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I'm Greer Jackson, host of the Climate Question podcast,
and this week we're looking at the new Pope's climate credentials.
The late Pope Francis was credited with being the first Catholic leader to make climate action a core part of the Church's work.
But will his American successor, Pope Leo, continue to fight global warming?
And if so, how influential might he be at home and abroad?
Search for The Climate Question wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service.
We're coming to you live from London.
I'm James Menendez.
And we're going to start today with Syria and that remarkable meeting between President Trump and the Syrian President,
Ahmed al-Shara, in Saudi Arabia a little earlier today.
Remarkable because it's the first meeting in a quarter of a century between leaders of the two countries and
because there was a time when Mr. Shara was a sworn enemy of the United States as a jihadist commander al-Qaeda fighting in Iraq in the years after America's invasion.
Well,
he long ago renounced his past ideology and has now promised to rebuild Syria as an open and pluralistic country following the end of the Assad dictatorship.
And it's on that basis that President Trump on Tuesday announced he was lifting US sanctions and today met his Syrian counterpart in Riyadh.
With the support of leaders in this room,
we are currently exploring normalizing relations with Syria's new government, as you know,
beginning with my meeting with President Ahmed al-Jarrah and Secretary Rubio's meeting with the Syrian foreign minister in Turkey after discussing the situation with Crown Prince Mohammed and President Erdogan of Turkey.