Israeli report denies targetting journalist in Gaza

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You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

Hello, I'm Oliver Conway.

This edition is published in the early hours of Wednesday, the 27th of August.

Israel says a strike on a hospital in Gaza that killed 20 people was not targeting journalists, but a Hamas camera.

U.S.

Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook says she'll file a lawsuit to stop President Trump sacking her.

And Taylor Swift announces her engagement to Travis Kelsey.

Also in the podcast, the Guinness Book of World Records celebrates its 70th birthday.

So, how did it start?

It was here in 1951 that Sir Hugh Beaver was invited to a hunting party and got into an argument.

What is the fastest game bird?

Is it the grouse, the plover, the tail, the woodcock?

Two weeks ago, Israel killed four Al Jazeera journalists and two freelance reporters in a deliberate attack on a tent outside Ashifa hospital in Gaza City.

On Monday, it killed another five journalists at Nasser Hospital in the south of the Gaza Strip.

But this time, the Israeli military says it wasn't targeting the journalists.

In its initial report, the IDF says it was trying to take out a camera that it says was operated by Hamas.

Twenty people died, most of them in a second strike, which came 10 minutes after the first, as journalists and rescuers rushed to the scene.

Our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson has this report.

Hatem Omar ran towards the first strike on Nassau Hospital as a journalist.

He left the second as a casualty.

The shrapnel wounds to his head, back and shoulder a reminder of how close he came to joining the dead.

Caught on his phone, the blast that struck as he rushed up the hospital's eastern staircase to the body of his Reuters colleague.

The first explosion happened and we immediately rushed to film the scene.

But as we climbed the stairs, we were suddenly hit by another explosion.

It was extremely violent and powerful, deafening and blinding like the Day of Judgment.

This pain, beyond a hospital's power to soothe.

And there's little healing in Israel's explanation of a tragic mishap.

At the hospital today, the staircase normally used by camera crews hung splintered and empty.

The question of why it was targeted by Israeli forces hanging on a military investigation.

Tonight, Israel's army said that inquiry showed troops that identified a camera positioned by Hamas in the area of Nasser Hospital, used to direct terrorist activities against them, it said.

It also described six of those killed as terrorists without providing evidence.

It did not explain how Israeli forces distinguished between television crews filming troops in Gaza and enemy surveillance.

Of course, journalism is a noble profession, but many journalists who have reported from Gaza, so-called journalists, are simply terrorists with a press vest on.

Of course, we take journalists, the right of journalists to do their work extremely seriously.

This is the most open country when it comes to a free press in hundreds of miles in any direction.

Israel does not allow international journalists to report freely from Gaza.

Local journalists like Ibrahim Salama, a lifeline for news organizations, find their own lives in danger.

His brother Mohamed, one of those killed yesterday.

Those paid to ask questions are waiting for answers about who gave the order to fire at Nassau Hospital and then fire again as journalists and rescue teams arrived.

Lucy Williamson in Jerusalem.

The Ukrainian army has denied reports that Russia has captured two villages in the Dnipro-Petrovsk region.

Russia has repeatedly claimed to have advanced into the territory which it doesn't occupy.

Katie Watson reports from Kiev.

Russian troops said they captured the small villages of Zaporyshke and Novohiorhievka on Monday.

But according to Ukraine's military, there's still active fighting, with both sides trying to secure the settlements.

Ukraine says it's the first large-scale attack by Russia in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

This admission, amid a recent flurry of diplomatic talks aimed at ending the war, is a clear sign of just how hard Ukraine is fighting to stop the slow advance of Russia on the ground.

Dnipropetrovsk is not one of the five Ukrainian regions Moscow has claimed as Russian territory, and there's increasing pressure on Ukraine to to give up land in return for an end to the war.

Katie Watson.

You may have heard in our earlier podcast the news that President Trump had ordered the sacking of Lisa Cook, the first black woman governor of the U.S.

Federal Reserve.

He's accused her of making false statements on mortgage agreements.

Look, I had a legal fight that went on for years with crooked people, horrible people, people that have been found out now.

