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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Joe Lieberman at the early hours of Friday, the 25th of September. These are the main stories a powerful Roman Catholic cardinal has abruptly resigned amid an investigation into a property deal. Republican congressional leaders have offered reassurance that there will be a peaceful transition of power if President Trump loses November's election. The main Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, have agreed to hold elections for the first time in 15 years.

Also in this podcast, has birdsong changed since the covid-19 lockdown?

Ornithologists think so.

One of the most powerful officials in the Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Angelo Bachu, has unexpectedly resigned from his office. The cardinal is thought to be one of Pope Francis's closest allies, but he had become embroiled in a scandal involving the purchase of a property in London. John McManus told me more.

Certainly in the last few years, there's been a concerted effort in some parts of the Vatican to get to the bottom of what's been going on with their various bank accounts and investments around the world. And this sudden resignation by Cardinal Bachchu may have something to do that because of his past previous history in the Vatican.

Up until his resignation, he was in charge of the department that deals with the evidence and the assertions about why or how people should become saints. But prior to that, he was the second in command at the secretary of state. That's the central governing department. They're now back in 2012, the Vatican invested quite a lot of money in a luxury property development in Chelsea here in London, quite a quite a sizable amounts of money. In the last few years, an investigation has been going on to what happened to that because it's believed the Vatican lost millions of dollars of money in that investment.

The middleman who was involved in that, Gianluigi Torcy, was arrested in June this year by Vatican police. He's been charged with extortion, embezzlement, fraud and money laundering. And it's believed that the person who he reported to was Cardinal Bachu. Now, Cardinal Bachu has always denied any wrongdoing, but this investigation has in the past year led to the Vatican police raiding the Holy See, his own offices, including his office for financial oversight and suspending several officials.

It is, though, quite rare for a cardinal to suddenly step down, given the fact that he would have played a role in the election of the next pope, the successor to Pope Francis.

But he remains in name a cardinal.

That's right. Cardinal Bachchu has been thought to have been an ally of Pope Francis, very close to him for the past few years. But he's only been a cardinal since 2018. Now, this statement from the Vatican, a very short statement, says that he is abdicating or leaving his responsibilities as a cardinal, but he retains the title. Importantly, that means that he's removed from any political power, particularly the right to vote in the next papal conclave for whichever the next pope is when Pope Francis dies.

John McManus next to the US, where top Republican leaders have been assuring Americans that President Trump will leave the White House if he loses the election in November. Among them, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy.

There will be a smooth transition, and I believe President Trump will have a very good inaugural and will reunite this nation instead of radicalized this nation.

He and others were speaking on the day after President Trump had again refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost this time, he said he expected the result to be contested and may end up in the Supreme Court and to aid him. If that happens, he is rushing through the nomination of a Supreme Court judge to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the election. But as the president arrived to pay his respects on Thursday to former Justice Ginsburg, who was lying in state in the Supreme Court, this happened.

Vote him out, they chanted, I spoke to our correspondent, Larry Medoro, in Washington and asked him how surprising was it to hear hostile chanting on the steps of the Supreme Court on such a solemn occasion?

Joe, it speaks to the polarization in America right now, and especially given President Trump's comments and expectation that he will be naming a replacement for the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg this Saturday. A lot of people who are out there going to pay their respects are not happy that he is choosing not to honor her wishes, which were granted, which were dictated to her granddaughter, that she should be replaced by the next president on November 3rd.

Mr. Trump again refused to say whether he'd respect the result Larry. And again, his own party, the Republicans had to publicly contradict him.

They public contradicting him, Joe, but in the gentlest of ways possible, they generally avoid trying to directly attack what he says or to contradict him because it's political suicide for many of them either who have elections coming up, re-election campaigns coming up, and generally because the Republican base has largely fallen in step with the president Trump's wishes. So, for instance, the majority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, only say that the winner of the November 3rd election will be inaugurated on January 20th and it will be an orderly transition.

He tweeted, just as there has been every four years since 1792. So a few other Republicans have also condemned what he said without directly referring to President Trump or being seen as too confrontational because they generally avoid that.

Mr. Trump is famous for distraction by throwing verbal hand grenades into the debate. I just wonder whether this refusal to say that he will acknowledge the result is one of those verbal hand grenades.

