Global News Podcast - Russia blamed for drone crash in Romania

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

Romanian authorities say a Russian drone has crashed into a residential building in eastern Romania, causing a fire and injuring two people in the major port city of Galati. The episode has sparked a chorus of condemnation from NATO and EU leaders, who have accused Russia of acting recklessly. The Romanian president, Nicușor Dan, has described this as the most serious security incident to occur on Romanian territory since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Also: eight students have been arrested on suspicion of arson after a deadly fire at a girls school in Kenya; Anthropic, the firm behind the Claude chatbot, overtakes OpenAI to become the world's most valuable AI startup; WHO chief lands in the Democratic Republic of Congo to address rare Ebola outbreak; what two decades of anonymous Google searches tell us about our habits over time; and Lucian Freud’s muse Sue Tilley tells us what it’s like to be the subject of a painting worth a fortune. 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. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Jonat Jaliel and at 15 hours GMT on Friday the 29th of May, these are our main stories. NATO and EU members condemn Russia after a drone hits an apartment building in Romania, injuring two people, close to the border with Ukraine. Eight students are arrested in Kenya on suspicion of arson after a fire at a boarding school kills 16 girls. Anthropic overtakes open AI to become the world's most valuable AI firm, valued at nearly a trillion dollars. Also in this podcast? Everybody has to search for things that, you know, we might think are basic, but they're really important part of the lives,

whether it's like how to boil an egg or how to. tie a tie or even how to know if you're in love. We take a look back at two decades of Google searches. We begin the program in Romania. Where a drone has crashed into an apartment block in a city that's close to the border with Ukraine, causing a fire and wounding two people, a mother and her child. It sparked a chorus of condemnation from NATO and EU leaders

who have accused Russia of active. recklessly. These residents of the port city of Galatz said they feared this was not an accident, but a deliberate attack by Moscow. Well, I think it's another provocation by the Russians. I don't believe this was an accident. This has happened too many times for the Russians to be doing this by accident. Either that or they're highly incompetent at waging war, but NATO needs to do something about this. I am thinking Russian peace is slowly reaching here in Romania. I am Ukrainian, and what happened here? In Ukraine, there are hundreds like these all night. King people, children, the elderly, one fell here, and Romanians and the European Union must continue to draw attention so that Russians understand they can't do such a thing.

And while Russian drones have fallen in Romania before, The Romanian president Nican president Nicosan Dan said this was the most serious incident to occur on Romanian territory since the start of Russia's war with Ukraine. As well as condemning Russia, there's been an outpouring of support for Romania from European leaders. The NATO Secretary General, Mark Witter, says he's assured Romania that the alliance stands ready to defend every, inch of its territory. Germany, France and Britain condemned the drone strike and the US ambassador to NATO said Washington stood with Romania. As we record this podcast, Moscow has neither confirmed nor denied the drone was Russian. I got more from our world affairs correspondent Joe Inwood. The port of Galati is about 20 kilometres or so from the nearest Ukrainian port just a few miles

over the border. Luckily, it does seem that the damage to the building was severe, but people inside, not nearly as bad as it could have been. Two people injured, 70 people evacuated. The fear is, of course, if it had hit lower down the building, it would have been much worse. But when you look at the pictures, you can see an impact point and fragmentation marks going away. It's right at the top of the building. And so the human cost hasn't been that serious. I think what's much more serious is the potential kind of political and diplomatic fallout from this. And F-16 fighter jets were scrambled, but they couldn't shoot down the drone. It's not as straightforward as you might think taking down a drone like this because it's a

densely populated area. We don't know the exact path, but the Romanian military have come out and basically said flying as low as it was, there were legal considerations, there were lots of restrictions on what their planes, their F-16s could do. Of course, they can shoot drones out the sky, but you haven't got much time to react just a few minutes they have. And it seems basically they were also concerned that they might veer into Ukrainian airspace. NATO have always been, for all the support they've offered Ukraine, very, very keen not to get involved in this war themselves. And they fear that, for example, if NATO jets started going into Ukrainian airspace, that would be seen as a provocation by Russia. And many people are voicing concern that this was not an accident, but Russia deliberately testing the response of a NATO country, Romania and its allies.

and there are some in Romania that are calling for more air defences to be given to it. Yeah, I mean, we should start this by saying, obviously, we don't know what the intention was. I mean, we haven't heard anything from the Kremlin so far, other than in the last few minutes, we're told that Vladimir Putin is aware of the situation. But that's the fear, isn't it, that by going into NATO airspace, these little sort of testing jabs by Russia to see exactly what would happen. So the German military have said that they think within five years or so, So the Russians are going to be in a position and may well try and take an actual nibble of NATO territory.

