The UN warns that it's "make or break" for malnourished Palestinians

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This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Alex Ritson, and at 13 hours GMT on Monday, the 28th of July, these are our main stories.

The United Nations has warned that it's make or break for civilians in Gaza.

Thailand and Cambodia have agreed a ceasefire to end five days of fighting along their border.

Disquiet in some European capitals at the terms of the new EU trade deal with Washington.

Also, in this podcast,

the tickets we sell and the donations we receive go to the charity.

China investigates the head monk of the Shaolin Kung Fu Temple for corruption and womanizing.

The United Nations has described the next next few days as crucial for Gaza.

Another 10-hour pause of Israeli military operations came into effect on Monday to allow more aid into the Palestinian territory.

The UN aid chief, Tom Fletcher, told the BBC that the easing of restrictions on Sunday had to go much further.

Yesterday was a start.

It's a drop in the ocean of what's needed.

During the ceasefire for those 42 days, we were getting in 600, 700 trucks a day.

Yesterday it was fewer than 100.

So it's the beginning, but the next few days are really make or break.

We need to deliver at a much, much greater scale.

We need vast amounts of aid going in much faster.

This second day of pausing military activities follows escalating international outrage at the shocking pictures of malnourished, emaciated children who've been dying in their dozens in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

The UN has described this as man-made mass starvation.

Donald Trump, who's on a visit to Scotland, was asked about this.

Mr.

President, Prime Minister Netanyahu said there's no starvation in Gaza.

Do you agree with that assessment?

I don't know.

I mean, based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry.

But we're giving a lot of money and a lot of food.

And other nations are now stepping up.

Our international editor, Jeremy Bowen, is on board a Jordanian plane dropping aid via parachutes into Gaza.

He sent this report just before takeoff from a rather noisy aircraft.

They're about to take off from just outside

Now, a couple of things.

First of all,

there are two aircraft here.

I think eight tons each of relief supplies.

Yes,

not bad, but there are two million, more than two million, starving civilians inside Gaza.

And so this

is not going to change a great deal.

What it is, is symbolic.

It's going to look good on television.

It's going to give the impression of things being done.

But actually, in reality, the only thing that's going to change things on the ground in Gaza in the humanitarian sense, and the UN has said this and others, is sustained road convoys bringing in what they need.

And there is no assurance of that from the Israelis at the moment.

Israel has repeatedly rejected what it calls the false claims of deliberately starving civilians to death.

Foreign journalists aren't allowed into Gaza by Israel.

Our correspondent, Yoland Nell, spoke to me from Jerusalem.

We're not hearing too much on the

The hope is that this system can start to bear fruit.

We just heard on the BBC a short time ago from the UN's aid chief Tom Fletcher.

He talked about how this new arrangement he'd been told could last a week or so.

He said that the whole focus was on getting aid moving but the UN was facing bureaucratic and security constraints and he pointed out after we heard that more than a hundred lorry loads of aid were picked up from inside the Gaza border and distributed inside Gaza yesterday that really a lot of the food that went across was looted, this by desperate people in the main and he said his drivers had to run the gauntlet going along roads where they knew there were starving starving civilians, and you know, these people would intercept the trucks and take away things like flour.

He's really pushing for all crossings to be opened, for an ease in the permits coming from the Israelis, and for improvements in the security for both the aid convoys and for the people who are rushing to try to get the aid.

So, are these so-called tactical pauses working or not?

I mean, so far, what we've seen is only sort of a trickle going through when what's needed is a flood.

And these are only limited pauses.

We're just hearing in the last few hours about five people having been killed in the Netserim corridor.

That's according to a local hospital.

They'd gone there hoping to get aid that was going to be distributed.

People were killed there in the same sort of location yesterday as well.

And, you know, there have been other military strikes in different parts of Gaza, particularly in Khairan Yunus and in the centre of the strip as well.

More than 20 killed, according to different sources.

Yoland Nell.

Diplomatic efforts are continuing to try to build consensus around a future two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

In New York, a three-day conference chaired by France and Saudi Arabia is getting underway later on Monday.

But the United States won't attend after condemning France last week for deciding to recognize a Palestinian state later this year.

