Global News Podcast - UN condemns 'large number' of civilian deaths in north Gaza

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

The UN has condemned the 'large number' of civilian deaths in north Gaza. Also: Lilly Ledbetter, who fought for equal pay for women in the US, has died, and the joy of discovering a 237 million year-old fossil.

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 Nick Miles and in the early hours of Tuesday the 15th of October, these are our main stories. The UN has accused Israel of trying to cut the north of Gaza off from the rest of the territory

and killing large numbers of civilians there in intensifying strikes. India and Canada have expelled their top envoys in a bitter row over last year's assassination of a Sikh separatist in British Columbia. Lily Ledbetter, a key figure in the fight for equal pay for women in the United States, has died at the age of 86. Also in this podcast... You can touch it, the first human hands touching it in 237 million years. This is extraordinary. It is an indefinable emotion.

The joy of discovering a very old fossil. The United Nations has accused Israel of trying to cut the north of Gaza off from the rest of the territory and killing large numbers of civilians there in intensifying strikes. The strikes in Jabalia and Gaza City killed at least 18 people on Monday. This followed a deadly attack on the Al-Aqsa hospital compound in central Gaza hours earlier. Israel is not allowing international journalists from media organisations, including the BBC, independent access to Gaza. Our special correspondent Fergal Keane sent this report from Jerusalem.

There was an explosion, then the fire came. Our special correspondent Fergal Keane sent this report from Jerusalem. from the scene, a figure is enveloped by flames, a hand grasping upwards. Men tried in vain to stop the fire by throwing buckets of water. Umm Muhammad Wadi was asleep with her daughters when she was woken by the blaze. It was around 1am and we were sleeping in our tent. I have eight daughters. We woke up to the fire over our heads. Our daughters are all burned and our sons are injured. All my daughters are in a dire state. The Israel Defence Forces said Hamas was operating a command centre next to the hospital which the IDF targeted. The EU's top diplomat, Yosef Borrell, condemned the strike and said mass evacuations, violations of international law would not make Israel safer. The UN has also warned that the escalating violence is having a disastrous impact on food supplies.

Ajiz Sungay is the head of the UN Human Rights Office for the Palestinian territories. There is a population of about 400,000 people who are stuck there, surrounded, besieged by the Israeli Defense Force, with no access to proper food, water or life-saving necessities. The Israeli Defense Force has asked people to evacuate from the north and move down to the middle or the south of Gaza. Now, people don't want to move because there's a major fear that if they leave the north, they'll never be able to return. Our correspondent in Jerusalem, Wera Davis, told me more about what the UN Human Rights Office had to say. Human rights organisations have often criticised Israel in the past,

but this is a particularly strongly worded statement. It accused Israel of trapping tens of thousands of Palestinians, including civilians, in their homes and shelters with no access to food or life sustaining necessities. It was a very long and very critical statement, which also said that Israeli troops have fired on civilians trying to flee the area, and that could amount to a war crime. It cited unverified reports of Israeli forces erecting sand mounds at key junctures, eventually sealing off northern Gaza and firing on those attempting to flee. Now, the separation, of course, of northern parts of Gaza around Jabalia raises further concern that Israel doesn't actually intend to allow civilians to return,

which is why many may be reluctant to leave. And repeated calls for Palestinians to leave northern Gaza have raised grave concerns amongst many human rights groups and the UN of large-scale forced transfer of the civilian population. And Wira, I gather there's been speculation growing in the Israeli military about why the military has been telling civilians to leave that part of Gaza. It might be part of a preparation for a siege

to force the surrender of Hamas fighters. And they've been incredibly difficult to get rid of the Hamas fighters there, haven't they? Yeah, I mean, of course, they've defeated most of Hamas battalions. Hamas hasn't got the weaponry it had a year ago, but there are Hamas units certainly based in parts across Gaza and probably in parts of Jubalia in the north, but the 200,000 civilians there as well. And the fear is that

there'd be some sort of almost like a scorched earth policy now that these civilians who aren't able to leave may end up being trapped as the Israelis intensely destroy many of the buildings in an attempt to finish off Hamas once and for all. And of course, that then does raise a spectre. Even when the fighting ends, will those people be allowed to return to their homes? Or will this be some sort of buffer zone, a no-go area between Israel and the rest of Gaza?

