Global News Podcast - World Food Programme to cut aid to Gaza

Episode Date: October 19, 2026

Residents of Gaza have described the World Food Programme's decision to drastically reduce lifesaving assistance as "disastrous". The number of people helped by the UN agency will be reduced by around a third to one-point-one million people, as it grapples with a funding shortfall. Also: An Australian lawmaker is in a critical condition after being hit by a car in what the prime minister described as an attack. A Kenyan court delivers its judgement in the trial of a cult leader accused of murdering almost two hundred people who starved to death.The French government says it's imposing temporary curfews in some cities to prevent any continuation of the violent unrest that swept the country over the weekend. A spacecraft is set to take off from Japan on the world's first mission to bring back samples from Phobos, one of two small moons orbiting Mars. And the British government has launched a campaign to clamp down on people playing music out loud on buses and trains - with fines of around $130.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]: Palestinian children queue to receive food from the World Food Programme (WFP) Credit: Reuters/Mahmoud Issa

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. It felt like everything I believed in was suddenly collapsing. This is the story of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia with a dark secret, of the school's head teacher. This was someone I respected above anyone else. And the investigation led by students, he's trying to silence. If this is leaked to the media, I'll be destroyed. This is World of Seward.

Secrets, Catching My Teacher. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app or wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 14 hours GMT on Monday the 19th of October. The UN says it's being forced to cut aid to half a million people in Gaza. An Australian MP is hit by a car in what the Prime Minister calls a deliberate act. and a court in Kenya is delivering its judgment in the trial of a doomsday cult leader. Also in this podcast,

This is one of the biggest mysteries in the solar system, is that we don't know how these two small moons of Mars first formed. The first mission to bring back samples from a Martian moon. The war in Gaza has left nearly two million people in need of shelter, with two-thirds of them relying on food aid to survive. But now the World Food Program says it's being forced to drastically cut support because of funding shortages. The UN agency says it will have to stop helping half a million people,

with community kitchen supplying 100,000 fewer meals a day. Carl Scow from the World Food Program has recently been in Gaza. It's at the same time as we're facing winter. So this is not really the time to move back, but we're forced to do so. And not because we are not able to bring in food or not because the needs are not there, but because we don't have enough funding. What we will try to do is to identify who are the one million people who, you know, really need our assistance every month.

And then we will try to rotate every other month for the remaining population. But, you know, yesterday I met people at the hot meals distributions, who that's the only meal they get a day because they also explained how they don't have cooking gas and so they can't cook in their tent. They were the ones closest to the yellow line and they still are being displayed. I asked our Middle East correspondent, Yoland Nell, what life is like for people in Gaza even before the aid cuts. Life in Gaza remains extremely tough. You still have nearly the entire population of 2.1 million people displaced from their homes. Two-thirds of people are reliant on food aid for their survival. You've had

no real reconstruction taking place and very little recovery. There are still, near daily Israeli strikes in Gaza. So these World Food Program cuts, you know, the World Food Program has been such a lifeline for people in Gaza. They're coming on top of already all that hardship. You've also got things like poor access to water, poor sanitation, and now you have the approach of winter and the wet weather, which makes everything worse,

especially because a lot of people are still living in very flimsy shelters in tents. And what is the issue with, funding at this UN agency. And can anyone else step in to help the people of Gaza? I think there's very much a hope that with this alert, they will be able to get more attention to their funding crisis and get others to step in. But what the World Free Programme is saying, that they received half as much funding this year for their Gaza operations as they got last year or the year before. And they're saying that they need urgently about $450 million to continue with their Palestinian operations because they also have some work that they do in the occupied West Bank as well over the coming six months.

Now, when it comes to why funding has dropped off, I ask this to the country director here, Sean Hughes. And he was saying that, you know, really it's a combination of things. There are, of course, global economic pressures that make it harder for countries to give the same level of aid as they have been giving. They're very conscious that this crisis in Gaza, has been going on now for three years. That leads to a level of donor fatigue. There's a lot of other competition from even other crises in this region, let alone in the world for attention.

And then on top of that, he's saying that, you know, there is this perception that, you know, because the ceasefire that was agreed between Israel and Hamas a year ago, the things have improved in Gaza, although, you know, in reality, the situation there remains extremely difficult. and Gaza has, to some extent, dropped out of the news headlines. Yolana, now talking to me from Jerusalem. Australian anti-terror police are investigating after independent MP Helen Haynes was hit by a car outside her office.

