Russia claims capture of key Ukrainian city

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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritson, and in the early hours of Tuesday, the 2nd of December, these are our main stories.

The Kremlin says that Russian forces have captured the strategic Ukrainian city of Pokhrovsk. U.S.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth distances himself from a second airstrike on a suspected drug boat off the coast of Venezuela.

400 people remain missing in Sri Lanka, which has been devastated by floods.

Also in this podcast.

They have had 15, 20 years in this space to do that of their own volition now, and the harms that are coming through by independent research demonstrate it's not enough, so we have made it the law.

As Australia prepares to ban teenagers from social media, the government hits back at critics.

Russia has said that its forces have captured the key logistics hub of Pokhrovsk in eastern Ukraine, although this hasn't been independently confirmed.

Moscow's defense ministry posted a video purportedly showing its troops raising a flag over Pokhrovsk's central square.

Kyiv had sent reinforcements last month in a bid to fend off Russia's attack, and it's not acknowledged losing a city that's been reduced to rubble by months of conflict.

Our correspondent, Will Vernon, is following developments and told me what we know so far.

President Putin reportedly visited a military command post yesterday and the chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, informed him officially that the city had been, in his words, liberated.

There's been no confirmation from Ukraine or anyone else yet. Just now I had a quick look at Deep State.
This is this map run by respected Ukrainian military analysts.

analysts, a map of Russian advances. That shows that the majority of the city is in Russian hands, but not all of it.

And actually, you know, in these conditions of kind of drone wars, which is what the battlefield has basically descended into now, it's quite difficult to establish exactly who controls what.

Growth is on the front line.

Last I heard, it didn't appear to be a great deal left of the city. Why is it so important? No, it's not much use as a city anymore.
It's mostly rubble.

But it does retain kind of strategic significance. It is a transport logistical hub.
It's on a critical crossroads that that links several key cities in the region.

And analysts say it will open up the way to the rest of Donetsk region. And we know that Vladimir Putin is absolutely laser-focused on seizing all of that region.

He's demand that Ukraine give up all of it, even the territory that Ukraine still controls.

And Pakrovsk has symbolic importance because Ukraine really poured resources into holding that city, even risking highly valuable, highly well-trained troops to try and defend it.

And that strategy appears not to have worked. But I think the story for me of Pakrovsk really shows how slow the Russian advance has been.

And I think what the Ukrainians will be saying to people like Donald Trump and Steve Vitkov, you know, people who think that the Russian military is this kind of unstoppable freight train, right, kind of juggernauting through Ukrainian territory, they're going to say that it's taken the Russian army more than a year to occupy Pakrovsk.

Doesn't that tell you that perhaps the Russian armed forces aren't as good as you think they are? What Moscow will be saying is this is the latest in a long line of victories and there will be more.

And they think that just around the corner, perhaps, is a sudden and dramatic collapse of the Ukrainian front lines. Yeah, you mentioned Steve Witkoff, the U.S.
envoy.

He's actually due to meet President Putin in Moscow in the coming hours. What can we expect? Yeah, he will.
He's coming off the back of talks between US officials and the Ukrainians in Florida.

They were discussing a draft peace plan, which is expected could result in significant territorial concessions by Kiev.

President Zelensky said today that this was the most difficult issue in these negotiations. But the White House says that it's optimistic about a deal.
Will Vernon.

In Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro has accused the Trump administration of using drug trafficking as a pretext for attempting to impose regime change. Speaking at a rally, he said the huge U.S.

military deployment in the Caribbean had been testing his country for months. The U.S.

has carried out a series of lethal strikes on boats it claims are carrying drugs in international waters, mostly off the Venezuelan coast, which have killed more than 80 people.

Questions are increasingly being asked about the legality of such actions, putting the Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth under scrutiny.

The White House press secretary, Caroline Levitt, appeared to confirm that in one case, he had authorized the military to take action, which resulted in a follow-up strike that killed two survivors.

President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made it clear that presidentially designated narco-terrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting in accordance with the laws of war.

With respect to the strikes in question, on September 2nd, Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. So, could the Secretary of Defense be in in trouble?

Here's our North America correspondent, David Willis.

