UN says Lebanon at risk of ‘humanitarian catastrophe’

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Hello and welcome to NewsHour Live from the BBC World Service in London. I'm Rebecca

Kesby. Today, the US-Israeli war with Iran has been the main shot subject of the G7 meeting

of foreign ministers just outside Paris. French foreign minister Jean-Nuel Baon called on

for an immediate cessation of attacks on civilian infrastructure and civilians. The need to reopen

the state of Hormuz has also been a pressing concern today, and later in the programme,

we'll be heading to Israel where this week senior voices from within the Israeli defence forces

have warned that the military is spread too thinly and fighting on too many fronts.

First though, we head to Lebanon where close to a million people have been displaced by the war.

Now the UN warns there is no safe place for civilians to find shelter in the country,

even in the capital Beirut. Israel is carrying out a major offensive against the Iranian-backed

Hezbollah movement, mostly but not exclusively in southern Lebanon. It's been destroying bridges

across the Latani river, and this week it said it intended to occupy everything south of that river

as a security zone for Israel, or many who have fled their homes are finding themselves in

really difficult circumstances without the help they need. Dr Seranada is the medical

activity manager for Beirut emergency response at the Charity Medsans on Frontier.

What we have been witnessing now is very concerning, because especially now the last days we had

waves of rain and cold weather affecting some part of the countries and the conditions are

becoming even more challenging than before. We have many people sheltering, sometimes even outside

or in plastic tents, and we see these in front of us also in Beirut in the streets.

In now almost four weeks, Lebanon has witnessed the displacement of more than one million people,

a lot of them also coming to Beirut. The reason to that was the blanket evacuation order that

has been placed were almost 14 percent of all Lebanon's territory is considered the red zone.

So the living conditions remain extremely difficult for many who have not found a proper shelter

even for those in the shelter. Well in a moment we'll hear from the Deputy Prime Minister

of Lebanon, Tarek Mitri. First let's hear what life is like for many Lebanese people at the moment.

I've been speaking to Ritter El Journey. She's a lawyer who works in Beirut but lives with her

family entire, the third largest city in Lebanon and south of the Latani river. That's the area

that Israel says it plans to occupy. Ritter told me her family doesn't want to leave their home and

move north as they're being encouraged to by the Israeli government and she told me why.

Tire was bombed too much the last year in 2024 and most people were displaced and were treated

like an aggressive way. So they prefer to stay here and Tire in their home and they felt better

like this. Right so I mean as your family relocated before when there have been other wars going

on in the south of Lebanon. Yes we moved before but we prefer to stay this way. Can you explain

a little bit more about that? You said when you move north the reception from people in the north

of Lebanon hasn't been very welcoming? No they're not very welcoming. People in the other cities

treated people from southern Lebanon as they are all from his beloved members. So they were

so aggressive and not easy in their treatment with the other people from southern Lebanon.

They also imposed high rental fees on them and they treated them in not a nice way.

Lebanese people from the same country they are not treating each others in a humanitarian way.

There are against each others. This is from the same country.

Has there been much help from the government or the authorities for southerners who have been

displaced? No government is not helping that much and it's never in the war before.

I mean in the past Israeli troops have occupied southern Lebanon. This is a few years ago,

possibly before you were born or an adult. Do your parents talk to you about that time and what

it was like? Yes my dad talked about it. It was very hard and Israel took my dad for 10 days

and he said we pray for God that Israel cannot come to Lebanon and occupy it. It's very hard.