She's in hospital with critical injuries. Police arrested a man at the scene in the southeastern city of Wangarata. The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, said the motive wasn't yet known, but described it as a deliberate attack. He spoke to ABC News. Helen Haynes is incredibly hardworking. She is fiercely intelligent, but most importantly, she's just thoroughly decent human being, full of integrity and respected right across the Parliament and from everyone who comes into contact with her.

Our correspondent Katie Watson in Sydney has been following the story. According to Victoria Police, Helen Haynes was outside her office in Wangarata, which is just under three hours from Melbourne, and a Toyota land cruiser struck her. It was just before 4pm. And when he exited the car, the police then arrested him. He's a 43-year-old man, and he is being interviewed in relation to the incident. The police also said that they found and seized a knife from inside that car. Now, this. Now, this is a little bit of a gun. And The police say that this is a critical and serious incident that's being investigated. The Prime Minister has been a bit more firm.

He said initially this was an attack. He has said in another interview on the national broadcaster ABC that it appears to have been a deliberate act. And he's talked about this temperature rising here in Australia, the political temperature. And in fact, after the initial press conference that the Prime Minister gave, The Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke also talked about this political temperature rising, also gave some figures about the increase in threats and harassment towards MPs in the last year. And the Prime Minister has said there is no place for violence in a democracy. So while the police are saying this is very much being investigated, it is a critical incident.

Certainly the politicians seem to have been briefed and are being very clear that this was a deliberate attack. Yeah, what do they mean when they say the political temperature? is rising in Australia? The Prime Minister talked about the political temperature rising here in Australia, but also said this wasn't just an isolated Australian thing, that he talked about that being no place for violence in a democracy. And I think there is a concern. Certainly Australia is not familiar with political violence

in terms of MPs going about their daily lives. They're very free to do so. In terms of regional offices such as this one in Wangarata, There wouldn't have been any security in that sense because this is a country that doesn't seem to have threats towards its politicians. So I think that is very much what Albanese has been talking about since this attack happened this afternoon. Kiki Watson in Australia.

As we record this podcast, a judge in Kenya is delivering a long-awaited verdict in the case of a doomsday cult leader accused of murdering nearly 200 people, almost all of them children. Pastor Paul McKenzie's alleged to have led hundreds of followers into a forest and encouraged them to starve themselves to death in order to meet Jesus. Over 400 bodies were found, and the authorities say 600 others are still missing. He denies the charges. Our Africa correspondent, Thomas Macquana, reports, and some details are disturbing.

Pastor Paul McKenzie. preaching in southern Kenya in 2019. He is telling followers in a parked tent that the end times are coming, that they should shun modern medicine and education, and that the devil had infiltrated modern life. Hundreds of people in plastic chairs watch and applaud. But soon, he'd asked his followers to move from the church

into somewhere much more remote. He began to tell them to move to Shakahollow. Forest, a barren, dry piece of land, about an hour's drive in from the coast. Mackenzie told them that if they fasted to death, they would meet Jesus. Hundreds followed, and hundreds died, in one of the worst cult-related mass deaths in history. I am now in Shaka Hall of Forest. This is where Mackenzie set up his camp and led hundreds of people to their death. Hundreds of people stopped themselves in here.

and looking around, there isn't much happening. Mostly dead trees and you can hear goats bleating in the distance, but it's hard to understand how someone would choose to live here. It's even harder to understand why someone would choose to die here. There were so many bodies, the police hired locals to dig them up. A motorcycle rider, Jaffa, tells me, some of the bodies were so decomposed. They were like porridge.

Salam says he once accidentally scraped off someone's nose when digging. One grave had 12 children in it, he said. Forty-year-old security guard Stephen Mwiti lived with his pregnant wife and five kids in a tiny housing nearby Malindi. He told me she took them all to the forest. after hearing Mackenzie preach on TV. She was the only one who survived. Every time I walk and see children,

I see the faces of my dead kids. But it's too late because I know they're dead. Sometimes I can't sleep. If Pastor McKenzie was in front of you right now, would you tell him? If I met Pastor McKenzie, one of us would have to die. Sometimes I ask myself, why am I alive? I just can't.

Astonishingly, some still support the pastor. I met Peter Shukrani, a 23-year-old who says he was 8 when he joined McKenzie's church. Peter was almost dying when he was rescued from the forest, but he remains a follower. I still love him, and I still think of him as my pastor. committed murder in front of you, would you put that change how you feel about him? No. You said that's not because I never saw or heard that he did anything bad. For those who lost family members in this tragedy, nothing can bring them back. Thomas Macuana reporting from Kenya.

