--:-- Oliver Conway: This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Saks Off 5th is your secret to fashion's most wanted deals at up to 70% off. On the hunt for designer steals that'll turn heads and leave a trail of envy? Uncover Gucci, Valentino, Versace, Stuart Weitzman and more. With new arrivals dropping weekly at prices too good to stay confidential. Lux layers, statement boots and tailored essentials from Saks Off 5th will put your wardrobe on the most wanted list. Head to SaksOff5th.com or SaksOff5th store near you for a style lineup you won't want to miss.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Go on, get a little out there, into the big heart of Nevada, where you can go off-road and off the map, on two lakes or on horseback. Dip into hot springs and dive into deserts. Climb a mountain or make your best effort. See thousands of stars in some of the darkest skies. Stake out haunted hotels. Can you make it to sunrise? There's always something new to see, because we've got plenty of space to just be. Plan your trip at TravelNevada.com.
--:-- Oliver Conway: You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We are recording this at 13 Hours GMT on Friday the 4th of October.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Iran's supreme leader tells a huge crowd in Tehran the missile attack on Israel was the minimum punishment it deserved. Israel is weighing up its response while continuing to attack Lebanon. The EU approves tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, so is a trade war looming? And a potentially huge breakthrough in ovarian cancer treatment?
--:-- Oliver Conway: Also on the podcast, dock workers in the US agree to suspend strike action. And... I pointed it at a tree outside my window, holding onto it, and I asked, what type of tree is this? And they have told me it is a money tree. I've since looked at Google Images, It does look like it was correct. How to search simply by taking a video.
--:-- Oliver Conway: In recent months, Iran has suffered a serious blow to its credibility as a powerful counterweight to Israel. In July, the Iranian security services were humiliated when the Hamas leader, Ismail Hania, was assassinated in Tehran. Then Iran's most important ally in the region, Hezbollah, lost much of its leadership in Lebanon through Israeli attacks via booby-trapped communication devices and then airstrikes.
--:-- Oliver Conway: On Tuesday, Iran responded by launching a barrage of ballistic missiles towards Israel, but that did relatively little damage. Today, the Iranian supreme leader appeared in public for the first time since then, leading Friday prayers of very rare occurrence.
--:-- Oliver Conway: During his sermon, in front of an enormous crowd, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei defended Iran's attack on Israel. The Islamic law and our constitution and the international law. And let me say that this is really certain that every nation has the right to defend its soil, its sovereignty, its territorial integrity. against an aggressor.
--:-- Oliver Conway: The crowd in Tehran showing their support for the Ayatollah. Kazran Natshi of the BBC Persian service monitored the speech from the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. So what did he make of it?
--:-- Kazran Natshi: Here, the feeling, first of all, is that the Israeli leaders are deciding on how to respond to Tuesday's missile attacks. We're expecting some kind of attack any moment. No doubt the Israeli leaders were watching what was going on in Iran too, in Tehran, where Iranian leaders, as you said, appeared in public.
--:-- Kazran Natshi: This was the first time, by the way, in five years that he appeared at Friday prayers. And today there were concerns about his security after what we have been seeing went on in the region in the last few weeks. But nonetheless, He spoke and he called for unity. He called for united action.
--:-- Kazran Natshi: He said Arab countries, Muslim nations must not give in to the divide and rule tactic of the big powers. And he said that they have to stand up and rise up to aggressions of Israel. I think what he wanted basically to do today was to claim that Iran has the backing of these countries and particularly what Iran calls axis of resistance, the militias in Lebanon, the Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and also the militias in Iraq and Syria.
--:-- Kazran Natshi: So he wanted to take credit for what happened on Tuesday night when Iran fired up to 200 ballistic missiles into Israel and convey that Iran is not impotent in the face of Israeli aggression, as they see it.
--:-- Kazran Natshi: Yeah, will his allies be reassured, particularly in Lebanon? Because at one point he said Hezbollah would be responsible for responding to the assassination of its leader, suggesting Iran wasn't going to help.
--:-- Kazran Natshi: Well, in the speech today, there was no hint of any direct action by Iran, other than saying that they will respond strongly to any action by Israel. But he said, we will not rush into it. In terms of defending these militias, there was no hint of that. The hint was that we are here for you, we will support you. But that's more or less it.
