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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Alex Rosen. And in the early hours of Thursday, the 18th of March, these are our main stories. Russia recalls its ambassador to the US after President Biden says Vladimir Putin will pay for meddling in last year's election. The European Union threatens to ban exports of covert jobs to countries including the U.K. The president of Tanzania, John Magufuli, has died also in this podcast.

How whales may have learned to warn each other of attacks by humans.

The specter of election meddling is looming once again over the fraught relationship between the U.S. and Russia. Moscow has recalled its ambassador from Washington in the wake of a U.S. intelligence report that found Vladimir Putin tried to influence voters in favor of Donald Trump in 2020. The Kremlin has denied the allegations of election interference. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, President Joe Biden made his feelings known about his Russian counterpart. You know Vladimir Putin.

You think he's a killer? Mm hmm. I do. So what price must he pay a price he's going to pay? Well, you'll see shortly.

President Biden said he had already challenged Mr. Putin face to face while serving as vice president under Barack Obama.

We had a long talk and I know relatively well. And the conversation started off. I said, I know you and you know me. If I established this occurred, then be prepared. And you said, you know, he doesn't have a soul. I did say that to him. Yes. And to and his response was, we understand one another.

The BBC's James Coomaraswamy asked the man who used to be the top American diplomat, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whether it was a good message to send.

Yes, it's a perfectly fine message. Frankly, there's not much news in Russian interference in U.S. domestic politics that's been going on for an awfully long time. The nature of it changes as technology changes. They have some elections where they try to do more and others less. We need to do all that we can. Our administration imposed more sanctions on the Russians than any previous administration. We supported the Ukrainians with defensive weapons systems. We were truly tough on Russia.

Vladimir Putin is a bad actor. I hope this administration will do enough. Last time last time they allowed the Russians not take Crimea, very, very watch.

You talked about driving a wedge between you and President Trump. Again, that criticism. President Trump never directly criticized President Putin. I mean, look what Joe Biden's doing. Do you wish President Trump had been more direct?

I'm about deeds and action, not words. I think what really matters and what the Russians really understand is American force and power and actions. We you get hung up about a tweet. You can get hung up about a particular statement. At the end of the day, what that rhetoric is unimportant to the Russians. They want to know that the United States is going to be firm and strong. And that's what we were whether it was in Ukraine, whether it was the push back against ISIS in Syria.

Every place we confronted the Russians, we were strong and determined. I'm proud of the work that we did to protect the American people from the threat from Russia.

The former U.S. Secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, diplomatic analyst Jonathan Marcus, told me more.

Mr. Biden does seem to be insisting that Russia's behavior will lead to consequences. Quite what those consequences will be. We don't know. The Biden administration is going to be different. It's going to work with allies. It's going to nurture alliances. It's not going to be sceptical about NATO. It's going to continue with sanctions. But, of course, as we know, the sanctions imposed by the Americans on Russia have not led to a change in Russia's behavior.

But, you know, it's a similar problem in many ways to the difficulties with a much more potent international actor. China, you know, on the one hand, they want to contain and confront China when they believe that it's acting against us Western and liberal values. But on the other, of course, they want to work with China and indeed they want to work with Russia on issues of mutual concern. So with Russia, again, you have obviously things like climate change, you have arms control, the nonproliferation.

Of course, one of the early successes, if you want to call it that, of the Biden team was to decide to extend the new START treaty, the key strategic arms reduction treaty between Moscow and Washington. So that's a plus.

Briefly, Jonathan, Moscow has warned of the U.S. Russia relationship being damaged beyond repair. What would that mean for the two countries? Well, look, if Russia continues its cyber operations and its intrusions into the American system, I don't think there are many things the Americans will necessarily want to do to to directly get back at the Russians, though for all we know, they may make some kind of cyber demonstration of their own. I think what it's going to do is it's going to reinforce the view in Washington that what America has to do is to strengthen its own security of its own computer systems.

It has to be a much more resilient society. It has to do much more to work against Russian information operations, that kind of thing.

