King makes history by praying with Pope

30m

King Charles becomes the first head of the Church of England to publicly pray with the Pope, five centuries after King Henry VIII broke with Rome. The British monarch joined the head of the Catholic Church for a service in the Sistine Chapel, in a powerful symbol of unity.

Also: the European Union joins the US in announcing new economic sanctions on Russia over war in Ukraine as President Zelensky holds talks in Brussels with EU leaders. A court in Northern Ireland has acquitted a British soldier of killing unarmed civilians on Bloody Sunday in 1972. The metabolic ceiling that limits calories burnt during exercise by endurance athletes. And the café owner trying to make his customers connect - by locking away their phones.

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Speaker 4 You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

Speaker 4 Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 15 hours GMT on Thursday, the 23rd of October.

Speaker 4 Five centuries after Henry VIII broke with Rome, King Charles formally ends the rift by praying alongside the Pope.

Speaker 4 The EU joins the US in announcing new economic sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine.

Speaker 4 And a court in Northern Ireland acquits a British soldier of killing unarmed civilians on Bloody Sunday in 1972.

Speaker 4 Also in the podcast,

Speaker 7 you have to stop the boats.

Speaker 8 Yes, it's madness.

Speaker 8 Madness.

Speaker 4 But could France do more to prevent migrants crossing the English Channel?

Speaker 4 Nearly 500 years ago, Henry VIII of England broke with the Roman Catholic Church, triggering centuries of religious strife in his kingdom.

Speaker 4 Today, his distant successor has signaled that that rift is well and truly over. King Charles III, head of the Church of England, went to Rome to pray with the Pope.

Speaker 10 Oh God, make speed to save us.

Speaker 4 The service in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican focused on conservation and protection for the environment, a cause long championed by King Charles.

Speaker 4 He and his wife Queen Camilla also had a private audience with Pope Leo and exchanged gifts. In Britain, Catholics and Protestants have largely abandoned any historic grievances.

Speaker 4 But this was still an important moment, as I heard from our correspondent in the Vatican, Mark Lowen.

Speaker 10 I mean, when Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534, the relationship between the Church of England and the Catholic Church began, and it has often been rocky, it has often been tense, there has been mistrust between the two denominations, and it has warmed in recent decades, but really today was sort of unprecedented in its symbolism of the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the British monarch, praying alongside the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV.

Speaker 10 It is thought that Charles's mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, wanted to pray beside the then Pope John Paul II when she visited the Vatican in the year 2000, but it was feared at that stage that it could upset factions within the Church of England.

Speaker 10 That has not been the case today. So beneath the splendid frescoes of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, this moment of real symbolism and unity and reconciliation.

Speaker 10 The King and Queen have left the Vatican. They've actually gone across Rome to a papal basilica called the Basilica of St.
Paul's Outside the Wall.

Speaker 10 And that is where another moment of symbolism is happening because King Charles is receiving the title of Royal Confrata, again symbolizing kind of the unity between the two wings of the Christian faith.

Speaker 10 And he will be given a seat inside that basilica with his coat of arms and he and his successors as British monarch will be able to sit in that chair.

Speaker 10 Now it is the basilica in which there is the tomb of St. Paul and the English crown for centuries, back to the Saxons, have been involved in the upkeep of the tomb of St.

Speaker 10 Paul and so it is also there is a huge connection between Britain and that church and once again symbolizing that unity today.

Speaker 10 I have to say that you know that is the kind of historical background to all of this and the historical moments to all of this.

Speaker 10 But of course, there is another thing happening behind the scenes on this trip, and that is the framework of what is happening in the UK as the scandal and controversy over Prince Andrew, the king's younger brother, deepens over his relationship with the convicted sex offender Geoffrey Epstein, and also, of course, the fact that he has been found to have been living rent-free in a 30-room mansion on the Windsor Estate.

Speaker 10 So that scandal and controversy over Prince Prince Andrew deepens, but the palace, Buckingham Palace, very much hoping that that does not overshadow or distract from the importance and symbolism of this trip here at the Vatican today.

Speaker 4 Did you get a sense from the Pope and the King that they knew this was a moment of history?

Speaker 10 I think you couldn't escape that, really. I mean, it was the King wanted to pay a state visit to the Vatican for some time.

