Israel calls Spanish PM 'a disgrace' after pro-Palestinian protest

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

I'm Rachel Wright, and in the early hours of Monday, the 15th of September, these are our main stories.

The final stage of the Fuelta cycling race in Spain has been abandoned because of clashes between police and pro-Palestinian protesters.

The governor of Utah says the suspect in the killing of Charlie Kirk isn't cooperating with authorities and has refused to confess.

On a visit to Israel, the U.S.

Secretary of State has insisted relations haven't been damaged by Benjamin Netanyahu's strike on Qatar, despite displeasure in the White House.

Reports from northern Gaza say at least 50 more Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces continuing their campaign of destruction there.

Also, in this podcast, she was able to take down some of the most rich and powerful men out there.

And so her voice is still here with us and it's with all of the survivors.

The brother of Jeffrey Epstein's most vocal victim speaks to the BBC.

The final stage of a major cycling race in Spain has been abandoned after around 100,000 pro-Palestinian protesters entered part of the course in the center of Madrid.

Protests around the Vuelta race have been ramping up in the past few weeks, with thousands of demonstrators angry at the inclusion of an Israeli-based team.

Protesters took to the streets of the capital on Sunday, knocking down barriers and occupying the road at several points on the course.

More than a thousand police officers had been deployed on the streets of the Spanish capital.

The BBC's guy Hedgeco is in Madrid.

These are protests which have been sort of increasing in intensity, it seems, the closer we've got to the finale of the voila.

And in particular, over the last week or ten days, we've been seeing not just people lining the roads of the race, waving Palestinian flags, but we've seen some much more vocal, more physical protests.

On one occasion, there was a crash which was apparently caused by protesters who'd run onto the the course itself, knocking two riders off.

One of those riders, a Spaniard, actually had to withdraw from the race altogether.

And I've seen reports that up to 100,000 people were out on the streets on Sunday.

Yes, that's the number we've been given by the central government.

So it has been a huge turnout.

This day was always in the calendar for protesters because it's the culmination of the race.

And that was the reason why we had, for example, 1,500 police deployed today in Madrid.

There were a number of occasions when protesters were blocking the road along the the cyclists were riding before they got into Madrid but the real problem was in central Madrid where the race was due to finish.

There that the protests were getting increasingly violent.

For example people were pushing over the the barricades that were separating them from the the road where the the riders were going to be running and it was the situation in central Madrid which persuaded the authorities to call off the race altogether.

And the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez took a rather unusual stance on this, certainly for a Prime Minister, which Israel has taken a dim view of.

Pedro Sanchez did actually address supporters down in Malagan, the south of the country.

And he spoke about the issue of these protests that have been taking place against Israel and in favor of the Palestinian people.

And he said, for example, Spain is shining as an example and with pride.

He said it's taking a step forward in defence of human rights.

And he said, we are in agreement with with a just cause, such as human rights.

Long live the Spanish people.

So that seemed to be a very clear endorsement of the protests that had been taking place.

We haven't heard from him since the chaos that took place at the end of the race.

But a lot of people saw that as a clear expression of support for the protesters in general.

The Israeli foreign minister has responded to this and said that

this is absolutely shameful of Pedro Sanchez to talk like that.

And that reflects a very tense, fragile relationship between Spain and Israel, which has become more and more tense over the last few days, in particular since Pedro Sanchez spoke about what he said was Israeli genocide in Gaza just a few days ago.

Guy Hedgeco.

The governor of the US state of Utah, Spencer Koch, says the man held in custody over the murder of Charlie Kirk is not cooperating.

Mr.

Kirk, a right-wing activist and close ally of Donald Trump, was shot last Wednesday.

Aruna J.

Mukherjee reports from Washington.

Speaking to ABC News, Governor Cox said the suspect had not confessed to authorities.

He said, however, those around him were cooperating, especially his roommate.

Governor Cox added that they were collecting forensic evidence and other information that will help them tie any loose ends, and more details are likely to come out on Tuesday when they formally file charges.

