--:-- Asma Khalid: This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, DC. Tristan Redman is in London.
--:-- Tristan Redman: And I'm Tristan Redman in London. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Nick Miles: I'm Nick Miles, and in the early hours of Thursday, the 31st of July, these are our main stories.
--:-- Nick Miles: Canada has become the latest major Western power to say it will recognise a Palestinian state in September if certain conditions are met by the Palestinian Authority.
--:-- Nick Miles: The Trump administration is stepping up pressure on Brazil, imposing 50% tariffs on its exports to the US and imposing financial sanctions on a senior Brazilian judge.
--:-- Nick Miles: Tsunami warnings have been scaled back across the northern Pacific after a huge earthquake off eastern Russia, but some alerts are still in place in southern parts of the ocean.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Also in this podcast...
--:-- Nick Miles: This is the home of metal. There's no other person who presented more than Oswald. He changed music. That's what he's done.
--:-- Nick Miles: Heavy metal music fans pay their final respects to their hero, Ozzy Osbourne.
--:-- Asma Khalid: We begin with the conflict in Gaza. Canada has become the latest country to announce plans to recognise a Palestinian state.
--:-- Asma Khalid: The Prime Minister, Mark Carney, said the dramatic shift in foreign policy would happen in September as long as the Palestinian Authority carried out democratic reforms and held elections without Hamas.
--:-- Mark Carney: [audio clip] Canada intends to recognise the state of Palestine at the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025.
--:-- Mark Carney: This intention is predicated on the Palestinian Authority's commitment to much-needed reforms, including commitments by the Palestinian Authority's President Abbas to fundamentally reform its governance, to hold general elections in 2026, in which Hamas can play no part, and to demilitarize the Palestinian state.
--:-- Mark Carney: Canada will increase its efforts in supporting strong democratic governance in Palestine and the contributions of its people to a more peaceful and hopeful future.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said plans by Britain to recognise Palestinian statehood unless Israel reaches a Gaza ceasefire before September would be a reward for Hamas.
--:-- Benjamin Netanyahu: [audio clip] The announcement, which marks a major foreign policy change for Britain, would mean the appeasement of jihadists.
--:-- Jeremy Bowen: Our international editor Jeremy Bowen reports now from the occupied West Bank, where he considers how realistic it would be to establish a Palestinian State.
--:-- Jeremy Bowen: Drive through the West Bank and you see Israeli military checkpoints, Palestinians living under Israeli occupation since 1967, and above all, the ever-present, fast-expanding and illegal Jewish settlements.
--:-- Jeremy Bowen: And you can get an idea of how hard it will be to reach the vision of the two-state solution laid out by Kirstama.
--:-- Hossam Zomlat: The Palestinian representative in London, Hossam Zomlat is home for the summer in Ramallah, and he is delighted by Keir Starmer's plan to recognise Palestinian statehood.
--:-- Hossam Zomlat: It is a sign that the UK and with it, the rest of the international community are really serious about the two-state solution.
--:-- Hossam Zomlat: We are no longer in the business of the lab service that has lasted three decades. If you really seek two states, recognise the two states.
--:-- David Lammy: At the UN, the Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Britain could be proud of helping the Jewish people lay Israel's foundations.
--:-- David Lammy: But its broken promises to respect Palestinian rights were, he said, a historical injustice which continues to unfold.
--:-- Simcha Rotman: At Israel's parliament in Jerusalem, the ultranationalist MP Simcha Rotman echoed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemning Keir Starmer's decision as a reward for terrorism.
--:-- Simcha Rotman: He is threatening the state of Israel with punishment and thinks that's the way to bring peace to the Middle East.
--:-- Simcha Rotman: He's not in a position to punish us and definitely will not bring peace. And it's against justice, history, religion, culture, and is giving a huge reward for Ichi Sinwar, former Hamas leader.
--:-- Nick Miles: Wherever he is in hell today, he sees what Keith Starmer says and says, good partner.
--:-- Nick Miles: Britain's decision, along with France, to recognize Palestinian independence increases the pressure on Israel and other countries might follow suit, even though the land Palestinians want for a state is broken by war in Gaza and occupied by Israel in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
--:-- Nick Miles: The Israeli government at the moment, backed by the United States, will do all it can to keep its iron grip on the land that Britain and many other countries say should be split into two states for two peoples.
--:-- Jeremy Bowen: Jeremy Bowen.
