Global News Podcast - Ukraine comes under renewed Russian attack

Episode Date: October 22, 2026

The Ukrainian president has accused Russia of responding to the latest negotiations about ending the war by launching three waves of ballistic missiles. Nine people were killed and more than 30 injured across Ukraine, as homes, power facilities, shops and a medical centre were hit. The attacks came after Russia had said it was "ready in principle" to resume peace talks, and the US said an end to the war was close. Also: American media reports say the US and Israel are developing plans for renewed strikes against specific targets in Iran. How Arab parties could hold the balance of power in the Israeli general election. Why has President Trump been heckled at a rally in South Carolina? And a clinical trial has been launched in the UK which scientists hope could cut years from the search for new treatments for Alzheimer's disease.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: A rescuer works at the site of a shopping centre hit by a Russian missile attack, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine October 22, 2026. Credit: REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Charles Haverland and at 1330 GMT on Thursday the 22nd of October, these are our main stories. Russia has continued its deadly bombing of Ukraine, despite having agreed to restart freeway peace talks. Cyber experts say details of a critical flaw in the website, programming language, PhP. were leaked before a fix was rolled out, prompting a flurry of hacking attempts.

Also in this podcast... It's doing something positive. It's doing something that might help me, but it might help other people as well. It's just, you know, taking things back into your control rather than leaving someone else. A clinical trial has been launched in the UK, which scientists hope could cut years from the search for new treatments for Alzheimer's disease. The skies over the Ukrainian capital were lit up on Wednesday night after one of Russia's most intense bombardments of Kiev. Other Ukrainian regions were targeted and there have been casualties.

Injuries have also been reported in Moscow after hundreds of Ukrainian drones targeted the Russian capital. The attacks came hours after Russia said it was ready in principle to resume peace talks and President Trump said an end to the war could be closer than ever before, following a meeting in St Petersburg between President Putin and Mr Trump's envoy. I got more details from our Ukraine correspondent, Dan Johnson. There were three waves of intense missile strikes on the capital.

The President Volodymy Zelensky says 21 Russian ballistic missiles aimed at this city in those three waves. He referred to them being fired by Russian humanitarian, in quotes. I think that's a reference back to the meeting in St. Petersburg when the... US peace envoy, Steve Wittkoff, commended Vladimir Putin as a humanitarian. Volodymy Zelensky said immediately after the latest negotiations, Russia delivered a demonstrative strike. This means there are no real changes in its attitude. He said it was important to continue trying to find the right solutions to end the war,

but when Russian ballistics are the answer to negotiations, real pressure is needed to stop the killings. He's called for strengthening of Ukraine's. air defences once again to try to protect against these missile attacks. Two people were killed in the capital. More than 30 people wounded and there are seven deaths reported in other parts of the country that have been hit by Russian drones. There was also a strike on the port in Odessa which we understand has damaged some vessels of the Ukrainian Navy. Here in the capital, traffic is a real problem because one of the bridges across the river was hit. Metro trains are

not able to cross at that bridge at the moment and the traffic is backing up. There is congestion because cars can't use that bridge either. They've also been power cuts reported because, again, parts of Ukraine's energy network have been hit. So in terms of the Ukrainian sense on the ground, just as they are told by US President Donald Trump, that we may be closer to an end to this war than ever, in his view, it certainly doesn't feel like that to Ukrainians who were woken in the night and now have to deal with the aftermath, that sort of death and destruction that's been wrought once again across the

country. And what of the Ukrainian drone attacks, many of them, on Russian territory? Yes, they have continued as well. The Ukrainians launched hundreds of drones towards Moscow. We are told that many of those were shot down, but there are reports of injuries. So the war continues both sides attacking each other. But in terms of the Ukrainians, when they hear the Russians say that they are ready to talk peace, and that they want to come to the table, that they want to find an end to this war, but then they see the response in terms of another round, three further rounds of intense ballistic missile attacks. That's what leaves the doubt that this is genuine on the part of the Russians, or that the Americans are honest brokers here who can actually bring everybody together in the right room to host those negotiations.