Well the White House has confirmed that a follow-up strike did take place in accordance with laws governing armed conflict, according to the White House spokeswoman on that suspected drug boat in the Caribbean at the beginning of September.

But the administration has denied suggestions that the Defence Secretary, Pete Hexeth, gave direct orders for that second strike. The White House said that Mr.

Hegseth authorized the commander in charge of the operation, that's Admiral Frank Bradley, to ensure that the vessel in this case was destroyed. And in a social media post, Mr.

Hegseth echoed that assertion, writing that he stood by the combat decisions that Admiral Bradley had made. Let us make one thing crystal clear, wrote Mr.

Hegseth. Admiral Bradley is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support.
America is fortunate to have such men protecting us.

So he is clearly seeking, as Pete Hegseth, to distance himself from this incident.

But Democrats are saying that a second airstrike on two shipwrecked survivors clinging to the wreckage of this vessel would or could could amount to a war crime.

And Republicans as well as Democrats are calling for more information about this attack, including audio and video records.

And it's being reported as well that Admiral Bradley himself is due to brief lawmakers behind closed doors later this week. If Mr.

Heckseth is drawn deeper into this incident following that congressional investigation, it could prove highly problematic for him.

President Trump has gone on record as saying he wouldn't have wanted a second strike, and that Pete Hickseth had denied ordering one to kill those who were wounded but still alive after the initial attack.

But a key question, I think, is whether the intended target of that second attack was the survivors of the first attack or the drugs or the vessel that was alleged to be carrying those drugs bound for the United States of America.

So, plenty at stake for Pete Hegseth here. David Willis.

President Trump has claimed that an attempt is underway to try to change the result of the presidential election in Honduras.

He also wrote on his Truth Social platform that if this was the case, there would be hell to pay.

The election remains on a knife edge, with the right-wing candidate Nasri Asfura, President Trump's favoured candidate, and the television host Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party, each on around 40%.

The website of the Electoral Council in Honduras has collapsed, fuelling public fears about the delay and problems with the count.

Our Central America correspondent, Will Grant, is in the capital of Honduras, Tegusigalpa.

It remains sort of deadlocked at the moment. There is just literally hundreds, you know, five hundred or so votes between the two men.

The last time we had an update from the Electoral Council, basically the entire country is sitting and waiting for another update.

So they hope there'll be clear daylight between the two men so that they can distinguish who indeed will become the president-elect.

At this stage, the entire country is sort of locked into watching the televisions, but no update is on the horizon so far. So continuing to sort of wait and watch, really.
And Hondurans

really following this closely, from what you're saying. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, this has been a much closer race than they'd have imagined going into it.

I think the idea that it's come down to a runoff between the two Conservative candidates, I don't think that was necessarily what people expected, or at least they didn't expect it to be this close.

And of course, part of that narrative is to do with the fact that Donald Trump got involved so late in the day, putting his weight behind Nasri Asfura, basically saying, unless you vote for Mr Asfurda, I won't be spending any more funds on Honduras, which is a big threat in the sense that it's about one hundred million

that flowed from Washington to the Central American nation this year. And in what is one of the poorest countries in the Americas after Haiti, that really is a significant

sort of investment and sort of support network in terms of aid. So is Mr Trump's support for Nasri Asfura essentially the main thing separating the candidates? What are the other key issues?

Well, Mr Asfura was mayor of Togusigalpa and undertook a lot of infrastructure projects in that time, more than one thousand one hundred bits of different works, including forty-five big infrastructure projects in the capital, bridges, underpasses, things of that nature, to try to ease the very congested traffic in the capital.

He's basically applying or trying to apply, proposing those ideas as President to put the country to work, as he put it, what he called a vision of five stars to do with economic, social and environmental plans.

On the other side, Salvador Nasarada Nasserada has basically pushed an anti-corruption idea saying that Honduras has been kidnapped by elite families for too long.

Will grant.

From next week, Australian teenagers will no longer be able to access social media as legislation comes into force banning under-16s from the likes of Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

Australia is facing a legal challenge over the law, which carries fines of up to $33 million if technology companies fail to take reasonable steps to make sure that under-16s don't open accounts with them.

Katie Watson reports from the state of Victoria.

