The NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte, has called for unity as a rift opens up between Europe and the US on how to end the war in Ukraine. Also: love rats and Valentine's Day.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles and in the early hours of Friday the 14th of February, these are our main stories. The head of NATO has appealed for the West to stay united as a rift opens up between Europe and the United States on peace negotiations about Ukraine.
Days ahead of German elections, the man tipped to be the country's next leader has said things must change after an asylum seeker drove a car into a crowd of people. Riot police in Tehran have prevented a protest demanding the release of people still under house arrest 13 years after they disputed an election result.
Also in this podcast... The most romantic day of the year. But if you're single or seething and would prefer getting back at your former flame, help is at hand.
We hear some unusual advice for Valentine's Day. How will the war in Ukraine end and at what cost to Kiev? That is the question dominating the minds of politicians and diplomats across Europe and beyond.
After Donald Trump's conversation with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, speaking to reporters a day later in the Oval Office, President Trump was asked if he believed his Russian counterpart wanted peace.
I believe he wants peace. I believe that President Putin, when I spoke to him yesterday, I mean, I know him very well. Yeah, I think he wants peace. I think he would tell me if he didn't. I think I'd like to see peace.
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Chapter 2: How is the US-EU tension affecting NATO's unity?
Do you trust President Putin?
I believe that, yeah, I believe that he would like to see something happen. I trust him on this subject.
The European Union's foreign policy chief, Kaya Callas, has accused President Trump of appeasing Russia over Ukraine. She insisted that European states and Ukraine itself must be part of any peace talks.
It is clear that any deal behind our backs will not work. Any agreement will need also Ukraine and Europe being part of it. And this is clear that appeasement also always fails. We shouldn't take anything off the table before the negotiations have even started because it plays to Russia's court and it is what they want.
Why are we giving them everything that they want even before the negotiations have been started? It's appeasement. It has never worked.
US officials have already said Ukraine can't expect to get all its territory back or be allowed to join NATO. But speaking after a NATO meeting in Brussels, the US Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth, said this didn't amount to a concession to the Russian president.
I think realism is an important part of the conversation that hasn't existed enough inside conversations amongst friends. But simply pointing out realism, like the borders won't be rolled back to what everybody would like them to be in 2014, is not a concession to Vladimir Putin.
It's a recognition of the hard power realities on the ground after a lot of investment and sacrifice, first by the Ukrainians and then by allies, and then a realization that a negotiated peace is going to be some sort of demarcation that neither side wants.
The German defence minister did, though, call it regrettable that Washington was already making concessions, in his words, to the Kremlin. Jonathan Beale is our defence correspondent in Brussels, where he asked the head of NATO, Mark Rutter, if he agreed with that.
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Chapter 3: What is Ukraine's stance on peace negotiations?
And if the war goes on and the fighting hasn't stopped, let's remember, these negotiations, we don't know whether they will succeed, but they will, European allies, still have to provide and fill the void left by the United States in terms of military support.
Jonathan Beale. So how has Wednesday's phone call between President Trump and Vladimir Putin been received in Russia? Our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg reports from Moscow.
In Russia, rarely has one telephone call caused so much excitement. The day after the conversation between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, Russian state TV praised America's new approach to Russia as a sharp turn and historic shift. The Kremlin's pleased, too. On a Kremlin conference call, I asked President Putin's spokesman for his assessment of the call.
It was a very important one, replied Dmitry Peskov. In recent years, he said, Moscow and Washington had had no high-level contacts. He accused the Biden administration of prolonging the war in Ukraine and praised Donald Trump for trying to end it. No mention of the fact that three years of war began with Russia's full-scale invasion of its neighbour.
To many Western leaders, Vladimir Putin is a pariah. To Donald Trump, he's a potential partner. The US president says he'll work with him to bring hostilities to an end. Thanks to President Trump, the Kremlin leader has already got one thing he wanted, the opportunity to negotiate on Ukraine directly with the United States. potentially cutting out Europe and even Ukraine itself.
Steve Rosenberg. Meanwhile, in Kiev, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has insisted his country must be involved in peace talks about the future of his country. With his assessment of Ukraine's position, here's our international editor, Jeremy Bowen.
America is under new management and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has joined a growing list of US allies who are finding out that the world according to Donald Trump is cold, uncertain and potentially dangerous.
President Zelensky, visiting a nuclear power plant, told journalists that it was not pleasant that President Trump had rung Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin before calling him, but much worse was the thought that the two men might want to settle Ukraine's future between them and no one else.
