Houthis in Yemen say prime minister was killed in Israeli strike

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

I'm Janat Jolil, and in the early hours of Sunday, the 31st of August, these are our main stories.

The Hufi movement in Yemen has confirmed that its prime minister and other senior officials were killed in a recent Israeli airstrike.

A massive manhunt is underway in Ukraine for a gunman who assassinated a prominent politician in the western city of Lviv.

Also, in this podcast, up to 80% of heart failure is diagnosed in the emergency department rather than in the community.

And if we can shift that diagnosis into the community, then treatment is started earlier.

Trials of an AI-powered stethoscope find it's twice as effective at detecting heart conditions as traditional stethoscopes.

Israel has killed Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon, Hamash leaders in Gaza, and it now appears to have killed a number of senior Houthi figures in Yemen in a strike three days ago on the Yemeni capital Sana'a.

The Houthis confirmed that the group's Prime Minister, Ahmed Ghaleb Nasser al-Rahawi, was killed along with several other ministers on Thursday.

The Iranian-backed Yemeni group has frequently attacked Israel with missiles in support of the Palestinians in Gaza, as well as carrying out attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea.

Mahdi al-Mashat, the head of the Houthis political council, said his movement would not be deterred from continuing to attack Israel.

Though the enemy has inflicted pain on us with this attack, we vow before God, the people of Yemen, and the families of the martyrs and the wounded, that we will take revenge.

From our deep pain, we will forge victory.

We affirm to our people that our armed forces remain strong and the enemy's gain was nothing more than a stroke of luck.

A correspondent in Jerusalem, Emir Nader, told Paul Henley more about the Israeli strike.

We had a statement on Thursday, the day of the airstrike, with the IDF, the Israeli military, acknowledging it had targeted parts of the Sana'a, the capital of Yemen.

However, it didn't clarify who the targets were, didn't name any names, but in Israeli media, we did hear that they had targeted senior leadership of the Houthi group there, and there was some reporting that that might have included the PM.

So, this statement from the Houthis today is the first official confirmation that we've had from them, acknowledging the killing of the Prime Minister Ahmed Ghaleb al-Rahawi and a number of other ministers in the Houthi government there.

A change in tactics by Israel.

Previously, they mainly targeted energy infrastructure, transport?

Well, there's been huge bombardment of parts of Yemen going back many months now because those strikes by the Houthi group on Israel have been very disruptive, though they haven't caused much material damage.

The Houthis say they are attacking Israel in support of Palestinians in Gaza and calling for a ceasefire and they've really weathered very heavy bombardment, not just by Israel, but we saw earlier in the year the United States bombing hundreds of locations throughout Yemen, energy infrastructure, ports, and indeed places in the capital of Yemen, Sana'a, which it said were being used by the Houthis.

And yet the Houthis continued sending missiles those two thousand kilometers from Yemen to Israel, most of them intercepted by the Iron Dome here in Israel.

However, they have continued, despite coming under that heavy bombardment, this appears to have been a much more targeted attack at that senior leadership.

Israel has been pretty successful in its campaign against regional enemies in recent weeks, years, months.

There's been the strikes on Iran and on Lebanon, where Hezbollah seem pretty much a spent force.

That's right.

And the Houthis in Yemen are really the only Iran-backed group in the region that was still able to mount missile attacks on Israel.

We've seen much of the decimation of Hamas.

We barely see any rockets coming out of Gaza Strip now into Israel.

Hezbollah, obviously that was seen as the jewel in the crown of the Iranian axis of resistance against Israel.

That's been pretty much decimated.

There is a process going on in Lebanon of the demilitarization of Hezbollah that appears to be going ahead, though it is a fairly rocky process.

And of course, we had those 12 days of direct attacks between Israel and Iran that ended with Iran essentially giving up.

And we haven't seen any attacks directly from Iran towards Israel since then.

The Houthis, they have continued with their attacks and they seem very defiant and keen to say that they will continue their attacks in this statement that we've had announcing the killing of the Prime Minister and the other ministers.

They've said that it won't affect their continuation of the defence and support of the Palestinian people, as they call it.

