Global News Podcast - Typhoon hits Japan causing landslides and cancelled flights

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

A powerful typhoon passing Japan's east coast is bringing heavy rainfall and major disruption. More than 1.9 million people in and around Tokyo have been told to evacuate. Winds from Typhoon Dujuan have caused power cuts for thousands of people, and hundreds of flights have been cancelled. Large events - including the Asian Games and Tokyo Game Show - have been postponed or called off.Also in this podcast: Nearly 500 people have been arrested in a major transatlantic operation targeting criminal gangs; officials in Gaza have announced plans to demolish more than 250 buildings; Vladimir Putin's political party is on course to retain its majority in Russia's parliamentary elections; a new trial aims to help dementia patients remain in their own homes and out of care facilities; and how arguments over sunbeds on European beaches have turned deadly.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] Photo: Pedestrians wait at Shibuya crossing under heavy rainfall triggered by Typhoon Dujuan in Tokyo. Credit: Franck Robichon - EPA/Shutterstock

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Visit BBC.com forward slash subscribe. to find out more. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Uncle Desai and at 4 o'clock GMT on Monday the 21st of September. These are our main stories. A powerful typhoon is being felt in Tokyo, with police urging more than one and a half million people in the Tokyo area to evacuate. A huge Belgian-led international police operation targeting drugs gangs

has seen nearly 500 people arrested mainly in Latin America. Officials in Gaza have announced plans to evacuate and demolish more than 250 buildings because they're at risk of collapsing. Also in this podcast, as expected in Russia's parliamentary elections, President Putin's United Russia Party is on course to retain its constitutional majority. So what impact will this result have? And a trial in the UK monitors how gadgets and sensors might help people with dementia live in their own hopes. That's the power of technology.

We're trying to spot early signs that things might be going wrong and we can keep people at home and out of hospital. We begin in Japan where a powerful typhoon is battering the country's capital, Tokyo. Typhoon Du Juan has forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights and prompted warnings of record-breaking rainfall. 1.9 million people have been urged to evacuate and several major events have been cancelled. This typhoon is the latest in a wave of storms in the Pacific, made more intense by this year's Super El Nino.

I got the latest from our correspondent in Tokyo, Karumi Mori. It sure is powerful. I mean, I woke up this morning to quite light rains here in Shibia, which is where the Tokyo BBC studios are located, and it turned. I mean, it was heavy rains, strong winds this afternoon. And just in the past hour, it's gotten way dark, and the rain has been stronger and stronger. There have been special warnings all day coming from the government. I've had mobile alerts go off all day. Something we are watching right now is this river called Meguro River that runs through Tokyo

from Shibuya, Sitagaya, Meguro, and into Tokyo Bay. I just spoke to a resident who lives near there, and he's been seeing over the past just two hours just the rise in the level of this river. And so he's concerned. We want to make sure that residents are evaluated. evacuating if they are on the ground floor, the elderly. But it's definitely something we're watching here in Tokyo today. And Karumi, I guess the wider impact is it's impacting rail services, air services,

and also some of the big events as well that are taking place. We've got the Tokyo Game Show and, of course, the Asian Games, where athletes from over 40 countries are attending. That's right, a lot of impact here. This is Silver Week, which is a holiday week for Japan. Today, tomorrow and Wednesdays are their public holidays. So although there are not many commuters out on the streets, thankfully, there are a lot of tourists here, a lot of people hoping to travel, but a lot of cancellations happening, whether it's the local trains, the bullet trains, the Shinkansen bullet trains, and also flights. Now we're seeing about 400 cancellations at two of Tokyo's major airports, Haneda and Narita. Also, Prime Minister Takaiichi was set to leave for New York. Her flight has been delayed to now 11 p.m. tonight for the UNGA. And then events. Tokyo Game Show canceled its last day today because of the typhoon.

And the Nagoya Asian Games have some events in Tokyo like swimming and equestrian. Equestrian delayed its events today and pushed it to tomorrow. And Karumi, are we likely to see an impact across East Asia with this typhoon? As of now, what we're tracking is that after it hits the Kanto region, the central area near Tokyo, it's supposed to kind of swerve up and away into the ocean. and so it's not set to impact other parts of Asian at the moment, but you never know because some of the trajectory may change. Karumi Mori in Tokyo.

