Israel approves military takeover of Gaza City

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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Nick Mars, and at 13 Hours GMT on Friday, the 8th of August, these are our main stories.

Israel's security cabinet has given the go-ahead for a military takeover of Gaza City.

President Trump has declined to say whether today's deadline for Russia to agree a ceasefire in Ukraine still holds in light of a possible meeting with Vladimir Putin.

Also in this podcast, an Australian woman who murdered three of her relatives with a meal of deadly mushrooms had allegedly tried to poison her husband several times.

He talked about a curry, a bolognese sauce and a wrap that he was given.

And such were his suspicions, he went to the GP who told him to log any suspicions.

And astronomers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have found compelling evidence of a giant new planet.

Israel's Security Cabinet has approved plans for a major expansion of the war against Hamas with the takeover of Gaza City.

The aims include the disarmament of Hamas, the return of all hostages, and the establishment of an alternative civilian administration.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier said his ultimate aim was the occupation of the whole of the Gaza Strip.

The latest proposal has been widely condemned by the Israeli opposition and military leaders, and the German government has announced it will not approve any exports to Israel of military equipment that could be used in the Gaza Strip until further notice.

Yehuda Cohen is the father of one of the remaining Israeli hostages there, Nimrod Cohen.

He's against the plan.

It's obvious that it's endangering my son, endangering the other living hostages.

And beyond the fact that it's endangering hostages, it's stalling time.

The hostages, well, Netanyahu said it's going to be about a four-month operation.

Considering that no hostage will be hurt, okay, guys, we got another four months going on inside the Hamas tunnels.

Thank Netanyahu for that.

So it's endangering the hostages and prolonging their suffrage.

But Michael Kleiner is a senior member of Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party.

He's in favor of the plans to take control of Gaza City, and despite the dangers, he says the alternative could be worse.

Ending this war, ending the misery of the hostages, which you know

they are endangered maybe by this operation, they will be endangered, but they're endangered also by the existing current situation.

You have seen the picture that Hamas was proudly presenting of those people, of those hostages who looked worse than my grandparents looked when they were freed from Auschwitz.

And this is

the Hamas doing.

Professor Yossi Mikkelberg is from the Mideast and North Africa programme at Chatham House in London.

He gave Lucy Gray his assessment of the plan.

I don't think about any redeeming aspects of this plan.

It's not very different from what Israel has done in the last 22 months, but it only will exacerbate an already disastrous situation because it's about entering in a highly populous city

and what might be the end result of it.

It's not surprising that actually the main objection to this operation came from the IDF, from the chief of staff during this very long meeting overnight.

He said that this is not going to achieve any of the military objective.

It probably will put at risk the hostages.

It put at risk the military itself entering in such an operation.

But we need also to think about how it's going to make much worse the life of Palestinians that have already

suffered immensely over the last twenty-two months.

And this will only make the humanitarian disaster the worse with who knows how many more hundreds, if not thousands, civilians killed.

And yet they still decided to go ahead with it, despite, as you say, this interesting intervention from the head of the military.

And I must admit, I myself try to think what can be the reason behind it, which should be make any rational decision.

And I think one, it might be just a burdening ship in negotiation with Ramas and not going to do that, but this is not very likely.

I think a different one is that Netanyahu is so much in the hands of the ultra-nationalist

and they push for that.

We know that the main reservation from, for instance, the finance minister Vetsalis Smotric, who's an ultra-nationalist settler, was actually allowing humanitarian aid to enter into Gaza and they think already about annexation and building settlements.

And the third option is that Taniya already is plotting election and he thinks that maybe if he achieves here victory, the defeat of Hamas, release of hostages, and then by miracle he can hand it over to some civilian authorities, then he can go call election and win it.

But you know, this scenario scenario is is very unlikely and unfortunately I think it's more likely that we'll see more and more bloodshed.

Rushdie Abu Alouf is our Gaza correspondent but at the moment he's reporting from Istanbul.

He told us about how Gazans are reacting to the news about Israel's plans to occupy Gaza City.

The people believe that they are playing in words but in fact they are going to reoccupy Gaza.

And for the new generation who don't know what's the meaning of a full occupation, the old generation and the middle generation they understand what the full occupation means.

Gaza was under full occupation until 1994.

I grew up in this first antifada and I I knew, like many other Palestinians, what the meaning of living under Israeli full occupation, full control, where soldiers are controlling your life, controlling your movement, could arrest you from the street any time.

So there is a very frustrating news for Gaza.