She seems to have had an infraction, and she can't have an infraction, especially that infraction, because she's in charge of, if you think about it, mortgages and we need people that are 100% above board.

But Lisa Cook is fighting back, saying the president doesn't have the power to dismiss her.

It is a crucial question because the Fed's independence is seen as essential in underpinning the U.S.

economy.

Kenneth Rogoff is a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

This is a threat to financial stability, inflation stability, not just in the U.S., but over the whole world, because the dollar is the bulwark of international markets.

So I don't think it's a good move.

Federal Reserve Independence has served us well.

And unlike Supreme Court judges, they don't have infinite terms.

I heard more about the standoff from our New York business correspondent, Erin Delmore.

We are definitely in the middle of unprecedented, uncharted territory here with this story.

But what we know is that Lisa Cook, via her lawyer, we've learned that she intends to fight this.

And they're pointing out that no indictment has been filed, no charges have been filed here.

And so she can basically petition the courts to get an injunction so that she can stay in place in her job as this plays out through in the legal system.

Tell us how the independence of the Fed works.

Well, the Fed, as you say, is independent.

What that means is that it is insulated from political pressure.

There are members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and they meet.

We report very heavily on their meetings, and decide whether or not to cut interest rates, among other things.

But it is a decision among professionals in economics, people who are selected by presidents and have a very long term.

In fact, Lisa Cooks wasn't due until 2038 is the year that I believe she was due to be up on her term, and they vote.

But that said, presidents are able to choose who goes onto this board.

And if she does leave, then President Trump would be able to nominate another person.

It would be his fourth in the seven member group, which would then give him a majority.

And then if Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve Chair, leaves his post in May, President Trump could appoint someone else, and then that would give him five seats.

So there is politics in the way that people are nominated, but politics does not have a role really in how they govern.

So this is something different that we are seeing with President Trump's sights being set here.

Yeah, he's been very vocal about his calls for interest rate cuts.

How are the markets likely to respond to this increase in political pressure on the Fed?

You know, over the past couple of months, we have chiefly seen President Trump criticize Fed Chair Jerome Powell, and we did see the markets in the past move based on that, and then we began to see markets become a bit numb to it.

And today, in fact, we're seeing that markets are little changed.

The SP is flat.

The two other indexes are only ever up or down by, you know, a couple hundredths of a percentage point, which we also consider flat.

So markets are little changed.

We are seeing some movement in the longer-term treasury yields.

That's something.

But overall, we're seeing investors largely shrug this off, which is a bit of a surprising development,

not necessarily what it looked like when markets opened at 9:30 a.m.

here in New York, at least.

That said, you know, the Fed is overwhelmingly expected to cut interest rates in September.

That was the expectation before any of this transpired.

So, an interest rate cut is something that has been extremely likely for some time now.

Erin Delmore in New York.

The U.S.

megastar Taylor Swift has announced she has got engaged to NFL star Travis Kelsey after two years together.

The singer took to Instagram to let her fans know.

Entertainment reporter and TikToker Indigo Stafford told Sean Lay more about the news and its impact.

It's huge news for Taylor Swift fans and huge news for lovers of pop culture in general.

As you mentioned, today pop star Taylor Swift has officially announced that she is engaged to her NFL player boyfriend Travis Kelsey.

They announced the engagement on Instagram.

They put up a joint post together and it had a playful caption which read, Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.

Now I don't know how much you know your Swifty knowledge

but this is actually a reference to Taylor Swift's song So High School which she also used in the background of the announcement which had a collection of photos of Travis getting one down on one knee and the ring and this is super meaningful because that song So High School has lots of references to Travis and their love story.

It's from her last album, The Tortured Poets Club.

And one of the lines is, you know how to ball, I know Aristotle, which, you know, a lot of fans think is her talking about his NFL career and her referring to her love of poetic lyrics.

She's also got...

another line in that song which is are you gonna marry kiss or kill me and this is actually a very clever reference to a game years ago that Travis played where he was asked by an interviewer.

This is before they were together.

