Global News Podcast - The World Food Programmes says no food aid has entered Gaza this month

Episode Date: October 12, 2024

The UN World Food Programme says no food aid has been able to enter the north of Gaza since the first of October. The WFP says it's unclear how long the limited food supplies that had previously been delivered can last.

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 Sunday the 13th of October, these are our main stories.

The World Health Organisation criticises the Israeli military for not allowing food into northern Gaza, as the IDF tells thousands to move because of an operation to stop Hamas regrouping. Another UN peacekeeper is wounded in Lebanon. One of Scotland's most prominent nationalists, Alex Salmond, a former first minister of the country, has died. Also in this podcast, Poland plans tougher treatment of those seeking asylum. We know very well how it is used by Putin, Lukashenko, people smugglers, people traffickers, how this right to asylum is used exactly against the essence of the right to asylum. For civilians in the north of Gaza, desperate living conditions are going

from bad to worse. The UN World Food Programme says no food aid has arrived in the territory since the beginning of October because of Israel's ongoing offensive. The estimated 400,000 people still remaining there are facing dwindling supplies. Antoine Renard is the director of the World Food Programme for Palestine, and he told Julian Marshall more about the problems they're facing. The two crossings which actually are the lifeline of the population, as there's no commercial good getting into the area, have been out closed since the 1st of October. And the biggest challenge

is that is the assistance getting in. We still had a number of our own warehouses with the cooperating partners that we have in the area. So we manage actually are relying on our existing stocks, but we are running short. Just to give you an idea, the only good that managed to come in was on Thursday and it was fuel, allowing us to actually still keep up and running four bakeries in Gaza City. All the two left bakeries that we had in Jabalia and northern Gaza have been now stopped due also to the ongoing conflict. But if we have no more fuel coming in, in two days, the rest of the bakeries will actually have to be stopped. Now, you're not going into northern Gaza because it's too dangerous

or you're not being allowed to go in by the Israel Defence Forces? We are still asking as the World Food Programme and the various actors to get in, but currently any of our mission has been denied for our own staff as the World Food Programme to get in. The only cargo that managed to get in was fuel, and that was on Thursday. We hope that fuel will be able still to come in, otherwise we'll have to shut down the rest of the bakeries. This is the only fresh food that is in northern Gaza. For the time being, there were practically no fruits, no vegetables for months that entering

into northern Gaza. Antoine Renard. Well, now the IDF has issued fresh evacuation orders for people in the area to move out. Palestinian Basama Ho says he's been forced to move so many times that he doesn't know where's safe anymore. I don't know where to go because of the indiscriminate bombing, the displacement and destruction. And no one has moved to help us since the war started more than a year ago. It has been more than a year with no food and no water. What do we do? I asked our correspondent John Donison in Jerusalem if there's anywhere safe for Gazans to go. No, I don't think there is, to be honest, because Israel is moving

the so-called safe zones, humanitarian zones, around all the time. They're shifting. And even in those safe zones over the past few months, we've seen them being targeted when Israel's military says Hamas is hiding among civilians. We've seen schools, hospitals being hit by Israeli strikes. And in the north now, where Israel has been pounding there for several days, where it says Hamas has been regrouping, you've now got the World Food Programme saying the offensive is having a disastrous impact on food security for thousands of Palestinian families. It says the main crossings into the north have been closed by Israel and no food aid has got in since October the 1st. It's running low on fuel as well, which

means the eight bakeries are struggling to function. So it's really difficult for people there. And Jabalia, it was once one of the world's most densely populated neighbourhoods. And the scenes from there are apocalyptic, really. There are a few areas in Gaza that have been hit as hard over the past year. But there are still an estimated 400,000 Palestinians living in the north of Gaza, and some of them are having to evacuate their homes and they're displaced again. You say Israel's operation in northern Gaza has been going on for some days now. What is the aim of it? Well, the aim, Israel's military says, is to target Hamas, who it says its operatives have been regrouping in Jabalia since Israel shifted its attention to other parts of the Gaza Strip.

And it accuses Hamas of hiding behind civilians. So Israel would say it is advising people to leave for their own safety. But the fear amongst Gazans is that the plan is to turn the north of the Gaza Strip into a closed military zone. And some Israeli government ministers have said they want to move Jewish settlers back into Gaza. Well, Palestinians would see that as another land grab, really, echoing the wars of 1948 and 1967. But Israel says that while Hamas keeps firing out of Gaza, they're not as frequent as they used to be, but they're still fighting. They've been massively diminished, but they're still there. Israel says it will do whatever it takes to protect its citizens, particularly those living close to the border with Gaza.