The French government has ordered a series of local curfews to try to stop protest sparring out of control after more than 2,000-1⁄2,000 people were arrested over the weekend. The Yellow Vest movement has called for new demonstrations next weekend, while student protesters blocked access to the Louvre Museum this morning. The southern city of Marseilles has already banned all gatherings for today. Around 1,000 police and gendarme were injured during the weekend unrest, and a clean-up is underway after an estimated 2,000 businesses were damaged. Sebastian Le Corneux is the French Prime Minister.

It's all scattered across France, this protest. This is all important to notice. we are very much, is very much localized and looked at in a very big urban centers. So there will be a partial curfew in different urban centers across France in order to protect the people, but also the shops. In collaboration with the mayors, it's impossible that we let this violence and this chaos keep going. He also said he would declare a state of national emergency if necessary.

Nevertheless, President Emmanuel Macron has. gone ahead with a planned trip to four Gulf states. I asked our Paris correspondent, Hugh Schofield, if France felt like it was under control. No, no, it doesn't. It feels out of control. What happened over the weekend far exceeds the last great outbreak of writing, which was the Gilles-June, the yellow vest of eight years ago. It feels it was worse, far worse than that, and that was bad.

It was more extensive. And there's a political, undercurrent to this, a party political undercurrent to all of this which was absent from the Gilles-June who were a kind of amorphous mass of people from the countryside in the main. So it is far more unsettling what has happened and people feel that.

And today the stories coming in are very, very troubling ones, as you say, hundreds and hundreds of shops wrecked, people who've lost everything. Images were seeing again and again of the scenes from Marseilles when tens of thousands, I mean, up to 30,000, is if that's an official figure of looters came down to take part in the pillaging of shops in the city centre. The historic building that was the town hall of Limoges burned down with its spire falling over just like the Notre Dame Cathedral.

These are things which will stay with people for their lives and they will remember this weekend. And the worrying thing is that it may not be over. Because as you say, there are the people behind the protests and they're not talking about the violence, to talk about the protests, want to keep up the pressure. And as you say, next weekend has been announced as another day. And there's no saying what will happen. And I suspect there'll have to be some kind of ramped-up security reaction in preparation for that in order to ward off what might happen again.

Why do you think the disorder was so much worse this time than eight years ago? The country is in a worse state, you could say. The electoral moment is approaching next year. There's a backdrop of uncertainty across the world, but across Europe. The extremes are confident. The far left and the far right are both feeling very buoyed up by their electoral chances. Social media has become universal. All this is why the moment feels far more insurrectional and dangerous than it did a few years ago.

Hughes Goffield in Paris. Still to come on this, this podcast. I think it's got a lot worse last all 10, 15 years, to be honest with a lack of consideration for fellow passengers, I think is increased. Britain introduces fines for playing loud music on public transport, but will it work? It felt like everything I believed in was suddenly collapsing. This is the story of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia with a dark secret of the school's head teacher. This was someone I respected above anyone else. And the investigation led by students, he's trying to silence.

If this is leaked to the media, I'll be destroyed. This is World of Secrets, Catching My Teacher. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app, or wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast. A day after four soldiers were killed by a fast-moving fire at a military base in Alberta, people in the Canadian province are voting on whether to start the press. of separating from the rest of the country. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has urged people in Alberta

to vote to remain part of Canada and called the referendum a dangerous bluff, comparing it to the Brexit vote that saw the UK leave the European Union. Supporters of Albertan independence say the oil-rich province has long been overlooked by the central government and that federal environmental policies have hindered its ability to develop its natural resources. Our chief international correspondent Lee's Doucette

is in the Canadian capital, Ottawa. There has been for a very long time what has been known in Canada as Western alienation and that Canada's oil-rich province, the richest province in the Federation, has had over the years a small but vocal a group of separatists. And they've been growing stronger,

but they're still very small. They are still a minority who very much resent. say that Alberta, with its oil wealth, is subsidizing the poor provinces of Canada. They say they've not been treated well by federal government policies. So they've been calling for a separate state for some time. But they have been getting more steam during the COVID pandemic. Their opposition to some of the restrictions swelled their ranks a little bit. Plus, they had an election of a Premier, Daniel Smith, who came to power with some of their support. And so the Premier has said, well, let's finally put this on the ballot so that the people of

