Israeli PM dismisses Trump peace plan for Gaza

15:55Doug Homes:Usually one dive and three diving for me in those depths is around 2 minutes 15, 2 minutes 30, maximum 2.40. And just to go down, it takes you around 50, 60 seconds. So, I mean, you don't have a lot of time down in the bottom. So when I was going down, the visibility was not very good. On the last 10 meters before the bottom was like four meters maximum of visibility. So when I entered this thing, I saw some more dark and I go to the dark and I see something that in the beginning I was thinking was a big rock. But when I was more close and I reached the bottom, and I realised that it was amphoras.

16:45Frank Lowenstein:Amphoras, yeah, absolutely. I mean, and I've seen the pictures that I think have been taken by the Italian authorities, the Carabinieri, and we'll get on to that. But, I mean, you can see it's a very distinctive shape, the jars that they used back in Roman era with the two handles and the narrow neck and the oval belly of the jar. And you could see what dozens of them.

17:07Doug Homes:The visibility was not so good, but I realized that there was a lot. I was thinking around 300. But after when I called the Carabinieri and another archaeologist team, they went down with the rebreather and tanks, and they measured the wreck that they say is 21 meters long, six metres wide and around two, three metres of height. So they calculated that the amphoras could be like 800, 900, something like this.

17:46Frank Lowenstein:And they're confident that these are from about 2 ,000 years old. Do you know how they have come up with that dating?

17:55Doug Homes:So from the shape of the amphoras, they understand from which period is the wreck.

18:02Frank Lowenstein:I know it's not unique that a shipwreck from the Roman era, from 2 ,000 years old, has been found, but it is very unusual. And it is also, it's amazing, isn't it, Giacomo, that you can find a wreck like this with its cargo, a cargo like amphora, still intact.

18:23Doug Homes:Yeah, the thing exceptional is that they are intact. It's like the time has stopped. Most of the amphoras was down of the sand, of the mud. But last winter, they had very bad weather in Sicily. I think that could be with very big waves and currents. Part of the sand, of the mud, went away from the wreck and I was able to find it.

18:50Frank Lowenstein:It will be a moment that will stay with you for a very, very long time. For sure.

18:56Doug Homes:I start now to realise also the dimension of the discover, because when I was there, yes, OK, it was a big emotion. I mean, OK, but I was not sure that this could be so important, so amazing that all the journalists called me and, you know, it's strange also for me. Yeah, I'm sure.

19:16Frank Lowenstein:So tell me, this was all part of you training to take part in the spear-fishing championship. Did you go ahead and compete?

19:25Doug Homes:Yes, I was distracted, but I was able to win the competition.

19:29Frank Lowenstein:Giacomo, congratulations. A very modest and extremely accomplished Giacomo de Mola. Welcome back to News Hour. The alleged boss of one of the world's most notorious crime gangs, Daniel Kinahan, has arrived back in his native island after being extradited from the United Arab Emirates. Kinahan did have a$5 million bounty on his head from the US government for information leading to his arrest. He's been accused of running a major international drug trafficking network. He was flown back to Dublin in an Irish government jet and has just appeared at a special criminal court to face charges of serious organised crime.

20:09Frank Lowenstein:Ireland correspondent Chris Page is outside the courthouse in Dublin. And Chris, this initial hearing, I mean, it happened amid a blizzard of security, didn't it?

20:21Doug Homes:Yes, it did. A very big security operation around the extradition of Daniel Kinahan. He was arrested in Dubai in April. The Irish government sent its jet to carry out the extradition, as it were. And it landed in a military airfield here in Dublin a few hours ago. So about an hour and a half after that, Daniel Kinahan was in the dock here at the Special Criminal Court in front of three judges. The hearing lasted for 13 minutes. He was remanded into custody to appear in court again on the 5th of October. And not long after, he was led out of the dock just a few minutes afterwards, while a convoy of four police vehicles left the court at high speed.

21:08Doug Homes:in the advance of this extradition Tim, the Irish Prison Service bought a special bomb-proof and bulletproof van that could be used to transport prisoners such as Daniel Kinahan who is assessed as being a particularly high risk. Now there wasn't any sign of that van being used tonight but it is a sign just of the security considerations that the authorities in Ireland are having to make.

21:30Frank Lowenstein:And it's a huge long-running saga and we're rather pressed for time but give me a sense of the scale of the crime network that he is alleged to have been at the top of?

