Global News Podcast - UN chief: Famine in Gaza is a 'man-made disaster'

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, says the famine in Gaza City is a 'failure of humanity' after a UN-backed body raised its food insecurity status in parts of the territory to the most severe. Also: FBI agents search the office and home of President Trump's former national security advisor John Bolton; the head of NATO has called for robust security guarantees for Ukraine; and scientists discover a new species of dinosaur with a sail-like structure along its back. 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]

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And don't miss the new season of Karen Piri coming this October. You don't look, look, please. I'll do that as a compliment. See it differently when you stream the best of British TV with Britbox. Watch with a free trial today. This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles, and in the early hours of Saturday the 23rd of August, these are our main stories. Aid agencies say Palestinians in Gaza City, where famine has been declared,

are too exhausted to flee Israel's promised offensive. FBI agents have searched the office and residents of John Bolton, Mr. Trump's former national security advisor turned vocal critic. Also in this podcast, the head of NATO has called for robust security guarantees for Ukraine. And scientists discover a new species of dinosaur with a spiky sail along its back and tail. This was a fairly large herbivore, probably walking around on four feet most of the time, but could probably raise up onto two if it needed to. An entirely man-made famine is taking place.

in Gaza City. That's according to the UN-backed global hunger monitoring body, the IPC. It's the first time famine has been officially classified in the Middle East. The IPC, which monitors hunger around the world, found that 130,000 children are now at risk of dying from malnutrition. The organisation also says that over half a million people across the Gaza Strip are facing starvation, destitution and death. Aid workers in the territory say exhausted and starving Palestinians will struggle to meet Israel's evacuation orders for Gaza City. For those living there, today's announcement comes as no surprise. We fight every day just to get life basics like food, clean water, hygiene, stuff, medications,

or even the feeling of security and peace. While children outside Gaza want to eat an asht cream instead of an apple, our children don't know what an apple is. Food and water should never have become a tool of war. Few trucks are allowed to enter Gaza, but those are commercial trucks. And these kind of items are going to the markets in a very high prices, four times, five times and sometimes ten times doubled the normal prices. UNICEF's spokesperson in Gaza, Tess Ingram, says the situation on the ground is the worst she has ever seen.

I've spent the last 48 hours going to nutrition points here in the middle area. of the Gaza Strip to meet with families trying to seek support for malnutrition, pregnant women, children, and I was shocked by what I saw. It is the worst that I have ever seen. I met a little girl called Nour, who was born healthy at four kilos, and now at 14 months old, she weighs just five kilograms. And she should be double that by this point. She's severely acutely malnourished, and her mother, who in tears said to me,

she was worried that her daughter might die. Our correspondent in Jerusalem, Eminada, told us more about today's declaration of famine. What we've learned is that roughly a quarter of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are now classified as suffering from famine. It's obviously something that many people working on the ground there and people that we've had testimony from, it's something that they've been talking anecdotally about the difficulties of finding food, as you've heard in those clips there. and now it's been sort of substantiated in this very robust report by the IPC. And what's more is that it notes that as soon as next month, much of the rest of Gaza, this famine will spread to those areas too.

So the trends that it identifies are very significant and indeed very worrying, especially ahead of this planned Israeli military offensive on Gaza City, the very place where today the IPC have found that famine is taking place. And the Israeli government disputes the findings of the report, though, doesn't it? It does. It says they are based on lies. They are biased. They're politically motivated. Prime Minister Netanyahu went as far as to say there was anti-Semitic motivations behind the report, referring to blood libels. So a very vehement rejection from Israel who have long denied that there is famine and indeed starvation in the Gaza Strip. Now, one of Israel's representatives, Fleur Hassan Nahum, did speak earlier about some of the points of rejection that Israel is seeing in the report.

