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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.
I'm Valerie Sanderson and in the early hours of Friday the 7th of March, these are our main stories.
At their emergency summit in Brussels, EU leaders agree to boost spending on defence.
President Trump temporarily lifts tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
Pope Francis thanks well -wishers in his first audio message since being admitted to hospital.
Also in this podcast, the Danish Postal Service says it will no longer deliver letters and It's got a little hopper that's going to bounce around the surface and try and look for water in these regions.
A lunar lander built by a private US firm has touched down on the moon.
The emergency summit of 27 European Union leaders meeting in Brussels has agreed to boost the EU's defences and carry on helping Ukraine, with one notable exception.
Hungary's Viktor Orban refused to sign a text pledging continued support.
But all the leaders agreed that Russia and Belarus posed a threat to the EU's eastern border.
The crisis summit is being seen as one of the most pivotal moments for the bloc's security for decades, following US President Donald Trump's pivot away from supporting Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia.
Writing on Ex, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said the day had been productive with a unified European vision for ending the war and concrete security guarantees.
Rebecca Kesby asked our Europe correspondent there Nick Beek about the mood at the meeting.
You can listen to various European leaders Rebecca and they each seem to have their own phrase, five minutes to midnight, decision time, the critical moment, all underlining just what an important moment this is.
But will the action follow this?
They had President Zelensky with them today for this meeting.
So if they needed to focus their minds, I'm sure he would have given a vivid account of the the ordeal that his people continue to face with bombs raining down on Ukrainian towns and cities.
The sort of the choreography today started with that warm welcome for President Zelensky, but then they got down to business.
And these European leaders from the 27 countries in the European Union, they were looking specifically at really boosting defence spending across the continent, increasing the amount of manufacturing when it comes to weapons, drones, missiles, tanks, all of that sort of thing.
But in the very short term, of course, they've got to try and work out how they fill this gap, which Donald Trump is leaving by suspending this military support to Ukraine.
And of course, at the moment, people don't know whether this is a temporary thing or whether this is an indication of what he'll do for the rest of his term in office.
Yeah. And as you say, Nick, a lot of money is being talked about and also really ambitious projects for new high tech in military hardware.
But how fast realistically are they going to be able to get any of this together?
We're not fast enough, I think, would be the simple answer to that.
This is planning for the future.
And if you listen to the leaders, they're saying it's a future threat from Vladimir Putin, among others.
I mean, it's quite interesting if you listen to what Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland, was saying today.
He is someone whose country spends more than four percent of their GDP on defense spending.
But if there is any sort of peace deal, a ceasefire in Ukraine, he says he can't afford to send any of his soldiers there to be peacekeepers because of the threat he describes from Russia that they may invade Poland.
So I think that's an indication of the level of concern.
Certainly the Baltic countries are talking about the threat of Russian aggression.
So it's really focusing minds.
And they're trying to do two things here, really.
They're trying to fill this immediate gap in light of what President Trump's done but also they're trying to completely transform the landscape here and like germany throw out the window some very tough rules on spending so that they can really increase spending on defense specifically so obviously there's a lot of unity within the eu but not everybody's singing from the same hymn sheet i'm just seeing a line here now this is coming from reuters news agency saying that the eu leaders agree a statement in support of ukraine without Hungary.
We know that Hungary does have quite a different stance on the situation in Ukraine, and I think Slovakia has also had some hesitancy.
Yeah, well, this is what everyone was thinking may happen.
Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, is sympathetic to Moscow, has much warmer relations with President Putin than the vast majority of the EU leaders.
And he said in the run up to this summit that there's no way he could sign any sort of communication, any sort of statement which said that the EU would continue to fund and support militarily Ukraine for as long as it takes.
And his rationale, Mr. Orban, was saying that the facts have changed, and actually Europe should be following the lead of Donald Trump.
They should be ringing up President Putin, trying to strike a deal, not perpetuating this conflict.
So he is very much the minority voice.
So it may well be that if they've decided this without him, they've done this as a conscious decision in the past.
He's left the room and decisions have been made, but he certainly has been the thorn in the side of many of the key EU leaders on Ukraine.
