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--:-- Valerie Sanderson: This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson and in the early hours of Thursday the 17th of July, these are our main stories.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The Syrian government has started to withdraw its forces from the southern province and city of Sweida following Israel's bombing of Syria in defence, it says, of the Druze minority living there.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: President Trump has denied he's about to fire the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, after reports that sent bank shares sliding.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: British doctors have announced that eight babies have been born using genetic material from three people in order to prevent devastating and often fatal conditions.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Also in this podcast, the large rock from Mars. It's a fantastic rock. It's huge. Yes, it would be great if it was in a museum for people to see or if it was part of a scientific collective for analyses to be done.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: But it is something that is worth quite a lot. And it's sold at auction for $5.3 million.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: As we record this podcast, Syria says its army has begun to withdraw from the predominantly Druze city of Sweida after days of deadly clashes.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: According to Syria, it comes after an earlier ceasefire agreement following an operation in the city against what it called outlaw groups.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: This was the moment when a presenter on Syria TV had to run and duck for cover after one of the Israeli airstrikes hit a building behind her.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: That followed days of clashes between Druze forces and Bedouin tribes in the southern province of Sweida, which is close to the Israeli border.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Israel, which has many Druze living there and serving in its army, says it's trying to protect the Druze community, and it's blaming the Syrian government for stirring up sectarian violence against the Druze.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The US has been urging restraint from both sides.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: We'll hear from there in a moment. But first from a surgeon who works in the city of Sweida and sent the BBC this voice note.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: No one is fine. Civilians, their homes are being shelled randomly and indiscriminately across entire neighbourhoods. Rockets, mortars, even heavy artillery is being used.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: There are snipers everywhere. Any movement's dangerous. Roads are closed. We can't even move between buildings.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: I can't understand the logic behind targeting civilians or looting their homes. This is not the action of a state. This is the behavior of a gang.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Syrians are being targeted simply because they belong to a different sect.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The BBC's Lina Sinjab followed the day's events from Beirut.
--:-- Lina Sinjab: It's the strongest message coming from the Israelis to this newly formed government of Al-Shara that they will not stop until they withdraw their troops from inside Sweida, which is the Druze city to the south of Damascus, very close to the border with Israel.
--:-- Lina Sinjab: For the Israelis, they say they want to protect the Druze, but also probably they don't want to see any of the jihadist fighters who are part of the Al-Sharaa or the new government of the army to be present inside Sweida or anywhere close to the Israeli border.
--:-- Lina Sinjab: There has been a deal achieved between the Syrian security forces and the Druze community earlier on. But later on, the Druze leaders have rejected this deal.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: We're still waiting to see how things are going to move on.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The Syrian government has condemned Israelis' attacks on Syrian territories. But of course, they will not want to engage in any clashes with the Israelis.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: And what do you think this is really about? Do you think this is mainly about Israel's concern for the Druze? Or is it also about targeting Syria's military?
--:-- Lina Sinjab: Well, Israel, throughout the years of the war, when Assad was in power, continued to target sites inside Syria, targeting Iranian and Hezbollah fighters and locations.
--:-- Lina Sinjab: But after the fall of Assad, immediately after the fall of Assad, for 48 hours, they've hit over 400 military sites, totally crippling the Syrian defense forces.
--:-- Lina Sinjab: So this is a country that has no defense power. Its army is being formed and it's still weak. Its security forces is being formed and is very weak and really has no interest in opening a battle with a strong army in the region.
--:-- Lina Sinjab: But I think Israel also wants to make sure that none of the jihadists are reaching anywhere close to its border.
--:-- Lina Sinjab: Many of the Druze also are part of the IDF, a part of the forces that come from the occupied Golan Heights. So they want to ensure that anywhere around the buffer zone between Syria and Israel is secure for them.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Tina Sinjab.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Meanwhile, the U.S. has been trying to calm the situation.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Writing on the social media platform X, the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said they'd engaged all the parties involved in the clashes in Syria and have agreed on specific steps that will bring what he called this troubling and horrifying situation to an end.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Earlier, Mr. Rubio was asked about the events at the White House.
