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In a post on Truth Social, the US president wrote that he had decided to "cancel the attack, subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL" - which would include the immediate opening of the Strait of Hormuz and an end to "Iran's nuclear threat".

Trump said the decision had been taken alongside Israel. The announcement came amid US media reports that the US might have been planning new, intense strikes on Iran over the weekend.

Tehran earlier accused the US of escalating tensions, saying any regional state co-operating with Washington would be "engulfed by the flames of war".

In the post, Trump said that the US was "locked and loaded and ready to go against the Islamic Republic of Iran, at levels of Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II".

But he said that he had cancelled the strikes after being "asked" by Iran and other countries in the Middle East to "hold off" on any attack to allow for a deal to be reached.

The US government had earlier urged Americans across the Middle East to be alert and ready to leave "should there be escalation" in the region.

"Americans currently in the Middle East should exercise caution and heightened vigilance and should be prepared for flight cancellations, periodic airspace closures, and potential travel disruptions," the security alert said on Saturday.

The US and Israel were planning what would be one of the harshest bombing campaigns to date against energy infrastructure targets in Iran, multiple sources earlier told CBS News, the BBC's media partner in America.

The plan came up during Trump's cabinet meeting on Friday, sources told CBS News.

During that meeting, Trump was heard saying while reporters were still in the room: "We'll be hitting them [Iranians] very hard. At some point, they're going to say, 'We just can't take it anymore.'"

Washington and Tehran have engaged in escalating strikes and counter-strikes since a ceasefire in April aimed at pausing the war fell apart in June.

The US has blockaded Iranian ports and bombed Iranian sites, while Iran has fired missiles and drones at US assets in countries across the Middle East and targeted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a global oil shipping route.

The US and Israel began launching their strikes against Iran on 28 February.

Body of mountaineer Nirmal Purja recovered after Pakistan avalanche

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyljq79kdko, today

The body of renowned British-Nepali mountaineer Nirmal Purja has been recovered on Broad Peak in Pakistan, rescuers have said.

The Alpine Club of Pakistan said on Sunday that he was found about 5,700m up the mountain, where three further bodies have been sighted although their identities have not been confirmed.

The 43-year-old's death was announced on Saturday by his company, Elite Expeditions, which said he was among 10 people were killed in the avalanche. The Prince of Wales was among those to pay tribute.

Purja, who was born in Nepal and later served in the British Army, was known for scaling the world's 14 highest peaks in just over six months in 2019.

The Alpine Club said a ground team would take the recovered bodies to a Japanese camp.

Prior to Purja's death being announced, Pakistani officials said the bodies of three other climbers from his expedition - American Mallory Geis, Nadhira Ahmed Abdullah Al Harthy from Oman and Pur Bahadur Gurung from Nepal - had been recovered.

On Saturday, Nepal's Prime Minister Balendra Shah said "the tragic death of six Nepalese and four other foreign climbers, including world record holder Nirmal Purja, in the Karakoram mountain range of Pakistan, has shocked us".

"The history of their courage, dedication, and contributions will always remain inspiring," the prime minister added.

In a statement, Purja's older brother Kamal wrote: "It is with the heaviest heart that I share the devastating news that my beloved younger brother, Nirmal 'Nimsdai' Purja, and the other climbers are no longer with us.

"Although our hearts are broken, we are incredibly proud of you. Your legacy will live forever," he added.

Prince William said he was "truly saddened to hear of the tragic death" of Purja, who he said "served with distinction" as a soldier before "becoming one of the greatest mountaineers".

UK Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said in a post on X: "Incredibly sad to learn of the passing of Nirmal (Nims) Purja and those he was climbing with.

"He was an inspirational man who served in our Armed Forces for many years - and whose incredible mountaineering adventures are known the world over."

Naila Kiani, a spokesperson for the Alpine Club of Pakistan which is involved in the rescue efforts, told BBC's Newshour programme on Saturday that her organisation feared all members of the group were dead, and that Purja had led many expeditions she was on.

Praising his leadership skills, she described him as a "very experienced climber and fearless".

Teams in Pakistan have been searching for the climbers on the world's 12th-highest summit since Thursday's avalanche on the 8,047m (26,400ft) peak in the Karakoram range.

The multinational climbing group was being led by Purja. Also known as Nims, he rose to prominence in 2019 when he climbed all 14 of the world's mountains with peaks above 8,000m in 189 days - smashing the previous record by more than seven years.

He became widely known following a Netflix documentary chronicling his journey, 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible, released two years later.

At the time, he said: "It has been a gruelling but humbling six months, and I hope to have proven that anything is possible with some determination, self-belief and positivity."

Purja served in the British military for 16 years, 10 of which were spent in the special forces, and he was awarded an MBE by the late Queen in 2018 for his achievement in extreme high-altitude mountaineering.

Purja, who lived with his wife and three-year-old daughter in Hampshire in southern England, said he was also the first Gurkha to climb Everest while serving in the British military.

In his last post on X, published on Monday, he said he had not intended to climb Broad Peak.

"Initially, the plan was to climb just G2," Purja wrote, referring to Gasherbrum II, another peak in the Karakoram mountain range.

But right before he set off for Pakistan, he realised if he also managed to climb Broad Peak while he was there, he would have only one more mountain to conquer before becoming the "first person in history to climb all 14 eight-thousanders twice. Without oxygen."

An eight-thousander is a mountain that rises more than 8,000m above sea level.

"This wasn't planned," Purja wrote. "But opportunities don't scream: they whisper to those already working in silence."

"Broad Peak, I ask for nothing but safe passage up and back down. I take zero mountains for granted," he wrote.

Broad Peak is regarded as one of the more challenging mountains for climbers. The first successful ascent was in 1957, when an Austrian expedition reached the summit.

Since then, many more have climbed the mountain, but dozens have lost their lives.

One of Broad Peak's deadliest years was 2013, when at least six fatalities were recorded.

At least 13 killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza after Hamas agree disarmament deal

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czjlvvkzj20o, today

At least 13 people, including several children, have been killed in the latest strikes on Gaza, Palestinian officials have said.

Gaza's Civil Defence Authority said Israeli military aircraft carried out the attacks on Gaza City, Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah.

It was the second successive night of Israeli strikes on the territory, and it comes days after Hamas accepted a disarmament plan, which would see the Palestinian group hand over its weapons to US President Donald Trump's Board of Peace.

A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said it was targeting military operatives in Gaza, and two Hamas militants were killed.

The Israeli Energy Minister, Eli Cohen, said on Sunday that no deal had been reached to stop attacks on the Gaza Strip, a territory now under 70% Israeli control.

Cohen added that he saw a need for the strip to be placed under the full control of Israel if Hamas did not disarm - despite the Board of Peace plan for Israel to pull out of the territory - the Reuters news agency reported.

In a post on X on Sunday, the IDF said it had killed two Hamas commanders, one from the elite Nukbha force, and one from the Maghazi Battalion.

The IDF also said killed another Hamas militant from the Jabalia Battalion in northern Gaza in a separate attack last week. It said all three were planning to attack Israeli targets.

Palestinian health officials said two people, including a child, were killed in a strike on a residential building in Gaza City, while another person was killed near Jabalia in northern Gaza.

A father, mother and their nine-year-old son were killed after a strike on a house in Khan Younis, and a man and woman died after their apartment block was struck in Deir el-Balah.

More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed since a supposed ceasefire came into effect last October.

Last week, President Trump said the Board of Peace had reached an agreement for the "complete disarmament" of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.

On Friday Trump insisted that Israel was "very happy" with the proposed agreement, describing it as a "big step for the Middle East".

But Israel remains deeply sceptical about Hamas' willingness to give up its weapons or its control in Gaza. Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir dismissed the draft as "not acceptable".

It is part of the second phase of a US-brokered Gaza ceasefire plan that aims to end the war in Gaza.

The 20-point plan, unveiled in September last year, included the creation of the Board of Peace to oversee the agreement's implementation, as well as the disarmament of Hamas, withdrawal of Israeli troops and reconstruction of Gaza.

A 15-point road map was also published on Friday, which sets out the final steps for implementing the agreement.

The roadmap, which has not yet been implemented, states: "A process shall begin to inventory and store heavy weapons, military production sites, weapons depots, and tunnels".

It says this is conditional on Israel meeting its commitments under the initial ceasefire agreement.

How the weapons would be handed over to the Board of Peace is not yet clear, although it is believed that all heavy weapons and other military hardware would be moved into storage and managed by the Palestinian National Committee - a group of independent technocrats to which Hamas has agreed to hand over power.

The committee has so far been working from Cairo and has not entered Gaza.

Israel has destroyed more than 1,500 buildings in areas of Gaza that have remained under its control since the ceasefire, satellite images seen by BBC Verify last November showed. The actual number is likely much higher, with imagery unavailable for some areas.

According to UN estimates, around 60 million tonnes of debris has been generated since October 2023.

Hamas - proscribed by the UK government as a terror organisation - has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007.

Three killed in Moscow restaurant explosion

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c86n4ljxp63o, today

At least three people have been killed and 15 injured in an explosion at a restaurant in Moscow, police say.

The blast happened at around 20:00 local time (17:00 GMT) on Kudrinskaya square near the city centre. The cause is not clear but the Baza Telegram channel said it happened in the establishment's kitchen.

A witness told the channel the venue was hosting a wedding reception attended by about 50 people, adding that they saw people being brought out covered in blood after the explosion.

Roads around the square were briefly closed. Dozens of cyclists had been gathering nearby for an evening ride through the city but the event was cancelled.

Video released by Russia's RIA news agency showed heavily armed law enforcement officers at the scene, which had been closed off to members of the public.

How ransom notes could help catch Nancy Guthrie's kidnapper

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2dkng21dg2o, today

On Friday, exactly six months after Nancy Guthrie was abducted, police released two ransom notes in the hope that they would help identify her kidnappers.

Guthrie, the mother of US news presenter Savannah Guthrie, was 84 when she went missing from her Arizona home in January.

Her disappearance sparked a months-long investigation which has turned up few apparent leads and fewer suspects.

So how could Nancy Guthrie's kidnapper, or kidnappers, be caught from these brief ransom notes?

The first of the notes, which are being treated as apparently credible, demanded millions of dollars in Bitcoin. The other claimed Guthrie died shortly after she was taken.

While the language in the notes might seem straightforward, police said the writer's "distinct linguistic characteristics" may be recognisable.

"There are a number of pieces of information in these notes that just might jar someone to say 'you know, I've heard that'," said Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos.

A forensic linguist told the BBC it's possible to glean crucial information about a person from just a few sentences.

"It's built upon the premise that we each carry an idiolect, or a word print, of our own that distinguishes our language from others," said William Eggington, a retired linguistics professor from Brigham Young University who is now a forensic consultant.

But, he said, investigators have to hold scientific scepticism when they analyse notes like this - especially when they have so few words to work with.

Furthermore, they have to account for the possibility that the person may be trying to disguise their natural writing voice.

What's unique about the writing style in the Guthrie notes?

The first note, sent to a local TV station on 2 February, began: "Hello Savannah, we have your mother Nancy. She is safe but scared. She will be held for ransom and once payment is received she will be released unharmed."

Here, the fact the writer heavily relies on passive voice and uses an "if-then" sentence construction suggests they have at least a high-school level education, and possibly some university exposure, Eggington said.

Later on, the note says: "Once payment is received to the bitcoin address below she will be released within 12 hours of deposit to a safe drop off location back in Tucson. If payment is not recieved [sic] by the last deadline on Monday the 9th at 5PM, she will be killed."

In this section, the writer at first spells "received" correctly, but goes on to spell it incorrectly. That indicates that the person is not particularly tuned in to the proper spelling of the word, or that they didn't do a close edit of what they wrote, Eggington explains.

Four days after the first note, the second arrived: "Guthrie Family, we did not fully grasp the seriousness of her physical condition. We never intended to hurt her, that was not our intention.

"She perished shortly after she was taken. We believe it was heart related. She is buried in nature now."

In these lines, Eggington said, the person is "dehumanising Nancy by talking about her in the third person" and "even putting the blame for her death on her".

While local officials say they cannot verify her death, Eggington said by claiming she "perished", the writer is not accepting responsibility, while using the distinctive phrase "buried in nature".

The passage contains restricted, academic-style language - but this may not be a natural reflection of this person's language, and they could be intentionally writing in a stilted manner as a way to disguise their true voice, he said.

It's clear that the same person wrote both Guthrie ransom notes, Eggington believes, based on the style of writing and, in particular, the writer's repeated use across both notes of a comma instead of a full stop to separate thoughts that should be two sentences.

Investigators will be using these small details to build an investigative profile of the writer.

When they find a suspect, either through their own profile or a member of the public coming forward, they can compare known writings from that person to the ransom notes, Eggington said.

'We are desperate - someone knows something'

Given six months have passed, "it seems like a stretch" that the suspect will be identified based on these notes, said Prof Jeffrey Adler, who teaches the history of American crime and violence at the University of Florida.

"Kidnapping is not a common crime," Adler notes, adding that most kidnappings involve family members fighting over the custody of children.

In other high-profile cases in American history - like the abduction of Charles Lindbergh's baby in the 1930s and Frank Sinatra's son in the 1960s - the kidnappers had a clear motive to extract ransom money.

Still, it wouldn't be the first time a suspect has been caught based on their writing. When authorities agreed to publish the manifesto of Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, in 1996, it was his brother who recognised his writing and came forward to identify him.

In Nancy Guthrie's case, police said they spoke to the family before releasing the notes.

Hours afterwards, Savannah Guthrie expressed hope the notes could catch whoever took her mother: "We are desperate. We need someone to come forward. Someone knows something.

"Someone suspects something. Someone recognises the writing in the ransom demand notes."

Will Canada's WestJet airline strike go ahead - and can I get a refund?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq568j06zgxo, yesterday

Flight attendants at Canada's second-largest airline WestJet could walk off the job as soon as Sunday morning, during one of the busiest summer holiday weekends in the country.

The flight attendants are considering striking over issues related to pay, specifically compensation for work they do when the plane has yet to take off - known as ground pay in the airline industry.

The airline began parking flights on Friday in preparation, and is offering free cancellations and flight changes to passengers with flights taking off throughout the weekend and until Tuesday.

Calgary-based WestJet, which flies to more than 130 Canadian and international destinations, has said it is negotiating with the flight attendant's union to reach a deal.

Here's a breakdown of what the disruption could mean if you're travelling.

Has the strike started?

No, both sides are still in active negotiation.

However, the 72-hour strike notice announced by the union runs out on Sunday at 02:01 EST (07:01 BST), in the middle of a long weekend across most of the country.

That's when flight attendants are expected to walk out unless an agreement is reached.

It comes after union members voted 99% in favour of the strike mandate last month.

My flight has been cancelled. Can I get a refund?

WestJet has said it will offer changes and cancellations to flights at no extra fee for travellers flying between Thursday and Tuesday.

The airline added that if a strike leads to cancellations or delays, "impacted guests will be refunded or re-accommodated, as applicable."

The carrier has cancelled 81 flights on Saturday ahead of the strike deadline to minimise the risk of stranding passengers and aircraft. They have asked passengers to check the status of their flight before leaving for the airport.

WestJet Encore flights booked on a Q400 and WestJet codeshare flights will not be affected by any potential labour disruptions, the carrier says.

Airline passenger laws in Canada mandate that carriers re-book passengers on the next available flight either from its own fleet or on a partner airline, and if both are unavailable, then they must be re-booked with a competitor.

Why are WestJet flight attendants considering striking?

Flight attendants and WestJet have been engaged in contract negotiations since September 2025.

A 72-hour strike notice was issued earlier this week by the union representing the flight attendants, CUPE 8125, who said in a statement that "the parties are still too far apart on some key issues".

"We have been clear about what needs to change, and we have worked hard to reach a fair deal," said Alia Hussain, president of CUPE 8125, adding that the union's goal was to reach an agreement without disrupting air travel.

A sticking issue has been pay, with the union saying that flight attendants are expected to work without pay up to 35 hours per month for duties performed when the plane has yet to take off.

"Boarding, safety sweeps, assisting passengers, and ground delays are entirely on our dime," said flight attendants on a union website campaigning for the end of the policy.

On its website, WestJet said its flight attendants are paid by block hours that start when the plane leaves the gate and ends when it arrives at the next gate, adding that it is "the standard pay model for cabin crews across North America".

The airline said wages under the credit hour system include compensation for work done before take-off and landing.

Cabin crew make anywhere between C$28 ($20; £15) to $58 ($41; £31) per hour, according to WestJet.

How Spain's migrant crisis created a political storm - whipped up by social media

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62vl925dqdo, today

Most of the tens of thousands of migrants who swam into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta on Thursday have now returned to Morocco, escorted to the border by Spanish soldiers and police.

But the extraordinary surge of arrivals has left at least 67 people dead, their bodies pulled from the sea where they floated alongside abandoned rubber rings and flippers.

This week's events have also shaken Europe politically, once again exposing divisions over the sensitive issue of migration.

And they've left lingering questions about what sparked the sudden influx: whether social media posts promising an easy path to Europe just went viral or this was something more deliberate, even organised.

The politics

Whatever the cause, Spain's socialist prime minister is angry with the response.

Pedro Sanchez has hit out at some in the EU for "attacking" Spain in this crisis, playing politics instead of showing support.

He meant Italy, above all.

Fratelli d'Italia, the hard-right party of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, had been quick to post images of migrants racing through the streets of Ceuta.

"This is the Sanchez model the Italian left wing likes so much," the caption crowed.

Meloni then announced she was suspending Italy's Schengen agreement with Spain that allows for the free movement of people, citing a security threat.

Madrid is fuming.

The way Spain sees it, the crisis has been contained and Ceuta is not in the Schengen zone so Moroccan migrants were never going to head for mainland Europe, unchecked.

Meloni knows that.

But she faces elections next year with her coalition losing ground to a new and virulently anti-immigrant party. This was a chance to sound tough herself and claw back votes and she leaped on it.

Soft touch Spain?

Italy is not the only country to see Spain as soft on migration, though.

Meloni's call for an urgent meeting of interior ministers to be held on Tuesday was signed by almost two dozen EU heads of state, calling for the elimination of all policies that could be "pull factors" to Europe.

Above all, they mean Spain's controversial move to allow hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants apply for residence and work permits and "regularise" their status.

The government's pragmatic: Spain is ageing and needs workers.

But those who flocked to the beaches of Ceuta this week were not heading to sign up for a campaign that's already closed.

Sanchez himself points instead to a recent ruling by Spain's Supreme Court: it said those who enter by sea cannot be pushed back immediately.

The prime minister argues that was misrepresented by smugglers to promise an easy path to Europe.

The crowd heading for Ceuta didn't need to pay smugglers, though, because most were Moroccan and the route is well known.

The message was actually spread online.

Migrants have shown social media posts to reporters with people shouting that "Spain is Open" and jumping into the sea.

Multiple accounts we've checked ourselves show young people in wetsuits and flippers, or filming themselves already swimming, mixed with pictures from inside Ceuta itself.

Some have only been active for weeks. Several have tens of thousands of likes.

All their promises were false.

The crowds who made it to kiss the shore in Ceuta with joy were met with nothing. Without food or shelter, and with no way on to continental Europe, most quickly turned back.

So what was it all about?

So have migrants been "weaponised" as happened a few years back in Belarus, for example?

If so, who did it?

For now we only see those enjoying the results.

The global right wing are "hyperventilating with happiness", as journalist Andrea Rizzi wrote in Spain's El Pais newspaper.

US President Donald Trump, angry at Spain for opposing his war on Iran, has talked of a "catastrophe" and an "invasion". Like Meloni, he has an election looming.

Russia has been gloating, too: it loves chaos and division in Europe. Anything to weaken Ukraine's allies.

As for Morocco, it's blaming "criminal organisations". But its border guards must have seen the crowds building.

The last time something similar happened, albeit smaller, Spain and Morocco were at loggerheads over Western Sahara, a former colony.

There are new tensions, right now.

Sanchez is emphatically not blaming Morocco for what happened, calling Rabat a "good ally".

But his critics call that appeasement and say he should be "showing teeth".

Results

For now, Spain is busy protecting Ceuta against further incident.

It is extending the border fence out to sea, attaching long lines of orange buoys to the jetty which ships will then patrol to deter future swimmers.

Next week, EU interior ministers will talk about strengthening external borders, with those on the populist right emboldened.

Travellers from Spain to Italy face random document checks by police for a few weeks.

So no huge change.

Except for the dozens of young people who set out to sea, chasing a vision they'd seen online, and are now being sent back to Morocco in coffins.

Five dead, 41 missing, after Indonesia ferry catches fire

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74g0wjvlrxo, today

Five people have been found dead and 41 are missing after an Indonesian ferry carrying at least 250 people caught fire while at sea, officials say.

The captain of the ship reported the fire - off Madura island - as the vessel sailed from the country's second-largest city, Surabaya in East Java, to Makassar in South Sulawesi, according to Basarnas, the National Search and Rescue Agency.

Footage played by local Indonesian news outlet iNews shows large numbers of people in life jackets on what appears to be a lifeboat.

Other clips show people climbing down from the ferry that has flames and plumes of smoke coming from the top of the vessel.

Basarnas posted a video to its TikTok, with a statement saying at 08:24 (02:24 GMT) the Surabaya Search and Rescue office received information that passenger ship KMP Mutiara Sentosa 2 was on fire.

"Based on information from the shipping company, the fire occurred at around 06:00-07:00 (00:00-01:00 GMT)."

Later, Basarnas said it got confirmation the ferry "was almost entirely engulfed in flames" as "passengers held on in the ship's bridge and bow while awaiting rescue".

It was unclear how the ferry caught fire, the statement said.

In some of the footage, can be seen jumping into the sea, with crowds of people in life jackets gathering and lifebuoys being thrown to some before they are carried into a rescue ship.

The Sopranos star Vincent Pastore dies aged 80

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2gz0epljgo, today

US actor Vincent Pastore, who played Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero in the hit show The Sopranos, has died aged 80, according to several US outlets.

Pastore was found at his home in the Bronx, New York City and there was no indication of criminality, the BBC's US partner CBS News reported.

In The Sopranos, Pastore played Tony Soprano's best friend who ultimately became an informant for the FBI. His character's death in series two was one of the show's most memorable storylines.

Robert Attermann, Pastore's manager, told CBS News: "To the world, he will always be remembered as the unforgettable 'Big Pussy,' but to those of us who knew him, he was so much more."

"He loved being an actor. He was passionate about his craft and was always encouraging, respectful, and generous with young actors, taking the time to offer guidance and support whenever he could," Attermann said.

He continued: "For me, losing Vinny is deeply personal. Over more than three decades, I had the honor of watching not only his remarkable career but also the incredible person he was. I will miss his friendship, his loyalty, his humor, and his heart."

Pastore was born in the Bronx in 1946. He enlisted in the US Navy during the Vietnam War before embarking on a career in acting.

His early credits included roles in movies such as Goodfellas and Carlito's Way.

Later TV appearances included Law & Order, General Hospital and Hawaii Five-O.

But it was his role in The Sopranos which brought Pastore widespread recognition. He appeared in all six seasons of the critically acclaimed show, despite his character being killed off in the second series.

In 2000, Pastore and his fellow The Sopranos cast members won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.

Solitude as a new aspirational lifestyle: 'We are not lonely'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y63dw2x3wo, today

It's a Friday night. A young woman trudges back to her apartment after a day of work. She enters a spotless kitchen, unloads a bag of groceries, and unwraps a frozen pizza before sliding it in the oven.

What follows is a nightly routine that is almost meditative in its mundanity: she lights a candle and gazes briefly at the snow-covered landscape outside her window, piles a premade salad onto a plate with the pizza, and settles on her sofa to eat in front of the TV.

The tagline that accompanies the scene reads: "POV you're a childfree and single girl that has no friends and lives alone so this is how you spend your Friday night."

At the centre of the video – which has amassed seven million views on TikTok – is Lana Isa, a software sales manager in her 20s based in Toronto.

In addition to chronicling her nightly self-care routines, she takes her almost 400,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram on late-night fast food drives, reading sessions perched on a rock by the lake, even a saga of getting locked out of her apartment in the middle of the night.

Isa is part of a growing, albeit niche corner of the internet where content creators, many of them women, share their daily rituals of living alone, choosing to spotlight a lifestyle that prioritises peace and solitude - the antithesis of social media excess.

For Isa, unveiling the "no friends" aspect of her life was less of a tagline, but the "reality" she had been living for several years.

Alone, but not lonely

After switching several high schools, enduring Covid isolation during her college years and moving across the country following her first heartbreak, Isa found herself forced to adjust to living alone with no close friends.

"People don't talk about having no friends a lot... I think it's still what people would consider embarrassing or a little taboo," she says.

When she started sharing the friendlessness of her circumstances on social media, an audience began to connect. Her initial following of around 2,000 followers on TikTok swelled to more than 175,000 in the span of eight months.

"It was eye-opening to see other people who are living the same situation that I've been… and to feel like I could kind of relate to people for the first time in a while."

And relate they did. Isa's comments section filled with people bonding over similar experiences of living alone or having no friends, and finding comfort in "feeling seen".

As with most trends online, curiosity quickly turned to backlash. Isa and similar creators were dubbed "loneliness influencers", with some framing them as part of a new demographic of sad, lonely, childless women in crisis.

Others accused them of romanticising self isolation and encouraging an "air of cosy defeatism" by shunning social connections.

But their reels paint a lifestyle that may be more relatable than many would care to admit. These women take themselves on solo dates, embark on spontaneous road trips, and even push through the awkwardness of attending parties alone.

Destigmatising loneliness

For Devon Noehring, a full-time content creator and self-proclaimed introvert based in Phoenix, Arizona, it's been "frustrating" to see her solo weekends cooking and lounging at home with her dog reduced to a symptom of female loneliness.

"It's the exact opposite intention of our videos," she says. "I just hate the stigma of alone equalling lonely."

While Noehring does have a close group of friends, growing up she always felt "ashamed" of being the quiet girl with social anxiety. It wasn't until she confessed her insecurities online that she discovered a following of fellow introverts who identified with her struggles.

"Being alone is where I feel my most free and most like myself," she says. "That's how I recharge, and I feel very proud of myself for being independent and doing things alone… I think it's something that should be celebrated."

Some health researchers have been working to "destigmatise loneliness" by differentiating between chronic loneliness forced by circumstance and those who have agency to choose to live and spend time alone.

"Everybody's lonely at some point, but some people are not OK admitting that," says Professor Melody Ding, an epidemiologist researching social connection and loneliness at the University of Sydney. "That can create this false expectation that you have to be socially happy and connected all the time."

But she cautions that while influencers can make being alone look "really appealing", humans still need social connection and it can be detrimental to one's mental and physical wellbeing to be stuck in a cycle of intense isolation.

"We're a social species," says Ding. "We survive better with companionship, with people around us."

She acknowledges that people's social needs vary at different stages of life, but Ding's hope for those who have lost relationships is that they can eventually "de-emphasise" the friendless aspect of their lives and forge new social bonds.

"It's important we have people in our life and it's important these relationships are positive and nourish our lives," Ding adds.

'We want to find people we relate to'

Even in moments when they do feel lonely, these women say loneliness doesn't define their lives, nor do they aspire to remain permanently friendless.

"We never describe ourselves as lonely," says SJ Hoadley, who works as a cleaner in the UK and began documenting her own solo living after discovering Isa's videos. "I think sometimes my lack of friends tends to bother the people around me more than it bothers me."

After leaving a seven-year abusive relationship, she moved to a new area where she knew no one and was confronted with having to rebuild her life. Despite the initial "shock", she eventually started "enjoying and embracing that independence" and "getting to feel comfortable with my own company".

In a social media ecosystem that thrives on flooding our feeds with aspirational living and a perennial state of FOMO (fear of missing out), the rise of solo living influencers can be validating for those who see themselves reflected in the lifestyle, says Dr Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch at the University of Connecticut who specialises in how humans build community online.

"There's been this kind of long growing backlash against the idea that we're seeing everybody's perfect life, their highlight reel," she says.

Oeldorf-Hirsch believes the appeal of solitude content is filling a social need for the creators and their audience, providing some "balance" against the dominance of hyper-glamourised influencer culture.

"We're kind of trending towards these influencers that are more authentic, living their true life," she says. "We just want to find people we relate to."

Hoadley has seen her following surge at times by tens of thousands per day, while Noehring's videos have garnered millions of views across her channels.

Those online connections have made Hoadley excited for a future where she finds a "little group of girlfriends". Noehring hopes to one day organise a real world meet-up with her virtual community, and Isa says the support has given her the "push" she needed to start thinking about making friends again.

"I think that what all the content is saying is: find your path," says Hoadley. "It doesn't have to be this one-size-fits-all that we keep getting pushed on social media."

Young guns for hire - the teenage hitmen recruited to kill across Europe

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czrjyevmv61o, today

In a Stockholm suburb a man dressed in black appeared out of the winter night. Carrying a handgun, he approached 20-year-old Murad Abdelkader, a student on his way back from a shift at McDonald's.

The gunman opened fire, shooting again and again as he approached his target. He fired the last shot into his victim's head as he lay helpless on the ground.

The killer was 18-year-old Atilla Azimov. On that February night last year, he had killed the wrong man.

He had done it for money - hired by the Foxtrot Network, an organised crime group with links to the Iranian regime which has become notorious for its violence-as-a-service (VaaS) tactics.

Since 2022, the Foxtrot Network is thought to have been responsible for about 35 murders as well as a number of attacks and attempted attacks on Israeli targets in Europe including two involving explosives and hand grenades.

The gang recruits teenagers to carry out the attacks for cash, but it almost never has to pay out as they often get caught.

Like Johannes Natland, a Norwegian teenager who was convicted of conspiracy to murder by a jury at the Old Bailey in London on Wednesday for a planned killing in West Yorkshire.

According to Operational Taskforce (OTF) GRIMM, the Europol group set up to tackle the problem, the teenage hitmen are recruited on social media, and are given their instructions in a "gamified" way, imitating how computer games work.

Andy Kraag, the head of Europol's European Serious and Organised Crime Centre, calls it the "calculated outsourcing of murder" to vulnerable young people.

OTF GRIMM currently involves 11 countries affected by the VaaS phenomenon - Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

The leader of the Foxtrot Network, Rawa Majid, has fled Sweden and his later operating base in Turkey, and is now based in the Iranian capital Tehran. Police believe some of the VaaS attacks have been carried out for the Iranian regime, including a hand grenade attack on the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen, though other attacks are part of Foxtrot's drugs turf wars.

Diamant Salihu, an investigative journalist for the Swedish broadcaster SVT, has been researching Foxtrot and its Iranian links for three years.

"The regime is ordering the leader of the Foxtrot Network to instigate his network to commit attacks against the Iranian regime's enemies," he said.

"It can be dissidents, journalists that are in the opposition against the regime, and it can also be Israeli targets."

The links to the Iranian regime started after October 2023 when Majid fled to Tehran, Salihu said.

"He had to make a deal to be able to live freely in Iran, under condition that he and his network work for the regime."

The Foxtrot Network and Majid were sanctioned by the UK government in April 2025.

That was the month after the arrest of Natland, who was 18 at the time. He had flown in to carry out a hit on behalf of Foxtrot somewhere near Huddersfield.

The Natland case illustrates how the VaaS system works.

Natland is the son of two journalists in Stavanger and had a comfortable upbringing, but he drifted into drugs and developed psychosis, ending up spending time in rehab and a short period in a children's home. There he met another teenager who used the online handle UnknownHustler.

It was UnknownHustler who first sent Natland the online request for someone to carry out a hit in the UK - "Killing in England 270k" (270,000 Norwegian kroner is about £21,000). It had come from another teenager with the handle Generalen. Generalen - who was 16 at the time and had spent the last three years living in a children's home - subsequently recruited Natland for the hit.

Natland was then passed on to a Foxtrot member with the online username Agent 47, which is borrowed from the Hitman game franchise. Swedish police have accused Ali Shehad Ahmed, who is close to the Foxtrot leader Majid, of being Agent 47.

Agent 47 booked Natland's one way ticket to Manchester Airport, and helped him through the process of getting an emergency passport. Using the messaging app Signal, he guided Natland at every stage of his journey before handing him on to a logistics man with the username "1".

Treating Natland a bit like a character in a computer game, "1" sent him a map and videos showing him where to find the guns hidden in woodland in Huddersfield, and then another video showing him how to access a stash of cash hidden in the undergrowth near a foot tunnel.

Once Natland was installed in his Huddersfield hotel with the weapons, Agent 47 messaged him again: "We have much to do tomorrow."

Natland was arrested the next morning. He had not yet been told who he was to kill, and counterterrorism detectives are still trying to work out whether it was to be a criminal hit or a political one carried out for Iran.

The teenager who recruited Natland - Generalen - was prolific. As well as hiring Natland as a hitman he had also recruited at least two people who carried out murders in Sweden. They were Azimov, who is serving a life sentence for killing the wrong man, and a 17-year-old who shot dead Ahmed Zamzam in Lund, south Sweden, three and a half weeks earlier.

Neither of the killers got paid, because they were both caught. Salihu said this was part of how Foxtrot worked.

"They don't care at all if the teenagers get caught. Because when they get caught, they cannot ask for money that they have been offered, and we see no examples of money being paid to these young killers," he said.

"It has been a deliberate policy to recruit younger and younger teenagers because they don't think about the consequences of getting caught, and they are more willing to take the risks."

Generalen was eventually stopped because he was trying to arrange the murder of the 14-year-old son of a Norwegian police officer. He recruited a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old to carry out the knife attack, but the 15-year-old told the police. When Generalen was arrested detectives found details of the Huddersfield murder plot on his phone that led to British police arresting Natland just in time.

Generalen was convicted in May and is serving a 14-year-prison sentence.

OTF GRIMM has had some successes in the 15 months since it was set up. Police have made more than 280 arrests including a few key suspects.

One of the most important arrests was that of Ahmed, who is thought to be Agent 47.

He was detained in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah in Iraq, and is currently subject to an extradition request to Sweden.

The Swedish deputy national police commissioner Stefan Hector said they were "constantly expanding our co-operation with other countries" and showing organised criminals "they cannot feel safe anywhere in the world".

In May, Mohamed "Moewgli" Mohdhi, a former rapper described by Swedish police as a "central actor" in Foxtrot, was arrested in Tunisia.

But Majid himself remains out of reach in Iran.

"He's still active," Salihu said. "And as long as this network is active we will still continue, I fear, to see attacks on the enemies of the Iranian regime."

It is not yet clear the extent to which the arrests have degraded Foxtrot's ability to operate, but other groups - including Foxtrot's rivals the Dalen Network - have already adopted the VaaS method of recruiting vulnerable teenagers for murders, so the danger is still very present.

It spread quickly from Sweden across Scandinavia and northern Europe and, as the Natland case shows, reached the UK last year.

Spider-Man fans hail Brand New Day as Holland's best yet

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyeq0wpn0go, today

Fans have been queuing outside cinemas to catch the latest Spider-Man film, with many hailing it as a spectacular return for the web-slinging superhero.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day marks Tom Holland's fourth standalone adventure as the protagonist and hero Peter Parker.

Picking up after the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home, the film follows Parker as he devotes his time to protecting New York City while adjusting to a life in which everyone, including his closest friends, has forgotten who he is.

The fourth Spider-Man film is director Destin Daniel Cretton's second project in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), having previously been at the helm of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

Appearing together in the same film for a second time this summer, Holland reprises the role alongside his wife Zendaya, who stars once again as MJ.

There is also a return for Jon Bernthal's Punisher, making his first appearance in an MCU feature film, and an introduction to the MCU for Sadie Sink, whose role in the plot has been kept firmly under wraps.

'Still Marvel's ace in the pack'

The reviews from critics have been largely positive.

Many critics have welcomed the film-makers' decision to scale back from the multiverse seen in No Way Home, in favour of a more personal, character-centred story.

The Telegraph's Robbie Collin called it "the best Spider-Man film since the Tobey Maguire era", and praised the relationship between Holland and Zendaya, who create a "real yearning and perplexity" that we have not seen previously in the dynamic between their characters.

In his review for The Wrap, William Bibbiani described it as the strongest entry in Holland's Spider-Man series, applauding its emotional focus and character-driven storytelling, and praising its "wonderful, propulsive quality".

Meanwhile, Empire's John Nugent awarded the film four stars, declaring the web-slinging hero is "still Marvel's ace in the pack", and in its five-star review The Standard said the film had "verve, intelligence and above all, heart".

However, others have been more reserved.

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw declared that Zendaya "saves this film" from "silliness and the generic déjà vu overfamiliarity that is always threatening to sink it".

This opinion was supported by David Rooney in the Hollywood Reporter, who wrote that the film "chugs along satisfyingly even with the occasional patch of sluggishness and the usual overly convoluted plot contortions".

He adds: "As much as the movie revels in the thrill of Spidey swinging between skyscrapers with erratic command of his shooters, the more intimate scenes with MJ and Ned are what supplies the emotional charge."

Danny Leigh of the Financial Times awarded the film three stars, praising the chemistry between Holland and Zendaya but criticising the film's insistence on falling back on CGI-heavy action sequences.

But that is just what the critics say. What do audiences think?

Fresh from a screening of the film, Sam said "I have been a Spider-Man fan since I was six years old, but it's only in the last decade I have really got into it, all because of these films".

He called Brand New Day his favourite film of Holland's tenure, praising him for the "most mature performance" as the character to date.

Kimberly agreed, but said while Holland does a "fantastic job" she still has a soft spot for "the OG" Tobey Maguire.

Maguire played the role in three movies directed by Sam Raimi from 2002 to 2007.

Spidey fan Joe praised Holland's handling of the famous character over the years, saying his version of Spider-Man has "shown his progression" over the years.

"Half his life he has been doing this character. He's handled it very well."

Asked how he felt about Holland one day leaving the franchise, he said: "I hope not! I think we still have a lot more to see from him."

Clutching her Spider-Man popcorn bucket, Danika was more open to the idea of a passing of the baton, saying Zendaya and Holland have "had a good run" so she would not be disappointed "as long as they end the characters in a good way."

She said Zendaya's acting in particular was "amazing," and labelled Brand New Day as "the most comic accurate Spider-Man movie".

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is poised to become one of Marvel's most successful movies at the box office, and Sony will be hoping to emulate the returns of Holland's previous outing, Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Released in 2021, the film benefited massively from the return of previous Spider-Man actors Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield and went on to gross $1.9 bn (£1.4bn) worldwide.

So, what next for the franchise's stars?

Holland and Zendaya were just 20 and 19 years old, respectively, when they first met in 2016 on the set of Spider-Man: Homecoming, during the movie's casting and initial production.

Ten years and multiple other blockbusters later, there is an ever-growing speculation that their futures now lie away from the MCU.

Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast with Josh Horowitz, Holland hinted that a new chapter was on the horizon, albeit not clarifying when.

"It's going to change, for sure", he said.

"There is a whole plan that we have been working on since, I would say, Spider-Man No Way Home.

"I have a really clear vision to the passing on of the baton, and I think it is really exciting."

As for Zendaya, she has hinted previously that she is planning on taking a career break at the end of 2026, after a busy schedule that included the promotion of her films The Drama, The Odyssey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Dune: Part Three.

Earlier this year Zendaya told Elle that "I think that after this, I'm going to have to take a little bit of a break".

She backed this notion up when asked about her future plans by Entertainment Tonight at the NYC premiere of The Odyssey, replying, "Oh, girl, nothing. Just mind my business!".

Ginger hair portraits show unexpected 'golden thread' connecting Americans

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce97nyz4rvmo, today

For Kieran Dodds, photographing people with red hair has become something of an obsession over the past decade.

The 45-year-old, from Edinburgh, who is himself a "proud ginger", began taking pictures in his homeland in 2013 as part of a series examining Scottish identity.

His interest in the subject soon took him to other ginger hotspots such the Russian city of Perm and Jamaica's Treasure Beach.

His 2020 book Gingers spanned the world but after its release he notice there was a "huge gap".

"I realised I didn't have any American citizens," Kieran told the BBC.

"Then all these people got in touch."

"I was like 'oh wow, of course, the whole world is in the States'," Kieran says. "It's a microcosm."

He says a message from a Native American man who had red hair instantly aroused his curiosity.

"I found it very interesting and it made me think, 'where on earth did it come from?'"

The cover of his latest book - Gingers of America - features Joshua Elliot from the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Oklahoma.

He told Kieran that some of his mother's relatives were German and on his dad's side there were people from England and Sweden, so that could explain where his ginger hair comes from.

"My mom's side has always been involved with the Muscogee tribe and traditions and I've grown up around it," he said.

Joshua knows he does not fit people's expectations of what a Native American should look like, but he said: "Our chief's wife told me it's about your involvement in your community and your tribe, the people around you and what you put back into it.

"Which I really took to heart."

