Global News Podcast - Israelis mark three years since 7 October attacks

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

Israel has been remembering the deadliest single day in its history on 7th October 2023 when Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups stormed communities along the border with Gaza, killing more than 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. The anniversary comes weeks before an election in which the question of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's personal culpability for the country's worst-ever security failure will be a central issue. Also: the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has described Moscow's latest round of attacks on his country as ''the Russian army's birthday gift for Vladimir Putin''. The World Health Organization has requested more information from Russia following unconfirmed reports that a second employee at a plague research lab in Siberia has contracted pneumonia. Malaysia pushes ahead with a ‌controversial move to repatriate thousands of migrants from Myanmar, where they could face persecution. The BBC visits a men's community group in South Africa where participants are encouraged to speak out about violence against women, and confront their own behaviour. Scientists Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for solving the mystery of life's asymmetry. And could the gender pay gap extend to AI agents?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]: Israeli family members at a memorial site for victims of the Nova music festival on the third anniversary of the 7 October attacks near Re'im, southern Israel Credit: EPA

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. It felt like everything I believed in was suddenly collapsing. This is the story of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia with a dark secret, of the school's head teacher. This was someone I respected above anyone else. And the investigation led by students, he's trying to silence. If this is leaked to the media, I'll be destroyed. This is World of Seward.

secrets, catching my teacher. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app or wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Celia Hatton, and at 13 hours GMT on Wednesday, October 7th, these are our main stories. Israel marks three years since the Hamas led attacks of October 7th, while Gaza counts the cost. Ukrainian officials say At least 20 people were killed overnight after Russian missiles and drones pounded residential buildings, industrial facilities and infrastructure. And two scientists are named this year's winners of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for solving a mystery about how molecules are made. Also in this podcast, the men in South Africa trying to break the cycle of violence against women. I remember myself, crabbing hair, slumping it, yeah, I was so aggressive.

and seeing what's happening around the world. I feel much more pain. I feel like I have contributed to what's happening. It's October 7th, the anniversary of a day when things changed for many in the Middle East. Today marks three years since Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups launched a brutal attack on Israel.

In total, around 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken as hostages, making it the single deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Israel responded by launching a military offensive in Gaza, triggering a war in which more than 74,000 to 200 Palestinians have been killed. That's according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. Across Israel, there have been a number of memorial events marking the anniversary. Burieved relatives gathered at the site of the Nova Music Festival where hundreds of Israelis were gunned down. This is the last place where Sean was, and I feel him here.

I'm terribly sorry I couldn't save him. I couldn't help him get out of this massacre. I miss him so much, and this place does something to me. Despite the fact that it takes a lot of energy from me, my family and our friends, I feel together with him here. I remember the moment that she called and asked to come and take her, because there were missiles in the air. And I remember the second call.

She called us from the road and screaming that they're shooting at her. Then we saw bodies on the floor and we saw things that you can forget. Our Middle East correspondent Yoland Nal has also been to the site. We've seen many moving scenes here of bereaved parents cleaning and putting candles to the memorials of their lost loved ones. Right behind me is the dance floor of the Nova Festival. It was turned into really a killing field three years. ago today. Now it's been transformed into a memorial. And for each of those people who were killed,

mostly Israelis in their 20s and 30s who just come here for a party at the end of the Jewish holidays, there have been big posts put up which have their names, their stories and pictures of them. And we have seen buses of young Israelis coming here, some of them with school groups. We've seen Israeli politicians arriving to pay their respects on this. this day of reflection. Visiting foreign dignitaries have been here as well. Yoland, you mentioned politicians arriving where you are. We're just a few weeks away from some crucial elections in Israel. How have the legacy of those Hamas attacks affected the discussion that's being had inside Israel now? I mean, security is really a major issue going into this general

election. It's the first election that will be taking place since the 7th of October attacks. And many people were surprised, actually, at the government's choice of timing, which in the end means that the elections come just when this anniversary will be very much in people's minds. But there have been demands, particularly from those who were personally affected by what happened on that shocking day, for a state commission of inquiry that has not happened up to now from the government of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and his political rivals are really accusing him of being responsible for many of the failures in security that led to the 7th of October attacks.

