Zelensky sacks Ukraine's army chief

Summary

Global News Podcast (BBC World Service)
Episode: "Zelensky sacks Ukraine's army chief"
Date: July 22, 2026
Host: Oliver Conway
Summary by Topic and Timestamps

---

Episode Overview

This episode delivers global headlines with in-depth reports on major stories: Ukraine’s President Zelensky sacks his army chief after days of anti-government protest, France’s new law banning social media for children under 15, haunting testimony from a deadly strike on an Iranian school at the start of the U.S.-Israel war, the aftermath of the Venezuelan twin earthquakes, a heated legal war between weight loss drug giants, concerns over abandoned pet monkeys in London, and the rise of high-tech sleep tracking for disease prediction.

---

Key Story 1: Ukraine’s Political-Military Upheaval

[01:35–07:50]

Background and Events

• President Zelensky dismissed the head of the armed forces, General Oleksandr Syrsky, following mass protests.
• The unrest was triggered by the earlier sacking of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, a reformist celebrated for modernizing drone warfare and pushing innovation.
• Fedorov was widely popular, while Syrsky was seen as old guard, Soviet-trained.
• Zelensky ultimately yielded to public pressure, removing Syrsky and appointing Mihailo Drapati, a younger, reform-minded commander seen as an ally of Fedorov.

Analysis & Discussion

• Paul Adams (Kyiv):

  “President Zelenskyy has clearly bowed to popular pressure to a certain extent. One of the key demands of the protesters…has been the removal of General Syrsky.” [04:03] “They see Mykhailo Fedorov as representing the future. His whole interest and involvement in the promotion of drone warfare and a whole array of technological innovations…” [05:23]

• Fedorov endorsed the new Commander in Chief, signalling hopes the crisis would abate.
• Public debate continues around the authority and political motives of President Zelensky:

  “For the second time in a year, he has been forced into a kind of U-turn…People suspect that he acted because he felt that Mr. Fedorov was becoming too popular.” [06:47]

Notable Moments

• Chants of “Syrsky out” reflected widespread public frustration.
• The episode raises questions about balancing old-guard military experience with innovation in time of war.

---

Key Story 2: France Bans Social Media for Children under 15

[07:50–11:44]

New Legislation

• France becomes the first EU member to set an outright age restriction on social media access for those under age 15.
• Law also bans mobile phones in high schools; passes with overwhelming support.

In Practice

• [09:07] Hugh Schofield:
  The ban is rolled out in two stages:
  • September 1: Age verification required for all new accounts.
  • Four-month grace period for existing accounts to implement verification.
• Platforms (e.g., Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok) are responsible for age checks, potentially using passports or facial recognition techniques.
• Failure to comply can result in fines up to 6% of worldwide turnover.

Public and Political Reaction

• Mixed feelings among parents and teens in Paris:

  “It scares me to see the content some kids post…” — Claire Dhu [08:34]
  “The more things are forbidden, the more teenagers want to do them.” — Nawal Al Makafi [08:45]

• President Macron determined to make this a legacy social measure.
• Across the political spectrum, growing consensus recognizes harms of underage social media use.

---

Key Story 3: Striking Testimonies from the Iranian School Strike

[11:44–16:12]

Incident

• On the first day of the US-Israel war with Iran, a strike hit a primary school in Minab, southern Iran, killing 156 (120 children).
• Months later, the US has not released its investigation, but evidence suggests a US missile was responsible.
• International media given rare access inside Iran to report on the aftermath.

On-the-Ground Reporting

• Scenes of devastation and deep mourning; families visiting rows of graves, trauma is palpable.
• Teachers, emergency responders share stark testimony.

  “You can't call it a school here. There are only walls that smell of death, grief and the blood that was shed here.” — Amine Nadimi, teacher [13:04] “There was only the smell of smoke in children's hair. I saw a hand, a foot. They had been torn to pieces.” — Masume, mother who lost her daughter [15:33] “May Trump be destroyed. May he drown in the blood of these children…” [15:48]

• Strike has united Iranians across divides in shared grief and anger at both their own government and foreign forces.

---

Key Story 4: Venezuela’s Earthquake Crisis and Political Turmoil

[18:55–21:24]

Context

• A month after twin earthquakes in Venezuela: 5,000 dead, search and rescue ongoing.
• Outrage and trauma have eclipsed public attention on the criminal case in the U.S. against ousted ex-President Nicolas Maduro for alleged drug trafficking.

