--:-- Jackie Leonard: This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: The US Defense Secretary has denied that President Trump has betrayed Ukraine by pushing for a peace deal with Russia. Meanwhile, Germany has accused Mr Trump of making concessions to Russia on Ukraine before peace talks have even started. And a breakthrough has been reported in talks to get the Gaza ceasefire deal back on track.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Also in this podcast, a man has driven a car into a crowd of pedestrians in the German city of Munich in what officials suspect was a deliberate attack. The fact that there are many injured is a slap in the face. We feel for the victims. We pray for the victims. We very much hope that everyone will make it.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: And researchers in Australia say a warming planet is changing the behaviour of crocodiles. We begin with Ukraine. As the third anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion approaches, there's been a flurry of activity from the US about ending the conflict.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: As you'll have heard in our last edition, Donald Trump has had a long phone call with President Putin of Russia and says he plans to meet him in person, reversing years of the US isolation of the Russian leader. Mr Trump has also spoken on the phone to President Zelensky.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: The news of these conversations has been front and centre at a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels. Boris Pistorius of Germany accused the US president of making concessions to Russia before peace talks had begun.
--:-- Boris Pistorius: Putin is constantly provoking the West and attacking us in a hybrid manner. It would be naive to believe that this threat will actually subside as a result of any peace agreement whenever it comes.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: On Wednesday, the US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseff, said it was unrealistic to expect Ukraine to return to its pre-2014 borders. But today he insisted the US isn't betraying Ukraine, and it's time to move towards a negotiated settlement.
--:-- Pete Hegseff: We recognize the incredible commitment that has been made over many years. And no country, as President Trump has pointed out, has made a larger commitment to the Ukrainian mission than the United States of America, north of $300 billion.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: So the United States has invested in stabilising those front lines after the aggression of Russia. There is no betrayal there. There is a recognition that the whole world and the United States is invested and interested in peace, a negotiated peace.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: So what does all this mean for NATO and its position on Ukraine? Our correspondent Jonathan Beale is in Brussels at the NATO meeting.
--:-- Jonathan Beale: I think really what's changed is that, you know, NATO here have been presenting a united front, that it supported Ukraine, it was providing military support in concert with the former US administration, and it was going to let Ukraine decide how this war would end, essentially.
--:-- Jonathan Beale: That if there were going to be talks, that Ukraine had to be involved in those discussions and those decisions. And what we're getting now with the new administration is that the US, the White House, Donald Trump is in the driving seat.
--:-- Jonathan Beale: He's calling the shots, not NATO as a whole. So that unity has been frayed somewhat. And we know that while the US administration has set preconditions on Ukraine that it can't, for example, join NATO, they don't believe that they should not expect a return of all the territory they've lost to Russia.
--:-- Jonathan Beale: That there will not be US boots on the ground if there is some kind of ceasefire in which it needs to be policed. That will not involve the US, no security guarantees on that front.
--:-- Jonathan Beale: We haven't heard any same preconditions given to Moscow. And, you know, what's happened here over the last few years, as far as NATO is concerned, is most NATO countries have isolated President Putin and Donald Trump has in effect rehabilitated to some extent President Putin by this phone call and by this meeting.
--:-- Jonathan Beale: And the question still, the insistence here from NATO headquarters is that it must involve Ukraine. But at the moment, both NATO and Ukraine are on the sidelines.
--:-- Jonathan Beale: And just briefly, what else can we be expecting to see from this meeting? You know, Mark Rutter has a difficult job trying to hold this 32 member alliance together.
--:-- Jonathan Beale: And he knows that to build bridges with the Trump administration, he is going to have to persuade allies to increase defence spending, particularly European allies.
--:-- Jonathan Beale: Now, they have actually increased defence spending overall with more countries, the majority now spending at least 2%. But Donald Trump wants him to spend 5%.
--:-- Jonathan Beale: That's going to be a much harder task. But he needs to build bridges and he sees that as a way of doing it. But to expect countries to come up with 5%, I think, is unrealistic. That is not going to happen.
--:-- Jonathan Beale: But he is trying to push them further in how much they spend on defence and also how much support they give to Ukraine. But they are not, at the moment, NATO, in the driving seat.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: So how is Ukraine reacting to the discussions about its future? Here's the view of Timothy Milovanov, who's a former economy minister.