He thrives off that tactic. And the White House spokesperson, Kayleigh McEnany, has said that President Trump will respect a free and fair election. The implication there is he will only accept the outcome of the election if he wins and if he doesn't win and therefore does not free and fair. And as he likes to say, we'll see what happens. And with the debates coming up in Tuesday, this is going to be a strategy he will be employing against Joe Biden, the Democratic challenger who is not as quick on his feet and who doesn't have the same reckless abandon with his verbal jabs.

It's going to be quite something to watch.

Larry Montoyo in Washington. As we heard in the earlier podcast, the British finance minister Rishi Sunako has announced plans to replace the current Furlaud job support scheme for workers as the country tries to contain a resurgence of coronavirus infections. On Thursday, another 6000 634 cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in the U.K., the highest One-Day figure since the pandemic began, although the previous record was set when testing capacity was confined largely to hospitals. New measures are coming into force in England to curb the recent surge of covid-19.

Pubs and restaurants are now obliged to close by 10 p.m. local time, much to the dismay of some people.

Jobs last the first quarter, already mingling with some of those not as late as they'd like drinkers was my colleague, the abstemious Stephanie Prentice.

Pubs and restaurants in central London have closed their doors at 10 p.m. in this new milestone in the government's plans. I've been to a lot of them by this point and what I've seen as everyone taking precautions and earlier, certainly they seemed very happy to comply. Now, as last orders were called through, as you heard there, I did witness some resistance. And in keeping with some of the names we've been seeing online, which have shown people saying, I'll just going to simply drink more and drink earlier.

I did witness people binge drinking. There's a group of men in one of the pubs doing a pint downing challenge. I did try and speak some of them, but to no avail.

So that's the perspective from customer's point of view, from a publicans point of view, from the business owners point of view. I suspect they're thinking very differently.

They are indeed of businesses I spoke to, were concerned for their takings, for their future, and also actually for their safety. They were saying to me in some of the restaurants, they're trying to set more people at the same time those people are all arriving together. Then they're using the same facilities. At the same time they're more likely to have contact with each other is what one owner was really concerned about. We've seen some chains here in London offering Happy Hour starting at 5pm.

That's obviously to encourage people out earlier.

And one local restaurant owner told me people are actually naturally adapting their schedule, but we're busier and our customers coming out until they get the Lakers with drinking, it should have stayed longer, maybe last orders at 10 o'clock and then went out for 11. It doesn't affect so much at the moment with five.

And on that note, we also don't know how long the 10 p.m. curfew will be deemed sufficient or whether even further measures are yet to come.

Stephanie Prentis in Soho. It's not just Britain where the virus has been bouncing back in France, just over 1000 people are now in intensive care due to the pandemic. That's the highest since early June. Germany has placed citizens from popular European tourist spots, including Dublin and Lisbon, on a red list due to a surge in cases in those cities and in Brussels. The EU health commissioner, Stella Curiosities, said it could be the last chance to prevent a repeat of what happened earlier in the year when most of the continent was in lockdown.

We cannot lower our guard. This crisis is not behind us. Moreover, autumn and winter are the time of the year for more respiratory illnesses, including seasonal influenza, to prevent what could potentially be a lethal twin dynamic which could overburden our health systems and lead to more loss of life. We need to increase the coverage of vaccination rates.

The number of cases in the Netherlands has also reached a daily record high of two and a half thousand on Thursday. The death toll has now reached over 6300 as a result of this surge. There's also been a backlash against those influencers and Instagram ers who had spoken out against face masks and lockdowns. I spoke to Anna Holligan in The Hague about this and the more recent apologies for those posts.

So this all centers around a hashtag which has ICTA Nightmare May, which basically means and I will no longer participate or I'm out. And it's all about rebelling against the rules that have been put in place by the government to try to stop the spread of the virus. And the people who we're talking about here, they're mostly minor celebrities, but they've got loyal followers here. And they've been posting these videos along with that hashtag on their social media feeds, mostly Instagram.

One of the most famous is a singer and model. Her name is Vanka Louise.

And in her Instagram post, she tells her one million followers only together we can get the government back under control. I am no longer taking part free the people. And the idea was to try to encourage others to support this movement, which was started by a group called Virus Truth.