On the Ground

• Will Grant:

  “It’s very hard to imagine the idea of ex president Nicolas Maduro facing drug trafficking charges in a US courtroom. Most people we've spoken to say they simply don't have capacity to think about that now.” [19:29]

• Multiple interviewees express a sense of abandonment by leaders:

  “Right now we all feel like we don't have a president here, no one at all. Our president is ourselves, our families and the Venezuelan people.” — Local resident [20:37] “Maduro has never worried about whether the Venezuelan people are doing well. That has always been a lie.” — Interviewee [20:52]

---

Key Story 5: Legal Fight over Weight Loss Drug Ads

[21:24–23:45]

Industry Rivalry

• Novo Nordisk (Wegovy, Ozempic) sues Eli Lilly (Mounjaro, Zepbound) for allegedly misleading ads in the U.S.
• Ads trumpeted greater weight loss claims based on older head-to-head studies, omitting newer comparably effective Novo drugs.

  “They're using an old outdated study…if they were using current data, it paints a very different picture.” — John Kuchelman, Novo Nordisk [22:20]

• Novo seeks damages and ‘corrective advertising’.
• U.S. remains one of few countries permitting direct-to-consumer prescription drug ads; battle for dominance in $100bn market intensifies.

---

Key Story 6: Monkey Abandonment on London Bus

[23:45–25:40]

Surprising Discovery

• Bus driver finds abandoned marmoset monkey in a bag; animal charity RSPCA intervenes, names it “Oyster.”
• The case is indicative of fears that new licensing laws for primate owners may prompt a rise in abandoned monkeys in the UK.

  “It’s very rare to find a monkey that has been left unattended or abandoned…We are concerned that the number will rise.” — Claire Dhu, RSPCA [24:27]

---

Key Story 7: Rise of Sleep Tech for Health and Disease Prediction

[25:40–29:53]

Tracking Sleep as Preventative Health

• Nearly half of Americans and 40% of Britons now use sleep trackers—either wearable or “kneerable” (environmental, like under-mattress mats).
• Devices measure duration, sleep latency, REM/deep sleep, heart rate, breathing, and produce daily scores.
• French company Withings features as innovator of under-mattress sleep analyzers.

  “This evolution [in your sleep data] is very important to detect a lot of things…like a disease which is coming, and probably you are preparing to be ill.” — Eric Carril, Withings [28:36]

Scientific Perspective

• Prof. Dirken Dijk (Surrey Sleep Research Centre):

  “We know that when we compare the measures of those devices against gold standard measures, it’s quite difficult…but one of the big advantages is you can record sleep for many, many nights.” [28:56]

• While consumer trackers aren’t substitutes for clinical sleep lab analysis, they provide valuable long-term trends useful for large-scale research and early warnings.

---

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “You can’t fight a large Soviet army with a small Soviet army.” — Paul Adams paraphrasing Ukrainian protesters [05:23]
• “May Trump be destroyed. May he drown in the blood of these children…” — Grieving Iranian parent [15:48]
• “Right now we all feel like we don’t have a president here, no one at all.” — Venezuelan earthquake survivor [20:37]
• “This evolution [of sleep data] is very important to detect…disease which is coming…” — Eric Carril, Withings [28:36]

---

For Further Listening

• The episode transitions to business and health stories (skipping mid-episode adverts here).
• For the latest reporting, subscribe to the Global News Podcast or contact at [e-mail].

Transcript

[Mike Townsend]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day, but what policy changes should investors be watching? Listen to Washington Wise, an original podcast for investors from Charles Schwab to hear the stories making news in Washington right now. Host Mike Townsend, Charles Schwab's Managing Director for Legislative and Regulatory affairs, takes a non partisan look at the stories that matter most to investors, including policy initiatives for retirement, savings, taxes and trade, inflation concerns, the Federal Reserve, and how regulatory developments can affect companies, sectors and even the entire market. Mike and his guests offer their perspective on how policy changes could affect what you do with your portfolio. Download the latest episode and [e-mail] WashingtonWise or wherever you listen.

[Odoo Advertiser]

Imagine buying a toy for your kid, but it doesn't come with batteries. That sucks. But honestly, it's even worse. When you buy business software. You end up with fragmented, disconnected systems that cost a fortune and don't talk to each other. Odoo completely changes that. Odoo comes fully complete with all your business apps perfectly integrated and working together seamlessly. It's everything your business needs in one place, saving you time, headaches and serious money. Stop paying for missing pieces. Go to odoo.com that's o-com to learn more.