At the press conference on Friday, it was revealed that the suspect's family had told investigators that Tyler Robinson had become more political in recent years and had been against Charlie Kirk's ideology.

Ironadeh Mukherjee.

On Sunday, the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the American Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, visited the Western Wall, the holy Jewish site in Jerusalem.

Mr.

Rubio's trip to Israel comes days after the Israeli strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar, a strike which President Trump and Mr.

Rubio have both said they were not happy about.

Not surprisingly, Mr.

Netanyahu was keen to stress the deep relationship between the two countries.

I think his visit here is a testament to the

durability,

the strength of the Israeli-American alliance.

It's as strong and as durable as the stones of the Western world that we just touched under President Trump and Secretary Rubio and their entire team.

This alliance has never been stronger.

Mr.

Rubio was also keen to stress the strong relationship.

So how will he be expressing his unhappiness to Mr.

Netanyahu over the Qatar strike?

Tom Bateman is our US State Department correspondent.

He's in Israel with Mr.

Rubio.

Well I think that President Trump's displeasure is going to be communicated to the Israeli Prime Minister, if indeed it hasn't already in some of the public messaging.

On the way here, Secretary Rubio

reiterated that the US was not happy about the Israeli strike on Qatar,

but at the same time suggested this wouldn't change anything about the fundamentals of the US-Israel relationship.

I think part of the reason for the irritation coming from Mr Trump and the administration more widely is because of that strong alliance that they have always had with the leadership in Qatar as a key Gulf ally to the US, and particularly the sort of close ties between Mr.

Trump himself and the leadership of Qatar and his key envoy Steve Witkoff.

I think it was extremely embarrassing for the Trump administration that they were seen not to have been able to rein in the Israelis in carrying out this action which both, at least according to the Palestinian account, failed to kill the leadership of Hamas.

So it can be seen, we still don't have that confirmed independently, but if that is the case, case, it would be seen militarily as a failure by the Israelis and at the cost of a huge escalation

into the region with now Arab countries meeting at the same time in Qatar to talk about a response to Israel's action.

So you have a growing further sense of Israel's isolation.

because of this and condemnation from Arab countries and the Europeans and the Americans unhappy about it.

Having said that, you know, I think we will still see

the ties between Mr.

Netanyahu and Mr.

Rubio presented extremely

strong, a lot of solidarity when they have their talks tomorrow.

Yeah, and quickly, Mr.

Rubio was also asked on his way to Israel about the Israeli offensive in Gaza City.

Thousands being forced to flee their homes.

What do you have to say about that?

Well, that was interesting because I think the most noticeable thing is there was no kind of ringing endorsement of this.

On the other hand,

he didn't criticise it or condemn it either.

He just said he didn't want to talk about it, but it would be coming up

in the discussions.

I think the point is that it's pretty clear Mr.

Trump wants a quick and decisive way through this.

You know, he wanted a deal where all of the hostages were going to be released in one go.

Now, the way they sought to get that was the diplomatic track, even though they're accusing Hamas of failing to accept the offers on the table.

But that diplomatic track is now clearly in pieces after the Israeli strike.

So, I think there will be some tough words from Mr.

Rubio on Monday.

Tom Bateman, in Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military offensive in Gaza City has continued.

Reports say at least 50 more Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces campaign.

Israel, meanwhile, says it's only striking buildings and areas used by Hamas.

The BBC's Owen Bennett-Jones spoke to Jacob Granger, the emergency coordinator for MSF in Gaza.

He's currently around 15 kilometers away from Gaza City.

What is happening right now in Gaza City is that Israeli authorities made evacuation order over all the Gaza city.

Gaza City since January 2025 it estimated to have one million inhabitants.

So me I went in Gaza City last week to visit my colleagues and my teams over there.

You can see high buildings it's really constructed and really destroyed as well.

So some of the buildings are totally or partially destroyed and you can see people trying to shelter wherever they can shelter.

So that would be in a part of destroyed buildings or in the streets between the buildings.

It's intensely crowded in really dire conditions.