Nick Beek in Brussels.
It's been announced that US and Ukrainian delegations will meet in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to discuss what Washington called an initial ceasefire with Russia.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's ambassador to London has accused the US of destroying the international rules -based order in the way it's been engaging with Russia.
Speaking at a think tank event in London, he warned delegates there was a risk that NATO could collapse without US participation and with what he called the White House taking steps towards the Kremlin.
The failure to qualify actions of Russia as an aggression is a huge challenge for the entire world and Europe in particular because we see that it's not just the axis of evil and Russia are trying to revise the world order.
But the US is finally destroying this order.
Our Europe Regional Editor, Danny Eberhard, told me more.
Well, this was from a speech that Ambassador Zaluzhny gave at Chatham House in London.
It sometimes restricts reporting, but this was not such an event.
Chatham House had billed it as being on the record and Ambassador Zaluzhny knew that his remarks would be freely reported.
So he's saying things very much as he sees things.
Some of the things he said were things like it's obvious that the White House has questioned the unity of the whole Western world.
Washington is trying to delegate the security issues.
He's talking about Ukraine there to Europe without the participation of the US.
And so in the near future, NATO likewise can stop existing, opening up the big theme that some analysts have been talking about.
He says Russia was headed by a war criminal and that through the US direct talks with Russia, the White House was making steps towards the Kremlin, trying to meet them halfway.
So he said the next target of Russia could be Europe.
He couldn't be much more direct.
And how important a figure is Valery Zaluzhani?
He absolutely is not just any other ambassador.
He was the former commander -in -chief of Ukraine's armed forces from 2021.
So he was leading the defence of Ukraine at the time of Russia's full -scale invasion.
And for nearly two years after that, he was sacked in February last year when President Zelensky said he wanted to freshen up the military leadership.
But still, for many Ukrainians, he absolutely is a hero.
He was appointed ambassador to the UK in May last year.
And he's always had a reputation for being a straight -speaking general rather than a diplomat.
It seems that he's decided to speak his mind, although we don't know if his remarks received tacit approval from Kiev or perhaps whether he's just voicing his own opinion.
Interesting, yeah, it'll be received in Washington.
I think we can safely say they'll go, these remarks will go down like a lead balloon, Val.
Being put in the same bracket as the axis of evil, as we heard there, presumably including countries like Iran and North Korea.
This all comes at a very delicate time with President Zelensky trying to rebuild relations with Washington after a disastrous meeting at the White House last Friday.
These comments could reignite that row and I imagine General Zaluzzi knows that he stepped onto treacherous ground but perhaps he sees it as worth the risk even if it could conceivably lead to him being sacked.
Danny Eberhardt. Pope Francis has issued his first public message since being admitted to hospital in Rome last month.
The 88 -year -old has been treated for double pneumonia for the past three weeks.
His condition worsened on Monday after he suffered respiratory failure.
The message was played during evening prayers in St Peter's Square to the surprise of the crowd who'd gathered.
Our correspondent in Rome, Sarah Rainsford, was there.
this is the first that we've heard from the pope in three weeks and it is a short message of thanks delivered from his hospital played out to all those who've gathered on saint peter's square to pray for his health as they have every night here it's just 22 seconds long and pope francis struggles for breath even so but in his native spanish he thanks catholics from the bottom of his heart for their prayers and he tells them he's with them.
The Vatican says the message was recorded today.
It'll be heard by Catholics around the world with a mixture of relief and worry because the Pope sounds so weak.
Sarah Rainsford. A lunar lander built by a private US firm has touched down close to the Moon South Pole.
After a tense wait, staff in Houston said the six -legged craft called Athena had landed and was acknowledging commands.
It also appeared to be generating power from its solar panels, although it's thought the lander is not upright.
This mission is part of NASA's renewed space programme, which hopes to have humans back on the Moon by the end of next year.
Maria Mishiri heard more from Dr Carly Howitt, Associate Professor of Space Instrumentation at the University of Oxford.
The Athena machine is going to go and it's going to look in a region of the Moon that's really hard to see into, something called these permanently shadowed regions so by definition the sunlight doesn't reach them so it makes them hard to see and it's got a little hopper that's going to bounce around the surface and try and look for water in these regions they're they're a great place to look for water because the sunlight doesn't get to them so they don't that the water doesn't burn off but they're making them very hard to see from the earth so this little hopper is going to look around and look
for hydrogen as a proxy to look for water so it's a it's a great little mission to go and see an area that we really can't see very well from the Earth.
But let's hope it can do it.
It's a bit of an exciting time right now.
Yeah, absolutely. And look, you know, it's a bit confusing, because I've mentioned NASA, but it's not necessarily a NASA mission.
NASA is subcontracting them.
Explain exactly how that works.
So back in the Apollo era, NASA were the ones that sent people to the Moon.
Now they're actually subcontracting different companies to try and develop the technology to go back to the Moon.
So of course, it's been a long time since humans set foot on the Moon.
So new technology needs to be built.
We need to remember how to do that and how to do that using the technology that we have available.
So there's a few different companies that have been subcontracted to do that.
And intuitive machines are one of them.
So they had a lander that landed last year and that famously tipped over, but land is successfully on the moon.
And this is pushing the technology a little bit more.
It's going to a region of the moon that's traditionally been very hard to get to.
Again, landing and this time deploying a hopper.
So with each of these landings, that technology is being delivered, but now it's by private companies for NASA, rather than NASA being the ones that pay and make the things themselves.
And finally, before I let you go, I'm reading in my notes that scientists don't like calling it the dark side of the moon.
Why not? Because it's not dark.
But Pink Floyd, but Pink Floyd.
I know, I love that album too.
The optics on the front cover aren't good either, but let's not go there.
It still gets sunlight, it just doesn't see the Earth.
Dr. Carly Howitt. still to come on top of one mountain i found this organ of chimes which is just this huge wooden pole with thousands of metal chimes on which flew in the wind and made music the sound artist who turns nature into music this is ashley canetti from the ben and ashley i almost famous podcast it feels like everyone is talking about GLP -1s these days.
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In the latest twist to President Trump's tariff plans, he said the U .S.
will delay them on many products from Canada and Mexico, temporarily at least.
The suspension lasts until early April.
And North America business correspondent Erin Dalmore told us more.
We are talking about the goods that are covered by the existing North American trade agreement that was negotiated during President Trump's first term in office.
Now, to be clear, that covers around 50 percent of imports from Mexico and around 38 percent of imports from Canada.
But if you do the math there, you still see that there's a large chunk of products that will be affected.
And again, this is a one -month reprieve.
President Trump has warned that on April 2nd, this reprieve will expire.
And he's also said that reciprocal tariffs will go into effect on countries that impose tariffs on the United States.
When asked what changed his mind, he talks about conversations with carmakers over the last day or two.
And remember, in the back and forth we've seen over which tariffs will be imposed and when, the carmakers were the first to get a reprieve.
And they've talked about their supply chains and how their bottom lines would be strained.
Now, what you're talking about with the back and forth here, the uncertainty, what is on, what is off, what's been given a reprieve, what's going ahead as planned, we're seeing it reflected in the markets with this whiplash, this seesaw motion.
All three major US indexes are down at this moment, and a lot of businesses and manufacturers are left wondering how they're going to be able to plan for the next few months in their businesses.
Despite the market jitters, the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, hailed the suspension of tariffs as a good result for both countries.
Many thanks to President Donald Trump.
We had an excellent and respectful call in which we agreed that our work in collaboration have yielded unprecedented results within the framework of respect for our sovereignties.
We will continue to work together, particularly on migration and security issues, which include reducing the illegal crossing of fentanyl into the United States, as well as weapons into Mexico.
For more on what this means for Mexico, I spoke to our correspondent Will Grant, who's in Mexico City.
It was interesting that she also began her morning press conference by referring to new figures from Custer and Border Protection Agency, which show that seizures of fentanyl have dropped to their lowest level in three years, a 75 % drop in just the last six months of her presidency.
So I believe she would have been in that phone call they were having, pointing out all the areas in which progress is being made, like those figures, like the fact that she, as he requested, sent 10 ,000 troops to the U .S.-Mexico border.
she sent 29 high -profile drug cartel figures to the US for trial, some of whom have been wanted for 40 years.
And taken all together, I think she probably had quite a strong defence to say, look, you're saying we're not doing enough on fentanyl.
We quite clearly are.
But it is, Will, isn't it, just a month -long suspension of tariffs?
It is, and I think that's right.
We shouldn't lose sight of that.
I think there is an element of exasperation in Mexico about the fact that this seems to be the way things are going.
That's twice now in two months that it's taken a last minute phone call, you know, and in between measures being taken, threats that tariffs will be imposed, counter threats from Claudio Sheinbaum saying, well, if you do that, I'm going to have to respond in kind.
Last minute phone call and everything gets postponed.
That doesn't feel like it brings much stability to the market, much dependability on the relationship with the White House.
And I think there is an element of some frustration about that.
Will Grant. The Danish Postal Service has said it will deliver its last letter at the end of this year.
PostNord said it would cut 1 ,500 jobs in Denmark and remove 1 ,500 red post boxes, ending four centuries of the company's mail service.
I asked reporter Adrienne Murray why they'd made this decision.
Well there's been a drastic fall in the volume of mail that we send since 2000.
That's slumped by 90%.
And that's really an enormous fall.
And just last year, letter delivery has also dropped off by 30%.
As a result, PostNord, they face years of financial challenges, they've been trying to cost -cut and modernise.
And the big driver behind that, really, of course, is digitalisation.
Many people here in Denmark, and we've probably struggled to recall the last time they posted a letter.
And, you know, here is one of the leading countries for digitalisation.
So there's really an app for almost everything.
There are other factors too.
There was a new postal act last year and that's opened up the market for more private competition.
But it's really this big digital tide, which of course is a global trend that's really the big driver here.
There are going to be big losses, 1500 jobs to go.
So what's been reaction in Denmark?
For the workers, this is a major upheaval.
For those not using the services, of course, they're not going to be missed.
And this is largely symbolic.
You won't see those red post boxes on the streets anymore but some point out that you know the people that are really going to be affected that's the elderly people who are perhaps less digital savvy and some MPs have also said that you know people in rural areas they may be disadvantaged by this transport minister Thomas Danielson he's been out stressing that it will still be possible to send letters but it's private companies so they're going to be offering those types of services and that probably means going to one of their shops where you have to go to an actual point to send a letter.
And do you think this is going to be a trend across Europe?
As you said, Denmark has been very successful regarding digitalisation, but where they lead, others are following.
I think Denmark is probably just a few steps ahead, but it's probably a sign of what's to come in other places.
And we do know that postal services, particularly across Europe, have been under pressure.
They've been grappling with this decline in letter volumes as well.
If we just look to Germany, only today Deutsche Post has also axed 8000 jobs.
That's a big number.
And they've initiated a cost cutting program, which they say is in response to this long term reduction in volumes of letters in the UK, too.
We've seen really over many years that finances have been under pressure for the post office.
And they've also been drawing up plans in recent months to close loss -making branches and also cut jobs.
And this is just one side effect of this changing, increasingly, digital world that we live in.
Adrienne Murray in Copenhagen.
Now, you may remember the video which went viral last week showing President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sipping cocktails on a beach with a sort of Dubai -like backdrop.
The AI -generated video showed Mr Trump's vision of Gaza turning into the Riviera of the Middle East.
Well, President Trump liked it so much that he reposted it on his Truth Social site, much to the astonishment of the man who created it, Solu Avital.
The whole story is a sort of like a comedy of coincidences, rather, I would say, because it was the day that Donald Trump announced his Gaza plant and our company, iMix Visuals, in Los Angeles.
We often test different AI platforms.
We generate films, commercials, and we just came across this amazing new technology by a company, another LA -based company called Arcana Labs.
And they gave us an access to their latest AI model.
And as we do often with testing stuff, we test the speed and quality.
And we figured, okay, let's try to do something within our eight hours, one shift, kind of like one seat between two cups of coffee.
and just as it happened my partner Ariel Verman who is a filmmaker himself was in Las Vegas as the news broke out literally at the same time and he was just taking his phone pointing it out to the Las Vegas strip and said Las Vegas strip Gaza strip Las Vegas you know it was it was that kind of like a comics moment.
That's how it started you say it took eight hours I read you said that it was basically the intention was a satire to underline the megalomaniac nature of the idea.
Is that right? Absolutely.
You know, when you have a test drive to do of a technology that you have a limited time, you don't really have time to really go into script and writing and developing a storyboard.
And we said, all right, that sounds like fun.
Let's just play around with that idea.
And, you know, the rest is history.
You say it was satire.
It obviously caused huge offence, but the president of the United States reposted it.
Just give me a snapshot really briefly of the moment you found out that he'd done that.
Actually, he posted it a week after we created it, literally.
And as we do with tests, we share it with friends and colleagues, and the reaction was obviously everybody realised that it's a satire.
So, you know, they were laughing about it and sending us like fun emojis.
And then Ariel, who's my partner, who has over 130 ,000 followers on Instagram posted it.
And then it took me two hours to catch it and seeing that he posted it, and I called him and said, Ariel, please take it down.
You know, we thought that we were going to get in trouble with the president.
That's what I thought.
You know, I thought we were going to get, you know, offend the White House or something.
But I think by that time it was too late.
You thought you were going to offend the White House.
In fact, the White House reposted it.
I suppose what this underlines is the extraordinary potential creativity of AI but all of the dangers as well?
Absolutely. I think that right now if you look at our website imix .ai you will see that some of the stuff that we've already done it's very hard to tell if it was filmed or realistic but the thing that you just pointed out is the danger point where imagine that if we would spend more than eight hours on it about a week you wouldn't be able to tell if it's AI or a video that was filmed.
And the danger of that is that imagine that all of a sudden an AI video will be made that is so convincing of one president or another launching a nuclear war and then it will spread like wildfire.
You know, it's a doonday scenario.
Solo Avital speaking there to Matthew Amralawala.
And finally, a 23 -year -old sound artist from the UK is one of two winners of the first ever Tune Into Nature Prize, an award for music inspired by the natural world.
Josephine Illinworth wrote Dawn Aurora using the sounds she recorded in the Dolomite Mountains in Italy.
I was living for a few weeks alone in the Dolomites sleeping in these bavacki or mountain huts which are tiny unmanned shepherd huts that are very high up, which climbers and walkers use to sleep in safety overnight.
So I was there on my own with a camera, a rucksack and a field recorder just spending time there and trying to be amongst mountains and really sort of listen and experience I ended up recording wind and cowbells and as I hiked I found things that were stranger and stranger like on top of one mountain I found this organ of chimes which is just this huge wooden pole with thousands of metal chimes on which flew in the wind and made music and was just kind of inexplicably there so that was that was an amazing recording the more i listened and the more i heard the more i kind of started to see this place
as a soundscape and building on that started to see it almost as a choir and from that experience i wanted to create a piece which was a core work for the mountain and for me all these mountain huts have little guest books in them which are used by most visitors to write about their experience spending the night there.
So they're actually quite funny.
And there are often things like, oh, thank you for whoever left all the wood or, you know, there's so many rats in here.
Just these kind of beautiful stories that are captured in such a, like, simple way.
I take these guestbook entries, translated them, put them into poetry, like mixed and matched and found narratives within them.
And then those became the lyrics of the piece.
music's an important emotional vehicle i think music's really special because unlike things like soundscape recordings or writing or imagery music is non -referential it is itself it doesn't speak to anything else and i always find that because of that music can reach emotions that are more subtle and more detailed and more strange than other things and it feels very important to me that there are prizes like this that are recognising music and nature.
Josephine Illingworth celebrating nature in music.
And that's it from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.
If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, send us an email.
The address is globalpodcast at bbc .co .uk.
You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.
Use the hashtag at Global News Pod.
This edition was produced by Judy Frankel and mixed by James Piper.
The editor is Karen Martin.
I'm Valerie Sanderson.
Until next time. Bye bye.
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