Speaker 10 They wanted to come actually during the papacy of the late Pope Francis, and they tried in April to come, but Francis was too ill and then died a few days later.

Speaker 10 They met him privately during their 20th wedding anniversary trip here to Italy.

Speaker 10 But, you know, there was so much importance placed by the royal family on this as a state visit to the Holy See, which is an institution, you know, the governance of the church, which actually is involved in many issues that the royal family feel very deeply about.

Speaker 10 You know, climate change, protection of women, and stopping women trafficking and the like, but also that kind of religious importance.

Speaker 10 I mean, Charles is a man of faith, and clearly it was important for him and his wife to be involved in this moment of real theological and religious symbolism.

Speaker 4 Mark Lowen in Rome.

Speaker 4 Since he returned to the White House, Donald Trump has given mixed signals about his attitude towards Russia. Last week, the U.S.

Speaker 4 President appeared to side with Vladimir Putin in his demand that Ukraine surrender the whole of its eastern Donbass region.

Speaker 4 But in another U-turn yesterday, President Trump criticized his Russian counterpart, saying, Every time I speak to Vladimir, I have good conversations and then they don't go anywhere.

Speaker 4 And the US has announced plans for new sanctions on Russia's two largest oil companies. The former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said it meant the US was now on the warpath against Russia.

Speaker 4 And this was the view of Kremlin adviser Andrey Fedorov.

Speaker 15 The situation is serious because Lukoil and Rosneft it's about 80% of Russian oil export and these two companies are the main suppliers for India and China.

Speaker 15 So it means that it could seriously damage Russian income. And it's very important

Speaker 15 because this year budget deficit is three times more than it was expected. This situation is quite negative also for the dialogue between Russia and the United States.

Speaker 15 And we can expect that there might be a very clear, visible escalation of negative tendencies in coming days.

Speaker 4 The Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky welcomed the US decision, saying it would increase the pressure on Vladimir Putin to end the war.

Speaker 4 Mr. Zelensky was speaking at a European summit in Brussels where EU countries formally adopted a 19th package of sanctions against Russia.

Speaker 4 The meeting is also discussing whether to agree a huge loan to Ukraine funded by frozen Russian assets. Our Ukraine correspondent James Waterhouse is in Brussels.

Speaker 4 I asked him first how important are these US sanctions?

Speaker 14 I think they're central to any Western hopes of pressuring Russia to stop this war in a non-military sense.

Speaker 14 Of course, Moscow has its own problems with the extraordinary cost in manpower its tactics have seen.

Speaker 14 Its offensive for this year has yielded relatively small returns in terms of seized Ukrainian territory.

Speaker 14 You know, in this war of attrition, it's about who loses first, and at the moment, that would be Ukraine. That is why the fighting continues.

Speaker 14 But it is widely accepted that America, and America alone really, alongside its allies, has the capability to put the squeeze on the Kremlin to make it think twice about continuing this invasion.

Speaker 14 Thus far, Donald Trump had resisted taking direct action. We saw President Zelensky leave empty-handed last week when he was looking to get the green light to use US missiles.

Speaker 14 And all of a sudden, ahead of this gathering of EU leaders, there's a renewed impetus because you now have the US sanctioning two of Russia's biggest oil companies. That is concrete action.

Speaker 14 It's being welcomed by EU officials here. And now the talk is about propping up Ukraine in a financial set.

Speaker 14 There seems to be consensus on supporting Ukraine and it's holding its finances for the next couple of years because Ukraine has got a black hole to the tune of tens of billions of pounds.

Speaker 14 Where there is less agreement is over the question of giving Ukraine an enormous loan, £122 billion,

Speaker 14 which will be funded by frozen Russian assets. At the moment, that very idea is illegal under international law and it's that that is making some European members a little bit uncomfortable.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean if that happens, that big loan, how would it work and how might Russia react to the use of its frozen assets?

Speaker 14 Well, you lead us to another area of disagreement.

Speaker 14 In theory, it would see Ukraine crop up its own public services, it would pay public salaries, but most of all, it would continue its war effort in terms of the humanitarian work that goes on, in terms of military equipment, and in terms of military contracts.

Speaker 14 I mean, take your pick. When you're a country on the receiving end of a full-scale invasion, you bleed resources in just about every sense.