And the idea is that all of these little things, little provocations are about testing NATO defences, testing NATO reactions and testing NATO resolve. Joe Inwood. We told you in an earlier podcast about a fire at a girls' boarding school in which 16 of the pupils died. Now, police in Kenya have arrested eight of the students on suspicion of our students. There have been a string of fires in boarding schools in Kenya in recent years and questions are again being asked about why they continue to have such a poor safety record. Thomas Maguana has been to the school in Gilgill, northwest of the capital, Nairobi,

and gave me this update on the police investigation. The news of the eight arrests was met with a lot of anger, understandably, from here, mostly because the parents that are present here, some of those parents are parents of kids who died in the fire. and others of children who are held because of suspicion of arson. This is not an isolated case. Here in Kenya, school children, mostly high school students, use as a form of expressing protest.

And it happened in the past, and in the very rare occasions that it happens at a massive scale like this one, it does result in the loss of life. Within the school itself, in the dormitory that caught fire, It is said by the Ministry of Education that the preliminary investigations have revealed that the students that were in the dormitory of first of all overcrowded, many of them, way more than they should have been inside the around 135 bunk beds. And on top of that, they only had one exit in the case of an emergency, which goes against the safety requirements at these high schools. And Thomas, it's been taking some time to identify the dead.

Have all the parents now found out which of their daughters died in this fire? Most of the parents by this time have found out. The depressing thing about being at the scene of this fire since yesterday is that you'll hear occasional wails from parents because maybe they've been met with the information that their children are amongst those who died the 16. And some of them have found out that some of their children have been arrested in connection to this fire. and you're then in this place where police are trying to contain parents who are protesting because they believe their children have been held within the school on this suspicion of Ason and they haven't been given access to their children for the past over 24 hours.

We've seen two cases this morning of parents who say they haven't heard about their children being inside the school under the custody of the police or whether they've died. Some of them are just left without knowing what's happening. And communication is part of the problem. but at the moment police officers are trying to reunite and try and figure out which child is whose and why they can't be found. And Torres, you outlined some of the reasons why these fires keep happening, but surely there must be growing anger that the authorities aren't doing more to address this recurring problem. Absolutely, absolutely.

And most of the anger is actually towards the Ministry of Education, because in 2024, after another similar incident, actually, that cost the life. of 21 boys at a primary school far from here. The ministry went on a countrywide inspection of all boarding schools, both primary and secondary boarding schools. And boarding schools are a majority of the schools here in Kenya. And they established that around 348 had not achieved the safety standards required to run. And they say that they shut it down. But this school had a boarding section that led to all these deaths. And it's just come from the Ministry of Education as well that the boarding section had not reached those safety requirements.

So the question is, why did the Ministry let it run? Thomas McWana speaking to me from outside the school in Gilgill in Kenya, where a deadly fire killed 16 schoolgirls. We've heard a lot about ChatGPT and its creator OpenAI, but now another company has overtaken it to become the world's most valuable AI firm. Anthropic, which is behind the Claude Chatbot, announced that it had raised $65 billion in funding, which means the company is now valued at nearly a trillion dollars,

more than double what it was worth just three months ago. I asked our business correspondent, Nick Marsh, why Anthropic had overtaken OpenAI. It's fundamentally to do with the business model that it's decided to pursue. You're quite right. Most of us have heard of ChatGPT, a lot of us use it, Open AI is pretty famous, but that's because it's tailored for the everyday consumer. You know, you use it in your everyday life.

You look up a cake recipe or, you know, ask it to plan your holiday. Anthropic, Claude, the chatbot, it can do all of that. But what it's done, it's focused a lot. Firstly, on coding, and that's been incredibly valuable. And it's also focused on selling its system to, they call it enterprise in the industry, just businesses, basically commercial clients. You know, you integrate Claude into your systems at work, into your computers, into everything you do, and you operate with Claude.

And obviously, being a commercial client, you can charge an awful lot more. That's what's really, in a very simplistic way, being behind this unbelievable rise in terms of anthropics value. And this valuation shows how enormous amounts of money are still flowing into the AI industry, despite widespread public distrust and fears of what it means for our future. Yes, exactly. So there were two main concerns. The first is that there's going to be some kind of stock market bubble. I mean, we're talking about trillions of dollars here.

I think I was talking to one of your colleagues about SpaceX not long ago. That's going to list on the stock market soon. That's expected to become a $1 trillion company. Same could well happen with Anthropic. And by the way, Open AI isn't doing too badly either. It's been overtaken by Anthropic. But that's a company that's going to list on the stock market either this year or maybe beginning of next year.

