Israel strikes Hezbollah-linked banks
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Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. This edition is published in the early hours of Monday, the 21st of October. Explosions are heard across Lebanon as Israel targets branches of a bank it says finances Hezbollah.

People in Moldova appear to have voted no in a referendum on supporting efforts to join the European Union. But did Russia rig the poll? And Hurricane Oscar makes landfall in Cuba as the electricity grid collapses again. Also in the podcast... When Putin is in power, for sure not. But I hope one day I will come back to Russia. I will participate in the elections.

The widow of Russia's opposition leader Alexei Navalny announces her own political ambitions. Israel has stepped up its assault on Hezbollah across Lebanon, targeting banks linked to the group and blowing up villages along the southern border.

On Sunday, the Israelis hit one village 14 times in a quarter of an hour, according to Lebanese state media. Israel's defence minister, Yoav Galant, said the military was destroying the enemy all along the border. He said Hezbollah was collapsing and that prisoners captured by Israeli forces had spoken of great fear felt among the group. As night fell, the Israeli defence forces spokesman, Daniel Hagari, issued a fresh warning. Good morning, everyone.

In a few minutes, we will be issuing an initial evacuation notice to Lebanese residents of Beirut and other locations to evacuate the sites used to finance Hezbollah's terrorist activities. I would like to stress here that anyone in the vicinity of sites used to finance Hezbollah's terrorist activities must leave immediately.

We will be attacking a large number of targets in the coming hours and other targets later this evening. Well, soon after, there were a series of blasts across Lebanon. Our correspondent in the capital, Jonathan Head, told us what happened. Well, we got these rather ominous warnings from the Israeli military. They're going after what is in effect...

the Hezbollah bank, Al-Qaeda Al-Hassan, which has more than 30 branches in the country, half of them here in the capital. After that, individual neighbourhoods started getting warnings. There were 25 areas where warnings were given to people to leave and...

and the explosion started happening about 20, 25 minutes after that. And they've pretty much continued up to now. I think they will continue probably through the night, one after the other. We're watching a lot of it on screens when we can't see them because...

Local media have got cameras up on high points and you can see the flash of light. In some cases, there's been some clear fire, some orange fire visible and always the large columns of smoke that go up. And we have seen pictures showing some of the branches of this bank now lying in ruins. What is it that they're destroying, though? Because banks are, you know, they're virtual operations. They exist in cyberspace, just virtually.

knocking down a branch doesn't end a bank, does it? We've all asked exactly the same question. We're not sure what's still in these banks. Many of them have not been functioning for some while. So we're a bit baffled as to why actual bank branches would be such an important target for the Israeli military. They say they will explain later on how effective these strikes have been and what they were trying to do. And yet, despite the airstrikes, Hezbollah continues to fire weapons

rockets at Israel? What are they doing? How successful are these rocket launches? And what is Israel doing about it? It's hard to know exactly what capacity Hezbollah has left. Israel claims to have significantly damaged its leadership, its communications and command networks, and in particular, its large stockpile of missiles and rockets.

but that would still leave quite a few left. Now, one thing we should say is Hezbollah has talked about the war entering a new phase. This was a phrase it brought in after the killing of Yahya Sinwa, the Hamas leader in Gaza. And so there was some expectation that we'd see an escalation of Hezbollah attacks.

That has not happened. They've really continued at about the same pace. And that suggests that perhaps what Hezbollah is doing at the moment is simply showing that it can still do it. If you remember, Israel's goal, it says, is to ensure that the rocket attacks stop completely. So as long as Hezbollah is firing some rockets...

It will show that Israel has not achieved its goal and then this gruelling war will continue. But of course, as it continues, there are Israeli ground forces moving very slowly with difficult fighting into southern Lebanon and that's where it's possible they will be worn down by guerrilla-style attacks by Hezbollah. We don't know, but certainly Hezbollah is still there and it's still making its presence felt. Jonathan Head talking to Alex Ritson.