There is deep skepticism about that possibility and the role that the Americans are playing here, whether Ukraine will be a part of these talks, whether it will even have a place at the table, and whether its voice will be heard, whether there will be a fair negotiation to bring about a deal to end this war. Dan Johnson in Kiev. In an earlier edition,

we covered news of a major security flaw in a programming language that runs much of the internet. A number of governments and organisations around the world have been scrambling to protect their websites from attacks. The vulnerability was leaked on Tuesday, before developers had rolled out a fix, prompting a frenzy of hacking attempts. I got more from our cyber correspondent, Joe Tidy. You've got to sort of look at the language that's the cyber security world users.

So when they're saying millions of hacking attempts, that could just mean scans, for example, automated scans that a criminal is using to send out waves and waves of searching bots to look at whether or not a website is vulnerable. So scans don't necessarily mean hacks, and hacks don't necessarily mean breaches as well. So all these attempts we have to take with a pinch of salt. There doesn't seem to be a wave of cyber attacks taking place that we have seen yet.

Certainly there are attempts and there's a lot of probing going on. But the PHP vulnerabilities that have caused such a panic around the world, they're very complex. And there's usually a time lag between information about a potential vulnerability being out there to hackers having a workable, what we call a POC, a proof of concept. But I think because of AI, that little lag that we used to rely on has become shorter. And I think, unfortunately, we will start seeing some breaches. On the more positive side from the AI point of view, people are pointing out that it was

AI that detected and unearthed the vulnerabilities in this computer language, PHP. Is AI therefore, can we say that it is helping cybersecurity in some ways? Yeah, I think this could have been and should have been a good news story about AI. because in 2024, the PHP Foundation that runs this programming language, it's a non-profit, they kind of maintain the language, they thought that they might have found a problem with their coding system that may lead to cyber attacks. So they thought, okay, maybe there's a theoretical problem here, but we can't work out how any human could actually do it. So they kind of parked it and thought, hopefully that's not a problem. Along comes AI, Open AI and a company called Caliph and a company called Whiz.

They use frontier models to pro-PP to see whether or not. there were any vulnerabilities. And they found that, yes, that particular pathway is possible in a really complex chain of action. So if you do this, this, this and this, and this particular order, you might be able to hack a website. So yes, AI did a good thing. It spotted something that humans couldn't. But then, of course, we see the fallibility of it because humans have accidentally leaked the information, and that's led the bad guys to use their own AI to figure out how the hacks could be possible. And that's what's launched this kind of wave of potential probes and attacks. against websites that haven't yet patched.

It shouldn't have been like this. It should have been much more civilised, but it wasn't. Joe Tidy. Reports in the American media say the US and Israel are developing plans for renewed strikes against specific targets in Iran. The New York Times says the attacks could happen after the US midterm elections on November 3rd.

US officials believe this may force Iran to make concessions. Our Middle East analyst, Sebastian Usher, has been following the story. for the newsroom. This is the latest reports in the New York Times, as you were saying. It comes amid a lot of speculation. There's two major elections that are coming. The Israeli election, which is coming in a few days, and the midterms in the US. Now, the thinking was from the way President Trump, the way Washington has been framing this, is that nothing would happen major until those midterms are over. But there's been a sense inside Israel,

from Israeli media reports there, that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is fighting a bit of a losing campaign at the moment. moment, he might not stay in power, might want to trigger before his election a major conflict again with Iran. Now, what the New York Times is saying is that those plans are very much on the table, talking about a three-day strike, major strike that would hit oil facilities, that would hit the nuclear facilities in Iran, the ballistic and missile abilities as well. Now, we've seen all this happened before. The big question is whether that could really move the dial. Again, officials quoted unnamed officials in a New York Times article, say that they believe that might push the

Iranian economy, which is already, you know, on the verge of collapse right over the brink. And that might bring the Iranians to the table. And they would accept the kind of conditions that they haven't so far from the US. I think many people think that's unlikely. Meanwhile, there have been new attacks on Saudi Arabia. by Yemen's Houthis who are of course backed by Tehrat. At the moment, it's the Houthis who are attacking Saudi Arabia every day. They've attacked oil facilities and now they're attacking airports. They've attacked other places too.

