This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Chris Barrow and at 14 GMT on Tuesday the 17th of December, these are our main stories.

A Russian general, sanctioned for using banned chemical weapons in Ukraine, has been killed in a bomb blast.

Kiev said they carried it out. We have the latest.

A powerful earthquake flattens buildings and cuts communications on the

Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu. And the pop star Adele has been accused of copying a Brazilian composer.

Also in the podcast,

Christian worship continues in Syria, but how are people feeling after a tumultuous week in the Middle East?

We start in Moscow in an ordinary neighbourhood, just a few kilometres south-east of the Kremlin,

where in the early hours of this morning, a remote-controlled bomb, hidden in a scooter, went off outside the entrance to an apartment block.

This local resident Yulia was nearby.

The explosion was so powerful. I was terribly afraid to look out the window.

People started coming out of this house to see what happened.

Thankfully, my building wasn't damaged, but it's very scary.

The blast killed a senior Russian general Igor Kirillov,

who was in charge of Russia's chemical weapons as well as his assistant.

The attack comes a day after Ukrainian prosecutors accused the general of using banned chemical weapons.

The BBC's Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg, is in Moscow and gave me the latest.

I was there earlier this morning, and the apartment block had been cordoned off.

There were police lines, and Russian investigators outside the entrance, still clearing things away and looking for evidence.

Quite a bit of damage to that particular entranceway,

clearly, and a lot of shock. I mean, we spoke to residents nearby and the sense was that,

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