Hamas requests help to retrieve the bodies of Israeli hostages

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Speaker 1 This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

Speaker 1 I'm Alex Ritzen and in the early hours of Thursday the 16th of October, these are our main stories.

Speaker 1 Hamas says it's trying to fulfill the terms of the ceasefire deal in Gaza, but needs help to retrieve the bodies of hostages from under the rubble.

Speaker 1 The Israeli Defense Minister has called for a comprehensive plan to defeat the group if it reneges on the agreement.

Speaker 1 President Trump has confirmed that he's authorized covert CIA operations inside Venezuela.

Speaker 1 Also, in this podcast, a study suggests the older men get, the less likely their sperm will produce healthy children.

Speaker 6 We found as men get older, their sperm pick up new genetic changes, which can be passed on to their children.

Speaker 1 Hamas has said it's committed to fulfilling the terms of the ceasefire deal with Israel but needs help to recover bodies from the rubble of Gaza. Two more bodies were transferred on Wednesday.

Speaker 1 But with anger mounting in Israel at the failure to hand over 19 others, the Israeli Defense Minister says he's called for a comprehensive plan to defeat Hamas.

Speaker 1 How serious is this threat to the ceasefire? Barbara Plet Asher is in Jerusalem.

Speaker 5 Well, it certainly has shaken the ceasefire because this is the core of it: to hand back all of the hostages, living and dead, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

Speaker 5 The deadline, of course, as we know, was 72 hours, but there was always an acknowledgement that not all the bodies would be able to be found in time.

Speaker 5 But I think the understanding was that Hamas had a lot of those dead bodies at hand to be able to give back.

Speaker 5 And so the Israelis got suspicious when they only got four on Monday and they said, This is a violation of the ceasefire, you've got to do better than this.

Speaker 5 And then Hamas started handing more back, so it's now handed back nine.

Speaker 5 But then suddenly, it said, This is all we've got, and we are committed to the ceasefire, and we're working very hard to meet its terms.

Speaker 5 But frankly, the rest of the bodies relocating and recovering them will be really hard work. So, the expectation was not that Hamas would end at nine bodies, there's still 19 left.

Speaker 5 We still have to wait for Israel's official response to this, as well as the United States.

Speaker 7 Now, I understand that Israel holds many Palestinian bodies, and some of those have started to be handed back to the Palestinians.

Speaker 5 Yes, that is part of the agreement.

Speaker 5 They are supposed to hand back a certain number of bodies of Palestinians that they have, and they have now handed back 90, 45 yesterday and 45 today, Wednesday, to Gaza.

Speaker 5 The forensic people are doing tests to try to identify the bodies and look at the condition of the bodies.

Speaker 5 But the difficulty is that so far they have not received names, they've received numbers, so they are finding it difficult to identify the bodies, especially because some of them are not recognizable.

Speaker 5 Furthermore, we sent a freelance cameraman into the hospital where the bodies are located, and he took some images that appeared to show marks around the wrists and ankles of some of these bodies that looked as if they'd had their hands and feet tied.

Speaker 5 We have asked the Israeli military about that, but haven't heard any response.

Speaker 1 Barbara Platasher talking to my colleague Oliver Conway. Meanwhile, people in Gaza are beginning the daunting process of rebuilding their lives.

Speaker 1 News about what's going on there, the availability of food, the security situation is difficult to get. Israel hasn't allowed foreign journalists to report freely from inside the territory.

Speaker 1 But the BBC has spoken to some Gazans about what life is like following the ceasefire. My colleague James Menendez talked to Raghad Salem, a journalist who lives in Gaza City.

Speaker 1 He started by asking her about reports that people are stockpiling food.

Speaker 8 After the announcement that Israel is going to limitly close

Speaker 8 borders, people were afraid of the limitation of food entrance. So, after Hamas's delays in handling the body parts yesterday, so this was a situation.

Speaker 8 So, people were afraid of the lack of food again. So, maybe they were trying to store food again because, you know, they have lived the situation of famine and starvation.

Speaker 1 How much food is there to buy at the moment in the shops? Is there a lot to buy now?

Speaker 8 There is not many because Gaza City is still partially closed because people aren't returning back to the city. They are gradually returning back.

Speaker 8 So the food is still limited, high prices, and not all food is available. Some canned food, you're talking about some flour, something that people can barely live on.

Speaker 1 And where are you living at the moment, Raghad, if I may ask?