--:-- Timothy Milovanov: Before even the negotiations start, President Trump, without consulting with Ukraine, without consulting with the EU, makes decisions and accepts, gives out already to the demands of President Putin.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: So you know this puts everyone in a very actually vulnerable position.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Our correspondent in Kiev James Waterhouse is following development.
--:-- James Waterhouse: I think it only been Ukraine really that has felt the pressure in what been a bruising opening salvo from America in terms of how it sees lasting peace in this war and I think privately the long-held fears that Ukraine wouldn't be involved in the negotiations sufficiently are being realized.
--:-- James Waterhouse: When you look at the warm language between Washington and Moscow when you look at the proposed meeting in Saudi Arabia when you hear Donald Trump say it's interesting on whether Ukraine on the question of whether Ukraine is an equal partner um because we are ultimately talking about the future of a country.
--:-- James Waterhouse: That said, the missing detail on Ukraine being free with Russia within its borders, the very question of how a conflict line will be policed by foreign troops, there is missing detail.
--:-- James Waterhouse: America said it's nothing to do with us, but Ukraine will still, you know, I think politically still has plenty to play for.
--:-- James Waterhouse: What can President Zelensky do now to make sure that he stays in the conversation? This is now the diplomatic challenge because at the moment it's hard to see how.
--:-- James Waterhouse: If you have a summit in Saudi Arabia where you see Donald Trump with Vladimir Putin, who will be delighted that he is able to bypass Ukraine in these negotiations, a country he denies the existence of, It'll be very hard for President Zelensky to then get his elbows up and get to the table and start asserting his wants and needs for a ceasefire.
--:-- James Waterhouse: And I think it is a reflection of geopolitics where superpowers wield the influence they do because of Ukraine's reliance on American aid, notably because of the scale and speed it can be provided.
--:-- James Waterhouse: America is therefore able to impose its terms on Ukraine more easily. The US is still going after Ukraine's natural resources in the deal in exchange for continued military aid.
--:-- James Waterhouse: So it's really quite difficult. I guess the only positive from yesterday for Ukraine is that this is the start of a very complicated path to peace.
--:-- James Waterhouse: And when you've been in a full-scale invasion, when you're on the tail end of 11 years of war, people do want peace. And of course they do.
--:-- James Waterhouse: People are tired of worrying whether their sons and husbands will come home. They're tired of wondering whether they'll survive the night under artillery.
--:-- James Waterhouse: So, of course, peace is desired, but it's the terms of that peace which is so crucial for Ukraine.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Meanwhile, James, we have seen some reports that the Ukrainian military are saying that there were 140 Russian drone attacks last night.
--:-- James Waterhouse: Little more than that, other than that this is, you know, in the scale of things, it's a larger attack than normal, but it's still something that Russia sustains.
--:-- James Waterhouse: The night before there were ballistic missiles landing here in Kyiv, the week before, 14 people were killed on a missile strike, this missile and drone strike on the central region of Pultava.
--:-- James Waterhouse: This is what happens. And so it is true that there is a heightened talk of peace, but Russia, you know, you cannot see it from within Ukraine as Russia continues to act out its invasion.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: As we record this podcast, details have been coming in of an incident in the southern German city of Munich, where a car has been driven into a group of people at a trade union rally.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Officials say 28 people were injured, some very seriously. Speaking at the scene, Bavaria's state premier, Markus Söder, said it was most likely an attack.
--:-- Markus Söder: It is simply terrible, ladies and gentlemen, when you get the news that someone has once again driven a car into a crowd of people.
--:-- Markus Söder: The fact that there are many injured is a slap in the face. We feel for the victims, we pray for the victims, we very much hope that everyone will make it.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Our correspondent Damien McGuinness is monitoring events from Berlin.
--:-- Damien McGuinness: What appears to have happened is that this was indeed committed on purpose. What the motivation is of the perpetrator we don't know, but what appears to have happened according to police is that a beige Mini Cooper was driving behind this trade union demonstration, which was surrounded by police cars.
--:-- Damien McGuinness: So there was security around the demonstration. Then the car, the Mini, started speeding up as if to overtake the police car. And then as it did, it rammed at high speed into the crowd of demonstrators.
--:-- Damien McGuinness: And so we now know that at least 28 people are injured, many of them seriously and some critically and we're finding out more information about the suspect as well who appears to be a 24 year old Afghan asylum seeker.
