UK threatens to recognise Palestinian state

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

I'm Nick Miles, and in the early hours of Wednesday, the 30th of July, these are our main stories.

Britain has threatened to recognize Palestinian statehood unless Israel ends what it called the appalling situation in Gaza.

The UN has led calls for a flood of aid to enter the Palestinian territory, where famine is taking hold.

The Trump administration says it's revoking the scientific finding underpinning all US climate legislation.

A gunman who killed four people at an office building in New York may have been targeting the headquarters of the NFL, the organization which runs American football.

Also in this podcast.

Part gymnastics, part street dance, we hear about the unsung creator of the hula hoop, who's just died.

International pressure is increasing on Israel, which despite growing warnings, continues to deny there is starvation in Gaza.

After an emergency government meeting, Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the UK would follow France in recognizing a Palestinian state in September unless Israel took substantive steps to end what he called the appalling situation and commit to a two-state solution.

His foreign minister David Lamy had this to say at the United Nations in New York.

The devastation in Gaza is heartbreaking.

Children

are starving

and Israel's drip feeding of aid has horrified the world.

These are an affront to the values of the Charter of the United Nations.

Israel's foreign ministry has condemned Britain's move, saying it constitutes an award for Hamas and harms efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza.

The German Chancellor Friedrich Metz said Israel had to quickly and decisively improve humanitarian access.

Our international editor Jeremy Bowen has this assessment to the announcement by the UK government.

This is a big change in British foreign policy, this decision to go ahead with recognition, because they will know that it is vanishingly unlikely that Israel will agree to the conditions that Britain has put in there, which is this progress towards a two-state solution.

The current Israeli government is absolutely against that.

It's more than simply against it as an idea.

There are people in the government upon whose political support Prime Minister Netanyahu depends who have been speaking in the last 24 hours about their hopes of not a two-state solution, but annexation of land that Palestinians want for a two-state solution.

Not just reports in the Israeli press about an Israeli plan to annex parts of Gaza, but also there's a man called the Finance Minister, Betzalel Smotrich, who is an ultra-nationalist messianic Jew who's driven by a combination of nationalism and religion.

And he says, because he's threatened in the past to bring the government down and he hasn't done it, he says, people are asking me why I'm staying in the government.

He says I'm going to stay in the government because good things are going to happen.

And by good things, he means taking land that Palestinians want for a state and incorporating it in the Jewish state.

So I think it's highly unlikely that as currently constituted the Israeli government will accept those conditions.

Now, it is possible that Mr.

Netanyahu, Prime Minister Netanyahu, might decide that he can reconstitute his government in such a way to to accept all of that, but it would be such a massive flip-flop.

I just don't see him doing it.

And plus, one other thing, don't forget that the Americans have been absolutely condemnatory of that conference that Foreign Secretary Lamy has been speaking at at the United Nations in New York.

The State Department put out a very strong statement using a really harsh tone, condemning it as a reward for terrorism and saying it was interfering with America's own plans to try to bring a wider peace in the Middle East.

So I think that at the moment

there's actually a stark division in the Western camp between Britain, France, I mean maybe that Canada might follow suit, some people have talked about that, and on the other hand the Americans supporting the Israelis.

But from the British point of view, this is a real change.

It was only a month or two ago that I was hearing from diplomatic sources that yes, they wanted to progress towards recognition in concert with the French, but what they wanted to do was to impose benchmarks on the Palestinian side.

Now they're imposing benchmarks on the Israeli side.

Jeremy Bowen.

So, how do Israelis feel about the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza and their country's handling of the war there?

Our correspondent Emir Nader has been gathering some opinions in Jerusalem.

I'm walking through Machane Yehuda, which is the main traditional market in West Jerusalem.

It's a mixture of fruit and vegetable stalls, also more modern delicatessen stalls.

At night time it becomes a gathering place, a place to socialize.

There's a real cross-section of Israeli society here.

Bin Yameen is taking his granddaughter Adele for a walk around the market.

We have to put an end to it.

It's never-ending.

They outsmarted us in Gaza.

The thing that hurts me the most is the soldiers.

We're losing them for nothing.

I ask him whether the hunger crisis of Palestinians in Gaza concerns him.

No, it doesn't concern me.

They started it.

Give us back our hostages, we'll leave.

There'll be peace.

And that's it.

Finished.

Hamas is stealing the food.

We're seeing all these images of them taking the food

eating us in the middle of the day.

Finish the war.

Give us back our hostages.

Binyamin here refers to images shared by the Israeli military in recent days and broadcast on T V screens, photographs apparently of Hamas fighters in tunnels, selfies smiling with platters of fresh fruit, though it's unclear what their context is or when they were taken.

Professor Tamar Herman is a pollster and research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute.

I would say simplistic to say that Israelis don't care.

