Israel investigates death of five-year-old girl in Gaza

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0:53This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

1:00I'm Will Chalk, and in the early hours of Thursday 20th August, these are our main stories. Israel's military admits it was behind the shooting of a car in Gaza, in which a five-year-old girl was killed in 2024. After six years in the US, Britain's Prince Harry and his family are moving back to the UK.

1:22Also in this podcast, there's good news for skin cancer patients, as a personalised vaccine shows early signs of promise. Think Gold Rush and you might picture old Western movies, but there's one going on in Kenya right now. We had approximately 10 ,000 people from all over the area, from neighbouring counties and even from the neighbouring country of Uganda. And why Greenland's waters are seeing a lot of whales.

1:53But we're starting with a phone call that's been heard around the world.

2:08Five-year-old Hind Rajab speaking to emergency workers from a car in Gaza in 2024 after six members of her family were shot dead around her. The call lasted hours. She was eventually cut off and two weeks later she was found dead. Last year, as we've just heard a clip from there, the real call was made into an Oscar-nominated film, The Voice of Hind Rajab. But through all of this, the Israeli military has denied its troops were behind the shooting. That's now changed, though. Our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson reports from Jerusalem. For more than two years, Israel's military denied it had killed Hind Rajab.

2:46Her last conversation recorded by emergency workers

2:52as the five-year-old cowered in a car surrounded by her dead relatives in an active combat zone.

3:02The tank is next to me, Hind says. Is it very close? The operator asks. Very, very, Hind replies. I'm scared. Can you come for me? Six members of Hind's family were also killed that day, along with two ambulance workers sent to rescue her. Today, Israel's military said its troops had fired at the family car, which it said was travelling contrary to an approved evacuation route. It also said it had shelled the ambulance sent with prior coordination, killing the two paramedics inside. By the time emergency teams were allowed to the scene days later, all those inside both vehicles were dead. Hind's mother, Wissam, spoke to us that day.

3:48For every person who heard my voice, my daughter's pleading voice, yet did not rescue her, I will question them before God on the day of judgment. Israel's military also said it was investigating the killing of 15 emergency workers by its forces in Gaza a year later. Their crushed rescue vehicles and bodies were found buried in the sand. Today, airstrikes in Gaza continued. Almost a year after a ceasefire there was signed, 17 people reported killed in strikes over the past two days. Israel said it had targeted Hamas commanders. Already disillusioned with ceasefire deals and promises of peace, many Gazans don't trust Israel's military to investigate itself.

4:36That report was by Lucy Williamson. And we should just add that in a statement, the Hind Rajab Foundation, which is based in Brussels, said these reported investigations, even if they do occur, should not be mistaken for a genuine step towards justice. So what then are the prospects of a criminal investigation leading to criminal charges? Ziv Stahl is executive director of the Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din. Sean Lay asked for her reaction to the IDF's announcement. We are pleased by the decision. Of course, we are really regretting the fact that they decided also to close three other investigations.

5:15But since we are aware that this is so rare that they do open investigations, we feel that this is pleasing to us, if you can use that terminology on something so tragic. Is there anything about the way Israel conducts this that makes it different from that of other military? First of all, it's not an investigation yet. In cases like the war in Gaza and other incidents in Gaza, they created this special mechanism. And this is supposed to be a mechanism that conducts a quick assessment of whether or not there is suspicion of crime being committed, whether it's a war crime or a criminal offense.

5:52Two points that you should know about this mechanism. one is that it's not quick at all. And as you've seen those incidents that they have decided to open an investigation in, it took them years to decide that. And second is that the vast majority of the complaints and the reports about incidents do not reach the point where they decide to open a criminal investigation. And maybe a third point is that the army and this mechanism do not investigate commanders almost ever and of course not policymakers and political leaders. So the investigations tend to be into troops on the ground, not necessarily the people who directed their action.