Kieran spoke to a lot of Native Americans on his visits and most knew of a European ancestry which could explain their red hair.

"The thing that surprised me was how early on there were these Scots and Irish marrying Native Americans," he said.

Lottie Wahkinney, a Comanche girl from Oklahoma, has Scottish grandparents, from Galashiels.

Her father Jared told Kieran his dad was Comanche but his mum was born and raised in Scotland.

"That's why my Lottie has a good mix of everything going on," Jared said.

"My Scottish grandparents would come over every summer.

"On my first visit to Scotland when I was 22, folks were like, 'Where are your moccasins? Where's your headdress?'.

"I explained 'I wear Nikes'."

While most Native Americans could explain where the ginger gene might have come from, there was one exception - a Cherokee girl called Lakia - whose family knew of no European ancestry.

"It is a totally different colour of red," Kieran said.

"It's deep ruby. That really intrigued me."

In the book, Lakia says that all her family, on both sides, have jet-black straight hair but hers turned red during her childhood.

"Everyone thought, since I was about eight, that I dyed my hair," she said.

"And still now everyone's like, 'what hair colour is that?'."

After meeting Native Americans, Kieran knew there was something in the US he could explore.

Over the next few years, he made seven lengthy trips, often linked to his full-time profession as an environmental photographer.

One state he found surprising was Alabama, a place many in the UK associate with racial segregation and the struggle for civil rights as well as its pioneering space exploration programmes.

"I knew it for racism and Nasa," Kieran said.

"In my head it was stuck in the 60s but Birmingham is an incredibly vibrant city.

"I met a lot of black Americans who had often married someone who is white."

Rachel Releford told Kieran that when she goes out with her daughter Liliana people think she is the nanny or the babysitter.

"I'm like, 'nope, she's mine'," Rachel said.

"I think you still get some people who grew up with the mindset that things need to be segregated.

"Some of my grandparents' friends were a little hesitant when they found out I was dating my husband. They said: 'You're really going to let her date someone of a different race?'

"But my grandparents were like, 'Go for it. He's a cool guy, he's a sweet one.' I love him for who he is. He's a great human being."

Also in Alabama, he met Henry Davis and his young son Henry Davis II.

The older man no longer has any red hair but he says he looked just like his son when he was the same age.

"We're not really sure where it comes from," Henry senior said.

"My dad is turning grey now. He'll get some red in his beard, and then it kind of goes grey.

"So I guess it's from his side."

As someone who grew up with red hair himself, Kieran says he is well aware that ginger can be used as an insult.

However, he says: "I use the word for its descriptive power because red is the colour of fire engines and blood whereas ginger has a golden tone to it.

"You can use it in a kind way."

He says the book uses ginger hair as "a golden thread" that weaves together America's diverse and difficult history in a way which shows a connection between people.

"That's my big idea," Kieran says.

"We are all made of the same stuff and with the ginger hair it shows."

According to Kieran no-one exemplifies this better than a young lad named Cali whom he met in Alabama.

"His background is everything - European, African-American, Hispanic and indigenous as well," he says.

"His gran is white but was she unable to get married to a black guy in Alabama - even after the courts had made it legal.

"She moved to Georgia and had a family there. It's an incredibly diverse family."

In Scotland, it is thought as many as 13% of the population - about 700,000 people - are natural redheads, a higher percentage than anywhere else in the world.

Globally, less than 2% of the population are thought to have red hair but Kieran's research lead him to believe the US figure is higher than that.

"We landed on about 4% for the genetic prevalence," he says.

"If all the gingers in America were gathered in one place, Gingertown would be about 14 million people.

"It's a big city. You would see it from space it would be so bright."

Kieran says the big difference between America and other places is that they tend to have really thought about where they come from.

"Everyone has self-consciously moved from somewhere," he says.

"And that includes the Native Americans, who have been moved from other parts of America.

"That's what makes it interesting."

He says his book is a road trip through the US trying to find out about the country through this unique trait.

For Kieran, the recent men's football World Cup got people excited about the US again in a way they haven't been over the past few years because of political divisions.

He says he was pleased to see people visiting the US and saying "it is not what I expected".

"There's such a lot of amazing people and communities there," he says.

"People you might connect with and agree with on a lot of things.

"I'm quite heartened that the football has revealed that.

"I feel quite patriotic for America now."

I had a vasectomy in my 20s after the trauma of my sons' births

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c04kdk9v590o, today

Alex West was left harrowed by the difficult labour his wife endured for their first child. When it came to their second, he hoped for a much smoother arrival.

The birth did go better for his wife - but not for him.

"I had a panic attack and broke down. I hadn't been able to - I didn't have the ability to - process that," Alex says.

Unresolved trauma from his wife's first labour and his subsequent postnatal depression meant Alex didn't want to continue with the couple's plan to have four children.

He remembers the months after the births of his two sons as "grey" - life was devoid of colour and filled with people telling him that being a father must be a fantastic experience.

"I didn't feel this love and connection that everybody says I should have," Alex says.

Not wanting to repeat the experience, he and his wife agreed to stop at two kids. Given he was the driving force behind the decision, he felt it was "wrong to put the onus on my wife" to take a contraceptive.

So like thousands more men in England have done in recent years, Alex chose to have a vasectomy.

The procedure involves the cutting and then clamping or sealing of the vas deferens, a tube on each testicle that carries sperm to the urethra. It's colloquially known as the snip.

Some 26,385 vasectomies were performed at hospitals and clinics during 2024-25, according to data compiled by NHS England. This was 16% more than in 2023-24.

Men aged 35-39 had more procedures than any other age group, about 8,400 in 2024-25.

There had also been a slight rise on the previous year in younger men choosing to have the snip - about 950 vasectomies were performed on men aged under 30 in England during 2024-25.

Fears about pregnancy

Alex, a mortgage broker, decided in his late 20s to have the procedure but his NHS doctor urged him to wait until he turned 30 in case he changed his mind.

When the appointment came in May 2024, he and his wife took the train from their Kent home to the London clinic.

The procedure was quick and painless says Alex, now 33. "I put my headphones on and I listened to about three songs before they said it was all done.

"Ridiculous - crazy quick."

Sam Knight, who's from the US, says he knew he didn't want to have children.

"I was putting myself in situations where kids could be a potential option and that really started to, kind of, freak me out," Sam says.

When his then-partner became pregnant, she chose to have an abortion and Sam, aged 22 at the time, felt a change was needed.

"[I had] a realisation of this thing that I've put somebody through and I just didn't want that to ever happen again."

He contacted a urology clinic in New York and, like Alex, had to explain to clinicians why he wanted a vasectomy. Sam was advised the procedure should be treated as permanent, as it can only be reversed in some circumstances.

Strict criteria for reversals

Because he was asking for a vasectomy at such a young age, Sam had prepared for the questions his doctor was going to ask him: Don't you think you're too young to know you don't want kids? Could you change your mind in future? You do know reversals are expensive and aren't always successful?

"[The doctor] actually said he had very recently changed his view," says Sam. "And that, if I had come in half a year earlier, he would have turned me away instantly."

His vasectomy took place a couple of months after he first contacted the clinic.

The questions from Sam's doctor were designed to ensure he was making a decision he could live with; men under 30 are more likely to regret a vasectomy, according to guidance from NHS Scotland.

Dr Sarah Salkeld, a former GP who is now a medical director for MSI Reproductive Choices, a group of clinics offering various contraceptives to NHS and private patients, says a vasectomy is "very safe and effective".

But she cautions it is important for men to "really think about" whether a vasectomy is right for them.

"We offer everyone counselling to talk about it if they want to, just to… make sure they've got all the information they need to make that decision."

She says reversals are not routinely available on the NHS as there are strict criteria for having one.

The NHS website points out that other forms of contraception are available to men, including condoms and the fertility awareness method - avoiding sex or using condoms on the days when their female partner is most fertile.

Sam told his doctor that, while he loved kids and had a happy childhood himself, he wanted to stay focused on his job as a sound designer for video games.

"I've devoted my life to this and, to me, parenting is something you also devote your life to," Sam says. "I just don't have the mental space or the time to do that, or even the desire to."

Sam, now 25, says he envies those who do want to become parents because the experience "clearly has" beauty and love in it. But adds, "I find that in music and art and these things that I do."

The procedure in 2024 and the aftercare cost Sam, who was still on his family's health insurance policy, about $1,200 (£849) in total.

He's among fewer than 1% of men in the US aged 18-29 who have ever had a vasectomy, according to the National Survey of Family Growth, which analysed the responses of about 4,000 men in 2022-23.

Men in their mid to late 40s were most likely to have had one -15% said they had.

Sacrifices and uncertainties of being a parent

Sam experienced one bout of excruciating pain a week after the procedure, a known but uncommon side effect of vasectomies according to Dr Salkeld, but that subsided after a few hours.

He doesn't think this should put other men off having a vasectomy. "Overall, it is worth the money and it is worth the pain," he says.

Another man told us the sacrifices and uncertainties of being a parent - particularly how his children might turn out - drove him to have a vasectomy aged 27.

Back in Kent, the decision to get the snip felt like the fairest and most effective form of contraception available to Alex and his wife.

It was something they considered carefully over several months, knowing they no longer wanted more children.

"I absolutely adore my children," Alex says, particularly now they are old enough to play football with.

"If I had added more to the team, it wouldn't have been the right thing for me."

Police in the US are making their own true crime podcasts - will it help catch killers?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpw9q0ekd9eo, yesterday

Peter Chadwick had been on the run for nearly four years, charged with murdering his wife, when California police launched a podcast about the crime.

He was captured in Mexico 10 months and 20 days later.

Karen Schepers had been missing for more than four decades when another police force, in Illinois, debuted the first episode of a podcast last year about the cold case - and her body was found at the bottom of a river within weeks.

Now Colorado investigators are hoping to bring in elusive tips about a 10-year-old unsolved murder, too. The Aurora Police Department (APD) released its own podcast this summer in an attempt to achieve justice for Chelsea Yasser, 21, who was found fatally stabbed in a shopping centre parking lot in 2016.

As the barrelling behemoth of true crime content continues to flourish, police departments across the US and abroad are turning to podcast production for help solving cold murder cases and other investigations.

"The true crime genre - whether it's TV, whether it's podcasts, whether it's books – I mean, it's wildly popular," says Joe Moylan, Aurora Police Department's public information officer. "And we absolutely were deliberate in trying to tap into that broader audience."

The phenomenon is still in its infancy and brings its own benefits and pitfalls - but experts believe the trend will grow.

"I think it's a tool that everyone will eventually embrace," says Michael Alcazar, retired NYPD detective and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. True crime podcasts can air inaccurate information, he says, but this way police get to control what is out there and seek new tip-offs.

There were already plenty of podcasts featuring former detectives discussing cases or policing issues, says Alyce McGovern, associate professor in criminology at University of New South Wales in Australia, where law enforcement has also begun dipping its toes into podcast production.

But it's rarer for police department-produced podcasts to focus on cold cases and solicit tips, as the California, Colorado and Illinois departments have done.

The police programmes are episodic in nature, outlining the crimes, victims and investigations with narrative panache and interesting details - much the same way that groundbreaking true crime podcast Serial did when it debuted in 2014.

In Aurora, police hoped to produce a podcast that was equally engaging - and would prompt listeners to come forward with any relevant information.

The killing of Chelsea Yasser has been described by the podcasters as the "White Whale", of Moby Dick fame, given how long it has haunted investigators.

Yasser was fatally stabbed after getting into a minivan that pulled up in the parking lot; she collapsed moments after leaving the vehicle. Grainy surveillance footage captured the rocking van as the assault took place, but the images were not clear enough to discern a face and DNA recovered from under her fingernails matched no one in the system.

As the APD released the podcast in June, detectives were testing the DNA using new forensic genealogy technology, and the programme updated listeners about other new lines of enquiry.

The department has issued appeals for information on the Yasser murder before, but the podcast can cast a far wider net for witnesses and tipsters, Moylan says.

"If you weren't watching the news that night when it happened, or if you didn't pick up a newspaper, you might not know anything about this case, so we wanted to tap into that broader audience.

"Assuming that the suspect is still alive and out there somewhere, they could be anywhere in the country."

The podcast had been downloaded 7,184 times by the end of July, according to APD - yielding several tips, including one which investigators continue to pursue.

Most departments don't have the staff, budget or time needed to produce podcast content, nor do they have the equipment or expertise.

Others hold off for fear of repercussions, lawsuits and civil liability, says retired detective Alcazar.

In California, Newport Beach Police Department's podcast about the fugitive Chadwick, for example, was not without controversy. The millionaire was introduced to viewers in Episode 1 as "a man who killed his wife in the peaceful coastal community of Newport Beach, California in October 2012".

Chadwick had been charged and pleaded not guilty, but not tried - yet the podcast made no use of the word "alleged" and called the millionaire a "murderer". Critics argued that it flew in the face of innocent-before-proven-guilty parameters and that the job of police was to investigate, not adjudicate.

The podcast was produced and hosted by public information officer Jennifer Manzella, who defended the choice at the time, saying police "put out the same kinds of statements all the time".

She tells BBC News that she was trying to balance telling the story in an engaging way without jeopardising the investigation.

After Chadwick's August 2019 apprehension, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison - where he remains.

Manzella says it wasn't a direct tip from the podcast that led to his capture - but it undeniably helped because it put pressure on Chadwick while on the run, making him more likely to make mistakes.

And investigators were able to obtain warrants and extraditions "in record time" because of the awareness - the podcast hit Number 24 on the iTunes chart.

In the wake of the podcast - and Chadwick's capture - she got calls from other departments and agencies interested in producing something similar.

But not everyone has been behind the idea.

"I initially was not really interested in it," says Detective Andrew Houghton - and now podcast co-host - at Elgin Police Department in Illinois. He worked on Elgin's 2025 podcast Somebody Knows Something alongside Detective Matthew Vartarian with assistance from a local radio station.

Houghton and Vartarian had just been assigned to Elgin's new cold case unit in 2024 when the chief informed them that the job would also involve podcasting.

"We're already starting this new unit," Houghton recalls. "Why are we adding something else new on top of that?"

Houghton and his partner begrudgingly began figuring out how to arrange episodes and soon discovered the process was also helping them structure the investigation. They formed different theories about what had happened to the missing 23-year-old, and each theory naturally formed an episode.

The podcast not only generated tips but also gave the detectives more ways to find leads. They started going through posts on social media about their own programme.

"They'd say, like, 'Oh, my mom worked with this person, or I live in this neighbourhood and I remember this.'"

The detectives ultimately solved the case through old-fashioned policework; one of their theories had been that Schepers had crashed her car and ended up in the river.

They had found a 1999 local newspaper story claiming that police had searched salvage yards by helicopter as well as dragging the Fox River but there was no evidence the latter had happened. And they did not shy away from telling listeners this.

So the department brought in a search company with the latest sonar technology as well as divers - and they found Schepers and her car at the bottom of the river in March 2025.

Now they're on the third season of the podcast. They shook up the format for the second, focusing on homicides, but have returned to a missing persons case.

Houghton acknowledges that "it is a lot of work - it takes a lot of time and effort".

As other departments navigate those budgetary and resource issues, however, there's a consensus that podcasts as an investigative tool will be seen more frequently.

If police departments can find the staffing to sustain it, podcasting could help in both recruitment and staff retention, says Janice Iwama, associate professor in American University's department of justice, law and criminology. It gives listeners the chance to learn more about what policing is really like, from the mouths of working officers.

Generational change could also fuel the trend, says retired NYPD Detective Alcazar, because younger police officers will be more ready to embrace the opportunities presented by podcasts and social media.

"That's their world," he says. "That's what they're most comfortable with."

Love Island has a problem, say fans - 'there hasn't been much love'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8edx4dp5qo, today

What's your dream Love Island series on paper?

Some watch for the heartwarming romances, like Molly-Mae Hague and Tommy Fury falling for each other back in 2019, while others prefer intense dramas - we see you 2022 winners Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu and Davide Sanclimenti.

Others tune in for exciting challenges like Snog, Marry, Pie or the ones which literally send heart rates soaring.

For most, it's a mix of all of the above, and it's a balance TV producers have been trying to strike for years with the original UK series, as well as a host of spin-offs and international editions.

It's no secret that Love Island UK linear viewing figures have dropped from their 2019 heyday, with streaming and social media becoming more of a focus.

Across the pond the US edition has been reaching new heights, with the latest eighth series ranked as the number one reality show for five weeks in the States across all streaming platforms, according to its streamer Peacock.

It also had an injection of star power as US celebrity fans, including Lizzo, Demi Lovato and Kesha, sent messages of support to the finalists, while rapper Megan Thee Stallion has become a regular guest.

BBC Newsbeat has been speaking to fans, commentators and an ex-Islander to see what they feel the UK edition could learn from the US version to regain its spark.

The 13th series of the UK show ended on Monday, with Julia Majchrzak and Lorenzo Alessi crowned the winners.

The final drew in an average audience of 1.1m viewers across all devices, including streaming, according to its broadcaster ITV, but this was a notable drop from last year's, which had an overnight audience of 1.3m.

By comparison, series five in 2019 broke the show's viewing records with 6m tuning in to an episode post Casa Amor, and that year's final had the highest average audience to date.

However, ITV say this 2019 figure was a consolidated number reached once it "had received all the data post final" and said it do not yet have an "equitable" figure for Series 13.

According to the network, more than 60% of its audience now engage with the show through streaming and the latest series, as well as its companion shows Aftersun and The Debrief, have had more than 180 million streams on ITVX.

Content creator Sarel, known for her Love Island debriefs to her 1.2m followers on TikTok, feels the biggest issue with the most recent UK series is "there hasn't been much love" between the couples, so she wasn't rooting for anyone at the end.

And while she knows people watch it for the drama and conversations it sparks, she thinks those are just "added extras" and the romances should be at the centre of the show.

"I want somebody to fall in love. I love stories where we get the butterfly moments," she says.

"Where you had your Indiyah [Polack] and your Dami [Hope] when they ran to each other, or you had couples like Molly-Mae and Tommy."

She thinks that's an aspect which the US version has been getting right, as it feels like "everyone who is in there actually fancies one another" and there is "no box" they have to fit into.

Someone from the UK who chose to go on the US version is Aaron Evans, but this wasn't his first reality series as he was one of three winners on the first series of The Traitors UK.

He feels the US edition's success is helped by having "fresh eyes" on the format and the show having "so much social media presence", which makes it "highly engaging".

Stats given to Newsbeat by TikTok - which called Love Island "one of the most influential entertainment franchises" on the app - suggest he's not wrong.

During the latest series, the hashtag #LoveIsland was mentioned in 123,000 posts in the UK, with #LoveIslandUK featuring in 88,000.

While in the US, #LoveIsland appeared in 1.09m posts and #LoveIslandUSA was tagged in 502,000 posts.

That said, the US population is nearly five times the size of the UK's.

US entertainment journalist Carly Thomas says executive producers have told her they look for ways to "bring in the US audience", be that through social media, challenges and the islanders they choose.

"I think for the US audience, we love to just relate and connect with people," Thomas, who works for The Hollywood Reporter, says.

She also feels the US edition wants to "push the limits" of the islanders with intense challenges and viewers "love to see how far they'll go", including rapper Megan Thee Stallion hosting one which saw them sit on cakes and throw them at each other.

Love Island USA has not been all smooth sailing, though.

Contestants in last year's series faced relentless online bullying which forced the show to broadcast a statement saying it does not tolerate "cyberbullying, harassment or hate". The show insists it takes duty of care seriously.

The US version runs for six weeks once a year, while the UK summer edition typically airs across eight weeks.

There is also now an additional series in the UK throughout the year, with a winter edition airing in 2020 and 2023, which has now been succeeded by All Stars.

The finale of the third All Stars version, which sees ex-islanders return to the villa, attracted about 910,000 viewers earlier this year.

During the most recent UK series, producers tried to get hearts racing, and TikTok numbers up, by introducing some new twists.

A few islanders were summoned for a sleepover at a different villa before Casa Amor, and for the first time, only three couples were in the final after two pairs got dramatically dumped.

Some fans have appreciated the changes, while others, like Sarel, feel they didn't land.

Love Island superfan Dami Amoo, who has watched every episode of the UK, US and All Star editions, says the UK series is starting to feel "overproduced".

"I do think it's been on a steady decline because they're trying to give us what we want, but then they're overdoing it and then they're taking away the classic [elements]."

She thinks this may have been due to budget constraints, but missed the islanders going on exciting dates and taking part in "fun activities or games" where you see their personalities more.

Amoo, 28, also thinks you can really see the impact of investment in the US version, which was aired almost simultaneously with the latest UK edition.

"They've invested so much into the props, the games and all of these brands are part of the actual production," she says.

"Whereas the UK version, it seems like they're just on an island somewhere just doing it on their own.

"You don't get a lot of hype, we don't get British celebrities contributing to the discussions."

'Everything's just very American'

The US edition has been able to bring in revenue by becoming a major space for advertising, with numerous content partners and more than 1,000 media partners, according to Peacock.

Evans isn't surprised by the US version capitalising on brand partnerships, saying "everything's bigger, everything's brighter, everything's just very American".

So as the sun sets on another run of Love Island series, what could UK producers do ahead of the next launch?

Superfan Dami thinks "they should really get some real fans in the production room".

"The people that do the debriefs online, people who engage on Twitter, they should get us in a room and we tell them what we really, really want."

An ITV spokesperson told Newsbeat "reaction of the fans is at the heart of the show as seen in public votes and including opinions as part of the challenges."

They added Love Island UK "continues to wield huge cultural relevance, both in the UK and in the USA" and to date it has had "over 2bn streams on ITVX and remains the biggest 16-34 show in commercial television".

Additional reporting by BBC Newsbeat reporters Srosh Khan and Jack Gray.

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here.

US urges its citizens in Middle East to be ready to leave in case of escalation in region

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgk4nyr0j73o, today

The US government has urged Americans across the Middle East to be alert and ready to leave "should there be escalation" in the region.

It comes amid US media reports that President Donald Trump may be planning new strikes on Iran over the weekend.

In its alert, the State Department said: "US diplomatic facilities, including outside the Middle East, have been targeted. Iran and groups supportive of Iran may target other US interests overseas or at locations associated with the United States and Americans throughout the world."

Tehran earlier accused the US of escalating tensions, saying any regional state co-operating with Washington would be "engulfed by the flames of war".

"Americans in the region should consider departing, or be prepared to depart should there be escalation. Americans outside the Middle East should seriously reconsider travel to and through the region."

US embassies across the Middle East - including in Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - reposted the security alert for American nationals, warning of "unexpected escalation".

US media earlier quoted US officials as saying Trump could order fresh strikes against Iran as soon as this weekend.

The US and Israel were planning what would be one of the harshest bombing campaigns to date against energy infrastructure targets in Iran, multiple sources told CBS News, the BBC's media partner in America.

CBS News said the plan came up during Trump's cabinet meeting on Friday, according to sources briefed later. Some White House aides who focus on politics were strongly opposed, one of the sources said.

At the cabinet meeting, Trump was heard saying while reporters were still in the room: "We'll be hitting them [Iranians] very hard. At some point, they're going to say, 'We just can't take it anymore.'"

On Thursday, the US military said it had completed a "heavy wave" of strikes against Iran in retaliation for Tuesday's attempted ballistic missile attacks on American forces.

The US Central Command (Centcom) said it hit "dozens" of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets in response to Tehran's firing on US bases in Jordan and at ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian state media said three people - including a two-year-old child - were killed in the US strikes.

The conflict expanded this week after a number of days of relative calm, with the first publicly announced joint US-Saudi strikes targeting Iranian proxies in Iraq.

Washington and Tehran have engaged in escalating strikes and counter-strikes since a ceasefire in April, aimed at pausing the months-long war, fell apart in June.

The US and Israel began launching their strikes against Iran on 28 February.

Russian ship defies sanctions to send military vehicles to Mali

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgk4rdley0ko, today

Russian and Malian troops fighting against a rebel offensive in northern Mali have been resupplied with a vast number of military vehicles that appear to have been delivered by a sanctioned cargo ship, BBC Verify has found.

A large column of armoured vehicles were seen arriving in the capital Bamako in verified footage broadcast by Malian state TV on 25 July. Reporters said the convoy had travelled from Lomé port in Togo.

A sanctioned Russian cargo ship, Mikhail Britnev, docked in Lomé on 9 July, according to ship tracking data reviewed by BBC Verify. Satellite images appear to show that the ship was carrying the kind of trucks, armoured personnel carriers and light infantry vehicles seen in Bamako, according to experts.

Ship tracking data shows that the Mikhail Britnev left Russia's Baltiysk port on 18 June and moved through the North Sea before entering the English Channel.

BBC Verify understands that the vessel was escorted through the Channel by a Russian Ropucha-class warship. The UK's Ministry of Defence declined to comment.

Experts say the deliveries signify that the Kremlin is doubling down on its support for Mali's ruling junta, which has been rocked by the success of a rebel offensive led by the Jihadist group Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and Tuareg separatists. The advance has seized large swathes of territory in the north.

The Kremlin has backed the Mali military government since French forces withdrew from the country in 2022, receiving cash payments and preferential access to mines and gold deposits in return. At first the Russian mercenary group Wagner was deployed, but its operations have since been taken over by Africa Corps, which falls under Russia's defence ministry.

While BBC Verify has previously confirmed footage showing the unit carrying out air strikes against the rebel forces, the Africa Corps has struggled to halt their advance across the north of the country.

But Charlie Werb, an analyst with Aldebaran Threat Consultants, said the new shipment could help Malian and Russian forces to build up enough strength to launch offensives into areas which have fallen to the rebels.

The Mikhail Britnev was sanctioned by the US in 2024. Tracking data shows it switched off its transponder after passing through the Channel two weeks ago, and only reappeared when preparing to dock in Togo.

It was carrying a variety of military vehicles - including general purpose trucks, BTR-style armoured personnel carriers and light-infantry vehicles - according to experts who analysed satellite photos taken before it left Baltiysk port.

According to Malian state TV, the vehicles were then transported across Togo and through Burkina Faso - which is also ruled by a military junta backed by Moscow. The government in Togo has been deepening ties with the Kremlin and signed a military cooperation agreement with Moscow late last year.

The vehicles could be used for a mix of logistics and planning manoeuvres, as well combat operations, analysts at the defence intelligence firm Janes said.

BBC Verify understands that Baltiysk port has been the staging point for several ships exporting military materials to West Africa.

The bulk carrier Sabetta was tracked after loading what appeared to be military vehicles at the port in February. It docked at Conakry in Guinea, a port long associated with weapons transfers from Russia to its regional allies in West Africa.

Another tanker, which did not appear on ship tracking data, was also seen loading military vehicles at Baltiysk on 6 June.

Mali's military junta has suffered several battlefield setbacks in recent weeks. Rebel fighters have carried out sustained attacks on the northern town of Anefis, with clashes also reported near Niono and other parts of central Mali.

Amnesty International on Wednesday called for a war crimes investigation into what it said were the summary executions of at least 19 Malian soldiers after an ambush earlier this month.

But Werb said the delivery showed that the Kremlin was digging in to defend its allied junta.

"The Kremlin has maintained steady military support since the conflict entered a new phase on 25 April by bringing in fresh forces, weapons, and equipment," he said.

"The delivery highlights that despite recent setbacks, Mali remains central to Russia's strategy in Africa, and the Africa Corps is a key pillar in Bamako's fight against militant groups."

What claims do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Trump threatens to revive $1.8bn 'anti-weaponisation' fund as Senate standoff deepens

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj9dwkk1lk7o, yesterday

US President Donald Trump has threatened to revive a controversial fund to compensate his allies amid a standoff with two Republican senators who are holding out on confirming his pick for attorney general.

Todd Blanche, who has been acting in the role since April, needs the support of all Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to get the job permanently.

But Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina - whose terms both expire in January - are withholding theirs over the status of Trump's $1.8bn (£1.3bn) "anti-weaponisation fund".

If the two don't approve Blanche, Trump said on Saturday that "it will immediately be back on the table, and I will get it done".

Trump claimed in a Truth Social post on Saturday that the two senators are "upset because I wouldn't endorse them".

He said if they don't approve Blanche's nomination, "then I will keep Todd as Acting A.G., and push hard to get the Anti-Weaponization Bill".

The proposed fund was announced earlier this year to settle a lawsuit by Trump against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over the leak of his tax returns.

It would have allowed Trump allies to claim compensation for what they say was politically motivated prosecutions by previous administrations.

The widely criticised plan prompted alarm among Democrats - and some Republicans - who argued it could result in payment to people who were prosecuted over the US Capitol riot on 6 January 2021, including those convicted of assaulting police officers.

Following the backlash, Blanche, who negotiated it, abandoned it.

Separately, a federal judge blocked the fund and expressed concerns that it breached ethical guidelines.

'Payout pot for punks'

Cornyn and Tillis want Blanche, who previously served as Trump's personal lawyer, to state in writing that the Justice Department will not resurrect the fund later on. The Trump administration has not announced such a commitment.

Tillis responded to Trump on X on Saturday, writing: "Despite comments as late as yesterday that the fund is dead, President Trump clearly intends to resurrect the payout pot for punks either by inappropriately establishing another bogus fund or pushing Congress to vote for a bill that the majority of Republicans in the Senate would be against.

"It's unfortunate that Todd Blanche, who I consider qualified for the job, will not be confirmed because of this reversal," he added. "Hopefully, we can resolve this by Tuesday."

The judiciary committee has a meeting scheduled for Tuesday for a possible vote on Blanche's nomination.

The BBC has reached out to Cornyn's office for comment.

The issue of the anti-weaponisation fund continues to be a focus for Trump.

At a cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday, Trump acknowledged that the fund was "dead" - but suggested that he still wanted compensation for those he believes were wronged by the justice department.

"I think people are horribly treated. Horribly abused," he told reporters. "I'd like to see them compensated for the pain."

"People they were very successful that wanted to go to a rally or an event...ended up spending the rest of their lives in horror," Trump added. "They've agreed to not have a fund, but there are a lot of people that are very set about it."

Even as lame duck lawmakers, both Tillis and Cornyn have emerged as thorns in Trump's side, despite his claims to have ended their political careers.

Tillis initially drew Trump's ire by opposing his "One, Big, Beautiful" tax and spending bill. After years of loyalty, Cornyn and Trump fell out after the president backed his opponent, Ken Paxton, to run in November's midterm elections, ending his chances of another term.

'Our hearts are in ruins,' Savannah Guthrie says after kidnapped mother's ransom notes released

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce973re9404o, yesterday

Police in Arizona have released two ransom notes in the hope the public can help identify whoever abducted the mother of US news presenter Savannah Guthrie.

The first note, which is treated as apparently credible, demanded millions of dollars in Bitcoin. The other claimed Nancy Guthrie died shortly after she was abducted from her home near Tucson six months ago.

The Pima County Sheriff's Office say they cannot verify her death, and the investigation remains active. "Our hearts are in ruins," Guthrie said on Saturday.

Officials released the two notes on Friday, asking the public for help identifying the writer, whose "distinct linguistic characteristics may be recognisable".

Investigators believe that Nancy Guthrie, who was aged 84 when she was last seen on 31 January, was taken against her will from her home, but they have not shared a possible motive or arrested a suspect.

On Saturday morning Savannah Guthrie wrote on Instagram: "We have lived every moment, every breath, and every heartbeat in agony and despair."

"Every day, we wake up and try to be strong and go on - because that's what our joyful and resilient Mom taught us to do. But make no mistake - our hearts are in ruins."

The ransom notes were addressed to Savannah Guthrie and the Guthrie family, and sent to a local TV station in Tucson, Arizona, in the days after Nancy Guthrie disappeared, according to the sheriff.

"A friend, family member, coworker, classmate, or acquaintance may recognise these patterns of expression and possess information that could help identify the individual responsible," the sheriff's office said in a statement.

The first note, which was received on 2 February, began: "Hello Savannah, we have your mother Nancy. She is safe but scared. She will be held for ransom and once payment is received she will be released unharmed. We will be holding her for a maximum of 7 days. You will need to send bitcoin in the amount of $4 million USD before 5PM on Thursday the 5th.

"If payment is not received, the ransom will be increased to 6 million USD which will need to be paid by 5PM on Monday the 9th. Once payment is received to the bitcoin address below she will be released within 12 hours of deposit to a safe drop off location back in Tucson. If payment is not recieved [sic] by the last deadline on Monday the 9th at 5PM, she will be killed.

"Your mother is aware of this and her life is in your hands. It is in the best interest of everyone to have this completed as soon as possible.

"You will not be able to contact me from here on out, there will be no negotiation. Do not play games, law enforcement will not be able to help you," the note continued.

After what appears to be a redacted sentence, it ends: "She had a white smart watch on the floor of the foot of her bed and the white flood light in backyard was destroyed."

Nancy Guthrie, who was taking daily medication, vanished after relatives dropped her off at her home on the evening of Saturday 31 January.

Police were contacted when she failed to show up the following morning at a friend's house to watch a virtual Sunday church service.

Four days after the first note, the second arrived: "Guthrie Family, we did not fully grasp the seriousness of her physical condition. We never intended to hurt her, that was not our intention.

"She perished shortly after she was taken. We believe it was heart related. She is buried in nature now.

"Nothing you could have done could have changed the outcome. We want your family to know this and hope you all can find peace. We are truly sorry."

After the second note, Savannah Guthrie - one of the most famous TV presenters in the US - took to Instagram on 7 February to respond.

"We received your message and we understand," Guthrie said at the time. "We beg you now to return our mother to us... This is very valuable to us, and we will pay."

Earlier this week, Guthrie again released a video calling for the kidnappers to "do the right thing" and reveal the location of her mother.

In her social media post on Saturday, Savannah Guthrie said she and her family were "desperate" and "begging for help".

Alongside a photo of her smiling mother, Guthrie wrote they were determined to "find out what happened to her, so that we can give her the dignity of a proper goodbye — a celebration of her remarkable life that she so deserves".

She urged anyone who knows or suspects something to come forward, saying tips can be made anonymously and a reward for information leading to her recovery remains available.

This would not be the first time that authorities have released the writings of criminal suspects in an effort to ID them.

Ted Kaczynski, who was known as the "Unabomber", was identified by his own brother after US newspapers published a copy of his manifesto.

Earlier this year, authorities released images of a masked and armed suspect who covered the front door camera at Nancy Guthrie's home before her disappearance.

A glove discovered in her neighbourhood also yielded no DNA evidence.

Wicker Man sequel director Justin Hardy dies aged 61

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgwj0wnyydo, today

British filmmaker Justin Hardy, who directed a sequel to his late father Robin's 1973 cult horror classic The Wicker Man, has died aged 61.

His family said Hardy died on Friday night after suffering a heart attack, remembering him as "a man of family, of boundless creativity" and "so full of life right to the end".

A Bafta and Emmy nominated writer and director, Hardy was known for his documentary Children of the Wicker Man in 2024, made with his brother Dominic which chronicled the legacy of their father's iconic film.

He had just completed production on Wrath of the Gods, the concluding chapter to the Wicker Man trilogy, which was due to premiere in London later this month.

Hardy also directed historical films and documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4 and CNN, including Princes In The Tower, Trafalgar Battle Surgeon, The Relief Of Belsen and Spanish Flu: The Forgotten Fallen.

His family said they were "devastated" by his death and "heartbroken" Hardy would not be able to see Wrath of the Gods open.

Dominic described his brother as having "an incredible appetite for life".

"We've lost him and we've lost that larger-than-life presence looking over us all," he said. "He really became a filmmaker his own right."

Dominic also praised Hardy's work on his last film as "incredibly beautiful", adding it was "a great satisfaction to him" to have made something new.

The Wicker Man, starring Christopher Lee, is the story of a police officer sent to a remote Scottish island community to investigate the disappearance of a local girl.

Wrath of the Gods was inspired by recently discovered scripts and storyboards by Hardy's late father Robin, marking the end of the trilogy that began with The Wicker Man and the 2011 follow-up The Wicker Tree.

Hardy, who also taught screenwriting at University College London, is survived by his wife Larissa, and their four children.

Ukraine says major Russian oil refinery and airfield hit, as Moscow reports eight deaths

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c998gg5pe09o, today

Ukraine has said it carried out overnight strikes deep inside Russia, hitting a major oil refinery and an airfield that houses Russian strategic aviation.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Engels airfield and the refinery, both in the Saratov region some 600km (373miles) from Ukraine's border, were hit. An oil depot was also struck in Kaluga region and a drone launch site in Bryansk.

Russia said eight people were killed in the Ukrainian strikes, and 635 drones shot down or intercepted. It also reported yet another strike on a warehouse of Russia's biggest online retailer Wildberries.

Meanwhile, Moscow said its forces attacked overnight two Ukrainian ports and two vessels in the Black Sea.

Later on Sunday, Ukraine said one person was killed in a Russian strike on a postal terminal near the north-eastern city of Kharkiv.

Both Russia and Ukraine have recently intensified attacks focusing on major cities, energy facilities and warehouses, as the vast front line remains virtually static and US-led mediation attempts to end the war have shown no breakthrough.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In Sunday's post on social media, President Zelensky described the latest Ukrainian strikes as "our long-range sanctions" against Russian facilities that he says finance Moscow's war.

He said the Engels airfield and Saratov oil refinery were "strategic facilities".

The Ukrainian military said in a separate statement that its attack triggered a blaze at the airfield - one of the main bases of Russia's strategic aviation.

It said Tu-95MC and Tu-160 bombers were regularly using Engels to launch missile strikes against Ukraine.

Saratov regional Governor Roman Busargin admitted that "a drone attack caused damage to civilian infrastructure in Saratov and Engels". He later said that two people were killed.

Separately, three people were reported killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on a civilian vehicle in Russia's Udmurtia region, and another three in the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine.

In the Samara region, Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev described a strike on a Wildberries warehouse that caused a fire as "yet another terrorist act" by Ukraine.

The governor reported no casualties in the overnight attack.

In recent weeks, Ukraine has hit a number of Wildberries logistics hubs, describing them as legitimate targets providing the Russian military with drone components, navigation equipment and other gear.

Wildberries - often described as Russia's Amazon - employs some 48,000 people.

Ukraine's attacks are reported to have had a serious impact on the Russian economy, especially on hundreds of small and mid-sized businesses using the retailer.

Meanwhile, Russia has been recently targeting warehouses of Ukraine's Nova Poshta postal company and major online retailers like Rozetka.

Rozetka said its largest warehouse was hit overnight by Russian drones, but reported no injuries.

Uganda unveils statue of Israel PM's brother who died in Entebbe rescue mission

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9v471x89m3o, today

Uganda has unveiled a statue of Yonatan Netanyahu, the older brother of Israel's prime minister, who was killed during the Entebbe hostage rescue mission 50 years ago.

Uganda's army chief Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba said the monument honoured his courage and selfless service.

Netanyahu was the only Israeli soldier killed in the raid, which rescued more than 100 hostages, after two Palestinians and two Germans hijacked an Air France flight that had taken off from Tel Aviv and diverted it to Uganda's international airport.

Kainerugaba described the mission as "one of the most significant episodes in modern history" and spoke of the now close ties between the two countries as a "remarkable journey".

The statue of Netanyahu, striding forward with a machine gun in his hands, stands outside the old airport terminal where the rescue happened.

During the operation, three hostages - Jean-Jacques Mimouni, Pasco Cohen and Ida Borochovitch - also died, and Dora Bloch was later murdered in hospital in the capital, Kampala, while being treated there.

"May their memories continue to inspire future generations in the pursuit of peace, justice and human dignity," the army chief said.

The hijackers and three accomplices who joined them in Uganda were also killed, as well as at least 45 Ugandan soldiers, in fighting with the Israelis.

Acknowledging the deaths of the soldiers, Kainerugaba said they had "fought valiantly... in what they believed was a justified cause. Of course, today, we know that the government of Idi Amin, which they served, was a brutal dictatorship which did not represent the Ugandan people."

The Paris-bound plane, which had taken off from Tel Aviv on 27 June 1976, made a stop in Athens, which is where the hijackers, from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, boarded the aircraft.

They took control and forced the plane to divert to Libya, where it refuelled. The Airbus A300 then flew to Uganda, where Amin welcomed it as it landed.

The hijackers demanded $5m and the freeing of 53 militants jailed in Israel, France, Germany, Switzerland and Kenya in return for the hostages. Some of the hostages were released on 30 June and 1 July, but Israelis and Jews remained.

On 3 July, after flying from Israel via Kenya, elite commandos landed at Entebbe and launched the operation that lasted less than 90 minutes.

The rescue mission was celebrated in Israel but was a profound humiliation to Amin.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Entebbe a decade ago where he said: "I learned from my brother that you need two things to defeat the terrorists: clarity and courage."

Kainerugaba called what happened half a century ago "a painful chapter in our history" but, he added, Uganda-Israel relations have developed into a "partnership characterised by mutual trust, respect and co-operation".