We're at Davis. Israel appears to have bombed a Christian-majority area in the far north of Lebanon for the first time in more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah. The Lebanese Red Cross says 21 people were killed in that attack on Aitou. Israel hasn't commented. Our correspondent Jonathan Haid in Beirut told us more. From what local residents tell us, this is indeed a Christian village.

It's a very small one, fewer than 1,000 inhabitants. There would appear to be no reason for it to be targeted. But, and this is true across Lebanon, there are so many people on the move who've been displaced. So you're getting a lot of outsiders coming in. In Aitou, there have been quite a lot of families who come in from the Shiite south who've been displaced by the war down there. They say that the house that was struck by this bomb, this very powerful bomb, had only been rented out in the last two weeks, and it's possible, and there's some information suggesting

there was someone there that the Israelis wanted, and that's why they bombed it. Of course, Israel is very accurate with its bombing, but these are very big bombs, and they have a devastating effect on all the people around the house. I can tell you the scenes after this bombing were just appalling. There were bodies and injured people lying all over outside the village, dust and smoke everywhere, people in acute distress in this village. And this is the reality of life in Lebanon now. Most of the strikes have

been inevitably in the south in the Bekaa Valley, where Hezbollah is known to be strong, in that part of Beirut where they're strong too. But there are strikes anywhere else. And remember, Israel has vowed to hit back very strongly in retaliation for that Hezbollah drone attack on an army base in northern Israel yesterday. In a way, one wonders how much more tough they could be. These strikes have happening, dozens of them, pretty much every day. And every single one of them has civilian casualties. Jonathan Head. To Germany now, where a landmark ruling has found a former Stasi officer guilty of murder. That's the first time a former member of the East German secret police has been found guilty of the charge. The officer is now 80 and has been sentenced to 10 years in prison

for murdering a Polish man, Czeslaw Kukuczka, who was attempting to flee to West Berlin 50 years ago. Details of the killing remained unknown for decades after the Stasi secret police shredded files related to the case before Communist East Germany reunified with the West in 1990. Stefan Apellius is one of the historians who uncovered the case in the archives. This is a really courageous and groundbreaking judgment in Berlin. I can only congratulate the judges. Czeslaw Kukuczka was treacherously murdered. And in other cases, I know in the years before, judges were very often not very courageous to do something. This is the difference in this case. For more on the story, my colleague Azadeh Moshiri spoke to the writer Katia Hoyer.

We're basically talking about a Polish individual who was trying to cross the Cold War divide in Berlin, so across the Berlin Wall into the West. And he did that by basically claiming to be a terrorist. So he claimed to have a bomb in his suitcase. And if he wasn't allowed across, he would detonate it. The Stasi, that's the East German secret police, worked out pretty quickly that this was a bluff, but still saw him as a threat because he was a foreign individual but still saw him as a threat because he was a foreign individual, did this in public basically, which could have caused some sort of international incident. And so they basically told him he's free to go. And as he walked across, he was shot in the back by a hidden Stasi officer. And this was a case that happened

50 years ago, but the details were only discovered now, which is why there was a court case about it now. And he was found guilty of murder. That's the first time that's happened in the case of a former Stasi officer. Why is that? For murder, you have to prove intent as well as malice. And when you're operating within an institution, that is quite difficult to prove since these people operate on orders. And so by and large, if killings happened, they were usually treated as manslaughter because the person actually executing the murder or the killing doesn't necessarily have that intent to kill that person, but is simply being told to do that. He was 38 years old at the time.

