Global News Podcast - US and Israeli-backed group distributes aid in Gaza

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

The first aid delivery into Gaza by a US and Israeli-backed group has been dismissed by the UN as a "distraction". Also: King Charles is to deliver a key speech in Canada's parliament, and the world's oldest human fingerprint.

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles and at 13 Hours GMT on Tuesday 27 May these are our main stories. A controversial aid supply group supported by the US and Israel claims to have distributed truckloads of food in Gaza. The latest threat for the people of war-torn Sudan, cholera and a public healthcare system unable to cope. We look ahead to a speech during which King Charles is expected to give his support to Canada in the face of Donald Trump's expansionist plans.

Also in this podcast... She was the baby of our family and just had a bright life full of promise, full of opportunity. As another mother mourns a daughter, we found out why nitrous oxide addiction is such a growing problem. And in Japan, how does your garden grow, Mr Prime Minister? With prime soil from the Fukushima nuclear plant, it seems. When you comment on the conflict between Hamas and Israel and its actions, you enter an extremely contentious space. One thing seems to be clear though, many people in Gaza are desperately short of food and there is widespread malnutrition. For many weeks Israel stopped any aid from entering the Strip but now it seems at least some is getting through. A controversial aid supply

group supported by the US and Israel says it's delivered truckloads of food to distribution sites in Gaza. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation bypasses the United Nations, the major aid supplier to Palestinians, and uses American security contractors. Aya Asher is a Gaza resident who works as a women's rights advocate. She questioned the motives of the foundation. The main goal is to force civilians to leave the north to the south to displace them from their homes and no one can protect us there from being violated, arrested or even killed. Everyone is armed, while we are unarmed under the eyes of cameras and guns just to get aid. The United Nations has also criticised the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Spokesman Jens Lerker said the UN would not participate in what he called this modality of aid provision.

It is a distraction from what is actually needed, which is a reopening of all the crossings into Gaza, a secure environment within Gaza and faster facilitation of permissions and final approvals of all the emergency supplies that we have just outside the border and needs to get in. Paul Adams, our World Affairs correspondent, told us about the aid getting in and where it's being distributed. Frankly, we know very little because the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation does not appear to be providing a great deal of information and the Israelis are also not being particularly forthcoming. Now, the Foundation said that it had commenced its operations, it had delivered what it called truckloads of food to its secure distribution sites.

I note it says sites rather than a single site, because I think there is a feeling that at the moment we're probably only talking about one, perhaps two locations in the far south of the Gaza Strip. And this is one of the problems. And it was a problem highlighted by one of your speakers just now who talked about the fact that Gazans are being told that they're going to have to travel considerable distances through active front lines, through checkpoints manned by Israeli soldiers to access this aid until and unless the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

are able to expand their operations to include distribution centers in the north. And until that happens, you're going to have this lingering suspicion, both on the part of Gazan civilians and the aid agencies, that this is all tied to an Israeli effort to force people to leave the North and move South. And how does Israel respond to that criticism and how does it explain why it's distributing aid in this way? It says that this is an independent effort by the way.

The Israelis are not claiming to be responsible for the Gaza humanitarian foundation, although it is widely regarded as an Israeli and American backed operation, frankly its origins are a little obscure. It's based in Switzerland. It's run by former American military contractors and humanitarian experts. Its donors are not really known. No one really knows who's backing it. But the argument that the Israelis make is that this is necessary because during the aid distribution so far during the war, significant quantities of aid have been diverted and stolen by Hamas. Now, I was speaking to a senior humanitarian agency official last week who said that the Israelis have simply not provided any evidence so far of a widespread systematic diversion

of aid by Hamas. If they had that evidence, he told me they would have shared it with us. The suspicion that the agencies have is that this is part of an effort to cut out the UN and its associated agencies altogether because, frankly, the Israelis don't like them and want to replace it with an aid distribution system more closely aligned with the Israeli military's own objectives. Paul Adams. To the north of England now, where four people are described as being very, very ill in hospital as we record this podcast. After dozens of people were injured when a

car rammed into a crowd at Liverpool Football Club's Premier League title parade. Minutes after the player's open top bus passed by, a vehicle swerved into the crowds that had gathered to watch and celebrate. The police have said the incident is not being treated as terror related. The Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, said he was thinking of those who were injured. Scenes of joy turned to utter horror and devastation and my thoughts and the thoughts of the whole country are with all of those that are affected. Those injured which of course includes children, their families, their friends, the whole community, Liverpool fans everywhere and Liverpool stands together and the whole country stands with