Jonathan Marcus, the president of Tanzania, John Magufuli, has died. He was 61 and according to his prime minister, had been suffering from a heart condition. In recent weeks, opposition politicians have claimed Mr. Magufuli was seriously ill with covid-19.

Richard Hamilton told me more had not been seen in public for more than two weeks. This made rumors spread and the government tried to control that rumor mill. Just a few days ago, they arrested four people on suspicion of spreading rumors on social media that he was ill. And just as recently as Friday, the prime minister said to spread rumors that his six smacks of hate. So officially, they're saying he died of a heart condition, but there's suspicion that he may have contracted coronavirus.

He'd actually declared Tanzania was konbit free back in June 2020, and it mocked the wearing of masks. He doubted the testing procedures. He teased neighboring countries for their lockdown's and he endorsed herbal remedy from Madagascar and suggested people tried steam inhalation therapy and praying. And he was quoted as saying, Coronavirus, which is a devil, cannot survive in the body of Christ. It will burn instantly. It was also vehemently anti vaccine. And he said vaccinations are dangerous.

If white people were able to come up with vaccines, they would have found one for AIDS. So if it turns out he did die of covid-19, it would be certainly for his opponents.

The ultimate irony, he had the nickname The Bulldozer. What's he going to be remembered for? That's right.

Initially, he was praised for his no nonsense approach and his austerity. He came to power promising to crack down on corruption. He curbed government spending. He reduced his own salary. He banned ministers from unnecessary travel abroad and using expensive limousines, he cleaned out the civil service of so-called ghost workers. And they organized a mass, a mass litter clearance. But in recent years, he became increasingly autocratic and repressed all dissent and opponents.

Richard Hamilton. The European Commission has threatened to ban the export of coronavirus vaccines to countries including the UK in an escalation of the row about the AstraZeneca jab. The commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said emergency powers could be invoked to ensure that countries which were receiving doses made inside the EU also send supplies to member states. The UK said it expects the EU to stand by a prior commitment not to restrict exports from Brussels. Here's our Europe correspondent Nick Beke.

European countries are staring at sharp rises in covid cases, but the continent is also fighting a vaccination crisis. It's not getting the doses it ordered. The European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said 10 million vaccine doses have been exported to the UK in the past six weeks alone. But very little was coming back to the EU, especially from AstraZeneca plants in the U.K., she said. In the second quarter of the year, the company would deliver only 70 million of the 180 million doses it had promised.

Miss von der Leyen said that would not be tolerated and she would do everything needed to get Europe's fair share.

All options are on the table. We are in the crisis of the century and I'm not ruling out any anything for now because we have to make sure that Europeans are vaccinated as soon as possible.

But millions of the AstraZeneca doses already in Europe are sitting on shelves. The majority of EU countries have now suspended its use, while their common medicines regulator assesses the latest evidence from a very small number of cases of possible links to blood clots. AstraZeneca said more than 17 million people in the UK and the EU had received their product and reiterated it was working tirelessly to increase supply to the EU.

Nick Beke in Brussels. Well, despite some. Hesitancy and delivery delays across the E.U., the European Commission is busy proposing a digital green certificate, what's being dubbed a covid passport. Its aim is to help ease international travel for many countries, such as those which rely heavily on tourism like Greece and Spain. This is extremely welcome news. Guy Hedgecoe reports from the Mediterranean resort of Benidorm in Spain.

I'm on the beach where a row of high rise apartment blocks and hotels look out onto the sea. Normally at this time of year, the sand would be full of foreign holidaymakers, as would the hotels, bars and restaurants here. But covid related travel restrictions, both in Spain and across Europe mean this town is unusually quiet at the moment. The Simbel, a large four star hotel in front of me, is one of the few which have remained open despite the low numbers of guests.

Ricardo Sanchez is its manager.

The international market in Benidorm is very, very important. The most important market here is the U.K. market, the second from Belgium, from Holland, from the east of Europe, from France. And nobody comes in. Nobody has come in.