He was asked by an interviewer, would you marry Kiss or Kill?

And there were three celebrities, one of them was Taylor Swift, in which he said he would kiss her.

So it's a very, very clever foreshadowing lyric about him maybe predicting he'd be with her all those years ago.

You see, I didn't know there was, this is like

cremlinology.

I didn't know there was so much behind it.

I tell you, though, I'm going to ask a slightly rather prosaic question, rather not very romantic, which is how much effort is going to have to go into the prenup for this marriage?

Well,

these are two people who we know have a bit of money.

I think

goodness me.

They have massive brands.

Two things that they have in common, which I actually think is why they're so compatible and it's such a rare and niche thing to have, is that they both know how to sell out a stadium.

Travis Kelsey, of course, massive NFL player.

All eyes on him when he's playing for the Chiefs.

And of course, Taylor Swift can sell out massive arena tours.

She's just came off the back of the ERAs tour.

So you know, these two have a lot of money.

We don't have details of the exact preen up, but I think it would be safe to say that there probably is something in order to protect their money and their brand.

But I think what we have seen when you're talking specifically about their brand is we've seen their brand come together very nicely as they've got together.

A lot of high-profile couples, for example, like to keep their relationship out of the public eye, whereas these two, knowing that all eyes will be on them, they seem to almost enjoy it, which makes them really suitable.

For example, Travis Kelsey

loved to go to her eras tour.

He loved to be supportive of her in the crowd, even though he knows that all eyes will be on him.

And Taylor Swift has been no stranger to turning up to some of his big, important games.

Can you reassure me of one thing, Indigo?

They're not going to do a duet, are they?

Well, I don't think so.

They've already, of course, done their duet on the podcast, if you can call it that.

Yes,

we should probably brush over that one.

But I think that's probably as close as we'll get to an official duet.

Maybe more public appearances and interviews together.

Indigo Stafford.

Still to come on the Global News podcast.

I hereby declare a state of public health emergency, granting me the necessary powers to make decisions quickly to address the immediate medical needs of the nation.

Why Botswana's health service is in crisis.

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At least 25 countries have now suspended postal services to the United States as the Trump administration ends a long-standing exemption that allowed packages worth $800 or less to enter the country tariff-free.

From Friday, August 29th, even low-value parcels will face duties.

So, what sort of effect is this having?

Roger Hearing asked Kate Muth, Executive Director of the International Mailers Advisory Group, who's in Virginia.

Some of them have already suspended it.

And so it really is, especially for small businesses that rely on the postal network and for citizens.

Of course, you know.

If you're looking for a package from your relative that's in another country, those won't be coming, at least temporarily, until the postal operators around the world can figure out how to meet the mandate of the executive order that has ended the de minimis exemption for all countries.

And the postal channel has some challenges because of the way the duties will be collected and remitted to customs and border protection.

Yeah, because a lot of it, I guess, isn't simply economically worthwhile because of the small size and the amount of markup that there will be.

Exactly.

I mean, the whole rationale behind the de minimis exemption was because you don't want to be, you know, enforcement costs being higher than the duties you collect.

Now, $800 is quite high by sort of the rest of the world standards.

And I think most of us expected that at some point there would be some reform of the de minimis exemption but eliminating it entirely with one month's notice it's just the posts are just not ready to do that and so you know consumers and small businesses around the world are going to kind of suffer from that yeah i mean you think e-commerce is an obvious area because that subsists on on really quite small amounts moving left right and center things like ebay i suppose it just couldn't work could it options of course to get goods into the u.s you can do it through the commercial channels and do the whole informal entry process.

You're still going to pay all the duties because it starts at the diminutive exemption goes away no matter what channel you use.

But you're right, the smaller sellers, the Etsies, the eBays, anyone that's a small business that's looking to go global, an easy entree to that, if you're an online retailer, is the postal channel because they're sweet spot for these low-value, lightweight goods that the posts are just very good at moving and delivering.

What's going to happen?

How is this going to work out?

We've seen a number of postal services just saying, right, we're going to hold it right there.