Speaker 14 So, this will be welcomed by Ukraine, but I think if we're talking through a military lens, what Zelensky really wants are American air defense systems, these Patriot missile batteries, as well as long-range cruise missiles to strike deep inside Russia.

Speaker 14 There are reports that some of the restrictions on Ukraine are being lifted slightly by Western allies on using their missiles to hit inside Russia, to frustrate its war effort, its supply lines, its oil refineries, for example.

Speaker 14 So there is a very slow direction of travel.

Speaker 14 But ultimately, if you look at the ongoing cycle we find ourselves in, this not-so-merry-go-round of Russia playing lip service in the eyes of the West on the idea of peace talks, but not actually committing to anything, Donald Trump being reluctant to get tough with Moscow and Ukraine continuing to fight this war, this will be a welcome changing of the tide.

Speaker 4 James Wothaus in Brussels. Well, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said any action by the EU to confiscate Russian assets would result in a painful response.

Speaker 4 For more on the reaction from Moscow, I've been speaking to Alexei Kalmakov from the BBC Russian service.

Speaker 11 So far, Russia has dismissed any economic impact for many sanctions from the West.

Speaker 11 And meanwhile, it's been building a parallel universe of trade, which allows it to continue shipping its main export product, oil and oil products, to different customers like China and India.

Speaker 11 So far, it's not affected. Because Trump gave both the companies that were sanctioned yesterday, they gave them four weeks to wind down their business.

Speaker 11 And we'll see if the sanctions stick after these four weeks.

Speaker 4 So should this be seen more as the U.S. trying to put pressure on Vladimir Putin to come and negotiate rather than a serious attempt to damage the Russian economy?

Speaker 11 Absolutely. Trump wanted to apply more pressure on Putin.
There are many, many more things available.

Speaker 11 As we know, as you've just mentioned today european union has adopted a new package of sanctions and so far trump hasn't done a single thing during his second term and this is the first time his first warning shot he's going after two russian oil companies but he could have say join uh the oil price scope which uh the european union and the united kingdom by the way lowered in september he didn't he could have gone after the shippers he could have done after the buyers of the russian oil especially in China and India.

Speaker 11 He didn't. So all he's done now, and he's just warning.

Speaker 11 Maybe it is a negotiating tactic, as it's often the case with Trump, or maybe it's a genuine intention to pressure Russia economically. But again, there are better ways to do that.

Speaker 11 If Trump would give weapons to Ukraine, that would basically be

Speaker 11 a more coherent and a more impactful move from him.

Speaker 4 Now, despite the fact that President Trump has given Russia a four-week period before these sanctions come into effect, oil prices have risen. So, what might be the impact on the global economy?

Speaker 11 Yeah, it's a very good question. For Russia, the rising price of oil obviously promises more revenue if it can export its oil.

Speaker 11 But the main beneficiary here will be the United States, because, as we know, the world is heading towards a glut of oil supply.

Speaker 11 Everybody on the market is warning that there's more and more barrels coming into the market.

Speaker 11 And three main oil producers in the world, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, have to decide which barrels to take off the market.

Speaker 11 So, by sanctioning the Russian oil industry, Trump is pursuing his own agenda as well.

Speaker 11 He's supporting American oil industry because as soon as the price goes down, at some point, the American oil industry will stop producing things unlike Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Speaker 11 So, there's many factors in play, and Trump is playing these cards for a while. We'll see how it works out.

Speaker 4 Alexei Kamakov of the BBC Russian Service. Next.
It was one of the darkest moments of the troubles in Northern Ireland.

Speaker 4 On the 30th of January, 1972, civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry came under fire from British soldiers. 13 of them were killed, a 14th died later.

Speaker 4 For years, families of the victims have been demanding justice. Only one veteran has ever been prosecuted, a British paratrooper known as Soldier F.

Speaker 4 Today, he was cleared of murdering two people that day. Michael Kelly died on Bloody Sunday.
His brother John attended the trial.

Speaker 18 It even puts me back to where I was that day and to where I ended up with Michael. Because I helped to carry Michael on the day afterwards and place him in the ambulance.

Speaker 18 Even going through that, again, it's worthwhile to

Speaker 4 Northern Ireland's First Minister, nationalist Michelle O'Neill, condemned the verdict as a denial of justice, but it was welcomed by military veterans.

