Global News Podcast - Deadly fire rips through boarding school in Kenya

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

The fire at the Utumishi Girls Academy started in the early hours of Thursday, killing at least 16, as the students were asleep in the dormitory block. More than 800 children were in the school at the time. Kenyan officials say the cause of the fire has not yet been established. Boarding schools in the country have experienced several fatal fires in recent years, with overcrowding and poor safety standards frequently blamed for the high number of casualties.Also in this podcast: Israel conducts airstrikes in Lebanon's Tyre, Sidon and Beirut. The US says it wants to treat Americans with Ebola abroad - we ask a doctor if that is the most efficient way to curb the spread of the disease. Why the price of coffee has surged. Australia sues the manufacturing giant 3M for a record sum over its alleged use of toxic chemicals such as PFAS in firefighting foam. A Google engineer is charged with insider trading after winning $1.2m on Polymarket betting. A buffalo in Bangladesh is spared from Eid sacrifice - after it went viral for what people say is a likeness to Donald Trump. And is a black flowing gown an acceptable tennis outfit at the French Open?The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. 30 years after two civilian airplanes were shot down, why is the U.S. government now bringing charges against the former Cuban president, Raul Castro? I'm Asma Khalid, and I host the Global Story podcast from the BBC. Cuba's government is calling this all a political maneuver, but the Cuban exile community in Miami calls it justice. Thirty years in the making. Is the U.S. setting the stage for a military intervention?

For more, check out the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 15 hours GMT on Thursday the 28th of May. A fire has ripped through a girls' boarding school in Kenya, killing at least 16 pupils. Israel says it's carried out an airstrike on southern Beirut as it steps up. It's offensive in Lebanon. and the US says a ballistic missile launched by Iran overnight was a violation of their ceasefire. Also in this podcast.

There are so many similarities to the US President Donald Trump. The only difference is this is a buffalo and President Trump is a human being. The Bangladeshi buffalo saved from slaughter because it looked a bit like the US president. The grim task of identifying victims from a fire at a school, Dormatry is underway in Kenya. At least 16 students died in the blaze in the early hours of Thursday at the Utumishi Girls Academy, about 100 kilometres northwest of Nairobi.

Kenya's education minister, Julius Ogamba, gave this update from the scene. We woke up with the third news of a fire incident at this school, Utumishi Senior School. About 12.45 a.m. A fire broke out in one of the domes on the second. floor. The response teams, of course, managed to put out the fire by about 3 a.m. But by then, the damage had already been done. Anxious parents gathered outside, hoping for news of their loved ones, including this distraught man looking for his daughter.

Please, can I go and check? I know my daughter who she looks like that. I know. She's very beautiful. I want to see my daughter. No, no, please. Don't lecture me, please. Don't lecture me, please. I want my. Our reporter Thomas Mukwana spoke to us from the school. Behind me, our parents were still trying to find the wearabouts of their children, and that's been happening since morning here, Oliver.

We can see the dormitory. It's a two-story dormitory, and you can't really see inside because you're far from it, but the bricks are still brown and gray as usual. But from the roof, you can see the darkening color from the smoke that engulfed the inside of that building. And that's all you can see from wherever. we are, but police are inside, it's hard to get through. And that tragedy, as it's being described by people who are here, is that these girls, most of the 79 that are injured, had to jump

from that story, that fast story of the first floor to try and escape the fire. And that's why most of them allegedly broke their limbs trying to escape the fire. You can imagine the scene. It was frantic and traumatic, we could imagine, for all those girls, those 200 were inside. Do we have any idea of how it started the fire? Oliver, we don't know why this fire started. The police are trying to investigate. We can throw a glance at the dormitory right now, but no one's allowed to enter inside because police are trying to conduct investigations. Sadly, this is not the first of its kind here in Kenya. In 2024, the same thing happened at another school in Neri County, far from here.