[Oliver Conway]

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 04:00 GMT on Wednesday 22 July. Ukraine's President Sacks, the head of the armed forces after protests called for changes in the military leadership. France becomes the first EU state to ban social media for children and we report from the Iranian school hit by a deadly strike on the first day of the war with the US and Israel. Also in this podcast, in a study,

[Grainger Advertiser]

people using Lilly's Zepp Bound lost an average of 50 pounds compared to an average of 33 pounds with up to a 2.4mg dose of the Wegovy injection.

[Oliver Conway]

Weight loss rivals go to court in a dispute over advertising claims and the unusual pet abandoned on a London bus. Ukraine, like Russia, has changed its military leadership several times during the past four years of all out war. But the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky appears to have shot himself in the foot last week by getting rid of his popular Defence minister mykhailo fedorov. The 35 year old reformist has been credited with revolutionizing Ukraine's drone warfare and taking the fight to Russia, but he clashed with the head of the armed forces, Oleksandr Syrsky and President Zelenskyy was forced to choose between them. He ended up siding with the 60 year old Soviet trained General and removed Mr. Fedorov from his post. But that didn't go down well with the public. People chanting Syrsky out. Well now, after six days of protests, President Zelenskyy has been forced to give in and sack General Syrsky, while praising his efforts in commanding the defence of Kyiv earlier in the war.

[Paul Adams]

I am grateful to Oleksandr Syrsky and every one of our soldiers for Ukraine's strong front line positions. I'm grateful to Mikhail Dropaty for having precisely the same view today with Oleksandr Syrsky and the Chief of General Staff. We talked about further service formats and the correct transfer of affairs.

[Oliver Conway]

I heard more about the changes from our diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams in Kyiv.

[Paul Adams]

President Zelenskyy has clearly bowed to popular pressure to a certain extent. One of the key demands of the protesters who've been on the streets for the past week has been the removal of General Syrsky. That has now happened. President Zelensky heaped praise on him, not least for defending the city of Kyiv four years ago at the start of Russia's full scale invasion. And he has replaced him with a new, much younger Commander in Chief, Mihailo Drapati, A man in his mid-40s, a man thought to be a good friend, friend of the ousted Defense Minister, Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. Mr. Fedorov has put out a statement of his own calling the appointment of the new Commander in Chief a breath of fresh air. That will be good news for President Zelenskyy because he will be hoping that that will take the sting out of the protests. We still don't know exactly what the impact will be because we don't know what the fate of Mr. Fedorov himself is. We know that President Zelensky has offered him some kind of position. We don't know what exactly. And so I think supporters of Mr. Fedorov who've been out on the streets will want to know a bit more about that. And I'm guessing that the discussions are still going on about his future.

[Oliver Conway]

Yeah, because everyone will want to know what these personnel changes mean for Ukraine's war effort, which has been having some success.

[Paul Adams]

Yes, I mean, look, what we've had revealed in the past week is that there has been a breakdown in the relationship between the Defence Minister and the Commander in Chief. And that's obviously a major issue in the midst of a war. Most protesters believe that President Zelensky chose to remove the wrong person when he removed Mr. Fedorov as minister of Defence. And so they were demanding that he make amends for that mistake, as they see it, and remove someone who they see as kind of representative of the old guard and a, a man trained in the Soviet military system who represents old ways of fighting. As all sorts of people put it here, you can't fight a large Soviet army with a small Soviet army. That's what they thought General Syrsky was doing. They see Mykhailo Fedorov as representing the future. His whole interest and involvement in the promotion of drone warfare and a whole array of other technological innovations, which Ukrainians see as the only way Ukraine can really turn the tide of the war. And in fact they believe that the tide has been turned and that Mr. Fedorov is partially responsible for that. But I think the fact that Mr. Fedorov has given his endorsement to the new commander in chief does mean that essentially this week long crisis is kind of over.

[Oliver Conway]

But has it damaged President Zelenskyy's authority? And if so, what will that mean for the rest of the conflict?

