--:-- Paul Moss: This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Paul Moss.
--:-- Paul Moss: In the early hours of Sunday the 7th of September, these are our main stories. Transport authorities in Lisbon say the funicular crash which killed 16 people this week was caused by a cable snapping.
--:-- Paul Moss: International post deliveries to the United States have plunged sharply since new customs and tariff rules were brought in.
--:-- Paul Moss: And the Brazilian football star Rafinha has accused staff at Disneyland Paris of racism after his son was passed over for a hug.
--:-- Paul Moss: Also in this podcast... Israel destroys another high-rise building in Gaza. A local journalist tells us why these attacks provoke particular fear.
--:-- Alison Roberts: People are terrified. If a high building will be targeted 500 metres away from you, you will be affected by this.
--:-- Paul Moss: The authorities in Lisbon are still trying to identify some of those killed when a carriage on one of the city's famous funicular railways suddenly hurtled downhill and crashed.
--:-- Alison Roberts: The accident on Wednesday left 16 people dead and many more injured. Now Portugal's National Transport Safety Office has issued a statement confirming that the main cable holding the carriage snapped.
--:-- Alison Roberts: This statement is a statement of the facts, what the investigators were able to see on the face of things. It's not, they're very clear, any conclusions.
--:-- Alison Roberts: So it's saying no conclusions can be brought from the list of facts that they have enumerated in this statement. But they do say a number of very relevant and interesting things.
--:-- Alison Roberts: For example, they confirm that the cable that connected the two funicular cars came detached from the upper car and that that caused it to start accelerating down the slope.
--:-- Alison Roberts: They also state that the brakeman, the driver in that upper car, did apply the brakes that were available to him. So that was a manual brake. And also there's an automatic pneumatic brake.
--:-- Alison Roberts: But it does raise the possibility that another automatic system that should have kicked in when the electric circuit was cut due to the cable coming loose, that that may not have been applied.
--:-- Alison Roberts: It also mentioned a number of other details, such as, for example, that when the car derailed and hit a building right near the bottom of the slope, that it was traveling at that point at 60 kilometers per hour.
--:-- Alison Roberts: It says rather curiously at this point in the proceedings that it still is not possible to state with certainty how many people were in the two cars.
--:-- Alison Roberts: And that's perhaps because some people are so badly injured. It's not clear in the confusion whether some of them were standing on the pavement or were in the cars at that point.
--:-- Paul Moss: Alison Roberts. It's only a week since the United States introduced new restrictions on parcels being sent into the country.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: But already the effect has been dramatic. There had been a rule which said you could post small parcels or gifts to someone in the US.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: And as long as they were worth less than $800, they weren't liable for tax nor all the customs bureaucracy which goes with it.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: But that exemption disappeared at the end of August. And since then, the amount of post coming into America has dropped by 80%.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: As the BBC's correspondent in Washington, I explained, That's partly because the post offices in many countries won't now accept parcels destined for America.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: You have about 90 international operators who have partially or fully suspended deliveries to the US.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: So postal services from countries including the UK, Australia, India, Japan and a few European nations like France, Germany and Italy say US-bound packages will no longer be accepted.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: Postal services, including Royal Mail, for instance, or Germany's DHL, had said last week that they would suspend deliveries until they had proper systems in place to deal with the new rules.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: Companies are saying they're looking at ways to try and tide over this and get the shipments moving back to the US as fast as they can.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: But the change in policy has left postal services without clear guidance on how to prepay, collect or remit duties for the affected items.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: So there still remains a fair bit of uncertainty and confusion.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: Which does raise the question, I guess, why? Why did Donald Trump issue this new rule?
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: Well, he signed an executive order last month ending the global import tax exemption on these low-value parcels, as you pointed out.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: And the White House has been very clear in its reasoning and rationale.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: It had said that ending the duty-free exemption would combat what they felt were, quote, escalating deceptive shipping practices.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: They had said there was illegal material coming in or even a duty circumvention.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: They had even gone on to claim that some shippers had abused this exemption in the past to send illicit drugs to the U.S., so essentially tying in with an issue of national security.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: What's also important to note is that the biggest beneficiaries of this exemption have been countries like China, Canada and Mexico, who were significant sources of low-cost parcels coming into the U.S.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: And remember, relations with all these countries have been tenuous, especially as far as conversations over tariffs have gone.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: Given that the amount of posts coming in has dropped by 80 percent, presumably that means an awful lot of Americans haven't been receiving the gifts and parcels they were hoping for.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: What's the public reaction been to this?