Well, as you said, there are Hamas's firing rockets and Hezbollah in Lebanon, also firing missiles on the holy day of Yom Kippur. What can you tell us about that? Yes, the Israeli military says some 320 rockets have been fired. Many of them have been intercepted, but some of them have got through. Houses, apartments damaged last night by an apparent drone strike just north of Tel Aviv. So Israel is pushing forward in Lebanon. It feels it's got Hezbollah on the back foot, but the aim of its operation there is to stop the threat from Hezbollah,

and it's not eradicated it yet. John Donison in Jerusalem. Well meanwhile the UN peacekeeping mission in South Lebanon says another one of its soldiers has been wounded due to what it calls military activity nearby and is in a stable condition. Andrea Tenenti is Unifil spokesman. The last several days have been very concerning for the mission, concerning because we have been attacked several times and we've been very vocal about it because the attacks have been coming from the IDF, hitting at one of our towers,

which is based in the headquarters of the mission. Our correspondent, Anna Foster, is in Beirut. UNIFIL, which is the UN peacekeeping mission in South Lebanon, have once again issued a statement today. It's the third in three days because they are increasingly concerned about their peacekeepers coming under attack from Israeli forces. Now, they say again their headquarters at Nakoura, which is a well known base that has been there for many years, has again, it seems, come into the crossfire of some sort of fighting that was going on between Hezbollah and the IDF.

It's important to know that the peacekeepers in this case, they are not fighting Israeli forces and they are not defending the Lebanese population. They are there to assist the Lebanese army in maintaining that buffer zone in the south of Lebanon. So there's been real international condemnation and concern that their safety might be at risk after five of them have been injured in just two days. The Speaker of the Iranian Parliament is visiting the Lebanese capital Beirut in a show of support for the country, as well as the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, as Israel continues its invasion to the south. Mohammed Boger Ghalibov was taken to the site of one of the biggest Israeli airstrikes on central Beirut,

which Lebanese officials say killed 22 people. Our correspondent Jonathan Head reports from the city. The Iranian speaker piloted his own aircraft into Beirut in defiance of Israel's dominance of Lebanese airspace. Mohammad Boger Ghalibov is the second senior Iranian official to visit Lebanon this month, a sign that Iran feels the need to show its support at a time when its ally, Hezbollah, has been hit hard by Israeli airstrikes. Mr Khalibov toured one of the Beirut neighbourhoods damaged by Israeli bombs on Thursday night,

in which Lebanese officials say 22 people were killed. Mr Khalibov toured one of the Beirut neighbourhoods damaged by Israeli bombs on Thursday night, in which Lebanese officials say 22 people were killed. Later, he read out a message from Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. I'm carrying assurances from him that in these difficult conditions, the Islamic Republic stands with the Lebanese nation, government and the resistance, he said, a reference to Hezbollah. Some here have questioned how far Iran will back its ally. Its response to the intense Israeli bombardment has so far been just one missile barrage last week, which proved ineffective. The Israeli bombardment continued today with multiple attacks across Lebanon. Most Lebanese condemn Israel, of course, but many also blame Iran and Hezbollah for dragging

their country into this war. Jonathan Head. A controversial new plan affecting the right to asylum has been announced in Poland. The country's Prime Minister Donald Tusk says it's a way of tackling irregular migration, but also told his party conference that the asylum system was being abused. This is because we know very well how it is used by Putin, Lukashenko, people smugglers, people traffickers, how this right to asylum is used exactly against

the essence of the right to asylum. I asked our correspondent Adam Easton in Warsaw for more on what Mr Tusk had to say. He has been speaking at a meeting of his centre-right civic coalition political grouping in Warsaw and he said that the government will announce a new migration strategy on October the 15th, but he said one of the elements of this strategy will be the temporary suspension of the right to asylum. And he went on to say, I will demand this, I will demand recognition of my decision in Europe. Of course, under international law, countries are obliged to offer people the right to claim asylum. But he said, essentially in justification,

he said that since 2021, since Poland has witnessed a huge increase in the number of people crossing into the country illegally from Belarus, he said that people smugglers and the Belarusian and Russian regimes were abusing this right to asylum. And that's why he felt justified in temporarily

