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Global News Podcast
Pope Leo issues AI warning
00:24:33
The Pope focuses on artificial intelligence in first encyclical
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Narrator/Advertiser
This BBC podcast is supported by ads
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Oliver Conway
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Oliver Conway
You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 16 hours GMT on Monday 25th May. Pope Leo warns that artificial intelligence poses a potentially existential risk to humanity. The World Health Organization chief says a delay in detecting Ebola means responders are now playing catch up, and Saudi Arabia says Hajj pilgrims will be safe despite the war in Iran. Also in the podcast, the idea here
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Riaz Patel
is that you could do one treatment once in your life and then hopefully for the rest of your time you won't have to worry about high cholesterol causing heart disease.
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Oliver Conway
Could a one off treatment spell the end of high cholesterol? The Pope has sounded a warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence, saying it could pose a potentially existential risk to humanity and calling for more to be done to reduce its impact on the environment. In his first encyclical or teaching document entitled Magnifica Humanitas, Leo said that AI shouldn't be allowed to concentra power in the hands of just a few people, nor used for military purposes.
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Paul Moss
Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed. The word is strong, I know, but deliberately chosen because this moment needs words
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Riaz Patel
capable of attracting attention, awakening consciences and
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Paul Moss
indicating paths forward for humanity.
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Oliver Conway
The Pontiff also said that the idea of a just war, which has recently been used by the Trump administration to justify its attacks on Iran, was outdated. Sitting alongside the Pope was Anthropic co founder Chris Ola, who warned against his own industry acting alone in dictating the development of AI.
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Chris Ola
Some might believe that matters of AI are best handled by computer scientists like myself. They are mistaken. The questions raised by AI are bigger than the AI research community, not just in their implications, but also in their nature. If it helps. One way I sometimes describe this is that it's a little bit like bringing a fictional character to life. And now we're entering an extraordinary world where those fictional characters speak to us. Do work? Have jobs? This clearly raises questions beyond computer science. The machinery that makes this possible is the Work of, of math and programming and science, but what character we choose, how it interacts with the world, how it ought to interact with the world. These are more clearly questions for the humanities, for religion, for philosophy, for society at large.
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Oliver Conway
Elise Anne Allen is Rome correspondent for the Catholic news website Crooks and a biographer of Leo xiv. What does she make of the Pope's warning?
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Elise Anne Allen
It was quite strong. And if you read this document, the language that Pope Leo uses is very forceful sort of in condemning this culture of power as he described in this tendency to domination, you know, and then that's the risk of these technologies now is that they will be used to dominate and ultimately exploit the human person rather than work for their good. So he was very, very firm in his caution in terms of how these technologies are used. So it was quite a strong message from Pope Leo today in the document and in the speech that we just heard. He didn't hold back in either of
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Narrator/Advertiser
those occasions, comparing it to the potential ghastliness of slavery in which he said the Catholic Church was hold all too slow in condemning. But suggesting that AI could create new forms of enslavement is a very strong way of trying to impart that message about the potential peril.
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Elise Anne Allen
I think that this is probably for myself, one of the key aspects of this document is the potential for new forms of slavery in the digital era. This is something that the Catholic Church was talking about even before COVID 19. And then I think they saw a boom in the online exploitation industry where it became much easier for exploitation. Online cyberbullying, specifically the. The online sexual exploitation of children, is something that tragically became a more common phenomenon during that time. And so this is something the Church has been concerned about. And I think Leo sees the advent of AI in all of this and sort of the limitless potential that it has and the way that some want to just carry this technology forward without limits as opening all kinds of concerning doors, you know, and the ease with which people can access content and also the anonymity of all. You know, it's so much easier to create, you know, anonymous profiles and there's no tracking for how these things are paid for. You know, this content is obtained and paid for. So it opens all kinds of questions, you know, and condemning, you know, and he apologized. Very strong and very potent moment. He apologized for the Church's past support of slavery and its slow condemnation of it. And he said, if we want to avoid having to make a similar apology in the future, we need to get ahead of the curve now. And I think that is one of the most important elements of this document.
