Trump says he and Putin will discuss land, power plants and dividing up assets in Ukraine peace talks; Also: North Macedonia enters a week of mourning, and can DNA from endangered animals be used to save species?
Chapter 1: What are Trump and Putin discussing about Ukraine?
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Andrew Peach and at 14 hours GMT on Monday the 17th of March, these are our main stories. As Donald Trump prepares for talks with Vladimir Putin, the European Union warns Russia isn't interested in peace in Ukraine.
Canada's new Prime Minister Mark Carney has broken with tradition by making his first overseas trip to Europe rather than the United States. Also in this podcast, as the authorities in North Macedonia question numerous suspects over the deadly nightclub fire, what kind of help is being offered to the survivors and their families?
Our staff and our volunteers were offering first ecological support, first aid and other material support.
The Kremlin has confirmed that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will talk tomorrow about ending the war in Ukraine. Its spokesman Dmitry Peskov wouldn't say exactly what the two presidents would be talking about, although President Trump suggested that dividing land and power plants was now part of the conversation.
I think we'll be talking about land. It's a lot different than it was before the wars, you know. We'll be talking about power plants. because that's a big question. But I think we have a lot of it already discussed very much by both sides, Ukraine and Russia. We're already talking about that, dividing up certain assets, and they've been working on that.
Donald Trump speaking on board Air Force One. Our diplomatic correspondent James Landale is in Kiev. I asked James if he was any the wiser about the conversation to come between President Trump and President Putin.
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Chapter 2: How is North Macedonia coping with the nightclub tragedy?
I think the way it's being portrayed, I think, by diplomats is that this will be a conversation designed not to sign off any deal, but to maintain momentum and maintain US pressure on the Russian side. If you think about it, Donald Trump has not spoken to Vladimir Putin for just over a month now. But since then, in the last few days, there's been quite a flurry of diplomacy.
President Trump's envoy spoke to Mr Putin in Moscow on Thursday. Russian diplomats have been contacting their counterparts over the weekend. And at the moment, the Americans are putting up a sort of determinedly, resolutely positive signals about the prospects of getting a ceasefire deal. But As far as we know, the Russians are still sticking hard to their guns.
This morning, the Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexander Grishko, was very clear in saying that, you know, as part of a deal, they want Ukraine to be utterly neutral and completely outside of the NATO military alliance. Well, you know, neutrality is something that Ukraine has made very clear they are not going to accept. So at the moment...
There is still a tension and a disagreement between the Americans who are saying, let's have a fast, quick ceasefire and then talk about the difficult stuff long term, and the Russians who are saying, no, we need to talk about all the difficult stuff in the round.
The messages from the EU are almost the opposite, resolutely negative, talking about, you know, they don't really think that Russia wants peace and therefore this is all a bit of a sham.
I think, yeah, their view is, it's not so much that it's a sham, but at the moment that it's going to be very, very hard to get a deal agreed. Because at the moment, if you think about it, Vladimir Putin has failed in his war aims. His war aims were to achieve a Ukraine that was subordinate to Russia. He's failed to do that.
Yes, he's taken some land in the east, but it's pretty marginal incremental gains. And so the Americans are trying to say to him, look, you know, the only way you're going to treat some of your aims is by diplomatic political means. That means a ceasefire. So you've got to start talking.
But at the moment, Vladimir Putin, last week in his press conference with the Belarusian leader, made it very clear that he has substantial differences of views. detail and also of substance that he says should be discussed in painstaking discussions before any agreement can be made over any kind of short-term ceasefire.
And so that means that the Russians and the Americans are still some way apart. It will take concessions by both sides to get them closer.
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Chapter 3: What is the status of Trump's potential deal with Iran?
He's after a deal, a deal on the nuclear deal that he pulled the US out of in 2018. And it's a really crunch moment for that deal. It's essentially moribund because the US pulled out of it. But there have been attempts to revive it. And it expires this year. It was negotiated over 20 months, I believe, under the presidency of Barack Obama. But it is due to expire in October.
And at that point, any sanctions that the signatories could put on Iran for not abiding by the terms of the deal will no longer be possible to use. So it's a key moment. And there has been a flurry of recent diplomatic activity, three tracks. Iran and the IAEA, then Iran and European countries and Britain, actually four tracks.
Then there were talks last week, last Friday in China with Iran and Russia. And then finally, you have this letter from Donald Trump delivered last Wednesday. We don't know the contents, but there have been some interesting comments today from a foreign ministry spokesman in Iran saying, saying that they're not going to release the contents. They will respond to it after proper scrutiny.
But the messages coming from the US are contradictory and inconsistent because the Americans are expressing readiness for dialogue while also imposing new sanctions. But the message from Donald Trump that we know of because he's spoken about it in a television interview is negotiate or else. If you don't do a deal, there's the threat of military strikes. So Iran has got a lot to think about.
I find myself asking this question a lot at the moment. Why now for Donald Trump? Is it just because he wants to get on with everything really quickly, along with all the other issues he's trying to address? Or is this about Iran being in a weakened position at the moment?
It certainly is in a weakened position because of those Israeli airstrikes last year, which targeted air defences around the nuclear facilities. And you know that the Israelis have lobbied for a long time for military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities.
Now, they insist they are peaceful, but there is a huge amount of international concern, alarm even, at what the Iranians have been doing over the past few years to Experts say it would now take less than a week for the Iranians to enrich enough material for a single nuclear weapon. So that's a very short time frame.
It would take them longer to actually weaponize it, but they are enriching uranium at a very, very fast pace. to 60%, you need 90% to build a bomb. But there is a huge amount of concern. So you've got a flurry of diplomatic activity. I mean, Donald Trump wants deals wherever he goes, doesn't he? But the Iranians do not like negotiating with a gun to their head. So let's see what happens.
our diplomatic correspondent Caroline Hawley. As we reported in a previous edition of this podcast, the US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order stripping back the federally funded news organisation Voice of America, accusing it of being anti-Trump and radical.
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Chapter 4: What changes are occurring at Voice of America?
There were times during the 1950s when there was the so-called red baiting that went on looking for communists in government that VOA also faced such accusations. But we have operated under a charter, which makes very clear what our mission is, that we are to be an independent broadcaster, even though we're part of the federal government. And this is a law in the United States.
which says we'll be consistently reliable and an authoritative source of news, and we must be accurate, objective, and comprehensive, and we will represent no single segment of American society. I have met people here in the United States and in other countries who told me that they really got their first taste of freedom from listening or watching the voice of America.
And in some cases, led to their decisions to defect from authoritarian countries. It's been very powerful. And destroying VOA is being considered a national security issue.
It's one of the most effective instruments of American soft power and abridged those who may never set foot on our soil, but really understand our values because they heard them in one of the dozens of languages in which we broadcast or used to broadcast in.
Steve Harmon of Voice of America talking to Victoria Ununda. Researchers from the University of Oxford have shown for the first time they can extract live tissue cells from the dung of an endangered animal. Scientists have taken living cells from mouse dung before.
Now the Oxford team has done the same with elephant droppings, raising hopes the technique could eventually be used to help save endangered species. Professor Susanna Williams has been leading the research and spoke to Paul Henley.
It's a real breakthrough because the potential to isolate these cells and the potential to use these cells has many, many opportunities, which could be highly influential in conservation. So obtaining them from mice has been done, but developing technologies or rather methodologies. And different ways of doing it to collect the cells from the elephant has been the real ability to do it.
Because, of course, you're collecting these cells from a very dirty environment. So be able to collect cells that are clean and you can keep them clean in culture and remove bacteria is really key.
Tell us how you did it.
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Chapter 5: Can DNA from endangered species be used to save them?
So, by doing a bit of gene editing, you can potentially make it so that it's no longer lethal to them. which is something that could evolve, but they just don't have the time to do that. And there's colleagues of mine working in Australia on that.
There's been talk about bringing back the woolly mammoth using stem DNA cells. Is that up your street?
That's a very good question. So, yeah, there's a big group, influential group in the States that's working on bringing back the woolly mammoth. Yes.
Yes, maybe.
I'm a big believer in there's many things that are possible, but we've put men on the moon many, many, many years ago. You know, bringing back real, it's about money and time. Whether there's a good enough reason or whether it's going to really be a mammoth or is it going to just be a modified elephant is a very different question.
That was Professor Susanna Williams from Oxford University. Still to come on this podcast, we'll hear from football fans in the north-east of England whose Newcastle United team hadn't won a trophy for decades until now.
I never ever thought we would win anything in my lifetime. Ecstatic, ecstatic, over the moon.
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: What recent success has Newcastle United achieved?
for operation, it didn't have fire exits, the sealing material was clearly highly flammable, and as a result 59 young people are dead, more than 150 injured, and this town of fewer than 25,000 people, you've got to say that every family has been affected by this.
I mean, looking at the facts, the situation at this makeshift nightclub looks pretty obviously insufficient, and yet the club's been open for years, and no one seems to have noticed or done anything about it.
And it had a reputation as being a really good night out, not just a really good night out in Cotcheny, but one of the best nights out in North Macedonia. The owner of the club was very good at getting acts in and putting them on, so DNK, who were playing on the night of the fire, very well known in North Macedonia.
And the way that it was all set up inside with the lighting and the stage, that was all very well done as well. But clearly what wasn't well done, where the corners had been cut, was in matters of safety. And if there are no fire exits from a nightclub, it's obviously, to use that awful phrase, an accident waiting to happen. And that's what occurred in this case.
And when we talk about government officials arrested and allegations of corruption, just fill us in on that guy.
Well, this is because the Pulse nightclub had a license and the Interior Ministry and the Prime Minister, Christian Mistkowski, have described that license as fraudulent or at least fraudulently issued. And they think it shouldn't have had a license to operate as a nightclub at all. And so now they're talking to people who were working at the government administration responsible for doing that.
Among those being brought in for questioning are current and former government officials. There's one former government minister who's been brought in for questioning. The Prime Minister has said it doesn't matter what political party you're from, what post you hold, what your name and surname is. There'll be no mercy if you're found to be responsible for this.
I'm Hawkins correspondent Guy Delaney in North Macedonia. An EU-led donor conference for Syria is taking place in Brussels, the first since President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown last December. The new Syrian authorities are attending the annual event along with regional neighbours and other Arab countries. Western partners and UN agencies are also represented.
The EU has eased some sanctions on key sectors of the Syrian economy, but wants to see the interim authorities there honouring their promises of an inclusive and peaceful transition. Kaya Callas is the EU Foreign Policy Chief.
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