[Paul Adams]

It has definitely not been good for President Zelenskyy. For the second time in a year, he has been forced into a kind of U turn. Although this U turn perhaps is not quite as dramatic as the one last year when he had to reverse a decision on limiting the powers of the anti corruption unit in, in Ukraine. But it is in some ways equally damaging. He has, you know, in the eyes of many, been seen to make the wrong choice and then had to change his mind. People suspect that he acted because he felt that Mr. Fedorov was becoming too popular. And this is not the first time Mr. Zelenskyy has been accused of trying to remove people who he thinks might pose some kind of political threat in the future. And so it has not been a good week for him. But if as a result of this, he has a team who have a similar vision, you know, who can function as a coherent team, then something good will have come out of this. And perhaps if Ukrainians continue to see the war turning in their favor, they will forgive and perhaps forget what President Zelenskyy did a week ago.

[Oliver Conway]

Paul Adams in Kyiv. France has become the latest nation to take action over the harmful effects of social media, banning children under 15 from using it. It's the first country in the EU to do so. The new law, which also prohibits the use of mobile phones in high schools, was passed by an overwhelming majority. The French President Emmanuel Macron. It was an important moment.

[Paul Adams]

I'd like to thank all the members of Parliament.

[French Government Official]

The government has done it and this

[Paul Adams]

is a major step forward. France is leading the way in Europe when it comes to protecting our children and teenagers.

[French Government Official]

We'll keep moving forward.

[Oliver Conway]

But there were mixed reactions on the streets of Paris.

[Claire Dhu]

Honestly, I discovered Snapchat and Instagram when I was about 15, but things have changed since then. It scares me to see the content some kids post and what they can see online.

[Nawal Al Makafi]

I think this law will keep them a little safer. I don't think it's a sufficient measure. The more things are forbidden, the more teenagers want to do them. And a young person with a phone in hand has plenty of workarounds like VPNs.

[Oliver Conway]

Our Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield told James Kumarasamy how the social media ban will work.

[French Government Official]

It'll be in two stages. The ban will come into effect on September 1st for new social media accounts. So if you're on September 1st or 2nd wanting to open a social media account, you will then be asked to provide age verification. All new accounts then will have that stipulation. All existing accounts are given a grace period of four months, during which time the platforms themselves will have to have put in place that check. So the onus is entirely on the. The platforms, you know, Instagram, Snapchat, Tick Tock, whoever, to institute these checks.

[Oliver Conway]

And those checks, what do we know of them?

[French Government Official]

Nothing in the sense that the government is saying you've got to do it this way or that way. It's leaving it up to the platforms themselves to. To decide how they go about it. It can be use of a third party who will take in passport details or whatever and then use that to reassure the platform or to assure the platform that the person is of age. Or there are face recognition apps as well, which can read your face. These techniques do exist and the government is saying to the platforms you choose, but if you've got to do it and you've got to do it effectively,

[Oliver Conway]

if not, you'll be fine, serious fines. I mean, is this something that the platforms are going to take very seriously,

[French Government Official]

do you think the fine it says could go up to 6% of their worldwide turnover for the platforms?

[Oliver Conway]

And France is the first EU country to introduce something like this, isn't it? Other countries are doing similar things. What kind of debate has there been around this in France?

[French Government Official]

France is not unique in any way in having this. What's unique about it is, I suppose, having a President Macron who has wanted to make this a kind of important social piece of legislation which will define the end of his era and he thinks be very important. So he's pushed it very hard. But obviously there's been a fair degree of consensus on this. There was a sort of quite a substantial left wing opposition, but not, not nearly enough to block it. Everyone else was for it. And that I think reflects the fact that gradually over the last few two or three years there has been a growing consciousness here as elsewhere of the, of the problems caused by social media and where a few years ago you' have got an automatic reaction from parents saying I can't let my little child not have this because he'd be so left out of the group. Instead of that, you're getting more and more parents saying no, I can see that this is, you know, a real problem.

[Oliver Conway]

Hugh Scofield in Paris. On the first day of the U. S. Israeli war on Iran, a strike hit a primary school in the southern Iranian city of Minab, killing 156 people, 120 of them children. Almost five months on, the US has still not released the findings of its investigation into what happened. Although media reports of an initial assessment suggest the US military was likely responsible. President Trump has said it may never be known who was to blame. Our correspondent Nawal Al Makafi, producer Jasmine Dyer and camera journalist Jack Garland have been given rare access to visit the site. Their report contains distressing testimony throughout.