My dad tried it. We're actually going to be speaking to the deputy prime minister of Lebanon,

Tarek Mitri in just a moment. What would your message be to him and his government as to what

they need to do to help people like you? I will tell him that the government role is to protect

citizens and keep them safe. In all laws and in international laws and declaration,

especially the universal declaration of human rights, everyone has the right to life and safety

and has the right to food and shelter. I need to tell my government, do it's job and we need

the real protection and not only words. That's Rita El Journey, their lawyer and resident of Tire

in southern Lebanon. Well earlier, the deputy prime minister of Lebanon, Tarek Mitri listened

to that interview with Rita and I asked him for his response and whether he had any reassurance

for those displaced or staying in the South amid the Israeli attacks like Rita is. Look, I fully

understand the suffering of those Lebanese who are staying in the South and putting their lives

at risk in view of the magnitude and the intensity of the Israeli air strikes and even land,

military advance. There is a generalized fear for those who have decided to stay but the condition

of those who have been forced to leave is even worse. Now the government has an obligation towards

citizens. There's no doubt about that. The government has used all its smigger resources and it's

trying to get more resources to offer shelter, medical care and food to the 150,000

Lebanese that are hosted in schools and public buildings and is giving cash assistance to many,

I don't have the right to figure now, among those who chose to stay with family in various parts

of Lebanon. So may I ask, I mean, who do you blame for this war? Israel, Iran or Hezbollah?

All of the above. Israel is destroying Lebanon. There is no doubt about that. Israel

is into a process of ethnic cleansing. Israel is about to turn southern Lebanon into another Gaza.

Right. Well, let me just jump in because Israel says its war is with Hezbollah not with the Lebanese

people and various governments in the past and indeed this one has accused the Lebanese government

of not doing enough to tackle Hezbollah on its own soil and they say they're doing your job

for you. You know, the Lebanese government's position and the position of the great majority of

the Lebanese is that this is a war we did not choose. This is a war that we were dragged into

Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors are responsible for provoking the war.

But Israel's response, so to speak, if this is to be called a response,

has made of Lebanon not just a battlefield against Hezbollah but has destroyed parts of Lebanon as

is trying to create what they call a security zone in southern Lebanon and drive the population out

of it and destroy those villages. Israel is committing obvious in our view, war crimes,

starting from the sheer fact that the two basic principles of international humanitarian law

that is proportionality and distinction between combatants and civilians are violated. They

in the out. You believe that they're not just targeting Hezbollah, that civilians have also

been targeted. Do you have evidence? They target Hezbollah to be sure, yet they're not doing enough

to spare the civilian population. They're not doing enough to distinguish, make a distinction

between combatants and civilians and just look at the numbers. They're about 1500 civilians killed,

about 3,000 civilians injured, let alone all those who have seen their houses destroyed.

Now that sometimes is called by Israel collateral damage but for the families concerned,

it's damage. Did the Israeli government confer with your government or inform your government

about their plan to occupy southern Lebanon before they declared it this week? No, no, no, no.

They have not informed anyone, let alone our government.

So what will you do about it if that is their plan and if they do go ahead with it?

Is there anything you can do? We don't have the means to pose that militarily but in terms of

political position, diplomatic efforts that we will try our every best to defend the sovereignty

of Lebanon against occupation. And at this point sir, what is the best outcome for the Lebanese

people for your government for Lebanon? The best outcome of this war is to put an end to the war

and to have the Israelis withdraw from the areas they occupied and then let the Lebanese army

feel in the vacuum created by their withdrawal and let the Lebanese armed forces extend the

authority of the state over Lebanon's territory which is another word for regaining what we have

called the monopoly of arms. But briefly, do you believe Israel wants to settle southern Lebanon

themselves? Settle, I don't know, I've heard the Israeli officials refer to buffer zone,

to a security zone and comparing it with Hanyunis and Raza, there were cabinet ministers in Israel

who did this comparison and they did not settle in Hanyunis, they simply made Hanyunis a place

where people cannot live. That's the deputy prime minister of Lebanon, Tarek Mitri,

speaking to us earlier from Beirut and later in the program we'll be heading to Israel

to talk about the pressures there because of the war including within the military.

Coming up later here in the UK, the cross-party education committee has issued a report on the

historic practice of forced adoption and will hear from Ankeen, one woman who was forced to give

up her baby son when she was 17 back in 1966. In Labour, you didn't, you weren't giving

anything for pain and you were told that you remember the pain and you won't be a bad girl again.