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: Well, we've been trying to scan social media or get a sense of how the public would be reacting.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: It's still early days, I think, and there will be, however, some confusion, frustration and chaos as companies try to figure out how to restore this.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: The U.S. exemption so far had meant that consumers could buy affordable things like clothes, household goods from online platforms without paying import duties.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: Now, as you said, anything above $100 will be charged.
--:-- Arunade Mukherjee: So that means it's a direct impact on the people who have been going on these e-commerce websites to try and get these parcels into the U.S., which were at affordable rates.
--:-- Paul Moss: Arunade Mukherjee.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: Is this the beginning of Israel's final and total sweep into Gaza City?
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have vowed to take over the strip's main urban centre, and the last few days have seen even more airstrikes than normal.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: They have a specific target, tall buildings.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: The Israelis claim these are used by Hamas for intelligence gathering, though they haven't provided any evidence for this.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: However, the Israeli military did share video footage of towers being hit.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: The first was on Friday, and then Saturday a residential building, the Susi Tower, was completely flattened.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: Gaza has long been one of the most crowded places on the planet.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: And as local journalist Garda Al-Kurd told my colleague Grupa Padi, that makes the destruction of tall buildings particularly frightening for people living there.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: The situation is horrible. People are very terrified from the targeting of the high buildings.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: It just like 10 to 15 floors here in Gaza City about the high building Gada we getting reports of people being out in the streets scrambling for shelter
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: We can say like most of Gaza City they are in the street living inside tents even for people who are living inside a destroyed building.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: Also, they are gathered in western areas of Gaza City and the coastal road of Gaza City.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: So people, while their houses are being destroyed, they directly went to the street, living in the street, maybe on the pavement, maybe on just put their stuff, whatever they can take from their tents or from their buildings, and they just stay in the street.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: Some of the people, they start to live to the middle area and the south of Gaza City.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: And Garda, are you in a high-rise residential building as we speak?
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: No, it's not a high building, but all the high buildings, they are around us, So it will harm the total, complete neighbourhoods here in Gaza.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: Gaza is a very small city.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: Like if a high building will be targeted like 500 metres away from you, you will be affected by this targeting.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: Are you planning to leave Gaza City?
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: To this moment, I don't have any place to go to the south of Gaza as before because there is no safer place even in the south.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: And I have no other place remain there.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: It's completely crowded.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: People, they just go there and they try to find some places.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: For me, actually, I don't have a place to go there.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: You've chosen not to leave, but there's also a very high risk with you choosing to stay.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: Just help us understand your thinking here.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: Both options, they are very dangerous and risky.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: You cannot decide about what you are going to do.
--:-- Garda Al-Kurd: It's not like before or at the beginning of this war.
--:-- Paul Moss: Garda Al-Kurd.
--:-- Weira Davis: There's been another protest within Israel against plans to launch a further assault on Gaza.
--:-- Weira Davis: Thousands came out in Tel Aviv on Saturday evening, demanding that the government instead makes it a priority to get Israeli hostages released.
--:-- Weira Davis: But their demands would seem to be falling on deaf ears, as our correspondent in Israel, Weira Davis, says a full-scale invasion does seem to be approaching.
--:-- Weira Davis: If you believe the words and the communications of the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, then it does look like Israel is preparing for something very major in Gaza City.
--:-- Weira Davis: He posted a video on social media today showing the blowing up of one of those high-rise buildings with the words, we continue.
--:-- Weira Davis: And previous to that, he said that the gates of hell will now be opened on Gaza.
--:-- Weira Davis: So the possibility, the probability of an Israeli ground offensive to go along with this offensive from the air that we've seen, I think, is very high on the agenda.
--:-- Weira Davis: There is no chance, realistically, of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.
--:-- Weira Davis: Israel has toughened its line in recent weeks, saying that it has to control the whole of the Gaza Strip to defeat Hamas and secure the release of hostages.
--:-- Weira Davis: And that is where we're at now.
--:-- Weira Davis: That is why Israel is trying to persuade tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of civilians from Gaza City to move further south to what is described as a safe zone around Al Mawasi.
--:-- Weira Davis: But in reality, there are no safe places in Gaza, and even al-Mawasi, which has been repeatedly designated by the Israelis as a safe zone, has been repeatedly attacked and many people have been killed there, including in the last few days.
--:-- Weira Davis: We've seen continued protests inside Israel against the continuation of the war, with hostages, families in particular, getting involved.