That's going to raise hundreds of millions. And all of these companies, you know, they sort of work to lift each other up. So, for example, Anthropic is going to pay billions to SpaceX to use its data centers. These data centers keep on getting built at an incredible rate because you need so much. They call it compute, basically, you know, the physical hardware, the systems to be able to power it. There are no signs of this slowing down. We're going to get to a point where the vast majority of the stock market's value is made up by AI companies. A lot of people say not a very healthy position to be in, but showing no signs of slowing down.

The other concern, Jeanette, is to do with safety. Who's regulating it? Anthropic itself, it's watered down its own safety regulations. Recently, big dispute with the Pentagon, you know, in its use of weapons. So there's a big concern there as well. But the money keeps flowing. Nick Marsh. For the first time here in the UK, an intensive care ward has opened on the roof of a hospital. It allows some patients who are too ill to leave their beds to breathe fresh air and enjoy nature

while still being hooked up to their life support systems. Their progress will be monitored to see if spending time outdoors helps them to recover more quickly. Our health reporter Jim Reid has been to King's College Hospital in London to see how it all works. I can't remember the last time I experienced being outside. Holly, this is week 9 in intensive care. She's been in this room in South London, getting treatment for a damaged heart valve. It's so hard. It's lovely because you have lovely nurses and lovely doctors, but the actual mental and physical side is just horrific.

And especially at a young age of 29, you don't know what's coming next. It's horrible. Today, though, Holly will be the first patient ever to be led out of her room to a brand new space on the roof of this giant hospital. Doors opening. And when you're up here on the fifth floor with these amazing views out over the London skyline, it might feel and look like a nice roof garden. But actually this in front of me is a full critical care ward with space for six different

beds. These cabinets here are all hooked up to life support. So the sickest patients can all be monitored, they can be given oxygen, all the from the top of this roof, the same sort of level of treatment that you'd expect to find downstairs in the main critical care unit. Wow. Very carefully, a whole team of medics move Holly out of the lift and into the sun for the first time in months. Oh, it's lovely. Do you want to be a bit of shade? Oh, it's so lovely.

Holly's doctors now plan to study the impact of this garden and its effect on heart rates and pain levels. Just the contact with sun, wind, rain, pulls them back into their own reality. Dr Philip Hopkins is a consultant in intensive care medicine. It's going to be absolutely critical to the NHS going forward because a lot of what we do is about rehabilitation, saving people's lives, but making sure that when they leave intensive care, they leave in a way that, A, they're not going to come back and B, that they are returning to their normal lives in the best possible shape.

The garden, with all its lifts and equipment, has cost, 2 million pounds, paid for almost entirely by charity fundraising. It's full of herbs and other plants that patients can smell and touch from their beds. Rosemary's, lavenders, jasmine, honeysuckle. Sarah Price, a three-time medalist at the Chelsea Flower Show, is one of the designers behind the project. It's the antithesis of a hospital ward. You want to be able to smell the damp soil after rain, the scent of flowers,

to step out into a garden and just having that sense of being connected and it's a different time scale. Patients like Holly have a long recovery ahead. The hope is that a scheme like this could speed that process up and ultimately take some of the pressure off intensive care. When you're stuck inside all day, there's no motivation to really try and get back to normal. life. Does it feel a bit more normal up here? Oh, it does. It feels lovely. I don't want to leave.

Hospital patient, Holly, ending that report by Jim Reed. Still to come in this podcast? What could be better? Lying around, being fed glorious food, being in the company of one of the greatest artists in the world, and having all the Sunday supplements to read. We talked to the woman who posed nude for one of Lucian Freud's most famous paintings ahead of its sale. 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 over you get your podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast. As conflict, displacement and widespread mistrust complicate efforts to fight the latest deadly Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo,

the head of the WHO has now arrived in the country to show his commitment to containing the disease. On his arrival in the capital Kinshasa, Tedros Adhanam Gabriususus has this message of reassurance for the Congolese people. come here is to really show to the community that they're not alone. Pushing orders from my comfortable office in Univa is easy. But if I'm asking my colleagues to work with the community and I am asking communities to protect themselves to do this on that, so I came here to show

that the community, they're not alone. This comes as a plan by the Trump administration to set up an Ebola quarantine centre in Kenya for American nationals has been temporarily blocked by the Kenyan High Court while it hears a case brought by a civil society group. I asked our correspondent in Kenya, Barbara Pletasha, how much of a difference the WHO chief's visit to Congo would make to efforts to fight the disease. He's very much highlighting the moral support of the head of the WHO coming to the Democratic Republic of Congo and he's going to be visiting not only Kinshasa but heading to the main epicenter of the outbreak. So that's one thing he's really been stressing. But on a practical level, he will be looking at coordinating and reinforcing the response efforts because it is complicated.