Now, tourism represents nearly 15 percent of the Spanish economy. Last year, the country received 65 million fewer tourists than normal. That was a major reason why GDP shrank more than any other countries in Europe.

Hostelry has been particularly hard hit here in Benidorm and the surrounding area. Earlier this year, all bars and restaurants were closed down for six weeks here, only partially reopening recently. Many of the establishments here in central Benidorm have chosen to stay closed until restrictions left further. A street musician performs on the seafront, a very rare sight recently in Benidorm, but the mood music is changing. There's hope for the tourism sector in the shape of the proposed covid passport or digital green certificate.

It's aimed at easing travel for those who have taken vaccines approved by the EU and possibly others, such as the Chinese and Russian Jab's. According to reports, the covid passport would be available either digitally or on paper. It's expected to provide proof and details of any vaccination the holder has received. It would also show the results of recent covid tests they may have had, and it would have information on whether the holder has already had covid-19. Spain and other southern European countries, which rely heavily on tourism, are hoping it will provide a lifeline.

Jose Luis, Florida, is executive president of Exhale, told a Spanish tourism association.

I think that travel certificate will benefit both sides and hopefully will start slowly, slowly to recapture all the traditional tourism flows.

But not all countries are as enthusiastic about the new certificate. Some have expressed ethical and logistical concerns. But Spain is hoping it will be up and running as early as mid-May. If the vaccine passport does come into use before peak season kicks in, it could transform the summer.

Guy Hedgecoe in Spain. If you searched the word relaxation on YouTube, you're likely to find hours of recorded whale song to lull you off to sleep.

But for the whales themselves, their sounds are a way of sharing vital information. A new study from the Royal Society here in Britain has looked at data from two centuries ago and found that whales may have warned each other about human attacks. Peter Gougne told me more.

They looked all the way back to the hunting of sperm whales in the northwestern U.S. in the mid 19th century. Now, these are the days of Moby Dick when hunting whales mostly for their oil, which powered our lamps, was one of the world's biggest businesses.

And researchers found that in the earliest days of commercial whaling, it was almost like, and I'm sorry to say this, but almost like shooting fish in a barrel. Whales just weren't used to having humans as predators and they were very vulnerable to us.

But then it seems that whales learn to fear humans. They learned how to escape from us, and it seems they shared that information with other whales. Now, to give you a sense of what that sharing would sound like, here's the call or coda of a sperm whale.

OK, so that's the sound, but but how do we know this is what actually happened?

Well, it was really a melding of historical research and modern science. So researchers compiled data from newly digitized versions of logbooks from 19th century ships in the Pacific Ocean. And that data showed that the whalers got less successful over time. Their rate of hitting a whale with a harpoon after spotting it dropped by almost 60 percent within a few years of whalers arriving in the region. And anecdotally, sailors wrote about seeing whales change their behavior.

Over time, whales started fleeing humans and actually swimming against the wind, which meant that sailing ships couldn't easily follow them. Now, this couldn't have been anything other than communication because it happened too quickly for it to be evolution in the classical sense.

Peter Gougne, still to come in this podcast, get your chip when you get your covid vaccination. The vaccine does not guarantee that it's safe. And evangelical preacher and an Islamic cleric, a pastor in Nigeria, rabbi in Israel preaching vaccine misinformation.

How some faith leaders have been sending a misleading message on covid jabs. With reports of continuing violence by the military in Myanmar, the United Nations has made a direct appeal to the Burmese people to collect evidence of atrocities. It said orders for crimes such as torture had probably come from the top and it asked anyone with information to share it with the UN investigators. This report from our South East Asia correspondent.

Jonathan had the flood of dramatic videos from the antico. Protests seen in Myanmar in recent weeks has slowed to a trickle as the military authorities have shut down more and more of the country's Internet access. Little information is now coming out of langmeyer. The industrial zone where more than 50 people were killed by police and military gunfire at the weekend and which has now been sealed off and occupied by the army. Even so, videos continued to come out today, showing people being struck by bullets and showing the security forces firing wildly in neighborhoods they've occupied and shouting threats and abuse at residents.