People are losing hope about the diplomatic solution because it's been going on for a very, very long time without achieving any progress, and

the situation is getting from bad to worse

to more worse.

I just see a line coming through from the Reuters news agency quoting Hamas, saying that Israel's decision to take control of Gaza City is a war crime.

We're also hearing from the UN human rights chief, Volka Turk, saying that doing this would be contrary to

the ICJ's ruling that the occupation should be ended as soon as possible.

I mean a lot of people calling for the international community to put more pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu.

What can you imagine the international community could do to put more pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu?

Well for the people of Gaza it's already 22 or 23 almost 23 months of war and where is the international community?

What kind of pressure they put on Israel to stop this?

People calling the international community from day one to distinguish between Hamas who attacked Israel on the 7th of October and the civilians who have nothing to do with this conflict.

They are paying a huge price.

When you talk to the number of kids and women killed in this conflict, it's a huge.

More than 60,000 people, about 100,000 people are missing or arrested.

Another 100,000 people

left Gaza.

So the people do not rely a lot on the international community because they had been calling the international community to intervene for 22 months and even before the 7th of October they all were demanding that give us our you know independent state and there is no point of just keep you know supporting Israel.

Most of the people are posting in social media since the beginning of the war about this.

Rushdie Abu Alouf.

Last month, a jury in Australia found Erin Patterson guilty of murder for knowingly adding death cat mushrooms to a beef dish at a family lunch.

Three of her in-laws died.

Her estranged husband was not present at that meal.

Now, it's been revealed that Erin Patterson was suspected by the police of having tried to poison him on several separate occasions.

Our correspondent Katie Watson told us more.

These are three attempted murder charges in connection with Simon Patterson, her estranged husband.

They were dropped on the eve of the lunch trial.

The jury was told they were dropped, that they were against her husband and they needed to be ignored.

That was it.

But this evidence that has come out today has been allowed to be made public, comes from pre-trial hearings.

So, weeks of hearings that started last year that were not in front of a jury, effectively to work out what evidence could and couldn't be allowed into the trial.

It's a very common thing.

And it was just part of, you know, lots more evidence that also came out, evidence about another visit to the tip that she made on the day of the lunch.

There was a police interview as well that will be released, in which she repeatedly lied to officers that was formed part of the trial, but is now allowed allowed to be released.

So, all of this has come out: how Simon Patterson said that over the course of a couple of years, he had eaten a bolognese, a wrap, a curry, and he'd started to log feeling ill after these incidents, something that the GP had encouraged him to do.

There were three murder charges, an attempted murder in connection with the lunch, and the three charges in connection with Simon Patterson, and they took place in different times.

So, prosecutors wanted all the charges to be brought together in one trial.

Aaron Patterson's lawyers disagreed.

They went back and forth over this.

Then the judge ordered two separate trials.

And then in the end, it was decided that those charges in connection with Simon Patterson were dropped so that she was only facing one criminal trial in the end.

Katie Watson in Sydney.

President Trump has confirmed that he will meet President Putin in the coming days, despite setting a deadline of the end of Friday for Russia to agree to a ceasefire or face further sanctions.

Overnight into Friday, the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, close to the Russian border, was hit in another wave of Russian drone strikes.

Nearly 3,000 civilians there have already been killed in the region since the start of the full-scale invasion by Russia.

Our defense correspondent Jonathan Beale has sent this report from Ukraine's second largest city.

Kharkiv's been in Russia's sights ever since it began its full-scale invasion three and a half years ago.

March 2nd, 2022.

So Russia

known that in this building was full of police officers.

Colonel Serhi Bulvinov of Ukraine's National Police shows me his old headquarters, targeted by Russian missiles at the start of the war.

His old office, now just a charred, empty shell.

Three of his officers died in the attack, along with six civilians.

His work is personal.

It's taken over his life.

So he and his team of around a thousand investigators now work in basement buildings dispersed across the city.

In one, a forensic team carries out DNA testing on the burnt, unrecognizable remains of the latest victims of a Russian rocket attack.

killed as they were collecting water in a village near the front line.

If you ask about generals, I will show you.

Each picture is a different case.

So these are Russian officers tied to an attack.

The walls of another basement office are plastered with photographs of Russian military officers who've been tied to specific attacks.

Investigators wade through boxes of documents and evidence.

Nearly 3,000 civilians have been killed in the Kharkiv region alone.

And Colonel Bolvinov is seeking justice for each and every one of them.

It's It's really hard work, but it's our work, it's our police work.

It's hard for all civilians.

