New threat to global oil supplies

**Oliver Conway** (0:00)
This is The Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. This edition is published in the early hours of Tuesday, the 21st of July. Iran's allies in Yemen, the Houthis, threaten to impose a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, further disrupting oil supplies. President Trump announces a new 50% tariff on Canada in retaliation for what he called unequal treatment of US products. And scientists in Northern Ireland mail a 3D printed battery as a game-changer for energy storage.
Also in this podcast, Italy's growing problem with childhood obesity.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:40)
I can't even sign him up for the gym because he's so obese. They don't want to take on the responsibility. He weighs too much.

**Oliver Conway** (0:50)
And?

**Ashita Nagesh** (0:51)
Women are getting notifications that their bodies are under some sort of strain, so their health scores have dropped, their temperatures are elevated, their heart rate is high and yet they feel totally normal.

**Oliver Conway** (1:01)
Can fitness trackers really predict that a woman is pregnant?
Following the deaths of at least three US soldiers in recent days, the United States has launched a 10th night of strikes on Iran, with President Trump saying the Iranians would pay many times over for killing Americans. For its part, Iran said it had attacked US military targets in Bahrain and Kuwait. It also claimed that two oil tankers had caught fire after explosions while attempting to go through the Strait of Hormuz.
There are fears that another key waterway could soon be shut after Iran's allies in Yemen, the Houthis, threatened to impose a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia. That would suggest they intend to close the Bab el-Maddeb Strait at the bottom of the Red Sea, further disrupting the global oil supply. But will they really go through with it and how would it affect the region? Rebecca Kesby asked Greg Holyoake, Middle East specialist with BBC Monitoring.

**Greg Holyoake** (2:03)
We really don't know how serious it is as of now. They are known for making these escalatory remarks.
How serious it could get is very serious. Just to look back to what happened with Red Sea shipping and the price of oil and goods around the world when they were attacking. Ships that they said were connected to Israel and to Western powers in the past during the Gaza war because it is this choke hold, especially now that we're already losing access to the Strait of Hormuz, which to add in the Bab al-Mandeb is going to be a significant shift. But what set Saudi Arabia aside during the Iran war was the fact that they have this port in Yanbu, which goes on to the Red Sea, which Qatar, the UAE, even Iraq had no access to. They had to use the Strait of Hormuz. We saw that Saudi media in March were quite pleased announcing that they were redirecting a huge amount of oil, up to five million barrels a day, to this port on the Red Sea for export. And if it is a blockade and if they're not able to use this, this kind of puts them in the same position as a lot of those other Gulf countries.

**Rebecca Kesby** (3:08)
Talk us through why this is all sparked off now, because there has been a ceasefire in place for the past four years or so.

**Greg Holyoake** (3:16)
There's a couple of different theories. We have seen quite a lot of escalation in terms of language, but also in terms of tit for tat strikes in the last couple of weeks.
The Houthis tried to fire at a bunch of Saudi fighters, who they said were trying to prevent an Iranian plane from landing in the capital, Sana'a. After that, the airport in Sana'a was bombed. They blamed Saudi Arabia for these strikes and fired at a Saudi airport. So what we're seeing with this is another escalation, but I think it's important that they're saying this is an escalation in a sort of tit for tat way. They haven't specifically said if they are going to proactively start striking or blockading, or if they're waiting for Saudi Arabia to make the next move. But as we've seen with other groups like the Taliban around the world, if you have this kind of guerrilla style warfare that you can fight very effectively, they were able to completely hold global shipping to ransom beforehand. So they definitely have shown that without any formalised forces in terms of the Navy and Air Force, they still have a huge amount of power.

**Oliver Conway** (4:19)
Greg Holyoake from BBC Monitoring.
Last week, President Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Canada over wildfire smoke drifting across the border and into US cities. Now he slapped a 50% levy on a wide range of Canadian products in retaliation for what he says is Canada's unequal treatment of American cars, dairy products and alcohol. The Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the US tariffs violated the Canada-US-Mexico agreement but has promised to step up talks. I heard more from my US correspondent Peter Bowes.