--:-- Damien McGuinness: Who whose application for asylum had been rejected but he was legally in Germany he had a legal status here but of quite a temporary one so which meant his situation here was rather precarious and now police are really talking to him to try and find out why he carried out such a terrible act.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: There are elections in Germany in what, 10 days from now? And immigration is a key issue, isn't it?
--:-- Damien McGuinness: Yeah, that's right. Because over the last few months have been a number of attacks involving asylum seekers, and most notably in January in the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg, where a kindergarten child was stabbed and a passerby also was killed by an asylum seeker.
--:-- Damien McGuinness: And that sparked a huge debate around migration connected to criminality. Hadn't really been the case before then, because I think mainstream parties had tried to calm, you know, this quite controversial debate and the polarised atmosphere around migration.
--:-- Damien McGuinness: But after that attack in Aschaffenburg, the Conservative leader, Friedrich Merz, who wants to be Germany's next chancellor, went very hard line, because his argument is he wants to undermine the poll numbers of the far-right AFD, which appear to be gaining traction on the back of these terrible attacks.
--:-- Damien McGuinness: And since then, we've seen a ferocious debate around migration. A lot of people have criticised it, saying it's very one-sided, and this idea of connecting migration to criminality, so obviously it stigmatises people with migration background.
--:-- Damien McGuinness: But either way, it's certainly a big, big debate in the political run-up right now, and the fact that we've now had another terrible incident will certainly play into the debate and could well have an impact in the election results in 10 days' time.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: China is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, accounting for around 30% of the global total. But new research shows that the country's coal plant construction surged last year to its highest level in almost a decade.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: This appears to conflict with President Xi Jinping's promise that carbon emissions would peak before 2030.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Here our China correspondent Laura Becker.
--:-- Laura Becker: There has been a lot of coal construction in fact about 95 gigawatts of power within the early half of 2024.
--:-- Laura Becker: Now that's the most coal-fired power plants that China has built since 2015. However, this report also notes that there has been an unprecedented surge in renewables, in wind and solar in particular.
--:-- Laura Becker: In fact, the report notes that China has installed more in wind and solar in almost one year than the United States has done in total since records began.
--:-- Laura Becker: And what this analysis seems to suggest is that they are concerned that the solar and wind capacity is being layered on top of coal production.
--:-- Laura Becker: It's not being installed instead of. And they fear that the net zero target, President Xi has pledged that China will be net zero by 2060, might slip away from China unless that changes.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Still to come, a warning from the former chief executive of Google about artificial intelligence models being misused by terrorists and rogue states.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: An example would be the ability for the system to fool us. Another one, if it developed a desire to get access to weapons, especially nuclear weapons.
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--:-- Jackie Leonard: When Dr. Sabah and I decided to do a skincare line together, he said to me, we are going to give women meaningful beauty.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: And I said, that's exactly right. We want to give women meaningful beauty, which means each and every product is meaningful.
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--:-- Jackie Leonard: According to a nationwide survey conducted by GeneSight, nearly 9 in 10 Americans who've been diagnosed with depression or anxiety believe that mental health medications are somewhat or very effective.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: However, despite that belief, more than half of those individuals say they have avoided taking medication due to concerns about potential side effects.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: That's why Dr. Whitney Brown, a family and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner based in Alabama, often recommends genetic testing to our patients as part of their treatment journey.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Dr. Brown explains.
--:-- Dr. Whitney Brown: As part of my treatment plan, I offer the gene site test, which analyzes how a patient's genes may influence how they metabolize or respond to certain mental health medications.
--:-- Dr. Whitney Brown: It gives me insights and takes out some of the guesswork that can be associated with prescribing them.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: If you or someone you love is facing challenges with depression or anxiety, talk to your doctor about how genetic testing may help.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: To learn more, visit Genesight.com. That's Genesight.com.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Hamas has said it will now release three Israeli hostages on Saturday and is committed to the ceasefire deal with Israel.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: The announcement follows mediated talks in Cairo. The group had said it would postpone the release, accusing Israel of breaching the terms of the ceasefire.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Israel has said it will resume the war against Hamas if the hostages aren't released.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Our correspondent Yolande Nell is in Jerusalem and has been following the story.