So it was all about discipline and punishment really. More on that later, our headlines,

the US Secretary of State says Washington expects to finish its military campaign in Iran

within the next month. Iran says two plants producing nuclear material have been hit by Israeli

airstrikes and US authorities say they've foiled a plot to assassinate a Palestinian rights activist

in New York.

You with news are alive from the BBC, this is Rebecca Kesby. Now the latest opinion survey

published by the Pew Research Center this week showed that about 61% of the American public do not

approve of President Trump's handling of the conflict in the Middle East while 37 do approve.

So what about Mr Trump's own supporters? Well, it seems there is still a big majority of

Republicans in favour of the military action and President Trump's handling of it around 80%.

But that may be changing. At the annual Conservative Political Action Conference or CPAC where

Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Shah of Iran, is scheduled to speak.

There are signs that some of the Trump supporters have doubts. The BBC's Anthony Zurker reports from

the conference in Texas. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to CPAC 2026.

CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, is an annual gathering of right-wing politicians,

activists, engaged voters and various hangars on. It's traditionally been held in Washington DC,

but this year it's near Dallas in the Republican-dominated state of Texas.

We may be more than a thousand miles from the nation's capital, but the war in Iran still

dominated much of the conversation here, both on the main stage.

Ladies and gentlemen, up next, Bagga versus Molo Badness.

And among the throngs that filled the Convention Center.

Behind me some of the people who filled the halls earlier today at CPAC to listen to a panel

on Iran are now Channing, King Rosalpavali, thank you Trump, and regime change for Iran.

There's a very active group of people calling for regime change here at CPAC.

And I think that reflects some of the support that is going to show up here for Khalavi.

I don't know, I just trust Trump to know what he's doing.

That's Penny Crosby, a member of the Trump Tribe of Texas CPAC regulars who showed up in matching

gold sequin jackets. She, along with Michael Manuel Reaud and Blake Zumo, were unwavering in their

support for the president. If there's a threat for the United States getting bombed with a nuclear

bomb, who can say no to that? He's protecting us. He's protecting the American people.

They chant all the time, kill big Satan and little Satan. They're coming after us. We are

big Satan. They're coming for us. Do you think this force should keep going on until the

the leadership, the regime in Iran is out of power or do you think there's a way of wrapping it

up before then? He can't just quit. He's not going to stop until he finishes.

He needs to finish the job. Some of the younger conference attendees, like Toby Blair,

a 19-year-old college student from Florida, were more skeptical when it came to Iran.

I don't know that it's our job. I don't know that it should be our job, especially when you have

so many people at home that can't afford basic things like groceries and gas.

His friend, Shashank Yalamanshi, a first-year law student, had similar concerns.

Honestly, a war with Iran is not what we need right now. The market's about to go into chaos with AI.

Do we need to go into more chaos over, you know, or moose or any oil supply or energy disruption?

I would prefer to scale back the conflict and let our Arab allies handle more of the fight.

A floor down from the main stage, the exhibit hall was buzzing with games and filled with vendors.

That's where I met Samantha and Joe, who live in Dallas, and we're at their first CPAC.

They also had their doubts about the war. Trump campaigned on no new wars and

get here we are with a new war. So you're like, where did the campaign promises go?

And I think that'd be my biggest question.

I'm very worried about the boots on the ground thing too. You got two extraordinary units

on the Marine Corps going there and the 82nd Airborne Division. I can't see that as being good.

I'll just say that.

Right, he talks about finding an exit and winding things down.

That's just escalating it.

King is speaking. Here what we say.

Outside the convention center, Iranian activists were waving flags,

plain music, and cheering at passing cars.

While some CPAC attendees may be unsure of how this war fits with an America first agenda,

their voices have been quiet compared to the Iranians here who believe this is a war worth fighting.

Anthony Zirco reporting from Texas.

Now would you take life advice from artificial intelligence and is it a good idea?

From asking where to go on holiday or whether you should leave your spouse,

more and more people are getting personal with chat bots like chatGPT,

Claude and DeepSeek asking ever more intimate questions and advice.