The latest was in Damam, which is the eastern city, where the Saudi oil giant Aramco is based. The international airport there was hit late last night. It's now confirmed that two people were killed as Saudi and an Indian national and several others injured. So, I mean, this is an intensification day by day. day of the attacks. And we've seen, again, looking at the wider picture that the US has essentially said that non-essential embassy staff should leave. There's also reports which have not been officially

confirmed that across the region at other US embassies a similar thing as happening. That would speak more to the sense that a bigger attack might be happening, not just to do Saudi Arabia, but to do with Iran. Sebastian Asher. The first signs might be a bit of forgetfulness, dates or tasks, just slipping away from a friend or relative who normally has an excellent memory, then may come tests and a potential diagnosis. Over 55 million people worldwide live with dementia, and Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause. But now here in Britain comes a clinical trial that scientists hope will cut years from the search for new treatments for Alzheimer's. It works by testing multiple drugs at once, starting with two repurposed medicines, already used

to treat type 2 diabetes and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD. Angela Buxi was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in January and is one of the first people to sign up to the trial. It's doing something positive. It's doing something that might help me, but it might help other people as well, regardless of whether I'm taking a placebo or a selection of drugs recommended, because we don't know that. And it's just, you know, taking things back into your control rather than leaving it to someone else.

Professor Parish Malhotra is chief investigator and group leader at the UK Dementia Research Institute. He's been telling my colleague Johnny Diamond more about the trial. So I guess the key thing about this trial, AD Smart, is that we're testing different treatments in parallel, and we're not wedded to one thing. So someone smarter than me has described a standard trial as being like building a football stadium, playing a single match, and then taking the stadium down again, and we're needing to build a football stadium every time you want to pay. play a match. And what we're trying to do is build a football stadium, play a whole season in it.

So we're testing more than one drug. We're testing more than one drug at a time. And we hope that the platform will keep rolling. And this isn't new for medicine. So it's been the standard in cancer for about 20 years. It was done in recovery to great effect for COVID. And what we're doing is bringing it to Alzheimer's disease, which I mean, all of us know someone with Alzheimer's disease. and so it's trying to bring this novel trial approach to something that's very important. And the first trial is using drugs that are currently used for other conditions. Why is that? A number of reasons, really. These drugs, there's plenty of circumstantial evidence and early phase evidence to show that they may work for Alzheimer's disease. We can understand the mechanisms by which they might work,

but nobody's done the definitive study, what's called the pivotal trial. And what we'll do, as well as doing the definitive trial, if there's no evidence that they're working at all at a halfway stage, then we can stop them and start something else. So the idea is that you don't stick with one thing for too long, which is what happens sometimes if people are doing a single trial of a mechanism or an approach they're particularly wedded to. This question of when you sort of say, okay, that's not working. Also brings up the question of how you work out when to say something is working. How do you do that? So for us, it's a question of, you, very simple. We want to see if it affects people's thinking and the way they carry out everyday

activities. So a lot of studies are based on a scan outcome or a blood test or some other sort of surrogate biomarker. When it gets to the stage, as you've heard from, again, someone much more eloquent than me about being a patient and having the condition, the only thing that matters to them is whether their symptoms will deteriorate as fast and whether we can slow that down. So we've been working with patients in the public throughout the design of the study, to be honest, to work out what would matter most for them, how we make, build the design around them to do that. For a fair number of listeners, this will be a very pressing issue, but this is about a clinical trial, not about, look, I've got a new wonder drug for you. Can you give us an idea of timings?

So the timings are that we will have the results of this trial in around four years time. That's when the primary outcome is. In between, we should get readouts at around two and a half years of where the things are working or not. But that's part of the reason for doing things in parallel, but this is still faster and we'll have the results for two drugs rather than one, and we'll have an infrastructure for testing more things as we go. Professor Parish Malhotra. Still to come in this podcast, Netflix has recreated one of the most notorious social experiments in history. It's a bad idea. The original study has nothing to do with science.