Do we know why Mr. Kukuczka risked his life trying to cross? As far as I know, that seems to be a little bit of a mystery because, as you say, he was kind of in the middle of his life. He had three children as well and a family, basically, in Poland. And the manner in which he did it was, to say the least, quite unusual in the sense that, you know, most of the people trying to cross were trying to do it secretly above or underneath the wall or, you know, across the so-called green border, the long border in Germany that separated east and west. But there were other ways of doing it. And the fact that, you know, he chose this very spectacular way of doing it, you it, makes the case even more mysterious. And could you remind us, for anyone who doesn't remember

or isn't familiar with that history, why people would risk their lives to escape? Most of them had relatives in West Germany. It's easy to forget sometimes that families were split in two by the Cold War divide, and particularly in Berlin, where the war was being put up overnight. Others left because they simply felt oppressed by the dictatorship in the East and wanted to live in a freer society. Many, many people left because of the economic circumstances just to seek a better life.

Katia Hoyer. Now to new research into something very old, shedding new light into the past. Scientists in Brazil have been examining one of the oldest fossils ever found, uniting parts of a creature that may date back to before most dinosaurs we know today, unearthed in a rock layer dating to the Triassic period between 200 million and 250 million years ago. The fossil comes from a time when dinosaurs, as well as mammals, crocodiles, turtles and frogs, first evolved. Stephanie Prentice has this report. The team of scientists piecing together the layered bits of fossils built up a shape of a four-legged species around the size of a small dog

and were shocked when they discovered how old it was. Pedro Aurelio was the first person to find the pieces in the town of Paraíso do Sul in Brazil. You can touch it, the first human hands touching it in 237 million years. This is extraordinary. There is no way for us to define it. It is an indefinable emotion. At 237 million years old, it's one of the world's oldest, and further study of it could help explain the rise of the dinosaurs. It's been identified as

part of an extinct group of reptiles long subject to debate over whether they're classed as dinosaurs or whether they're the precursor to them. Paleontologist Rodrigo Muller has been studying the skeleton and what it could mean for a potential rewriting of the past. One of the most interesting characteristics of this animal is that the part that connects the spine to the pelvic girdle is composed of three vertebrae. That's a common characteristic of dinosaurs, but we've never found an animal from

237 million years ago of this group with this characteristic. The creature has been named Gondrinax parisensis, a nod to the Gondrina landmass in the supercontinent Pangaea, before the continents as we now know them broke apart. Stephanie Prentice. Still to come. I prefer Trump. Also, he imposes economic sanctions on China. I'm quite excited. Harris candidacy marks an important step forward. With three weeks to go before the US election, who do people in China want to win the presidency and why. 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. A diplomatic row between India and Canada over the murder of a Sikh separatist,

Hari Singh Nidja, in British Columbia last year is escalating. India and Canada have expelled their top envoys after Justin Trudeau's government accused Indian agents of being behind that murder. Mr Trudeau said India was undermining Canadian sovereignty. Canada and India have a long and storied history, but we cannot abide by what we're seeing right now. Canada fully respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India. We expect the Indian government to do the same for Canada. Our South Asia regional editor, Ambrasasan Etterajan, told me more about what India has been accused of. Let's rewind a bit. In June 2023, a Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, he was shot dead by unidentified gunmen. That triggered a diplomatic

row. Soon after that, in September, the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, in Parliament, he said that there were credible evidence linking Indian agents with the murder of Mr. Nijar, and they were looking into these allegations. And now the Canadian police say that they have enough information linking people with Indian agents with the acts of homicide and violent activities on Canadian soil. Now, the killed activist was a Canadian citizen, so he was killed on Canadian soil. So that really triggered anger in Canada. But India has been saying that they had no information about this murder. They have no links with this killing.