Speaker 8 Yes, of course. I am currently living in the western part of Gaza City, you can say next to the Gaza seaport.

Speaker 8 This is the only neighborhood that is still, you can say the life is stable, that we can live in, it's kind of habitable.

Speaker 1 And what about all those people who have returned from the south to discover that their homes are just rubble? Where are they living?

Speaker 8 Many of them, they prepared their their tents to put them in the places of their houses.

Speaker 8 Some of them are asking for houses here that can be rented, but actually, the price is so high, so people cannot afford the prices here.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, how much is, for example, I don't know, a two- or three-bedroom apartment?

Speaker 8 Yeah, we're talking about $3,000,

Speaker 8 too much for a Gazan family here.

Speaker 1 $3,000 for what?

Speaker 1 For a month? For a month?

Speaker 8 In a month, yes.

Speaker 1 Gosh, that is a lot. Um, yes, and what about power? Do you have power at the moment?

Speaker 8 Electricity is also limited, most areas get only a few hours a day, if at all. Many rely on small generators or solar panels.

Speaker 1 And what about the security situation, the internal security situation? We've been hearing about these clashes between Hamas fighters and members of Gaza's clans. I mean,

Speaker 8 yes, worth mentioning. Yesterday, I was working walking in the market and I suddenly saw some people, a group of people.

Speaker 8 They are like from 20 to 28 years old and they were apparently from Hamas's groups. So they were like trying to secure the city from what we can say, militias and grouped like that.

Speaker 1 And have you heard these reports of people being executed by Hamas

Speaker 1 for not, you know, for falling out of line?

Speaker 8 I actually heard about that and i saw that with my naked eye um they dragged a person who uh used to sell people money for a high price during the war so they dragged uh them from uh his workplace i guess and they dragged him um in public i didn't want to see the the

Speaker 8 the view actually it was horrific well what what happened did they did they shoot that person i asked uh the the public there. They said that they are going to shoot him.
I don't know.

Speaker 8 They didn't, actually, but they were like torturing him in front of many people in an open area so that all people can see him.

Speaker 1 Rakhat Salem, a journalist who lives in Gaza City.

Speaker 1 Syria's interim president Ahmed al-Shara visited Russia on Wednesday for the first time since overthrowing Bashar al-Assad last year.

Speaker 1 He told President Putin that he would respect past agreements with Russia, which gave Assad vital support to help him stay in power during the civil war, and still has military bases in Syria.

Speaker 1 Many Syrians want Russia to hand over Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Moscow to face allegations of war crimes. The horrors of Assad's crackdown during the civil war are still being uncovered.

Speaker 1 More than 180,000 people remain unaccounted for, and, as our senior international correspondent Ola Gerin, reports, families of the killed and the disappeared are demanding answers and justice.

Speaker 10 I'm in the village of Sheba. It's in eastern Ghouta on the edge of Damascus.
And I'm in a community hall which is absolutely packed. Women have been pouring in.

Speaker 10 They're holding up photographs of fathers and brothers and sons who are still missing.

Speaker 10 On the wall in front of me, there are more photographs hung in rows showing young men and older men and the dates when they disappeared. Some in 2012, some in 2013.

Speaker 10 We've been told that in this village alone more than 400 men have gone missing.

Speaker 10 We were invited to join this gathering called a Truth Tent, a place where families share stories of loved ones forcibly disappeared by the Assad regime. in the new Syria.

Speaker 10 Many, like Sharifa, are ready to speak out.

Speaker 11 When Bashar al-Assad is hanged, we will get our rights.

Speaker 11 He is responsible for the officer who tortured my husband.

Speaker 11 When we cut the head of the snake, our hearts will heal

Speaker 11 and we will make peace with each other.

Speaker 10 There is a real sense here of loss and of grief and of anger. Families want to know when the guilty will be held to account and when they can hope for justice.

Speaker 10 From the stage, Najwa, one of the organisers, urges the women to be strong and be patient.

Speaker 13 When I hear your stories, it breaks my heart. That son of a pig, Bashar, broke us for 14 years.

Speaker 13 The only thing I ask of you is don't give up.

Speaker 10 Don't stop pushing.

Speaker 13 It's not going to happen overnight.

Speaker 10 But more evidence is being uncovered. In rural Damascus we saw bones where crops should be

Speaker 10 I'm in the countryside about an hour from Damascus in an area of open fields. We've come here because we got word that a mass grave has just been discovered and we're now at the site.

Speaker 10 There are about two dozen people here. Some are police in uniform, some are locals.

