Global News Podcast - Deadly Russian strikes hit western Ukraine

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Russian missile and drone strikes in western Ukraine have killed at least twenty-five people and injured more than seventy in the city of Ternopil. Two apartment blocks were hit, leaving upper floors destroyed, buildings on fire and rescuers searching through rubble for survivors. Also: Britain reports that a Russian ship operating on the edge of the UK's territorial waters has directed lasers at air force pilots sent to monitor its activities; a major global study links ultra-processed foods to higher risks of cancer, diabetes and heart disease; we look ahead to the men’s FIFA World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico, as the Caribbean island of Curacao becomes the smallest nation ever to qualify; relations between China and Japan deteriorate further after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggests Tokyo could respond militarily if China attacks Taiwan; the global chief of Hyundai says the White House personally apologised after a major immigration raid at one of its factories in the US state of Georgia; and scientists trace the evolutionary origins of kissing.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 is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jeanette Jalil and at 16 hours GMT on Wednesday the 19th of November, these are our main stories. In one of the deadliest attacks on Western Ukraine since the war began, Russian strikes kill at least 25 people and wound many more. Global experts warn ultra-processed foods have created a pandemic of chronic diseases such as cancer and diabetes. Also in this podcast, I think we deserve this, and then we are now going directly to the World Cup with all players. It's time to celebrate for us right now. The Caribbean island of Kurosau celebrates becoming the smallest nation ever to qualify for a football World Cup.

In one of the deadliest Russian attacks on Western Ukraine since the war began at least 25,000, people have been killed, three of them children, and around 70 others wounded in the city of Turnipil. Two blocks of flats were hit by Russian strikes. Images show the crumpled buildings on fire with the top floors destroyed, and it's thought that many more people remain trapped under the rubble. Other parts of Ukraine were hit, including Kharkiv in the north, where dozens more were wounded. There were three impacts somewhere nearby. and then there was a big strike.

All the windows were completely blown out, and the smoke was so thick. We took towels, soaked them in water, to be able to breathe. This isn't the first time either. About six months ago, a cluster bomb fell here, and everything was damaged. People had just replaced the windows, and now this has happened again.

There have been power cuts across the country, as Russia again targets Ukraine's energy infrastructure. This comes as President Zelenskyy, Turkey in an attempt to revive US-led efforts to end the war. Our defence correspondent, Jonathan Beale, who's in Kiev, told me more about these latest Russian attacks on Ukraine. 471-way attack drones, what we know is shahy drones fired from Russia, as well as 48 cruise missiles. A lot of those were shot down, Ukraine says, but clearly if you're firing that number, some get through. The focus of this attack, yes, it was across the country. So

Harkiv in the northeast was hit overnight. But the focus of most of this attack was in the west of Ukraine, which is obviously far from the front line, but it is where Ukraine has some of its military infrastructure, but also its energy infrastructure. And that has been the particular focus of Russia in recent months as the temperatures plunge. And much of the country is having energy rationed at the moment. And of course, when these power stations, are hit, then there are emergency outages too. But I think the tragedy here was clearly these two apartment blocks hit in the city of Ternipal, which is a city of more than 200,000 people, not regularly targeted by Russian, but the casualties are there. And it's not just the dead,

but also hundreds injured, including kids as well. So it is a tragedy there. And as you say, they are still going through the rubble. We still see the emergency services at the scene. Poland and Romania had to scramble NATO fighter jets early on Wednesday with a drone reported to have breached Romanian airspace. Yes, so I think, you know, after that incident earlier this year when more than a dozen, I think 20 drones, and they were decoy drones, they weren't armed drones, went across into Poland. We know that NATO stepped up its air policing operations, its air patrolling operations. they are concerned that that was an attempt by Russia to test NATO's air defences. And I think when they do have strikes on Western Ukraine, that is clearly nearer NATO's border. It's eastern flank and therefore they are more vigilant.