The report is based on partial and not full data. They've completely ignored all the information given to them by Kogat, which is the Israeli government military coordination with the Palestinian administration. And on top of all that, they've completely ignored the numbers of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that have actually given out 150. million meals out in the last few months. So if you're only going to use the data that serves your political agenda, it's not a very credible report. Emma, that's what Israel says, but a lot of experts say that it is valid this report. Indeed, we've heard from numerous independent experts. Much of the humanitarian community really coming out today with a strongly worded support of this report, really defending its

conclusions and indeed the methodology that it is based upon. So where does this leave us? The report is out there. It's putting more pressure on Israel, but they're rejecting it. What is the likely outcome? Well, I think that we can see the response of Israel to this report. Sitting in with the general hardening of its position on many fronts that we've been seeing in the past week or so, including this plan defensive of Gaza City, really defiant language where we've heard repeatedly from ministers saying, you can criticise us and threaten. with sanctions all you want. We believe invading Gaza City is the way to return the hostages and to defeat Hamas

and to end the war. We have seen previously Israel respond positively to international outrage around aid and allowing more aid to get in. But given the kind of language we've been seeing in the past week or so, I don't imagine that we're going to see any immediate shift in its policies around letting food into the Gaza Strip. That was Emma Nader. Is there a witch hunt against Donald Trump's opponents?

It is a question that some are asking after FBI agents arrived in a plush suburb near Washington, D.C., and searched the home of Donald Trump's former National Security Advisor John Bolton. He's served every Republican president dating back to Ronald Reagan, but he fell out with President Trump over foreign policy and was sacked in 2019. Since then, he's become a staunch and vocal critic of his former boss. And that continued, even as FBI agents were at his home posting on X that the President was interested in Ukraine just because he wants a Nobel Peace Prize, but that the peace talks were unlikely to make any progress.

Our correspondent Tom Bateman has been following developments. He's been reporting from outside John Bolton's house in Maryland. What the FBI have said is that this was a court-authorised action. We have seen, I'm outside John Bolton's house now, and there have been FBI agents in their FBI jackets coming and going, and have been in there, what, five or six hours, hours now they took in empty cardboard boxes earlier. All we know is from our named officials that they say this is an investigation into the alleged illegal possession or sharing of classified

information. Now, Mr. Trump during his first term had fired John Bolton as his national security adviser. John Bolton then wrote a book about his time in the White House, which the White House then tried to block publication of, claiming that he hadn't got the appropriate approvals. The courts rejected that, so the book had gone ahead, but the administration under the Justice Department has still tried to carry on a criminal investigation. But here we are all these years later with Mr. Trump back in office. Nothing had come of that investigation, but it seems if it is linked, if it is the same case, that therefore has been reactivated, but what, seven, eight months into Mr. Trump's second term. At a moment where John Bolton has

been increasingly critical of Donald Trump, and as you say, particularly recently over his attempts to do a peace deal with Vladimir Putin. And we know that Mr Trump was very irritated about the media coverage of that summit last week because he was posting on his social media account about his irritation over the weekend. And Tom, the Department of Justice has opened investigations into a number of people seen as Trump opponents, ex-FBI director James Comey, New York attorney, Letitia James. Is there a concern that these probes are being used as a political well? weapon. Towards the end of the Biden administration, I mean, I was talking to very senior officials

who spoke about the concerns about this, about the possibility for the incoming Trump administration to use the legal system to carry out retribution, basically, to punish its political opponents. They had been concerned about that. And as you say, we're seeing political opponents of Mr Trump subject to criminal investigations. Now, the administration says in all these cases that these legitimate legal actions and that people, in their words, that nobody is above the law. But it also coincides with people who have tended to be very strong critics of Mr. Trump or his administration. Now, certainly, I mean, one official I spoke to last year did raise concern about this, but said in the end they felt assured by the independence of the legal system.

And in the end, the courts, you know, if things reach that point, the courts will realize that these are politically motivated actions. But, of course, it's raising, I mean, we've had protesters, a very small number of protesters turning up here, one with a placard at the moment saying Trump uses the FBI for vengeance. So you get a sense already of how this is playing into the deep divisions already in American politics and society. That was Tom Bateman.

As Donald Trump was preparing to meet Vladimir Putin last week for a summit on ending the war in Ukraine, he said the next step would be a meeting between Mr Putin and Vladimir. in Zelensky. Well, so far, there has been no sign that such a meeting is forthcoming. Mr. Trump was asked about it in Washington on Friday. We're going to see if Putin and Zelensky will be working together. You know, that's like oil and vinegar a little bit. They don't get along too well for obvious reasons, but we'll see.

