At least 81 people killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza, Hamas-run health ministry says
At least 81 Palestinians have been killed and more than 400 injured in Israeli strikes across Gaza in the 24 hours until midday on Saturday, the Hamas-run health ministry said.In one incident, at least 11 people, including children, were killed after a strike near a stadium in Gaza City, Al-Shifa hospital staff and witnesses told news agencies. The stadium was being used to house displaced people, living in tents.Footage verified by the BBC shows people digging through the sand with their bare hands and spades to find bodies.The BBC has contacted the Israeli military for comment.Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said he was hopeful a ceasefire could be agreed in the next week.
Qatari mediators said they hoped US pressure could achieve a deal, following a truce between Israel and Iran that ended the 12-day conflict between the countries.In March, a two-month ceasefire collapsed when Israel launched fresh strikes on Gaza. The ceasefire deal - which started on 19 January - was set up to have three stages, but did not make it past the first stage.Stage two included establishing a permanent ceasefire, the return of remaining living hostages in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.On Thursday, a senior Hamas official told the BBC mediators have intensified their efforts to broker a new ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, but that negotiations with Israel remain stalled.A rally was organised on Saturday evening in Tel Aviv calling for a deal to free the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Organisers said "the time has come to end the fighting and bring everyone home in one phase".Meanwhile, Israeli attacks in Gaza continue. Friday evening's strike near the Palestine Stadium in Gaza City killed at least 11 people, hospital staff and witnesses said.One witness said they were sitting when they "suddenly heard a huge explosion" after a road was hit."This area was packed with tents - now the tents are under the sand. We spent hours digging with our bare hands," Ahmed Qishawi told the Reuters news agency. He said there are "no wanted people here, nor any terrorists as they [Israelis] claim... [there are] only civilian residents, children, who were targeted with no mercy," he said.The BBC has verified footage showing civilians and emergency services digging through the sandy ground with their hands and spades to find bodies.
Fourteen more people were reported killed, some of them children, in strikes on an apartment block and a tent in the al-Mawasi area.The strike in al-Mawasi killed three children and their parents, who died while they were asleep, relatives told the Associated Press."What did these children do to them? What is their fault?" the children's grandmother, Suad Abu Teima, told the news agency.More people were reported killed on Saturday afternoon after an air strike on the Tuffah neighbourhood near Jaffa School, where hundreds of displaced Gazans were sheltering. The strike killed at least eight people, including five children, the Palestinian health ministry said.One witness Mohammed Haboub told Reuters that his nephews, father and the children of his neighbours were killed in the strike."We didn't do anything to them, why do they harm us? Did we harm them? We are civilians," he told the news agency.The health ministry said ambulance and civil defence crews were facing difficulties in reaching a number of victims trapped under the rubble and on the roads, due to the impossibility of movement in some of the affected areas.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has not yet commented on these reported strikes. The IDF released a statement on Saturday evening saying it had killed Hakham Muhammad Issa al-Issa, a senior figure in Hamas's military wing, in the area of Sabra in Gaza City on Friday.The Israeli military launched its bombardment of Gaza in response to Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.More than 56,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.
