--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: President Trump is en route to Alaska to meet Vladimir Putin for talks on the Ukraine war, an encounter he called high stakes before he departed from Washington.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Meanwhile, pro-Ukraine demonstrators in Alaska are outraged by the absence of President Zelensky at the summit.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Negotiations develop a global plastic pollution treaty collapse, prompting anger from several countries.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Also in this podcast, Japan commemorates the 80th anniversary of its World War II surrender and scientists unlock more clues about a cancer notoriously tricky to diagnose.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: As we record this podcast, we're just hours away from the highly anticipated meeting between Donald Trump and the Russian president Vladimir Putin about the war on Ukraine.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Shortly before President Trump departed Washington for the summit in Alaska, he posted two words on social media. High stakes.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: And the rest of the world is in agreement. A major concern is the potential for Russia to be offered territorial gains in return for ending the war.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: This will be the first time in a decade that Vladimir Putin has set foot on American soil.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, around 1,000 Ukrainians have arrived in Alaska.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: In the state's largest city, Anchorage, hundreds of protesters waved Ukrainian flags and banners reading, I am with Ukraine.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: These demonstrators were outraged that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, hadn't been invited to the talks.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: I think he should be here. He should be there at the table.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: I think it was appalling how he was treated by our president when they spoke last, but I think he should be here.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: It's all about his country.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: If they truly wanted to talk about what was going on in Ukraine and how to end the war, they would have included President Zelensky.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: There isn't a question of what's right or wrong in this war.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Absolutely, Ukraine is right, and Trump needs to take a stand.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Russia gets no land.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: But there was a note of optimism from Galina Tomesa, a Russian-American living in the city.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: I want to believe that we will have some positive outcomes because of this meeting, but it's kind of the situation right now, it's like two steps forward or one step forward, two steps back, you know.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: I just want to hope, and they say the hope dies last, that there will be some fruitful results from this summit.
--:-- Tom Bateman: I was interviewing people at one where there were several hundred Americans had come out to support the Ukrainians.
--:-- Tom Bateman: You know, Ukrainian flags everywhere, lots of banners and placards complaining about the fact that President Putin will be coming.
--:-- Tom Bateman: And remember, he has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for allegations of war crimes over the war in Ukraine.
--:-- Tom Bateman: Some people I spoke to saying, why on earth is President Putin being allowed to fly to the United States under those conditions?
--:-- Tom Bateman: And not only that, but meeting the president here in Alaska.
--:-- Tom Bateman: So those people were extremely concerned about that and said they were going to make their voices heard throughout that.
--:-- Tom Bateman: I spoke to one man who lived here for many years, but was originally from Western Ukraine and still have family and friends there, who was outraged by this visit.
--:-- Tom Bateman: Said that, you know, his family members he was still in touch with were reflecting the fact that Ukrainians feel extremely sidelined by this and are very worried about this becoming a carve up between the US and Russia without the Ukrainians even at the table.
--:-- Tom Bateman: So a lot of anger about that.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: But also remember, this is a Republican state and there is going to be a rally in support of President Trump and in support of the meeting taking place as well.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Don't know about whether we'll get the same kind of numbers out.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: But clearly, President Trump is relying on that support when it comes to the actual base of hope that he has for this particular meeting that he says he thinks that he has a big chance of success.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, it's going to be, I presume, carefully choreographed.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: What form will it take?
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Well, President Trump will arrive first on Air Force One, landing at this Cold War era US air base after a seven hour flight all the way up from Washington, DC.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Then President Putin will land around an hour later and then they will start the bilateral meeting.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Now the format of that is still unclear.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The Kremlin has suggested that at the start of that there will be what they have called a tête-à-tête, a head-to-head between the two men and only their translators so no other advisors or officials in the room.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The White House has not commented or confirmed that.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The speculation from the American side is that there will be at least an advisor each to the two men in the room, at least for the sort of formal part of the bilateral meeting.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Whether anything takes place without any advisors is unclear, but certainly that seems to be a suggestion from the Kremlin.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: There will be a working lunch at which there will be the much wider delegations of the two sides.
--:-- Tom Bateman: Ukraine has the most to lose from the negotiations between the two world leaders.
--:-- Tom Bateman: President Zelensky has warned that decisions made in his absence will be meaningless.
--:-- Alexander Mareczko: We don't have high expectations, to put it to the least, with regard to this summit, because for Putin it's already a diplomatic win.