So, how viable is this attempt to rekindle the wider peace process, which began in 1993 with the Oslo Accords?

Our State Department correspondent Tom Bateman reports.

Mr.

Prime Minister, Madam.

Emmanuel Macron filled his speech to the UK Parliament this month with history and ideas of unity.

But Britain and France were colonial rivals when they carved up the Middle East as European superpowers a century ago.

And the wars that began then, they are still trying to end.

And today, working together in order to recognize the state of Palestine and to initiate this political momentum is the only path to peace.

Because since Oslo in 1993,

with Gaza in Ren and West Bank being on a daily basis attacked, the perspective of a Palestinian state has never been put at risk as it is.

Last week, Mr.

Macron announced France will recognize a Palestinian state in September, further angering the Americans.

When I heard that the French were trying to spearhead this effort to get a meeting together at the United Nations, the purpose of which supposedly is to recognize a Palestinian state.

President Trump's ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, last month calling the plan a revolting ruse, he told France to drop it and derided the hopes meant for the people involved.

If France is really so determined to see a Palestinian state, I've got a suggestion for them.

Carve out a piece of the French Riviera and create a Palestinian state.

They're welcome to do that.

The U.S.

State Department, meanwhile, privately threatened diplomatic consequences for countries that joined the UN Conference, being co-chaired by France and the Saudis.

The American Demarche meant, along with the divisions over the militarized system of aid in Gaza, there has never been such a serious split between Washington and its European allies over the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a crisis for the concept of a negotiated two-state solution.

Together, Arab and Jew walked onto the White House lawn with an American president who finds a major foreign policy success thrust upon him.

Oslo meant for the first time the Palestinians had a national political body recognized by the world under U.S.

brokerage, the Palestinian Authority.

Since then, the PA, drawn largely from the dominant Fatah party founded by Yasser Arafat, has suffered a crisis of legitimacy among Palestinians, many of whom have come to see it as delivering no progress towards a state, little more than a security contractor for Israel's military occupation.

And in the bitter and bloody rivalry between Fatah and Hamas, the latter often prevailed, winning elections in 2006, then brutally forcing the PA out of Gaza.

On the Israeli side, anti-Oslo forces have prevailed too, and Israel has the most extreme nationalist governing coalition in its history, proclaiming an exclusive Jewish right to all the land and rejecting a future Palestinian state.

Public support for a negotiated two-state solution has dropped well below 50% within both societies, plunging even further in Israel after the Hamas attacks of October the 7th.

The U.S.

and Israel are condemning France's plan to recognize a Palestinian state.

As U.S.

networks broke the news, the Israeli leader portrayed it as a reward for Hamas, even though the French position demands Hamas's demilitarization.

Paris hopes its move will strengthen the ailing, internationally backed Palestinian leadership, but also create incentives for Israel, as with Saudi support, they think it could help bring normalization between those two countries.

This web of diplomacy is likely far too delicate to hold though given the shattering crisis on the ground driving new divisions over a decades-old conflict.

Tom Bateman Thailand and Cambodia have agreed a ceasefire to end five days of fighting along their border.

Government leaders have been holding peace talks in Malaysia after violence that killed more than 30 people and displaced tens of thousands of others.

Anwar Ibrahim, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, spoke at a press conference earlier.

Both Cambodia and Thailand reached a common understanding as follows.

One, an immediate and unconditional ceasefire with effect from

twenty-four hours local time, midnight, on twenty-eighth july twenty twenty-five, tonight.

This is a vital first step towards a de-escalation and the restoration of peace and security.

Celia Hatton, our Asia-Pacific Regional Editor, is following developments.

We've heard from Cambodia's Prime Minister, Khun Menaid.

He said that he confidently believes the result today provides a lot of opportunity for hundreds of thousands on both sides to return to normalcy.

That's referring to the numbers of people who've been forced to flee the areas that came under fire.

Lots of people who've been living in makeshift camps for a few days now.

It's interesting to hear what the Thai's acting prime minister had to say, Puntam Mwe Chaiichai.

He said, Thailand's agreed to a ceasefire that will be carried out successfully in good faith by both sides.

Now, the in good faith part is quite interesting because right before he left Bangkok today to travel to Malaysia to engage in these talks, he said that he didn't believe that Cambodia was acting in good faith and he didn't believe that a ceasefire was going to be possible.