They denied all these accusations by Ottawa. Now you see the diplomatic escalation now, both sides expelling the high Commissioner and the senior diplomat. So this is quite a serious diplomatic incident because you don't expel the ambassador unless it is a real difference of opinion between two countries. So it has now come to this stage. We have to wait and see what happens next. One can understand India being concerned about its reputation because extrajudicial killings abroad are usually associated with authoritarian regimes. That's what people are asking. How come India was linked?

And not only in Canada, there is a parallel investigation going on in the US about an assassination attempt on another Sikh activist. And that has again triggered a diplomatic row between India and the US. And now India says that they have formed a committee to investigate into the information provided by the US, and they are going to have a meeting in the coming days. So India is now under the radar to see whether any of these Indian government agents, or as some people would describe, rogue agents, were involved in the assassination attempt of another leader in the US because the Sikh separatist movement doesn't exist now in India itself. Very few people may be showing sympathies towards a separate state for the Sikh community in India's Punjab state. But a lot of Sikhs have migrated to Canada and the US. And the idea of a Sikh

separate nation is still very much alive among the diaspora community. And that is really irritating the Indian government about how these people are raising the separatist flag and trying to hold a referendum. And they've been urging Canada and the US to take against these Sikh separatist activities. And now we see the diplomatic role really coming out in the open. Ambrose Aneta Rajan. China and the United States have vastly different political and economic agendas, but that hasn't stopped the Chinese from following the race for the White House with keen interest and some anxiety. They fear what could happen next at home and abroad, whoever wins the White House. Some Chinese analysts have said the choice between Kamala

Harris and Donald Trump is akin to two bowls of poison for the country, amidst growing concerns that intense competition between the two could veer into conflict. Our correspondent in Beijing, Laura Bicker, visited a local park to gauge public opinion. In a clearing in the trees, a pensioner is in full song as he elegantly spins his partner. This group of seniors meet here regularly to learn new moves. And as the US election approaches, its impact on the two superpowers is on their minds. I'm worried that the Sino-US relations are getting tense, which is a zero-sum game. It does no good to China or the US.

We hope the two countries can coexist peacefully with each other so that they can both develop. There are also concerns about another trade war, and many feel the US is imposing tariffs on China's goods to suppress its growth. The tariffs will also increase the burden to the US people. Increasing tariffs will cause the increase of life expenses. The two countries should work for win-win instead of destructive competition, which is not good for both sides. Instead of watching the dancers, many gather to listen and add to our conversation.

I prefer Trump, although he imposes economic sanctions on China. He does not wish to start a war. Biden starts more wars so more ordinary people dislike him. It's Biden who supports Ukraine as the war, and both Russia and Ukraine suffer great loss from the war. This echoes a key message from Chinese state media, which has been quick to blame the current Biden administration for its unwavering support of Israel and Ukraine. China portrays itself as a peacemaker and the US as a troublemaker. As his four-year-old plays on the slide, this father

believes Kamala Harris will keep a cooler head when it comes to one of the biggest flashpoints between the U.S. and China, Taiwan. I don't think there's a good future. I don't want my son to go to the military. China claims the self-governing island of Taiwan, as its own. And President Xi has said reunification is inevitable, vowing to retake it by force if necessary. Joe Biden has insisted the US would defend it. And if Kamala Harris agrees, some fear it could lead to conflict. We find 17-year-old Lucy. She hopes to study in America one day.

I'm quite excited to see there is a female candidate. Harry's candidacy marks an important step forward for gender equality. Previously, China lagged behind the U.S., but now China has risen up in all aspects, which may lead to the U.S. worrying about their number one place in the world. I will work hard to earn the opportunity to participate in overseas programs, allowing me to promote Chinese culture and facilitate deeper cultural exchanges. Both sides have vowed to work towards more people-to-people exchanges, and yet even that is proving difficult. There is a lack of trust on both sides.