It's a remote area with a lot of difficulties, security, infrastructure, and otherwise. And there are a lot of elements involved. The national government is leading the response, but there are a lot of international partners as well. And they're going to have to have a system, a coordinated system, because there's no vaccine. So they have to go back to like surveillance, testing, contact tracing, isolation, care for patients and then trying to prevent further infection. And that requires a whole coordinated system. And he's going to be looking at how to reinforce that. But he has a lot of obstacles to overcome the sort of displacement caused by conflict and also the widespread mistrust. Yes. And we've seen that before in Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

So this is the 17th, by the way. So that means that there has been much experience of this before. The community, as I said, it's in a remote area. It's an area that has been afflicted by conflict from armed groups for decades, basically an area of state neglect. So there's a certain amount of suspicion of outside forces coming in, and people are saying the attitude is somewhat, like you come here when there's Ebola,

but otherwise you don't give us anything. That's on the one hand. On the other hand, there's misinformation and suspicion about whether this disease really is as bad as that people say it is or whether it's actually happening to that degree. And they want access to the patients. They don't want to go and be quarantined somewhere. They don't want to let other people bury their dead. So there has to be a lot of community engagement. And all health officials have acknowledged this, not only the WHO director. And there is going to be, that is going to be part of the response. And it's especially important because of

the fact that there is no treatment or vaccines. And so they will need the cooperating. of the community. Barbara Pletusha. Every day, millions of us use the internet to find answers to questions from the practical to the deeply personal. Worldwide, the weather forecast remains the most popular search. Other frequently asked questions include, what is my IP address? Which dinosaur had 500 teeth?

And even, where am I? Simon Rogers is Google's lead data editor and he's been looking at two decades of anonymous searches for his new book. So what does the data tell us about our search habits over time? Yes, definitely evolved over time. Sometimes it's obvious things like slang or language because, you know, there's always new things to learn, isn't there? Like new emojis that we've never heard of before, that sort of thing. But also what you've got is a lot of trends that have just increased over time. So for instance, we search for how to help more than at any time in search history now. And we've also seen like changes in societies.

So people are more likely to search now for take care of parents than they are to search for take care of kids. AI is obviously really changing the way that we ask for stuff. Queries are now three times as long as they used to be because they're much more conversational. We're almost having a conversation with search now, so we'll ask really complicated questions. I mean, if you're one of those people who feel like everybody else has got everything sorted out and you're the only person in the world that doesn't know something, I can tell you you're not. everybody has to search for things that, you know, we might think a basic, but they're really important part of a life, whether it's like how to boil an egg or how to tie a tie, or even

how to know if you're in love. All of those things are the kinds of things that we search for every day. There are some things that are searched globally that are very searched in similar ways. Like, you might be surprised to know that the top place searching for Liverpool Football Club isn't Liverpool. It's from Kassengarti, which is in Uganda. The top food that's searched in Paris, the capital of culinary excellence in the world is pizza. But there are some things that are similar. Like everybody around the world searches for how to learn to play the piano in December just before Christmas, you know.

But then there are some things which are different in different places. So if you look like kids' classes after school, in the US parents search for like etiquette classes for kids. In Australia it's coding classes. In Canada, it's boxing classes and the UK is parkour classes. Simon Rogers. And just in case you were wondering, which dinosaur did have 500 teeth, we've Googled it for you, and the answer is anigosaurus.

Now, a sound that many of us don't like to hear. Mosquitoes. A new research suggests that DEET-based repellents to protect ourselves might not always work. That's because the mosquitoes may learn that where there is DEET, there is food, i.e. us. Hillary Ranssen is Professor of Entomology, that's the study of insects at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. What does she make of the discovery? It is a very interesting study and a very clever study, but I think the first thing I would say is, don't be too alarmed. Diet is still a very effective repellent, the most effective repellent we have.

But what the scientists doing a study were able to show is that you can effectively train a mosquito to associate Diet, this very effective repellent, with a blood meal. And so whereas the mosquito normally if it could smell the deed, it would avoid the skin. Because it's so keen to get the blood meal, by training that mosquito to associate the smell of deat with a blood meal, you can then make the deat not effective, effectively so that people will be bitten. But this was in a laboratory experiment over a short period. What we don't know is if this was done over about an hour.

