ever manufactured any pages. And so the plot thickens. Tonight, a team of investigators left the offices of Gold Apollo with boxes of documents and many, many questions still to be answered. Our Asia correspondent Rupert Wingfield Hayes. Let's move on to other news now. Emergency workers in central Thailand have rescued a 64-year-old

woman from the grip of a huge reticulated python. Police broke down the woman's door after a neighbour heard her calling for help. Here's Abigail Maudsley. The rescuers were alerted when a neighbour heard the woman's faint, exhausted cries. They found her on the ground being slowly crushed by the four metre long snake. It took more than half an hour for them to extract her from its powerful coils. A widow who lived alone, she said she'd been washing dishes behind her house on Tuesday night when she felt a sharp pain in her thigh as the python sank its teeth in and began to wrap around her. She'd been struggling for two harrowing hours by the time help arrived.

A tea company in Shenzhen has apologised and deleted a social media video with themes from China's cultural revolution. It showed employees of Gu Ming wearing cardboard posters with some of the things they were guilty of at work, like forgetting to give a straw to a customer. Gu Ming make milk tea. I started by asking our China media analyst, Kerry Allen, what that is. It can be iced beverages. They can have little bubbles in. Often they're tea that's got fruit in. So it's like a fruity, milky drink that's very popular in China and very popular in Asia as a whole. What happens in this video that turns out to be so controversial?

Well, it shows three employees at one of the stores. This company's got more than 9,000 in China. And they've got cardboard boards hung over their heads with words on, for example, saying, I am guilty of not giving a straw to a customer. And they're meant to be very tongue in cheek. They're meant to be a bit of a joke. But the reason this is so controversial is because wearing a sign that says, I'm guilty, a lot of people in China will think back to the Cultural Revolution. One of the most stark signs during this period, this was the 1960s and 70s, was people, landlords in particular, being publicly shamed, wearing big signs that say, I am guilty of things like capitalism. So seeing this social media video

instantly makes people think back to that time, a very controversial time in China. I mean, I suppose it's designed to do exactly that. It's just something the authorities in China, perhaps people in China, are not ready for. Well, absolutely. And the company, which is one of the biggest milk tea companies in China,

has apologised today, saying they didn't anticipate the misunderstandings that people would have about this video and the discomfort that people would have seeing it. Because there are people from around that time who they remember it was a very distressing time. I mean, seeing people who were beaten up, there were public beatings, people were imprisoned, there were rapes, torture. It was a very, very controversial time. And this was just meant to be a bit of fun. That's what the employees who made this video said. They

thought it would just be a bit of fun. And there are people on Weibo, which is a very popular social media platform in China, saying that they think it's a smart campaign. They can see the fun in it. And it has got a lot of attention as a result, even though for a lot of people, it is actually quite distressing to see. And they feel very uncomfortable about seeing it. So, yeah, the company has needed to apologise. The company said they thought it would be a meme. It will be something that people could have a bit of fun with. But in their apology today, they've simply said, sorry, we messed up big time.

Our China media analyst, Kerry Allen. And still to come... The sound of animals who like to dance. Stay with us to find out which ones. 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. At the end of 2020, people in the US West Coast state of Oregon voted for a different approach to dealing with burgeoning drug abuse. More than half gave their backing to a law decriminalising the possession of a small amount of hard drugs like fentanyl, heroin and cocaine. Instead of a conviction, users were given a fine, much like a speeding ticket, which they could get out of if they went into rehab. But nearly four years on, that experiment has come to an end. From the start of this month, possession is once again a crime. That's

after a public outcry against the number of people openly taking drugs and living on the streets. James Menendez reports. I felt all strong, you know, and that was just the new thing. It grasped you and didn't want to let go. And I tried to get off of it once myself. Well, I couldn't. Bill, who's originally from Alaska, tells me he's been a drug addict most of his life. He's 62 but looks older with a nervous gaze that occasionally breaks into a wry, crinkled smile.

Like when he tells me that he came to Oregon because a friend said it was easy to score drugs, in particular fentanyl, coming up the west coast from Mexico. His friend was right. It was easy, and that sent Bill hurtling into the abyss. See, the problem with the fentanyl was I couldn't go maybe two hours without. Were you worried about overdosing? No, it didn't change anything.