21:43Doug Homes:Yes, the US Treasury Department has said previously that the Kinnaghan cartel is one of the world's most dangerous. The Irish police have estimated that the gang has made more than$1.2 billion through its activities over the years. Going back about 10 years, the last time Daniel Kinnaghan was in Ireland, Well, there was a gangland feud that Kinnehan's were involved in, in which 18 people were killed. So it's acknowledged by law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Atlantic as being a particularly big, active and dangerous crime gang. Daniel Kinnehan denies through his lawyers that he is the head of that crime gang or indeed that he's any involvement in organised crime at all.

22:26Frank Lowenstein:And it was an achievement, wasn't it, for the Irish government to secure his extradition from Dubai?

22:32Doug Homes:Yes, and it was the result of police work, of course, detective work, but also diplomatic and political work. The governments of Ireland and the United Arab Emirates struck an extradition agreement. One man's already been extradited from the UAE to Ireland under that, Sean McGovern. He was jailed earlier this year as a key lieutenant in the Kinham organisation. Daniel Kinham is the second person to be extradited. He didn't enter a plea in the short hearing today. The processing process against him has commenced and it'll likely run for some months.

23:02Frank Lowenstein:Chris Page, our Ireland correspondent, speaks to us outside the courthouse in Dublin. Thank you very much. This is NewsHour. It's live from the BBC in London. I'm Tim Franks and we're returning to the Middle East with a question increasingly loudly asked as to whether Yemen is about to tip back into full-scale conflict. Just to be clear, the civil war in Yemen may have been something that we've not been talking about much recently, but it has continued to shape, even wreck, the lives of millions in the Middle East, as it has for much of the last 12 years. Now, though, there's particular concern that the recent assaults by the Iran-backed Houthi paramilitary group could lead to a rapid escalation in fighting.

23:43Frank Lowenstein:Their immediate enemy is the internationally recognised government of Yemen, but that government has been very strongly backed by Saudi Arabia, and today the Houthis said that in their latest attack against Saudi interests, Their drones had targeted a refinery on the Red Sea coast. The Houthis are also being blamed by Yemeni officials for a missile attack on the government-controlled city of Mokka, in which 11 people are reported to have been killed. Hussain al-Bukhaiti is a Yemeni journalist and pro-Houthi commentator in the capital, Sana 'a. Why are the Houthis stepping up their attacks?

24:15Doug Homes:Because Saudi has broke the ceasefire that was agreed in 2022 by targeting Sana 'a airport a month ago. and because Saudi still hasn't implemented the roadmap agreement that was signed in 2023. And since that day, Yemen is still under Saudi blockade. Samar Airport is closed. Hodeidah Port, Saudi is allowing only a few ships to reach Hodeidah. And all those ships, they are forced to reach Hodeidah Port to go to Djibouti Port. And they stayed there between one month to four months. It actually costs to the Yemeni livelihood. and Saudi is in control of Yemeni oil and gas revenue. They are not paying Yemeni salaries.

24:57Doug Homes:They are not using that money to build infrastructure. That is the opposite. They are using it to build army bases across Yemen.

25:03Frank Lowenstein:Just to pick you up on your first point, which was this attack by the Saudis on Sana 'a airport. I mean, they were saying that they did this attack preemptively because they wanted to stop a plane landing from Iran, which was full of personnel, know-how, military and dual-use equipment. And this wasn't the first time that the Iranians had tried to fly in military supplies for you. So they said that they were acting preemptively against your attempt to inflame the situation.

25:35Doug Homes:This is actually a big lie because if Iran went to smogil weapons to Yemen, they are going to send an airline with hundreds of Yemeni people who are stranded outside Yemen to San 'a airport. And as soon as the flight reached San 'a, there was international media and local media that would fill me the entire landing. And as well, when the plane had left Yemen and Iran could smuggle weapons by sea. But isn't the truth, Hussein,

25:58Frank Lowenstein:that you're saying what Iran is doing in terms of its war with the US and how it is trying to project its power in a very muscular way across the region. And you're thinking, well, you know, if it's working for Iran, will have a piece of the action as well. I mean, just look at the blockade in the Red Sea.

26:17Doug Homes:We are the one who teach Iran to block the Strait of Hormuz because Yemen, when they blocked the Red Sea, Iran thought, OK, it's easy to close the Persian Gulf. And regarding what's happening in Iran, it has nothing to do with Yemen. Yemen has been under attack since 2015. Saudi has conducted more than 300 ,000 airstrikes. So what Yemen is doing now is what Yemen needs. It has nothing to do with Iran.

