Massive Russian attack on Ukraine's energy infrastructure

Summary

Global News Podcast Summary
BBC World Service | Episode: Massive Russian Attack on Ukraine's Energy Infrastructure | Released: November 28, 2024

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1. Massive Russian Attack on Ukraine’s Energy Infrastructure

The podcast opens with a significant update on the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. On the night of November 28, 2024, Russia launched a substantial assault targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure, leaving hundreds of thousands without power. The attack primarily hit the western regions and the capital, Kyiv.

Vladimir Putin, speaking from Kazakhstan at [01:19], justified the offensive by stating:

"Last night, we carried out a comprehensive strike using 90 missiles and 100 drones. 17 targets in Ukraine were hit. These were military facilities, defense industry facilities and support systems."

Vitaly Shevchenko, Russia editor for BBC Monitoring, provides expert analysis at [01:48]:

"Russia had carried out similar strikes before. This messaging from the Kremlin tells us they’re worried about such strikes, maybe because they're so effective... From the Ukrainian public’s view, it’s more of the same—daily and nightly attacks that cause havoc and devastation."

Despite the extensive damage to infrastructure, Ukrainian emergency services reported at [03:20] no fatalities, marking an improvement over previous assaults. Shevchenko emphasizes the urgent need for enhanced air defenses to prevent casualties:

"Ukraine needs more air defenses to protect its people from such attacks and ensure that nobody gets killed."

The likelihood of continued attacks remains high as Ukraine persists in utilizing Western-supplied weapons against Russian targets.

2. Ceasefire Between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon

Transitioning to the Middle East, the podcast discusses the fragile 60-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, now entering its second day. Despite reports of minor violations, the ceasefire appears to be holding.

Barbara Platt Usher, BBC's Beirut correspondent, shares perspectives from the ground at [05:11]:

"Happy, sad, worried about what's next. Relieved, grieving. It's everything."

Residents in Beirut are cautiously optimistic, yet traumatized by months of conflict. Amidst their return to normalcy, both sides remain on high alert. Hezbollah has declared readiness to respond to any Israeli violations, while Israel continues to enforce restrictions on certain border areas to prevent conflict rekindling.

Lebanon’s Minister for Economy and Trade, Amin Salam, discusses the extensive economic damages at [08:13]:

"We have shared a number between 15 to 20 billion dollars worth of losses... The biggest damage... is the collapse of major sectors like tourism, agriculture, and services."

Salam highlights the dire economic situation exacerbated by the conflict, with unemployment soaring above 55%. He underscores the necessity for international aid to facilitate Lebanon’s reconstruction post-ceasefire.

3. Humanitarian Crisis in Sudan

Shifting focus to Sudan, the podcast highlights a dire humanitarian situation described as a "crisis of staggering proportions." Ongoing conflict between the national army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has left half of Sudan's 50 million population in need of life-saving aid.

Barbara Platt Usher provides a poignant account at [16:48], illustrating the plight of children:

"More children are on the run in Sudan than anywhere else in the world. Nearly 5 million."

The narrative includes testimonies of survivors like Rumaisa Abdel Munnay Moussa, a 23-year-old woman, who recounts the pervasive fear and sexual violence experienced during the conflict:

"When I was in Khartoum, even me and my mom and my aunts, we could not get out because I was afraid to get attacked by those soldiers."

Alex Marinelli, head of operations at the World Food Program in Port Sudan, reflects on the unparalleled severity of the crisis at [20:16]:

"By far, this is the worst humanitarian situation I've ever seen or had to face."

The podcast underscores the immense challenges faced by aid workers in delivering assistance amidst active hostilities and logistical obstacles.

4. Medical Breakthrough in Asthma Treatment

In a segment on health advancements, James Gallagher, BBC’s health and science correspondent, discusses a promising development in asthma treatment. Scientists from King's College London have discovered benralizumab, a drug that could revolutionize asthma management.

At [13:22], Gallagher explains:

"This drug targets eosinophils... it can bring down an asthma attack quite quickly."