--:-- Nick Miles: Next to the diplomatic tensions that are ratcheting up between US President Donald Trump and his Brazilian counterpart Lula da Silva.
--:-- Nick Miles: The American president has now slapped a total of 50% tariffs on many Brazilian exports, which he says is partly due to what he called a witch hunt against Brazil's former right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro.
--:-- Nick Miles: He's on trial for allegedly seeking to seize power after losing the last election in 2022.
--:-- Nick Miles: The Trump administration has also put financial sanctions on the judge presiding over Mr Bolsonaro's trial.
--:-- Ione Wells: I spoke to our South America correspondent, Ione Wells, who's in South Paolo.
--:-- Ione Wells: So I asked her, why is Donald Trump prepared to go this far for Mr Bolsonaro?
--:-- Ione Wells: Well, this comes after quite a long, sustained lobbying campaign by Bolsonaro and his family.
--:-- Ione Wells: His son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, has been lobbying U.S. officials for months and months in the U.S. over his father's legal proceedings.
--:-- Ione Wells: And I think through some of Trump's rhetoric, you can gauge that Trump sees a little bit of himself in Bolsonaro.
--:-- Ione Wells: He's talked about certain parallels between some of the allegations that Bolsonaro faces and some of the allegations that Donald Trump has himself faced in the past, including after he lost the election to Joe Biden and his supporters stormed government buildings in the same way that Jair Bolsonaro supporters stormed government buildings after he lost the election in Brazil.
--:-- Ione Wells: I think it's interesting, too, because Bolsonaro himself in interviews earlier this year has called repeatedly on the U.S. president to help to intervene in his case.
--:-- Ione Wells: Donald Trump has now in a manner that is only really characteristic of Donald Trump really as you say gone out on a limb for Bolsonaro.
--:-- Ione Wells: Not only has he introduced 50 tariffs on Brazilian goods which will hurt not just the Brazilian economy but also consumers in the US too
--:-- Ione Wells: He's also sanctioned the Supreme Court judge, Alexander de Moraes, who is the lead investigator of Bolsonaro in his case.
--:-- Ione Wells: He's introduced visa bans for Moraes and his family members too.
--:-- Ione Wells: So this is a real raft of measures ramping up this diplomatic spat that's now been going on for months and months between Brazil and the US.
--:-- Ione Wells: Indeed.
--:-- Ione Wells: Do you think, Ioni, there's any way that allies of President Lula and himself, who are calling it an attack on Brazilian democracy, is there any way that they can defuse a situation and bring Donald Trump round or is it beyond the possibility of doing that?
--:-- Ione Wells: Well, that is the big question at the moment, because Brazil's president, Lula da Silva, has urged the government in the US to negotiate.
--:-- Ione Wells: Brazil has submitted some proposals for possible trade negotiations, which it hasn't received a response to yet.
--:-- Ione Wells: And certainly at the moment, relations remain pretty icy.
--:-- Ione Wells: President Lula and President Trump haven't even ever had a phone call, let alone had sort of formal talks or negotiations.
--:-- Ione Wells: So at the moment, progress seems to be pretty slim.
--:-- Ione Wells: On the upside for President Lula, in a similar vein to the left in Canada earlier this year, he's enjoyed a bit of an opinion poll bounce as a result of Trump's tariff threats.
--:-- Ione Wells: He's even taken to wearing a blue cap, not that dissimilar a font to Trump's Make America Great Again cap.
--:-- Ione Wells: But his says Brazil belongs to Brazilians.
--:-- Ione Wells: So he's sort of made something of this defiance, really.
--:-- Ione Wells: He's saying that he won't back down, that he won't be intimidated by Donald Trump's threats.
--:-- Ione Wells: So at the moment, it doesn't look like there's any sign of progress because you have two big personalities on completely opposite ends of the political spectrum with their own respective bases that they need to impress and talk to.
--:-- Nick Miles: Neither of whom seem particularly willing at the moment to back down on what the other is demanding.
--:-- Nick Miles: I.N.E. Wells in Brazil.
--:-- Nick Miles: Staying with American tariffs, President Trump has announced that from Friday, the U.S. will impose a 25% tariff on imports from India.
--:-- Nick Miles: Writing on his Truth Social account, he described the country's trade policies as obnoxious.
--:-- Nick Miles: The president also hinted at an unspecified penalty for Delhi for buying oil and weapons from Russia.
--:-- Nick Miles: India says it's committed to fair and balanced trade with Washington.