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Daily Mail
21 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
BBC chiefs 'should face charges' over Glastonbury... Outrage led by Keir Starmer grows after broadcast of vile 'death to Israeli soldiers' chants
BBC bosses should be prosecuted for broadcasting a vile anti-Semitic outburst at the Glastonbury festival, the Tory party said tonight. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said the corporation 'appears to have broken the law' by transmitting a punk duo's calls for the deaths of Israeli soldiers. Top lawyer Lord Carlile said the BBC may have committed a criminal offence, while Sir Keir Starmer said the broadcaster had serious questions to answer. The growing backlash comes after the BBC live-streamed Bob Vylan's performance uninterrupted on its iPlayer site. It could now face an investigation into whether it has breached public-order laws. Such are the implications of the chants that the US State Department is also reportedly gearing up to revoke the band's visas ahead of a forthcoming tour. During Saturday's performance by the London-based pro-Palestinian duo, vocalist Bobby Vylan shouted 'Death, death to the IDF', the Israeli Defence Forces. He followed the chant, which was repeated by the audience, with 'From the river to the sea, Palestine... will be free' – regarded by many Jews as a call for Israel 's elimination. Broadcasting material calling for the death of an individual or group is an offence under the Public Order Act 1986. It carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison. Detectives from Avon and Somerset Police, the force responsible for the policing of Glastonbury, are reviewing footage of the performance. It is understood that BBC director-general Sir Tim Davie would have to bear ultimate responsibility if the Crown Prosecution Service decided to take the matter further. Mr Philp said: 'It looks clear that Bob Vylan were inciting violence and hatred. 'They should be arrested and prosecuted – just like some of those who did the same during the riots last summer. 'By broadcasting the duo's vile hatred, the BBC appears to have also broken the law. I call on the police to urgently investigate and prosecute the BBC as well for broadcasting this. 'Our national broadcaster should not be transmitting hateful material designed to incite violence and conflict.' DailyWire this evening said the US State Department were looking to revoke the band's visas. A senior official reportedly told them: 'As a reminder, under the Trump Administration, the U.S. government will not issue visas to any foreigner who supports terrorists.' The punk duo have a twenty-city tour through the States lined up later in the year. Bob Vylan were performing as a warm-up act for controversial Northern Irish rappers Kneecap – one of whose members is facing a terror charge for allegedly displaying a flag in support of the banned organisation Hezbollah. Sir Keir said there was no excuse for Vylan's 'appalling' hate speech. 'I said that Kneecap should not be given a platform and that goes for any other performers making threats or inciting violence,' he added. 'The BBC needs to explain how these scenes came to be broadcast.' Lord Carlile said people were free to make anti-Israel comments but when those comments spilled over into death threats, or something that sounded like death threats, the BBC had a responsibility not to broadcast unlawful material. The KC, who served as the Government's independent reviewer of terrorism legislation for ten years, added: 'I would be interested to know whether the BBC took legal advice and, if so, what that legal advice was. I'm very troubled they may have broadcast unlawful material under section 22 of the Public Order Act.' Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis said: 'Their chants very much crossed a line and we are urgently reminding everyone involved in the production of the festival that there is no place at Glastonbury for anti-Semitism, hate speech or incitement to violence.' Bob Vylan, who formed eight years ago in London, refuse to reveal their real names because of what they call the 'surveillance state' But lawyer Mark Lewis, who specialises in libel cases, said the apology had come too late. He added: 'It is a bit rich that they try to lock the stable doors after the horse has bolted. Glastonbury was warned what was likely to happen and now it is likely there will be legal consequences.' Former Tory culture secretary Nadine Dorries said the BBC had 'serious questions to answer', adding: 'It is quite right that lawyers are asking whether the broadcasting of the chants made on the stage at Glastonbury have crossed the line into a criminal offence. Police should seek swift advice and take action immediately.' Dame Priti Patel, former home secretary and current Shadow Foreign Secretary, added: '[The BBC] no longer hold the respectability to claim the mantle of our national broadcaster.' Former Labour minister Lord Austin said: 'This weekend Glastonbury was turned into a sickening hate rally, and chants for death were beamed into millions of homes by the BBC. 'Tim Davie must now launch an urgent investigation and fire those found to be responsible. He must understand this is a very dark day for the corporation that calls its very purpose and future into question.' Former director of BBC television Danny Cohen told The Daily Telegraph: 'The police should investigate, as should the BBC's board, led by chairman Samir Shah. How much longer can they tolerate the failings of BBC leadership on anti-Semitism and bias?' A spokesman for the Campaign Against Antisemitism said: 'The BBC has surpassed even itself in endangering British Jews by airing this violent chanting. 'We are formally complaining to the BBC over its outrageous decision not only to broadcast Bob Vylan's calls for death and destruction, but also to place that segment on iPlayer along with Kneecap's performance, which the BBC knew in advance that it should not air. Bob Vylan is the UK's self-proclaimed 'most violent boy band' whose singer attended his first pro-Palestine protest at the age of 15 and whose music fuses punk, grime and hip hop 'Our national broadcaster must apologise for its dissemination of this extremist vitriol, and those responsible must be removed from their positions. 'That includes Tim Davie... who has had more than enough chances to stop this abuse of licence fee payers' money to platform bigots and extremists.' Toby Young, president of the Free Speech Union, raised the case of childminder Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for tweets she made about deporting asylum seekers and burning down hotels housing them after the Southport killings of three girls at a dance studio. She is currently serving a 31-month sentence. He added: 'She caveated what she said by adding 'for all I care', whereas he [Vylan] clearly does care and wants every member of the IDF, which includes virtually the entire population of Israel, to be killed, so the case for prosecuting him is stronger. But to be clear, neither should be prosecuted.' Bob Vylan's performance was later removed from iPlayer. A BBC spokesman said: 'Some of the comments made during Bob Vylan's set were deeply offensive. 'During this live stream on iPlayer, which reflected what was happening on stage, a warning was issued on screen about the very strong and discriminatory language. We have no plans to make the performance available on demand.' Avon and Somerset Police were approached for comment.