Some of them care, but cannot really

react in a way that would be considered reasonable under the circumstances by external experts and people who are looking at us from the outside.

Most people I approach in the market don't agree to be interviewed about the war, even though many walls and doors are covered in the stickers and pictures of Israeli soldiers who've fallen in the war.

My name is Avi, and this shop is

selling tools for the house and for the kitchen.

My feelings are not good.

It's very, very urgent to leave Aza.

It's not good for Israel.

It's not good for the soldiers.

Do you think your feeling and your attitude and your opinions are shared by many people, many people here

in Jerusalem?

Or would you say?

In the market, I don't think many, many people support my ideas.

Maybe if somebody will hear my ideas, he will be against me.

But around Israel, many people support this attitude.

I asked Avi about the images of starvation in Gaza.

If it's real, it's very, very bad.

It's very sad.

I want the Hamas will destroy.

But not the children of Gaza.

I want the children of Gaza to live in peace and to have the food to eat as necessary.

That report was by Emir Nada in Jerusalem.

The Trump administration says it will revoke a key finding that's long been the legal underpinning for US action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight fight climate change.

Environmental groups are expected to launch swift legal action in response.

Dr.

Michael Mann is director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Science.

We have two decades of additional data that confirm that the planet is continuing to warm up as we predicted it would if we continued to add carbon pollution to the atmosphere.

So the science, if anything, has gotten a whole lot stronger, but so has the denial of the science.

And we're seeing that here in the form of this effort to strike down this very important precedent.

I spoke to our North America correspondent Peter Bose and asked him what exactly is happening with regards to the U.S.

administration and climate change.

This is a move by the Trump administration to relax U.S.

government rules on emissions standards.

They're hoping to do this by scrapping the landmark finding known as the endangerment finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to the environment.

In 2009, the then President Barack Obama issued an order based on this finding that allowed the US Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, to create rules that limit pollution by setting emissions standards, limits on carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases.

All of this stemmed from a Supreme Court ruling a couple of years earlier, back in 2007, in which the court ruled that greenhouse gases were air pollutants, and that established that emissions from sources such as cars, power plants, factories cause climate change and could pose a public health risk.

And it authorised the government to impose emissions standards.

But now, the head of the EPA, Lee Zeldin, is planning to rescind the endangerment finding, and that's a move that could lead to emissions standards being dropped.

So, I suppose it's quite difficult to assess the impact that this could have, but a lot of people are very worried about it.

Environmental groups are likely to appeal, I would have thought.

Yeah, I think there'll be widespread challenges to this.

Environmental groups certainly, I think, to question the legality of this, especially as the original ruling stemmed from a decision by the Supreme Court.

Of course, the main thrust of the opposition will be on scientific grounds.

Here in California, there are in place aggressive actions to reduce greenhouse gases.

And the Governor of California, in fact, in a joint statement with the Governor of Wisconsin, has accused President Trump and his administration of reckless abandonment of science and the law.

One imagines it won't have much impact in largely Republican states where some of the more stringent rules weren't in place in the first place.

Exactly.

Different states across the country.

I mentioned California, it's one of the more stringent states as far as this issue is concerned, but others are not so strict.

So I think the impact will vary across the country.

But I think this issue is bigger than one single state.

This is a federal agency, and whatever that federal agency decides is going to have widespread implications.

Peter Bose.

A gunman who killed four people at an office building in New York may have been targeting the headquarters of the NFL, the organization which runs American football.

The city's mayor, Eric Adams, said a note found on the suspect claimed he was suffering from a type of brain injury often connected to contact sports.

Our correspondent John Sudworth reports from New York.

Police say the suspect 27-year-old Shane Tamura from Las Vegas drove 2,500 miles to New York before entering the Park Avenue skyscraper in central Manhattan with a high-powered assault rifle at his side.

Spraying the lobby with bullets and then taking the lift to an upper floor, he left four people dead, including a police officer, and then reportedly turned the gun on himself.

The building houses the headquarters of America's National Football League, and New York's mayor Eric Adams, speaking on CBS News, has revealed a possible link, a claim from the gunman that he was suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

He did have a note on him.

The note alluded to that he felt he had CTE, a known brain injury for those who participate in contact sports.

He appeared to have blamed the NFL for his injury.

Although an NFL employee was seriously injured in the shooting, the gunman is believed to have taken the wrong lift, so he was unable to reach the company's officers.

Two of those killed were from financial and real estate firms also based in the building.

Mass shootings are very rare in Manhattan, but this incident will add to public concern, already heightened after last year's assassination, just a few blocks from this latest incident, of the United Healthcare CEO, believed to have been targeted by a gunman with a grudge about America's private health industry.

The suspect in that case, Luigi Mangioni, is currently awaiting trial.

John Sudworth.