[Nawal Al Makafi]

In the blazing heat, the search continues. Months after a missile hit the Shajar Al Tayyeba school in Minab, people here are still looking for what remains of those who were killed. The authorities were keen for us to visit because this attack has become a big part of Iran's case to the world. Local officials say 156 people died here, including 120 children. I've been teaching here for six years and I'm a first grade teacher. We meet Amine Nadimi. She leads us through what's left of the building. The walls that remain are bright with painted balloons, flowers and children's writing. She points up to where the girls classrooms once were and to where they collapsed into the boys classrooms below. You can't call it a school here. There are only walls that smell of death, grief and the blood that was shed here. Parents, desperate to find their children arrived to a horrific scene after the attack in February. I thought why are they coming here? There's no one inside. Everyone has fled. I didn't know they were all under the rubble. Reza was one of the first Emergency responders to arrive. I saw one of my relatives, he was begging that just found my child, found my son. I couldn't tell her that your son is not alive. Experts say evidence indicates it was a US strike that hit the Shejaratiyeba school in Minab, southern Iran. They've also questioned whether the school was hit because of its proximity to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps site. The US is yet to release the findings of its own inquiry. Many had hoped foreign intervention would bring political change. After months of bloody anti regime protests, Reza is adamant there was no military activity in the area. The place of the army and everything that was near here is changed. There wasn't any army or anyone that be related to this regime around here. I'm walking around the cemetery where many of the children killed in the Manab school attack have been buried. And around me there are so many families that have come to visit their young children. They come here every day. I can see some of the siblings of those that were killed kissing the photos of their loved ones that stand by their grave. There are some that are so young that they're playing. In between the different tombstones there is row after row after row of graves. It's a really sobering place to be. Masume lost her 9 year old daughter Sateesh in the attack. The school had gone.

[Shannon McCallum]

There was only the smell of smoke in children's hair. I saw a hand, a foot. They had been torn to pieces.

[Nawal Al Makafi]

Like many of the parents here, her grief has become intertwined with anger.

[Shannon McCallum]

May Trump be destroyed. May he drown in the blood of these children and may he be afflicted with such suffering that everyone hears about it.

[Nawal Al Makafi]

In a country deeply divided over its authoritarian leadership, the strike on this school has united many in grief. A stark reminder that every war brings with it a devastating human cost.

[Oliver Conway]

Nawal Al Makafi reporting from Minab in southern Iran on condition that none of her material is used on the BBC's Persian service and similar restrictions apply to all international media organizations operating in Iran. Still to come on the podcast what's your sleep score?

[Eric Carril]

I see that you are sleeping a low number of hours. Your heart rate, which has been higher at the beginning of the night and then decreasing.

[Oliver Conway]

How monitoring our shut eye can help identify possible illnesses.

[Grainger Advertiser]

This is the story of the one, the one who keeps multiple buildings running smoothly day after day. Plumbing that flows, H Vac that hums, cleaning supplies that keep surfaces sparkling. That's why she counts on Grainger. With Easy reordering online and 247 support Grainger helps her keep the products she needs on hand so shelves stay stocked and buildings stay ready. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it Done Grainger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, Filters ready to clog H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 24. 7 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[Odoo Advertiser]

Self Directed Investing, Trading Full Service Wealth Management Automated Investing, Financial Planning, Thematic Investing, Retirement planning. Phew. And to think, that's just a small taste of what Schwab offers. Because Schwab knows that when it comes to your finances, choice matters. No matter your goals, investing style, life, stage or experience, Schwab has everything you need all in one place so you can invest your way. Visit schwab.com to learn more.

[Grainger Advertiser]

When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place. So nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

[Oliver Conway]

This is the Global News Podcast. It's almost a month since twin earthquakes struck Venezuela. More than 5,000 people are now known to have died and recovery efforts are still going on. In other times, Venezuelans might have been keeping a close eye on the US Criminal case facing their ousted leader, Nicolas Maduro. He and his wife are due to return to a New York court on Wednesday for a hearing about their alleged participation in a drug trafficking operation. But as Will Grant reports, people in Venezuela have other things to worry about.