Liverpool. British police have arrested a 53 year old man in connection with the incident and unusually they gave his ethnicity white. Our Europe regional editor Paul Moss told me more about the context to that decision. This is very new in Britain, the police usually give away very little information when someone's arrested. The idea is that anyone is entitled to a fair trial and so there shouldn't be any speculation beforehand about what the motive might have been. However, there's been a big push to change this and it all stems from a horrible triple

murder last year. In July a man ran amok in a community centre where children were playing and stabbed three of them to death. Immediately, rumours started spreading on the internet, on social media, that the man who had been arrested was a Muslim asylum seeker. What happened? Immediately crowds started attacking hostels where asylum seekers were living. There were crowds rioting outside mosques. In fact, the man who was arrested and later convicted of these killings

was born in Britain, he was not an asylum seeker and he was not a Muslim. And what critics said is that if the police had said this immediately, that the man they'd arrested was British born, not an asylum seeker, not a Muslim, it might have prevented the rioting which followed. Now what it seems is the Liverpool police have taken a leaf out of this, they've learned that lesson and so immediately said that the man arrested was a white male and that he was from the Liverpool area. Coming back to Liverpool and the experience that people there have just had, the city is no stranger to traumatic events. And disasters which have unfortunately been associated with the football club. Most famously of course the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 when 97 Liverpool fans were crushed

at a match in Sheffield. Liverpool fans I should say were blamed for causing another crush at the Heysel Stadium in 1985 when Juventus fans were running away from them and 39 were killed. But what I should say is throughout all this Liverpool does seem to have retained tremendous urban city pride. You feel it when you go there. People are proud to be from Liverpool. Scousers they're known as. The football team has been very much at the centre of that. So on Monday after the attack we heard people saying Liverpool will stand together in the face of this. That could sound like a sort of platitude you'd say in any situation. In fact with Liverpool when it comes to the idea of staying united, staying together, they do really mean it.

Paul Moss. To Sudan now and aid groups have warned of a full-scale public health disaster as cholera and other deadly diseases spread amid a breakdown in the health infrastructure. Nearly 350 people have died from cholera in the capital Khartoum in recent weeks and Soy reports. Humanitarian organizations say the cholera outbreak is a direct result of the unrelenting conflict. Drone attacks on power stations in Khartoum's twin city Omdurman have meant that water treatment plants don't have power. Fuel is expensive and with very little funding coming through, unreliable.

People who've so far survived the fighting are now forced to use untreated water from the Nile. With over 70% of hospitals destroyed during the war, health care is either unavailable or unaffordable. And soy. So-called critical minerals are just that, critical for modern life as well as being crucial to the green transition. They're in your laptop, phone, and in fact, most of the technology you can think of. But the International Energy Agency is warning that the world is becoming too dependent on just a few countries for those critical minerals.

And that risks disrupting supply chains and pushing up prices. Sam Fenwick from Business Daily has been looking at the global race for these minerals and how we're using them around the world. The sound you can hear is the blade of a wind turbine slicing through the air, a symbol of the world's push away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy. But powering that turbine and the green transition it represents takes more than

just wind, it takes takes more than just wind. It takes minerals, dozens of them. Around 50 of these elements are now officially classed as critical minerals. Critical because they're essential to modern technology, but their supply is vulnerable. So we've got a sort of hazmat suit coming out now. We've just got to zip down the front. I'm going to put a mask on next. Hood on, hair tucked in, zipped up. As the world moves to electrify transport and clean energy systems,

the pressure is on to produce more and more batteries. On the screen just before you enter this room, it says minus 50 degrees Celsius. Dew point minus 50 degrees. It's telling us that it's extremely dry in there. Probably drier than any place on earth. Production lines like this one at the Battery Industrialisation Centre in the UK can be built in a matter of months and are being shown around by Richard LeCain, the centre's chief technical officer. So what we have in this display cabinet are a lot of glass jars

and what they have in them is the beginning materials of an anode and cathode electrode. This is this black powder here. That's nickel, 60%, manganese, 20% and cobalt 20%. So that is the active material and that is what's responsible for determining the energy of the cell. These pastes and powders might not look much but they're the building blocks for our future economies. Don't tell us what we're gonna feel we're trying to solve a problem. Back in February Ukraine's president Vladimir Zelensky travelled to Washington DC to finalise a landmark deal on critical minerals with the US President Donald Trump. Because you're in no position to dictate that. Remember that.