suspending that right. But as you said it would breach Poland's commitments under international law. Was he asked about that? Is he happy to do that? He wasn't put under any sort of scrutiny because he was just giving a speech to his party faithful. There were no questions. He hasn't outlined the details exactly. The legal situation is very unclear. We'll know more on October the 15th. But certainly the country has international obligations to offer the right to apply for asylum. policy, given that Poland is a member of the European Union, which also adheres to the both European and international obligations, legal obligations. So a hard line from Poland. And of course, that matches attitudes, doesn't it in some other European countries, too? I think there's been a recognition in Poland by the current centre-right governing coalition and many other countries in Europe that migration is an issue that is a sensitive issue

that many of the electorates in these countries are concerned about and that issue has been instrumentalised by populists, politicians across the continent and the way to actually deal with that is to sort of reassure the electorate that they will be as tough as these populist groupings on migration. Adam Easton in Poland. Tributes have been paid to Alex Salmond, the former First Minister of Scotland and a dominant figure in Scottish politics for decades, who's died at the age of 69. As a leader of the Scottish National

Party, he transformed it into a formidable political force, helping pave the way for the historic referendum on independence in 2014, which failed to go his way. Our political correspondent Rob Watson told me more. I think he's an absolutely towering figure, Fannery, in both British politics and Scottish politics of the 21st century. And I think the way I would sum it up is to say that without him, without his political skill, without his charisma, without his power of organisation, Scottish independence would not be, as it is, a mainstream idea in Scottish politics. Now, it's true that as leader of the referendum campaign, the independence campaign, he lost that in 2014. But it remains Scottish independence,

the idea of it remains a mainstream idea. And I think that is largely down to him and his skill. But he was a controversial figure, wasn't he? He was profoundly controversial figure. I mean, he was what they call a Marmite politician, a reference to that food substance. You either hated him or you liked him. But I mean, certainly controversial in the sense that in 2018, when he quit his membership of the Scottish National Party over allegations of sexual harassment. Now, he was cleared of those two years later, but absolutely a controversial figure in a sort of political sense. And of course, in a personal sense, which you sort of expect from

one of those, you know, truly larger than life kind of characters, I should certainly say from having met him and interviewed him a few times. And we're getting reaction coming in, aren't we, from other politicians? Yes. And I think most of them, by and large, recognising what we have just been talking about, Valerie, which is whatever you think about him as a person, as a personality, you cannot, you cannot overstate his influence on British and in particularly Scottish politics. And as I say, that idea of making Scottish independence a mainstream thought,

something that was utterly unthinkable, certainly when I first became a political journalist 40 years ago. Rob Watson. The authorities in Kenya say 45 of their nationals are being held in Myanmar, having been trafficked there to work in online scamming centres. The Kenyan embassy to Thailand says its officials are stationed at the Burmese border, negotiating the release of 10 more citizens. Officials say hundreds of Kenyans are being lured by fake job advertisements in Thailand and then are trafficked upon arrival in Bangkok.

Richard Kagoy reports. Victims are held in heavily gutted compounds in Myanmar, forced into scamming, prostitution and drug trafficking. If they fail to meet targets, they face brutal torture, including weeping, electrocution and confinement in dark rooms without food. Some are even threatened with organ harvesting. Traffickers demand $12,000 in ransom, claiming they bought the victims as slaves. Officials say rescue operations are difficult because the victims are held in dangerous areas. In the past two years, the embassy has rescued 140 Kenyans and others from East Africa. Richard Kagoi.

Still to come in this podcast, we hear about a kayak journey along the length of one of the world's most remote rivers. There was nowhere to land. We had to actively look out the window, pointing, making sure the pilot could land. And then from there, it took a good six days of going through the jungle and then eventually finding the source. 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. The Democratic presidential nominee and current US Vice President Kamala Harris possesses the physical and mental resiliency required for the top job. That's according to a new medical report. Kamala Harris

is accusing her Republican opponent Donald Trump of a lack of transparency for not publishing his own health records in full ahead of next month's election. Stephanie Prentice told us more. This is a formal assessment from a White House physician. It says from a medical perspective, Kamala Harris can physically as well as mentally be president and it says she's in excellent health. It covered lifestyle elements like alcohol consumption, smoking, as well as her current overall health and a family history of things like cancer or cardiac disease. We also actually learn seemingly quite unusual things like how she manages seasonal allergies.