A huge manhunt is underway in Ukraine for a gunman who assassinated a leading politician as he was walking on a street in the western city of Lviv.

Andrey Parouby rose to prominence a decade ago as one of the leaders of mass protests calling for closer ties with the European Union, which eventually brought down the then pro-Russian president.

Ukraine's current president, Vladimir Zelensky, says all necessary resources are being deployed to find the killer, who was reportedly dressed as a courier on an electric bike when he fired repeatedly at Mr.

Perubi.

Law enforcement agencies, the Minister of Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor General are reporting regularly.

They are investigating the circumstances surrounding the murder of Andriy Paraby.

A lot of resources are being used, all that are necessary.

Unfortunately, the crime was carefully planned, but everything is being done to solve this crime.

The shooting came hours after Russia carried out a massive attack on Friday night across Ukraine, killing at least one person and wounding dozens of others.

Katie Watson reports from Kyiv.

Emergency workers were on the scene in Zaporizhia, in southeastern Ukraine, putting out fires after homes were destroyed.

Hopes of peace, it seems, have also gone up in flames.

People were screaming for help from the windows.

They were suffocating.

Everything was on fire.

President Zelensky said 14 different places across the country were hit.

Ukraine attacked two Russian refineries, a deliberate strategy disrupt oil supplies, and the income Moscow needs to keep fighting.

And in the western city of Lviv, an assassination in broad daylight of the former parliament speaker, Andriy Paruby, a prominent leader of the Euromaidan movement that unseated the pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, more than a decade ago.

Mr.

Paruby was shot down by a gunman dressed as a courier.

The hunt for his killer has begun.

President Zelensky has accused Moscow of using the time to prepare for a leaders' meeting to instead prepare these attacks.

He called for action from the US, Europe and the world.

But few people here believe Donald Trump's peace initiatives will deliver.

Maria's father is fighting on the front line.

In a few next years it can be my father.

It can be everyone's father.

Boyfriend's brother.

What's like Trump is doing?

Is he helping us?

Do you think he's helping you?

No.

President Zelensky is angry about the strikes, but he knows he needs to keep up the diplomacy.

Next week, he says he wants to dot the eyes on security guarantees at a leaders' meeting in Europe.

But what those guarantees will be remains so unclear.

Katie Watson in Kiev.

For decades, people in Western nations have protested about the rising numbers of immigrants arriving on their shores.

But there's a growing backlash in a number of popular tourist destinations against Westerners and gentrification that's pricing locals out of their own neighbourhoods.

In recent weeks, there have been several demonstrations in Mexico City, with at least one of them turning ugly as boutique stores and coffee shops were attacked and foreigners intimidated on the streets, with some protesters even yelling, gringoes out.

We'll grant reports from the Mexican capital.

The timing of the anti-gentrification protest in Mexico City was no coincidence.

The 4th of July, U.S.

Independence Day.

It began as a peaceful march over aggressive rent hikes, unregulated holiday lettings, and the endless influx of Americans and Europeans into the capital's trendy neighborhoods of La Condesar and Roma, but it soon descended into violence.

Radical demonstrators attacked coffee shops and boutique stores aimed at tourists, smashing their windows and spraying graffiti while chanting fuera gringo, meaning gringos out.

Las muestras eno fó vicas esa manifestación que condenarlas.

In a press conference two days later, President Claudia Schoenbaum, who'd previously served as the mayor of Mexico City, condemned the protest as xenophobic.

No matter how legitimate the cause, as with gentrification, the demand can never be to just say get out to people of other nationalities inside our country, she said.

Her administration would support the mayor, Clara Brugada, in tackling the issue, she added.

Mayor Brugada then set out a 14-point plan to regulate rent prices, protect long-term residents, and build new social housing at affordable prices.

For many, though, the mayor's promises came too late.

Activist Sergio Gonzalez says in the past decade his group has recorded more than 4,000 cases of forced displacement of long-term residents from his neighborhood of La Juarez alone.

He was one of them.

We are definitely facing what we call an urban war.

What's in dispute is the ground itself.