--:-- Darshini David: More from our Deputy Economics Editor, Darshini David.
--:-- Darshini David: It's a trade relationship worth over $100 billion.
--:-- Darshini David: The 25% tariffs President Trump wants to impose on Indian goods reflects not just his frustration with America's deficit with India, but also the tariffs that Delhi applies on US-made products and its long-held reluctance to grant more access to its markets.
--:-- Darshini David: President Trump also announced that imports from India would face an additional unspecified penalty due to the country's purchase of Russian military equipment and energy.
--:-- Darshini David: It's the first such action against those he sees as supporting President Putin's regime and leaves India in a worse position than trading partners like the EU and UK.
--:-- Darshini David: The majority of what America imports from the rest of the world is now covered by agreements or tariff decisions.
--:-- Darshini David: But the intervening uncertainty distorted American economic activity, with figures today revealing that growth in the second quarter was boosted by a flurry of American exports to beat higher tariffs.
--:-- Darshini David: As the new trading regime settle in, economists expect American growth to slow over the rest of this year.
--:-- Nick Miles: Darshini, David.
--:-- Nick Miles: The US Central Bank, the Federal Reserve says it's keeping interest rates unchanged in the range of four and a quarter to four and a half percent.
--:-- Nick Miles: The widely expected decision comes despite an unprecedented barrage of criticism from Donald Trump, who wants to see them slashed.
--:-- Jerome Powell: [audio clip] We will continue to determine the appropriate stance of monetary policy based on the incoming data, the evolving outlook and the balance of risks.
--:-- Jerome Powell: Changes to government policies continue to evolve and their effects on the economy remain uncertain.
--:-- Jerome Powell: Higher tariffs have begun to show through more clearly to prices of some goods, but their overall effects on economic activity and inflation remain to be seen.
--:-- Nick Miles: The US Fed typically lowers interest rates when the economy is struggling and raises them if inflation rises too quickly.
--:-- Nick Miles: Tsunami alerts have been scaled back across much of the northern Pacific Ocean after one of the world's strongest earthquakes struck Russia's Far East.
--:-- Nick Miles: The quake hit Kamchatka, injuring several people on the remote Russian peninsula.
--:-- Nick Miles: In Hawaii and California, people had to be told to avoid beaches, harbours and marinas.
--:-- Nick Miles: As we record this podcast, waves of up to three metres are still possible for coastal Chile, Costa Rica and other islands in the Pacific.
--:-- Nick Miles: Taiwan's tsunami alert remains in place.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Japan initially ordered the evacuation of nearly two million residents.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Shama Khalil reports.
--:-- Shama Khalil: As the huge earthquake hit Kamshutka on Russia's far east, millions of people across the Pacific were alerted of a tsunami and told to evacuate.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Roman Kripikov, a chef at a restaurant in Paramushir, an island just off the coast of Russia, was already at work when the 8.8 magnitude quake struck.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Everything started shaking. The shelves in the kitchen started trembling.
--:-- Shama Khalil: We turned everything off and ran outside.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Residents on Japan's Pacific coast were woken up by the sounds of sirens.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Dozens of waves hit the Pacific coast here, some more than a meter high.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Yu Koga, who lives in Fujisawa, recalled how his day started.
--:-- Shama Khalil: I saw an alert on my phone saying that there was a big earthquake in Russia. and I had an alert going on around my area.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Then I realised I had to evacuate, so I took shelter at a nearby shopping centre.
--:-- Shama Khalil: There were tsunami alerts in Hawaii as well.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Residents were told to evacuate and get to higher ground.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Rachel Burrows, a British tourist on a cruise in Hawaii, was on a tour of an island when the warnings came through.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Everyone was just running, trying to get on the ship because they were closing the ship off because we needed to get out to city.
--:-- Shama Khalil: So we were luckily one of the last ones that got back onto the cruise ship.
--:-- Shama Khalil: And then we could see a lot of other people getting dropped off and just lining up, but they didn't make it.
--:-- Shama Khalil: They were then told to get up to higher ground on shore, so it was quite scary.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Japan's Meteorological Agency has now downgraded the alert to advisory along the country's whole Pacific coast.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Russia has done the same, while Hawaii's Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre has lifted its evacuation order.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Residents there have been told they can return home, but remain vigilant.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Shaima Khalil in the Japanese city of Tokyo.
--:-- Victoria Gill: The US Geological Survey said the earthquake was at a depth of 19 kilometres underground, and as our science correspondent Victoria Gill explains, it was hundreds of years in the making.