So now that both sides have announced the ceasefire, with a lot of pressure, frankly, pushing them towards these talks, it's interesting that again he's using the term in good faith.

And so I think that leaves a little bit of wiggle room open to kind of suggest that maybe this ceasefire isn't going to hold for long.

Well, that was going to be my next question because Donald Trump has been putting massive pressure on both countries, saying he wouldn't sign trade deals with them unless a a ceasefire was resolved.

So do we think it is going to last?

Well, both sides are facing a lot of economic pressure.

Both sides want to move forward with trade talks with the United States, so that was certainly a threat.

And frankly, both sides are really dependent on things like manufacturing supply lines carrying on, the tourist trade continuing.

So their economies have been hurting even before this conflict broke out.

conflict really didn't do either one of them any good.

So there's that economic pressure.

However, there is pressure they're both probably feeling from within both of their countries to continue the fight.

It's very difficult to back down because there's a lot of nationalist pressure on both sides that's really willing this conflict to continue.

I will say Cambodia is the weaker of the two militaries.

They're the ones who've been more eager to institute a ceasefire, but we'll see whether this one holds.

Celia Hatton.

Google has admitted that its earthquake early warning system didn't properly alert 10 million people before the devastating earthquakes in Turkey in 2023.

They could have been sent a warning giving them 35 seconds to find safety.

More than 50,000 people were killed in southern Turkey and northeast Syria.

The BBC's Anna Foster covered the disaster and after Google initially said that the Android earthquake alerts, which in theory is meant to detect tremors, had worked, she returned to Turkey to try to find people who'd received them.

Did you get this alert on your phone at the time of the earthquake when you were sleeping?

No.

Makes a sound?

No.

No.

No.

Quake this?

No?

No.

No.

Alijan lost his grandmother when the hospital building she was being treated in collapsed.

Did your Android phone, did it send you an image, a warning?

Did it make a sound?

Did it send send you any kind of alert at 4.17 that that earthquake was starting?

No.

Nothing.

Nothing.

A research paper published by Google admits that its Android system underestimated the tremors.

The technology giant told the BBC that only 469 of its highest-level take-action alerts were sent out during the first earthquake.

Google said there had been improvements to the algorithm, but challenges remained in trying to send warnings.

Anna Foster asked Harold Tobin, the director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network in the U.S., what he made of Google's system.

It's very clear now that the take-action alerts were either not delivered at all or to a very small number of people in an area where millions upon millions of people were in the true danger zone.

So it didn't perform, you know, as I'm sure that they would have wanted at the time.

It was a very new system.

It's a promising technology that they're developing.

So I appreciate that very much.

But it does seem pretty clear that it really did not live up to what they had hoped it would do.

It's a difficult balance, isn't it?

Because obviously it's not necessarily the responsibility of commercial tech companies to take charge of something like this.

But equally, Google had talked about this tech.

They'd publicized it.

They'd made adverts for it.

It was them that chose to move forward in this direction and to tell people they developed something that worked.

Well, exactly so.

I think it's a technology that is, you know, tremendously innovative and it's exciting as potentially a really meaningful public safety system.

If Google is going to offer a true public safety system like this, then there's a real responsibility to understand very well how it works and to be very, I think, also clear and transparent about how it works so that the civil authorities and the people in a danger zone can really understand what's being delivered.

As you say, Google has used this as a selling point essentially for the Android system, and they're operating it in 93 countries around the world.

So it's very real, and I think it comes with some very real responsibility.

Different parts of the world have different types of earthquake alert and monitoring systems.

Do you think using phones is the best way forward for this kind of tech?

It's pretty clear that the systems that are based on professional seismic networks, usually operated by a civil authority of some sort, as Japan has, as Taiwan has, Mexico, and here in the western U.S., that's really a gold standard as compared to this method.

On the other hand, the phones are, you know, they're ubiquitous, obviously, and Google has really shown that the sheer numbers of them can allow for an innovative earthquake detection system.

There are clearly many countries around the world that don't have the resources or the seismic networks to operate a kind of a more professional instrument-based earthquake early warning system.

