BBC News Briefing

24 September, 2024

Jules Darmanin

Hello. Today we're covering the displacement of thousands of Lebanese people from the south of the country to its capital Beirut, as strikes between Hezbollah and Israel continue across the border. I'm also sharing a fascinating piece from Suhnwook Lee about ethnic Koreans migrating to South Korea more than a century after their ancestors left for the-then the Russian empire.

TOP OF THE AGENDA

Thousands flee homes in southern Lebanon

Roads were gridlocked late on Monday in the south of Beirut. Credit: EPA

Trafic on the road from the southern Lebanon to its capital Beirut is worsening as people flee the region where Israeli bombardment has continued overnight. According to the Lebanese health ministry's latest figures, 492 people were killed on Monday, including 35 children. Israel says it hit Hezbollah targets, but Lebanon says most of the sites were residential. Cross-border attacks keep escalating and sometimes hit beyond the zones that were already evacuated since the 7 October attacks and the onset of the Israel-Gaza war. Schools are shut in northern Israel and Lebanon entirely, and some school buildings in Beirut are now used as shelters for people who have fled their homes. This morning, Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets, damaging some buildings, according to the Israeli military. But the group's response "remains strangely muted", writes Paul Adams from northern Israel. "All of which begs the question of whether Hezbollah is unwilling or simply unable to unleash its larger arsenal," Paul Adams says.

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'No idea what to do': Lebanese people tell the BBC about their journey to Beirut and their anxiety for the future.

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The latest: Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati says he is heading to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly "in light of current developments" and to make further contacts. Our live page has more.

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Cancellations: Multiple airlines have suspended their flights to Beirut and Tel Aviv in light of the escalation.

WORLD HEADLINES

Mpox: India has reported its first case with the new mpox strain that has triggered a public health emergency alert by the World Health Organization.

Slumping growth: China's central bank has unveiled a major package of measures aimed at reviving the country's flagging economy.

Buffer zones: Anti-abortion protesters in Scotland can no longer stand near clinics while a similar legislation will become effective next month in England and Wales.

In South Korea: A man has confessed to murdering his girlfriend and hiding her body in cement - 16 years after she was reported as missing.

Back to Earth: Two Russian cosmonauts have left the International Space Station after spending more than a year in orbit, a record. Watch their landing here.

AT THE SCENE

Asan, South Korea

The families returning to South Korea after generations

Koryoins are descendants of ethnic Koreans who emigrated in the turn of the 20th Century and now mostly live in Central Asia. A growing number of Koryoin families are now living in South Korea, where the government sees them as a way of solving its population crisis.

Suhnwook Lee, BBC Korean

At first glance, Dunpo Elementary is no different from the thousands of elementary schools dotted across South Korea. But look just beneath the surface and the differences are stark. For one thing, most of the students in this school in Asan, an industrial city near the capital Seoul, may look ethnically Korean, but cannot speak the language. “If I don’t translate into Russian for them, the other kids won’t understand any of the lessons,” says 11-year-old Kim Yana. Yana speaks the best Korean in her class - but she and most of her 22 classmates are native Russian speakers.

Keep reading

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Crowdstrike to face questions over outage

A crowd of people stranded at an airport.

Thousands of flights were cancelled as a result of the Crowdstrike outage. Credit: EPA

On 19 July, doctors couldn't treat patients, travellers were unable to board their flights, and small businesses lost thousands in sales. Now an executive for Crowdstrike, the company responsible for the massive IT outage that froze shut millions of computers, will testify at the US Congress to explain what happened.

Read the story

A medieval bridge is erected over a river in Bamberg.

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

Beer Capital of the World

Munich is known for its Oktoberfest, but the true centre of German beer is Bamberg.

Read now

And finally...

A farmer in Northern Ireland is celebrating the arrival of four new barn owl chicks after 10 years of conservation work on his land to increase numbers of the birds. Cameras that have been installed inside their nests give us a bird's eye view of the owls' progress.

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– Jules

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