--:-- Victoria Gill: The epicentre of this earthquake is along a boundary where two of the Earth's tectonic plates, the shifting puzzle pieces of the Earth's crust, are moving towards each other.
--:-- Victoria Gill: As they collide, one of those tectonic plates slides beneath the other.
--:-- Victoria Gill: And it's not smooth.
--:-- Victoria Gill: Those pieces of the Earth's crust get stuck with catastrophic consequences, as Professor Stephen Hicks, a seismologist from University College London, explained.
--:-- Stephen Hicks: If they stuck for hundreds to thousands of years all of that accumulated plate convergence can suddenly get released in a magnitude eight to nine earthquake
--:-- Stephen Hicks: And all that energy gets released in just a matter of 100 or 200 seconds
--:-- Stephen Hicks: You end up producing a very, very high magnitude of earthquake.
--:-- Stephen Hicks: And this was very high magnitude, 8.8, the biggest since the 2011 earthquake in Japan that generated a deadly tsunami.
--:-- Victoria Gill: That's the wider danger.
--:-- Victoria Gill: Undersea megathrust earthquakes, as they're known, move huge volumes of seawater above, triggering waves that can inundate coastlines thousands of miles away.
--:-- Victoria Gill: Networks of sensors linked to international tsunami warning systems appear to have worked very well in places like Japan and Hawaii.
--:-- Victoria Gill: And this tsunami seems to have been smaller than feared.
--:-- Nick Miles: Still to come.
--:-- Nick Miles: I wanted to have an idea of the bulk chemical composition of the residue first.
--:-- Nick Miles: And I was comparing this with beeswax and with honey.
--:-- Nick Miles: So what was the sticky substance found in metal jars in Italy?
--:-- Nick Miles: Find out later.
--:-- Asma Khalid: America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
--:-- Asma Khalid: I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C.
--:-- Asma Khalid: I'm Tristan Redman in London.
--:-- Asma Khalid: And this is The Global Story.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: Barbara Pledasha is in Kenya and she told me more about the group's activities.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: Well, you know, it didn't start out as a starvation cult.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: Several years ago, Paul McKenzie called his followers to join him in Shakahola Forest, which is this area in southeastern Kenya.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: And he said they were going to create a community to prepare for the end of days or the coming apocalypse, which he said was imminent.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: And then at the beginning of 2023, witnesses say, including those I spoke to, that he started telling them that this preparation meant that they needed to fast.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: In other words, that they would get to heaven more quickly if they stopped eating.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: And some did so willingly, some did not do so willingly, but a lot of people died, more than 400 bodies were recovered.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: And then this came to light with a couple of cases, and Mr McKenzie was eventually arrested in April 2023.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: He's currently on trial for manslaughter, but he has pleaded not guilty.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: So Paul McKenzie is in custody.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: So why the continued activity with the case beyond him?
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: Yes, well, one local report has suggested that Mr. McKenzie was in contact with some of the suspects by telephone from jail.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: But his lawyer has flatly denied he has anything to do with the case and the court documents.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: They haven't said anything about that.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: What they have said is that police have confirmed is that at least three of the suspects were part of Mr. McKenzie's movement back in 2023.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: So that's the link they've made to the ongoing activity, presumably people who had never let go of that extreme ideology, which is what the police called it.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: And they've cited some evidence that continues, which is that two of the people they arrested at the property, they now suspect to be the new base for this cult, were emaciated and they had to be hospitalized.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: They found scattered body parts on the grounds and what looked like grave markings.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: And they suspect that six children reported as disappeared are among those buried there.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: Their parents were among those arrested.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: So what do we expect now in terms of the police in and around this forest?
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: Well, they have been granted this permission by the courts to exhume the suspected grave sites.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: And they have already, since the weekend, been at the property and have marked what they believe are graves.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: And so they are continuing to do preparation work.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: And our understanding is that they will start the exhumation next week.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: They did find among those scattered body parts on their initial visit, the body, a full body of a man who appeared to have died recently.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: He has been brought in and there's going to be an autopsy to find out what he died of.
--:-- Barbara Pledasha: So those are the two main leads they're following right now.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Senior US Democrats are using a little known law to try to force the release of files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Democrats on the Senate's Homeland Security Committee have asked the Justice Department to turn over documents on the disgraced financier.
--:-- Noamia Iqbal: Here's our North America correspondent, Noamia Iqbal.
