Winter Olympics disrupted by protests and 'sabotage'
Global News Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 8.2K Ratings
🗓️ 8 February 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Winter Olympics in Italy are disrupted by violent protests and the authorities launch an investigation after severed cables cause mass delays on the railway network. Also: The veteran French politician, Jack Lang, resigns as head of the Arab World Institute in Paris over his links to the late American sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. France urges people to have more children to boost the population because there were more deaths than births last year. Spain carries out the world's first face transplant from a woman who gave consent before she underwent an assisted dying procedure. President Zelensky says the US wants a peace deal agreed between Russia and Ukraine by June. Voting is underway in a general election in Thailand, where the governing Conservative Party faces tough competition from the People’s Party. Critics are sceptical about Elon Musk's plans to build AI data centres and send them into space. Washington Post CEO, Will Lewis, steps down after mass layoffs at the newspaper, and a new exhibition about Iran's new wave of cinema opens in London.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.4 | This is the Global News Podcasts from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:11.3 | I'm Paul Moss and in the early hours of Sunday, the 8th of February. |
| 0:15.6 | These are our main stories. |
| 0:17.3 | The Italian authorities denounce what they call serious sabotage on the rail network, linking the |
| 0:22.9 | incidents to the start of the Winter Olympics. The US has apparently insisted that a peace deal on |
| 0:28.6 | Ukraine be reached by the end of June, and the Washington Post's chief executive is stepping |
| 0:34.7 | down, days after the newspaper announced mass layoffs. |
| 0:40.6 | Also in this podcast, the French government is sending 29-year-olds a letter, |
| 0:45.9 | urging them to have children, and a medical milestone. |
| 0:50.2 | She offered to donate her face. |
| 0:52.6 | This gave us a unique opportunity, which is having enough time in order to prepare the surgery. |
| 0:59.2 | A woman offers to donate her face for a transplant before she undergoes euthanasia. |
| 1:08.6 | On Friday, the Winter Olympics was all about sport and celebration. |
| 1:13.4 | The opening ceremony in Milan saw music for Mariah Carey, and this being Italy, from Puccini and Verdi as well. |
| 1:20.7 | And yet politics did intrude. |
| 1:23.3 | The audience loudly booed the US Vice President J.D. Vance and the Israeli Olympics team. |
| 1:29.7 | And A2 has seen all the talk of sport and universal brotherhood once again rudely interrupted. |
| 1:35.9 | There were reports of sabotage on the Italian rail network linked to the games, and then there was this. |
| 1:47.3 | Demonstrators out on the streets of Milan blue whistles |
| 1:50.3 | and chanted slogans against the Olympics presence |
| 1:53.5 | and what began peacefully then deteriorated into violent clashes with riot police. |
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