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

I'm Valerie Sanderson, and in the early hours of Sunday, the 18th of May, these are our main stories.

President Trump says he'll be speaking to Vladimir Putin on Monday in a new push to end the fighting between Russia and Ukraine.

Seas-fire talks between Israel and Hamas have entered a new phase as Israel steps up its offensive in Gaza.

Storms and tornadoes in the US states of Kentucky and Missouri have left more than 20 people dead.

Also in this podcast.

People accepted it with quite mixed feeling because it was aesthetically nothing too special.

But it's been there and I don't see nobody being particularly bothered by it,

nor that anyone would gain a particular value by taking it.

The theft of a statue of U.S. First Lady Melania Trump from her hometown in Slovenia. All the remains of the giant

bronze figure are the feat. The U.S. President Donald Trump has announced he'll have

separate phone calls with the leaders of Russia and Ukraine next week in an attempt to end what he

called the bloodbath in Ukraine

and to push for a ceasefire. It follows talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul

this week, the first of their kind in three years. I asked our correspondent Joe Inwood

how these conversations may go. That is a very, very good question of And one, I can't answer right yet. We do know how

it's going to take place or when it's going to take place. And that is Monday at 10 a.m. US time.

And Donald Trump is going to speak to President Putin. We understand that his main topic of conversation

is, in his words, this is his all caps post on his own social media platform, truth social,

stopping the bloodbath, in quotations, which is killing more than 5,000 people a week, he says,

and he also says he's going to be talking about trade. We're then going to have a call, we understand,

after that, or he will have a call with President Zelensky of Ukraine and other NATO members.

...