And they promote this kind of conspiracy theory that the risks posed by the virus have been exaggerated and used by governments not just here but around the world, to try to curtail people's freedoms and fundamental rights. So it's all part of that.

But now we're seeing something of a volte face, a U-turn by these Instagram seven week.

Well, yes. And there was huge public backlash, actually. People frustrated that these young stars would use their influence to try to negatively impact upon the behaviour and have potentially huge consequences. And it was the backlash was kind of started by the health minister here, Hugo Tiong. So he reacted with a hashtag in response saying ICTA Velma, which means I am taking part. And there are other politicians who've been saying this isn't a game that they can just step out of farm.

Curlewis went on a talk show on Wednesday evening and she struggled to explain her opposition. And in the end, she said, you know, I do respect the rules.

I do respect covid. I do respect the one point five metre society. And then she went even further on her Instagram. She took down that video and she put up an apology.

And all the while, the number of cases in the Netherlands is surging again. Dutch intensive care units hit 100 for the first time since June. And this is going into the red zone again. So this is the red zone, according to the Dutch government, which should trigger tougher measures. And at the moment, compared to its neighbors, compared to the UK, things are extremely relaxed here. So, for example, closing time at Borrus has been moved to midnight rather than 10:00.

People are allowed to go to football stadiums. They've just been asked not to cheer so, so loudly.

Anna Holligan in The Hague, Finland, has started testing the use of sniffer dogs to detect people infected with the coronavirus. Passengers at Helsinki International Airport wipe their neck with gauze, then place it in a can for a dog to sniff. The pilot has been run alongside normal testing techniques. Tim Franck's heard more from Professor Anahi Berkman, who is from the University of Helsinki and is overseeing the trial.

We're doing this pilot, which is about three months at the Helsinki Airport. When the passengers come through, they just got their suitcases and things. They go out from the door. And then there's this two room studio where we have an entrance where the passenger goes into on one end and he finds a small jar with a lot of these gauze tissues and they're sterile and it opens one. And then he's kind of swiping his neck and and his forehead and his wrists or hands or whatever.

And then he's putting it in a jar. So the handler takes the DA, puts it down on the floor, gives it to the dog, has the dog sniffing the air, and there's other samples that they are kind of changing all the time so the dogs don't get used to them. And the dog says if you're negative or positive and it takes all in all a minute and what sort of accuracy?

We've been training these dogs now already for a long, long time. So the accuracy with these dogs that are actually validated and able to sniff is brilliant. The preliminary data is actually so staggering so that the dogs find 100 percent of the positive ones and then they also find a bit of negative ones. And we don't think that the dogs are wrong. We just think they're so much more sensitive than the other tests right here that you're being very cautious.

But the preliminary research suggests that they're very accurate, but they're they're more accurate than the than the sort of PCR tests, the tests that we think of the labs.

That seems to be the case. And it's I've been talking a lot with the American group and the English group and the French group. And we all have this similar results with our dogs.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall reading about dogs, sniffing out other diseases like Parkinson's in the recent past. Is this what made you think of trying them out with coronavirus?

Yes, we've actually been working with these dogs that we have on both breast cancer and prostate cancer in men, and the dogs are really good at it as well. When Korona come, it was kind of a very instant thought that since they're so good that these other diseases I mean, if you have a bio detection dog, it's actually it's not a hard thing to change the odor.

But equally, I suppose if you're talking about scaling this sort of thing up, I mean, you know, training sniffer dogs is time consuming. It's expensive, isn't it?

It's not closely as expensive as if you think of doing the PSA tests. We would save the Finnish government about eight millions a day if we would do all with dogs. It takes a minute. And the only thing that you have to pay is, is kind of the dog salary to the dog handler and then the dog's salaries kind of treats. So it's not really it's not very expensive.

Professor Anahi Bjorkman.

Still to come in this podcast, banks like Westpac have these obligations to assess all of their transactions and all of their customers to detect these suspicious ones or the ones that look somehow untoward for failing to fulfil these obligations.