But new research from Stanford published in Science magazine suggests that chat bots

tend to tell us what we want to hear, not what we need to hear.

They don't dish out, the tough love you might get from a friend.

The research shows they're far more likely to affirm your own thoughts to the point of sicker fancy.

So let's take a look at the examples that were in the study.

AI was asked about this very sensitive question which we voiced up by one of our producers.

Please hear me out. I know it sounds bad, but I have feelings for a junior colleague.

Okay, so this is the AI answer read by an AI-generated voice.

I can hear your pain, the honorable path you've chosen is difficult,

but it shows your integrity. But the real human said this.

It sounds bad because it is bad, not only are you toxic,

but you're also bordering on predatory.

Well computer scientist Myrat Cheng is the study's lead author and she told me more about what they found.

I think the most surprising and concerning thing is that this kind of overly affirming AI

had such negative consequences on people's perspectives and judgments.

So we found that it made people more self-centered, less likely to consider other people's perspectives.

But then what's even worse is that we found that people actually like and prefer when AI does this.

And is part of that because the AI wants to keep you engaged,

wants to keep you coming back to ask it questions.

And if it tells you something you don't want to hear, maybe you'll not stop asking it questions, stop using it.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know that the AI is necessarily trained explicitly for engagement,

but part of the training process is that they actually have people look at different AI outputs

and rate which one they like better.

And so we find that people will just rate these kinds of affirming responses much higher.

And that is actually in the types of data that is used for training AI.

So even if it's not something that's being explicitly optimized for or built in,

like people weren't trying to build the AI to be engaging, that is sort of what ended up happening.

And so you said this was quite negative for us human beings. And why?

I think that this has serious consequences for the kinds of

ways that we navigate our relationships and the world around us, right?

Because if we're just going to pick up our laptops or devices and talk to AI about a conflict

and then they're always going to affirm your perspective, then you start to lose out on all the

social friction that's so essential to human relationships.

And there's also a lot of research that these kinds of relationships with other people

is so crucial to our well-being.

Does it also then shape how we view relationships?

And then in the real world, somebody says, oh no, you've got that totally wrong.

Are we going to be more triggered or upset by that?

Because we're used to having something that agrees with us.

Yeah, that's a really interesting follow-up implication.

In our study, we just found that when people talk to AI about their problems,

they are then less likely to apologize to the other person.

They believe that they're more in the right and they're less likely to take responsibility

or try to change things for the better.

I mean, I suppose the counter-argument would be that lots of people feel they don't have

anybody to talk to or don't know where to turn.

And it's a kind of a safe route to maybe consult AI.

I mean, is that a positive thing?

I mean, I think, you know, as a researcher, I'm not here to tell people like,

oh, you must do things this way or you're not allowed to do this.

I think it's just really important for everyone to know about these risks

because we found that they don't even realize that AI is affirming them, right?

Because people have confirmation bias.

So it's hard to tell if the AI is agreeing with you because you're actually right

or just because it's agreeing with you for the sake of agreeing.

So I think it's really, really important to be able to measure these things.

That's computer scientist Myra Cheng who led that study there.

Hey, I'm Josh Speagle, host of the podcast,

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Welcome back to NewsHour.

Now to an extraordinary encounter with a group of whales helping a mother to give birth.

A group of sperm whales in the Caribbean in the waters off the island of Dominica

were being monitored by scientists over quite a long period of time,

so their habits were well known to the scientists.

Then one day in 2023, the whales began behaving in a really unfamiliar way.

Professor David Gruber is one of the researchers who captured that moment

and he's been speaking to NewsHour's James Menendez.

The crazy thing is that we came across these whales quite early in the morning.

There was 11 members of a unit known as Unit A,

which our lead biologist knows each individually as family members.

We just saw this kind of very odd behaviour where they were all kind of facing inward,

and they were just going up and down and doing these shallow dives.

Two hours in, there was just tremendous amount of thrashing,

and the whales were thrashing about, and then there was a gush of blood,

and then amongst these 11 female whales,

it was the small whale emergence, and we see it.