The United Nations body set up to collect evidence of war crimes following the violent expulsion of Rohingya three and a half years ago has published a hotline on social media asking anyone with clear information about who's now giving orders to the security forces to report it to them in confidence. The escalating violence has also brought an unusual rebuke from the Buddhist Sanker, the influential state appointed association representing monks, which says it's planning to stop all official activities. Usually the Sanker works closely with the government.

Any withdrawal of its support is likely to be taken seriously by the coup leaders.

Jonathan Head on the 2nd of December 2017, The New York Times published a front page story detailing the accounts of four men who said they'd been subject to long term sexual abuse and harassment by the world famous orchestra conductor, James Levine. He was best known until that point as the musical director of the Metropolitan Opera. But his career ended in disgrace. Now James Levine is dead. At the age of 77, our arts correspondent Vincent Doud told me more about him.

Levine's reputation came crashing down in 2018, though he denied all charges. He was accused, as we've said, by several men of having sexually abused them years before. This was probably, of course, the peak of the Metoo movement. More often, of course, it was women making accusations of sexual misconduct and rape. But rumors had surrounded Levine for years. Those men had lived a long time with what had happened to them. They were the victims specifically.

There was an allegation that years before he'd enticed and under-age teenage boy into sexual encounters in the state of Illinois after they met at a classical music festival and a pattern appeared to have repeated itself.

Of course, the reason he was initially notable was his career as a conductor. Just talk us through that career. Yes, Levine had been music director at the Met in New York City since 1975. The Metropolitan Opera. His time there lasted in various forms for 47 years. It was his home, basically, but he was seen as a huge talent everywhere he went, such as the Chicago Symphony, where he often conducted Mozart, as in this recording.

And he had an international reputation, too, he was a frequent visitor to Berlin and to Munich, for instance, after 1990, when that great showman, Leonard Bernstein, died. He was probably the best known classical conductor, certainly in America, and he was one of the best known in the world, Vincent.

So listeners will be shocked to hear that despite the allegations against Levine, the Metropolitan Opera actually ended up paying him damages.

Yes, well, this was America. The two sides sued and countersued. It was reported that James Levine eventually was awarded three and a half million dollars less than he'd asked for against the Metropolitan Opera, basically for breach of contract and defamation. But James Levine's long career as a conductor was very definitely at an end.

Vincent Dowd, the man suspected of killing eight people at three different massage parlors in and around the U.S. city of Atlanta, has told police the murders were not racially motivated. But the city's police chief, Rodney Bryant, said it was too early in the investigation to conclude that Tuesday's shootings had not been a hate crime. Or details from Netta Taufiq.

The 21 year old suspect was interviewed by police and the FBI last night. Officials say the gunman admitted responsibility and indicated that he had a sexual addiction. The suspect may have frequented the spa's in the past, but investigators cannot confirm that. He said he did not target the victims because of race. He saw the locations as temptations that he wanted to eliminate. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said the businesses in Atlanta were operating legally and had not been on their radar.

The suspect also told investigators that he was on his way to Florida to carry out additional attacks when he was arrested at a taufiq.

As coronavirus vaccines are rolled out across the world, religious leaders in particular will play a crucial part in convincing people to be vaccinated. Many are helping to spread the news that vaccines are safe and effective and don't conflict with religious beliefs. But as the BBC's population reporter Stephanie Heggarty has found out, there are figures in almost every faith who are undermining that message.

Get your chip when you get your covid vaccination. Their vaccine does not guarantee that it's safe.

And evangelical preacher and an Islamic cleric in the US, a pastor in Nigeria, a rabbi in Israel, their religious leaders spreading rumors and lies about covid-19 vaccines. And though it's a minority spreading these messages, it's something that's happening in almost every faith.

Well, the rabbi is making the nonsensical claim that vaccines will make you game.

And the spiritual leader in India suggests that vaccines cause blood in them, but they don't.

I look at anti vaccine content all day, every day.

Clinical Data is a researcher at the University of Washington who studies anti vaccine messaging online.

So these figureheads who have a large platform are often respected, address the values of their congregation, and they have also the cultural competency to make the information or in some cases misinformation relevant or particularly powerful. I think it's incredibly important for religious leaders to spread accurate and up to date information about vaccines and making sure that that information that they're spreading is relevant to their congregation.

But most faith leaders are making a big effort to encourage people to take the covid-19 vaccine, which is very important for Muslim Moutier, into what is the director of Indonesia's halal certification body. She and her team were keen to avoid a mistake that had happened in 2018 with the measles and rubella vaccine.

People kept asking, is the product or not?

And then the highest clerical council in Indonesia had issued a fatwa for this vaccine. Even it is not halal, but it still can be used because it had pork derivatives in it. They said it wasn't allowed, but Muslims could still use it. But that mixed message led many parents not to vaccinate their children. Now they're doing things differently. They sent a team to visit the scene of a covid-19 vaccine factory and certified it as halal before rollout in Indonesia began.

But when religious leaders spread misleading messages about vaccines, they can travel far.

I think it's difficult for social media companies to figure out where is the appropriate moderation limit when it comes to religious content sitting in London.

I received a video on WhatsApp from a friend in Nigeria.

It came from Zambia. Zambia must not inject any vaccine in any Zambian body before strenuous verification.

The speaker never is a politician and a former televangelist. No injection should be inserted into a body of any sort.

I contacted him to ask him why he spread this message. All we are saying to our people make. Sure, it is safe. There's a danger when someone as influential as you spreads a message like this publicly, they undermine confidence in the vaccine.

I think it's my moral obligation as a leader to make that public because it puts our authorities on alert to realize that we are not just people who receive anything that comes to us.

And the World Health Organization authorizing the vaccine is safe. That isn't enough.

Not at all. Not at all. When Pfizer hit London, London had to do its own verifications and ensure that they are satisfied, even if the intent of the person who's posting it is not necessary to spread misinformation.

It can be interpreted as a message to not vaccinate.

Sowing doubt about vaccines can have serious consequences. Teddy Andrew Mulenga is a doctor and a public health advocate, and he challenged every member publicly.

Plaster's. They have huge followings and whatever they say is taken as gospel truth. I am a doctor, but there are more people listening to him.

He says Zambia should trust the most stringent regulation process because a delay in vaccinating means more lives lost.

And that's dangerous. We need the vaccine. We need people to buy in. Stephanie Haggerty with that report, the residents of a town in North Wales are being warned to watch out for an increasing number of goats which have strayed into the area after the coronavirus pandemic put a stop to last summer's contraception program. The Kashmiri goats have wandered far from their usual habitat because of reduced traffic on the roads, as Wales correspondent Howard Griffith takes up the story.

Scuttling across the roads and straying into people's gardens, the ghosts of the Great Orme have been a familiar sight around the headland since the 19th century. But over the last year, the pandemic has played havoc with their normally tranquil existence. The regular contraception program, which was due to take place last summer, was cancelled as it required a large gathering of people to herd the goats. While the annual count is yet to take place, there already seemed to be more new kids on the block.

Tracking them all down may be tough, too. During periods of lockdown, the male Billy goats have been wandering further than ever through and did not. Councillor Louise Emiri fears some may not be able to return.

There's sort of a rogue herd of goats that have wandered across the town into a completely new area where they've never been. The 12 male goats that that have left the ormonde gone further than the goats have ever gone before are now on the other side of what will be a busy town shortly.

It's hoped nature's cycle will draw the Billy goats back to where they belong as they become more interested in female company ahead of the rutting season. The park warden also aims to get the Goats own vaccination program back on track and ensure the females have had their contraceptive injections. How old Griffith?

And that's all for us for now. But there'll be an updated version of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is Global Podcast at BBC, Orzio Dot UK.

This podcast was produced by Rebecca Wood and mixed by Chris Cazares. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Richardson. Until next time. Goodbye.