Israel intercepts Gaza flotilla

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this is the global news podcast from the bbc world service

among kiddesign at five o'clock gmt in the early hours of thursday the 2nd of october these are our main stories the israeli navy has intercepted boats carrying aid to gaza and detained the activists on board including the swedish campaigner greta thunberg french troops have boarded a tanker believed to be part of Russia's shadow fleet.

There are suspicions it's also linked to last week's disruptive drone flights over Denmark.

Also in this podcast.

To have a chimpanzee just sit there and watch me and know that I was there and not mind.

That was a very, very wonderful moment.

We look back on the life of world-leading chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall, who's died at the age of 91.

Elsewhere in the Czech Republic, populist billionaire Andresz Barbisz looks to return to power but he'll need allies on the extremes of national politics and the comedy festival that's left some comedians disgusted and disappointed.

Let's start in international waters north of Egypt.

Phones in the water please directs an official from the Israeli military as one of the boats of a flotilla of vessels hoping to bring aid to Gaza is intercepted whilst detaining the activists on board, including the Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg.

Another video shows what was a deck full of protesters on the lead boat, the Alma Vessel, now empty.

I spoke to John Sudworth, who told us what happened in more detail.

The boats involved in this flotilla, more than 40 or so boats, hundreds of people on board in total, have been live streaming their journey across the Mediterranean since they left Spain a month or so ago.

And what began to become clear as they got closer, reaching at about the 100 mile mark off the coast of Gaza, was that things were reaching a critical point.

As we got into the darkness, the pictures from those boats began to show a large number of lights on the horizon.

It looked like that clearly was the first signs of the Israeli military there to meet them.

They refused to comply and then within another hour or two the Israeli military began boarding those boats.

You could see people with their hands up on some of these boats, military vessels circling them, shining floodlights at them, and the whole thing being brought to a close.

And the Israeli military are keen to reassure people over the safety and health of those on board, too.

Yeah, it looks that way.

A lot of international scrutiny, of course.

This is the biggest flotilla that's attempted to breach the naval blockade of Gaza over the past decade or so.

As I say, there have been others.

But also, I think, because of the intensity of the war, the growing international outcry, you know, the attention it has garnered has also been larger, and governments in Europe expressing concern.

And, you know, with the Israeli authorities saying they were going to intercept these vessels, the governments of Italy and Spain asking them to make sure that if they did that, it was done peacefully.

And so, as you say, I think there has been an effort to sort of stress that that is at least the intention.

A statement from the Israeli Foreign Ministry, accompanying some video footage of the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, being detained on the deck of a boat with a military personnel around her talking to her, accompanied by the statement, Greta and her friends are safe and healthy.

Can you tell us a bit more about some of the other people who are also part of this flotilla?

People from across the world, obviously, large European contingent, including some European MPs, MPs from Italy, Italy, for example.

Nelson Mandela's grandson is said to be on board.

Lawyers, peace activists, all people who have come together, clearly concerned about what is happening in Gaza.

And the intention was first and foremost, they said, to deliver aid directly to the people in Gaza.

They were carrying supplies, medicines, prosthetic limbs, things that they clearly see as vital.

But, you know, you have to say, even with almost 50 boats or so, the amount of aid they could carry, you know, given the humanitarian need inside Gaza, probably wasn't going to make that much of a difference.

I think the real purpose was to try to test the blockade to see if they could force their way through.

I think that was the real hope, that they could sort of establish a precedent with strength of numbers, and also, of course, to raise publicity.

Well, that latter thing, especially with the live streaming, they appear to have done that.

John Sudworth reporting.

European leaders have been meeting in the Danish capital to discuss mutual defense amid fears of Russian aggression and a new style of hybrid warfare.

The summit came as troops boarded an oil tanker off the western coast of France, suspected of belonging to the shadow fleet used by Russia to transport oil in defiance of Western sanctions.

The vessel was off the Danish coast last week when unauthorised drones flew overhead, the latest in a series of incursions into EU airspace.

Jessica Parker is monitoring developments from Copenhagen.