Speaker 10 There's livestock still here in the area.

Speaker 10 We've been told that more than a hundred remains are located here. It's believed that they were local people who tried to flee the area but were killed by the regime as they tried to escape.

Speaker 10 On the ground in front of me, there are some items of clothing scattered around. There's a jumper, a man's jumper, a brownish color.

Speaker 10 We've been told that belonged to a 20-year-old man called Samer, who had been married just 10 days before he was killed. His brother Qasim found the jumper.

Speaker 1 Samer was a civilian.

Speaker 1 He had nothing to do with armed groups at all. all.

Speaker 1 My three nephews are also here.

Speaker 1 They all fled because of hunger. The regime wouldn't let any food come in.

Speaker 10 Walking along here, there's a shoe, and over here, a green bomber jacket. Nearby, bones have been found and a skull.

Speaker 10 This is a country still grappling with its painful past, still searching for its dead, and a country where many are still waiting for justice.

Speaker 1 Halla Guerren.

Speaker 1 The Australian swimmer Ariane Titmus has announced her retirement from the sport at the age of only 25, although she's won four Olympic gold medals and is widely regarded as one of the greatest middle-distance swimmers of all time.

Speaker 1 Titmus is the current world record holder for the 200m freestyle, and she says it wasn't an easy decision to make.

Speaker 16 A tough one, a really tough one, but one that I'm really happy with. I love swimming.
I've always loved swimming. It's been my passion since I was a little girl.

Speaker 16 But I guess I've taken this time away from the sport and realised some things in my life that have always been important to me are just a little bit more important to me now than swimming.

Speaker 1 Even so, 25 does seem quite young to be retiring. A question I put to Jessica Stewart, a journalist for the ABC in Brisbane.

Speaker 17 Yeah, it certainly does. In the swimming world, you'd think that's the peak of your powers, especially coming off back-to-back gold medals at the Olympics.

Speaker 17 But for Ariane Titmus, she's decided to move on to the next phase of her career.

Speaker 17 And while it may have shocked many in Australia waking up this morning hearing that news, I don't think it's shocked too many in the sporting world because she was on that year-long break.

Speaker 17 And perhaps it was a hint that she was kind of contemplating this and wanting to just really think about her future.

Speaker 17 But she's made the decision decision and she'll go out on the biggest of highs, I guess you could say.

Speaker 1 Yeah, in a social media post, she said she'd realised some things were now more important to her than swimming.

Speaker 17 Well, for people that don't really know Anie, as we call her, that's her nickname here in Australia, she had a bit of a health scare heading into Paris and it actually interrupted her preparations, which is what made that victory last year for her all the more impressive.

Speaker 17 She had a tumor that was found on her ovaries, and she had to have a procedure in the lead-up to the Paris Olympics.

Speaker 17 And it kind of put her out of the pool for some time, but I think it was a pretty big scare for her.

Speaker 17 And she revealed in some interviews at the time that she was really concerned about whether or not it would impact her ability to have children at the time.

Speaker 17 And all those things were going through her head, and the sacrifices you make as a professional athlete, and also the things that you know you miss out on by delaying things like starting a family and motherhood and all those things to chase the pursuit of greatness in the pool.

Speaker 1 Because Australians are still reeling from the decision of the tennis player Ash Barty to retire also at the age of 25.

Speaker 17 Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that because I was saying this morning that this feels quite Barty-esque, doesn't it?

Speaker 17 I remember at the time that felt like the huge bombshell that it was because an Australian winning the Australian Open and then just weeks later she comes out and goes, oh, by the way, I'm I'm going to retire now.

Speaker 17 I've kind of ticked that box and I'm going to move on to the next phase of my life. And it does feel like that too, with Arnie's decision to retire.

Speaker 17 Yeah, it's just a very fascinating decision, but one I think that obviously she's put a lot of time into, and it shows just how comfortable she is with where her career is out and what she's achieved in that time in the pool.

Speaker 17 And she did start at a very young age from an international perspective. So, 25 doesn't feel like that young in the context of how long she's been swimming for Australia.

Speaker 1 The ABC's Jessica Stewart on the retirement of Ariane Titnus.

Speaker 1 Still to come in this podcast, Sumo Wrestling returns to London, bringing with it 1,500 years of tradition.

Speaker 18 I saw the ring and my heart is pounding. I hope the audiences will enjoy the sumo.

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Speaker 1 There's been a sharp escalation in the United States' targeting of the government of the Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro.