And that took with it 21 boys. It was a boys' primary school. And questions were raised at that time about the safety, especially fire safety in these schools. And the government put together an entire task force, and they put together a report and part of the report found that 348 schools around the country did not have the safety requirements that are up to standard, and so they were shut down. And the government claimed that that problem was something that they were looking into, but this tragedy, this new one, raises bigger questions.

In the previous reports, the problem, as reported by the ministry at that time, according to the investigations, was that most of these dormitory doors open inward, which makes it harder for children who are trying to escape a fire to get out in time. but this fire specifically its cause has not been established yet. Now there's some suggestion that emergency exits were locked during the fire. Have you heard anything about that? Not to the specific case.

That was mentioned in the 2024 tragedy at that Boy School have mentioned. And for that, there was a single door that was supposed to be the exit for all these children. For these girls, there was around 200 girls in that dorm that caught fire this morning. As of 2024, the problem was that these schools, most of these schools, most of them were considered to not have achieved the required levels of safety. Thomas Mukwana there in Kenya. There is still supposed to be a ceasefire in Lebanon, but in the past few days, Israel has intensified its offensive against Hezbollah.

The most recent Israeli strikes targeted Tyre, Saigon and the capital Beirut. Israeli forces have issued evacuation orders for about 14% of the country, leaving many people with nowhere to go. As we record this podcast, another 11 deaths have been reported today, taking the total to more than 600 in the six weeks since the supposed ceasefire came into effect. Hezbollah has been using fibre optic drones to target occupying Israeli forces in Lebanon.

One IDF soldier was killed on Wednesday, taking their losses to 24. I got the latest on the Israeli offensive from our correspondent John Sudworth in the city of Saidan, also known as Saida. I'm standing in front of a scene of pretty extensive devastation. It looks like this was a strike that hit the roof of building. A number of stories high.

The missile has come down through each story it looks before exploding in the ground floor, blowing out the front of it, demolishing large sections of it. The building is sort of in a precarious state now. We know a number of people died here. just one of a number of sites across southern Lebanon that was struck by the Israeli Air Force last night, with Israel saying it is intensifying its attacks on Hezbollah targets. Yeah, and yet this city is north of the Zaharani River, the area that Israel is demarcating as the north of its combat zone.

Good way north, Oli. The Zirani River has been set by Israel as, the northern end of a huge evacuation area, which they are now telling people to leave as a live combat zone, something like 300 towns and villages south of the Saharani. And we've seen refugees moving in this city. Authorities here telling people that Saida is full and advising people looking for alternative accommodation to head even further north.

But this city is outside that zone, but it's not the only place that is being targeted beyond that evacuation zone. We've just had in the past few minutes reports that the southern suburbs of Beirut have been hit again, an area of the city known to be a stronghold of Shia-Hesbola support. Israel saying, of course, that it is not targeting civilians, that this is a war aimed at depleting Hezbollah's military capabilities. hitting its infrastructure, killing its fighters. But when you come to places like this here in this city, you hear it again and again people saying that they don't think this particular target was a military target, that innocent people have been killed here.

So as always, those conflicting accounts. And all this coming while talks are expected between military delegations from Lebanon and Israel in the US tomorrow. and while there is supposed to be a ceasefire between the two sides going on. Yeah, it's remarkable to think that those talks continue while this is happening on the ground. Of course, Hezbollah is not party to those talks. In fact, it is accusing the Lebanese government of enacting a betrayal by engaging in direct talks with Israel. But those talks are being encouraged by Washington, of course,

because the situation here in Lebanon has the very strong possibility of complicates. Washington's attempts to sign a broader peace deal with Tehran. And I think you speak to most Lebanese people here, they do not feel at all optimistic about the possibility of peace. In fact, most people are expecting this to escalate before there's any talk about it getting better. John Sodworth in southern Lebanon. Staying in the Middle East and the US says a ballistic missile launched by Iran

towards Kuwait overnight was a clear violation of their ceasefire. It said the missile was intercept. by Kuwaiti forces. The Iranian attack came after the Americans launched strikes of their own. The US military said it shot down four Iranian attack drones that, quote, posed a threat around the Strait of Hormuz and targeted a military site in the strategic port city of Bandar Abbas. It said the action was defensive in nature. Fouad Izadi is professor of international relations at the University of Tehran and a supporter of the Iranian government.