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

Faisal Islam: Four reasons why Fifa's World Cup plan never stacked up

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyvd8363wlo, yesterday

Documents that set out Fifa's plan to part-privatise the World Cup and seen by the BBC show why the deal may have fallen apart.

The sales pitch was circulated to Fifa members this week, setting out the case for Gianni Infantino's controversial plan featuring pictures of the Spain team lifting the trophy and Argentina's fans.

The 25-page deck of slides painted a picture of American football-level revenue expectations, which pointed to a potential continuation and extension of the controversial 2026 US-influenced World Cup model.

It suggested there was the potential for $1,000+ tickets, dynamic pricing, and pressure to put broadcasting of the world's biggest sports tournament behind a paywall.

The documents make it clear that the plan and Fifa's arguments never really stacked up. Here are four reasons why.

1. The claim that football is 'under-monetised'

In the slides, Fifa's central argument was that football does not raise enough cash in relation to its fan base, that "Fifa has been under-monetised versus other leagues" and so "global football development gets squeezed".

It did this with reference to a comparative chart showing annual revenue as well as revenue per fan for Fifa, the Uefa Champions League, Premier League, US baseball and NFL American football.

On the face of it, Fifa is the poorer cousin at just $1 per global fan, compared to NFL's $52.80. But this measure is rather suspect.

The World Cup is not an annual competition - it happens once every four years. If instead this was done on revenue per World Cup 2026 match, Fifa makes multiples of the Premier League, perhaps more than three times as much.

As important, football is decentralised globally, so more of the revenues go to individual leagues, such as the Premier League or Champions League. Fifa was effectively arguing it wanted to keep more of that overall football pie.

Football's fans are also spread across the globe, in rich and poor countries alike. NFL has a much smaller base concentrated in the US and is pretty much the whole of American Football.

Finally, about half of NFL's revenues are paid out as wages. Fifa does not pay Erling Haaland or Lionel Messi or Vozinha. Profits would have yielded a rather different result than the chart’s focus on revenues.

2. Extraordinary ticket prices

According to the document, the new partly privatised entity, called Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE), would have become the "organiser and operator of competitions" - i.e. the World Cup - and would be responsible for ticketing, broadcast, licensing and sponsorship.

That would have been a clear transfer of the organising power from a non-profit answerable to all of world football to a privately backed company, albeit one with majority of Fifa board members.

The slides said that the FFE structure would "expand and optimise media rights monetisation" and "maximise the value of Fifa IP [Intellectual Property], which has been undermonetised, historically". This would have been a transfer of responsibility and accountability from Fifa itself.

As Fifa highlighted the revenue per fan of the NFL in the document, it raised questions about a future of free-to-air World Cup games.

This is protected by legislation in the UK and Europe, but digital rights will alter considerably in the coming years. It could also clearly have underpinned the continuation of the extraordinary ticket prices charged in 2026.

3. No stated fee for the 'annual licence payment'

Why was Fifa trying to sell a $4.2bn (£3.1bn; €3.6bn) stake?

Fifa had already said that it would give FFE a 20% stake in the organisation, which would raise an initial $4.2bn.

The document made it clear that initial cash injection would fund the $20m "extraordinary distribution" to each of the 211 member associations.

That explained the $4.2bn funding requirement. Essentially, the funding would have been used to provide a $20m one-off payment for infrastructure to every voting association that would have made the decision on Infantino's plan.

It would have meant, for example, giving Montserrat a sum worth just under half its entire economy or $10,000 per person, and the same for, say, Bangladesh, a massive highly-populated growth market for global football development.

Where would the extra money for investment in Fifa's future been, given the new investment would have been immediately distributed to voting members? How much would actually have been paid back to Fifa as an "annual license payment" referred to in a flow diagram in the charts, but not quantified? Would that have been fixed or proportionate to revenues?

Did FFE have a mission to maximise revenues at all costs to provide returns for the investors?

None of these crucial questions were answered by the document.

4. The Kushner connection

The private timetable shared in the document said that investors would be given access to the materials starting this month. Terms would have been confirmed by September, and bids and transfer of funds by the end of October. This showed how advanced the plans were, and the speed with which members were being asked to decide.

The lead investors were publicly been named as Thrive Eternal, run by Joshua Kushner, the brother of US President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared.

Thrive was almost entirely concerned with AI investments, with OpenAI taking a stake in one of its arms.

Thrive only began its sports investment arm in April, with an investment in the San Francisco Giants baseball team, which was the pioneer in sport-based dynamic pricing of tickets.

Kushner said that the fund would focus on certain live sports as "these are assets with qualities that cannot be replicated by technology".

This is an investment thesis that the value of certain forms of entertainment which can not be replaced by AI (unlike music or some films) will increase in the coming years.

So in the end, we were left with an opaque structure designed to continue the 2026 experiment with high ticket prices, commercialisation which would put pressure on broadcast costs, and inevitably lead to more matches, and more frequent tournaments. A proposal that fell apart in a matter of days.

BP puts North Sea business up for sale

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62q7w003lro, 2 days ago

BP has said it is putting its North Sea business up for sale in a move that would end 60 years of production in the region by the oil giant.

The decision follows a review of BP's operations as it seeks to slim down the group. Its North Sea business has five production hubs - two in the central North Sea and three west of Shetland - and employs about 1,100 people.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he told US President Donald Trump he would take a "pragmatic approach" to the issue of North Sea oil and gas.

Trump, some trade unions, industry figures and some Labour MPs all back increased drilling in the North Sea.

"The UK has been our home for more than 100 years and will continue to play an important role in our future," BP chief executive Meg O'Neill said.

"We're proud of the jobs we create, the contribution we make to the UK economy, and the work we do to keep energy flowing every day," she said.

The company said it remained committed to operating the business safely and reliably throughout the sale process.

Its North Sea business produced 117,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2025, a small fraction of the oil giant's 2.3 million barrels of daily production.

O'Neill, who took the helm at BP in April, said earlier this year there was "untapped potential" in the North Sea.

However, in announcing Friday's decision she said: "As we focus our portfolio and direct capital to our highest-value opportunities, we believe our North Sea business will be better positioned as part of another company.

"It has world-class people, resilient assets and a proud heritage, and it is precisely these qualities that can attract an owner ready to back its next chapter. We are seeking an outcome that recognises that value."

The sale could potentially bring in £2bn to BP. Last month, the FT reported the company was in talks with Ithaca Energy to sell its North Sea assets for around this amount, although the talks fell through.

BP employs around 13,960 people in the UK. Its global headquarters will remain in the UK.

Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh said she was in close contact with BP, and her priority was to ensure that "the workers and local community are protected during this sale process".

The North Sea has increasingly become a topic for political debate.

In its 2024 general election manifesto, Labour said it would not issue new licences for drilling, but would honour existing ones.

But in recent months, as the Iran war pushed up global oil prices, calls have grown for more North Sea drilling to be approved, from the Conservatives, Reform UK and from President Trump, while also becoming a divisive issue within the Labour party.

Some Labour MPs have urged the government to take a more liberal approach, warning that the transition away from oil and gas must protect jobs and the cost of energy bills.

But others have backed the government's existing approach, arguing that expanding renewable energy is key to improving energy security and reducing the impact on climate change.

As energy secretary in Sir Keir Starmer's government, Ed Miliband was a staunch supporter of the manifesto position. Miliband is now the foreign secretary in Burnham's government.

Burnham himself has seemingly left the door open to future drilling. He said he told President Trump this week: "There is a resource there. When people are struggling - you can't ignore that."

Labour's deputy leader Lucy Powell previously told the BBC that Burnham would stick to the party's manifesto commitments, but there would be a "change of emphasis" on North Sea oil and gas.

Oil and gas companies have also criticised the UK's windfall tax - the Energy Profits Levy - which they argue means the North Sea has lost some of its appeal in recent years.

The Scottish government's energy minister, Stephen Gethins, said the decision would cause uncertainty for workers.

"Scotland's future prosperity – and our contribution to energy security – are reliant on North Sea energy production and, crucially, the skills and experience of that workforce," he said.

Reserved policies – such as the Energy Profits Levy – were driving an accelerated decline of North Sea oil and gas before renewables were fully ready to meet energy needs, Gethins added.

The Scottish Conservatives' energy spokesman, Andrew Bowie MP, called on the Labour government at Westminster to approve the Jackdaw and Rosebank offshore sites and cancel plans to ban new licences in the North Sea. He also called for the Energy Profits Levy to be scrapped.

Reform MSP Duncan Massey said 1,100 workers faced uncertainty with the BP sale, adding politicians should not put ideology ahead of jobs and economic reality.

The Scottish Greens said 80% of the oil from the North Sea was shipped overseas, therefore it was "doing very little to improve our energy security".

Amazon and Apple just told us more about their AI plans - here are three things we learned

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp87m46g392o, 3 days ago

The world's biggest technology companies - including Microsoft, Meta, Google, Apple and Amazon - updated Wall Street in recent days on their finances.

One common thread emerged: they are all planning to continue spending massive amounts of money on artificial intelligence (AI).

The reaction from investors was that they need to see more tangible results to show for the $1tn (£743bn) and growing investment in things like computer chips, data centres, and even technical staff. That sent some tech stocks on a wild ride in recent days.

While each company operates in different sectors, their AI spending and plans showed they have a few other things in common as well.

1. AI tools and chatbots still do not make much money

OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in late 2022 kicked off the ongoing AI investment race, and every major tech company has since launched a consumer-facing AI chatbot of their own. Meta has Meta AI, Google has Gemini. Amazon has Rufus. Apple even relaunched Siri.

Yet, none of the chatbots or the related tools in and of themselves clearly provide a meaningful amount of revenue for the companies, despite being costly to create.

Instead, this batch of earnings results made clear that companies like Google, which is owned by Alphabet, and Meta are currently spending much more money related to AI tools than they bring in.

Both companies reported some of their lowest ever amounts of free cash flow, a measure of how much money a business has left over after paying for operations and investments.

Google spent so much money on AI that Alphabet's free cash flow was negative on revenue of $118bn, meaning it spent more than it brought in for the first time in the company's history as a public company.

Meta's free cash was just $784m on $61bn of revenue, meaning it spent almost as much money as it made during the quarter.

Meta's Reality Labs, which is responsible for its AI work, lost nearly $9bn in the first half of this year.

2. Wall Street wants results, not more ideas

Look no further than Wall Street's reaction to Meta's quarterly results to see that investors are no longer placated with executive's claims that AI investment will turn out to be worth it at some unknown point in the future.

Shares of the social media giant plunged to its second lowest level in a year after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said Meta was working on its own AI agent, or an AI chatbot that can operate somewhat autonomously. And that it was planning to develop an operation to sell an AI tool directly to other firms.

Neither the operation or the AI tool currently exist in a way that could make Meta money, and Zuckerberg gave no timeline for when they would materialise. Still, Meta increased the low end of its planned spending on AI – it is likely to pour more than $140bn into AI this year alone.

Meanwhile, shares in Microsoft soared to a six-month high. Despite the company's plans to effectively match this financial year the $190bn it spent on AI over the last 12 months, it showed strong revenue growth and more adoption of its core AI tool.

Tracy Woo, an analyst with Forrester, said Microsoft was a tech company showing that its massive AI investments were "beginning to deliver returns."

The market reaction to Amazon was almost identical. Despite negative cash flow, and plans to spend $220bn on AI this year, the success of its other businesses drove its stock to its highest price in two months.

3. There is still huge demand for new tech

AI tools may have not yet proven to be a consumer tech revolution on the scale of the internet or even electricity, as many tech executives have promised for years. But there is still huge demand from people for new technology.

Google said last week that 950 million people are using its Gemini chatbot at least once a month, three times the users it had a year ago.

Apple on Thursday said that new versions of its core products, the Mac computer, iPhone and iPad, have been selling better this year than the company planned for or expected.

So much so that it warned investors that sales of such products would slow down, because Apple is unable to get enough of the microchips that would be required to meet buyer demand.

The company is, however, anticipating a lot of excitement from Apple users for its impending update of Siri, its AI voice assistant within its products that is getting an overhaul with the help of Google's Gemini chatbot.

Outgoing chief executive Tim Cook said Apple already has plans to charge users who wish to make heavier use of the new Siri, given feedback received from user testing so far.

"We're off-the-charts excited about Siri AI", Cook said. "We do believe there will be people who want to use it – a lot."

The Chinese robot army transforming the UK's retail industry

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0jl8v23qwgo, 4 days ago

Every time you click "buy" on an online order, the chances are that your purchase starts getting processed within minutes.

Increasingly, the journey starts with a squat silver floor robot gliding beneath a storage rack, lifting a shelf and carrying it across a warehouse to a waiting worker.

At Geek+'s factory in the eastern Chinese city of Hefei, which the BBC visited, fleets of the robots are built and tested before being shipped to warehouses around the world.

Some of Britain's biggest retailers - including Tesco, Asda and Next - now use the company's technology.

By automating these repetitive journeys, Geek+ says retailers can increase picking speeds, store more goods in spaces that are hard to reach for humans, and reduce errors.

Unlike traditional warehouse automation, which relies on fixed conveyor systems and permanent infrastructure, autonomous mobile robots can be deployed simply using QR code floor markers and safety fencing.

Geek+, which listed in Hong Kong last year in one of the biggest robotics share sales of 2025, has become the world's largest supplier of autonomous mobile robots.

The UK has struggled with weak productivity growth for more than a decade, and economists say wider adoption of robotics will be essential if businesses are to become more efficient.

In its 2026 report SME Technology Adoption in the United Kingdom, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said technologies like robotics would be key to improving productivity.

According to the OECD, Britain's low adoption of robotics is "surprising" given its manufacturing heritage, noting that while UK firms have embraced mature digital technologies, they lag behind in robotics and automation.

That presents an opportunity for companies such as Geek+. The UK has one of Europe's largest e-commerce and logistics sectors, but many warehouses are still in the early stages of automation.

Britain has already become Geek+'s biggest European market, with UK partner MotionTech deploying more than 2,000 robots across 10 warehouse sites.

"Customers want fast deployable solutions," says Barry Pemberton, Account Director at MotionTech. "They want high volume, high storage, fast picking... ultimately on a smaller footprint with a reduced headcount."

"We seem to have a very big shortage of labour in the UK at the moment. These technologies are really important to keep businesses thriving and meet demand."

The Trades Union Congress (TUC), which represents almost 6 million UK workers, says robotics should be used to raise productivity and improve jobs, rather than simply cut labour costs.

In its response to the government's consultation on a new AI and innovation strategy, it urged ministers to ensure workers are involved in decisions about automation and that employers invest in retraining.

"Working with technologists, workers and unions can help steer the UK's research and innovation towards workers' priorities for automation... avoiding job-cutting, low-productivity automation," the TUC said in its report.

How China became a robotics leader

Robotics has become a strategic priority for Beijing under President Xi Jinping's drive to develop what he calls "new quality productive forces".

With China's working-age population shrinking, policymakers increasingly see automation as essential to boosting productivity and maintaining the country's manufacturing advantage.

"The robotics story builds directly on China's electric vehicle ecosystem," says Kyle Chan, a researcher at the Brookings Institution.

Batteries, electric motors, cameras, sensors and semiconductors developed for electric vehicles (EVs) are increasingly being used across China's robotics sector, creating what he describes as "overlapping industrial ecosystems".

One company leading that crossover is Chinese EV maker XPeng, which unveiled its humanoid robot, Iron, last year.

Founder He Xiaopeng says he no longer sees XPeng simply as a carmaker.

"We want XPeng to be a high-tech company," he told the BBC. "In the future, any car company will transform into a car and robotics company."

Analysts say China's robotics push could follow a similar path as its global EV success, with local players using manufacturing prowess, dense supplier networks and rapid product development to establish an early lead.

"China is deliberately trying to build on some of those strengths," says Chan. "As it reaches into new areas, from humanoid robots to industrial robots to delivery robots."

Tesla is pursuing a similar vision with its Optimus robot, which Elon Musk has said could eventually become a bigger business than carmaking.

But China's ambitions to dominate the global robotics industry was dealt a blow this week when the US banned the import of new foreign-made advanced robots, citing national security.

The Chinese embassy in Washington responded to the move by saying that Beijing has long opposed the US' "politicising" of trade issues and sanctions based on "groundless pretexts".

The next frontier

The Chinese-made robots now operating in British warehouses are designed to solve the problem of moving goods. Geek+ says the company's next goal is to automate everything else.

"We are working on... end-to-end unmanned warehouse solutions," says Yanyu Liu, head of communications at Geek+.

That means automating picking, handling and eventually packing goods.

Across China, companies including AgiBot and Unitree are investing billions in humanoid robots.

But the business case for humanoids is less clear than it is for today's warehouse robots. If wheeled robots move goods cheaply, reliably and efficiently or robots with just arms can do the other automated tasks, what problem does a humanoid solve?

Developers say factories, hospitals and offices have all been designed around people, and so they may eventually be able to work in different environments without the need to redesign workplaces around automation.

But experts and developers alike agree that the current technology is not yet suitable for some repetitive tasks that require more dexterity.

"I don't think [humanoids] will change the landscape of the types of technology or the automation that's going to be put into place," says Pemberton. "They're definitely going to be complementary."

Chinese companies already account for the vast majority of global humanoid deployments, but it may be years before they are commonplace in warehouses.

For Britain, where productivity pressures and labour shortages are driving demand for automation, the country's warehouses are becoming an early testing ground for China's next major technology export.

Additional reporting by Jaltson Akkanath Chummar

South Korean shares soar after chip stock rout

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gdzlzprv1o, 3 days ago

Share prices jumped in South Korea on Friday, partly reversing a three-day rout that wiped hundreds of billions of dollars off the value of the country's stock market.

The benchmark Kospi index closed almost 18% higher, driven by chip makers SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics.

It came after earnings updates from US technology giants Amazon and Microsoft helped boost optimism over the huge amounts of money being invested in artificial intelligence (AI). South Korean regulators have also announced measures aimed at curbing this week's sell-off.

Surging chip stocks also helped push markets in Japan and Taiwan higher.

SK Hynix, which is a major supplier to leading AI chip firm Nvidia, saw its shares gain almost 30%, while Samsung was up by 28%.

Both firms had seen their stock market value slump this week as a sell-off in AI-related stocks deepened.

Investors had become concerned over the hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into in AI by big technology firms.

In recent months stock market trading has been particularly volatile in South Korea as it has attracted large numbers of retail investors.

South Korea's tech-heavy Kospi has been halted multiple times this year under a stock market mechanism known as a circuit breaker, which is designed to calm panic selling.

The index had more than doubled in value this year and despite a series of big falls since hitting a record high in mid-June it is still more than 50% higher than it was at the end of 2025.

Shares of AI-related companies rallied after Amazon and Microsoft beat earnings expectations.

On Thursday Amazon jumped by more than 9% in after-hours trading in New York on Thursday, while Microsoft gained more than 15%.

What you wear can help you get a job - here's how

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c80neg5rd81o, 5 days ago

Trying to secure her "dream job" with a fashion company, Taya Reed was highly aware she had to make a good first impression in the interviews. And how she dressed was going to be a key component.

A London-based science graduate from two top universities in the UK capital, the 23-year-old had applied for a marketing job at a womenswear brand. She had done her homework, and devised a promotional campaign for the business.

But Reed also put a great deal of thought into what she would wear for the interviews, the first online and another in person.

"I find outfits can be a good conversation starter," she says, adding she showed up to her main interview wearing an all-white ensemble with ballet flats, a long maxi skirt, and a white vest, all "girly and summery".

"I wanted to show I fit in with the company's culture."

It worked, and Reed got the job last month.

With youth unemployment stubbornly high on both sides of the Atlantic, young adults need to think of every possible way they can positively stand out in interviews.

And while substance matters, research suggests a person's appearance is also important. In a 2020 UK study, 51% of employers admitted turning down a candidate because of the way they looked, with managers indicating they had been influenced by scruffy clothes or poorly dyed hair.

Min-Hsuan Tu, a professor of human resources at the University of Buffalo, warns that job interviews can be unfair from the moment a candidate walks in.

The main author of a 2021 paper on the topic, she says good-looking people get hired more often because people associate attractiveness with positive traits such as trustworthiness and intelligence.

Individuals seen as attractive are likely to have received more positive attention and preferential treatment since childhood, helping them better learn non-verbal communication skills from an early age, Tu says. As a result, they can be more confident.

"Studies show that attractive people tend to have better communication skills and networks. They also have a higher sense of power," she says.

However, physical attractiveness is not limited to one's face or body shape but includes clothing and make-up. Making an effort to present well is important, says Tu.

I wore a shirt and trimmed my beard

Matt Cohen, a 31-year-old American who moved to London two years ago, aimed for a confident demeanour in his recent job interviews.

The holder of a master's degree in marketing, this month he landed his first post-graduation job after spending almost a year looking for work.

Despite a slow start, having sent out more than 100 cover letters, Cohen finally got an opportunity to shine with a few rounds of interviews that landed him an entry-level executive role at a media company.

Cohen wore a long sleeve buttoned-down shirt for interview, even though people in the company wore T-shirts.

"It's important that I appear professional, especially because I want to show I'm prepared if we have meetings with clients," he says.

He trimmed and groomed his beard, and made sure his short hair was neatly cut.

Besides appearances, Cohen also mastered non-verbal cues. "I try to give good eye contact, nod to what they're saying and show them I'm engaged," he says.

One interview technique helps him lower his stress levels and make a personal connection.

"I pretend they're already my friends and already offered me the job, and this interview is just about figuring out the details," he says. "I try to go into a zone - it usually works. I try to seem in control."

Caroline Hickey, a London-based career coach who advised both Reed and Cohen on how to interview, agrees that appearances matter, especially in such a competitive job market.

"Showing that you have taken care of your appearance and have presented yourself in a professional manner is an unconscious signal to the interviewer that you are taking the opportunity seriously," she says.

It also makes it easier for the interviewer to picture you in their office, or perhaps in front of a client, adds Hickey.

She argues that "knowing that you look good makes you more confident".

Madeline Drucker, 21, from Short Hills, New Jersey, agrees. She recently secured two internships through video interviews.

"I definitely prepared the same way I would for an in-person interview," she says. "I would do my hair, put on make-up, wear a nice sweater, and make sure my video background is clear and blurred so [the interviewers] are focused on me.

"When I feel like I look good, I feel more confident and perform better," she says, adding it is especially important on video calls where it can be harder to connect with people.

She wore green, her favourite colour, with a ring and bracelet to play with off-screen and calm herself. "I'm a fidgeter and that's distracting. The bracelet helps," she says.

As for Taya Reed back in London, part of her process was to do some deep breathing in a nearby park before the in-person interview.

"I tried my best to be super-relaxed, even if I was stressed inside," she says. "I'm so glad it worked out."

The 20-somethings betting big on tech stocks

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20yz9v1llro, 13 days ago

In her teens, Michelle Huynh, the eldest daughter of migrant parents in Australia, made a promise to her family that she would become a millionaire by the time she turned 30.

The 26-year-old describes it as "a somewhat silly promise" inspired by the sacrifices her non-English-speaking parents made to raise the family.

But she is trying to make that dream come true by investing her savings in the stock market.

"Times are so different and investing has become a necessity," says Huynh, who works in sales for a tech firm. "It feels like our purchasing power is shrinking. This is the only way to combat that."

This year, the technology-driven surge in stock markets has edged her closer to that goal.

With more than a third of her investments in tech stocks, by the middle of July that part of her savings had jumped this year by 50% - a rise of A$31,000 (£16,100; $21,666).

But those gains have now eased to about A$22,000 as the sector is going through what she calls a "wild moment".

Huynh says she's prepared for the volatility, viewing those investments as a long-term bet.

The rise in tech stocks, led by firms riding the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, has attracted large numbers of ordinary investors, many of them in their 20s and early 30s, even as some analysts warn that the fervour around AI may be overblown.

Retail investors have been caught up in the excitement, which has been fuelled by social media and marketing efforts to draw non-professionals, says Glenn Tan from advisory firm Providend.

Huge swings - both ways

The tech-heavy Nasdaq in the US is up by about 10% this year, while Japan's Nikkei 225 has risen by more than 20%.

But many tech stocks have seen big swings - both up and down.

That volatility is most apparent in South Korea. Seoul's Kospi index, which includes tech heavyweights like SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, has jumped by more than 50% since January.

The rally has attracted an army of retail investors, known locally as "ants", which has helped fuel volatile trading.

"I could maybe count with my hands the number of people who aren't investing today," South Korean investor U Chan Lee says. "Even stay-at-home mothers, like my mum, who has never been interested in the stock market, are now interested."

But the Kospi has seen some dramatic moves. Since hitting a record high of more than 9,000 points in June it has plunged to around 6,500.

Trading on the benchmark index has been halted seven times this year under a mechanism called the circuit breaker, designed to calm panic selling after it fell by 8%.

Those slides have raised concerns over people who have borrowed money to invest in stocks, leading to South Korean authorities taking action to curb the practice.

Lee, 30, sold many of his shares last year when the Kospi surged, concerned the market was becoming "too overheated". Since then, he has shifted to buying stocks when they fall and selling them when they rise a few days later.

The swings reflect the hazards of investing in tech, some analysts warn.

As governments and companies pour hundreds of billions of dollars into developing AI, sceptics are asking whether the technology will be profitable enough to justify such huge investments.

People often make bets on "optimistic outcomes" or "the most visible winners" that are not based on a business's profitability, analyst Lale Akoner from investment firm eToro says.

Retail investors often view drops in shares as buying opportunities, treating each sell-off as a "test of conviction", she says, but they need to be aware of "how painful valuation resets can be".

Chasing gains

Jacqueline Choi, from South Korea, says she missed out on bigger gains by not investing more ahead of the Kospi's rally, and was forced to sell Hyundai Motor and Samsung Electronics shares when she needed money.

"Why didn't I go in and buy those SK Hynix stocks or extra Samsung stocks with all of my savings?" the 28-year-old now wonders.

Earlier this month, computer chipmaker SK Hynix debuted in New York, raising $26.5bn to become the largest ever US listing by a foreign firm.

Some of Choi's friends have used thousands of dollars of their savings to invest in stocks.

"I should really invest more, knowing that investing can earn you so much more than your everyday job," she says.

Singaporean business student Shyan Lim is a firm believer in AI-related shares, putting about three-quarters of his savings into tech stocks.

The 24-year-old says there have been plenty of "uneasy" days when his investments plunged by as much as 10%, but he is willing to take his chances.

Overall, his bets have worked so far. In October, he invested 23,000 Singapore dollars (£13,185; $17,845) in chipmakers Intel and Micron. Those shares are now worth about 100,000 Singapore dollars.

"It feels like I'm one step closer to retirement," Lim says. "While I'm still young I think I can take the risk. I probably won't take such positions when I'm older."

With more than half of his investments in tech, George Lee, who recently graduated, says he is well aware of the lack of resources and other disadvantages that ordinary traders can face.

"Investing doesn't just come down to luck, though it does play a part," Lee says.

"As long as the fundamentals of a company don't change, I'm ready for the swings since I have time to let my shares run."

Not just down to luck

But not everyone is willing to bet it all on tech.

Singaporean student Ayush Deb says the sector accounts for only about a third of his investments. The 23-year-old says even that has been difficult for him, recalling how in June his memory chip-focused investments fell by more than 10% in just one day.

The same day, people on investment forums started discussing "who got burned".

"I've ridden the highs and lows of tech stocks but the sector is quite hard to read," says Deb, who has invested since his late teens. "I try to cut out a lot of the noise in this industry and focus on making informed picks."

Deb says he felt a sense of "FOMO" - fear of missing out - when he was unable to buy SpaceX stocks when Elon Musk's space and AI company listed in June.

But despite surging to $225 at one point, the shares have since dropped below their $135 stock market listing price.

That's as its potential for profitability has been questioned by some analysts.

Despite the buzz surrounding SpaceX, Singaporean investor Lim says he avoids newly listed stocks to give himself more time to study a company's operations.

He would do the same with Anthropic and OpenAI, as the leading AI developers eye $1 trillion stock market debuts, Lim adds.

In Sydney, Michelle Huynh, who creates her own finance-related social media content, says investing can be daunting for people entering the workforce because such skills are not widely taught in schools.

She added that staying on top of the news is an "underrated skill" and has recently turned to energy and metal stocks based on what she has read, believing they will benefit from heavy investment in chip manufacturing.

"I think many young people are afraid of investing - and validly so. It can feel like gambling if you're not aware of what's going on."

India wants to join the strawberry superpowers

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8x274xxxpwo, 3 days ago

In the west of India, the mountainous region of Mahabaleshwar is home to most of India's strawberry farms.

Around 85% of India's strawberry cultivation happens there.

An altitude of more than 1,000m (3,280ft) gifts the region a long cool growing season between November and March.

In addition, light, well-drained soil is well-suited to strawberry cultivation.

But that doesn't mean farmers have an easy life - it's a labour intensive and risky way to make a living.

"If you have a field full of strawberries and sudden heavy rains hit, the entire crop is ruined and we have to bear massive losses," says Sheetal Danavle who, with her husband, grows strawberries on half of their three-acre farm.

Strawberry plants have to be replaced every season and are not grown from seed. Instead, farmers buy young plants from suppliers. For Danavle, on her small farm, that's an outlay of $2,500 (£1,900) every year.

"If the season goes well, you can earn double your investment. But the climate makes it a huge gamble," she says.

Thousands of farmers grow strawberries across the Mahabaleshwar region, making the fruit one of the most profitable horticultural crops in western India.

Despite that success the industry still relies on varieties that are imported from California, Florida, Italy and Spain, as no one in India has developed a domestic plant.

It can take 10 to 15 years for breeders in the US and Europe to develop a top quality fruit and they patent their varieties.

"We import the certified mother plant from the breeder abroad," says Nelson Sequeira, the founder and director of Tara Farms Fresh, a licensed strawberry propagator.

Once imported the plants have to go through a government quarantine, before they are planted in a nursery. There the mother plant produces daughter plants and those are then sold to farmers.

"One single imported mother plant becomes an engine. That single mother plant will shoot out runners to yield an average of 20 daughter plants - with some advanced growers pushing that up to 30 or 40," says Sequeira.

It's a high-tech and precision operation.

"The plants do not touch the ground. We use large industrial pipes split completely in half to form long, rounded gutter containers," Sequeira explains.

"Instead of soil, we pack these containers with a specialized coco-peat substrate derived entirely from coconut husk. We then integrate a highly precise drip-irrigation and fogging system to control micro-climates."

Sequeira and other propagators rely on mother plants from abroad - for now.

But work at Mahatma Phule Krishi Vidyapeeth (MPKV), an agricultural university in Maharashtra, might change that.

MPKV has partnered with the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) on a breeding experiment.

Researchers are using controlled, low-dose gamma irradiation on plant tissues to induce stable genetic mutations.

"The goal is to fast-track the development of India's first indigenous, climate-resilient strawberry cultivar that matches the large fruit size and firm texture of foreign varieties while natively tolerating Indian heatwaves," says Dr Darshan Shashank Kadam, assistant professor of Horticulture at MPKV.

He admits it could be a long process, with results perhaps in 10 or 15 years. But in the near term they are helping farmers in other ways.

"We are developing scientific packages of practices for farmers. We have already standardised planting schedules, fertiliser recommendations and growth regulator applications specifically for Mahabaleshwar conditions," he says.

Large farms with more resources are investing in new technology.

Ketan Yashwant Sodha, is the founder and CEO of Berry Fresh Agrotech. He started with traditional open-field farming, but was frustrated by losses caused by the weather.

"For the past 10 years, it has consistently rained in India during our peak season - November, December, and the first week of January. When you are in an open field and your plantation is at its absolute peak, a single rain will ruin your entire crop," he says.

So in 2022, he started to experiment with hydroponics, a type of covered cultivation that does not use soil and tightly controls water, nutrients, light, and temperature.

His early results were not encouraging.

"I suffered immense losses and failed multiple times," Sodha says.

"The soil is forgiving; hydroponics does not forgive. If you make a mistake today, you will wake up tomorrow morning to a disaster - and the recovery time in hydroponics takes twice as long as soil."

But the lessons learned from those mistakes are paying off.

"We have trailed 19 different varieties, including rare Japanese ones, and we are the only ones in India trailing a specific Netherlands variety this season."

Sodha says that limiting each plant to 75ml of water a day produces "rich, highly concentrated sugars and aromas instead of water-logged, bland fruits".

His team also runs what he calls regular "blood work" on the crops, which involves laboratory testing of the leaves and petioles (the stalks attaching leaves to the stems) to measure exact nutrient uptake. That way he knows exactly which nutrients and chemicals need to go into the water supply.

And by using a semi-open polyhouse, strawberries can grow the whole year round. "It's not a seasonal fruit for us," Sodha says.

Now he is ready to scale-up.

"We have built the trial facility, written the SOPs (standard operating procedures), and designed the farm manual. We are talking to investors to expand to a five-acre facility that will accommodate 200,000 plants."

Krishan Bhilare's family has been farming strawberries for generations in Mahabaleshwar.

He can remember when the first American varieties were planted in 1992 and being amazed at the size of the fruit.

Bhilare is part of a Farmer Producer Organisation (FPO) network. They have installed towers at four strategic locations across their land. The towers monitor weather conditions.

The system employs AI, which uses the weather data to pinpoint when rain will strike. Farmers can then be advised to delay spraying their crops, so expensive chemicals are not just washed away.

The FPO is also building vertical towers, where strawberries can be grown on a coco-peat substrate, five layers deep.

"By stacking five pots into a single vertical tower, we can scale our density from 25,000 plants to 125,000 plants per acre. We are effectively multiplying our production footprint by five times on the exact same piece of land," says Bhilare.

But such investments are either beyond small farms, or a huge risk.

In 2017, Danavle and her husband experimented with hydroponic strawberry farming.

"The experiment was 100% successful and the fruits we grew were entirely organic. It saved us a lot of labour, the workers didn't have to constantly bend down or prune, and it saved us a lot of money on medicines and field manure."

But they were unlucky - a massive cyclone hit Mahabaleshwar that year.

"The cyclone completely knocked down our entire hydroponic setup. Then we did not have the courage to set it up again."

So, Sheetal went back to the traditional method of growing strawberries, but with a twist.

"I took help of social media. I post videos of how one can grow strawberries and invite tourists to visit my strawberry farm, learn and pick the fruit. They directly now buy from the farm. This has helped, cut the middle man, and make more profit. So, now I am an influencer and entrepreneur."

Sainsbury's agrees to sell Argos for £120m

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpw9yrl4p2qo, 2 days ago

Sainsbury's has agreed to sell Argos for £120m after a long process of trying to offload it as the supermarket chain aims to focus on its main food business.

Sainsbury's said it would be "business as usual" for Argos customers, staff, and suppliers. Shoppers will see no change as Argos will still operate in Sainsbury's shops, sell Habitat products, and offer Nectar points.

The buyer, Swift Partners, is a company that has been created to buy the brand and includes former Co-operative Group boss Richard Pennycook.

There are 667 Argos shops across the UK, with 201 operating as standalone stores and 466 operating within Sainsbury's. It also has more than 450 collection points.

Founded in 1973, Argos opened shops where customers browsed its catalogues and placed their orders, with products being delivered to tills from warehouses connected to the stores.

The Argos catalogue, once described by comedian Bill Bailey as the "laminated book of dreams", used to be a physical book.

Argos no longer prints this hefty tome, with its full range now available online instead. In store, customers can browse the product collection on tablet computers.

Sainsbury's has been trying to sell Argos - which has been seen as an underperforming brand - for some time.

Sainsbury's bought Argos – together with Habitat and all the other retail brands owned by Home Retail Group – in 2016 for £1.4bn. It then sold Argos financial services, which runs the Argos card, for around £720m in 2024.

In September last year, its talks to sell the rest of Argos to Chinese online retailer JD.com fell through.

Sainsbury's chief executive Simon Roberts said that all of Argos's nearly 14,000 staff would be transferred over to Swift Partners as part of the deal.

He also confirmed that Argos would continue to operate in Sainsbury's shops; Nectar will continue to be used across both Argos and Sainsbury's; and Sainsbury's will continue to sell Habitat products

Swift Partners' Pennycook said he believed "strongly in Argos's future and see real opportunities to invest and build on its progress".

The deal is expected to be completed in February next year.

Pennycook said there was the potential to open new standalone Argos shops – and did not rule out the possibility of the return of its print catalogue.

'Suboptimal performance'

Retail expert Catherine Shuttleworth said Argos has been a "distraction" from Sainsbury's main food business.

She said having new owners focused entirely on it gives Argos the potential to be a "really digital-first business".

She praised the user-friendliness of its app and said its click-and-collect model, where customers can order something online and pick it up from an Argos shop the same day, means it can give a "bloody nose" to online retail giants like Amazon.

Retail analyst Clive Black said he had always questioned whether Argos was "wholly aligned" with Sainsbury's grocery business, describing the supermarket group's attempt to sell Argos as "challenging and prolonged".

He said Argos has been a "suboptimal performer from a financial perspective".

In Sainsbury's latest results for the first three months of this year, group-wide sales were up 3.1%, although sales for Argos specifically had dipped 0.5%.

Bally Auluk, national officer at Usdaw, a union which represents Argos workers, said the announcement would create uncertainty, but that it welcomed Swift's commitment to "keeping the model of store in stores, standalone stores and local fulfilment centres".

Passenger on British Airways mayday flight describes fear and shout of 'I don't want to die'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9n2v3lwr0o, 2 days ago

A passenger on a British Airways flight that issued a distress call on approach to Heathrow Airport earlier this month has described the rising fear in the cabin and a lack of information from the crew.

Edward Killiwick had been travelling back from a friend's birthday party with his partner Julie, on the flight from Dusseldorf in Germany on 6 July.

He said passengers were told that the landing had been aborted, and then he felt a "very violent manoeuvre" and "did think we could crash". He and his partner had to comfort a woman who "completely lost it and started screaming, 'I don't want to die'".

The flight landed safely, but the incident is being investigated with assistance from BA.

The UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) said it was "investigating a serious incident", and France's accident investigation authority, the BEA, said on Wednesday that the plane, an Airbus A320, had issued a distress call.

Edward said: "The violent manoeuvre almost felt like it was avoiding another aircraft. You could feel the engines going at full power.

"It was a bit odd going around in a holding pattern with no information. I thought if they're not talking, then they're not in a good place."

He said they were in a holding pattern for about 15 minutes.

The BEA said that as the plane approached Heathrow, there was a data system failure which triggered a stall warning.

The crew then flew the aircraft in a different mode called "alternate law", which removes some automated flight protection systems. Another stall warning then occurred at 3,000 feet — which experts say was likely to have been just miles away from the airport.

The urgency call the crew had already made was upgraded to mayday, indicating imminent danger.

A British Airways spokesperson said the airline was assisting the AAIB with its investigation and was not legally able to comment further at this stage.

Edward said: "I was definitely scared. After the violent manoeuvre I thought, there is definitely something very badly wrong here. I did think we could crash.

"I did think it was a possibility, and I think everyone else did."

He added: "I think everyone was getting very scared, including one lady who completely lost it and started screaming 'I don't want to die.'

"Then we did land, but still no communication from the flight deck, which I suppose isn't surprising as I suppose they had quite a lot to do."

Several fire trucks and a police car were on the tarmac when the plane landed, Edward said.

"There was a few people that did clap, but not that many because I think everyone was just relieved to be on the ground," he said.

"Everyone was very, very quiet. There was almost no conversation. That's the eerie thing.

"Julie, my partner, did shed a few tears when we landed."

With additional reporting from Katy Austin

UK petrol prices hit highest level since Iran war began

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20zgjzz0e4o, 2 days ago

UK petrol prices have risen to their highest level since the beginning of the Iran war as the conflict continues to hit drivers' finances.

The average cost of petrol has reached 160p per litre, according to motoring group the RAC.

The price of fuel tends to track the wholesale price of oil, which surged when the Iran conflict began on 28 February as the fighting severely disrupted oil supplies across the Middle East.

Prices then nosedived when US and Iran agreed to a framework deal to end the conflict in June, but they have risen again since the collapse of peace talks.

How do wholesale oil prices affect the cost of petrol and diesel at the pump?

Crude oil is a key ingredient in petrol and diesel, which means that higher wholesale costs make filling up a car more expensive.

Analysts say every $10 (£7.44) per barrel increase in the oil price pushes up pump prices by roughly 7p a litre.

Since the war began, the price of a barrel of Brent crude – the global benchmark for wholesale oil prices – has been very volatile.

Generally speaking, news of further conflict drives the price up while hopes of an end to the war pushes the price down.

Before the conflict, Brent was about $70 a barrel, but the fighting saw it peak at above $120.

In early July, after the framework deal was signed, prices fell back to near the $70 a barrel mark.

When the peace talks collapsed, the price climbed back up again to above $100 a barrel, but are now around $90.

What has happened to petrol and diesel prices in the UK?

