President Zelensky has accused Moscow of bombing a school in Ukrainian-occupied Russia killing four and injuring dozens. Also: the Taliban takes over Afghanistan's only luxury hotel, and the romance of the orchid.
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Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.
Start listening to Oliver Berkman, Epidemics of Modern Life. Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks.
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritson, and in the early hours of Sunday, the 2nd of February, these are our main stories. Ukraine says Moscow has bombed a boarding school in part of Russia held by Kiev. Dozens of elderly Russians are thought to be trapped in the rubble. Canadian officials say new tariffs imposed by the US will come into force on Tuesday.
More civilians are fleeing the fighting in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as rebels push towards the city of Bukavu. Also in this podcast... Emotional scenes in Israel as three more hostages held by Hamas in Gaza are freed and reunited with their families. And... High emotion too in the occupied West Bank as more than 180 Palestinian prisoners are released by Israel.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has accused Russia of bombing a building in Ukrainian-occupied Russia, where dozens of civilians were reportedly sheltering on Saturday night. The Ukrainian military has posted video from the Kursk region. It shows the damaged temporary evacuation shelter. The BBC has not been able to independently verify the material.
As we record this podcast, a rescue operation is underway as it's believed there could be almost 100 people trapped under the rubble, including women and children. I got more from our Europe regional editor, Danny Aberhart.
What we know, or according to the Ukrainian military at least, is that there were only civilians sheltering in the building. The Ukrainian military claims that Russia knows that there were only civilians sheltering in the building as well. And one Ukrainian military spokesperson has said 95 people are trapped under the rubble.
that there are rescue efforts to try to get them out of the rubble and that groaning and screaming can be heard. Now, the accounts obviously have not been independently verified. So we have seen some pictures, some video and some stills images posted by the Ukrainian military and by President Zelenskyy. It appears to be a school that we can see in Suja, but that has not been absolutely confirmed.
It's certainly a possible candidate. So there's some evidence, but as we speak at the moment, not enough to be conclusive.
Is there any way this could have been a military target, a legitimate military target?
Buildings such as barracks can be used, obviously, for military purposes as well. We know that there is fighting very close to Suja. Suja has been very badly hit in the fighting, and we know that Russia uses guided bombs to target Ukrainian positions. There is at least one pro-Russian military blog that talks of this being actually a strike by Ukraine.
alleging that it was an attack from Sumy, which is the Ukrainian region on the other side of the border, you will virtually certainly get very different accounts from Ukraine and from Russia about what happened in this attack.
And the other possibility, I guess, is that it is some kind of accident.
It could be an accident. We just don't know at this stage. Ukraine alleges that Russia has been trying to prevent its own civilians evacuating into Russian controlled areas. Ukraine says that it's happy for Ukraine. such evacuations to take place. That's a very serious accusation.
President Zelensky has accused Russia of using similar tactics to ones seen in places like Chechnya, Syria, and obviously in Ukraine itself, where he says in this particular case, Russia has been bombing its own civilians. You can guarantee that Moscow will not accept that account.
The Ukrainian military spokesperson in Kursk said that many of the people sheltering there were elderly and bedridden. But we've also heard from the Ukrainian military that women and children were also sheltering there.
Tariff is the most beautiful word in the world. So said Donald Trump on the election trail. Ever since then, the rest of the world has waited to see whether he would follow through and start what many fear will mean an international trade war. White House officials say the president has signed an executive order imposing steep tariffs of 25% on Canada and Mexico and 10% on China.
He's also threatened to target the European Union with tariffs. Officials in Canada understand that the 25% tariffs on exports will come into force on Tuesday. Brian Lanza, who advised the Trump presidential campaign, insisted what was happening was a negotiation, not a trade war.
What's the long-term success of this trade confrontation? Better term trade agreements for U.S. consumers. And that's what the U.S. consumer understands, that these trade deals that we've had for the last 20 to 30 years have done nothing but gut American cities, gut American businesses, and hurt the middle class.
And so these voters are willing to tolerate a little bit of pain or some pain as Trump negotiates better trade deals.
For its part, Canada has promised an immediate and forceful response. The Canadian High Commissioner to the UK, Ralph Goodale, told the BBC's Simon Jack that Donald Trump's policy was foolish.