United States have attacked Iran illegally. They have killed more than 3500 civilians. And they think they can control this part of the world. It's not going to happen. It's a pipe dream. They thought they can change Iran's government. That was a pipe dream. Trump has basically two choice. Either go diplomatic political route and reach a settlement with Iran or have another war. And I think Iranian authorities are ready for both cases. Our Middle East correspondent, Yoland now has the latest. The Iranian Foreign Ministry has put out a statement condemning the U.S. strike on the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, and it seems to have been that strike that triggered the Iranian retaliation on Kuwait.

That's a close U.S. ally. There's a big U.S. air base there, and earlier Kuwait said that it was intercepting a drone and missile attack without saying where that attack was coming from. Now, this all followed on from the U.S. saying that it had downed four Iranian attack drones and also had then attacked Banda Abbas to stop a fifth drone from being fired. And a US official was saying that this was purely a defensive action and that the ceasefire did remain intact. That, of course, you know, is being questioned because it makes the ceasefire look increasingly shaky.

The fact that it's the second time this week, that there has been a flare-up of this kind, It pushed up oil prices once again, and this is all happening as we haven't had sort of fresh signs of progress in those talks that have been going on between the UN's Iran via mediators to try to get a deal across the line. Yel now in Jerusalem. The epicenter of the current Ebola outbreak, Ituri province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been described by the World Health Organization as a catastrophic collision of disease and conflict. The WHO has called for an immediate ceasefire there so health workers can tackle the disease. Dr Craig Spencer from Brown University in the U.S. worked in West Africa during the Ebola epidemic of 2014 and contracted the virus himself.

I think it's worth remembering that we didn't know about this outbreak even two weeks ago. And in this span of just a few days, we've gone from not knowing about this to this being one of the largest Ebola outbreaks ever. every day comes with what seems to be more and more concerning news, either on the case counts, where cases are at, other concerning developments and how international partners are responding or other things like limitations of test capacity or other treatments. So I think that we are still in the very, very early phase of what is going to be a very long and complicated outbreak. And I think things are truly just starting to become clear. this was going to be a tough outbreak regardless of where it was at. This would have been hard to manage with these case counts and this disease itself in ideal conditions.

And the eastern part of Congo is anything but ideal. I've worked many times in this part of D.R. Congo. Transportistice logistics are hard. In addition, you have the conflict that is pervasive and omnipresent. And that makes it that much harder to access certain places, certain health care structures, in certain institutions. And it's going to be really hard for us to want to tackle this outbreak as quickly as possible. But we need to recognize, as we have learned in every other outbreak,

that we need to work with communities as opposed to against them. Otherwise, we're setting ourselves up for even more trouble, even more challenges and more of a prolonged outbreak. The Trump administration says that it wants to treat American citizens who might have been exposed to Ebola, not in the US, but in a facility in Kenya. What's your response to that? I think it's a moral abdication of what our country owes its own. The people that we are going to be sending and demanding, essentially, go and help with the response,

either part of the CDC or a public health service, or maybe even perhaps our military. These folks are then going to be treated in a structure which I have a hard time believing can't provide the quality of care that we are currently able to provide in a network of specialized hospitals all across the U.S. that we have built up for this reason over the past decade at an immense amount of cost, an immense amount of work by really dedicated professionals. And I think the fact that we are not going to, as Secretary of St. Markerubio said, allow any single case of Ebola into the U.S. is a fixation on the wrong goal and the wrong priority.

Our priority needs to be helping in the outbreak in Congo. and that is the only way to prevent cases from showing up in the region in the U.S. and in other places. It's the only way. The road ahead is going to be really, really difficult. I look for those lights of optimism, but I'm also faced with the pragmatism and the realism of what the next few months and longer are going to look like, and it's going to be really tough. Tougher even than the 2014 outbreak, do you think? It's hard to prognosticate. I would not be surprised.