The talks didn't go to plan. But the importance of the deal meant that negotiations quietly continued behind the scenes. And two months later this happened. This partnership establishes a fund that will receive 50% of royalties, license fees and other similar payments from natural resource projects in Ukraine. Washington's also struck a major deal with the United Arab Emirates. The US is also in talks with the Democratic Republic of Congo, home to some of the world's richest reserves of cobalt and copper. But why now? Well, part of the answer lies with China, which dominates the processing of many of these critical minerals. I think there's a slight misnomer right now that a trade war has suddenly begun.

If you're sitting in the metals world, this has been rumbling for quite some time. Ellie Sacklatvala keeps a close eye on all of this. She tracks the prices of critical and rare minerals at the market intelligence firm Argus Media. China has had an export control on hafnium, for example, for several years. Hafnium goes into the aerospace industry and also electronics.

It can be used to make chips, the semiconductors. But then within just the past two years, China has also put export controls on gallium and germanium, which are really important for electronics. And then more recently, on the 4th of April, two days after Donald Trump did his big Liberation Day, China put an export restriction on certain rare earths and that is a really potent export restriction that could cause huge disruption. The International Energy Agency says the world needs to act fast to build resilience, diversify supply and prepare for shocks. Because right now, if something goes wrong in China, the ripple effects could be felt across the entire world. Sam Fennick reporting. And you can find the full programme by searching for Business Daily wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

In the years since the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, Japan's government has tried to find ways to decontaminate the affected site and that has caused a secondary problem, a massive amount of contaminated topsoil stored in a facility close to the crippled power plant from earlier clean-up works. And now the government has come up with a headline grabbing solution to convince the people of Japan the soil is safe. Our Asia Pacific editor, Mickey Bristo, told me what the plan is. It's not a solution to all the soil because there's a massive amount of it it we're talking about 14 million cubic meters. What the Japanese government wants to do with all that soil essentially is to use it in civil

engineering projects such as seawalls, railway embankments but there's been a lot of public opposition to that in Japan, predictably perhaps, and so the government is trying to find ways to persuade the public that this soil, mostly as you mentioned there, topsoil taken off farmland and other land after the disaster, they want to show that it's safe. So what they've come up with is a bit of a gimmick. It's to put this soil on the ground in the gardens of the Prime Minister's residence in Tokyo. Essentially, they want to nurture his flower beds with this contaminated soil,

just to show that it is safe and persuade the public it's okay to use in these other projects. And the government is clearly thinking it is safe. Do we know just how safe it is? Well, the Japanese government says it is. And interestingly and importantly, the International Atomic Energy Agency also says it is and interestingly and importantly the International Atomic Energy Agency also says it's safe. Late last year they reviewed fully the Japanese government's plans about what it intends to do with this soil. It says it's safe to go ahead but importantly it's always, as in these cases, it's the public

who have to be persuaded. Now, I remember there was a similar problem with contaminated water, how was that resolved in the end? Essentially yeah there was a problem all this water collected in the Fukushima plant used to cool the damaged reactors. Essentially two years ago what the Japanese government did was they decided they were going to treat it and then release it into the sea. A lot of objections from local people, from governments, neighbouring governments, but that's been going on for the last couple of years. In fact, just a month ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency went again, tested the

water, said it's going fine. China as well sent its own scientists. It was one of the countries that objected, sent its own scientists. They said it was okay as well, so that's going fine. Mickey Bristow, our Asia-Pacific editor. Still to come. We couldn't believe what we were looking at, because there was a big stone with a red dot just in the middle that it looked like a human face. Spanish scientists may have unearthed what could prove to be the world's oldest example of artistic expression. A 19-year-old New Zealand man has died from a serious head injury that he sustained in a game inspired by a social media trend. The run it straight challenge is supposed to recreate the collisions you'd see in a

game of rugby and has been a popular backyard pastime in New Zealand and Australia in recent years. Nick Parmiter told me more. This young man who's been identified as Ryan Satthwaite by local media, he died in hospital Monday night New Zealand time after being seriously injured playing this game of run it straight in the city of Palmerston North. What is the run it straight challenge? Well, imagine those big collisions you see in games of rugby or rugby league. Two people will run at full speed at each other and collide. The objective