It's obviously not going to be helpful. We are doing our very best to persuade the Americans to a more common sense position. The consequences will be negative for both countries. This will impose costs on the United States. This will damage Canadian or American consumers and producers as well.
Last time this happened, for example, there were retaliation on things like Florida orange juice, Tennessee bourbon, places which were strong Republican Trump supporting states was where Canadians felt they had most leverage. Do we expect that again?
We will want our response to send a very clear message. We will want it to hit people. sensitive areas in the United States.
Justin Trudeau is stepping down. You've got candidates vying to succeed him within weeks. Is there a danger that the candidates to be the next leader will try and out-tough each other to the point of not being very pragmatic for Canadian interests in this?
Quite frankly, so far, both in terms of the candidates that are running for the leadership of the Liberal Party and the leaders of other political parties and other levels of government in Canada, at the provincial level, for example, what's been accomplished so far is a huge amount of Canadian unity, Canadians standing shoulder to shoulder with each other and saying this is simply unacceptable, in addition to being wrong in terms of how one neighbour treats another.
It's also foolish economics because it will impose costs on the United States. There is this notion that somehow this brings revenue into the United States. In fact, it's Americans who will pay the American tariffs. So it's, in fact, a tax on themselves. And in that sense, it is very wrongheaded and counterproductive. And we will push back.
Canadian High Commissioner to the UK, Ralph Goodale.
As we record this podcast, the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is travelling to Panama on his first trip abroad since taking office. His visit follows President Trump's extraordinary threat during his inauguration speech to seize the Panama Canal. Mr Rubio will then visit four other Latin American countries where he'll focus on migration from Panama City.
Our State Department correspondent, Tom Bateman, sent this report.
Tom Bateman!
Protesters in Panama City burned effigies of Donald Trump and Marco Rubio. Elsewhere, riot police moved in on a crowd, firing tear gas and wrestling demonstrators away.
The clashes in the run-up to Mr Rubio's visit were small-scale, some led by a well-known union leader, but the resistance to Mr Trump's sudden policy pronouncements for Panama is broad, including from its conservative president, José Raúl Molino. For weeks now, including at his inauguration, President Trump has said he wants America to take back the Panama Canal.
He said it was being run by China and falsely claimed Chinese soldiers were operating it and that American ships were unfairly charged more than others. The waterway is in fact owned and operated by the Panamanian government under a neutrality treaty signed with the US decades ago. However, Chinese companies have invested heavily in ports and terminals near the canal.
The visit by Mr Rubio, the first Hispanic Secretary of State and a China hawk, is meant to signal a growing intolerance to countries soaking up Chinese investment in what the US sees as its own backyard.
But the muscular approach of President Trump, who when asked by reporters even refused to rule out military action to get the canal back, has aroused strongly patriotic sentiment in this small strategic nation. US officials say Mr Rubio's visit is meant to help reinstate a golden age of the Americas by building economic cooperation and tackling migration. Tom Bateman.
The mineral-rich east of the Democratic Republic of Congo has been dogged by conflict for over 30 years. Over that time, this instability has had a devastating effect on the entire region, resulting in the deaths of millions of people.
Over the past few weeks, the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have made rapid advances in the eastern DRC, including the seizure of the strategically important city of Goma. Now, the president of neighbouring Burundi, Ivar East Endayi Shimaye, whose troops have been helping the Congolese army fight the M23 rebels, has warned that the wider region is at risk if peace isn't brought to the eastern DRC.
One day they'll come to Burundi. We're not going to accept war. It will be regionalised. We have a threat in the region. It's not just Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya. It's the whole region. It's a threat. If Eastern Congo has no peace, the region has no peace.
Camilla Mills has been following developments.
Residents in parts of South Kivu are starting to flee to neighbouring countries as the M23 rebels are now advancing towards the provincial capital of Bukavu. The fighters, as we understand it, are about 100 kilometres away and apparently many people are starting to stock up on essentials and food.
These are really similar scenes to what we saw just a few days ago in Goma when the fighters captured that major city. Now, reportedly, the DRC army has set up a defensive line between Goma and Bukavu and hundreds of civilians are starting to come forward and volunteer to try and defend the city. The M23 rebels have also threatened to continue this offensive towards the capital, which is Kinshasa.
