Deadly fire rips through boarding school in Kenya

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1:08You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 15 Hours GMT on Thursday the 28th of May. A fire has ripped through a girls' boarding school in Kenya, killing at least 16 pupils. Israel says it's carried out an airstrike on southern Beirut as it steps up its offensive in Lebanon. And the US says a ballistic missile launched by Iran overnight was a violation of their ceasefire. Also in this podcast. There are so many similarities to the US President Donald Trump. The only difference is this is a buffalo and President Trump is a human being.

1:49The Bangladeshi buffalo saved from slaughter because it looked a bit like the US president.

2:00The grim task of identifying victims from a fire at a school dormitory is underway in Kenya. At least 16 students died in the blaze in the early hours of Thursday at the Utu Mishi Girls Academy, about 100 kilometres northwest of Nairobi. Kenya's Education Minister, Julius Ogamba, gave this update from the scene. We woke up with the sad news of a fire incident at this school, Utumishi Senior School. About 12.45am, a fire broke out in one of the domes on the second floor. The response teams, of course, managed to put out the fire by about 3am, but by then the damage had already been done. Anxious parents gathered outside hoping for news of their loved ones, including this distraught man looking for his daughter.

2:51Please, can I go and check? I know my daughter, how she looks like. I know, she's very beautiful. I want to see my daughter. No, no, please. Don't lecture me, please. I want my daughter. Our reporter, Thomas Mukwana, spoke to us from the school. Behind me are parents who are still trying to find the whereabouts of their children, and that's been happening since morning here, Oliver. We can't see the dormitory. It's a two-story dormitory, and you can't really see inside because you're far from it, but the bricks are still brown and gray as usual, but from the roof you can see the darkening color from the smoke that engulfed the inside of that building, and that's all you can see from where we are, but police are inside.

3:36It's hard to get through, and that tragedy, as it's being described by people who are here, is that these girls, most of the 79 that are injured, had to jump from that story, that first story of the first floor, to try and escape the fire, and that's why most of them allegedly broke their limbs trying to escape the fire. You can imagine the scene. It was frantic and traumatic, we could imagine, for all those girls. Those 200 were inside. Do we have any idea of how it started the fire? Not yet, Oliver. We don't know why this fire started. The police are trying to investigate. We can throw a glance at the dormitory right now, but no one's allowed to enter inside because police are trying to conduct investigations.

4:15Sadly, this is not the first of its kind here in Kenya. In 2024, the same thing happened at another school in Nyeri County, far from here, and that took with it 21 boys. It was a boys' primary school, and questions were raised at that time about the safety, especially fire safety in these schools, and the government put together an entire task force and they put together a report and part of the report found that 348 schools around the country did not have the safety requirements that are up to standard and so they were shut down and the government claimed that that problem was something that they were looking into but this this tragedy this new one raises bigger questions in the previous reports the problem as reported by the ministry at that time according to the investigations was that most of these dormitory doors open inward which makes it harder for children who are trying to escape a fire to get out in time.

5:02But this fire specifically, its cause has not been established yet. Now, there's some suggestion that emergency exits were locked during the fire. Have you heard anything about that? Not to the specific case. That was mentioned in the 2024 tragedy at that boys' school I've mentioned. And for that, there was a single door that was supposed to be the exit for all these children. For these girls, there was around 200 girls in that dorm that caught fire this morning. As of 2024, the problem was that these schools, most of them, were considered to not have achieved the required levels of safety. Thomas Mukwana there in Kenya.

5:39There is still supposed to be a ceasefire in Lebanon, but in the past few days, Israel has intensified its offensive against Hezbollah.

5:51The most recent Israeli strikes targeted Tyre, Sidon and the capital Beirut. Israeli forces have issued evacuation orders for about 14 % of the country, leaving many people with nowhere to go. As we record this podcast, another 11 deaths have been reported today, taking the total to more than 600 in the six weeks since the supposed ceasefire came into effect. Hezbollah has been using fibre-optic drones to target occupying Israeli forces in Lebanon. One IDF soldier was killed on Wednesday, taking their losses to 24. I got the latest on the Israeli offensive from our correspondent John Sudworth in the city of Sidon, also known as Saida.