Reuters
29 minutes ago
- Reuters
Morning Bid: The euro's big beautiful moment
LONDON, June 30 (Reuters) - What matters in U.S. and global markets today Investors are keeping a wary eye on the progress of President Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful" U.S. tax-cutting and spending bill that is slowly making its way through the Senate, with signs it may not make it by Trump's preferred July 4 deadline. Meanwhile, over on Wall Street, futures on the S&P 500 suggest another record high might be in the offing later on. Mike Dolan is enjoying some well-deserved time off over the next two weeks, but the Reuters markets team is here to provide you with all the information you need to start your day. Today's Market Minute * Canada scrapped its digital services tax targeting U.S. technology firms late on Sunday, just hours before it was due to take effect, in a bid to advance stalled trade negotiations with the United States. * The trade deal signed between U.S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer lowering some tariffs on imports from Britain has come into effect, the British government said on Monday. * A million-dollar question will hang over the world's top central bankers when they meet in Sintra, Portugal, from Monday evening: Is the monetary system centred on the U.S. currency beginning to unravel? * The war between Israel and Iran offered a real-time look at some new global cross-asset dynamics that can help investors understand the state of play in the first half of 2025 and what they can expect in the next six months. TPW Advisory founder Jay Pelosky details three key takeaways from the conflict. * Plus, ROI energy columnist Ron Bousso explains why Egypt was one of the biggest economic losers of the Middle East's 12-day war. The euro's big beautiful moment The euro is heading for a ninth straight day of gains versus the dollar, something it has only achieved three times since its inception in 1999. Another daily rise and we're in record territory. In 2025's "everyone hates the dollar" trading environment, the euro, and European assets in general, have to be real magnets for investor cash. The euro itself has gained nearly 14% against the dollar so far this year, while its performance against other currencies has been far less eye-popping. It has risen around 3.5% against both the pound and the Japanese yen and has barely broken even against the Swiss franc and Norwegian crown. Confidence in the United States as an investment destination - not just in markets, but for businesses too - has not vanished, but has taken a serious knock from the erratic and unpredictable policies of the Trump administration. This would not be obvious when looking through the lens of the stock market, given the S&P 500 is at record highs, in dollar terms at least. When priced in other currencies, it is a long way off. Europe's STOXX 600 has risen 7% so far this year, compared with the S&P's 5% rise. On an equal-weighted basis, the divergence is even more marked. Wall Street's Magnificent 7 are back in vogue, but not quite riding to the rescue. The equal-weighted S&P is up 3.3% versus a near-10% gain in the STOXX equivalent. That said, in spite of the chaos from Trump's on-again off-again tariffs, the heightened uncertainty stemming from the Middle East and the deficit-busting "One Big Beautiful Bill" that is up for debate in the Senate right now, investors aren't exactly ditching U.S. assets en masse. "Anywhere But The USA" may sound catchy as an investment theme, but it has taken more than that to lure capital into Europe. European governments, spearheaded by Germany, have pledged to unleash a one trillion euro ($1.17 trillion) spending bazooka, much of which will be concentrated on defence and infrastructure, as they attempt to address years of riding on the coattails of Washington for security, and of shortfalls in spending on basics at home. The July 9 deadline for a trade deal is less than two weeks away - and with Trump saying he will impose 50% tariffs on all EU goods without a deal - investors are moving their money. Data from LSEG's Lipper Funds show that more than $100 billion has flowed into European equity funds so far this year - up threefold from the same period last year - while outflows from the U.S. more than doubled to nearly $87 billion. "All that is an indication that at least market forces, investors, those who move real money around, actually see value and have confidence in Europe," European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said earlier this month. She said now is the time for Europe to take its destiny into its own hands, and that this is the euro's "moment". Chart of the day With the U.S. Independence Day holiday on Friday, the June employment report lands on Thursday. A Reuters poll shows economists expect to see a rise of 129,000, slightly below May's 139,000 increase. Evidence of the impact on the economy