Analysts are saying that this could be unlikely because that's about 2,500 kilometres away and on the other side of the country.
The international reaction?
Well, the fall of Goma has really rattled the continent and it's prompted huge reaction also from the international community. Their fears of a humanitarian crisis and warnings that this conflict could seep into the wider region.
As we just heard, the Burundian president has urged the international community to intervene and try and restrain Rwanda to prevent this war from spreading into the Great Lakes. Burundi has about 10,000 soldiers in the DRC at the moment, and Uganda's army is saying that it's going to adopt what it's calling an active defence measure.
Now, the effort to end the DRC conflict has really ramped up in the last few days. We've seen leaders from the Southern African Development Community asking for an immediate joint summit with their East African counterparts. The DRC, just to put this into context, is the second largest country in Africa. It's about two-thirds the size of Western Europe and borders nine countries.
So the risk of this really escalating is huge.
Camilla Mills. He's arguably the most famous scientist of the last century or so. Albert Einstein, the father of the theory of relativity. Now, physicists at the University of Nottingham in central England are trying to protect a rare artefact that's been hanging rather anonymously all on a wall in the institution, a blackboard signed by the man himself.
Dr Emma Chapman is a cosmologist in the physics department at the university.
So just under 100 years ago, the University of Nottingham invited Albert Einstein to come and tell everybody in the physics department all about his new theories of general relativity, which are the idea of how space-time works, how the universe works. He was friends with one of the heads of department here. And so on the evening, he was due to give a lecture
He did turn up late, which is very Einstein. But he ended up getting distracted by Isaac Newton's house in Lincolnshire on the way. But he did turn up. And what he did was he spoke in German about all of these theories, all of these mathematical equations. And as he was doing so, we had one of the physicists actually translating from German to English.
and also he was transcribing the mathematical equations on a blackboard. It's one of very few blackboards in existence and the only signed one that we know of at all. There's one more in the UK at the University of Oxford. There were two but somebody unfortunately cleaned one of them so this is a very very rare item and it's got a wonderful signature and a date right at the bottom of it.
You can look at it and you can see all of the text you can You can identify the equations that describe a black hole. You can see his signature.
Dr Emma Chapman.
Still to come... For thousands of years, orchids have had an association with seduction and some orchids have been used as aphrodisiacs.
Why orchids are identified with romance and seduction.
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Discover how to lead a better life in our age of confusion. Enjoy this BBC audiobook collection, written and presented by best-selling author Oliver Berkman, containing four useful guides to tackling some central ills of modernity. Busyness, anger, the insistence on positivity, and the decline of nuance.
Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.
Start listening to Oliver Berkman, Epidemics of Modern Life. Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks.
Hamas has freed three Israeli hostages in exchange for the release of 183 Palestinian prisoners as part of the deal for a ceasefire in Gaza. The border crossing to Egypt from southern Gaza has reopened, allowing the first medical evacuation since May of last year. Thirty children with cancer were among the first to leave the territory.
International news organisations are not permitted free access to Gaza. Our correspondent Wira Davis sent this report from Hostage Square in Tel Aviv.
After Thursday's chaotic scenes when hostages being handed to the Red Cross in Gaza were surrounded and jostled by hundreds of people threatening to derail this delicate ceasefire, today's handovers were much more orderly, although armed Hamas fighters were again prominent. Among the three Israeli hostages was 34-year-old Yarden Bibas.
His two infant sons and his wife are widely believed to have been killed in captivity. And for many supporters, today's release was a bittersweet moment. Freed at the same time were 54-year-old Ofer Calderon and Keith Siegel, who's 65. For the first time in 15 months, they were able to hug their overjoyed families.
Liat Castelnova, a friend of Keith Siegel's, who's an American-Israeli dual national, had long campaigned for his release.
We are thrilled, we are so happy, we are crying all day because Keith is a close friend of mine and he came back after a long, long time. We want all the 79 hostages that left there to come and return home.
In exchange, more than 180 Palestinian prisoners were released and taken to Gaza and the occupied West Bank. where huge crowds were there to welcome them. The majority of Palestinians released today had been detained after the October 7th attacks and held without charge.