So plastic sheetings, woodstocks and trying to have some kind of privacy and dignity in this kind of setup.

The Israelis have told people that they have to leave Gaza City.

Are they actually doing that?

They are in a space where they have a lack of access to food, to water, to medical uh facilities and they are forced to leave this place

to go south where there's the same issues, but they have no land, they have no space in the south.

So in the same way, the Israeli authorities claim that they are

opening a so-called humanitarian territory, humanitarian zone in the south of the Strip.

So that would be in

Khanis, a small part of Tehr al-Bala governorate.

And now since two weeks, the military operation in Gaza city are increasing a lot, meaning that there are a lot of airstrikes coming from drones, coming from

aircraft F-16, and destroying buildings.

And sometimes with prior notice, sometimes not.

It's very unreliable.

So now what is happening is that a part of the population left Gaza City.

You must understand that the population has to do the choice between staying and being at risk to

be hit by a strike, by a bombing, or something like this, and have a really reduced access to medical care and also little access to food and water, or to go south,

knowing that everything costs a lot.

So you need to pay for the transportation of yourself, you need to pay for the transportation of the items you have.

Just to give you an idea, a small shelter made of woodstock and plastic sheeting would be approximately 1,000 US dollars.

Jacob Granger.

Still to come.

It's very hard for a world champion to turn around and say to anyone, I'm crying, you know, I want to kill myself, my head's in bits.

Can you give me a hug?

These are very hard things to admit.

The former world champion boxer Ricky Hatton has been found dead at the age of 46

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In Britain, the Labour government has had a difficult week.

Just days before President Trump arrives for an unprecedented second state visit, the British ambassador to the US, Lord Peter Mandelson, was sacked because of his close ties to the late convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

He says he never saw any evidence of abuse.

One of Epstein's victims was Virginia Dufray, who took her own life in April.

She had alleged that Epstein abused her and trafficked her to his friends, including Prince Andrew, the brother of King Charles.

Prince Andrew has always denied any wrongdoing.

Now, Miss Dufray's brother and sister-in-law have told the BBC they're proud of all she managed to expose, as Richard Hamilton reports.

In their first interview to the British media, Skye Roberts, who's the brother of Virginia Dufray and his wife Amanda, spoke about the pain of their loss, how much Virginia had had to suffer, but also how proud they were of her.

She did so many amazing things in her lifetime.

She was able to take down some of the most rich and powerful men out there.

And so we're still grieving through this process, but we're also so proud of what she was able to do.

And we feel that sense of responsibility to want to make sure that her voice is still here with us and it's with all of the survivors.

We were very close growing up.

She was always like a protector to me.

Every day she would light your room up.

I mean, every day we miss her so much, but we will continue her fight, and we will not stop until we get justice and accountability for her and for all the survivors out there.

In the United States, there's increasing pressure on Donald Trump to explain the exact nature of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

President Trump is alleged to have written a bawdy letter to Epstein in a so-called birthday book.

And the scandal has also had a huge impact on British politics.

On Thursday, the Prime Minister Sakia Starmer sacked the UK ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson following further details about his friendship with the late sex offender.

Amanda and Skye Roberts said Lord Mandelson should not have been given the role in the first place.

We should have done something sooner.

He should have never been given that title and there are a lot of people that are actively out in our governments, in politics, that are actively holding their titles and positions.

we have to put the spotlight on them.

With President Trump arriving here in Britain this week for a state visit, the shadow of the Epstein affair is likely to hang heavy over the red carpet and royal pageantry.

Richard Hamilton with that report.

It's now three years since U.S.

citizens lost the constitutional right to abortion nationwide.

Since then, twelve states have banned abortion outright, while others have enshrined the right to abortion in their own state constitutions.

The small city of Bristol sits on the border between Tennessee, which prohibits abortion, and Virginia, which allows it, giving rise to local tensions over the issue.

Our reporter, Eve Webster, visited the city.

Yeah, I actually grew up in Bristol.

I come from a very religious family, was put in Christian school my whole life.