Alberta can have their say. Now, the Premier herself has said that while she wants to change some of the provincial powers, the relationship between Alberta and the federal government in Ottawa, that she would like to remain in Canada. But today, Monday in Canada, the people of Alberta can choose between whether to remain in Canada or whether to start the legal process for what would be a binding referendum on whether to form a separate state. There are 10 questions on the ballot. The other nine deal with immigration issues, issues of provincial powers. but it is this 10th question about Alberta's place in Canada

that is attracting the most attention, is seen as the most crucial. Then I've met many people here who's many people from Alberta who say, well, I want to stay in Canada, but I still want us to have this binding referendum so that we can send a message to Ottawa and give us greater leverage in negotiations over control over our energy well.

control over different aspects of our economy. And this has led the Prime Minister Mark Carney, who grew up in Alberta, to say this is a dangerous bluff. And he has warned he was the governor of the Bank of England during the Brexit referendum in Britain. And he warned that there were bitter lessons from Brexit. Our chief international correspondent, Leis Duce. A spacecraft is set to take off from Japan later

on the world's first mission to bring back samples from Phobos, one of the two small moons orbiting Mars. The samples are due to return to Earth in 2013. Professor Sarah Russell, a scientist at the Natural History Museum in London, is serving as the mission's deputy for sample analysis in southern Japan. This is one of the biggest mysteries in the solar system is that we don't know how these two small moons of Mars first formed. And there are two main theories. One is that it might be a captured asteroid, an asteroid that strayed too close to Mars's gravity and got caught up with it. And that's what it looks like when we see it through our telescopes. It looks like an asteroid. But its orbit is a bit too

circular for it to be an asteroid. So because of that, there's an alternative theory, which is that a giant asteroid smashed into the surface of early Mars and produced first a ring around Mars, which then created the moons. So to find out which of these two theories or another theory is correct. We have to go and take a look and eventually get a sample and bring it back to Earth to look at in our labs. So it's an incredibly ambitious mission. So this little rover will be going to the smallest body that's ever had a rover on wheels go to it. And it will drive around. It will make lots of analyses of the surface of Phobos. And then the spacecraft will touch down in two different places on Phobos and collect up some of the sample of the

fine-grained soil on the surface of the moon to bring back to Earth. This is going to be Japan's biggest sample return mission, and so we're all incredibly excited by it. Because we can analyse just tiny, tiny grains and get so much information out of them. Professor Sarah Russell, I asked our science editor, Rebecca Morel, exactly how the team will extract the samples and get them back to the Earth. Not easily, actually. It takes a while to do,

but this is a pretty audacious mission. So the rockets carrying the spacecraft should blast off hopefully later on this evening. It's blasting off from Japan. It's then going to arrive at the Mars system in 2027. Now, there are only three moons in the inner solar system. There's our own moon that we know and love. But there are also these two moons around Mars, Phobos and Demos. They are both really, really tiny.

So Phobos is only about 20 kilometres across, and Demos is even smaller. It's about 10 kilometres across. And they both, I mean, I hope I'm not. not being offensive to the moons, but they look like sort of knobbly space potatoes. They're really unusual looking, so tiny and unusual looking. So the spacecraft is going to arrive in the Mars system next year. It's going to study Deimos, first of all, but then it's really going to focus its attentions on Phobos. It's going to get into orbit around it and then set down a little rover. It's the first time that a rover that's going to trundle around has landed on something quite so small.

And it's going to be hard as well, because Mars is a big planet with a lot of gravity. Phobos is a tiny moon without much gravity. So that's going to be quite a feat to do that. That's going to scout for a great place for the spacecraft itself to land, which is going to set down on the surface, scoop up some material from Phobos, put that in a capsule, the spacecraft with the capsule inside it, blasts off from Phobos, and then it returns the capsule carrying this moon dust back to Earth in 2013. 10 grams. That's how much it's going to grab, which is, I don't know, it depends how dense the material is, but a bit more than a teaspoon, which doesn't sound like much. but every grain is going to be precious.

Sounds like a lot of moving parts. How difficult will this mission be and what are the chances of success? I think it is going to be pretty difficult, but I like this mission. It's very plucky, actually. They're really going out there for this. I mean, it's not cheap doing it.

It's hard in terms of the science. But Japan is a Jaxa-led mission, which is a Japanese space agency. They have led missions to asteroids where they've grabbed some material and brought it back. And there was a NASA mission that went to an asteroid called Benu and grabbed some material and brought it back. So it's not unheard of, but, you know, it's what this 10 grams of material is going to tell us.