Nearly 500 people have been arrested in a major transatlantic operation against criminal gangs. Belgian federal police, which led the raids, say large amounts of drugs, firearms and ammunition were seized mainly in Latin America. Our Europe correspondent, Nick Beek, reports. More than 370 of these arrests were made in. Costa Rica, where raids targeted a criminal network, allegedly being protected by senior judicial and security figures, which was sending vast amounts of drugs to Europe. In Paraguay, a record amount of cannabis was said to have been seized. In Ireland, police dismantled what is believed

to be the country's first known cocaine processing laboratory. Europe has been battling to stem the flow of cocaine, in particular, coming from South America, which has enriched crime bosses and fuelled increased gang violence. Nick Beak, reporting. According to the UN agency that supports the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, more than 80% of all structures in the Gaza Strip were damaged or destroyed during the war between Israel and Hamas. The Gaza War was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on the 7th of October

23, when about 1,200 people were killed. Now officials in Gaza have announced plans to evacuate and evacuate. demolish more than 250 buildings because they're at risk of collapsing. A Middle East correspondent Yelan Nel told us this move follows a series of collapses in recent days. In the past week, at least 21 people were killed in Gaza City when a residential building came down. Locals who have been living in that area told the BBC that it had been tilting to one side that families knew it was unsafe. One relative who was bereaved said that buildings like that had become a ticking time bomb. But really, because of the lack of safe places to go, the lack of durable shelters in Gaza,

it is forcing people to go into some of these unsafe buildings. And as well as that building in the south of Gaza City that really fully came down, on Friday there was another partial collapse in which five children got minor injuries. And this coming after the first rains of the season in Gaza last week. And that really accelerated the warnings once again about the dangers of some of these places. where people displaced by the fighting, now with no homes of their own, have been sheltering. And Yoland, just for us about the challenges the authorities are facing in terms of trying to implement this demolition plan? There are going to be so many challenges.

This statement from the Hamas run media office says that local authorities will be going to families and asking them to leave these more than 250 buildings, which are at risk of collapse where the situation is urgent. Of course, many of those families will not have places to go. They'll also need to evacuate areas around where the buildings are going to be pulled down. That is another danger. Many families may be refusing to go. Then you've also got the fact that many authorities, they're talking about police and other services that are aligned with Hamas

will have to be working on this. Israel has opposed fully the signs that Hamas has been trying to sort of reassert itself in Gaza. I've not been able to get some clarification from local UN officials about what their role is going to be here. But certainly, this statement is saying that the plan involves UN agencies and other international organizations. They're the ones really with the heavy lifting equipment that will be able to do some of this work.

But you've had the UN in recent days really underlying how Israeli officials that control the border crossings, how restrictions from Israel are limiting the work that they can do, whether it comes to that sort of heavy equipment that's so important for rubble removal, the fuel and the oil that is needed to run these machines. And then on top of that, the fact that there is not enough durable shelters in Gaza. They're looking for things like caravans to be allowed to go into Gaza that would give people better protection as we go into the winter.

And Yelan, then we've got the issue of the wider infrastructure in Gaza as well. That's right, and there are big UN longer term plans to try to improve the infrastructure. Gaza's health ministry has talked about how there are about 3,000 buildings that they class as being dangerous. And in many cases, families are living in those. You've also got inadequate roads, problems with waste and sanitation. All of these are going to be highlighted once again, particularly as the weather conditions become more difficult with increased rain. Yulandnell. A refugee crisis in Djibouti is worsening as people flee renewed conflict in Yemen

between the Iranian-backed Houthis and Saudi Arabia. Several thousand have made the dangerous sea crossing, many arriving in Djibouti's northern town of Obok. A security correspondent Frank Gardner is there. I'm in a very crowded, noisy refugee camp. I'm in a warehouse at a place called Obok, which is just on the African side of the Babel-Mandev Strait. that separates Yemen from Djibouti here. And this warehouse is absolutely full of Yemeni families who fled across the water,

takes several hours to get across, and they're telling me that the thing they've been fleeing most from are the air strikes. They don't care, they tell me, whether these are Saudi planes or Yemeni, or whether it's the Houthis. They're just terrified of the bombs. So the situation on their side, on the Yemeni side,