--:-- Kazran Natshi: There wasn't a hint of physical or military backing. But nevertheless, the theme of his speech was that we have to be united. the whole of the Arab nation and Muslim nations.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Well, as Israel weighs up its possible response to the Iranian attacks, its forces are continuing to target Lebanon. The capital Beirut was hit at least 10 times overnight in an apparent attempt to kill Hashem Safiaddin, a cousin of and possible successor to the assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Israel has also struck the Lebanon-Syria border and ordered residents of more than 20 towns in southern Lebanon to evacuate immediately. For its part, Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets at northern Israel.
--:-- Nick Beak: Overnight we heard a stream of Israeli jets high in the sky heading towards the Lebanese border in the last few hours. More, but not quite in the same sort of number. But it does give you an indication of how the Israelis are sending more troops on the ground more resources in the sky towards the border as part of this operation.
--:-- Nick Beak: But of course, it comes at a considerable cost to the Lebanese civilian population in terms of people being displaced and also those being killed. The Israelis are saying that they're carrying out a series of operations which they describe as limited, localised and targeted.
--:-- Nick Beak: They say that in the course of these operations in the past 48 hours, a lot of Hezbollah fighters have fled and they've been able to examine what they left behind. And in many cases, they say that they've gathered up, lots of weapons left behind.
--:-- Nick Beak: Now, we're also hearing that Israel has continued its operations in Gaza, the Palestinian territory in the south, with some of the highest numbers killed for some time. But we're also today getting reports that there have been sirens in southern Israel, of course, the scene of that Hamas massacre nearly a year ago.
--:-- Nick Beak: That's right. And that's the first time in two months that that part of the south of Israel, they've had the sirens wailing because Hamas have been able to launch rockets. And of course, that's a reminder of the many fronts that the fighting is taking place on at the moment.
--:-- Nick Beak: Hamas still able to fire some rockets, clearly not as many as they were. And if we bring ourselves back to where I am, just looking out towards the Lebanese border, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says this ground invasion into Lebanon has to take place so that ultimately, people displaced in the north of the country near the border can return to their homes and that they can live in peace there.
--:-- Nick Beak: But clearly it is a big operation for the Israelis. We saw some Israeli soldiers killed just a few days ago. And to illustrate Oliver really how the Israelis are trying to move their resources in different directions last night there was an Israeli airstrike A jet was used to hit a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank There, 18 people were killed, including, according to local reports, a woman and her two children.
--:-- Nick Beak: The Israelis said that they'd killed a local Hamas leader. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority president described that attack as a heinous crime and a massacre.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Despite efforts around the world to move away from petrol cars, electric vehicles remain beyond the means of many customers. Chinese-made electric cars can be cheaper thanks to subsidies, but Western countries worry they will flood their markets.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Now the EU has voted to impose strict tariffs on Chinese imports, in line with an earlier action by the US. But this risks retaliation from Beijing, and some firms say it will hamper Europe's green transition.
--:-- Theo Leggett: It's decided to confirm tariffs on imports of electric vehicles from China and how much each company will pay depends on what subsidies they're deemed to have received from the Chinese government because the EU does believe that car firms based in China are receiving unfair subsidies from the government.
--:-- Theo Leggett: And those tariffs will be backdated now to when the EU initially said it would do this, which was a few months ago. So what it means is essentially imports of electric cars from China will have extra taxes imposed on them. And those could be anything up to 35% over and above the sort of standard 10% tariff for imported cars.
--:-- Theo Leggett: OK, so the tariffs are in. I keep seeing reports that there are negotiations continuing. So what's going on?
--:-- Theo Leggett: Yes. Negotiations with China have been going on for a lengthy period of time. The European Union is in a bit of a conundrum on this one because it wants to encourage the take up of electric cars. That means it needs electric cars to be cheap.
--:-- Theo Leggett: Chinese electric cars potentially could be very cheap. But the problem is domestic manufacturers, EU manufacturers have higher costs than their Chinese counterparts. They're trying to develop their electric car industry. And the risk is that if Chinese manufacturers come in, aggressively take market share now, there won't be any space left for the European manufacturers and they will decline.
--:-- Theo Leggett: So the idea of tariffs is to redress the balance. But there's been a lot of opposition to this, particularly from Germany. And that's because German car makes, we're talking the likes of BMW, Mercedes-Benz, the Volkswagen Group, which includes Porsche and so on, they sell a lot of cars in China and they're high value cars, which are very profitable.
--:-- Theo Leggett: And they don't want any kind of tit-for-tat reaction from Beijing to upset that market and to cost them money. So while the EU is on the face of it playing hardball here and saying these tariffs will be imposed, we're going to redress the balance, we're going to stop unfair subsidies, at the same time it's in quiet discussions with Beijing about coming to some kind of a compromise that everyone's happy with.