--:-- Yolande Nell: Through the day we've had various positive signs that this latest crisis in the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal can be overcome.
--:-- Yolande Nell: We know that Egyptian and Kateri mediators have been working on the areas Hamas has complained about, the amount of fuel going into Gaza, numbers of shelters, Egyptian sources indicating more heavy lifting equipment to move rubble is to go in.
--:-- Yolande Nell: Hamas did put out a statement saying it didn't want the deal to collapse. It reaffirmed its commitment to implementing the agreement as signed, including the exchange of prisoners.
--:-- Yolande Nell: That's what it's calling Israel's hostages being exchanged for Palestinian detainees. According to the specified timeline, the statement says.
--:-- Yolande Nell: So under that, we'd expect there to be these three hostages released on Saturday.
--:-- Yolande Nell: And Israeli media was signalling earlier that the message that had gone from Israel is that it would accept three hostages being handed over and not stop the ceasefire, despite, of course, President Trump having proposed that high-stakes ultimatum, bring back all the hostages or the fighting starts.
--:-- Yolande Nell: So we've heard from Israeli media. Are we getting anything from the Israeli government about what's been coming out of Cairo?
--:-- Yolande Nell: I mean, nothing officially from the Israeli government at this stage.
--:-- Yolande Nell: I think it's still a bit wait and see. And, you know, it may be that we find ourselves at the same stage tomorrow, We're waiting to see if Hamas does publish this list of three names as we're expecting.
--:-- Yolande Nell: I mean, it's worth pointing out as well. At the moment, negotiations on the more sensitive second stage of the ceasefire deal are supposed to be fully underway in Doha.
--:-- Yolande Nell: That's supposed to see a permanent end to hostilities, the return of remaining hostages. Instead, mediators have been really sort of tied up with just trying to shore up this part of the ceasefire, the initial part of the deal.
--:-- Yolande Nell: The Israeli negotiating team returned from Doha on Monday after just two days. You know, negotiators also envisaged there would be a third stage to the ceasefire, reconstruction of Gaza.
--:-- Yolande Nell: But now what you've got is so much uncertainty about the future that's just increased under President Trump with his post-war plan for Gaza that envisages emptying it of its two million residents, building a kind of seaside travel destination there, of course, totally rejected by Arab countries and many others around the world.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Just how concerned should we be about the advent of artificial intelligence? Very, says the former chief executive of Google, Eric Schmidt.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: He's been speaking on the subject at the AI conference in Paris. He told my colleague Amol Rajan why the rapid development of the new tech is so groundbreaking and challenging for humanity.
--:-- Amol Rajan: I actually think and I know you think I insane and maybe I am that AI is underhyped.
--:-- Eric Schmidt: We don't know yet if AI can build an AI Einstein but we think that the computer can get pretty close to it.
--:-- Eric Schmidt: And that means that each and every one of us would have literally Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci or pretty close in your pocket on your phone.
--:-- Eric Schmidt: It's a pretty big deal.
--:-- Amol Rajan: Well, I'm very, very struck by the fact that anyone who's followed your career will know that as boss of Google, go back to nearly 25 years ago, you've generally been an advocate of technology, an optimist, someone who tries to use technology to advance human goals, human ends to satisfy human demands.
--:-- Eric Schmidt: And yet in your recent remarks, Eric, I'm very struck by the fears that you have about the potential of AI.
--:-- Amol Rajan: For instance, you said in December 2024 that AI systems might need a kill switch. What did you mean?
--:-- Eric Schmidt: Basically there's a set of things that we shouldn't really allow. An example would be the ability for the system to fool us, to deceive us.
--:-- Eric Schmidt: Another one would, if it developed a desire to get access to weapons, especially nuclear weapons, imagine that it starts to make copies of itself. It decides that it wants to propagate itself, even if we plug it off.
--:-- Eric Schmidt: There's a set of such things that we need to watch for in this technology. It's not capable of doing it right now, but there are signs that it might be capable in the future.
--:-- Amol Rajan: There are people, Eric, who fear that actually the whole dynamic that we've got for AI is the wrong one. It's a race. It's a competition. It's one that pits the US against China, against Europe.
--:-- Eric Schmidt: It's one where we don't have a system of global regulation. And it's also one where the most of the innovation is being driven by companies rather than by states.