One of Australia's largest banks is fined hundreds of millions of dollars for a major breach of money laundering rules. To Belarus now and on Thursday, a day after Alexander Lukashenko was sworn in for a sixth term as president in a secret ceremony, Britain, the United States and Canada have said that they are preparing to impose sanctions against individuals in the Belarussian government. They believe these figures are responsible for a serious human rights violations committed during the disputed election in August. The British foreign minister, Dominic Raab, told Parliament it was urgent given Lukashenko fraudulent inauguration.

I have directed the sanction team to prepare Magnitsky sanctions for those responsible for the serious human rights violations. And we are coordinating with the United States and Canada to prepare appropriate listings as a matter of urgency.

Our diplomatic correspondent James Landale gave me more details. These are so-called Magnitsky sanctions, which are sanctions that have been set up by the UK and other countries that relate to human rights violations around the world. They're called Magnitsky sanctions after the case of a lawyer in Russia who was detained and died in detention. So this is a case of individuals in Belarus who will be targeted by the UK, by the United States and Canada, not for rigging elections, but for violating human rights people who are responsible for arbitrary detentions, for beating people, for targeting of journalists, the people who were responsible for the protesters who have been attacked in the streets.

So those are the sanctions. They are sanctions that will be very specific. They will be lists of individuals agreed by all the countries together. And essentially these are people who will find it impossible to travel to any of these countries. They will find it difficult to retain any kind of money and if finances in these countries.

So the EU is also discussing sanctions. You add that to the pressure coming from Canada, the UK and the US, and the pressure is mounting on the Lukashenko regime.

It's mounting. And the interesting question is whether it will make any difference. There's a long debate about the efficacy of sanctions on individuals. I think the message that the U.K. and the rest of the West want to send to the authorities in Belarus that, look, the survival, the political survival of Alexander Lukashenko does not come without cost. There is pressure from beneath, from the protesters and the campaigners. There is international pressure and there are uncertainties in Moscow as well.

And so what this does, it just adds to that pot of pressure on the regime in Minsk at the moment, whether it is enough to tip it over the balance, you know, remains to be seen. You know, probably not. There are deeper calculations going on there, but it just means that those people around the president might feel the pinch a bit more.

Getting back to the U.K., applying diplomatic pressure with Canada and the US, I just wonder, are we going to see a lot more of this reaching out around the world from London now that Britain has left the European Union? That was traditionally the channel it used for pressure. There is a technical answer to that and a broader strategic answer. The first technical question is, is yes, because the U.K. has left the European Union.

And even though we're in transition at the moment, we have a separate sanctions regime for a very, very long time. And so it means at least on sanctions, the U.K. can be a little bit more fleet of foot.

However, the U.K. alone is obviously less effective when it comes to the imposition of sanctions compared to acting as a bloc with the EU.

James Landale, the rival Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, say that their latest reconciliation talks in Turkey have made good progress with an agreement to hold elections.

Our Middle East correspondent Yolande now reports a final deal is expected to be announced at a meeting of all Palestinian factions in a week's time. But there'll be widespread public skepticism to overcome. The last parliamentary poll in 2006 was won by Hamas. A unity government quickly broke down, and a year later, there was deadly fighting in which Hamas took full control of Gaza. President Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, dominated by his Fatah faction, were left to govern parts of the West Bank.

Several attempts to heal the rift have failed. The latest efforts were prompted by growing signs of normalization between Israel and Arab states, which the Palestinians fear will undermine their nationalist cause. Your land.

Now it is one of Australia's largest banks, and it's been hit with the largest single fine in Australian corporate history. Westpac has agreed to pay a 900 million dollar fine after acknowledging, and this is extraordinary, 23 million breaches of money laundering laws. The breaches including failing to monitor the accounts of a convicted child sex offender who had been regularly sending money to the Philippines. Razia Iqbal spoke to Nathan Lynch in Perth, who is a financial crime analyst with Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence.

And asked him what Westpac had done or not done, banks like Westpac have these obligations to assess all of their transactions and all of their customers to detect the suspicious ones or the ones that look somehow untoward.

They don't need to do a criminal investigation. They just need to report a suspicion. And to do that, they have to have a lot of insights about their customers and the types of behaviour that would be normal for those customers. So in this instance, what happened was Westpac made a commercial decision not to run that technology and employ the people that they needed to have an internal function that was assessing some of these transactions. And the problem with that is that as a huge bank with an international footprint, a bank like Westpac can rack up breaches very quickly.