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Oliver Conway
Elise Anne Allen talking to Tim Franks. Despite the war in nearby Iran, Muslims from around the world are traveling to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj pilgrimage. Officials say that more than one and a half million people will be heading to Mecca, more than last year. So will the pilgrims be safe? I asked our Arab affairs analyst, Sebastian Usher.
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Sebastian Usher
The Saudi Defence Ministry has essentially said that they can protect the skies above Mecca and elsewhere where the rituals are going to take place.
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Oliver Conway
Place.
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Sebastian Usher
They posted a video of an air defense battery just on the outskirts of Mecca. I mean, Saudi Arabia was one of the targets for Iran during the height of the war. Of course, with a ceasefire, there have been no attacks recently, but it could of course erupt again at any moment. So, yeah, there's two different types of heat. There's the customary summer heat. I'm just looking now at my phone, it's around 42 degrees there at the moment. The Saudis for years now have introduced all sorts of ways to try to mitigate that with water trucks, mist of water, umbrellas, all sorts of things, but people will die of heatstroke there. But again, for some of those who come to the pilgrimage, some of those who are older, that isn't something that they particularly mind. You know, this is the summit of their lives. And to die at Hajj, if you've reached that stage of life, isn't actually considered the worst thing to happen. And of course there's the political heat, there's all the talk of the ceasefire, that it may be extended, that there may be a deal finally on the table. But that uncertainty has certainly colored the way that from which these people, the pilgrims, had come from. But not so much the pilgrims themselves. I mean, this is pretty large number. If you remember back at the time of COVID it was down to just a few thousand. So there's been a resurgence in the past two or three years and it's continuing.
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Oliver Conway
Very important religious event for those pilgrims. But it's also an important. Well, it's important for Saudi's economy. It's been trying to diversify, but run into a bit of trouble recently.
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Sebastian Usher
It has. I mean, massively. You know, there's a thing called Vision 2030, which is where the Crown Prince for De Factor ruler, Mohammed bin Salmandi set this up about 10 years ago with hugely ambitious ideas. One of them was about bringing tourism to Saudi Arabia, which really hadn't had tourism beyond religious tourism ever, and the expats who go and work there so There've been many, many events, all sorts of things to try and bring people towards Saudi Arabia and also massive giga projects, things like the line, the cube development of the Red Sea. But it hasn't so far resulted in any real influx of tourists. Still, the largest number by far are the pilgrims who come for ha.
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Oliver Conway
Our Arab affairs analyst, Sebastian Usher. In many countries, convenience stores tend to just sell basic snacks and essentials. But in Japan, they're part of the vital social infrastructure, offering all manner of goods and services. The man regarded as the father of the Japanese convenience store industry, Toshifumi Suzuki, has died at the age of 93. He opened the first 711 in Japan in 1974 and turned it into the country's largest chain. As I heard from our global affairs
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Paul Moss
Reporter, Paul Moss, 7:11 sort of sounds to many people like the classic American company. And it does have its origins in the U.S. but in fact, it's now majority owned by a Japanese company. And that is largely down to Toshi Sumi Suzuki. He got the first franchise to open 711 in Japan in the 1970s. It was very successful. So successful that in the 1990s, when the American side of 711 was having a bit of difficulty, his company bought a majority of the shares and have had them ever since. So 711 is majority Japanese owned. But in that way, he sort of embodied Japan's post war economic success, which saw America push Japan to do capitalism the American way. And Japan not only did it, it did it well, and did it in some ways better than America. I mean, we first of all, of course, saw Japanese consumer electronics beating their American competitors. Suzuki took that approach of beating America at its own game and he applied it to retail.
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Oliver Conway
Yeah, and why was 711 in particular such a success in Japan?