While petrol has hit its highest price since the Iran war began, according to the RAC, diesel remains below the peak of 191.54p a litre it reached on 15 April.

In early July, the RAC said the average price of petrol sank to a low of 150.59p per litre and 164.52p per litre for diesel.

Since then the prices have risen, with petrol now at 159.97p a litre while diesel costs 178.97p a litre.

RAC head of policy Simon Williams said the price of diesel was likely to reach 185p a litre "in the next few weeks, barring any major oil price reduction".

Despite the conflict, petrol and diesel prices remain below the levels reached in the summer of 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, when petrol reached 191.5p a litre and diesel hit 199p.

Because transporting oil is a slow process, price movements in the wholesale markets take about a fortnight to show at the pump.

Fuel retailers have denied accusations of price gouging during the conflict. The official markets regulator said it had "not seen evidence of retailers actively changing their pricing strategies to take advantage of the crisis".

A government scheme called Fuel Finder lets drivers compare the cost of fuel offered by petrol stations across the UK.

Luke Bosdet, the head of policy at the AA, said the group had been surprised at the speed that prices had fallen and put it down to the scheme.

On 20 May, the then Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said a planned 5p increase in fuel duty due in September would be postponed until 31 December because of the conflict.

Why has the Iran war had a big impact on oil prices?

The Middle East conflict sent global oil prices soaring as it effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz - one of the world's key water transport routes for oil, liquid natural gas and other essential commodities - limiting global supplies.

About 20% of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes through the waterway.

Even if a deal is agreed to reopen the strait, experts warn it will take time before normal levels of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz resume, and the impact of the war will continue to affect the global economy for potentially months to come.

Where does the UK get its oil and gas?

The UK is heavily reliant on oil and gas imports, with the majority coming from the US and Norway.

The price of oil on the global market determines how much the UK pays for it.

Although the UK does get some oil from the North Sea, most of that is exported for refining elsewhere.

You can also send us your questions by following this link

Reporting by Faarea Masud, Jemma Crew, Alex Daniel, Michael Race, Mitchell Labiak, and Miguel Roca-Terry

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Anthropic's Claude AI escapes to hack into three organisations

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7dl7w8y7po, 2 days ago

US technology firm Anthropic says its AI models hacked into the systems of three organisations on their own, during a private security experiment.

The models found a weakness in what was supposed to be an isolated test environment and connected to the internet.

It comes just days after rival OpenAI said that its models had breached the systems of other companies, including AI tools hub Hugging Face.

The announcement prompted Anthropic to check whether its own systems had carried out similar attacks. It says it uncovered three cases which have since been reported to the affected companies.

Anthropic, which did not name the organisations, urged other AI labs to perform similar reviews to better understand the risks of their models' capabilities.

Anthropic said in a statement it reviewed more than 140,000 tests to find evidence Claude - its family of AI models - had managed to get online even though it was supposed to be in an isolated test environment, cut off from the internet.

The tests included exercises in which Claude was tasked with obtaining "secret" information hidden on another machine on the closed-off network.

It was then told to get the information by breaking into the machine and finding it - a common way that experts assess a model's hacking capabilities.

A "misconfiguration" on systems run by Anthropic and its testing partner left the models with live internet access.

Treating it all as still part of the same exercise, Claude then connected to the internet and breached the systems of three real organisations rather than just test ones, the San Francisco-based firm said.

Anthropic said the earliest incidents date back to April and that it is "approaching the fixes as if the responsibility were ours alone."

Neither Anthropic nor the organisations that were breached had noticed the intrusions at the time.

Anthropic said it could have reviewed its records more thoroughly and added that the findings gave the firm "cautious optimism" that such risks can be overcome with more investment and tighter measures.

'Doing what they're told'

Professor Gina Neff, head of the Minderoo Centre at the University of Cambridge, said the review showed "AI models doing what people told them to".

"The moral of this story is not to fear robots that will take over, but the companies behind powerful AI agents who are making the decisions about what is safe for the rest of us," she said.

"It also shows why independent testing and government oversight is crucial."

Meanwhile, cyber-security expert David Allott from Veeam Software told the BBC the lesson to take from the cyber-attacks was "not necessarily that AI has developed a fundamentally new attack capability".

"Instead, it is that AI agents can combine capabilities, obtain credentials and system access to take actions autonomously, while adapting scope and scale at machine speed," he said.

The incidents come as tech firms pour billions of dollars into developing AI agents that can independently perform tasks ranging from research and customer support to cyber-security.

A string of AI-driven cyber-attacks has fuelled calls for tighter safeguards and oversight of the technology, over concerns about the risks posed by increasingly powerful autonomous systems.

US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that Washington is considering measures to rein in AI tools after recent cybersecurity incidents.

Over the last week, OpenAI has taken responsibility for at least two hacking incidents involving its platforms breaching the rules of what they were directed to do.

On 21 July, the ChatGPT-maker said its agent - an AI system that can operate alone after human instruction - went rogue and escaped its test limits to hack into Hugging Face.

OpenAI said the incident was "unprecedented", and it was investigating with Hugging Face, whose boss co-founder Thomas Wolf told the BBC that the incident is "a wake-up call" for the industry.

The incidents have been viewed with some scepticism as OpenAI and Anthropic prepare for blockbuster stock market listings that are expected to value each firm at around $1tn (£740bn).

An OpenAI spokesperson has said "we recognise there are a lot of questions and speculative details circulating" about the incident. They added that "we plan to publish a technical report of our learnings in the coming weeks".

Apple warns of future 'supply constraints' for Mac, iPhone, iPad

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c204nw64xwno, 3 days ago

Apple spooked Wall Street on Thursday by warning it expected a "significant" hit from growing supply constraints for its most popular products.

Shares in the company fell in after-hours trading by more than 7%, even as it showed a 16% increase in revenue to $109b (£81b) thanks in part to unexpectedly high iPhone sales, and a 26% increase in profits to $29b.

Outgoing chief executive Tim Cook said while the impact of supply constraints had already shown up with the availability of Mac computers, it was expected to worsen and spread to affect iPhone and iPad products.

"We're seeing some very significant constraints currently with limited flexibility in the supply chain to remedy it," Cook said.

One of the supply constraints was in key chip components of Apple's products, the firm said.

Devices such as Macs and iPhones require microprocessors with "advanced nodes" - essentially computer chip technology that allows them to operate more quickly - most of which Apple has manufactured through TSMC, which is based in Taiwan.

However, Cook insisted that the core issue was unexpected demand, mainly for iPhone and Mac products. Sales of those products grew 22% and 25% respectively during the June quarter.

Earlier this year, Apple said its iPhone 17 was so in demand that its launch was the biggest in the company's history.

"This is not a regular supply issue, it's a demand forecast issue to be candid," Cook added. "We've got a quarter ahead where we'll be scrambling on the supply side."

Apple also noted that its gross margin, or the amount of money it keeps from every sale, was 2% larger than it otherwise would have been during the last three months because of tariff refunds. That would mean the company received roughly $1.1b in such refunds, according to calculations by the BBC.

Cook said Apple intended to "reinvest the tariff refunds into the US".

The company previously said it intended to put $600b toward building out more domestic manufacturing over the next four years. China is currently the largest manufacturer of Apple's products.

Cook also addressed Apple's impending public relaunch of Siri, an AI assistant that the company has seemingly struggled to make competitive in an era of proliferating AI chatbots from the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic.

While the new version of Siri AI is still in public beta, essentially a testing phase before broader release, Cook said it is part of "an enormous opportunity for Apple going forward in AI."

"The ability to run on device is also very strategic, and sort of a competitive weapon, if you will," Cook said.

He added that negotiations with authorities in the European Union about releasing the new version of Siri are ongoing with the goal of making it available "to everyone, everywhere at the same time."

Boom in Amazon cloud boosts stocks

Investors proved less concerned with Amazon's future performance, pushing the company's stock up 10% in after hours trading.

Despite showing free cash flow of negative $7.6bn due to massive and ongoing spending on AI projects, Amazon's core businesses grew enough to offset any immediate worry on Wall Street.

Free cash flow is metric that details how much money is left over after a company pays for operations and investments. So, over the last year, Amazon has spent significantly more money that it has brought in.

Chief executive Andy Jassy boasted 37% growth in Amazon's Amazon Web Service (AWS) cloud business, noting it was the segment's best showing in four years.

"AWS is booming," he said.

Overall, Amazon's sales grew 20% compared to a year ago, to $200bn, while its profits more than doubled over the same period to hit $63bn.

Forrester analyst Tracy Woo said the growth in Amazon's cloud business was impressive and its combined company results were "a clear indicator that its infrastructure investments are meeting market demand rather than outpacing it."

The company's expectation that it will spend $220b this year on AI, up from a planned $200b just three months ago, did give Woo some slight concern over how successful such ongoing and ever-growing spending will be in the years ahead.

"The bigger question is whether long-term commitments, capacity, power, leases, and guarantees will continue to be a source of economic exposure when capacity comes online in 2027 and 2028," Woo said.

Thames Water boss says leakage targets 'not realistic'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c04kd3gl1gpo, 3 days ago

The boss of Thames Water has claimed targets the company has been set over things like leakages are "not realistic".

Thames has been criticised for its performance in recent years following a series of sewage discharges and leaks, and last year was fined a record £122.7m by regulator Ofwat, most of which was for breaching sewage spills rules.

Chris Weston said Thames wanted "to do better" but said some of its targets were not achievable.

Ofwat said company targets were "intended to be ambitious", while an environmental group said sewage pollution should not be accepted as inevitable.

Thames, which has struggled for years under billions of pounds of debt, faces being put in a form of temporary nationalisation known as a special administration regime.

But Weston said if that were to happen, there was a risk the taxpayer would have to bear the cost of funding it, and instead backed a rescue deal put forward by the firm's lenders.

Pollution targets

Water companies have performance commitments on issues such as leakage.

It is illegal to release raw sewage into rivers and seas during "normal" weather conditions, but firms are allowed to do so when it rains heavily, to prevent homes being flooded.

Thames is the UK's largest water company, supplying water and wastewater services to 16 million customers across London and parts of southern England.

Speaking to the BBC's Big Boss Interview podcast, Weston said the company treats 4.3 billion litres of waste a day, and "99.5% of the time" it gets treated successfully, although "sometimes something goes wrong".

"We want to do better when it comes to pollutions," he said, but added, "the targets that the company is expected to make are not realistic.

"[For example], we have to hit a certain level of leakage, but it is so far in excess of what we are capable of doing, I think anyone would be capable of doing, however much money you invested, that it is not going to be achievable."

The chance of getting to zero pollution was "very, very slim", he added.

Ofwat told the BBC: "With around a fifth of water put into supply still lost through leakage, companies must deliver on the commitments they have been funded to achieve.

"Water company targets are intended to be ambitious and drive better outcomes for customers and the environment."

A spokesperson for the Environment Agency said: "[We] and the public expect Thames Water to comply with the law," adding that the agency would continue to hold companies to account where performance falls short.

James Wallace, chief executive of campaign group River Action, said: "Thames Water's tactics of opacity and deflection fool no-one. Telling the public to save water while this wasteful profit-obsessed corporation leaks 570 million litres of treated drinking water every day is offensive.

"There is nothing 'realistic' about accepting sewage pollution as inevitable. The choice is simple: keep propping up a failed privatised financial model, or put Thames Water into special administration and rebuild it as a public utility serving customers, rivers and the public."

Whether or not Thames will be put in a special administration regime - which would allow the government to recoup some taxpayer cash if the company was sold to a private buyer - has long been the subject of speculation.

New Prime Minister Andy Burnham has backed direct public control of utilities, and while Weston said he agreed that greater public control and "an ability to hold us to account" was a good idea, he said special administration would not be the best solution for Thames, warning it could disrupt investment and leave taxpayers funding the company.

Instead, he supports a proposal from Thames' creditors that writes off about £9bn of debt, injects new investment and offers a "golden share" to the government which would give it veto powers over major decisions such as mergers.

The pay of water company bosses has also been widely criticised. Weston himself saw his pay increase 14% to £1.163m in the year to March, while other directors received bonuses totalling £4.1m, at a time when the company warns that it could run out of money by November.

But Weston defended Thames' pay levels, saying his own pay was set by a committee and that the company needed to be able to attract and retain talent.

"We need capable people to help turn this company around. And if we're not prepared to pay market rates, then they won't come to us and they won't stay with us."

He said he understood public anger towards the water industry, but thought it sometimes went too far.

"We do have physical assaults of our staff, verbal abuse. I get the same. None of that is acceptable or appropriate," he said.

Droughts 'the new normal'

Speaking in a week where more than half of England and all of Wales have been declared in drought, Weston said the hot, dry conditions we are currently seeing have become more common in recent years.

"We need to prepare for that and be ready to deal with this in the future," he said.

"This is absolutely the new normal."

Thames is one of several companies to have imposed a hosepipe ban and Weston said the UK had been complacent about water provision.

While January and February this year were extremely wet, since then rainfall had been "pitiful", he said, and called for more reservoirs to be approved.

"We do not have enough storage to get through a summer and we have to think about next winter as well without restricting people's usage of water."

Trump considering AI controls after OpenAI hacking incidents

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20dppq3y90o, 3 days ago

US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that his administration is considering asserting more power over artificial intelligence tools after recent cybersecurity incidents.

Asked about OpenAI's tools being responsible for improperly breaching the private technology of other companies, Trump said: "We're looking at AI, we're looking at controls, we're also making sure that we lead."

It marks a change of tone for his administration, which has taken a more hands-off approach to the technology.

Trump's comments come after an escalation of not only the apparent hacking capabilities of popular AI tools, but White House threats aimed at competing Chinese tech.

Trump added that while some kind of control around AI tools was on the table, such a move would have to be done carefully.

"We don't want to restrict them where all of the sudden we come in second to China," he said.

"China has virtually no [AI] controls. It's freewheeling a little bit," Trump added.

The White House has been contacted for additional comment. The BBC has also contacted the Chinese embassy in Washington for comment.

In the last week, OpenAI has taken responsibility for at least two hacking incidents involving its AI tools acting outside of what they were designed and directed to do.

During a trip to Washington on Wednesday, OpenAI's chief executive Sam Altman was asked by a reporter if there were more systems that had been breached by the company's tools.

"I mean, there could be yeah," Altman said.

The US government intervened when Anthropic, OpenAI's main American rival, decided to release to the public a model that it had previously said was too much of a risk to be made widely available.

Meanwhile, in an internal White House memo from April, Trump's senior tech advisor Michael Kratsios accused China's AI firms of "industrial-scale" theft of US AI technology. He did so again last week, claiming that the popular Kimi 3 AI model from China's Moonshot AI was developed by stealing information from Anthropic.

The Chinese government has consistently rejected such accusations.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has also warned that Chinese AI firms could face sanctions for such activity. And the Federal Communications Commission this week banned the importation of new foreign-made humanoid robots.

Most AI models being developed in China are open source, meaning they are built and then made freely available online for anyone with the proper computer equipment to download and use.

Recently, executives from most major US tech companies have signed onto public statements of support for open-source models.

From potato harvest to packet of crisps in 24 hours

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0qv8e87ve7o, 4 days ago

Crisp manufacturer Seabrook sells 460 million packets a year, but what does it take to turn a humble spud into a multipack ready for supermarkets and lunchboxes?

In a field near York, the journey from the soil to the shelf is just beginning.

The current crop, planted in April, is bound for the Seabrook factory in Bradford.

This field is the size of 17 football pitches and contains about 2.5m potatoes, with each one enough to be turned into a bag of crisps.

Technological developments in farming mean they can be lifted from the ground using a mechanical potato harvester, rather than the slow, laborious process of being dug up by hand.

"We are looking at around hopefully 300 tones of potatoes from here, which should keep the Seabrook factory going for about two days," says Polly Megginson, supply chain manager at R S Cockerill, which supplies potatoes to supermarkets and crisp processors.

"In about 27 tonnes of potatoes we have about 240,000 actual tubers and from each one of those will be one bag of crisps."

The Cockerill family began growing potatoes, as well as carrots, 80 years ago and have expanded their business ever since.

So what makes the perfect potato with the potential for bags of flavour?

"We are looking for a really nice, round potato - not too big, not too small, around 50ml," says Polly.

"Hopefully that will make the perfect crisp."

The planting process requires both patience and regular quality checks, but there is also one other key ingredient: rain.

In recent years, prolonged spells of hot and dry weather mean that has been harder to come by.

According to the Met Office, last year's summer was officially the warmest on record for the UK, with a drought declared in Yorkshire.

Spring 2026 was also the warmest on record for England and Wales.

"Our biggest challenge at the minute is water availability," says Joe Weston, farms director at R S Cockerill.

"We are having longer, hotter, dry summers and our availability of water is key to our ability to grow potatoes."

Polly says having to irrigate is an added expense in the production process, adding: "It's less so the quality [impacted] but more so the size and amount."

Once the potatoes have been harvested, they are transported about 50 miles to the Seabrook factory in Bradford, where the company's famous crinkle-cut crisps have been made since 1945.

The process starts with washing, peeling and slicing the potatoes into a crinkle shape before they are fried then sent on to be seasoned in a drum while they are still hot.

In total, turning a potato into a crisp takes about 40 minutes, according to Peter Bacon, preparation manager at Seabrook.

The whole process, from harvesting to processing at the factory, is about 24 hours.

"It's a very fast process," says Peter.

"A day we are talking one to two million packets.

"A year, we are talking 460 million."

Tommy Brown has worked at the factory for 40 years, following a family tradition, with his father also a former employee of Seabrook.

Having seen more crisps than he would care to remember, does he ever get sick of them?

"No. It's in my blood."

The UK loves crisps. According to survey company YouGov, Walkers is the third most popular food and snack brand among Brits, while Pringles comes in at number nine.

Estimates place the number of packets of crisps sold in the UK each year at 6bn.

But with harvests impacted by the warm weather, should crisp-lovers be worried?

"How I treat potatoes can change quite drastically, so if we have had a bad season potato-wise that directly impacts how I'm treating them," says Peter.

"The advantage that we have got is that we are very good at handling the potatoes and dealing with the variances, so we will be fine."

Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.

Wiped out by a hurricane, this US community is now a global energy giant

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0ejq9g2pz4o, 4 days ago

Michael Fewell points out that his corner of Louisiana has seen a remarkable improvement in its fortunes.

Back in 2005, Hurricane Rita ripped through the coastal county of Cameron Parish, destroying or badly damaging more than 90% of homes, with a repair bill of $2.75bn (£2bn).

"It looked like a war zone," says Fewell, who was 16 at the time.

He spent days driving his truck around towns, collecting dead cattle flung into people's homes and lining the roads. Between stops, he watched National Guard helicopters fly in vital drinking water.

"They were, by far, some of the darkest days of my life."

Fast forward to today, and Fewell is now president of the elected council that runs the county.

And he says that Cameron Parish, population approximately 4,700, is on course to become one of the wealthiest counties in the region. "We are going to have more money than we need."

It is all down to the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Today on a marsh in Cameron where cattle once grazed sits the world's largest LNG export terminal - Sabine Pass, which started to send the fuel overseas in 2016.

LNG is created by super-chilling natural gas down to -162C (-260F), which condenses it into a liquid. This reduces its volume by 600 times, requiring significantly less space for its storage and transportation by tanker ships.

Sabine Pass alone can process 29.5 million tonnes a year. The county is also home to another two LNG terminals, and a fourth is under construction.

Work on the latter, called Commonwealth LNG and costing $13bn, started in May. It is expected to produce 9.5 million tonnes of LNG a year by 2030 - enough to heat six million homes.

Across all its LNG terminals, Cameron Parish is projected to receive tax revenues of more than $4bn over the next decade.

Go back a decade and the US barely exported any LNG, but it is now the world's biggest supplier, and Louisiana ships around 60% of it, sourced via pipelines from elsewhere in the state, Texas, and even from as far away as Pennsylvania.

Two thirds of the Louisiana's LNG exports go from Cameron.

Tim Wyatt, president of Commonwealth's parent company, Caturus, says that amidst global instability the US is experiencing an LNG boom for a reason. "There is cheap, abundant supply here, while being a flexible, reliable, relatively low cost and transparent producer that flows to the places that need it the most."

It's boom time for Cameron, but not everyone sees this as a positive. LNG tankers are so large that shipping channels must be dug deeper and wider.

And if the dredged mud isn't contained properly, it spills into nearby waters. In one incident last year, around 15,000 cubic yards of removed material spread beyond its permitted area.

Fewell doesn't deny some local annoyance. "There is a lot of ship traffic and there's been some frustration, it's fully understood."

When asked about pushback from the local community, he points instead to the wealth creation. He says that median local household income was $75,000 in 2024, up by a quarter from $59,555 in 2010.

Much of the overseas demand for American LNG comes from Europe, which following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 rushed to replace Russian natural gas.

This year's US-Israel conflict with Iran has only increased Europe's reliance on American LNG, as Iran's efforts to block the Straight of Hormuz has hit LNG exports from another key exporter, Qatar.

The US now supplies about two-thirds of Europe's gas imports, up from roughly a quarter in 2021, according to energy analysts at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

Susan Bourgeois, secretary of Louisiana Economic Development, says that the state's LNG exports have helped Europe improve its supply security.

"They want reliable relationships for their energy," says Bourgeois. She points to buyers across Europe signing longer-term contracts since the invasion, not cargo-by-cargo as before. "It's about dependability and predictability, that's what matters."

That dependence has a cost, argues Ana Maria Jaller-Makarewicz, an analyst for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis global think tank. She says that Europe is now reliant on US LNG supplies, and competing with Asia for the same cargoes, which pushes up prices.

She says that the EU is expected to get as much as 80% of its LNG imports from the US by 2030.

Nowhere is that exposure felt more sharply than in Germany, the EU's biggest manufacturer, producing more than a quarter of the block's industrial output.

At InfraLeuna, a vast chemicals and plastics industrial park in central Germany, boss Christof Guenther has watched his site's annual gas bill climb from €60m ($68m; £51m) before the war in Ukraine, to an expected €200m this year amid the Iran crisis.

American gas isn't the answer, he says. "[Domestic] natural gas prices in the US are about 20 to 25% of the prices we are paying here." After being turned into LPG and shipped across the Atlantic the price shoots up.

With natural gas accounting for 12% of German power generation, and with half of German homes fitted with gas boilers, German households are also being affected.

The average home now pays 31% more for its electricity than before the Ukraine war, according to Clean Energy Wire, a Berlin-based news outlet covering Germany's energy transition. Gas prices for German households are also up over that period, over 74%, per the same source.

That is replicated across the European Union, where household electricity bills have risen 30% since 2021, according to official Eurostat figures.

Meanwhile, UK electricity prices are now around 38% higher than in mid-2021, while gas prices are at a 120% increase, according to data by regulator Ofgem.

Jaller-Makarewicz says this is the new normal until the EU reduces its gas consumption.

However, a 2025 US-EU trade deal, committing Europe to $750bn of American energy over three years - including LNG, oil and nuclear fuel - locks the relationship in further.

Back in Cameron, Fewell is less concerned with Europe's anxieties than with what the boom means for a community finally going from survival to hope.

"If I had one dream," he says, "it's to bring our youth back to our parish." His own children can look ahead to high-paying jobs without leaving home, a future he never thought possible while growing up there.

For a parish nearly emptied out 20 years ago, the LNG powering and heating Europe may be what allows it to thrive.

Beauty Pie founder on how she dropped out of university and built five beauty businesses

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jngmk93p9o, 4 days ago

The name Marcia Kilgore might not be instantly recognisable but her Beauty Pie brand is known the world over for being an industry game-changer with its online-only subscription model.

Before founding Beauty Pie in 2016, Kilgore had built other brands including luxury day spa Bliss, make-up and skincare range Soap & Glory and footwear brand FitFlop.

Here the 57-year-old serial entrepreneur shares her story and the five secrets to success she learned along the way.

1. You don't need a perfect plan

Kilgore didn't always know she wanted to be an entrepreneur but growing up she saw first-hand the stress that financial insecurity could cause.

"I remember deciding at eight-years-old that when I was my parents' age, I would never want to be stressed about my electric bill," she says.

That desire shaped her approach to work and risk. "I knew that working for other people wouldn't necessarily give me the freedom I wanted and at least when you are an entrepreneur, the risk is your own."

She didn't begin with a grand business plan - she moved from Canada to New York to study at Columbia University and her tuition plan fell through so she had to get a job to support herself.

"You can't sit around thinking: 'What am I going to do? You have to survive. I knew I had to use the skills I had to support myself and then I would figure it out."

She started working as a personal trainer and taking beauty classes in the evening.

"What ended up transpiring was that I was quite good at the beauty industry job," she says and eventually she dropped out of university to pursue a career in it.

2. Know the job inside out

Working in her salon, Kilgore says she was involved in every aspect of the business from the laundry, to performing treatments and training staff.

She says that practical experience was invaluable when she later opened Bliss Spa in London in the 1990s.

"I had trained loads of people ahead of the store opening but when we first opened it was so busy and a lot of them got afraid and quit.

"The good thing is I know how to wax and do facials so I could do all of the appointments myself."

Her advice is to start a business in an area where you have genuine knowledge.

"You want to have deep expertise, so you're not left swinging in the wind if people disappoint you or things come in from the side and surprise you," she says.

3. Challenge your own ideas

Kilgore recommends asking yourself why someone should care about your idea and be able to explain the value of an idea in one clear sentence.

"If you can't answer 'so what?' in one sentence, your idea isn't good enough yet."

That doesn't necessarily mean abandoning it but it needs to be refined more so its purpose is immediately understandable, she says.

Kilgore also warns against developing "ownership bias", believing an idea is brilliant simply because it belongs to them.

"You might think something is really great, but you're living in your own bubble," she says.

Her advice is to "test your idea with your target market before you go too far down the road of investing in something nobody cares about but you".

She adds that AI now offers significant opportunities to people starting their own business as "you don't need a huge budget for consultants".

"AI can spit your idea back and forth, challenge it and advise you on what you need to consider that you might not obviously see."

4. Expect sacrifice and be kind

When she was starting out in her career Kilgore realised she needed to be "someone that people look forward to being around".

It's important to be polite, punctual and nice as those qualities help you build loyalty, she says.

"I made sure I was the sunniest, hardest working and most diligent person to do that service."

"If you do a really great job, people will recommend you," she says and she soon opened a tiny beauty salon that became booked up months in advance.

She also explains you also need to be "willing to make some big sacrifices" to make your business successful.

"You're not going to have a lot of free time," she says as running a business requires you to be aware of changing customer behaviour, new competitors and wider market trends.

That often means reading, researching and connecting ideas outside of working hours.

Kilgore says the workload can feel easier if you have a curiosity around you as "that's what drives you".

She does have some non-negotiables and has made an effort not to miss important events while raising her children, including school plays and family holidays.

5. Do the deathbed test

A test that Kilgore has used throughout her career is the deathbed test where she asks whether a project will still feel worthwhile at the end of her life.

"Imagine you're on your deathbed, think about what you would have done differently and do that," she says.

"If it doesn't mean something, or you haven't done something good for people, are you going to feel that your life was really well spent?"

She adds that success for her isn't just about building another company but deciding which ideas are worth the time it will take to build them.

Trump administration bans new Chinese humanoid robots

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp9e2ex3ekyo, 5 days ago

The Trump administration on Tuesday announced a ban on new foreign-made humanoid robot imports to the US over "unacceptable risks" to America's national security.

The move applies to advanced robots - including humanoid and four-legged machines. Many of them are made in China, which is competing with the US to develop robotics and artificial intelligence (AI).

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) also banned imports of power inverters - devices used in data centres and solar panels - which it said could also pose a risk to the US economy.

The Chinese embassy in Washington said Beijing has long opposed the US' "politicising" of trade issues and sanctions based on "groundless pretexts".

FCC chairman Brendan Carr said the agency was doing its part "to secure America's critical supply chains".

The FCC has added the items to its Covered List - a register of goods and services that are deemed a risk to US national security.

The ban applies to new foreign-produced advanced robotic devices and power inverters and does not prevent the sale or import of any existing models that had been previously authorised by the FCC.

The FCC cited concerns that the use of foreign-made inverters could allow overseas firms to turn them off, steal data, facilitate remote access and surveillance by "foreign government actors, or be otherwise exploited through a cyberattack".

It added that the use of robots made outside the US could allow "malign actors to surveil Americans, enhance the capabilities of foreign intelligence services, or to remotely commandeer the robots".

The Chinese embassy in Washington also said Beijing will "take all necessary measures" in response to any moves that harm its interests, urging all countries to work together to develop AI "for the positive and for good".

It called on the US to "abandon its hegemonic mindset, and stop smearing Chinese companies and threatening them with sanctions".

The BBC has contacted major Chinese robot manufacturers Unitree, UBTech and AgiBot for comment.

China's exports have come under intense scrutiny by the US as the Trump administration attempts to address trade imbalances with the world's second largest economy.

Despite being the world's biggest exporter of electric vehicles, China has been effectively shut out of the American market by a steep tariff.

Washington has also blocked the sale of cutting-edge US semiconductors to China in a bid to protect national security, slow Beijing's military modernisation and maintain America's lead in AI.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has also warned that Chinese AI firms could face sanctions over allegations that they have stolen American intellectual property.

In response the Chinese government has said its country's development of AI was "the result of its own dedication and effort as well as international cooperation".

The US will be keen to avoid a repeat of the squeeze on supply chains that was triggered last year when China tightened export controls on rare earths - critical for electronics.

Chinese technology firms have rapidly developed humanoid robots to be used in settings including factories and homes.

Companies have also been quick to market their machines to businesses and the public ahead of US humanoid robot rivals like Elon Musk's Tesla and Boston Dynamics.

Why Wimbledon is serving Indian ice cream and Bollywood beats

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgdz0420xzo, 5 days ago

Few things are more sacrosanct in sport than Wimbledon.

Its all-white dress code for players, minimalist court-side advertising and association with strawberries and cream all remain fiercely guarded traditions.

Yet as the organisers of the world's oldest Grand Slam set out to crack cricket-obsessed India this year, Wimbledon had to abandon some of its trademark restraint to win over audiences in a country where tennis remains a niche sport.

Strawberries and cream got an Indian makeover after Wimbledon partnered with a historic Delhi kulfi (Indian ice cream) maker. Its Instagram channel shared reels of Roger Federer and other stars gliding across the court to popular 1990s Bollywood hits. The championships also welcomed celebrity cricketers and Indian influencers to the Royal Box, using their star power to broaden its appeal.

Wimbledon also hyper-localised its marketing effort with digital content scattered across various Indian languages.

The effort seems to have paid off.

Jannik Sinner's win over Alexander Zverev in the men's final reportedly drew some 2.7 million livestream viewers despite being played after midnight local time.

And on average 8,53,000 viewers tuned in to watch the tournament in India this year - up 18% over last - according to local media. JioStar - the platform which holds exclusive streaming rights for the matches - declined to share official data with the BBC.

Wimbledon's push to win India is strategic and not accidental, Darshana Bhalla, a sports branding expert told the BBC.

India is already Wimbledon's largest international audience by reach, and 2026 is a particularly important year with Arnav Paparkar becoming the first Indian in 36 years to reach the under-18 boys singles quarter finals.

"India is also seeing a stronger pipeline of young talent across both ATP and ITF circuits than it has in nearly a decade, and premium urban sports consumption is expanding rapidly beyond cricket, with streaming platforms able to target niche audiences at scale," says Bhalla.

The organisers of the game are capitalising on these shifts.

Sally Bolton, chief executive of the All England Lawn Tennis Club, Wimbledon's governing body, earlier told the Financial Times, that India has joined the US as a "main focus" for growing the grand slam's audience.

But with the country likely to become the world's most important growth market for sport in the coming years - the sector is estimated to grow at a compounded 12-14% rate to 2030, nearly double the global average according to KPMG - tournaments like Wimbledon are having to be more culturally specific in the way they engage Indian audiences.

"Wimbledon has understood one of the biggest shifts in global marketing. For decades, premium brands believed exclusivity came from distance. However, today they understand that exclusivity comes from belonging," says Bhalla.

"What they've changed is the entry point, instead of asking young Indians to first understand Wimbledon...they are allowing Indians to discover Wimbledon through familiar cultural cues. Like the kulfi collaboration, Punjabi, Bollywood and Tamil music infusion and Indian creators."

This, she says, is not just tactical social media engagement, but the creation of a cultural bridge for a vast potential audience currently focused on cricket.

For many younger Indians to whom Wimbledon can feel aspirational but also distant, "reducing this cultural distance" is important, Upasna Dash, founder of the Jajabor Brand Consultancy, told the BBC.

Its focus on social media led marketing is also rooted in how people discover events these days, she adds.

"Younger audiences often encounter global events through social media before they engage with the event itself. Instead of asking consumers to enter Wimbledon's world, the campaign briefly enters theirs."

For streaming platforms like JioStar too, the tournament offers a chance to broaden engagement with a new demographic, create calendar events and move away from focusing on a single sport.

It has been widely reported that JioStar was seeking to renegotiate its $3bn broadcast rights contract with the International Cricket Council for 2024-2027 due to financial losses.

The partnership still remains in force, but in such a scenario of uncertainty, increasing investment in tennis makes strategic sense, say experts.

"For JioStar, tennis broadens the engagement calendar, attracts affluent urban audiences and diversifies advertiser categories beyond cricket," says Bhalla.

"In India, cricket gives scale, tennis gives premium audiences…Wimbledon brings something cricket cannot - a premium, affluent, English-speaking, urban audience that brands in luxury, automotive, banking, fintech, travel and premium consumer goods actively."

Yet, for all the awareness the branding blitz has created around the tournament to convert to sustained, long term engagement with the sport, Wimbledon will have to "create lasting relevance long after the tournament ends", according to Aryan Anurag, co-founder, Binge Labs, a Delhi-based social media agency.

"If [these moments] are treated as one-off campaign tactics around a tournament, the impact is likely to be short-lived."

For the curiosity to translate into genuine fandom, there will have to be more grassroots engagement and continued market investment, adds Dash.

But for now, every major global sports property is watching Wimbledon's experiment, says Bhalla.

"If it demonstrates that culturally contextualised storytelling can materially increase engagement in India, then expect F-1, the NBA, the NFL, the UFC, La Liga and the Premier League to deepen their India-first content strategies."

Follow BBC News India on Instagram, YouTube, X and Facebook.

eBay agrees $56m settlement with bloggers over harassment case

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj039p238r5o, 5 days ago

eBay and some former executives have agreed to pay a couple $56m (£42m) after a campaign of harassment in retaliation for their online criticism of the firm.

In a statement on Tuesday, David and Ina Steiner, said they and eBay had reached a settlement stemming from the 2019 harassment they faced from several of the company's executives, as well as internal communications by eBay's then chief executive.

The Steiners ran a website and newsletter EcommerceBytes that was at times critical of eBay.

A group of now former company executives ultimately pleaded guilty to sending the couple a costume mask covered in pigs blood, a book on surviving the death of a spouse, among other threatening actions.

Other actions perpetrated against the Steiners included eBay executives sending them a funeral wreath and harassing messages on Twitter (the social media platform now known as X). Some even paid visits to the couple's Massachusetts home in a bid to install a tracking device on their car.

Seven former eBay executives pleaded guilty to the criminal charges between 2022 and 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

An FBI agent involved in the investigation said in 2024 that the former executives' actions were an "unprecedented, relentless, and over-the-top harassment campaign".

eBay was also criminally charged and entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the DOJ and agreed to pay a fine of $3m.

While eBay is paying the couple the bulk of the settlement, including $6m to "various non-profit organizations", Wenig is personally paying $1m toward the settlement.

Wenig left eBay in 2019. The same year, he had sent eBay's top communications executive a text message regarding Ina Steiner which said: "Take her down."

A representative of Wenig on Tuesday said earlier proceedings in the Steiners' lawsuit explained that his text was referring to a public relations strategy to combat purported errors in Ina Steiner's writing.

Wenig added: "No one should ever have been subjected to what the Steiners endured in 2019, and I'm saddened by it, especially because it occurred during my time as CEO of eBay. The harassment was deliberately done in secret."

His contribution is set to go to an unnamed charity that is "dedicated to protecting First Amendment rights" and will be gifted in the name of Ina Steiner, according to the couple's lawyers.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the right to freedom of speech.

Christopher Murphy of Scalli Murphy Law PC, which represented the Steiners in the case, said on Tuesday: "We believe this resolution sends a clear message that corporations and their executives cannot engage in this type of misconduct without facing significant consequences."

eBay said: "What the Steiners were subjected to by former eBay employees in 2019 was wrong, reprehensible and should never have happened."

The company condemned the former employees who ended up pleading guilty to criminal charges that led to the civil lawsuit, and admitted to an "unprofessional tone in internal communications" by Wenig and other former executives.

"This agreement is consistent with our commitment to fairly compensate the Steiners and fulfills our efforts to make things right," eBay said on Tuesday.

Chip stocks slide in US and Asia as AI jitters rattle investors

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly8zng43npo, 5 days ago

Shares in major chip firms have fallen sharply in the US and Asia as a sell-off in artificial intelligence-related stocks deepened.

Trading on South Korea's benchmark Kospi index was paused temporarily on Tuesday morning after sliding by 8%. It fell further after the 20-minute halt was lifted, closing 10.8% lower.

The slump was led by technology firms, with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix both falling by more than 13%.

It comes after AI chip giant Nvidia fell by 5% in New York on Monday, meaning it lost its position as the world's most valuable listed company to Apple.

The tech-heavy Kospi has been halted multiple times so far this year under a stock market mechanism known as a circuit breaker, which is designed to calm panic selling.

The index had more than doubled from the start of the year to mid-June but has since lost around a third of its value.

In recent months stock market trading has been particularly volatile in South Korea as it has attracted large numbers of retail investors.

On Monday, US-listed shares in SK Hynix fell by 7.5% to well below the $149 (£112.11) offer price when it made a record-breaking debut on the Nasdaq on 9 July.

Japan's Nikkei 225, which is also dominated by tech companies, closed almost 4% lower.

Jane Sydenham, investment director at investment manager Rathbones, said the Asian market slump came after "phenomenal rises" over the last few months.

She said the Korean market in particular is "very concentrated" with a lot of investment in Samsung and SK Synix, both of which fell sharply.

In addition, a lot of Korean investors buy stocks with debt, which "exaggerates the movements when we get a correction like this".

Sydenham said the sell-off was triggered by Nvidia, whose shares fell on Monday after the Wall Street Journal reported that it is in talks to provide around $250bn for OpenAI as part of a massive data-centre project.

The BBC has contacted Nvidia and OpenAI for comment.

The decline allowed Apple to overtake Nvidia as the world's most valuable company after the iPhone maker rose by about 25% this year.

Cheng Chye Hsern, head of investments at wealth manager Providend, said Apple is one the few tech firms "not taking part in the AI race".

He said this makes the stock appealing to investors who are concerned about the billions its rivals are spending on data centres.

Sydenham said AI spending among tech firms is "something that's been testing investors' nerves on and off in the last couple of months".

"Is it going to earn a proper return in the future? That's what investors are worried about."

Jun Bei Liu, the founder of investment firm Ten Cap, told the BBC there are also worries about increasing competition from China.

As such, she said investors are "taking some profit off the table" but are likely to reinvest in these stocks after the US holiday season, she said.

Shares in China's biggest memory chip maker, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), soared by nearly 470% as they made their debut in Shanghai on Monday.

The company said said it plans to use most of the proceeds from the initial public offering (IPO) to boost production and carry out more research and development.

CXMT manufactures dynamic random-access memory (Dram) chips that power AI data centres, mobile phones, PCs, tablets and other devices.

The big European stock markets all shrugged off the AI spending concerns when they opened on Tuesday.

The UK's FTSE 100 index, France's Cac 40, and the German Dax 40 have relatively less exposure to AI and were all around 0.6% up a couple of hours after trading began.

Johnson & Johnson offers up to $5.5bn to settle baby powder lawsuits

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyqnz52rp6o, 6 days ago

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has offered to pay as much as $5.5bn (£4.14bn) to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits in the US alleging that its baby powder and other products containing talcum cause ovarian cancer.

The proposed landmark settlement aims to close a long-running legal battle that has weighed on the New Jersey-based healthcare giant for years.

J&J has denied that its talc-based products caused cancer and has changed the formula of its widely used baby powder.

Erik Haas, the firm's vice president of litigation said on Monday that the allegations are "meritless" and that J&J was willing to settle in order to finally resolve the matter.

J&J said the settlement would cover about 76,000 cases, totalling most of the remaining talc-related claims. The firm said it will offer up to $3bn next year, with no additional payments due before 2028, it said.

The proposal must be accepted by legal firms representing 95% of the ovarian cancer claims in state and federal courts before it can be finalised, the J&J said.

Haas said in a statement that the company is confident that it would have "ultimately prevailed with further litigation" just as it has in the majority of cases heard in court to date.

