This BBC Podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. So, quick summer recap. Heat waves, data leaks, AI hacks, folding phones and a viral spinally challenge record. Yeah, I think that covers it, right? I'm Thomas Germain. I'm Just Maddox and the Interface is back from its summer break. New season, new co-host, same deep dives into the tech that's shaping our world and our lives. So before AI wipes out all of humanity? Allegedly. Join us for the Interface. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcast. The inside story of a dream to revolutionize how humanity sees the universe. Told by the people who made it happen. Lift off of the space shuttle endeavor on an ambitious mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. All of those steps which I've done a bunch of times in the water now they're for real. This is 30 minutes trouble with Hubble from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Charles Haveland 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 taking things back into your control rather than leading to 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, Volodymyr Zelensky, says 21 Russian ballistic missiles aimed at this city in those three waves. He referred to them being fired by Russian humanitarians in quotes. I think that's a reference back to the meeting in St. Petersburg when the US peace envoy, Steve Wyckoff, commended Vladimir Putin as a humanitarian. Volodymyr 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 defenses 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 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 are 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 floor 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 Tai-D. You've got to sort of look at the language that cyber security world uses. So when they're saying millions of hacking attempts, that could just mean scans, for example. Automated scans that are criminal is using to send out, you know, waves and waves of kind of searching bots to look at whether 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 the 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 an unearthed the vulnerabilities in this computer language PHP. Is AI, therefore, can we say that it is helping cyber security in some ways? Yeah, I think this could have been and should have been a good new story about AI, because in 2024, the PHP foundation that runs this programming language, it's a nonprofit, they kind of maintain the language. They thought that they might have found a problem with their coding system that may have, 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 Calif and a company called Wiz. They use frontier models to probe PHP 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 civilized, but it wasn't. Jotiety. Reports in the American media say the US and Israel are developing plans for a new 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 analysts, Sebastian Usher, has been following the story for the newsroom. This is the latest report to the New York Times. As you were saying, it comes amid a lot of speculation. There's two major elections, but are coming, the Israeli election, which is coming in a few days. And the midterms in the US. Now, the thinking was from a way, President Trump, a 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. But the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is fighting a bit of a losing campaign at the 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 happen before.
question is whether that could really move the dial. Again, officials quoted unnamed officials in New York Times article say that they believe that might push the Iranian economy, which is already 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, they've been new attacks on Saudi Arabia by Yemen's Houthis, who are, of course, backed by terror. At the moment, it's a Houthis who are attacking Saudi Arabia every day. They've attacked all the facilities and now they're attacking airports. They've attacked other places too. The latest was in Daman, which is the eastern city, where the Saudi-old giant Aramco is based, the International Airport there was hit late last night. They're now confirmed that two people were killed, a Saudi and an Indian national, and several others injured. So I mean, this is an intensification day by day of the attacks. And we've seen, again, look 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 is happening. That would speak more to the sense that a bigger attack might be happening, not just to the Saudi Arabia, but to do with Iran. Sebastian Archer. 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 two 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 taking things back into your control rather than leading to someone else. - Professor Paresh 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 needing to build a football stadium every time you want to 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 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 whether things are working or not, but that's part of the reason for doing things in parallel, that 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. - So quick summer recap. - Heat waves, data leaks, AI hacks, holding phones, and a viral spinally challenge record. - Yeah, I think that covers it, right? I'm Thomas Dermain. - I'm Jess Maddox, and the interface is back from its summer break. - New season, new co-host, same deep dives into the tech that's shaping our world and our lives. - So before AI wipes out all of humanity. - Allegedly. - Join us for the interface. - Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. - The inside story of a dream to revolutionize how humanity sees the universe told by the people who made it happen. - Lift off of the space shuttle endeavor on an ambitious mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. - All of those steps which I've done a bunch of times in the water, now they're for real. - This is 30 minutes, trouble with Hubble from the BBC World Service. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. - Get more with BBC podcasts, wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favourite shows, like Evil Genius, Good Bad Billionaire, and You're Dead To Me, with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon Music subscription. - Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. - Join me, Mike Wildridge, as I bring you the story of Father Gabriel Romanelli, the only Catholic parish priest in Gaza. Why did he insist on returning there after Warburg Out, despite the enormous danger? And how does he manage to hold on to his faith? - Listen now, by searching for the documentary, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. (dramatic music) 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. Poll suggests 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, Yolant 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 turn-out 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 vote straight higher than it is in the Arabic community. - Israel's divisions were on display last month, as a Supreme Court overruled attempts to disqualify Arab parties from this vote. Mis-trust and hostility have risen since the 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel. Suha Selman 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 1948. Israel's government often frames them as a threat [BLANK_AUDIO]
state's Jewish identity. At Radio Nass, an Arabic language station, I ask news editor Mohammad Majadli about the Prime Minister's claim that his rivals planned to team up with Arabs and form a dangerous government. In one world, it's right of them, because the political interest of Benjamin Netanyahu, he's trying all the time to pull maybe the legitimacy of these 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. Sour Abbas and Islamist who heads the United Arab List joined a previous government and wants to join the next one. Our approach has been driven by 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 Jaffat's yet some morning, 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 waved flags for their favorite party. The stakes are high in this election. Arab citizens could yet decide who wills power in Israel, and they also see this vote as key to their own future in the country. Yolanda Nell reporting. Hecklers 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, Nada Talfique, 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, labelled 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 of 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 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. Nada Talfique. This week Netflix released a new series or an experiment as its build. It is 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. Ray 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 a 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 doctors and barrios 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 has nothing to do with science and it is a deliberate confusion of science with what was going to be reality TV later in 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 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 mildly concerned 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. Play Ramsay 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 pod 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 operates? We'll try to tackle the answers for you, send your emails and video and voice notes to the usual address,
[email protected]. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at
[email protected]. You can also now watch our episodes in full, just search for the Global News Podcast on YouTube. This edition was mixed by Resenwyn Durell and the producer was Ed Horton, the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Charles Havilland, until next time, goodbye. So quick summer recap. Heat waves, data leaks, AI hacks, holding phones and a virus, finally challenge record. I'm Thomas Germain. I'm Jess Maddox and the Interface is back from its summer break. New season, new co-hosts, same deep dives into the tech that's shaping our world and our lives. Allegedly. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcast.
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