--:-- Weira Davis: I wonder if these voices are having any influence on the government there.
--:-- Weira Davis: They're having influence in Israel.
--:-- Weira Davis: I think the government itself or the tight cabal of ministers around Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters are pretty much unmoved by it.
--:-- Weira Davis: Again, if you listen to what Netanyahu says, if you listen to what other ministers on the right say, that they are determined to prosecute the war until its final end.
--:-- Weira Davis: We heard intriguing noises from Washington last night, from Donald Trump saying that he thought there may be a chance of a breakthrough after talks between the American government and Hamas.
--:-- Weira Davis: But the reality on the ground is very different.
--:-- Weira Davis: We've just been discussing now what is happening in Gaza.
--:-- Weira Davis: Hamas don't want to pursue a deal that would see them releasing all of the hostages.
--:-- Weira Davis: If there's no end-of-war peace deal, and the Israelis are reluctant to end the war.
--:-- Weira Davis: So I think the signs on the ground are very ominous indeed.
--:-- Weira Davis: Yeah, I mean, listening to you, all these talks we do here occasionally of Israel and Hamas meeting via or talking via intermediaries, it sounds like Israel's working on the basis that none of this is going to succeed.
--:-- Weira Davis: Indeed, and there's been some very critical opinions in the Israeli newspapers, not just those who are normally critical of Netanyahu.
--:-- Weira Davis: So many people in Israel are asking, does he really care about releasing the, or alive, the remaining 20 hostages?
--:-- Weira Davis: We had a video, a propaganda video released by Hamas yesterday, which featured two hostages.
--:-- Weira Davis: And that seems to suggest that at least 10 hostages may be in Gaza, Gaza City.
--:-- Weira Davis: And Hamas has made it clear that they are going nowhere.
--:-- Weira Davis: They remain in Gaza City.
--:-- Weira Davis: So if there is a full-scale Israeli military assault on Gaza City, many hostages, families, and many Israelis are worried what it might mean for their future and their chances of survival.
--:-- Paul Moss: Weira Davis.
--:-- Katie Watson: Police in Australia say a man is dead after what's believed to have been a shark attack near Sydney.
--:-- Katie Watson: Our correspondent Katie Watson has this report.
--:-- Katie Watson: The attack happened at a beach in the northern part of Sydney, further up the coast from here, a place called D.Y.
--:-- Katie Watson: Authorities say the victim was an experienced surfer.
--:-- Katie Watson: He'd been on the water for about 30 minutes before the attack happened.
--:-- Katie Watson: And they were about 100 metres from the coast.
--:-- Katie Watson: Now, his friends saw it happen.
--:-- Katie Watson: They saw him in distress, went to rescue him.
--:-- Katie Watson: He'd lost several limbs and they brought him back to shore.
--:-- Katie Watson: But he lost a lot of blood and died shortly afterwards.
--:-- Katie Watson: Authorities have recovered two parts of the surfboard and they're analysing that as we speak.
--:-- Katie Watson: Now, it's been a very sunny weekend here in Australia.
--:-- Katie Watson: It's been a really really wet August we're coming out of winter so people were taking advantage of the better weather enjoying the swimming there were lots of surfers on the water at the time now although obviously Australia is known for its sharks fatal attacks are rare especially here in Sydney the last attack was three years ago when a British diving instructor was killed by a great white but before that it was more than 60 years ago since the last fatal attack here in the city
--:-- Paul Moss: Katie Watson.
--:-- Announcer: Still to come. We used Instagram to message our friends. Small businesses that operate with social media, it will be difficult for all of them too.
--:-- Paul Moss: Nepal shuts down dozens of social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.
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--:-- Paul Moss: According to a nationwide survey conducted by GeneSight, nearly 9 in 10 Americans who've been diagnosed with depression or anxiety believe that mental health medications are somewhat or very effective.
--:-- Paul Moss: However, despite that belief, more than half of those individuals say they have avoided taking medication due to concerns about potential side effects.
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--:-- Dr. Whitney Brown: If you or someone you love is facing challenges with depression or anxiety, talk to your doctor about how genetic testing may help.
--:-- Dr. Whitney Brown: To learn more, visit genesight.com.
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--:-- Paul Moss: Have a family of visitors to Disneyland Paris been victims of racism? That's the claim made by the Brazil and Barcelona football player Rafinha.
--:-- Paul Moss: He says when his son visited the amusement park just outside the French capital, two of the mascots refused to hug him but did hug other children who were white.