And then we'll see whether or not I would have to be there. I'd rather not. I'd rather have them have a meeting and see how they can do. But in the meantime, they continue to fight and they continue to kill people, which is very stupid. Volodymyr Zelensky did meet the NATO chief, Mark Rutter, on Friday. Mr. Ritter called for security guarantees for Ukraine to ensure that Russia honors any peace deal that is eventually made. Our correspondent Katie Watson reports from Kiev. As the war rages, diplomacy is trying to keep pace. This was a chance for the well-traveled President Zelensky to play host here in Kiev. NATO's Secretary General Mark Rutter, reminding Russia who Ukraine's allies are.

and what they're prepared to do. Robust security guarantees will be essential. And this is what we are now working to define. So that when the time comes, for you to enter that bilateral meeting, you have the unmistakable force of Ukraine's friends behind you, ensuring that Russia will uphold any deal and will never, ever again, attempt to take one square kilometer of Ukraine. But still, there's little detail on what that actually means.

It's not the first time that security guarantees have been agreed and not respected. The NATO Secretary-General insisted lessons had been learnt. Meanwhile, President Zelensky accused Russia of doing everything not to have a meeting with Ukraine. He said Vladimir Putin needed to be forced into diplomacy. People here in Ukraine, though, are war-weary. Many have little faith that anything will come of these talks. A question I put to Volodymy Zelensky. What do you say to Ukrainians who think that we're,

in the same position as we were a week ago. Maybe I'm sure boating, but Washington felt like a success. Why? Because yes, Ukraine needs security guarantees. But without the U.S., Europe will not give us everything it can. I don't know how this will end, but this is much better

than it was a week or two ago. We saw unity in Washington. It's still political, but it's just the first step of everyone working on security guarantees. Ukraine's surrounding itself with allies. But it's not clear whether the plan they come up with will convince Russia it needs to come to the table. Katie Watson. The US Justice Department has released a transcript of an

interview with Gilane Maxwell, the ex-girlfriend of the late paedophile and financier Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein's friendships with wealthy individuals, including Mr Trump, have fueled conspiracy theories. Our North America correspondent David Willis is following the story. There's 300, 37 pages of transcript, Nick, and I think the top line is that in this interview with Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General conducted a month ago, Jolie Maxwell goes out of her way to praise Donald Trump, saying that although she came into contact when Mr. Trump, he was part of Jeffrey Epstein's orbit, he, Mr. Trump, never did anything inappropriate, adding that she admired what she called his extraordinary achievement in becoming president.

And as well as maintaining her own innocence in these interviews, Jelaine Maxwell implicates nobody else in what was thought to be the widespread trafficking of children, which Jeffrey Epstein was engaged in. And of course, his friendships with rich and powerful people have fueled conspiracy theories along the lines that others were clearly involved with his crimes, but no one other than he and Jelaine Maxwell have been criminally charged. She is appealing her sentence to the US Supreme Court. And remind us why this has been released now

and how much it's likely to allay those suggestions of involvement of Donald Trump and others? Well, this is a story, Nick, that the Trump administration has been desperately seeking to play down, given the president's friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, there's been pressure from members of Mr. Trump's own base, who for years have been fueling conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein's clientele and his mysterious death in prison, and partly under the encouragement, in fact, of Donald Trump, only for his own U.S. Justice Department to announce suddenly back in general,

that they would not be releasing the criminal files relating to this case. Officials have apparently been deliberating for the last few days about whether or not to release these transcripts and these recordings. The fact that they've done so, I think, are late on a Friday night, Nick, speaks for itself. But those seeking answers about Jeffrey Epstein's scandalous conduct will be disappointed by the contents of these recordings, I think. David Willis. Still to come in this podcast.

We need to celebrate. I'm going to celebrate on the way with all the dogs that I meet. The dogs of Delhi have been given a reprieve after big protests by animal welfare groups. This podcast is brought to you by Wise, the app for international people using money around the globe. With Wise, you can send, spend and spend. receive up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps. Plus, Wise won't add hidden fees to your transfer. Whether you're buying souvenirs with pesos in Puerto Vallata or sending euros to a loved one in Paris,

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Every dish has its own story. Flavors, experimentation and tradition, Turkey has it all. Plan your detour at go-turkotr.com. From South Korea to Mexico to Egypt, school uniforms are standard in classrooms across many countries. But stricter dress codes for students in El Salvador have sparked controversy. Critics say it's another step towards the militarization of education and President Naibuqueles increasingly authoritarian rule.