6:31Exactly and this is not even an investigation, it's just a preliminary examination. What sort of proportion of cases result in charges? Very very few from what we've looked at in previous operations in Gaza. We cannot say about this one because they haven't released a lot of data. But in previous cases, we saw that less than one percent of the complaints and reports reached an indictment. That's Ziv Stahl speaking to Sean Lay. On to some news that is dominating the UK's tabloid headlines this morning. After six years in the US state of California, Prince Harry and his family are moving back to Britain.

7:13Whilst the announcement came as a surprise to lots of us, it actually looks like this has been in the offing for a while. The prince's two children already have their school places booked for September. As for King Charles, he's said to be looking forward to spending more time with Harry and Meghan and his grandchildren. Our correspondent Tom Simons told me more. Prince Harry and his family are going to be back within weeks. They're going to be living in a non-royal residence somewhere outside London. Prince Archie, who's seven now, and Princess Lilibert, who's now five, are enrolled already to start in a British school in September.

7:47But there's no plans for him to become, again, a working royal. Back in 2020, the late Queen said there could be no half-in, half-out option. If he was going to move outside the UK, he couldn't be a working royal. As we understand it, that is not going to change. But, of course, the king, who was told about this, we understand, on Sunday, is going to be able to see the family again, more regularly when he met them in July at Highgrove. He hadn't seen his grandchildren for some four years. So he, we understand, is going to welcome the opportunity to spend more time with them in a sort of personal capacity.

8:20And of course, he'll be able to do more charity work here as well. So this is a big change. The rows within Britain's royal family have made headlines around the world for years. And a big part of that has been police protection and how Prince Harry is paid for security-wise. this is going to throw that all up in the air, isn't it? The eventual decision was that he should be given ad hoc security when it was regarded as being needed, based on intelligence, based on what he was doing, based on when he was in the UK. Now he's going to be in the UK the whole time. It's presumably going to be a property that needs to be kept an eye on at least.

8:52We haven't heard of any change in that agreement. One would imagine if there is going to be a change, then it will be something that isn't really made public because it's about security. But clearly he now feels happy enough to bring his family back here, which was something that he always said was a concern. Even though there's no suggestion of this at the moment, it does leave the door open again for them to return to royal duties, theoretically. Yeah, I mean, he's going to look a bit like a working royal, isn't he? Because he's going to be doing speeches, going to visit places, especially with regard to Invictus Games, his charity for wounded veterans.

9:26The Duchess of Sussex is running a lifestyle brand. And one would imagine that at some point his role could change. but we have been told that there is no plan for him to be a working royal at this moment. What about the wider reaction from the royal family? What do you think that is likely to be? Well, we've talked about the king whose health is not great. He's still suffering from cancer and still being treated. It's less clear when you think about the relationship between the two brothers which, as I understand it, is still not great. Does coming back improve that? Who knows? It's going to be very interesting over the next few weeks.

10:02And just quickly to focus in on Meghan, because as anyone who lives in the UK will know, the tabloids have been accused of having it out for her from the beginning. So this probably won't go down well with some of the tabloids. Well, possibly. But one of the narratives in that reporting has been that it was her that dragged him away from the UK to the US. And if she's now coming to live here, then it's either an argument he's won or that she has very much decided that that's a good thing for their children. And maybe that kind of opposition to living in the UK that she appeared to demonstrate is not there anymore.

10:35And that will go down well with the media. We'll see. That's Tom Simons there. Ukraine's capital, Kiev, has faced another barrage of Russian missile attacks overnight.

10:53several residential areas and warehouses were hit and at least five people are known to have been killed more than 20 were injured kiev has been facing near nightly attacks as in recent months ukraine has also escalated its retaliatory strikes on russia i got more from vitaly Shevchenko, chief analyst at BBC Monitoring. Yet again, tragically, civilian buildings were hit or damaged or destroyed, including a children's hospital that suffered damage, a school where people are trapped in the shelter. There's a nine-storey residential buildings where the authorities say the upper floors have been completely destroyed.