is still extremely fluid, because we don't know, they don't know, whether the Saudis are going to escalate this or not, because the Saudis have got a difficult decision to make. They can't get their ships safely through the Bablamandib Strait with their oil out, and that poses an existential threat to their economy and will impact on the world economy, because it'll mean shorter oil supplies, higher prices, or do they escalate this and increase the airstrikes, increase the misery on the Yemeni? side, bring more than the 3,000 refugees we've already got here in this camp, or did they try

and mediate it through a country like Pakistan, Turkey? The Saudis are looking around wondering where their friends are right now, because the Americans, so far, are not prepared to do the strikes, the air strikes and join in that the Saudis may be asking for. Frank Gardner. Still to come in this podcast. Some of the videos online of this mad dash to the sunloungeers pools and beaches are just extraordinary. Crowds of people can be seen lining up at the gates in the morning at resorts waiting to get into the pool. We hear about how the so-called sunbed wars in Europe have turned deadly. To the haunted library.

Have you come in search of a tale? This podcast invites you to browse the shelves and find stories that will linger long after you've left this place. From Gothic masterpieces to Pulpy Penny Dreadfuls, join me. Colin Morgan with new episodes twice a week. Find the haunted library wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast. In Germany, as we reported on the earlier podcast, the emerging success of the far-right anti-immigrant AFD Party in regional elections

has caused alarm in the ruling party, the CDU, the Christian Democrats. For the first time ever, the CDU was voted out of regional parliament in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg, Western Pomerania, where the far-right alternative for Germany is on track to win the most votes. And in another vote in the capital Berlin, the CDU was beaten by a far-left party. Despite the results, Chancellor Friedrich Metz has vowed to keep his ruling coalition together for what he called the democratic future of Germany. Mr Metz told journalists he was determined to live up to the historic challenges Germany is facing

and he said lessons had to be learned. The CDU as a party has fundamental, long-term questions to grapple with. Now in the leading body of our organisations, we have decided to pursue intensive discussions about where we have failed, what we are doing and where we're heading. We need to talk about the structure of our party, our program and the image of the CDU. But Germany isn't the only country in Europe that has seen a shift to the political extremes. Our Europe editor, Katya Adler, told Justin Webb about the significance of Germany's regional elections for Europe. Well, it's first and foremost a Europe-wide issue because Germany is the biggest net payer into the EU budget.

So if you have economic and political upheaval in Germany that has a definite ripple effect, this comes at a time when the continent, whether it's in the defence industry or whether it's in politics, say, we need to stick together. We've got aggression from Russia, in Ukraine, hybrid threat, throughout the continent. We've got that economic threat from China. We've got the US now so unpredictable whether it comes to trade or whether it comes to having our back in terms of defence. Kiev will be worried that if you like the more fringes of politics are doing well in Germany, whether it's on the left or the right because Germany is the single biggest supporter in terms of military and other aid to Ukraine. And both those parties are saying no more military aid for

Kyiv. But yes, more widely in Europe, Brussels says, oh my gosh, we have months ahead of big elections. Every big EU country is holding key elections. We've just had Germany. We've got French presidential elections. Poland, Spain, Italy. And in each one of those countries, nationalist forces are doing well. That comes at a moment where Brussels says the EU really needs to stick together. Otherwise, Moscow, Beijing and other opponents will just be rubbing their hands with glee. To which some people will say, well, it is the failures of the old established political order,

certainly in Germany, but in other places as well, I suppose, that have led to this. They only have themselves to blame. That is very much the sense among voters. I think whether you talk to voters in these regional elections in Germany or whether you go to France, where Marine Le Pen is looking very strong at the moment ahead of the presidential elections,

many voters say, look, for decades after the Second World War, across Europe, we've given our votes to the centre-right parties or the centre-left parties, those traditional parties of old. But we now worry about our personal finances for our family, whether we will ever have a state pension, we worry about the effects of wars abroad, and these parties are not coming to us with the answers. Then you have parties like the AFD in Germany, or DELINCA on the hard left, you say, we're listening to you voters, and we can help you, and they have that personal effect, and you can see parties like like that right across Europe, you have the Reform Party in the UK that says the same thing.

The traditional parties have failed. Give us a chance. Katya Adler. From one set of polls in Germany to another in Russia's parliamentary elections, President Putin's United Russia Party is on course to retain its constitutional majority. It has won a record number of seats and the near complete results will ensure it can continue to make changes to the constitution without support from other parties. The victory was widely expected. Only pro-Kremlin parties were allowed to stand.