Ella Bicknell has this report. At this technical college, head teacher Oscar Malera, inspects each student as they fall in through the school gate. Shirt, shoes and haircuts must meet strict new standards. Mohawks and popular bowl style Edgar cuts are out. Short back and sides are in. This is now the norm in schools across El Salvador. Under new rules, teachers are encouraged to enforce strict punishments for students who don't comply,

from community service to lowering grades. It's been spearheaded by El Salvador's new education minister, Carla Chigueroas, a captain. with the armed forces. She's been touring schools in her military uniform promising to transform the system. She says discipline will prevent children being recruited into gangs. Her teacher Oscar Malera agrees. Previously, when we stopped students to tell them their haircut wasn't appropriate, they would say their teacher was pressuring them or psychologically mistreating them. It made so many teachers back off from enforcing rules. But with this new minister and these rules, she tells us we must

Correct this, because we need students to receive a complete education. And some students support it as well. Thank God most students are now taking it up again. For me, it's something we should always maintain. So we students look smart and aren't misinterpreted out there on the streets. But teachers' unions say the measures go too far. The Salvadoran Teachers' Front called the policy absurd, liking it to the country's past under military.

dictatorship. Since taking office in 2019, President Naïbe Buckele has removed presidential term limit, calling himself the world's coolest dictator. His crackdown on gang crime has made him wildly popular. Behuman rights groups say it's come at a cost, including enforced disappearances and torture. More than 80,000 people have been detained by the authorities. Ella Bicknell. A police helicopter brought down killing 12 people, a truck bomb outside a military airbase, six more deaths. It sounds like a return to some of the worst of Colombia's civil war violence of the past. It all happened late on Thursday and it has made many people there look at the historic 2016 peace deal with the FARC rebel group and think, what's gone wrong? Now President Gustavo Petra has announced a security forces campaign against the group thought to be responsible.

the EMC. Our America's editor, Leonard Orozha, told us more. The president described this group, the EMC or central general staff, described them as the biggest drug trafficking organization in Colombia. I don't know if that's true because there are other organizations, but they are quite powerful. And what he said is that these attacks marked the beginning of the end for them. He said he had instructed the security forces to go and basically destroy this unit.

minutes from where these attacks were launched on the helicopter. They threw a mortar and also a drone that destroyed that helicopter, killing 12 police officers. Now, this deal with the FARC in 2016, that was supposed to resolve most things. The EMC, where have they come from? What do they want? The EMC are dissidents from the FARC during the peace process. The FARC had been fighting since the 1960s.

And we had this agreement with a previous government. And then by the end of the peace talks, some leaderships said, we're not going to accept that. We don't trust the government. We'll carry on fighting. And then there's one of the rebel leaders called Ivan Mordisco. He invited people to join his forces and said, come and join me. And these are the EMC. Basically, it's a coalition of basically criminal groups now because they're not all involved in fighting the government. They're involved in drug trafficking, extortion, kidnappings and all sorts of things. And the EMC is a coalition of these groups. And there are other groups as well. It's not just these sort of form.

former left-wing rebels? No, there are three main groups. There's ELN, which is the main rebel group, still active. You have the EMC, they're rivals, former FARC, and you have the Gulf Clan, their appeal, drug trafficking, extortion organization, very powerful. And they're fighting basically for routes. What is this that?

What are the roots? It's basically taking the cocaine from where it's produced in Colombia to the ports where it can be smuggled into the United States and Europe. And they're very powerful. And President Petro tried to have peace talks, we call Total Peace, with them inviting, including the EMC, for talks. But they have failed. And all that happens in a year before the elections. President Petro says he's determined to fight.

And he said what motivated this attack was his actions against these groups, basically responded by planting a bomb in Cali and attacking the helicopter. Leonard O'Rosha. Scientists have discovered a new species of a large plant-eat-eat-eat-eat-eat-e. dinosaur that had a sail-like structure along its back and tail. Fossils of this extraordinary animal related to the better-known iguanodon were found on the Isle of Wight of England's southern coast. The researcher who identified the beast is Jeremy Lockwood. He spoke to Tim Franks about the discovery. This was a fairly large herbivore, probably walking around on four feet most of the time, but could probably raise up onto two if it needed to.