26:40Frank Lowenstein:And there was Hussein al-Bukhati speaking to me from Sana 'a. Ayanna Craig is a journalist specialising in Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula. She's currently based in the UK but has spent many years reporting from Yemen. How dangerous is this moment for the country?

26:56Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:I think it's very dangerous at the moment. We haven't seen anything like this since 2022 when the truce was arranged between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia. The airstrikes that began in response from Saudi Arabia on the 13th of July that targeted Sana 'a airport, and then again on the 24th of July, were the first airstrikes by Saudi Arabia against the Houthis since 2022. And now we have this scaling up of fighting on the ground in Yemen, which has been very extensive over recent days and even the last 48 hours in Marib, on the eastern front line, in Hadramount, in Hudaydah, on the west coast. And that is very concerning.

27:35Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:So we've got multi sort of layers of what's going on at the moment. And all of them are indicating further escalation, certainly. But as you mentioned at the beginning, a slip back into where we were between 2015 and 2022.

27:49Frank Lowenstein:And given that, who do you think it is who thinks that maybe now is a good time to inflict some damage militarily?

27:58Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:There's a lot about the timing here, obviously. If it was all about Iran's influence and wanting the Bab al-Mendab closed, it would have happened a lot sooner. You know, that confrontation between the US, Israel and Iran has been going on since February. I think the timing here really for the Houthis goes back to the roadmap which was mentioned. The Houthis were looking to gain a huge amount financially out of a deal with Saudi Arabia, which would have seen salaries being paid, would have eased governance and economic issues in Houthi-controlled territory. And that just hasn't happened. So this blockade is very targeted at Saudi Arabia specifically.

28:35Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:And initially, it may have looked like some extreme brinkmanship to get that roadmap back into discussions. But we've kind of gone beyond that now. But the pressure is still very much on Saudi Arabia. And at the moment, they responded with those strikes on the 13th of July and then responded again on the 24th of July after oil tankers were attacked. But Saudi is under pressure because of what's happening in the Strait of Hormuz. This blockade by the Houthis and attacks on their western Red Sea ports is impacting the ability of Saudi Arabia to continue exporting oil, particularly to the Asia market.

29:13Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:And that's what now brings more pressure. If the Strait of Hormuz wasn't already closed, then this pressure that the Houthis are putting on wouldn't have the same sort of impact.

29:23Frank Lowenstein:Does the Saudi defence pact with Turkey and Pakistan change things at all?

29:30Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:Well, I think we have to wait to see how that is tested, really. I would say at this moment, it is unlikely, purely because this is very much a Houthi to Saudi scenario. And although Iran obviously supports the Houthis in many ways, it is still directly a confrontation between the two. It would seem very unlikely, I would say at this point, that either Pakistan or Turkey would want to get involved. That being said, you know, the Saudis were very quick to create a coalition back in 2015 of regional nations to try and support them in their efforts against the Houthis.

30:03Frank Lowenstein:And that was the Yemen specialist, Iona Craig.

30:15Frank Lowenstein:Germany has just revealed that two drones were spotted at the end of last week flying over a sensitive military base close to the city of Bonn. The site at Mechernich houses components for the US-made Patriot air defence systems. The incident came a few days after an explosives-laden drone was discovered near a Ukrainian cargo plane at Leipzig airport in the east of the country. Fingers are being pointed at Russia. Charlie Edwards is Senior Fellow for Strategy and National Security at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. What does he read into this latest incident.

30:49Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:In one week, Germany has had a drone-carrying Semtex found beside a fully-fuelled Ukrainian cargo aircraft at Leipzig and drones circling the one site in Europe that prepares Patriot air defence systems and it was still flying after the police arrived. Neither is surveillance, I think, by accident and both fit a pattern that we have tracked across a dozen NATO states since 2024. Russia is probing what Europe can see, how fast it decides, and who is actually allowed to act.

31:29Frank Lowenstein:And you said Russia there without any hesitation or caveat. You're convinced this is Russia.

31:36Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:So it fits a pattern that we have seen in our report from earlier this year. I should be clear that no government, Tim, as yet has attributed these drones to Russia. And what I can say is that our assessment from the report was that it was highly likely the Kremlin was running a UAV campaign over Europe last year. And these two incidents at least have the hallmark, a signature. It's a sensitive target. It's a capable airframe. And it was an operator who clearly did not do anything once the air police, German air police, were in the air. So I think we have also seen the US suggest, at least in open source reporting, that it was Russia, but the German government, to be clear, has not yet attributed either act to the Russian government.