So why this? Why now? Well, as we know, less than a month until election day, both campaigns are busy crisscrossing the country. National polls currently suggest Kamala Harris slightly ahead with those battleground states extremely close. So some see a medical assessment as an obvious tool in Kamala Harris's armory. We do, of course, know Donald Trump often criticised Joe Biden as too old to run at 81. With his exit from the race, Donald Trump at 78, now the oldest presidential nominee in American history. So this is a clear step from the Democratic camp to highlight its position when it comes to age, and of course, possibly fitness for the job. And what about the health of her rival Donald Trump?

Well, Donald Trump's campaign responded quickly in a statement saying his doctors have concluded he's in excellent health to be commander in chief and actually saying his opponent lacked his strength. But Donald Trump has been criticised repeatedly for not releasing any comprehensive medical records in this campaign. Back in November 2023, we got a doctor's note saying he was in excellent health, but not giving any details. And currently, his mental health is coming under extra scrutiny, particularly with some of his speeches being fact checked as inaccurate. Now the Harris campaign, they've been drawing attention to a New York Times analysis of his language during those speeches, suggesting he could be

experiencing cognitive decline. So all of this certainly aimed at putting pressure on him to take some sort of cognitive test. And of course, remember, it's something he pushed Joe Biden to do when he was running against him. Stephanie Prentice. The Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who was President Vladimir Putin's most formidable political opponent before his death in February believed he would die in prison. That's according to a posthumous memoir that will be published later this month. The New Yorker magazine has published excerpts from the book featuring writing from Alexei Navalny's time behind bars. Danny Eberhard reports. In life, he was President Putin's fiercest critic,

but Alexei Navalny's words continue to resonate from beyond the grave. The extracts are full of defiance and pathos. Mr Navalny knew he'd be jailed on his return from Germany in 2021 after treatment for being poisoned with Novichok in Siberia. But he explained he did not want to surrender his homeland or the future of Russians and their children to what he called a gang of liars, thieves and hypocrites. If convictions mean something, he writes, you must be prepared to make sacrifices. Key to his strategy for dealing

with his fate was acceptance, even through self-deception, of what he called the worst case scenario, his words voiced by a BBC producer. I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here. There will not be anybody to say goodbye to. Or, while I'm still in prison, people I know outside will die and I won't be able to say goodbye to them. I'll never see my grandchildren. I won't be the subject of any family stories.

I'll be missing from all the photos. Mr Navalny predicted the eventual collapse of the Putinist state, despite being under no illusions as to the resilience of autocracies. His arch-foe, Vladimir Putin, is presented as a tin-pot czar and a vengeful runt, but his main message to his compatriots was not to give in to fear. The hero of one of my favourite books, Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy, says, yes, the only suitable place for an honest man in Russia at the present time is prison. It sounds fine, but it was wrong then, and it's even more wrong now. There are a lot of honest people in

Russia, tens of millions. There are far more than is commonly believed. The authorities, however, who were repugnant then, and are even more so now, are afraid not of honest people, but of those who are not afraid of them. Or let me be more precise, those who may be afraid, but overcome their fear. The excerpts are laced too with poignant, tender references to his family, a rare early visit from his wife, Yulia, missing his son on his 14th birthday. And Mr Navalny mocks the privations of jail life with his trademark dry wit, although he admitted that when the authorities transferred an interminably yelling lunatic in a seemingly deliberate plan into his otherwise empty punishment wing, it almost drove him nuts

through sleep deprivation. He recounts the surprise of a prison psychologist regarding his enduring good spirits, a result of what he called his prison zen. Resilient, yes, but Alexei Navalny admitted missing normal human interactions. Less than two months before his suspicious death in his final freezing Arctic jail, he invoked people to be present in the lives of their nearest and dearest. Don't, he wrote, let your loved ones miss you. Danny Eberhard. In recent decades, China's economic growth turned it into the world's second largest economy and a manufacturing superpower. 2024 has been more of a challenge.

Exports are down, local governments are battling rising debt, and the country has yet to fully recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. On Saturday, China's finance minister announced more elements of a huge stimulus package, which he hopes will reverse that economic decline. Celia Hatton reports. China's economy has been struggling since the pandemic, and economists outside the country have been calling on Beijing to actively stimulate growth. At a hotly anticipated news conference, China's finance minister, Lan Foan, made some concessions. He said £249 billion worth of special government bonds could be used over the next three months. The details were vague. It wasn't clear how much of that fund is comprised of new money and where it will be spent.

