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The UK media watchdog on Friday sanctioned the BBC for a Gaza documentary whose child narrator was later revealed to be the son of Hamas’s former deputy minister of agriculture, branding it “materially misleading”.The broadcaster earlier this year apologised for “serious flaws” in the making of “Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone” and pulled it from its platform after a backlash.The broadcaster said it shared the blame for the “unacceptable” flaws with UK production company Hoyo Films.Ofcom said the programme had been a serious breach of its broadcasting code because of the “potential to erode the very high levels of trust audiences would have expected in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war.””This is particularly pertinent in the case of a public service broadcaster such as the BBC,” it added.As a sanction, the BBC will be required to broadcast a statement of the watchdog’s findings at a later date, it said.The BBC said it accepted Ofcom’s ruling because the documentary, initially broadcast on February 17, had failed to disclose the relationship.”We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom’s decision in full,” it said.”We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised,” it added.

Iraqi farmer Umm Ali has watched her poultry die as salinity levels in the country’s south hit record highs, rendering already scarce water unfit for human consumption and killing livestock.”We used to drink, wash and cook with water from the river, but now it’s hurting us,” said Umm Ali, 40, who lives in the once watery Al-Mashab marshes of southern Iraq’s Basra province.This season alone, she said brackish water has killed dozens of her ducks and 15 chickens.”I cried and grieved, I felt as if all my hard work had been wasted,” said the widowed mother of three.Iraq, a country heavily impacted by climate change, has been ravaged for years by drought and low rainfall.Declining freshwater flows have raised salt and pollution levels, particularly further south where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers converge before spilling into the Gulf.”We haven’t seen such high levels of salinity in 89 years,” Iraq’s water ministry spokesman Khaled Shamal said.Last month, salinity levels recorded in central Basra province soared to around 29,000 parts per million compared to 2,600 ppm last year, according to a report from the ministry.Freshwater should contain less than 1,000 ppm of dissolved salts, while ocean water salinity levels are around 35,000 ppm, according to the US Geological Survey.- Dead buffalo -The Tigris and Euphrates converge at Basra’s Shatt al-Arab waterway “laden with pollutants accumulated along their course”, said Hasan al-Khateeb, an expert from Iraq’s University of Kufa.In recent weeks, the Euphrates has seen its lowest water levels in decades, and Iraq’s artificial lake reserves are at their lowest in recent history.Khateeb warned that the Shatt al-Arab’s water levels had plummeted and it was failing to hold back the seawater from the Gulf.Farmer Zulaykha Hashem, 60, said the water in the area had become very brackish this year, adding that she has to wait for the situation to improve in order to irrigate her crop of pomegranate trees, figs and berries.According to the United Nations, almost a quarter of women in Basra and nearby provinces work in agriculture.”We cannot even leave. Where would we go?” Hashem said, in a country where farmers facing drought and rising salinity often find themselves trapped in a cycle of water crisis. The UN’s International Organization for Migration, which documents climate-induced displacement in Iraq, has warned that increased water salinity is destroying palm groves, citrus trees and other crops.As of October last year, some 170,000 people were displaced in central and southern Iraq due to climate-related factors, according to the agency. Water scarcity pushed Maryam Salman, who is in her 30s, to leave nearby Missan province for Basra several years ago, hoping her buffalo could enjoy the Shatt al-Arab.Near her house, AFP saw three buffalo skeletons on the parched land, with locals saying the animals had died due to lack of water.Rising salinity is not the only problem now, said Salman, a mother of three children.=”Water is not available… neither summer nor winter,” she said.- Fewer fish -The Tigris and Euphrates originate in Turkey, and Iraqi authorities have repeatedly blamed dams across the border for significantly reducing their flows.Iraq receives less than 35 percent of its allocated share of water from the two rivers, according to authorities, in a country with inefficient water management systems after decades of war and neglect.Khateeb from the University of Kufa said that in addition to claiming its share of the rivers, Iraq must pursue desalination projects in the Shatt al-Arab.In July, the government announced a desalination project in Basra with a capacity of one million cubic meters per day.Local residents said the brackish water was also impacting fish stocks. Hamdiyah Mehdi said her husband, who is a fisherman, returns home empty-handed more frequently.She blamed the Shatt al-Arab’s “murky and salty water” for his short temper after long days without a catch, and for her children’s persistent rash.”It has been tough,” said Mehdi, 52, noting the emotional toll on the family as well as on their health and livelihood.”We take our frustrations out on each other.”