And I think that there's value in a system like this to fill that gap.

But again, that's a trade-off, and I think it's one that people have to enter into with very open eyes in any given country.

Harold Tobin.

Still to come in this podcast.

There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, rubidium, and tantalum, titanium, and stay tuned for a Donald Trump satire from one of our editors.

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They seemed very pleased, but on the morning after the night before, there's some unhappiness among leaders of European Union member states.

Italy's Prime Minister, Giorgio Maloney, said it was positive that a deal had been reached, but expressed some caution.

More work will need to be done on the agreement, because what was signed yesterday is a legally non-binding preliminary agreement, so further detail is still needed on certain aspects.

There is still a fight to be had, and as a result of this work, support will need to be provided both at the national and European level for sectors that may be particularly affected by this decision.

The deal will see a flat US import tax of fifteen percent on US goods, as well as European pledges of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of energy purchases and investment.

I asked our Europe editor, Katja Adler, about the reaction of EU leaders.

I think it's a mixture of grumbles and sighs of relief, because if you listen to Donald Trump, there's been all sorts of wild threats that there would be an imposition of fifty percent tariffs on goods from the European Union.

Then, most recently, it was a 30% across-the-board tariff introduced.

So, you know, that really would have been disastrous.

As it is, we're looking after this agreement, this preliminary agreement, as we heard from the Italian Prime Minister, of a flat tariff rate of about 15% on most EU goods entering the United States.

The EU has also agreed the purchase of $750 billion worth of US energy products and AI chips and $600 billion of private investment in the US economy.

So, I mean, I think if you look at Donald Trump, who is well known as somebody who likes to have a clear win rather than have a win-win situation, in this case, he appears to be the winner.

Although, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who was talking to him in Scotland,

the Commission negotiates trade deals on behalf of EU member states.

She says this was a good deal.

And her trade commissioner today said, absolutely, because if there hadn't been a deal five million jobs in Europe would have been at risk and if you have a look you know the EU-US trade deal is the biggest in the world I mean it's 1.7 trillion dollars a year so if there had been a real trade war between the two sides this was expected to have a very big impact on the global economy but individual leaders are not happy Victor Orban of Hungary says that Donald Trump ate Ursula von der Leyen for breakfast the French Prime Minister said the deal was a submission to the United States and a dark day for Europe.

Briefly, Katya, will leaders, even though they're not entirely happy, will they accept the deal anyway?

This is not a final deal.

This is not a legal deal.

And I think this is, you know, for many of the deals that we've seen Donald Trump reach, including that, you know, with Japan recently, this is not a legal document yet.

And until a document exists, EU member states can't vote on it and it therefore can't be put to the European Parliament.

So as you heard there from Italy's Prime Minister, they feel there's still a lot of horse trading to do behind the scenes, even though Donald Trump will have gone away away yesterday saying this was a very big win and the EU the loser in this case.

Kacha Adler.

From the Democratic Republic of Congo, the band Fulu Maziki's name means music from garbage as they make their instruments and clothes from discarded items.

The members even search for rubbish when they go on tour.

Fulu Maziki is doing this to highlight the environmental damage caused by dumping refuse in Africa.

Alice Zavadsky met the group in Portugal, where it performed at Festival Med.

Yes, hello.

I'm called Sekelembele, a member of Fulumiziki.

I'm an artist and musician, and I play all the instruments.

Hello, I'm Deboule Bukungako.

I'm an artist of Fulumiziki, and I play nearly all the instruments.

And I'm also a designer and composer.

Some countries send their refuse to countries in Africa, to landfill to be burned.

Is your message also to the wider world?

We need things from Europe, but they are often things that are already damaged.

We don't have the machines to transform this stuff.

Loads of plastic and metals.

These end up in the slums, even in the center of towns.

There's so much rubbish on several levels.

You see, you are living in a complete mess.

Above all, it's important that we offer measures they can take in our music and also with workshops we do with kids.

Because for us, the most important thing is to pass that message on to the children.

Because we only use recycled materials, we want to motivate people to give them confidence themselves to do this, to make them see that there are some things that we shouldn't let go of.

When you're doing these workshops with children, do you follow the same process with them?

Well, with the children, when we were in Congo, in Kinshasa, we made instruments for ourselves and we also made instruments for them.

