Global News Podcast - World leaders express growing concern about the danger of a regional war in the Middle East

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Israel and Hezbollah have threatened to increase their cross-border attacks, despite international appeals to calm the situation in the Middle East. Also: unknown Mozart music performed for first time in recent history.

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. Life and death were two very realistic co-existing possibilities in my life. I didn't even think I'd make it to like my 16th birthday, to be honest. I grew up being scared of who I was. Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference.

It's the hardest step. But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care. To hear more stories of recovery, visit camh.ca. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free.

Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles, and in the early hours of Monday the 23rd of September these are our main stories. World leaders are expressing growing concern about the dangers of a regional war in the Middle East. Sri Lanka's presidential election has been won by a left-wing anti-corruption candidate Anura Kumara Desenayaka. Voting in regional elections in the

German state of Brandenburg has ended with provisional results showing Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats are slightly ahead of the far-right AFD. Also in this podcast, we meet the world's greatest composers. Find out who later. We begin in the Middle East. Both Israel and Hezbollah have threatened to intensify their cross-border attacks as fears grow that the worsening violence could erupt into an all-out war. The two sides are exchanging heavy rocket fire,

which has killed at least three people in Lebanon and sent hundreds of thousands of Israelis to bomb shelters. Hezbollah says the confrontation has entered a new phase, becoming an open-ended battle of reckoning. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists his troops landed a series of blows on the group and warns that if it hasn't got the message yet, then it will. President Joe Biden says the United States will do everything in its power

to prevent an escalation of the conflict. Egypt had already warned that intensifying fighting between Israel and Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hezbollah risks igniting a regional conflict. Our diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams, who's in Jerusalem, sent this report on Sunday's developments. In Kiryat Bialik, on the outskirts of Haifa, bulldozers have been clearing rubble all day. A town hit for the first time in almost 20 years by rockets fired from inside Lebanon. Smoke pours from a gutted building, cars lying mangled in the road. Achir Itzraki lives nearby.

And we are living here, three houses from here. And it happened this morning around 6.30. There was an alarm and then immediately afterwards, a big explosion. By lunchtime, Hezbollah had launched more than 150 rockets and drones across the border. Pro-Iranian militia groups in Iraq said they had fired missiles too. The army said most were intercepted, but some Hezbollah rockets landed much further into Israel than before. The north of the country remains on high alert, with schools closed, hospitals moving patients underground and public gatherings restricted.

Across the border, Israeli jets have kept up a relentless bombardment, striking hundreds of targets across southern Lebanon. Israel says it's hitting Hezbollah's infrastructure and especially its rocket launchers. As she watches from Beirut, Dialla says the people of Lebanon don't want war. But in the end, she says, we're not the ones making decisions. With its aerial bombardment, strikes on senior commanders and presumed booby trapping of thousands of pages and walkie-talkies, Israel has dramatically escalated its war on Hezbollah. The Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this morning delivered a stern warning. In the last few days, we inflicted on Hezbollah a sequence of blows that it did not imagine.

If Hezbollah has not understood the message, I promise you, it will understand the message. Israel, he said, was determined to return 60,000 displaced civilians to their homes close to the border. For now, at least, Hezbollah seems equally determined to stop that from happening. Paul Adams in Jerusalem, or with tensions in the Middle East showing no signs of cooling. Our international editor Jeremy Bowen considers where the region is heading. Israel's offensive against Hezbollah with airstrikes, assassinations and the audacious weaponisation of pages and radios is designed to change the balance of power in the border war, forcing Hezbollah to stop firing into Israel. Without question, Israel has inflicted severe

blows on its enemy in Lebanon, which limit its capacity to go on the offensive. But they will not be enough to make it comply. Fighting Israel is deep in Hezbollah's DNA. Its arsenal is largely intact, its attacks continue, and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has promised retaliation. Israel's next steps might include a ground offensive, sending troops and tanks into Lebanon. It has reinforced units on the border, and well-informed former generals assess there is a strong chance it might happen. The rapid escalation driven by the Israelis since the Pager attack is why Israel's allies as well as its enemies are preparing for the worst. Nothing has happened in the last few days to slow down the slide into a much bigger war. The US and UK, among many others, insist that only diplomacy can cool this crisis.

