World Food Programme to cut aid to Gaza

This BBC Podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. The BBC is the universe, told by the people who made it happen. "Lift off of the space shuttle Endeavour on an ambitious mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope." "All of those steps which I've done a bunch of times in the water, now they're for real." This is 30 minutes, travel with Hubble from the BBC World Service. "Listen now, wherever you get your BBC Podcasts." This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 14 hours GMT on Monday the 19th of October. The UN says it's being forced to cut aid to half a million people in Gaza. An Australian MP is hit by a car in what the Prime Minister calls a deliberate act. And a court in Kenya is delivering its judgement in the trial of a doomsday cult leader. Also in this podcast, this is one of the biggest mysteries in the solar system. It's that we don't know how these two small moons of Mars first formed. The first mission to bring back samples from a Martian moon. The war in Gaza has left nearly two million people in need of shelter, with two-thirds of them relying on food aid to survive. But now the world food program says it's being forced to drastically cut support because of funding shortages. The UN agency says it will have to stop helping half a million people, with community kitchens supplying 100,000 fewer meals a day. Carl Scalp from the world food program has recently been in Gaza. "At the same time as we're facing winter, so this is not really the time to move back. But we're forced to do so. And not because we're not able to bring in food or not because the needs are not there, but because we don't have enough funding. What we will try to do is to identify who are the one million people who really need our assistance every month. And then we will try to rotate every other month for the remaining population. But yesterday I met people at the Hot Meals distributions, who that's the only meal they get a day because they also explain how they don't have cooking gas and so they can't cook in their tent. They were the ones closest to the yellow line and they still are being displaced regularly." I asked our Middle East correspondent, Yoeland Nell, what life is like for people in Gaza even before the aid cuts. "Life in Gaza remains extremely tough. You still have nearly the entire population of 2.1 million people displaced from their homes. Two-thirds of people are reliant on food aid for their survival. You've had no real reconstruction taking place and very little recovery. There are still near daily Israeli strikes in Gaza. So these world food program cuts, the world food program has been such a lifeline for people in Gaza. They're coming on top of already all that hardship. You've also got things like poor access to water, poor sanitation. And now you have the approach of winter and the wet weather, which makes everything worse, especially because a lot of people are still living in very flimsy shelters in tents. And what is the issue with funding at this UN agency? And can anyone else step in to help the people of Gaza? I think there's very much hope that with this alert, they will be able to get more attention to their funding crisis and get others to step in. But what the world food program is saying that they've received half as much funding this year for their Gaza operations as they got last year or the year before. And they're saying that they need urgently about $450 million to continue with their Palestinian operations because they also have some work that they do in the occupied West Bank as well over the coming six months. Now, when it comes to why funding has dropped off, I ask this to the country director here, Sean Hughes. And he was saying that really it's a combination of things. There are, of course, global economic pressures that make it harder for countries to give the same level of aid as they have been giving. They're very conscious that this crisis in Gaza has been going on now for three years. That leads to a level of donor fatigue. There's a lot of other competition from even other crises in this region, let alone in the world for attention. And then on top of that, he's saying that there is this perception that because the ceasefire that was agreed between Israel and Hamas a year ago, the things have improved in Gaza, although in reality, the situation there remains extremely difficult. And Gaza has, to some extent, dropped out of the news headlines. Yola, now talking to me from Jerusalem. Australian anti-terror police are investigating after independent MP Helen Haynes was hit by a car outside her office. She's in hospital with critical injuries. Police arrested a man at the scene in the south-eastern city of Wangarata. The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, said the motive wasn't yet known, but described it as a deliberate attack. He spoke to ABC News. Helen Haynes is incredibly hardworking. She is fiercely intelligent. But most importantly, she's just thoroughly decent human being. Full of integrity and respected right across the parliament, and from everyone who comes into contact with her. Our correspondent Katie Watson in Sydney has been following the story. According to Victoria Police, Helen Haynes was outside her office in Wangarata, which is just under three hours from Melbourne, and a Toyota Land Cruiser Strucker. It was just before 4pm, and when he exited the car, the police then arrested him. He's a 43-year-old man, and he is being interviewed in relation to the incident. The police also said that they found and seized a knife from inside that car. Now, the police say that this is a critical and serious incident that's being investigated. The Prime Minister has been a bit more firm. He said, initially, this was an attack. He has said in another interview on the National Broadcaster ABC, that it appears to have been a deliberate act. And he's talked about this temperature rising here in Australia, the political temperature. And in fact, after the initial press conference that the Prime Minister gave, the Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke also talked about this political temperature rising, also gave some figures about the increase in threats and harassment towards MPs in the last year. And the Prime Minister has said there is no place for violence in a democracy. So while the police are saying this is very much being investigated, it is a critical incident. Certainly, the politicians seem to have been briefed and are being very clear that this was a deliberate attack. Yeah, what do they mean when they say the political temperature is rising in Australia? The Prime Minister talked about the political temperature rising here in Australia, but also said this wasn't just an isolated Australian thing, that he talked about there being no place for violence in a democracy. And I think there is a concern, certainly Australia is not familiar with political violence in terms of MPs going about their daily lives. They're very free to do so, they in terms of regional offices such as this one in Wangarata. And there wouldn't have been any security in that sense, because this is a country that doesn't seem to have threats towards its politicians. So I think that is very much what Albanese has been talking about since this attack happened this afternoon. Kihuotsun in Australia. As we record this podcast, a judge in Kenya is delivering a long awaited verdict in the case of a Doomsday cult leader accused of murdering nearly 200 people, almost all of them children. Pastor Paul McKenzie's alleged to have led hundreds of followers into a forest and encouraged them to starve themselves to death in order to meet Jesus. Over 400 bodies were found and the authorities say 600 others are still missing. He denies the charges. Our Africa correspondent Thomas McQuana reports and some details are disturbing. Pastor Paul McKenzie preaching in southern Kenya in 2019. He's telling followers in a parked tent that the end times are coming, that they should shine more than medicine and education, and that the devil had infiltrated more than life hundreds of people in plastic chairs watch on the floor. But soon, he'd ask his followers to move from the church into somewhere much more remote. He began to tell them to move to Shakahola Forest, a barren, dry piece of land about an hour's drive in from the coast. McKenzie told them that if they fasted to death, they would meet Jesus. Hundreds followed and hundreds died in one of the worst culture-related mass deaths in history. I am now in Shakahola Forest. This is where Mackenzie set up his camp and led hundreds of people to their death. Hundreds of people stopped themselves in here and looking around, there isn't much happening. Mostly dead trees and you can hear goats bleating in the distance, but it's hard to understand how someone would choose to live here. It's even harder to understand why someone would choose to die here. There were so many bodies, the police hired locals to dig them up. The motorcycle rider, Jaffa, tells me some of the bodies were so decomposed, they were like porridge. Salam says he was accidentally scraped off someone's nose when digging. One grieve had 12 children in it, he said. Forty-eight years old security guard Stephen Muity lived with his pregnant wife and five kids in a tiny house nearby Malindi. He told me she took them all to the forest after hearing Mackenzie preach on TV. She was the only one who survived. Every time I walk and see children I see the faces of my dead kids, but it's too late because I know they're dead. Sometimes I can't sleep. If pasta Mackenzie was in front of you right now what would you tell him? If I met pasta Mackenzie one of us would have to die. Sometimes I ask myself why am I alive? I just can't. Astronishingly some still support the pastor. I met Peter Shukrani at 23-year-old who says he was 8-20-join Mackenzie's church. Peter was almost dying when he was rescued from the forest, but he remains a follower. I still love him, and I still think of him as my pastor. If he committed murder in front of you would you put that change out you feel about him? No. Because I never saw or heard. He did anything bad. For those who lost family members in this tragedy nothing can bring them back. Thomas MacWanna reporting from Kenya. The French government has ordered a series of local curfews to try to stop protest sparring out of control after more than 2,500 people were arrested over the weekend. The Yellow Vest movement has called for new demonstrations next weekend, while student protestors blocked access to the Louvre Museum this morning. The southern city of Marseille has already banned all gatherings for today. Around a thousand police and John Darm were injured during the weekend unrest, and a cleanup is under way after an estimated 2,000 businesses were damaged. Sebastian McCornew is the French Prime Minister. It's all scattered across France this protest. This is all important to notice. We have very much is very much localized and looked at in the very big urban centres. So there will be a partial curfew in different urban centres across France in order to protect the people but also the shops. In collaboration with the Mayors it's impossible that we let this violence and this chaos keep going. He also said he would declare a state of national emergency if necessary. Nevertheless, President Emmanuel McCorn has gone ahead with a planned trip to four Gulf states. I asked our Paris correspondent Hugh Scofield if France felt like it was under control. No, no, it doesn't. It feels out of control. What happened over the weekend, far exceeds the last great outbreak of rioting, which was the Gilles-Joyne, the Yellow Vest of 8 years ago. It feels it was worse, far worse than that, and that was bad. It was more extensive. And there's a political, undercurrent to this, a part of political, undercurrent to all of this, which was absent from the Gilles-Joyne who were kind of amorphous mass of people from the countryside in the main. So it is far more unsettling what has happened and people feel that. And today the stories coming in are very, very troubling ones. As you say, hundreds and hundreds of shops wrecked. People who've lost everything. Images were seeing again and again of the scenes from Marseille when tens of thousands, I mean up to 30,000, is if that is an official figure of looters came down to take part in the pillaging of shops in the city centre. The historic building that was the town hall of Lemoge burned down with its spire falling over just like they're not too down with you. These are things which will stay with people for their lives and they will remember this weekend. And the worrying is that it may not be over, because as you say, there are the people behind the protests and they're not talking about the violence and talking about the protests want to keep up the pressure. And as you say, next weekend has been announced as another day and there's no saying what will happen. And I suspect there'll have to be some kind of ramped up security reaction in preparation for that in order to ward off what might happen again. Why do you think the disorder was so much worse this time than eight years ago? The country is in a worse state, you could say. The electoral moment is approaching next year. There's a backdrop of uncertainty across the world, but across Europe, the extremes are confident, the far left and the far right are both feeling very void up by their electoral chances. Social media has become a universal role. All this is why the moment feels far more insurrectional and dangerous than it did a few years ago. He's got failed in Paris. Still to come on this podcast? I think it's got a lot worse last sort of 10, 15 years to be honest with you. Like a consideration for fellow passengers, I think it's increased. Bretton introduces fines for playing loud music on public transport. But will it work? Get more with BBC Podcasts, wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favourite shows, like Evil Genius, Good Bad Billionaire and Your Dead To Me, with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts, ad-free, with an Amazon Music subscription. The inside story of a dream to revolutionise how humanity sees the universe, told by the people who made it happen. Lift off of the space shuttle Endeavour on an ambitious mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. All of those steps which I've done a bunch of times in the water, now they're for real. This is 30 minutes, trouble with Hubble from the BBC World Service. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC Podcasts. Welcome to The Haunted Library. Have you come in search of a tale? This podcast invites you to browse the shelves and find stories that will linger long after you've left this place, from Gothic masterpieces to pulpy penny dreadfuls. Join me, Colin Morgan, with new episodes twice a week. Find The Haunted Library, wherever you get your podcasts. Available now on The Documentary, from the BBC World Service. In the UK, the security services are warning of a spying threat from China. Universities are being told to protect sensitive research from hostile Chinese agents. Join me, Paul Kenyon, to find out why a once flourishing relationship has soured. Listen now, by searching for The Documentary, wherever you get your BBC Podcasts. This is The Global News Podcast. A day after four soldiers were killed by a fast-moving fire at a military base in Alberta, people in the Canadian province are voting on whether to start the process of separating from the rest of the country. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has urged people in Alberta to vote to remain part of Canada and called the referendum a "dangerous bluff", comparing it to the Brexit vote that saw the UK leave the European Union. Supporters of Alberta and independence say the oil-rich province has long been overlooked by the central government, and that federal environmental policies have hindered its ability to develop its natural resources. Our chief international correspondent Lee's due set is in the Canadian capital Ottawa. There has been for a very long time what has been known in Canada as Western alienation and that Canada's oil-rich province, the richest province in the federation, has head over the years a small but vocal group of separatists, and they've been growing stronger, but they're still very small. They are still a minority who very much resent, they say that Alberta, if its oil wealth is subsidising the poor provinces of Canada, they say they've not been treated well by federal government policies. so they've been calling first separate state for some time. But they have been getting more steam during the COVID pandemic, their opposition to some of the restrictions swelled their ranks a little bit. Plus they had an election of a Premier Daniel Smith who seemed at least to, who came to power with some of their support. And so the Premier has said, well, let's finally put this, put this on the ballot so that the people of Alberta can have their say. Now, the Premier herself has said that while she wants to change some of the provincial powers, the relationship without between Alberta and the federal government in Ottawa, that she would like to remain in Canada. But today, Monday in Canada, that the people of Alberta can choose between whether to remain in Canada or whether to start the legal process for what would be a binding referendum on whether to form a separate state. There are 10 questions on the ballot. The other nine deal with immigration issues, issues of provincial powers, but it is this 10th question about Alberta's place in Canada that is attracting the most attention is seen as the most crucial. Then I've met many people here who's spending people from Alberta who say, well, I want to say in Canada, but I still want us to have this binding of referendum so that we can send a message to Ottawa and give us greater leverage in negotiations over control over our energy wealth control over different aspects of our economy. And this has led the Prime Minister Mark Carney who grew up in Alberta to say this is a dangerous bluff. And he has warned, he was the governor of the Bank of England during the Brexit referendum in Britain, and he warned that there were bitter lessons from Brexit. Our Chief International Correspondent, Leesdewsett. A spacecraft is set to take off from Japan later on the world's first mission to bring back samples from Fobos, one of the two small moons orbiting Mars. The samples are due to return to Earth in 2031. Professor Sarah Russell, a scientist at the Natural History Museum in London, is serving as the mission's deputy for sample analysis in southern Japan. This is one of the biggest mysteries in the solar system, is that we don't know how these two small moons of Mars first formed, and there are two main theories. One is that it might be a captured asteroid, an asteroid that strayed too close to Mars' gravity and got caught up with it, and that's what it looks like when we see it through our telescopes. It looks like an asteroid, but its orbit is a bit too circular for it to be an asteroid. So because of that, there's an alternative theory, which is that a giant asteroid smashed into the surface of early Mars and produced first a ring around Mars, which then created the moons. So to find out which of these two theories or another theory is correct, we have to go and have take a look and eventually get a sample and bring it back to Earth to look at it in our labs. So it's an incredibly ambitious mission, so this little robo will be going to the smallest body that's ever had a robo on wheels go to it, and it will drive around, it will make lots of analyses of the surface of Phobos, and then the spacecraft will touch down in two different places on Phobos and collect up some of the sample of the fine grain soil on the surface of the moon to bring back to Earth. This is going to be Japan's biggest sample return mission, and so we're all incredibly excited by it because we can analyse just tiny, tiny grains and get so much information out of them. Professor Sarah Russell, I asked our science editor Rebecca Morell exactly how the team will extract the samples and get them back to the Earth. Not easily actually, it takes the world to do, but this is a pretty audacious mission, so the rocket's carrying this spacecraft should blast off hopefully later on this evening, it's blasting off from Japan, then can arrive at the Mars system in 2027. Now there are only three moons in the inner solar system, there's our own moon that we know and love, but there are also these two moons around Mars, Phobos and Demos, they are both really, really tiny, so Phobos is only about 20 kilometres across, and Demos is even smaller, it's about 10 kilometres across, and they both, I mean I hope I'm not being offensive to them in, but they look like sort of knobbly space potatoes, they're really unusual looking, so tiny and unusual looking, so the spacecraft is going to arrive in the Mars system next year, it's going to study Demos first of all, but then it's really going to focus its attention on Phobos, it's going to get into orbit around it, and then set down a little rover, it's the first time that a rover that's going to trundle around has landed on something quite so small, and it's going to be hard as well because Mars is a big planet with a lot of gravity, Phobos is a tiny moon without much gravity, so that's going to be quite a feat to do that, that's going to scout for a great place for the spacecraft itself to land, which is going to set down on the surface, scoop up some material from Phobos, put that in a capsule, the spacecraft with the capsule inside it, blasts off from Phobos, and then it returns the capsule carrying this moon dust back to Earth in 2031, 10 grams, that's how much it's going to grab, which is, I don't know, it depends how dense the material is, but a bit more than a teaspoon, which doesn't sound like much, but every grain is going to be precious. Sounds like a lot of moving parts, how difficult will this mission be, and what are the chances of success? I think it is going to be pretty difficult, but I like this mission, it's very plucky, actually, they're really going out there for this, I mean, it's not cheap doing it, it's hard in terms of the science, but Japan is a jaxa-led mission, which is a Japanese space agency, they have led missions to asteroids where they've grabbed some material and brought it back, and there was a NASA mission that went to an asteroid called Bennu and grabbed some material and brought it back, so it's not unheard of, but you know, it's what this 10 grams of material is going to tell us, you know, it could solve this mystery of the mushroom moons, how they formed as we heard Sarah Rossell were explaining, you know, are they wondering asteroids that were just grabbed by Mars' gravity, or were they formed by this big sort of impact early on in Mars' history, and actually once the material is back on Earth, the scientists should be able to find out pretty quickly, because you just look at the chemistry of the moon dust, you look at the minerals inside it, and you say, okay, well that looks more like an asteroid, or that looks more like something from an impact crater, so they should be able to answer that question pretty quickly, but the other really exciting thing is it might have a few grains of Mars itself in there, because Phobos is very close to Mars, so if Mars has had a few asteroid impacts over the years, which we know it has, that might have sent some little bits of Mars up towards Phobos, and the few grains of Mars might have landed on the surface too, so this will be the first time we've ever had material back from the Mars system, and from, well, maybe Mars itself, so it is really going to be quite exciting for the scientists. If they're successful, I hope they are, I mean, it's amazing. That science editor Rebecca Morrell. Back on Earth, it's one of the regular complaints of modern life, about people playing music out loud on their phones on buses and trains. Well now the British government has launched a campaign to stamp it out by imposing fines. The Prime Minister Andy Burnham said it was a simple thing that will make journeys a little bit better for everyone. These passengers spoke to the BBC. I think it's got a lot worse last sort of 10, 15 years, to be honest with you. A long time ago, if the if the guard told you not to do something, you wouldn't do it, but that's not the case today. I heard more about the campaign for my UK political correspondent Rob Watson. Well, this is all part of Andy Burnham's instructions to ministers, Oliver, to say, look, we need to let the people know that we've got their backs that we're on their side. So it's about a series of feel good announcements that are designed to let the voters know that. There was one back in the summer, for example, about removing the sales tax on going to fund parks. And politically, of course, it does make an awful lot of sense, Oliver, because wait for it drum roll. How many people use Britain's buses and railways every day? 16 million of us. And none of them like that of the videos and the noise and the music. Yeah. Will this effort work? Well, I certainly hope so. It's one of those 16 million Oliver. I guess what the government would say is, look, this isn't just about fines. It's also about a public information campaign. I've got the slogan in front of me, so I'll look down, share the journey, not the noise, Oliver. So the idea is that that will be played repeatedly to people on some buses and trains. And the government does tend to take the view that, look, it's not perfect. But public information campaigns where you sort of try to nudge people towards, you know, behaving in a way that's not anti-social does have a record of at least some success. Yeah, I mean, what do staff who work on public transport make of this? Because at the moment, you see people pushing through barriers, not paying tickets and some of the staff feel that they can't intervene because it's too dangerous. Well, I gave you the government's hopeful approach to this that public information campaigns work along with the threat of fines. I mean, the counter argument, the skepticism that's out there is absolutely that rail staff will tell you that they face violence bus staff on a pretty much daily basis. That should perhaps be a bigger priority than music, but absolutely that the big concern is, well, if these public information campaigns don't work, Oliver, if people still carry on with their music, their videos, their sort of vaping and littering, who on earth is going to enforce this? Because the government is making clear that it's not going to be up to bus drivers to do that. It's not going to be up to train. drivers because they're rather busy driving the trains. It's up to people called public safety officers and police officers. Well, I've never seen a public safety officer. I don't think in my years of commuting on Britain's trains. And obviously the police are really busy. So I guess the the bottom line on this is that everyone thinks, yeah, great idea. It doesn't cost very much. It would appeal to millions of voters, might public information campaigns work, maybe, but what about enforcement? Is someone really going to go up to someone and say, right, oh, mate, get your headphones off or it's $130 or if you do it on a train, $1300. Is that really going to happen? Well, I'll be watching closely on my rail journey. It's all over to see if it does Rob Watson there. And that's all from us for now, but you can email us at [email protected] and watch our episodes in full by searching for the global news podcast on YouTube. This edition was mixed by Darcy O'Brien produced by Richard Hamilton. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm all of the Conway. Until next time, goodbye. Welcome to the podcast's premium on Apple podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts, add free with an Amazon music subscription.