And President Zelensky is in Turkey right now for talks. There are reports of a secret peace plan being worked on by Donald Trump's administration along with Russia. What more can you tell us about what we're expecting to come out of these talks in Turkey? Well, it's clearly the US leading talks of peace, and we know that's stalled. But there are reports, as you say, that Steve Wickoff, President Trump's negotiator has been having direct talks with his Russian counterpart. We don't know the details of these plans. Russia's not saying anything about details of these plans. We have heard that they may be briefed to European allies. But there was a suggestion, for example, today, that President Zelensky would be in Anchor at the same time as Steve Wickho. Steve Wickhoff, as we understand. stand is not there. So I think the focus in Turkey will be more on issues that are more immediate like prisoner swaps, getting Turkey to help Ukraine because it does have good relations, President Erdogan, with President Putin. So I think that these are important, but they're not part of the peace process in any sense if there is a process.

Jonathan Beal in Kiev. Well, as we just touched on, NATO is extremely concerned about the risk Moscow poses to offshore infrastructure following the recent sabotage. of several undersea telecom and power cables. Now Britain has reported that a Russian ship operating on the edge of the UK's territorial waters has directed lasers at Air Force pilots sent to monitor its activities. The British Defence Secretary, John Healy, said the ship, the Yantar, was designed to gather intelligence and map undersea cables. A UK political correspondent Ben Wright is following the story.

John Healy said it's used for surveillance in peacetime. and sabotage in conflict. And this isn't the first time it's been seen moving in and out of British waters. Earlier this year, a Royal Navy submarine surfaced right in front of this ship as an act of deterrents, but now it's loitering again on the edge of British waters. And for the first time, it flashed lasers at the pilots of RAF planes that were tracking it. John Healy explained what had happened and had a warning for Russia. We deployed a Royal Navy frigate, an RAF P8 planes.

to monitor and track this vessel's every move, during which the Yantar directed lasers at our pilots. That Russian action is deeply dangerous, and this is the second time this year that this ship, the Yantar, has deployed to UK waters. So my message to Russia and to Putin is this. We see you, we know what you're doing, and if the Yantar travels south this week, we are ready.

John Healy didn't elaborate on what further action there may be, but he put this in the context, of course, of growing Russian aggression. The war in Ukraine, drone incursions across Europe, thousands of cyber attacks on the UK defence systems. He was making a speech on how the government is trying to ramp up the UK's defence industry, but his speech comes as a cross-party group of MPs, the Defence Select Committee issued a pretty critical report, warning that Britain isn't ready in its view in the event of any future attack on the UK.

Ben Wright. A giant conspiracy to promote addiction, spread chronic disease and cause us to lead shorter, sicker lives. That's what ultra-processed foods are, essentially, according to a global study published in the Lancet Medical Journal, which argues that so-called UPSs are linked to illnesses such as cancer and diabetes. Chris Van Tulligan is Professor of Infection and Global Health at University College London. He's one of the authors of the study and he's also the author of the influential book, Ultra Processed People. Ultra processed food is a formal scientific definition. It's also known as Nova Group 4 and it broadly describes the category of packaged goods made by transnational food corporations

and to understand how they're made and why they're so full of additives. So you've got to sort of imagine that you're running a food company. So if you're running a food company and I'm running a food company, we've only got two ways of making money. We can drop the price of ingredients. So we start using additives, flavors rather than strawberries, emulsifiers, rather than eggs. And we can also engineer our food so that it's very hard to stop eating and people buy lots and lots of it.

We can dominate food environments. We can suppress real and whole food. And so that's the project of transnational food companies. And I say that without agenda, that's sort of what, we pay them to do in a way. And you're a co-author of this paper in the Lancet. Just tell us what its findings are. So this is a series of three papers published in the Lancet today being launched at the Royal College of Physicians in London. The authorship is primarily from the global south, from Latin America and Brazil, and from sub-Saharan Africa. There are authors also from all around

the world. There are 43 of us. The paper is broken up into three sections. First of all, we look at the scientific evidence linking ultra-processed food to health harms. And we've done a formal meta-analysis of more than 100 of the kind of studies that linked tobacco to lung cancer. And we've looked at lots of experimental evidence, both animal evidence, human evidence, laboratory evidence, alongside this population data. So we're very clear now that we have reached the threshold where we can say a dietary pattern high in ultra-processed food causes negative health outcomes. And there's a wide range of these, obesity, weight gain, metabolic disease, cardiovascular disease, cerebral vascular disease, stroke, gastrointestinal disease, depression and early death from all causes. And we know from other published work that poor diet has overtaken, or is at least on parity with tobacco now, as the leading cause of early death on planet Earth.