Speaker 4 Paul Young is from the Northern Ireland Veterans Movement.

Speaker 18 Veterans across the whole of the United Kingdom that served in Northern Ireland with honour and courage will be

Speaker 17 supported by this verdict today.

Speaker 4 Well, I spoke to the BBC Sarah Girvin outside court in Belfast.

Speaker 19 The events of Bloody Sunday are absolutely synonymous with Northern Ireland's troubles. I mean, that was 30 years of violence during which 3,500 people were killed, which ended in 1998.

Speaker 19 Now, this morning, we've been hearing from the judge. It took a long time to deliver his findings, his verdict, which again I think demonstrates just how complicated this case has been.

Speaker 19 This has been a five-week trial.

Speaker 19 We've heard a lot of evidence from people who were there on Bloody Sunday, some of them recounting what it was like to be shot and to see people killed in front of them, others telling us that, telling the court that they actually pretended to be dead so that they wouldn't be shot again by British paratroopers.

Speaker 19 There was also evidence heard from two soldiers called G and H. Their anonymity orders protecting their identity as there is with Soldier F.
Now they had served with him that day in 1972.

Speaker 19 They had recalled in their evidence evidence shooting at civilians on that day. They claimed those individuals had been armed.

Speaker 19 Something the judge said today that previous inquiries have found was not the case.

Speaker 19 And the defence had argued in court over the past few weeks that the statements from those soldiers simply couldn't be relied upon. They were 53 years old and they were inconsistent.

Speaker 19 But the prosecution argued that they were consistent when it came to soldier F. Now we've just made a note of some of the judge's comments that I guess stood out to me.

Speaker 19 He acknowledged the quiet dignity of the bloody Sunday families and said that they'd had to listen to absolutely harrowing details. And he said that what had happened that day had done so.

Speaker 19 13 people were killed, he said, in a time span measurable in seconds. He said one voice was missing during that trial.
It was that of Soldier F, he said.

Speaker 19 And he said he could only assume because that was nothing, there was nothing he could say that would help his case. And he had some very strong words about the actions of the soldiers of those days.

Speaker 19 He said that they should hang their heads in shame. But in the end, he found that the crown case, you know, they couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

Speaker 19 And as you've been explaining, he found him not guilty on seven charges-that's two of murder and five of attempted murder.

Speaker 4 And tell us why it's taken so long for this to come to trial. I mean, it's 50, more than 50 years since Bloody Sunday.

Speaker 19 I know, it seems incredible that it should take 53 years for this to come to trial.

Speaker 19 With things that

Speaker 19 concern Northern Ireland's legacy, its violent past, it is really complicated.

Speaker 19 It was only in 2010 that an inquiry found that on the balance of probability soldiers had fired first and those who were hit

Speaker 19 didn't pose any threat and it was only then that the police investigation began. And that's taken us through to today, to today's trial and that verdict verdict of not guilty on those seven charges.

Speaker 4 Sarah Gervin, outside court in Belfast.

Speaker 4 And still to come on the Global News podcast.

Speaker 13 Once they try it, they end up talking more, laughing more, and you can actually feel the difference in the atmosphere.

Speaker 4 How one cafe owner is trying to make his customers connect by locking away their phones.

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Speaker 4 Since Mao's time, China has followed a series of five-year plans, including the Great Leap Forward, which left tens of millions dead.

Speaker 4 The latest blueprint has just been approved by the Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party, even as China faces economic headwinds and a trade dispute with the US.

Speaker 4 There were also some political changes at the four-day meeting, with 11 members replaced, the most since 2017. And just before it started, nine generals were sacked for corruption.

Speaker 4 I heard more about the new five-year plan from Stephen McDonnell in Beijing.

Speaker 1 The document that's been released after the four-day closed-door session, it's a big sweeping document.

Speaker 1 This is not the sort of thing where you get specifics, but it's the vision thing, I guess is one way people would put it.

Speaker 1 And what it's all about really is tackling China's massive economic challenges. And central to this is this emphasis on scientific and technological self-reliance.

Speaker 1 Now why would they be talking about that? Because the Trump administration continues to restrict and threaten more restrictions on access to computer chips, advanced software and the like.