In recent weeks, Israel has also been pounding northern Gaza, saying it wants to prevent Hamas regrouping there. On Sunday, the IDF announced that the commander of its 401st Brigade, Colonel Arsene Daksa, had been killed in a clash in the Jabalia area, hit after getting out of his tank. For their part, Palestinian officials said the number of people killed in an Israeli airstrike on the town of Beit Lahaya on Saturday night had risen to 87. Israel's

Israel described it as a precision attack against a Hamas terror target. Fogel Keen reports from Jerusalem. Habibi, you are strong, the nurse says. He carries the boy, who is about 10, his face smeared with dust from the explosion, his wounded leg bandaged, and sits with him in a corner of the busy emergency ward. I want Sharif. Where is he? the child asks.

He's OK, don't worry, comes the reply. On the floor nearby, a young girl is lying with a smear of blood on her forehead. Her leg is in a splint. A few yards away, a woman holds a piece of tissue to her right ear to soak up blood. With Israeli forces still fighting Hamas in Beit Lahiya and Jabalia, men were still trying to dig bodies from the rubble at the site of the airstrike.

A resident described the moment the missile struck. Yesterday, while we were sitting in peace around 10 o'clock at night, we were surprised by the volcano coming down on us from the sky. A missile. It demolished the buildings in the neighborhood. The Israelis have disputed the casualty figures and said the incident is being investigated.

The UN has accused Israel of forcibly displacing tens of thousands of people. Israel denies this. The clear, verifiable fact is that civilians are suffering on an immense scale. There's no sign of an end to their trauma.

Russia has long been accused of stirring things up in Moldova and its pro-Russian separatist region of Transnistria, but has it successfully intervened in altering the future direction of the former Soviet republic?

Moscow stands accused of trying to rig a vote which took place in Moldova on Sunday, a presidential election and a referendum on ambitions to join the EU. Nikol Popescu is the former foreign minister of Moldova. Even before our independence, since around late 80s, early 90s, Russia has supported separatism, used energy blackmail, corruption of politicians, introducing embargoes on wines, on fruits, and now it took...

a new form, and this is putting thousands of people on payroll and paying them for several months so that they vote in a way that suits Russia. Well, as we record this podcast, just over half of the votes have been counted. So what do the early results tell us? I heard more from our Eastern Europe correspondent, Sarah Rainsford, who was at the campaign headquarters of the current president, the pro-EU Maya Sandu, in the capital, Chisinau.

The mood here has been pretty glum for some time, pretty subdued. And now we've just seen Maya Sandu herself. She came floating down in the glass lift in a beige suit and she walked past us in silence to make a short statement, pointing out that the vote counts were still going on. So this is not the final result. But as they stand at the moment, it looks like in the presidential election, she'll have to go

to a second round. The person who came second to her has a much higher percentage than he had been predicted to get. And in terms of the EU referendum, at the moment, as I say, not quite all the votes counted yet, but still 54% saying no to enshrining EU

membership within the constitution of Moldova and Maya Sandu addressed that and essentially without naming Russia she talked about foreign forces hostile to Moldova's national interests and she blamed them for attacking this country she said there was clear evidence of fraud electoral fraud on an unprecedented scale and she was

saying that these groups, which Moldovan prosecutors and police have linked to Russia, she said they aimed to buy up to 300,000 votes. So I think she's trying to point in that direction as the explanation for what is, quite frankly, a very different result to what Mrs Sandu's team was expecting ahead of this vote. Yeah, I mean, is it a surprise based on what you've seen in Moldova? And could Russia really have rigged it to that extent?

Well, you know, it's interesting. I mean, generally speaking, this is a country that is very pro-EU. I mean, even people who are more sympathetic, perhaps, to Moscow, people who speak Russian predominantly, they still generally have family members in the EU, they'll travel to the EU, they'll talk positively about the EU. And that was even today when I was speaking to people from the

the breakaway separatist state of Transnistria, even people from there were telling me quite openly that they wanted to join the EU. So it does seem strange that there is such a

Thank you very much.