It was probably in herds and would have been the size of maybe a small American bison when it was full grown. And on its back, it had something distinctive? It did. So we think it had a sail running down its back onto its tail, which sort of stood out. And it's quite a different thing from the other similar sorts of iguanodontians that we find on the Isle of Wight. What do you think the purpose of it was?

We did quite a bit of research when we found this animal into what was actually happening with the neural spine. So the spines rising up from the vertebra running along the back and we actually went back into the Jurassic which is much earlier than this dinosaur and started measuring the heights of neural spines on these animals and followed it right through really to the end of the dinosaur. these animals started to get taller neural spines.

And this combined with a change from a smaller bipedal animal into a big, hefty, sort of mega herbivore, there seems to be a mechanical use for having taller neural spines. They developed a crisscross of tendons running across these. And some of these have actually been preserved in the dinosaur group that we're looking at. And so it was a bit like a bridge. It needed more support for its spine, including its increased weight and bulk. Right. That was the first stage.

But in a few, a few dinosaurs, and I think there's probably four or five examples around the world, the neural spines became much taller than was clearly necessary for a mechanical function. So if we look around at lizards today, we do see several species that have this, this sail running down their backs. It's slightly bigger in the males, but it's on males and females. And this is sexual signalling.

This has evolved due to sexual selection. It's extraordinary that you sort of, I'm sure you were an incredibly successful family doctor. Tell me what it's like now to have sort of achieved scientific success in an entirely different field. Well, it's been really nice

for me. I needed a new subject to, well, maybe keep my brain. inactive. And it was a question that had been concerning me for a long time that the anatomy that we were seeing here showed variation that couldn't be explained by the, at that time, only two iguanodontian dinosaurs in the Isle of Wight. So it's quite time consuming doing a PhD. But now that I've got it, it's opened up new doors for me. It's been, I mean, I'm very lucky to have discovered three new dinosaurs. We found 10 on the island over the last. six years. So there's a real renaissance in dinosaur discoveries in this little island off the

south coast of England, probably finding more than a lot of places in the world that are really well known for their dinosaurs. Jeremy Lockwood. And from dinosaurs to the street dogs of Delhi that have been given a reprieve. There were so many of them roaming around that the Supreme Court had ordered them all to be rounded up and sent to shelters. But after protests by animal rights groups, they will now be vaccinated and sterilised and then released. Terry Egan has the report.

The dogs of Delhi. According to Indian media, there may be as many as a million strays in the city. And there are regular reports of dog attacks, particularly on children and the elderly. Last year, there were more than 25,000 reported cases of dog bites in the capital and fears that, as in other parts of India, some could end up with rabies. But if the dogs were raging, so were the authorities,

who issued an order to catch and remove tens of thousands of them. Yet that triggered protests. The strays then also have their fervent support, In some middle-class neighbourhoods, many have become beloved residents, despite lacking formal owners, with some being given special canine jackets to keep warm during the winter, and others taken into private homes. On top of that, it began to dawn on everyone just how big an exercise moving all the dogs to shelters could prove to be. So India's Supreme Court has now scaled back its plans. Instead, the dogs will be sterilized and vaccinated to prevent rabies.

They'll then be released with only those showing aggressive behavior kept in shelters. For supporters and pro-dog activists, a big victory. We were expecting an order and everyone was praying since last night and chanting. And I think these prayers have been heard, but more importantly, the voice has been heard. And the moment the order came, you know, with different clauses, but mostly in support of of whatever we are saying, so that's what the celebration was about. This college student, who also took part in the rallies, supporting the dogs, welcomed the success. I think we won today. If the stay order is legitimate, then I hope that we need to celebrate.

And if it is so true, I'm going to celebrate on the way with all the dogs that I meet. Which means, of course, a lot of celebrating. Terry Egan reporting. And that is all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later on. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is Global Podcast at BBC.co.com. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global NewsPod. Well, this edition was mixed by Massoud Ibrahim Gael, and the producers were Charles Sanctuary and Stephanie Tillotson. The editor is Karen Martin.

Nick Miles, and until next time, goodbye.