--:-- Noamia Iqbal: The Jeffrey Epstein case has become a key test for President Donald Trump and his ability to contain the demand for transparency by his usually loyal base.
--:-- Noamia Iqbal: Democrats are trying to capitalise on the fallout.
--:-- Noamia Iqbal: A group of senators announced their plans to use a rare law known as the Rule of Five.
--:-- Noamia Iqbal: It requires government agencies to provide information if at least five members of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee demands it.
--:-- Noamia Iqbal: Democrats say it isn't a stunt, but about accountability.
--:-- Noamia Iqbal: The ongoing pressure on Mr Trump comes after the Justice Department said there was no evidence that Epstein had blackmailed prominent figures.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Here in the UK, a technical problem at the main air traffic control centre, which covers aircraft movements around London, has been solved after briefly causing disruption.
--:-- Asma Khalid: The outage included Heathrow Airport, Britain's largest and Europe's busiest.
--:-- Doug McLean: Bert Wright spoke to Doug McLean, an air traffic consultant and formerly a senior manager with the National Air Traffic Service, or NATS.
--:-- Doug McLean: So what happened?
--:-- Doug McLean: The system itself is incredibly safe, like all aviation.
--:-- Doug McLean: But when you get a glitch like this, there are a few basics.
--:-- Doug McLean: Is it a communications problem? Is it a radar problem? Is it a data problem or a personnel problem?
--:-- Doug McLean: So they will have identified very quickly what the problem was and then how they can solve it.
--:-- Doug McLean: And it looks as if it may have taken about an hour, an hour and a half, somewhere like that.
--:-- Doug McLean: I've seen some reports that suggest it's a radar issue, but you don't think we know that yet?
--:-- Doug McLean: This is part of the problem, which I don't think is really acceptable in this day and age, is that Nats is not saying.
--:-- Doug McLean: Now, I know the first priority is safety.
--:-- Doug McLean: The second priority is to talk to the customers, and that will have been done.
--:-- Doug McLean: There will have been a conference call with the customers as quickly as they could arrange it to say what the problem was and what they were doing
--:-- Doug McLean: but the knock-on effects are going to go on for hours and we did have the situation about 18 months ago where we had a data failure because of some very unusual circumstances and to be fair there was a very good report and investigation and a very thorough report that looked into this and some very strong recommendations made.
--:-- Doug McLean: I mean, the consequences, the knock-on to flights across the UK are very big, aren't they?
--:-- Doug McLean: How many flights do we think could have been affected?
--:-- Doug McLean: Certainly we'll run into hundreds by the end of the day.
--:-- Doug McLean: So when you have a major failure, obviously you're looking for the safety of everything to be assured as quickly as possible.
--:-- Doug McLean: So once you done that you then look at how you going to limit the traffic
--:-- Doug McLean: The easiest way to do that is to stop departures because they simply not in the system
--:-- Doug McLean: And then airplanes which are airborne you can take a little more time to get them landed and safely on the ground and out of the way.
--:-- Doug McLean: Once everybody's on the ground, you don't have a problem as an air traffic control service, but you have a huge problem as far as the customers are concerned.
--:-- Asma Khalid: A quick foray into space now because NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation launched on Wednesday a new satellite from southern India.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Four, three, two, one, zero.
--:-- Asma Khalid: It is hoped that the new satellite will help predict and prepare for natural disasters.
--:-- Asma Khalid: The device carries one of the most sophisticated radars ever developed.
--:-- Asma Khalid: India's space minister has hailed the joint venture as a defining moment in Indian-US space cooperation.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Next to Italy.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Ever since their discovery underground in an ancient Grecian shrine not far from Pompeii, a group of metal jars have held within them a secret.
--:-- Asma Khalid: What is the sticky substance preserved for thousands of years in darkness, its residue still detectable inside.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: Sean Lay spoke to Luciana da Costa Carvalho from Oxford University, who led the research.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: So I started my investigations using a technique which is, you know, very classic in the museum world, but as well as in analytical chemistry, which is infrared spectroscopy.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: So I wanted to have an idea of the bulk chemical composition of the residue first.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: And I was comparing this with beeswax and with honey.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: And what I got as a response was something, okay, it looks very similar to beeswax.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: And this is what one of the labs had already mentioned, but it was very acidic.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: Now, beeswax does become acidic over time.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: So at that point, I thought, OK, so it's degraded beeswax.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: But then I analyzed the residue with gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, but using a different technique than what they did in the 80s.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: I burned a little bit of the residue.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: And what that enabled me to do was to have an idea also of the chemical composition.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: And there were many acids in there.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: And then we analyzed a sample from the very kind of core of the residue, but also samples from the surface.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: And in one of those surface samples, there were some sugar degradation products.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: So this was like the first hint that there was sugar in there.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: And actually, the vial that I used to burn the residue even smelled a little bit of burned sugar at the end.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: Ah, so there was that kind of caramelized color.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: So in other words, that sense somehow survived.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: That was the first hint.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: All that effort, not just your team, but previous teams over decades.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: Why is it worth it? Why is science worth it?
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: Oh, I think there are things that we need to know to survive.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: There are things that we are curious to know because it's a little bit about who we are
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: And particularly what people did in the past.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: There is some sugar, but it's not that much.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: What could have happened?
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: And we think that, okay, there were microbes who attacked this residue.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: Originally, the jars were full and now there is just a little bit.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: So something must have eaten most of it.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: And no, honey is mostly sugar.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: No, we all know that now, and maybe people did in the past, that honey is a superfood.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: Why is that?
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: It's not because it's sweet.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: It's great that it is, but it's not because of that.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: There's some bacteria that lives in honey.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: The beauty of analytical chemistry and new techniques develop is that we can look back at these residues, which represent chemical reactions that we cannot simulate in the lab.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: These are reactions that took 2,500 years to take place.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: These residues need to be studied, and particularly the bacteria.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: We're looking at some bacterias which are ancient, how they mutated.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: What we can learn that we can use today?
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: We're all researching about new antibiotics.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: Learning how bacteria develops over time may help us with that.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: How food survives.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: In this case, it's probably the major royal jelly proteins that are there.
--:-- Luciana da Costa Carvalho: This is the essence of honey.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Now, thousands of fans lined the streets of Birmingham in central England on Wednesday to pay their last respects to the rock legend Ozzy Osbourne, who died last week at the age of 76.
--:-- Asma Khalid: His family took part in a cortege procession of his coffin, which stopped at a bridge in the city named after his band, Black Sabbath, where they lay flowers.
--:-- Mark Savage: The BBC's music correspondent, Mark Savage, was there.
--:-- Mark Savage: Ozzy! Ozzy! Ozzy! Ozzy!
--:-- Mark Savage: Before he died, Ozzy Osbourne said he didn't mind what happened at his funeral as long as it wasn't depressing.
--:-- Mark Savage: Fans in Birmingham took that to heart.
--:-- Mark Savage: They gathered in their thousands, blasting heavy metal and drinking from Viking horns as they said their last goodbyes.
--:-- Mark Savage: This is the home of metal, and to see the support around the city is absolutely incredible because there's no other person that deserves it more than Ozzy Osbourne.
--:-- Mark Savage: He changed music, that's what he's done.
--:-- Mark Savage: and Black Sabbath and Aussie changed the whole of the music scene in the world.
--:-- Mark Savage: When the cortege reached Black Sabbath Bridge on Birmingham's Broad Street, Osborne's wife Sharon and their children stopped to greet fans and observe their tributes.
--:-- Mark Savage: We love you, Aussie!
--:-- Mark Savage: Thank you, Sharon!
--:-- Mark Savage: Aussie forever!
--:-- Mark Savage: Sharon, we love you!
--:-- Mark Savage: They didn't speak to the crowds, but waved in recognition before leaving some tributes of their own.
--:-- Mark Savage: It was a send-off that recognised Osborne's role as a heavy metal pioneer and one of the most charismatic frontmen of his generation.
--:-- Mark Savage: The family will hold a private funeral on Thursday.
--:-- Asma Khalid: And that is all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later on.
--:-- Asma Khalid: If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.
--:-- Asma Khalid: The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.
--:-- Asma Khalid: You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Use the hashtag Global News Pod.
--:-- Asma Khalid: This edition was mixed by Martin Baker.
--:-- Asma Khalid: The producers were Liam McSheffrey and Peter Goffin.
--:-- Asma Khalid: The editor is Karen Martin.
--:-- Asma Khalid: I'm Nick Miles and until next time, goodbye.
--:-- Asma Khalid: And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
--:-- Asma Khalid: I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C.
--:-- Asma Khalid: I'm Tristan Redman in London.
--:-- Asma Khalid: And this is The Global Story.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