The sound of the security code on the Barnes family lockbox marks the end of the nightly digital detox for the four teenagers in this house.

Their phones are released, the internet is switched back on. These are tough rules imposed by their parents to try and keep them from getting into trouble online.

But now, with this new government ban looming, their digital freedom is about to be curtailed even more. And 14-year-old Will is not impressed.

They don't realise how much of our life is actually on social media. And I think they just have to realise that it's a different world that they grew up in compared to us.

This one is for the mums and dads. I want kids to have a childhood.
I want them off their devices and onto the footy field and onto the netball courts.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has sold this as legislation to keep kids safe and give parents peace.

It's about protecting teens from algorithms and endless scrolling and covers a handful of the most prominent platforms, including Snapchat, YouTube, and TikTok.

The onus is on the social media companies to take reasonable steps to make sure under-16s don't open an account on their platforms.

The evidence is now that seven out of ten Australian kids are suffering harm online.

Speaking to the BBC, Australia's communications minister Annika Wells said the law was necessary because companies had failed in their duty to protect kids.

They have had 15-20 years in this space to do that of their own volition now, and the harms that are coming through by independent research demonstrate it's not enough.

We feel that they have more of a social responsibility as social media platforms than they have signed up for themselves, so we have made it the law. Are you intimidated by the tech companies?

I am not intimidated by a big tech because I understand the moral imperative of what we're doing.

As the school year draws to a close at Padua College, a short drive from Melbourne, few kids are celebrating. Their long summer holidays are looking a bit different this year.

My life will be impacted significantly as I do use it every day and it is definitely my number one source of communication like Snapchat and stuff. Well I think it'll have a pretty good impact.

Get me off my screen a bit which is actually really good.

I want to get off my screens more but it's just a bit harder to do than I expected. I think it's too hard to regulate.

I don't think it can work, and there will always be loopholes with these sorts of things. Kids will find a way to get in to social media if they want it.

And I want to commend you for taking the time to be informed, proactive, and united in navigating this new legislation for the well-being and safety of your children.

Their mums and dads are thinking through the consequences at a parents' evening. I knocked on the door, no answer.
I'd open the door, and he'd take his life.

Wayne Holdsworth Holdsworth is talking about his lived experience of the damage of social media.

Two years ago, his son Mac killed himself, a victim of sexual extortion, after an online interaction with what he thought was a young woman, but turned out to be a middle-aged man.

In the audience, tears and much shaking of heads from parents who've come for advice on how to steer their teens through the changes. I think the implementation of it is garbage.

I mean, we needed to have something that actually has teeth and has a consequence for the social media companies and possibly parents and children. But as far as I understand, it's kind of toothless.

If you ask any child where they're in trouble and their phone's taken away from them for two, three days, they turn into quite a nice child. So I'm hopeful that

it's a good thing. There will be some kids who are probably more shy in real life that maybe

it might have a negative impact on, but I'm hoping not for us. You can't out-parent an algorithm.
Despite the critics, the government's standing firm, Communications Minister Annika Wells again.

This is giving parents another weapon in their arsenal for their lives and for the happiness and mental well-being of their children.

I wanted to ask if Paguel would be doing a talk that can be more focused on neurodiverse children.

But there are still plenty more questions than answers right now. Teens and their families are not quite sure what their online life will look like come December the 10th.
Katie Watson.

Still to come in this podcast. In Taiwan, in a lot of Asian society, they really focus on conformity.
So every people watch this film, they feel like they can be their self.

The director who used iPhones to make an acclaimed film that is empowering women.

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More than one billion people around the world are classed as obese.

It is such such a significant problem that the Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Adhanom Gebriesis, has called for wider and fairer access to weight loss drugs.

In his first guidance on so-called skinny jabs, the WHO also said that products such as Moonjaro, Ozempic, and Wegovi could help shift the trajectory of the global obesity epidemic.

Here's our health reporter, Michelle Roberts. The World Health Organization says fewer than one in ten people who could benefit from obesity jabs such as Wagovi is currently able to get them.

It has already put GLP-1 drugs, which make people feel fuller so they eat less, on its essential medicines list that countries should provide.

But high costs, limited production capacity, and supply chain constraints are major barriers to universal access to the injections, says the WHO.