from Trump's tariffs and their potentially inflationary effect, along with the mass layoffs among government employees and the likelihood of big cuts to a raft of welfare benefits is starting to materialise in other data points. So far, the monthly non-farm payrolls report has not been one of them. May's number marked the fifth upside surprise in the past 12 months, and the ninth reading below the 200,000 mark over the past year. Layoffs are historically low, but hiring is not exactly booming. The most recent weekly jobless claims numbers showed the number of Americans filing new applications for jobless benefits fell, but work opportunities are becoming scarce as businesses are reluctant to hire while things such as import tariffs are in flux. Today's events to watch * Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks at the European Central Bank Forum on Central Banking 2025 in Sintra, Portugal * Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Raphael Bostic speaks on the economic outlook and monetary policy in London * Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee speaks at the Aspen Ideas Festival 2025 * June Chicago PMI * Three- and six-month Treasury bill auctions Opinions expressed are those of the author. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, opens new tab, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias. Want to receive the Morning Bid in your inbox every weekday morning? Sign up for the newsletter here. ($1 = 0.8533 euros)
BBC News
36 minutes ago
- BBC News
'It's insane to build the same thing and expect different results': Can LA fire-proof itself?
Six months after the wildfires tore through Los Angeles, residents are tussling with the urban destruction left behind – and a debate over the future of the city's buildings. Countless Los Angeles streets still contain the charred remains of homes that succumbed to wildfire six months ago. Many of their inhabitants are still living with friends and relatives or in hotels, hostels and shelters. With more than 16,000 homes and buildings destroyed in the January 2025 wildfires, the LA neighbourhoods and nearby communities affected have been left contemplating how best to balance the need to get their homes back as soon as possible with future resilience to wildfire. Today, even as the city faces the new turmoil of immigration raids ordered by President Donald Trump and the extensive protests that have followed, LA is clearing debris and preparing to rebuild. Progress so far has been slow, however, with few permits issued to rebuild (in Palisades, for example, just 125 rebuild permits have been issued out of 558 applications, the LA Department of Building and Safety told the BBC). Many residents have moved to communities far from the homes they lost, according to an investigation by the New York Times. Faced with a daunting rebuild, many contractors and homeowners want to build quickly, with some working to loosen environmental protection code and permit requirements. Meanwhile, wildfire experts tell the BBC they want to ensure new construction is compliant with fire and energy codes, while sustainability advocates say they hope greener methods and materials will enter the market. "There are going to be hard decisions on how we want to rebuild versus what is technically required," says Ian Giammanco, managing director for standards and data analytics at the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS), a South-Carolina-based research group funded by the insurance industry. California's building code was updated in 2008 to establish standards for wildfire-resistant construction. It requires the use of non-combustible materials and for homeowners to maintain defensible space around the home, such as by creating a safety buffer cleared of vegetation or debris. California is one of only five US states to apply a specific building code to areas designated as having very high wildfire risk. Homes which had been constructed after 2008 in the LA neighbourhood of Pacific Palisades, which lost 6,837 structures in the Palisades Fire, were built with these requirements in place. But in Altadena, an area north of downtown LA where many neighbourhoods were affected by the Eaton Fire, many homes did not fall under the fire code. In March, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, a state agency often referred to as Cal Fire, expanded its maps of areas required to use the code, with existing homes at a minimum creating defensible space by clearing brush. The expansion means about 500 additional homes affected by the Eaton Fire will be covered by the code by late July 2025, according to analysis by US broadcaster NPR, but still leaves about 7,800 structures outside the high-risk zone. Some of the proposed methods are already being used in the wider US. In Colorado, for example, where a 2021 wildfire destroyed nearly 1,000 homes in the Denver suburb of Superior, some