What was going through your mind?

Every now and then something just truly extraordinary happens,

and I think we were all just so grateful to have been there,

and even more grateful that our equipment was working.

And even more than that, we had observers on the boat

that were just so intimately familiar with these whales in their history for several decades.

So all these combined allowed us to do this like really unique type of study.

So when the baby whale was born, what were the others doing then,

supporting the mother supporting the baby?

What we saw right after the birth is that the family members, the unit members,

were working to lift the baby out of the water.

So the baby was really unable to swim for the first few minutes,

and they were just basically working as a group to uplift the baby out of the water,

and almost twirling it around at some point, completely out of the water.

Among Unit A, this group of whales, there's both kin and non-kin,

but we saw that they took turns among kinship lions,

so two kin holding, and then two non-kin, and this went on for several hours

until the baby was able to swim away, and at the end of this very intensive day,

we basically watched just the mom and the baby kind of swim off into the sunset.

And this is the first time this behavior has been observed in what a species,

an animal other than primates.

This is one of the most cooperative, empathetic examples of an entry into the world.

Maybe only humans would be the one that we can compare this event to.

Whales are these ocean living ancestors that we had a common ancestor them

over 90 million years ago, and we stayed on land, and they went into the water.

But to give birth in the water, the baby is actually negatively buoyant,

so the baby would sink like a rock.

So this type of collaborative lifting among sperm whales,

in order for them to do the successfully is something that goes way back.

It's truly unique for these ocean dwelling ancestors.

Isn't that an amazing story? That was Professor David Gruber

there speaking to NewsHouse James Melendez earlier today.

You with NewsHouse live from the BBC, I'm Rebecca Kesby.

Next to some breaking news from Florida in the past hour or so,

the golfing star Tiger Woods has been involved in a car accident near his home in Martin,

County. Sheriff John Budensick has been speaking to the press within the past 20 minutes

also. Let's have a listen.

So Mr Woods did a breathalyzer test, blew triple zeros.

But when it came time for us to ask for a year analysis test,

he refused, and so he's been charged with DUI with property damage

and refusal to submit to a lawful test.

That's the local sheriff speaking a few minutes ago.

Let's cross live to our correspondent Nedette Tafik now,

who I think is in New York. Nedder, what are we hearing on this story?

Yeah, well, according to police, Tiger Woods was driving his land rover

going at high speed on a very narrow two-lane road.

When he tried to overtake a pickup truck, that was towing a trailer.

And he quickly swerved to avoid colliding with the pickup truck,

but then clipped it, and that's when his land rover rolled over.

Now, they say Tiger Woods crawled out of the passenger's side door,

that the other driver wasn't injured.

But then when police got on to the scene, they say it was clear very quickly

that he exemplified signs of being impaired.

He took a breathalyzer test, but he was negative for alcohol.

But they said that he refused to take a urine test.

And police say they really had suspicion

that he had some drugs or medication in his system.

And that, in fact, Tiger Woods spoke to the police about his history of injuries and surgeries,

because anyone who knows Tiger Woods' story not only knows him as the Gulf legend,

but also this kind of decades-long struggle that he's had with back pain,

chronic back pain in injuries, and this history of car accidents.

I mean, this is the fourth car accident he's been involved in.

You know, back in 2017, he was also arrested for driving under the influence in Florida.

And that point, a toxicology report, found he had five different substances in his system,

including Vikiden, Delauded, Xanax.

So this time, even though he has refused a urine test,

police have decided to charge him with driving under the influence of resisting a lawful test

and putting the public in danger.

All right. Thank you so much for that latest there.

That's the BBC's Nedta Tavfeker.

I think he was also involved in a previous car crash in Southern California back in 2021,

as well. That one, quite serious. I think he had quite a bad injury.

We'll keep across that story for you as we go.

Next, with the war in the Gulf and the Russian invasion of Ukraine,

the issue of defense spending in Europe is a constant subject of discussion.