Who does and who doesn't have rights to this ground?

The first apartment I rented here cost around 4,000 pesos a month in 2007.

Today, that same apartment costs more than 10 times as much.

It's an outrage.

it's pure speculation.

The Juarez Groma and Condesa are now so changed in character that they're almost unrecognizable to some of the original residents.

Trendy coffee shops, high-end restaurants, and boutique clothing stores.

And the growing complaint is that the original character of so many of these communities is being lost in the endless pursuit of the foreigner earning in dollars, euros or pounds.

The violence of the anti-gentrification protests sparked headlines across Mexico.

Branches of Starbucks and banks being smashed up made for images of a sort of anti-American class war unfolding on the capital's streets.

But for displaced resident Erika Aguilar, the radical demonstrators and agitators don't represent her cause.

Still, she has advice to anyone planning to relocate to Mexico City.

Learn Spanish and pay your taxes.

That report by Will Grant.

The stethoscope has been a vital part of the doctor's toolkit for the best part of two centuries.

But now, a team of researchers here in the UK has created an AI-powered version that they say can detect serious heart conditions within a matter of seconds and is more than twice as likely as doctors with traditional stethoscopes to detect early signs of heart failure.

The head of the research team behind the AI stethoscope, Professor Nicholas Peters, says this could save lives and money by diagnosing people's heart problems much earlier.

The health economics, the cost benefit analysis is very strongly in favor of use of this device.

Currently, about two in every three patients with heart failure don't have the diagnosis made until they are very unwell and possibly in an emergency setting.

And the ability to diagnose patients earlier and start them on drugs earlier has benefits to the patient and benefits to the healthcare system.

Our reporter, Michael Daventry, describes how this new technology works.

The shape of a stethoscope is familiar.

You have the earpieces and you have a little round device that's placed onto the patient's chest.

Now in this new device the earpieces are the same but instead of that round cup you've got a flat device which looks a a little bit like a credit card and it can listen out for differences in heartbeats and blood flow that the human ear normally cannot hear and it takes all that data and it instantly sends it into the cloud to compare it to data from tens of thousands of other patients to diagnose and this is what the team from the Imperial College London research group have been doing and it helps to generate a diagnosis pretty much instantly.

So exactly what heart conditions can it diagnose and how accurate is it?

Well the researchers say that it's effective at picking up conditions like heart valve disease or irregular heartbeats, and also crucially very important, it can diagnose them a lot earlier in the patient's treatment cycle.

It also has been particularly effective at, for instance, picking up cases of arterial fibrillation, which is irregular heartbeats.

It's three and a half times more effective at that and two and a half times more likely to find patients with heart failure in the next 12 months.

And Michael, also many lives that could potentially be saved.

Absolutely.

Faster treatment is a particularly important part of all of this.

To find treatment at doctor surgeries rather than in the emergency departments means that they're treated faster, it's a lot cheaper and also the patient's health is less likely to be compromised.

Michael Daventry.

Still to come on the Global News podcast.

It has been pretty intense and we're pretty relieved to be on land now but we're feeling pretty good.

The adrenaline's still pumping.

We all think that, you know, in a few moments' time we're going to wake up and we'll still be out there in the middle of the Pacific.

Three brothers from Scotland have set a new record for rowing unsupported across the Pacific Ocean.

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Refugee advocates have criticized a multi-million dollar agreement between Australia and Nauru, which will allow Australia to deport hundreds of immigrants to the tiny Pacific nation.

Some of these people have serious criminal convictions but can't be deported to their home countries for fear of persecution or harm.

Our Asia-Pacific editor Mickey Bristow is following the story.

This is a deal essentially to deal with a group of people that Australia doesn't want but cannot get rid of.

So as you indicated there in your introduction, these are people who, for one reason or another, can't be deported back to their home country.

Their home countries might not want want them, or they might not want to go back there.

They also are not being allowed to stay in Australia for one reason or another.

So, what does Australia do with them?

It's come up with this deal to send them all the way to Nauru, tiny island, as you mentioned there, in the Pacific.