But if you were to go the next day or even a few hours later, would that learning behavior still be retained? They might forget? They might forget, exactly. Yes. And of course, under wild natural situations, there are a huge range of different stimuli. There are a number of different repellents. There's also access to other sources of blood or even parts of your own skin. We all know that we're not that great at putting on repellent. And there's usually a patch of skin we miss that doesn't have the repellent. So the mosquitoes will be honed into finding that blood meal. And so whilst I think this is a really interesting study, it tells us a lot about that mosquitoes can learn and they can change their behavior. I don't think we should be too worried about

whether or not Diet is going to remain protective when we put it on to protect ourselves from mosquito bites. Have we seen other ways in which mosquitoes have changed their behaviour according to the environment? Yes, absolutely. I mean, they're very adaptive species, and particularly the mosquitoes that transmit human diseases because they live in such close association with us and they learn to adapt. So as we urbanise or we change our housing, they can adapt. And perhaps one of the best examples is for malaria-controlled, across Africa, the most effective preventative measure is to sleep under an insecticide treated net. But we're seeing that the mosquitoes are evolving or changing their behavior so that some of them

now feed earlier in the evening or very early in the morning after people have got outside of their net. So they are changing, they are evolving. We need to stay ahead of the game with them. But the rise now of mosquito-borne infections across the globe, including in Europe, it's really important that people don't loose confidence in the efficacy of Diet as an effective repellent. Professor Hilary Ranssen speaking to Johnny Diamond. How does it feel to be the subject of a painting that's worth tens of millions of dollars? Most of us will never know, but Sue Tilly does. She was the nude model for a series of Lucien Freud paintings,

the last and most ambitious of which, sleeping by the lion carpet, is coming up for auction in the next few. weeks. Sue Tilly was paid a daily fee for the portrait of her seemingly asleep in an armchair, but she's never received any money from the sale of the paintings she modelled for. Anna Foster asked her if she ever thinks about how much a picture of herself is now worth. I've worked it out. I think I must be worth about a hundred million, what with all the four paintings and all the etchings. I go, how can that be possible when I've never got any money myself? Well, I mean that's just, That's an excellent point. And somebody should be taking that into account.

Do you know, what was it like, Sue? Because you have to sit for these things for quite a long time, don't you? I know it was a while ago, but it's a long process. Yeah, it was fine. As I've said, often, what could be better lying around, being fed glorious food, being in the company of one of the greatest artists in the world, and having all the Sunday supplements to read. It sounds perfect to me.

It was. What was he like to work with? I know there are bits and pieces of the conversation. that you probably can't say on the radio. Well, he was hilarious because I'm very interested in people and, you know, their behaviour. And he was very hard to pin down, you know. And he just sort of, like an artist just did what he wanted and everything he did he thought was right. Even though he used to tell me stories of something he'd done.

Like I go, oh, marvellous. And I just go, and you did what? Yeah, really simple thing, not awful. Well, it's a lot of chit chat to have to make, isn't it, I suppose? Or were the times when you just, as you say, you just sort of sat quietly and thought, and think your own thoughts? Yeah, sometimes I'd go and I'd be really desperate for sleep and he'd be dead chatty. And then other times I'd be quite chatting and he'd be quite tired.

Well, all of these memories that you've got as well, did he ever talk about what he was doing, about the painting or about his great vision for it? Not really, no. But people like to sort of read stories into the paintings and everything. But really, they're all a test of himself and what he could paint and how he could paint better because he realised he was getting older. So he just wanted to keep trying new and new things. Do you have attempted to go, oh, what about that bit there?

I didn't. But Lee Barry, who worked there as well, sometimes in the brakes, used to go up and add a bit of paint to the paintings of himself. I sometimes used to say, can you make my hair look a bit nicer, thank you? But you would. I mean, do you ever go to these auctions and sort of drift through and see if people recognise? I mean, that would be quite a moment, wouldn't it? You'd be not.

I've got to go to auctions, but, you know, that painting was recently in the National Port. portrait gallery. And I went there because I don't really look like it anymore. So I've got grey hair and everything. So people generally don't recognise me. It's, I love the way that, you know, for you, it's all very, you know, it's just a part of a part of your life that you've, you know, people like me have asked you questions like there's so many times before. And yet you're very, very patiently still talk about it and still go back through those memories. I thought if someone gave me a pound for every time I was asked how I'd met Lucy and Freud, to be quite a rich woman.

You would. You'd have all those multi-millions for yourself, wouldn't you? I would, yeah. Sue Tilly, who met Lucian Freud through their mutual artist friend Lee Barry, and who once joked that she thought she was chosen as a model because Lucian Freud got a lot of flesh for his money. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at globalpodcast at BBC.co.uk. This edition of the Global News Podcast was mixed by Nathan.

Chamberlain, the producer was Ed Horton. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jeanette Jalil. 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.