--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: At 17 hours GMT on Thursday the 18th of September, these are our main stories.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: President Trump says again that he's disappointed in Vladimir Putin as he completes his state visit to the UK.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Ukraine says it's attacked two refineries in Russia, bringing operations at one of them to a complete halt.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Hundreds of thousands of people are on strike in France in protest at the government's austerity plans.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: And a lager a day, the alcohol intake enjoyed by wild chimpanzees and white matters to humans.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: This sort of supports the drunken monkey hypothesis, which basically says that human attraction to alcohol today originated from this evolutionary exposure to ethanol.
--:-- [Sound effects: News theme music continues to play in the background]
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: It has been a whirlwind two days in the UK for President Trump on an unprecedented second state visit.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Wednesday saw a day of pageantry when he was welcomed by King Charles at Windsor Castle for a glittering event with guests who all sat down to the best food and wine the UK can offer.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Today, Mr Trump's destination was Chequers, the official country residence of the British Prime Minister for talks.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: It has been a flawlessly choreographed and tightly controlled trip, with the greatest moment of possible danger left to the end, the news conference when both leaders would be questioned by journalists from the UK and the US.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: In his opening remarks, the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, said the country's special relationship had been renewed for a new era.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: The United Kingdom and the United States stand together today as first partners on defence, first partners in trade with the groundbreaking deal we struck in May and now with a new agreement that we've just signed this afternoon.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: We're confirming our status as the first partners in science and technology, ready to define this century together, just as we did the last.
--:-- [Sound effects: News theme music continues to play in the background]
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: President Trump was asked whether peace talks on Ukraine have come to the end of the road, and if President Putin has let him down.
--:-- Donald Trump: He has let me down. I mean, he's killing many people, and he's losing more people than he's, you know, than he's killing.
--:-- Donald Trump: I mean, frankly, the Russian soldiers are being killed at a higher rate than the Ukrainian soldiers.
--:-- Donald Trump: But uh yeah he said let me down I don't like to see it's death you know it doesn't affect the united states we have other than unless you end up in a world war over this thing you could this was a thing that would have never happened had i been president if i were president it would have never happened and it didn't happen for four years people most people agree it didn't happen nor was it close to happening and i spoke to president putin about ukraine it was the apple of his eye.
--:-- Donald Trump: I've said that many times.
--:-- Donald Trump: It was. But he would have never done what he did, except that he didn't respect the leadership of the United States.
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--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: As the news conference ended, we got the initial thoughts of our North America correspondent, Gary O'Donoghue, and our UK chief political correspondent, Henry Zeffman.
--:-- Henry Zeffman: So how did Henry think the prime minister's office in number 10 Downing Street would feel about how it went?
--:-- Henry Zeffman: I think they'll be delighted with that in number 10.
--:-- Henry Zeffman: President Trump disagreed with Keir Starmer, sure, on quite a few important things, on Gaza, on illegal immigration and how to handle it, on energy policy.
--:-- Henry Zeffman: But those are all things that we knew at the start of this trip that they disagreed on.
--:-- Henry Zeffman: And President Trump disagreed in the most agreeable way possible.
--:-- Henry Zeffman: The tone of the whole thing was essentially agree to disagree.
--:-- Henry Zeffman: And then there were the unexploded ordinances.
--:-- Henry Zeffman: There was nothing really other than something quite perfunctory on Jeffrey Epstein and Lord Mandelson.
--:-- Henry Zeffman: In fact, Donald Trump claimed not to know who Lord Mandelson was and nothing at all on Nigel Farage.
--:-- Henry Zeffman: So I think chalk this one up as a big success for Sir Keir Starmer and 10 Downing Street.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to step onto Henry's territory, but if I was Downing Street, I'd be cracking open the champagne right now because you couldn't have hoped for that to go any better.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: Donald Trump was in one of those kind of reflective, I don't want to say low energy, but sort of not quite in one of those sort of full on moods that he can be.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: It's obviously been a long visit, you know, and that has taken its toll to some degree.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: And as Henry was saying, there were there were there were opportunities for fireworks there.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: He was, you know, people laid some bait in terms of freedom of speech.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: A couple of times that wasn't taken in terms of attacking the UK.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: You know, when it came to recognition of Israel, all he said was, we disagree.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: It's one of the few things we disagree.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: And then he stopped and he said nothing more.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: So you look at things like that and you look at some of the other issues around, particularly around Gaza and Putin.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: I think that that will be an absolute win for the president as well, because, you know, he's he's the pomp of his visit has not been overshadowed by any kind of fireworks at the press conference.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: And if you're in Downing Street, as Henry has been pointing out, you will breathe an enormous sigh of relief at that moment in this visit, that moment in this visit where you didn't really have control over what would happen.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: And the Prime Minister, he kind of bossed the whole 45 minutes, didn't he?