Originally used for severe asthma cases unresponsive to existing medications, benralizumab is now being administered routinely every eight weeks to control inflammation even in less severe cases. This shift aims to prevent asthma attacks more effectively, potentially reducing the annual 450,000 deaths caused by asthma worldwide.

5. Death of Shalom Nagar, Israeli Hangman

The podcast takes a historical turn with the obituary of Shalom Nagar, the Israeli official who executed Adolf Eichmann, a key architect of the Holocaust. At [22:37], Nagar recounts his reluctant participation in the execution:

"My commander came to me and asked me, are you willing to press the button?... In the end, they drew lots and the commander said, it's an order. The lot fell on you. You'll do it."

Nagar's account reveals the psychological burden he bore, experiencing nightmares and a profound sense of responsibility. Despite his initial reluctance, Nagar felt compelled by the atrocities Eichmann represented. His legacy is intertwined with the complex emotions surrounding justice and remembrance of the Holocaust.

6. Local News: Deer Spotted Wearing High-Visibility Jacket

In a lighter and more peculiar news story, a deer wearing a high-visibility (hi-vis) jacket was spotted in the town of McBride, British Columbia. Andrea Arnold, reporter with the Rocky Mountain Goat News, describes the unusual sighting at [25:44]:

"The deer was wearing a black jacket with green and yellow high-vis reflectors... It looked like the deer's legs had been in the sleeves, but possibly they'd ripped out."

Residents reacted with a mix of humor and concern. While some found the sighting amusing, others worried about the potential harm to the deer, such as entanglement or infection from prolonged jacket wear. Authorities are monitoring the situation, hoping the jacket will eventually come off naturally.

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This episode of the Global News Podcast provides a comprehensive overview of significant global events, from conflicts and humanitarian crises to medical breakthroughs and quirky local news. Through insightful interviews and on-the-ground reporting, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of the world's current landscape.

For more information and to share your thoughts on this episode, visit globalpodcastbc.co.uk or follow us on X at @globalnewspod.

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Credits:
Mixed by Holly Palmer
Producer: Richard Hamilton
Editor: Karen Martin
Host: Alex Ritson

Transcript

[Alex Ritson]

This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex ritson and at 14 hours GMT on Thursday, 28th November, these are our main stories. Hundreds of thousands of people across Ukraine are without power as Russia launches another massive attack on its energy infrastructure. The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon appears to be largely holding as it enters its second day. Also in this podcast, a rare glimpse into the suffering of the people of Sudan.

[Barbara Platt Usher]

When I was in Khartoum, even me and my mom and my aunts, we could not get out because I was afraid to get attacked by those soldiers. Those people are very dangerous, so we cannot even take the risk.

[Alex Ritson]

Vladimir Putin says the huge bombardment of Ukraine's energy infrastructure overnight was in response to Russian territory being hit with Western supplied missiles. Hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine are without electricity after the Russian attack. Many of the sites targeted are in the west of the country as well as in the capital, Kyiv. Speaking in Kazakhstan, the Russian president insisted more strikes might follow.

[Vladimir Putin]

Last night, we carried out a comprehensive strike using 90 missiles and 100 drones. 17 targets in Ukraine were hit. These were military facilities, defense industry facilities and support systems. I repeat, once again, these strikes on our part also took place in response to the ongoing strikes on Russian territory by American ATACMS missiles. As I have said many times, there will always be a response from our side.

[Alex Ritson]

Vitaly Shevchenko is the Russia editor of BBC Monitoring. Asked him if he was surprised by President Putin's reaction.

[Vitaly Shevchenko]

That has always been his attitude to this special military operation. He presents Russia as the victim rather than an aggressor. But we have to remember that Russia had carried out similar strikes before. Similar or maybe even worse. In September this year, for example, more than 230 missiles and drones were used. And in that case, and in attacks before that, Ukraine was not using Western weapons against targets in Russia. So Russia did not need that reason to carry out these attacks. So what this messaging from the Kremlin tells us is that it's really worried about such strikes, maybe because they're so effective, maybe because the Kremlin feels it needs to respond somehow to maintain its credibility in the eyes of the Russian public, and maybe internationally as well. But from the point of view of the Ukrainian public, it's more of the same. They're used to it. Daily and nightly attacks that cause havoc and devastation. This one is very bad. It seems likely that more than one and a half million people are left without power currently. And in many cases, this means no running water as well, no trolley Buses, trams, lifts. So it's a grim moment in Ukraine.