He added that the proposed resolution "allows the company to put this matter behind it" and enable J&J to "remain focused on its mission to develop medicines and devices that save lives".

J&J's former consumer health business, Kenvue, holds liability for Johnson's baby powder outside North America.

Kenvue - which owns well-known brands including Band-Aid, Listerine, and Calpol - was spun off from J&J in 2022.

Lawsuits against J&J over its talc-based baby powder started as early as 2009.

Earlier in July, a federal court handed the firm a victory by questioning individual plaintiffs' ability to show that talc was the direct cause of their ovarian cancer.

Talc is a natural mineral made of magnesium, silicon, oxygen and hydrogen, known for its soapy feel and is often used in baby powder.

The company has faced lawsuits from consumers and their survivors who claim J&J's talc products caused cancer due to contamination with asbestos.

Talc is mined from the earth and is found in seams close to that of asbestos, which is a material known to cause cancer.

J&J has repeatedly denied the allegations and in its latest announcement said: "Studies show talc is safe, does not contain asbestos and does not cause cancer."

In 2022, J&J said it would stop making and selling its talc-based baby powder around the world.

The announcement came more than two years after it had ended sales of the product in the US.

"As part of a worldwide portfolio assessment, we have made the commercial decision to transition to an all cornstarch-based baby powder portfolio," J&J said at the time.

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Is it time to stop using glue and labels on paper?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c872nj1n4xyo, 6 days ago

It's quite literally a sticking point.

While paper or cardboard packaging might on its own be recyclable, the presence of a label, a seal or a coating can negate that.

That's because non-recyclable adhesives, or "stickies" as they are known as in the industry, can cause damage to recycling machinery, make the resulting batch of recycled paper inferior, or even cause a batch of paper to be recycled to be rejected, according to scientists at NC State University.

And that's a shame as paper is one of the most recycled materials in Europe - with around 74% of paper and board consumed in 2024 being recycled.

And European authorities are spurring firms to do better.

In August, a new Europe-wide packaging and packaging waste regulation (PPWR) kicks in ordering that all packaging should be minimum 70% recyclable by 2030, rising to 80% from 2038. In addition, German law will also require stricter reporting and licensing fees.

So, tackling stickies would be helpful. One solution has been to develop water soluble adhesives.

But what if you could skip the adhesive altogether?

That's the idea that three firms from Germany - Fraunhofer, Herrmann Ultraschall, and Henkel - have come up with.

It's no coincidence they are all German, as the country is known for its Packaging Valley, a hub for the packaging industry.

Their efforts to innovate are partly a bid to satisfy ever tightening regulation around commercial recycling, and rising fines for those who fall foul.

With that in mind, German research organisation Fraunhofer established the PAPURE project in 2023 to develop a laser-based heating process that can seal paper packaging without an adhesive at all.

From September, when the project is set to officially close, Fraunhofer hopes to find an industry partner to take the technology to market. Fraunhofer researchers exhibited their work at the Interpack packaging trade show in Dusseldorf in May, and are hopeful that the interest they attracted will come to fruition.

"There are not really many paper sealing technologies without any foreign materials, so it's a great technology and we feel it's likely that we can bring it to market," says researcher group leader Fabian Kayatz.

"If we are optimistic, we will have the first solution out in two years."

Also in 2023, engineering firm Hermann Ultraschall bought the rights to develop a patented ultrasonic paper sealing technology, a process which it likens to welding.

"We are really actively at the moment in discussion with several really big players in the market with the focus of bringing this technology into mass production," says Michael Baumann, the company's head of business development packaging.

"One customer told me this is an innovation they have never seen before."

Yet these seemingly simple solutions stem from complex technology, so naturally, there are challenges.

Firstly, it's not as simple as simply getting product manufacturers and packaging companies to swap out their old packaging for these new options. It requires updating, and in some cases, completely replacing, existing machinery, which can be costly and time consuming.

"The packaging industry has existing machines which are all designed for glue materials. Some kind of redesign is probably necessary, and this is our biggest challenge," says Hermann Ultraschall's Baumann.

Yet Volker Franke, also a research group leader at Fraunhofer, is confident that those existing machines can be modified by integrating the laser module that PAPURE has been developing.

They both acknowledge that the production rate is also currently much slower than that for paper packaging that uses adhesives, but Franke says a key benefit PAPURE is selling is fully automated production, which he believes can continue to be developed for speed.

The other issue is that the technologies don't work on all types of paper.

"It's not possible to bond every paper material," Baumann confirms. "But we are actively in discussion with paper manufacturers about how they can produce a raw material in a way that makes it easy to bond."

PAPURE has also yet to find a way to apply their laser sealing technology to food-grade packaging, which needs a coating to protect the item. This tends to be why plastic is often favoured for packaging food.

But this is something Henkel, with both a consumer brand division, and adhesive technologies division, has cracked.

In February, Henkel announced the launch of the first cold seal solution that works with barrier coated paper, which is both recyclable and suitable for food products.

Barrier paper can be a difficult surface to bond, and using heat isn't suitable for heat sensitive food products like ice cream or chocolate. Hence the cold seal solution, in which enough pressure is applied for the barrier coated paper to be bonded against itself.

Henkel's cold seal solution is already available for packaging manufacturers to apply to barrier coated paper. It is already being used in snack and confectionery products, but Henkel could not say which ones.

Henkel had previously developed a heat seal solution for paper that is fully recyclable. This has enabled Italian brand Regina, for example, to switch from plastic to paper packaging for its hygiene products like toilet roll, kitchen paper and napkins.

"Since paper is already very established in the recycling infrastructure, it's a very obvious solution when we think about how we can improve the sustainability and recyclability of our packaging," explains Dr Arianna Savini. She's the market strategy manager for paper packaging Europe at Henkel's adhesive technologies division.

"This is really a system shift. You need to engage with all the players in the supply chain to enable this change. But there is good momentum in the industry now because of the PPWR deadline, so everyone is very active at the moment, trying to make this change."

Improving the recyclability of paper is also more straightforward than trying to do the same with plastic, she adds.

Jamie Stone is a packaging expert at global innovation consultancy PA Consulting. He explains that there's a lot that can go wrong when trying to marry recyclable paper packaging with a compatible sealant.

"For example, take a yoghurt pot made from folded paper fibre. You need a barrier layer between the paper fibre and the yoghurt to protect the shelf life, and you also need a secure lid. So, you're immediately dealing with multiple surfaces that all have to work together," says London-based Stone.

"If the barrier layer is a liner, which is best for recycling, it needs to be very thin. It also needs to bond really well to the paper fibre part. If it doesn't stick well enough, you risk pulling out the lining with the lid still attached – leaving a messy, partially sealed pot of yoghurt, which is clearly not a good consumer experience."

But there's also a bigger problem at play than a little glue. When paper doesn't get recycled it's more likely to be because of poor collection and sorting methods, argues Ambarish Mitra, co-founder of Greyparrot, a waste analytics platform used by big waste collection companies, as well as local authorities.

"A lot of paper and card doesn't get recycled because it gets dirty or mixed in with other rubbish before it even reaches a recycling plant, not because of the glue holding it together," says Mitra.

PA Consulting's Stone agrees, though, that new paper sealing technologies are "a smart place to start".

"We'll see the real sustainability benefits start to scale as technologies like these mature and begin to handle more complex, high-barrier paper-based packaging, while matching the speed and cost of plastic packaging lines," he concludes.

Chinese chipmaker shares surge nearly 470% in blockbuster stock market debut

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9q9w3x9qn2o, 6 days ago

Shares in China's biggest memory chip maker have soared by nearly 470% as they made their debut on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's tech-heavy Star Market.

The surge has pushed ChangXin Memory Technologies' (CXMT) stock market valuation to around 3.3 trillion yuan ($487bn; £365bn), making it the most valuable listed company in mainland China.

The spectacular debut comes despite a sharp sell-off in technology stocks around the world this month.

CXMT manufactures dynamic random-access memory (Dram) chips that power AI data centres, mobile phones, PCs, tablets and other devices.

The firm, which was founded in 2016 by Chairman Zhu Yiming, is headquartered in Hefei, Anhui Province in eastern China.

The company has said it plans to use most of the proceeds from the initial public offering (IPO) to boost production and carry out more research and development.

The stellar performance of its IPO will offer some comfort to Chinese financial officials, who have been rolling out measures to help curb a stock market slump that wiped out more than $1.5tn in recent weeks.

Analysts said the jump was also being driven by demand for the shares far outstripping supply.

"The reason for the extraordinary bounce this morning is that only 7% of the shares are available for trading," Anna Macdonald, investment strategy director at Hargreaves Lansdown told the BBC's Today programme.

It also highlights Chinese investors' strong appetite for a homegrown chipmaker, as the government in Beijing pushes ahead with plans to make its technology industry self-reliant.

South Korean tech giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix and US-based Micron dominate the Dram market, with the three companies accounting for around 90% of global production.

Earlier this month, SK Hynix raised $26.5bn (£19.8bn) in its New York share offering, marking the largest ever listing by a foreign firm in the US.

The company, a key supplier to AI chip giant Nvidia, said it had sold 177.9 million American depositary shares for $149 each.

The shares surged as much as 17% in their first day of trading on the Nasdaq but have since given up some of that gain.

SK Hynix saw its market value top $1tn in its home country in May, lifted by the boom in demand for AI chips.

Once an affordable component used to build devices, memory prices have more than doubled in recent months - and are still rising.

Some big tech firms have hiked the price of popular gadgets, such as tablets and video game consoles, to cope with rising component costs.

Ellie Wong, an analyst at technology research firm TrendForce, told Reuters such price increases were expected to continue until the end of 2027.

"Amid persistent supply shortages, many customers are seeking to diversify their memory supplier base, which should significantly benefit CXMT and create more business opportunities," she said.

Shein swings to $99m loss as Trump tariffs hit sales

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyj8v0rek8o, 7 days ago

Shein says it swung to a quarterly loss as its sales slowed after US President Donald Trump removed an import duty exemption on small packages.

It also comes as uncertainty remains over the tit-for-tat US-China tariffs wars, which is currently paused.

The fast-fashion giant, which has its headquarters in Singapore but was founded in China, said it lost $99m (£74.1m) in the first three months of the year, compared with a net income of $395m a year earlier.

The announcement is part of the firm's preparations ahead of its stock market debut in Hong Kong, although the filing did not give any details on the size, timetable or pricing of the planned initial public offering (IPO).

"In response to the increased duties and taxes, we are pursuing a wide range of options, including increasing our prices in the US market to offset a portion of the increased costs," Shein said in the filing.

The company also said the Iran war had hit demand, increased costs and caused delays of deliveries in some markets.

The first-quarter figures also partly reflected a paper loss of $328m due to an accounting change for special investor shares. The shares can be turned into ordinary stock later, and their value can change before a listing.

The filing showed that in the year to the end of March 2026 Shein had 281 million active customers - a rise of more than 16% on a year earlier - who placed a total of more than one billion orders.

On 10 July, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) gave Shein approval for a Hong Kong share sale after failed attempts to list in New York and London.

The Hong Kong share listing is expected to take place in the coming months.

The figures show the impact of a Trump-signed executive order to end a global tariff exemption that had been used by US shoppers of low-cost goods.

That order, which came into effect on 29 August 2025, broadened an earlier presidential action which specifically targeted cheap products from China and Hong Kong to cover the rest of the world.

The so-called de minimis exemption had allowed goods valued at $800 or less to enter the US without paying any tariffs. US consumers relied on the exemption to buy cheap goods from online commerce sites like Shein and Temu.

The White House said the global exemption was being used to "evade tariffs and funnel deadly synthetic opioids" to the US.

"The removal of the US de minimis exemption has had an adverse impact on our sales in the US and the overall growth of our net revenues," Shein said in the filing.

Earlier in July, the European Union imposed a €3 (£2.56; $3.42) levy on low-value e-commerce imports.

The measure is aimed to curb what the trading bloc has said is unfair competition from China.

Would you pay $58.5m to live in this iconic New York building?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20e5r1pvvdo, 8 days ago

The Flatiron Building - with its unique triangular shape, narrow prow, ornamental columns and intricate decorative details - has been one of the most recognisable structures in New York City for more than a century.

But for the last seven years, the Flatiron has been shrouded in scaffolding, its Beaux-Arts exterior hidden from throngs of tourists who came to view it.

It has been undergoing a large-scale renovation, both internal and external, from an awkwardly laid-out office building into ultra-luxury apartments - with new units going for up to $58.5m (£43.9m). Only 21 residences currently on the public market or under contract in New York City are priced higher, with the top spot occupied by a $128m (£96.1m) condo off Central Park, according to data compiled by Manhattan Miami Real Estate.

Now, with its transformation nearly complete, the Flatiron is ready for its next - and most extravagant - phase of life.

For over 120 years, the building has been a testament to architectural ingenuity, and while that history is highlighted in its redevelopment, the building is also becoming a symbol of just how expensive the city's luxury apartments can get.

A dramatic impact on the neighbourhood

The Flatiron Building's renaissance harkens back to when it was originally built.

Completed in 1902, the building was an architectural marvel with a pioneering steel-frame construction making it one of the city's first skyscrapers.

Designed by architect Daniel Burnham to fit onto a wedge-shaped plot of land at the intersection of Broadway and Fifth Avenue, it was initially dubbed "Burnham's Folly" because locals feared that its height and thinness would cause it to blow over.

For years, tourists flocked to a small triangular plaza out front to snap a selfie with the full structure behind them.

But after the scaffolding went up and the pandemic hit, the plaza saw a slight drop in visitors, said James Mettham, president of Flatiron NoMad Partnership, a business improvement district that operates the space.

As the scaffolding has come down, he says the visitors have returned.

"People are coming back to get their pictures, and then in turn will go shop at the local retail, and all the great food and beverage that's around here," Mettham said.

"So getting it back in all of its glory to complement everything that's been going on around it is really important."

Originally built to house the Fuller Company, a Chicago construction firm, the 24-storey, 94m (307ft) tall building has had many occupants, including clothing and toy companies, magazines, and publishing houses.

But in its 100-plus-year history, it was always an office space – until now.

After the last office tenants, Macmillan Publishing, moved out in 2019, scaffolding went up and it sat vacant through years of ownership disputes.

The building's current owners – the Brodsky Organization, GFP Real Estate, and the Sorgente Group - began renovations in 2023, after announcing they would convert it into high-end condos.

Once completed, the building will have 36 open-concept apartments – some half-floor and some full-floor units – ranging from $11m (£8.3m) for three-bedroom units to $58.5m (£43.9m) for a full-floor five-bedroom residence with a balcony, which is currently in contract.

Amenities also are being added to the building's basement and common spaces, including a 18m (60 ft) pool, billiards room and piano lounge, and wellness centre.

New residents are expected to start moving in in the coming months, the owners say. All units and amenities are expected to be finished in early 2027.

How do you make a triangular residence desirable?

When New York design firm Studio Sofield was hired to reimagine the building's interior, it had to address the problem of the building's previous life as an office space, co-founder William Sofield said.

Another big hurdle came with the building's shape. How do you subdivide a triangle – just 1.8m (6ft) across at its narrowest point - into luxury apartments worthy of a multimillion-dollar price tag?

But the triangle itself – along with its history, architectural ingenuity, and novelty – is exactly the point.

"It wasn't about changing anything that makes the building so special and beloved to New Yorkers," Thomas Brodsky, partner at the Brodsky Organization, told the BBC.

"The layouts and the proportions and views really came directly from the architecture rather than from how we generally would start planning a building from the ground up."

Originally designed to evoke a classic Greek column, the structure's limestone, brick and terra-cotta exterior features ornamentation including lion heads, wreaths, eagles, and faces.

Beyer Blinder Belle, lead developer on the building's exterior, enlisted a speciality manufacturer in California to replicate and restore thousands of terra-cotta pieces from the facade, reinstalling each by hand.

The building's windows, totalling over 1,000, also needed to be replaced – dating back to the 1970s, they were too heavy, hard to open, and not energy efficient.

The new ones are thick enough to block the bustling noise of surrounding streets, offering silence in units that's uncharacteristic of New York City apartments.

Steel beams holding up the skyscraper are exposed in various corners of residential units - an homage to what made the original building so innovative. In the 12th-floor model unit, the steel framework has even been turned into closet shelving.

The scaffolding is expected to be fully removed by the end of summer.

When the restored exterior is unveiled for the first time in seven years and illuminated for the first time ever, everyone will get to appreciate its beauty, said Mettham.

"Whether it's functioning as an office for one of the world's largest publishing companies, or it happens to have really expensive condos," he said, sitting in a small plaza at the building's prow, "the exterior, and what we see from these spaces right here, we share in that. We are all part of that."

Old menus, a hidden balcony and a wooden revolving door

The redevelopment led to some unexpected discoveries.

While removing sheetrock during demolition, workers found remnants of a balcony at the triangular point on the 20th floor, identical to an existing balcony one floor above.

"It's kind of the hidden jewel in the building that nobody knew about," said Carlos Cardoso, partner at Beyer Blinder Belle.

That balcony, overlooking the treetops of Madison Square Park and the length of Broadway, has now been restored.

Going through the building's cavernous basement – which once housed two restaurants – crews found fragments of a wooden, revolving door dating back to the 1910s. That door was so damaged that it couldn't be salvaged, Cardoso said, so it was replicated.

The building's developers have found other ways to incorporate the building's past into its new life.

Steel balustrades from an old staircase found in the basement were repurposed as legs for apartments' bathroom sinks. Mosaic tile lettering on the floors marking each apartment number is a recreation of the originals.

Other artifacts found in the basement – tools, a piano, original restaurant menus, shoes, advertisements, shirts, lights, and buckets – will be displayed in glass cases in the lobby, giving modern dwellers a glimpse of Flatiron's past.

A "nearly forgotten" historic streetlamp that once stood outside on 23rd Street has been reimagined as a chandelier in the lobby, Sofield said.

Paneling from one of the building's original restaurants was recreated in the trim of the new pool. Vintage planters and awnings as well as antique light fixtures and window curtains are being incorporated into the street fronts.

And the building's entire facade – with its unique form and intricate detailing - will be showcased with new lights, allowing passersby to admire it at night.

"Unlike many buildings in New York, the Flatiron is seen in the round," Sofield said. "All sides are extraordinary."

'It eats away at my body': The human cost of S Korea's ultra-convenient overnight deliveries

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq6dgz7e4m8o, 9 days ago

A week before her son died Park Mi-suk asked him to quit his job.

For more than a year, the 27-year-old had been working overnight shifts at a warehouse for the country's largest online retailer, Coupang. He steered pallet movers with stacks of plastic bins and cardboard boxes across the sprawling space.

In that time, Park says, her son lost 15kg and often complained of how tired he was.

But Jang Deok-jun refused to quit. He compared his job to being on a seesaw: if he stepped down, his co-workers would struggle to keep going.

The following week, Park found him unconscious and hunched over in the bath.

"We pulled him out and performed first aid. We rushed him to hospital, where they declared him dead."

Jang died of a heart attack. The state-run insurer that covers healthcare for workers, Comwel, blamed his death on overwork following an investigation.

Park wishes she had noticed Jang's exhaustion sooner. "I didn't pay attention to my son's words, so I lost my son. But I hope others won't repeat the same mistake."

Jang died in 2020 but six years on, Park is still fighting to end what she believes is the reason for his death: night-time deliveries.

Jang died as deliveries surged during the pandemic, which was often cited to explain his workload.

But the working conditions for warehouse and delivery workers have been the subject of a growing national debate, with their union claiming that suspected deaths from overwork have continued.

Night-time deliveries have become ubiquitous in hyper-connected South Korea, where shoppers are guaranteed delivery by 07:00 for orders placed before midnight. This convenience is thanks to a huge overnight workforce, from warehouse workers like Jang to delivery drivers.

Several companies compete to offer speedy, cheap deliveries but the biggest is Coupang.

Founded by a Korean-American, it became synonymous with online shopping in South Korea after 2015, when it started offering fresh produce overnight. It has grown to have an unrivalled network of warehouses and delivery trucks, with nearly 100,000 employees across the business.

But increasingly, this industry is under scrutiny.

Between 2020 and May 2026, Comwel ruled that 46 warehouse and delivery workers, including Jang, died of a stroke or heart disease that count as work-related deaths. Jang aside, it's unclear how many of them worked overnight shifts.

Comwel did not say how many of these cases were also investigated for the role of overwork, which only happens if the family asks for it in their claim. And not every case is referred to Comwel in the first place, so the data can be patchy.

Previously Comwel data suggested that day-time delivery workers died of overwork and accidents at a higher rate than those who work overnight.

But that is now questioned by those who say night-time deliveries are expanding fast, and there is not enough data to fully document their impact yet. The workers' union also argues that the latter is more harmful to health in the long-term.

Night-time work is a probable cause of cancer globally, according to the UN's cancer research body. "Not only that, evidence has been accumulating that it also raises the risk of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and mental illness," says Kang Mo-yeol, professor of occupational medicine at the Catholic University of Korea.

South Korea doesn't limit overnight working hours, unlike in the UK, where night-time delivery drivers cannot work more than 10 out of 24 hours.

The Korean delivery workers' union called for a ban on overnight deliveries in 2025, but the union for Coupang's drivers says nearly all of their members prefer working at night.

Some have children, elderly or ill family members to care for during the day and, more importantly, it pays better.

"I can't do this for life because it eats away at my body," says Kim, a Coupang driver on a sub-contract, who did not want to share his real name. But he adds that his monthly salary of around 7m won ($4,600; £3,430) - nearly double the national average - makes it worth it.

When the BBC met him at 22:00, he had already loaded his truck for the first round of deliveries.

Driving through the narrow streets of Incheon city, west of the capital Seoul, he explains that he works from 21:00 to 07:00, five to six days a week.

His schedule does not allow for a break. Every time the truck stops, he runs, package in hand. Nearly all drivers are paid by the number of packages they deliver and if they fail to make all deliveries by 07:00, they risk losing their "territory" to a competitor, he says.

At first, his pregnant wife was scared he might fall asleep at the wheel. But he is used to it now, he insists, and he finds it easier to navigate the night's empty streets.

"We choose to deliver overnight for the money," Kim says. The way he sees it, those who are saying overnight deliveries should stop because they affect his health are ignoring the choice he has made.

But men like Kim are becoming invisible, Jang's mother Park says, as the demand for fast deliveries grows, normalising the industry.

Park spoke to the BBC outside Coupang's headquarters in Seoul's office district of Songpa. Standing alone in front of the gate, she told staff streaming out for lunch to remember her son and others like him. Few paid attention.

Park says one of the challenges is how hard it is to hold employers accountable in cases like Jang's.

She says it was on her to prove that her son had died from overwork, and Coupang was obligated to provide records, including security camera footage, to Comwel, but not her. After months of leaning on lawmakers and government agencies, she received Jang's work log and relevant CCTV footage.

In the months before his death, Jang's working hours met the bar for how South Korean law defines deaths related to overwork: heart attacks or brain strokes after an average 60-hour-week over 12 weeks, or 64 hours a week in the four weeks leading up to death.

Jang's overnight hours counted 30% more towards the calculation, according to Comwel's rules.

As Park continued her fight, local media published what Coupang's former chief privacy officer claimed was a conversation with Chairman Bom Kim.

In the leaked chat, Kim orders the executive to remove mentions of Jang "working hard" from internal reports: a phrase several employees used to describe Jang's final shift. Coupang called it a "groundless" claim by a disgruntled former executive.

But the union accused the firm of covering up evidence and filed a criminal complaint. The police launched an investigation into Coupang in December 2025. Coupang denies the accusation, saying it had submitted everything that was requested and had fully cooperated with Comwel's investigation.

By then, another high-profile case was in the headlines. Oh Seung-yong, 34, died after crashing his truck into a pole during a delivery run. It was an "occupational death", or work played a role, Comwel ruled.

Oh's sister told parliament his work log showed that he had been working six days a week, more than 11 hours a day, and mostly at night. According to her, when their father had died days earlier, Oh delivered orders for another four hours before coming to hospital. He worked for a logistics company contracted by Coupang.

Coupang says it restricts its employees to working for under 52 hours and gives sub-contracted drivers the full weekend off every two weeks. But the union alleges that this was not enforced by Oh's employer.

The firm added that it fully pays for health check-ups for direct employees and sub-contracted drivers, and "has never had a single industrial accident death, which is the best safety record in the entire global logistics industry".

Coupang CEO Harold Rogers was summoned to parliament in December 2025 over the deaths of Jang and Oh, as well as to answer for a recent data breach at his firm, involving 37.5 million users. The country's largest ever breach, it earned them a record $410m fine.

During the televised hearing, Park demanded that Coupang's Chairman Kim be held accountable for her son's death, while Oh's sister asked for an apology from Rogers. He said he was "sorry" and offered his "deepest condolences". When Oh's sister pressed further, he was silent.

The investigation into Coupang has also raised key questions for President Lee Jae Myung, who has a disability in his left arm from an old injury at a factory. He made it one of his priorities to reduce workplace injuries and deaths.

Stories like Jang's and Oh's resonate deeply in South Korea, where gruelling work hours are no anomaly. It has one of the highest rates of workplace deaths among developed countries, a grim statistic it has been trying to improve for decades.

The government has capped weekly work hours at 52 and passed a law to jail executives for negligence leading to workplace deaths.

To break Coupang's stranglehold, the governing party even proposed relaxing existing restrictions so more retailers can deliver overnight. But the bill angered unions, activists and Park, who say the challenge goes beyond Coupang.

"I've been haunting the streets since my son died," Park says.

Because of all the time spent fighting for compensation and answers, she was forced to close her furniture-making business. She could no longer afford to live in her old home and moved to a rental apartment in Daegu city.

She has kept all of Jang's belongings, including his collection of action figures. They sit in a box in her new apartment.

She isn't ready to say goodbye yet, or to give up her fight.

Recalling how Jang compared his work to riding a seesaw, where he held down one end, she says she sees it differently now.

Jang and tens of thousands of workers like him are on one side for the convenience of the consumers on the other end, she says.

"I hope we don't become a society where we close our eyes to others' sacrifice for a little convenience."

Tech titan ordered to pay ex-wife $644m in divorce settlement

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg68jky65eo, 9 days ago

The chairman of corporate giant SK Group has been ordered by a South Korean court to pay his ex-wife 944bn won (£483m; $644m) in a case that local media has called the "divorce of the century".

The award, which still needs to be finalised, is below the initial 1.38tn won that chairman Chey Tae-won was told to pay Roh Soh-yeong in 2024.

It comes more than a decade after his marriage to Roh - the daughter of a former president - fell apart following the revelation he had fathered a child with another woman.

SK Group runs SK Hynix, the semiconductor giant that supplies chips to Nvidia and recently made a record-setting debut on the US stock market.

Chey's lawyers said "Chairman Chey Tae-won is deeply sorry in that [the divorce] proceedings so far have caused concern to many people. We will share specific response to the verdict after we closely review the ruling."

SK Group is one of South Korea's chaebols - family-owned conglomerates that dominate the country's economy.

The verdict comes after deliberation over the division of assets between Roh and Chey, who had been married for 35 years.

During the earlier trial in 2024, Roh's legal team had successfully argued that Chey had received significant help from his ex-wife's father, Roh Tae-woo, who had served as the country's president between 1988 to 1993.

The court had determined that the strongman had given Chey 30bn Korean won from his slush fund in 1991, and told Chey to pay 1.38tn to his ex-wife.

But the Supreme Court overturned the verdict last year, ruling that the slush funds were illegally obtained and could not be considered as part of the couple's assets.

The case has gripped South Korea.

SK Group began as a textile company in 1953 but quickly grew across a wide swath of industries to become one of South Korea's biggest conglomerates.

Today, it is the second largest chaebol after the Samsung group. South Korean people buy phone plans from SK Telecom and fill their vehicles at SK petrol stations.

The group gained global prominence after its subsidiary SK Hynix found itself at the centre of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. In May, the chipmaker surpassed $1tn (£750bn) on the South Korean stock market.

As SK Hynix's value soared, the SK Group and its chairman Chey's status also rose.

Last month, President Lee Jae Myung commended Chey during the unveiling of a landmark AI investment plan, calling him and Samsung chairman JY Lee "Heroes of Korean People."

The company also raised $26.5bn in its New York share offering, marking the largest ever listing by a foreign firm in the US.

The BBC has contacted SK Group for comment.

Google withdraws new Earth AI tool after warnings over misinformation risks

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9349yx2ydvo, yesterday

Google has rolled back its new AI tool that allowed people to create fake images on top of its satellite imagery, following a BBC Verify report in which experts raised concerns about misuse and the potential to spread misinformation.

Less than 48 hours after the tech giant announced the integration of its AI image generator Nano Banana 2 into Google Earth, it said it was pausing the feature "while we work on implementing stronger guardrails".

In its statement on Friday, Google said it had seen "people sharing screenshots of generated imagery that appear to violate our policies".

The retracted feature enabled users to use text prompts to generate false scenarios on top of a base layer of real satellite, aerial or 3D imagery - which could then be downloaded and shared on other platforms.

"We know that people uniquely trust Google Earth for a reliable view of the world," it added.

Experts told BBC Verify the tool could be used to spread misinformation with the appearance of Google's legitimacy - and highlighted the potential for bad actors to abuse it.

A collapsed Eiffel Tower, a sinkhole swallowing the Great Pyramid of Giza and Russian tanks in Ukraine's capital were among the images BBC Verify was able to create when testing the feature, which initially launched on Thursday.

Before it was paused, AI and misinformation expert Henk van Ess highlighted the risks the feature posed, by creating fake images of a non-existent nuclear power plant in Iran, a refugee camp on the US-Mexico border and a fake hospital in Gaza with a bomb crater next to it.

He said Google had allowed "invented" imagery to be "welded to genuine coordinates, drawn on genuine imagery".

"The forgery does not have to look convincing on its own. It inherits the credibility of the map it was born on," van Ess added.

Google said AI content created by its tools contain invisible watermarks to indicate that they are fake or manipulated, adding that anyone who is "unsure about an image" can check it using the Gemini chatbot app or use the Lens feature in its search.

Generally, BBC Verify's tests found this is effective with images generated by the new feature. But we also found it was possible to circumnavigate these checks and trick Gemini into saying these fake Google Earth images are real.

Tests using external AI detection tools also in some cases failed to identify the Google Earth AI-content.

AI-detection researcher Henry Ajder told BBC Verify the creation of fake imagery in conflict zones could prove particularly "destabilising" when events are fast-moving and information is scarce.

"Journalists might be able to check that image… and report on it. But again, not everyone is going to do that," he added.

Google initially said that guidelines built into its AI model would prevent the creation of imagery depicting "harmful topics", however BBC Verify found that small changes to prompts could be used to bypass these guidelines.

For example, a request to create a "raised platform to hang traitors" next to the UK parliament was rejected. But when a less specific prompt was used, it was accepted and the image was created.

We also asked the tool to mow the word "Trump" into the White House lawn, but it said it could not "create that image" based on its guidelines. It did, however, allow a community garden to be generated in the same spot.

With the constant flood of AI imagery, Ajder said, spaces assumed to be "unblemished by AI are valuable, particularly for journalists and people trying to do work on the frontlines of rapidly evolving crisis scenarios".

"It's concerning because it's another place where sources of trusted information are being eroded by the constant doubt that AI might be involved," he added.

For many, Google Earth is the entry point to openly-accessible satellite imagery and can be used to obtain insights into hard to reach areas.

"This is potentially particularly damaging to public trust because satellite imagery has historically been seen as an especially trustworthy source of data," Bill Greer, a geospatial analyst and co-founder of the non-profit satellite service Common Space, told BBC Verify.

Falsified satellite imagery has already been used to spread misinformation, he added. "Governments are also restricting access to data more and more, so we're likely to see more false images, and fewer real images which will further erode trust."

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Snapchat joins other popular platforms in fight against 'AI slop'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c77g6dm5pr8o, yesterday

Snapchat has joined the likes of YouTube, LinkedIn and Substack in a growing effort to combat fake writing, images and videos that are entirely created by artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

Such content, commonly called "AI slop", has proliferated online as the tech industry has raced to create a greater number of easier to use generative AI tools that can create anything from essays to realistic videos.

Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, said on Friday that the platform would stop recommending "wholly AI-generated videos" in its popular Spotlight feed in favour of "authentic, human-made content."

Over the past two weeks, YouTube, LinkedIn and Substack have unveiled similar strategies.

Snap did not go so far as to try and prohibit all AI-generated content from Snapchat. The platform offers its own AI tools to alter content, and so AI "enhanced or edited" content will still be part of its recommendations to users.

However, Snap acknowledged that entirely AI-generated content is typically "low-quality", "repetitive", and generally not what Snapchat users want to see.

Recent research into the reception of AI-generated content shows that people tend to agree with those descriptions.

Moreover, the more fake AI-generated content that people see in a social media feed, the less likely they are to think that any of the content they're being shown online is genuine, according to a separate survey.

Targeting 'AI slop'

As Chris Best, the co-founder and chief executive of Substack put it last week: "It's getting harder to tell what's real on the internet."

Announcing a new tool designed to let readers on the newsletter platform detect AI-generated writing, Best cited other research that has found up to 40% of writing on social media is now fake or AI-generated.

"Platforms that reward fakeness will create a race to the bottom," Best said.

LinkedIn, a social media platform focused on work, introduced a button on its platform this week that allows any user to report if a post or a comment appears to be AI-generated.

"AI slop is a top priority for all of us," LinkedIn's chief product officer Hari Srinivasan wrote on the platform.

In just the last couple of months, he said the platform had "blocked billions" of attempts to post AI-generated comments.

"Every day we are now catching hundreds of thousands of automated comment attempts," Srinivasan said.

Like Snap, LinkedIn said it is not rejecting the use of AI entirely and users that use AI tools to "refine" their posts should not get caught up in efforts to combat AI slop.

Nonetheless, LinkedIn is removing an automated prompt that would show up for users writing a post offering to "enhance" it through the use of AI. It will go back to a simple proofreading tool.

YouTube, the video platform owned by Google, also this month updated its policies around what kind of content can be monetised by creators.

Research from last year found scores of channels on YouTube that were solely AI-generated content, many of which had millions of subscribers and some of which made millions of dollars in revenue.

In an effort to discourage YouTube from filling up with what the platform calls "inauthentic content", earlier this month the site broke down into three categories the kind of videos that will not be allowed to make money through it: generic, repetitive, or template-based.

Those styles of content are much easier to make, and quickly, with the use of generative AI tools.

YouTube's trust and safety chief Matt Halprin said in an interview on the updated rules that, while AI tools can help people with their content, they are more frequently being used to create fake and low-quality videos.

"The same technology really enables great stuff," Halprin said.

"But it also enables stuff that's kind of content farming, and that's the stuff that we don't want to have."

Dancing dots: The motion-sickness cure hidden in iPhone settings

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260728-dancing-dots-the-motion-sickness-cure-hidden-in-your-iphone-settings, 4 days ago

A buried iPhone setting is turning heads and saving stomachs. But does relief just mean more time staring at your screen?

I try not to look at other people's phones, but you get unintentional glances jammed in the crowds on the New York subway, bodies lurching around as the train blasts through tunnels. Lately I've noticed something strange. I keep seeing people with dots dancing across their screens.

The more I saw it, the more I needed to know. It turns out all these people have something in common: they get motion sickness.

This choreographed dot ballet is a lesser-known iPhone setting called "Vehicle Motion Cues" that's supposed to help. It puts animated dots on the edges of your screen, which move in sync with the motion of the vehicle you're in, thanks to the phone's accelerometer.

Reviews are mixed, but over the past few months, some people have gone wild for it. One man I met on the subway told me he loves the feature so much he keeps it on 24 hours a day, even when he's not moving – though he declined to share his name with the strange journalist asking questions on his commute.

The dots could be an antidote if you're cursed with a history of queasy car rides. I was born with an iron stomach, so I'm afraid I can't relate. But I think there's something more interesting happening. Bit by bit, our devices are adapting to infiltrate more of our lives.

A phone for what ails you

Here's some trivia I learned talking to doctors for this story: it seems like most of the people who study motion sickness get motion sickness.

"When I go on a cruise, I'm in my bunk for like 72 to 96 hours. I can't eat, I can't get up," says Tom Stoffregen, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota, US, who's been studying motion sickness since the 1980s.

Experts disagree about what causes motion sickness. The classic explanation is "sensory conflict theory": your inner ear detects movement, but other senses (like your sight) see a bunch of fixed objects that seem like they aren't going anywhere.

Stoffregen doesn't buy it. Instead, he says the issue is your muscles and other bodily systems are constantly guessing where you're about to move to control your posture, and you get discombobulated when the prediction fails. That might explain why passengers get sick but drivers usually don't, because they're controlling the car.

Either way, the confusion makes some of us nauseous, says Kristen Steenerson, a clinical associate professor at Stanford University, US, who studies the vestibular system, which controls balance.

"That deviation is what makes people feel dizzy, or disoriented," says Steenerson. "And probably due to some interesting evolutionary coincidences, that elicits a lot of nausea." We may have evolved to assume we've eaten something toxic when we feel disoriented, she says, so your body thinks it a good time to vomit.

If you can give your body signals that demonstrate how you're moving through space, it can mitigate motion sickness, Steenerson says. The iPhone's dots seem to follow the same logic. "They give you a sense of how you are moving in space," she says.

"There is some research that has looked into visual feedback and found it can be very helpful," says Steenerson. For example, you can buy phenomenally goofy anti-nausea glasses that are filled with liquid that sloshes around in a similar fashion, and there's evidence they work. If you've never seen them, I am delighted to present you with the photo below.

Steenerson says the dots help a little with her own motion sickness. "Everyone thinks there's something wrong with my screen. These dots are so cool," she says.

To turn it on, open your iPhone Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Vehicle Motion Cues. You can leave the dots on perpetually or have them turn on automatically when your phone detects motion. Android apps can replicate the setting, and there are rumours a similar feature is coming to Pixel phones.

You can also change the size and colour. I've been walking around with big purple dots on my screen that make for great conversation starters.

Some motion sickness victims told me vehicle motion cues didn't help, but some people call them a miracle.

Zandie Brockett, a curator from New York City, swears by them. "It's been a game changer," she says, enough to turn her into an iPhone-dots evangelist. "I'm not screaming about them from the rooftops. But I recommend them anytime someone tells me they get car sick."

I heard the same from my old boss, Rory Carroll. His car sickness is particularly ironic, as he spends a lot of time in the passenger's seat for work: he's editor-in-chief of Alloy, a car enthusiast news publication. "It's a bit of an occupational hazard," Caroll says. "It's solving a very specific problem that I've had my whole life. The dots really work."

Fans of the iPhone dots kept telling me the same observation. They are only useful when you get motion sick because you're looking at your phone.

In other words, your reward is yet another opportunity to look at your screen. Which isn't a reward at all, perhaps, when so many people worry about screen time. "It is a bit of a bummer to have one less reason not to look at Instagram," says Carroll.

More like this:

• Is your tech giving you phone body?

• Your phone's blue light isn't ruining your sleep

• The saddest question on the internet: Is that cat real?

Phones consume modern life, and new developments are letting them creep into the few remaining times we can't use them. Ever-growing battery life means screens stay on for longer. Elon Musk and his competitors have blanketed the sky with satellites that beam Wi-Fi and phone service to once disconnected areas.

There's even a rumour that Apple is working AirPods with cameras in them, not for taking photos, but to serve as eyes for new AI voice tools you can use screen-free. It may allow for new computing opportunities in those rare phoneless moments, like when you're walking down the street.

If looking at screens makes you car sick, you might want to try the iPhone dots. Or – stop me if this sounds crazy – you could just put your phone down and enjoy the ride.

For more technology news and insights, sign up to our Tech Decoded newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights to your inbox twice a week.

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How period trackers share your private details

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260715-how-period-trackers-share-womens-private-details, 5 days ago

Some apps are sharing users' health data. New research uncovers which apps lock down your privacy, and which don't.

Stardust is a period tracking app that combines users' menstrual cycles with astrology and horoscopes. It also makes bold privacy promises.

"Your data is private," Stardust says on its website. "Period."

The problem, according to a new report shared exclusively with the BBC, is you and Stardust may have different definitions of "private".

The Mozilla Foundation, creator of the Firefox web browser, investigated the privacy practices of six popular period trackers: Flo, Clue, Stardust, Spot On, Period Calendar and Euki.

Some apps have strong protections. Others handle data in ways you might find disturbing, like sharing information with Google, Meta and TikTok, alongside other companies you've likely never heard of.

This may be perfectly legal. But since the US Supreme court overturned federal abortion protections in 2022, experts worry that data gathered by period trackers could be used in criminal cases. Police have already obtained other kinds of data from tech companies and used it to help put women in jail.

But there's good news too. This isn't the first time period trackers have been criticised for privacy problems, but Mozilla found some apps have cleaned up their acts, and others make privacy their whole mission. Mozilla described Euki, for example, as "squeaky clean".