And most people we talk to believe that no matter who wins the White House, that will not change. Laura Bicker reporting. Well, China and America are placed one and two on the list of carbon dioxide emitters. And how they decide to address those emissions will be centre stage at the UN's Climate Change Conference, which starts on November the 11th in Azerbaijan. Ahead of that, we are recording a special edition of the Global News Podcast with two of the BBC's top climate change experts. They'll be here to answer any burning questions you have. So please send them to us at the usual address, globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. Thanks. Now, a Nobel Prize in Economics has been awarded to three academics who try to explain why some nations are rich and others poor. The Swedish Academy of Sciences said their research helps us understand how what they called an inclusive system made former colonies richer, while an extractive one made them poorer.

Professor Simon Johnson is one of the academics. So has colonisation ever been good for any countries? Well, we should be careful with the word good because obviously indigenous people, almost without exception, suffered when the Europeans came. And that suffering in many cases has lasted through to today. There are places, geographies where richer societies have developed because the institutions the Europeans brought that developed based on that European legacy were more positive and were more inclusive. But there's a lot of work to do definitely in the country like the United States, even, I'm sure people will tell you this in Australia and New Zealand as well. And you can't change history, but could this have an impact on reducing income inequality in the future as the Nobel Committee has suggested? Yes. So you obviously can't change history, but you can understand history and you can

appreciate how you got to the current place and position. And you can recognise the constraints that that creates, but also the opportunities. So we've always looked for space around which you could create more inclusive institutions and make those more robust so they don't get taken over or undermined by people with autocratic tendencies, for example. And what sort of countries pointed you towards these conclusions? What are some examples? The three of us came in, I think, through our own paths. My path was through working 10 years in the former communist bloc in Eastern Europe, quite a lot in Poland and other countries. And in the former Soviet Union, I spent a lot of time in Ukraine, for example, and some time in Russia. And I was disappointed by the fact that some

standard tools of economics and the way we thought about policy were not that effective in those settings. And that pushed me to understand something more about corruption, something more about the informal economy when people don't register their companies. And that pushed me to understand something more about corruption, something more about the informal economy when people don't register their companies. And that pulled me towards this issue of representation and voice and what political rights people have and the way in which that's intertwined with economic rights and your ability to have a good job and to keep that job and for your kids to do better than you do. Now, no democracy is perfect. Everybody's got their weaknesses, to be sure. But thinking that you can be prosperous, run a rich country, line the pockets of the people at the top indefinitely without broader political representation, I think that's pretty hard to pull off. Where is the legacy of colonialism the most evident to you? Colonialism, I think you can see that throughout the former empire. And you can see it, for example, throughout the former British empire.

Places where Britain was very harsh and very extractive, for example, in West Africa, struggle today with poverty reduction and with keeping children alive. Places that had better institutions under the British because they wanted to encourage British people and Europeans to move there, like Australia and New Zealand, have done better. So those are both colonial legacies on two sides of that coin. But the United States, I have to say, because I live in the United States, I'm well aware of the sort of split legacy. On the one hand, some aspects of the US come from a better treatment by the British, and they encouraged more Europeans to come to the northern and eventually the western parts of the United States.

But let's remember the slave trade. That was Nobel laureate Simon Johnson talking to Azad al-Mashiri. The death has been announced of the American activist Lily Ledbetter, whose advocacy led to the first equal pay law in the US. She was 86. Ledbetter sued her employer Goodyear for gender discrimination after discovering that she was being paid less than her male counterparts. Gordon Carrera takes a look at her impact. discrimination after discovering that she was being paid less than her male counterparts. Gordon Carrera takes a look at her impact. Lily Ledbetter was working at a Goodyear plant in Alabama when she learnt she was paid less than three male colleagues. In 1999, she took the company to court and was initially awarded