I think there is an opportunity right now to surge resources, support, and everything that we need to get on the ground, testing, treatments, etc., to potentially avert the worst-case scenario. But if we do not do those things, I think it's a real possibility that we could have a repeat in something potentially even worse than what we saw a decade ago. Dr. Craig Spencer, talking to James Copnell. Now, as a tea drinker, it's not something I've noticed, but the price of a cup of coffee is now said to be approaching $7 in some Western cities.

The rise is a result of tariffs, climate events, and changing consumer tastes. So will prices ever come down again? Our economics editor Faisal Islam reports from Turin in northern Italy. I'm standing in front of what looks like a sort of locomotive train engine, which is in fact the first espresso machine from Moriando, 1884. At that point, it becomes a staple drink in Italy

and a drink of the masses, a cheap drink. And it's been like that for decades. Since. But in recent years, that price point has increased, and it does raise the question, how do you deal when a price shock comes through an industry? Does it change it forever? This is a pretty good place to find out. I've come here to meet Giuseppe Lavazza. His great grandfather launched the famous coffee brand 130 years ago. Giuseppe is now chairman of the business. Complexity and troubles. I begin by asking him what's causing the current volatility in the coffee market.

This kind of business has been affected for many years by climate effects. So when we saw a frost in Brazil in 2021 after COVID, the effort was devastating. And the tension of prices lasted for about four years. And then the inflation, record price, geopolitical crisis, the Swiss Canal, now another big crisis, another war. President Trump tariffs. So really we went through incredible difficulties. A long list of troubles have combined to create a perfect storm. Every day we saw the coffee prices going up, going up, breaking records.

Speculation, of course, stepped into the business and tried to ride this great opportunity, exactly as happened in Koko, the same. It's not just the financiers playing the markets. Part of Vietnamese coffee farmer's daily ritual now involves the 4.30 a.m. morning app check of the robust to futures price in Vietnamese Dong. Farmers that could harvest enjoyed extraordinary windfalls from last year's prices and are storing hundreds of thousands of bags of coffee which otherwise would have been exported.

Even aside from the weather, President Trump's tariff roller coaster saw extra taxes applied to the world's biggest coffee producers before the White House saw the very visible impact on U.S. domestic coffee price, prices and roadback. Prices have settled down from peaks, but still at much higher levels. So is the £5 late a temporary aberration in our cups we can now forget about? No yet, unfortunately. We have to wait for at least a couple of years

because we need two big crops from Brazil and from Vietnam arriving on the market. Let's create different market condition, more stability, more visibility, long-term. And so the chance, of course, of... rebalancing the value all over the supply chain. Giuseppe Levasa, ending that report from Turin by Faisal Islam. And still to come in this podcast. I think it must be a little bit tricky for her opponents

when there's so much attention on her. So I have no doubt that it probably does get into the minds of her opponents. Why Naomi Asaka's unusual tennis outfits have caused a stir at the French Open. 30 years after two civilian airplanes were shot down, why is the U.S. government now bringing charges against the former Cuban president, Raul Castro? I'm Asma Khalid, and I host the Global Story podcast from the BBC. Cuba's government is calling this all a political maneuver, but the Cuban exile community in Miami calls it justice, 30 years in the making.

Is the U.S. setting the stage for a military intervention? For more, check out the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to the Global News podcast. So-called Forever Chemicals don't break down under normal environmental conditions and can be toxic to humans and wildlife. Now, the Australian government is bringing its largest ever claim, $1.5 billion, against the American firm 3M, accusing it of failing to disclose the use of forever chemicals in firefighting foam. In 2023, the firm agreed a $10 billion settlement with U.S. public water systems. I heard more about the Australian lawsuit from our correspondent in Sydney, Katie Watson. There was a press conference earlier today and the Attorney General, Michelle Rowland, said that the government wanted to hold 3M and 3M Australia to account for what it called economic and environmental harms associated with PFAS. So these are like non-stick, water-resistant properties. They can be found not just in firefighting phones, but mobile phones, clothing, non-stick, cooking pans and the government said that the misconduct has contributed to substantial costs for

defence because this foam has been found in 28 defence bases across Australia, but it's contributed to cost for defence and cost for the Australian taxpayer, including one billion Australian dollars, which is to date to investigate, remediate, mitigating the contamination at these relevant sites. And what has 3M said about all this? So they have said. said that they are prepared to defend themselves, that they never made this foam in Australia, and that they stopped selling the foam in Australia 20 years ago, and pointed out that the Department of Defence kept using the foams for two decades after it stopped selling the product in Australia. Do we know how long this case will take?