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Paul Moss
Well, I think you've hit the nail on the head describing it as part of the social infrastructure. I mean, it's not just paying bills. Do you know that when they have an earthquake in Japan, 711 is very involved in organizing the recovery. It's that much part of life. But it's also unusual in that it's a chain which often means uniformity. You know, you go to a branch of any super, most supermarkets anywhere, that's got the same stuff. For many people, that's the attraction. What Toshumi helped to pioneer with the art, Toshifumi, was the idea of the hyperlocal, in which any branch knows by its computer records what particular variety of sun product is popular locally. And they make sure they have lots of it. And they then transferred that model to other branches elsewhere in Asia, for example, in Thailand, Taiwan. They know that in this particular town, people like this particular flavor of bubble tea. I should say that also, if you ask Japanese people about it, they'll also start using some traditional Japanese terms which they say they've applied to business in 711 words like kaizen, striving for continuous improvement, or I think my favorite quad wari, which is usually translated as the relentless pursuit of perfection. I mean, when you read about 711 success in Japan, you might feel like you're reading a manual for how to be a samurai warrior in the 19th century. In fact, this is just how they do retail.
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Oliver Conway
Yeah, very briefly, he ended up resigning. Why was he.
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Paul Moss
Yeah, that was very sad. He was accused in 2016 of trying to get his son installed as the boss and he resigned, saying, it is my lack of virtue and I'm unbearably ashamed. So ended his career, but he was still a very successful, much loved man in Japan.
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Oliver Conway
Paul Moss on Toshivumi Suzuki, who's died at the age of 93. Deep Sea scientists have identified a new species of octopus the size of a golf ball near the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean. The tiny creature stands out for its blue color, one of the rarest shades in nature, its relatively few arm suckers, and lack of an ink sac. Scientists say related species are usually much larger and normally found in the icy waters of Antarctica. We heard more from Dr. Thomas Clements, lecturer in invertebrate zoology at the University of Reading.
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Dr. Thomas Clements
These animals are so incredibly rare that even if you send an expedition down into the deep water, the chances of coming across one are so unlikely. And I think one thing that that sort of typifies that is the reaction of the researchers when they discovered it. You know, they were very excited when they saw it because it's just such a rare thing. From this specimen, we know that this type of cephalopod normally sits quite close to the seafloor and sort of bounces along. It doesn't swim too much because it wants to conserve energy. But we know from related animals that when they collected them, they dissected them and found that they were full of parasites. And those parasites are actually only really found in crustaceans. So we know that they were eating crustaceans. One thing that I think is such a cool fact, most octopuses can change the color of their skin. They have these things called chromatophores. These deep water octopuses don't need that because they live in the dark, so they're kind of see through, but they have really pigmented internal organs. And the scientists think that they have these organs to stop bioluminescent crustaceans from glowing inside them and making them potentially eaten by other predators. They're found normally in very deep waters around the Pacific and around the Atlantic, as you said, close to Antarctica. I think a big part of this is just that we haven't done that many expeditions in these areas and so the geographic range will grow as we get more data.
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Oliver Conway
Dr. Thomas Clements still to come on
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Harry Heseman
this podcast, I don't know if that's an honour or not. You know, if I was back on seventh year I'd say, oh well, I might get there, but I never dreamed I would be doing it.
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Oliver Conway
The 98 year old British man riding on the wing of a biplane.
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Oliver Conway
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedra Sadhanom Ghebreyesus, says 220 people are now thought to have died of Ebola in the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As two new cases were reported in neighboring Uganda. He said a delay in detecting infections meant responders were now playing catch up. At a meeting in Kampala, health ministers from Congo, Uganda and South Sudan adopted a joint plan to counter the spread of the virus. The head of the Africa Centers for Disease control and Prevention, Dr. Jean Casea, dismissed criticism they had taken too long to coordinate a response.
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Dr. Jean Kassea
We landed with a joint plan of $319 million to stop this outbreak. And more importantly, we also agreed on a continental mechanism to coordinate this response, led by Africa CDC and who, supported by all other partners.
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Anne Soy
Many who will be listening to you will be wondering how come there wasn't a plan in place already? Because your organization was created in response to that large outbreak of Ebola in West Africa.
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Dr. Jean Kassea
The world must Even congratulate Africa CDC because on the 15th of May, Africa CDC declared this outbreak when we got evidence that more than one country was infected. Second, we immediately started to interact with authorities who declared this outbreak the same day and started to work on the plan. And in about three days, all countries had a plan. In about four days, I organized a meeting with all partners and all countries. Now we have the plan ready. We did it quickly, as much as possible we could do.