--:-- Theo Leggett: So what might China do in response? Will they hold fire while these negotiations continue? So far, they appear to have been holding fire, but they've condemned the tariffs. That's been happening in recent weeks. They've threatened to impose sanctions on other areas of the economy, other exports from the EU.
--:-- Theo Leggett: So it doesn't just affect the car sector. And that's another reason, I think, why we're seeing this sort of lukewarm support for the tariffs within the EU itself. 12 countries abstained in today's vote, we believe. Five voted against. So there's not a lot of support for this measure, which has been enthusiastically pursued by the European Commission.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And while staying with the business world, and in the United States, from Maine to Texas, striking dock workers have returned to work after a provisional deal on wages.
--:-- Oliver Conway: For the past three days, container ships have had to queue up outside ports, threatening shortages of everything from bananas to car parts. It was the industry's biggest work stoppage in nearly half a century.
--:-- Michelle Fleury: This is more of a reprieve than an end. What has happened is that the International Longshoremen's Association, which is the union that represents the dock workers who are on strike at these ports along the east and Gulf Coast, They have agreed to suspend their strike.
--:-- Michelle Fleury: They say that one of the issues, which was wages, the offer from employers has been improved to the point where they are comfortable to call off the strike temporarily to allow negotiations on other issues to resume.
--:-- Michelle Fleury: So this is a suspension of the strike until mid-January. And what we understand so far, but it has not been confirmed yet by the United States Maritime Alliance, that is also known as USMX, is that they have offered to increase wages by 62% over the course of a new six-year contract.
--:-- Michelle Fleury: That was less than the unions had been looking for, but certainly better than they were offered at the outset. But remember, they were asking for 75%. And part of this was driven by lingering anger that they had to work throughout the pandemic.
--:-- Michelle Fleury: When many people were at home, they were there every day under the old contract. And what they saw during supply crunch times was shipping rates going up and profits increasing at these companies. And there were complaints, if you listen to what the union boss has been saying, that the CEOs had seen more remuneration, shareholders had benefited, but they hadn't.
--:-- Michelle Fleury: However, there are other issues that they had been pushing for, whether that was relating to retirement benefits or health care. And then the big one that workers I've spoken to have said is automation. They're very concerned about their jobs disappearing.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Well, AI can have some benefits. Imagine being able to look at something and immediately find out what it is. Google has invented a new technology that allows you to do just that.
--:-- Katie Silver: Video search basically is letting people point their camera at something, ask a question about it and get search results. It's been released on Android and iPhones just in the last 24 hours or so.
--:-- Katie Silver: It's only in English for now. and in order for users to get it, they basically need to enable AI overviews in their Google app. So I've just tried it out and I pointed it at a tree outside my window, holding onto it, and I asked, what type of tree is this? And they have told me it is a money tree.
--:-- Katie Silver: I've since looked at Google Images. It does look like it was correct. This isn't the first time Google's attempted something like this. It has tried to incorporate AI into its search engine, not always successfully.
--:-- Katie Silver: I must add, it was criticized, for example, back in May. It provided an erratic, inaccurate answer. For example, at one point advising people to make cheese stick to pizza by using non-toxic glue.
--:-- Katie Silver: The Google spokesperson said that those times they were isolated examples and they've pointed to the fact that they're now going to be moving into other types of searches. For example, improving its shopping results, incorporating reviews and pricing information from different sellers, and also trying to introduce a competitor to Shazam, which is owned by Apple.
--:-- Katie Silver: So at the moment, it's only being released on Android devices. But the idea is that it's going to allow people to search for songs without leaving the Google app.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Now, it's interesting. Google, for perhaps the first time in the couple of decades that it's been around, is facing growing challenges in the search space. Of course, OpenAI recently trialed its Search GPT. It's still very much the dominant player in this market. It's got about 90% of it.
--:-- Katie Silver: But it is having to move into AI and work out how it's going to leverage AI in terms of maintaining that market dominance. Our business correspondent, Katie Silver.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And still to come on the Global News podcast. We had a senior editor on. I said to him, oh, you want to talk about Scientologists? And he went, no, scientists. Asking a one-eyed interviewee if he was turning a blind eye to something. After a mistake by one of our colleagues here at the BBC, other journalists admit to their blunders.
