Janet Jalil

Our chief international correspondent Lise Doucette is in Tehran. She's been speaking to the senior lawmaker Ebrahim Azizi, the chairman of the Iranian parliament's national security and foreign policy committee. And a reminder, she's reporting on condition that none of her material is used on the BBC's Persian service. These restrictions apply to all international media organizations operating inside the country.

Senior Iranian lawmaker Ebrahim Azizi speaking to Lise Doucette. A gunman has shot dead his seven children plus another child in the US state of Louisiana. Their ages ranged from 1 to 14 years old. Two adults were also wounded in the attack in the town of Shreveport. The suspect, identified locally as Shama Elkins, was killed by police who had chased him after he tried to flee in a stolen car.

One of Britain's largest overseas military training areas is in Kenya, north of Nairobi. Thousands of British troops train at the Nanyuki army base each year. And it's emerged that nearly a hundred children have been found to have been fathered by British men serving at that base. Many of them have grown up in Kenya, not knowing their fathers, who left and never returned.

Some of the children have endured extreme poverty or been ostracized by their communities. The BBC World Service has been following a groundbreaking project which uses commercial DNA databases to identify these men and in some cases take them to court here in the UK. Ivana Davidović reports.

It's December 2024. A group of women are crowded into a room in the back of a cafe in a town called Nanuki in Kenya. Each of them has a child who they believe was fathered by a British soldier, who they say is now failing to support them. We will try as hard as we can. We will use every tool we can. We will go to court as much as we can.

They're here to meet a team of lawyers and a geneticist who are looking for volunteers for a legal project which has the potential to change their lives. I can't promise you we'll find them. I can promise you we'll work very, very hard for this. UK lawyer James Netto and his colleagues are here to collect DNA samples, then use commercial DNA databases like Ancestry to track down the missing military fathers.

He was never here for you. Kathy's mum Maggie was engaged to her dad, but when Kathy was seven months old, he disappeared. They spent years trying to track him down, and Kathy sent him messages through Facebook over many years, but never received a reply. I knew I was talking to a ghost. I just literally poured my heart out. It's like a journal. I was writing a journal, but I was talking to someone who's not there.

Lähtökohtaisesti sähköpostit löytyvät commercial DNA-databaseissa. Kun sopimukset löytyvät, tutkijat rakentavat perheeksi, kunnes joissain tapauksissa he löytävät isän. Kathy, hei, on hienoa nähdä sinut uudestaan. Miten menee? On hienoa nähdä sinut myös. Kaikki nämä osat, joita teet yhdessä, näyttävät, että tämä herra on todella varma, että tämä herra on sinun isä. Miten tuntuu siitä? Olen yllättänyt jotenkin.

But I have hopes, yeah. Next, James takes Kathy's case along with others to the highest family court in England and Wales. Nothing like this has ever been done before. Cases on such scale all heard at one time. And the common thread is that all of them are in the British Army. Well, that was a very good day in court. I'm so happy for these kids.

Kathy's father is confirmed in the eyes of the law, meaning he will be added to her birth certificate and she can register for British citizenship. For mothers of children under 18, they can now demand child support.

And after 19 years of silence, Kathy's dad Phil contacts her almost immediately. He tells me it all started when his mobile phone was stolen and he lost all his contacts. He says he never saw any of the messages Kathy and Maggie were sending him or thought they were spam. And then, when he left the army, his life fell apart. I wasn't in a very good place either, you know, because I'd just come back empty-handed.

but all I can do is to do the best that I can. 20 cases have so far gone to court, and many more are in the pipeline. The Ministry of Defense told the BBC, while paternity claims are a private life issue, the UK government cooperates with Kenyan authorities on these matters. All soldiers are trained on the behavior expected of them on and off duty in Kenya.

Ivana Davidovic reporting. And to hear the full investigation, search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Still to come in this podcast, K-pop, K-drama and now the latest Korean cultural export. Reading other stories and sharing my own writing. Here we don't need to censor ourselves and it's really widened my perspectives.

Literature with female authors at the forefront.

Sinulle, joka haluat enemmän kuin pelkän kuntosalin. Elixialla pysyt motivoituneena ammattitaitoisten ohjaajien ja yli 70 erilaisen ryhmäliikuntatunnin avulla. Saat personal trainerin tukea silloin, kun sitä tarvitset ja olet osa treeniyhteisöä, jossa jokainen kannustaa sinua. Tutustu Suomen monipuolisimpaan liikuntatarjontaan ja aloita harjoittelu osoitteessa elixia.fi. Motivation included.

This is the Global News Podcast. The UN Children's Agency, UNICEF, has said it's outraged after two truck drivers it contracted to deliver clean water to families in the Gaza Strip were killed by Israeli forces over the weekend. It happened during a routine delivery in northern Gaza. James Elder is a UNICEF spokesperson.

The two men were performing routine trucking operations without any deviation from the standard movement procedure, been doing this a long time since the approval of December 2024, and they came under Israeli fire. At no time are these people ever, ever armed. It's not an area that's subject to coordinated movement, so it's 400 metres within.

West of the Yellow Line, if you will. Their trucks were parked at the time. It's not yet confirmed on whether the fire came from a fixed position, a tank or a quadcopter. Initial eyewitnesses in the count may have come from a tank. Two other drivers were injured at the same time. So it's obviously absolutely achingly sad for their families and extremely damaging for one of the most critical water points for the entirety of the Gaza, or certainly for northern Gaza.

No, it doesn't accord with what we think happened, doesn't accord with what the eyewitnesses happened, doesn't accord with what we have done every single time there, scores and scores of times as we access water. And no clear rebuttal has been made, and it always would when a UN agency, we are very sparing in coming out with things like this now.

Olen tehnyt monta kysymyksiä Gazan kanssa, joissa olin sanonut, että tarvitaan tarpeeksi tukea. Olimme huolimatta. Olimme sanoneet, että on tarpeeksi tukea. Olimme nähneet polioa. Yhteisöt väittivät tietoja vuosien aikana ja käsittivät sitä myöhemmin. Gazan syrjintä on mielestäni ideaalinen esimerkki. Olimme syrjineet vuosia, vaikka 20 000 lapsia on tullut. Olimme myöhemmin tunneet, että se on oikeastaan.