With Mozilla's help, I want to guide you through the different ways that period trackers handle your data.

Here are four questions that can help you protect your privacy when choosing a menstrual cycle tracker.

Who sees your health data?

Mozilla uncovered numerous privacy problems across various apps, but Stardust was the only one found sharing detailed reproductive health data with another company.

The report found that Stardust sends users' health information to a data management company called RudderStack, which isn't named in its privacy policy. That data includes pregnancy status, birth control, moods, alcohol consumption and specific symptoms like tender breasts and stomach cramps.

Companies often share data with outside services to process information and analyse user behaviour. There's nothing unlawful going on, and there's no reason to think RudderStack (or any company mentioned in this story) is doing something nefarious.

However, experts say it's inherently risky when your data spreads to more places. It creates another opportunity for security breaches or legal requests for information. Besides, you may just be uncomfortable with another company seeing your health data.

A Stardust spokesperson says the company only uses RudderStack as a "technical pipeline" to route data into its own analytics systems, and the app doesn't share anything that could allow RudderStack to identify your name or contact information. "Additionally, RudderStack is contractually prohibited from selling or using it for its own purposes," and RudderStack doesn't store the data long-term, the spokesperson says.

"People deserve better," says Shoshana Wodinsky, a privacy research analyst who conducted Mozilla's tests. At the very least, she says, you should know what's happening.

Spot On, an app made by the sexual health organisation Planned Parenthood, had its own privacy issues related to health information, but the situation was more complicated.

The Spot On app itself doesn't share data with other companies or try to track users, Mozilla says. But tapping certain features – an AI chatbot called Roo and a healthcare provider search tool – opens Planned Parenthood's website in a browser. Mozilla says the website is less secure.

The most striking example: Planned Parenthood's website shares information about what kind of healthcare you're looking for with an analytics company called AB Tasty. This includes whether you're looking for HIV testing or gender-affirming care.

Wodinsky says it would be easy to configure the website to make it harder for outside services to know what you're looking at. "Someone could probably fix this in an afternoon," she says.

This is also not Planned Parenthood's first run in with privacy criticisms. I wrote about similar problems four years ago, for example. The organisation didn't respond to a request for comment.

Who sees that you've used the app?

Mozilla says most apps in the report do not share details about your health. However, some track you in other ways.

Many of the apps sent basic user information to advertising and analytics services, including platforms run by Google, Meta, Microsoft and TikTok.

Typically, such data includes an ID number or other information that's used to identify you. This can be used for targeted ads, and in some cases, to help tech companies track you across other parts of the internet. You give your consent to this when you "read" the apps' privacy policies.

This may or may not bother you. But simply revealing the fact that you use a reproductive health app can have consequences, says Sara Geoghegan, director of the Consumer Privacy Program at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group.

Among other things, it could let law enforcement know there's a trove of health data to get their hands on.

"Data collected from a period tracking app can be part of a whole tapestry woven from many different threads of surveillance," says Geoghegan. "That can be very revealing."

For example, Period Calendar – also known as "Period Tracker Period Calendar" – sent ID numbers and information about your device to Google and the advertising company InMobi, Mozilla says. According to the report, there's no way to prevent this.

The report found Stardust shares the same kind of data with Facebook and AppsFlyer, an advertising analytics company, though you can opt out using your phone's privacy settings. When you access Planned Parenthood's website through the Spot On app, it shares similar information with companies including Google, Microsoft, TikTok and Pinterest, and Mozilla says there's no way to prevent this.

"We do not share any health data with advertising platforms," a Stardust spokesperson says. "We use AppsFlyer and Meta to measure and optimise our advertising campaigns."

Period Calendar didn't respond to a request for comment.

Where does the app store your data?

Euki is the only app Mozilla recommends without reservations. "Euki is special," Wodinsky says.

Unlike the other apps on this list, Mozilla says Euki keeps all your health information stored on your device, without even sending it to the company's servers.

You don't even need to make an account, so you can stay completely anonymous. Euki also offers a "decoy" feature that shows fake, harmless information if someone gets your phone and tries to snoop.

It proves there's a better way to do things, says Geoghegan. "We can and we should have technology that isn't built upon harmful practices,' she says.

Flo and Clue weren't as locked down as Euki, but they scored relatively well thanks to real transparency and granular privacy controls.

As far as Mozilla can tell, neither app shares health information with third parties under any circumstances. Flo and Clue do tell their advertising and analytics partners when you use their apps, as they explain in privacy policies and consent pop-ups, but you can easily disable this using privacy settings.

However, Mozilla criticised Flo and Clue for collecting far more health information than other apps and then storing it on their own servers. Compare that to Euki, which just keeps that data on your device instead.

Even if Flo and Clue never share this information, the fact that they keep a copy of it could expose you to data breaches or legal requests from governments, says Wodinsky. That's a trade-off you need to weigh.

Spokespeople for Flo and Clue reject the idea of a trade-off. The companies say storing this information in the cloud is necessary for their services and they have safeguards in place to make it secure.

Flo spokeswoman Samantha Wannemacher says users worried about government requests for data can use the app's "Anonymous Mode", which ensures that no one – including Flo itself – holds "both a user's identity and their health data at the same time". She says Flo has never received a subpoena for user data, which the company would fight.

Both Clue and Flo are based in Europe, which would make such legal requests form the US more challenging. "We have never disclosed private health data to any authority, and we never will," says Rhiannon White, Clue's chief executive.

What is the app's track record on privacy?

To ensure your information is truly secure, you should probably consider more than an app's current practices. Mozilla says you also need to examine their track record.

Flo, for example, settled a case with the US Federal Trade Commission in 2021 over allegations that the company shared sensitive user information with Meta, Google and others after promising to keep the data private.

According to Mozilla, Flo's practices improved dramatically in the face of this criticism. But after initially locking down, Flo's privacy policy expanded to include new advertising partnerships with services run Google, Meta and others. Though again, you can disable that with privacy settings.

A Flo spokesperson says the FTC settlement involved practices that ended seven years ago and the company did not admit wrongdoing. Flo says its privacy and transparency practices exceed industry standards.

Other apps have had their own run ins with privacy scandals.

Reports of privacy problems on the Planned Parenthood website date back years, for example.

A 2022 investigation found lists of individual devices that use Clue, Period Calendar and other period trackers for sale online. (White says the data came from the mobile advertising ecosystem, not Clue's app, and that Clue has "never and will never sell user data to third parties".)

And after Stardust initially seemed to promise end-to-end encryption, which makes data particularly secure and private, the company scrubbed these references from its website after questions from reporters. Stardust's spokesperson didn't address this.

More like this:

• Not on TikTok? They're tracking you anyway

• What menstrual blood reveals about your health

• People are selling your home address online. Here's how to stop it

"People are rightfully concerned, because we live in a world that has combined ubiquitous surveillance with the criminalisation of abortion," says Geoghegan.

The risks highlight the need for regulation in the US, she says, where unlike Europe, there is no national privacy law.

Plus privacy issues have other consequences too, she says, like causing fear and anxiety that prevent people from using tools that are meant to improve their health.

For more details on each individual app in the study, complete with tips on how to choose a period tracker, check out Mozilla's full report.

Correction: This article was originally published on 16 July 2026 and updated on 28 July 2026. A previous version of this story misstated the timing of the practices related to Flo's FTC settlement. A Flo spokesperson says the practices ended seven years ago.

For more insights, sign up to our Tech Decoded newsletter, where Thomas and Lily Jamali break down the biggest stories of the tech world, and help you live a better digital life. Sign up for free here.

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AI has ruined cute animal videos

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260721-ai-has-ruined-cute-animal-videos, 10 days ago

AI-generated animal videos are sweet, until you realise the joy, like the animal, was never really there.

Cats built the internet, and they'll usually show you where it's going next. "I Can Haz Cheeseburger" taught us about memes. Keyboard Cat introduced millions to YouTube. Grumpy Cat's marketing deals established a business model for influencers. Now the online world is turning again.

Animals were one of the last reliable sources of joy on an internet filled with madness – innocence in a sea of anger and clickbait. But lately I've felt that slipping away.

For decades my reaction to cute animal videos was softness. Now it's suspicion: was that real, or just AI?

If you look closely, there's a strange psychological dance playing out here that you might unwittingly be part of. And just beneath the surface, you can see the economic forces dictating the next moves from the tech giants.

I'd argue that puppies and kittens are the first casualty in the coming war on truth. They offer a glimpse of what it's going to feel like to live through the internet's next revolution.

"Part of the joy of cute animal videos is, 'Oh my god, look at this adorable thing that has actually happened,'" says Jessica Maddox, an associate professor of media studies at University of Georgia, US. "AI completely removes that from the equation."

It could be the gateway to something more harmful. The only question is how you, and I and all our cat-loving compatriots are going to react.

Why can't AI cats be cute?

For a while I hoped this was just a me problem, the side effects of a mind turned sour by years of tech journalism. But dozens of people have told me about the same pattern.

You see an animal video that feels too good to be true, and no-one likes getting fooled. So you suspend your emotions and dive in the comments, hoping someone's figured out whether you should be happy or disappointed.

Authenticity is a bigger problem for some genres than others. "Oddly satisfying" videos, where things move or fit together in a way that scratches your brain just right, are another victim. The same goes for the oldest form of comedy: people getting hit in the head.

It may be subconscious. "But on some level, these videos are about connection", says Maddox, author of The Internet is for Cats: How Animal Images Shape our Digital Lives.

"It brings you joy, and you know it brought someone else joy on the other side of the screen as well," says Maddox. "It's the parasocial relationship of it all."

But people love animation, so from a psychological perspective, why does it matter if videos are fake?

When you see an unlabelled AI video, Maddox says it feels like a set up. "The joy feels manufactured. It can be hollow in a way that's almost fraudulent. Ultimately I think it's going to make us a lot more cynical about the world."

There are two possible futures. One is people will hate this so much they seek out something else. If our attention drifts, new social media companies might fill the void. Existing platforms could be forced to bury AI slop to hold on to users. Content creators who post real videos would rise to the top.

Or maybe AI will be just satisfying enough that it takes over our feeds. If that sounds dystopian to you, there's been some troubling recent history.

Who cares if it's real?

Catastrophic floods tore through the American south during Hurricane Helene in 2024. There were plenty of real photos, but some particularly devasting AI images went viral as people used them to criticise the US government's response.

Some faced backlash for sharing AI fakes, including Republican National Committee member Amy Kremer. "Y'all, I don’t know where this photo came from and honestly, it doesn't matter," she tweeted at the time. "It is seared into my mind forever."

As journalist Parker Molloy noted, many people seemed to agree, acknowledging the images were fake but insisting they were "real on some deeper level".

It's not just political material, either. Earlier this year, a parody of the reality TV show Love Island starring sexualised, AI-generated talking fruit racked up millions of views. The attention on "Fruit Love Island" was short lived, but it raised questions about the future of entertainment.

"A lot of this only worked because there was something original to reference," Maddox says. "The joke only lands because there's a real Love Island."

Still, Maddox expects some large number of people will enjoy AI animal videos, and the AI content that follows it. But there could be more significant consequences.

A cutesy dystopia?

"On the internet, sometimes the cute and the innocent is the gateway to more harmful," Maddox says.

AI content isn't limited to animals, of course. If we get used to fabricated cats and the rest of the AI menagerie, Maddox says that same tolerance may extend to more consequential fakes – like manipulated images of politicians, made-up crime footage and racist AI caricatures.

And there could be more immediate casualties: human content creators. People who make a living posting real videos will have to compete with AI opponents who don't have to sleep and pump out videos in the blink of an eye. It could make more thoughtful content harder to monetise, and therefore scarcer.

More like this:

• The AI bot that became a real-life millionaire

• How period trackers share your private details

• The unsettling community building the internet's future

Last week my animal-loving friend Ashleigh reposted a video of a man skipping with a big group of dogs, all of them warning matching bandanas. I'll admit the video itself looked real. And maybe you could train one dog with a bandana to skip, but 10? I smelled a robot.

"Oh god," Ashleigh said when I asked about it. "I'm so embarrassed, I never fall for AI." She said she just hadn't thought about it before sharing the clip. The unpleasant feelings will last much longer than the video. "It just feels like there's no safe place for anything real anymore," she said. "I can't trust anything."

For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

Why WhatsApp usernames could upset Somalia's anti-terror fight

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce97zxdkeyyo, 12 days ago

Somalia's government has told the BBC it is concerned about WhatsApp's plan to launch a new feature that would let people chat using usernames rather than phone numbers, saying it could pose a security risk.

Communications and Technology Minister Ahmed Osman Dirie said it could make it harder to trace and counter criminals in a country that is still battling Islamist militants.

The rollout to three billion global users of WhatsApp worldwide is expected in the coming months, allowing people to remove or change their usernames at any time.

Somalia has been hit by a brutal and deadly insurgency - led by al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda affiliate - for more than two decades.

In response to Somalia's concerns, WhatsApp told the BBC that the feature was not yet live, and users would still need a phone number to use the app. It further stated that the feature comes with built-in safeguards against scams.

But Dirie told the BBC Focus on Africa podcast that the Somali government had approached Meta, which owns WhatsApp, about their concerns and hoped that "we'll reach a resolution on this matter very soon".

He pointed out that Somalia had a "unique context", with an economy that heavily relies on mobile money transactions.

"Unverified and untraceable usernames" introduced the risk of financial fraud and citizens becoming vulnerable to scammers, he said.

Al-Shabab militants have also been known to use WhatsApp for their operations, including for extortion and propaganda.

In 2024, Somalia's intelligence agency said it had shut down 20 WhatsApp groups allegedly operated by al-Shabab for extortion and intimidation.

It said it had also disabled data services for about 2,500 phone numbers associated with them.

Dirie told the BBC that while Somalia effectively regulated phone numbers in the country, WhatsApp's new feature would undermine that.

Somalia's issues follow a similar complaint raised by India - the biggest market for the platform with more than 850 million users.

Earlier this month, India said it believed usernames might increase online fraud, impersonation and other crimes by allowing criminals to contact potential victims without disclosing their phone numbers.

It also asked the company "not to roll out this feature until the consultation on this point is achieved to the satisfaction of the government".

Dirie said linking a WhatsApp profile to a phone number made it easier to track criminals.

"So moving away from phone numbers to usernames, we believe, will make it difficult for us to counter those crimes," he said.

The minister said they required further assurances from Meta, despite its assertion that it had built mechanisms to defend against cybercrimes through WhatsApp.

He demanded that Meta demonstrate that hiding phone numbers would not "erode digital traceability" and provide "specific safeguards" against financial fraud.

"If they prove that, when we discuss if we put those safeguards in place, then we will not have any issue with rolling out the new feature," he said.

According to Moses Kemibaro, a technology blogger who focuses on Africa, WhatsApp's new feature aims to enhance user privacy.

He views the change as an evolution of WhatsApp to become like other services under Meta, such as Instagram, where one's identity is not related to a phone number.

"It's almost saying that this can work irrespective of the phone number and just give you a single identity," he says.

While this can enable more private interactions, Kemibaro notes that countries have valid concerns about its impact on security.

"[It is] a very sensitive issue around the possibility of escalation in scams and risky propositions that might actually come out of this new trend," he says.

Meta needs to explain the implication of the changes - including whether regulators can link crimes committed by a username to a person behind it, the blogger adds.

Kenyan security expert George Musamali partly concurs, saying what WhatsApp is doing helps guarantee a user's privacy.

He says that when people complain about their details being taken from WhatsApp groups and used against them, the blame often falls on the tech giant.

There may also be cases when some governments use information shared in such groups to target their critics, which, Musamali argues, might be what Meta is trying to prevent.

Ultimately, he suggests that governments may be "jumping the gun", citing a need for a balance between privacy and security concerns.

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

Mum says memories of late son keeps her 'brave'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2k7zelkvp3o, today

A mother of a boy who died four years ago says she still watches old videos of him to remind her to be brave.

Julian "Jools" Sweeney, from Gloucestershire, died in April 2022. Later that year, a 23-minute inquest into his death recorded a narrative conclusion and ruled out suicide.

His mother, Ellen Roome, says her son's death was caused by an online challenge gone wrong and has successfully fought to have the inquest reopened.

Roome still rewatches a video Jools sent while she was climbing Kilimanjaro, in which he told her to "stay strong and be brave", as motivation to continue her campaign work.

She told former This Morning presenter Holly Willoughby: "Jools was the most beautiful, happy boy.

"There are days that getting out of bed is hard and you just think, 'What am I getting up for?' And I would watch that video and go, 'Right, Jools, off we go'.

"When I was really campaigning hard, I'd walk past the stairs and go, 'come on Jools, got stuff to do', as if he's still alive. Taking him with me."

Speaking in an upcoming episode from her YouTube series Together, Willoughby spoke to Roome, who lives in Cheltenham, about how she has become a leading figure in the campaign to ban social media use for children in Britain since Jools' death.

She has also campaigned to get an amendment to the law that would force social media companies to give parents access to their child's data in the event of their death.

When asked by Willoughby if her son would be proud of her work, Roome said yes.

Willoughby added: "We just had a little break recording, and you just said something, and I've been really trying to hold it together, and that just really got me.

"You were saying that you know deep down that he'd be proud of you."

The pair spoke just two weeks after the High Court quashed the senior coroner's conclusion after a legal challenge from Roome.

Speaking at the time, Roome said: "We hope this is a turning point, not only in finding the truth about Jools, but in making the online world safer for every child."

Roome's interview with Willoughby will be available on YouTube and other digital streaming platforms on 4 August.

The new podcast marks Willoughby's return to screen following her departure from This Morning after 14 years fronting the show.

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AI firms must answer for rogue bots, says boss of hacked company

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr7k49xjzzeo, 2 days ago

The boss of one of the companies recently hacked by out-of-control artificial intelligence (AI) says bot makers must be accountable for cyber attacks carried out by their creations.

Clement Delangue's company Hugging Face was breached by a rogue OpenAI bot that broke out of a test environment and autonomously attacked his firm earlier this month.

Hugging Face had to rebuild around a third of its IT network after the unprecedented incident.

He told CNN his company - which is a small start-up - will not be taking legal action against OpenAI, but added that these types of hacks are illegal and should remain so.

"Everyone has to remember that a cyber-attack is a crime and it is illegal," he said.

Delangue said he hoped legal frameworks would ensure the companies that make mistakes leading to the hacks are "accountable."

He added that he didn't want cyber attacks on other companies to become "normalised".

His remarks come after Anthrophic, the maker of the chat bot Claude, also admitted that its bot had attacked three companies in similar circumstances in recent months.

Anthropic revealed on Friday that it only realised its bot had escaped the containment system and hacked the organisations after doing a review prompted by the recent OpenAI incident.

In both cases neither of the artificial intelligence giants knew that their models had roamed the internet attacking companies until long after the attacks had been carried out.

The AI models were being tested on their hacking skills and carried out the attacks by breaking out of seemingly secure "sandboxes" to search the internet for ways to complete the tasks set by researchers.

The unprecedented incidents have sparked fierce debates in the cyber-security and legal world about who, if anybody, should be held liable for attacks by out-of-control AI agents.

"Agentic security failures unfold at machine speed, but determining who is materially liable still moves at a lawsuit's pace," said Dor Sarig, co-founder and Chief Builder at Pillar Security.

Sarig was concerned that accountability is already becoming "ambiguous".

"Today the industry is extending grace, but the first time an autonomous agent causes a breach involving real data, a real plaintiff, and real financial losses, liability won't be an academic debate anymore," he said.

"That's when the legal framework, and not just the technical safeguards, will be stress-tested."

AI slow down

The AI-driven cyber-attacks have fuelled calls for tighter safeguards and oversight of the technology, over concerns about the risks posed by increasingly powerful autonomous systems.

US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that Washington was considering measures to rein in AI tools after recent cyber-security incidents.

Previously, Hugging Face's co-founder Thomas Wolf told the BBC the incident was "a wake-up call" for the industry.

In the wake of his bot going rogue, OpenAI boss Sam Altman said "we may have to pace the rate of AI development," but has not committed to slowing down his company's research.

OpenAI has been asked for comment but a spokesperson has previous said: "we recognise there are a lot of questions and speculative details circulating" about the incident.

They added: "We plan to publish a technical report of our learnings in the coming weeks."

TikToker faces police probe over secret filming using 'smart glasses'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g369y5k8ko, 2 days ago

A TikToker who used Meta "smart glasses" to secretly film members of the public, shop workers and ferry staff during a road trip around Scotland is being investigated by police.

Footage posted by Scott Margerison includes him swearing at a stranger, making sexualised comments about young women and an interaction with a Sikh shopkeeper where he talks about a plan to "breed out the white race".

In another video Margerison, from Rochdale, recorded a tour of the bridge of the CalMac ferry Loch Seaforth, prompting the firm to suspend the popular visits.

Police Scotland confirmed it had received complaints and was reviewing footage to establish if any criminality was involved.

BBC Scotland News has attempted to contact Margerison for comment.

Margerison, who also posts on Instagram and YouTube, has built up the vast majority of his social media audience on TikTok using the alias E Dobbin.

In his videos he frequently approaches strangers and starts bizarre conversations.

In late June and early July he toured Scotland in a white Ford Transit van, visiting various locations including Dunoon, Glencoe, John O'Groats, Skye, Uist, Barra and Lewis.

While many of his videos feature harmless banter, others have a darker side, particularly when he encounters young women or people from ethnic minorities.

In one video, the 42-year-old makes sexualised comments about the appearance of two teenagers who he spots as he drives onto a small CalMac ferry.

He then puts on his Meta glasses, which contain tiny cameras, gets out of his van and engages the girls and their parents in conversation, apparently without their knowledge of being filmed.

In the same video he uses a strong expletive in an unprovoked outburst directed at a fellow ferry passenger.

One of the most disturbing incidents occurs on Skye where he tells a UK-born Sikh shopkeeper of Indian heritage that there is "forced" diversity in Europe.

He goes on to refer to the Kalergi Plan - a far right conspiracy theory about a plot to "breed out the white race".

The woman, who was running the shop with help from her teenage daughter, politely suggests his comments are "slightly derogatory".

When he leaves, Margerison angrily describes her in his video commentary as "condescending" and complains that "they don't understand".

The woman, who was born in London and has lived in Skye for 20 years, told BBC Scotland News he initiated the conversation by asking "what are you doing here?" but edited this out of the published footage.

She said her encounter with Margerison, who is heavily built and well over 6ft tall, was "100% intimidating" and that she cried when she was later told by a friend that a secretly-filmed video had been published on TikTok.

"You're made to feel very small when you see a video like this," she said.

"And it's sad because everyone in the local community is really nice. This was really upsetting."

While in the Hebrides, Margerison also filmed an angry encounter with an elderly couple in a supermarket after they complained that he had "loudly and rudely" asked them to move out of his way.

He follows them around the store, at one point blocking their path, swears in front of them, accuses them of being "mental".

He also tells them he intends to post footage of them on TikTok which he says is "well within my rights".

During a journey to the Isle of Lewis, Margerison was given an escorted tour of the bridge of CalMac's largest ferry MV Loch Seaforth - a courtesy the firm has traditionally offered customers at the discretion of the ship's master.

He spent about three minutes firing questions at the ship's second officer, who was helming the vessel, before he was shepherded back to the public areas.

When it emerged that the crew had been secretly filmed, CalMac announced it had paused such visits - which were popular with children and ship enthusiasts - because an individual had "filmed in a restricted area without permission."

A spokesperson for CalMac said Margerison had been informed prior to the tour that filming and photography were banned.

Elsewhere on the network, he argued with a female CalMac staff member as she tried to explain to him that the small ferry he wanted to board was fully booked.

Is it illegal to secretly film using Meta glasses?

Whether it is lawful to film someone secretly using Meta glasses depends on the circumstances.

In general people have only a limited expectation of privacy if the filming is carried out in a public place.

However, the filming would be unlawful if it amounts to harassment, stalking - or the behaviour is deemed likely to cause fear or alarm.

A person who is filmed could also have grounds for a civil claim if the footage is recorded in circumstances where they have a reasonably expectation of privacy - for instance in a changing room or a hospital treatment area.

And if the person filming the material is doing so as part of a business - for instance by making money from a social media channel - data protection laws may be relevant.

A spokesperson for Police Scotland said: "We are aware of the videos posted online and are assessing the content."

The rise of smart glasses

Smart glasses are rapidly moving from a niche gadget to a mainstream consumer technology, increasingly being marketed as AI assistants rather than simply wearable cameras.

They look just like ordinary spectacles or sunglasses but contain tiny cameras, microphones and batteries - and can access the internet, usually by pairing with a phone.

Meta is widely regarded as the dominant player having linked up with designer brands like Ray-Ban and Oakley, but others including Apple, Google and Samsung are also investing in the technology.

Manufacturers point to possible benefits of the AI-linked technology. For instance a partially-sighted person could look at an object and ask: "What am I looking at?"

But the potential for the glasses to record, analyse and store information about people without their knowledge has raised some serious privacy concerns.

Meta glasses have a built-in LED light which blinks when they are recording images and cannot be turned off.

But earlier this month the firm announced it was having to roll out a mandatory update following reports that users were finding workarounds to disable the safeguard.

BBC News has reported on cases where young women were approached and secretly recorded by men who then posted videos online and demanded money to remove them.

Secret recording has also taken place by individuals - including Margerison - at various Comic Con cosplay events, prompting attendees to complain of invasion of privacy, harassment and "body shaming".

Last week Monopoly Events, the promoter behind some of the biggest comic and entertainment conventions in the UK, banned Meta glasses from its gatherings.

Meta, which owns Instagram, told BBC Scotland News it was "actively investigating" Margerison's accounts and had shut them down.

On the smart glasses themselves, a spokesperson said: "People use our glasses because they're genuinely helpful – from listening to music, to live translation or hands-free calls.

"For those wearing them and the people around them, trust matters. That's why we built privacy into our AI glasses from the ground up."

The head of Instagram Adam Mosseri recently admitted that some users had tried to "drill off" the flashing light, but he claimed the latest updates meant doing so would render the glasses inoperable.

TikTok said it did not permit content that harasses or bullies others, and said it took action against accounts that violated its policies.

YouTube said it would investigate Margerison's videos on its platform.

Police Scotland is understood to be investigating complaints about both Margerison's secret filming and his behaviour, and anyone who wishes to report an incident should do so using the 101 number or online.

City Hall defends blocking Met's £50m Palantir deal

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3d3pkygyjzo, 2 days ago

The mayor of London's policing office has told the High Court it had no choice but to block a £50m deal between the Metropolitan Police and technology company Palantir.

In May, the mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (Mopac) stopped the Met from entering into a two-year contract with Palantir to provide artificial intelligence for criminal investigations.

Mopac said the force had failed to present its procurement strategy, describing this as a "clear and serious breach" of procedure.

Palantir is now suing Mopac, claiming it unlawfully vetoed the deal because it considered the company's "values and ethics", which it said was an "irrelevant consideration".

Joseph Barrett KC, representing Mopac, said this was not the case in his written defence submitted to the court on Thursday.

He said the decision was taken because the Met's process for awarding the contract was unlawful or "gave rise to an unacceptable risk of unlawfulness".

Barrett also said the Met had, "repeatedly, it is inferred intentionally, provided Mopac with inaccurate, misleading and/or inconsistent information" in relation to its procurement strategy and its dealings with Palantir.

The AI technology is available to other police forces, as well as the NHS and the Ministry of Defence.

Mopac added that the Met had only considered Palantir for the contract and had not looked at any other suppliers.

Lord Pannick KC, representing Palantir, previously argued that Mopac's assessment of the company's "values and ethics" meant the decision was "irrational, disproportionate, and is based on irrelevant considerations".

Palantir is seeking "a declaration that (Mopac) has acted unlawfully, an order quashing the decision, and an order that the contract be awarded to the claimant".

A full hearing in the case is expected to take place next January.

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Satellite killers: What a war in space might look like

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260730-satellite-killers-what-a-war-in-space-might-look-like, 2 days ago

The satellites that orbit Earth have remained largely untouched in modern conflict. But in the 21st Century, space may no longer be a safe haven.

Around 03:00 on 24 February 2022, thousands of satellite modems across Ukraine and Central Europe went offline. A few hours later, Russia's invasion of Ukraine began.

"The first strike of the Russia-Ukraine war was not the tanks rolling into Ukraine, but a cyberattack against a commercial satellite system, which was later attributed to the Russian state," says Kari Bingen, director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in the US. "Why would they do that? They wanted to degrade the Ukrainian military and government's ability to communicate."

In modern warfare, the first shot may involve not a rifle or a missile, but a line of malicious code aimed at satellites in orbit on Earth.

During the Cold War, the US and Russia faced off against each other on land, in the air, under the sea and – also, largely unnoticed – in space. But now tensions are growing again in orbit, and this time, in the public eye. The stakes are high; a $626bn (£479bn) space economy could be at risk.

In early February, it was revealed that two Russian satellites have likely intercepted the communications of at least a dozen European ones since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Such interceptions may have allowed Russian intelligence services to read the sensitive data they transmit, or hypothetically, even to take control of the satellites.

Over the last few years Earth-based telescopes and orbital cameras have spotted two Russian satellites, Luch-1 and Luch-2, making a number of suspicious manoeuvres in orbit. In particular, they have been seen making close approaches to Europe's most important, if elderly, geostationary satellites. These include Intelsat 39, which orbits high enough above the Earth that it appears to be stationary above a single point on the Earth's surface. Such a lofty perch makes them ideal platforms for communication, navigation and military purposes. And a prized potential target for a would-be adversary.

Western countries are having to make plans to thwart such attacks if conflict with another power like Russia takes place.

"When one satellite is coming really close to another in space, it's a game of who's going to do the first manoeuvre, and then how the other satellite reacts to that," says Norbert Pouzin, senior orbital analyst at Aldoria, a French satellite tracking company

This dance has been compared to dogfights – aerial battles between fighter planes. Except they take place in space.

This recent behaviour seems to be an extension into space of Russia's hybrid warfare – conflict that involves non-military tactics, such as disrupting communications systems. Satellites are seen by Russia as the Achilles heel of the United States and its allies, as they have become so dependent on them. Disrupting them could cause massive damage to civilian and military infrastructure.

"This is not new behaviour by the Russians, whether it's in space or on Earth," says Juliana Suess, an expert in space warfare at the Royal United Services Institute. "We keep seeing this sort of testing of boundaries, whether it's drones entering Polish airspace or Russian satellites manoeuvring close to other communication satellites, whether they belong to Western governments or are commercial satellites. We've seen them do this for over 10 years."

From the Cold War onwards, counterspace weapons have been developed to destroy, disrupt or degrade satellites and space-based infrastructure to gain military advantage over an opponent. These range from cyber-weapons like the one used in this attack, through to jamming and spoofing a satellite's signals, to the more sci-fi-sounding weapons such as lasers, or electromagnetic pulses (EMP). These can be used to blind or destroy a satellite from the ground, air or even from another satellite that has manoeuvred close to its target.

Then there are kinetic weapons such as missiles launched from the ground or air, or dart-like objects fired from another spacecraft, which can also destroy a satellite.

"We are seeing cyber [attacks on satellites] on a routine basis; electronic warfare – jamming and spoofing – is prolific on the battlefield of Ukraine, and China has fielded an enormity of jammers in the region, embedded with their forces," says Bingen. "The Iranians have fielded jammers and frankly you can now buy a low-powered GPS jammer off eBay."

Some countries have tested actual physical weapons in space, such as missiles to disable a satellite in orbit. Bingen explains that the technology was incubated in the Cold War by the US and Soviet Union. Then China's missile test in 2007 changed the game, she says, when it launched a missile at a dead weather satellite, which created thousands of pieces of debris that were predicted to stay in orbit for seven decades.

In 2008, the US publicly announced an operation called Operation Burnt Frost. "It used a missile defence interceptor launched off a ship to take down a malfunctioning American satellite," says Bingen, who explains this was done for safety reasons.

Other countries have joined this in-space arms race. India has demonstrated the same capability to use a missile defence interceptor to take down a satellite as the United States and China. "The Russians did it as recently as November 2021, three months before they invaded Ukraine. Was that signalling [for] us, or was it the military conducting tests?" adds Bingen.

Pouzin explains that there is also speculation from US officials that Russia has test-fired some kind of co-orbital weapon. This isn't a satellite, but some kind of bullet launched from a satellite in space. But this has been denied by the Russians, he says.

The debris from the use of kinetic weapons can stay in orbit for years, raising fears of the "Kessler Syndrome" – a chain reaction created as increasing numbers of fragments of space debris collide with each other, thereby creating even more fragments.

Suess suspects there may be a darker reason for the testing of this technology. "They [the Russians and Chinese] know that we're watching these assets, and they know we can see them manoeuvre close to them," she says. "So they are showing off their capability to make sure we can't feel safe in any domain, and space is no different."

"The question is always, why are they doing it?" says Bingen. "Are they signalling [to] us? Are they testing technology, operational procedures and tactics? Or gathering intelligence on us for the day when they want to do this for real? We just don't know. We have to plan for the worst-case scenario."

Or at least, this was the question experts were asking. Then the Russians seemed to become serious, just before the Ukraine War.

Nukes in space

In 2022 Russia launched Cosmos 2553 into space weeks before the invasion of Ukraine. Two years later the United States announced that the satellite could be part of a Russian programme to develop a space-based nuclear weapon. This bomb could, it's believed, be used to destroy entire satellite networks, such as SpaceX's vast Starlink system, which has supported Ukraine's response to Russia's invasion. Russia has denied this.

The idea of nuclear weapons in space is not as far-fetched as it may sound. In 1962, the United States exploded a nuclear bomb in orbit to see if it would cause an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). These pulses can disable electronics, disrupt radio communications and create artificial radiation belts to neutralise satellites. The test, known as Starfish Prime, did cause an EMP – and one that was much larger than expected, causing several satellites to fail in the days and months after the explosion.

Further, smaller-scale American and Russian tests followed. Then, in 1964 the Partial Test Ban Treaty outlawed the testing of nuclear weapons in space.

"Looking at what we know and what's been discussed there is no current nuclear-armed satellite in orbit at the moment," says Suess. "They could certainly build one. I think any nuclear-capable state could."

But are the Russians really planning to build one? Even if they were, Suess argues, it is unlikely they will actually use it. Their ally, China, is growing as reliant on space technology as the US, she says. "It only makes sense for Russia as a last straw," Suess says.

The debris caused by such an explosion may even trigger the Kessler effect. Suess explains that you could end up inadvertently preventing access to space for months if not years due to the radiation.

What might the future of counterspace weapons look like?

"We do know that the Chinese programme is advancing quite fast in the development and the testing of new technologies and new hardware in space," says Pouzin. He explains that, based on which projects are being funded by government agencies in the West, a great deal of money is going into developing small "guardian" satellites. These would serve as guardians of a highly valuable and vulnerable satellite or could be sent to inspect another satellite, he says.

More like this:

• The satellites that can peer almost anywhere

• The Cold War nuke that fried satellites

• The drone that flew into A-bomb blasts

Japan, France, India and Germany have all "indicated" they plan to, or are already building, such "bodyguard" satellites.

"Any country that has a missile and has basic orbital positioning information, like Iran or North Korea, and knows that satellites follow predictable trajectories can launch a missile to intercept a satellite," says Bingen.

Whereas shooting down one – or even a handful – of satellites in a constellations such as Starlink would not disrupt the entire network.

A nuclear weapon may not be the only option available, however. One idea is to use 935 small, synchronised jammers carried by a fleet of drones, balloons or aircraft. Research from China suggests that these could form an electromagnetic barrier powerful enough to block Starlink from over an area roughly the size of Taiwan.

"The danger of a miscalculation by one of the space powers is only going to increase," says Suess. "If there is a satellite break-up, and there is a suspicious satellite not that far away, the question will inevitably be… was this an act of deliberate, malicious interference or an accident?"

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Robot sessions aim to inspire future engineers

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0jw7j2x5lo, 3 days ago

A university hopes it has inspired some engineers of the future after showing dozens of schoolchildren how to build a robot from scratch.

The 80 students, aged from 14 to 18, took part in free robotics taster days at the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE) in Hereford this week.

The university offers accelerated engineering and technology degrees and tasked the pupils with building and coding their robots.

"I've never done anything like this before and it's really interesting to see how it all comes together," Magnus, 15, said of the course.

"We've taken a bunch of bits and using the hints and instructions, we've been able to put the components in the right places and plug them all in."

With robotics not currently taught in schools, many of the teenagers taking part were new to some of the technology.

"They may have had no experience of coding or mechanical engineering or mechatronics or engineering at all," said NMITE chief executive James Newby.

"By the end of the day, they will have accomplished the building of a robot. That's pretty fantastic.

"This requires really foundational engineering, it requires mechanical engineering, it requires an understanding of electronics, of sensors and feedback and it of course requires software engineering and coding to drive the decision making that the machines have."

The taster days came amid planned changes to the school curriculum, proposed by Prime Minister Andy Burnham earlier this week, who wants schools in England to offer technical subjects to pupils from the age of 14.

The chief executive said the college saw their taster days as "an important way of starting that process".

Some of NMITE students were on hand on the days to offer help and support.

"I think it's a good idea to show them what it's like to do real hands-on stuff," Will Gough, a third year engineering student, said.

"University doesn't always have to be the traditional lecturer experience and it can be a lot more interactive and engaging."

Jasmine Smith, who is in her second year and leads a drone team at the college, said there were lots of "happy kids" at the end of the day.

"I never had anything like this growing up, so this is a really good opportunity for all the young children," she added.

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How victim's wedding photos were used to create obscene images

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2gmpk1v01o, 3 days ago

"I felt violated, but at the same time, I knew it wasn't me" says a woman whose wedding photos were taken and used to created explicit images - which then helped uncover a a global network used to market child sexual abuse material online.

The case began in January 2024 when his victim, referred to as Sarah to protect her identity, reported photographs from her wedding had been digitally manipulated to make her appear naked or wearing lingerie.

Police identified the man responsible as 30-year-old Ethan Orchard, of Highland Road, Southsea, who was known to the victim.

During their inquiries, officers uncovered a "truly horrifying" website, where more than a million child sexual abuse images had been shared.

Orchard was sentenced to three years and four months in prison.

More than 100 fake images of Sarah were uploaded to a website alongside graphic written fantasies describing sexual violence.

Officers said Orchard had even alerted her to the existence of the images himself, without revealing that he had uploaded them.

'Distraught'

Sarah said: "My first instinct was, who did it? Who had access to these images, because they were all private on my Facebook and no-one could access them, so I was very confused.

"I was distraught because it was my wedding photos being used. It's my face but not my body. I felt violated, but at the same time, I knew it wasn't me."

Investigators later discovered Orchard had also created and shared fake explicit images of two other women he knew, as well as posting violent and sexually explicit fantasies about them online.

He also encouraged other users of the website to harass one of the women, although she was never contacted.

PC Steve Cann, who led the investigation, said the women had been "targeted, objectified and left in constant fear for their safety".

"What happened to the women in Hampshire is truly shocking and highlights the frightening reality of how people can exploit online spaces to cause serious harm," he said.

While investigating Orchard's offending, Hampshire Police alerted the FBI to the website in February 2024.

The site was later seized by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement as part of a separate international investigation.

US investigators discovered it was also being used to advertise child sexual abuse material and connect buyers with sellers.

Authorities seized more than 1.1 million child sexual abuse images and identified more than 50 victims across the United States, Canada, Australia and the UK.

Cann said the scale of offending uncovered through a single website had been "truly horrifying".

"Our counterparts in the US have conducted incredible work to remove this website, seize more than a million indecent images of children and identify a global paedophile ring," he said.

Police said advances in artificial intelligence had made it easier than ever to create convincing fake images and videos using photographs taken from social media or elsewhere online, creating new challenges for investigators.

Cann said: "The law is catching up, and the Online Safety Act 2023 is a new set of laws that protects children and adults online."

Sarah said the experience had left a lasting impact and that reporting what happened to police had been difficult, but worthwhile.

She hopes speaking publicly about the case will encourage others to come forward.

"It would have been easier for me to sit back and not have to deal with this but then, I don't know how much worse he could have gotten," she said.

"I don't know how far my images could have gone, I mean he spread my name, my address, everything out there. Anything could have happened to me if I didn't report it."

Orchard pleaded guilty to three counts of sharing a photograph of a person in an intimate state for the purpose of sexual gratification and one count of encouraging the commission of an offence.

He was also made subject to a 10-year sexual harm prevention order and an indefinite restraining order.

How police are trying to divert teen hackers away from crime

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0nqpy1rk4o, 3 days ago

Lucas was 16 when he got into trouble for hacking his school computers. Twice.

"It was like a challenge to see if I could," he told the BBC.

He wanted access to play games and visit blocked websites so he started tinkering with programming.

At one point he even unscrewed the computer tower to take some internal components home for tests.