--:-- Oliver Conway: We be right back and the best promotions in the industry No tricks or gimmicks Owned and operated in the USA Moto Casino is a free social casino No purchase necessary 21 plus to play Void or prohibited Sign up today for a generous welcome bonus Moto Casino. America's social casino. Download the Moto Casino app today.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Go on. Get a little out there. Into the big heart of Nevada. Where you can go off-road and off the map. On two lakes or on horseback. Dip into hot springs and dive into deserts. Climb a mountain or make your best effort. See thousands of stars in some of the darkest skies. Stake out haunted hotels. Can you make it to sunrise? There's always something new to see because we've got plenty of space to just be. Plan your trip at TravelNevada.com.
--:-- Cindy Crawford: Hi, I'm Cindy Crawford and I'm the founder of Meaningful Beauty. When Dr. Sabah and I decided to do a skincare line together, He said to me, we are going to give women meaningful beauty. And I said, that's exactly right. We want to give women meaningful beauty, which means each and every product is meaningful.
--:-- Cindy Crawford: It has a reason to exist. It's efficacious. You're going to get results. And then you just go out and live your life. Meaningful beauty. Confidence is beautiful. Learn more at MeaningfulBeauty.com.
--:-- Oliver Conway: According to a nationwide survey conducted by GeneSight, nearly 9 in 10 Americans who've been diagnosed with depression or anxiety believe that mental health medications are somewhat or very effective.
--:-- Oliver Conway: However, despite that belief, more than half of those individuals say they have avoided taking medication due to concerns about potential side effects. That's why Dr. Whitney Brown, a family and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner based in Alabama, often recommends genetic testing to our patients as part of their treatment journey.
--:-- Dr. Whitney Brown: As part of my treatment plan, I offer the GeneSight test, which analyzes how a patient's genes may influence how they metabolize or respond to certain mental health medications. It gives me insights and takes out some of the guesswork that can be associated with prescribing them.
--:-- Dr. Whitney Brown: If you or someone you love is facing challenges with depression or anxiety, talk to your doctor about how genetic testing may help. To learn more, visit genesight.com.
--:-- Oliver Conway: That's genesight.com. Next, to a potentially huge breakthrough in cancer treatment. British researchers are hailing it as the world's first vaccine for ovarian cancer. They say it could wipe out the disease entirely.
--:-- Oliver Conway: The lead researcher is Professor Ahmed Ahmed from the University of Oxford. He's been talking to Justin Webb. We have done a really important piece of research to show that the immune cells that reside in the fallopian tube, which we believe is the origin of ovarian cancer, these immune cells have memory to the tumour in patients with ovarian cancer.
--:-- Professor Ahmed Ahmed: That's important because if they do have memory, then one can train these cells to exaggerate the memory, then to stop the cancer from starting in the first place.
--:-- Professor Ahmed Ahmed: The second thing that we have done is that we have gathered mutations, alterations that happen very early in a cell transforming from becoming normal to becoming cancerous. Those mutations appear foreign to the human body and therefore the immune system starts to make a strong response to them.
--:-- Professor Ahmed Ahmed: What we want is to test the ability of those mutations to induce the immune response in these residing immune cells and then prioritise which ones to take forward to start clinical trials.
--:-- Professor Ahmed Ahmed: And if it works and if it becomes a widely available vaccine, are we talking about people at particular risk or would it simply be given to all women?
--:-- Professor Ahmed Ahmed: The vaccine that we are designing is one that would be eventually, if proving, effective given to all women. But initially, we would test it on women who are most in need.
--:-- Professor Ahmed Ahmed: And those would be the ones that have mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, because they have lifelong risk of ovarian cancer of more than 40%, and some reports about 70%.
--:-- Professor Ahmed Ahmed: We're used to talking about vaccines, we became very used to it during the pandemic. Is this in a sense linked to the pandemic and the research that was done there?
--:-- Professor Ahmed Ahmed: You're very, very right. I mean, a positive outcome that came out of COVID is the realization that vaccines can have a very, very strong impact and that actually developing a vaccine and testing it does not need to be a very lengthy process.
--:-- Professor Ahmed Ahmed: So it's giving the whole field encouragement to say, okay, let's try this in cancer. Because conceptually, cancer, as I mentioned, have a lot of these mutations that appear foreign to the immune system. So there is now a real enthusiasm in the field of trying vaccines in the context of patients with established cancer to help prevent recurrence of the tumour, but also more excitingly in the field of women who have no cancer to stop cancer from developing in the first place.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Liz Cheney, once a leading figure in the US Republican Party, has reaffirmed her support for the Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris by joining her at a campaign rally in the key battleground state of Wisconsin.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Watching was our North America correspondent David Willis. He told Charlotte Gallagher that such an endorsement would have been unthinkable in the pre-Trump era.
--:-- David Willis: She is, of course, one of the grandest names in the grand old party, as the Republican Party is known. but speaking in the city of Ripon in Wisconsin, which is the symbolic birthplace of the Republican Party, she reflected on her formerly staunch loyalty and devout allegiance to the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan and Bush before unleashing this excoriating attack on the man who followed them, Donald Trump.
--:-- David Willis: Today, I ask all of you here and everyone listening across this great country, I ask you to stand in truth, to reject the depraved cruelty of Donald Trump. And I ask you instead to help us elect Kamala Harris for president.
--:-- David Willis: In her speech, Miss Cheney called Mr. Trump petty and vindictive, amongst other things. In contrast, she said, Kamala Harris will be able to unite the country and would serve as a president, as she put it, for all Americans, regardless of their party affiliation.
--:-- David Willis: And do you think this will potentially sway Republican voters? It's a good question. I think the Harris campaign is looking to court disaffected Republicans, those who are repelled by Donald Trump's rhetoric and his brand of politics, and independent voters whose support in swing states such as Wisconsin, in fact, could prove crucial to the outcome of the election next month.
--:-- David Willis: It doesn't seem likely this endorsement will have a major impact. A recent Reuters poll suggested that only a tiny number, around 5% of respondents in that poll who identified as Republicans said that they would support her.
--:-- David Willis: That's pretty close to the margin of error. But with the presidential race, of course, still pretty much neck and neck with just over 30 days to go before polling day, a small number might actually be enough to tilt the result in a particular direction.
--:-- David Willis: And he's never usually shy in giving his opinions. Has Donald Trump said anything yet about this? Well, his campaign has issued a statement attacking the records of both women.
--:-- David Willis: That statement reads in part, Liz Cheney is a stone-cold loser who is so desperate for relevance and attention, she has debased herself by campaigning with a weak, failed and dangerously liberal Kamala Harris. And the statement concludes that both of them are made for each other, proponents of endless wars, killers of social security and enemies of American workers, Charlotte.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Meanwhile the former US First Lady Melania Trump has signalled her support for abortion rights in a new video to promote her forthcoming book Melania Individual freedom is a fundamental principle that I safeguard.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Well, that stance appears to be in sharp contrast with the position taken by her husband, Donald Trump, as he enters the final leg of the US presidential race.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: What we just heard there is from a black and white video, and it's showing Melania Trump speaking down the lens, appearing to take a resolute, even stern tone when discussing a woman's right to bodily autonomy.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: In fact, let's take a quick listen to the rest of it. Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth, individual freedom. What does my body, my choice really mean?
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: So she's promoting her upcoming memoirs. And on Thursday, the UK based Guardian newspaper, they publish an excerpt from that book, in which she writes that restricting a woman's right to choose where to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: Some are saying that video is just the tip of the iceberg. Naturally, this has invited a lot of speculation, people basically asking whether she could be trying to help or harm the Trump campaign in a race, of course, where abortion is one of the key issues that matters to voters.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: Now, on Donald Trump's part, he does seem to struggle to find a clear line on the issue. He's been accused of trying to please everybody and going back and forth.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: At one point, we heard him sounding proud of that role he had in overturning Roe versus Wade. But then recently, he said for the first time that he would veto a national abortion ban.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: In the vice presidential debate, his running mate J.D. Vance indicated a sort of softening in the rhetoric around abortion. That's particularly pertinent because up until late July, his own campaign website said he was 100% anti-abortion.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: So it's complex. Some have argued that Melania may be used as a tool to win over the pro-choice voters. She's definitely riled up anti-abortion campaigners.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: We've heard from one major group, that's the Students for Life of America, and they tweeted Melania Trump's support of abortion, is anti-feminist and clearly outside the teaching of our Catholic faith. She is wrong.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: So whatever the motivations are for Melania honing in on abortion as an issue, what we do know is that November's presidential race is pretty much neck and neck. Kamala Harris currently leading nationally by a small margin, but the swing states incredibly tight, meaning every vote will really count and every move that may win or lose votes counts too.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And just a reminder that we are doing a special Q&A podcast on the US presidential election in two weeks.
--:-- Oliver Conway: So if you have a question you'd like to put to our AmeriCast colleagues in Washington, then please send us an email, globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk, or tweet us at globalnewspod.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And thanks to those who have already sent in voice notes. A specially designed Arctic Research Vessel is expected to set sail today from northern France.
--:-- Oliver Conway: The Tara Polar Station will drift around the Arctic Ocean for the next two decades, studying life underneath the ice and the impact of global warming.
--:-- Chris Bowler: It's 26 metres long by 16 metres wide on four floors and it's built of aluminium to withstand the shock of the ice and with an ovoid shape and a very flat hull, it can basically be lifted up on top of the ice and drift on the ice in the central Arctic.
--:-- Chris Bowler: The whole ice cap does rotate very slowly clockwise and so if you get yourself locked in the ice on the sort of Russian side, then you will slowly drift over the North Pole and come out on the Greenland side a year and a half, two years later, something like that.
--:-- Chris Bowler: And this unique design, what has pushed you towards it?
--:-- Chris Bowler: It's a series of different factors. Obviously, you need comfort for the scientists on board to be able to withstand the hostile conditions up in the central Arctic during the polar night when it's dark, when it can be up to minus 50.
--:-- Chris Bowler: We also have a moon pool inside the vessel, which is basically a sort of chimney, a hole which gives access to the under ice environment. We can launch different equipment through that moon pool and use drones and different kinds of scientific equipment underneath the vessel and explore the under ice environment.
--:-- Chris Bowler: It also has a very small carbon footprint. This is very important because we're measuring pollutants in the atmosphere up in the central Arctic and so we don't want to pollute our own environment.
--:-- Chris Bowler: What exactly will you be looking for?
--:-- Chris Bowler: We are particularly interested in the ecosystem of the Arctic, the life that is found up in the central Arctic. A lot of that life is really dependent on life that you find inside the sea ice. Life, mainly microorganisms, plankton, that adapted to this very hostile environment.
--:-- Chris Bowler: These organisms that drive, that provide the energy, the food for the entire food web up in the Arctic. These organisms are believed to generate a whole range of gases which are active in the climate system. These gases can stimulate the formation of clouds, they can stimulate the formation of ice crystals from water.
--:-- Chris Bowler: And so we believe that the biology of the Arctic is a very central component in driving the climate of the Arctic.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Finally, have you ever sent an email or WhatsApp message to the wrong person?
--:-- Oliver Conway: Well, BBC presenter Laura Koonsberg was due to interview the former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson this weekend, but had to cancel after accidentally sending him her briefing notes, a message actually intended for her production team.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Journalists, would you believe it, do make mistakes from time to time.
--:-- Paddy O'Connell: Hello, I'm Paddy O'Connell, owning up to some of my many mistakes. I overslept on the morning of 9-11.
--:-- Paddy O'Connell: We had a senior editor on. I said to him, oh, you want to talk about Scientologists? And he went, no, scientists.
--:-- Paddy O'Connell: I went all the way to interview a trollerman and forgot my recording equipment.
--:-- Sarah Montague: I have such a long list of complete cock-ups, not least asking a one-eyed interviewee if he was turning a blind eye to something. That was on television.
--:-- Sarah Montague: Good on him. He just gave me a little smile and carried on as if I hadn't said such an idiot thing.
--:-- Johnny Diamond: Moments of horror include saying that the head of the Turkish military had threatened a coup when in fact he had expressly ruled out a coup.
--:-- Johnny Diamond: I'm John Sargent and I used to be the BBC's chief political correspondent and I went with Margaret Thatcher and a large press group to Moscow in 1987.
--:-- John Sargent: What excited us was that we were on an RAF plane which meant the food was going to be better and we'd be having vintage wines it was all going to be marvellous and the plane took off I then settled down in front of me there were three glasses vintage wines and I was just about to start the main course when Margaret Thatcher suddenly appeared at my side.
--:-- John Sargent: I stood up and all the food and crockery went onto the floor. You can imagine. Margaret Thatcher instantly threw herself onto the floor and turned to me and said, you stay where you are. I'll sort this out. Meaning you are another idiot male that can't cope.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Sadly, I don't have any stories to add to that, at least not that I'd admit to. But thanks to all those journalists for being so open about their embarrassing mistakes.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And that is all from us for now, but the Global News podcast will be back very soon.
--:-- Oliver Conway: This edition was mixed by Gabriel O'Regan and produced by Nikki Verrico. Our editors, Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.
--:-- 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. I'm Tristan Redman in London. And this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection. where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