Speaker 1 Donald Trump has said he would allow the CIA to conduct covert operations from inside Venezuela. Asked at the White House whether the U.S.

Speaker 1 was considering strikes on suspected drug cartels inside inside Venezuela, President Trump had this to say.

Speaker 1 Shortly after Mr. Trump made the comments, President Maduro condemned what he called called coup d'état orchestrated by the CIA, adding no to regime change.
Since the beginning of September, the U.S.

Speaker 1 military has carried out at least five attacks against Venezuelan boats in international waters in the Caribbean Sea.

Speaker 1 The White House alleges the vessels smuggling drugs, referring to them as narco-terrorists. Luis Fajardo is our South American expert from BBC Monitoring in Miami.

Speaker 23 This seems to give strength to those who have been arguing for some time that significant U.S.

Speaker 23 military deployment that has been seen around Venezuela in the last few weeks was not going to be limited to just attacking small drug trafficking boats.

Speaker 23 People across Latin America were wondering why this big deployment seemed to be limited again to targeting relatively small drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean.

Speaker 23 Now, of course, the speculation is that the U.S.

Speaker 23 is planning something more directly against the Maluro administration, an administration that the White House has accused of complicity in corruption and in participating in

Speaker 23 activities of drug trafficking.

Speaker 23 So, of course, there's going to be a lot of expectation across Latin American media, certainly in Venezuela, but not only in Venezuela, about how significant these potential U.S.

Speaker 23 actions could be in the next few days.

Speaker 1 The U.S. cites Venezuela's involvement in the drugs trade as its justification for all of this.
How significant a player is Venezuela?

Speaker 23 Venezuela is not the center of the cocaine industry in particular.

Speaker 23 It has cocaine activity, which has a lot to do with the fact that it is a neighbor of Colombia, which is the absolute epicenter of cocaine growing and exporting in the world.

Speaker 23 In fact, most of the cocaine that leaves Colombia leaves not through Venezuela and to the Caribbean, trying to reach the US, but on the opposite ocean. It leaves Colombia by the Pacific.

Speaker 23 That does not mean that Venezuela does not have a role in the cocaine trade.

Speaker 23 There's, in fact, very substantial evidence that some cocaine from Colombia gets sent to Venezuela and then not only to the US but to other parts.

Speaker 23 The drug traffickers are looking at other export markets, for example, in Europe.

Speaker 23 And Venezuela is said to have some degree of participation in this, but it definitely is not the center of the cocaine industry.

Speaker 1 So if it's not the drugs trade, what is it about?

Speaker 23 Definitely the U.S. has had a very antagonistic relation with the Maduro administration and before Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez.

Speaker 23 There is also, cynics would argue, a domestic political reason for this increasing confrontation between the U.S. and the Venezuelan government.
The U.S.

Speaker 23 has a substantial Venezuelan-American community, which is particularly active in Florida, in the state of Florida. And it is said to have a growing importance in the U.S.

Speaker 23 electoral politics, at least in Florida.

Speaker 23 And the Trump administration has been seen as willing to try to please this electorate, which turned very strongly in favor of President Trump during the last U.S. presidential election.

Speaker 1 BBC Monitorings Luis Fahado.

Speaker 1 During more than three and a half years of war, Ukraine's rail network has been targeted by Russian attacks.

Speaker 1 It has 180,000 employees, overseeing track from the eastern front lines to beyond Ukraine's western border.

Speaker 1 Ukraine's government says half of all attacks on the railway have taken place in just the last two months.

Speaker 1 It accused Russia of logistical terrorism, deliberately targeting freight and passenger trains alongside attacks on power infrastructure as winter approaches.

Speaker 1 Our correspondent Gary O'Donoghue sent this report from Kyiv.

Speaker 22 At this train depot in Darnitsia, in the east of the capital Kyiv, engineers are taking on some major work repairing a piece of rolling stock which took a direct hit in late August.

Speaker 22 So I'm just climbing onto a locomotive that's been hit by a drone at the end of August and there's a huge impact point on the side of the train that's blown the whole side off and there's wires on the floor.

Speaker 22 The place has now been gutted, all the seats have been taken out, there's a lot of ash all around.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 22 this took place on a night where there was was a massive attack on Ukraine's rail infrastructure.

Speaker 22 As I climb down from the train, I meet Olexey Balesta, a deputy minister in the government department responsible for the railways.

Speaker 22 He says the Russians are now targeting every part of the rail network.