What you worry about is running out. We've come to downtown Portland now, and I've come to talk to Max Williams, who was heavily involved in the campaign to recriminalize the possession of hard drugs. What was your problem with the moves to decriminalize hard drugs? I think it opened up a considerable more amount of open-air drug use. The consequences that the provisions had allowed for a $100 ticket to be written by law enforcement, but there was zero enforcement. And as a result, we saw increasing amounts of overdoses, increased retail crime, and violent crime, and people becoming increasingly concerned

about an almost dystopian feel to Portland's downtown. We saw three people openly doing drugs. This is a problem that's going to take a while to fix. I do think, collectively, if you were to ask most people, they would say things are trending in the right direction, but it's not going to be an overnight success. This facility here exists exclusively for individuals that require 24-7, 365 medical monitoring. One of the benefits of the Portland experiment was more funding for the treatment of

addiction, paid for in a neat twist out of the taxes on sales of marijuana, which is legal. That money helped set up this detox facility in the city. Joe Bazzeghi is its director. Can I ask you this? I mean, there have been an argument that decriminalisation caused more overdoses in Portland. Your best place to answer whether that's true or not, is it?

No, it's not true. What is true is that the replacement of our heroin supply with illicitly manufactured fentanyl, 50 times as strong, has spiraled our overdose death rates. Measure 110 was passed in November of 2020 and implemented in February of 21. We saw a 70% increase in overdose deaths in Oregon in 2020 before the law was implemented. What do you make of the fact that it's being recriminalized? What do you think the impact will be? People are less likely to engage with treatment if they first have to admit to a crime in order to enter treatment. So people are afraid because criminality is associated with their health condition. Caught in the middle of all these arguments, people like Bill, who was brought back from the

brink, others weren't so lucky. Last year in Oregon, nearly 1,400 people died from an opioid overdose, a five-fold increase since 2019. And how are you feeling now? Oh, it's way better to be freed up to where I don't have to find a place to hide and smoke. You know, that's pretty good. So is it fair to say that this place saved your life? Oh, that's way fair. Yeah. And that was Bill, formerly a fentanyl addict, ending that report by James Menendez.

The US Federal Reserve has cut its lending rate for the first time in four years. The target range has been dropped by half a point to between 4.75 and 5%. The Fed said it had gained confidence that US inflation was moving sustainably towards the target of 2%. The chairman of the Federal Reserve is Jerome Powell. This recalibration of our policy stance will help maintain the strength of the economy and the labour market and will continue to enable further progress on inflation as we begin the process of moving toward a more neutral stance. We are not on any preset course. We will continue to make our decisions meeting by meeting.

This report from our North America business correspondent, Ritika Gupta. What it's suggesting is that the Fed is concerned about the risks of growth to the economy. It has that dual mandate of ensuring full employment whilst also keeping inflation in target. We've seen inflation start to recede, start to moderate. The central bank did say it expects inflation to return to target next year, so perhaps it is focusing more on employment and any risks to slower growth for the economy. After the announcement, Donald Trump said the rate cut showed the US economy was either very bad or they're playing politics. Just a quick reminder that in the run-up to the US presidential election in November,

we'll be doing a special podcast with our friends at BBC AmeriCast. We need your questions, though, to put to our team in the US. So if there's anything you'd like to know about the Trump-Harris contest, do drop us an email, globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk, or find us on X, where we are at Global News Pod. And if you can, please record your question as a voice note. In 2023, the World Health Organization estimated that more than 55 million people across the globe had dementia, with nearly 10 million new cases every year.

And of course, it affects everyone differently. The journalist Anthea Rowan has written about her experience of her mother's dementia in a book called A Silent Tsunami. As she told Sarah Montagu, the first she knew that something was wrong was when her mother suddenly stopped recognising her. She said, now tell me, when did we first meet? I thought she must be joking. And I laughed, but it was very clear by her response that she wasn't joking

and that she didn't know who I was. I said to her, Mum, you've known me my whole life. I'm your daughter. And she accepted that with some embarrassment. But the next day she refuted that furiously. I couldn't possibly be her daughter because I was much too old to be her daughter. At the time, I was just over 50 and she was very nearly 80. So I tried to collect photographs together and produce this sort of PowerPoint of pictures. I produced photographs with her parents and me and my siblings. She knew who my siblings were but she didn't know who I was.

And you needed to do this not just because it would be nice that your mother knew you were her daughter, but also because of the care. She wasn't living with me at the time. She was staying with me at the time. But there was medications that needed to be administered and I just needed her to feel at peace being with me. Later on, when she came to live with me, and she lived with me for a year and a half before she died,

there were many times when she didn't know who I was. But you know, by then I'd grown used to it. With dementia, they talk about distracting people, just constantly appeasing, you never challenge. Did you do that at the beginning before you knew fully what you were dealing with? Oh, in the beginning, I stated my position, I am your daughter. And I continued to state my position most of the time when it seemed important to do that. For example, when she felt unsafe or where were her people? Well, I'm your person, Mum, I'm your daughter. But she also disputed the fact that my father had died. My father died when we were teenagers.

