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US confirms Ukraine used its missiles to strike Russia
00:27:35
The attack came after Washington gave its permission for such strikes
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Alex Ritson
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk. Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. The podcast exploring the minds, the motives and the money of some of the world's richest individuals. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritson and in the early hours of Wednesday 20th November, these are our main stories. US officials have confirmed that Ukraine used American supplied ballistic missiles to strike Russian territory for the first time since Washington lifted restrictions. There's growing concern in NATO countries bordering the Baltic of possible sabotage after two undersea cables were cut in as many days. Prosecutors in New York say they're still opposed to throwing out Donald Trump's hush money case, but are open to a sentencing delay. Also in this podcast Wherefore we firmly decree for us and our heirs that the side Edward our son shall have the name Steal Tetel dignity and honour could this really be the voice of King Richard iii, one of England's most controversial monarchs who died more than 500 years ago? US officials have confirmed that Ukraine used American supplied ballistic missiles to strike Russian territory for the first time since Washington lifted restrictions. They said Russia shot down two of the eight missiles fired by Ukraine on Tuesday. Moscow's Defense Ministry has said the long range weapons known as ATACMs, caused a fire at a military facility in the Bryansk region. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the attack could only have happened with the help of U.S. experts. We proceed from the understanding that any modification of ATACMS cannot be used without American experts and instructors, including satellite data including programming and targeting. If long range missiles are going to be applied from Ukraine into Russian territory, it will also mean that they are operated by American military experts. Mr. Lavrov also said that the attack was an escalation, but a spokesperson for the Pentagon, Sabrina Singh, said it was Russia that was responsible. Russia chose to escalate this war by introducing DPRK forces into the battlefield and into the fight. And so what we are doing is ensuring that Ukraine has what it needs. So you're going to see us continue to support Ukraine with different presidential drawdowns packages that are going to support its short term and long term needs. President Putin has also approved changes to Moscow's nuclear doctrine. Under the changes, a large attack on Russia with conventional missiles, drones or aircraft could meet the criteria for a nuclear response and an attack from a non nuclear state if backed by a nuclear power, will now be treated as a joint assault on Russia. Vitaly Shevchenko BBC Monitoring's Russia editor told me about the significance of Moscow's reaction. Pulling all of that together, it suggests that Russia is threatening the west with a response of some sort to this attack. Is that response World War Three? We don't know. We have heard similar threats coming out of Russia before. But it would be imprudent and reckless to completely dismiss the possibility that Russia may use possibly a technical nuclear device, because this is part of its new doctrine and this is what they've been hinting at rather heavily all this time. And it's not inconceivable that the permission to use these missiles was given to Ukraine specifically because time's running out for Joe Biden, for Ukraine, and when Donald Trump moves into the White House, things may change dramatically. Looking at his rhetoric, which strongly suggests that reducing aid to Ukraine is a possibility that he is considering, that causes a lot of nervousness both in Kyiv and other Western capitals, supporting Kyiv. So that's why time is of the essence. That's why Ukraine is desperate to use all it has at its disposal at the moment, at this time, before things may change dramatically in January next year. Vitaly Shevchenko Another undersea telecoms cable for the Baltic has stopped working. The latest outage between Sweden and Lithuania happened on Sunday, shortly before a second Baltic telecom cable between Germany and Finland was also severed. The German Defense Minister, Boris Pistorius has said no one believes both cables were cut by accident and the working assumption had to be sabotage. The German Foreign Minister, Annalina Baerbock said so called hybrid attacks blamed on Russia don't target just Ukraine, but Europe as a whole. None of this can simply be coincidence, but it is important to make it clear every day in our societies when Putin talks about this attack not only being directed at Ukraine but also at European democracy. We must stand up for this European democracy every day by supporting Ukraine, by protecting our own European critical infrastructure, by defending our European freedom. Our Europe regional editor Danny Eberhardt has more details. The Swedish and Lithuanian defence ministers did not say what might have cut the cable, but they said it came against a backdrop of a growing threat from Russia and warned of the need to safeguard critical infrastructure. Both this incident and the breaking of the cable between Germany and Finland are being investigated. Sabotage is suspected in each case. Swedish public media is reporting that a large Chinese ship sailing from Russia was in the vicinity of both cable breaks when they happened. A Chinese container ship was blamed for rupturing a gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia last year with its anchor, Danny Aberhart. Prosecutors in New York have said they're open to sentencing in Donald Trump's hush money case being delayed, but object to his criminal conviction simply being dismissed. Mr. Trump was found guilty in May of falsifying business records to cover up payments to the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels. He was due to be sentenced next week. Neda Torfik is in New York. The Manhattan district attorney said