being to knock your opponent to the ground effectively to create as big a collision as possible in regards to the death of this young man. Police in New Zealand have raised concerns about the safety of this game in unorganised, more informal settings, which is where it originated and urged people to consider their wellbeing. I mean this game can have tragic consequences as we've seen, but where has it come from? Has it developed very quickly in the recent months and years? Well I can remember going back at least five or six years to the original concept, which

was more of a social media challenge, often taking place in backyards or parks across New Zealand as well as Australia, emulating that gladiatorial combative nature that has been celebrated in the past. And while both codes have made strides to address the issues of head injuries and head-on collisions. That is still an element of the game that is widely celebrated and so popular the game has become that what started as a backyard social media trend is starting to become an organised event. Mr Satithwaite's death comes just a few weeks after the Run It Championship League made its debut in

Auckland, which is New Zealand's largest city. There's also been events in Australia and there's plenty of videos online, there's buy-in from social media influencers, young men charging at each other on athletic tracks, really major collisions and there's prizes in the tens of thousands. So it's being promoted on social media, it's having organised events with prizes. Are there calls for these events and the social media side of things to be cracked down upon? There's certainly concern from some medical experts in New Zealand and Australia and in both rugby codes there's increased examples of former players coming out and disclosing that they have serious neurological conditions like CTE

in all likelihood caused by repeated knocks to the head. One of the organizers of the run at Championship League, he has acknowledged Mr. Satterthwaite's death. He said it's a reminder to wear appropriate protective headgear. Nick Palmerter. Blue raspberry, cotton candy, they sound like brands of harmless sweets but in fact they are names for types of nitrous oxide, a recreational drug that's causing increasing numbers of deaths in the United States. The BBC's Eve Webster has been speaking to a mother whose youngest daughter died after becoming addicted to the drug. She was the baby of our family

and just had a bright life full of promise, full of opportunity until really the addiction grabbed her. And she just... Kathleen Dial's sister Meg was found dead in the car park of a shop selling smoking supplies in November last year. Her family believes she died from overdosing on a product freely and legally available across the US, stocked on Amazon.com, in Walmart and in smoke shops, nitrous oxide. Unfortunately, it was so readily available to her and she didn't think that it would hurt her because she was buying it in a smoke shop. Nitrous oxide known as laughing gas or whippets can be used in

dental procedures and in high-end restaurants, meaning it's largely sold as a culinary or medical product in the US. But over the past few years misuse has steadily increased. People have been paralyzed and even died from overdoses. Campaign groups are arguing that brands are selling the product expecting it to be used as a drug. Even being called Galaxy Gas or Miami Magic and then having flavors makes it that much more interesting. This is Pat Oster from the Partnership to End Addiction. She points to the fact that brands such as Galaxy Gas and Baking Bad have

moved from selling 8-gram single-use canisters to selling canisters up to 2 kilos in size, in neon colours featuring cartoon characters and crucially began producing flavoured gas from blue raspberry to cotton candy. And then of course if you have large canisters, then it means that more people can try it and use it. That can lead to a lot of peer pressure challenging people to try it. Amazon have said that they are aware that some customers are misusing nitrous oxide

sold on their site, and they're looking in to implement further safety measures. Meanwhile, brands such as Galaxy Gas have started showing a message on their website warning against misuse. Nevertheless, the increase in popularity came to a head a few months ago when the gas and the effect it has on the voice became a viral trend on TikTok. What was once a niche drug began to infiltrate into mainstream culture.

Rude K, 17-year-old rapper in Atlanta, released a song about the drug in September last year. Meanwhile, the stars of the Hulu series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, indulge while getting Botox treatment. When this mom talk group gets Botox, they'll get laughing gas. And it's a party. The online trend came and went. Investigative youth culture journalist Ezra Marcus explains why. For one thing, I mean, I think that social media platforms were really aggressive about taking down content about nitrous.