And she told me that he had left her. And the first time she told me that, I said to her, he didn't leave you, mum. He died. And she said, well, I never knew that. Thank you so much for telling me. Anyway, he continued to leave her. And I continued to state the fact of his dying until it occurred to me one day to ask her what was better. Would it be better to think he died or would it be better to think that he had left you? And she said it would be better to think that he had left me because then he might come back. And then it occurred to me sometimes my truth may be more painful, maybe sometimes her truth, whatever fiction she's living in, is an easier one to live with. When she eventually died, did you think, I have been actually dealing with this death for some

time and you've been grieving her? Yes, I did. They call dementia sort of a slow death and a death by a thousand cuts and all these kinds of things, these phrases that they use for it. I did. And I think the hardest thing when somebody dies from dementia, it was four or five years since mum had forgotten me when she died. But what I'm trying to do now is you have to reach beyond the time when they had dementia. And you have to look at old photographs and remember old stories. And then somehow, they're conjured to the forefront of your mind again. Because it's, there was nothing to remember. It's a very slow, long, painful process

and you lose a bit of them every day. The journalist Anthea Rowan. Let's return to our main story now, the devastating attacks in Lebanon. It's almost exactly a year since the 7th of October massacre in Israel. So how dangerous a moment is this for the region? A question for our international editor, Jeremy Bowen.

I'd say really dangerous, as dangerous as any in the last almost 12 months since those Hamas attacks, which, by the way, this last year has been the most dangerous year since 1948 when Israel fought and won for its independence. Why is it so dangerous right now? Well, that's because at the moment there seems to be no possibility of diplomacy getting through and de-escalating the situation. That's because it depends on a ceasefire in Gaza, and that isn't happening either.

Now, while Israel has scored a really significant tactical victory here, there is a potential longer-term serious strategic downside because Israel has humiliated its enemy in Lebanon. There's no question about that. But it doesn't get Israel closer to its strategic aims, the things it wants to do. That is to stop the rocket fire over the border into Israel.

60,000-plus people have been evacuated for almost a year from their homes as a result of that. They want to go home and they want to push Hezbollah as well back away from the border. I do not see how these attacks get Israel closer to that. Now, Israel, of course, defends itself, self-defense against a terrorist organization is what it would say. But there are plenty of people criticising Israel as well for using force somewhat indiscriminately, as well as hitting military targets, those Hezbollah fighters, also hitting members of their family, killing children, killing bystanders in markets.

So Israel under pressure with that. And one more thing as well. The UN General Assembly is sitting at the moment in New York and by a vote of 123 to 14 with 43 abstentions, the General Assembly supported a Palestinian resolution saying that Israel must end its unlawful presence in the occupied territories within a year. It's non-binding, but it shows just how isolated the Israelis are. Our international editor, Jeremy Bowen. Now, there are many things that distinguish humans from our ancestors, the apes, from the ability to create fire to our technological skills. Did you know that until now,

humans were thought to be the only primate that could dance? Not anymore, it seems, after scientists found that gibbons also enjoy a jig. More from Isabella Jewell. They shake very vigorously and it's a cross between a robot dance and voguing. This might sound like a standard night out on the town, but instead of a sweaty nightclub, the backdrop to this dance is a little more tropical. Scientists studying gibbons, a type of ape native to parts of Asia, say they've discovered that they like to dance. And unusually for the animal kingdom,

where several non-ape species perform a sort of mating dance, in this case it's the female gibbons who are the most into it. Professor Priti Patel-Graws of the University of Oslo is co-author of the paper. The gibbons dances are rhythmic in that the length of time between individual movements and a dance sequence are relatively uniform. It's as though they're following a beat. The other thing we found is that the dance behaviour is intentional. So the gibbons will check to see if there's an audience before they dance. The gibbons will dance standing up on their back, lying down in different positions. So there's not one way in terms of body posture that they will perform these dance displays.

But why do they do it? When the wild gibbon dancers have been claimed to be a mating ritual in the rescue shelters and zoos, which is where our data came from, we find a much broader range of uses. They dance to solicit socialization or grooming, and they don't just dance to each other, but they also direct these dances at humans as well. And we think that when they're directed at humans, it's in anticipation of feeding, social interaction, sometimes excitement as well. There are 26 different types of ape across the world. Is it really just the gibbons who dance?

Here's a case where we have a primate. It's a small ape that displays rhythmic, intentional, structured dancing. We can take this methodology and tools and try to look for this in the great apes. So according to this new research, it's not just humans who go bananas for a dance. Isabella Jewell reporting. And that's all from us for now. There'll be a new edition of Global News to download later. If you'd like to comment on this edition, drop us an email, globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk, or on X, we are at globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by David Evans.

The producer was Alison Davis. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Andrew Peach. Until next time, Goodbye. 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.