The US Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson, says two days of trade talks with Chinese officials in Sweden have been constructive, but there's been no extension to a lower tariff period.

The current 90-day truce is set to end on August 12th.

Mr.

Besson said President Trump would have the final say on whether to prolong it.

He added that without an extension, tariffs on Chinese goods could boomerang back to previous higher levels announced in April.

Meanwhile, the tiny southern African mountain kingdom of Lesotho has found itself at the forefront of the US tariff crisis.

For years, the African country's economy has been hobbled by a reputation for corruption and soaring unemployment.

Now, it also faces the imminent threat of 50% US tariffs, some of the highest likely to be imposed by Washington.

The government has declared a state of disaster, as the BBC's Shinga Nyoka reports from the capital, Maseru.

I'm in a pretty large factory in downtown Maceru with hundreds and hundreds of machines.

This is the heart.

of a factory that used to produce garments that were sent to the US, but at the stroke of a pen, Donald Trump's pen, the factory is now almost empty.

There are a couple of men that are fixing the machines, but a thousand workers are now out on the street and the future is really uncertain.

My name is Rahila Omer.

I'm the compliance manager here at TZICC.

So we started laying them off.

Then we went to the sewing line.

And that's where the majority of the employees are.

I think around

650.

All in all, we are 1,000.

So you've essentially laid off

1,000 people on the street?

Yes,

all of them.

Unemployment in our country is bad.

Those hardest hit, young people.

One in two under 35 here have never worked.

And it's not only the tariffs to blame.

Solo Takele is a youth activist.

We are hopeless.

There is a serious state of hopelessness amongst the youth because really there is nothing tangible that the government has done or said to address the problem.

Empty promises.

I mean the government has already declared a state of disaster.

On paper.

There are no trajectories, there are no roadmaps.

There's not even a master plan on how that's going to be implemented.

Yeah, we are a small economy.

We have to survive as a nation.

Moketi Shele is Lesotho's trade minister.

There are a lot of foreign-owned factories.

Some would say that this really was a missed opportunity for Lesotho to create businesses for its own people.

Yes, so right.

Almost.

I think when I leave this post,

I would like to see a legacy that I've created being the one that started

a local private sector to take over this industry.

So you do admit that it was a missed opportunity to a certain extent?

Yes, I said almost.

It's not going to be.

It stops here.

Hundreds of workers are just streaming out of Lesotho Precious Garments Factory on their lunch break.

It's one of the factories which is still operating here.

But the question is for how long?

They say it can close any time from now on.

Aletta Saleso, a 47-year-old embroiderer, has had her hours and pay slashed.

She used to earn $160 a month but must now survive on 80 and support her mum, child and her late sister's children.

If I wasn't in this factory, I wouldn't be able to raise my child.

So what would you say to your government?

Government, please, please talk to America.

Please, we are dying.

We are going to die.

We don't know how we'll survive.

Are you scared for the future?

Very, I'm very scared.

I was the factory worker Aleta Seleso ending that report from Shingai Nyoka in Lesotho.

Still to come.

An official note on the parliament's website says a considerable number of older citizens have expressed a strong desire to voluntarily join the defense of the state.

Yeah, Ukraine is allowing citizens over 60 to volunteer for military service as it seeks to plug a manpower gap.

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The president of Ivory Coast, Alessandra Wattara, says he'll seek a fourth term in October's elections, which have been condemned by opposition parties whose candidates have been excluded.

Presidents are only allowed two terms, but Mr.

Watara argues that a new constitution approved in 2016 reset his two-term limit.

Our Africa regional editor, Will Ross, reports: Alessand Watara says the constitution allows him to run for another term and that his health is okay.

At 83, he's not the oldest man in the region looking to stay in power.

President Paul Beer of Cameroon is 92.

The opposition in Ivory Coast boycotted the last election, arguing that Mr.

Watara shouldn't have been allowed to stand.

Protests left dozens of people dead.

At the time, he promised not to seek another term.

Now President Watara is the overwhelming favourite in another controversial poll, which could see the young population become even more disillusioned with the country's political system.

President Zelensky has signed a law allowing citizens over 60 to volunteer for military service.

Ukraine's armed forces are struggling to find recruits as the Russian invasion drags into a fourth year.

Sasha Schlichter reports.

An official note on the Parliament's website says a considerable number of older citizens have expressed a strong desire to voluntarily join the defence of the state.

Subject to medical clearance and consent from a unit commander, volunteers will be invited to sign a renewable one-year contract.

There is no upper age limit.

Actual service will start after a two-month trial period.

The ardor of the first months of the war has dissipated, and Ukraine has launched several initiatives to attract more people into the armed forces, including with a one-year contract and financial incentives for people aged 18 to 24.

Last year, Ukraine lowered the mobilization age by two years to 25, resisting US calls to go as low as 18.