And of course, there are some cases who left a scarp on all of us, and we will never forget this trauma.

Russia's declared Colonel Bolvinov a war criminal for investigating their war crimes.

He says he wants peace, but not at any price.

If Donald Trump was able to get a ceasefire tomorrow, would he be able to forget about all this?

Of course not.

You can imagine how

much time we spoke with the victims and the relatives of the victims.

And they asked me personally and my team when Russian soldiers and commanders will be punished.

And for us, it's important to investigate these cases for the future justice.

No one in this city of more than a million people can escape Russia's bull.

Civilians may be powerless against Russia's strikes, but these families of missing soldiers and prisoners of war raise their voice to highlight the plight of their loved ones.

Once and in a two weeks we gather here in the center of Kharkiv just to remind

to people of our town about

prisoners of war.

Wives without husbands, mothers without sons, and children without fathers.

And just friends like Alina.

She's hoping President Trump's efforts to end this war will pay off.

Now we see that

the situation changes and I hope that the USA will support Ukraine more.

So you think President Trump is getting tougher with Putin?

I hope so.

I hope so.

And do you think it could end the war?

No.

No.

Even President Trump himself

acknowledges there's still no breakthrough.

Jonathan Beale

Gina Carano is best known for her role as a warrior in the hit TV show The Mandalorian and she's just faced down Disney and its subsidiary Lucasfilm after she was fired from the show in 2021 for posting comments on social media that were deemed offensive.

She sued and the studio has settled without the case coming to court.

Some of her comments were posted on X.

The site's billionaire owner, Elon Musk, said she had a right to air her view and promptly paid all of her legal costs, despite the fact that he'd never met her.

Our North America correspondent Peter Bowes spoke to Jackie Leonard.

Gina Carano sued Disney.

Lucasfilm is a Disney subsidiary.

She sued them for firing her over inflammatory social media posts about the Holocaust, the pandemic, and transgender rights.

One post that she chaired appeared to compare being conservative in the United States to being Jewish in Nazi Germany.

Another seemed to mock a person for wearing multiple masks during the COVID pandemic in California.

She was dropped from the Mandalorian in 2021 over the post.

She claimed that she was wrongfully dismissed for expressing political views.

As you say, she sued the studio with the financial backing of Elon Musk, having publicly replied to an open letter from him to help anyone fired after using his social media platform to exercise free speech.

She claimed she lost a role on a planned spin-off, Rangers of the New Republic, which she said would have been worth up to a quarter of a million dollars per episode.

But the case never went to court and they have now settled.

So what does this settlement mean in terms of the sort of cultural and political pressures in the film and TV industry at the moment?

Well, I think much like American politics, American entertainment companies, indeed entertainment companies around the world, to some extent are working in an increasingly polarised environment.

So the studios are trying to balance the demands of their audiences from those who support the original goals of this lawsuit, freedom of speech issues, campaigns against so-called cancel culture, versus the demands of a section of the audience that rails against what it considers to be offensive.

So it's a balancing act for the studios.

Now the fact that there has been a settlement I think will be read as an acknowledgement by Disney of this case that Lucas Film has issued a statement saying that the actress was always well respected by her directors, co-stars and staff and that she worked hard to perfect her craft.

In other words a very positive statement about her and I think a sign that the studio in future, if there are similar situations, might be somewhat more cautious about approaching this kind of issue.

Does this mean that Gina Carano's career will be rejuvenated?

Well, there's an old adage that says that there's no such thing as bad publicity.

I think this might apply to her.

It's very rare in Hollywood, a controversy will end a career.

There are some exceptions, of course, but I think it's unlikely in this case.

Peter Bowes.

Still to come in this podcast: The Rwandans Taking to the Open Road.

Love of my cycling takes away my anxiety, depression, and brings me happiness.

We meet the women racing and recovering.

This is Larry Flick, owner of the floor store.

Labor Day is the last sale of the summer, but this one is her biggest sale of the year.

Now through September 2nd, get up to 50% off store-wide on carpet, hardwood, laminate, waterproof flooring, and much more.

Plus two years interest-free financing, and we pay your sales tax.

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And that someone doesn't have to be you.

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Head to Escalon.services and use the code SanFran for a special listener-only deal.

Escalon, because founders deserve peace of mind, too.

This is Larry Flick, owner of the floor store.

Labor Day is the last sale of the summer, but this one is our biggest sale of the year.

Now through September 2nd, get up to 50% off store-wide on carpet, hardwood, laminate, waterproof flooring, and much more.

Plus two years interest-free financing and we pay your sales tax.