A small bit of evidence of that ourselves on the ground today at a polling station when a woman told us quite openly that, yes, she had been offered money to vote. And what does this result, if it is indeed the result, mean for countries in that area caught between Russia and Europe?

Well, I think it's another signal, if you follow that line, that Moscow's influence is still extremely strong. Its levers are strong. It has the ability to act in many different ways to ensure that its foreign policy interests are met. So I think that's the broad picture. In terms of what it means for Moldova's ambitions within the EU, well, it has already begun accession talks to the EU. That is the path that it's chosen. This was about

enshrining that within the constitution. So I think kind of making it a much firmer prospect and harder to turn back from. And that is what has been dashed, I think, today. Sarah Rainsford talking to us from Moldova.

The race for the White House is becoming an all-out sprint, with early voting now open in all seven key battleground states. In arguably the most important of them, Pennsylvania, the tech billionaire Elon Musk has announced a cash giveaway for registered voters if they sign an online petition.

Mr Musk, an enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump, said he would hand over a million dollars to a random voter every day until the election. Questions have been raised about the legality of the plan. Our correspondent in Washington, Rowan Bridge, has more details. Elon Musk has come out.

as an ardent supporter of Donald Trump, if you like, in this election cycle. And I think this is the latest sign of that. He has what they call a political action committee, a sort of campaign group which is supporting Donald Trump. And that's what's running this lottery system whereby you will have to sign his petition saying that you are in support of the First and Second Amendments of the US Constitution around free speech and the right to own guns.

And if you sign up to that, then you are eligible in Pennsylvania to take part in this lottery for a million dollars a day, which for Elon Musk is a bit of a drop in the ocean. He is, after all, the world's richest man. He seems to be able to... The thought is that he is getting around election law in the sense that it is illegal in the US to pay somebody to register to vote or to vote. But in this case, what he's doing is getting you to take part in a lottery rather than anything directly around voting.

But in order to sign up to the lottery, you hand over your details, which means that the Political Action Committee, the campaign group, will have your details and will be able to contact you around the election. And in an election as tight as this one, the hope, obviously, is that that is going to help swing some voters in what could be a knife-edge state in this election on November 5th. Rowan Bridge in Washington. Well, despite calls from Mr Musk for voters to support the Constitution, there are doubts about whether...

all those across the US will accept the results. Threats against election workers have increased since the 2020 vote, which Donald Trump and his allies falsely claim to have won. Our reporter Mike Wendling has been speaking to some volunteers in the state of Wisconsin.

American democracy at its most grassroots. A group of election workers gets sworn in in Black River Falls, town of a few thousand souls in rural western Wisconsin.

But behind this wholesome display of civic duty, there are some dark feelings brewing. I worry that I didn't prepare them to be safe. Melissa Como is clerk of a small Wisconsin town, and she also travels around the state delivering training like this to volunteers. I've been concerned for several years now about just people trying to tamper with the vote, even on the local level. When people perceive the stakes as being very high,

that then they're willing to do extreme actions in order to win. The main thing driving what Melissa Cuomo is talking about is the swirl of conspiracy theories and rumors being spread by Donald Trump and his allies. They insist that Trump won the 2020 election and that Democrats cheated.

The claims vary. They include things like illegal voting by immigrants, dodgy voting machines, ballot box stuffing, and more. But the key thing that unites them all is they've been examined by courts, by journalists, by government investigators, and by officials from both major political parties, and

and have all been found almost entirely without merit. In 2020, threats were directed against election workers in big cities and swing states, Atlanta, Georgia, Detroit, Michigan, Phoenix, Arizona. But now election volunteers all over the country find themselves a target, even here in rural Wisconsin. I had a man come in.

asking all kinds of questions about our voting machine, taking pictures of the voting machine. Chris Burlingame is a longtime elections worker in Alma Center, a tiny village of about 500 people. Part of her duties is holding a public test of voting machines. Usually, she says, nobody shows up. But in early August, one man did.

was middle-aged. He had just moved into the area and he was belligerent. I felt as though we were being accused of rigging it because I asked, I says, why are you taking a picture of this? And he said, because these are the machines that changed everybody's votes, but there's no way that it can change votes.