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Anne Soy
So what are the details of the plan?
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Dr. Jean Kassea
The plan is articulated around 11 pillars. These 11 pillars will help us to contain the outbreak. As you know, currently we don't have vaccines, we don't have medicine, and we are mostly relying on a better coordination, how to bring countries and partners together to avoid wastage. Second, we are mostly targeting the risk communication and we are targeting how to test, test and test to isolate cases.
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Anne Soy
And you say that Your budget is $319 million. How much have you raised so far and what are the priorities?
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Dr. Jean Kassea
I'm four so proud of African countries. You know, I'm someone talking every day about the sovereignty of African countries. I request African countries to start with the initial contribution. So far, 10% of the budget were already secured by African countries. In addition to that, we got 2.5 million from South Africa. It means African countries are coming to support the response.
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Oliver Conway
Dr. Jean Kassea talking to Anne Soy. Early test results published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggest a single infusion of what's been described as a revolutionary gene editing therapy could lower bad cholesterol by almost 2/3 and do so permanently. Riaz Patel is a professor of cardiology at University College London who worked with some of the patients on the study he spoke to Tim Franks.
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Riaz Patel
This is essentially, as you've described, a new gene editing treatment for cholesterol. And the idea is that you give a single treatment, it turns off a very small part of the DNA of a particular protein in the liver, and that essentially translates to hopefully, a very long term reduction in your cholesterol levels, which then in turn leads to lower risk of heart disease and stroke.
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Narrator/Advertiser
It sounds fabulous. Presumably you're going to be trialing on a larger scale now. Lots of people at the moment take statins in order to try and reduce the levels of bad cholesterol. Would that obviate the need for that?
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Riaz Patel
It's a good question. I think it's a bit early to say. So we've got to remind ourselves it's still interim early stage results. These are 35 people around the world who have received this therapy. And the exciting thing is that, first of all, it's safe. It really does work. And the science behind it is truly science fiction like. And the excitement really in the field is that this will change the paradigm by which we treat a chronic problem like cholesterol. Because at the moment, if someone is at high risk of heart disease or has very high cholesterol, we have to give them a pill or a treatment regularly to keep those levels down. And when they stop those treatments, the levels go up and their heart risk goes up. But the idea here is that you could do one treatment once in your life and then hopefully for the rest of your time you won't have to worry about high cholesterol causing heart disease. So in theory, there will be those questions asked about whether it will replace tablets. I do think that this is the future and at some point we will look back and say, did we really need to take pills to suppress cholesterol?
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Narrator/Advertiser
What about the issue of high cholesterol in those who don't necessarily have what might be considered to be a bad diet, but just have inherited the predisposition for high cholesterol? Is this potentially a therapy that could help them as well?
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Riaz Patel
Yes, in the study currently, they're looking at people who have very high cholesterol and who need cholesterol lowering long term. So that includes people who have a genetically high cholesterol who are at risk of future heart disease. There's a number of those patients in the trial at the moment. So this is definitely for those people with a genetic problem. But more importantly, it's also for people who might, for example, have had an early heart attack in life and need another 30, 40 years of cholesterol lowering in order to stop a second or third heart attack. And for them, this will again be potentially transformative. And it opens up the scope for using gene editing not just for a rare condition, as we've heard in previous gene editing studies, but now for the first time, for a very common problem with potentially many, many thousands of heart attacks that could be saved.
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Oliver Conway
Riaz Patel of University College London. The travel industry has been badly hit by the war on Iran. With the Strait of Hormuz closed, the cost of jet fuel has soared, meaning airlines have cut flights or raised prices. As a result, travel enthusiasts are trying to find different ways of exploring the world. Isabella Jewell took a walk with social media influencer Sama Speaks to see how to experience different cultures without leaving London.
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Sama Ansari Poor
The next station is Shepherd's Bush.
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Isabella Jewell
I've been promised a holiday, but I'm in a rather breezy part of West London next to a main road. But a young British Iranian Londoner called Sama Ansari Poor should be waiting somewhere around here to take me on a journey across the world.