Speaker 1 And so this is the Communist Party's way of saying, look, we need to up our game in terms of being able to produce all this stuff ourselves in a time of uncertainty.

Speaker 1 I mean, it also speaks about making up for lost export revenue by boosting domestic consumption. Same reason.
It's all about this time of political uncertainty.

Speaker 1 If you can't keep exporting as much stuff, you need to rely on this huge domestic market. That said, China has been doing

Speaker 1 a pretty good job of finding other export markets following a drop-off in sales to the US and recent export figures are still looking pretty good.

Speaker 1 You know, it's all about technology and this type of thing. Talking about the military, it's the same thing, boosting military cutting-edge technology.

Speaker 1 And also, I suppose, trying to steer the country into a sort of more modern path.

Speaker 1 I mean, the broad shift in China has been turning this country from a place that produces cheap sneakers and what have you to a high-tech powerhouse.

Speaker 1 And it has gone a long way along the road to achieving that. But the priority is going to be even

Speaker 1 more of this according to this five-year plan that's been approved by the party.

Speaker 4 Of course, one of the problems China is grappling with at the moment is high unemployment.

Speaker 4 What are those sackings of generals and the replacement of members of the Central Committee, what do they say about the politics of all this?

Speaker 1 Yeah, well,

Speaker 1 in terms of the military, there are a lot of unemployed officers after just days ago this anti-corruption drive, which has been sweeping through the military over recent years, I should add, especially through the Rocket Force, which has seen a lot of people purged.

Speaker 1 Well, just the end of last week, prior to this meeting happening, number three in line in the People's Liberation Army was purged, and they've approved a new vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, General Zheng Sheng Min.

Speaker 1 He's now number three in the PLA behind another general, Xi Jinping at the helm. And so, yes, there have been new appointments to make up for those lost positions.

Speaker 1 But some would wonder why Xi Jinping sees the need to keep sacking all these top military officials.

Speaker 4 Stephen MacDonnell in Beijing. For years, Britain has been unable to stop migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats, and it's enlisted help from France.

Speaker 4 In the summer, the French authorities announced plans for a new doctrine, allowing security forces to intervene at sea.

Speaker 4 But the BBC has learned that the plan may be falling victim to the current chaos in French politics, as we heard from our Paris correspondent, Andrew Harding.

Speaker 7 I'm sitting on a windy beach beside a canal that leads into the English Channel near the French town of Graveline. It's a canal that's used routinely by smugglers to launch their small boats.

Speaker 7 And I've met a local man here, a retired chip shop owner called Jean-Del Dique, who's showing me dozens of videos he's taken from his window of the smugglers' boats coming past and heading out to sea.

Speaker 7 The canal here is tidal and mostly very shallow. You could wade out into it, but the French authorities are making no attempts to intercept the smugglers.

Speaker 7 There's even a video here showing a police patrol boat simply sailing past an inflatable packed with people.

Speaker 7 You have to stop the boats, Del Dique's saying.

Speaker 8 Yes, it's madness.

Speaker 8 Madness.

Speaker 7 So, what's going on here?

Speaker 22 Careful, big wave, big away, big away, fuse wave.

Speaker 7 Back in July, we were on a beach further south along the coast, and we saw a rare intervention by French police who waded out into the water with knives to stop an overloaded small boat.

Speaker 7 The police have come in to slice the boat.

Speaker 7 In London, the Prime Minister's spokesman reacted immediately to our footage, calling it a really significant moment, proof that the French are starting to take tougher action to stop the small boats onshore and at sea.

Speaker 7 The issue was discussed by President Emmanuel Macron and Sakir Starma at a summit days later.

Speaker 7 Back in Paris, a source at the Interior Ministry confirmed to us that French patrol boats were poised imminently to begin intervening, to intercept the smugglers' so-called taxi boats.

Speaker 7 Months later, and we've established that the reality is very different.

Speaker 7 For a start, French police have confirmed to us there's no new plan to wade out into the shallow waters, that it's simply too risky for all concerned.

Speaker 7 The incident we'd witnessed on the beach was a one-off.

Speaker 7 Jean-Pierre Cloz is a police union official. He tells me the rules are the same.
It's too dangerous. For now, there'll be no change in the way we do things.

Speaker 7 But what of those plans to intervene at sea? France's maritime authorities have told us officially that the issue is still being studied.

