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 Thursday the 13th of March.

President Trump says a US team is on its way to Russia to outline his Ukraine ceasefire plan,

even as President Putin is reported to have gone to the front line.

Will American tariffs stop the fentanyl

coming in from Mexico? Our correspondent has been to meet one of the drug smugglers there. And the

Pakistani army says it's rescued hundreds of hostages from a hijacked train, but more than 20 passengers

and 30 militants are dead.

Also in the podcast... This new technology, I think this is a very, very well-designed heart.

It's got this maglev technology.

So the disc is rotating, sort of freely floating and rotating by this magnetic levitation.

A patient survives for 100 days with a heart made of titanium.

The Russian president tends to steer well clear of the fighting,

even as he throws hundreds of thousands of his troops into the so-called meat grinder in

Ukraine. But in the past few

hours, footage has been released of Vladimir Putin apparently visiting a command post in Kursk,

the Russian region partly captured by Ukrainian forces last year.

I very much expect that all combat tasks will be fulfilled and that the territory of the Korsk

will soon be completely liberated from the enemy, said Mr. Putin. He was dressed in camouflage gear.

The Russian chief of staff, General Valery Gerasimov, told him Russian forces had now recaptured

86% of the occupied land.

Ukraine has acknowledged some setbacks there, but said fighting was continuing.

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