"It's quite a sense of achievement when you've succeeded in doing something that two or three trained professionals have spent a lot of time trying to stop you doing," he said.

He was close to being expelled - but his worried mother had no idea how serious his actions were.

She called the police and invited an officer from the nationwide programme Cyber Choices to their home in rural Cumbria.

"My mum was like, 'ooh, you've got a detective coming to speak to you, you're in a lot of trouble'," Lucas said.

"So I was sat at the window waiting. Who's going to come? How much trouble am I going to be in?"

PC Sam Cooper knocked on the door earlier this year and has been working with Lucas ever since.

He explained to Lucas, as he has with dozens of other children, there were real consequences and harm caused by cyber-attacks.

Cooper said showing the mostly teenage boys what was legal and not was step one.

Then comes positive encouragement over months of one-to-one meetings, usually at their homes.

"I'll try and find where their interests are and try and divert them towards professional training, qualifications," he said.

Cyber Choices, also known as Cyber Prevent, is like a hacker rehab course.

It works in parallel with the more well-known Prevent scheme, which identifies potential terror offenders.

While at Lucas's house I saw first hand how some of the conversations work.

Lucas enthusiastically explained his latest computer experiments and Cooper asked him what software and tools he was using to check they were legitimate.

Soon the officer will take Lucas on a visit to the local university where he will be shown the cyber security course with the aim of inspiring him to apply.

More than 1,150 cases have been referred to the National Crime Agency (NCA)'s Cyber Choices scheme in the last eight years - nearly 600 of those were in the last three years.

Authorities warn teenage hacking groups are playing an increasingly prominent role in serious cyber-attacks.

Young, English-speaking hackers have been linked to attacks on major organisations including Transport for London (TfL) and MGM Grand in 2024, and Marks & Spencer and the Co-op in 2025.

Individuals are also being increasingly targeted in hacks for their cryptocurrency holdings.

"It certainly has become more of a problem," said Paul Foster, who leads cyber prevention work at the NCA.

"Certainly English-speaking, Western world individuals that we know are now more active in cyber-crime."

He said young people were engaged with online activity and devices at increasingly young ages exposing them to criminal communities and influences.

Police say many young offenders do not initially set out to become criminals.

Instead, they often begin by experimenting with technology, testing systems or trying to bypass restrictions before becoming drawn into online communities where hacking is encouraged.

'Majority are neurodiverse'

The children can come from all over the country and from a range of backgrounds, and Cooper said many be autistic or are neurodiverse.

"The vast majority of individuals I'm dealing with are neurodiverse," he said.

"Even if they're not labelled as such... they obviously have more affinity with computers than they do with practical and social reality," he said.

"Sometimes they can get fixated on certain goals and not listen to any adults around them, so that's where I come in and sit them down and talk to them."

In 2023, a high profile teenage hacker called Arion Kurtaj, who had hacked Grand Theft Auto maker Rockstar Games, was deemed unfit to stand trial because he was severely autistic.

Two teenage hackers who were jailed earlier this month for the TfL hack were also autistic - which was taken into account by the judge when he sentenced them to five and a half years in prison.

One of them, Owen Flowers from Walsall, had been offered a chance to enrol on the Cyber Choices programme when he first got into trouble shortly after he turned 16.

He refused to engage with the scheme.

Some critics argue that teaching cyber skills to young people who have already shown an interest in hacking risks making them more capable offenders.

In another ongoing court case, it emerged a teenager who had been enrolled on the programme was alleged to have gone on to commit further offences.

Foster said he understood the concern but believes the alternative would be worse.

"My fear is that if we didn't give them something like Cyber Choices, where would they get that input and where would that input take them?"

The NCA hopes it could intervene before curiosity, talent and online influence turn into serious offending.

For Lucas, the fear of having a police officer show up at his door made him rethink things.

He admits that if he had not been caught and helped by the scheme he would have carried on pushing boundaries in his exploration of computers and hacking.

Meanwhile in Leicestershire, 21-year-old cyber-security professional Izak is another Cyber Choices success story.

At 15, he hacked his school computers so he could make graphic designs in Photoshop, but he also found himself drawn into cyber-crime groups online who were making "lots of money".

A visit from Leicestershire Police got him on to the programme and helped him see cyber-security as a possible job opportunity, by encouraging him to "use my cyber skills for good".

Virtual interviews don't show bosses your personality, says Burnham

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g4dkr40deo, 3 days ago

Bosses should not rely so heavily on virtual job interviews when hiring as they don't capture candidates' personality and passion, Andy Burnham has said.

"One thing I really don't like is this culture now of interviewing via Zoom or Teams," the prime minister told a careers podcast, adding: "How does a young person shine in that situation?"

With more than one million 16 to 25-year-olds not in work or education, and vacancies at a five-year low, firms are increasingly turning to AI to sift through applications and choosing online interviews over in-person.

But some young people have told the BBC the experience of applying for hundreds of jobs and never hearing back is "robotic and brutal".

It comes as some 89% of UK recruiters say they are planning to use more AI in the hiring process this year, according to data from Linked In.

Speaking to former political adviser Jimmy McLoughlin on his podcast Jimmy's Jobs of the Future, Burnham said he was concerned that the use of technology was not making recruitment processes "fairer".

"How do you get over some of your personality, your passion?" he asked, referring to virtual interviews. "It seems to me to then work against people who have that side to their character and work for those who are just giving the more formulaic answer.

"I do worry about that and I've seen that in relation to my kids and their situation."

Responding to Burham's comments, industry body the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) said online interviews were useful, particularly in earlier hiring stages, but could not replace vital in-person connection.

Maxine Bligh from the REC said: "AI tools are helpful, even essential, when dealing with a huge volume of applications, but it takes skill and professionalism to make the right call.

"The key message from us to recruiters is to go digital where it matters and human where it counts."

Elizabeth Anderson, chief executive of the Digital Poverty Alliance, said online interviews allowed people who do not live in cities to access opportunities.

"Forcing young people to travel into London and other major cities or be limited to local roles that are often in short supply, doesn't support aspiration or opportunity within the UK," she said.

"AI is the bigger issue. AI in job interviews and CV sorting is unfair on young people due to its inherent bias and the vast majority of school leavers being unaware of how to write to be shortlisted by the AI recruitment tools doing the sorting."

Amy Davies from Talent People, which designs assessment and selection solutions for early careers hiring, said while video interviews were not an ideal substitute for an in-person meeting, they could make the process more accessible.

"As one candidate told us: 'I appreciate the ability to retake each question, so I could practice, then rewatch and try again'," she said.

"That kind of control matters particularly for neurodivergent candidates, and for young people who may not be able to afford travel just to attend a first-stage interview, which can be the difference between applying for a role and not."

Denis Machuel, chief executive of the Adecco Group, said there was a role for both virtual and in-person interviews.

"The real test for employers isn't whether an interview happens on a screen or in a room, it's whether the process remains fair, transparent and focused on evaluating genuine skills and potential," he said.

More than one million 16 to 25-year-olds are not in education, employment or training - the highest level in more than 12 years, official figures show.

A major review by former minister Alan Milburn found job and career opportunities for young people are "not growing, they're shrinking" with one in six set to be out of work, education or training in five years unless action is taken.

"We are at risk of a lost generation" with young adults facing a "perfect storm" of challenges, Milburn warned in May.

Burnham also told the podcast that companies who provide six-week work placements for teenagers could be prioritised for government contracts.

He said he wanted to increase the number of 45-day placements, to give 16 to 18-year-olds the chance to spend more time with an employer and gain practical experience.

The PM also called for senior executives to offer young people who do not have established contact networks the chance to shadow them.

It comes after Burnham unveiled plans on Tuesday to open up new technical education routes to 14-year-olds, which would be put on the same footing as traditional academic pathways.

From Year 10, pupils will be able to combine core academic subjects, such as English and maths, with technical education linked to jobs in their area.

TikTok removes council's account fearing it a fake

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgv601v244o, 3 days ago

A town council's new TikTok account was removed because the social media platform thought it was a potential fake.

Wellington Town Council had agreed in June to trial an account on the popular video site, sharing sparse content that included a clip of the mayor leading a summer fayre parade.

But the world barely had the chance to watch. On Tuesday, the council's Events and Communication Committee heard the bid to engage with the younger population had hit a snag - the account was gone, with "no reason" given for the takedown.

By Thursday, however, it emerged that TikTok did indeed have a reason, finding the account to be the potential work of imposters due to an accreditation issue.

Under TikTok's rules, all government, political party or politcian accounts (GPPPAs) must be correctly labelled as such, which, TikTok said, the council's was not.

TikTok said it had since reactivated the account.

The GPPPA accreditation is now displayed.

The account has two videos, both dated June, and with zero views between them as of 17:00 BST on Thursday.

At Tuesday's meeting, in which councillors learned of the issue, they were informed the authority had written to TikTok in a bid to resolve the mattr.

Councillor Paul Davis said during the proceedings that he hoped the step was overturned.

Committee chairwoman Emma Holding said she wanted to not only understand why the account was banned but to avoid the same thing happening again in the future.

Councillors also suggested that Mayor Reg Snell should "write a letter" to the multinational social media giant to ask it to reconsider.

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, which covers councils and other public service organisations.

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Xbox tech boss says 'unacceptable' outage should not have affected disc games

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq5637p7qpno, 3 days ago

Xbox's technology chief said an "unacceptable" outage on Monday should not have stopped people from playing their games on physical discs.

"We're looking into reports that some players were unable to access games using discs as expected during the service interruption," Scott Van Vliet said in a statement.

He said the outage, which lasted around 20 hours, was caused by a licensing issue failing to correctly check if a user was allowed to play a game.

It has poured further fuel onto the fire of fears about gaming's potentially digital future - after Xbox rival PlayStation faced an outage of its own on Friday.

"Disc-based entitlement checks should not prevent players from accessing their games and this is by design," Van Vliet said, originally reported by The Verge.

He said a fix to stop this happening again will be rolled out in an upcoming update.

"I think this highlights how important it is to move towards truly consumers owning their digital games," said one commenter responding to Van Vliet's initial post.

"If consoles are going to become digital only, then issues like today cannot lock people out of their stuff."

Gaming's digital-only future

The issue follows a separate incident on 24 July in which the PlayStation Network also suffered an outage for several hours.

Both incidents have created unease about a so-called digital-only future in games and the questions over game ownership and licensing that come with it.

In June, Rockstar Games announced that physical copies of GTA 6, perhaps one of the most hotly-anticipated games in history, would contain a code for a digital download for the game rather than a disc.

Nintendo has also shifted further towards digital distribution in recent years with the introduction of Game-Key Cards - physical cartridges that act as a key to download a game, rather than containing the game itself.

Meanwhile, earlier this month, Sony announced plans to no longer release new PlayStation games on discs from January 2028.

It said while new games would still be able to be bought in shops, they would come with a digital code.

Both announcements have prompted backlash from people worried about a future without physical games.

Stop Killing Games is a consumer rights movement campaigning for publishers to leave online games playable if they end up switching off their servers.

"The problem is the industry has a very poor reputation of disabling games once they end support," said Scott Ross, co-founder of consumer rights group Stop Killing Games, following Rockstar's announcement.

"The trust from customers for many large publishers just isn't there.

"I don't think the lack of a disc is the problem in itself, but rather it can be a symptom of a larger, very consumer-hostile practice."

Jez Corden, executive editor of the website Windows Central, said Sony's decision to stop selling physical games had "put digital rights under a microscope".

And he said the statement on the Xbox outage suggested the firm was "sensitive of the discussions around digital rights and disc-based games right now".

Digital sales now account for the vast majority of game revenue - but the recent spate of outages have lead some to hope games companies may begin to rethink their strategy.

‘What can you live without?’: How the Nordics have perfected the summer cabin

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260730-nine-stunning-nordic-cabins-and-summerhouses, 2 days ago

In this region, summer is all about retreating to a countryside timber dwelling. Here are some of the best, from a mid-Century home to a modern cabin overlooking the ocean.

The Nordic people tend to stay close to home in the summer. And why not, when the annual ritual is to get away from it all by spending the whole summer at their rural retreat?

Whether bought, inherited or rented, these summer houses are all about dipping into a simpler, more traditional lifestyle. Originally, they were back-to-nature basic. A prolific summer cabin designer, Norwegian mid-20th-Century architect Wenche Selmer believed they were a metaphor for a simple, good life. "What can you live without?" she often asked her clients.

In recent times, these cabins and summerhouses – some 1.8 million of them across the Nordics – have been souped up with modern conveniences, as the demand has increased for comfort. Now environmental concerns combine with a desire for reduced consumption and a digital detox, producing a simpler aesthetic. Whatever their spec, they allow people to embrace friluftsliv, the Norwegian concept of open-air living.

Here are nine Nordic cabins and summerhouses, from original designs and eco-friendly new-builds to sympathetic restorations.

1. Cabin at Fjelldalsøy, Norway, by Wenche and Jens Selmer

Wenche Selmer and her cabins are getting their moment in the Sun, through an exhibition of her work in Oslo. Selmer developed a practice where nature, frugality, wooden house traditions and modern architecture came together, like this one from 1960, which she designed with her husband Jens.

Many new cabins in Norway boast luxuries such as running water, electricity, top-of-the-range kitchens, internet access, flat screens and car access. But Selmer's 1960s and 1970s cabins are an increasingly appealing antidote to that.

Hers were bare-minimum dwellings, with no water or electricity, only functional necessities such as a sheltered, Sun-facing wall suitable for enjoying tasks like cleaning foraged berries and mushrooms.

2. Qvarsebo Summerhouse, Sweden, by Leo Qvarsebo

This retreat sits between some woods and pasture in the Swedish countryside. Architect Leo Qvarsebo designed it for himself and his children. Its triangular profile means the building leans into its holiday-home spirit, with the sloping façade doubling as a climbing wall. There's even a rope attached to the top of the roof for extra help.

As with all such dwellings, time contemplating nature is key. So there's space on the terrace for sun-loungers and a frame for two swings, and cooking happens indoors and outdoors, of course. The connection with nature is expressed in the building's wooden frame and façade clad in pine panels. The sustainable qualities also include the walls and ceilings inside. These are lined with birch plywood, which Qvarsebo sourced from a closed-down puzzle factory. And all the doors and windows are second-hand.

3. House on an Island, Norway, by Atelier Oslo

This small house on Skåtøy Island, off Norway's south coast, was designed for a pair of artists who craved a retreat where they could contemplate and work. Its prefabricated wooden structure is wrapped in a gridded façade of timber slats, which create a dappled light, rather like sitting under a tree. The grid also shapes the views through walls of glazing.

The house sits on slabs of smooth rounded rock, and its concrete flooring inside and out makes the building feel like part of the landscape. Over time, the structure's heat-treated wood will turn grey, meaning the building will almost disappear into its surroundings.

4. Slavik house, Sweden, by Fahlander Arkitekter

Bohuslän is a picturesque province on Sweden's north-west coast. This house on one of the area's higher points was designed for the son of a big family, who have spent their summers here for generations.

Rather than levelling the ground, the house hovers above the cliff on a cantilevered pier. The design and layout take account of the salty autumn storms and the simple summer lifestyle. The timber frame supports rounded roofs, whose shape echoes the surrounding cliffs.

Cooking, dining and socialising all happen in the big space at the front of the building, with sleeping and showering at the back. The many glazed sliding doors give every room access to the outside.

5. Vejrhøj, Denmark, by Studio Marshall Blecher and Jan Henrik Jansen Arkitekter

Danish architect Ole Meyer completed Vejrhøj, a small yet significant modernist summerhouse, in 1967. It sits among the hills of Western Sjælland (Zealand) in the west of Denmark and combines a functionalist approach with farmhouse vernacular, including a thatched roof.

In 2018, architects were brought in by the owners to restore and extend it.

The original roof, exposed timber frame and sliding wooden windows were in a poor state and didn't come close to meeting Denmark's stringent modern building codes. For the windows a local craftsman developed custom composite columns with steel and fire-retardant material enveloped in sheaths of pitch pine.

6. Torö, Sweden, by Atelier Heyman Hamilton

On the Swedish island of Torö, a 1970s "catalogue house" – a modest, modular, prefab home ordered through a catalogue – has been sensitively expanded and updated.

The building stands on rocky terrain and is an example of Folkhem architecture, a Swedish movement in the mid-20th Century that mixed modern materials and mass production systems with local and traditional forms.

Inside, the architects have reconfigured the rooms to make the work better for multi-generational living. And outside, a key change is the new roof. Meanwhile, the extension houses an extra bedroom and reading room.

7. Manhausen Sea Cabins, Norway, by Snorre Stinessen

Norwegian polar explorer Børge Ousland was drawn to the island of Manhausen by the beauty of the Arctic landscape. This was the place for adventure, from fishing and kayaking to diving and exploring mountains. And Ousland saw its potential as a resort. Architect Snorre Stinessen has designed seven sea cabins here for Ousland, along with communal amenities. Each acts as a personal refuge with its own view.

"Most of the cabins sit on the old stone quays, projecting out over the water," Dominic Bradbury writes in his book The Iconic Nordic House. These dwellings are compact, full of space-saving designs, like the bunkroom and galley kitchenette. They are designed as places to recharge, giving visitors the sensation of being out in nature while they're snug in the warm interiors.

8. Skigard Hytte, Norway, by Mork-Ulnes

Kvitfell is where Norwegian architect Casper Mork-Ulnes and his American wife, designer Lexie Mork-Ulnes, go with the family to ski in the winter, and to hike and fish in the summer. In The Iconic Nordic House, Bradbury explains that the pair "wanted to make the most of the setting and open views across the valley below while touching the Earth as lightly as possible". They slotted the cabin between existing trees and raised it on wooden supports to maximise the view. The big open space has zones for seating, dining and cooking. The floors and walls are of local pine.

9. Cabin K, Finland, by Studio Kamppari

Finland is known for its clear lake waters, dense forests and shifting light, and this high-altitude cabin overlooks Lake Saimaa. It is a new guest house for an extended family who also have another property nearby. Now with Cabin K, they can all continue to holiday together. The living room has north- and south-facing windows, and there is a bedroom at either end of the cabin. This pine log construction borrows from traditional architecture, and will help Cabin K blend in with the forest as the treated logs turn grey, for a natural, weathered look.

Wenche Selmer. What Can You Live Without? is at the National Museum of Norway, Oslo, until 4 October.

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British girl band FLO 'want it all' - and they're confident they will get it

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8rnpxyj762o, yesterday

"It's kind of been like a bit of a crash course in making music," says Stella Quaresma of making FLO's second album, Therapy at the Club.

After entering the music industry as teenagers, the British girl band say they grew to trust their own instincts during six months making their new record.

Formed of Quaresma, Jorja Douglas and Renée Downer, they first broke through in 2022 with the track Cardboard Box and have since won Best R&B/Soul Act at the 2026 MOBO Awards.

The group have more than five million monthly Spotify listeners and 1.2 million TikTok followers.

The campaign around their second album has included a NPR Tiny Desk performance viewed over a million times and appearances on high-profile US podcasts, helping reintroduce them stateside.

"It felt like we went to university and graduated with honours," Quaresma adds.

For their latest album, the group say they became more involved than ever before in every stage of the album's creation, from songwriting and vocal arrangements to production decisions.

'We're definitely a lot more grown up'

"Sometimes you walk away from a session and people are surprised that you contributed, that you had ideas," says Douglas.

Quaresma suggests that's partly because when FLO first entered the industry, they leaned on the experience of the writers and producers around them.

"In the past we'd kind of been okay with that," she says. "But now we really don't need that kind of crutch."

For Downer, that greater creative control has resulted in FLO's most authentic record yet.

"We're definitely a lot more grown up. We've been a lot more involved, so this really is the best reflection of us at this point in time," she says.

Love has always been central to FLO's music, but on this album they explore its messier realities, with nights out providing the backdrop for stories of heartbreak, healing and friendship.

"So go ahead and kiss who you wanna / whatever the trauma / If you ever fall out of love / try therapy at the club," they sing on the title track.

Quaresma says the title came to represent the role friends can play during difficult moments.

"It's the idea that you're having the worst time of your life, but your friends are saying, 'No, you're coming out, you're going to dance and forget about it for a second.'"

While R&B remains at the heart of FLO's sound, they say they also aimed to push further into pop on their second album.

Quaresma says making Therapy at the Club taught her "how fun it is to really blend genres and to delve more into making pop music to make really big songs".

One example is Remedied, co-written with Grammy-winning songwriter Amy Allen, who has worked with pop stars Sabrina Carpenter and Tate McRae.

When making their Grammy-nominated debut album, Access All Areas, the FLO trio wrote songs together - but for Therapy at the Club, they wrote separately before bringing ideas back to one another.

Quaresma says this process helped them appreciate one another's strengths in a new way.

"You don't fully get to appreciate each other's talents when you're writing in a room of 10 people. To go away and write songs, then show each other what we'd made, was really special," she says.

That approach also extended to the album's collaborations. One of just two guest appearances on the record is Sex in Peace, their second collaboration with rising British R&B singer kwn. Quaresma wrote the song before bringing it to the rest of the group.

Downer says working with kwn has become a natural fit.

"We work really well with kwn when it comes to sexy R&B, so it felt right to send it to her and see if she'd do a verse," she says.

"She sent it back really quickly. We had no notes. We loved it."

'This is the most thrilling, entertaining, fulfilling job'

FLO's ambition doesn't stop with the music. Live performance is never far from their minds, with choreography, visuals and music videos all considered throughout the album-making process.

"As we elevate everywhere else in our career, with the vocals, the music, the appearance, we also want to elevate the music videos and the dance," Douglas explains.

The demanding schedule has meant long rehearsal days and little sleep, but Douglas says it's worth it.

"This is the most thrilling, entertaining, fulfilling job we could have ever asked for."

Asked what success looks like over the next year, the trio don't hesitate.

"We want it all," Quaresma says.

Douglas nods in agreement before adding: "We want the shows, we want the numbers, we want the awards, we want the love and we want the success."

How Sam Fender and Olivia Dean's Rein Me In broke the UK's singles chart record

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly8r2p27lzo, 2 days ago

It's a song that has become inescapable, whether you're scrolling on TikTok, listening to the radio or even filling up your trolley on the weekly shop.

And now Rein Me In, the melodic love song by Sam Fender and Olivia Dean, has officially broken the longest standing record in British music history.

Speaking to Jack Saunders on BBC Radio 1's Official Chart show on Friday afternoon, Fender said he was "speechless" when asked how it felt to break the record.

By spending 19 non-consecutive weeks at the top of the UK singles chart, it overtakes the record set by American crooner Frankie Laine with his track I Believe, in 1953.

This reworking of Rein Me In, from Fender's third studio album, the Mercury Prize-winning People Watching, features an extra verse about the breakdown of a relationship from a female perspective, from Dean.

"[It's] very personal and reminded us of home, but when Olivia put her touch on it, it became a much more universal track," he told Radio 1, adding "that's what made it so huge and so beautiful".

He said he wanted to "personally thank" Dean, who helped him achieve his first ever number one single, adding: "It wouldn't have happened without Olivia obviously, but now I feel like it belongs to the fans, they've made it what it is".

When asked how he'd be celebrating the achievement, Fender joked "I think I'm just gonna have a really big sandwich".

It hasn't been a straightforward ascent to the top for Rein Me In - originally released as a solo Fender track and repurposed as a duet in June 2025, it took eight months to reach number one in February this year.

Dean said when the track came out that the original version of Rein Me In was her "favourite song on Sam's album" and it was "a pleasure to write a new verse from a female perspective".

A lot of the song's success as a duet comes from its authenticity, with the lyrics exploring the fallout from the end of a relationship and the difficulties faced by both parties as they try to move on from each other.

Whilst Fender's verses feel full of anger and regret at not being able to open up and be the partner he wanted to be, they are complimented by the softer and more reflective tone of Dean's, in which she encourages him to try again to make it work.

It has been described by Blunt Magazine's Jake Fitzpatrick as "stormy, tender and anthemic" and a "love letter to the kind of songwriting that knows when to burn slow".

The song has also received praise amongst many critics and bloggers, including Cult Following's Ewan Gleadow, who says that Dean's addition helps it to find "a new depth", noting "charm is a big part of it too, with all those reflections on where you come from and where you're headed".

The song's journey has been an interesting one - first entering the charts in June 2025, but not hitting the top spot until February 2026, just a week before it was crowned song of the year at the Brit Awards.

Three weeks after going to number one, it was knocked off the top spot by Harry Styles' American Girls, but only for seven days.

Since then it has only been superseded briefly by Olivia Rodrigo's Drop Dead and Ariana Grande's Hate That I Made You Love Me.

Rein Me In has now spent so long at the top that it has broken every record in UK chart history.

* Wet Wet Wet topped the charts in 1994 for 15 weeks with Love Is All Around and was previously the longest-running British chart topper.

* Bryan Adams' track (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, spent 16 weeks at the top in 1991.

* Frankie Laine's I Believe achieved 18 weeks at number one in the 1950s.

Ben Mortimer, who runs Fender's label Polydor, described it as a "historic achievement" from "two homegrown stars" - Newcastle's Fender and London's Dean.

In an interview with Radio 1 when the track first hit number one, Fender acknowledged the track's slow climb to the top, thanking "the internet".

He also says he found it interesting that the track "travelled online and people came to it later, which is wonderful really because it's the music that's doing the talking".

The song has become a mainstay on TikTok - a quick scroll through the social media app shows its use on everything from grand declarations of love to montages of holidays and even compilations of football goals and celebrations.

It's also notable that the song first went viral after the pair performed it at a show at the London Stadium, home of Dean's team West Ham, in June last year.

She then returned the favour a week later at Newcastle United's St James Park, performing the song this time at the home of Fender's footballing love.

Whilst TikTok streams do not count towards the official charts, BBC research from last year explored how much of an effect the platform was having on what we listened to, particularly songs with meaningful and powerful lyrics.

Former England football star Shaun Wright-Phillips joins Strictly line-up

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg74gvy8lgjo, 3 days ago

Former England and Manchester City winger Shaun Wright-Phillips is the latest star to join the line-up for this year's Strictly Come Dancing.

The football pundit, who is the son of Arsenal legend Ian Wright, had 36 caps for England and also played for clubs including Chelsea and Queens Park Rangers.

His fancy footwork may have dazzled on the pitch but Wright-Phillips says this latest challenge "is definitely outside my comfort zone. Dancing is in my blood -but mainly at family events! I'm super excited to get started and really looking forward to the challenge!"

While ex-footballers have had mixed fortunes on previous Strictly series, former soccer star Karen Carney flipped the script last year by winning the coveted glitterball.

Wright-Phillips is the tenth celebrity to be confirmed for this year's series, joining stars including Delta Goodrem, Lacey Turner, Dani Dyer and Jaime Winstone.

More celebrities are set to be announced in the coming weeks, with 15 expected in the final line-up.

Scroll down to see the rest of this year's line-up so far:

Bethany Anthony

Antonia has portrayed dragon-rider Lady Baela Targaryen in HBO's Game of Thrones prequel since 2022. She is currently starring as Eurydice in the Tony Award-winning musical Hadestown in London's West End.

Her acting career began when she was 14 when she appeared in a short film adaptation of The Tempest, before being cast as a guest role in the BBC's Doctors.

The singer and actress has also appeared in series including Nolly, Stay Close, Stath Lets Flats, and Doctor Who.

Antonia said: "I can't quite believe that I will be heading to the Strictly ballroom this September! I have grown up watching Strictly, and I am so excited to take the challenge on and (hopefully!) learn a new skill. See you on the dancefloor!"

Jaime Winstone

Jaime Winstone launched her acting career in 2004 and her film credits include Bullet Boy, Tomb Raider and Wild Bill, as well stage productions such as 2:22 A Ghost Story.

The actress, who also won acclaim for her portrayal of Barbara Windsor in the BBC biopic Babs, said she was "so excited" to be joining the dance competition.

The actress said in a statement she was "no stranger to a dance floor", but added that ballroom is "a whole new world for me".

"I love a challenge though," she continued, "so can't wait to enter my showgirl era and get super sparkly!"

Winstone has also appeared in TV series such as Poirot, Dead Set, Torvill & Dean, Mad Dogs, Count Abdulla and Four Lives.

After playing Windsor in Babs, Winstone stepped into the late actress's famous role of Peggy Mitchell in EastEnders, appearing in flashback specials, most recently in the soap's 40th anniversary last year.

Dame Sarah Storey

Known as Great Britain's most successful Paralympian of all time, Dame Sarah Storey has secured 19 gold medals across the nine Paralympic Games she competed in.

The swimmer and cyclist said embarking on the challenge is "hugely exciting" and she "can't wait to get started".

"I have always loved watching Strictly and my daughter Louisa is a very talented dancer, so to be able to learn from the best and hopefully understand even more about her world, is incredibly motivating!" she said.

The former athlete won four golds at London 2012. She started her career as a swimmer and later switched to cycling, winning 30 Paralympic medals in total.

Will Best

Best is known for hosting Big Brother with AJ Odudu on ITV since 2023, and as host of the Hits Radio Breakfast Show alongside Fleur East and James Barr.

He said it was "an absolute dream" to be taking to the BBC One contest's dance floor in September, "albeit a pretty terrifying one".

Best added: "I've been lucky to do lots of live telly before, but absolutely nothing like this. And I cannot wait!

"I have no idea if I can actually dance, but bring on the sequins, bring on the quicksteps, bring on the dance floor! I'm going to try to enjoy every minute of it."

Cach Mercer

Mercer was part of the winning couple on ITV dating show Love Island last year, and also works as a model and DJ, and is an ambassador for a young people's mental health charity.

"I have grown up watching the show with my family and am so excited to now be part of the cast," he said.

Mercer also showcases his Afrobeat, hip-hop and street dance moves on his social media accounts.

"Dancing is a huge passion of mine and I can't wait to learn ballroom and do the foxtrot for the first time!" he added.

Delta Goodrem

Delta Goodrem is also part of this year's celebrity list, with the Australian singer and actress becoming the third celebrity to be announced for the upcoming series.

"I've been incredibly honoured to perform on many different stages throughout my career - from TV, theatre, film sets, to touring my own shows around the world," Goodrem said.

"There is, however, one stage I've never stepped onto and that is the ballroom floor. I'm absolutely thrilled to be joining Strictly and can't wait to get started."

She rose to fame in hit Australian soap opera Neighbours and recently represented her nation in the 2026 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Chris Appleton

Celebrity hair stylist Chris Appleton is also part of this year's line-up.

Appleton, best known for his work with Kim Kardashian, joins singer-songwriter Delta Goodrem, EastEnders actress Lacey Turner and reality star Dani Dyer in the battle for the Glitterball trophy.

The Leicester-born Color Wow creative director said: "I'm thrilled to be joining Strictly Come Dancing and coming home to the UK for this incredible experience."

He has also created red carpet looks for the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Katy Perry and Ariana Grande, while having his work showcased on the covers of publications including Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Vanity Fair.

"I've always believed that the best things happen when you take a chance and try something new," added the 43-year-old, who this year released a memoir entitled Your Roots Don't Define You.

"I may know my way around a salon floor, but the dance floor is a whole different story - and I can't wait to get started."

Lacey Turner

Lacey Turner was the first contestant to be announced for this year's series, which is expected to begin in September.

She said she was "so excited to be making my way to the dance floor", adding that she was a "huge fan" of the show.

Turner, 38, is best known for her role as Stacey Slater on the BBC One soap, which she joined in 2004.

She has won a British Soap Award and National Television Award for her role, and has also starred in TV dramas including the BBC's Our Girl.

In a video posted on Instagram, Turner said she was "so excited and so terrified at the same time" to be taking part in the show.

"But I've had so many friends do Strictly, and I thought it was about time that I pluck up the courage and made my way on to the dance floor."

Dani Dyer

Dani Dyer, the media personality and daughter of actor Danny Dyer appeared in the launch episode last year, but was then injured in training and pulled out before the competition began.

That incident has not put her off trying again. "I am so excited to be back in the ballroom this September," she said.

"I just cannot wait to get my dancing shoes back on and hopefully this time around I can actually make it to week one! I'm just over the moon and cannot wait to find out who else is doing it."

The 29-year-old, who first found fame on Love Island in 2018, fractured her ankle when she "landed funny" in rehearsals with dance partner Nikita Kuzmin before the competitive episodes began last September.

She was replaced by actress Amber Davies, another former Love Island winner, who went on to reach the Strictly final.

Earlier this year, Dyer was joint winner of Channel 4's Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, and appeared with her dad in TV show The Dyers' Caravan Park.

Josh Widdicombe, Emma Willis and Johannes Radebe will take over as Strictly presenters this year, following the departures of Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman.

The first line-up announcements were made significantly earlier than usual - the BBC usually confirms the line-up in August.

Speaking to ITV's Good Morning Britain in June, Ballas said: "There are going to be some people on there that will make you go 'wow'."

Asked about the new presenting trio, Ballas said she was "very excited to see what they bring" to the show.

"I know they took lots of chemistry tests, as did everybody, and those chemistry tests have brought those three people together, and I believe it's absolutely unbelievable," she said.

Ballas described the number of new elements on this year's show as "quite extraordinary", but added that it will still feel familiar to viewers.

"I don't think they'll change the show too much, maybe tweaks here and there, but no major changes."

Ballas, Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse and Anton Du Beke will all return as judges.

Regular pro dancers including Amy Dowden, Dianne Buswell, Katya Jones, Vito Coppola and Aljaz Skorjanec will all be back on the dance floor.

However, professional dancers Gorka Marquez, Nadiya Bychkova, Luba Mushtuk, Karen Hauer and Michelle Tsiakkas will not be returning this year.

Ted Lasso to The Shards: 10 of the best TV shows to watch this August

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260727-10-of-the-best-tv-shows-to-watch-this-august, 5 days ago

From the comeback of Apple TV's hit football comedy to a dark teen thriller from Ryan Murphy, and new DC superhero series Lanterns – these are the best series to watch and stream.

1. Fightland

Set in the worlds of boxing and drug cartels, this revenge drama has Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson as an executive producer, as he was on Power, a show so successful it has led to five spin-offs. Fightland shares a similar gritty style. British boxer Duke Kilroy (Howard Charles, best known for Top Boy) becomes world heavyweight champion, only to spend the next eight years in a US prison for his brother's murder. On his release, he heads back to London determined to get vengeance on the man he is certain set him up for a crime he didn't commit: Kingsley Marshall (Nicholas Pinnock), a drug lord living a lush lifestyle. Duke decides to infiltrate his crime syndicate. Kingsley sets the series' tone in the teaser trailer, looking polished and ominous as he says, "Boxing is a criminal enterprise. Always has been and always will be."

Fightland premieres 31 July on Starz in the US and 27 August on Sky and NOW in the UK

2. Ted Lasso

Three years after it ended, supposedly for good, this warm, funny hit series returns with a twist. Former AFC Richmond football coach Ted (Jason Sudeikis) is lured back to the UK from Kansas City to coach a Richmond women's team that Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) has just created. The first episode sets up his choice too obviously, but by episode two he's back in London and the old show is reinvigorated with its new female-empowerment theme. Much of the lovable cast returns, including Jeremy Swift as director of operations Leslie Higgins, Juno Temple as marketing guru Keeley Jones, and Brett Goldstein as Roy Kent, now in Ted's old job but still a wonderfully acerbic character with a marshmallow heart for Keeley. Tanya Reynolds (from Netflix's Sex Education) plays a deadpan, talented coach for the women's team. With its motto "Believe", the show was embraced as pandemic-era comfort food when it began in 2020. Now that it's familiar, it may be even more comforting today.

Ted Lasso premieres 5 August on Apple TV internationally

3. The Shards

Produced by Ryan Murphy, like a gazillion other series, this drama is set in 1981 Los Angeles and based on Bret Easton Ellis's 2023 semi-autobiographical novel. The conspicuously named Bret (Igby Rigney) is an aspiring writer and closeted gay man in his senior year of high school, when a new student, Robert, played by Homer Gere (yes, son of Richard) arrives. At the same time, a serial killer called The Traveler begins piling up victims. Kaia Gerber (daughter of Cindy Crawford) also stars as Bret's friend, Susan. The three are caught up in a world of rich, beautiful people and themes typical of both Murphy and Ellis: sexual identity, jealousy and suspicions. When The Shards was published, the New York Times review said the author had returned "to his old tropes: gruesome murder, lonely teenagers and 1980s Los Angeles".

The Shards premieres 5 August on Hulu in the US and 6 August on Disney+ internationally

4. Sterling Point

Megan Park, writer and director of the coming-of-age comedy My Old Ass, created this teenage melodrama fraught with family secrets. Seventeen-year-old Annie (Ella Rubin) and her twin brother, Connor (Keen Ruffalo), live in New York City with their father (Jay Duplass). Out of nowhere, the twins inherit a Canadian island called Sterling Point from the grandfather they barely knew, the father of their late mother. The trailer gives away part of a key secret. We see Annie arriving at her grandfather's cottage on the island, meeting a girl around her age named Ramona (Amelie Hoeferle) and frantically calling Connor to say, "I'm freaking out. There's a girl here who looks just like Mom." But there are more twists after that, along with romance for Annie. Teen Vogue, previewing the show, praised the way it leans into young adult tropes, saying, "Dead-slash-absent parents, secret-sibling reveals, love triangles – this series has it all."

Sterling Point premieres 5 August on Prime Video internationally

5. Alley Cats

Ricky Gervais created and is the main voice in this decidedly adult, British animated comedy about a group of stray city cats making mischief, sitting around asking existential questions, and using language that would be bleeped for a children's audience. Gervais plays Gus, the gang's leader. Diane Morgan (Motherland and Ann Droid) is the voice of the lead female cat, Olive, and Tom Basden is Ponce, the only posh member of the group. Netflix categorises the show as "raunchy, quirky, irreverent", and Deadline has called it "riotously politically incorrect yet philosophical", which is very on brand for Gervais. When it was shown at the Annecy International Animation Festival, Gervais said: "It's a sitcom. I don't even like the term 'adult animation' because it's a family of cats – just like in a sitcom." He added, "I hope you like cats. And swearing."

Alley Cats premieres 7 August on Netflix internationally

6. Reacher

Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson), the former US Army officer and current itinerant crime-solver, is often seen drifting through small towns, but in this fourth season of the popular action-thriller he moves to the city, a change likely to inject freshness into the sturdy premise. The plot is based on Lee Child's 2009 novel, Gone Tomorrow, the 13th in his Reacher series, and the show transplants the action from New York to Philadelphia, where Reacher witnesses a woman take her life on the subway. When he investigates, the trail leads to government agencies and intelligence networks, but that doesn't tamp down the action. Ritchson has said of this season, "It's just a labyrinth of fights." The series has become so reliable that a fifth season has already been ordered, and Neagley, a spin-off about Reacher's former military colleague Frances Neagley, is set to arrive next month.

Reacher premieres 12 August on Prime Video internationally

7. My Brilliant Career

This Australian period drama is based on the classic 1901 novel by Miles Franklin, which was also the source for Gillian Armstrong's still-resonant 1979 film starring Judy Davis and Sam Neill, the beloved actor who died on 13 July. In the new series, Philippa Northeast plays Sybilla, a young woman who dreams of becoming a writer and defiantly resists marriage in favour of pursuing a career. Her plan becomes more complicated when she falls in love with a perfect match, the rich landowner Harry. Christopher Chung plays the romantic hero, a radical shift from his role as the computer-savvy, socially-inept Roddy Ho in Slow Horses. Set and shot amid the awe-inspiring South Australian countryside, the series includes the kind of scenes that make period dramas so popular, including the heroine riding a horse across the screen, an elaborate ball with dancing, and a shirtless hero. But the story remains timely. Northeast has said about Franklin's novel, "More than a century later, her words still remind us that ambition is not arrogance."

My Brilliant Career premieres 13 August on Netflix internationally

8. Lanterns

The cast and creators alone make this latest addition to the DC screen universe a standout among comics-inspired series. Kyle Chandler plays Hal Jordan, about to retire as one of the Lanterns, the intergalactic cops whose glowing green rings give them extraordinary powers. Aaron Pierre co-stars as John Stewart, whom Hal is training as his replacement. Hal believes a murder 10 years ago in Nebraska has extraterrestrial written all over it, and the story moves back and forth between 2016 and today. Kelly Macdonald plays the sheriff of the Nebraska town, while Laura Linney will appear as a character still being kept under wraps. The show was created by Chris Mundy (a producer of Ozark), Damon Lindelof (Lost and Watchmen) and comics writer Tom King. Mundy has said he was inspired by some sophisticated series, including the first season of True Detective, which also had dual timelines and hinged on the friendship of Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey's characters. "We think of this as a relationship show between John and Hal," he told EW.