--:-- Paul Moss: A global affairs reporter, Leonardo Rocha, has more.
--:-- Leonardo Rocha: Rafael Dias Beloli, known across the world as Rafinha, is one of football's biggest stars.
--:-- Leonardo Rocha: He came from a very poor background in southern Brazil and in several occasions considered giving up a career in football.
--:-- Leonardo Rocha: He only broke into the international scene in his mid-twenties when he joined Leeds United and later signed for Barcelona.
--:-- Leonardo Rocha: Like millions of Brazilians, Rafinha and his wife dreamt of taking their kid to Disneyland.
--:-- Leonardo Rocha: It's almost a rite of passage for families who can afford it in Brazil.
--:-- Leonardo Rocha: Rafinha is on international duty in South America, so his wife decided to take a young Gael to Disneyland Paris, but the experience let the family down.
--:-- Leonardo Rocha: In the video posted on Rafinha's social media account, you can see his young son trying to get the attention of two mascots, dressed as the characters Chip and Dale.
--:-- Leonardo Rocha: In the background, you can hear a woman, probably the player's wife, saying, Oh, he doesn't want to hug. Let's try the other one.
--:-- Leonardo Rocha: They then approach the other mascot, but as Rafinha's son gets close to him, he's cut off by an older girl.
--:-- Leonardo Rocha: She gets the hug before the mascot gets up and moves away.
--:-- Leonardo Rocha: Rafinha has accused Disneyland Paris staff of discrimination.
--:-- Leonardo Rocha: He said he understood that people working at a busy park could get tired and overworked, but insisted there was no justification for snobbing his son.
--:-- Paul Moss: Leonardo Rocha.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: It's affecting our daily lives. We used Instagram to message our friends, so that part is also a bit affected.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: From small businesses to big ones in Nepal that operate with social media, I feel like it will be difficult for all of them too.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: We mostly use Facebook for the news, so being deprived of that has made us feel sad.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: The problem has come about because of new rules in Nepal, which require all of these companies to have a local office and local representatives.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: Rules many companies have failed to comply with.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: Our South Asia analyst Ambarasanathirajan explained why these rules were introduced.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: The government is saying they want to have control over social media platforms because they want to prevent cybercrime, money laundering and also hate and rumours.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: And most importantly, in case if there is any post causing social disharmony, they want to take them as early as possible.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: So they want to have a local contact, a grievance officer, a liaison officer and also someone who can respond to any of the government requests and orders.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: This is what the government says because it is causing a lot of problems within society.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: As in many other countries, social media platforms play a key role in Nepal.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: On the contrary, the critics would say is that increasingly governments in the region, they want to regulate social media platforms because they don't want criticism, because people are criticizing quite freely on social media platforms.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: That is causing concern for various governments.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: But given that companies like Meta have vast resources, why aren't they prepared to have a local office?
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: I mean, it's not exactly going to dent their budgets, is it?
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: One of the reasons why these companies are not very keen is they don't want to be controlled because the whole idea of social media platform is to have a free-flowing discussion debate.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: But at the same time, don't forget, even in a country like Nepal, more than 50% of the population, they have access to Internet, they use Internet, and mainly 80% of the traffic is through social media platforms.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: So it is incredibly important for the population, not only for people within.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: You have about 5 million Nepalese working in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: They communicate with their relatives and friends, these expatriate workers, through social media because it is cheaper.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: Doesn't cost them anything except for the internet charges.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: So that is where it plays a very crucial role.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: Within South Asia, it's not just Nepal, is it, that's introduced rules like this?
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: India has already set and established procedures in asking these companies to register and have offices in the country.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: And according to the social media platforms like X, India tops the countries among those countries which is asking the X to take down posts.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: And at the same time, Pakistan has also put in a lot of restrictions, especially for those people are saying it is criticising the government.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: They are being asked to regulate the social media platforms.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: So it is not just Nepal.
--:-- Ambarasan Ethirajan: The countries are increasingly seen as they want to see social media platforms are regulated and controlled.
--:-- Paul Moss: Ambarasan Ethirajan.
--:-- David Phillips: Governments are often quick to shout from the rooftops about successful military operations, but less so about missions which fail, and particularly if this failure is politically sensitive.
--:-- David Phillips: We all heard about the crack US Navy SEALs unit which killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.
--:-- David Phillips: There was an award-winning Hollywood film about it.