Speaker 15 Almost every day for the last two months, we have been experiencing targeted attacks on Ukra Zelizneta infrastructure and power transmission facilities.

Speaker 15 Over the last four years of the full-scale war, 50% of all attacks on the railway have taken place in just the last two months.

Speaker 22 Back in central Kyiv, I'm at a hospital to meet a train conductor who was badly hurt in another recent attack on a passenger train in Shostka in the north. Olha Zolotova was one of 30 people hurt.

Speaker 22 She's got multiple injuries and just had surgery on her hip. She told me what she remembered of the attack.

Speaker 24 My eyes went dark. There was fire everywhere.
Everything was burning. My hair got fire a little.
I was trapped, but thanks to the man, I was able to get out.

Speaker 22 Officials here point to two principal factors which they believe have led to the intensified spate of attacks.

Speaker 22 First, Russia's increasing capacity to produce large numbers of long-range drones, and second, a near stalemate on the front line of fighting itself, and a consequent focus by Russian planners on disrupting supply lines instead.

Speaker 22 The railways are now a battlefield in their own right, says Alexander Petsovsky, chief executive of Ukrainian Railways.

Speaker 1 They've become very, very targeted in doing everything possible to stop railways from serving our near-frontline regions or stopping us from supplying our export goods towards the ports.

Speaker 22 So we're at the Kyiv Central Station, really the

Speaker 22 node of the whole country.

Speaker 22 When there's been an attack on the railway, they have special ceremonies here to make awards to those conductors, drivers who've been involved in strikes and attacks on the railway.

Speaker 22 They call the recipients Iron Heroes. Alexander Leonenko is getting his certificate today for help putting out the fires at the Darnitsia depot.

Speaker 15 It was very scary because there was fire. In short, the train consists of nine cars.

Speaker 15 Thanks to quick action, the fire was contained to one car.

Speaker 22 Ukraine's railway system is not merely a mode of transport, it is a central pillar of Ukraine's war effort and a powerful national symbol of resilience.

Speaker 22 But the company's chief executive, Oleksander Petsovsky, acknowledges the reality. Things can only get tougher.

Speaker 1 This winter is likely to be the hardest out of the winters we have survived already. Having said that, I don't want to sound like

Speaker 1 we are desperate. So we are giving up for this hard winter.

Speaker 1 We are psychologically prepared to

Speaker 1 deal with a lot of difficult situations, but I think Ukrainians are high in their spirits.

Speaker 22 You hear this music all the time at Kyiv railway stations. It's the city's anthem.
The railway's goal is never to cancel a single service or destination.

Speaker 22 Certainty, say officials, prevents panic and creates resilience. Ukrainians will need plenty of that resilience over the long, hard months ahead.

Speaker 1 Gary O'Donoghue in Kiev.

Speaker 1 Often, when talking about the effect of age on trying to have a baby, the focus is on women, but men are affected too.

Speaker 1 Here in the UK, the number of babies born to fathers over 60 has risen by 14% in the past year, and research now suggests this might cause health problems for their children.

Speaker 1 According to a study from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, older men are more likely than previously thought to pass on disease-causing mutations.

Speaker 1 We heard from the two lead authors, Matt Neville and first, Rahala Rabari.

Speaker 6 By sequencing sperm, we found that among men in their early 30s, around 1 in 50 sperm carry a potentially disease-causing mutation. And by age of 70, it's closer to 1 in 20.

Speaker 6 To give a bit more details, we studied about 100,000 sperm from men aged between 20 to 80 years old.

Speaker 6 And we found as men get older, their sperm pick pick up new genetic changes, which can be passed on to their children. What's really interesting is that not all of these changes are random.

Speaker 6 Some keep appearing in the same genes because they give cells a small growth advantage. So over time, these mutations, many of which are linked to disease, become more common in sperm of older men.

Speaker 6 And essentially, as men age, their sperm don't just collect more mutations. They actually favored and selected for.
And this shows that the germline isn't static, it is an active evolutionary arena.

Speaker 7 And Matt, if these older men pass on these mutations, what can that mean for the children?

Speaker 25 Those numbers that Rahele quoted are based off of any known single gene disease, but the diseases that really increase the most with men's age are generally quite severe developmental disorders in children.

Speaker 25 This is because the mutations that give sperm progenitors the strongest competitive advantage for growth also seem to ones that most impact normal development in life.

Speaker 7 And so should we be advising older men not to have children or are there alternative treatments?

