Floods in Indonesia kill 600 people
Global News Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 8.3K Ratings
🗓️ 1 December 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Floods in Indonesia have killed more than 600 people and left 500 unaccounted for. They were caused by a rare cyclone that formed over the Malacca Strait. It has hit three provinces and affected around 1.4m people. Also: the young African men being lured to Russia on the promise of well-paid jobs, but finding themselves sent to fight in Ukraine; the "forever chemicals" in our bodies, and what we can do about them; a new podcast that discusses the bomb that changed the world; HIV prevention in South Africa; the former Bangladeshi prime minister's niece is found guilty of corruption charges; South Korea's largest data breach; and a hairy new world record.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
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| 0:24.2 | This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:29.2 | I'm Nick Miles, and at 16 hours GMT, on Monday the 1st of December, these are our main stories. |
| 0:34.8 | Rescue workers in Indonesia are trying to reach the survivors of devastating floods, |
| 0:39.4 | which have submerged parts of the island of Sumatra. And more evidence has emerged about |
| 0:44.5 | young African men who are being recruited to fight for Russia in the Ukraine conflict. |
| 0:51.5 | Also in this podcast. I wish our leaders today would have been as responsible as John F. Kennedy |
| 0:58.8 | and Nikita Krushev were in 1962. Relatives of those two men tell the BBC how a moment of |
| 1:05.6 | existential danger was averted. And so it's height, width and circumference. So my width and my height, I wasn't really worried about, |
| 1:15.6 | but my circumference I was concerned about because I do at-home trims. |
| 1:20.2 | It turns out she needn't have worried, but what world title has she just won? |
| 1:32.8 | We start in the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where as we record this podcast, it is known that more than 600 people have been killed in floods and landslides, caused by |
| 1:38.8 | days of rain and an intense tropical storm. |
| 1:48.0 | And that is the sound of rescue workers, |
| 1:53.0 | arriving in a small motorboat fighting against the raging brown floodwaters. They reach a terrified-looking man, |
| 1:55.4 | clinging to the trunk of a palm tree and pluck him to safety. |
| 1:59.9 | Another person lucky to be alive is a woman called Rosmina, who lives in northern Sumatra. |
| 2:05.2 | Reporters found her wading through needy mud to try to see if she could salvage anything from her house. |
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