Yolan Nal. As families gathered for that memorial event at the festival site, not far away just across the border in Gaza, loud bangs were heard early on Wednesday. Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have continued, despite a U.S. brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas last year. Palestinian officials say two people were killed in that latest strike overnight. So how are Palestinians feeling today on the third anniversary of the October 7th attacks? I spoke to our Gaza correspondent, Rushdie Abu al-Luf, who's in Istanbul. There is no official memorial or any event in Gaza to mark that day, but hundreds, maybe thousands of Palestinians use the social media to mark that day

people are posting before and after, before, when they used to enjoy. the life in Gaza, despite all of the difficulties, and after, since October 7, they are not enjoying one day of full, you know, peaceful, despite a year of a ceasefire. The situation continued to deteriorate a humanitarian situation in Gaza is very bad. People still, after three years, a queueing to get clean water and food. Many of the two-thirds of the population, they live in a makeshift tense across Gaza and the majority of the people lost their homes, their loved ones. Despite the ceasefire, about 1,500 people have been killed in a continuous Israeli, like targeting mainly Hamas, but many civilians are always caught in the Israeli strikes in Gaza.

So it is a day that has changed their life once and forever. Rastya, going back to that day, I was presenting on BBC television that day, and I was the first person to interview you, you, inside Gaza, when Hamas started firing rockets into Israel. I remember you were standing on the roof of the BBC Bureau in Gaza. At first, not even with a helmet or a flak jacket on. And as the day wore on, I remember you put that protective gear on as I continued to speak with you.

Going back to that day, how long did it take you to realize that this was an event like no other that Gaza had seen? It was very chaotic, the first couple of. of hours. We were just, you know, starting our day as normal. Kids were getting ready to go to school and suddenly we had big explosions and rockets flying from all over Gaza. But then we were not recognizing that Hamas is doing this massive attack on Israel. And very quickly, we started to receive, you know, videos and photos from Hamas and some local journalist about it. And within a couple of hours, we realized that this is the biggest event we might

face and we might cover. Even standing in that roof that day was not safe, buildings were collapsing around us and we were all the time trying to protect ourselves while continue to cover the story and nobody in Gaza was ever expected. A day like this, people clearly mark this today in their post. They were saying that we would never expect that the next morning is not coming yet. Like most of them said that we are still stuck in the that morning and we are still stuck. People are, you know, suffering and they will continue to suffer for a long time because there is no solution in the horizon. There's no negotiation. Everything is, you know, stopped. Rushdie Abu aloof. To Ukraine, where a wave of Russian missiles

and drones pounded residential buildings, industrial facilities and infrastructure overnight. Ukrainian officials say at least 20 people were killed. President Zelensky has described the attacks as the Russian Army's birthday gift for Vladimir Putin. Vitaly Shivchenko, chief analyst at BBC monitoring, told me more about what's happened. It happened in a town called Briluki, which is just east of Kiev, where a Russian missile hits a five-story apartment block. And I would say a couple of dozen households had been reduced to. a heap of rubble.

So far, the authorities say that at least 14 people have been confirmed dead there, including four children and at least 50 wounded elsewhere in Kremlinchuk, for example, further east. Part of a street was completely erased by more Russian missiles and more apartment blocks were hit there as well. Well, two people are dead. Overall, at least 20 people have been confirmed dead in strikes across Ukraine overnight. Vitaly, are we entering an era where Ukraine simply unable to defend itself against Russian missiles and Russian jet-powered drones?

It's an endless game of cat and mouse, if you like, a tragic game where it all comes down to a quantity. and quality. In terms of quality, Russia's weapons, they are getting better. They've started installing jet engines on their drones, but they also have ballistic missiles, which Ukraine is struggling to intercept. It needs American patriot intercepting missiles. It doesn't have enough of them. There's also glide bombs, which are all but impossible to intercept. So Russia has really good weapons and it's got a lot of them and it's really bad news for Ukraine. It's really struggling to come up with interception means. It's amazing, Vitaly, because it wasn't that long ago. Back in July, the director of the CIA in the United States estimated that the average

Russian soldier lasted around 20 to 30 minutes on the battlefield because Ukrainian AI power drones were so powerful. So what's changed? When did Ukraine lose that upper hand? I would say that what's happening along the front lines is still very important. However, there's been very little movement there on the ground. And it's probably still true that the Russian average soldiers' life expectancy is very short. but the importance of Russian air attacks on cities is getting bigger and bigger. Vitaly Shivchenko.

