Plus: Undercover unit kills three militants in West Bank hospital, and the risks taken by North Korean cash smugglers.
| | | | | | | Hello. Today I want to share with you a powerful report from Abdujalil Abdurasulov, who has been speaking to people who fled a small city in eastern Ukraine over the past weeks, as Russia appeared to slowly advance on the front line. In South Korea, my colleague Jungmin Choi is writing on brokers who risk their lives to smuggle cash into the North. We have more stories on brain implants, French wine and the Oscars. |
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| | | | Top of the agenda | | A ghost town on Ukraine's front line | | | | Some locals say Russian soldiers have seized several streets in the southern part of Avdiivka. Credit: White Angels |
| | A special Ukrainian police unit known as the "White Angels" is tasked with evacuating civilians on the front line of Russia's invasion. A recent video shared with the BBC shows them visiting an elderly woman who is one of the last residents of Avdiivka, a small city north of Russian-controlled Donetsk. Several rockets had fallen near the woman's house. White Angels forces were begging her to leave to join her grandchildren, but she refused. "Let me die here," she told them with a weak voice. She could barely walk. Out of the 30,000 people who lived in Avdiivka before the war, only 1,000 remain. The suburban city has become a ghost town and a graveyard, volunteers and former residents tell our reporter Abdujalil Abdurasulov. Russian troops have recently seized several streets in the southern part of the town, they said. It's the first time Russians have managed to enter Avdiivka since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. Read Abdujalil's report here. | | • | A long-contested town: Evacuees were already trickling out of Avdiivka a few months ago, before the city was reduced to rubble. Here's Jenny Hill's report from October. | | • | Cleaning the house: Ukraine's security service said on Sunday it had uncovered corruption in an arms purchase by the military worth about $40m (£31m). | | • | When it all started: UN ambassadors have told a new BBC documentary about the moment they learned of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in the middle of a Security Council session. Watch a clip here. |
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| | | | | | World headlines | | • | Occupied West Bank: Israeli forces have killed three militants inside a hospital in Jenin. CCTV footage showed members of an undercover Israeli unit disguised as medics and other civilians, making their way through a corridor with rifles raised. | | • | Back at the table: The DUP, Northern Ireland's main Unionist party, said it is backing a deal with the UK government that would restore Northern Ireland's Assembly government after two years of deadlock in a row over post-Brexit trade. | | • | Pakistan: Former prime minister Imran Khan has been sentenced to 10 years in jail in a case in which he was accused of leaking state secrets. He has called the charges against him politically motivated. | | • | Insert in the brain: Tech billionaire Elon Musk has claimed his Neuralink company has successfully implanted one of its wireless brain chips in a human. Neuralink hasn't provided any information about the procedure, however. A number of rival companies have already implanted similar devices. | | • | Dreamy landscape: A lost watercolour by JMW Turner - the romantic British painter renowned for his atmospheric style - was found "stuck among" less prestigious hunting prints in a file at a country estate. And it's up for auction. |
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| | AT THE SCENE | South Korea | | How to smuggle cash in North Korea | | Every year, hundreds of North Korean defectors, who have since settled in the South, send much-needed money back home. But this is getting riskier as both countries increasingly crack down on illegal transfers. Brokers say the steps they take to send money north are akin to a "spy movie". | | | | The illicit cross-border cash transfers begin with a phone call between defectors in the South and their families in the North - made possible by an influx of smuggled Chinese phones which can tap into Chinese telecom networks. The calls are facilitated by brokers in North Korea, who have to travel long distances and sometimes even climb mountains to arrange such calls. But Hwang Ji-sung, a broker who has about 800 clients, says he has even encountered families who rejected the money. "They were scared that it could be a trap set up by the security police and would say things like, 'We won't accept money from traitors.'" |
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| | | | Beyond the headlines | | Shattering an Oscar glass ceiling | | | | Lily Gladstone has already won a Golden Globe for her role in Killers of the Flower Moon. Credit: Reuters. |
| | Lily Gladstone has already made history, and she could be about to make it again. She became the first Native American performer to be nominated for best actress at the Oscars, for her role in Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon. The star tells the BBC about her journey from growing up on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation to a potential historic award win. | | | | |
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| | | | Something different | | Dr Strangelove at 60 | | The true story behind the ultimate Cold War film. | | |
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| | | | And finally... | | La Tour d'Argent is one of Paris's most storied restaurants, inspiring cultural giants such as Marcel Proust and the Ratatouille film. It boasts its theatrically prepared signature duck dish and a 300,000-bottle wine cellar. During wartime, the most prized bottles in its collection were kept safe behind a fake wall when Nazi troops took over the premises. But it seems 83 bottles - worth a cool €1.5m (£1.3m) - have not survived the 2020s. Here's the background to the mysterious case. |
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– Jules |
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