Iranian drone attack kills two US soldiers

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1:26stories. Iranian attacks on Jordan have killed two American servicemen. Another US service member is still unaccounted for. Two warehouses belonging to Russia's biggest online retailer have been hit in some of the latest Ukrainian drone attacks. And a prominent Cuban dissident has gone into exile in the United States after being allowed to leave Cuba, where he'd served a long prison sentence. Also in this podcast, Netflix's latest gambit to try and win the battle for our attention. It's sort of a strange mix between a playable movie and a little bit of a game. This thriller that kind of magically uses your phone and your TV to interface with it.

2:09And history is made in the Football World Cup bronze medal match with a 10-goal thriller.

2:19It's something that will be a painful reminder to people in the US of the human cost of the The Iran war their country is raging thousands of miles away in the Middle East. The deaths of two US service members and the announcement that a third is missing. US Central Command, which is responsible for American military activity in the Middle East, announced on social media that the casualties happened in Jordan during defensive action against ballistic missile and drone attacks by Iran. As we record this podcast, the American bombardment of Iran has been continuing for an eighth straight night. after the US president declared that the temporary ceasefire was over.

2:57We've also heard, in a way, from Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtabar Khamenei. He's not been seen since the war broke out, but a few hours ago a statement attributed to him was read out by a newsreader on Iranian state TV. Now that the American enemy is seeking to escalate conflict and bear even greater costs and greater disgrace, it should know that the dear Iranian nation and the resistance front have unforgettable lessons for it. Nick Johnson is our reporter in Washington. US Central Command, which is responsible for American military operations in the Middle East, has confirmed that two of its service members have been killed.

3:39One is missing and this follows an Iranian missile and drone attack towards US troops in Jordan. Now, US Central Command hasn't gone into any specifics regarding the identity of those who've been killed and that one who is missing, nor the specifics of the incident itself. But the US does have a permanent presence at a number of bases in Jordan. And actually, last night, the Jordanian military said it had intercepted around 10 missiles fired from Iran into its airspace, but it reported no damage. But then a little earlier, we heard from Iranian state media who said that Iranian forces destroyed at least two US aircraft in Jordan.

4:24But that's something we haven't had yet confirmed from the Pentagon. That takes the US death toll in the conflict to 16. And we should say thousands more have been killed across the Middle East since the conflict began. But I guess it is the US death toll, isn't it, that will bring this home to a lot of people in the United States? Yeah, absolutely. We've heard from the Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who on social media has said, Godspeed heroes, this only strengthens our resolve. But yeah, you'd point to the wider number of casualties. And it is worth saying that Iranian state media has said, and it attributes this to the Iranian Red Crescent, that at least 50 people have been killed in Iran and at least 500 have been injured since these hostilities renewed over the past few weeks.

5:13We've had seven days of attacks now. Is there any word from the White House that this tactic is going to change or modify going forward? It's difficult to say what the plan is. And as we know, Donald Trump doesn't often know what the plan is in the long term. He often works day by day. And yeah, we've heard from Pete Hegseth, but we've also heard from Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who has released a written statement. He said that America's repeated breaches of the agreement had laid bare a fundamental truth that the signature of the US president is utterly worthless and devoid of credibility.

5:50Of course, he's referring there to the signature of the president on the memorandum of understanding, which was signed last month, which was meant to be a temporary ceasefire agreement between the two countries lasting 60 days. We're not even a month into it now. And then that would pave the way for peace talks for a longer term peace settlement. But it looks very much like that memorandum of understanding is a peace deal by name only. If you look back to 10 days ago when President Trump was wrapping up that NATO summit in Turkey, he talked about the ceasefire being over. That was in response to Iranian attacks on commercial shipping in the Straits of Hormuz.

6:29And that prompted more limited tit-for-tat exchanges between Iran and the US. But fast forward to where we are now, we've heard news of more American military personnel being killed, Iran accusing the US of striking its civilian infrastructure deeper into Iran, things like railway stations, bridges, roads. But this is something that the US has denied. Nevertheless, with such strong rhetoric on both sides and the ramping up of military strikes, it's difficult at this stage to see any way that teams can get back around the table for peace talks. Nick Johnson there. When Ukraine launched another wave of drone attacks against Russia on Friday night, two of the targets were warehouses belonging to Russia's biggest online retailer, Wildberries.

7:19Russian officials say seven people were killed and more than 20 injured at one of the sites, a logistics centre in the Tambov region, more than 400 kilometres south-east of Moscow. One of those injured was a security officer at the warehouse. We were about to let people out, but herded them back inside because there was firing right near the fire exit. The firing was close by. We got everybody back inside, and that's when it happened. The impact blew out the doors and windows. Everything went flying. Everyone nearby got hit. Another of the retailer's sites was hit in the Moscow region, along with a nearby oil depot.