The Floor Stores Labor Day sale.

Don't let the sun set on this one.

Go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our 10 showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

The Floor Store, your area flooring authority.

You didn't start your company to manage payroll, file taxes, or chase invoices.

But someone has to do it.

And that someone doesn't have to be you.

Escalon Services handles your finance, HR, and accounting needs under one roof so you get back to what you love, building your business.

Head to Escalon.services and use the code SanFran for a special listener-only deal.

Escalon, because founders deserve peace of mind too.

The U.S.

government describes him as one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world, and now Washington has doubled the reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro.

That figure now stands at $50 million.

Alfie Habershan reports.

The big bounty now on the head of Venezuela's president is more than the US offered for the capture of Osama bin Laden after 9-11.

The US government says he is the orchestrator of a web of cartels in Latin America that are flooding the US with fentanyl-lased cocaine.

In a social media post, Attorney General Pam Bondi said he must be brought to justice.

Maduro uses foreign terrorist organizations like TDA, Sinaloa, and Cartel of the Sons to bring deadly drugs and violence into our country.

To date, the DEA has seized 30 tons of cocaine linked to Maduro and his associates with nearly seven tons linked to Maduro himself.

Yet, Maduro's reign of terror continues.

Venezuela says the new bumped-up reward is pathetic propaganda designed to distract from the allegation about Trump's relationship with the convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.

The U.S.

Department of Justice says it has already seized $700 million in assets linked to Nicolas Maduro, and America's long-running dispute with the Venezuelan leader is a rare area of cross-party agreement.

He was first charged by the previous Trump government in 2020 with a $15 million reward for his capture, later raised by the Biden government to $25 million.

His re-election for a third term in office is also not recognised as free or fair by much of the international community, which says in reality he lost.

Alfie Habershan.

In Haiti on Thursday, a wealthy businessman was sworn in as the president of the Transitional Council, just hours after the country's most notorious gang leader vowed to overthrow it.

At his inauguration ceremony in the capital Port-au-Prince, Laurent Saint-Cyr set out his message to the country.

He said, This is not the time to make fine speeches.

Today is the time to take action.

Too much blood has been shed.

Too much time has been lost.

We must unite to give the people the results they deserve.

The event marks the final stage of Haiti's transition period before the country is expected to hold democratic elections later this year.

Mimi Swebi told us more.

Laurent Saint Cyr is a wealthy Haitian businessman, and he is part of this highly unpopular transitional presidential council in Haiti, which is basically tasked, a very hard task, of restoring order in this country, which has been plagued by gang violence and to oversee presidential elections, which are now set for November.

He's now become the latest head of this council, it's a nine-member council, and he was inaugurated on Thursday in a temporary location in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Given that many of the areas of Port-au-Prince, 90% now controlled by gangs, was deemed too unsafe to hold it.

So he's president of the Transitional Council, but how much power will he actually have?

This all depends on how much help he really gets.

In his address, he said, our country is going through one of the greatest crises in all its history.

It's not time for beautiful speeches, it's time to act.

And for him, security is the utmost priority, but he really called on the armed forces to intensify its operations, but also international partners to firstly send more soldiers, offer more training, and send more equipment and resources.

This is because a UN-backed multinational task force led by Kenya was sent to Haiti a year ago, roughly, but they haven't really had a major impact, any significant impact.

If anything, it's gone in the opposite direction, and the situation really has got worse, mainly due to the fact that the fact they haven't got sufficient equipment, personnel, and they're just lacking resources all round.

So, what does his appointment actually mean for the country?

He will have to basically stabilise this country in the hope that Haiti can get to November when presidential elections are set.

However, a prominent Ghan leader called Barbecue has threatened to overthrow this transitional government and he actually wanted to disrupt the inauguration of Saint-Cyr.

He didn't do this, it went ahead unscathed, although we did hear gunfire during the day on Thursday.

He's been tasked an incredibly difficult challenge to try and stabilise, if not improve, the situation with the gangs.

However, many will see this as a very difficult and long road ahead, and he might not have the tools in his toolbox to do it.

He does need that international support.

So, gangs are said to be in control of most of Port-au-Prince.

What is life like for residents there?

Since the assassination of President Moise in 2021, Haiti has spiralled.

There have been compounding crises.

You have an economic crisis, you have a humanitarian crisis, and this has been fuelled by gang violence, which has spread across the capital, but it's also seeped into areas outside of Port-au-Prince.