[Alex Ritson]

At the moment, as you say, a huge attack with huge implications, but maybe incredibly no deaths.

[Vitaly Shevchenko]

Well, that's the latest we've heard from the Ukrainian emergency service dsns, which is saying that despite the damage caused to Ukraine's electricity infrastructure, that seems to be the main target of the Russian attack. No deaths have been registered. So that's better than the outcome that was registered after previous such attacks. But looking forward, the message that that's coming from the Ukrainian government is that Ukraine needs more air defenses to protect its people from such attacks and make sure that nobody gets killed.

[Alex Ritson]

So we heard the clip of President Putin very annoyed still with the Western weapons being used on targets inside Russia. Is this going to stop? Is this response going to stop Ukraine using those Western weapons?

[Vitaly Shevchenko]

Well, I think it's not unreasonable to expect the Ukrainian government to see this message from Vladimir Putin as a sign that these strikes are really working, otherwise he would not be talking about them so much. And also the Ukrainians, they don't really have much choice. They're trying the best they can to take out the launch sites and the infrastructure that Russia has been using to attack Ukraine. So I think these attacks will continue.

[Alex Ritson]

Vitaly Shevchenko as it enters its second day, the long negotiated but fragile ceasefire in Lebanon appears to be holding, despite some reports of minor violations. After Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters withdrew from southern Lebanon, thousands of Lebanese citizens nervously started to return to their homes with hopes the full 60 day ceasefire endures. These residents in Beirut described the mood on the streets of the capital.

[Barbara Platt Usher]

Happy, sad, worried about what's next. Relieved, grieving. It's everything. Cars full of people. You have like around 10 people in each car carrying mattresses, carrying chairs. You can just see them going up the road to the south. And it's good to see honesty. On one hand, there's this sense of relief knowing that for now the bombing has stopped. But on the other hand, it doesn't erase the trauma that we've been living for the past two months. Being in Beirut meant constant anxiety because of the evacuation warnings, because of the sound of the drones and the warplanes all night and this feeling sort of of helplessness.

[Alex Ritson]

Barbara Platt Usher is our correspondent in Beirut.

[Barbara Platt Usher]

There's people who are relieved that the fighting has stopped. They have been celebrating, some of them heading back to areas from which they fled. But they have been through several months of trauma, in particular the last couple of months when Israel stepped up its campaign and bombed Beirut as well as the south and the east. And they are wondering about the future. They're wondering if the ceasefire will hold. Will they ever actually be able to feel that things have gone back to normal?

[Alex Ritson]

Barbara, both sides have said that they will respond, as they put it, to any violations. What do they mean by that, and what are the biggest causes for concern?

[Barbara Platt Usher]

Well, Hezbollah put out a statement, its first statement since the ceasefire was announced, that said it had fighters at the ready who would monitor the withdrawal of Israeli forces with their hands on the trigger. So presumably that means attacks. Although the ammunition, the military infrastructure, the military leadership of the group has taken a severe hit and it has been significantly weakened, it is signaling that it is still ready to fight if it feels the Israelis are not pulling out as they should. The Israelis, they are supposed to withdraw gradually in phases over a period of 60 days. And they have been warning Lebanese civilians and residents that they should really stay out of these areas until that happens. So in the last little while, they've issued a list of 10 border villages where civilians should not return until further notice. These are located in a strip of territory right along the border still occupied by Israeli troops. They've imposed an overnight curfew on parts of southern Lebanon, and they have taken some action. Most recently, both media and both Lebanon and Israel were saying that a drone had fired at a car that was nearing a restricted area to warn that car to turn around. So I think we're looking at that sort of thing in terms of keeping people out of restricted areas. But the Israelis have been very clear that if they see Hezbollah either rearming or actually carrying out attacks, then they will respond very forcefully.