32:34Frank Lowenstein:And I'm interested, when you say the operator, the drone operator here, I mean, is the working assumption that these are people whom, if this is Russia, that Russians are then paying or organising to operate these drones? I mean, is there a thought that actually Russian agents themselves might be on the ground in NATO countries?

33:02Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:Well, the incident over Leipzig with the armed drone found inside the freight security zone is the more serious of the two incidents. And just for your listeners, by way of background, on I think Tuesday, shortly before midnight, it was an airport worker who spotted the drone on the southern runway close to a Ukrainian Antonov, and he kicked it out of the air and brought it down, which is quite incredible, given that the charge was Semtex in a sort of tin can strapped to the airframe. And we have seen something similar before over Poland, in fact. And it required federal police specialists to make it safe.

33:46Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:What is interesting about this particular drone was that it carried two SIM cards and 5G antennas. So in theory, it could be flown over the mobile network from anywhere. And I think we have seen in open source reporting a couple of drone specialists calling it the sort of worst case for detection because a frequency scanner cannot tell such a drone from a mobile phone and the airport's own detection system did not register it. So that points to a more professional approach than we have seen in other drone incidents across Germany. Right.

34:24Frank Lowenstein:But there's every chance that these drones have, you know, at the very least, whoever's, you know, on the ground operating them, that it's not as if they've been flown all the way from Russia. These are fairly, I mean, they may be sophisticated, but they're fairly generic bits of kit that could be assembled in place.

34:45Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:For the incident over Leipzig, it looks like this was a drone that was developed for this particular type of operation. So, yes, you can raise, you could fly a UAV, you could launch it nearby, but you could fly it from somewhere else over the mobile phone network. Right.

35:07Frank Lowenstein:It's a real challenge, this, isn't it? Because it just feels as if it's, I mean, disruptive, it's intimidating, but it's incredibly difficult to defend against.

35:20Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:It is. I mean, this is, from our report at least, a clear, I think, example in the case of the drones that were flown over the Bundeswehr airbase about probing allied response times and decision thresholds. It's about mapping critical infrastructure and the logistics nodes supporting Ukraine. And as you say, Tim, it's imposing economic and psychological costs on the population, as well as normalising airspace violations below the level that triggers a response. So what the German government do and how quickly is something that we will look to monitor going forward.

35:58Frank Lowenstein:Charlie Edwards, Senior Fellow for Strategy and National Security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. You're with the BBC and live from London, this is NewsHour with me, Tim Franks. In Canada, the whole of the vast western province of British Columbia is under a state of emergency with more than 100 wildfires burning. Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated, including the 12 ,000 residents of Summerland. The mayor of the town is Doug Holmes and he spoke to me from Penticton about an hour's drive south after he'd been ordered to leave his home very early on Saturday morning.

36:33Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:The fire started around 5.30pm, 15km outside Summerland and then it just moved really quickly. We're a farming community. There were kind of three mountain valleys with real rich soil, lots of cherry and peach orchards and vineyards and the fire just kind of ripped through two of those three valleys. So those two valleys were evacuated probably around 8.30, 9 o 'clock Friday night, our time. And then the fire just kept coming closer and closer to town. And so the decision was made at midnight Friday night, Saturday morning to evacuate the whole town. And maybe 5 ,000 people had been evacuated already, but then another 15 ,000 were to be evacuated after that.

37:16Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:So you can imagine that number of people all packing up their cars and heading out at the same time. There's only one highway that comes through Summerland. The north end of the town was blocked off by fire. So we could only leave going to the town to the south, which is Penticton. And so there was basically a large convoy of cars heading south.

37:37Frank Lowenstein:You've arrived in Penticton and it sounds like that's where most people have ended up as well. about an hour's drive and under normal conditions south of Summerland. And I mean, what are people staying in?

37:50Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:We're two closely connected communities anyway. So people are staying at friends or families. A lot of people are left with their camp trailers and their caravans. And so the parking lots in Penticton are full. And if there are people who have no place to stay, there's an evacuation centre that has been set up at the convention centre here.

38:10Frank Lowenstein:And what do you know of Summerland? I mean, did the fire reach your town?

38:15Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:Lots of parts of town it did reach, not every part of town. So we do know parts have been spared. We know our downtown, so our centre core is OK. But, you know, homes have been lost. We know structures have been lost. Everybody will know somebody who has lost a home.