Staying in the region, the US President Donald Trump has said he'll speak to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, soon, about the death of a lab worker at a plague research center in Siberia. The World Health Organization says it's requested more information from the Russian authorities over reports a second employee at the laboratory had also contracted pneumonia. The WHO is seeking clarification on the cause of the severe pneumonia and the pathogen involved. Steve Rosenberg in Moscow has been speaking to Russian officials and told us more. I managed to ask President Putin's spokesman Dvichu Peskov about the situation in Erkutsk region. And I put it to him that a lack of official information was spawning rumors and speculation.

He didn't agree. He said Russia was providing competence. comprehensive information about what was going on down there through the country's public health watchdog. Now, if you look at the statements that that watchdog has been putting out, the message from Moscow is pretty clear. There is nothing to worry about. There is nothing to see here. According to official information, the lab worker didn't die of the plague, but died of, quote, pneumonia of unknown origin. America has offered Russia assistance in this situation. But you get the impression that the Russians aren't exactly thrilled.

by this offer. And in fact, Moscow made a counter offer to America saying that we'll help you sort out your infectious diseases that you're struggling with like the measles. Steve Rosenberg. Still to come in this podcast, do you notice if the AI agent you're using is presented as male or female? When we have these AI assistants, are they gendered? Are they assigned a human-like identity? And does, do you? Does that human-like identity affect the way we interact with them? We hear about new research that says it matters. It felt like everything I believed in was suddenly collapsing.

This is the story of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia with a dark secret of the school's head teacher. This was someone I respected above anyone else. And the investigation led by students, he's trying to silence. If this is leaked to the media, I'll be destroyed. This is World of Secrets, Catching My Teacher. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app or wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast. Malaysia used to be one of the strongest critics of the military regime in Myanmar.

But in a signal of changing regional alliances, Myanmar's ruler Mino Lain is in Malaysia for talks with the Malaysian Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim. The two-day visit comes as Malaysia. pushes ahead with a controversial move to repatriate thousands of migrants from Myanmar, many of the Muslim Rohingya refugees. The repatriation is happening even though rights groups and UN experts have warned, those people could face danger and persecution back in Myanmar, where a civil war is being fought.

I asked our Southeast Asia correspondent Jonathan Head in Bangkok to tell me more about Malaysia's U-turn on Myanmar. Malaysia is the fifth member of ASEAN now to accept official visits by Min Online since he held his much-criticized election earlier in the year, cementing his position as president. Malaysia is the most significant because of its previous stance, such strong stance against the military government and its legitimacy. Malaysia still doesn't officially recognize the government. It's bizarre that he's getting this official state welcome, and yet his government is not legally recognized. Malaysia's ambassador doesn't actually sit as an ambassador in Myanmar. And what Ibrahim has done this, he says,

simply because he said there are practical requirements, that there are things I have to talk to the man who effectively runs the government in Myanmar about, and that most critically is the number of asylum seekers from Myanmar in Malaysia, 200,000 Rohingyas, tens of thousands of other Burmese as well. And he says that, unless I meet him, we can't address this. And it's become an extremely heated issue in Malaysia after this toxic online campaign of hostility towards Rehingers back in June and July, at a time where Mr. Amwar's popularity has fallen sharply.

He faces an election within a year. It's a very heated topic. So you can understand why he sees the need to be responding to the hostility towards migrants, to be doing something. The question really is, what's he going to get out of this visit? And I would question whether he's going to get anything meaningful at all. Well, some migrants have already been sent back to Myanmar. What awaits them there?

It was very unclear, and we're not getting much transparency from the Myanmar government. I mean, everyone knows about that. the 1,500 who went back in Myanmar Navy ships last week, there have been thousands of others who had to pay for their own airfares who've flown back. And now in those cases, they've probably got some family support. But I mean, none of the migrants who've gone back, by the way, so far, are Rohingyas, who are the target of hostility. So Prime Minister Anwar has let people believe that these arrangements he's made to send migrants back are targeting Rohingyas. There are none. And there's a good reason for that, because Rehingers are not

recognized as citizens and are only allowed to live in Rekinds. state, which is in a complete state of war and fundamentally out of the control of the central government. So when Prime Minister Anwar says, you know, we're going to negotiate to get the Rohingyas sent back, that just isn't going to happen. But the other groups have gone back. Also, many of them come from war-torn parts of Myanmar. There are chins there. There are ethnic Rakhine. I mean, it's very unclear about whether they will be able to go back home. And if they are young men, they face the gruesome prospect of forced conscription. The Myanmar military is engaged and a massive conscription drive at the moment.