[Will Grant]

Everywhere you turn in La Guaira, there's more evidence of the devastation, whether it is social housing on this side of the road, down near a place called Playa Los Cocos, or indeed on the other side of the road where you see businesses and homes, private homes also completely crushed. The picture everywhere you turn remains one of devastation. Of course, now the heavy machinery is moving a lot of the rubble, but there are still family members burrowing into the remnants of those homes, trying to find the bodies of their missing loved ones. And in that context, it's very hard, hard to imagine the idea of the ex president Nicolas Maduro facing drug trafficking charges in a U.S. courtroom. Most people we've spoken to say they simply don't have capacity to think about that now. Yes, many remain extremely angry at not just this government, but previous governments for the state of the nation and that they believe he should be facing charges. But many others say all they can focus on now is this moment.

[Shannon McCallum]

Right now we all feel like we don't have a president here, no one at all. Our president is ourselves, our families and the Venezuela people.

[Grainger Advertiser]

Because in truth, it really doesn't feel

[Shannon McCallum]

like we have a leader.

[Oliver Conway]

Honestly.

[Paul Adams]

Maduro has never worried about whether the Venezuelan people are doing well. That has always been a lie.

[Mike Townsend]

What matters to them is how they're doing, nothing more.

[Paul Adams]

Whether things go well or badly for him now is down to God above. Only he will give the answer to that. And a solution to all of this too.

[Will Grant]

As you were hearing from both of those grieving family members, they have no interest in what is happening in New York or what is happening to their ex president Nicolas Maduro. All they are concerned about right now is what's happening in here. In the rubbling La Guaida in the

[Oliver Conway]

search for their missing relatives, Will Grant reporting from Venezuela. The two biggest players in the multi billion dollar weight loss drug industry are heading to court. The maker of Wegovy and Ozempic, Novo Nordisk has launched legal action accusing its arch rival Eli Lilly, which makes Mounjaro and Zepbound of false advertising in suggesting its weight loss drugs perform better.

[Grainger Advertiser]

In a study, people using Lilly's Zepbound lost an average of 50 pounds compared to an average of 33 pounds with up to a 2.4mg dose of the WeGovy injection.

[Oliver Conway]

The US is one of only a handful of countries to allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise prescription medicines directly to consumers. Novo Nordisk is now seeking damages, including some profits its rival allegedly made from the ads. John Kuchelman from Novo Nordisk spoke to Bloomberg.

[Mike Townsend]

They're using an old outdated study that is a head to head study which is no longer current. And if they were using current data, it paints a very different picture. What we will show first is that it's obviously misleading. So the only outcome and the only right thing to do is to pull these advertisements and to pull them.

[Oliver Conway]

This morning our business correspondent in New York. Samira Hussain has the details.

[Samira Hussain]

The Danish firm Novo Nordisk filed a lawsuit in the US claiming Eli Lilly made adverts that created the misleading impression that Eli Lilly's medicines are superior. Now the American pharmaceutical giant hit back, saying it firmly stood behind its advertising, that it was grounded in the most direct scientific evidence available. Novo says that the ads compare the highest approved doses from Eli Lilly to lower doses of Novos while omitting newer higher dose options. Novo says it is seeking a court order requiring Eli Lilly to push pull its ads and instead run what it called corrective advertising campaign. Now the two companies are locked in a fierce battle to dominate the weight loss industry, especially here in the US, which by some estimates could be worth more than $100 billion by 2030.

[Oliver Conway]

Samir Hussain in New York. Imagine the surprise of a London bus driver who spotted a large bag left behind making this noise. Well inside was a monkey in a cage. The marmoset had been abandoned and was reported to the RSPCA animal welfare organisation. Oyster, named after the Oyster card used on London Transport, is now doing well. But the RSPCA's Claire Dhu says the number of abandoned monkeys is likely to rise after the UK passed a law requiring the estimated 5,000 primate owners in Britain to to get a license.

[Claire Dhu]

Animal abandonments are very common. They are the bread and butter, unfortunately, of animal welfare situations like a house. But it's usually cats left in carriers in bin sheds or dogs tied to lampposts or rabbits let free in the wild. It's very rare to find a monkey that has been left unattended or abandoned. However, the change in legislation recently gave us some cause for concern. The RSPCA certainly were aware that there would be more numbers. This is the first one we've seen in London at the moment, or the first one we found. The worries are, is that there will be more unattended abandoned, dumped monkeys or maybe even released directly into the wild left places where nobody can find them. They certainly can't cope here in the UK by themselves. We don't know what type of monkeys people may now have. The smallest ones are potentially the cutest, but that doesn't mean that people won't move on to something bigger. They're very demanding. They like to live in large social groups. Most people that keep them keep them individually, which is not great, which means it wants a lot of attention. They've got some very specialist health needs. If you keep a primate now in the uk, you're almost obliged to keep it as well as a Zoo. So I think we are concerned that the number will rise.