It is a deliberate confusion of science with what was going to be reality TV later. We get the views from one of the original participants. It's late 2007 and while attending a Christmas party, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg meets a woman who would change the course of his company forever. She joined Facebook as chief of operations in 2008 and has been credited for making the company profitable. and herself enormously rich. On Good Bad Billionaire, we're exploring the life and fortune of billionaire tech leader Cheryl Sandberg. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News podcast.

Israelis head to the polls next week for the first general election since the deadly Hamas-led attacks three years ago. Polls suggest that both the veteran Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with his existing partners and the so-called change block of parties would struggle to form a governing coalition after the vote. That could leave smaller Arab majority parties potentially holding a critical balance of power. Our Middle East correspondent, Yoland Nell, reports now on what Israeli Arabs,

also known as Palestinian citizens of Israel, want from this election. At Rush hour in Nazareth, students hand out leaflets to passing motorists. Disaffections often. driven down past turnout among Arab or Palestinian citizens who make up a fifth of all Israelis. But this election, there's a push for change. We're handing out election papers so we can get the votes rate higher than it is in the Arabic community.

Israel's divisions were on display last month, as the Supreme Court overruled attempts to disqualify Arab parties from this vote. Mistrust and hostility have risen since the 23rd. Hamas led attacks on Israel. Suha Salman Musa from the Masawah Center advocates for equal rights. After October 7, we were treated as enemies for this country. There was major arrests. There was also firing people from their workplaces because they put something on social media or they went out against the war on Gaza.

Most Arab Israelis are descendants of Palestinians who remained on the land which became Israel in 19. Israel's government often frames them as a threat to the state's Jewish identity. At Radio Nass, an Arabic language station, I ask news editor Mohamed Majadli about the Prime Minister's claim that his rivals plan to team up with Arabs and form a dangerous government. In one world, it's racism. Because the political interests of Benjamin Netanyahu, he's trying all the time to pull maybe the legitimacy of this. Arab parties because they are Arab, because they are Palestinians, and that's affecting all

other parties. On the campaign trail, all the main right-wing contenders rule out a coalition with Arab majority parties. But most polls indicate that neither the Prime Minister and his allies nor the main opposition bloc has a clear path to a parliamentary majority. Mansour Abbas, an Islamist who heads the United Arab list, joined a previous government and wants to join the next one. Our approach has been driven by a desire to reach a position of influence,

not just representation, and to offer hope to both Arabs and Jews. Other parties in the alternative joint Arab list say they're ready to vote with a government that ousts Mr Netanyahu, giving it a safety net. With videos shared on social media showing near daily shootings in Arab communities, rampant gang crime is a top issue for all Arab-Israeli politicians. Murders are at a record high.

In Jaffa, Zyad Samuni, shows me where his son, Hussein, was shot dead a year ago, apparently by two fellow Arab Israelis. No arrests were made. Many accused the government of inaction. It seems that they are interested in making sure we reach a situation where the killer is never cool, allowing Arabs in Arab society to keep killing one another. As a father who has lost the son, of course I want this bloodshed to end. Back in Nazareth, some motorists wave flags for their favourite party.

The stakes are high in this election. Arab citizens could yet decide who wields power in Israel. And they also see this vote as key to their own future in the country. Yoland Nell reporting, Heklers have repeatedly interrupted President Trump at a rally in South Carolina, where he's been campaigning for a Republican senator fighting to keep her seat in the midterm elections in less than two weeks. Mr. Trump's approval rating fell to a record low 31% in a poll released this week. Our correspondent, Nader Tauphiq, is traveling with the president and sent this report.

At least 10 protesters had to be removed by security at the Clemson University rally. One of them called President Trump a traitor and told him to release the Epstein files. Another shouted that the president was a war criminal as Mr. Trump questioned why he hadn't received the Nobel Peace Prize. The president mocked them, labeled them paid protesters, and even praised one of his supporters for punching one of the men. Mr. Trump asked the crowd to pretend he's on the ballot and again promised to give every American $5,000 if his party maintained control of Congress. He claimed interest rates and the price of oil would be falling soon and defended his tariffs and the U.S. Iran War. The crowd cheered in support but was notably quiet when the president tried to sell them on data centers, which are extremely unpopular with voters from both parties.