This is very early stages, the fact that they have announced the legal action, And as you said, this is the largest claim ever brought by the government. So now it's got to take the kind of all go through the legal processes. So 3M will obviously have to mount its defence. So, no, we're incredibly early stages in this. Katie Watson in Sydney. An employee at Google has been arrested for allegedly using inside company information to place lucrative bets on the Pollymarket prediction platform,

winning $1.2 million. The Italian engineer was arrested in Switzerland and brought before a US federal judge in New York on Wednesday. Nick Marsh has the details. There's been a lot of suspicious betting activity on Polymarket, which is basically an online prediction site where you can bet on pretty much anything you can think of. In this case, we're talking about Michel Espaniolo, who is an engineer for Google, who basically bet on who wouldn't and wouldn't be. the most searched person on Google in 2025.

So he bet against the bunch of names such as Donald Trump. He bet on the singer David, which was odds close to zero at the time. Turns out, though, that David did become the most searched for name on Google. He was arrested and put in custody for the alleged murder of a teenage girl, which obviously, you know, garnered a lot of attention. He won about $1.2 million. this Google engineer through these bets, and the US Department of Justice is saying that he used internal information, which was contained in marketing material that Google says all employees have

access to, but which the company is condemned as a serious breach of its policy. So he's been arrested for insider trading now, this engineer. A spokesman for Polymarket said that the platform was working closely with the authorities, so the DOJ and the FBI in this case in this investigation. The spokesman also said that blockchain trading is transparent, traceable and bad actors leave footprints, hence why they were able to find this engineer. Business correspondent Nick Marsh. For weeks, people in Bangladesh have been flocking to catch a glimpse of a rare buffalo that's been getting a lot of attention online. I pray to Allah, all praise to him. See, it is a beautiful beast. There are so many similarities to the

US President Donald Trump. Not only the hair, but also the way he looks. The only difference is this is a buffalo and President Trump is a human being. The Trump lookalike buffalo was due to be sacrificed for the Muslim Festival of Eid al-Ada. But because of its popularity, the Bangladeshi government intervened at the last moment, sparing the animal. Our global affairs reporter, Ambarasan Etirajan told me more about the creature in question. It is an albino buffalo. Usually buffaloes are dark, black and color. So this one is more of a pinkish or white color. If you put it next to a black buffalo, it will stand out. So it became a what you call celebrity status in Bangladesh.

And people usually go to the markets during the Eid time, the festival time. The cattle market will be one of the biggest attractions. And people used to hype, usually buffalo. And this one, this year, it is more of a Donald Trump because it's unusually. It has got some hair on the top. So people, if you take the photograph in a different angle, I mean, I'm not sure it looks like him, but people, if you want to think in that way, probably it can appear as Donald Trump. Now, because of the popularity, it was going around, you know, Instagram reels on social media.

A lot of people wanted to go and take a selfie with that animal. So now the government is now intervene. It was sold, actually, to be sacrificed, to slaughter this morning. But then the government intervened at the last minute saying that, you know, because of, security concerns and what kind of reaction it will have on the media. So they have taken control of this buffalo and it will be sent to the main zoo in the capital, Dhaka, where it will be kept from now on. Just looking at the pictures, I notice one of the keepers is actually brushing their hair,

almost making it look more like Donald Trump. But there's a history of these animals going viral in Bangladesh. See, the cattle market is a billion dollar business in Bangladesh, because beef eating is very common, especially during festival season. They will come from all over the country. And also, many get smuggled into Bangladesh. So we are talking about, in a huge business here. And then this hype like a couple of years ago,

there was even a beauty contest for buffaloes. And then one buffalo was called as Mr. Bahubali. It was named after a movie where it is something like a Herculean man. So they all get polished. Some of them, you know, sold for. $10,000, $5,000. So this kind of activity boosts this image or the hype about the animals, and that is what we see.