You know, as like any trend does, it had its moment of virality. And then I think that subsided. But I don't know that the consumption has subsided. This is something Meg's family are hoping to change. You know, unfortunately it's become very obvious that the manufacturers and the owners of the smoke shops are not going to do the moral thing and take this off the shelves themselves. That report was by Eve Webster. The Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche is planning to move a new antibiotic into late-stage clinical trials after early studies

showed it had potential to tackle a common superbug that has become totally resistant to other treatments. The drug will begin late-stage human trials with 400 patients. Dr. Andrew Edwards, Associate Professor in Molecular Microbiology at Imperial College, told us about this new drug. So this is a very exciting development. Very few new antibiotics are getting through to phase three clinical trials as this one seems to be doing. So this is a really nice development. It has a new target, which is good because hopefully that will reduce the rate at which resistance emerges. And it tackles a bacterium

for which there are very, very few alternative treatments. So this is an organism that typically doesn't infect healthy people, but people who are in hospital, whose immune system is compromised, healthy people, but people who are in hospital, whose immune system is compromised, maybe people who are on ventilators or have urine catheters are particularly prone to infection from this organism. And once that takes hold, it's very serious and it's very hard to treat effectively. So new options really are needed and hopefully this will provide an answer. Rather surprisingly, there's not much money to be made in antibiotics despite the problems caused by superbugs. And so, you know, as exciting as this news is, it's also equally exciting to see big pharma companies getting back into this space. Dr Andrew Edwards from Imperial College. King Charles is due to deliver a significant speech

in Canada's parliament later today. The invitation from the newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney to the King to read the speech comes against the background of the US President Donald Trump, often expressing his desire for Canada to become part of the United States. Robert Russo is Canada correspondent for The Economist and former Parliamentary Bureau Chief for the National Broad broadcast of CBC. He's been speaking to Johnny Diamond and explains the significance of the King's visit and in particular his speech. It's a big deal because of the threat that comes from the South.

In the words of our new Prime Minister, the honour of having the King here at this time matches the weight of our times. It's a chance for the Prime Minister of Canada to put words in King Charles' mouth. A rare opportunity. Every syllable will be weighed and poured over, particularly as it pertains to the audience of one that everybody believes this visit is really aimed at and that's Donald Trump. Everybody knows that President Trump has reverence for royalty, Americans in general, even though they revolted against the crown, have never lost their reverence for royalty.

But Trump, he seems to fantasise about being Pope. No one would be surprised if he fantasised about being King as well. It's being written about fairly widely as a show of support from the king. I mean, again, the truth is he's unlikely to have turned down the invitation, given his role as sovereign of Canada. There wasn't much choice about it for him. Well, we wonder about that, and I'll tell you why, John. We are cognizant of the fact that the king is recovering from cancer, that he has crossed several time zones to come here. He's only here very, very briefly.

So there is some recognition that physically this might be more demanding of him than it normally would be. The visit was arranged on rather short order. Mr. Carney has only been prime minister for a little bit of time. This was seen as a moment when we needed the king. And I think that there is some sense that this is a demonstration of the utility of having a sovereign who lives in a faraway land. We're pretty sure, just based on the presence of the American media here, for instance, that this won't go unnoticed in Washington. And the message that the King sends through the words written for him by the Canadian Prime Minister won't go unnoticed in the White House either.

Robert Russo. And finally, what may be the world's oldest example of art has been unearthed by Spanish scientists. It's estimated to be around 43,000 years old. It was discovered on a stone found at a site in Segovia in central Spain. Archaeologists believe a Neanderthal dipped a finger in red pigment and painted what appears to be a nose on the pebble resembling a face. One of the scientists, Professor María de Andres Herrero, co-director of the research and co-author of the research paper, told us about the discovery.

In 2022 we found this stone and when we found it was below one meter and a half of sediments, of musterian sediments that are from the Neanderthal groups. And we looked at the stone and it was weird for us. At the beginning we couldn't believe what we were looking at because there was a big stone in comparison to other stones that appear in the site with a red dot just in the middle that it looked like a human face. And then when we confirmed this, we contacted the scientific police of Spain and they did a very big research and thanks to multispectral analysis, they found this fingerprint. We couldn't believe it. It was amazing. We think it's a very important contribution to the debate about the Neanderthal symbolic capacity because it represents the first known pigment mark object in an archaeological

context that it's clear that it's a Neanderthal site and it has a human fingerprint in a non-utilitarian object. Professor Maria de Andres Herrero. And that's 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 globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.

Use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Darcy O'Brie and the producer was Tracy Gordon and Charles Sanctuary. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles and until next time, goodbye.