6:31I'm standing in front of a scene of pretty extensive devastation. It looks like this was a strike that hit the roof of this building a number of stories high. The missile has come down through each story it looks before exploding in the ground floor, blowing out the front of it, demolishing large sections of it. The building is sort of in a precarious state now. We know a number of people died here. Just one of a number of sites across southern Lebanon that was struck by the Israeli Air Force last night with Israel saying it is intensifying its attacks on Hezbollah targets. Yeah, and yet this city is north of the Zahraini River, the area that Israel is demarcating as the north of its combat zone.

7:22Good way north, Oli. The Zahrani River has been set by Israel as the northern end of a huge evacuation area, which they are now telling people to leave as a live combat zone. something like 300 towns and villages south of the Saharani. And we've seen refugees moving in this city. Authorities here telling people that Sayyida is full and advising people looking for alternative accommodation to head even further north. But this city is outside that zone. But it's not the only place that is being targeted beyond that evacuation zone. We've just had in the past few minutes reports that the southern suburbs of Beirut have been hit again, an area of the city known to be a stronghold of sheer Hezbollah support.

8:21Israel saying, of course, that it is not targeting civilians, that this is a war aimed at depleting Hezbollah's military capabilities, hitting its infrastructure, killing its fighters. But when you come to places like this here in this city, you hear it again and again, people saying that they don't think this particular target was a military target, that innocent people have been killed here. So, as always, those conflicting accounts. And all this coming while talks are expected between military delegations from Lebanon and Israel in the US tomorrow, and while there is supposed to be a ceasefire between the two sides going on.

9:02Yeah, it's remarkable to think that those talks continue while this is happening on the ground. Of course, Hezbollah is not party to those talks. In fact, it is accusing the Lebanese government of enacting a betrayal by engaging in direct talks with Israel. but those talks are being encouraged by Washington, of course, because the situation here in Lebanon has the very strong possibility of complicating Washington's attempts to sign a broader peace deal with Tehran. And I think you speak to most Lebanese people here, they do not feel at all optimistic about the possibility of peace. In fact, most people are expecting this to escalate before there's any talk about it getting better.

9:44John Sodworth in southern Lebanon. Staying in the Middle East and the US says a ballistic missile launched by Iran towards Kuwait overnight was a clear violation of their ceasefire. It said the missile was intercepted by Kuwaiti forces. The Iranian attack came after the Americans launched strikes of their own. The US military said it shot down four Iranian attack drones that, quote, posed a threat around the Strait of Hormuz and targeted a military site in the strategic port city of Banda Abbas. It said the action was defensive in nature. Fouad Izzardi is professor of international relations at the University of Tehran and a supporter of the Iranian government.

10:24The United States have attacked Iran illegally. They have killed more than 3 ,500 civilians and they think they can control this part of the world. It's not going to happen. It's a pipe dream. They thought they can change Iran's government. That was a pipe dream. Trump has basically two choice. Either go the diplomatic political route and reach a settlement with Iran or have another war. And I think Iranian authorities are ready for both cases. Our Middle East correspondent Yoland now has the latest. The Iranian foreign ministry has put out a statement condemning the US strike on the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.

11:03And it seems to have been that strike that triggered the Iranian retaliation on Kuwait. That's a close U.S. ally. There's a big U.S. airbase there. And earlier Kuwait said that it was intercepting a drone and missile attack without saying where that attack was coming from. Now, this all followed on from the U.S. saying that it had downed four Iranian attack drones and also had then attacked Bandar Abbas to stop a fifth drone from being fired. and a US official was saying that this was purely a defensive action and that the ceasefire did remain intact. That, of course, is being questioned because it makes the ceasefire look increasingly shaky.

11:46The fact that it's the second time this week that there has been a flare-up of this kind. It pushed up oil prices once again. And this all happening as we haven't had sort of fresh signs of progress in those talks that have been going on between the UNs and Iran via mediators to try to get a deal across the line. Yelanel in Jerusalem. The epicentre of the current Ebola outbreak, Ituri province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been described by the World Health Organisation as a catastrophic collision of disease and conflict. The WHO has called for an immediate ceasefire there so health workers can tackle the disease.

12:26Dr Craig Spencer from Brown University in the US worked in West Africa during the Ebola epidemic of 2014 and contracted the virus himself. I think it's worth remembering that we didn't know about this outbreak even two weeks ago. And in this span of just a few days, we've gone from not knowing about this to this being one of the largest Ebola outbreaks ever. Every day comes with what seems to be more and more concerning news, either on the case counts, where cases are at, other concerning developments and how international partners are responding or other things like limitations of test capacity or other treatments.