Speaker 7 But in recent days, three well-placed French sources in maritime security have told us it's just not going to happen. Two dismissed the idea as political spin, a stunt.

Speaker 7 Another said the maritime authorities were set against intervention, fearing more deaths and prosecutions.

Speaker 4 Andrew Harding, reporting from France. Next to a study that's been testing the limits of the human body.

Speaker 4 Published in the journal Current Biology, it looked at how many calories are burnt by endurance athletes. It found the number is limited by what's known as a metabolic ceiling.

Speaker 4 Claudia Hammond heard more from British doctor and health commentator Ian Panja.

Speaker 2 We kind of know what basal metabolic rate is, which is the number of calories your body needs just to function, the bare essential in terms of calories.

Speaker 2 And our metabolic ceiling is almost the opposite. It's the maximum number of calories that your body can burn off.

Speaker 2 And what they looked at in this study, so they were looking at these ultra-endurance athletes, 14 of them, who often do multi-day events, whether that's cycling or running or triathlon, just to see what was happening to their metabolic rate.

Speaker 2 And they did this by labeling a type of water. When I say labeling, I mean it was something that they could track and measure through the body.

Speaker 2 And what they found was that a lot of these athletes were burning six or seven times their basal metabolic rate, particularly during these multi-day events.

Speaker 2 But after a while, the maximum number of calories that they could burn came back down to two and a half times their basal metabolic rate, which kind of suggests that there is a metabolic ceiling.

Speaker 2 Even these superhuman people that are sort of exercising to extreme cannot get beyond that 2.5, and that sort of means the body kind of almost corrects itself after a while.

Speaker 2 The only way you could try and beat that is by overdoing it effectively, by doing that kind of ultra endurance every single day.

Speaker 2 And then, if you did that, the danger would be that you would start to shrink, you know, you would start to lose muscle mass and effectively start to disappear.

Speaker 19 I wonder what this means for the rest of us mere mortals.

Speaker 2 For us, I guess it's not as much of an issue because most of us are not going to be burning that level of calories.

Speaker 2 Interestingly, also, it says that if you were to do 11 miles of running a day for a year, that would hit your metabolic ceiling of sort of two and a half times.

Speaker 2 That's a lot of running, and the counterbalance to that is injury and also the risk of exhaustion.

Speaker 4 Dr. Aaron Panja.
Finally, have you ever been out to eat and realise you're surrounded by people on their phones? Well, one business owner has decided to take matters into his own hands to change that.

Speaker 4 Usman Hussain runs a cafe here in the UK. He's offering customers a 20% discount if they put their mobiles into phone jail during their visit.

Speaker 13 It's sort of to just get everyone back to how it was without the phones, get connected with each other.

Speaker 13 I mean, cafes used to be a place where people talked, they laughed and, you know, they came together.

Speaker 13 And now everyone's just sort of on their their phones so I just wanted to bring that vibe back the real face-to-face feeling again. The reaction's been overwhelming.

Speaker 13 People actually people actually love it. Some are a bit hesitant at first but once they try it they end up talking more, laughing more and you can actually feel the difference in the atmosphere.

Speaker 13 As you get to the counter we've got it on display and you could basically just opt for putting your phone away.

Speaker 13 So you'd place your order, put your phone in the jailbox, we'd then put that next to you on the desk. It's actually locked as well, so you sat there.

Speaker 13 And once you finish your meal and you stay, then you can just come back to the counter to make the payment and you get your phone back.

Speaker 13 Last night, as an example, we had a full house, and literally, there was a box at everyone's desk, and it was just really nice.

Speaker 13 Not only did they mix in, you know, with their own company, they were actually talking amongst each other, and these people had never met each other before, you could tell.

Speaker 13 So, it was just really nice atmosphere. We're just sort of so used used to it that it's the first thing that everyone does as soon as they sit down.

Speaker 13 Rather than connecting with each other, we're all, you know, checking our phones.

Speaker 13 So it's just brilliant to put it away just for that short time while you're with us and just connect with each other really and enjoy the present moment.

Speaker 4 Usman Hussain.

Speaker 4 And that is all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast very soon. This one was mixed by Nick Randall and produced by Stephanie Zacherson and Chantal Hartle.

Speaker 4 Our editor's Karen Martin, I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.

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