8:04Videos posted online show columns of thick smoke at the sites. Our World Affairs correspondent Paul Adams, who is in Kiev, told Pete Ross about the significance of Ukraine's military targeting retail warehouses. It certainly was a devastating attack, as you heard just now in that clip. We think it's the first attack of its kind. Ukraine has been attacking energy infrastructure targets deep inside Russia for a long time. But this is different. This is a civilian target with civilian casualties. Now, Ukraine's argument, as expressed by President Zelensky, is that Wildberries, which is essentially Russia's version of Amazon, is playing a central role in Russia's military logistics infrastructure, supplying components for drones and navigation equipment.

8:50President Zelensky calls this a campaign of long-range sanctions. And experts who I've spoken to today say that Wildberry's role is even more widespread than that, that soldiers buy all sorts of military equipment from there, from uniforms to body armor to walkie-talkies and other gear. Ukraine also says that it's revenge for Russia's attacks on Ukrainian cities. Russia has attacked Ukraine's online retailers for several years, and probably for very similar reasons. One other suggestion is that since Wildberries is owned by someone with a close relationship with Vladimir Putin, the attacks may also have had the effect of disrupting parts of the Russian economy that the leader in the Kremlin really cares about.

9:31This seems like the sort of latest step in these widespread Ukrainian drone attacks. What sort of impact are they having in general? Well, they're having a pretty huge effect deep inside Russia and inside Russian occupied parts of Ukraine. The mayor of Moscow published a map today showing almost 1900 Ukrainian drone attacks on the Moscow region in the past week alone, with only 207 of those being intercepted. So it is an increasingly effective strategy. It's disrupted oil storage and refining as much as 10 to 15 percent of Russia's total capacity. It's led to fuel rationing in Crimea, forced Russia to import refined oil products, which is a pretty shocking situation for one of the world's biggest oil producers, and put additional strain on Russia's war budget.

10:21Ukraine has also been hitting vessels that are part of Russia's shadow fleet exporting oil in an effort to evade sanctions. So that's also having an impact. I think it's become an absolutely key part of Kiev's strategy and one very much identified, I should just add finally, with the recently ousted Ukrainian defence minister, Minister Fedorov, who protesters are on the streets right now here in Kiev demanding his return to his position. Paul Adams in Ukraine there. The Cuban performance artist and prominent dissident Luis Otero Alcantara has arrived in the United States. He was jailed in Havana nearly five years ago for insulting national symbols, contempt and disturbing public order, and was just released last week.

11:06Known for his painting and his performances, he founded the San Isidro Movement in 2018, a group of activists defending freedom of expression in Cuba. Here he is in archive footage describing their aims. We want to have a project, a single project, where we can talk about culture without it being seen as a danger to national security. Luis Fajardo from BBC Monitoring told me more. Luis Sotero Alcantara was a member of an artist group called the San Isidro Movement, a dissident group in Cuban society who have been active for several years and many of them were arrested and imprisoned during the crackdown in the years around 2020-2021.

11:51He is a very high-profile dissident and his opposition to the Cuban government had clearly created a lot of headache for the communist government in the island. And is that why then, with thousands of people risking their lives every year to try and get out of Cuba, he is being allowed just to hop on a plane because he's so much of a thorn in the side of the government? Well, dissident media have been describing the circumstances of his going to the U.S. like a forced exile, almost a banishment of him. Apparently, one of the conditions for his release by the security forces after he had finished a five-year prison sentence was that he was agreeing to leave the country, presumably on a permanent basis.

12:33So it is clear that Mr. Otero Alcantara had the potential to create headaches for the government in Cuba. Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, was posting in social media, highlighting his arrival to the US, so clearly a very high profile person who had a lot of potential to cause further embarrassment and problems to the government. And he has been apparently released under the condition of leaving for the United States. So does this mean that if this was agreed before his jail sentence that this is irrelevant, the oil embargo that the US has got over Cuba, that's not putting any extra pressure on?

13:10It's hard to say. There's lots of speculation, again, in exile media in Cuba. The Trump administration has been applying what they describe as maximum pressure against the Cuban government for quite a long time, not only via very drastic and continuously escalating economic sanctions, but the discussion, at least implicit, of potential actions, even military actions against the Cuban government. There's also lots of versions about potential talks between the Cuban government and the United States, presumably around liberalization of the government. But the fact is that there's still no concrete advances.

13:50And one thing that can be said about the communist government in the island of Cuba, of course, is that it has proven very resilient for decades. And even in the face of very, very serious economic crisis and pressure and great political pressure, they managed to survive. So it's not clear at this moment what success will these policies have against Cuba and the potential implications of this very high profile political prisoner landing in the US. Luis Fajardo there. Now, as multiple streaming services vie for our attention and our money, there's a constant battle to have the latest must-watch show.

14:28Netflix believes the answer is to think outside the box. It's launched a new immersive video game called Unhinged. Sean Crankel is the head of narrative games at Netflix. He's been speaking to Sean Farrington about how the game works. It's sort of a strange mix between a playable movie and a little bit of a game. The way that it works is that it's this thriller that kind of magically uses your phone and your TV to interface with it. So you're looking in first person at your TV. Massive storm has rolled in. most of your neighbors have left because they've evacuated wisely. Your best friend who lives across the street, who happens to be played by Sadie Sink, is somebody who's saying, we should probably get out of here.

15:12You, the player character, are played by Zoe Kravitz. And your phone, when you get a phone call, it literally is getting called on your phone. And when you turn on your flashlight on your phone to peer into the darkness and move your phone around, it actually works in real time. And so what starts as a fairly benign, let's get out of here for the storm story escalates into a very crazy sort of thriller slash horror experience about a home invasion. Yeah, I've seen the trailer and that gets pretty terrifying quite quickly. So the phone, is that like a controller as we would have known it with other consoles?

15:48Yeah. So this is what I'm so excited about for this is that it's very approachable in terms of how you play it. Your phone, when you get a call on it, you'll just press the button and you'll hear literally, you know, Sadie coming through your phone and you'll hear your character's voice on TV. And then the way you move through the world, instead of having to learn very complex controls, when you're aiming that flashlight around, you can just sort of aim where you want to go, click, and then you'll move to that space. And so it's even though the story gets very intense, the way you play it is actually dead simple.

16:21It feels more like you're at a great Disneyland ride than it is a game that you have to get, you know, very good at playing. It's quite different. I think it broke our brains as we started to approach this one, because as game developers, I think the teams regularly want to build on what the rest of the industry has already done. And I think for us, we came at it from a a very different perspective, which is to say there's people on Netflix who are coming to watch a great horror or thriller film or show, but they probably don't want to have to clear the skill bar of what it takes to play a great horror game.

16:56Sean Crankle speaking to Sean Farrington. Still to come in this podcast. What we see now, I never thought that I would see this happen in my lifetime. We hear from black voters in the U.S. state of Alabama who say the Supreme Court has dealt them a big blow.

17:22This podcast is sponsored by Made In Cookware. Made In partners with multi-generational artisans and some of the world's best chefs to create professional quality cookware, knives and kitchen tools. Their products are trusted in Michelin-starred restaurants worldwide and designed to perform just as well in your kitchen. From five-ply stainless clad to carbon steel, every piece is built to last and made to actually make you a better cook. Discover award-winning cookware at MadeInCookware.com. How did a boycott Jimmy become a billionaire from posting videos? On GoodBadBillionaire, we're going to find out how the world's most popular YouTuber, MrBeast, made his fortune.

18:02He's buried himself in a coffin for days. Counted to 100 ,000 on camera. And even recreated Squid Games, all in an attempt to go viral on the internet. But it all started when he gave a homeless man$10 ,000. So is he a philanthropist reshaping capitalism? Or is he just the king of the attention economy? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. But what policy changes should investors be watching? Washington Wise is an original podcast from Charles Schwab that unpacks the stories making news in Washington right now and how they may affect your finances and portfolio.

18:44Listen at schwab.com slash Washington Wise. That's schwab.com slash Washington Wise.

18:56This is the Global News Podcast. The wildfires in Canada are big. Nearly 30 ,000 square kilometres have already been scorched. That's an area roughly the size of Belgium. Now, four of the members of the US Congress from Michigan have written to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, saying it's the third year in a row that Americans have been affected by dense smoke coming across the border. In an escalating war of words, they say Canada isn't doing enough to prevent fires. President Trump has also accused Canada of willful negligence and threatened more tariffs. Speaking in Thunder Bay, Ontario's Premier, Doug Ford, had this to say in response.

19:36You don't get on and start threatening and criticising because guess what? One day it's going to be your turn. But to make the comments they did through the administration, absolutely unacceptable. We're trying to get through this. And maybe, I got an idea for President Trump. Why don't you get rid of the softwood lumber tariffs because 33 % of the lumber that you use in your building, I mean, guess what? It comes from Canada. You want us to clear the forest? Well, open up the gates. Eleanor Olszewski is the Canadian Minister of Emergency Management and Community Resilience. Owen Bennett-Jones asked her for an update on the fires.

20:13We have a really challenging wildfire situation in the province of Ontario. There are a number of wildfires that are out of control. A lot of those fires are affecting northern and remote and First Nations communities. They're not accessible by road. And so they are very challenging, not only in terms of fire suppression, but in terms of evacuations as well. In the province of Ontario, and then of course drifting into the United States as well, there is a significant amount of smoke. some of the smaller centres where we're doing evacuations and we're doing those because of smoke too not just because of the wildfire risk.

20:55Now there is smoke across US cities too and I just want to read you what four congressmen have been saying from Michigan. We were told last year that this would be treated with urgency. It wasn't. We were told the causes chronic underinvestment in forest thinning, fuel reduction and prescribed burns were being addressed. They're not. Not adequately enough to matter to the people we represent. So they're saying these incidents, you could be doing more to stop them happening. For decades, we've had a very collaborative working relationship with United States. That relationship has included the exchange of aerial firefighting assets, as well as firefighting personnel.

21:36And so from an on-the-ground perspective that absolutely has continued and our officials are in touch with American officials throughout this wildfire season as we have been in the past and we have provided the Americans certainly with assistance when they've had wildfire issues to deal with. So we sent aerial firefighting assets when they had the Palisades fire in California and in fact really recently we had water bomber pilot die while he was working trying to suppress a wildfire in Colorado a couple of weeks ago. So we do have a long-standing relationship with the United States and at the present time my primary objective is the safety of Canadians who are facing wildfires in their communities who may need to be evacuated and that's absolutely what my focus is at the present time.

22:35Eleanor Olszewski, the Canadian Minister of Emergency Management, speaking to Owen Bennett-Jones. We're in Bangladesh next, where heavy monsoon rains have caused severe flooding and landslides across the southeastern part of the country. One of the worst affected areas is the coastal town of Cox's Bazaar, home to more than a million Rohingya refugees in the world's biggest refugee camp. Across the country, at least 51 people are known to have died, with more than a million affected by the floods. Maynul Islam is head of programmes at the Norwegian Refugee Council in Bangladesh. He leads the organisation's humanitarian relief efforts for Rohingya refugees and often travels to Cox's Bazaar.

23:16He spoke to us from Dhaka. This year, last seven days, the amount of rain we had, it's like last 42 years we didn't have a similar amount of rain. Like in six days, more than 1400 millimeter of rain in Cox's Bazar and Chattugram area. That was significant. So things are getting unusual also in the climate change impact. And in six days, 95 landslides in Rohingya camps has been also reported. So that is quite unusual. The camp is in hilly train in Bangladesh and it's not a solid rocky mountain. It's very chaserated, soft clay. so when it's heavy rain and also the human habitat was established on the silly train it was used to be a reserve forest so there has been a lot of damage done to these hills so when it's heavy rain it becomes so soft that the shelters are very vulnerable to these landslides and shelters in the camps are made with makeshift bamboo plastic sheets and some basic items so it's not a permanent structure.

24:17So a landslide makes it significantly vulnerable, both for shelters, learning centers, means schools. There has been an incident in one school, eight children died on the spot due to a landslide during this flooding time. There are 1.3 million of Rohingya refugees living in 33 camps. It's the most congested refugee camps in the world. So it's around 22 kilometers or even less than that. So people are very congested. It's very narrow, like 50 ,000, 60 ,000 people in some of the camps, in some blocks. There are incidents that people even didn't have a space to bury those bodies who died. So it's quite a devastating situation, actually.

24:57And people are coping with what they have. They don't have nowhere to go because Rohingya refugees are allowed to live only in the camp, not officially allowed to go outside. So it's a disparate situation for the Rohingya refugees. Mynul Islam from the Norwegian Refugee Council in Bangladesh. Back in April, the Supreme Court in the US struck a blow to a part of the Voting Rights Act that had helped give minority voters more representation in Congress. That law, passed in 1965, was meant to ensure that the right to vote was not denied because of race. But the Supreme Court's decision allows Republican-led states to redraw congressional maps and erase Democrat-leaning majority black districts.

25:41Alabama is one of those states that could see its black elected officials lose their seats ahead of the midterm elections in November. The BBC's Brandon Dredden has visited Alabama to see what this means for the people there. Butler Chapel Methodist has been at the center of the African-American community in Tuskegee for decades. When I arrive, members of the congregation are spending a misty Alabama morning socializing on the steps outside. But 70 years ago, it served a far more pressing purpose. When black people could not vote in this area, they used to have secret meetings right here at this church.