Sasha Schlichter.

Is the way we use the internet to search about to change forever?

Major tech companies around the world have been in an innovation race since Open AI launched Chat GPT three years ago.

Other companies were quick to follow with their artificial intelligence or AI offerings.

And now Google has this week launched its most advanced search feature.

AI mode here in the UK.

It's already been added to Google searches in the US and India.

Now, the new search tool will not replace Google's existing search platform, but will have some highly distinctive features.

It's definitely apprentice reports.

Web searching got going in the 90s when the internet was just a well-connected phone line away with basic search engines like Archie and Ask Jeeves.

Now, Google says users of its new AI systems can ask multi-pronged, meandering questions and get an answer with just one click.

While launching the product in the UK, Google's vice president, Hema Buddharaja, gave us an example.

I'm planning a trip to a strawberry farm with my two kids and we want to find a cafe nearby for one of my kids who's a picky eater, but I also want free car parking close by.

That's a lot of things to do in a search, but you can ask all that of AI mode and be able to receive a comprehensive comprehensive response.

Google's AI mode promises to be different to its current offering AI overviews.

The interface, more conversational, the links far fewer, and personalization is possible.

That sounds familiar.

Hey ChatGPT, do you think Google's new AI mode will replace you?

ChatGPT said.

Smart question.

The short answer is no.

Google AI mode equals a turbocharged search engine.

Chat GPT equals a collaborative thinking partner or assistant.

We should probably check that for bias.

Ian Leslie is the author of a book about learning curious the desire to know, and we asked him what he makes of this.

AI chatbots in general are amazing, and it speaks, if that's the word, with complete confidence.

But in some cases, it's giving you completely mistaken information and presenting it as the truth.

Google's launch of AI mode in a third market, following the US and India, comes at a pivotal time for tech and who will win the search race.

Meta has reportedly offered top AI talent contracts of up to $300 million for four years.

Apple has delayed the arrival of a smarter Siri, and OpenAI has debuted Codex, a tool that will do web-based tasks on your behalf, like booking a desk in a shared office.

Experts seem to agree that a successful rollout of this level of AI technology means less clicking, more chatting, and dare we say, less thinking.

James Marriott is a columnist for The Times in the UK, covering society and culture.

There was a good phrase that's sometimes used of junk food.

They call it ultra-processed food.

And I really think there's such a thing as ultra-processed information, which is superficially nutritious, but actually pretty empty.

And I think we really need to get hold of the idea that not all information is created equal.

That said, if you are planning a trip to a strawberry farm with your two kids and you want a cafe nearby for one of your kids, who's a picky eater, and you want free car parking close by, it's never been easier to find it.

Now, for a piece of nostalgia.

If you've ever tried hula hooping, you'll know how difficult it can be, but also how addictive.

A hula hoop is a toy hoop that is twirled around the waist, limbs, or neck.

As you swivel the coloured hoop or hoops continuously around you, I'm told that it can be quite mesmerising as well as beneficial.

Well now an Australian woman who went uncredited for her role in creating the hula hoop has died aged 101.

Terry Egan reports.

It was way back in 1956 that Joan Anderson noticed people exercising by swiveling wooden rings around their waists.

Miss Anderson got hold of one of the rings, getting it sent to her home in California, where she could show it off at parties.

But when a friend pointed out that the process looked like Hawaiian hula dancing, that prompted her to label the device the hula hoop.

Miss Anderson was a swimsuit model, but her husband, Wayne, knew a businessman, Arthur Spud Mellin, and arranged a meeting to pitch the hoop for his company, Wamo.

In an office car park, he told them he liked the toy and they would be compensated if it made money.

The deal was sealed with what Ms.

Anderson called a gentleman's handshake, and Wammo went on to develop a colorful plastic version, which, within months, sold in the millions.

Everybody's playing with the new Wammo Hula hoop.

Buy yours today at all toy, drug, and department stores.

Get one, get two, get more.

It's the new, amazing amazing

and that might have closed the circle with a happy ending.

But unfortunately, as time went on, the couple heard less and less from Mr.

Mellon and Wammo.

In news reports about the hoop's origins over the following years, Miss Anderson said she was relegated to being a nameless Australian friend.

In 1961, the Andersons filed a lawsuit against Wammo, which resulted in a modest settlement, but still no formal recognition.

Finally, though, her story was rediscovered by filmmakers and featured in the documentary Hula Girl, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and made her name.

Joan Anderson then finally got the recognition she deserved.

An example, perhaps, of what goes around comes around.

Terry Egan reporting.

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 at bbc.co.uk.

You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.

Use the hashtag Global Newspod.

This edition was mixed by Martin Baker.

The producers were Liam McSheffery and Peter Goffin.

The editor editor is Karen Martin.

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

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