38:33Frank Lowenstein:It's an agricultural region, isn't it? I mean, there's a lot of farming that goes on. I think a lot of winemaking that goes on as well. I assume there must be immense concern about what's happened to the land.

38:47Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:Yeah, you know, the immediate concern is what happens to people's crops. I know farmers who have told me that they know they've lost their barn, for example. Recovery is going to be hard. It's going to be challenging. We're going to need government support. But, you know, we'll pull together as a community and we'll get through it.

39:05Frank Lowenstein:Have you got any update on, you know, the progress of the fire and when you and others may be able to return to Summerland?

39:14Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:Well, that's the number one question everybody asks is when can we go home? And we just don't know yet. The fire is still out of control. They're still fighting it. That's the top priority right now is to get the fire under control. And then once it's under control, we can start planning re-entry. The first thing will, there'll be farmers who've left animals behind. They need to get back to their farms to feed those animals. And then people can't return to their homes until we know it's safe to do so. There's power lines down. The water has been contaminated. There's structures that we don't know are safe or not.

39:49Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:So all that sort of thing has to happen before people can return to their homes. All that's going to take time.

39:55Frank Lowenstein:You must be thinking, as many are, that these sorts of disasters are sadly becoming more frequent.

40:04Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:Absolutely. Every summer, it's fire season in British Columbia, especially in August. And 20 years ago, it was an exception to have a summer with smoke-filled skies and everything like that and fires nearby. Now it's an exception not to have it. It's become the new norm and it's tragic.

40:24Frank Lowenstein:And that was Doug Holmes, the Mayor of Summerland.

40:31Frank Lowenstein:in the occupied west bank thousands of ancient archaeological sites remain unexcavated israel has recently expropriated it palestinian land to develop two of them palestinians say archaeology is being used to deepen israeli control of the territory israel says it's simply protecting and preserving its heritage now the un's cultural agency unesco is planning to add sebastian near to both its World Heritage List and its list of World Heritage in Danger, in a move which Palestinian officials have welcomed, but Israel's foreign minister is condemned as an attempt to change history. Sebastian Usher has this report from Sebastian.

41:13Doug Homes:Up in the hills above the Roman columns of Sebastian are olive fields that have been cultivated for generations by Palestinian families. It's a vital income for them, of course, but it goes deeper than that, as one of those landowners, Abu Madif, explains. Every tree has received more of my attention than my children, more than my family, and more than myself. Abu Madif says he's now received notification that his land is part of a tranche of around 450 acres that the Israeli authorities are taking possession of in order to develop a new national park in the archaeological site. Standing on a path between the car park at the ancient site of Sebastia, where the Roman era forum once stood, and the columns of the basilica, the mayor of Sebastia, Muhammad Azam, looks down to his right at some rubbish left in the ruins.

42:03Doug Homes:He says that as Israeli-controlled titans, local people no longer feel free to clean the site. Nahed Saka, who owns a local restaurant that is under threat of demolition, says the Israeli plan seems to be to cut Palestinian residents off from the archaeological site. In the middle of the ancient Roman theatre, an Israeli activist, Alon Arad, who heads a group that aims to ensure that the ancient heritage of a region belongs to all communities, says the Israeli authorities have bypassed consultation with the local administration and residents of Sebastia.

42:37Fleur Hassan-Nahoum:Israel is not the owner of this place. This is a Palestinian heritage site. And in order to do it in a positive way, it has to be done with the local community, with the municipality, in order for them to benefit.

42:55Doug Homes:Further to the south in the West Bank and just in sight of Jerusalem, a man-made hill rises at Herodium with an extraordinary palace built on its summit by King Herod, who ruled these lands more than 2 ,000 years ago. Recently here too, Israel has begun to expropriate land, this time around 80 acres for what it says is the preservation and development of the site. For Shmuel Browns, who's worked on excavations here, it's vital for Israeli archaeologists and officials to be able to oversee and protect places that are so freighted with significance. The way we decide whether Herod was here is by finding a coin from Herod or pottery that can be dated to the time of Herod right here.

43:42Doug Homes:A new law was proposed earlier this year that would have given the Heritage Ministry sweeping powers to take control of land across the whole of the West Bank. It's now on hold as elections are coming up in Israel and it may never re-emerge.

43:56Frank Lowenstein:And that was Sebastian Usher reporting from Sebastian. in the West Bank. That's it from NewsHour. Thanks for listening.