no current law establishes that a president's temporary immunity requires dismissal of this case. They said the court must balance competing constitutional interests and preserve the independence of the presidency and the integrity of the criminal justice system. In that regard, they suggested one remedy, instead of an outright dismissal of the case, could be to freeze the case, including Mr. Trump's sentencing, until the end of his upcoming presidency. Police in Brazil have arrested five people, four of them soldiers with special forces training, in connection with with an alleged plot to kill the country's president, Lula da Silva. It's claimed that the suspects were part of a conspiracy to kill him and his vice presidential running mate just over two weeks before they were sworn in. Details of the conspiracy emerged as Brazil hosts the G20 summit of the world's biggest economies. I heard more from Vanessa Busch. There have been many investigations into alleged plots to overthrow President Lula before he was sworn in on the 1st of January, 2023. But this is the first time there have been allegations that there was a plan to kill the president elect and his vice president. So, of course, this is making massive waves in Brazil at a time when, as you say, it is hosting the G20 summit. Yeah. Take us back to those days before and after President Lula's inauguration. These were very tense times in Brazil. Lula had beaten his rival, President Jair Bol Bolsonaro, the incumbent, in the second round of the election. And Jair Bolsonaro refused to acknowledge his defeat. And those who had supported him in the elections were adamant that they did not want to see Lula sworn in. The swearing in of a president in Brazil always happens on the same date on the 1st of January, traditionally. So between the second round of the election at the end Of October and the 1st of January, there was a very, very tense time. And it was during these days, according to the Federal Police statement that was released today, that a group of criminals inside the military were plotting to prevent Lula from taking office. And according to what the police has released today, they were thinking of poisoning President Lula and of arresting one of the ministers in the Supreme Court and having him executed so very extreme measures. And of course, these are only allegations. But the allegations alone have caused shockwaves in Brazil. What information do we have on these people who've been arrested? We know, as you said in your introduction, that they had been receiving training in the special Forces. But what is widely known is that there were many in the military who would have preferred for Jair Bolsonaro to continue in the presidency rather than have Lula return. Lula had been president once before. They did not want to see him return. And there are many who think that the rhetoric that Jair Bolsonaro had used, casting doubts on the accuracy of the election, had caused some of those who supported Bolsonaro to want to prevent Lula from taking power by any means possible, even if that meant going as far as killing the president elect. Vanessa Bush. Luther. He was one of the most controversial of England's kings. Richard III was killed in battle in 1485. This week, an audience of enthusiasts had the eerie experience of hearing his voice. Now, given that King Richard's reputation has been traduced over the years, William Shakespeare portrayed him as a murderous uncle. They might have thought that this newly created digital avatar would defend himself. Instead, it was programmed to deliver an address conferring titles on his son Edward. Wherefore we firmly decree for us and our heirs that the side Edward or son shall have the name, steel, title, dignity and honour of the Principality of Wales and the Earldom of Chester aforesaid to him and his heirs forever. That voice, with distinctive medieval pronunciation delivered in the Yorkshire accent, was created by linguistics professor David Crystal. The first thing is you look at the spellings. Spellings were a real guide to pronunciation in the old days, not a guide now. Modern English, no real guide from the spelling of a word as to how you pronounce it. But in the old days, spelling was a really useful indication. People wrote as they sounded to a very large extent in the Middle Ages. Then the second kind of evidence are the rhymes that poets used, rhymes that don't work now, but they must have worked at the time they were written, otherwise you'd have been a lousy poet. So, for instance, Chaucer, which is the period of Richard, of course. I mean, Richard's grandmother could have spoken to Chaucer. Chaucer rhymes, words like what was and glass. So it must have been wass and glass, you know, that sort of thing. So the rhymes. And then the third kind of evidence is that during the 16th century, which is not so long after Richard really, people started to write books and articles about how English words were to be pronounced and so that kind of evidence, along with the others, means that you can reconstruct an accent from that period with, oh, I would say about, you know, 90% accuracy. You can never be 100%, but it was pretty good. I think we get as close as you can get to the speech of Richard Professor David Crystal. Still to come, your way is not welcome. I saw your food packaging, I saw your baby's diaper appear in Malaysia. Where does your recycling end up? If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmericasT and the Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts, from history to comedy to true crime, all ad free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC podcasts. The mass rape trial that has shaken France has heard closing statements from the former husband and wife Giselle Pellico. At its centre, 50 men are on trial, along with Dominique Pellico, who is accused of drugging his wife and inviting the men to rape her while she was unconscious. Giselle Pellico insisted the proceedings be held in public. Andrew Harding was at the court in Avignon. Applause as usual for Giselle Pellico as she arrived at court to make her final statement in this extraordinary trial, she admitted to exhaustion. Her