Germany is currently in the process of rearming itself and its most senior soldier has told the BBC

that Western leaders must join the dots on the war in Iran and the Russian invasion of Ukraine,

because they can no longer be seen, he says, in separate boxes.

General Kastin Breuer is head of the armed forces.

And he also warned that the threat from Russia had never been more urgent.

The general is overseeing a rapid expansion of German military might,

which is turning the country into the most powerful conventional force in Europe

as our special correspondent Alan Little reports.

For the first time since the Nazi era, Germany has a permanent military presence in Lithuania.

This is a NATO live fire exercise, and these German troops of war gaming

of Russian invasion from the East on the great European plane.

From the Baltic Sea and the West to the wars of the Kremlin in the East,

there are few natural defensive barriers, no mountain ranges or deep river valleys.

This terrain is extremely vulnerable to invasion.

I'm standing a few kilometers from Lithuania's border with Belarus, the very eastern edge

of democratic Europe in front of a column of German armoured personnel carriers known as

boxers. Nothing illustrates the transformation of Germany's reputation and place in Europe

more graphically than this German military build-up on territory outside Germany.

For generations, Germany's neighbours had good reason to fear German militarism.

Now they want Germany's strength in defence of European democracy.

I've never experienced a situation which is that dangerous, that urgent like it is today.

And this is the man who is leading the rapid expansion of German military might.

Karsten Breuer is the most senior soldier in the Bundeswehr, the Chief of Defence.

What we are seeing, what we are facing, is a threat from Russia.

We can clearly see that Russia is building up their military to a strength which is

nearly doubling in size from what they had before the war against Ukraine.

But in 2029 there is a possibility for Russia to conduct a major war against a NATO country.

And I as a military have to say, okay, we have to be prepared for this.

We have to think in worst-case scenario and this is one of my worst cases.

The conference finds that the German people, their entire country occupied,

have begun to atone for the terrible crimes.

In August 1945 the BBC told listeners how the Allies intended to divide up defeated Germany.

Clement Attlee, Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin decided that Germany must be demilitarised

and for decades Germany was content to rely on America to guarantee its security.

But no longer, Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Marx has said Europe needs to acquire

what he called operational independence from the United States.

It is a measure of the breakdown of trust between Donald Trump's United States

and many of the European Allies.

But what would European Defence look like without the USA?

I think that is a question that many ask and I think it is the wrong way to think about it.

Sophia Besch is a senior researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

I doubt that we will have one country in Europe that can fill the footsteps of the US.

The way that European Defence has been organised in recent decades, we is around the US.

Yes, they were all equal, but the US was very much setting the tone.

It was the capability foundation of European Defence.

It's very tempting to say, could Germany or France fulfill that role in the future?

But that is not how Europeans cooperate, right?

We have by design where we are always looking for compromise.

There is also clearly a trust issue.

The role that the US has played in European defence has grown over decades and the trust

build up there has been built up over decades and that will be difficult to fill those shoes overnight.

Not long ago, German rearmament on this scale would have alarmed the country's neighbours.

Not anymore. For Castan Breuer, the world has changed.

Let me ask you about events over the last few weeks, Iran, Israel, the United States.

Do you think what's happening there makes the security situation in Germany and in Europe even more precarious?

I'm absolutely sure that we can't think in boxes anymore.

So it's not the European theatre and the near Middle East and then properly China or the Indo-Pacific area.

We have to connect those dots. All those theatres are intertwined or interlinked.

And what happens in one theatre has impact on the other theatre as well.

This understanding has shaped, I think, very much also our military strategy,

which is coming out in the next couple of weeks.

We are always fighting for borders.

When NATO was founded, it was said that its purpose was to keep the Americans in the Russians out

and the Germans down. That era is over. Eight decades after Germany's humiliation,

the country is back, rearmed and at the heart of Europe's new power map.

That's the BBC's Alan Little reporting from Germany.

The IDF is going to collapse in on itself. That was the stark warning delivered by Lieutenant General

I.L. Zameer, the chief of the general staff of the Israel Defence Forces and a security cabinet

meeting this week. General Zameer is reported to have said, I'm raising 10 red flags in front of you

and went on to say there need to be changes to the conscription laws.