Australia has agreed to pay about nearly 300 million US dollars to Nauru initially, and then afterwards to give about 50 million a year in order to upkeep and to look after these people.

So, it's an extraordinary amount of money for, I think it's about 350 people.

As you said, some of them have got criminal records and they were being detained indefinitely.

But a court a couple of years ago said you couldn't detain them indefinitely.

So that's why the Australian government has had to come up with this plan.

And this deal has been criticised, with some saying that the Labour government is not living up to its progressive values.

Can't escape to anyone's attention that Australia is run by a Labour government, progressive, supposedly liberal, supposedly more welcoming, if not to migrants, and at least more in tune with Liberal ideas of where people should have equal treatment when it comes to the law, they should be treated fairly, should have recourse to legal action.

One of the other things that the Australian Government is doing, as well as signing this agreement, is trying to push through Parliament a law which will

undermine the legal rights enjoyed by these people, so essentially they won't be able to tangle these cases up in the courts and never leave Australia.

And it's not the first time that Australia has sent immigrants to Nauru.

Tell us more about this tiny little island.

Yeah, I think it's worth mentioning that now the idea of sort of offshoring immigrants, so people arriving in a country and you send them to a third country because you don't want them in your country, is quite an idea with currency all over the world at the moment.

But actually, Australia was one of the first countries to practice this and Nauru was one of the countries.

This is a tiny island.

I think it's the world's third smallest country.

It's in the middle of the Pacific.

A lot of it previously was used for mining so it's it's not a a lot of the places are uninhabitable and obviously they they've taken these or agreed to take these immigrants because it's a lot of money for them.

Mickey Bristow.

The Maldives in the Indian Ocean is often described as a tropical paradise for tourists, with beautiful white sandy beaches and crystal clear waters.

The Maldives is also known as something of a shark sanctuary, having banned most shark fishing in its territorial waters for more than 15 years.

That's about to change.

The government has announced that from November it will allow the fishing of the Gulper shark, whose liver oil is widely used in cosmetics, beauty products, and health supplements.

The Government says this will bring in much needed new revenue.

But this has angered environmentalists and some in the crucial tourism industry.

Gary O'Donoghue spoke to Mohammad Rashid, a tourist operator based in the capital Mali, and asked him why he thought the ban was being lifted.

There's a pledge of the President before he came that he would open this type of fishing.

So I think it's very politically

a motivated thing rather than an economical thing.

My view on people whoever is in the tourism sector, I think it would have a negative impact on the future for the tourism of the Maldives.

Why is that?

Firstly, Maldives has been a very shark-friendly country.

Lifting or relaxing the shark fishing ban poses high risk to the Maldives tourism as it's a very tourism-driven economy.

Sharks, they play an important role in ecotourism and marine health.

So the status as the top shark-safe country status would be gone with this

lifting the ban.

But

these sharks, as you said, they swim very deep.

So the tourists don't get to see these sharks.

So why would the tourists care if there was fishing of these sharks now?

Yeah, very good question because this shark doesn't have any relation with the tourists diving to see them or to swim along with them because they are very deep, they will never see them.

But for me, I believe relaxing on this thing will open a big

thing for a lot of bycatch.

Like, if you're targeting for this type of deep sea fishing, oh, so many other fish might as well get beaten and dead, and they will do other types of shark pin shark finning for meat exports.

Like, if you can't

have a proper control, it would damage a lot of fish I believe.

That was Mohammed Rashid, a tourist operator in the Maldives.

Now, you have to get on pretty well with your siblings to want to share a confined space with them for 140 days.

But that's exactly what three brothers from Scotland chose to do in a tiny boat.

And as well as managing not to fall out with each other, they have set a new record for rowing non-stop and unsupported across the Pacific Ocean from Peru to Australia.

Ewan Jamley and Lachlan MacLean were greeted on their arrival by the sound of Scottish bagpipes.

Paul Henley spoke to Jamie not long after he'd come ashore in Cairns in Queensland, in Australia.

It has been pretty intense and we're pretty relieved to be on land now, but we're feeling pretty good.

The adrenaline's still bumping.

What a welcome we've had in Cairns.