children have been with her this week, grappling with the fear that their father may also have abused them or even their children. Masked as always, the 50 men accused of raping Giselle Pellico as she lay drugged by her husband in their bed have already finished giving evidence. Almost all still deny rape, but explicit video footage of their actions has been shown in court. Giselle Pellico, her words, spoken here by a translator, condemned male cowardice. They all raped an unconscious woman who was unable to give her consent. Not one of them reported it to the police. It's time for a change to our macho, patriarchal society, one that trivialises rape. Inside the courtroom here, Giselle Pellico has been speaking again of her refusal to feel shame as a victim. Asked, for instance, about why she kept using the family name Pellico, she said because she wanted it to be associated with her, not her husband, and that she wanted her grandchildren to feel proud of it. In his own last comments, Dominique Pellico spoke of his fantasy of making a strong woman submit to him. At one point, his daughter Caroline screamed at him across the court, calling him a coward and a liar. The verdicts are still a month away, but Giselle Pellico and her determination not to feel shame are already inspiring and perhaps changing. France Andrew Harding the Iranian judiciary has said that no charges will be brought against a university student who stripped to her underwear in an apparent anti hijab protest earlier this month. 30 year old Ahu Daye is said to have removed her clothes after being confronted by security guards over how she was wearing the hijab. Our Middle east regional editor Sebastian Usher reports. The image of a young Iranian woman standing in her underwear amid her fellow students in hijabs and black abayas created a strong reaction both inside and outside Iran. After a few minutes she was bundled into a van and taken away. Many celebrated her action as a symbol of defiance, but Vijudi judiciary spokesman claims she was treated in hospital and found to be sick and so has now been returned to her family, perhaps in an effort to deflect public anger. The incident came two years after the death of a young Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, who'd been detained by the morality police for not wearing her headscarf in an officially approved way. Sebastian Usher Here in central London, the Labour government has been facing fierce protests from farmers. British farmers, like their French and Dutch counterparts, are furious at plans which they say will make them worse off, even ruin their livelihoods. The British Prime Minister Keir Starmer wants some people with agricultural assets to pay 20% inheritance tax. According to the police, 13,000 people were at a protest outside the British Parliament on Tuesday. Tractors were on the roads and and even children were demonstrating by riding on toy tractors. Their parents said that farming in the UK had a bleak future. Well, if you have to pay seven figure sums every time you pass the farm down, it's not going to last very long. Agriculture cannot put the money aside to afford these taxes. The sad day that we lose our parents, we will lose the farm because the amount of money that the farm makes does not allow us to pay the inheritance tax. That this legislation we haven't really got a future. Things play out how the Labour government wants. The British government said that it needed the money to help pay for public services. It added that only the wealthiest landowners would have to pay inheritance tax and no more than 500 farms would be affected. The protest has drawn support from US President elect Donald Trump's close confidant and ally Elon Musk. The tech billionaire said that Britain under a Labour government had gone, as he put it, fools Stalin. I spoke to our political correspondent, Rob Watson. I can tell you one thing, Alex, they are incredibly angry and that they feel that their case is very strong and they've got very much off on the wrong foot, if you like, with the new Labour government. How strong is their case? Well, I mean, on the one hand, of course, up until now, they haven't paid any inheritance tax at all. But what British farmers are saying is that if you look at it, there are, what, something like 210,000 farms in Britain, Alex? About 70,000 of them are said to be worth more than a million pounds. So like one and a quarter million dollars. So they're saying the government's figure of only 500 a year needing to pay this tax is ridiculous and that it really will make it very difficult to pass down your sort of just an ordinary sized farm from father to son, from mother to daughter. We've seen farmers protesting elsewhere in Europe. Is this all part of a kind of city versus rural trend? I mean, I think it's a really interesting question, Alex. I think in some ways it is this sense, and that is that the people that live in the countryside feel that people that live in the cities don't understand them, particularly those working on farms, and that they don't get what food production is all about. And in particular, there are cases that people that live in cities don't understand that in order to have the food. That has been the goal of most Western governments ever since the war, since 1945, that requires dishing out help to farmers and it certainly doesn't involve things like inheritance tax. So, yeah, in Britain, as in so many other European countries, that sense that people in towns just don't get how their food arrives on the table. I mentioned Elon Musk. He will be a huge player, we believe, in the Trump administration. Should Keir Starmer be worried by his intervention? Well, I can tell you that Downing street are trying to play it down, Alex. It's not the first time they've crossed swords. Downing street said we're not going to be responding to individual comments, but, I mean, clearly it is rather uncomfortable to be like, taken to Stalin. And there's been quite a lot of stuff on social media that previous governments, any governments who've attempted to try and shake up land ownership and how things are farmed often end up coming very unstuck. And they cite Stalin and of course, Chairman Mao in China. I mean, how much of this will play into things such as the us, Britain's desire for a trade deal? I don't know. I mean, I think domestically Starmer will be more worried about labour losing the countryside. Rob Watson Global plastic waste exports from wealthy nations to developing countries are rising again. They'd fallen in 2021, probably due to international restrictions that came into force then. Malaysia has become a global hub for plastic waste imports and recycling and exports there have increased by over 30% in the past couple of years, according to UN trade data. But how clean and safe is the recycling trade and how much plastic is actually recycled? Liana Hosea has been to Selangor in Malaysia to investigate. I'm on a surveillance mission of plastic recycling factories in an industrial area of Selangor in Malaysia with Phua Le Peng. So we need to keep a low profile. There's a cctv. We need to know how to avoid them. So the problem is, since China announced they will ban waste import, we are attacked by the import waste from developed countries like Europe, uk, America, Japan. We're just jumping out of the car now to look through the plastic to find out if it's been smuggled here illegally and from which countries. The import waste actually contains non recyclable plastic, which is illegal now. You think that you have a very good waste management system. It's a lie because only 9% of plastic globally is recycled, isn't it? Your waste is not welcome. Come. I saw your food packaging. I saw your baby's diaper appear in Malaysia. How come this can happen to us? I've got this sickness from inhaling the smoke from the burning of plastics. Miz Hen is in his early 60s and he's lived in his village all his life, working the palm oil plantations that surround. But plastic recycling factories have sprung up around it and plastic waste dumps that are periodically set on fire. The smoke makes me cough and suffocate because I can see you've got inhalers and various sorts of tablets. My health has been worsening, therefore I need to use all these inhalers. When I inhale the smoke from the burning plastic or cables, I suddenly collapse. I've been in and out of hospital five times just this year in the intensive care unit. A new study by the University of Putra, Malaysia has found that air pollution is 30% worse within 6 km of plastic recycling factories. And a third of the people living within that area have reported increased health symptoms. Dr. Sharifah Ismail is the lead researcher. We found significant relationships between those who live near to the factory with some kind of health symptoms, for example, like respiratory problems. I asked Dr. Tarifa if the health problems Ms. Han is suffering could be from living near recycling factories and burning plastic dumps. Definitely, yeah, because what happened was when you burned the plastics waste, it produce these hazardous gases. The other side to this is that Malaysia is a major manufacturer of plastic. Nicknazmi Bin Nik Ahmed is the Malaysian Environment Minister. We still have a sizable part of our plastic industry which depends on imported plastics, of which partly is legal, but some are also importing it illegally. So some campaigners here have said that these are human rights violations and that Malaysia is a victim of waste colonialism. Is it as serious as that? I would say that it is. All countries should treat their waste within their boundaries as much as possible. Well, you say that then. Are you going to ban foreign waste imports? We have to work on stepping up enforcement with regards to the illegal waste coming in and reduce the plastic waste coming. And if you want to hear more of that report by Liana Hosea, just go to assignment from the BBC World Service at some point. Almost everyone takes the budget option when they go on holiday. Arthur Frommer, who has died at the age of 95, was a pioneer of travelling on the cheap, writing a series of guidebooks. His first for Americans in 1957 was called Europe on $5 a day. Rachel Wright has more. Arthur Frommer grew up in America during the Great depression of the 1930s. The son of Austrian and Polish immigrants, he was drafted into the US army in 1953, at the time of the Korean War. But because of his language skills, he was sent to West Germany to work for US Intelligence during the Cold War, Arthur Frommer spent his weekends taking trains to Paris or hitching rides to England on Air Force planes while in the army overseas. I was always struck by the fact that my fellow GIs did not travel. They were scared to travel. They were worried about how you would pay for various items, what currency would you use, where would you live at night? And I decided to do a guidebook. His resulting GI's Guide to Traveling in Europe quickly sold out. So Frommer continued to travel, going to 15 different cities trying to find cheap restaurants and hotels in order to write another guidebook. It was called Europe on $5 a day. It hit the market just as the rise of jet travel made getting to Europe much EAS easier than crossing the Atlantic by ship, and became phenomenally successful. Arthur Frommer often said he was a pioneer in suggesting that a different type of American should travel, not just the well heeled. This is a book for American tourists who a own no oil wells in Texas b are unrelated to the Aga Khan and C have never struck it rich in Las Vegas and who still want to enjoy a wonderful European vacation, he wrote. Together with his daughter Pauline. He brought out a whole new series of printed guidebooks in 2013 with dozens of suggested trips around the world. His first book was reprinted and called Europe on $95 a day. That's inflation for you, Rachel Wright. Looking back on the life of travel writer Arthur Frommer. 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 Caroline Driscoll and the producer was Alison Davis. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritz and until next time, Goodbye. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News AmericasT and the Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime. All ad free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC podcasts.