Its director general said although medication alone could not solve the world's obesity crisis, GLP-1 medication could help millions. Our greatest concern is equitable access.

Without concerted action, these medicines could contribute to widening the gap between the rich and poor, both between and within countries.

We must work together on strategies like pool procurement and cheer pricing to make these medicines affordable for all.

The WHO says the drugs can be taken long term, for six months or more, but must be prescribed along with advice on diet and exercise so that people can keep the weight off.

To help widen access, it suggests voluntary licensing, where a pharmaceutical company grants permission for others to make affordable non-brand versions of its patented drug.

A patent on semaglutide, the core ingredient of Novonaldisc's Wigovi, is due to expire in several countries in 2026, meaning other drug makers will soon be free to produce and sell cheaper versions in places such as India, Canada, China, Brazil, and Turkey.

The WHO says countries must also create healthier environments to promote good health and prevent obesity.

Michelle Roberts. Rescue efforts are continuing after torrential rains hit four countries in Asia.

The World Health Organization has said that it's sending rapid response teams and critical supplies to the the region.

At least 1,200 people have died as a result of catastrophic flooding, triggered by storms and vast cyclones.

Two main areas were affected: Sri Lanka in South Asia, and three nations to the east, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.

They were hit by a combination of monsoon rains and a rare tropical storm called Cyclone Senya. Sri Lanka, though, was battered by a separate weather system called Cyclone Ditwa.
Dr.

Koshela Aria Ratney, a government minister, has been speaking to the BBC about the crisis. The situation is pretty awful and bad.

We heard that nearly 400 people remain missing for the moment, but we really don't know the exact figure. And still, the landslides are happening in certain places.

The total number of people affected across the island exceeds 1.3 million, and over 15,000 homes have been destroyed, and some completely and some partly.

It is the most terrible natural disaster. Definitely, we need support from the international community.

Asman Ahmad, who works in the capital Colombo, comes from Gampola in the center of Sri Lanka, where there's been flooding and landslides.

His mother, father, sister, and nephew managed to evacuate their home as the waters rose, but the house is filled with mud. The water just started rising and rising like within minutes.

Nobody would have expected that this could have happened. It had taken a lot of lives.
I spoke to my parents.

I couldn't speak to them for like two, three days because of the power cut and their connection was also very, very, very low.

So nobody was there to help them with the food. They were wearing the same clothes as how they got wet from.

And no foods, no, no clothes.

With more on what's happening in Sri Lanka, here's Maryam Aswa from BBC Monitoring. Sri Lanka has now declared a state of emergency after the cyclone-made landfall on the 28th of November.

The disasters, which include flooding and landslides caused by the cyclone, have affected all 25 districts of the country.

And over 1.1 million people have been affected, according to official statistics.

In many areas, especially in landslide-hit areas, people remain missing, and some areas are still too risky to approach, which is where the military has been called in to assist.

This is also going to have devastating economic impact.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Sri Lanka requires about 31 billion rupees for the restoration of agriculture and this is roughly 100 million US dollars.

The opposition has continued to criticize the government over what it calls a lack of coordination and in one of the latest reports the opposition has said that it will file a criminal case against the government.

A lot of newspapers have also taken up the issue criticizing the government over various issues. Some newspapers claim that the government failed to heed early warnings.

There's also a lot of concern about whether Sri Lanka has the infrastructure and the facilities to handle any potential disasters. Mariam Aswa.

The Trans-Siberian Highway in Russia stretches 11,000 kilometers from St Petersburg to Vladivostok.

It's no surprise that at this time of the year motorists must brave freezing conditions on some stretches.

On Monday, though, their journey became even more perilous on the road connecting Siberia and Russia's far east.

A series of accidents and extreme weather conditions caused a traffic jam, which at its peak was as long as 85 kilometers, all this in temperatures which plunged to minus 30 Celsius.

I heard more from our global affairs reporter, Joanna Keene.

Bad weather and these sub-zero temperatures aren't exactly unexpected on this highway, which spans Russia, but this this was a particularly long traffic jam.

It actually came after three days of heavy snow and strong winds and it was on the Baikal section of the road. The authorities had warned the weather would be bad but then this happened.

The local authorities have actually said truck drivers were to blame.

They made the situation worse apparently by violating traffic regulations and then causing accidents on top of that really bad weather.

Do we know how motorists and their passengers managed to survive this horror? Because this is a pretty remote place. That's right.
Well, some families were stuck for hours.

We've got some reports of people actually being stuck overnight. And of course, they started to run out of food, water, and fuel.
Apparently, the emergency services did manage to reach them.

They were sent there with supplies and they also set up warming points so people could warm when they were running out of fuel and also fuel stations.

Now the traffic did clear by late afternoon, but officials have said these low temperatures and hazardous conditions are set to continue. Joanna Keene.

Left-handed girl has been praised as one of the best films of the year, despite it mainly being shot on iPhones.

Directed by Shijin Shu from Taiwan, it tells the story of a single mother and her two daughters who moved to the capital, Taipei, to open a noodle stall.

The youngest daughter, Ei Jing, is left-handed, which is crucial to the plot. Netflix released the film after it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last May.

My colleague Claire McDonnell spoke to Shi Jin Shu. When I was in high school, my grandfather saw me use a knife with my left hand and he scolded me.
He said, left hand is the devil's hand.

And then he asked me, he never used my left hand. At the time, I wasn't even left-handed because I got corrected when I was in kindergarten, very, very early on.
Let's talk about your movie.

You plunged the viewer into this sort of technicolored world of the Taipei night market. As I say, you grew up there.

How much of an ambition ambition was it for you to make a film in your home country?

It was such a big project for me because I made film in the US for almost 25 years and I wanted to make a movie in Taiwan as a

left-handed girl as the character. So going back to Taiwan and finally make this film after 25 years, it's like a dream come true.
It's such an incredible world.

I mean, I've never been there, but I feel like I have now, having watched this movie.

I mean, here you can get anything from an incredible looking bowl of noodles to a sort of life-changing phone charger.

Anything you need you can buy in these markets and there's a real sense that you create in this film of it being an extended family.

Everybody, no one's got much money but everybody's helping one another out.

Is that something you've always felt there? Oh yeah. Night market is like a big family.

You know when we first found this night market in 2010 we went there to write a script and we ran into this Tonghua Night Market where in the film, we ran into this little girl who looked just like Ei Jing in the film.

And she ran around just by herself. So we follow her and back to her mother's noodles then.
And I make friends with them and realize this whole night market is basically like a big family.

Everybody knows her. They help each other.

It's a wonderful community. The cinematography is absolutely stunning.
The colors, the vibrancy, this sort of beautiful chaos of the night market. Tell us about how you filmed it.

You had to film a lot of of it on mobile phones, I understand, and you describe it as a guerrilla-style technique of filming.

Yeah, that's the only way we can film in the real night market because everybody using iPhone this day to shoot. When we're filming in the night market, people didn't even see us filming.

And you also talk about it being a film about cultural secrecy amongst women across the generations. No spoilers here.
But essentially, it's about saving face within Taiwanese culture.

I want to know why is that just a female burden? Well I think because a lot of time females they are the real people who's running the family.

Men just go out and make money and they come home they they just relax and they don't really do much at home but women they are the ones who kind of pass down the traditions and how they run the family, how you know they are basically the gatekeepers in the family.

So I think for them that's their responsibility to kind of keep this family together and keep the face and you know make sure everybody looks great, you know, family.

So, your message in this film, then, what do you hope the next generation or this generation of Taiwanese women take from it? In Taiwan, in a lot of Asian society, they really focus on conformity.

You are not allowed to be different, you have to be like other people.

So, I hope people watch this film, they feel like they can be themselves, they can be brave and break out, you know, ignore the noises around them and ignore the outdated traditions and create your own fairness, the tradition that's good for everybody.

I want the world to see Taiwan, you know, how Taiwan is, how beautiful and how warm people are, you know, everything about Taiwan. Filmmaker Xi Jin Shu speaking to Claire McDonnell.

And that's all from us for now. But there'll be a new edition of the Global News podcast later.
If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.
Use the hashtag global newspod. This edition was mixed by Daniel Fox, and the producer was Michael Bristow.

The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritz, and until next time, goodbye.

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