--:-- Alexander Mareczko: Seems like President Trump has brought back Putin to the limelight and sort of destroyed his status of isolated pariah, which is very dangerous in itself.
--:-- Alexander Mareczko: I don't expect any tangible result coming out of this summit for a very simple reason, because Putin doesn't want to stop the war of aggression.
--:-- Alexander Mareczko: He hasn't abandoned his maximalist goals to destroy Ukraine, to subjugate Ukraine.
--:-- Alexander Mareczko: And President Trump seems not to be keen on imposing serious sanctions on Russia and those countries which provide lifeline to Russia.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Vladimir Putin, I mean, he's delivered himself one thing that he's been looking for, that is recognition, international recognition that he's a player, a big player on the world stage.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: The fact that this summit is happening at all you know the Russians are portraying as a victory for Moscow you know despite all the attempts by Western countries to try to isolate Vladimir Putin over the last three and a half years.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Look where he is sitting at the top table with Donald Trump discussing Ukraine.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: You know, for President Trump, this may be a listening exercise for Vladimir Putin.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: It's a legitimization exercise.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: But also he is keen to come out of this with some kind of victory you know he's the man that started this by pouring Russian troops across the border into Ukraine for him it's vital to if the war in Ukraine is to end soon it's vital to come up with some kind of deal that he can portray to the Russian people as a victory.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: I mean I wonder how much experience of Russia there is on the American side.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: If you look at the Russian side, it's packed full of experience.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: I mean, Vladimir Putin, right? He's been in power 25 years.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: He has experienced five U.S. presidents.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: He's been foreign minister for 20 years.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: He knows everything there is to know about America.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin's foreign policy aide, a former Russian ambassador in Washington, Kirill Dmitriev, Vladimir Putin's investment envoy, foreign investment envoy, educated in the United States.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: This team knows about America, it knows about Donald Trump.
--:-- Steve Rosenberg: And this will, I think, add to fears in Ukraine and in European capitals, that perhaps at the end of this meeting, the Russian side will have got the better of the American one.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: And we'll update you with the latest from that summit in a later edition of the Global News Podcast.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Negotiators have once again left talks aimed at agreeing the world's first treaty on plastic pollution with no result.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: After more than two years of negotiations, delegates had gathered at the UN in Geneva hoping to finalise a deal.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: But countries remain deadlocked over whether the treaty should reduce plastic production and put legally binding controls on the toxic chemicals used to make the product.
--:-- Trisha Farrelly: We've seen during the talks negotiators removing key provisions essential to protecting environmental and human health, including obligations to, most concerningly for us, to reduce plastic production to sustainable levels, to address chemicals of concern and account for impacts across the full life cycle of plastics.
--:-- Trisha Farrelly: While a small group of countries actively denied the scientific evidence, we're still encouraged by the overwhelming majority who've engaged constructively with it, but there's still no agreement on any text at this stage.
--:-- Esme Stallard: To sum it up, they effectively ran out of time.
--:-- Esme Stallard: There was two groups that was kind of split between countries there was an initial draft text that was produced a couple of days ago back on Tuesday no country was happy with that it just country particularly the high ambition countries felt that it didn't address any of their concerns there was nothing in the text at that point about trying to ban certain chemicals in plastic there wasn't anything mandatory around the design of plastic and nothing at all around production however having said that on the other side the oil producing states they also weren't happy the new text that got published at 2 a.m this morning local time did seem to address some of the concerns of that ambitious group of countries more and it seemed that they had compromised even though there wasn't anything specifically in there on production that was them giving way to the oil states there was more measures around better design of plastic to try and reduce our use of it particularly single-use plastic but it seemed like as they were already 12 hours over time that this new text just didn't have enough time to go through discussions.
--:-- Esme Stallard: The EU did say in their final meeting that they felt this was a good basis for future negotiations.
--:-- Esme Stallard: Although Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, who are part of that group of oil nations, said that they felt like this was not a good basis for future talks.
--:-- Esme Stallard: So they still remain very unhappy.
--:-- Esme Stallard: Well, very early days, but will there be future talks or is this all at an impasse?
--:-- Esme Stallard: What happens is in that final meeting, countries will indicate how they would like to see a way forward.
--:-- Esme Stallard: Many countries were saying that they would like to see what they're calling an inc 5.3 so every single round of negotiations was given a number there was meant to be five of those meant to finish in December this was called 5.2 because it was a run-on from those it was hoped this would be the last one that hasn't happened so we would go to a 5.3 but what needs to happen is finding a location the money to run these conferences it's very expensive to host them but also for those traveling there that was something raised by the northern pacific nation of Palau who was speaking on behalf of the island states that they put a lot of money and resources into travelling to these negotiations and they feel very disappointed.
