The Global Story

Last week saw what could be the biggest heist in history: $6.3bn was stolen from the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. North Korean hackers are suspected of being behind the attack, which saw billions of dollars disappear in just 20 minutes. It’s far from the first time North Korea has been accused of a major cyber-attack. Over the past decade, hackers linked to the country have targeted banks, pub...

Russell Brand’s conviction for rape and sexual assault has brought renewed scrutiny to the actor and comedian, who cultivated an image of provocation and promiscuity before embracing an identity as a right-wing influencer. What does his case say about the promises – and limits – of the MeToo movement? The BBC’s Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty, host of the podcast Fame Under Fire, has been in court thro...

Preppers have long been planning for the worst-case scenario. Are governments now doing the same?  The UK government has launched a national “Be Ready” campaign, urging people to keep enough food, water and medicine at home to prepare for three days of disruption. Other European countries have similar policies. But for preppers, whose mission it is to ready themselves for a future disaster, this i...

Can a new crop of Democrats in Congress end the war in Iran? Democrats have taken control of both chambers of Congress in the US midterm elections, dealing a major blow to President Donald Trump. The result could have significant implications for US foreign policy – and for the conflicts unfolding overseas. The Global Story’s Asma Khalid and Tristan Redman explore what the results mean for America...

After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, many Russians who opposed the war – or feared being sent to fight in it – fled the country. In much of the West, they were welcomed as courageous dissidents. But four years on, the number of Russians being forcibly returned from the US to Russia is rising. Is the tougher stance on Russian asylum seekers evidence of the Trump administration seeking closer ties...

The AI juggernaut Anthropic could "pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity,” its owners warned last week, “if not developed, deployed, and operated with appropriate safeguards, oversight, and security measures.” It’s one of many similarly dire predictions AI companies have made about their own products in recent months, but this one is distinct, because it is part of the company’s pitch...

Londoners can now travel in autonomous cars for the first time, after Uber was granted a licence to operate a test fleet of self-driving vehicles. Each vehicle must have a safety driver behind the wheel, but the UK government says fully self-driving cars will be available in late 2027. Driverless cars are the latest threat facing London’s iconic black cabs, over a decade after the introduction of...

Latino voters in Florida — including 68% of Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade County — helped fuel Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential victory. But now, ahead of next week’s midterm elections, some of those voters are questioning their loyalty to Trump, and to the Republican party. Many are focused on the administration’s immigration crackdown — thousands of people arrested and deported by ICE — and also...

A ceasefire has come into effect in the Ukrainian city of Oleshky, on the front line of the war with Russia. Thousands of residents have been trapped there, cut off from food, water and electricity. The ceasefire has been brokered by an unexpected figure: the US First Lady Melania Trump. But the Vatican is also claiming credit for the truce, raising questions about who helped bring it about – and...

Brazil has just come through a fierce electoral campaign that saw left-wing incumbent Lula face Flavio Bolsonaro, son of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president convicted of plotting a coup. Election night brought a series of unexpected turns before incumbent Lula Da Silva was declared the winner. Flavio Bolsonaro refused to accept the result and has called for the election to be annulled. But the re...

The polls suggest a tight race in Israel’s upcoming election. Candidates are doing all they can to win the approval of young and first-time voters, who are set to play an influential role. Israel’s security is front and centre in the campaign, as are the events of the Hamas-led October 7 attacks. And polls suggest that young Israelis are increasingly supporting right-wing and far-right parties. In...

The American journalist and former marine, Austin Tice, disappeared 14 years ago while covering the civil war in Syria. Despite the best efforts of US officials and Austin’s family, what happened to Austin has remained a mystery. In a new podcast for the BBC and NPR’s Embedded, our colleague Josh Baker, along with his reporting partner Sara Obeidat, spend three years searching for answers - and di...