Those opposing the war with Ukraine were not. In elections described as neither free nor fair. From Moscow, our Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg, reports. Many things about Russia are unpredictable. The results of this election weren't. In a political system tightly controlled by the Kremlin, as expected, the ruling party united Russia, which is backed by Vladimir Putin, is well out in front.

Preliminary results suggest it has retained its constitutional majority. As for those parties that are trailing far behind, but which have cleared the 5% threshold and made it into Parliament, experience shows that their MPs and the Duma normally support Kremlin initiatives. President Putin is likely to use the results to claim that the country is full square behind his policies, particularly the so-called special military operation, Russia's war on Ukraine. This was the first parliamentary election in Russia since the country's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And from it, the authorities will claim a mandate from the people to justify any future decisions on the course of the war.

Steve Rosenberg. In our earlier podcast, we brought you a powerful story from Indonesia about a cover-up at a prominent Islamic boarding school involving allegations of sexual crimes by the son of its founder. Known as Beki, he was jailed in 2022 for six. sexually assaulting a student at the school. But BBCI has exclusively recorded footage of him as a free man after serving less than half his sentence. The investigation also uncovered further allegations against him

and evidence that the school tried to suppress them. I asked the author of the report, the BBC's Rebecca Henske, how she had come across the story. We were investigating allegations of sexual abuse in Islamic boarding schools. It's an issue that's come to a head in Indonesia with a couple of high-profile cases. So Ira Pospita Sari, we were speaking to her about her allegations over years that she was intimidated into withdrawing. And when we were doing that, we started to hear rumors that the man that she alleges raped her since the age of 15 and also was jailed for the sexual abuse of one of her friends had been released early.

So we began an undercover investigation to look into what had happened there. Okay. And the man at the centre of this story, Becky, are we likely to know what's going to happen next? Well, the report has just sort of gone live in Indonesia and there's already been a huge reaction on social media with the majority of comments calling for justice for era and also for a full investigation by the government into why he was released early. I mean, the government says he was given remissions that are according to the law. But lawyers that we've spoken to said that's often used as. a loophole and they want more details about exactly what those remissions were.

And we've also, the reports being shared by some parliamentarians who are also calling for action. So there's quite a strong reaction from Indonesia right now. Rebecca, is this a sign of Deepa Malays in the Indonesian society that senior men that are connected are often protected? There is an issue for sure with the legal system. And there was a report by Komnas Prampoan, which is the Commission for Violence Against Women and children just a few months ago that was saying that this issue of sexual abuse in Islamic boarding school, Passantrians, where millions of children go to school, many have a very

happy time there, but they're saying that this issue of sexual abuse in the schools has reached an emergency level right now because of the unchecked power of the men that are running these schools and is calling for the government to put in place safeguarding, reporting mechanisms, because all the cases that we were looking at, the students did raise red flags. They went to teachers or they tried to go to the police and each time they were intimidated and not helped. For the full investigation, you can search for catching my teacher.

Wherever you get your BBC podcasts and you can watch it on the World Service YouTube channel. Hundreds of families are taking part in a study that uses the latest technology to keep people with dementia safer in their own homes in the UK. Scientists at the Dementia Research Institute have kitted out houses with smart gadgets and sensors to try to cut care home and hospital admissions. The UK's National Health Service, the NHS, says it's following the trial closely to see if it can reduce trips to the hospital and give families peace of mind that their loved ones are safe. A health reporter Jim Reid has been to meet one of the couples involved.

Would you please welcome back? Fantastic Barrett Patel and Joti! Joti Patel has spent decades on stage, always alongside her husband, Barat. I'm going to please won't come there. The couple travelled the world as a magical double act. That's a real magic. A few years ago, though, some of those routines became harder for Jotie to remember. Three years back, and I saw something I was looking for on the stage and it wasn't there. So I thought something is wrong.

I wasn't sure that it is a dimension. or something, you know, because I thought she might have forgotten it. But we saw the doctor and they says it is coming, it's the starting, you know. If I was going out, if I just don't look around, then I would find that I'm lost. Two years after her Alzheimer's diagnosis, the couple are now one of 250 families involved in a new project using technology to help people live at home with dementia. You're looking up the sensors for the door. Their house in West London is fitted out with door or movement sensors in every room.