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: He bossed it.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: Yeah, he did.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: He felt completely in control, of the way in which the press conference was unfolding, of who was asking things at different times.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: And that, I think, was the risk for Downing Street, was that he ceded that control deliberately or otherwise to President Trump and then lost control.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: But I mean, you're absolutely right. President Trump did not take opportunities, which in other circumstances or perhaps with other fellow world leaders who he likes less, he might have taken.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: I think actually at one point President Trump even said, I don't want to be controversial.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: I mean, I think that wouldn't have been in the wildest spin doctor's dreams in 10 Downing Street as something that President Trump would both say and then act on.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: I thought it was interesting.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: I mean, Donald Trump repeated the idea that he won the 2020 election again, which we know he didn't.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: Now, you know, he repeated that. No one picked up on that.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: And that could have been something, a very tricky question for Keir Starmer.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: If someone had said, do you agree? He just said he won the 2020. Do you agree with that?
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: But no one really picked up on that.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: And I thought the interesting thing that the Prime Minister does is he, when he's asked a difficult question about the areas of disagreement, he actually focuses in on the nugget of what they do agree with in that disagreement.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: So asked about Palestine he goes straight in on Hamas being a terrorist organisation.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: They don't want to be part of a two solution. They should have no part in the future.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: So he gets right in there with the bit the tiny bit where there common ground.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: Well, and I think it helps us understand how deftly he is clearly handling President Trump behind closed doors as well.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: It's clearly not an accident that Sir Keir Starmer has managed to find a way to, dare we even say, make President Trump a bit boring.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: And, you know, that has happened behind closed doors.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: They've established this warm rapport.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: And I think actually probably what we got a bit of in public view was the way in which Sakhir Starmer manages to smooth over those points of difference and maintain the rapport.
--:-- [Sound effects: News theme music continues to play in the background]
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: A day of action is underway in France.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: O'China, O'China, O'China, O'China, O'China!
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Where hundreds of thousands of people are expected to join strikes and demonstrations against the government's plans to cut public spending.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Some schools are closed, many pharmacies are shut, and there's expected to be severe disruption on the Paris metro network.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: The effect of strikes and demonstrations is being felt across the country, with cities including Marseille and Lyon also affected.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Our correspondent Hugh Schofield spoke to us from the Place de la Bastille in Paris.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: We're at the start of the demonstration and so the crowds are beginning to gather.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: I can see lots of coloured balloons from the various unions.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: This This is very much, as opposed to the day of blockage last week, which is a kind of amorphous, spontaneous affair led by social media, this is very much a traditional public sector union-organised demonstration, a real kind of display of muscle by the unions and the battalions in the big public sector.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: So I can see red balloons, orange balloons from the various different unions, and it's very hard so far to gauge how big it is, but all the unions, of course, are claiming it's been a big success
--:-- Hugh Schofield: There's, I don't know, 250 different demonstrations and cortege around the country.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: Yes, as you said, this is happening everywhere, isn't it?
--:-- Hugh Schofield: Not just Paris.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: Totally.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: I mean, but that's classic for a day like today.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: It's, you know, it's a big day of protest organized by the unions and with the backing of the left wing parties.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: They want it to be a real kind of arm twister on President Macron and his new Prime Minister, Le Corneau, to influence them as they go through the motions now of forming a government and trying to draw up a new budget.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: So, you know, even though the other thing about all this, of course, is that it was called when there was another Prime Minister, François Beirut, in order to counter his plans, dramatic plans in their view, to counter the growing debt.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: He's gone, Beirut's gone, but they've maintained this display of force in order to maintain the pressure on his successor, who's Sebastian Le Corneau, and of course, through him on President Macron.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: So are these protests primarily about cuts to public spending, or are people angry about other things too, for example, low wages?