This ceasefire is still holding, and today's partial reopening of the Rafah border crossing allowed 50 injured Palestinians out for treatment in Egypt, another significant sign of progress.
I went with Ibn Ibrahim, Hassan Abu Jazar, Elash, and Al-Kharij. They told me to go to Egypt.
My child has been suffering for months. We've been waiting so long for this day, said one mother, as she accompanied her sick child across the border, but leaving another behind in Gaza. Next week, talks will begin aimed at extending the ceasefire process into a second phase, but there's no guarantee they will succeed.
Rua Davis in Tel Aviv. Long before the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan more than three years ago, Islamists repeatedly targeted what is known as the country's only luxury hotel, the Serena Kabul. A symbol of Western opulence for 20 years, it's been under the management of the Aga Khan Fund, based in Switzerland. On Saturday, though...
The hotel announced that the Taliban has taken over and it will now operate under the Afghan state. Guests at the Serena Kabul included foreign dignitaries and visiting journalists. Rachel Reid, who writes for the Afghanistan Analyst Network, was one of them. She told me more about what made the hotel a prize Taliban target.
This was the only five star hotel in Kabul. It drew a very high end middle class Afghan crowd and obviously all the foreigners in town. There would be some foreigners who would actually live there year round, some of the smaller embassies, for example, some of the military contractors. But for others, it was, I mean, it had an outdoor swimming pool.
It was the epitome of everything that was wrong about the West. You know, an open-air swimming pool with one of the ministries overlooking, seeing people, women in particular, in swimming costumes. It was... kind of an outrage for a lot of Afghans locally, and yet a bit of a safe haven, a bit of a pretend other place to be for people who were living there year round without much to do, really.
I mean, I would go and use it, but also be painfully aware of how wrong it was, really.
And how dangerous it was, because it was the target of multiple deadly attacks by the Taliban.
It was in 2008 and 2014, very famously, two big attacks. The 2014 one, I remember really clearly, actually, because I'd been ill-advisedly made to stay there the night before by a security advisor, even though I thought it was much safer in low-profile places at the time.
And it was attacked about an hour or two after I checked out by some very young Talibs who had managed to get past security with guns in their shoes and then killed lots of people, including a lovely Afghan journalist and his young family.
So the Taliban have now taken control of its management. Which way is it going to go? Because on the one hand, they say they want more tourism, but on the other, they disagree with basically everything the hotel stands for.
Well, indeed, it will be really curious to see how they restyle it to become something that is something that they're very austere and fundamentalist version of Islam and they're very authoritarian rule based.
can tolerate but they are on this bizarre tourism drive which of course you can you can see the need for it the the economy is absolutely shattered and they're on a propaganda drive they want to
to be able to present an image of the country that is something at odds with this image they have as a pariah state with, you know, just last weekend, we had two of the most senior leaders with the ICC requesting warrants for their arrest for crimes against humanity.
So there's something rather perverse about the idea that you might go on holiday there as if crimes against humanity are now a kind of a zoo you can go and look at to inspect and make your Facebook status updates that you've You've seen this place where women are effectively banned from the streets, from public life.
Rachel Reid from the Afghanistan Analyst Network. The governing body of world cycling, the UCI, has banned the controversial technique of repeatedly inhaling small doses of poisonous carbon monoxide to boost the performance of elite cyclists. The UCI says it's made the move to protect the health of riders. Ella Bicknell reports.
If you want to be cycling world champion, it's all about making marginal gains. From tyre quality to helmet aerodynamics, athletes are constantly trying to make those minute 1% improvements that could be the difference between the back of the peloton and the podium.
The carbon monoxide breathing method is the latest craze, with three-time Tour de France winner today Pogacar and his two-time winning rival Jonas Vingegaard confirming their previous use of the controversial but legal practice. When used during altitude training, the toxic gas can measure the blood's levels of haemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that boost movement and endurance.
But the fear is that repeated inhalation could increase a cyclist's red blood cell count, giving them an unnatural advantage in races. Not good for a sport with a long history of doping. Cycling's world governing body is banning the repeated use of carbon monoxide breathing out of concerns for potential misuse.
The World Anti-Doping Agency has also warned carbon monoxide breathing could seriously endanger a rider's long-term health, with side effects ranging from fatigue to breathing difficulties and even a loss of consciousness.