But without a ceasefire in Gaza, their hands are tied and it's not clear who is listening to them. Jeremy Bowen. In a separate development, the news organisation Al Jazeera has accused Israel's armed forces of committing a criminal act when they raided its offices in the occupied West Bank. It's been closed for an initial period of 45 days. The Qatari-owned television network aired dramatic live footage showing heavily armed Israeli soldiers entering its bureau in Ramallah and ordering journalists to stop work and leave the office immediately.

Israel says it took the measures because Al Jazeera is guilty of incitement and of supporting terrorism. The Israeli government had previously shut down Al Jazeera's offices in East Jerusalem. He calls himself the voice of the working class and now Anora Kumar Disanayake has become Sri Lanka's new president. Mr Disaniaka campaigned on a promise to implement anti-corruption measures two years after street protests forced the then president to flee the country. He's largely seen as the candidate of change who's managed to break Sri Lanka's political dynasty. Samira Hussain spoke to me from the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo. It was at the election commission office that he was pronounced officially as president. And, you know, you have to think that this was a candidate that came up as an unlikely frontrunner. He's not new to politics, but he's certainly someone who's been able to capitalize on the anger of Sri Lankans,

very angry at what happened with regards to the crushing economic crisis that was largely due to decades of financial mismanagement here in Sri Lanka. So he really capitalized on that. And the sense from Sri Lankans that they really want some kind of change. Now, for so many years, politics in this country has really been dominated by one political family, the Rajapaksas. And he really positioned himself as a candidate who is so far from that political dynasty that you could trust him with trying to rebuild the country. Change is easy to promise, hard to deliver, isn't it? Particularly with regards to the economy. He'll have to toe the line promise, hard to deliver, isn't it? Particularly with

regards to the economy. You'll have to toe the line with the international lenders, won't you? Right. I mean, you can't go and renegotiate a lot of the debt that the country is under. Look, it has $92 billion in debt, and that's including both national and foreign debt. And there have been some pretty intense austerity measures put in place by the International Monetary Fund, where a lot of the money has come from for Sri Lanka. One of the things that proponents of the IMF would say is that, look, they don't ever institute the kinds of measures

that they don't believe that the country can take. And although there is quite a lot of pressure on everyday Sri Lankans who are dealing with higher taxes and stagnant wages, it is a bit of something that the country has to bear because of just how many dollars in debt they are. Samira Hussein in Colombo there. Next to Germany and the provisional result from a key regional election in the country is putting the governing Social Democrat Party narrowly ahead

of the far-right AFD. Brandenburg in the country's northeast has traditionally been seen as safely in Social Democrat hands, but two regional elections earlier this month saw major gains for the far right. And Sunday's vote was being viewed as a crucial test of the anti-immigrant party's fortunes. The state premier, Dietmar Wojtka, emphasised the significance of the vote. We said that we would face this fight. And therefore therefore it was our aim from the very beginning to stop our country getting a big brown stamp. It seems that once again, as so often in history, it was the Social Democrats who stopped extremists on their way to power. I heard more from our correspondent Mark Lowen in Berlin on the SPD's success. It's a very narrow win, actually. I'm at the party election headquarters of the AFD,

and they actually let out cheers when the results came out. I mean, that was hiding their disappointment to some extent, but also showing the extent to which the party has risen, because I can give you the final results that have just come through. And the SPD has 30.7% of the votes and the AFD at 29.6%. So just over 1% between them. It is a narrow victory, one which the SPD will savour and provide some respite for Olaf Scholz, given the fact that there were increasing calls for him to step aside ahead of federal elections next year. And if the SPD had lost Brandenburg, which is a state which it has ruled

since German reunification in 1990, I think it could have proved fatal for him. Perhaps those calls will, if not fall silent, they will perhaps be slightly quieter over the next few days. But the AFD has come within almost a percentage of victory. And so it is another sign of how the far right has really soared in this country. I mean, it now has, in the space of a month, there's one in one regional election in Thuringia and come a close second in two others, and shows to some extent that the old political order in this country, and as it is in much of Europe, is crumbling.

The AFD has capitalised on voter discontent with immigration. That was topping the polls in terms of the number one issue for voters. It capitalised on anger about immigration, capitalised on people's anger about the cost of living, given Germany's support for Ukraine. And it has done very well, albeit beaten into second place. And briefly, Mark, those comments about the brown stamp demonising voters of the AFD

doesn't necessarily bring them back on side, does it? It doesn't, but the party is bullish that, you know, they are still continuing their line, which is that, you know, they've even talked about re-migrations, deporting migrants. They are very confident in their rhetoric. I mean, this is a party which in three states of the country has been classified as right-wing extremist.

The leader in Thuringia, the state that it won, was found guilty of using a banned Nazi slogan. They say they are not. They say, I mean, I spoke to one of their MPs just here. He said that his party is not a threat to democracy. They are simply supporting common sense. And they're saying that migrants who come here and cause problems in the country,

they don't want and voters don't want them. Mark Lohan at the AFD party headquarters in Berlin. What a thrill to discover an unknown piece of music by the 18th century composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Dr Ulrich Leisinger, director of research at the Mozart Institute in the Austrian city of Salzburg, has done exactly that. And the piece was performed for the first time, at least the first time in recent history, last week. Edward Sturton heard more from Dr. Leisinger. We basically went through all major libraries and this library card at some point caught my attraction, saying a trio in C major for two violins and bass by Mozart and everybody should know that there is no peace. I understand that other people had it seen before

and thought, oh, this cannot possibly be by Mozart. The source and the music speak for themselves and for Mozart, starting with the title page, where the composer is named del Signor Wolfgang Mozart. This form of the name was not used after the first Italian tours, so only the earliest sources have this form, Wolfgang Mozart. Can you point us to a passage which made you immediately think this must be Mozart? Let me give you one step first, namely the form of the piece. We have seven movements, starting with the march. So this is a serenade, a casazio, a type of music that was common only in southern Germany and Austria.

And perhaps the most telling piece is the second of the minuets, because this has, particularly in the trio section, it alludes to horn playing. This is something that we find often in Mozart's vicinity, for example, in works by his father Leopold. And another telling spot is the slow movement, with sardini. And there is a specific characteristic

because there is a juxtaposition of triplets and straight 16th and 8th notes. And we find these characteristics, for example, in Mozart's earliest symphony, K16, or in some of the early violin sonatas, but basically not later in his lifetime. We'd like to leave our program today with a piece from this composition. Can you choose one for us? So I personally would take the finale. It's really a charming piece.

It's not just a new discoverer, which will be forgotten on Tuesday. I think it will have a slight chance to go in the repertory because people may add this 10-minute piece to the programmes. Dr Ulrich Leisinger, Director of Research at the Mozart Institute in Salzburg. Still to come...

If the man who's sweeping the floor of the studio came up with an idea and told someone, if they thought it was funny they'd put it in the script remembering the hit u.s comedy show friends which first appeared on tv screens 30 years ago if you're hearing this you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free.

Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. Pakistan's foreign ministry says a police officer has been killed and three others injured while accompanying diplomats in the northwest of the country. The group has returned safely to Islamabad. Caroline Davis reports. Diplomats from 11 different countries, including Russia, Iran and Portugal, were in Swat to attend a conference intended to promote tourism in the district, according to one of the event's attendees. The explosion happened as the convoy of vehicles travelled from the event venue to the hotel the diplomats and others were supposed to be staying in overnight. Images from the scene show the police van, which was travelling ahead as a scout vehicle, blackened and dented from the explosion. Another video shows

a police officer, his head bandaged and bleeding, being wheeled into hospital on a stretcher. So far no one has said they carried out the attack. Caroline Davis. It's estimated that half of the world's population don't have access to essential health care. In South Africa, hospital trains, complete with clinics and a pharmacy, are travelling to remote communities to provide affordable treatment. The scheme has been growing since it began around 30 years ago, and last year saw a staggering 640,000 patients. It's so popular that people often have to queue overnight. But as Mpolo Kadje reports from Soweto, most think it's worth waiting for.

As I made my way into the station, I saw a slick grey train, 19 carriages long. It's called the Transnet Pelopepa healthcare train. Pelopepa means good clean health. Besides the train, are two rows of white plastic chairs and mostly older women are sitting, waiting patiently to be seen. One of them is Solofelo Ludia, who is waiting for a dental appointment. I think it's one year I have a problem with my teeth, so I don't like the way I smile. For me, I'm just enjoying because it's my first time to come. Also, it's much cheaper than when I go to the dentist.

On the platform, I saw an optician asking an elderly lady to read out letters. Another optician, Komotsopalagangwe, told me they mostly treat older patients who struggle to read or see far away. It is really a nice feeling to actually change somebody's world. We get patients that come here and they didn't even know how bad their vision is. Others are desperate to get spectacles because without government institutions it takes longer for them to get the spectacles. But then with us we provide them with the services in the same day. Passing a lens cutting machine, Agot talking to Zongezile Makubu, who was waiting for his pair of glasses. Zongezile was prepared

to wait as he knew he'd get an eye test and new glasses for 30 rand. That's less than two US dollars. At a local clinic, he would have paid ten times as much. People do not have money, people are unemployed, so once an opportunity like this comes, people will come in large numbers. The service is way better than the local clinics. They're moving very quickly. I next headed down the train to the dental clinic. Whoa, lots of children this side of the train.

I think they are from the same school because they are dressed in the same colours, black and white uniform with a bit of red. Anyone under 16 gets services on the train for free, as I heard from the lead dentist, Dr. Agnes Ramutla. So here we offer services that you find at maybe a local hospital. So that will be your cleanings and your fillings and extractions. So most of our numbers, we get them from actually schools. Obviously, they're desperate for this service.

How important is this to you? I like helping communities. It's like we are their last hope. I'm very passionate about dentistry. I've always wanted to do this my whole life. So this is like a dream. The train service really relies on medical students like Tembeli Hedube. Students work on the train for a fortnight during their final year of studies. Usually at school you would see two, three patients a day, but here we go as far as seeing 120 patients on a daily basis, so it is extremely hectic, but it's extremely helpful.

A part of my passion doing dentistry was to help people, and that's exactly what we are doing here. There are 22 permanent staff who work, eat and sleep on the train. Nurses and other support workers are employed locally. Mpola Kaje on board South Africa's hospital train and you can hear more about the trains on People Fixing the World wherever you get your BBC podcasts. There's been more grim news over the weekend from Ukraine. Civilians killed by Russian drones and airstrikes, dozens more injured and of course there's the continuing fighting on the ground in Kursk in Russia and the Donbass regions. So it might seem odd that both

Russia and Ukraine have been focused on the world of chess. Russia is excluded from the World Chess Federation, along with its ally Belarus. And on Sunday, there was a vote on whether to readmit them, a vote which Russia lost. Our Europe regional editor Paul Moss told us more. The first thing you've got to understand is that chess is a big deal in Russia. The game has a lot of prestige. It's very popular. In fact, if you look at the last hundred years, most of the world's chess champions were Russian.

So yes, when Russia was kicked out of the International Chess Federation, that really mattered. It was kicked out after the invasion of Ukraine, along, as you said, with its ally Belarus. And the reason given was that they say chess is essentially a tool now of Vladimir Putin. If you look at the Russian Chess Federation, on the board, you have Dmitry Peskov,

the Kremlin spokesman. You have Sergei Shoigu, the defense secretary. It's not a pastime like any other. Also, they say that the Russian Chess Federation organized tournaments in the areas of Ukraine, which Russia has occupied. In other words, chess is complicit in the invasion. So Russia is subject to all sorts of boycotts and sanctions. This one really hurt. So here's what Vladimir Putin did. This weekend, there was a chess congress going on in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, and Kyrgyzstan, an ally of Russia, put a motion to admit Russia back into the Chess Federation along with Belarus. I should say it's not just Russia taking this very seriously. Vladimir Zelensky sent one of his top people to Budapest to lobby people to try and persuade the delegates to vote against

admitting Russia again. So the vote went against Russia. What exactly happened? Who voted? Yeah, essentially Russia lost and by a large majority, only 21 member states voted to completely readmit Russia. The only caveat is that they voted to look at the possibility of allowing junior teams to come, but I think it's under the age of 12. And also chess teams that involve disabled people. Now, there's another reason why this really matters. Russia, of course, as I said, subjects all sorts of boycotts and sanctions. It's thought that what Vladimir Putin was hoping was that if he could muster a majority to reverse this boycott, it would show, look, I can do it. I have got countries on my side. And maybe it would lead to other boycotts and sanctions being reversed. But if that's what

he hoped for, well, it failed. And if that's the case, I would say Russia today has one very disappointed president. Paul Moss. Ecuador has just started power cuts a day earlier than planned due to a severe drought that's affecting its hydroelectric plants. The country is suffering its worst drought in 60 years with no significant rainfall in over two months. Our America's regional editor Leonardo Rocha reports. Ecuador's government had already announced overnight power cuts across the country from Monday but because of the severity of the crisis it cut electricity this weekend in 12 provinces from eight in the morning to five in the afternoon. President