They're quite literally kidnapping people off the streets at night to try and fulfil the quotas to throw them into this dreadful meat grinder of a civil war where new recruits suffer very, very high casualties. So human rights groups are quite right. They're definitely not going back to a safe and unstable country. Jonathan Head. Lots of excitement, I'm sure, in parts of France and Japan today

after the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to the French scientist Henri Kagan and the Japanese organic chemist Kenso-I for their work providing a solution to the chemical mystery of life's asymmetry. Our science correspondent Palab Ghosh told us more. It's a mystery that no one really knows about, so let me explain it. Think about a molecule. It's a kind of stringy thing that's a bit of a funny shape.

It is a particular type of shape. It's left-handed. If you put your left hand in front of you, and then next to it put your right hand. In the middle of it, if you put a mirror, you can see that one's a mirror image of another. So there's this whole world of mirror molecules that largely don't exist in life.

So why should that be? Something must have happened in deep time to favour the world of left-handed molecules and left-handed plants and animals and life. And so this mirrorness has been a mystery in chemistry for about 100 years. And in the 80s and 90s, these two scientists began to solve just what happened back then to make life as it is. Fascinating. I mean, they won the award together today, but actually they didn't work together, did they?

One made some breakthroughs and then the other followed on about a decade later. Well, that's right. That's how Nobel Prizes work. That's how science works. It might have heard the expression on the shoulders of giants. Albert Einstein's theories built on the work of Isaac Newton. And so the Nobel Prize celebrates something that usually happens a long time ago, not always, but in this case, the first piece of work was done in the 1980s. They do that just to see if it really has a big ramification. So Henri Kagan did the initial work to show that certain types of chemical reactions magnify a particular type of handedness.

And then, so I found out that if you have a bit of one type of handedness, there's a feedback effect. You get more and more of it. So it's like a snowball getting bigger and bigger. So somewhere in the gloopy mess that resulted in eventually you and me talking, there was a series of reactions that favoured one kind after another. Palab Ghosh. And now the recent spate of killings of women near Johannesburg has reagre. ignited anger over South Africa's long-running crisis of gender-based violence. In a televised address last week, the country's president, Cyril Ramaphosa,

promised new measures to protect women, but campaigners say government action alone will not solve the problem. In one Johannesburg community, men are being encouraged to confront violence and their own behavior. The BBC's Christian Parkinson went along to one of their meetings to meet some of those involved. Men, they shout, we are men. I'm at an all-male gathering outside a tavern in an area known as organic market. It's an informal settlement to the north of Johannesburg, a maze of corrugated metal shacks and narrow unpaved roads.

But we can sit down with a man and talk and resolve the problem with them and before it happened. Some of the men are sipping on bottles of beer, and in the middle of the group is Itumelang Stephen Tamaga, known locally as Bras Steve. As I'm sure you picked up the subject today's gender-based violence on femicide, something that many around here are familiar with. Did you used to hit women before? Yes, I did. And I remember myself grabbing hair, slapping her.

Yeah, I was so aggressive. That's Homoza Mateka, a local man who's attending today's meeting. And as in like seeing what's happening around the world, I feel much more pain. I feel like I have contributed to what's happening. So that I must stand together as fight against the family side. Rastiv is the local organiser of Father a Nation, a non-profit that focuses on using positive male role models

to help end violence against women and try to fix broken neighborhoods. All the men, they must realize gender violence is a pandemic. It's been a tough time in South Africa. The issue of femicide and violence against women has dominated the headlines and sparked outrage, after a string of brutal murders in the east of Johannesburg. Recent government measures aimed at curbing violence against women here as seen by many as too little too late.