Speaker 25 No, we wouldn't say that. We'd say that this information, like the risks linked to maternal aging, is simply something for families to weigh when they're making their own decisions.

Speaker 25 So we think that younger men who expect to have children much later in life could consider freezing their sperm, or older men planning a family might explore available screening options a bit closer.

Speaker 25 But we would emphasize that the overall risks remain quite low for typical reproductive ages, and these procedures can be costly, so it won't necessarily be practical for everyone.

Speaker 7 And yet, I guess, Rahela, this is going to become a more pressing issue as the population ages and people wait to have children.

Speaker 6 Yes, you are correct. As more people have children later in life, the average number of new mutations that are passed on will increase slightly across the population.

Speaker 6 But what's encouraging is that our work helps pinpoint where and how this happens.

Speaker 6 And by understanding these processes, we can develop better ways to screen, predict, and even reduce risk in the future.

Speaker 6 So, while delayed parenthood may slightly raise mutation and disease risk in children, advances in genetic screening and reproductive technologies are likely to outpace that.

Speaker 1 Rahala Rabari and Matt Neville from the Welcome Sanger Institute.

Speaker 1 Sumo wrestling has come to London. The Royal Albert Hall is hosting a full five-day sumo tournament, only the second one ever held outside Japan.

Speaker 1 Elite wrestlers have flown in from Japan to take part in what organisers say will be a celebration of the sport's ancient traditions and rituals. This report from Tim Muffet:

Speaker 14 strength,

Speaker 9 power,

Speaker 14 tradition, and spirituality. There's no sport quite like sumo wrestling.

Speaker 14 Its origins go back more than 1500 years. And for the first time since 1991, an official tournament is about to take place in the UK in London's Royal Albert Hall.

Speaker 14 In the world of sumo, this is big news.

Speaker 9 Grand Sumo Tournament in London!

Speaker 14 What's it like being in the UK ahead of this this historic sumo event?

Speaker 18 I saw the ring and my heart is pounding.

Speaker 18 I hope the audiences will enjoy the sumo.

Speaker 18 So I came here today and I'm very moved by what they built here, so I'm very looking forward to it.

Speaker 14 Ho Shoyu and Ono Sato have both reached Sumo Wrestling's highest level, Yokozuni.

Speaker 14 There'll be more than 40 wrestlers taking part at the Royal Albert Hall, but these these two are the favourites, and they've fought many times before.

Speaker 14 What is it about this sport which makes it such a popular one in Japan?

Speaker 18 So the rule is very simple. You can push the opponent outside the ring and you win.
So that's very easy to understand.

Speaker 18 And also, you're fighting with your opponent with just your body. You don't have anything, you're almost naked, and that's the appeal, I think.

Speaker 18 Sumo is more more tradition than sports and that's what people feel so close about Sumo. Even when we go out in our days off we have to wear a kimono.

Speaker 18 So I think that the sumo being rooted in tradition is what people like.

Speaker 14 It's 34 years since Sumo last came to London.

Speaker 26 Some people think Terra is slowing down but it doesn't look like it here in London.

Speaker 9 Look at him.

Speaker 14 It was hugely popular and just like then the Royal Albert Hall has been undergoing a major transformation.

Speaker 26 What we're trying to do here is to really show the history and ritual and heritage that Sumo encapsulates.

Speaker 14 And have you yet to get in extra food?

Speaker 26 Yes, we have. We have a chef, Chef Naomi, who's been brought in especially, and we've worked with the hotel to prepare all of their meals and exactly what the wrestlers will eat.

Speaker 26 I think we're getting through 70 kilograms of rice every day.

Speaker 26 The wholesaler of noodles has run out.

Speaker 14 There are no weight categories in Sumo, so being heavier can give you an advantage.

Speaker 18 Sumo wrestlers diet consists of two meals per day because the morning we use it for practice, so it's lunch and dinner. So we have to cram as much calories as we can in those two meals.

Speaker 18 It's been 34 years since the last Sumo tournament was held in London, and I wasn't even born back then.

Speaker 18 So I would like for the UK fans and the European fans to have as much fun as possible watching our game.

Speaker 1 Tim Muffet with that report.

Speaker 1 And that's all from us for now. But there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.
If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.

Speaker 1 The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.
Use the hashtag GlobalNewsPod.

Speaker 1 This edition was mixed by Daniel Fox

Speaker 1 and the producer was Ed Horton. The editor is Karen Martin.
I'm Alex Ritzen. Until next time, goodbye.

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