British authorities faced growing pressure Friday to overturn a ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending a European match at English club Aston Villa that Israel’s government branded “shameful”.Villa announced on Thursday that following advice from the police no away fans may attend the UEFA Europa League match with the Israeli club in Birmingham on November 6 due to “security concerns”.”Shameful decision! I call on the UK authorities to reverse this coward decision,” the foreign minister of Israel Gideon Saar wrote in a post on X.UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a keen football fan, also slammed the move, calling it “wrong” in a statement late Thursday.”We will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets. The role of the police is to ensure all football fans can enjoy the game, without fear of violence or intimidation,” Starmer wrote on X.Britain’s Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, whose brief includes sport, was set Friday to meet interior ministry officials and other stakeholders to “see if there’s a way through” the ban, a minister said.”The Prime Minister has said we will do everything we possibly can to resolve this issue,” Ian Murray told UK media.Villa said it received the instruction from the Safety Advisory Group (SAG), the body responsible for issuing safety certificates for every match at the club’s stadium, Villa Park.”The SAG have formally written to the club and UEFA to advise no away fans will be permitted to attend Villa Park for this fixture,” its statement said.”West Midlands Police have advised the SAG that they have public safety concerns outside the stadium bowl and the ability to deal with any potential protests on the night.” Villa said they were in “continuous dialogue” with the Israeli club and the local authorities “with the safety of supporters attending the match and the safety of local residents at the forefront of any decision”.- ‘Disgusting’ -Local police said on Thursday they had classified the fixture as “high risk” following a “thorough assessment”.”This decision is based on current intelligence and previous incidents, including violent clashes and hate crime offences that occurred during the 2024 UEFA Europa League match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv in Amsterdam,” a spokesperson for the West Midlands force said.Last November’s match between Dutch side Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv saw two days of violent clashes between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli fans.Supporters of the Israeli team were assaulted in Amsterdam in hit-and-run attacks.The attacks were the culmination of two days of skirmishes that also saw Maccabi fans chant anti-Arab songs, vandalise a taxi and pull down a Palestinian flag.Emily Damari, a British-Israeli who was captured during Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 and held captive for more than a year before being released in January, said the ban would stop her from going to watch Maccabi, the team she supports.”Football is a way of bringing people together irrespective of their faith, colour or religion, and this disgusting decision does the exact opposite,” she said in a statement.Maccabi Tel Aviv chief executive Jack Angelides told BBC radio the team had travelled to other countries where he said the sentiment is “not so kind towards Israeli teams” but the police “were out in force” and there were no incidents.

Nearly 80 percent of the world’s poorest, or about 900 million people, are directly exposed to climate hazards exacerbated by global warming, bearing a “double and deeply unequal burden,” the United Nations warned Friday.”No one is immune to the increasingly frequent and stronger climate change effects like droughts, floods, heat waves, and air pollution, but it’s the poorest among us who are facing the harshest impact,” Haoliang Xu, acting administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, told AFP in a statement.COP30, the UN climate summit in Brazil in November, “is the moment for world leaders to look at climate action as action against poverty,” he added.According to an annual study published by the UNDP together with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, 1.1 billion people, or about 18 percent of the 6.3 billion in 109 countries analyzed, live in “acute multidimensional” poverty, based on factors like infant mortality and access to housing, sanitation, electricity and education.Half of those people are minors.One example of such extreme deprivation cited in the report is the case of Ricardo, a member of the Guarani Indigenous community living outside Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia’s largest city.Ricardo, who earns a meager income as a day laborer, shares his small single-family house with 18 other people, including his three children, parents and other extended family. The house has only one bathroom, a wood- and coal-fired kitchen, and none of the children are in school.”Their lives reflect the multidimensional realities of poverty,” the report said.- Prioritizing ‘people and the planet’ -Two regions particularly affected by such poverty are sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia — and they are also highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.The report highlights the connection between poverty and exposure to four environmental risks: extreme heat, drought, floods, and air pollution.”Impoverished households are especially susceptible to climate shocks as many depend on highly vulnerable sectors such as agriculture and informal labor,” the report said. “When hazards overlap or strike repeatedly, they compound existing deprivations.”As a result, 887 million people, or nearly 79 percent of these poor populations, are directly exposed to at least one of these threats, with 608 million people suffering from extreme heat, 577 million affected by pollution, 465 million by floods, and 207 million by drought.Roughly 651 million are exposed to at least two of the risks, 309 million to three or four risks, and 11 million poor people have already experienced all four in a single year.”Concurrent poverty and climate hazards are clearly a global issue,” the report said.And the increase in extreme weather events threatens development progress. While South Asia has made progress in fighting poverty, 99.1 percent of its poor population exposed to at least one climate hazard.The region “must once again chart a new path forward, one that balances determined poverty reduction with innovative climate action,” the report says.With Earth’s surface rapidly getting warmer, the situation is likely to worsen further and experts warn that today’s poorest countries will be hardest hit by rising temperatures.”Responding to overlapping risks requires prioritizing both people and the planet, and above all, moving from recognition to rapid action,” the report said.