homeowners have opted to rebuild using compressed earth blocks that have a high resilience to fire. And CalEarth, a California-based nonprofit that pioneered a type of earthbag construction called super adobe, has drawn renewed attention from residents, says Khalili, and is urging state and local officials to work with them on making their designs code-compliant. "Let's do the full tests… and build back prepared for these climate events," Dastan Khalili, president of CalEarth, tells the BBC. "It's insane to build the same thing and expect different results." But bringing alternative building methods to market is costly, especially in California, where materials must prove to be fire-resistant while also passing stringent seismic testing. Any alternative material, such as rammed earth – a building technique using compacted soil mixed with water and stabilisers which has been used for over 1,000 years, including, in recent decades, in California – must be submitted for testing, typically by manufacturers, says Crystal Sujeski, chief of code development and analysis for CalFire. This testing needs to prove they are equivalent to or exceed the standard set by conventional, widely used materials. "A lot of [testing] options are out there," she says. New building materials that pass multiple tests can also be added to a register of approved materials, she says. Khalili says CalEarth has always designed structures to comply with international building codes and has planned tests to meet the fire and seismic requirements of California's code. "All of that is ready to be executed," he says. "The only thing that's stopping us is the funding to go after it and make it happen." Burn tests in a fire lab for a single new material, he says, run at around $40-50k (£30-37k), and the required seismic testing can triple or quadruple this bill. As a result, rammed earth homes and other alternative structures can be costlier than using more conventional methods – and even then, the process of approving construction at the state and municipal levels is arduous. Ann Edminster, a green building consultant and author based in northern California, says that the ease and cost of the permitting process is highly dependent on the jurisdiction and who you work with. "The building official will either be your best friend or your worst enemy," she says. It creates a wall of inertia boxing out those with interest in experimenting with alternative materials, she says. And in any case, if you have just lost your home to fire and don't have a place to live, "you're probably not going to be super enthusiastic about testing some brand new material", she says. Still, there are relatively straightforward options for fire-proofing new builds – especially considering the risks of not doing so. A 2022 report by IBHS and Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based research institute, found that wildfire-resistant construction adds from 2% to 13% to the cost of a new home in California, with the upper cost here going well above current required codes. "Increasing home loss and growing risks require reevaluating the wildfire crisis as a home-ignition problem and not a wildland fire problem," the report said, noting that a home's building materials, design and nearby landscaping all influence its survival. Stephen Quarles, an advisor emeritus at the University of California who has spent decades researching how building materials perform during wildfires, says it's more straightforward to obtain approval for smaller alternative projects. Quarles emphasises that wildfire building codes are flexible and allow for traditional construction to be adapted and use more sustainable materials. For instance, a homeowner constructing a straw bale home can coat the exterior with a fireproof material to get approval from a code official. "You could say, 'My cladding is stucco, which is non-combustible,' and you would be good to go," he says. But he also acknowledges that most homeowners just want to rebuild as quickly as possible. When the June 2007 Angora fire destroyed 280 homes in neighbourhoods around Northern California's Lake Tahoe, some residents raced to rebuild before the stricter code regulations took effect the following January, Quarles recalls. Later that same year, after the Tubbs fire ripped through the Coffey Park neighbourhood of Santa Rosa, the community "built back as if there [hadn't been] a wildfire there", he says. But he believes the latest Los Angeles wildfires – along with the 2023 Lahaina fire on Hawaii's Maui island, which were called the "largest natural disaster in Hawaii state history" – have alerted people to the importance of hardening their homes in the future. A January 2025 study found that the hot, dry weather that gave rise to the LA fires was made about 35% more likely by climate change. The LA wildfire season is getting longer, the study noted, while the rains that