And Marasan Etirajan. The four-time tennis grand slam champion Naomi Asaka receives almost as much attention for what she wears as what she does on the court. The Japanese player won her opening match at the French Open after arriving on court in an Eiffel Tower-inspired dress with a black flowing gown. Some praised her.

creative outfits, including the world number one, Arena Sabalenko. But one of Osaka's defeated rivals, Laura Sigamund, was less complimentary. She said rules were being ignored to allow Osaka more time to change outfits, adding, I come here to play tennis not to put on a fashion show. Tennis commentator and former player Annabelle Croft told Sean Lay what the fuss was all about. I don't think I've ever seen outfits quite like the ones that Naomi Asaka has turned up in. in Australia in January. She turned up in, it's hard to even describe it, but it was a very wide-brimmed hat with sort of fabric draping down. She was wearing a parasol and she said it was inspired by a jellyfish. And actually, if you kind of had the image of a jellyfish and what she was wearing, it was quite closely matched. But this year, she has come on court in something that I've never ever seen anything quite like it, which is very sparkly top part of the dress. But then there was a great long sort of black sort of tool skirt, which resembled something of more of a Met Gala outfit.

And after she'd walked onto the court for the coin toss and then started to play in what I thought looked more like a sort of a salsa outfit or a samba dress, but very frilly, very striking, but very, very glittery. And she also said herself, well, you know, we're in France and the Eiffel Tower is often very sparkly at night. and I kind of think I look a little bit like that. Is she playing mind games with her opponents, do you think? I think you've got to have an incredible amount of confidence in your ability to live up to what you've just done on the court. So I think it must be a little bit tricky for her opponents when, you know, there's so much attention on her. So I have no doubt that it probably does get into the minds of her opponents. Her opponent that she beat in the first round, Lara Siegman, did say, oh, well, you know, it's not a fashion show.

out here, I'm here to play tennis kind of thing. But Osaka won that match. I mean, it was fairly close, but she won it. I would think it would be a little bit of a distraction. But then for some players who are quite feisty or competitive, they might see it as fuel. They might see, right, well, you know, you're walking out in these outfits, but I'm going to put you in your place. So let's see what happens.

But I do think it's incredibly brave. But I also think she's clearly kind of taking her brand into different areas. and she's really excited about fashion. It's certainly got all of us talking. And look, we're here talking about it. We are indeed. But I just wanted to pick up on what you mentioned, Laura Sigmund's comments,

because she also said the tournament organisers were letting top stars flout strict timing rules for elaborate outfit changes. In other words, that too much slack is being cut to accommodate a flamboyant tennis performer and that arguably that's damaging to the game. Well, that's quite interesting, isn't it?

I mean, I would say that was probably typical of Laura Siegman to sort of pose that question. But at the same time, I do think that tennis is part of the entertainment business. And I'm sure that the organisers, certainly here at Rowan Garrow, or even in Australia when she wore that outfit, they would love the attention and headlines that it created. And it will only bring more eyeballs to the sports. Annabelle Croft. And that is all from us for now, but the Global News podcast will be back very soon. This edition was mixed by Joe McCartney and produced by Alice Adely and Chantel Hartel.

Our editors, Karen Martin, I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye. 30 years after two civilian airplanes were shot down, why is the U.S. government now bringing charges against the former Cuban president, Raul Castro? I'm Asma Khalid, and I host the Global Story podcast from the BBC. Cuba's government is calling this all a political maneuver, but the Cuban exile community in Miami calls it justice, 30 years in the making. Is the U.S. setting the stage for a military intervention?

For more, check out the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.