And so my parents took me to the clinic in Bristol, Tennessee, and had me stand up for our sons as a child.

So you were an anti-abortion protester as a child.

Yeah, so a five-year-old.

So I felt like that was my retribution.

Like I wanted to give back to women that I had probably made feel bad, even though I was only a five-year-old.

Carrie is a volunteer at SLAP, the stateline abortion access partnership.

The charity was set up by local residents here in Bristol to serve people traveling across state lines to get an abortion, paying for hotel rooms and escorting people to the clinic through lines of protesters.

Escorts like Carrie play loud music to block out the shouts of protesters and carry large umbrellas to mask the identity of people visiting the clinic.

This is SLAP co-founder Barbara Schwartz.

They've driven sometimes hundreds of miles.

They're under stress, under duress as it is, and it really can affect them.

Bristol is a small American city with a population of around 40,000.

I'm on its main road, which is called State Street, as on one side of the road is Virginia, and on the other, the state of Tennessee.

This means that in half the city, abortion is legal, whereas in the other half, it is not, even in cases of rape and incest.

This has been the case since 2022, when the city's abortion clinic moved just a mile down the road from Tennessee into the Virginia side of town, making it the closest place to get an abortion for people living in many of the southern states.

This has fueled the abortion debate in the town and driven some to try and change local laws to stop them.

The town had a lot of people who were devastated that the abortion business essentially walked across the street.

This is Victoria Cobb, director of the ultra-Christian lobbyist group, the Family Foundation.

They worked with these locals to put forward a change in local planning laws, which would make opening a new clinic or expanding the existing one practically impossible.

Our organization has simply come alongside of local individuals who don't want to see their town turn into a destination location where people come from other states, let alone other communities, to have abortions.

Ultimately, the campaign was unsuccessful.

Bristol, Virginia's City Planning Committee Director Jay Detrick explains why.

In the Commonwealth of Virginia, abortion is legal.

And an ordinance that would not allow that particular use in the city was determined to be not only bad land use planning, but possibly illegal.

In short, changes to local planning laws would come up against state law.

But should the Republicans win this November's state election in Virginia, this could change.

Eve Webster, reporting from the Tennessee-Virginia border.

Two weeks ago, a plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had to land in Bulgaria after its GPS signal failed, forcing the crew to rely on paper maps.

The jamming of satellite signals or the use of fake ones to confuse pilots has prompted plans for land-based backup systems.

David Mitteling is chief executive of Kairos, a company working on creating an alternative to GPS.

He told my colleague Sean Lay what he thinks the problem is with the use of GPS.

We are overly reliant.

I would say it's been stated by other experts in the industry that it is a single point of failure for our society.

We use GPS for our locations app to get around,

but it's also a requirement for navigation, it's a requirement for timing, it's a requirement for networks and power grids.

So we are overly reliant.

And what problems have arisen?

Well, fortunately for us, GPS has been very solid.

But there are local areas where there's been jamming and spoofing, particularly with the conflicts in Ukraine and in the Middle East.

So we're starting to see the impacts of those conflicts seeping into the commercial world, impacting commercial airline flights and local networks.

We had a recent example involving the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, where I think suspected Russian GPS interference forced her plane to land using paper maps, which sounds archaic nowadays, but also quite striking that something that we have become so dependent on could apparently be cut so easily.

Yeah, and that's what we're learning a lot from the conflict in Ukraine is that what used to be something that was only available for very sophisticated militaries has now become relatively commonplace.

Now we're seeing that there are groups that can build kit that can do some very major damage with very simple hardware, very simple off-the-shelf equipment.

And so that's creating a lot more concern for this reliance that we have on that signal from GPS.

If it's that open, does that make it comparatively easy to block or to jam or to send a false signal?

Absolutely.

The reasons the receivers work so well, they lock into that GPS signal very rapidly is because the information about the signal, the waveform, is published.

So you're advertising this to the receivers and the companies that build those receivers, but you're also advertising it to any adversary that wants to do some malicious harm.