--:-- Marco Rubio: These are historic, long-time rivalries between different groups in the southwest of Syria, Bedouins, the Druze community. And it led to an unfortunate situation and a misunderstanding, it looks like, between the Israeli side and the Syrian side.
--:-- Marco Rubio: So we've been engaged with them all morning long and all night long with both sides. And we think we're on our way towards a real de-escalation and then hopefully get back on track in helping Syria build a country and arriving at a situation there in the Middle East is far more stable.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: We got the latest from our State Department correspondent, Tom Bateman.
--:-- Tom Bateman: I think they believe now that they have got at least commitments for that. And that's potentially why you're hearing about an agreement, at least the Syrian state media is reporting that Syrian government forces would withdraw from Sweida.
--:-- Tom Bateman: That would certainly be, I think, a condition that the Israelis had been demanding.
--:-- Tom Bateman: I think the administration was taken a bit unawares by the scale of the Israeli bombardment that has taken place over the last 24 hours or so.
--:-- Tom Bateman: And remember the context here is that the Trump administration has been trying to nurture a new relationship with this transitional government led by Ahmed al-Sharah.
--:-- Tom Bateman: You know, they have lifted sanctions on the country. They have delisted Hayat al-Sham, the organization that he belonged to, as a foreign terrorist organization.
--:-- Tom Bateman: They've done a lot to try and sort of embed stability into that country because the Americans are trying to draw or further draw Syria in its new form away from the orbit of Iran.
--:-- Tom Bateman: And also they want to create this sort of Arab club of Middle East states that the Americans can do business with, basically.
--:-- Tom Bateman: That's one of the big sort of Trump priorities.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: So they've been trying to do that work. And then at the same time, they've had the Israelis making a whole series of demands, saying that the transitional government has to demilitarise the whole southwest.
--:-- Tom Bateman: They can have their forces there.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: That has escalated into this very dramatic situation over the last few days with these culminating the Israelis bombing Damascus in those extremely dramatic pictures that we have seen.
--:-- Tom Bateman: And so the Americans have been caught with this, trying to sort of compel their ally, the Israelis, to stop doing this, to hold back, although they haven't admitted to that publicly, but at the same time trying to get some concessions from the government in Damascus as well.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Tom Bateman in Washington.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The US and Israel-backed group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, that's taken over food distribution in the territory, has given a rare press conference to confirm that 20 people have died at an aid distribution site, but it blamed Hamas operatives for causing the violence.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: As Imogen Folks reports.
--:-- Imogen Folks: 19 of the dead were trampled by the crowds as they waited for food. One was reportedly stabbed.
--:-- Imogen Folks: A spokesman said the GHF was heartbroken, but claimed the deaths were part of a pattern of attacks by Hamas to undermine the foundation's work.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: This is just the latest tragedy linked to the controversial foundation.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The UN Human Rights Office has documented almost 700 deaths, mostly from gunshot wounds, of people trying to get food at GHF sites.
--:-- Imogen Folks: Imogen Folks.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: President Trump wants the United States to have what he calls a Golden Dome Missile Defense Shield, a multi-layered defense system intended to detect and destroy foreign threats.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Leading the way in developing the system is the US Space Force, which was set up five years ago and is the newest service in the US military.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: It's already proved to be crucial in intercepting Iranian ballistic missiles and in helping the US carry out strikes on Iran's nuclear program.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Our defence correspondent Jonathan Bale has this exclusive report.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: Mission, this is the Cape with countdown.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: In a dark and secure military facility in Colorado, lit up by computers and giant monitors, the countdown to a rocket launch.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: This is the first time the US Space Force has allowed international media into an operations centre for missile warning.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: And this is what they're doing every single day, detecting launches, whether fired from Russia, Israel, Yemen or Iran.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: Sibiris detected a mass volley of five missiles out of Iran.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: This is America's first line of defence.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: Launch Yemen! Copy launch Yemen!
--:-- Jonathan Bale: Lieutenant Colonel Anne Hughes oversees the operations room.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: Give two, track one.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: They are able to track the point of origin as well as the predicted impact location.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: So that's the data that they send or they collect and then send downrange.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: No notice launch, Iran! Copy!