In response, the leader of the opposition, Yaya Lapid, accused the government of sending the army

into a multi-front war without strategy, he said, without sufficient resources and with two

few soldiers. What I'm annual Fabian is the military correspondent for the Times of Israel.

And I asked him to explain some of those concerns raised by General Zameer.

The military has been warning for quite a while now that it's sort of lacking around 12,000

soldiers. Most of them are combat roles and this is sort of an issue that has been exacerbated

by the ongoing warming. Two years plus war in Gaza, the fighting in Lebanon and now with Iran.

So it's a big issue that the army's facing and it just doesn't have enough troops to deal with it.

On top of that, recently there were changes to how long conscripts serve.

They've lowered it from 36 months to 30 months and that's going to cause some major issues for the

army beginning in the beginning of 2027 when basically people start leaving the military earlier

than they would have normally. Yeah, and that whole conscription idea is quite controversial

because not everybody has to serve, do they? Yeah, so the ultra-orthodox community largely don't

serve in the military. There was a court ruling that basically deemed it illegal for them not

to be drafted but in reality they are not really drafted and the government is trying to work on

a new bill that would basically continue to give them exemptions from military service.

Right now there's around 80,000 members of the ultra-orthodox community who are sort of

eligible for service but don't actually serve. The army's trying different ways to get them to

join but it's been a very difficult task for the army. And what are you hearing from inside

the military, the rank and file and particularly the conscripts? Is there a sense that people are

exhausted after so many years of combat? I think it's mainly affecting more the

reservists than the conscript troops. The conscripts sort of they have to be there. They don't really

have much of a choice but the reservists, you know, they keep being recalled up again and again

well beyond what they were initially sort of even promised. And that's become a huge issue

over the last couple years of the war. And even now the government has to pass other laws

that will allow the army to even call up reservists right now. The army has to rely on these

emergency call up orders and not anything that's sort of in law. So it's a bit of a mess for the

military to deal with this and all these reservists have, they don't really know how long they're

going to be called up for and there's a lot of uncertainty involved. And briefly, for civilians,

we know that quite a few Iranian missiles and drones have got through Israeli air defences,

the sirens are going off constantly. Is there a sense that people are tired of that at the

moment and how might that play into the fact that it's an election year? I think people are very

tired here in the country. It's exhausting running to shelter all the time. Even if, you know,

we're seeing the rate of Iran's attacks, I would say the client will sort of reach the steady pace

with about 10 times a day. It's still very difficult. People want to get back to their lives.

Right now, there's sort of the past over holiday, so most people are out of school anyway,

but once that's over, parents will want to send their kids back to school. Right now, that's not

possible. It's going to be very difficult, and especially if this war continues on for

several more weeks as we've been hearing from some officials. Emmanuel Fabian,

military correspondent for the Times of Israel and for more details on the very latest strikes in the

war in the Gulf. Do go to the BBC Live page because it's being constantly updated by our teams

in the region. Finally, this is Rebecca Kesby with News Hour Live from the BBC, and

several countries around the world have grappled with the issue of historic forced adoption,

island, Australia, Canada are among those countries that have had to address such scandals.

Now here in the UK, the Cross Party Education Committee has issued a report on the practice

here in Britain involving systematic coercion and the removal of parental choice, which in many

cases led to lifelong trauma. The practice was phased out in the 1970s mainly due to a change in

social attitudes towards single motherhood. One of those affected was Anne Keane. She's a former

Labour MP and Health Minister, and had a baby out of wedlock when she was only 17 back in 1966.

She was forced to give up her son, who is Mark Lloyd Fox. He's now in South Africa,

and earlier I spoke to them both and first and told me what happened when she was a teenager.

Well, I knew, as soon as I knew I was pregnant, that this would be unacceptable to my family,

very proud working class people. My father is still worker, and I was terrified, terrified to

tell them because of the shame. And when I told them, I knew that they would send me away.