13:03So I think that we are still in the very, very early phase of what is going to be a very long and complicated outbreak. And I think things are truly just starting to become clear. This was going to be a tough outbreak regardless of where it was at. This would have been hard to manage with these case counts and this disease itself in ideal conditions. And the eastern part of Congo is anything but ideal. I've worked many times in this part of DR Congo. Transport is tough. Logistics are hard. In addition, you have the conflict that is pervasive and omnipresent, and that makes it that much harder to access certain places, certain healthcare structures, and certain institutions.

13:45And it's going to be really hard for us to want to tackle this outbreak as quickly as possible. But we need to recognize, as we have learned in every other outbreak, that we need to work with communities as opposed to against them. Otherwise, we're setting ourselves up for even more trouble, even more challenges and more of a prolonged outbreak. The Trump administration says that it wants to treat American citizens who might have been exposed to Ebola not in the US, but in a facility in Kenya. What's your response to that? I think it's a moral abdication of what our country owes its own. The people that we are going to be sending and demanding, essentially, go and help with the response, either part of the CDC or a public health service, or maybe even perhaps our military.

14:30These folks are then going to be treated in a structure which I have a hard time believing can provide the quality of care that we are currently able to provide in a network of specialized hospitals all across the U.S. that we have built up for this reason over the past decade at an immense amount of costs, an immense amount of work by really dedicated professionals. And I think the fact that we are not going to, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, allow any single case of Ebola into the U.S. is a fixation on the wrong goal and the wrong priority. Our priority needs to be helping in the outbreak in Congo.

15:09And that is the only way to prevent cases from showing up in the region, in the US and in other places. It's the only way. The road ahead is going to be really, really difficult. I look for those lights of optimism, but I'm also faced with the pragmatism and the realism of what the next few months and longer are going to look like. And it's going to be really tough. Tougher even than the 2014 outbreak, do you think? It's hard to prognosticate. I would not be surprised. I think there is an opportunity right now to surge resources, support, and everything that we need to get on the ground, testing treatments, etc.

15:44to potentially avert the worst case scenario. But if we do not do those things, I think it's a real possibility that we could have a repeat in something potentially even worse than what we saw a decade ago. Dr. Craig Spencer talking to James Copnell. Now, as a tea drinker, it's not something I've noticed, but the price of a cup of coffee is now said to be approaching$7 in some Western cities. The rise is a result of tariffs, climate events and changing consumer tastes. So will prices ever come down again? Our economics editor Faisal Islam reports from Turin in northern Italy.

16:22I'm standing in front of what looks like a sort of locomotive train engine, which is in fact the first espresso machine from Moriando, 1884. At that point, it becomes a staple drink in Italy and a drink of the masses, a cheap drink. And it's been like that for decades since. But in recent years, that price point has increased and it does raise the question, how do you deal when a price shock comes through an industry? Does it change it forever? This is a pretty good place to find out. Welcome to the museum, Lavazza Museum. I've come here to meet Giuseppe Lavazza. His great-grandfather launched the famous coffee brand 130 years ago.

17:04Giuseppe is now chairman of the business. Complexity and troubles. I begin by asking him what's causing the current volatility in the coffee market. This kind of business has been affected for many years by climate effects. So when we saw a frost in Brazil in 2021 after Covid, the effort was devastating and the tension on prices lasted for about four years. And then the inflation, record price, geopolitical crisis, the Swiss Canal, now another big crisis, another war, President Trump tariffs. So really we went through incredible difficulties. A long list of troubles have combined to create a perfect storm.

17:49Every day we saw the coffee prices going up, going up, going up, breaking records. Speculation, of course, stepped into the business and tried to ride this great opportunity, exactly as happened in Cocoa, the same. It's not just the financiers playing the markets. Part of Vietnamese coffee farmers' daily ritual now involves the 4.30am morning app check of the robusta futures price in Vietnamese dong. Farmers that could harvest enjoyed extraordinary windfalls from last year's prices and are storing hundreds of thousands of bags of coffee, which otherwise would have been exported. Even aside from the weather, President Trump's tariff rollercoaster saw extra taxes applied to the world's biggest coffee producers before the White House saw the very visible impact on US domestic coffee prices and rode back.

18:42Prices have settled down from peaks, but still at much higher levels. So is the£5 latte a temporary aberration in our cups we can now forget about? Not yet, unfortunately. We have to wait for at least a couple of years because we need two big crops from Brazil and from Vietnam arriving on the market. Let's create a different market condition, more stability, more visibility long term. And so the chance, of course, of rebalancing the value all over the supply chain. Giuseppe Lavazza ending that report from Turin by Faisal Islam. And still to come in this podcast I think it must be a little bit tricky for her opponents when there's so much attention on her so I have no doubt that it probably does get into the minds of her opponents Why, Naomi Osaka's unusual tennis outfits have caused a stir at the French Open

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21:51You're listening to the Global News Podcast. So-called forever chemicals don't break down under normal environmental conditions and can be toxic to humans and wildlife. Now, the Australian government is bringing its largest ever claim, $1.5 billion, against the American firm 3M, accusing it of failing to disclose the use of forever chemicals in firefighting foam. In 2023, the firm agreed a$10 billion settlement with US public water systems. I heard more about the Australian lawsuit from our correspondent in Sydney, Katie Watson. There was a press conference earlier today and the Attorney General, Michelle Rowland, said that the government wanted to hold 3M and 3M Australia to account for what it called economic and environmental harms associated with PFAS.

22:41So these are like non-stick, water-resistant properties. They can be found not just in firefighting foams, but mobile phones, clothing, nonstick cooking pans. And the government said that the misconduct has contributed to substantial costs for defence because this foam has been found in 28 defence bases across Australia. but it's contributed to cost for defence and cost for the Australian taxpayer, including one billion Australian dollars, which is to date to investigate, remediate, mitigating the contamination at these relevant sites. And what has 3M said about all this? So they have said that they are prepared to defend themselves, that they never made this foam in Australia, and that they stopped selling the foam in Australia 20 years ago and pointed out that the Department of Defence kept using the foams for two decades after it stopped selling the product in Australia.

23:42Do we know how long this case will take? This is very early stages. The fact that they have announced the legal action, and as you said, this is the largest claim ever brought by the government, So now it's got to take the kind of all go through the legal processes. So 3M will obviously have to mount its defence. So, no, we're incredibly early stages in this. Katie Watson in Sydney. An employee at Google has been arrested for allegedly using inside company information to place lucrative bets on the Pony Market prediction platform, winning$1.2 million. The Italian engineer was arrested in Switzerland and brought before a US federal judge in New York on Wednesday.

24:26Nick Marsh has the details. There's been a lot of suspicious betting activity on Polymarket, which is basically an online prediction site where you can bet on pretty much anything you can think of. In this case, we're talking about Michele Spagnuolo, who is an engineer for Google, who basically bet on who wouldn't and wouldn't be the most searched person on Google in 2025. So he bet against a bunch of names such as Donald Trump. He bet on the singer David, which was odds close to zero at the time. Turns out, though, that David did become the most searched for name on Google. He was arrested and put in custody for the alleged murder of a teenage girl, which obviously, you know, garnered a lot of attention.

25:16He won about$1.2 million, this Google engineer, through these bets. and the US Department of Justice is saying that he used internal information which was contained in marketing material that Google says all employees have access to, but which the company has condemned as a serious breach of its policy. So he's being arrested for insider trading now, this engineer. A spokesman for Polymarket said that the platform was working closely with the authorities, so the DOJ and the FBI in this case, in this investigation. The spokesman also said that blockchain trading is transparent, traceable and bad actors leave footprints, hence why they were able to find this engineer.

25:55Business correspondent Nick Marsh. For weeks, people in Bangladesh have been flocking to catch a glimpse of a rare buffalo that's been getting a lot of attention online.

26:09I pray to Allah, all praise to him. See, it is a beautiful beast. There are so many similarities to the US President Donald Trump. not only the hair but also the way he looks. The only difference is this is a buffalo and President Trump is a human being. The Trump look-alike buffalo was due to be sacrificed for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. But because of its popularity, the Bangladeshi government intervened at the last moment, sparing the animal. Our global affairs reporter Anbarasan Etirajan told me more about the creature in question. It is an albino buffalo. Usually buffaloes are dark, black in colour.