--:-- Esme Stallard: They keep having to return with insufficient progress.
--:-- Esme Stallard: So I suspect we'll be back, but where and when is still unclear.
--:-- Esme Stallard: And remind us what a big problem plastic pollution is and what these negotiations hope to achieve and haven't done so.
--:-- Esme Stallard: Plastic is, you know, seeing as this miracle product, it's helped to transform a lot of sectors, but the problem is how we deal with it.
--:-- Esme Stallard: There's a lot of plastic pollution in the environment that's expected to increase and there's concerns around the impact of toxic chemicals on the marine environment and also increasingly on human health, potentially being carcinogenic, some of those chemicals.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Here in the UK, scientists say a surprising discovery could make it easier to diagnose pancreatic cancer earlier.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: It's one of the deadliest common cancers, often found too late for effective treatment.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: The researchers were studying how normal pancreas cells start going wrong in the lab.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: So essentially in cells carrying a common cancer gene called KRAS, the cell recycling system that exists in all cells called autophagy falters.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: So instead of clearing out waste and recycling it for energy, it meant that sticky proteins piled into clumps.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: And that's a bit like what happens in dementia.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: So they also looked at early lesions in the human pancreas And they also saw similar clumps.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: And that suggests it could also hold true in people.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: This is pretty early research, but it points to a fresh angle for prevention or therapy as well.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: I see. So by tracking it back to the source, by seeing how something like this actually starts, it gives you new pathways to treat it.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: Yeah, absolutely.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: You know, it's early, but it's new and promising biology.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: You know, if we can spot these recycling faults and protein clumps early, we might be able to find pancreatic cancer sooner and treat it better.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: And as you said, you know, pancreatic cancer survival has remained stubbornly low.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: You know, it's the 10th most common cancer, but the fifth leading cause of cancer death.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: So we've seen survival, cancer survival improved for many types of the disease.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: But for pancreatic cancer, it's remained stubbornly low.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: So early biology like this really offers that new avenue for progress.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: Why is that? Why has pancreatic cancer in particular been so difficult to deal with?
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: One of the reasons is it's often diagnosed late.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: It's often not picked up early because of the sort of generic symptoms, you know, weight loss and ongoing tummy or back pain.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: Changes in poo can be a number of different things.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: And those symptoms, you know, it's a deep tissue.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: It kind of hides away.
--:-- Dr Catherine Pickworth: It's quite difficult to notice the symptoms at that early stage as well.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Still to come on the Global News podcast.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: One of these robots came flying around the band to the delight of the crowd.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: He might be fast but couldn't quite hold the line.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The robot athletes delighting spectators in China.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: In northern Pakistan, flash floods triggered by torrential monsoon rains have killed at least 160 people over the past 24 hours.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: Landslides and floodwaters have buried homes and swept people away.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: A rescue helicopter has also been reported missing.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: I got this update from our Pakistan correspondent Azadeh Mishiri in Islamabad Pakistan is in the midst of its monsoon season and has been experiencing heavy rains flash floods on and off for several weeks as well as landslides.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: So far, officials have said there have been multiple deaths in Pakistan-administered Gilgit, Baltistan.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: That's one of the provinces that's been most hit, but also in Khaybir-Partan Khoa, which is western Pakistan.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: Now, in terms of collateral damage, people have seen their homes destroyed in all the provinces that have been affected.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: Evacuations are also ongoing.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: And within these areas, there are many regions that are affected.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: In Khyber Paton Hoa, for example, SWAT has been badly hit.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: And that's a tourist attraction.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: It's very attractive, lots of natural beauty.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: And as well as closer to the border with Afghanistan, that province has been especially affected as well.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: So what are the authorities saying? Is there a big search and rescue operation on?
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: There is.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: And in some cases, they've been able to reach people, but it's a real challenge.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: And the military has said they've now deployed helicopters in some parts to help that effort.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: There's also another challenge.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: Emergency teams are also very focused on creating temporary bridges, temporary roads, helping locals and tourists who are stranded across these provinces be able to travel to safety.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: Because again, keep in mind some of these people aren't actually local to the provinces where they find themselves.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: And so they need that support.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: On top of all of that, emergency teams have said that this sort of danger could continue for the next week or so.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: And is it connected to climate change?