And this has long been a problem in the West, but it's a growing problem in places like Africa and Latin America. And there's no benefit for people there because these are. big multinational companies that are making the profits, whereas people in places like Africa and Latin America are suffering all these health consequences you talk about. The companies that do this sort of processing, there aren't a long list of them. They're the brands you know. They make your breakfast cereals, your favourite cola drink, your ready meals, your candy and chocolate. They are primarily, most of the shareholders of those companies are institutional investors

based in the global north. That's broadly true. And so any benefit accrues into high-income settings that already have high-income settings. And we also have healthcare infrastructure to deal with the appalling externalised cost of the diet that the food industry essentially forces people with low-income to eat. And so when we look at that in a low- or middle-income context, it is completely unaffordable. And I think that's why such strong advocacy has come from particularly South and Central America, where in a single generation, obesity went from being essentially unheard of to being the dominant public health problem.

People like you have been giving out this message for years now. And yet, consumers of ultra processed foods don't seem to be listening. Oh, consumers of ultra processed foods are listening, but they are essentially, as I say, forced to eat a diet of ultra processed food. You say that, but it's also about convenience, it's about price, And it's also about the fact that they really like the taste because it's got a lot of salt, sugar and fat, which some people might say is addictive. So the convenience and price point are the reasons that I frame is they're forced to eat it. They're forced to eat it by a set of very loose regulatory policies that miss price food.

So, yes, the food is convenient. It's marketed very aggressively. It's often sold as healthy if a product has a health claim. If anyone listening to this, go and look at a box of breakfast cereal, it is covered in health claims. it's almost certainly also high in calories, high in fat, high in salt, high in sugar. So people living on low incomes around the world find it increasingly difficult to access real food. It's not near them. It's not in the shops and they can't afford it. You wouldn't say it's down to people's choice.

So let me address that question very directly. The food that most people eat, they have approximately as much control over it as the air they breathe and the water they drink. That is how structural this is. You eat the food that your community eats, that you can afford. So no, personal responsibility, in my view, is not a part of this discussion. Professor Chris Van Tullochan. The Men's Football World Cup, hosted by three nations, the United States, Canada and Mexico will kick off in under seven months' time.

And as we record this podcast, nearly all of the 48 places have been decided with 42 countries qualifying. Among them, the Caribbean island of Curisale, which even before the tournament has made history by becoming the smallest nation to qualify for a World Cup with a goldless draw in Jamaica. This Curacao fan outside the stadium in Kingston was delighted. That was a great game for us for the first time as a small island. It has the possibility to join and we have now, we have played very successful tonight against Jamaica and I think we deserve this and then we are now going directly to the World Cup with all the players. It's time to celebrate for us right now. Our sports reporter, George Addo, told me more about Curacao's unlikely journey

to next summer's tournament. Just as the fan said there, there are just 150,000 of them in the country. That's less than half of Iceland, who are the previous smallest country to make the World Cup. It's been really great to watch Curacao do what they have done. The head coach Dick Avocat will also be the oldest coach at the World Cup. He's 78 years. That's a record. He's taken away from Otori Hagel then he was 71 in 2010 when he handled Greece. Now, let me just put this in little context. Ten years ago, there were 150th in the world rankings. Today, they are 82nd and have qualified. Even in the match that we see them qualify, in the fourth minute of five minutes added on, there was a penalty that was supposed to go against them. Jamaica had an

opportunity to score there, but the referee had to go and check the var and decided that that wasn't a penalty and somehow they managed to stay right in there. So every good thing you can think about for now is all about Kurosau and what they have done. And in a qualifying matches, they won seven finish their campaign and beaten. And mind you, they had countries like Jamaica, Trinidad and Bermuda all in there. So this is a really golden story and we're all looking forward to see how they do of the World Cup. Yeah, phenomenal. Also through our Haiti and Panama, both with only one previous World Cup appearance.