normally put out the blazes have reduced. "There's an acknowledgement that these fires can happen in places where you don't expect fires to happen," Quarles says. "I think that's taking hold and there is a desire to genuinely build back better." Giammanco, who contributed to a March 2025 report by IBHS documenting which types of homes survived the fire, agrees. "If you look back at our history of construction, there are inflection points," he says. The report showed that homes compliant with California building codes had a higher survival rate than those which were not. But some homes that took preparatory steps, such as clearing brush and creating defensive space, still succumbed when enough of their neighbours had not taken these steps. "Even the most hardened materials when subject to extreme fire exposure will reach their limit," Giammanco says. "Defending a community is sort of a system that builds on itself." More like this:• The people rebuilding their homes with earth• Could a buffer shield Californian homes from wildfire?• How wildlife survives after wildfires When wildfires spread in urban areas, the homes they ignite become "fuel bombs" and intensify the blaze, says Kimiko Barrett, lead wildfire research and policy analyst at non-profit research group Headwaters Economics. "The home itself is the fuel," she says. "Once your neighbour's house starts to burn, the radiant heat means that your home is threatened as well." This is a particular problem in LA, which despite its sprawling footprint is actually still a densely populated area, especially relative to more rural communities. Slow progress in retrofitting existing homes remains a major problem, says Giammanco – and homes that predate California's 2008 wildfire code are not mandated to do it. But there is precedent for incentive and rebate programmes in the US to help make homes more resilient to extreme weather, from initiatives in arid south-western cities for residents to collect rainwater to an Alabama programme providing grants up to $10,000 (£7,400) to install roofing resilient to wind and rain. Giammanco says similar programmes for wildfire protection could incentivise residents to make their homes more resilient to fire. "I think that's the missing link," he says. Adding fire-resistant materials in retrofits such as fibre cement siding and enclosing roof eaves to make it code compliant costs just a few thousand dollars, Barrett says. Other steps are even easier, such as clearing bark mulch from a home's defensive space. "A lot of these mitigation measures can be done over the weekend by the homeowner," she says. It's still early days in LA for the thousands of homeowners preparing to rebuild, but there are signs that the construction industry is starting to adapt. The LA-based homebuilder KB Home, for example, has designed a fire-resilient community with 64 homes that comply to IBHS standards. When it comes to building new homes, Edminster emphasises that simple structures with minimal openings and overhang can be best, comparing an ideal fire-resistant home to an aerodynamic car. "The same principle could and should apply to homes," she says. "Obviously we don't want to live in little round spaceships or something, but… get your outer shell so that it works really well." Sustainable building advocates are also pushing for greener materials and methods to become commonplace, arguing that they can be used in fire-hardened homes while also reducing emissions and bringing costs down in the longer term. For existing houses, simple retrofitting steps can improve the sustainability as well as the resilience of a home – even when they don't use the greenest materials possible. Some of Edminster's clients have retrofitted homes to be fire-resistant without stripping everything out. "That's a terrible waste of material and the embodied carbon in them," she says. "So there's a trade-off." Edminster is adamant that building codes should stay in place after a disaster. "The whole idea of relaxing code to make it easier for people to rebuild, I think, is nonsense," she says. "[They] have been put in place to protect people and to protect us as a society." And while many of the structures lost in the Eaton fire remain outside the boundaries of California's wildfire code, Barrett believes there is precedent for drastic change. US cities began mandating fire hydrants and sprinkler systems around the turn of the 20th Century after major urban fires in Chicago and San Francisco. Earthquake codes became stiffer in the 1970s, requiring buildings to retrofit for seismic risk reduction "We can do this. We have done it before," Barrett says. "We just need to now think of it through a wildfire lens." -- For essential climate news and hopeful developments to your inbox, sign up to the Future Earth newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week. For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