--:-- David Phillips: But six years ago, that same unit is thought to have carried out another mission in North Korea, one which allegedly failed and caused the death of innocent civilians.
--:-- David Phillips: Donald Trump was in his first presidency at the time, and the story only came to light through the work of two New York Times journalists, Dave Phillips and Matthew Cole.
--:-- David Phillips: David Phillips told my colleague Krupa Padi what the operation was meant to achieve and what went wrong.
--:-- David Phillips: The United States was in the middle of nuclear negotiations with North Korea and wanted to be able to listen in on Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea's conversations.
--:-- David Phillips: So it decided it would try to plant an electronic listening device in North Korean territory.
--:-- David Phillips: And that basically meant they were going to take a nuclear submarine to the edge of North Korea and send SEALs in on stealth mini submarines.
--:-- David Phillips: They would go to shore and try to plant this device.
--:-- David Phillips: What steps were taken and what went wrong?
--:-- David Phillips: Well, they thought, the Navy SEALs thought that they would be going into a deserted shore where they could sneak in and out carefully and not spot anyone.
--:-- David Phillips: But when they got to the shore, they realized they had missed a small boat that was floating very near their mini subs.
--:-- David Phillips: The SEALs on the shore were afraid this boat was going to recognize and discover their mini subs and so they opened fire on the boat
--:-- David Phillips: The SEALs then swam to this boat to make sure that everyone was dead
--:-- David Phillips: And they didn find any security force uniforms or weapons on this boat.
--:-- David Phillips: And they realized that in all likelihood, they had just killed two to three civilian fishermen.
--:-- David Phillips: And it may have affected United States and North Korean nuclear relations, which right afterwards fell apart and have never recovered.
--:-- David Phillips: There are risks, of course, for these individuals speaking out now.
--:-- David Phillips: Oh, sure. This is all still classified.
--:-- David Phillips: And so, you know, potentially discussing it as a crime.
--:-- David Phillips: And who knew about the operation in the first place?
--:-- David Phillips: Well, we don't know because that's a secret, but a very small group of people, probably SEALs and planners that helped.
--:-- David Phillips: The guys who drove the submarine probably knew a little bit.
--:-- David Phillips: And of course, the president.
--:-- Paul Moss: David Phillips.
--:-- Tom Bailey: Older listeners in Australia might well recognise that as a famous advert broadcast in the 1980s.
--:-- Tom Bailey: The song was upbeat, but the message was a deadly serious one.
--:-- Tom Bailey: Protect your skin from the sun to avoid getting skin cancer and, perhaps most importantly, wear sun cream.
--:-- Tom Bailey: Australia, by some measures, has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world.
--:-- Tom Bailey: So it's come as quite a shock there to discover that some of the most popular brands of sun cream on sale do not actually provide the level of protection they claim.
--:-- Tom Bailey: Our reporter Tom Bailey has been following the story and told me first how this failure was discovered.
--:-- Tom Bailey: This was an investigation carried out by the consumer advocacy group Choice Australia.
--:-- Tom Bailey: And what they actually did was they took 20 of Australia's leading sunscreens, bought them and sent them off to a laboratory for independent testing.
--:-- Tom Bailey: And what they actually found was that 16 of these 20 did not meet the skin protection level that it stated on the label.
--:-- Tom Bailey: So effectively, people who thought they'd taken measures to protect themselves to the level they required, in fact, it appears were not.
--:-- Tom Bailey: Do we have any idea what was wrong with these sunscreens?
--:-- Tom Bailey: Is it sort of not enough of the active ingredient, whatever that is, that stops the sun's rays getting through?
--:-- Tom Bailey: Yeah, it's still quite unclear the kind of chemistry of this and exactly what the issue is here.
--:-- Tom Bailey: But what's come out recently is that five of these were actually produced in the same factory.
--:-- Tom Bailey: So that's obviously raised a lot more questions here.
--:-- Tom Bailey: Now, it is really important to say that while these products did underperform in the tests, most did still actually offer moderate protection.
--:-- Tom Bailey: But understandably, this has really shaken consumer confidence and sparked a pretty big backlash from consumers in Australia.
--:-- Tom Bailey: Skin cancer is a particular problem in Australia.
--:-- Tom Bailey: That's partly because it's very sunny and also a very outdoor lifestyle.
--:-- Tom Bailey: And there's been this huge campaign persuading people they must wear sunscreen to avoid skin cancer.
--:-- Tom Bailey: How has this gone down?