Was it scary at all? It was a little bit. I wasn't afraid, but it did make me stop and think, what is the election going to be like?

Eventually, the man left of his own accord. The police did not have to be called, but incidents like this are becoming more common. The Brennan Center, a left-leaning but nonpartisan think tank, conducted a survey of election workers earlier this year and found that nearly two-fifths had experienced threats, harassment, or abuse. Back in western Wisconsin, the local Republican county chairman Bill Laurent says he's not worried about any violence at the polls around here. He says he's not worried about any violence at the polls around here.

But he also told me, though he didn't want to be recorded, that he was worried that Democrats would somehow steal the election, echoing those false conspiracy theories. After the training session, I asked election worker Chris Burlingame if she was personally worried about Election Day threats. I don't think anything's going to happen, but I'm not going to have a blind eye. There's just some people that I just don't feel I can trust.

And that scares me. And that report by Mike Wendling. Still to come on the Global News Podcast. Welcome to my abandoned Japanese house. This is 90 years old and houses in Japan, they depreciate, which means that after 30 years, they're basically not worth anything. We meet the TikTokers buying up Japan's empty homes.

If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free.

Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts.

Since Friday, millions of people in Cuba have been without electricity after a power failure at the main energy plant. Many homes are also without water, with supplies run by power. And families are having to cook with firewood. These women in the capital, Havana, said they were finding it extremely difficult to cope.

It's bad, very bad, because without electricity we have nothing. We don't have food, we don't have a way to free stuff, we don't have a way to work, we don't have anything, and it's hard. What are we going to do? It's been almost three days without electricity because last night it came back in various sectors but not ours. The phone is off, the refrigerator, everything's gone to waste, the little I have, and there's no water.

The authorities were expecting power to be restored to large parts of the country by Monday night, but the Energy Ministry said the electricity grid had collapsed again on Sunday. On top of that, Hurricane Oscar has, as we're recording this podcast, just made landfall on Cuban shores, threatening to complicate things further.

Cristiana Mesquita is the Caribbean bureau chief for the Associated Press news agency. She is based in the capital, Havana, but says the whole of Cuba is struggling.

People that have already been suffering for months with electricity shortages. So what started on Thursday evening when they announced they would not be able to provide even half the power that would be required ended up being a total collapse on a Friday morning when one of the main energy brands went dead practically.

And that's when the whole country went dark.

We just came out of a press conference with the Minister for Energy, who said he hopes by Tuesday morning latest is going to go back to normal. It's the latest on a series of issues that they've been having. Power has been a problem for quite some time now with them having to rotate power

areas of the country or neighborhoods that would not have power for a certain number of hours a day. Add to that that there's also a water shortage, also connected to the energy problems because you don't have electricity to run the pumps.

So, yes, people are upset. Even though they're calling a tiny storm, it's going to be big enough to affect most of the eastern, southeastern tip of the island. And it is a concern because especially that area is also one of the main hubs for electricity generating.

which means that if you have a lot of rain, you know, transformers will go down. It might get the situation even worse than it is. Associated Press reporter Cristiana Mesquita in Cuba.

More than 70 fake bomb threats are reported to have been made against Indian airlines in the past week, triggering travel delays across the world. All the flights landed safely, but planes were diverted to Canada and Germany and fighter jets were scrambled to escort aircraft in the skies above Britain and Singapore. India's government says it will take, quote, very strict action. The motive is unclear. So what's going on? Anbarasan Etirajan is our South Asia editor.