--:-- Eric Schmidt: What's your concern, if you do have one, about the current dynamic?
--:-- Eric Schmidt: The truth is that AI and the future is largely going to be built by private companies. It has to do with the incentives and the money, where the talent is and how the world works.
--:-- Eric Schmidt: They're not going to be built in the equivalent of a Manhattan project. So it's really important that governments understand what we're doing and keep their eye on us.
--:-- Eric Schmidt: We're not arguing that we should unilaterally be able to do things things without oversight. We think it should be regulated.
--:-- Eric Schmidt: The real fears that I have are not the ones that most people talk about AI. I talk about extreme risk.
--:-- Eric Schmidt: There's evidence that the models have knowledge that could allow, for example, a bad biological attack from some evil person.
--:-- Eric Schmidt: And I'm sure no one listening is evil, but there must be at least one evil person in the world who could take advantage of that in a really bad way.
--:-- Eric Schmidt: We want to make sure that doesn't happen.
--:-- Eric Schmidt: Part of the reason that we're all alive today is because people in the 1950s developed a whole strategy around nuclear containment.
--:-- Eric Schmidt: The same is not true in computers. The current best idea we have for controlling this proliferation is to make it hard for other countries and evil people in general to get access to the most powerful hardware.
--:-- Eric Schmidt: That's why the U.S. export controls are so important.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Researchers in Australia say a warming planet is changing the behaviour of crocodiles.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: A study of 200 wild crocodiles found that as temperatures have risen, so too have the reptiles average body temperatures.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Simon Atkinson reports from Cairns.
--:-- Simon Atkinson: Unlike birds and mammals, crocodiles can't regulate their own body temperatures. So, when they get hotter, they need to change their behaviour.
--:-- Simon Atkinson: Scientists have been analysing data from sensors on wild crocodiles in far north Queensland since 2008.
--:-- Simon Atkinson: In that time, peak temperatures locally have jumped by 0.5 degrees Celsius and the body temperatures of the animals has risen by more than 0.1 degrees.
--:-- Simon Atkinson: Previous studies suggest hotter crocs don't dive for so long, giving them less time underwater to ambush prey and that devoting extra time to keeping cool means activity for reproducing and staying safe from predators is reduced.
--:-- Simon Atkinson: The researchers from the University of Queensland and the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve at Australia Zoo will now focus on how a hotter planet is impacting the overall health of the region's crocodile population.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Let's return now to US politics. Well, sort of. President Trump has made no secret of his desire to take over Greenland, an autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: And since his re-election, he's also said he wouldn't rule out using military force to seize it.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Now a satirical petition has appeared online offering to buy the US state of California for Denmark.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Harry Bly reports.
--:-- Harry Bly: The petition on the website Denmarkification.com promises to bring some Scandinavian charm to America's golden state.
--:-- Harry Bly: It offers to introduce bike lanes and smørrebrød, which are traditional Danish sandwiches, as well as changing the name of Disneyland to Hans Christian Andersenland, a nod to the famous Danish fairy tale author.
--:-- Harry Bly: It also claims to have reciprocal benefits for Denmark too, boasting California's 300 days of sunshine per year, its tech sector Silicon Valley, and the state's plentiful crop of avocados.
--:-- Harry Bly: Already, the petition has attracted more than 230,000 signatures.
--:-- Harry Bly: Its creator claims to have the cast of Borgen, the Danish political drama, ready to lead negotiations.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: California already has a connection to Denmark. The city of Solvang, which means sunny fields, was founded by three Danish immigrants in 1911 and promotes itself as the Danish capital of America.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: And that was Harry Bly.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Now before we go, in our last edition, our science editor, Rebecca Morrell, was reporting on a major archaeological discovery, a 2,000-year-old Roman basilica found beneath an office block in the heart of London.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: And we were so excited about it, we completely forgot to mention that the person showing her around was the marvellous Sophie Jackson from the Museum of London Archaeology team.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Sorry, Sophie, and thanks.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: And that's it from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: If you'd like to comment on this edition or the topics covered in it, do please send us an email.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Use the hashtag Global News Pod.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: This edition was mixed by Charlotta Hadroy-Turzimska.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: The producer was Vanessa Heaney.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Our editor is Karen Martin.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: I'm Jackie Leonard. And until next time, goodbye.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: And this is The Global Story.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