“They've surrendered their country to vandals,” claimed Donald Trump this week, as videos of protests and looting across France spread across social media and TV news bulletins. The US president has framed the unrest in France – and similar protests across Europe, as a migration problem. “They’re losing Europe”, he said, at a campaign rally in Kansas this week. But what is actually getting people...

Can Ukraine still rely on America? More than 80 years after the Yalta conference reshaped post-war Europe, some observers fear a new era of great-power diplomacy could once again shape the continent's future. Reports of a possible meeting between Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have prompted questions about what role Ukraine would play in any discussion about ending the war.  The spec...

Midterm elections in the United States are normally about domestic issues such as the economy and the cost of living. They’re often a pulse check on voter sentiment towards the party in power, or a reflection of local political battles and regional trends. Midterms are rarely impassioned referendums on a specific foreign policy issue. But this year in Michigan, for some voters, the Senate race is...

America’s pain at the pump could have major implications for the future of the war in Ukraine. US President Donald Trump wants to bring down fuel prices for Americans. One way he’s trying to do it is by reopening the door to Russian energy, reversing a policy designed to deprive Russian President Vladimir Putin of money for his war in Ukraine. The shift comes as relations between Trump and Ukraine...

A diplomat’s job is traditionally to represent their country’s interests while maintaining good relations with their host nation. But some of Donald Trump’s ambassadors are taking a different approach. On Tuesday, Kimberly Guilfoyle resigned from her ambassadorship in Greece after serious allegations were raised about her conduct. According to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, the former fianc...

Is Washington leaving Saudi Arabia to fend for itself? Last week, Houthi rebels launched a series of missile strikes on Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital. Surveillance footage showed a fireball erupting as airport passengers ran for cover. At least fourteen people have been killed and hundreds were injured. The attack is the latest escalation in a decade-long war between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis...

This week tens of thousands of young people have taken to the streets of Delhi, India’s capital, demanding changes to the electoral system and the resignation of the country’s electoral commissioner. Thousands have been detained by police in the process. They represent the ‘cockroach’ movement, a grassroots campaign group started by a Boston University graduate in protest at government policies an...

Since World War Two ended, most people living in the United States or Europe have generally upheld a consensus about its morality; that it was a just war fought against an evil Nazi regime, and the allies were right to fight it. But in a viral podcast debate with the British conservative Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, Tucker Carlson seemed to disagree with that narrative, causing deep consternation within t...

Politicians and commentators keep telling us we’re living through unprecedented times. But how unusual is the world we’re living in, really? John Simpson has spent 60 years reporting for the BBC, witnessing some of the most consequential moments in modern history. He was on the plane that brought Ayatollah Khomeini back to Iran during the 1979 revolution. He watched the Berlin Wall come down. And...

A plague scare in Siberia has become a Rorschach test for public health fears in a post-Covid world. Russian officials are investigating the death of a worker at a plague research laboratory. They say she died of pneumonia. But speculation online has suggested she may have died from pneumonic plague. Russian authorities deny this and say there is no risk of an outbreak. So why has the story sparke...

What began as a revolt over public school funding has spilled into a much bigger fight over the future of France. Now, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets, and clashes with police have left teenagers and officers injured. More than 6,000 people have been arrested, most of them minors. But what sparked these demonstrations? How could they shape next year’s election in France?...

Israel is marking three years since the 7 October attacks, in which around 1,200 people were killed by Hamas-led attackers and a further 251 hostages were taken back to Gaza. The commemorations come in the final weeks of a pivotal election campaign. Benjamin Netanyahu’s record on national security is coming under immense scrutiny, amid reports that the government failed to act on warnings in the m...

At a recent Meta product launch, Mark Zuckerberg promised that the company’s smart glasses would give wearers “new superpowers”, but what are they? Amid criticisms of its privacy and child protection policies, Meta is betting big on smart glasses as a way to restyle the company’s image, but they too have caused controversy – dubbed by critics ‘pervert glasses’ because they have been used to film w...