For the past one week, dozens of flights received these fake threats from anonymous sources, mostly posted on social media, particularly the microblogging platform X. And authorities say more than 70% of these threats came from one unverified anonymous account.

which has since been suspended. What it has done is a global disruption of flights, people trying to get connecting flights, reaching to different destinations. India is one of the biggest airline industry in the world. For example, a flight from Delhi to Chicago, middle of the week, was diverted to a remote Arctic airport in Canada.

And then the passengers had to wait there for 18 hours. The Canadian Air Force had to bring them back to Chicago because the flight was delayed for nearly two days. They had to go through various procedures. And in the same way, as you mentioned, a flight going to

London was diverted to Frankfurt and another flight, British Air Force jets were scrambled to intercept and to escort. So what it is doing is delays in flights and also as soon as they land at any airport, they are being taken to a secluded area where the plane will be searched for explosives. All these security experts will be boarding the plane, check the baggages once again. So this is causing a lot of financial implications and delay for the passengers. They're missing the connecting flights.

stranded in the airports, and this is a real worry for the authorities. They've arrested a minor, a 17-year-old boy, in connection with the threats. But even after this particular arrest, they are seeing these threats coming out. And what the authorities are saying is that some of those who are using these social media posts to send out these hoax threats

They are using VPNs, which means they are not able to be tracing these people and where these threats are coming from. But what they say is there is a pattern behind these messages and they are confident they can trace them. But again, a week is a very long time. And this day and age, people might question how you cannot trace an email or even any social media account because the technology is not there.

And that is why it is forcing the authorities to reassure the airline industry itself. For example, on Saturday, officials from India's Aviation Safety Body, Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, they met the CEOs of various airlines companies to go over all the operating procedures in case of a bomb threat.

And they were asked to follow the standard operating procedures. And then they are thinking about introducing more. But it is also costing a lot of money for the airline industry. And the government is very, very keen to find out where these messages are originating from.

Since Alexei Navalny died suddenly earlier this year, his family has vowed to continue his fight. Vladimir Putin is widely blamed for the death of the Russian opposition leader in a remote penal colony. Mr Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalny, faces arrest if she returns to Russia, but has told the BBC she intends to run for president when the time is right.

With her late husband's memoir, Patriot, about to be published, Yulia has been speaking to our culture editor, Katie Razzell. Everything has changed in my life. Everything has changed in our children's life. He was really not just a husband. He was the best friend. And Alexei died on February 16th, 2024, in one of Russia's most brutal prisons in the Arctic Circle. What do you believe happened to your husband?

I believe that Vladimir Putin is answering for the deaths and for the murder of my husband. We do have some evidence. What evidence do you have? I would like to come with the whole picture, what happened, not just with the random documents. Probably it will take a lot of time because he was in this cell alone. So, of course, it's very difficult to investigate all this.

When you say President Putin answers for your husband's death, is that what you mean, that President Putin ordered this? Of course, I mean that he ordered this. Now, the book contains diaries that Alexei wrote in prison. These diaries have never been seen before, certainly publicly. How did you feel reading your husband's prison diaries? We exchanged a lot of letters when it was possible to.

So I knew even before diaries that he was tortured and he was starving. And in the book, we read about him spending 295 days in solitary confinement. And usually the normal practice is punishment just for two weeks. And my husband spent there almost one year alone.

Alexei was poisoned with Novichok, a nerve agent, in Siberia back in 2020. He was eventually evacuated to a German hospital for treatment. And you decided, the pair of you, once he was better, to go back to Russia in January 2021, even though he knew the regime had already tried to kill him. Just explain why. It's not about we decided. It's about...

that you believe the person with whom you live so many years and you that he wants to be with his supporters, to be an example for all these people with his courage, with his bravery. And you've now taken on the role that your husband had in the Anti-Corruption Foundation. You face arrest if you go back to Russia. Can you see yourself returning while Putin is in power?

Can you see yourself standing, Heather, to be president of Russia? Is that your goal now?