This week, Netflix released a new series or an experiment as its build. It's described as a modern reimagining of the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, seen as one of the most notorious social experiments ever conducted. The psychologist, Philip Zimbardo, created a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University's psychology department in the US. He recruited 24 college students, assigned them randomly as guards and inmates, and instructed the guards to use any means necessary to maintain order. The experiment was halted after just six days after it rapidly got out of hand. Within 36 hours, one of the prisoners had an apparent mental breakdown,

and on the second day, the inmates staged a rebellion. The guards vigorously repressed it, spraying their perpetrators with fire extinguishers. The results were also tarnished as it came to be seen as an example of unethical research. Clay Ramsey is now a senior research associate at the University of Maryland, but back in 1971 he was one of the 24 students selected to take part, being given the role of a prisoner in the study, Prisoner 416, tasked with leading a hunger strike. My colleague Rob Young spoke to him. When I arrived, the prison had already been up and running for three days or so.

It was an excitingly horrible environment that you can see recorded on video of the day. And I myself was only there for three and a half days. But after about a day and a half, I concluded that I wanted out. And it occurred to me to try a hunger strike. because it seemed to me that there was no voluntary exit. You had to create a situation in which the experimenters got worried or afraid, and I thought a hunger strike might do that. Like in a real prison, I suppose.

You can't just decide you want to leave. What was it that made you want to leave? Why was it so bad? It was deliberately made an exotic game, which was, led really by only one or two of the guards who genuinely took on board Dr. Zimbardo's instructions to create the kind of scene that he wanted. Well, now Netflix is launching what they call a modern reimagining of the study. How do you feel about that?

It's a bad idea. The original study was, has nothing to do with science. and it is a deliberate confusion of science with what was going to be reality TV later, which is the area in which Zimbardo is a true pioneer, not in social psychology. So what Netflix is doing is once again exploiting this confusion and making people understand what science is. is less and less. Apparently this is one of the most pitched TV formats. TV executives are regularly being asked, do they want to recreate the Stanford Prison Project? Why do you think that is? And what do you think that says about us? Well, I think it says something about

social psychology as a discipline. The defense made is that it's still a sort of dramatic demonstration of something that's supposed to be true about the impact of environments on individuals. That's what they say. I think it's indefensible, and I've always thought so. Now, as far as the entertainment world is concerned, I understand why this is sexy, and my only concern And there would be that those actors who are participating in this are told the truth about what they're supposed to be doing, are told that this has no scientific value whatsoever. Those would be my real demands. Clay Ramsey talking to Rob Young.

And that's all for this episode. But before you go, my colleague has a special request for listeners of the podcast. Hi, I'm Celia Hatton from the Global News Podcast. We're working on a new special edition of the podcast. that's looking at China and what lies ahead for its powerful leader, Xi Jinping. At the end of this month, the top ranks of China's Communist Party are meeting behind closed doors. And it's believed around that time, Xi Jinping could indicate the next generation of leaders to run the country. He's not stepping aside anytime soon, but we'll get a sense of what lies ahead for China, one of the world's superpowers.

So we're hoping for your questions on China and its future. What do you want to know about Xi Jinping and how he's? operates. We'll try to tackle the answers for you. Send your emails and video and voice notes to the usual address, Global Podcast at BBC.co.uk. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at Global Podcasts at BBC.co.uk. You can also now watch our episodes in full. Just search for the Global News Podcast on YouTube. This edition was mixed by Rezenwin-Dorrell, and the producer was Ed Horton. The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Charles Haverland. Until next time, goodbye. He's the founder of the Adani Group, one of India's major infrastructure conglomerates. And with interests ranging from ports to airports to power generation and green energy, he's become one of Asia's wealthiest individuals. On Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service,

we're delving into the life and fortune of billionaire businessman Gautam Adani. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.