--:-- Hugh Schofield: Look, it's a left-wing demonstration.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: It's a political show force by the people who support the left, particularly the unions and the parties and so on.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: And what they want to do is exert pressure.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: They want to exert pressure on the government to tailor a budget which is more to their way of thinking.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: That means with fewer cuts, with fewer of the threats that they see in the budget to the welfare state as it's been handed down over generations.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: So, you know, what they're protesting about is the general sense of threat to the world they know.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: The counter argument from the government and certainly from the outgoing Prime Minister Prasabero is, you can't go on like this, we can't go on like this.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: There is a massive level which is going to hit us in the face soon.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: And if we don't get our act together, life is going to get very, very tough indeed.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: And all talk of any kind of welfare state is going to go out the window.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: So there are two polar opposites here.
--:-- Hugh Schofield: And it has to be said that the public feeling is much more with the protesters who are saying, no, don't touch our welfare state than it is with those Cassandra-like figures like Bronson Barberi who are saying, hang on, we've got to do something or else none of this is going to survive.
--:-- [Sound effects: News theme music continues to play in the background]
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Ukraine's Special Operations Forces say they've struck an important oil refinery in the city of Volgograd in western Russia.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: They claim the attack has brought operations there to a complete halt.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: The refinery is one of Russia's largest and helps supply the country's armed forces with fuel.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Danny Abahard has more details.
--:-- Danny Abahard: Russia has not officially commented on the Ukrainian claims to have hit and stopped production at the Volgograd refinery.
--:-- Danny Abahard: The region's governor spoke only of Russian air defences repelling a massive drone attack, adding that, as he put it, debris had fallen on private homes in the city.
--:-- Danny Abahard: The Russian authorities have, though, acknowledged there's been a drone attack and a fire at a separate petrochemical refinery in the Bashkort-Astan region to the north of Kazakhstan.
--:-- Danny Abahard: Video footage of the aftermath posted online that's been verified by the BBC shows large amounts of black smoke rising into the sky from a fierce blaze at the plant.
--:-- [Sound effects: News theme music continues to play in the background]
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Could artificial intelligence replace journalists?
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Around the world, some newsrooms are increasingly using it to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: But big questions remain over the ethics and quality of AI output.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Sam Gruett has this report.
--:-- Sam Gruett: Hello and welcome to Channel One, a new way of consuming, reporting and thinking about the news powered by artificial intelligence.
--:-- Sam Gruett: For Channel One, the future is very much here.
--:-- Sam Gruett: All presented by our team of AI-generated reporters.
--:-- Sam Gruett: The generative AI news service, launched for a brief period last year, advertised its news scripted, edited and presented, by artificial intelligence.
--:-- Sam Gruett: But would you or anyone you know actually watch a channel that lacks a real human being?
--:-- Sam Gruett: I put that to founder and CEO Adam Mossam.
--:-- Adam Mossam: We got, I think it was 8,000 emails in the week after that.
--:-- Adam Mossam: And that was from such a wide variety of folks, everything from people that were the creatives in the industry to the CEOs of, I feel like most of the biggest media companies on the planet.
--:-- Adam Mossam: What about the potential for AI to You completely replace journalists?
--:-- Adam Mossam: Listen, there's a lot of jobs that, you know, if you speak to folks in the industry that are being done that people don't really want to do.
--:-- Adam Mossam: Right.
--:-- Adam Mossam: They want to focus on higher value content.
--:-- Adam Mossam: If we could take that off their off their plates, our product essentially acts as, you know, an assistant to the creatives.
--:-- Adam Mossam: Right.
--:-- Adam Mossam: Next comes the launch of our daily news program in countries and languages across the globe.
--:-- Adam Mossam: So with new possibilities for news output, how much of it are we seeing rolled out across newsrooms around the world?
--:-- Adam Mossam: Chris Stoker-Walker is a journalist and author of How AI Ate the World.
--:-- Chris Stoker-Walker: We are seeing AI being used on the front lines of journalism at the point at which the audience consumes that bit of information.
--:-- Chris Stoker-Walker: But it's not all been smooth sailing between the media and AI.
--:-- Chris Stoker-Walker: The New York Times is suing Microsoft and chat GPT maker OpenAI over copyright infringement.
--:-- Chris Stoker-Walker: The newspaper claims the company's used its intellectual property to train large language models.
--:-- Chris Stoker-Walker: One of the challenges here is that, you know, the generative AI space has been a little bit of a wild west.
--:-- Chris Stoker-Walker: There is this real appetite for these AI models to be trained on data.
--:-- Chris Stoker-Walker: Without that source information, AI needs that base data.
--:-- Chris Stoker-Walker: OpenAI has denied these claims and the case is ongoing.
--:-- Chris Stoker-Walker: And frankly, the outcome of it could really significantly affect the future of AI development.
--:-- [Sound effects: News theme music continues to play in the background]
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Our next guest is at the forefront of how one of Britain's biggest newsrooms is using technology to shape the way we consume journalism.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: He's Group Technology Director at the Telegraph Media Group.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Our next guest is Dylan Jacks.
--:-- Dylan Jacks: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: We really have been trying to position ourselves as an organisation that drills into the value of how AI can support, elevate and accelerate journalism.
--:-- Dylan Jacks: We've got a really interesting AI project around our Ukraine The Latest podcasts.
--:-- Dylan Jacks: From today, each episode of Ukraine The Latest will be translated into Ukrainian.
--:-- Dylan Jacks: We want to ensure those most affected by the war can access our coverage.
--:-- Dylan Jacks: That podcast has got really great global reach, but one of the things that we wanted to do is we wanted to make that available to non-English speakers, particularly in Ukraine and Russia, and we used very advanced AI tooling to recreate that podcast, cloning and using the voices of those presenters.
--:-- Dylan Jacks: To be clear, this is AI helping to present our journalism not produce it.
--:-- [Sound effects: News theme music continues to play in the background]
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: If you've got a move coming up, you really need to look into United Van Lines, the do-it-all moving specialists.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: With United Van Lines, you don't worry about a thing.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: You have a dedicated moving coordinator, qualified drivers, and full value protection for your possessions.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Compare that to a couple of dudes manhandling your family heirlooms or cramming your things in a container on your driveway.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Rather than help for the best, you deserve a hassle-free move.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Visit UnitedVanLines.com.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Big moves, small moves, all moves. Easy choice.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: 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.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Dip into hot springs and dive into deserts.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Climb a mountain or make your best effort.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: See thousands of stars in some of the darkest skies.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Stake out haunted hotels.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Can you make it to sunrise?
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: There's always something new to see because we've got plenty of space to just be.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Plan your trip at TravelNevada.com.
--:-- [Sound effects: News theme music continues to play in the background]
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Hi, I'm Cindy Crawford, and I'm the founder of Meaningful Beauty.
--:-- Cindy Crawford: Well, I don't know about you, but like I never liked being told, oh wow, you look so good for your age.
--:-- Cindy Crawford: Like why even bother saying that?
--:-- Cindy Crawford: Why don't you just say you look great at any age, every age?
--:-- Cindy Crawford: That's what Meaningful Beauty is all about.
--:-- Cindy Crawford: We create products that make you feel confident in your skin at the age you are now.
--:-- Cindy Crawford: Meaningful Beauty. Beautiful skin at every age.
--:-- Cindy Crawford: Learn more at MeaningfulBeauty.com.
--:-- [Sound effects: News theme music continues to play in the background]
--:-- Host: 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.
--:-- Host: 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.
--:-- Host: 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 offered the gene site test, 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.
--:-- 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.
--:-- Dr. Whitney Brown: To learn more, visit genesight.com.
--:-- [Sound effects: News theme music continues to play in the background]
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Australia has faced global criticism for its continued reliance on fossil fuels.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: It's one of the world's biggest polluters relative to the size of its population.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Now the country has announced a plan to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 62% over the next decade.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: That's compared to 2005 levels.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: But critics argue the planned cuts don't go far enough.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: The Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, made the announcement at a news conference flanked by ministers.
--:-- Anthony Albanese: This is a responsible target, backed by the science, backed by a practical plan to get there and built on proven technology.
--:-- Anthony Albanese: It's the right target to protect our environment, to protect and advance our economy and jobs and to ensure that we act in our national interest and in the interest of this and future generations.
--:-- Tom Woodruff: It's a step in the right direction, and it certainly shows that Australia is continuing on its journey of transitioning from being a fossil fuel-reliant economy to hopefully an economy that is driven by both clean energy and green industrial experts.
--:-- Tom Woodruff: There's no beating around the bush that the target falls short of what a lot of us hoped for, particularly with respect to what would have been Australia's fair share with respect to the international effort in terms of what the science demands.
--:-- Tom Woodruff: But this is still a really significant step.
--:-- Tom Woodruff: It means that Australia, by the time we get to 2035, will need to be powered, for example, by 93% renewable energy across its national electricity grid.
--:-- Tom Woodruff: And getting to that point is obviously no small thing.
--:-- Tom Woodruff: It's not a leap, this.
--:-- Tom Woodruff: It's a step, you described it as.
--:-- Tom Woodruff: Can it be reached?
--:-- Tom Woodruff: It absolutely can.
--:-- Tom Woodruff: Australia, in fact, should be able to not just meet this target and meet the upper end of its target, which is a 70% reduction in emissions by 2035, but it should be able to beat it.
--:-- Tom Woodruff: Governments are obviously cautious.
--:-- Tom Woodruff: They're setting policies and goals based on the information and tools that they have at their disposal right now.
--:-- Tom Woodruff: But we know from this journey of the clean energy transformation around the world that this is an exponential curve.
--:-- Tom Woodruff: And certainly we believe, renewable energy doing the heavy lifting of this transition, that actually Australia should be able to get a reduction in the mid-70s at the very least by the time we get to 2035.
--:-- Tom Woodruff: And how far would this go towards meeting the longer-term ambition for Australia to get to net zero by 2050?
--:-- Tom Woodruff: Would this get Australia that much closer?
--:-- Tom Woodruff: It certainly puts Australia on the right track and gives us a credible pathway to get into net zero by 2050, as you say.
--:-- Tom Woodruff: The really big thing that it requires and is incumbent on us to do, though, in the next decade, if we are to get to net zero, is we need to take our transformation as being one around largely renewable energy domestically and our domestic sources of electricity.
--:-- Tom Woodruff: And actually, we need to be looking at the hard to abate sectors of our economy and also pivoting our economy to one that is driven by green industrial exports, whilst fossil fuel exports are not accounted for within our national target because those emissions if you will are exported into other jurisdictions
--:-- Tom Woodruff: Our ability to replace those sources of trade revenue on our balance sheet require us to be producing the green industrial commodities of tomorrow
--:-- Tom Woodruff: Things like green ammonia potentially green hydrogen, certainly green iron and green steel, where there's a huge potential in Australia
--:-- Tom Woodruff: And this target continues to allow us to go on that journey
--:-- [Sound effects: News theme music continues to play in the background]
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: We heard earlier about the protests happening across France.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: And as well as his political battles, President Macron is also fighting a defamation case against the right-wing US influencer Candace Owens after she promoted videos online claiming that his wife, Brigitte Macron, was born a man.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: A lawyer acting for the Macrons has said the couple are planning to present photographic and scientific evidence to a court in the US.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: He was speaking to the BBC's Fame Under Fire podcast presented by Anoushka Mutanda-Doherty.
--:-- Anoushka Mutanda-Doherty: Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron are suing the American right-wing influencer Candace Owens after she made repeated claims that France's first lady was born male.
--:-- Anoushka Mutanda-Doherty: Miss Owens has stated she would stake her entire professional reputation on the allegation.
--:-- Anoushka Mutanda-Doherty: The Macrons began their legal action in July, saying she'd been spreading outlandish, defamatory and far-fetched fictions.
--:-- Anoushka Mutanda-Doherty: Their lawyer, Tom Clare, wouldn't at this stage reveal the exact nature of the expert scientific testimony the couple were willing to give, but he said they were prepared to demonstrate fully, both generically and specifically that the allegations were false.
--:-- Anoushka Mutanda-Doherty: Obviously, it's incredibly intrusive for this family to have to go into open court and present this evidence.
--:-- Anoushka Mutanda-Doherty: But that should just demonstrate how serious they are about it, how confident they are in their ability to prove it as false in a public forum, and how they want to put this falsehood to rest once and for all.
--:-- [Sound effects: News theme music continues to play in the background]
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: The fashion industry is notoriously ageist.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Now, one of its most influential figures, the former British Vogue editor Edward Ennenfall, is tackling this taboo by featuring an actress in her 50s on the first cover of his new magazine, 72.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: She might be Julia Roberts, a Hollywood A-lister and famous beauty, but she's 57 years old and at an age where women are overlooked, as he explained to the BBC's Amur Raja.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: When I talk about inclusivity, people always automatically go to race.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: They think it's always about colour.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: But my work at British Vogue, my work has always been about women who I call ageless.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: And it was very important to me that the first cover was a woman of a certain age.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: It's the age where women are seen as invisible when they hit their 50s or 60s.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: And I felt like talking of inclusivity, that is the kind of woman I wanted to target for the first issue.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: Sort of the invisible woman.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: And Julia does represent, yes, all that, the fame, the biggest movie star in the world.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: But at the same time, she's also a woman of a great age, a beautiful age.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: And I thought, let's start with that.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: You're no longer the editor of British Vogue.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: I want to ask you about your departure from there.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: Were you surprised at the fact that it ended?
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: And are you glad that it ended?
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: Because here we are now, you're launching something new.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: I decided to end it.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: I sort of changed an industry where diversity was concerned.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: Six years in, looking at every magazine, September covers, you had women of colour.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: Everywhere I looked, I felt my work was done.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: But also we're in an industry in flux at the moment because I think we're potentially going back to sort of an industry that's just sort of one type is the norm.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: You know, being European is the norm.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: Being super thin is the norm.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: It's a bigger picture.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: Designers are leaving houses.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: You know, new designers are being brought in, then they're taken out.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: But the exciting thing about now is it's like it's almost like anything goes right now.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: This is the perfect time to be able to shape an industry.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: And I've always sort of kind of been around in those moments somehow.
--:-- Edward Ennenfall: So I'm so excited to be coming back to this industry right now because I know there's a lot of work to be done.
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--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Humans have drunk alcohol for thousands of years.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: It's not clear how we got a taste for it, but we know wild chimpanzees also consume alcohol by eating a lot of fermented fruit.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: New research has found they consume the alcoholic equivalent of a standard-sized bottle of lager every single day.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: Alexey Marrow from the University of California, Berkeley, took part in the study.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: We went out and collected fruits from underneath foraging chimpanzees and on the ground where they were foraging in some cases in Thai.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: And we assayed the ethanol concentrations within the fruits and found about very low concentrations of 0.3 to 0.4% on average.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: But since chimpanzees consume such a large amount of food per day, upwards of 10% of their body mass, it really does add up.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: And as we say, over the course of a day, they consume about 14 grams of pure ethanol.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: Is it your sense then that they are deliberately going out to, well, not get drunk, that would be to put a too human a spin on it, but to look for that alcohol?
--:-- Alexey Marrow: Yeah, so we tend to think of alcohol in terms of drinks.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: It's really less comparable to a drink of highly concentrated liquid alcohol that you drink quickly and more like eating highly fermented food during the course of a day.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: Because even if you had a drink or two, if you spread it out over breakfast, lunch and dinner, you know, you're hardly likely to feel anything.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: You mentioned getting it from under the feet of these chimpanzees.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: Was it quite an undertaking, quite a difficult thing to do?
--:-- Alexey Marrow: Well, these chimpanzees have been habituated for decades now and they've been studied for a long time.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: So it's actually really fascinating.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: It's like getting a window into an ancient society or something.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: Each of the chimps are recognizable by their face.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: They all have a name and a backstory.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: And the more time you spend out there, the more you recognize that.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: And it's really fascinating.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: Yeah.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: And does it suggest then add more evidence to the case that humans might have got our taste for alcohol, the taste that some humans have for alcohol from our primate ancestors?
--:-- Alexey Marrow: That's exactly right, since we suspect that chimpanzees today live a similar lifestyle to what our remote ancestors did millions of years ago when we were fruit eaters.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: So if there's alcohol fermenting in the fruits now, then there likely was back then as well.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: And this sort of supports the drunken monkey hypothesis, which my PhD advisor, Robert Dudley, started, which basically says that human attraction to alcohol today originated from this evolutionary exposure to ethanol through our fruits that we were eating and through particularly the smell of ethanol may be a signal of sugar calories and helped us to find the fruit crops in the forest.
--:-- Alexey Marrow: So it's cheers for the chimps.
--:-- [Sound effects: News theme music continues to fade out]
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: America is changing, and so is the world.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: I'm Tristan Redman in London.
--:-- Host: Valerie Sanderson: And this is The Global Story.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Tristan Redman: The Global Story, every weekday, bringing you the stories that matter.
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