French soldiers aboard an oil tanker, which is allegedly part of Russia's sanctions-busting shadow fleet and was recently off Denmark's coast.

French authorities say it's being investigated for serious offences, but haven't confirmed reports that it's suspected of links to last week's mystery drone launches that led to airport closures in Denmark.

Moscow's denied involvement.

But Europe's skies suddenly feel exposed after repeated airspace violations.

And Denmark's leader believes Russia is a threat and hybrid war has arrived.

One day it's Poland, the other day it's Denmark, and next week it will probably be somewhere else that we see sabotage or we see drones flying.

How serious a threat do you think this is to Europe now?

When I look at Europe today,

I think we are in the most difficult and dangerous situation since the end of the Second World War, not the the Cold War anymore.

Denmark is spooked and they don't think that what happened here is a one-off.

In fact, ministers are warning that hybrid attacks are part of a new reality designed to surprise, disrupt and destabilize.

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This Danish counter-drone company makes detection, tracking and jamming technology as the EU discusses building a drone wall.

Doing something that is 100%

a wall that cannot be penetrated, I don't think it's possible, but we can get close to and it's for sure that if we don't start building the wall, you can always breach it.

This is territory that's evolving rapidly and with it the face of what conflict can look like.

There is talk of urgency, but Europe stands accused of complacency as they prepare not for the threat of tomorrow, but one that's already here.

Jessica Parker reporting from Copenhagen.

Drones are still relatively new technology, and as we've been hearing, they pose their own unique challenges to national security.

For more on how to address those challenges, let's hear from David Jordan.

He's co-director of the Freeman Air and Space Institute at King's College London, and he's been speaking to the BBC's Rebecca Kesby.

The risk is many and various in some ways.

It can be anything from disruption over an airport, as we've seen in the United Kingdom, and of course, as we're seeing in recent days over Denmark, they could carry some form of electronic warfare that could be used to jam communications.

Though drones are being used for that purpose, amongst many others in Ukraine, and of course, they can also be weaponized, carrying a small amount of explosive, or indeed in some instances, quite a large amount of explosive, to attack physical targets.

And while I think that's the least likely risk at the moment from these these drones, the amount of disruption they're causing is very significant, particularly in terms of cost to airports and business.

Yes, and defensively, there are some challenges as well, aren't there?

I mean, it seems as if they can be quite difficult to detect.

Yes, they can be because of the size.

If you look at, and we use the term drone to cover a whole range of things, but the size of some of the smaller drones makes them extremely difficult to detect using traditional means like radar.

Now, we have fairly sophisticated tracking kit, of course, and there are signals that have to be sent from whoever's operating it on the ground to the drone, which can be detected and intercepted, but it's not an easy task.

One of the things that obviously many European governments are worried about is the cost of these things and whether, you know, intercepting them or trying to come up with an effective, efficient, cheap way of intercepting them.

And I think the Ukrainians have been leading the way on this and advising European leaders.

Yes, the Ukrainians for obvious reasons have the greatest and most up-to-date experience.

And it's about a six-week cycle now between a new innovation in drone warfare coming out and a countermeasure being found to it and then something new occurring.

So it's very rapid and that does increase potential in terms of the cost.

And it depends upon how you wish to deal with them.

Electronic warfare systems can be quite expensive if you're shooting them down with guided missiles like something like a Patriot.

That's an extremely expensive bit of kit um but you've got to have a system of course for detection reporting control of your intercepting forces and so on and so forth and that makes it extremely difficult to actually place any hard cost on it some things will be available for many purposes fighter aircraft for instance whereas you may have some very specific anti-drone equipment which could only be used for that purpose and it's difficult to know exactly how much it's going to cost but it's not a cheap enterprise they're talking about three to seven billion euros i believe for this idea of a drone war.

And that's a conservative estimate, I think.

Yeah, and as we heard there from Jess,

this needs to be happening very quickly.

The timing of this is key, isn't it?

And this is something we've also heard from Mark Rutter, the NATO Secretary General.

He said we can't wait a year for this to become operational.

How fast can they get something like this together?

That's a very good question.