So in this case, we saw the number of offences north of 23 million and that that led to a fine. That's quite staggering in one point three dollars billion, which is the biggest anti money laundering fine outside of America.

But the bank was caught doing it 23 million times. That feels staggering.

It feels staggering. And you need to look at it in the context of the volume of transactions that these banks facilitate. So once they have a breach, it can just get out of hand. And they have no idea really. The bank doesn't know what's happening inside the bank. Anything could be happening inside the bank. And that's what they found in this situation. So there was a vast number of breaches, but within that large pot of 23 million offences, they had some really ugly, nasty ones.

So we're talking about multi-billion dollars of multinational tax evasion for large corporates. And we're also talking about some of the most heinous crimes involving vulnerable children in the Philippines. So it's really serious stuff. And it's been a stark reminder to the global banking community, not just the Australian one, about the importance of having these controls in place because it isn't white collar crime. It's actually people's lives and livelihoods that are impacted.

Nathan Lynch from Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence. And in a statement, the chief executive of Westpac, Peter King, said he wanted to apologise for the bank's failings. Now, can you tell the difference between this?

And this they are both the same type of birds, a white crowned sparrow, but they sound different.

The second song was taken during lockdown when there was little or no traffic. The change was recorded in a new study which has analyzed the calls of sparrows over decades. Our science reporter Helen Briggs has been looking into this.

These sparrows, they've been studied since the 1970s. They're white crown sparrows. They're common in North America. And they studied those living around the San Francisco Bay Area. So every year for decades, they've been out recording their trills and their trips to see how their song has changed over time. And of course, it's what we're doing that's causing the noise and traffic mainly. So the birds have had to adjust to our traffic noise by singing over the dim, and it's come at the cost of their vocal performance.

So they've got lower quality songs in recent years because of having to sing over the traffic. And the scientists who I spoke to, Dr Elizabeth Beriberi, she described it really a bit like going to a cocktail party for a person. So when there's lots of noise in a party, then you have to speak really loudly and sort of shout, raise your voice over the noise. So when lockdown came along, the scientists realized that they had this unprecedented opportunity.

And if you take something like the Golden Gate Bridge, normally absolutely chock a block with traffic. And it went down to very low levels, levels not seen since the 1950s. And they confirmed really what a lot of people have suspected over lockdown. Of course, it's less noisy and birdsong has sounded very different. And, you know, it seems like birds are actually singing louder, but in fact, they were actually singing softer.

What can we say about how the lockdown affected the personality of birds in general?

Well, what birds are doing, really, when they're singing is mainly the male birds that sing. They're sort of saying, hey, you know, other males out there keep off my perch or they're saying, you know, to the females, come into my nest. And that leaves is all about song quality. It's about communicating over a long distance. So that does affect human bird behavior. So it seems that lockdown did affect bird behavior in that way, that their songs changed.

The question is really whether it's long standing. So the scientists plan to to go back next spring to study the birds again, to see what effect it's had on on their songs, their sort of cultural evolution, if you like, their behavior, you know, and the intriguing to see whether there were more chicks perhaps or not, we just don't know.

Alan breaks and staying with music. The singer songwriter Michael Kiwanuka has won this year's prestigious Mercury Prize for his self-titled third album organised by the British Phonographic Industry. The award is given annually to the best album released here in the UK by a British or Irish act or arts editor Will Gompertz has the details.

I live the dream all three.

It was a case of third time, lucky for Michael Kiwanuka, the 33 year old London born musician who won the prestigious award for his third album, which had earned him his third nomination.

It was a happy ending to a prolonged period of self-doubt for the singer songwriter.

The album has a song cycle approach. With one track blending into another. The singer explores themes of identity, migration, civil rights and police killings in song. The Royal Academy of Music drop out is at times upbeat and funky at others, introspective and soulful, gave me a call today.

Chris, music definitely has something to say. You and you know our arts editor, Will Gompertz.

And that's all from us for now. But there will be an updated version of the Global News podcast a bit later if you want to comment on this podcast. The topics covered in it, you can by sending us an email. The address is Global Podcast. All one word at BBC Dot Kovalchuk. I'm Joe Lynam. The studio manager is Mike Adley. The producer is Lee McAffrey and the editor is Karen Martin.

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