--:-- Jonathan Bale: This is just a drill.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: Coordinates for the launch are 28 north by 80 west.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: But a few weeks ago, they were doing it for real when Iran fired a salvo of missiles at a U.S. military base in the Middle East.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: We saw Iran launch against Al-Udid Air Base in Qatar.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: Ultimately, we saved the entire installation and the personnel that were there.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: How did that feel?
--:-- Jonathan Bale: Heavy.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: It was absolutely great to make sure that we're safeguarding our U.S. and coalition forces.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: Outside are these massive, big, what look like golf balls.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: And they're covering large radar, which is how the US Space Force talks to their satellites up in the sky.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: And this is part of what will be America's golden dome, how they provide missile defence for North America.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: It's in response to growing concerns about Chinese and Russian hypersonic missiles.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: This is the Wolf Den.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: This is the entrance to where we conduct our advanced tactics analysis for space.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: I'm Colonel Phoenix Hauser, the commander of Space Delta 7.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: We are Space Force's intelligence in targeting Delta.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: But the U.S. is also worried about their actions in space.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: We're talking satellites with grappling arms that can pull other satellites out of orbit.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: We are already sparring in the cyber domain and the space domain.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: I think one of our Space Force senior leaders talked about dogfighting in space.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: That's happening already?
--:-- Jonathan Bale: I don't know that we're quite there in the type of Top Gun-like dogfighting perspective, but it's something certainly that we need to be ready for.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: I'm shown a China People's Liberation Army video by Lieutenant General David Miller.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: So this is what you're up against, do you think?
--:-- Jonathan Bale: You've got to be prepared, if directed, to contend against adversaries like this, should they choose to threaten the US or our allies.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: Next chart.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: We will no longer assume that just goodwill will ensure that an adversary will not attack us.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: So to put it very plainly, you are developing offensive weapons for space?
--:-- Jonathan Bale: I think what we're advocating for is the development and fielding of capability.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: The only way to deter conflict is through strength.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: And we have to have our own systems and capabilities in order to defend those assets.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: And it has to be made plain to potential adversaries.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: Are you able to tell us what those options are?
--:-- Jonathan Bale: I am not.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: Intelligence expects a launch out of CENTCOM.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: America's military relies on space for its communications, navigation and precision strikes.
--:-- Jonathan Bale: Launch from Suncom in five minutes.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: And that report by Jonathan Beale.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Well, how much would you pay for a 25 kilogram rock from Mars?
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: It's the largest piece of the red planet found so far here on Earth.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: And it's sold at auction in New York.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: This is your last chance.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Try one more.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: I'll say fair warning then.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: It's with you, Isabel, and selling for $4,300,000.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: So, $4,300,000.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Congratulations on online.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Thank you very much.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Well, after commission, the total price was just under $5.3 million.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The reddish-brown Martian rock had travelled 225 million kilometres to Earth before it was found by a meteorite hunter in Niger in West Africa in 2023.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: It had a guide price of between two to four million dollars.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: So what makes this expensive rock so special?
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Dr Julia Cartwright is a planetary scientist and cosmochemist at the University of Leicester in central England.
--:-- Dr Julia Cartwright: You will have this sort of material being ejected from Mars in a fairly dynamic process, probably a massive asteroid here with lots of chunks coming out and then those things are kind of spread out into space and then they the one that we've we've got here has was clearly on a trajectory so it would collide with the earth and it was found in an area where it's quite easy to find things like big rocks which would be somewhere like the Sahara desert many of these because they are found in quite isolated places are often found by the nomadic people that are living in those areas um so there is a large population of nomadic people who live in the Sahara desert and these materials are found and ultimately brought to areas um or to people um in more populous areas and then connections are made and messages are sent to say hey look we found this what we think might be a meteorite and it kind of goes from there really.
--:-- Dr Julia Cartwright: But meteorites themselves have many different facets.
--:-- Dr Julia Cartwright: They hold really, really valuable information about the solar system, but are also considered effectively space artifacts.
--:-- Dr Julia Cartwright: So for this one in particular with it being fairly large I mean it a fantastic rock If you seen it it huge And yes it would be great if it was in a museum for people to see if it was part of a scientific collective for analyses to be done.
--:-- Dr Julia Cartwright: But it is something that is worth quite a lot.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Still to come.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The hackers have disrupted major events across the continent, including the European elections, the peace summit for Ukraine, and most recently, the NATO summit here in the Netherlands.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: An international police operation has dismantled a group of pro-Russian hackers accused of a wave of high-profile attacks targeting critical infrastructure in Europe.
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--:-- Valerie Sanderson: 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.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: However, despite that belief, more than half of those individuals say they have avoided taking medication due to concerns about potential side effects.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: 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 GeneSightTest, which analyzes how a patient's genes may influence how they metabolize or respond to certain mental health medications.
--:-- Dr. Whitney Brown: It gives me insights and takes out some of the guesswork that can be associated with prescribing them.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: If you or someone you love is facing challenges with depression or anxiety, Talk to your doctor about how genetic testing may help.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: To learn more, visit genesight.com.
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--:-- Valerie Sanderson: President Trump says he's not planning to fire the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The initial reports that Mr. Powell had been forced out sparked a drop in bank stocks and the dollar.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Mr Trump has strongly criticised Mr Powell, saying he was doing a terrible job for failing to cut interest rates.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Michelle Fleury reports from New York.
--:-- Michelle Fleury: U.S. stocks took a rollercoaster ride after a White House source said Donald Trump was ready to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
--:-- Michelle Fleury: But the president later walked back the claim.
--:-- Michelle Fleury: Donald Trump has repeatedly stopped short of saying he would fire Mr Powell, something he may not even have the legal authority to do.
--:-- Michelle Fleury: The president said he discussed the idea with lawmakers continuing his criticism of Mr Powell over the Fed's interest rate policy.
--:-- Michelle Fleury: Mr Powell's term ends next May and he plans to stay until then.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Michel Fleury.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The billionaire owner of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, is expected to testify in a high-stakes trial where he's being sued by his own company shareholders.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The case got underway on Wednesday in the US state of Delaware.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Shareholders from Meta, the parent company of sites including Facebook, Instagram and the messaging app WhatsApp, are suing him for around $8 billion as payback because of the money Meta has already spent on legal fees over privacy violations by Facebook.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: I heard more from Lily Jamali, our North America technology correspondent.
--:-- Lily Jamali: These shareholders are alleging that Mark Zuckerberg and some other executives, former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, for example, are responsible for these billions of dollars that you mentioned in costs that they have had to spend to settle privacy violations, to basically pay fines in some cases to government agencies that have gone after them for that.
--:-- Lily Jamali: And what's interesting too, is that they're also suing current and some past members of Meta's board of directors.
--:-- Lily Jamali: And they're suing these people in their personal capacity.
--:-- Lily Jamali: Meta, the company, is actually not a direct party to the suit.
--:-- Lily Jamali: But these shareholders are saying that those directors didn't do their jobs, that they protected Mr. Zuckerberg instead of protecting them, the shareholders.
--:-- Lily Jamali: Has there been any word from Mark Zuckerberg? I mean, do we know what his case is?
--:-- Lily Jamali: Well, you know, Meta, as I say, has declined to comment.
--:-- Lily Jamali: Zuckerberg has not spoken, as far as I know, giving a direct comment on this.
--:-- Lily Jamali: But the company has said that they have invested billions of dollars in protecting the privacy of users in recent years.
--:-- Lily Jamali: The defendants have called the claims extreme in legal papers, but we are expected to see Mark Zuckerberg and some of these other people, including Reed Hastings of Netflix and Marc Andreessen, a prominent venture capitalist, take the stand in this trial.
--:-- Lily Jamali: It's an eight-day trial starting today.
--:-- Lily Jamali: The judge in the case will ultimately render a decision.
--:-- Lily Jamali: And Mark Zuckerberg, from what we're told, is likely to take the stand sometime next week.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Lily Jamali.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: A pro-Russian group blamed for hacks on critical infrastructure across Europe has been dismantled in coordinated action by EU crime agencies in 12 countries.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The hackers, called No Name 05716, are accused of launching thousands of what's called denial-of-service attacks, which overwhelms individual systems.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The hackers targeted arms factories, power suppliers, government agencies and public transport, especially in Ukraine.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Anna Holligan reports from The Hague.
--:-- Anna Holligan: The hackers have disrupted major events across the continent, including the European elections, the peace summit for Ukraine, and most recently, the NATO summit here in the Netherlands.
--:-- Anna Holligan: As part of the global police operation, more than 100 servers were taken offline, and eight suspects, among them the alleged ringleaders based in Russia, were identified.
--:-- Anna Holligan: This unprecedented international sweep represents one of the largest actions yet against state-aligned cybercrime networks in Europe.
--:-- Anna Holligan: But investigators warn that with key players out of reach in Russia, the threat may evolve rather than disappear.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Anna Holligan.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Doctors here in Britain have announced that eight babies have been born using a groundbreaking three-person IVF technique to prevent the children having devastating mitochondrial disease passed from mother to child which starves the body of energy
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The technique combines the egg and sperm from the mother and father with a tiny amount of DNA from the egg of a second donor woman
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The technique has been legal in the UK for a decade, but this is the first proof that it's leading to children being born free of illness caused by defective mitochondria, the powerhouse of cells.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: None of the families involved in using the three-person IVF technique are speaking publicly.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: But Kat Kitto, whose daughter Poppy was diagnosed with mitochondrial disease 12 years ago when she was just 18 months old, supports its use.
--:-- Kat Kitto: It impacts any individual completely differently and any cell can be impacted.
--:-- Kat Kitto: So in our daughter it severely affects her. She is unable to use most of her body independently. Very life-limiting.
--:-- Kat Kitto: To realise that eight babies have been born free of mitochondrial disease and those families are able to live a life with children free of pain, discomfort, disease is really, really optimistic and hopeful.
--:-- Kat Kitto: And it's absolutely not IVF for IVF's sake. It is to eradicate disease for which there is no cure.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Anchor Desai heard more from the BBC's health and science correspondent, James Gallagher.
--:-- James Gallagher: This is all about something called mitochondria, which barely anybody has heard of, but they're actually the reason you breathe because they take oxygen and food and they turn that into the usable energy your body needs to survive and those mitochondria are nearly every cell of your body
--:-- James Gallagher: What happens is they're passed down from mother to child so if you have very high levels of defective mitochondria in the eggs in your ovaries then all of your children could be affected by mitochondrial disease
--:-- James Gallagher: So the way scientists have developed a way of overcoming this is to introduce a second woman who effectively acts as a donor of her healthy mitochondria to the couple that are trying to conceive
--:-- James Gallagher: And how many people does the mitochondrial disease impact and affect?
--:-- James Gallagher: The figures are around about one in every 5,000 births are affected by mitochondrial disease
--:-- James Gallagher: I should say that there is a wide range of symptoms.
--:-- James Gallagher: So some people are relatively mildly affected and will survive into adulthood.
--:-- James Gallagher: Some people have different parts of the body who are affected, but in the most extreme cases it can be fatal within days or even hours of birth.
--:-- James Gallagher: This was also something that was pioneered in Newcastle a decade ago.
--:-- James Gallagher: So why has it taken so long, I guess, for it to be published and become more common knowledge?
--:-- James Gallagher: There was a big moment a decade ago when Parliament in the United Kingdom voted to become the first country in the world to make this technique legal.
--:-- James Gallagher: Then there was a process of refining the technology to actually make it work in a clinic rather than in a laboratory.
--:-- James Gallagher: And then just as they were getting ready to go, COVID happened, the pandemic happened, and that delayed everything.
--:-- James Gallagher: And it's now that they've done the first births and they've monitored them for long enough to be convinced that they are free of mitochondrial disease.
--:-- James Gallagher: What about, I guess, some of the concerns ethically?
--:-- James Gallagher: There have been some concerns in some countries.
--:-- James Gallagher: The ethics of this are fascinating.
--:-- James Gallagher: And different countries around the world, for starters, have different laws around what types of embryo research that you can actually do.
--:-- James Gallagher: And so the UK made it legal. Only Australia has followed in terms of making it legal.
--:-- James Gallagher: But the ethics of this come down to one of the consequences of the way the eggs and the sperm are manipulated.
--:-- James Gallagher: So you get about 99.9% of your genetic inheritance from mum and dad, as you always would.
--:-- James Gallagher: But you get about 0.1% from the donor because mitochondria have their own DNA, which governs how the mitochondria works inside the body.
--:-- James Gallagher: And so you do get that tiny amount of genetic inheritance from the third person.
--:-- James Gallagher: And the way this works, if you have daughters, you will pass that on to them.
--:-- James Gallagher: And if there's a permanent change that's passed down through the generations.
--:-- James Gallagher: How soon can we start seeing the full effects of a child into adulthood as well? And knowing whether this disease is eradicated completely?
--:-- James Gallagher: I can answer that in two ways.
--:-- James Gallagher: One of them is we'll find out when they're like 40 or 50 and you just kind of have to wait.
--:-- James Gallagher: What's happened so far is they go through quite a rigorous developmental testing.
--:-- James Gallagher: And that takes place at 18 months.
--:-- James Gallagher: It's at age five, so there's still actually a way to go with lots of these eight babies.
--:-- James Gallagher: They do those kinds of tests again.
--:-- James Gallagher: And when you're five, you get a pretty good idea of what's going to happen decades down the line.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: James Gallagher.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: A team from the luxury fashion house Prada has been meeting shoemakers in the Indian city of Kolopur after accusations of cultural appropriation.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Prada sparked outrage at a fashion show in Milan last month when its models wore Kolopur-style sandals without crediting their famous origins.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Here's a letter in A-Smith.
--:-- A-Smith: When Prada unveiled what it labelled its latest leather footwear, it looked rather familiar, particularly to the artisans of Kolopur who've been handcrafting the very same leather footwear for over 800 years.
--:-- A-Smith: They're so well known that India gave them geographical indication status in 2019.
--:-- A-Smith: Trade experts called the lack of credits a serious oversight.
--:-- A-Smith: Indians were outraged.
--:-- A-Smith: Prada has admitted being inspired by the iconic footwear.
--:-- A-Smith: It's promised to work to help Kulipur's sandals gain their rightful global recognition.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Electron A. Smith.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: And finally, how do you make a hot house or greenhouse less hot?
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Well, that's the challenge facing Kew Gardens, the world-renowned Britannic gardens in West London.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The Palm House, which dates from 1848, and the Waterlily House, which opened four years later, are to be painstakingly renovated in a project which could take five years.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The $65 million project will refurbish the building's iron frame and replace its glass, and will also switch to greener heating methods to cut its emissions to net zero.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Our science editor, Rebecca Morrell, reports.
--:-- Rebecca Morrell: Cue's Palm House is a wonder of the Victorian age.
--:-- Rebecca Morrell: When it opened in 1848, it was the largest glasshouse ever constructed.
--:-- Rebecca Morrell: But the hot and humid conditions inside, that are essential for the tropical plants it houses, have taken their toll on the building.
--:-- Rebecca Morrell: Its ornate painted metalwork is rusting, and 16,000 panes of glass need to be replaced.
--:-- Rebecca Morrell: The renovation will begin in two years' time, but the horticulturalists at Kew have already started to relocate some of the precious plants, as more than 1,000 species need to be removed and safely stored before work can start.
--:-- Rebecca Morrell: Thomas Pickering is the head of glasshouses at Kew.
--:-- Thomas Pickering: So it's going to be a long-term project here, and over the next two years it's going to be a process of selecting which plants we need to containerise and keep, which ones we need to propagate.
--:-- Thomas Pickering: And also some of the plants will be felling because we won't be able to move them.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Kew is also taking the opportunity to make the greenhouse much greener, replacing the gas boilers with huge heat pumps to drastically cut its emissions.
--:-- Rebecca Morrell: That report by Rebecca Murrell.
--:-- 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 Rosanwyn Dorrell.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The producers were Leah McChefrey and Ariane Kocci.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: The editor is Karen Martin.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: I'm Valerie Sanderson.
--:-- Valerie Sanderson: Until next time, bye-bye.
--:-- Asma Khalid: America is changing. And so is the world.
--:-- Asma Khalid: But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval.
--:-- Asma Khalid: 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.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Where the world and America meet.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