The main thing, President Zelensky said, was to stop Putin's plan to make all negotiations between Russia and the U.S. bilateral. As an independent country, he said, Ukraine could not accept any agreements made without its involvement. When he starts negotiating seriously, President Trump might find that it's impossible to bridge the gap between Ukraine and Russia's positions.
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Chapter 4: How is the German election influencing immigration policies?
This suspected attack is the latest of a string in Germany, where the suspect has been an asylum seeker. That's fuelled an already fraught debate about immigration, a signature issue of Germany's increasingly popular far-right party.
There are warnings that Germany must not allow itself to become divided, but immigration and public safety were already dominant issues in the country's election campaign. That will now likely only intensify with just over a week until polling day.
Jessica Parker in Germany. Israel has said Hamas must release three living hostages on Saturday or the Gaza ceasefire will be over. The demand follows an earlier announcement by Hamas that it will now meet that deadline. The group had previously said it would postpone the release, accusing Israel of breaching the terms of the ceasefire deal.
That led President Trump to say Israel should let hell break out in Gaza if the captives aren't freed. Our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson reports from Jerusalem.
After the crisis sparked by President Trump's suggestion that all the remaining hostages held in Gaza should be released this coming Saturday, both Israel and Hamas appear to have climbed back from the brink and endorsed the original terms of the ceasefire agreement they signed.
Earlier, Hamas confirmed its intention to carry out the agreement, including, it said, the exchange of prisoners according to the specified timetable. That timetable dictates that three more Israeli hostages should be released this Saturday. Israel has also now signalled that it will not break the ceasefire and return to war. if Hamas does release three living hostages by midday that day.
Israel's defense minister had earlier warned that any resumption of the war in Gaza would be of a new and different intensity and would not end until Hamas had been defeated. There had also been confusion about whether Israel had changed its demands regarding the number of hostages due for release after President Trump's comments.
The crisis was sparked after Hamas suggested it might postpone the next release of hostages, accusing Israel of violating the deal by not allowing enough tents or aid into Gaza and firing on civilians.
Meanwhile, the families of some of the young women hostages freed from Gaza have told the BBC of their treatment during 15 months of captivity and the ways they survived. The parents of four of them have described how they were given little food, saw another hostage being beaten and were threatened by armed men as they were held in tunnels and buildings above ground.
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Chapter 5: What is the status of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire?
Shlomi Berger's daughter, Agam, is a 19-year-old violinist among the women who had just started at the base. Her father says she knows her own mind and was shocked by the way women were treated.
There was times that she was threatened and sometimes they torture other female hostages in front of her eyes. It happened in the same room.
Now finally home, all the families are calling for the remaining hostages to be urgently released and for answers about why their warnings were missed. They say they will join calls for a national inquiry. one they believe is long overdue. On her return home, Daniela reminded her mum of a stark warning she made just before October 7th.
She told me, Mummy, when I'm going back to the army, there's going to be war. In my worst nightmares, I didn't think it's going to be such a war and, of course, that my daughter will take an hostage.
That report was by Alice Cuddy.
Still to come... There's impacts on the growth of species, their reproduction, their behaviour. Even at the molecular level, changes in the way that individual proteins may be synthesised within their cells.
We find out what's causing so much damage around the world.
On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.
Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.
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Chapter 6: How are former hostages from Gaza describing their captivity?
Trump has said he has said Robert Kennedy will be sorting out the health of the nation and such like.
Yeah, that's fine. And my guess is he'll be appointed to a non-confirmed sort of czar position to use a broad term that is overused.
Not so, it seems. Evan Davis spoke to Anthony Zirka, our North America correspondent, and asked him more about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 's appointment.
It was 52-48. There was one Republican, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former... Senate majority leader who voted against him. And he released a press statement shortly afterwards and condemned Kennedy's, quote, record of trafficking in dangerous conspiracy theories and eroding trust in public health institutions. Of course, McConnell, he is a polio survivor.
He has a lot of faith in vaccines, particularly polio vaccines, which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had criticized in the past. So maybe that was not surprising. But every other Republican stuck with Kennedy.
Obviously, the health establishment, mainstream opinion in health will find this a shocking appointment. What exactly do they fear of RFK?
Well, I think they fear, first of all, a lack of funding. And that's something that we're already seeing from this White House. Big cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services. the Centers for Disease Control and other federal agencies that spend a considerable amount of money funding medical research in universities and independent research centers across the country.
They fear changes in regulation, regulation that could be more restrictive on chemicals and additives in food, although I will say it's interesting. Pharma, which is the big lobbying group for the pharmaceutical industry, They didn't go all out in opposing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. They said they can work with him. That suggests that maybe the fears of what Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
can do as health secretary might be a bit overblown.
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