[Alex Ritson]

BARBARA Platt Usher in Beirut if the ceasefire holds, the next job is for the Lebanese to rebuild their country. One of those in charge of that daunting reconstruction project is Amin Salam, Lebanon's Minister for Economy and Trade. Victoria Uwankunda asked him how extensive the damage from the conflict had been.

[Amin Salam]

As Minister of Economy and Trade a few months ago, I was having a big assessment on the damages on the economy, direct and indirect damages on the infrastructure, on the villages, on the areas in the south. And we have shared a number between 15 to 20 billion dollars worth of losses, estimated losses until today between 15 and 20 billion. Because it's so hard now to have very specific numbers, the ceasefire period will give us more clarity, to be able to do a better survey, a better assessment. But today we are looking at an estimate between 15 to 20 billion direct and indirect losses to the Lebanese economy.

[Barbara Platt Usher]

Where are you seeing the biggest damage.

[Amin Salam]

Coming from the biggest damage actually that hit the economy directly are the complete basically collapse of the major sectors in the economy that are the major generating revenue to the government, that is the tourism sector, the agricultural sector, transfers of the diaspora all across the world to their families in Lebanon and all the services in Lebanon. Those alone have been assessed about 8 to 10 billion dollars to the major sectors and the major financial transaction to Lebanon. The rest was mostly destruction of major all the villages across the borderline, all the destruction on the southern of Beirut city, all the buildings, all the institutions, all the businesses. On top of that, we factored into the equation the unemployment rate that has went over 55% for the first time in the history of this nation keeping hundreds of thousands of people without jobs. And we looked as well into the growth and to the GDP for the next two years.

[Barbara Platt Usher]

Such a high number of unemployed people in your country at the moment. You talk about billions of dollars in damages as is. This was already a struggling economy. I wonder then, Minister, how do you plan on going forward to help recover from this? What are you seek outside help?

[Amin Salam]

Well, there is no doubt. I mean I've just returned from a big visit to multiple countries including the United States, where we had time spent with the World bank, imf, US Government, European Union, many different international community institutions. Really looking into the day after because as you mentioned, the biggest challenge now will be if we maintained and successfully passed through this ceasefire phase into a peace process. Our next project will be the economy and this would require major, major international intervention.

[Alex Ritson]

Lebanon's Minister for Economy and Trade, Amin Salam. So if peace persists in Lebanon, what is the likelihood of a ceasefire being negotiated in Gaza? Yolande Nell is our Middle east correspondent in Jerusalem.

[Barbara Platt Usher]

Well, we know that the US President Joe Biden urging regional powers Qatar, Egypt, Turkey to try to restart talks to get momentum behind another deal that would end the fighting in Gaza as well. And certainly when it comes to what the Israeli Defense minister has been saying, you know, he has talked very much about the need. He said that most ethical objective before us at present, this is our, this is our goal to get the hostages released by Hamas in Gaza. And Hamas itself has also been saying that it is ready for new rounds of talks. But when you kind of go below the surface of that, it doesn't seem that either side has significantly changed their position. And indeed that is why, you know, months of negotiations have recently frozen to come up with a ceasefire and hostage release deal for Gaza. And there are a lot of, you know, domestic political reasons in Israel that come into play here. It's a different situation from with Lebanon, where Israel's goals were really more limited. And you have got those far right ministers who are part of the coalition government, who have threatened to collapse it if the government, in their view, goes for a reckless deal to stop the fighting in Gaza. There are some ministers who have aspirations to recreate Israeli settlements in Gaza, for example. Basically, the political survival of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is all caught up with this.

[Alex Ritson]

Yoland Nel in Jerusalem. Asthma is a common lung condition, affecting more than a quarter of a billion people all over the world. But despite its prevalence, treatments have not seen significant innovation in the past few decades. Now, scientists from King's College in London say they've discovered a game changer drug that could revolutionise the way we treat asthma. James Gallagher, our health and science correspondent, told us how it worked.

[James Gallagher]

This is taking advantage of what is a relatively recent understanding of what's happening in asthma. Because if you go back 20, 20, 30 years, people thought that every single asthma attack was basically the same biologically, the same things were happening inside the airways, in the lungs of everybody having an asthma attack. But what's become apparent is actually there are different things going wrong in different people's overactive immune systems in each time someone's having an asthma attack. And so this drug targets one specific thing that's going wrong. So eosinophils are a type of white blood cell and they're responsible for about half of asthma attacks. When they go into overdrive, that's when you get the difficulty breathing, the gulping and gasping for air. Those symptoms are being caused by these eosinophils. And this drug, benralizumab, exclusively targets those white blood cells, suppresses them massively and can bring down an asthma attack quite quickly.

[Alex Ritson]

Because this drug has been used to treat severe cases of asthma in the past. What's different now, the way that it's.

[James Gallagher]

Used at the moment, is for people who are not really having any success with the current medication. So they're having this drug every couple of months, just routinely. They're taking it every eight weeks in order to try to keep inflammation down inside the body. This is thinking about it in those less extreme cases and actually moving it to the more familiar symptoms of an asthma attack. So it's very much moving it from something that is relatively few people to pretty much the whole of asthma, because.

[Alex Ritson]

Something like 450,000 people die as a result of asthma every year. Could this make a big difference to.

[James Gallagher]

That number, the thing about many of the deaths from asthma is that is that a proportion of those are preventable with appropriate and good treatment. So absolutely, if you can get into that position where you can have better control over people's asthma, then absolutely it has that potential to reduce the number of people dying from this condition.

[Alex Ritson]

James Gallagher, still to come in this podcast, my commander came to me and asked me, are you willing to press the button? I said, I don't want to. Everyone else wanted to. I was the only one that didn't. In the end, they drew lots and the commander said, it's an order. The lot fell on you. You'll do it. The Israeli hangman who executed the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann has died. It's a crisis of staggering proportions which demands the world's urgent attention. Those words were used by the new United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, not to describe Gaza, Lebanon or Ukraine, but Sudan, a country ravaged by famine, violence and sexual abuse. As the national army and the militia known as the Rapid Support forces, or RSF, wrestle for control of country, half the population of 50 million need life saving aid and it's not getting enough attention, in part because it's very hard and dangerous for journalists to operate there. Our chief international correspondent, Lise Doucet is travelling to Sudan with the UN's new relief chief, Tom Fletcher.

[Barbara Platt Usher]

That's the sound of toy blocks on a bare floor in this crumbling school. It's a shelter now for orphans. More children are on the run in Sudan than anywhere else in the world. Nearly 5 million. One of them 13 year old. Mahmoud, what do you miss about your home in Khartoum? Basketball, bicycle, Pizza. Pizza. I'm a consultant for Alternative Family Care. Tell us about Mahmoud's story. He was adopted when he was 10 months old in Khartoum.

[Dr. Liz Bentley]

The capital.

[Barbara Platt Usher]

In Khartoum, the capital. And then when the war broke in Khartoum, he was evacuated with other children to Medini, then from Madani, transferred here to Kassala. Mahmoud, what is your dream now? I would like to be a state governor. I will fix the situation of the country, then I will build houses. Sexual violence is being used as a weapon of war in Sudan. Dozens of women sitting on plastic chairs under a canopy in the baking heat. All of them displaced by this war. My name is Rumaisa Abdel munnay Moussa. I'm 23 years old. This event today was about sexual violence as a weapon in war. Is that something the women here worry about? Fear? Has it happened to women that you know yes, definitely. It's a very. It's something that we feel a lot fear of it. When I was. My personal experience when I was in Khartoum, even me and my mom and my aunts, we could not get out because I was afraid to get attacked by those soldiers. You were afraid you would be kidnapped, taken away. Those people were very dangerous. So we cannot even take the risk to get any contact with them. They don't respect women. They harass women. Not just women. Women. And in a war torn country of so much suffering. Listen to these laborers sweating in the heat, trying to keep their spirits up. We're in a vast warehouse of the United Nations World Food Program, and you can hear the men carting boxes, one after the other on their shoulders, to the trucks waiting outside to take them to the worst affected areas of this crisis.