Social media can often feel like a never-ending stream of doom and gloom, but there is one wholesome corner of the internet gaining traction, an Instagram account that celebrates the joy of finding... Good stick. Yes, you heard that right. The joy of finding a good stick.
With three million followers, Official Stick Reviews shares clips of people across the world finding interesting pieces of wood. Why is it so popular and how did it all begin? The BBC's Jeanette Kawachi spoke to the creators Boon Hogg and Logan Juggler.
Official Stick Reviews was born a year ago. Me and Boone and some friends went on a little camping trip and we were just hanging out and came across some cool sticks and we started making kind of a joke about being stick experts. And then so we started making some videos about it and we thought they were really funny and kind of was just like an inside joke between us and some friends for a while.
And a lot of people found it and just started submitting their own sticks. And it became known as Stick Nation. It's a worldwide community of stick enthusiasts.
What's up, Stick Nation in Angat, Philippines. Hello, Stick Nation. I'm Max from Belgium. All right, Stick Nation, we are at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. It is a magical sword with healing properties.
Pretty magical, if you ask me. It's got a lot of holes. Pretty good stick.
It's like a nice katana. You can fight the ninjas with it, or you can use it as a cane. Great stick.
Yeah, it was surprising, but then the more it's kind of unfolded, it makes a lot of sense. There's not really a barrier of entry. Sticks are free, so anyone can take part in the community, and everybody relates to picking up a stick and using their imagination, so...
And when you get these submissions from all over the world, does it shock you, the kind of different sticks that are out there?
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's been one of the coolest parts about it, that me and Boone have the chance to go through all the submissions that we get, which we get like hundreds a day. We get them from all over the world. So it's kind of like a little glimpse into everyone's geography. And so you kind of get a little view into people's, you know, what kind of sticks are around them.
And so it's kind of this cool way to get a peek into people's worlds, you know, that they're operating in.
People are really creative with the level of content and the quality of content that they're submitting to you guys and that you're posting. How do you pick what actually gets featured on your page? Because clearly the competition is quite high now.
Yeah, we try and do as little gatekeeping as possible. So there are some that have pretty wonderful aura and ones that are high quality sticks and then others that see more if it's a stick and somebody took the time to send it in and found joy in the video or in the submission, we'll share it.
But we do do stick of the year tournaments and stick of the month tournaments where at that point it's like an all-out brawl between really high quality sticks. So We try and do a little gatekeeping, but we for sure do showcase some of the most high-quality sticks in the world.
Boone Hogg and Logan Juggler. In the grey months of a British winter, we need some exotic colour to cheer us up. What better tonic, then, than a celebration of the most romantic of flowers, the orchid? Here in London, the Royal Botanic Gardens is hosting its 29th Orchid Festival, this time with Peru as a source of inspiration.
It's been organised by Professor Michael Fay, an orchid specialist who's been obsessed with the flower for 60 years. Johnny Diamond asked him just why orchids have become associated with romance and seduction.
For thousands of years, orchids have had an association with seduction because they have all sorts of interesting mechanisms for getting themselves pollinated, many of which involve tricking the pollinators into thinking that they're seducing a female of their species, but it turns out they're actually pollinating an orchid.
And some orchids are being used as aphrodisiacs, and so there's a whole range of different things where orchids are involved in some seduction in one way or another. Why Peru this year? The Andes and the countries around the Andes are remarkably rich in orchids. So the Orchid Festival focuses each year on a country which has a large number of orchid species.
And Peru is one of those that we've been waiting to do because it's one which has approximately 3,000 species of orchids compared with the 50 native species that we have in the UK. So it's a remarkably rich one with orchids from high mountains down to sea levels.
I should add, this is quite personal for you, isn't it? You've had a passion for orchids for many a moon.
Well, about 60 years. Fair number of moons. Yes. They're enigmatic plants. They have very bizarre life histories. They're unpredictable, some of them where you can find them. I can remember where, for example, I saw my first bee orchid and who I was with when I saw it, and that was when I was about seven years old.
Professor Michael Fahey. And that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Martin Baker and the producer was Alison Davis.
The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritson. Until next time. Goodbye.
Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.
Start listening to Oliver Berkman, Epidemics of Modern Life. Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks.