Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?

You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway and this edition is published in the early hours of Saturday the 15th of March.
Is Vladimir Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine? President Trump says he thinks Russia is going to make a deal, but others are more sceptical. G7 foreign ministers have threatened Moscow with further sanctions if it doesn't sign up.
Also in this podcast... We will never, ever, in any way, shape or form, be part of the United States.
America is not Canada. We hear from the newly sworn-in Canadian Prime Minister.
How close are we to a ceasefire in Ukraine? In the past few hours, President Trump said he felt Russia would make a deal. Pretty good vibes coming out, he said.
But the Europeans and Ukrainians fear Vladimir Putin is playing for time. Here's the EU Foreign Affairs Chief Kaya Kallas.
We see now what Russia is doing. So the reactions were really not unconditional, but conditional.
And of course, these conditions that have been presented are not acceptable. It also shows clearly that Russia does not really want peace.
Their end goals haven't changed, and we have to keep that in mind. Kayakala speaking at the G7 meeting in Canada.
The foreign ministers there agreed a joint statement expressing unwavering support for Ukraine and threatening further sanctions against Russia if it didn't back a ceasefire. The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said he was cautiously optimistic of a deal, but he was pressed on the time frame by the BBC State Department correspondent, Tom Bateman.
How long does Putin have? Well, in terms of long for what? Because there are those who say he's playing for time, but this is adding conditions, adding... Well, this war's been going on for three years, so I think the question, and with no end in sight at this point, without this intervention by President Trump, the fundamental question really is not how long.
I think the question is, are we actually moving towards a ceasefire, or is this a delay tactic? I think we'll know sooner rather than later, but we're certainly at least talking about peace for the first time in three years. Now we'll have to figure out how close we truly are, and that's going to take some time.
Marco Rubio. I caught up with Tom Bateman as he travelled back from Canada as part of the press contingent and asked him how close are we to an agreement.
You have on the one hand the demand or the call for an immediate ceasefire. That's what the joint Ukrainian and United States statement says.
And then of course we had the statements from Vladimir Putin yesterday which appeared to add a whole series of conditions and questions.

And that has led to some, particularly Europeans, as you were hearing there, suggesting that this is a tactic to sort of string the Americans along or play for time. So I pressed Mr Rubio on that very point.
And as you heard him say there, basically they believe that, first of all, that this process shouldn't be dictated by what is being said in public, but rather the contact, the private contact between the Kremlin and the Americans, which of course we had in the form of President Trump's envoy, Steve Wyckoff, traveling to Moscow last night and talking to Vladimir Putin. So there was a sense that they want to kind of study exactly what the Russian president is saying to them before they work out what the response might be.
But there you have, you do have a sense of sort of inconsistency because at the same time, the idea is that this should be a fast truce. That's what President Trump has repeatedly characterized this.
But at the same time, you heard there from Mr Rubio it's going to take some time to establish what the Russians areians are talking about you know i think what they say when they're pressed about this is at least the discussions are about peace and you heard him say there after three years of war the fear of course from some in europe is what all of this process is doing is basically rewarding the invading power and that has carries the risk of emboldening vladimir putin as he occupies a fifth of Ukraine territory. Well, there was some suggestion that those differences of opinion between the Europeans and the Americans might surface at that G7 meeting of foreign ministers.
But what do you make of the statement that came out, including the threat of possible further costs on Russia, as it put it? Well, there were some quite sharp divisions between the Europeans and the Americans. That is because, I mean, Mr.
Rubio had said he didn't want to see antagonistic language, as he put it, in the joint statement, just at a time when they were trying to draw the Russians to the negotiating table. Now, it is notable that, for example, the G7 foreign minister's statement from their meeting of late last year, contained paragraph upon paragraph of condemnation of Russia.
That was all gone. There was no explicit condemnation of the Russians in this statement.
What there was, though, was a sense of strong backing for Ukraine. The statement talks about the support for Ukraine's sovereignty, its territorial integrity and its independence.
And so, you know, I think that that is a win for the Europeans that they've got that sentiment in the statement. And certainly that's the part of it that they're talking about most.
Tom Bateman traveling with the US Secretary of State. Well, even as the G7 foreign ministers began heading home from Canada, Mark Carney was being sworn in as the new prime Minister there, replacing Justin Trudeau.
Mr Carney, a former head of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, has been robust in his approach to President Trump. His first foreign trip will be to France and Britain, and not as usual for new Canadian Prime Ministers to the United States.
After taking the oath of office in Ottawa, he rejected President Trump's suggestion that Canada become the 51st state. Personally, I've been clear, the ministers behind me, I think to an individual when asked have been clear that we will never, ever, in any way, shape or form, be part of the United States.
America is not Canada. Look at the ceremony we just have.
You could not have had that ceremony in America. Look at the cabinet behind me.
You do not have that cabinet in America. We are a very fundamentally different country.
So irrespective of any issues economically, fundamentally to our core, to our identity, one reason why we have a minister of Canadian identity and culture. So before we get to the economics of it, we won't be part of it.
And when we get to the economics and the president is a successful business person and dealmaker, we're his largest client in so many industries. And clients expect respect and working together in a proper commercial way.
So the nature of Canada means we won't. The economics means we shouldn't.
And what you will see from this government is focusing on building here at home, building with different partners abroad, and that will reinforce the point. We're doing it for our own reasons, to be clear, for our own people, for the high-paying jobs.
But eventually, the truth will out and the Americans will understand as well. Thank you.
The new Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney. The former president of the Philippines,

Rodrigo Duterte, has appeared via video link at The Hague, the first ex-Asian head of state

to go before the International Criminal Court. He is accused of crimes against humanity over

his so-called war on drugs, which saw many thousands of people killed by death squads during his six years in power. The 79-year-old said he was too ill to give evidence.

The presiding judge read out a list of the charges.

Murder of at least 19 persons killed by members of the Davao death squad in various locations in

or around Davao City B. Murder of at least 24 persons, allegedly criminals, such as drug pushers or thieves.
Relatives of those who were killed had gathered outside. I think for us, the victims of the war on drugs, this is the first step to attaining justice under our international criminal justice system.
But Mr Duterte's supporters were also there calling for him to be sent home, while his lawyer claimed he'd been abducted from the Philippines. Our correspondent Anna Holligan spoke to us from the court.
He looked very tired at times during the half-hour hearing. It seemed as though he was nodding off.
We heard the judges confirm his identity. They confirmed Rodrigo Duterte understood the charges against him.
Also importantly in this initial appearance, they set a date for the confirmation of charges hearings. So that's 23rd of September this year.
And at that point, the judges will hear from the defence, the prosecution and the victims' representatives. They'll have a chance to present a kind of flavour of their evidence and then the judges will decide whether there is sufficient evidence to send this case to trial.
Now he is the first former Asian head of state to face charges at the ICC what is the significance of his appearance or non-appearance in the court for the court itself? Hugely significant and for the people of course here today the people in the Philippines especially those alleged victims of his hit squad. So according to the prosecution we've had a look at the the application for the arrest warrant.
And in that, he is accused of ordering, orchestrating, funding and promoting these hit squads, the death squads, who targeted people who were suspected of being responsible for crimes, mostly things like drug dealing and drug taking, but also other types of petty crimes, according to

this application for the arrest warrant. So the significance for the ICC of the fact that they

have managed to serve an arrest warrant, have it enforced, have a suspect extradited to face

justice here, to appear in front of the judges remotely from the detention facilities, all within

seven days is remarkable. And if you put that in the context of others who are wanted by the ICC, for example, Benjamin Netanyahu is really Prime Minister, Russian President Putin, there's little chance of those arrest warrants being served any time soon.
And so this is quite a victory for the ICC, especially at a time where it's under a lot of scrutiny from some quarters.

And after the sanctions imposed by Donald Trump as well on the prosecutor, Kareem Khan, who was in court for this hearing today.

This is quite a moment and it demonstrates really how quickly international justice can unfold when countries, the countries involved, are prepared to cooperate with this institution. Anna Holligan in The Hague.
Hamas says it will release the last living Israeli-American hostage it's holding in Gaza, along with the bodies of four other dual nationals captured during the massacre of October 7th, but there are reported to be conditions. Hamas made the announcement as indirect ceasefire talks continued with Israel through US negotiators in Qatar.
John Donison reports from Jerusalem. Idan Alexander was just 19 and serving in the Israeli army when he was captured by Hamas during the October 7th attacks.
The dual American-Israeli national is now 21. As a male Israeli soldier, it was expected that he would have been among the last hostages to be freed.
But in a statement, Hamas said it was now prepared to release him, along with the remains of four other Israeli-American hostages. It comes after the United States acknowledged it had been negotiating directly with Hamas for the first time in more than 30 years, to the reported fury of Israeli officials.
The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will meet with his ministers tomorrow evening to discuss the matter, but accused Hamas of engaging in psychological warfare. The original ceasefire deal signed in January stated that by now Israel should be withdrawing its forces from Gaza

and that both parties should be negotiating a permanent end to the war. Israel has said that

is no longer acceptable. The ceasefire is fragile.
The health ministry in Gaza, which operates under

Hamas, says more than 140 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes since the truce came

into effect in January.

John Donelson, reporting from Jerusalem.

And still to come on the Global News podcast.

If you think about the gold bars of classical imagination, right, Italian Job, James Bond,

those large 400-ounce, 12.5-kilo bars, that's really the market in gold worldwide.

That's what's setting the price. Why do investors resort to gold in times of economic crisis? Women accused of breaking the strict female dress code in Iran face being arrested, beaten and even killed.
According to a new report by the UN, the authorities are going to extreme lengths to monitor women with surveillance cameras, mobile phone apps and even drones, as I heard from Siavash Adalan of the BBC Persian service. They're using all kinds of new technologies that are available to the law enforcement organisations in Iran, including apps where people can report violations of the mandatory hijab law.
If they see another woman in a car who is not wearing the scarf or head covering, they can report that to the app. And then in real time, a text will be sent to the owner of the car, and then the car may be impounded if they don't pay a penalty in time.
For example, that's one thing. They're considering using drones to monitor this.
They haven't really done that extensively, but it's mentioned in this human rights report as well. Yeah, I mean, this is just one of a string of tactics used by the authorities to basically crush dissent, according to this report.
Yes, an enforcement of mandatory hijab is considered one of these ways of crushing dissent because not wearing the hijab today is considered defiance of Iranian law, especially in light of the protests that we saw in 2022. But it's interesting that in spite of all these attempts by the government to enforce mandatory hijab, the public life goes on with a lot of women not wearing the scarf.
So it's not really being observed on the street by many, many women. But at the same time, the government needs to show its supporters, the supporters of mandatory hijab, that it is taking action.
And every now and then it makes example of people, of women who don't observe the hijab. And another sign of the examples it makes of people who protest against it is executing them.
Absolutely. The number of executions has risen since 2022 when Mahsa Amini died in police custody.
And this is not just about women. It includes a lot of activists, human rights activists, protesters, people who have led some of those protests.
This was government's way of intimidating the public in order to avoid any further disruptions and social unrest. And they make no distinction between adults and children.
Well, we've had reports of children having also been arrested, not necessarily of children being executed. But yeah, I mean, as you remember, the protest of 2022 was all about the Generation Z taking to the streets, the new Iranian girls and boys who don't want to accept these rules that have been enforced by the theocratic government for decades.
There have been reports of their arrest. Teenagers as well as youngsters are targets of this intimidation and persecution and suppression campaign by the state.
Siavash Adelan of the BBC Persian Service. A new study on the impact of plastic on young sable shearwaters, a seabird in Tasmania, has found that not only are their digestive systems being harmed, so is their brain function, not unlike Alzheimer's or Parkinson's.
Alex Dejerzi is a doctoral candidate at the University of Tasmania in Australia and lead author of the study in the journal Science Advances. She spoke to James Menendez.
So these chicks, they're relying solely on their parents to be going out and foraging and collecting food for them. So it's their parents that are mistakenly picking up plastic as food.
And there are a few reasons why that is. The first, we see our adults favour pieces that are blue or white.
So we're thinking that it's visually mimicking prey that they should be eating, whether that be fish or squid. But secondly, plastic that's been in the ocean for a really long time tends to accumulate oils and things like that.
So it's getting the scent that it could be fish or squid. So we did a blood test on these birds and we were looking at the proteins.
And proteins can be a great hallmarkers for organ function and health. And one of the markers that we did see was that that stomach lining is breaking down.
And that's not surprising. You know, you've got these huge chunks of plastics floating around in your stomach.
They're bound to be piercing or rubbing quite intensely on that stomach lining. You also found that it's causing brain damage in these chicks.
What are we talking about? So we saw a decline in a protein that's called BDNF, and this is associated with the neurons within a brain. And in human research, this has been a sign of early stages of cognitive decline within elderly people.
And within birds, this protein has been found to impact the development of their song. Now, if anyone's seen a documentary about a seabird colony, you'll know that it's a really loud place and it's really critical that these birds can make a beautiful and complex song, but then be able to find their partner within a really noisy colony.
So we think that the decline in this protein that we found in the high plastic chicks might impact their breeding success moving forward. We do find microplastics within their stomach and we have found, you know, in other samples that the liver and the kidney are impacted by microplastics.
So it is definitely possible that microplastics could be at play. And I guess this isn't exactly your field, but the implications for other creatures and I guess also for humans, well, it's pretty troubling, isn't it potentially? Yeah, definitely.
Proteins are an excellent thing to work with. They're highly conserved across all animals and we're working with really abundant proteins and we know they're quite conserved across different species.
So, you know, we actually could see these symptoms and signs in other species that do consume plastic as well as humans. Alex DeJersey talking to James Menendez.
The carmaker Nissan says it's just completed the latest stage of an eight-year project to develop technology for self-driving cars. Its specially adapted Nissan Leafs have been tested on rural roads in Britain with their twists, turns, blind junctions and occasional potholes.
The plan is to use the technology to develop self-driving taxis that could be used by those who can't or don't want to drive themselves. Our reporter Theo Leggett has been seeing what happens when you let the computer do the driving.
The Alden Star car is an American answer to the universal problem of personal transport in congested cities. It combines the door-to-door convenience of the private car with the speed and relaxation of public transport at its best.
People have been trying to design self-driving vehicles for decades. Back in the 1960s, the idea was you could drive your car onto special tracks which would guide you to your destination hands-free.
The undercarriage slides under the track and the star car begins to glide along an electrified rail. It never really caught on.
But today, genuine self-driving cars do exist, and I'm about to try one out. So Brendan has set the route to the vehicle, so I'm just turning the AD system on and then activating it.
The car is an electric Nissan LEAF. It's been developed by a consortium including Nissan, other private firms, research groups and government agencies.
And it's being tried out on the narrow roads, potholes and blind bends that are so familiar in rural Britain. So this section is one of the long sweeping dynamic roads which really gets to showcase the car's ability.
It's actually going quite fast. The project has been going for eight years.
The test cars have covered 16,000 miles. They've learned to cope with motorways.
They've been tried on some of London's busiest streets where they've even used roadside cameras to pick out hazards well in advance. And most recently recently they've been pounding along rural roads.
Back in the workshop, the engineer leading the project, Bob Bateman, tells me how it all works. We've got a variety of sensors on this car, cameras and we've got laser guidance systems and we've got a radar as well.
And all of this helps to support the self-driving technology that we're trying to deliver in this car. It's effectively the eyes and ears of the car to allow you to drive.
It's certainly impressive, though travelling at 60 miles per hour on bumpy roads and what amounts to a mobile computer is a little disconcerting at first. But what exactly is the point of it all? David Moss is Nissan's Head of Research and Development in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
What we're looking to do is to provide technology that allows us to develop a mobility service. This means people who maybe can't drive or no longer want to drive or don't even have access to public transport are able to actually move around.
Driverless taxis are already a reality in some parts of the world, in cities in the United States and China, for example. But they can only operate in carefully defined areas, and their performance hasn't always been flawless, as this man, who ended up trapped doing circuits of a car park in Phoenix, Arizona, found out.
OK, why is this happening to me on a Monday? I'm in a Waymo car. Connecting to rider support.
This car may be recorded for quality assurance. This car is just going in circles.
Meanwhile, door-to-door self-driving for private motorists remains a long way off, according to Professor David Bailey of Birmingham Business School. This is an important step forwards, but we're not going to see, say, autonomous cars that can drive you anywhere, probably until the back end of the next decade.
So that's still some way away.

True self-driving cars were once seen as science fiction.

You press a destination button on a dashboard route map and electronic controls take over.

There is still a long way to go, but engineers insist they're now firmly on track to turn futuristic fantasy into day-to-day reality.

That report by Theo Leggett. The price of gold hit the $3,000 an ounce mark for the first time on Friday as demand surges amid economic uncertainty.
It's up 14% since the start of the year. Gold is seen as a safe asset for investors and is often sought after in times of instability.
But why? Adrian Ash, the director of research at Bullion Vault, spoke to Andrew Peach. Gold is relatively useless in terms of productive use, but socially it's always been used as the ultimate store of value.
And that seems to be where the markets want to be right now. So if I buy gold, as people have been, that's what's pushing the value up, where is it? Well, I mean, there's very many ways you can buy gold.
I mean, the physical gold product you might buy as jewellery, you might buy it as coins or small bars, or you might buy it whereby somebody else looks after it for you and it's cared for in a vault. But it is about the physical products, and that's gold's appeal, is its physicality.
You know, this is a lump of metal, which nobody else's financial performance can deprive you of and i guess it is the gold bars in vaults that's the the primary form of gold that we're seeing traded that's pushing the price up at the moment yeah absolutely i mean jewelry demand is very important to the gold price but what really makes the price of gold move is when large investors' investment cash is going into gold. It typically goes into gold bars in vaults because that's where it's liquid.
If you think about the gold bars of classical imagination, right, Italian Job, James Bond, those large 400-ounce, 12.5-kilo bars, that's really the market in gold worldwide. That's what's setting the price.
And is it held by individuals, by companies involved, as well as by central banks? Because again, it's the kind of Fort Knox Bank of England goal we tend to conjure up in our mind. Are there lots of people holding gold involved? Central banks are increasingly important to the gold market.
And this has really been a change in the last 10, 15 years. Since the Western banking financial crisis, central bank demand has really been very important to the gold market.
But yes, you're talking about private investors, investment companies, hedge funds, family offices, owning gold bars as tangible property within specialist bullion vaults, where can buy and sell very quickly, very easily. And security is absolutely the primary concern there.
We've had Donald Trump and Elon Musk talking about going to see, to check on the gold at Fort Knox. Can we all do that? If we buy some gold, can we go and see it? Is my bit of gold in the same gold bar as someone else's gold? The issue there is that if I was to show you a pile of yellow bricks, would you actually know whether you were looking at actually a pile of gold bars or something else? What you want is for somebody to go and say, yeah, these bars are of the quality as advertised.
They are of acceptable market quality and they are all there and good. So it's about really knowing that the material is what it should be and that it's all there in full.
So if you're going to do a Fort Knox audit, what you're actually talking about is really a Fort Knox inspection. And that's a very much bigger job and it's going to take a long time to do.
I'm presuming that we think of gold as being so precious at the top of the tree, if you like, not only because of its scarcity, but because of its kind of social history. It must be.
Gold has been the ultimate prize in all cultures and in all ages throughout history. So if you look at the way that humanity actually values this stuff, it's always been the number one asset class.
That's where it really gets its safe haven appeal from today. Adrian Ash.
People who reach the ripe old age of 100 often put their longevity down to good genes. And it appears they may be onto something.
Spain's Maria Brañas Morera died last year at the age of 117, when she was the world's oldest person. Scientists have now discovered that she inherited genes that made her cells mirror those of someone much younger.
They say this could explain why she didn't feel the effects of ageing as much as others. Chantal Hartle has the story.
Maria Brañas Morera was born in the US in 1907 before emigrating to Spain as a child. She lived through two world wars, the Spanish Civil War, a flu pandemic and COVID-19.
She previously spoke about her healthy lifestyle, regular exercise, a Mediterranean diet and eating three yogurts a day. Maria Brañas Morera even volunteered to help scientists at the University of Barcelona understand how she had lived so long.
Researchers started analysing her DNA before her death, as genetics professor Manel Estella told the BBC last year. She has like a little bit like a superhero DNA, a DNA that is highly protective against cardiovascular disease and also against high levels of sugar in the blood.
Learning from her has been a great experience. That was then, but the complete findings have revealed something even more extraordinary.
The scientists found that her genes allowed her cells to behave as if they were 17 years younger than they actually were. They discovered that her gut bacteria closely resembled that of a child and that she had low levels of unhealthy cholesterol.
It was a combination of these lucky genetics and a healthy lifestyle that seemed to explain why Maria Brañas Morera was able to live well beyond a century. This is thought to be one of the most extensive research projects into a so-called super centenarian, someone above the age of 110.
The researchers in Barcelona hope the findings will help those aiming to develop medications and treatments for age-related illnesses. Chantal Hartle.
And that's all from us for now, but the Global News Podcast will be back at the same time tomorrow. This edition was mixed by Chris Cousares and produced by Richard Hamilton.

Our editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Oliver Conway.

Until next time, goodbye.