If the door is left for a longer time open, I'll get a phone call. If Joti tries to leave in the middle of the night, Sautier suddenly starts making more trips to the bathroom, the system can alert her carers. So you can see much more comfortable and safer. Then upstairs in the bedroom, under this mattress is a sensor which can record Jocci's heart rate and breathing as she sleeps to try to spot early signs of infection.

And back downstairs in the kitchen, there are more sensors on the fridge, on the kettle, the microwave, even the toaster. The idea is they can help check whether she is sticking to her daily routine and eating properly. You can see here a feed of her heart rate. All this data can then be shared with doctors and care staff in near real time. We'll get that feed from the sleep mat. The team behind the project say the total cost works out at around £2,000 a year. I'm Sarah Daniels. I'm an occupational therapist and I work at Imperial College London.

That's the power of technology. We're trying to spot early signs that things might be going wrong. There may be risks that are changing. We spot them early. we can intervene earlier and we can keep people at home and out of hospital. So this kind of system might cost what perhaps a couple of thousand pounds. Is that kind of money justified when there's pressure elsewhere on the health service? So really we only need to delay someone's admission to a care home by a month

or reduce the days that they spend in hospital by 20% and we've more than covered our costs for a year of tech and monitoring. So that's the kind of kind of equation that we're looking at. at. Okay, so that's the socks. I'll just put it on. Back in the living room, Joti is now trialling wearable technology, a smart watch and smart socks to spot signs she's at risk of falling.

For this couple, it's about reassurance and in the longer term, about keeping Jotie in her own home as long as possible. Oh, peace of mind. Definitely. Definitely it is a peace of mind. That report from Jim Reid. Now, if you've ever spent time in Europe during the summer, You've probably experienced fierce competition for sunbeds at pools and beaches.

But in Greece, a dispute over one of those coveted spots has turned deadly. An 82-year-old man has died after getting into a fight with another man over a sun lounger on a beach near Athens. I spoke to our reporter, Helena Burke, about what happened. According to witnesses at Vuliang Many Beach, which is about an hour south of Athens, this man had tried to reserve a few sun loungers and was waiting for his companions to join him. This then sparked a dispute with another man on the beach aged in his 70s. The dispute eventually escalated into a physical fight between the two and eventually other people got involved as well.

One eyewitness told local media that the scene became so chaotic that the screaming could actually be heard at the other end of the beach. While these two men were fighting, the older man aged in his 80s collapsed. According to various reports, he received CPR and a defibrillator was used on him. He had to be taken to hospital where he later died. and the other man involved in the fight has now reportedly been arrested. Helena, there seems to be a growing issue in Europe around this as well. During the summer it feels as though it's got completely out of hand,

people competing for a spot on a sun lounger. Yeah, some of the videos online of this kind of mad dash to the sunlangers around pools and beaches are just extraordinary. Crowds of people can be seen lining up at the gates in the morning at resorts, waiting to get into the pool as soon as possible. There are also reports of people fighting over sunlangers at various, European beaches. The market research firm Yucav actually did a poll about this recently, and they found that about 57% of people in Europe say they found themselves deprived of a sunbed because they were all

taken. The poll also found that the majority of holiday makers think it's unacceptable to try and reserve the lounges by leaving your towel on top of them and then leaving. This isn't only an issue in Europe. There are reports of similar tensions over sun lounges at resorts in North Africa and the Middle East. Anecdotally, though, is someone who's originally from Australia and spent quite a lot of time in Southeast Asia, this isn't really as much of a problem in that part of the world. I think that some of that is cultural differences, but it's also the fact that there's just generally a lot more space on the beach in that part of the world. The number of tourists going to Europe is increasing every single year. So it seems like these

so-called sunbed wars are only going to become a bigger and bigger problem there. Helena Burke, reporting. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at Global Podcast at BBC.co.uk. You can also now watch our full episodes. Just search for the Global News Podcast on YouTube. This edition was mixed by Darcy O'Bree, and the producer was Rachel Wright.

The editor is Karen Martin, and I'm Uncriticay. Until next time, goodbye. With a subscription to the BBC website and app, you can now get early access to your favorite BBC podcasts. Listen to shows like, you're dead to me, in our time. good bad billionaire, and more. Plus, there's all the other great benefits you get with a BBC subscription. From live streaming the BBC News Channel and acclaimed documentaries to in-depth analysis and features,

visit BBC.com forward slash subscribe to find out more.