11:38The building is on fire. Warehouses are on fire. There's one video showing a huge column of fire taller than a nine-storey building in the town of Brovary outside Kiev. So I'm afraid the death toll is very, very likely to rise. And in the context of such a long conflict, is there a sense that things are intensifying or is this more of the same? It's more of the same when it comes to Ukraine and particularly its capital being attacked by Russia. The most important change, which is truly tragic for Ukraine, is that it's apparently running out or possibly has run out of ways of intercepting Russia's most effective and lethal weapon, ballistic missiles.

12:36In fact, the Ukrainian Air Force has stopped publishing statistics of how many missiles were fired or how many were intercepted because they do not want to undermine morale. Vitaly Shevchenko from BBC Monitoring. On to encouraging news about a possible vaccine for the skin cancer melanoma. It was tested on patients who'd had surgery. An early result showed the patients who had it stayed cancer-free for longer. Here's our health editor, Hugh Pym. The significance here is that it's a personalised vaccine for individual patients. It's produced by the company Moderna. And the study looks at how it's applied in combination with an existing drug for high-risk melanoma patients called Keytruda made by Merck.

13:25and these are both applied together after surgery and what the study shows is an extension of the amount of time a patient lives on without the cancer coming back and a reduction in the risk of it spreading to other parts of the body compared with if they just had the drug on its own. Now, it has to be said, these are preliminary findings of a study, of a stage 3 trial. We do need more data and some commentators are holding back a bit because they don't want to sort of hail this as a great breakthrough. They do want to see a bit more of these findings. But that hasn't stopped share prices going up pretty significantly for both companies on Wall Street tonight and a general sense of optimism around it.

14:12And I think you could get to one conclusion, which is optimistic, a commentator saying tonight that it is a breakthrough, showing that vaccines can protect against the recurrence of one of the deadliest cancers. Keep him there.

14:30Still to come in this podcast. They started a few years ago with a robot called the X-Dog and since then they've evolved into making affordable but also really effective Quadruped and more recently humanoid robots. How hype around the latest robots is making major money for a Chinese company.

15:02Maybe you go for some free-range self-directed investing, or perhaps you pick up a few farm-fresh trades while you peruse. You can even get help from a dedicated advisor. That's full-service wealth management. Mix, match, and change your mind whenever you want. Because at Schwab, you can invest your way. No matter your goals or appetite for investing, Schwab has everything you need all in one place. Visit schwab.com to learn more. Is the West Bank reaching a tipping point? I'm Asma Khaled, and I host the Global Story podcast from the BBC. For more than a week, homes in the village of Qusra have been under siege, including one of a Palestinian-American man from Ohio.

15:41It's just the latest to draw attention to the rise of settler violence in the West Bank, which the UN says is higher than at any point in the last 20 years. For more, listen to the Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

16:00This is the Global News Podcast. Some seriously big numbers in this next story. US public debt has soared to a record$40 trillion. And critics claim the Trump government is making things worse and worse by spending$2 trillion a year more than it's bringing in. Here is Michael Peterson from fiscal campaign group, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. When treasury rates go up, all the other rates also follow. So your mortgage rate goes up, your car loan goes up, your credit card bills go up. So if we reined in our federal spending and showed a long-term fiscal path that was sustainable, rates would come down and therefore everything else would get less expensive.

16:39You don't have to pay the bill on the national debt personally, but we are paying the bill as a society and in the cost of living. To put this in context, the interest is now up to more than a trillion dollars a year. Our business correspondent in Singapore, Maura Fogarty, told me more about what's caused this record high level of public debt. Well, the first one is that if you look back over the last 10 years, and what's interesting here is just how quickly the national debt has increased more than doubling in just a 10 year period. In the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, both President Trump in his first term, in like the waning years of his first term, and President Biden in his new term, both ramped up spending quite tremendously in response, both in providing preparedness and dealing with the pandemic, but also in terms of stimulus for the economy as well.

17:29that accounts for about a third of the increase in the national debt. The bigger and more important reason why we've seen the debt explode so much is because of the federal budget deficit. Essentially, it means that the U.S. government is spending more than it brings in in terms of tax receipts. We have had a federal deficit in the U.S. for the past quarter of a century. Right, but for a president like Donald Trump, who's also a proud businessman, this isn't a good look, is it? So how can he get this debt under control? It's interesting you say that because when he came into office, he talked about wanting to reduce federal spending by about a trillion dollars.

18:08And so far, that hasn't really come to light, despite efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency that was led by initially by Elon Musk. A few things here. One, we've had the war in Iran. That's forced the country to spend more on kind of military in dealing with that. Two, President Trump made it a centerpiece of his administration that he would impose tariffs on other countries to kind of reduce the trade deficit that the U.S. was buying too much from outside countries, but also to bring in tax revenues. And that hasn't really come to pass because the U.S. government has had to refund and return that money after a Supreme Court ruling.

18:49The other thing is that with the war in Iran, we've seen higher prices in the U.S. because of inflation. or energy prices, I should say, that has not helped the U.S. economy be as expansive or as vibrant as they had originally thought it would be. And then finally, if you look at tax cuts, which were passed by the Republicans last year, that's also brought in lower income into government coffers. So there's a bunch of reasons why. But it's not just President Trump alone. In the long term, U.S. lawmakers have to tackle some very big structural issues to do with U.S. spending. And a lot of that is if you look at the annual budget deficit each year or government spending each year in the U.S., a lot of that money, a lot of that spending goes to social safety net type programs, things like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and veterans benefits.

19:37So there are some questions over how they deal with that in the longer term. It's not just President Trump. More of Fogarty there. We've had the second day of a landmark trial against the tech giant Meta caught in California. The standout moment, a former employee turned whistleblower saying CEO Mark Zuckerberg fostered a culture where child safety took a backseat to engagement and growth across Facebook and Instagram. Our North America technology correspondent Lily Jamali was in court and sent us this report. Meadow whistleblower Arturo Behar testified on Wednesday that inside of the company it was common knowledge that there were millions of users under the age of 13 on Instagram.

20:19He described the policy inside the company as don't ask, don't tell. He also said that he believed that Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg was well aware of the potential harms posed to young users by the company's platforms, but misled the public about the safety of both Instagram and Facebook. Now, under cross-examination, Behar acknowledged that Meta had policies in place to deal with issues like bullying and harassment. He also acknowledged that the company had taken down millions of pieces of such content. But he countered that what was taken down was just a tiny fraction of what was reported by users.

20:58States, including California, want Meta to change its business practices and also to pay significant financial penalties for misleading the public on the issue of safety, as well as for harvesting the data of users under the age of 13 without parental consent. Mehta has denied all of the allegations. This trial is expected to run well into September. Lily Jamali in San Francisco. It might sound exciting, thousands of fortune seekers descending on a village in search of gold. But what's happening in West Pocot County in Kenya is causing a big problem. It's putting pressure on a community with little infrastructure and raising concerns about security and safety.

21:41The BBC's Akisa Wondera reports. Before sunrise, the digging begins in this remote village in western Kenya. Hundreds of people are searching for something they hope will change their lives, gold. Some hack at the rocky ground with holes and shovels. Others sift mud and sand along a nearby riverbank. watching closely for even the smallest speck of gold. Just a few weeks ago, Cheporor was a quite sparsely populated community. Today, it is the centre of a gold rush. Residents say the rush began earlier this month after reports emerged that gold had been discovered here. Manasse Lomachar says he was among the first residents to get the gold.

22:32I was looking for a goat that had gone missing. We thought it had given birth somewhere in the bushes. That's when I came across some women who were pining for gold in the water. I joined them in the search, and that's how we discovered there was gold in this area. News of the discovery spread quickly. Within days, thousands of prospectors had arrived. Westpocourt's Deputy County Commissioner Samuel Kiari had told the BBC social media helped fuel the influx. We had approximately 10 ,000 people from all over the area, from neighboring counties and even from the neighboring country of Uganda. And the number has drastically reduced to 2 ,500 because, you know, the expectations were so high.