My goal is to make all these changes happen. If I will come back to Russia, I will participate in the elections. As a candidate? As a candidate. Yulia Navalny, talking to Katie Razzell.

With a shrinking population, Japan is struggling to find buyers for its more than 9 million empty homes. The vacant properties are not just in the countryside but also urban areas like Tokyo. The low price tags of these buildings are attracting the interest of foreigners, many of whom might not be able to afford a house back home. Our Tokyo correspondent Shaima Khalil has been finding out more.

It's a breezy morning here in Sangenjaya, the small but busy neighbourhood in Tokyo. It's about three stops from the famous Shibuya Crossing. I'm about to go and see one of Japan's nine million empty homes, also known as akiyas. They're scattered all over the country, including here in the capital, and they've been making waves on social media.

Welcome to my abandoned Japanese house. Anton Worman is a male model turned renovator, now a famous TikToker, who's gone viral for chronicling his project and selling the idea of these cheap homes. In this case, it was three siblings and their parents lived here. When the parents passed away, they had this house filled with stuff. And just getting rid of things costs a lot of money and also a lot of time. So the house just gets abandoned that way. How much did you pay for this?

About $100,000. What I essentially am paying for is the land. This is 90 years old, and houses in Japan, they depreciate, which means that after 30 years, they're basically not worth anything. While they may seem like an opportunity, these empty homes are cheap for a reason. Japan's acid bubble burst in the early 1990s, and that meant decades of economic stagnation, which kept property prices low. Houses became like cars. The longer you have one, the less it's worth.

There are millions of them because Japan's population has been aging and shrinking steadily for 15 years now. And when elderly people pass away and their homes are not worth much, families may not want to deal with the tax implications, the cost of emptying the home, selling it or demolishing it. So some just choose to leave them abandoned.

For a social media star like Anton, the return on investment for an empty home renovation might be a bump in followers. For everyone else, the dream of doing up an IKEA is a far bigger risk. Yet some families have chosen to move to depopulated villages and refurbish abandoned old homes there.

My name is San King. I'm originally from the UK and I've been in Japan about seven years now. I'm Nanami. I'm born and raised in Tokyo. This is Aiden. Hi. Hello. How long have you been in Japan? Five months. If we had done a new build, that would have been a lot easier and straightforward. But it's such a beautiful house and it's nice to preserve that and to extend its life.

How much did you pay for the house? It cost us £70,000, which is about US$100,000, I guess. If you go further away from Tokyo, there are cheaper options. For anyone who's thinking about buying an IKEA in Japan, what would you tell them? Try and have someone who...

You can advise you on the condition of the property because some of these places sound really cheap, but then you get in there and you find there's problems with the structure or the water system is completely changing like this place. Be prepared that everything is not as it seems on the Instagram post. And although they may look nice, you have to look beneath the surface a little bit.

If you watch the Instagram and TikTok videos, akiyas are tempting. But these 9 million empty homes tell the story of Japan's existentialist crisis. And this is what the trend doesn't show you. Japan is aging and desperate for more people. And yet it doesn't encourage immigration, so there isn't much demand for property. Villages don't have the right infrastructure or the environment to keep people there, so outsiders can struggle to fit in.

For Japan's abandoned homes to come to life again, Japan itself needs to change. Our Tokyo correspondent, Shaima Khalil. Now, a quick message from Nick Miles about a special edition of the Global News podcast ahead of the UN's annual climate change conference in November.

Record-breaking hurricanes in America, droughts and floods in China, and around the world, the highest sea temperatures on record. Climate change has never been so clearly with us, but sometimes it can be confusing, to say the least, about what the UN Climate Change Conference is trying to achieve and what it delivers, which nations are leading the way and which are dragging their heels. We need your questions to put to our experts. Just email us.

globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. Thanks. And Nick says if you can send a voice note, then all the better. And that is all from us for now, but the Global News Podcast will be back very soon. This edition was mixed by Holly Palmer and produced by Chantal Hartle. Our editors, Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.

If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free.

Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts.