Israel-bound flight diverted after fight between pilots

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30Reserve your spot with just$200 down at BKFSEA.com. Thumbtack presents Tile Trouble. Every single time I use my sink, I make eye contact with the uneven ground on my kitchen backsplash. The crooked corners eye me and I'm haunted by more tiling questions than I thought possible. What kind of pro can fix a backsplash? Can I replace one cracked tile or should I replace them all? What? What if I just use Thumbtack? I can hire top-rated pros, read reviews and compare prices with a tap, all on the app. Thumbtack knows homes. Download the app today.

1:07This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritson and on Wednesday 30th September, these are our main stories. An Israel-bound passenger jet sends out a hijack alert as one pilot reportedly stabs the other, before being overpowered. Russia pounds energy facilities in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and surrounding areas. We hear how children in Gaza are coping in the territory which is still under near-daily attack. Also in this podcast, researchers say they persuaded a Chinese AI system to give them the recipe for bioweapons and... We Africans who will develop Africa, whether they like it or they don't like it, we are moving.

1:54Africa's richest man leads a consortium to build an oil refinery on Kenya's coast, which he says will put Africa in charge of its own destiny.

2:07A passenger plane flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv carrying about 170 people had to divert to Saudi Arabia after the pilot was reportedly stabbed. Israeli and Saudi fighter jets were scrambled when the plane transmitted a code used to indicate a hijacking. Israeli media is reporting that the co-pilot is thought to have stabbed the pilot and attempted to crash the plane. Yasmin Aboukassis was waiting at Tel Aviv airport for her daughter Miriam, who was on the flight. The plane started to lose control. So all the people, they scream, they think they are going. And after a few minutes, two other pilots, they took the control.

2:48and few Israelis ran away to the guy. He took a knife, they took his hand and put him on the floor. There was a lot of blood around. She said it's a crazy, crazy time. It's very hard to explain what happened there, but it was a big stress. Almog Itali was also on the flight. I spoke with several people who were in the cockpit and there are quite a few versions it's unclear how the cockpit door was opened whether someone from the crew opened it so help could come or if it was forced open it is unclear what is clear is that there were two pilots in the front one stabbed the other and there were two spare pilots who were supposed to operate the next flight the relief pilots are European one of them British who entered and pulled the aircraft up, pulled the yoke, stabilised the plane and landed us in Saudi Arabia.

3:50Our global affairs reporter Sebastian Usher told us what we know so far. Everyone's trying to piece together the narrative of the moment from all the elements that are there. I mean, of course, passenger testimony being verified is going to be key to it. This was something which was set off when there was a code emergency warning from this flight, which one, there was trouble on board, and the other, but it was a hijack code. So there was an immediate response both from the Saudis and the Israelis, this was over Saudi airspace, to scramble jets to try and deal with that. As you were saying in your introduction there, it was brought down safely in a Saudi airport, Tabuk airport.

4:32There is some damage to the back of a plane that's visible. It also plunged at one point by about 10 ,000 feet. So this was an extraordinary incident, whatever the reason, whatever motivation behind it. One of the videos that we've just verified at the BBC shows two bodies lying on the floor. Now, not bodies of dead people, bodies of people who have been wounded. They appear to be the pilot, potentially the co-pilot. There is blood spattered around them. We've heard from the airport authorities that both the pilot and the co-pilot are in hospital and being treated. So we know that a very serious incident happened.

5:08We know that there have been no actual deaths. We don't think from what we know so far that it involved other people directly in the confrontation, but we don't know 100 % how it was subdued. The report we heard there from that passenger has been backed up by other reports that we heard that other crew managed to get into the cabin and resolve the situation and then the plane was able to be flown to a safe landing. And that is an extraordinary thing in itself because you're not supposed to be able to get from the main body of the aircraft into the cockpit, although in this instance, if what we're hearing is correct...

5:43Well, this is the crew. This is the crew. Now, I'm not an expert on aviation, but one assumes that the crew has the ability to do that if there's something going on inside the cockpit. Obviously, passengers themselves wouldn't be able to do that. And there are some passengers who have talked about that they were involved in this as well, which may be the case. There's one still of a passenger with blood on his T-shirt. There's video also of the landing where the passengers who would be almost all Israeli. I mean, I've flown that flight between Dubai and Israel. It's a very popular flight for Israelis who go to visit the UAE ever since it joined the Abraham Accords.

6:19And they are giving an Israeli prayer of thanksgiving as they land. So, you know, we still don't know exactly what happened. And we haven't had any really strong official statement from the Israeli authorities so far. But what we're hearing both in the Israeli media, from Israeli officials speaking anonymously to agencies, is that they believe that it may well have been a terror attempt that whoever was in the cockpit who tried to take control, that may have been what their motive was. This will play out in an already feeble atmosphere in Israel where elections are due to take place in a month's time.

6:53Sebastian Usher. President Zelensky says at least five people have been killed and 14 injured across Ukraine in the latest Russian overnight attacks. They involved both drones and ballistic missiles, which the Ukrainian air defences tried to shoot down.

7:14Lillian Bivings is business editor at the Kiev Independent. The last few hours, everyone's been pretty exhausted here in Kiev after another sleepless night. It's been, you know, sleepless nights for the last several weeks, largely, along with constant daytime attacks. We were just actually talking in the newsroom about how this air raid alert, this last one, lasted 12 hours. So the attack continued well until late morning. And we have a brief pause right now, but I imagine attacks will start again as they have been. Now, that's an extraordinary length of time, 12 hours of air raid alerts. I mean, how on earth does life continue with that going on?

7:53It's very challenging. You know, even as a newsroom at an organisation, we've had to shift how we work, you know, where we work. It's very disruptive. It's very disruptive to daily life, of course, to businesses that, you know, rely on being able to stay open so that they have customers and things like that. You know, I think as everyone has here for the last almost five years of war, you know, people have kind of found ways around it, found ways to continue living to kind of, you know, as one of my colleagues put it recently, kind of stretch the limits of what we consider normal constantly. And in doing so, continuing to live life, which is, you know, what we all want to do.

8:29But it has been complicated. And certainly people are exhausted. Certainly people are stressed. And certainly you see that more and more people are making the decision to relocate temporarily out of Kiev to safer parts of the country in the West or abroad. Lillian Bivings in Kiev speaking to Karen Giannone. Vitaly Shevchenko from BBC Monitoring told me where the Russians had hit. It was energy infrastructure, first of all. In fact, the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Serhiy Koretsky, says that this was the worst attack on Ukrainian energy infrastructure since the end of the previous heating season. So he says that Russia's relaunched its campaign against Ukrainian electricity, heating and water supplies.

9:19Electricity supplies have been restored to about 8 ,000 households in the Ukrainian capital. The Russian defence ministry says that it hit the Trapilska power station outside of Kiev, the largest supplier of electricity to the Ukrainian capital. The Ukrainians, they knew that this coming winter is going to be really, really tough. It looks like it's going to be much tougher than the previous winter when the Russians also attacked energy infrastructure. But this time around, they're also hitting supply chains, warehouses, supermarkets. And over the past month and a half, they've also knocked out a key sector of the Ukrainian economy, steelmaking, which used before the war, it used to account for 10 % of GDP and employed half a million people.

10:15So things are looking pretty grim for Ukrainians. Vitaly Shevchenko. Nearly a year after a ceasefire was supposed to end the fighting in Gaza, Israeli forces still conduct near daily strikes against what it says are Hamas targets. For ordinary Palestinians in Gaza, life is precarious. The Hamas-run health ministry says more than 1 ,400 people have been killed since last October, and doctors say that Israel is restricting vital medical supplies to patients in hospitals. Israel denies this. The BBC's Eme Anada reports now on how the children in particular are coping. Six-year-old Rasiel is getting ready for skin graft surgery.

11:00Earlier she had seizures caused by a shrapnel fragment in her brain which her doctors cannot remove. On July 30th Rasiel was sleeping with her family in their tent in El Mawasi camp in southern Gaza, when witnesses say they were hit by an Israeli airstrike. She was injured along with her mother and brother. Her nine-year-old sister, Ratil, was killed. Rasil's father, Mahmoud, watches over her in the hospital bed, the distress palpable on both their faces. I asked them, where is Ratil? Nobody answered. I asked my wife's cousins, where is Ratil? they said, in the morgue. I couldn't hold myself together.

11:42They used to play together all the time. It's only been two or three days since she started eating again. I'm afraid that if my daughter stays in Gaza, she'll die. Rasil has had more than 20 operations in order to clean wounds that keep getting infected. MSF's Dr Awani Rajafirrawi at Nasser Hospital is looking after her. Her current wounds have multi-drug resistant bacteria. So the solution is to try and clean the wounds every day or every other day, washing them in the operation room and trying as much as possible to control the infections. Dr. Al-Jafr Rawi explains the long-term consequences of the failure of key antibiotics he is seeing on his ward.

12:27In the long run, people's immunity weakens. A patient would need to undergo surgery every day or every other day. Over the coming years, you will see the number of amputees rise daily, even if the war stops. Israel says it allows medicines to enter Gaza without restriction, including antibiotics. But multiple humanitarian organizations and medical staff across Gaza have told the BBC that there are major shortages of essential drugs. Other factors that risk people's health are also at play. Rats and other pests have spread. Neighbourhood volunteer Mahmoud sprays pesticides around the rubble where he lives.

13:06The kids have developed severe allergies from these rodents and insects. They started bringing us diseases we had never heard of before. Honestly, we are sick of this life. For children in Gaza, bombardment is an ever-present threat. On September 1st, the Israel Defense Forces carried out a series of airstrikes during a raid near a school. At least four people were killed, including two children. The IDF says that it was part of an operation to capture the head of Hamas' internal security service. Dawah Qudayh is a teacher at the school. What war is over? There were over 200 children in my kindergarten right now.

13:47We were all evacuated from the building under bombardment. September 1st was also 14-year-old Lara's birthday. She was supposed to go to school that day but didn't because her mother wanted to celebrate with her at home. There's school tomorrow. Are you going to go? No. Seriously? You don't want to go? No. Why? Just because. Lara's face is tearing up. She's already lost her father who was killed while trying to get food for the family a year ago. Her mother tries to comfort her. I mean, it'll be a day or two, and after that, things calm down. Yes. What do you mean, yes? Why are you crying? I'm fed up.

14:32What are you fed up with? Life. UNICEF says that almost every child in Gaza requires urgent mental health and psychosocial support. Back at Marshal Hospital, Rasil, while waiting for a medical evacuation, has a new doll. She's named her after her dead sister, Ratil. The IDF says that they have no record of a strike that hit her family and regrets any harm to civilians. A few days ago, Rasil's father called the BBC to say they've been given permission to leave Gaza for treatment. But for the thousands of other children who were injured and traumatised, the wait for essential medicines or even a medical evacuation continues.

15:17That report by Emir Nader. Still to come in this podcast. Backpack tends to be an introverted bear. He's got quiet strength about him. That's one reason I like him. 89 Backpack wins the annual Fat Bear Week in Katmai National Park in Alaska.

15:47VP of Behavioral Finance and Investing, explains how Betterment takes the time-consuming work out of smart investing. I grew up learning about finance and investing myself and realizing that I needed to reinvest dividends and rebalance my portfolio and if there was an opportunity to tax loss over time. And then I realized that I was doing all of these things that were pretty straightforward to implement. I just needed to spend my time doing them. Betterment automates the same good practices so that I know I'm doing portfolio management and goal-based planning in a way that makes sense and is responsible without me having to spend hours of my life doing it.

16:25Learn more at Betterment.com. Investing involves risk, performance not guaranteed. Betterment does not offer tax advice. TOH may not be suitable for all customers. Learn more at Betterment.com slash TLH dash terms. It felt like everything I believed in was suddenly collapsing. This is the story of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia with a dark secret. Of the school's head teacher. This was someone I respected above anyone else. And the investigation led by students he's trying to silence. If this is leaked to the media, I'll be destroyed. This is World of Secrets, catching my teacher. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app, or wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

17:16This is the Global News Podcast. Over the last few weeks, the media has been dominated by warnings about the dangers posed by artificial intelligence. On Tuesday, President Trump signed an agreement with top tech leaders saying they would implement safeguards as a form of protection from AI's potential risks. And now the Chinese AI company Moonshot has announced that it's conducting an internal review after it discovered that an AI tool had told researchers how to make bioweapons. Our senior technology reporter Chris Vallance told me more. There is an AI security company called Mindguard, and they figured out a way to persuade two versions of Moonshot's Kimi model to disregard its own safety guardrails and pretty much discuss any topic they wanted it to.

18:08Some examples of the kind of things it discussed were biological weapons, chemical weapons, and ways in which you might carry out assassinations, to name but a few. This kind of disregarding of its own safety rules is called jailbreaking. And the interesting thing about that is if you look at, for example, last year's report by the UK's AI Security Institute, they say they were able to jailbreak pretty much every model that they tested. And that will include some of the big name models. So, you know, jailbreaking is something that the industry is very aware of. It's a risk that the industry takes very seriously because obviously they don't want people doing bad things with their models, persuading them to do things.

18:51The safety rules are meant to stop. but it's a problem that people find they're certainly making it harder to jailbreak these models but they find it very hard to remove the risk completely. What has been Moonshot's response? Well Moonshot says it's still in discussions with Mindguard over what they found it says it's conducting an internal review as well it also says it welcomes third party input to help make the model safer. And it says in an email it sent to MindGuard, which it shared part of that with us, it said that in its experience, the model generally refused these kinds of requests. Chris Vallance.

19:31After more than two decades of American military presence in Iraq, the last US troops to be stationed there have now withdrawn. Iraq hailed the end of the US-led anti-jihadist mission as the start of a new chapter. Here's Major General Tarsin al-Khafaji from Iraq's Defence Ministry. Today is the completion of sovereignty for Iraq. Today is the end of the international coalition's mission and the start of a new era, an era of bilateral relations between us and the countries that supported Iraq in its war against the Islamic State terrorist organisation. This new era depends on investment, arming, training, building a strong economy and securing the borders.

20:13Today, our security forces are able to carry out difficult operations, operations to preserve what we achieved through victory over Islamic State. Karen Giannoni spoke to Toby Dodge, Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and author of Iraq from War to a New Authoritarianism. What did he make of the last few hundred US soldiers leaving the country? I don't actually think it's a particularly big story in terms of the ramifications that it has for Iraq. Iraq's security services have been functioning pretty well for the last five, six years. Islamic radicalism is at a historic low level.

20:53So the Iraqi system, for all its multiple weaknesses and flaws, is self-sustaining. And whether the Americans go or not has not got much to do with the future trajectory of the country. Right. So when we compare it, say, to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, we saw such a dramatic turn of events after that, the Taliban sweeping back to power. That's an excellent comparison and is radically different. I think if you look at Ali Zaidi, the current prime minister, he's been in the United States twice in July and in September, both in New York and Washington. He's got good relations with President Trump.

21:33So the current Iraqi government are attempting to build as close relations with the United States as possible. They're offering oil deals to large United States companies. So the departure of a few hundred, I think it's probably about 500 troops here or there doesn't make a difference. Now, that's not to say that Iraq hasn't got profound problems. It's a deeply corrupt country. It's population, high unemployment. unemployment, I think 700 ,000 young people joining the job market each year without jobs to go to. So there are profound problems, but I don't think American troops or a good or a bad relationship with the United States is going to make any difference.

22:12Right. And you're not fearing any kind of security vacuum as happened in 2011 when the US withdrew before? No, not at all. The two situations are not comparable. Now, there is a profound war going on. The war that the United States started with Iran in February. That's still very much ongoing. What the Iraqi government have tried to do is work very hard not to get drawn in. There have been periodic uses of Iraqi territory to strike the Arab Gulf states and other set of American allies. But the Iraqi government themselves really don't want anything to do with this conflict and are attempting to keep out.

22:48You mentioned Iran, and I wonder, will there be those who portray this U.S. withdrawal as a defeat for the U.S.? And I'm thinking of Iran trying to frame it in that way. Yeah, I think the Iraqi government's relations with Iran have been superb since 2003. The Iranian government have courted, anointed, made sure that there's no one in the Iraqi government that isn't directly and very closely aligned to them. But the idea that a few hundred American troops can do anything about that, I think, is part in the sky. I think what Trump and his America First agenda has done is looked at the small amount of American troops on the ground.

23:28I think we can project as much influence or as little influence as we want into Baghdad without our troops. And I think in this thing alone, he's probably right. Professor Toby Dodge. Work is starting on constructing a$16 billion oil refinery in Kenya near the port of Lamu. When active, the site is expected to have a capacity of some 700 ,000 barrels of crude oil a day. But many residents of Lamu, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, oppose the construction, saying the refinery is set to be built on land that they and their families have lived and farmed on for generations. Walid Ali is co-founder of community-based organization Save Lamu.

24:36environmental law in Kenya. Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote, who is bankrolling the project, says it will go ahead whatever the protesters say. Nobody wants Africa to develop. That's why we Africans will develop Africa. Whether they like it or they don't like it, we are moving. It's a moving trade. Either you join it or you'll be crushed along the way. We don't have a problem with that. Nkechi Ogbonna, the BBC's Africa business reporter in Nairobi, is following the story. This project aims to be a game changer for energy security in the East African region. President William Ruto has said repeatedly that this is not a Kenyan project, that it belongs to the entire East African community.

25:19It also hopes to encourage energy stability as well and ensure steady supply of fuel following the fallout of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran and how fuel prices soared high in the region, impacting most African countries. But as we heard in that clip, many, many protests against it. Yes. Yesterday in Lamu, there were protests against the construction of the project. Residents believe land is being grabbed, ancestral land in this case. They also have environmental concerns and they actually approached Kenya's High Court to suspend the beginning of the construction. But the court had said the status quo would continue, although there is a hearing on the 14th of October for the case.

26:10And Lamu, it's a UNESCO heritage site, isn't it? Yes, it is. It's in the coastal part of Kenya, in the north-eastern part of the country. It has beautiful beaches, it has huge tourist potential, and it generates a lot of visitors every year. So residents are really very worried about this. Also, they say the population is about 160 ,000 people in the entire county, and they are worried what this new construction would do to already scarce resources in the region. Aliko Dangote is Africa's richest man. Is the entire project funded essentially by African business? Well, he's spearheading the project, but it is believed that there is some funding from the Africa Finance Corporation, the AFC.

26:59It's also believed that Aliko is also going to work with regional governments from the neighboring Ethiopia and South Sudan and Uganda as well. There is also going to be a pipeline that would provide the crude oil from South Sudan along the Ethiopia-Tanzania corridor. Enkechi Ogbonna. It's that time of the year when we get to find out the winner of the 2026 Fat Bear Week in Katmai National Park in Alaska. He is 89 backpack and his name comes from his habit as a cub of climbing onto the back of his mother Holly, who was a Fat Bear Week winner back in 2019. 16 bears took part in the contest, and more than 2 million votes were cast from 100 countries around the world.