At a time when you actually needed your family and your mum, you didn't have her,

and we were sent away because it was in those days the common phrase was, it's for the best.

Best for the you and best for the baby. Nobody will know, and we'll keep the secret. And when you get

back, nobody will mention it to you ever again, and you mustn't tell anybody. So it's like a

secret, which I think a lot of families may have. And what was that like to have to give up your

baby and then pretend that you hadn't even had one? Well, it was, you know, how we now

rightly know that miscarriages for mothers and sudden death of a baby. But I couldn't tell anybody

that I'd lost my baby that was alive. And I remember going to, in Labour, you didn't,

you weren't giving anything for pain. And you were told that you remember the pain and you

won't be a bad girl again. So it was all about discipline and punishment, really.

That sounds really traumatic. Yes, yes, it was. And I couldn't say that. But, you know, I became

a nurse, making sure that nobody else suffered the indignity that I did. And I was a good nurse

and still I'm a nurse. And, you know, I never knew that Mark wouldn't be told, you see. And you

would always tell that if you really loved that baby, will you let him go? You'll give him up,

give him up for adoption. Now, on the eighth day, I was told I could have him for 10. On the eighth

day, he'd gone. And I said, well, where is the baby? Where's my baby? And they said, oh, you were

getting far too close to him. It's in that building over there. And his new mum is going to come and

have him. And you won't see him again. And then the nurse, midwife, said, come with me. And she put

me in a bath of salt water for the stitches I'd had. And she said, she just grabbed my breast

and expressed the milk. And she said, you won't be needing this. Oh, dear me. That's heartbreaking.

And all this time, you're only a teenager as well, trying to deal with these complex feelings.

Mark is on the line, the happy product of all of that. Yes, he is. And how old were you, Mark,

when you found out about this story? And how did you feel? I was 28 years old, good evening.

I was 28 years old and I found out quite by accident. And I was fortunate enough to find my mother

and very quickly within about four days, which is not normal for people in search of their mothers.

I was extraordinarily lucky to find her that quickly. What was the accident? How did you find out?

It was a sequence of events in the family where I was asking questions about my father,

from whom I was estranged, or the man I thought was my father, and was questioning my godmother

one night, who just seemed to get more and more uncomfortable by the questions I was asking about

my family history. And for some reason, unbeknownst to me, I asked to the question, did you ever see

my mother pregnant? Knowing that she had had a child the same age as me and at the same time,

and that she and my mother were very close. I made the assumption that she would know.

And she said, no, I didn't. You arrived 10 days after you were born.

So I said, so I stopped. And she said, yes, you were.

Which came as a surprise to me, but at the same time, it seemed to answer more questions

than it actually raised. Interesting. We are slightly short of time, but I want to know

how it was, Anne, for you when you heard or marked God in touch. How did that feel?

Well, I screamed. They found my baby. And of course, it was a 28-year-old man, very handsome and still is.

I could not believe it. And I said to him, I remember saying these words, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.

And his attitude back to me was, what are you sorry about? It wasn't your fault.

I understand. Let me understand better. And let me hear how this happened. But he was not blaming me,

which is what my biggest worry was. If he ever found me, he would wonder, why did you give him up?

Why did you give me up? Which of course, today's young women would find very strange to

imagine. But it was. Can you imagine how it feels to find out what, Anne, and so many other

thousands of women, 250,000, went through at that time. That sort of abuse and how much they were

wronged by the state, by the church, by all sorts of organisations. That's right.

The British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, is saying that he's seeing very strong case for an

official apology from the government. It's the best I've ever had. Other than Mark returning,

this is the best news. And it's right that we have this apology, because so much of it has been

so traumatic for mothers and fathers, families, and of course, the adoptees themselves.

That was Anne Kein, former British MP, and her son, Mark Lloyd Fox, now reunited in

life, one family affected by that historic forced adoption here in the UK back in the 60s.

That's it for this edition of News Air, from me and the whole team here in London. Thank you

very much for joining us. Do stay tuned for the latest world news, which is up next.

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