Are they going to come back with a new system or are they just going to say, well, we can't do it?

It's a new system taking shape.

So the way it is going to be done is either the carrier, the air carrier, or an approved third party will collect from the postal operator and remit to customs and border protection.

And there are a couple of approved third parties.

It's just going to take a little bit of time to get them plugged in, you know, kind of implement and integrate the systems with the foreign postal operators.

We're hearing that Royal Mail is very close.

I hear that Canada Post is quite close to having the systems in place.

But there's going to be this temporary suspension until everybody's comfortable with that system.

And I just want to add one other thing about that.

is that if the airlines aren't comfortable taking on any of the responsibility or the liability, and we have heard that some airlines are suspending Lyft to the U.S.

of packages,

until they're comfortable, it doesn't matter if a postal operator is ready, if an airline is reluctant to take packages, deliver them to the U.S.

through customs and border protection, because if they are going to be held responsible or liable for a misdeclaration or something like that when airlines don't even have the item level data of the packages they just have it at the receptacle level so kind of get get that all straightened out and that's not going to happen by friday of this week so i think there will be a little bit of a blip well very briefly at the end okay just how long is it going to take you say a little time you're talking weeks months a year i well you know ideally it'd be great to have six months or so if we could even get 30 days.

I think that would be huge because I think a lot of these third-party providers, they're ready to go.

It's just a matter, again, of integrating and getting everybody fully comfortable.

Kate Muth, Executive Director of the International Mailers Advisory Group.

Botswana has declared a public health emergency after hospitals ran out of essential medicines and medical equipment.

In a televised address on Monday, President Dumoboko announced $18 million worth of emergency funding.

By the powers vested in me

by section 17, subsection 1 of the Constitution of this Republic, I hereby declare a state of public health emergency, granting me the necessary powers to make decisions quickly to address the immediate medical needs of the nation.

Nom Somaseiko is following the story from Johannesburg.

Julia McFarlane asked her how big a problem this is for Botswana.

It's quite serious because the President declared yesterday that there would be a public health emergency and this is linked to the high price of medicines and also a shrinking national budget, and also cuts in aid from the US.

And

the shortages, it's across the board, you know, because this includes a range for a range of illnesses, including hypertension, cancer, diabetes, TB, asthma, mental and sexual health.

And also, non-emergency surgeries have been postponed until further notice.

Naansa, what are the reasons for this?

Why has Botswana found itself in this position?

Because of two reasons.

Firstly, because the sales, in fact, of diamonds in the country make up 80% of Botswana's foreign earnings, but sales have weakened in recent years.

And also, another reason is the fact that the US cut aid, and that has also led to shortages.

In fact, some of the aid that was cut off from the US has also forced an orphanage catering for children living with HIV to be shut down.

So this announcement was made earlier this month on the 4th of August by the Health Minister and then yesterday we saw the President spring into action about the kind of changes that will be made to ensure that clinics and hospitals do have medicines as soon as possible.

Nomasa, what are the wider implications of this?

I mean the Ministry of Health also says that it's temporarily suspended some referrals for surgeries.

The implications here are the fact that non-emergency surgeries are going to be postponed.

But there is some form of reprieve because we saw earlier today and also yesterday that medication has been dispatched to various health facilities and that is being done by the military.

And lastly, Nomsa, before you go, what are people saying?

How are they reacting about this?

Well, people are actually pleased that, you know, the fact that this was announced earlier this month, and now the President has, you know, announced steps that will be taken to ensure that this problem is dealt with.

So people do have confidence in this government.

And now it's considering selling because it can't make enough profit.

Susannah Savage, commodity correspondent at the Financial Times, explains what's going on.

It started almost two years ago, but prices of both Arabica, which is the higher-end coffee beans used in espresso and in coffee chains that's grown in Brazil, prices of that started to rise, as well as prices of Robusta, which is used in things like instant coffee.

Now, one is grown in Brazil and the other in Vietnam, but in both places, you saw a sort of change in weather patterns and more extreme weather events affecting crop yields and that's really largely driven by climate change and that as a result of that we saw an increasing shortage of coffee and rising prices.