--:-- Tom Bailey: Yeah, as you say, Australia is somewhere you conjured up images of beaches and an athletic lifestyle and kids from a very young age are taught of the dangers of sun damage and sunscreen.
--:-- Tom Bailey: So this obviously has been a real jolt to many, many Australians to learn this.
--:-- Tom Bailey: The BBC, we've been hearing from people affected by this.
--:-- Tom Bailey: One woman who was diagnosed with a low-grade skin cancer last year has spoken to the BBC of the real anger she felt, really, when she learned that the sunscreen she'd been using for many, many years was one of these identified as unreliable.
--:-- Tom Bailey: And it's, as I say, really has sparked quite a backlash from customers.
--:-- Tom Bailey: As for the manufacturers, well, some of them initially questioned these findings and insisted their products did provide the levels of protection they state.
--:-- Tom Bailey: Some have said they carried out their own independent tests and that backs up their side of this.
--:-- Tom Bailey: Others have paused product sales and some have actually been withdrawn from the market altogether as further testing is carried out.
--:-- Tom Bailey: But what they also point out is this is actually a really difficult thing to do.
--:-- Tom Bailey: Everyone's skin responds differently and there's factors such as sweat and makeup and all sorts of things that make measuring how a sunscreen is going to react to different people's skin is really, really difficult.
--:-- Tom Bailey: So they're saying, look, this is a tricky thing to get right, but obviously we do need to get this right and further testing will be carried out.
--:-- Tom Bailey: Regulatory bodies and industry stakeholders are at a huge pressure to ensure more transparency and improve testing standards but in the meantime health officials the message they're really really keen to get out is that though these findings are unsettling and consumer confidence has been shaken it is really important that people going out in the sun do continue to wear sunscreen.
--:-- Paul Moss: Tom Bailey.
--:-- Dr. James Smith: I'm doing this, I'm participating in the flotilla because I have friends and colleagues in Gaza and you know I'm in contact with them every day and nothing thus far has made any significant difference to the material conditions in Gaza.
--:-- Dr. James Smith: Day on day the situation is getting worse.
--:-- Dr. James Smith: Now, you're on a flotilla, you're going to be sailing towards Gaza.
--:-- Dr. James Smith: But realistically, the flotilla hasn't really got any chance of getting to Gaza, has it?
--:-- Dr. James Smith: We are very well aware that the flotilla is facing one of the most well-resourced and determined militaries that has acted with impunity, not only over the course of the last two years, but for several decades.
--:-- Dr. James Smith: Over the course of the history of flotilla actions, there are some flotillas that have reached Gaza and they were able to bring humanitarian aid and also transfer patients in need of medical care out of Gaza.
--:-- Dr. James Smith: But they are the exception rather than the norm.
--:-- Dr. James Smith: I think that people are determined, of course, and are committed and are hopeful that we might reach Gaza.
--:-- Dr. James Smith: And of course, the kind of cascading effects of solidarity activists physically reaching Gaza are important to think about.
--:-- Dr. James Smith: But we're also very well aware that there is a very high likelihood of interception and detention.
--:-- Dr. James Smith: So do you have fear for your own personal safety?
--:-- Dr. James Smith: I think everyone is fearful for their safety, but these are risks that people are willing to take to show solidarity with Palestine and the Palestinian people through an act of direct action.
--:-- Dr. James Smith: Those risks are calculated.
--:-- Dr. James Smith: You know, among the flotilla participants, we have many people from very different walks of life, different ages, different backgrounds, and of course, from more than 40 or 50 different countries, if not more.
--:-- Dr. James Smith: People that feel very, very strongly that this is something that they have to do, that they are morally and politically obliged to do.
--:-- Paul Moss: Dr. James Smith.
--:-- Paul Moss: And that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.
--:-- Paul Moss: If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.
--:-- Paul Moss: The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.
--:-- Paul Moss: You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.
--:-- Paul Moss: Use the hashtag hash global news pod.
--:-- Paul Moss: This edition was mixed by Jack Wilfan and the producers were Alison Davies and Mickey Bristow.
--:-- Paul Moss: The editor is Karen Martin.
--:-- Paul Moss: I'm Paul Moss.
--:-- Paul Moss: Until next time, goodbye.
--:-- Asma Khalid: America is changing. And so is the world.
--:-- Asma Khalid: But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval.
--:-- Asma Khalid: It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
--:-- Asma Khalid: I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C.
--:-- Asma Khalid: I'm Tristan Redman in London.
--:-- Asma Khalid: And this is The Global Story.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