Yes, Haiti made the World Cup back in 1974, but there's a real big one here because their coach, Sybester Minier, actually, has never stepped foot in the country since he took over the job. And that is pretty fascinating. He took over the job 18 months ago, hasn't been able to go to Haiti to coach a game or even see what it looks like, but they've been able to qualify. They played all their games, all their home games in Corosal and managed to get there. He was the assistant coach back with Cameroon in the World. Cup but this has been another good performance there for Haiti who did well. They also won their group which included countries like Honduras and Costa Rica who were quarter-finalists in the 2014 World Cup. So certainly they have really done well. For Panama, the last time

the World War the World Cup was in 2018 and they've also pulled a brilliant, brilliant way to get into the World Cup. Really good to see them do this. Yes. And the reason the coach has not been able to go to Haiti is because of the awful violent situation there. Scotland haven't made it to the tournament for nearly 30 years. But that changed when they beat Denmark. So it's going to be a massive deal for Scotland too, isn't it? Oh, yeah, big deal for Scotland. Remember that two of those opportunities they made to the World Cup

or those World Cup qualifications in a role, they were actually bigger there because England failed to make it in 1974 and 1978. So that long wait has been particularly tough for the Scots, but this was really good in the way they managed to win this game against Denmark and the players that scored the goals really gives them that opportunity to go into the World Cup

and I think that it's a very special one all the scores will be looking forward to this one. Good, good job down there. George Adow. Still to come on the Global News podcast. We knew that other primates kiss as well but what I wasn't quite expecting to find is that lots of other animals do.

Polar bears, prairie dogs kiss, albatrosses, even ants. The surprisingly ancient origins of kissing and the surprising range of animals which enjoy it. China and Japan have a long history of conflicts and tensions, especially over the appalling crimes that accompanied Japan's invasion of China nearly 90 years ago. But the speed and the strength of the current downturn has been striking. It started when Japan's new Prime Minister, Sanaea Takeichi,

suggested her country could respond militarily if China attacked Taiwan. Now, the Chinese authorities have imposed a ban on all imports of Japanese seafood as well as urging their citizens not to travel to Japan. One Ping-Au runs a Tokyo-based travel company often used by Chinese tourists. She told my colleague Tim Franks what she made of the latest developments. There are two main segments of Chinese tourists coming to Japan, we could label them as like individual travelers who travel in small groups. And then we also have Chinese tourists who are coming to Japan on ports.

So they are the customers who will use the large motocultures and go visit the stores to do text-free shopping. So right now, from what I hear from my Chinese friends who own transportation companies and bus companies, business is actually doing very well. Like seeing no reduction in the number of tourists. But on the other hand, the people who are using the large motor cultures, they are seeing a large reduction in the number of their tour participants. There seems to be a bit of a clash at the moment between the governments in Tokyo and Beijing.

I wonder if you or you're the people that you know in the industry, whether you've already seen an effect that maybe fewer Chinese people are coming or a booking or whether you're concerned that that will be the case. From what I see on the ground, a popular site seeing places like Hakonet or Mount Fuji is actually overpopulated with tourists from like America and Australia and India from all over the world. So I think the percentage of Chinese tourists, there is a decrease, but it's not significant. But presumably in the course of a normal year, there is a reasonable number of Chinese tourists who come to Japan. Yes. I think the problem now is that people who are new to Japan, they usually need to apply for their visa.

And if their visa doesn't get approved, they just can't come no matter how much they want to come. They wouldn't be able to come. We've seen relations between China and Japan sometimes go through episodes where there is real, tension. I just wonder if this is something that you have seen before and you think, well, you know, the numbers may go down a little bit, but in the long term, we'll be all right. I've seen this like a few times. This is just politics at play. I think things will be figured out. It's just that local businesses will have to take the brunt of it. And whichever industry is involved, it's just unfortunate that they are part of this political play.

Kumping Al, who runs a Tokyo-based travel company. The boss of the South Korean carmaker Hyundai says the White House phoned him personally to apologize after a major immigration raid at one of its factories in the U.S. state of Georgia back in September. Speaking at a high-profile business conference in Singapore, Jose Munoz said the raid was a bad surprise, but that most of the workers have since returned and it hasn't shaken Hyundai's multi-billion dollar plans for manufacturing. in the US. Nick Marsh reports.