Analysts say more details on the stimulus need to be released. Beijing appears to be suffering from a bout of indecision. China's leader, Xi Jinping, has been pushing officials to pour money into high-tech research and development to boost the economy. But there are concerns that Beijing needs to do more to address more immediate issues, including high youth unemployment, hovering at 17%, and local governments that are mired in debt, often due to overspending on infrastructure. Celia Hatton. Fashion insiders have expressed concern over what they say is a worrying return to using extremely thin models at shows last month. A report on inclusivity by Vogue Business has found there was a plateau in size inclusivity efforts

across New York, London, Milan and Paris. Of the almost 9,000 looks presented across 208 shows in the women's wear collections, nearly 95% were shown on models who fit a US size 2 or less. Malia Shoaib is a reporter at Vogue Business covering diversity and inclusivity and is the author of the report. And she spoke to Rima Ahmed about the lack of progress. We've been doing this research for about two years now. And in all honesty, the figures have never been super high for midsize and plus size representation. But we found that over the past year or so, the numbers have really started to sort of plateau, as you said. And we're seeing a lot of models, even within that straight size category, they look really, really thin. I think it's one thing seeing models online and it's easy to detach and sort of see them as this, like almost like an object that exists to present clothes. But actually, when you sexuality at the forefront of a lot of what's

been going on in the world of fashion. What does this regression tell us about the industry at the moment? Well, I think that we've seen a backtrack in diversity and inclusion efforts kind of across the board. I think that the topic has become quite unnecessarily polarised in the media and sort of, you know, online culture. I think that it's also become unnecessarily political. I think when you look at something like clothing, at the end of the day, regardless of how you feel about people of any different size, everybody needs to buy clothes and everyone, I think, deserves to feel good in those clothes that they buy. So, yeah, it's a shame that as there's been the cost of living crisis and a lot of brands have really felt that slowdown that I think with budgets being cut, diversity is not necessarily a priority for people.

And it's becoming apparent that those efforts that people were making, you know, five years ago or so were actually slightly tokenistic. It's not something that people are following through on. And it really does come back to the editors, the designers themselves, because they're the ones who are choosing these models. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, it's kind of a cycle, right? Like the designers choose the models, the agency chooses which models to put forward often. Then the retailers choose which brands they'd like to stock.

So, you know, sometimes they're not choosing the brand that has a bunch of diverse models. They kind of want that stereotypical look. But there are a number of solutions that we can look at. So if you look at Copenhagen Fashion Week, they have requirements for the designers that show their regarding sustainability, but also body diversity. And it does work. You know, we usually see that there is much more size inclusivity in Copenhagen compared to any of the big four fashion weeks. But it's important that we have these standards, but also that they're enforced. Malia Chueb.

Adventure sports have become increasingly popular over the years, and as more people climb the highest mountains and run the furthest distances, world firsts are becoming harder to come by. Well, four adventurers have been recognised by the Guinness World Records for following the Copernan River in Southern America from its source to the sea, as Sophie Smith reports. The Copernan River starts in the Wilhelmina Mountains in central Suriname and flows for around 500 kilometres through an untouched rainforest

out to the Atlantic Ocean. Its source, according to the Guinness World Records, has not yet been mapped and so caught the eyes of the British explorers Ash Dykes and Jacob Hudson who were looking to set anew first. Along with Dutch and Scottish wildlife experts Dick Locke and Matt Wallace, they took a helicopter and tried to find it. There was nowhere to land. We had to actively look out the window, pointing, making sure the pilot could land.

And then from there, it took a good six days of going through the jungle and then eventually finding the source. After they found it, they moved on to their next challenge, setting a world record for the fastest team to hike up Suriname's highest mountain, Juliana Top, and they succeeded. From there, they made their way back to the river to embark on their final journey, kayaking from the source to the sea. Because it's the dry season and the water's shallow, there's a lot of pulling the kayak behind upstream and downstream until eventually it's deep enough to get in the kayaks

and start paddling. Ash Dykes is no stranger to adventurous travels. He's already walked across Mongolia and the length of the Yangtze River in China, but he said this was the most remote journey he'd ever made. 93% of Suriname is covered by jungle, and the trip was in part funded by the American singer Cher's conservation charity, Free the Wild, with the aim of documenting the wildlife and the effect of human activity on it. The team saw everything the rainforest had to offer. Jaguars, capybaras, seals and scorpions.

But they reached the Atlantic after 37 days and succeeded in winning their third world record of the trip. That report from Sophie Smith. 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. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Joe McCartney.

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 Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts.