--:-- Janet Jaleel: This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jaleel, and at 4 Hours GMT on Thursday the 9th of October, these are our main stories.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: President Trump announces that Israel and Hamas have agreed to the first phase of a Gaza peace deal, paving the way for hostage and prisoner releases.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Nine months after one of Los Angeles' worst fires devastated the affluent Pacific Palisades neighbourhood, police arrest a suspect.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Cristiano Ronaldo becomes the first billionaire footballer.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Also in this podcast... The longest-running musical in London's West End, Les Miserables, celebrates its 40th anniversary.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: It has evolved over the years, so it's been restaged. New casts come and go and bring their own interpretation to it.
--:-- [Sound of news theme music fades out]
--:-- Janet Jaleel: As we record this podcast, the world is beginning to react to the news that Israel and Hamas have agreed to a deal that should see hostages and prisoners released soon.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: President Donald Trump took to social media to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first phase of his peace plan.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: He said this meant that all the hostages in Gaza would be released soon, although it's thought perhaps it will be all living hostages initially, given the difficulty of retrieving the bodies of those who have died.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: He also said that Israel would withdraw its troops to what he called an agreed-upon line, although it's not clear where that line will lie.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: As the news spread, Palestinians in Gaza thronged the streets of Khan Yunis even though it was the middle of the night, to celebrate what they hope will be the start of the end of the war.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Just a few kilometers away in Israel, the families of hostages also welcome the announcement, chanting, cheering and lighting fireworks in celebration.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Meanwhile, speaking to Fox News, Mr Trump hailed the deal as peace in the Middle East, saying hostages could be released in just a few days.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: The big thing is hostages are going to be released. It's probably our time would be probably Monday.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: And, you know, it's they're terribly a terrible situation. They're deep. They're deep in the earth and they're being gotten.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: And a lot of things are happening right now. As we speak, so much is happening to get the hostages freed.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: And we think they'll all be coming back on Monday.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Our chief international correspondent, Lise Doucette, who's in Tel Aviv, said there had been a lot of doubt that negotiators would even achieve the first phase of an agreement.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: They have moved with breathtaking speed.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: We've seen these negotiations year on year, decade after decade, where when they get down to the last detail, sometimes the talks can drag on and there can be unexpected hurdles.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: So hours ago, the Times of Israel put out a big statement saying the deal could be finished as early as tonight.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: There was some caution being expressed by some of the mediators.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: I sent messages to people that I know who were in Sharm el-Sheikh and they said, yes, we believe it will happen shortly.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: But with the knowledge of how detailed this is, how there can be last-minute obstacles, there was a sense, well, wait, let's wait and see.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: And it's extraordinary that it has broken through so very quickly.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Of course, we have to underline, we don't have all the details yet, but all the emphasis is on the first phase, which will be the release of all the remaining hostages.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Alive and dead has been the phrase, but we do know that during the negotiations, Hamas had said they weren't sure that they would be able to reach all of the remains in a very short time, if at all, because given the intensity of the war on the battlefield, some of the remains sadly could be buried under mounds of rubble, could have been moved during the war.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: But we're getting reports now that the release of the 20 living hostages could start as early as this weekend, that the Israeli cabinet will convene.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: They will have to approve the deal.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Once the deal is approved, then it's going to quickly be set in motion with the release of the hostages as soon as possible.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: In exchange for, under the deal, which again, we don't have the new details, but what was on the table was 250 prisoners from Israeli jails, most of them on multiple life sentences, as well as more than a thousand who had been detained during the war.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: So that exchange will start.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: It was included in that Hamas statement that Israeli forces have to withdraw to a line.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: We don't know what that line is yet.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: We don't know what percentage of the Gaza Strip Israel will continue to control.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Aid is supposed to then start flowing into Gaza.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: And judging what happened during the last ceasefire between January and March, the trucks started moving in almost immediately, going up to 600 trucks a day and sometimes much more than that.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Where there still is trouble, we know, where we know there isn't agreement, is on the final elements of President Trump's 20-point plan, which talk about the future of the Gaza Strip.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Who will govern it?
--:-- Janet Jaleel: What is the political horizon?
--:-- Janet Jaleel: We haven't heard about whether Hamas has agreed to disarm.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: So it is very much the first phase.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: But even that is hugely significant.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: This is a major, major breakthrough.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Lise Doucette, well, for two years now, Gaza's people have been constantly on the move, trying to survive between the shifting front lines of Israel's offensive.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: The destruction of homes and neighborhoods has had a profound impact on individuals, while the constant movement of people has broken the social structures that held communities together.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Israel doesn't allow international journalists into Gaza, so working with colleagues in the territory, and just before this latest news broke, our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson spoke to the residents of one apartment block in Gaza City about what happens to families who are forced to move over and over again.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Walk towards the beach along Gaza City's Omar al Mukta Street.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Turn left beside the ruins of the old American International School and you'll be standing in front of the skate building.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Look up to the first floor and you might see one of Shaukat Al-Ansari's seven children hanging over the ledge where the windows used to be.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: His youngest one Hanin often gazing out at the destruction from her father's arms.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: During the bombing, I get the kids away from the windows and make the kids sleep here.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: We stay here until morning while I'll hold them and keep them calm.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: The empty apartment is the latest temporary home for Shaukat and his family.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Their old house and neighborhood in Bet Lahia are totally flattened.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Nothing left.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: The constant displacement, he says, is not only straining families, but family ties.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: The family has split.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: My mother and sister are both now in the south, sleeping on the street.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: I'm here in Gaza City, constantly moving.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Four months ago, my brother went missing.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: We are all stranded in different places.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Three floors above Shaukat is Hadil Daban with her husband and three children.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: It's the 12th place they've moved to since the war began.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: The people who were here before us laughed because it was so dangerous.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Shrapnel sometimes hits the walls here, but still better than a ton.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: The sound of explosions regularly echoes around the building, but Hadil's young sons don't flinch.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: The family has already survived several strikes, she says.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: One killed her mother-in-law, injured her children and buried her husband alive.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: On the fifth floor of the building, Munashabet points out the large bullet holes in the wall.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: They hit here two days ago, she said, but she and her large extended family are staying.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Everything they owned was wiped out with their neighborhood in Al-Tufa, Muna says, and they've got no money to leave.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: We are starting life again, spoon by spoon, plate by plate.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Famine came and we had to eat weed-ground pigeon feed to eat, living on wild greens.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: After two years of war, I say I'm not alive.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: I'm one of the dead.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: In two years of war, the UN says 90% of Gaza's residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Home is more than shelter or belongings.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: The constant movement has seen families fray and health services, education and social support disappear.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: Shaukat tries to study with his children, chanting with them from a crumpled alphabet chart.
--:-- Lucy Williamson: My kids were smart at school before the war, he says, but now they're forgetting how to read and count.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Days later, a call from the building. Hadil and several other families are packing up to leave again.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Three families brought together and separated by war.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Peace could end their journeys, but their old lives are behind them.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: This war has wiped out the road to the past.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Lucy Williamson reporting on the toll that the war in Gaza has had on families there.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Cast your mind back to January now, and what started as a normal Tuesday morning turned into a nightmare for residents in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood in Los Angeles.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Late into the night, we watch one of America's wealthiest neighbourhoods burn.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: The flames so intense, the fire crews are powerless to stop them.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: So if I very quickly take my mask off, the air is absolutely thick with smoke.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: The fire crews here tell us they have a shortage of water and in many instances they're having to stand and watch these properties burn.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: It is a losing battle.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: That was our correspondent John Studworth reporting on what turned out to be one of the worst fires in LA's history.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: The Palisades fire killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes, reducing entire neighbourhoods to ash and rubble.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Now, nine months on, police have arrested a 29-year-old man from Florida on suspicion of starting that fire.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Bill Isaley is the acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: The allegations in the affidavit are supported by digital evidence, including the defendant's chat GPT prompt of a dystopian painting showing in part a burning forest and a crowd fleeing from it.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Our reporter in Los Angeles, Reagan Morris, told us more about the suspect.
--:-- Reagan Morris: His name is Jonathan Rindernekt and he was arrested in Florida where he's living now, but he was living in Los Angeles and had at one stage lived in the Pacific Palisades and knew that neighborhood well.
--:-- Reagan Morris: And, you know, the night of the, it was New Year's Eve.
--:-- Reagan Morris: He was working as an Uber driver in the neighborhood and people who he dropped off, you know, shortly before midnight said he appeared agitated and angry.
--:-- Reagan Morris: And then authorities now say that he went up to a popular hiking trail in that area.
--:-- Reagan Morris: And shortly after midnight, they believe he lit a fire.
--:-- Reagan Morris: And they're using sort of the GPS tracking and whatnot on his cell phone and the images and things that he was doing with his phone to make their case.
--:-- Reagan Morris: And they believe he did start the fire.
--:-- Reagan Morris: They believe it was maliciously set.
--:-- Reagan Morris: He was listening to some French rap.
--:-- Reagan Morris: Apparently, he lived in France for a part of his life.
--:-- Reagan Morris: And was fluent in French, and he was listening to a bleak French rap song on repeat that showed a video of people starting fire.
--:-- Reagan Morris: And they painted a picture of a young man fixated with fire.
--:-- Reagan Morris: And they say he lied to authorities about his movements and where he was when the fire started.
--:-- Reagan Morris: And they pinged cell phone towers to deconstruct that and said he was, you know, within 20 feet of where the fire started.
--:-- Reagan Morris: There's cameras up there that are used for firefighters to report when things do start.
--:-- Reagan Morris: And he also used his phone to call emergency services, though.
--:-- Reagan Morris: He did dial 911.
--:-- Reagan Morris: He couldn't get a phone signal the first few times.
--:-- Reagan Morris: And then apparently he actually screen recorded himself dialing 911, which the arson investigators believe was a sign that he was trying to cover his tracks and it's kind of unusual behavior.
--:-- Reagan Morris: How has the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood recovered nine months on from those devastating fires?
--:-- Reagan Morris: You know, not great.
--:-- Reagan Morris: It's coming along.
--:-- Reagan Morris: They've cleared a lot of the rubble, but, you know, for people that live there and the thousands who've lost homes, very few have been rebuilt.
--:-- Reagan Morris: You know, they've gotten a lot of the rubble and toxic waste and, you know, car batteries.
--:-- Reagan Morris: It's just such a mess in there.
--:-- Reagan Morris: So a lot of that toxic waste is gone now, and construction crews are really just starting to move in and start rebuilding.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Two days after France's recently appointed prime minister stunned the nation by resigning just hours after he'd named his cabinet, he has suggested a solution can be found to the political crisis that over the past year has seen one short-lived prime minister replace another.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: The outgoing prime minister, Sébastien Le Corneau, said President Macron would be able to name a replacement for him before the weekend, as he expressed hope that this would avoid snap parliamentary elections.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: At Mr Macron's request, Mr Le Cornu has been holding talks with opposition parties to try to find a new government that can pass a budget that will reduce France's ballooning debt.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: We have a small majority, some political groupings who are basically ready to agree to a common budget.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: political groupings from the opposition, particularly from the left, who also want the stability and want a budget for France.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: But they do have conditions.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: And I told the President of the Republic that the possibility of Parliament being dissolved is receding.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: And I think the situation will allow the President to nominate a Prime Minister in the next 48 hours.
--:-- Catherine Norris: So are things clearer now?
--:-- Catherine Norris: Not a lot I think what S Lecornu was doing was trying to buy some more time because clearly the discussions about forming a government have made some headway but they've not been resolved absolutely.
--:-- Catherine Norris: So Emmanuel Macron really does want to avoid snap elections, dissolving parliament again.
--:-- Catherine Norris: And that's because he doesn't want to see the far right party, the National Rally of Marine Le Pen, get into power, which opinion polls say could be the case if there were new annexions.
--:-- Catherine Norris: So they're really trying to basically cobble together some kind of government.
--:-- Catherine Norris: And although they seem to have got some kind of agreement, it looks like that may now be possible after the spectacular drama of the beginning of the week when we thought it was all over.
--:-- Catherine Norris: So it's a bit of a turnaround, but no details yet and no real guarantees that any government, if it were formed, would be able to last any amount of time before being voted down.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: For more than two decades, he's dazzled football fans around the world.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Now the Portuguese world star, Cristiano Ronaldo, has become the first billionaire footballer, according to Bloomberg.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: It's thanks in large part to his current lucrative contract with the Saudi club.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: His total net worth is now put at around $1.4 billion.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Sports news reporter Joe Linsky explained how Bloomberg reached that figure.
--:-- Joe Linsky: Bloomberg have a billionaire index which they publish every day which ranks the world's richest people effectively and it uses public data to create a net worth analysis of these individuals.
--:-- Joe Linsky: Now Cristiano Ronaldo has tipped over that £1 billion mark in terms of net worth.
--:-- Joe Linsky: He's the first footballer to do that.
--:-- Joe Linsky: He's actually only the fifth sports person to do that.
--:-- Joe Linsky: So it's a select group.
--:-- Joe Linsky: But all of those kind of legends, they've made most of their money from those big global brand deals, actually.
--:-- Joe Linsky: The difference with Ronaldo is that he's actually got to this billion pound figure mostly through his salary, through his playing salary.
--:-- Joe Linsky: And that's, of course, since he's gone to the Saudi club Al Nasser.
--:-- Joe Linsky: He joined them in 2023.
--:-- Joe Linsky: They haven't won the Saudi title yet in his time there, But he got a new contract in June and his status and his goals are so valuable, not just for that club, but for that league and for that nation in terms of profile.
--:-- Joe Linsky: And this new contract he's got in June means that over the next two years, it's worth nearly 500 million pounds.
--:-- Joe Linsky: That includes all the bonuses and add-ons and that breaks down to about 500 grand a day.
--:-- Joe Linsky: David Beckham, apparently during his playing career, he was worth about 100 million pounds.
--:-- Joe Linsky: So obviously Ronaldo is now worth about 10 times more than that.
--:-- Joe Linsky: He's got brand deals with all sorts of things, with fragrances.
--:-- Joe Linsky: He's got watch deals, underwear deals, and that will mean that his wealth continues to go up after his playing career is over.
--:-- Joe Linsky: But yeah, brand deals are usually the main way that these athletes have this enormous wealth.
--:-- Joe Linsky: But Ronaldo is bucking the trend somewhat.
--:-- Joe Linsky: It's that salary, that Saudi salary from Al Nasser that is really taken him to the next level.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Still to come on the Global News Podcast, why some within the EU are being grilled about whether veggie sausages really are sausages.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: An escalope or a sausage, a steak, whatever, these are products that come from our farms.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: We're not talking about banning plant-based alternatives, of course not, but I think that terms should mean what they mean.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Implementing AI is now a must for companies and the executives in charge of steering them.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: But how do you turn AI experimentation into actual business results?
--:-- Janet Jaleel: I'm Chip Klinexel, host of Resilient Edge, a business vitality podcast paid and presented by Deloitte.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: It's not about AI for AI, but AI for ROI.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Arjun Krishnamurthy from Deloitte cuts through the hype.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: It's about return on investment.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Which use case do I start with that gives me the most value?
--:-- Janet Jaleel: ROI value has become way more important because, you know, AI is not cheap.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: And here's where most companies get stuck, deciding where to invest resources.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Why spend your precious IT or R&D resources on building something that anyway comes out of the box?
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Philip Herzig, SAP's chief technology officer, sees companies spending too many resources reinventing the wheel.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: In this episode, we're joining all the dots for a complete look at AI implementation.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: So where do I actually see the most value, where the least effort, where it's mostly plug and play?
--:-- Janet Jaleel: That helps us to prioritize scenarios that offer medium to high value requiring low to medium effort to implement.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: It sounds simple, but it's revolutionizing how smart companies approach AI investments.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: So where should you build? Where should you buy?
--:-- Janet Jaleel: And how do you avoid common pitfalls that derail most AI initiatives?
--:-- Janet Jaleel: All of that and more on this episode of Resilient Edge.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: For children in Haiti, trauma has become a daily reality.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: That's the finding of a report by the UN's Aid Agency for Children, UNICEF.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: It says a number of youngsters displaced by spiralling gang violence has almost doubled in the last year to around 680,000.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: The gangs have taken over so much of the country that nearly a quarter of the population now lives in areas under their control, exposing many more children to sexual and physical violence.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Stephanie Prentice told me more.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: This firms up the numbers on some of the issues we've been trying to track in Haiti, a place that's extremely difficult to report from.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: It describes a large scale displacement issue that's crucially accelerating.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: As you mentioned, the number of children displaced by violence doubling in just one year.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: And UNICEF describes children forced to flee their homes.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: They're losing access to things like schools, their communities.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: They're being exposed to violence and sexual violence on the streets.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: And that's all on top of existing issues like food insecurity and a lack of access to health care.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: The public services are collapsing in the capital.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: Now, the UN estimates that more than half the population, and that includes 3.3 million children, need urgent humanitarian assistance.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: And we know from previous reports that in this vulnerable state, children are being taken in by the gangs, either forcibly or just with offers of food and shelter, and they use the boys as spies, messengers, foot soldiers, and the girls as domestic slaves and, in some cases, as sex slaves.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: And last week, the UN announced that a new gang suppression force was going in, and that was met with both hope and criticism.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: It was.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: So this new force will be the UN's second attempt at putting a security force there just this year, after the first mission just failed to establish any sort of presence.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: This one's been rebranded as the gang suppression force.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: It was praised when it was announced for being larger.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: It was 5,500 military and police units and for having greater powers in terms of law enforcement.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: The first force was under-resourced.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: This one is more robust and it has more significant backing from the US.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: Critics have said the issues that prevented that first mission are very much still in place and in fact have probably gotten worse.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: The gangs are just really bedded in to the capital Port-au-Prince.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: They control things like supply routes and key infrastructure.
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: And in the background of all this is an announcement we heard on Wednesday that the UN has to reduce peacekeeping forces worldwide by 25 percent
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: And that due to a lack of funding that also linked to USA cuts
--:-- Stephanie Prentice: So the hope for Haiti will be that funding manages to hold long enough to make some sort of impact and bring some sort of stability to a situation that's really already spiralled out of control.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Ukraine's military has accused Russia of trying to erase Ukrainian culture through the looting of historical artefacts.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: A new report details how several sites in occupied Crimea and Zaporizhia have had items stolen from them.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: It's thought that in all, thousands of objects may have been taken during the war.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Gary O'Donoghue reports from Kiev.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: Ukraine says Russia has undertaken illegal excavations at several sites in occupied Crimea, including a suburb of the southern city of Sofastopol, a Roman military camp and a Byzantine church.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: It also details dozens of pieces stolen from the Kamiana Mohila National Historical and Archaeological Museum in occupied Zaporizhia.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: Most of the items come from the ancient Scythian civilisation, which lived on the Eurasian steppe, straddling modern-day Ukraine and Russia.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: Items listed include ceramics, metal pendants and coins.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: The agency which has collated the thefts says Russia is seeking to erase Ukraine's national identity by appropriating Ukrainian culture and history.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: The Office of Ukraine's Prosecutor General has previously said some pieces had turned up on the black market, and it has already launched a new unit focused on investigating both the destruction of cultural heritage in war and any attempts at illegally selling the artefacts abroad.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: When is a sausage no longer a sausage?
--:-- Janet Jaleel: That might seem an odd question, but the European Parliament has voted to ban the naming of meat-related items like burger and sausage for plant-based products.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: The proposal still needs the backing of the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, as well as the governments of member countries to become law.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Céline Imard, the French MEP who led the initiative, said it was intended to support farmers.
--:-- Céline Imard: An escalope, a scallop or a sausage, a steak, whatever, these are products that come from our farms.
--:-- Céline Imard: We're talking about transparency, we're talking about clarity for the consumer and also recognition for the work done by our livestock farmers.
--:-- Céline Imard: Now we're not talking about banning vegetable or plant-based alternatives, of course not, but I think that terms should speak for themselves and should mean what they mean.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: But there are questions about what this would mean for plant-based food companies and how they label their products.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Thomas Weitz, a Green MEP from Austria, said the change was unnecessary.
--:-- Thomas Weitz: For farmers, and I'm a farmer myself, look, we produce what consumers like to eat.
--:-- Thomas Weitz: And if consumers eat more vegetables and more grains, we produce more vegetables and more grains.
--:-- Thomas Weitz: So it's not about farmers, and this is not helping farmers at all.
--:-- Thomas Weitz: It's not creating a single cent of additional income for farmers.
--:-- Thomas Weitz: It's more an ideological battle that we see here, where vegan is being seen as something that is vogue, that is kind of progressive, and that's something we don't want anymore.
--:-- Thomas Weitz: It's kind of greenish. It's kind of a cultural war that has been waged here, especially by the far right.
--:-- Thomas Weitz: But unfortunately, European People's Party is joining in.
--:-- Thomas Weitz: I mean, we're having a lot of different languages in the European Union.
--:-- Thomas Weitz: And in my home language, German, the word schnitzel is used for a lot of things.
--:-- Thomas Weitz: If I chop wood, so wood chops in German are called Hacksnitzel, which has nothing to do with meat.
--:-- Thomas Weitz: These words are used for many products that are not edible at all.
--:-- Thomas Weitz: It's not about comparing with meat, but it's about the question whether really consumers need the European Parliament to kind of teach them how to read what is written on a package.
--:-- Thomas Weitz: So I really don't think we need to educate consumers there.
--:-- Thomas Weitz: There's a lot of successful industries producing plant-based food in the European Union.
--:-- Thomas Weitz: We're actually a global player in this.
--:-- Thomas Weitz: And I see no reasoning why we should limit or damage some of their trademarks.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Les Miserables is one of the most successful musicals of all times, performed in many countries in many languages.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: But when it first opened here in London 40 years ago, theatre critics were quick to dismiss it as monotonous, pretentious and a glum opera.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Fortunately for the show, audiences ignored the critics, and Les Mis, as it's often called, has become the longest-running musical in London's West End.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: A gala performance was held on Wednesday night to celebrate its four decades of success.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: One of those taking part was the actor Michael Ball, who's played several roles over the years, including the main character Jean Valjean, the young revolutionary Marius, and police inspector Javert.
--:-- Michael Ball: It was the catalyst for me into, certainly into musical theatre.
--:-- Michael Ball: I'm very lucky.
--:-- Michael Ball: I was starting my career at the time when British musicals were literally taking over the world.
--:-- Michael Ball: My favourite role is the role of Javert.
--:-- Michael Ball: And Javert is the inspector who's chasing us, I should say.
--:-- Michael Ball: But is there a favourite line that is Les Mis to you?
--:-- Michael Ball: Yes, 100%.
--:-- Michael Ball: It's a line of Marius'.
--:-- Michael Ball: It's the sort of big moment in One Day More.
--:-- Michael Ball: and it's when all the students rising together and Marius is deciding, do I go with a woman I love? Do I stay and fight with my friends?
--:-- Michael Ball: And he sings, my place is here.
--:-- Michael Ball: I fight with you. I fight with you.
--:-- Michael Ball: One day more.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: But if you've performed it so many times and you've been in it so many times, and I know you've not been in the audience very much, but does it begin to lose its power or not?
--:-- Michael Ball: Never.
--:-- Michael Ball: First of all, the reason it's lasted as long as it has is it has evolved over the years.
--:-- Michael Ball: So it's been restaged.
--:-- Michael Ball: New casts come and go and bring their own interpretation to it.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: I'm going to play a song from which Michael sang and this is your version.
--:-- Michael Ball: Tell us about this, Michael.
--:-- Michael Ball: Empty Chairs at Empty Tables.
--:-- Michael Ball: Yeah, this is a song that is the most important song to the character of Marius.
--:-- Michael Ball: This is when all of his friends have died fighting for what they believe in.
--:-- Michael Ball: And he returns to the ABC cafe where they all used to meet.
--:-- Michael Ball: And he's mourning, he's changing and he's a broken man.
--:-- Michael Ball: And it sort of charts the change from this idealistic, young, get-up-and-go hero into a rounded, deeply fragile and fractured man.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: The very work that they had sung Became their last communion
--:-- Michael Ball: And they wanted to cut it.
--:-- Michael Ball: And I said, because the show was too long, and I said, if you cut that, then you cut Marius's point, and you just want to give him a shake and smack his legs, because there's nothing to him.
--:-- Michael Ball: And I'm thrilled to say they kept the song.
--:-- Michael Ball: Phantom faces at the window
--:-- Michael Ball: Phantom shadows on the floor
--:-- Michael Ball: Empty chairs and empty tables
--:-- Michael Ball: Where my friends will meet no more
--:-- Janet Jaleel: That was actor Michael Ball singing us to the end of this podcast.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: If you want to comment on this podcast, you can send us an email.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: This edition was mixed by Holly Smith.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: The producers were Carla Conti and Stephanie Zacherson.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: The editor is Karen Martin.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: I'm Janat Jalil.
--:-- Janet Jaleel: Until next time, goodbye.