So the rolling hills of farmland above Port-au-Prince, which were once seen recently as like a safe haven for people, are now also experiencing kidnapping, murder, rape, sexual violence.

So it really is a nightmare to live in Port-au-Prince, as well as surrounding parts now in Haiti.

Mimi Swaby.

Researchers using the James Webb Telescope have found evidence of a newly discovered planet next door to our own solar system, four and a half light years away in the star system known as Alpha Centauri.

So what makes this so exciting to scientists?

We ask Dr.

Carly Howard, an associate professor of space instrumentation at the University of Oxford.

There's tentative evidence through direct imaging, and that's just fancy words for taking a photograph, a scientific photograph, but a photograph nonetheless, of a planet that we think is Saturn-sized, but it's only two times the distance of the Earth from its star.

So it's a gas giant.

But the important thing here is it's in a star system that's very close to us.

Four and a half light years is a long way, but in galaxy terms, it's very close.

It's in our neighborhood.

And it's also around a star that is sun-like.

So it's about the same temperature, it's about the same brightness.

And that's really important because if we want to think about about habitable worlds, why it might not be possible to live on this target, you know, it's Saturn-like, it's got lots of gas, it might have moons.

Moons are ubiquitous in our own solar system, and that would make that moon potentially really, really habitable.

So if you look at our own solar system, all of our gas giants, all of our ice giants have moons, and those moons that have been shown in our own solar system to be some of the most habitable worlds, right?

We think that there's potentially life beneath the surface of Europa and maybe Enceladus.

And so there's no reason, really, from our own understanding understanding of what the solar system looks like, that there might be something similar here.

It's going to be much harder to find the moon.

Of course, moons are smaller than their targets.

So we've got a ways to go before we can definitely say this system is habitable.

But it's a step towards that, finding a potentially, you know, a large gas giant near a planet at all around a sun-like star.

And then the next step is to look.

confirm it and then look for these exo moons.

That was Dr.

Kylie Howitt.

Next month, Rwanda will host Cycling's Road Race World Championships, Championships, the first time the event will be held in Africa.

The country has seen growing interest in cycling, particularly amongst women who are pushing back against traditional expectations.

Kelvin Kimati of BBC Sport Africa has been speaking to 21-year-old Olivia, who turned her life around by racing and fixing bicycles.

Life on two wheels.

For Olivia Maniraghena, it has always meant a level of freedom.

I learned how to ride a bike when I was seven years old.

It at one time helped me to take care of my family, like fetching water, firewood, buying different things, and as a means of transport.

But that freedom was put at risk when Olivia was orphaned aged 14 and became a mother at 15.

By the time she was 17, she was left on her own, caring for two children and three siblings.

Her decision to join Bike for Future, an all-female cycling team, has put her back in control.

Love of my cycling takes away my anxiety, depression, and it brings me happiness.

At the Project Cycling Center in Bugesera, Olivia has honed more than just her racing skills.

She's now a proficient bike mechanic as well.

I can dismantle the bike and then bring it together in five minutes.

It is something I value so much and it has brought me hope to life, something that I had lost.

On a good day when I work from the bike shop, I can get seven dollars per day.

Olivia can earn even more when she races competitively.

It's all part of the plan to empower women and young girls.

Solomon Tesfamarium is the plan international country director for Rwanda.

They are funding the program.

The way how we do it is by bringing to the attention of community members and elders parents that girls are also able to do what men can do, giving girls the opportunity to get into business areas where boys predominantly engage.

The project lead and coach, Nyon Saba Elidad, believes Olivia has what it takes to represent Rwanda at a global stage.

What makes Olivia

very unique is that she's very determined girl.

She knows what she wants.

The project project was launched specifically to take advantage of the fact that Rwanda will this year become the first African nation to host Cycling's Road Race World Championships.

And the inclusion of a separate women under 23 race for the first time in the World Cycling Championship history reflects a commitment to gender equality in the sport.

Baba Zifilet is the scheme's programmes and partnership manager at LWD, the organization that is implementing the scheme.

She says Olivia is already changing the way female cyclists are viewed.

If just they saw you as a young girl getting a bike and riding it, it would be an abomination.

I cannot wait to see different women taking part of this and I am very excited and this is a very big opportunity for my country.

While the road to the top remains difficult, the determination of cyclists like Olivia reflects the growing opportunities for women in sport in Rwanda.

Kelvin Kamathi.

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 BBC World Service.

Use the hashtag GlobalNewsPod.

This edition was produced by Alice Adeli and Peter Goffin and was mixed by Derek Clark.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Nick Miles and until next time, goodbye.

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