You know, it could solve this mystery of the Martian moons, how they formed, as we heard Sarah Russell explaining, you know, are they wandering asteroids that were just grabbed by Mars's gravity? Or were they formed by this big sort of impact early on in Mars's history? And actually, once the material is back on Earth, the scientists should be able to find out pretty quickly because you just look at the chemistry of the moon dust, you look at the minerals inside it, and you say, okay, well, that looks more like an asteroid or that looks more like something from an impact crater. So they should be able to answer that question pretty quickly. But the other really exciting thing is it might have a few grains of Mars itself in there because Phobos is very close to Mars. So if Mars has had a few asteroid impacts over the years, which we know it has, that might have sent some little bits of Mars up towards Phobos. and a few grains of Mars might have landed on the surface too.

So this will be the first time we've ever had material back from the Mars system and from, well, maybe Mars itself. So it is really going to be quite exciting for the scientists, if they're successful. I hope they are. I mean, it's amazing. Our science editor, Rebecca Morel. Back on Earth, it's one of the regular complaints of modern life about people playing music out loud on their phones on buses and trains. Well, now the British government has launched a campaign to stamp it out by imposing fines.

The Prime Minister Andy Burnham said it was a simple thing that would make journeys a little bit better for everyone. These passengers spoke to the BBC. I think it's got a lot worse the last 10, 15 years, to be honest with you. Lack of consideration for fellow passengers, I think it's increased. A long time ago, if the guard told you not to do something, you wouldn't do it. Well, that's not the case today. I heard more about the campaign from our UK political correspondent, Rob Watson.

Well, this is all part of Andy Burnham's instructions to ministers, Oliver, to say, look, we need to let the people know that we've got their backs, that we're on their side. So it's about a series of feel-good announcements that are designed to let the voters know that. There was one back in the summer, for example, about removing the sales tax on going to fund parks. And politically, of course, it does make an awful lot of sense, Oliver, because wait for it, drumroll. How many people use Britain's buses and railways? every day, 16 million of us, and none of them like the videos and the noise and the music. Yeah, will this effort work? Well, I certainly hope so. It's one of those 16 million, Oliver. I guess what the government would say is, look, this isn't just about fines. It's also about a public information campaign. I've got the slogan in front of me, so I'll look down, share the journey, not the noise, Oliver. So the idea is that that will be played repeatedly to people on sort of buses.

and trains and the government does tend to take the view that, look, it's not perfect, but public information campaigns where you sort of try to nudge people towards, you know, behaving in a way that's not antisocial, does have a record of at least some success. Yeah, I mean, what do staff who work on public transport make of this? Because at the moment you see people pushing through barriers, not paying tickets, and some of the staff feel that they can't intervene because it's too dangerous. Well, I gave you the government's hopeful approach to this, that public information campaigns work along with the threat of fines.

I mean, the counter-argument, the skepticism that's out there is absolutely that rail staff will tell you that they face violence, bus staff on a pretty much daily basis. That should perhaps be a bigger priority than music. But absolutely, the big concern is, well, if these public information campaigns don't work, Oliver, if people still carry on with their music, their videos, their sort of veysed, and littering, who on earth is going to enforce this? Because the government is making clear that it's not going to be up to bus drivers to do that. It's not going to be up to train drivers because they're rather busy driving the trains.

It's up to people called public safety officers and police officers. Well, I've never seen a public safety officer. I don't think in my years of commuting on Britain's trains. And obviously the police are really busy. So I guess the bottom line on this is that everyone thinks, yeah, great idea. It doesn't cost very much. It would appeal to millions of voters. Might public information campaigns work?

Maybe. But what about enforcement? Is someone really going to go up to someone and say, right, oie, mate, get your headphones off, or it's $130. Or if you do it on a train, $1,300. Is that really going to happen? Well, I'll be watching closely on my rail journeys, Oliver,

to see if it does. Rob Watson there. And that's all from us for now, but you can email us at Global Podcast at BBC.co.uk and watch our episodes in full by searching for the Global News Podcast on YouTube. This edition was mixed by Darcy O'Brie and produced by Richard Hamilton. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye. It felt like everything I believed in was suddenly collapsing. This is the story of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia with a dark secret of the school's head teacher.

This was someone I respected above anyone else. And the investigation led by students, he's trying to silence. This is World of Secrets, Catching My Teacher. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app or wherever you get your BBC podcasts.