This is the first time that we've heard publicly, at least from Hyundai, saying that the White House personally phoned Jose Munoz to say sorry about this raid. He was talking earlier, actually, and he said that the governor of Georgia even called him to say, I don't know what happened there. We're really sorry about the raid. But those images of hundreds of South Koreans shackled on the factory floor, detained for a week. That provoked a lot of anger in Seoul. also confused a lot of South Korean government officials who have committed to investing billions into American manufacturing, and then this is what happened. It turns out that these were

skilled workers sent by Hyundai to set up this new factory in Georgia. They've now since returned to work. We know Donald Trump wasn't very happy about this raid, but it is an interesting confluence, if you want, of the two impulses of the Trump administration, cracking down on illegal immigration on the one hand, but then encouraging foreign firms to invest as much as possible in American manufacturing. Like I say, it seems to have settled down by now, but the fact that the White House is personally phoning CEOs, and they haven't confirmed it yet, but a personal phone call to CEOs shows a good degree of embarrassment we might not have considered before, and also genuine concern at losing these crucial billions of dollars

of investment in American manufacturing. Nick Marsh. The auction house Christie's is suspending the auction of a rare example of the first calculating machine in history, which was expected to sell for between $2 to $3 million. Here's our global affairs reporter, Sebastian Usher. La Pascaline is one of only nine examples of the world's first calculating machine still in existence, and it remains fully functional. It was developed by the French mathematician, inventor and philosopher. Blaise Pascal in 1640. when he was just 19 years old. Christes has described the box as the most important scientific instrument ever offered at auction, but for now at least its sale has been halted. After a court in Paris, suspended authorization for export late on Tuesday evening. That came after scientists and researchers had urgently appealed

for any potential export of a machine to be blocked. They want the instrument to be classified as a national treasure. Sebastian Usher, if you thought kissing was a simple romantic quirk humans came up with somewhere along the way, think again. Chimpanzees, gorillas and even polar bears have been known to share a kiss. Now scientists believe they've traced the origins of the practice which they say likely evolved more than 20 million years ago. Researchers did this by finding evidence of animals that kissed to construct an evolutionary family tree to find out when the kiss was. was likely to have evolved. Victoria Gill has been looking at the science behind a smooch.

The scientists studied kissing because it's something of an evolutionary puzzle. It has no obvious survival or reproductive benefits, and yet it's seen across the animal kingdom. By finding evidence of other animals engaging in kissing, scientists were able to construct an evolutionary family tree to work out when it was most likely to have evolved. To ensure they were comparing the same behaviour across different species, the researchers had to give a very precise, rather unromantic definition to a kiss.

In their study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour, they defined it as a non-aggressive, directed oral-oral contact with some movement of lips or mouth parts and no food transfer. Nice. Dr Matilda Brindle is an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford, and she led the study. We found lots of evidence that chimps, orangutans, bonobos, kiss and some gorillas, And we used that evidence kind of in conjunction with information on their evolutionary relationships.

So we know humans, chimps and bonobos all kiss. So probably their most recent common ancestor kissed. And we think that kissing probably evolved around 21.5 million years ago in the large apes. In this research, scientists found behaviour that matched their scientific definition of kissing in wolves, prairie dogs, polar bears. Very sloppy, by the way, lots of tongue. and even albatrosses. The same study also concluded that Neanderthals

are closest ancient human relatives that died out around 40,000 years ago, also kissed. Given that we know Neanderthals probably kissed, that obviously doesn't mean that they kissed humans. But what we've just suggested in the paper is that given that most humans of non-African ancestry have a small amount of Neanderthal DNA, so we know that we interbred with them.

And then there was this other really cool study that showed that, modern humans and Neanderthals, long after the two species split off, they shared this oral microbe, which means that they must have been swapping saliva for hundreds of thousands of years. While this study pinpointed when kissing evolved, it wasn't able to answer the question of why. There are already a number of theories that it might have come from the grooming behaviour of our ape ancestors, or that it's an intimate way to assess the health and compatibility of a partner. But Dr Brindle hopes that this study will open a door to answering that

question. It's really important for us to understand that this is something that we share with our non-human relatives and we don't, people don't collect data on it enough. We should be looking at this stuff and not just dismissing it as silly because maybe it's got a romantic connotation in humans. Dr Matilda Brindle ending that report by Victoria Gill. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast, you can send us an email. The address is Global Podcast at BBC.co.com. This edition was mixed by Sid Dundon.

The producers were Chantal Hartle and Arianko O'Hautchi. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jonak Jalil. Until next time, goodbye.