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: In some ways, yes.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: Climate change exacerbates the frequency and the severity of these extreme weather events.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: And Pakistan has a particular challenge because it contributes less than 1% of global greenhouse gases, the gases that warm our planet.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: But its geography makes it extremely vulnerable to climate change.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: And the difficulty is that they have a double whammy.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: They both experienced drought, but also monsoon rains.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: And everyone here remembers what happened three years ago when floods devastated the country and killed about 1,700 people.
--:-- Azadeh Moshiri: We're nowhere near that level of devastation, but people are certainly suffering.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Events have been held across Japan to mark the 80th anniversary of the country's defeat in the Second World War.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The end of the fighting in the Pacific is largely seen as a day of celebration for the victors, including the US and UK.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Here in Britain, there's been a ceremony and a two-minute silence at the National Memorial Arboretum in central England to mark the occasion.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: In the presence of other veterans and the King and the Prime Minister, a 101-year-old former RAF pilot, Ron Gumbel, read out the poem The Fallen by Lawrence Pinion.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: I shall not weary them, nor the years come then.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.
--:-- Shama Khalil: The end of fighting came soon after the dropping of two devastating atomic bombs in Japan.
--:-- Shama Khalil: That country's unconditional surrender to the Allies on August 15, 1945, remains an extremely sombre occasion in Japan.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Hario Nihei was eight when her neighborhood and the entire downtown Tokyo area were flattened in the Great Tokyo Air Raid on March 10, 1945, 100,000 people were killed in one night.
--:-- Shama Khalil: She told me about the day the emperor made that unprecedented announcement.
--:-- Shama Khalil: At that time, the emperor was a god to us.
--:-- Shama Khalil: I asked my mother, what did he say?
--:-- Shama Khalil: She said, the war is over, but Japan lost.
--:-- Shama Khalil: I stood up and clapped my hands, saying, no more air raids.
--:-- Shama Khalil: I jumped up and down with joy.
--:-- Shama Khalil: But my older brother, who was 15 and had received intense military education, he dragged me out of the room and beat me up in the corner.
--:-- Shama Khalil: While there were celebrations in the U.S. and Europe, here this is a day of mourning, remembering the millions who died and praying for peace.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Defeats stripped Japan of its military might.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Under the U.S. occupation, it rebuilt as a democracy and an industrial powerhouse.
--:-- Shama Khalil: But the country has never really fully confronted or acknowledged the atrocities committed by its imperial army.
--:-- Shama Khalil: Many Japanese leaders have apologized over the years for vaguely bad things Japan did, but they don't really get into specifics about what Japan did.
--:-- Jeff Kingston: Every time they make such an apology or express these contrite views, there will always be another prominent conservative who will come out and disparage those views, deny them, denounce them.
--:-- Jeff Kingston: So, you know, it's understandable overseas that people are a little confused.
--:-- Jeff Kingston: Is Japan contrite or not?
--:-- Jeff Kingston: The U.S. too has never really apologized for Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
--:-- Jeff Kingston: Eighty years on, Japan stands as a modern democracy and a global economic power.
--:-- Jeff Kingston: And yet, the shadows of its violent past still stretch into its present.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has launched a campaign to redraw the state's congressional map to boost the number of seats held by Democrats.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: He said the aim was to counter Republican moves in Texas.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Mr Newsome also lashed out at Donald Trump after a group of Border Patrol agents swarmed outside a building where he was announcing the plans.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The Democrat and longtime Trump critic said he would not be intimidated by a patrol of ICE agents.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Well, I think it's pretty sick and pathetic.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: And it just said everything you need to know, the setting that we're under.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: That they chose the time, manner and place to send their district director outside right when we're about to have this press conference.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: That everything you know about Donald Trump's America, and that was top down, you know that for a fact.
--:-- Tricia McLaughlin: Our law enforcement operations are about enforcing the law, not about Gavin Newsom.
--:-- David Willis: Gavin Newsom has said that it was probably, in his view, an act of intimidation or intended as an act of intimidation on the part of the Trump administration.
--:-- David Willis: More than two dozen federal border patrol agents, dressed in masks and wearing helmets and equipped with guns, started milling around the building within which Gavin Newsom was announcing his plans today.
--:-- David Willis: Plans to hold a ballot, a special ballot here in California in November with a view to a constitutional amendment that will provide for the redistricting of certain parts of this state to provide for five additional Democratic seats going into next year's midterm elections.
--:-- David Willis: That's an attempt to basically nullify similar moves being conducted on the part of the Republicans and at the behest of the Republican leader, Donald Trump, in the state of Texas.