[Alex Ritson]

Hi, my name is Alex Marinelli. I'm the head of operations at the World Food Program here in Port Sudan.

[Amin Salam]

We're currently in the warehouse watching specialized.

[Alex Ritson]

Nutritious food being loaded by a very.

[Amin Salam]

Lively gang of laborers.

[Alex Ritson]

We're trying to drive thousands of kilometers across a conflict. So the journey of moving trucks full of food across Sudan is fraught with danger, is fraught with physical difficulties and a lot of negotiations. Engagements at all levels are needed to make sure that this vital humanitarian aid finds free passage to the people that need it.

[Barbara Platt Usher]

Alex, you've worked in so many places around the world confronting a crisis of hunger. How does this compare?

[Alex Ritson]

By far, this is the worst humanitarian situation I've ever seen or had to face.

[Amin Salam]

I've been working for the World Food.

[Alex Ritson]

Program for more than 25 years. I've served in so many countries in.

[Amin Salam]

Emergencies, I have never seen anything like it.

[Alex Ritson]

That report compiled by our chief international correspondent, Lise Doucette. We know that the world has heated up, but can we say with any certainty where the heating is most intense? Well, a new study by scientists at Columbia University in the United States has identified areas where temperatures are spiking far beyond what is expected as the planet warms. And with some of the most striking examples occurring in the Pacific Northwest. Dr. Liz Bentley, Chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, has been looking at the data.

[Dr. Liz Bentley]

We've known for a while that as our global temperatures rise due to human induced climate change, that we see more frequent and intense heat waves. But this report looks at the distribution of those heat waves and highlights that there are specific areas of the world that are seeing more intense and more persistent heat waves. In other parts of the world, it's linked to the position of the jet stream. Now, the jet stream is a band of strong winds at the top of the atmosphere. It's quite straight and strong and powerful and develops storms and brings them to our shores. But as our climate changes, we know that the Arctic is warming about four times faster than the tropics. And so we're seeing a decrease in the temperature difference from tropics to pole. And that's actually weakening that jet stream. So instead of it being kind of straight and zonal, it becomes quite wavy. And we know that when the peak of the wave is pushed further north, it brings more heat to certain areas. So we get static waves that sit quite persistent for weeks on end. And we tend to find there's four or five areas around the Northern hemisphere, in particular North America, and that brings heat right up into Canada. And we saw that a few years ago with some extreme heat in the western side of Canada. Again, we have another one in Europe, another one as you move around towards Asia as well. So we get these patterns where the heatwave is persistent. It can stay there for weeks on end and it drives intense heat waves.

[Alex Ritson]

Dr. Liz Bentley from the Royal Meteorological Society. The Israeli hangman who executed the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 1962 has died at the age of 88. Shalom Nagar was specially selected for the job, but as David Lewis reports, he was a reluctant executioner.

[Vladimir Putin]

Shalom Nagar arrived In Israel aged 12 in the year of its creation, 1948. A Jewish orphan from Yemen, he served as a paratrooper before joining the country's prison Service. He was 26 when he carried out the only execution in Israel's history. Years later, in a film about him, the Hangman, he explained how he was chosen.

[Alex Ritson]

My commander came to me, his name was Mohavi, and asked me, shalom, are you willing to press the button? It's the greatest commandment there is. Wipe out the memory of the evil Amalek. I said, I don't want to. Everyone else wanted to. I was the only one that didn't. In the end, they drew lots and the commander said, it's an order. The lot fell on you. You'll do it.

[Vladimir Putin]

Ubersturm Banfuhrer Adolf Eichmann was a key architect of the Holocaust and the Final Solution. After the war, he fled to Argentina, living under a false name in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. He worked for Mercedes Benz, so secure in his new life and identity that his wife and children even joined him from Europe. He was snatched near his home by Mossad agents in 1960 and secretly flown back to Israel to be put on trial for his role in the murder of 6 million Jews. Eichmann was kept in prison throughout, deeply concerned the inmate would try and kill himself. Israeli authorities handpicked guards to keep him alive. Nagar was one. In interviews, he explained that it was perhaps because of his non European heritage that he was chosen for the job. Prison officers who were Holocaust survivors, some with tattoos on their arms, were not even allowed on the same floor as the former Nazi. There were concerns about poisonings too. Negar claimed he would sample the Germans meals to make sure they were not spiked. After the verdict and sentence was passed, Negar said he didn't want to be the one to put Eichmann to death. He was convinced to do it after being shown photos of atrocities against Jewish children in World War II. At the moment of execution, the Israeli and his commander put a noose around the captive's neck. He went behind a screen, pressed the button and the trap door opened. An hour later, he helped to take the body down. I felt the angel of death had come to take me too. He admitted the hanging had a deep impact. He said he had nightmares for a year and even felt at times Eichmann was following him. In later life, he returned to religion after being approached for interview by a German media outlet in 2004. He insisted it be done in a busy, noisy Israeli religious institute. He told the interviewer that Jews not only survived the Holocaust, but were now thriving on the very culture, books, traditions and language that the Nazis had tried to destroy.

[Alex Ritson]

That report from David Lewis. Deer sightings are pretty common in the Canadian province of British Columbia, but the creatures are not usually wearing clothes. However, a deer has been spotted in the small town of McBride wearing a hi vis jacket. It was seen and photographed by Andrea Arnold, a reporter with the Rocky Mountain Goat News. She spoke to Oliver Conway.

[Andrea Arnold]

I was just driving home and the vehicle in front of me slowed right down and I thought, okay, whatever, there are deer going across the highway, no big deal. But then I saw the deer and it was wearing a black jacket with kind of green yellow high vis reflectors on it. And I definitely did a double take before I thought, I am, I'm not actually seeing things. This is actually what I'm seeing. And then my second thought was, I need a picture of this because nobody's going to believe it. So I got off the highway and drove up onto the little side road where the deer was walking towards and managed to get the two pictures.

[Alex Ritson]

You say it was wearing a Jacket? I mean, how exactly was it wearing a jacket?

[Andrea Arnold]

Well, at the time I didn't. Couldn't figure that out exactly. But now looking at the pictures and having talked to the other individual in town who also saw it, it looked like the deer's legs had been in the sleeves, but possibly they'd ripped out because in the photo it actually looks like the deer has three front legs because the jacket arms are dangling like legs next to the deer's legs. And the other individual was close enough that he was able to see that it is actually a zipped up jacket that is on this deer.

[Alex Ritson]

And any idea how the jacket got on the deer? I mean, sometimes you see dogs with a kind of a coat in cold weather. Might it be someone's pet?

[Andrea Arnold]

It's a small town. We would probably know if somebody had a pet. There's lots of deer in town and people feed the deer and the deer are a little too comfortable with people. But I haven't heard of anybody actually domesticating one. I don't think that's the case.

[Vitaly Shevchenko]

So what theories are there?

[Andrea Arnold]

That it was possibly a drunken dare or a practical joke or a bunch of people got together and tackled it and got it dressed? It's really hard to say what happened.

[Alex Ritson]

Sure. But how has the town reacted to this?

[Andrea Arnold]

On Facebook with the post, there's humorous comments like seeing a deer on his way to work and the deer finally got smart and this one won't get hit on the highway and stuff like that. And then there's also the concerns that the jacket gets stuck on a fence or a branch and the deer panicking and gets injured or becomes food for prey because it can't get away. Or if the jacket stays on for too long, then the natural fur loss that happens in animals can't happen. So there may be some kind of infection. So there's humor and concern all kind of rolled into one.

[Alex Ritson]

And I understand the authorities are trying to track it down to try and help it.

[Andrea Arnold]

Yeah, they've asked the community to report when it's seen and where so that they can track the best place to find it. My little cousins actually reported yesterday that it looked like it's possible that the jacket's falling off on its own already. That would be the ideal situation.

[Alex Ritson]

And that was Andrea Arnold, a reporter with the Rocky Mountain Goat News. And you can see a picture of the deer with the hi vis jacket on their website, therockymountain goat.com 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 globalpodcastbc.co.uk you can also find us on X globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Holly Palmer and the producer was Richard Hamilton. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritz, and until next time, goodbye.