Using equipment that we currently possess, when I say we, I'm talking about Western nations, NATO members, the EU, you can have a fairly robust interim capability fairly quickly.

I think you've just got to integrate all the systems and to make sure your detection, reporting, control, and interception are all tied together effectively.

And of course, you're talking about different nations may well be involved.

But you can do something fairly quickly, I would imagine, in

sort of relatively cheap terms.

But if you're talking about something that's sort of the robust long-term system, you could be talking five, ten years, but an interim capability will exist.

David Jordan, co-director of the Freeman Air and Space Institute at King's College, London.

Rescue teams in Indonesia are searching through the rubble of a collapsed school for 59 children still believed to be trapped underneath.

They're using cameras and thermal sensing drones to detect signs of life, with heavy machinery like diggers and cranes on standby.

Relatives of those missing have described it as a race against time.

Our reporter Astudestra Ajingrastri has the latest on the rescue efforts.

It is a very complex operation, but as of last night, the search team has managed to pull seven bodies from the building.

Five had survived, but this brings the total death count to five since Monday.

The victims are students, mostly boys, and they are like 10, 11 until 15 years old.

So they are very fragile and they are stuck in a position that makes it very difficult to be pulled out.

So the search team have to dig a tunnel around 60 centimeters wide and not more than 80 centimeters depth.

One by one, the rescue team have to crawl in that tunnel to actually access these children and then pull them out from that very small tunnels.

And it has become a very dramatic rescue efforts.

And no doubt you've been speaking to the relatives there who are obviously understandably upset and concerned for some of their children and family members.

Yes, especially because there are still about 59

people that are unaccounted for.

So we see on the command center, there are a lot of parents that don't know whether their children survive or not.

They have their names up on the list in the walls, but then nobody knows where they are.

So that's why um the rescue team is now still trying to find sign of life if there's any possibilities that anyone who might been survive under the rubble then they will do another manual extraction but if there's no sign of life then they'll bring out the heavy missionaries Astodestra Ajingrastri from BBC Indonesian

Rival attempts to end the U.S.

government shutdown on its first day have failed in Congress with Democrats and Republicans blocking each other's proposals.

Essential staff like firefighter William Cridge have been working but potentially without pay.

If I'm already making, you know, such low wages and you just take that away, that just makes things that much worse because rent and bills don't waste.

No one knows enough to care that I don't make any money to survive to help your children.

With more details, here's our North America correspondent David Willis.

With the American government now officially out of money, non-essential services are already starting to grind to a halt.

Essential workers, such as air traffic controllers and airport security screeners, will remain on duty but won't be paid until the shutdown ends.

Three-quarters of a million federal employees are expected to be placed on furlough, a kind of enforced leave without pay, and President Trump has threatened to turn many of those furloughs into mass firings.

The White House says it's working with individual federal agencies to identify where such cuts could be made.

At the center of this dispute are demands by the Democrats for an extension of health care subsidies for low-income families.

Such benefits are currently due to expire at the end of the year, and Democrats are refusing to agree to a stopgap measure that would extend government funding whilst negotiations continued.

Both parties are blaming the other for the onpasse, and at a White House briefing, the Vice President J.D.

Vance had this to say.

The Chuck Schumer AOC wing of the Democratic Party shut down the government because they said to us, we will open the government, but only if you give billions of dollars of funding for health care for illegal aliens.

That's a ridiculous proposition.

That view is disputed by the Democrats.

This is the first U.S.

government shutdown in nearly seven years.

The acrimonious nature of negotiations this time around suggests an agreement may not be easy to reach.

David Willis.

Still to come, as big name stand-up comedians take big money to perform in Saudi Arabia.

Some comics are critical, but is the cash just too tempting?

I think a lot of these comedians are very dazzled by power and by money, and they talk a lot about free speech.

But at the end of the day, I think the principles are less important to them.

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BBC analysis has found that Ukraine has dramatically stepped up drone attacks against Russian oil refineries.

The number of reported strikes, some deep inside Russian territory, has surged since August, sparking fuel shortages in parts of the country.

Olga Robinson reports.

Motorists in parts of Russia and occupied Ukraine have been posting videos showing long queues at petrol stations amid fuel shortages and rising prices sparked by Ukrainian drone strikes on oil refineries.

Analysis of media reports and footage confirmed by BBC Verify and BBC News Russian has found that the number of reported attacks this year is already nearly 50% higher compared with the whole of 2024.

The strikes peaked in August when 14 refineries were targeted and continued into September.

Vladimir Bilov, a former Russian deputy energy minister who is now an opposition politician, told us that the Ukrainians appear to be pursuing two targets, large refineries essential to civilian supplies, and those closer to the front line used to supply the Russian troops.

These installations are very easy targets.

They're visible from space, very recognizable, and there's also a very big chance of hitting because the installations are big enough so it's very easy to hit a part of it and do the damage.

And uh the damage that you do to the fuel market and also to the Russian macroeconomic situation is uh

very significant.

Uh it's making this targeted attacks worth it.

Ukraine's President Zelensky has previously said damaging the Russian oil industry is a key means of forcing Russia to the negotiating table.

The Kremlin insists that this situation remains under control, saying measures are being taken to stabilize fuel prices.

Olga Robinson reporting.

Next, checks go to the polls this weekend against the deteriorating security situation in Europe and fears of Russian interference.

Pollsters predict the current pro-Western, pro-Ukraine coalition will be swept away, but who will replace them?

The populist billionaire Andresz Babys is in poll position for a return to the top job, but he'll likely need allies on the extremes of Czech politics, and their asking price is not cheap.

Rob Cameron reports from Prague.

The warm-up acts on a stage in the middle of a housing estate, trying to get the mostly elderly crowd clapping along to a medley of Czech hits.

They're here for this man, Andrei Babysch, billionaire businessman, founder of the Ano party and former prime minister.

Throughout his decade in politics, Mr.

Babish has been dogged by allegations of communist-era collaboration with the secret police and claims of EU subsidy fraud, all of which he denies.

But as the threat from Russia becomes ever more acute, there's a new line of attack from his opponents.

We'll never drag the Czech Republic to the east.

I can absolutely rule that out.

We weren't the ones who sat down with Putin.

We were the ones who expelled Russian diplomats.

And never, I repeat, never, will we consider leaving the European Union?

Look at what happened to Great Britain.

That idea, holding referendums on leaving the EU and NATO, is only on the agenda at all because smaller parties on the far right and left have put it there.

And that matters because they, along with the Eurosceptic Motorists Party, are the only ones willing to go into coalition with Mr.

Babish.

But his deputy, Karel Havlicek, was keen to put fears to rest.

Of course, we are criticizing the European

But on the other hand, joining NATO was the most important milestone in the history of the Czech Republic and position it's to strengthen NATO.

But it's not just NATO or EU membership.

The smaller parties have other demands too, demands which will please the Kremlin, such as radical cuts to to defence spending and expulsion of Ukrainian refugees.

Not to mention things Anal themselves have already promised, scrapping the successful Czech ammunition scheme for Ukraine or ending projects targeting Russian disinformation.

Andrey Babesh, meanwhile, decries all this talk of war and prefers to focus on jobs, the cost of living, the economy.

Rob Cameron reporting from Prague.

The British zoologist Jane Goodall, world-leading expert on chimpanzees, whose observations helped to reveal how closely related humans are to apes, has died.

She was 91.

She witnessed a chimpanzee in Tanzania using a tool for the first time.

Up until then, it was thought only humans were intelligent enough to do so.

She's also worked tirelessly for conservation projects around the world.

Here's our environment and rural affairs correspondent, Claire Marshall.

As a child growing up in London, Jane Goodall said she became fascinated by animals after reading Dr.

Doolittle.

In her mid-twenties, a stay on a friend's farm in Africa led to a meeting with a leading primatologist, Louis Leakey.

Although the young woman had no qualifications, Mr.

Leakey saw her potential and helped arrange her first research trip to the jungles of Tanzania in 1960.

It was to be the beginning of a 60-year study of wild chimpanzees.

She learned to communicate with them, their embracing, playing and patting, even the kisses.

To have a chimpanzee just sit there and watch me and know that I was there and not mind, that was a very, very wonderful moment.

It was tremendous feeling of accomplishment and exhilaration and pride in the fact that I'd been accepted.

In 1960 she was the first person to record witnessing an animal using a tool, a large male chimpanzee digging termites out of a mound with a stick.

Until then, it was thought only humans were intelligent enough.

Her observations would shape the future of evolutionary science.

Her work was published in leading journals, and in 1965, she made the front cover of National Geographic, introducing the world to the emotional and social lives of the creatures.

Orson Welles narrated a television documentary, which saw her playing and wrestling with baby chimps.

After her experiences in the field, she became an activist, working to free chimpanzees kept in zoos or in captivity for medical research.

It was when she returned to the Gombe National Park in Tanzania that she decided to broaden her campaigns.

In 1990, when I flew over, it was just this tiny island of forest surrounded by completely bare hills.

All the trees gone.

People had overused farmland, it was infertile, cutting down trees even on the steep slopes in their desperation to grow food to feed their families.

And that's when it hit me: if we don't help the people to find ways of living without destroying their environment.

We can't even try to save the chimps.

The following year, she set up a global action programme, Roots and Shoots, which has helped to educate millions of young people about the environment.

Right up until she died, Jane Goodall campaigned for wild animals and wild places to be cherished.

Our environment and rural affairs correspondent Claire Marshall.

Now for most of us who aren't professional comedians, the thought of getting up on stage and trying to make people laugh is pretty terrifying.

Now imagine you're doing it somewhere where the topics you joke about are at best highly controversial and, at worst, liable to get you thrown in jail.

Or worse.

Some of the biggest names in world comedy are currently doing just that in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and human rights groups aren't happy.

Well, Chalk has the story.

I landed

in an unexplored territory.

From the slick YouTube adverts to the music festivals, esports tournaments, and huge boxing matches, it's clear the image Saudi Arabia wants to portray of itself.

This land is calling.

But for years, human rights groups have been arguing this image is a distraction from the reality, a country where dissidents and protesters can and do face the death penalty.

It's easy to see then why, up to now, the country has largely kept its tourism push away from comedy, an inherently political art form where the biggest names are often the most contentious.

But that has all changed with the Riyadh Comedy Festival.

I think a lot of these comedians are very dazzled by power and by money, and they talk a lot about free speech.

But at the end of the day, I think the principles are less important to them.

That's journalist Seth Simons, who specializes in comedy.

He says the festival is dominating conversation in the industry at the moment, but not for the right reasons.

Otsuko Okatsuka, a US-based comedian who turned down the festival, she said, hosted a portion of the contract that she received when they pitched her, and it included a section on content restrictions, specifically restrictions on talking about the royal family, the culture, the laws, religion, all these things these comedians love to talk about in the US.

Still, some of the biggest names in world comedy, including Americans Dave Chappelle and Pete Davidson, and Brits Jimmy Carr and Jack Whitehall, did say yes.

And the criticism they've had from their peers has been brutal.

In a blog post on his website, US Comic David Cross wrote: I am disgusted and deeply disappointed in this whole gross thing.

He added, we can never again take seriously anything these comedians complain about unless it's complaining we don't support enough torture and mass executions of journalists.

Now of those taking part, the BBC approached several for an interview.

They all said no.

One man who did play the festival, Hey, what's going on?

It's Bill Burr and it's time for the Monday morning podcast for Monday!

American comic Bill Burr discussed it on his podcast.

He said after the organizers negotiated with the comics, the rules weren't as strict as expected.

You can talk about anything, you know, other than a couple things, which was basically, you know,

you know, religion, don't make fun of the royals.

And other than that, it was all everything

was like

open.

Still, for many of these comedians who made their names by calling out abuses of power in society, the accusations of hypocrisy might be hard to laugh off.

Will Chalk Reporting

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

If you want to comment on this episode or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

And you can also find us on X at BBC World Service, and you can use the hashtag globalnewspod.

The edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll, and the producer was Will Chalk.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Uncle Desai.

Until next time, goodbye.

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