So that is, I think, a crux of where the issue could come in is just the ability to not only jam the signal, but something that's much more concerning, which is the ability to spoof the signal, fake the signal so you think you're in a location that you actually aren't.

David Micklin, speaking to Sean Lay.

Ricky the Hitman Hatton, one of the finest boxers of his generation, has been found dead at the age of 46.

The British fighter won world titles in two weight classes.

Police in his home city of Manchester, in the northwest of England, say there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death.

Will Chalk, who interviewed Ricky Hatton in 2018, now looks back at his life.

When I got to Ricky Hatton's gym in Manchester, knowing I was about to meet a boxing superstar, I was expecting this huge aura of celebrity, you know, a huge ego about him.

But I was wrong.

He was, as basically every tribute that's been paid to him says, the most humble down-to-earth man you can imagine.

He was floating around the gym, training with young fighters, giving them tips, and sharing jokes with fellow boxing legend Tyson Fury, who just happened to be there on the day that I showed up.

Now, I was there to make a documentary about YouTubers becoming boxers.

And Ricky's take on it was, in short, if it's good for the sport, I'm all for it.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether you're a professional boxer, whether you do mixed martial arts, or whether you're just a regular guy that has a passion for the sport, has a passion for boxing.

And if he wants to give himself the opportunity to give the fight game a goal, you know, he deserves a shot just like everybody else.

Now, raised in a pub on a council estate, Ricky Hatton was proud of his hometown of Manchester.

He made his boxing debut at the age of 11, and some of the most memorable of his 45 professional wins were at PAC Stadiums in the city.

But he was equally as admired for the fights he didn't win, including two in Las Vegas against Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, with thousands of people from Manchester making the trip to the States to watch him.

Speaking years later, Hatton said it was a surreal experience.

Denzel Washington just walks in and says, Excuse me, Ricky, do you mind if we watch you watch you warm up?

No problem, you know what I mean?

And, you know, Sylvester Stallone come in the change rooms to watch me warm warm up, you know, on a regular basis.

You never, I never thought when I laced the gloves on, I'd have Rocky watching me warm up.

But it was those losses, he later said, that led to the darkest times of his life.

After his retirement, he was open about his struggles with his mental health, including long periods of depression.

It's very hard for a world champion to turn around and say to anyone, you know, that, you know, I'm crying, you know, I want to kill myself, my head's in bits.

Can you give me a hug?

A world champion saying, can you give me a hug?

These are very hard things to admit when

you've been seen as this former world champion take on anyone, fight anyone, took all them fans to Vegas.

All of a sudden, I'm a broken man.

I'm crying to myself.

The football team Ricky Hatton supported, Manchester City, has been among those paying tribute.

The club described him as a humble, down-to-earth human and one of their most loved and revered supporters.

Here is Ricky's friend and fellow boxer, Amir Khan.

He was a massive inspiration to me in my career.

Not only that, he came to my wedding.

He also came to me when I won my first world title.

He was at the fight, giving me all the great advice I needed at the time.

And it's just so sad because he was a very dear friend of ours.

Ricky Hatton leaves behind three children.

Here he is speaking to the BBC in 2013.

Boxing has given me such a great life of what I've achieved.

And, you know,

you know, my main goal now is to try and become the best dad I've ever done.

You know, and just my life, my boxing life was all about was

providing for my little ones.

And I'm very proud of of the job that I've done for them.

Ricky Hatton, who has died at the age of 46.

And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later.

And just to let you know, we are changing the publishing times of the Global News podcast.

From today, Monday, the new publishing times will be 0500 GMT and 1700 GMT.

You will find us in your feed, as usual, wherever you get your podcasts.

Another quick note before we go, the last edition of our pod included a story about the amount of gas the EU buys from Russia but it gave the wrong dollar amount.

In fact the EU has spent $250 billion on Russian energy since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

We apologise for the error.

An updated version of that podcast is available in our feed now.

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 Caroline Driscoll, and the producers were Alison Davis and Peter Goffin.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Rachel Wright.

Until next time, goodbye.

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