We've had four pipers on the harbour wall and yeah, we're on Cloud 9 at the moment.

It all feels a bit surreal.

I think we're pinching ourselves.

We all think that, you know, in a few moments' time we're going to wake up and we'll still be out there in the middle of the Pacific.

And it sounds as if there were moments when you genuinely doubted you'd make it.

It's been a real roller coaster, you know.

It's been much tougher than we anticipated.

The weather was a lot more unpredictable than we were expecting for this time of the year for the crossing we were doing.

Pushed off course.

We had to shelter behind islands to avoid storms being blown backwards and pretty chaotic and wild seas, large waves, high winds.

Yeah, there were definitely moments where we all thought, you know, have we bitten off more than we can chew?

But we're obviously very relieved to be on dry land now.

And judging by the snippets of film that I've seen from on board, you were really exposed to the elements.

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing with these boats.

It's an open-top rainbow, so you know, the only shelter you have are these tiny little bubbles at either end, and you only really go in them when we're at night and you're on your night shift.

They're pretty uncomfortable, they were extremely cramped.

We had so much food with us because, you know, we were expecting to be at sea for up to 150 days.

So we were really packed to the gunwales.

We would spend 18 hours a day on deck, exposed to everything that Mother Nature could throw at us.

And you all seem like you're getting on still.

You must have incredible brotherly relations.

I think for the three of us, it's really our superpower.

You know, we've always gotten on well and we've always gotten up to no good as three little boys growing up.

And, you know, like any siblings in a very small space or very small area for 140 days in extreme conditions.

Of course, you're going to have tiffs, you're going to have squabbles, but really the only thing you can do out there is address it.

I mean, I think the beauty about being brothers is you can just be honest with your siblings.

And the rules are very strict.

You can't resupply, you can't touch land, and you can't accept any help from passing boats.

You must have been tempted at times.

We saw remarkably few vessels, you know, for the vast majority of this crossing.

You know, after setting off from Lima, we didn't see an airplane for about 120 days, and we didn't see another vessel for an equal amount of time.

We did have to shelter around New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands from a couple of storms.

And when we were doing that, you can't step foot on land, you can't take any assistance from anyone, but you can seek shelter and drop anchor in sheltered bays if needs be.

There were a couple of occasions where we were anchored less than 100 feet from land, you know, tantalizingly close to beautiful beaches and forests and greenery.

Your brother Lachlan was washed overboard at one point, was he?

You know, that was probably

one of the darkest moments on this crossing.

It was during an anti-cyclone where we just couldn't escape it, so we had to take it front on.

Kept getting hit by these, every tenth wave would come at the boat at 90 degrees and it would smack the boat, it would knock us off our rowing seats.

And it was on the third occasion.

We'd just broken into our night shifts where there's one person on the oars and two people trying to have a short sleep.

Ewan, the eldest brother, was on the oars and Lachlan, the youngest brother, he was at the stern stern cabin.

He was just getting ready to go inside the cabin.

He was just looking up, you know, at these moments, it's really important that you open the cabin door for as brief a moment as possible because if a wave hits when the cabin doors open, that could be game over.

And he looked up and this towering wave was just coming towards him, a big, massive, black 20-foot wave.

It just took him and he grabbed the nearest thing on the boat.

It was a carbon pole that we used for putting cameras on.

That ripped off the cabin.

He was thrown over the safety lines and thrown overboard.

And thankfully, you know, the most critical bit of safety equipment that we would wear 24/7 is a climbing harness and a line that tethers us to the boat.

It saved his life.

Absolutely.

You must be celebrating now with the things and the people you miss most at sea.

Who and what are they?

I think so far I've had a couple pizzas, I've had a couple ice creams, I've had my first shower, and all that's left is to tuck myself into a bed with clean sheets and sleep for more than an hour and a half.

A well-earned rest there for the rower Jamie MacLean.

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, you can send us an email.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

This edition was mixed by Masood Ibrahim Kahel.

The producers were Liam McSheffery and Stephanie Zacherson.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Janat Jalil.

Until next time, goodbye.