Gustavo Noboa says he's considering further cuts and other emergency measures. In the capital Quito, 60 neighbourhoods have had their water supplies suspended. Several other countries in South America are suffering the impact of the worst drought in living memory. Leonardo Rocha. Now, if you're of a certain age, you'll know exactly what this is. That is the theme of the hit US comedy show Friends, which first appeared on TV screens 30 years ago on Sunday and went on to dominate 90s TV in the US and beyond. It's making a comeback now on streaming sites, so a whole new generation is catching up

with the six main characters, three women and three men in their mid-twenties, in the first series at least, wrestling with finding jobs in New York, love and drinking vast amounts of coffee as they went. Well, the six stars became household names and the show also featured cameo performances from the likes of Julia Roberts,

Brad Pitt, and the British actor Tom Conti, who played Ross Geller's father-in-law. Here's a reminder. Here comes my dad and step-mom. This is Mrs Geller, this is Stephen, and Andrea Waltham. How do you do? How do you do? Nice to meet you. Darling, they're Gellers. Darling, it's the gallows. She's very self-involved, you know. I should never have married her. Rebecca Kesby caught up with Tom Conti and he told her what it was like to be part of the Friends gang. Well, it was one of the nicest jobs I've ever had.

I was astounded when I read it. It was 30 years. But by the time you arrived on the set, it was already an established show, wasn't it? Everybody knew it was a winner already. What was it like to arrive on the set and meet everybody and be part of the gang? Well, it was one of the nicest jobs I've ever had. When I was asked to do it, and I said to the family that I'd been asked to do it, if I had said I'd just been asked to do a movie with Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman, they would have said, oh, that's very nice. When I said I've been asked to do some episodes of Friends, they went crazy.

Oh, my God, how completely amazing and wonderful. So that was a measure of how the show was perceived, you know, by everyone. It was just hugely popular by then. I think it was series four I was in. So the surprising thing about it was that quite often when people have been working together for years, as that lot had, you know, there's a lot of griping goes on and they've decided not to like each other and all that sort of thing. That didn't happen with them. Yeah, because you always get this idea that they were friends off the set, but then when you hear stories from Hollywood full of backstabbing and so on,

but they really were friends. They seemed to be, absolutely. Yes, I mean, the girls sometimes sat on the boys' knees in rehearsal and such. They really seemed to like each other, which was wonderful and refreshing. What do you think it was that made it such a hit? Because I mean, it really rejuvenated TV comedy at the time, didn't it? And a lot of people talk about the script, people talk about the setup, you know, the fact that it was three boys, three girls. What do you think was the magic chemistry? Well, the first thing, of course, is always the script. And not only that, but the team leaders who create the atmosphere for working and then

choosing, as you say, the right cast. And it's important when you're casting something to choose people who you not only think are good, but you think will be fun to work with and won't be a pain. And I think they were very careful about the casting and they found people who were pleasant, you know, amenable people. And that worked. The other thing that was wonderful about it was that they would take any idea that was funny.

If you improvised a line, for example, at rehearsal or at a read-through, and it got a laugh, then that line went into the you know you could have page a rewrite page under your dressing room door and that line was now officially in the script you know if the man who's sweeping the floor of the studio came up with an idea and told someone if they thought it was funny they'd put it in the script that was the actor Tom Conti.

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 Sid Dundon.

The producer was Liam McSheffrey. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles. And until next time, goodbye. Life and death were two very realistic coexisting possibilities in my life. I didn't even think I'd make it to like my 16th birthday, to be honest.

I grew up being scared of who I was. Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference. It's the hardest step. But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care. To hear more stories of recovery, visit camh.ca. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's

award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime all ad free simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership spend less time on ads

and more time with BBC Podcasts