--:-- David Willis: Those attempts having been thwarted temporarily by the withdrawal of around 50 Democratic lawmakers who took themselves out of the state of Texas in order to basically thwart attempts to have a vote on that matter there.
--:-- David Willis: They now expected to return in the next few days pending a vote on that controversial measure which they now say those Democrats they are happy to do because of the moves by Gavin Newsom here in California.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: I'm standing right next to the running track and one of these robots came flying around the band to the delight of the crowd.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: He might be fast but couldn't quite hold the line and ended up crossing out of one lane into another lane and finally actually crashing into one of the engineers from one of the other robot teams.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: Again, much to the delight of all the kids who love that.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: Bring it on.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: They love all the crashing and burning as much as they like the success of these robots.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: So, you know, we have seen some spectacular falls, but you wouldn't expect that, wouldn't you?
--:-- Stephen McDonald: I mean, this is cutting-edge technology.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: They are pushing these machines out to the best that they can do.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: And that is part of the purpose here.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: Apart from being a bit of a sort of PR stunt for the Chinese robotics industry, it enables technicians to see, well, how can we move them around in these complicated areas?
--:-- Stephen McDonald: How can we make them turn more quickly or adapt to situations?
--:-- Stephen McDonald: So there is a sort of serious side to it as well.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: I mean, to what extent are humanoid robots, the robots that look ostensibly human to us with limbs, torsos, heads, are they being used in parts of China or is it still very much a thing in the future?
--:-- Stephen McDonald: In terms of the question of are they being used, we're not seeing robots in people's houses yet, but given the speed with which this technology is developing, you wonder how quickly it'll be until that is actually the case.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: Certainly, there's so much money being thrown into this.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: The Chinese government wants to be the world's tech superpower.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: By the way, a bit of a cheer from the crowd there.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: One of the robot teams has scored a goal in the footy.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: China wants to be a tech leader and so billions of dollars are going into robotics.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: And that's another point for this sort of, events like this, this world humanoid robot games, the companies want to attract investment.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: So if your robot's the fastest or the grooviest looking or something like that, well, it's also money potentially coming your way because it's a bit of a cutthroat industry here as has been the case with other industries.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: We've got all these startups.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: They're not all going to survive.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: They want to be the companies that do get there in the end.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: And so, yeah, that's why the pressure is on to do well at these games, if I could put it to you that way, for financial reasons apart from anything else.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: And do we know, as far as we can tell, who's been winning the races?
--:-- Stephen McDonald: Are there medal ceremonies, all that kind of stuff?
--:-- Stephen McDonald: It looks like there are going to be medal ceremonies because I've seen there's a little area in the middle which looks like a bit of a podium sort of set up.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: So I think at some point we are going to see some medals issued.
--:-- Stephen McDonald: I mean, one funny thing is with the races, for example, around the running track here, it's a bit unfair because sometimes you've got these tiny little robots and others with ginormous legs flying past them and you wouldn't expect them to be able to...
--:-- Stephen McDonald: If they're human beings, this would be an unfair race.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: And that's it from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, send us an email.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Use the hashtag Global News Pod.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: This edition was mixed by Alana Bowles.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The producers were Chantal Hartle and Aaron Kochi.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: And the editor is Karen Martin.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: I'm Valerie Sanderson.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Until next time, bye bye.
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--:-- Susan Glasser: Hi, I'm Susan Glasser.
--:-- Susan Glasser: I'm Jane Mayer.
--:-- Susan Glasser: And I'm Evan Osmos.
--:-- Susan Glasser: And we host the Washington Roundtable from the New Yorker's Political Scene Podcast.
--:-- Susan Glasser: For me, this is the water cooler.
--:-- Susan Glasser: This is a wonderful chance to sit down with two of the smartest colleagues in the country and, you know, just kind of compare notes.
--:-- Susan Glasser: No, that's so true, because first of all, we are actually friends in real life.
--:-- Susan Glasser: But I can't wait until Fridays to hear what you guys think.
--:-- Susan Glasser: Everybody sees the headlines, but you guys fill in the gaps.
--:-- Susan Glasser: I also think, though, occasionally we get somebody to come on, and I'm always smarter for it.
--:-- Susan Glasser: If you get a great historian who can tell you about a presidential election 50, 60 years ago, often it can help you understand about what's happening today.
--:-- Susan Glasser: So if you're looking for weekly insights into what's going on inside the Belt