$3.8 million in damages. But the company appealed and the Supreme Court eventually ruled she should have filed her lawsuit within 180 days of having first been paid less than her colleagues. Ledbetter went on to a new career as an activist and the first bill that President Obama signed into law in 2009 was the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, making it easier for workers to take their employers to court. Gordon Carrera, a new biopic of Donald Trump called The Apprentice

will be in cinemas on Friday with its premiere at the London Film Festival today, Tuesday. But for a long time, despite it being nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, it didn't look like it would see the light of day. That's partly because of a reluctance by the big Hollywood players to touch anything that might

be controversial, but also because when Donald Trump heard about it, his lawyers sent what are known as cease and desist letters. Here's a clip from the film of the former president with his first wife, Ivana Trump, after a row about a prenup, that's a pre-marriage financial agreement, that led to this haggle over a record. Ivana, please, let's talk about this. Come on, don't do this. Go find someone else to marry. I'm not a traffic wife. You're going to ruin your life if you don't marry me.

Why? One second, listen. Why is that? Because I'm rich, I'm handsome, I have a great family, I'm going to be the number one builder in New York. Listen to me. You're going to have a life you can't even dream of, Ivana. With me.

The film was the idea of the writer and Vanity Fair journalist Gabriel Sherman. He told my colleague Sarah Montague about the challenge he'd faced making the film. This movie has faced an uphill battle. The filmmaker Ali Abassi and I have been trying to get this movie made since 2019. And none of the major Hollywood studios would invest any money to finance the production. We had to look for money overseas and from independent sources. And it finally came together in the fall of 2023. Last fall, we got all the money together and got the actors hired and went into production. So this is for me as a writer, this has been a seven-year journey.

I mean, we should say that there is, for example, a very controversial scene that you have in this movie, you know which one I'm referring to, where Donald Trump rapes his first wife, Ivana. Now, she had said in the divorce deposition that there was a similar assault, but she later retracted that. He has always denied it. And I think it could be an argument that people are thinking, well, we don't know if that happened. She didn't blanket retract it. What she did was in 1993,

so three years after she made these allegations under oath in the threat of perjury, she later clarified in 1993 that she just didn't mean it was a criminal act, that she felt violated as a woman. And then subsequently, in 25 years later, when Trump was running for president, she dismissed it. I mean, that is the scene that, for example, concerned the initial funder of the film, didn't it? I mean, if you had removed that, you wouldn't have had the difficulties. Possibly. But, you know, maybe that was not a smart business decision, but I felt it was the right artistic decision. And that all along the sort of process of making this, you have had challenges, which do you put them down to the prospect that Donald Trump could be president again? Oh, without question. The big entertainment companies in America are terrified of him becoming president. And this is not unique to my movie.

I think we should point out that across the entertainment landscape in America, the companies are afraid of producing political content. I've had friends who work in Hollywood who have had projects that are not even specific Donald Trump projects, but they deal with political issues and they're not having luck getting them made because the companies do not want to alienate any side of the audience, that they worry that Trump's audience is so powerful that if he tells them to attack this movie or attack a TV show, that it will hurt the company. So it's a very dangerous time in America, in terms of artistic freedom, at least when it comes to commercial art.

And you've had letters from his lawyers. Have they pursued that? Are they going to pursue it or have they dropped the threats? We did get letters after the premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May. But this morning, actually breaking news for your audience, Donald Trump took to Truth Social and posted a long attack on me and the movie and called me human scum and said the movie was completely made up. So I don't know if this is just the beginning of a legal attack on the film, but I know Donald Trump attacked the movie in very vicious terms. What has been the consequence of that for you so far? I see lots of hate mail online and nasty Twitter posts about me, but beyond that, I don't know. It's all happening as we speak. Right. And I mean, it came out in the US just what just before the weekend. It's had

its first weekend. Yeah, I think it took what one and a half million dollars at the box office. Is that right? I believe 1.6 was the number. Is that disappointing? Listen, this movie is a miracle that it's even being released. To me, I'm thrilled that it's even out in the world. You know, most movies take six months of marketing. We had five weeks. So the fact that even people knew about the movie to go see it is a miracle. Gabriel Sherman. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can 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 Holly Palmer and the producer was Alison Davis. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles and until next time, goodbye. 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.

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