[Oliver Conway]

Claire Dhu from the RSPCA from gadgets like wearable trackers to high tech innovations such as smart mattresses and headbands, sleep monitoring has become an obsession for many. But new developments in sleep health technology are now focusing on disease prediction, as Our reporter Shannon McCallum has been finding out.

[Shannon McCallum]

According to research, nearly half of all Americans and around 40% of people in the UK are tracking their sleep. And I'm not just talking about the duration, I'm talking about really drilling into all aspects. So room temperature, the time you go to bed, how long it takes for you to fall asleep once the lights go out, which is something called sleep latency. REM sleep, which means rapid eye movement. That's the stage of sleep where most of your dreams happen. Deep sleep or slow wave sleep, which is the time of the night that supports the memory growth and cell regeneration. There's a lot to it. Now this can be done using wearables. Smart rings such as the Oura, the Samsung Galaxy or the Lunar ring are ones that are popular, but also by devices that you wear on your wrist. So things like the Whoops and of course watches like the Garmin, the Fitbit or the Apple watch, all of these look at things like your breathing, your heart rate and your body movement. And they usually give you a score in the morning based on a combination of all of those things. I went to Withings, a French health tech company, after trying out their sleep analyzer. Now this is a kind of device that's like a small mat. It goes under the mattress so you don't have to wear it and it's not intrusive. And it was the first sleep tracker to provide sleep lab metrics without any to wear. It's what the industry calls a kneerable. That's technology in your environment rather than on your body. Manon Navalu is the mechanical manager at Withings.

[Nawal Al Makafi]

The pressure sensor records changes when you breathe. Your thoracic rise and fall will be recorded here as well.

[Shannon McCallum]

The tech aims to by monitoring what it can through the movement of your body, heart and breathing, builds a health score that can be pre detect disease and connect you with a doctor at exactly the right time. So after looking at the mechanics of the sleep analyzer, I went through my own data with Withings founder Eric Carril.

[Eric Carril]

I see that you are sleeping a low number of hours.

[Shannon McCallum]

And what about this sleep score then? At the moment we're seeing I've got 49, it's out of 100.

[Eric Carril]

What we see is that your duration is quite low. If you have taken glass vine last night, your heart rate, which has been higher at the beginning of the night

[Shannon McCallum]

and then decreasing regularity, I guess, is something that you're going to be tracking over a longer period of time.

[Nawal Al Makafi]

Yes.

[Shannon McCallum]

If we look at, for example, April, we've got more green there. So April I slept slightly better.

[Eric Carril]

Yeah, exactly.

[Shannon McCallum]

Last month more yellows creeping in and this month more red.

[Eric Carril]

This evolution is very important to detect a lot of things like a disease which is coming and probably you are preparing to be ill. It's why sleep is very important and can really affect your health.

[Shannon McCallum]

So you can see the range of different things. I was able to determine from my own data, but of course I wanted to talk to an expert as well.

[Dirken Dijk]

I'm Dirken Dijk, professor of Sleep and Physiology at the Surrey Sleep Research center at the University of Surrey. We know that when we compare the measures of those devices against gold standard measures, it's quite difficult to. With gold standard, we bring people into the laboratory, we put electrodes on their head, close to their eyes, we measure muscle tone and if we have those signals, we can very accurately quantify sleep according to very well established criteria.

[Shannon McCallum]

So these are not medical devices providing that gold standard sleep study, but they do have their uses.

[Dirken Dijk]

Some of these devices are used in real research studies. One of the big advantages of those devices is that you can record sleep for many, many nights, weeks or months, which is something that's very difficult to do in the laboratory with your gold standard methods.

[Oliver Conway]

Sleep and physiology professor Dirk Chandyke ending that report by Shona McCallum. And that is all from us for now, but the Global News podcast will be back very soon. This edition was mixed by Chris Kuzaris and produced by Stephanie Zakrissen. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time. Goodbye.

[Grainger Advertiser]

Grainger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog. Hvac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Granger for quality products, easy reordering and 24. 7 support. Call 1-800-granger click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.