On top of that, speculators such as hedge funds jumped into the market to make a profit and that pushed up prices even more.

And in the case of Brazil, that's been exacerbated by Trump's repeated threat of tariffs and the implementation of tariffs and negotiations over that.

And as much as roasters such as Costa can pass on some of those costs to consumers, eventually that starts to impact demand.

Consumers simply aren't willing to spend that much on coffee.

When you start to see coffee pushing up towards four pounds or even, you know, five pounds, then it starts to impact how much consumers are willing to buy it.

And so that starts to hit their sales.

But at the same time, this is actually a broader trend that's related to climate change.

It's just becoming harder to grow coffee as much as we used to because the weather is changing in these key growing regions.

Susannah Savage.

Finally, the Guinness Book of World Records is the global authority on the biggest, fastest, and strangest feats of human achievement.

Sold in at least 100 countries and translated into more than 40 languages, it turned 70 today.

Ella Bicknell looks at what's made it such a lasting and record-breaking success.

From the tallest man to the most backflips in a minute, if it's extraordinary, chances are you'll find it in the Guinness Book of World Records.

With over 53,000 records in its database, it's become an international franchise, a long journey from its humble beginnings in 1950s Ireland.

Some say it all started as a marketing ploy for the Irish beer company.

The editor-in-chief, Craig Glenday, tells a different story.

One set a few kilometres south in County Wexford.

It was here in 1951 that Sir Hugh Beaver was invited to a hunting party and got into an argument.

What is the fastest game bird?

Is it the grouse, the plover, the teal, the woodcock?

And despite the library being very vast and full of very expensive books, no one could find a solution to the question.

So Hugh then had this moment of clarity and thought, and what we need is some kind of reference book that will solve the problem, settle the argument, and turn that heat of argument into the light of knowledge.

A browse through an annual, you'll find out everything from the most expensive man-made object, the International Space Station, to the longest-running radio programme.

That honour goes to the BBC's shipping forecast, which recently celebrated its saintenery.

Humber, Thames.

Variable two or three, fair, good, occasionally moderate.

But with the wonderful comes the weird and wacky.

From the most wine glasses balanced on a head, 200 if you're curious, to the world's longest fingernails, a title held by Diana Armstrong from Minnesota.

Her nails span 1,206 centimeters, about the length of the average bus.

Well, my grandkids come over and do my nail one nil to four to five hours, and I go through about 15 to 20 miles of nail polish.

So, what's with our obsession with record breakers?

I think everyone's interested, aren't they?

I mean, people are always breaking records.

Some people want to be the best, or the fastest, or the greatest.

Cheryl Baker, the Eurovision Song Contest-winning singer and presenter of the long-running British children's TV programme Record Breakers.

Well, we've got a man trying to put a jumper jet on his own.

The world's teeniest horse and you nearly get wrecked on a mile-long treadmill run.

Say ya bud!

It's not just about what you can do yourself, it's about what you can do for others.

And I think that's why record-breaking is so great.

And she's right.

Record attempts have often become a powerful way to raise money or awareness for good causes, from tree planting campaigns to charity marathons.

Just ask Sally Orange.

My surname being Orange, I've ran over 85 marathons dressed as different pieces of fruit.

And I do it because people smile and then they'll ask me why.

And I say that I want to change the conversation and break the stigma associated with poor mental health.

And after about 50 marathons, somebody said to me, You're completely nuts.

And I thought, what a good idea.

And so I got a nut costume and had a sign on me that said, nuts about mental health.

Together we can crack it.

And I got the Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon dressed as a nut.

So it's amazing what a costume can do.

Raising money for charity, then it, you know, it really, really does help.

And the Guinness Book of World Records holds a record of its own.

With total sales nearing 24 million, it's the biggest selling copyrighted book in history.

Ella Bicknell.

And that is all from us for now, but the Global News Podcast will be back very soon.

This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll and produced by Oliver Burlow.

Our editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Oliver Conway.

Until next time, goodbye.

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