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Sama Ansari Poor
I'm a cultural content creator. It means that I spend a day experiencing the culture of another country in London. So I'm a tourist. I'll go to the supermarket. I'll do the dances, the clubs, the cultural activities, restaurants. Anything you do in a foreign country on holiday, I'll do it here. I chose this place because it's got three enclaves. A really big Algerian community, a really big Ethiopian Eritrean community, and a really big Syrian community.
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Isabella Jewell
So some are welcome. What's the first stop on our trip?
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Sama Ansari Poor
I'll take you to Syria. Right now we're walking past a Syrian restaurant. It's tucked right next to a Syrian supermarket. Let's go inside.
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Isabella Jewell
Lots of fresh goods around. You can see lots of amazing herbs as well.
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Sama Ansari Poor
Lots of mezzes like you've got Ryan leaves, moussaka, molames, garlic sauce, tzatziki. If we go over here, look, product of Syria. It says it in another. This is Persian cucumbers. I would always eat this as a kid. And they're very different to, like Turkish prickles. I think, like a really cool side effect of it is, well, okay, you can go to museums for free or Gallis for free, but, oh, you can also go to all of these cultural centers and stuff. Like, there's a Somali house right across the road. Even for me, because I can't really go back to Iran going to places like Palestine House, where the architecture is just mirrored of My country, it's just so comforting and I feel like for majority of the world that exists here.
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Isabella Jewell
A few minutes away we find one of summer's favorites, an Ethiopian hardware store.
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Sama Ansari Poor
A lot of Ethiopian stores always smell so good because of incense. It's quite big in their culture. But then you have these things over here, so you have these tea cups, these really nice, beautiful golden like sort of small mirror tables and it's used for a traditional coffee, coffee ceremonies.
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Isabella Jewell
Back at the tube station, Sama told me why she shares these stories online.
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Sama Ansari Poor
I really want to make other cultures like quite accessible. If we're more exposed to each other and we have more conversations, I really hope that us versus them get smaller and smaller.
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Oliver Conway
Sama speaks, talking to Isabella Jewell. Finally, a man here in the UK has proved it's never too late to try something new. Just days before his 99th birthday, Harry Heseman took to the skies for a wing walk, becoming the oldest person ever to attempt the daring feat. Helena Burke has the details.
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Helena Burke
A year ago, Harry Heseman couldn't climb the stairs and had to enter an old age home. But then the 98 year old decided he'd like to fulfil a childhood dream. As a teenager during the Second World War, Harry worked in a factory making aircrafts used in the D Day landings. He wondered what it would be like to fly in one of the planes.
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Harry Heseman
I've been up on the plane once but I didn't fly. We did everything except take off on Saturday.
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Helena Burke
After more than eight decades, Harry stopped wondering. The 98 year old was strapped to the wing of a 1940s biplane as it took to the skies. In doing so, he broke the Guinness World Record for the oldest person ever to complete a wing walk.
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Harry Heseman
I don't know if that's an honour or not. You know, if I was back on 70, I'd say, oh well, I might get there, but I never dreamed I would be doing it.
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Helena Burke
In preparation for the flight, Harry rebuilt his strength with a physiotherapist. He can now walk up the stairs independently again, a feat that came in handy for the wing walk because he had to step up to the top of the plane. But Harry has insisted that the focus of the stunt shouldn't be on him. Instead, he wants to raise awareness about the charity he is fundraising for, the Lenox Children's Cancer Fund.
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Harry Heseman
They're a small charity but they do small miracles. There's a young lady who was sitting there, she had cancer when she was 10. She's 15 now and they've helped her through it and she wants to be a vet now. When you hear something like that, that gives you a bit of a get up and go and do something.
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Helena Burke
Harry has raised nearly $7,000 so far. The 98 year old plans to continue to work with his physiotherapist, with his sights now set on completing the London Marathon, Helena Berg.
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Oliver Conway
And that is all from us for now. But the Global News podcast will be back very soon. This edition was mixed by Rose Susan Winderell and produced by Richard Hamilton. Our editors, Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time. Goodbye.
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Oliver Conway
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