Zizipo Mtwesi is the project coordinator of father a nation. So when I read about the murders that have been happening, most of the time I get very angry. I question myself, are we doing enough when it comes to gender-based violence? And some of the questions I also have is, why do we wait for something to happen, for us to start addressing it? The politicians, they love to talk,

but we are the guys that love to make action. Also at today's meeting is Craig Wilkinson. He's the founder of Father a Nation. I have absolutely no doubt that we need to focus on prevention. The thing that will change it is raising boys to be good men, is raising the standard of what masculinity is. So I'm utterly convinced that this, kind of program. Focusing on prevention, that is what this country needs, because that is

ultimately what will reduce and ultimately, hopefully, eliminate the scourge of gender-based violence. Come, come, go, go, go, go, let us. I'm now walking around the area with Bras Steve. There's a group of people in the local salon doing their hair. Amongst them is Providence Maseko. We are afraid to talk to anyone, because we do not know what to trust anymore. We do not know, because you might be the serial killer. We do not know, right? And Providence isn't. the only one who's scared, doing her washing in a large metal bucket nearby is Linky Mashele. She was beaten up by a minibus taxi driver last year.

We are afraid when we see the car standing just behind us when we work. We feel afraid. We feel scared. What if this guy's going to kick me or do something to me? We are not safe. I'm a man. I'm a force. Back at the tavern today's men's meeting is wrapping up.

Hormozo is impressed with what he's heard. My message is to other men. Stop lying, be protectors of your community by protecting your children and yourself by being the good role models to them so that when they grow, they become a better nation out there. I have what it takes to be a powerful force. To be a powerful force. Christian Parkinson. Well, staying with gender issues now, we're finding more and more uses for artificial intelligence in our everyday activities. especially at work. But is there a risk that gender biases that exist in the real world can be transferred onto how we feel about the AI bots that shape our days? Dr. Mary Housefeld from the University of Limerick in Ireland thinks so.

She's the co-author of some new research into how we interact with AI assistants that are presented to us as being male or female. I asked her to tell me more about what she's found out. This was part of a broader program of research. It was a big collaboration between a scheme of business school, University of Zurich and University of Limerick. And I was brought in because of my expertise and gender in the workplace. So we set real knowledge workers in Switzerland up in the lab. And we even brought the lab to them, hooked them up to VR headsets. And they started working on different tasks. So idea generation tasks. And they had an assistant for these tasks. And the assistant was an AI. And behind the scenes, the AI agent was the same exact AI model, but it was presented either as a robot or as a human-like AI agent. And then the human-like agent, of course, was gendered. There was a male-presenting version of Johan and a female-presenting version of Johanna. So they worked on these tasks together in collaboration with their AI assistant, and we asked them questions about how much they trusted their AI assistant, how much credit the AI assistant deserves for the work.

And then we gave them an opportunity to reward their AI assistant for the work it contributed. And what we found was that despite saying that the male version and female version of the AI deserved similar levels of credit for the work, they actually paid Johanna about 10% less than they paid Johan. That's incredible. And what else did you learn about how much they trusted the female presenting agent versus the male presenting agent versus the robot? So this part is really interesting because what we found was that women participants in our

sample tended to trust Johann and Johanna similarly and trusted them both more than the robot. But their male participants only trusted Johanna about as much as they trusted the robots. We're not exactly sure what explains this, but it does align with some other work in the gender space, indicating that maybe women's competence is less trusted. Dr. Housefield, so what do we all take away from this? Should we be paying attention to how AI bots are presented to us in our everyday lives? I think we need to be careful, right? This is only one experiment.

And for me, it raises a lot of questions, but these are very important questions. So a question I would have for us and also for businesses is when we have these AI assistants, Are they gendered? Are they assigned a human-like identity? And does that human-like identity affect the way we interact with them? Dr. Mary Hasfeld. And that's all from us for now. But before we go, we have a request. Did you know there are nearly 1,300 terms and phrases used by election officials in the United States? So with the midterms fast approaching, the Global News podcast is joining forces with AmeriCast. Together, we'll, we'll, be offering you a one-off jargon-busting special and want your suggestions please for words and phrases that could do with an explanation. Nothing is too simple in our sites already are Senate, caucus and gerrymander. Please let us know what else to add. It's the usual address, global podcast at bbc.co.uk. We look forward to hearing from you. And you can also now watch our episodes in full

just search for the global news podcast on YouTube. This edition was mixed by Calla McLean, and the producer was Adrian White. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Celia Hatton. Until next time, goodbye. It felt like everything I believed in was suddenly collapsing. This is the story of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia with a dark secret, of the school's head teacher. This was someone I respected above anyone else.

And the investigation led by students, he's trying to silence. If this is leaked to the media, I'll be destroyed. This is World of Secrets, Catching My Teacher. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app or wherever you get your BBC podcasts.