And even if they don't learn to play well, they understand the sound.

Here in Europe, we organize workshops on how to build instruments, costumes, and masks.

We once did such a workshop with children in Marseille with about 15 children and worked with them for five days, building the instruments but also finding the materials.

It was fun.

Looking through the rubbish bins, it was great.

Where do you find your strength to cope with the stresses and the effort of touring?

And so we have to play well to pass on the message.

And that's what gives us our strength.

It gives luck to everyone.

And everyone is important.

Important.

Important.

Without all my bandmates, I wouldn't be here.

There isn't a leader in our band, in fact.

It's the instruments you see, the costumes.

That's our leader because it's a family.

It's truly a family.

Can I join your band?

That report by Alice Savatsky.

He turned China's ancient Sheolin temple into a global brand, commercializing kung fu and Zen Buddhism for the masses.

But now, Xu Yongxin has been removed from his position and stripped of his robes.

China's Buddhist authority has put him under investigation for decades of alleged embezzlement and so-called improper relations with women.

Our Beijing correspondent Stephen MacDonald reports.

From movies such as The Legend and Hag of Shaolin to the millions of tourists who travel to China to visit their Buddhist martial arts school, the Kung Fu monks of the Shaolin Temple have become a global marketing success story.

And much of that is due to the efforts of Shi Yong Xin, who became abbot in 1999.

After taking control of the 1,500-year-old institution, he immediately pursued an unashamedly commercial path for those under his tutelage, sending young monks around the world to perform on stage.

For the many critics in China who say he's debased a religious and cultural icon by turning it into a money-making venture, the corruption allegations against Shi Yongxin come as no surprise.

The man nicknamed the CEO monk has now had his clergy certificate revoked by the Buddhist Association of China as the authorities investigate alleged embezzlement.

A decade ago, he faced similar accusations, but was cleared of them at the time.

Even before that, the rumours were already swirling around about financial impropriety when he spoke to the BBC in 2014.

The tickets we sell and the donations we receive go to the charity.

Asked if the temple's financial records should be disclosed publicly so people could see everything was above board.

He responded,

We're not independent.

We have to consider the entire Buddhist community, fellow monks, and many other factors.

He's also accused now, as before, of having inappropriate relationships with multiple women and fathering at least one illegitimate son.

In China, people have long turned a blind eye to such infidelities amongst the Buddhist clergy.

But corruption is another matter.

So, this could be the last battle the Kung Fu Master faces as head of the temple.

And given the success rate of the police and prosecutors here, he may be looking at significant prison time.

Stephen MacDonnell.

On our last global news podcast, we ended with the death of one of the greatest satirists of the 20th century, Tom Lira.

His style of humour and ridicule remains undimmed, and with President Trump brokering trade deals, it seemed appropriate to combine them.

Picking up on one such deal, which gave the US a stake in Ukrainian minerals and hydrocarbons, our Euro regional editor Danny Eberhardt drew up a list of elements which seemed, well, lira-esque.

Danny's lyrics are delivered by Rodri Marsden at the piano.

There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, rubidium, and tantalum, titanium, and tungsten and tellurium, and natural gas and nickel, neodymium, germanium, and gallium and indium, iridium, uranium, europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium, and rhodium, and oil, and then there's platinum, palladium, and holmium and graphite, and some hafnium, and erbium,

samarium, and fluorine, and thulium, and terbium,

and potash, gadolinium, niobium, ruthenium, and yttrium, ytterbium, and something in between.

There's lanthanum and fluospar, and manganese, magnesium, dysprosium, and scandium, and cerium and cesium.

Bismuth barite, lithium, beryllium, and chromium, and cobalt, copper, zinc tin, gold, and lots of praseodymium.

For Donald, these appeal much more than struggling with Harvard.

There may be many others, but they haven't been discovered.

Roderie Marsden, there with Danny Eberhardt's adaptation of Tom Lura's The Elements, set to the tune of I am the very model of a modern major general by Gilbert and Sullivan.

And that's all from us for now, but there'll 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 mixed by Nick Randall and produced by Peter Hyatt and Daniel Mann.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Alex Ritz, and until next time, goodbye.

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