Lanterns premieres on HBO Max on 16 August in the US and 17 August in the UK

9. Conan O'Brien Must Go

Now on its third series, this delightfully silly, thoroughly comic travel show sees Conan O'Brien meet fans across the world, and put himself in ridiculous situations. This season's four episodes take him to Morocco, India, the Philippines and the Netherlands. Shooting in Amsterdam, he was photographed in an orange hat and scarf and enormous rhinestone-rimmed orange sunglasses, which is funny enough in itself. While there, he hinted at one of his adventures for the show in a radio interview. "One of my fans is a high-fashion model here in Amsterdam and she said she could teach me how to be a male model," he said. "I showed up, I met with her, and she told me at the end, 'This isn't going to work.'" In the same interview he gave a pithy explanation of his goal. "We've all seen travel shows – they try to teach you about the country," he said. "I want you at the end of my program to know nothing about the country. I want you to be maybe even dumber than you were at the start of the show."

Conan O'Brien Must Go premieres 21 August on HBO Max in the US and 22 August in the UK

10. Dark Matter

Joel Edgerton once more plays all the Jasons in this mind-bending series. In the first season, Chicago physicist Jason Dessen was abducted into an alternate universe, landing in different versions of his life and accidentally releasing hundreds of versions of himself as he tried to make his way home to his wife, Daniela (Jennifer Connelly), and teenaged son, Charlie (Oakes Fegley). He made it back, and the family seemed settled until hordes of variant Jasons came after them. Now in season two they are on the run. Blake Crouch created the show based on his own novel but used up the book's plot in the first season, so who knows where he will send the family next? Beneath all the sci-fi and suspense, the series raises questions about the big what-ifs of life as Jason One grapples with his choices.

Dark Matter premieres 28 August on Apple TV internationally

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The Dog Stars to One Night Only: 10 of the best films to watch this August

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260722-10-of-the-best-films-to-watch-this-august, 9 days ago

From Jacob Elordi in Ridley Scott's post-apocalyptic thriller, to a wacky NYC romcom starring Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro, here are the films to watch at the cinema and stream at home this month.

1. One Night Only

In most ways, One Night Only is a typical romantic comedy. It revolves around two flirtatious and absurdly attractive young New Yorkers (Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner), and it's directed by Will Gluck, who made such Hollywood romcoms as Friends with Benefits and Anyone but You. But Travis Braun's script has a bizarre twist: it's set in an alternate reality where it's illegal for single people to have sex, except on one night a year. Nicknamed "The Purge, but for sex", the concept has prompted much online debate about whether it's a great idea for a romcom or an absolutely terrible one. "If you allow yourself to buy into the absurdity of it, you'll have a good time," advised Turner in The Hollywood Reporter. "Don't be a stickler for the rules, or go watch something else. Go watch a documentary."

Released on 7 August in the US and Canada and on 28 August in the UK and Ireland

2. Ice Cream Man

Eli Roth, the director of Cabin Fever and Hostel, is back to dish out another scoop of gory, low-budget horror – and Ice Cream Man looks like his most gleefully excessive film yet. Ari Millen plays the titular purveyor of frozen treats, a mystery man who drives around an all-American town, selling ice cream that turns children into homicidal maniacs. So if you enjoyed the climax of Weapons, when the children become a pack of feral predators, then Ice Cream Man could be the guilty pleasure for you. "I want this to be the craziest film I've ever made," said Roth in Geek Vibes Nation. It's like The Birds but with children... I mean, it's totally insane."

Released on 6 August in Australia and New Zealand, and on 7 August in the US, the UK, Canada and Ireland

3. The Dog Stars

Ridley Scott is 88, but the legendary director is busier than ever. In the past five years, he has made The Last Duel, House of Gucci, Napoleon and Gladiator II, and now he's directed The Dog Stars, a post-apocalyptic thriller adapted from Peter Heller's novel. Among the survivors of a near-future flu epidemic are a pilot (Jacob Elordi), a medic (Margaret Qualley) and an ex-marine (Josh Brolin) – although you could say that none of them knows more about surviving than Scott himself. "He's been plugging into cinema his whole life – it literally pumps through his blood," said Elordi on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. "That's what keeps the engine running. I'm literally watching cinema sustain a life."

Released on 26 to 28 August internationally

4. Tony

Anthony Bourdain, who died in 2018, was a rock star in the world of food and travel-writing, so it's appropriate that he should get a rock star origin-story film. Inspired by his bestselling memoir, Kitchen Confidential, Tony is set in the mid-1970s when he was a college drop-out working in a restaurant in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It's directed by Matt Johnson (Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie), and it features Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers) as the 19-year-old Bourdain, alongside Antonio Banderas as the chef who mentors him, Leo Woodall as a friend, and Emilia Jones as his girlfriend. Sessa is the ideal actor to play Bourdain, Johnson said in Entertainment Weekly. "[They are] both from Jersey, both sent to private school, but didn't fit in, both restless and searching… More than any movie I've ever made, this film was a partnership with an actor."

Released on 7 August in the US, and on 14 August in the UK and Ireland

5. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma was the best reviewed film at this year's Cannes Film Festival. A surreal postmodern comedy from Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow), it stars Hannah Einbinder (Hacks) as a queer director who is hired to revive a Friday-the-13th-like slasher franchise – and to make it politically acceptable to liberal young viewers. Her big idea is to hire the actress (Gillian Anderson) who was the star of the first film. But it so happens that the actress now lives as a recluse in the very summer camp where that film was shot, so the boundaries between reality and fiction begin to blur. "A steamy stew of sex, death, VHS and junk food, Schoenbrun's delirious third film is their most accomplished, most persuasive and most playful movie yet," says Jessica Kiang in Variety.

Released on 7 August in the US and Canada, and on 21 August in the UK

6. The End of Oak Street

The Jurassic Park/ World films are usually set in exotic locations, so it's intriguing to see a different kind of dinosaurs-v-humans scenario. Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell (It Follows) and produced by JJ Abrams (Lost, Star Wars: The Force Awakens), The End of Oak Street stars Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor as ordinary suburban parents in an ordinary suburban neighbourhood. The only trouble is that this neighbourhood has somehow been teleported to a primeval wilderness. Will garden tools be enough to fend off the ravenous reptiles? "I love the Jurassic movies as much as anyone, but those films, for the most part, take place in these beautiful jungles, these distant islands," Abrams said in Empire. "David's whole approach here was the juxtaposition of the absolute mundane suburban family life and dinosaurs."

Released on 12 to 14 August internationally

7. The Wrong Girls

Two friends smoke too much cannabis and then stumble into a world of dangerous crime. That's the outline of countless stoner comedies from Up in Smoke to Pineapple Express, but almost all of these films have something else in common: the friends in question are men. The Wrong Girls is one of the only female-led examples of the genre. Kristen Stewart (who is married to the film's writer-director, Dylan Meyer) and Alia Shawkat star as the slacker buddies who stumble across a consignment of an experimental new wonder drug. Seth Rogen and Kumail Nanjiani provide the voices of their pet cats, who speak to them when they're hallucinating. "I kept making this joke during production that it was my memoir, which is very funny when you watch the movie because there's giant squids and telepathy and all kinds of other stuff in it," said Meyer in the film's press notes. "But it feels very autobiographical to me when I watch it."

Released on 14 August in the US

8. Union County

Union County stars Will Poulter and Noah Centineo as two opioid-addicted brothers in rural Ohio who need to stay sober and hold down jobs if they want to keep out of prison. Poulter has been praised for his touchingly naturalistic performance, but the drama is authentic for other reasons, too: its debut writer-director, Adam Meeks, grew up in Ohio, and aside from Poulter and Centineo, almost all of the other people in the brothers' recovery programme are non-professional actors telling their own stories. "The film earns every emotional, lived-in development," says Chase Hutchinson in The Wrap, "instilling this slice-of-life portrait with such a quiet humanity that it can feel like you're sitting at the tables and in the meeting rooms along with all the characters."

Released on 14 August in the US

9. Coyote vs Acme

Coyote vs Acme is a film we thought we'd never see. A Roger Rabbit-style mix of live-action actors and 2D animated characters, it focuses on two Looney Tunes favourites, Wile E Coyote and Roadrunner. In the classic cartoons, Coyote kept buying disastrously faulty gadgets, so in the film he sues the company that sells them, with Will Forte as his lawyer. The unusual part is that the finished film was shelved three years ago by Warner Bros, as the studio chose to take a tax write-off rather than release it. (The same thing happened to another Warner Bros film, Batgirl.) But now at last Coyote vs Acme is being released by an independent company. Its screenwriter, Samy Burch, has commented that Wile E Coyote's never-say-die persistence was inspiring. "There's beauty in that – in trying even when things are not coming easily and when you've failed a hundred times before," she said in Empire.

Released on 20 to 28 August internationally

10. The Magic Faraway Tree

Simon Farnaby, the co-writer of Paddington 2 and Wonka, brings his eccentric humour to another treasure of British children's literature: The Magic Faraway Tree novels by Enid Blyton. In Farnaby's modern version of Blyton's stories, an inventor and her husband, played by Clare Foy and Andrew Garfield, move to a remote cottage in the countryside to give their three children a break from the internet. The children then discover a tree that has portals to other worlds in its branches, and they encounter colourful characters including Silky (Nicola Coughlan), Moonface (Nonso Anozie), Dame Washalot (Jessica Gunning), and the villainous Dame Snap (Rebecca Ferguson). "It's a smart update of the Blyton stories for the smartphone era," says Phil de Semlyen in Time Out. "With a cracking cast, thoughtful message and the odd rollicking adventure, it's a fun family movie that'll finally give you permission to switch off the wi-fi."

Released on 21 August in the US and Canada

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The 'Holy Maid of Kent' who prophesied the death of King Henry VIII

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260729-the-holy-maid-of-kent-who-prophesied-the-death-of-king-henry-viii, 3 days ago

In the 16th Century, household servant Elizabeth Barton became a celebrated visionary – but when she defied the monarch, she paid the ultimate price with a gruesome end. Was she a charlatan or a brave heroine of the Tudor world?

In a small village in Kent, England in 1525, a household servant named Elizabeth Barton fell dangerously ill. In her delirium, she murmured passages from the Bible. Later, she began slipping into seizure-like trances and uttering religious prophecies. Word quickly spread of her revelations, and people flocked to see this enigmatic young woman.

Warning: This article contains details some readers may find upsetting.

After Barton publicly fell into an hours-long trance which then supposedly healed her of illness, she was declared a "genuine visionary". One eyewitness out of the thousands present said: "Her face was wonderfully disfigured, her tongue hanging out, her eyes being in a manner plucked out."

Barton then entered a small Canterbury nunnery and went on to have an enormous influence in Tudor England. Senior religious figures, noblemen and even King Henry VIII all consulted her. But her prophecies became dangerously political, and led to her tragic downfall. Now a book just out in paperback, Heroines of the Tudor World, re-assesses her significance.

Barton's rise in popularity coincided with the Reformation (the split between Catholics and the followers of Protestant reformers), which had arrived in England. By the 1520s, Protestant ideas had spread from mainland Europe. These ideas were critical of the wealth of the Catholic church and challenged the power of the Pope.

Many Catholics were worried. "They saw it all as a threat to their way of life, and anything that helped them combat that threat was going to be encouraged," says Sharon Bennett Connolly, author of Heroines of the Tudor World. Seeing Barton as a vessel for the word of God, people circulated her revelations widely through both word of mouth and writing.

"Everybody took her seriously. Whether her visions were real or not, people believed them," Connolly tells the BBC.

Besides her following of ordinary people, the "Holy Maid of Kent" or the "Nun of Kent" as Barton had become known had impressed several monks and prominent religious figures including the king's chief minister Cardinal Wolsey and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Word was then passed on to Sir Thomas More, King Henry's influential lord chancellor. More, upon meeting Barton, said he wished to witness her "great virtue" that he had heard about for "so many years".

But the lord chancellor later wrote to her with a warning: never to speak of the king or his personal affairs.

Barton went on to enjoy the personal favour of the king, and met with him many times, bonding over their devout Catholicism (Henry remained a Catholic for most of his life). However, Henry's desire to divorce, remarry and produce a male heir went directly against Catholic doctrine. Much of her prophesising was against the break with Rome, and she fervently supported Catherine of Aragon. So much so that Barton wrote to Pope Clement, warning him that there would be a plague if he turned against Catherine.

Senior figures in the Catholic Church believed Barton could influence the king, and "prevent him [from] taking a course of action that horrified them", says Diane Watt, professor of medieval English literature at the University of Surrey in the UK and the author of Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England.

A resistance leader

This has led some to argue that the so-called Holy Maid of Kent was nothing more than a puppet for the Catholic Church, and that she was manipulated, says Watt.

"I think that perception of her as a charlatan and puppet figure is really the perception that her enemies wanted us to have. I think that she was an incredibly talented and charismatic woman," Watt tells the BBC. Another interpretation is "to see her as leading the resistance to Henry's divorce and remarriage, rather than to see her simply as a puppet of other people".

It's worth bearing in mind that there were several powerful mystics and visionaries in medieval Europe who had the ear of kings and even the Pope. In England, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe were well-known 15th-Century visionaries, though they didn't reach the same level of popularity as Barton, Watt says.

This might have been because her prophecies became progressively political, not just moral. "Elizabeth gained importance because she was talking about political matters in a way that other visionaries of the time didn't," says Watt.

Also, she was born a servant, and typically mystics were from a higher social class. "Unless you were a queen or a very exceptional member of the upper classes or aristocracy, women didn't really have a political voice," says Watt. "Mysticism and prophecy, if you had the support of the Church, could give women an opportunity to intervene in political matters."

Defying the king

And intervene she did. Firstly, she claimed that she had received a revelation from God that Henry would not live for seven months if he married Anne, and then that he would not be king after a month if he married her. She did not specify how or why. "She was treading a very, very fine line," Connolly says.

It was a courageous move. What was extraordinary, adds Connolly, was "the idea that this young woman… could stand up to a king and tell him that." It was treason to predict the death of a king under the Treason Act of 1351.

The king and Anne were so worried about the prophecy that in October 1532, on their way to Calais, they visited Barton in Canterbury to try to win her favour. Henry offered to make her an abbess if she were silent on the matter of his marriage, and Anne offered her a position in her household. Barton refused both, to the king's rage but it didn't stop him marrying Anne in January 1533.

And as the months passed it was clear that the prophecies were not coming true.

She was sent to the Tower of London for interrogation by the king's new chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, where she confessed that she had never had a revelation from God. "That's why she still fascinates, because we don't know whether or not she had visions," says Connolly. "If she did [lie], she was very clever, and she fooled an awful lot of people."

Whether she was manipulated or forced into confessing, we will never know, just as we will never know if she was a true prophet.

A gruesome end

On 20 April 1534, Barton and six of her loyal supporters, including her confessor Edward Bocking, were executed by hanging and beheading at Tyburn gallows. She was just 28 years old.

Her severed head was then raised on a pike and displayed on the south gate of Old London Bridge. This grisly tradition, practised from around the 1300s to the late 1600s, was a severe and macabre warning to traitors. Sir Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell and Guy Fawkes are other famous examples of traitors who had their severed heads displayed. The Holy Maid of Kent, however, is the only woman this is known to have happened to.

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Besides this grim distinction, Barton has real significance, Connolly says. "A young woman from Kent, with very little education, managed to attract people to her ideas. She showed what common people were thinking at the time."

Unfortunately, Barton's side of the story has largely been erased from history. None of her writings, nor her followers' accounts, are known to have survived. Cromwell ensured that 700 copies of a book of her revelations, written by Bocking, were seized after printing and destroyed. A later pamphlet that was due to be circulated was also destroyed.

Academics hope that one day her revelations will be found, and in fact, a new murder-mystery novel imagines a world where a historian makes this groundbreaking discovery.

This is yet to be seen. What we are left with is official state papers by the likes of Cromwell, and the one-sided Protestant view of her, that she was a "charlatan", Watt says.

"That negative view of Barton has really influenced the history books, and that's why she's ended up becoming quite obscure, because very few people wanted to argue her case," she says. "I hope that one day that missing book of revelations by Elizabeth Barton actually does turn up."

Heroines of the Tudor World by Sharon Bennett Connolly is out now in paperback.

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Tom Holland's Spider-Man needs to evolve - or hang up his suit

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260728-tom-hollands-spider-man-really-needs-to-grow-up, 4 days ago

Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the latest instalment, is going to be a mega-hit. But Holland's incarnation is running out of web and needs to grow up – or hand over to a younger actor

The latest Spider-Man film, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, is expected to have the biggest opening weekend of any cinema release of 2026 so far. It could well go on to be the most lucrative blockbuster of the year. The franchise's previous instalment, Spider-Man: No Way Home, was a near $2bn (£1.5bn) hit which was the highest grossing film of 2021. And since then, fans have only grown fonder of its stars, Tom Holland and Zendaya, whose real-life romance seems to inspire more fervent fascination than any of the characters they play on screen.

Then there's the film itself, which is a well-crafted, action-packed addition to the colossally popular series. In some ways, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a gift to aficionados of the Marvel superhero universe, boasting as it does such nerd-friendly treats as a fight between Spidey and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), an unlikely team-up with the Punisher (Jon Bernthal, goofier and less scary than in his Disney+ small-screen incarnation), and all sorts of lore which I won't reveal here.

But at the same time Brand New Day could well leave fans with a nagging sense of dissatisfaction – a sense that Holland's Peter Parker / Spider-Man may be running out of web.

In the half decade since the last film came out, time has moved on for the characters, too. Spider-Man has done so much crime fighting that New Yorkers now adore him. (Arch Spidey-sceptic J Jonah Jameson is nowhere to be seen.) Meanwhile, his best buddy Ned (Jacob Batalon) and his beloved once-girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) have both graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The snag is that due to some magic-related shenanigans in No Way Home, MJ and Ned have had their memories of Peter erased. Not only have they forgotten that he's Spider-Man, they've forgotten that he exists.

Stuck in a loop

No Way Home finished with the promise that Peter would explain to them what had happened, but in Brand New Day we learn that he decided against it. For the sake of their safety, he has kept away from his friends, and now lives alone in a dusty attic, with only his voice-activated computer for company. What this means is that rather than developing the Peter-MJ relationship, the franchise has effectively scrapped it, so that when the star-crossed lovers bump into each other, Holland can do his tongue-tied, lovelorn geek act all over again.

It's the kind of thing that happens regularly in superhero comics: if a series has been published for several decades, as Spider-Man has, then periodic resets are a necessity. But superheroes in films can sometimes mature and change as the actors get older. That's one of the reasons why so many people were invested in Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark / Iron Man and Chris Evans's Steve Rogers / Captain America. Peter hasn't done that. Holland has now starred in four Spider-Man films (not counting his appearances in various Captain America and Avengers adventures), but his closest relationships are essentially back where they started.

It's the same with other aspects of the character. One plot strand in Brand New Day is that Peter is mutating into a more powerful and more spidery superhuman – a conceit with spine-tingling echoes of David Cronenberg's body-horror classic, The Fly. This strand takes up an inordinate amount of time, and prompts endless technobabble about a mutation-repressing "inhibitor". But, again, it doesn't result in any major shifts in the character or his world. Without wishing to spoil anything, Peter doesn't turn into an eight-legged, eight-eyed monster.

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The director, Destin Daniel Cretton, and screenwriters, Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, haven't worked out how to take their web-slinging hero anywhere new, which is ironic for a film with "New" in the subtitle. In two-and-a-half hours, Peter doesn't do anything that couldn't have been dealt with in a five-minute pre-credit sequence.

In the next film – and there will be a next film before long – maybe the team will have the courage to let the characters grow up and move on. Maybe we'll get to see an older Peter Parker with a job and a family. Holland is 30 now, after all. If his Spider-Man isn't allowed to evolve, then he should probably hang up the red and blue costume and let a younger actor have a turn.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is released in cinemas internationally on 31 July.

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'A masterclass in betrayal': The British double agent who defected to Russia and taught enemy spies

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260724-the-british-double-agent-who-defected-to-russia-and-taught-enemy-spies, 6 days ago

On 30 July 1963, Kim Philby's defection from MI6 to the Soviet Union was made public. In 2016, the BBC broadcast previously unseen footage of his lecture to Stasi operatives in which he revealed the secrets behind his treachery.

"Almost all my life I have spent trying to avoid publicity of any kind," says Kim Philby in a 1981 video unearthed by the BBC from the archives of East Germany's spy service. It's something of an understatement. Philby was a British double agent whose defection to the Soviet Union was made public on 30 July 1963. In the video, he is seen giving a seminar to Stasi operatives on how to succeed at espionage.

As the BBC's former security correspondent Gordon Corera explained in his 2016 report on the previously unseen footage, "Philby offers a masterclass in betrayal, from his recruitment by Soviet spies after Cambridge to his joining Britain's secret service MI6, whose secrets he stole." It is the only known video in which the leading member of the so-called Cambridge Five KGB spy ring discusses his betrayal – a rare recording that is revealing on many levels.

"I'm looking back on my career in the enemy camp, this 30-year career in the enemy camp," he says in the grainy video, standing behind a lectern in thick-rimmed glasses and a suit and tie. "Every evening, I left the office with a big briefcase full of reports which I had written myself, full of files taken out of the actual archives. I used to hand them to my contact in the evening. Next morning I'd get the file back, the contents having been photographed, and take them back early in the morning and put the files back in their place. That I did regularly, year in, year out."

As part of a circle that also featured Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross, Philby passed British state secrets to the Kremlin during World War Two and the Cold War, including the period when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were allies. Yet there has sometimes been a rose-tinted view of their double-crossing, according to Antonia Senior, the author of Stalin's Apostles: The Cambridge Five and the Making of the Soviet Empire.

"The stage and screen portrayals of them, in particular, present them as glamorous rogues," Senior tells the BBC. "In reality they were lying, unpleasant traitors who betrayed the people who loved them as well as their country… This was not a victimless crime. Their betrayals helped Stalin to enslave half of Europe, and the Cambridge Five were enthusiastic in advancing that imperialist project under the guise of world revolution."

Philby admits in his Stasi speech that he betrayed a joint CIA-MI6 operation in Albania, which led to hundreds of men being killed. And he described the Albanian agents he betrayed as "just down from the trees" in a 1968 autobiography that was labelled "unrepentant and self-regarding" by the New York Times. He had a "callous disregard for the men he sent to their deaths", says Senior.

The Magnificent Five

After being recruited as a Soviet spy at Cambridge University in the early 1930s, Philby joined MI6 in 1940, later becoming the agency's head of counter-Soviet intelligence. That position enabled him to feed critical British and American secrets directly to the KGB while sabotaging Western anti-communist operations. His rise through the ranks of British intelligence services was helped by his background and a phenomenon that Senior labels the "chapocracy" – a tight-knit network of privileged men within the establishment who shared the same elite educational backgrounds.

According to Senior, this meant that security clearance was granted based on a shared social class and personal charm rather than on merit or rigorous vetting. "The chapocracy brought Philby into the employ of British intelligence at the start of World War Two, when the huge demand for clever chaps to join the Security Services meant that people like him were waved through," she says.

By exploiting class biases and institutional blind spots, Philby and the other members of the Cambridge Five were able to gain access "to the deepest secrets of the British and American states during the 17 years they were spying for Stalin", says Senior. "Atomic research. Full UK Cabinet minutes. The secrets of Bletchley Park [the UK's WW2 codebreaking centre]. The private correspondence of Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt. The list is long and utterly flabbergasting – it is no wonder that Soviet intelligence dubbed them internally as the 'Magnificent Five'."

After Burgess and MacLean defected to the Soviet Union in 1951, Philby was relieved of his intelligence duties before being dismissed from MI6 in 1955. Yet despite that, he was still able to escape to Moscow in 1963. One possible reason was given in Philby's final piece of advice to the East German spies. "They interrogated me in order to break my nerve and force me to confess. And all I had to do, really, was to keep my nerve. My advice to you is to tell all your agents that they're never to confess. Just deny everything."

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None of the five were ever prosecuted for spying – a failure which some have seen as the result of a cover-up by the British establishment. But Senior argues that this wasn't necessarily the case. "There was a huge release of material early last year from MI5 on its investigations into Philby, Blunt and Cairncross, which revealed a different picture," she says. "The Security Services did make mistakes, but the fundamental problem was how hard it is to prove spying. Philby, in this video, portrays his escape from prosecution as his skilful manipulation of the establishment's desire to hush things up. The reality is more nuanced."

Suspicion fell on Philby as soon as Burgess and MacLean defected – and he was interrogated, watched, bugged and followed, as well as being subjected to a cross-examination by a leading barrister. Unfortunately, says Senior, "The evidence was lacking to prosecute. It was obvious to all that Philby was lying, but there was no proof."

A hero in Russia

The Security Services eventually got confessions out of Philby, Blunt and John Cairncross, but only because they were promised immunity from prosecution, meaning that their confessions could not be used against them in court. "In Britain, the most important element protecting the Cambridge Five was the rule of law," says Senior. "It was our insistence on evidence and due process which helped them avoid justice. The master they served, Stalin, would have just shot them in the head or sent them to die in his Gulag."

Philby was hailed a hero in his adopted homeland after he defected, reaching the rank of Colonel in the KGB before his death in 1988, and featuring on a Soviet postage stamp in 1990. He is still venerated there today, with a square named after him in Moscow, near the headquarters of the Russian Foreign Intelligence unit, and a statue of him near the battlefield at Kursk. "Putin has adopted Kim Philby as a symbol of his Russian nationalism," says Senior.

Philby is buried at Kunsova Cemetery on the outskirts of Moscow, in a country he regarded as home. When Corera reported from there in 2016, it was covered in snow, which reminded him of the title of a classic espionage novel by John le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Philby, Corera noted, "was the spy who came into the cold".

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'Books like this get people debating': Why smash-hit tradwife satire Yesteryear is 2026's most divisive book

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260722-why-yesteryear-is-dividing-readers, 10 days ago

Caro Claire Burke's debut novel Yesteryear is the book of the season – and quite likely the year, too. Here's why this satirical novel about tradwives and womanhood in the US has everybody talking.

Take a quick scan of the hotel pool, beach or airplane this summer and there's a good chance you'll see someone immersed in the pages of Yesteryear.

Caro Claire Burke's debut novel was published in April to great fanfare. It is the story of a successful "tradwife" influencer who finds herself transported back to the 1800s. Buzz about the book has only snowballed from there. It's spent weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and topped the Sunday Times hardback fiction chart in the UK.

It's not just that people are buying it in droves – they're also talking about it en masse. On Bookstagram and BookTok, the literary nooks of social media, Yesteryear takes are ubiquitous. In June the novel topped the new BookTok chart, meaning it was the most talked-about title on the platform. In group chats and bookclubs, readers are fiercely debating its merit.

What's it about?

Yesteryear's protagonist is Natalie Heller Mills, a 32-year-old married mother of five (soon to be six) who documents her family's apparently idyllic life on their 500-acre Idaho farm to millions of social media followers. Her character mirrors the real-life internet subculture of women who promote and imitate traditional gender roles, where men are the breadwinners and women their subordinates, prioritising raising children and housekeeping.

Natalie bakes sourdough, home-schools her children, drinks milk fresh from her cow, collects eggs from her chickens ("the ladies") each morning – all with a gleaming smile on her face. At least, for as long as the camera is rolling. Natalie's perfect life is a carefully constructed façade, but it's a compelling and lucrative one.

Then, one day, she wakes up and finds herself living slap-bang in the past that she has been romanticising – 1855 to be exact. When cosplay becomes reality, the "good old days" suddenly don't seem so rosy after all. The book flips between the present and a nightmarish version of the past, with how and why Natalie ended up in the 1800s only revealed at the end.

A runaway hit with real-world parallels

Why has the book proved so popular? Certainly, the publishers invested in an intense marketing blitz. And the enthusiasm of Anne Hathaway – who saw an early draft, bought the rights and will produce and star in the film – has helped put eyes on it. But the real pull of Yesteryear is that simple but delicious "what if"' premise: what if a woman who imitates a bygone way of life was forced to live the reality of that fantasy? And what if, we, the reader, got a ringside seat to her downfall?

"The idea of sending an influencer back into the past to live as a real-life pioneer woman? I was jealous," says Leigh Stein, author of several novels satirising internet culture, including Self Care and If You're Seeing This It's Meant For You. "I was like, 'why didn't I think of that?' It's such a brilliant idea."

The tradwife is having a moment in fiction, with three thrillers titled Trad Wife or Tradwife published this year, each playing on the idea that picture-perfect lives are rarely what they seem.

"I think people are fascinated with the tradwife because she's such a larger-than-life and exaggerated figure," says Dr Rachel Sykes, associate professor in contemporary literature and culture at the University of Birmingham. The inherent paradox of a tradwife, who apparently scorns career women while at the same time building her own successful business, also makes them ripe for cultural dissection. And the rise of conservative female influencers is jarring for progressives, says Sykes. "The tradwife figure really crystallises a lot of that, and books like this get people debating what matters to them."

Readers and critics have pointed to Hannah Neeleman, otherwise known as Ballerina Farm as a real-life inspiration for Yesteryear. Mother of nine, Neeleman, a Mormon, shares dispatches from her life on a Utah farm with more than 10 million Instagram followers. Both Neeleman and Natalie attended a prestigious college (Neeleman studied dance at New York's Juilliard, Natalie is a Harvard dropout). Each marry into money and start a family in their early 20s. Ultimately, both women build a social media empire and successful product line that trades off their domestic life.

Neeleman, who doesn't call herself a tradwife, seems unfazed by the Yesteryear hype, telling Vulture: "I've had an online presence for enough time to know that people like to be entertained… I'm surprised it didn't come sooner."

This self-awareness is also shared with Natalie, who states in the book: "The goal of the influencer is not to be lovable, and it is not to be unbearable. The goal is to be both at once. In other words: addicting."

What the book gets right

Stein thinks the book smartly reflects our complicated relationship with social media. "Something I think [the author] did really well is capture the symbiotic relationship between an influencer and her haters. The haters can't look away and the influencer needs their engagement."

The Yesteryear author is a former journalist who has reported on the tradwife movement, and dissected it on TikTok. "I think there's something about the tradwife discourse that seems to intersect with every imaginable conversation about modern womanhood," she said in an interview with Literary Hub. "What you choose to do with your career, when you decide to have kids (if at all), who you marry, what a marriage looks like…"

Joanna Mackenzie, a literary agent from Chicago, thinks the novel succeeds. "It had me from the first line," she says. "The author masterfully takes us all the way from childhood into menopause with this character, and shows us all parts of womanhood in contemporary culture, the choices that women have to make and what's thrust upon them."

'Deeply flawed 'characters

Natalie is an unlikeable, unreliable and yet compelling narrator. "For me she is super-complicated and deeply flawed," says Mackenzie. "But there were also so many times when I felt sympathy for her, because she was just trying to make her way in a world that hates women, and do the best with the beliefs that she was indoctrinated with."

Natalie is swift to judge everyone she encounters, from her too-passive husband to the "angry women" who comment on her Instagram posts.

The book also takes broad swipes at judgemental liberal feminists. "Tradwives are quite an easy target, which I think she does capture in the novel," says Sykes.

Why readers are divided

In Yesteryear, the tradwife is a Trojan horse for a laundry-list of cultural obsessions: the influencer economy, the facade of social media, "girl boss" feminism, the manosphere, religion, marriage, motherhood. But does it have anything substantial to say about them? That's where readers disagree.

Sykes wishes the author had explored her characters' motivations more. "I felt like it was a very unsympathetic portrayal of everyone. I'm all for unlikable protagonists, but when it's a tradwife figure, if you make them too dislikable it's harder to get an insight into that psychology."

She also feels the book could have dug deeper into its politics. "It's very good about the labour of a tradwife, how much help they have," says Sykes. "I wish there had been more of a reckoning with what it means not just to be invested in that idea of womanhood in the present, but to be selling it to other women."

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Despite its great premise, Stein also felt the book ultimately had little of substance to say. "I am perplexed by the people who feel like this book is saying something smart about what it's like to be a woman in America," she says. "I didn't find it to be a coherent critique of anything. Ultimately, I felt like the novel was just saying all women are unhappy. That is so bleak and depressing."

Perhaps less important than what the book itself has to say about the topics it raises, is that it's getting people debating those very issues. "I haven't heard anyone having passive conversations about it," says Sykes. "It is good for book culture to have something that people want to talk about so much."

Yesteryear is out in hardback now.

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'He was tasked with making the body disappear': The macabre kidnapping of Eva Perón's corpse

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260717-the-macabre-kidnapping-of-eva-perns-corpse, 13 days ago

Argentina's iconic first lady died in July 1952. Sixty years on, the BBC looked back at her cadaver's bizarre disappearance – and its 16-year journey around the globe.

A few hours after the death of Eva Perón, on 26 July 1952, Dr Pedro Ara got to work. The renowned Spanish anatomist was tasked with embalming the Argentinian first lady's body in the same way the Russians had preserved the remains of Lenin and Stalin. The corpse of Evita, as she was affectionately known, was kept in the Ministry of Labour building, where a monument to workers was due to be built, with a glass coffin at its base that would be her final resting spot.

Warning: This article contains details that some may find distressing.

Yet three years later, in September 1955, her husband, President Juan Perón, was deposed in a military coup and went into exile. The new regime decided to steal Eva Perón's body – setting off a macabre 16-year odyssey. Her cadaver would be held at the Centre for Military Intelligence, stored in a van, buried in Milan, and transported to Madrid before it was eventually returned to Buenos Aires to be laid to rest in a heavily fortified crypt.

After Eva Perón died of cervical cancer at the age of 33, her husband had political reasons for having her embalmed. Her poor rural background and her charitable works as first lady had won her fervent working-class support. "So he wanted to preserve that, [by] preserving the body," Flavia Fiorucci, a historian of Peronism, told the BBC in 2012. "It also had to do with the importance that Perón and Peronism gave to symbols, and Evita was a symbol."

That was clear in the weeks after her death. Dr Ara was able to embalm Evita's body in a lifelike state using a paraffin and glycerine injection technique. Two million people visited her coffin as she lay in state in Congress for 14 days, the devotion she'd inspired while alive continuing after her death.

And the symbolism of Evita's body was the reason for the long meandering journey it took over the next 16 years. When Perón was deposed in 1955, the dictatorship led by Gen Pedro Aramburu aimed to quash all aspects of Peronism – and feared that her corpse could become an emblem of resistance.

Lt Col Carlos Moori Koenig, head of the Army Intelligence Service, moved it around Buenos Aires, paranoid that Peronists might attempt to retrieve it. Evita's cadaver was said to be hidden in a van parked on the streets of the capital, behind a cinema screen, and inside the city's waterworks – and wherever it went, flowers and candles appeared.

Koenig then moved the body to his office, where he allegedly stood the coffin upright, and showed it off to visitors. He was said to have become obsessed with her corpse. "I knew him from military school. He was completely normal, but after getting his hands on the body, he went mad," said Col Héctor Cabanillas in the 1997 documentary Evita, la tumba sin paz (Evita, the grave with no peace).

Argentine academic Cecilia Macón told the BBC in 2012 that, while it's hard to uncover the truth because "myth and history mingle constantly in stories regarding Evita", one story is that Koenig became infatuated with his charge, before being relieved of his duties in 1957.

Cabanillas was then tasked with making the body of Eva Perón disappear, arranging for it to be shipped to Italy in 1957. Evita was buried under the name María Maggi de Magistris in a cemetery in Milan. She was not forgotten by her supporters, however, with graffiti appearing in Buenos Aires asking, "Where is the body of Eva Perón?" The return of the corpse became a rallying cry for Peronists in Argentina.

The return of the body

Fiorucci believes that the fact it was the military who had made Evita's corpse disappear added to its potency. "The pain inflicted [on] the dead body of Evita was also a symbol of that against the working class."

In 1971, a new regime aimed to return Argentina to democratic rule, easing restrictions against Peronists, and agreed to return Evita's body to Juan Perón. It was delivered in a silver coffin to the villa in suburban Madrid where the former dictator was living in exile, with his third wife Isabel.

Carlos Spadoni, then a confidant of Juan Perón, was one of the first to see the body. "Gen Perón, the gardener and I took the body out of the coffin," he told the BBC in 2012. "We laid it on a marble-top table and our hands got all dirty with earth. So the body had to be cleaned. Isabel took care of that… with a cotton cloth and water. Nothing more. Very carefully. Isabel combed the blonde hair. It was long and she cleaned it bit by bit with a comb and then blow-dried it."

Again, myths circulated about what happened next, with stories focused on the occult beliefs of the former government minister José López Rega. According to one tale, the Peronist politician told Isabel to lie beside the body of Eva Perón so that the Evita political magic would rub off on to her. Beliefs like this tapped into the almost religious reverence that Evita's followers felt towards her. The former dance‐hall girl who rose to power with her husband became a spiritual leader to her devotees, her body taking on a sacred importance for them – although she was also reviled by anti-Peronists.

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Juan Perón returned to power in Argentina in 1973, with Isabel as his vice president. Evita's body remained in Spain, but after Juan died suddenly in 1974, her corpse was returned to Buenos Aires. Domingo Tellechea was sitting in a bar in the capital when he was first approached to repair damage to Evita's body. "Two guys all dressed in black came in," he told the BBC in 2012. "They flung the doors open and looked over at us. This was dangerous, because in those days people were being carried off and 'disappeared' and never seen again."

Tellechea was a restorer of art, antiquities – and human remains. Fearful of government death squads, he was relieved when he found out the two men were drivers. They took him to see Oscar Ivanissevich, Eva Perón's former personal physician. "He said to me, 'We've got a job for you. You've got to restore the body of Eva Perón.'"

Tellechea accepted, despite being aware of the risks. "To do the work was to put myself in opposition to the people who made the body disappear and a lot of people really wished Evita had never turned up again at all. I knew it could bring me problems," he said. "There were threats, phone threats, torching my car." The restorer later went into exile, as state brutality and torture became systematic in Argentina under successive regimes.

Yet Evita was finally laid to rest in October 1976, with only a small group to witness her burial. The crypt was fortified to ensure her remains would never be disturbed again. The marble tomb had a trapdoor in the floor leading down to a hidden room. And that room had a second trapdoor leading to another room which housed her coffin. Even 24 years after her death, the strength of Evita's symbolism meant that her body had to be buried 5m below the ground.

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Planes, trains and automobiles pulled from archives

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1j15en0zejo, today

From surfboards to steam trains, museum curators have delved into the archives for the first show in a special exhibitions gallery.

Things that Go! features transport-themed objects never before seen by the public from the Discovery Museum's collections in Newcastle.

These include models of the Shields Ferry and South Shields trolleybus, 1950s toy cars, steam locomotives and a Victorian fire engine model.

Created with younger families in mind, organisers hope it will inspire "the next generation of museum-goers, thinkers and tinkerers".

Other highlights include an Armstrong-Whitworth biplane and an ornate Royal Mail carriage model, and a surfboard belonging to North Tyneside's British and international surfing champion Gabe Davies.

The free exhibition is sponsored by Stagecoach, Tyne and Wear Metro, and Lumo Travel, and an electric model of a Lumo train will run continuously around the display.

Director of North East Museums Keith Merrin said: "The new Special Exhibitions Gallery has transformed a tired space into a bright, contemporary gallery, enabling Discovery Museum to share more of its collections that would otherwise be hidden from view in our stores for visitors to enjoy.

"Things That Go! is a fun way to bring out items from the collection that relate to the theme of transport.

"While it has been created with younger families in mind, there are some fascinating and evocative objects on display for all generations to explore."

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In Pictures: Festival has record-breaking year

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7vg11m145lo, today

Camp Bestival welcomed record-breaking crowds as it returned for 2026, with organisers confirming the biggest opening day in the festival's history.

Self Esteem headlined on Friday night at Lulworth Castle in Dorset, ending her set with a Shirley Bassey-inspired conga line that swept the crowd off their feet. Billy Ocean also played the Castle Stage.

Bastille topped the bill on Saturday, marking their return to performing after a two-year break.

Away from the main stage, Radio 2's Sara Cox recorded a live podcast in the Library Tent, traditional Morris dancers brought a touch of nostalgia and Joe Wicks helped festivalgoers keep fit.

Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann to kick off in Belfast

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg89jd44e8o, today

Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann is kicking off in Belfast for the very first time on Sunday.

The opening event will take place from midday.

The eight-day festival, running until 9 August, is the world's largest celebration of Irish music and culture.

There are more than 200 events planned across the city during the festival, with live music sessions, storytelling, interactive workshops, dance classes and family fun days featuring in the programme.

While the opening ceremony kicks off 12:00 BST, the event will continue into the evening with performances by Goitse, Blackwater Céilí Band and Sharon Shannon.

Lord Mayor of Belfast, councillor Róis-Máire Donnelly, described the festival as a "major moment" for Belfast.

The Fleadh's main outdoor stage, the Gig Rig, is located outside Belfast City Hall. the stage will offer free live performances every day.

As well as core events the city centre the fringe programme will feature more than 90 community events with family-focused gatherings taking place in neighbourhood venues across Belfast.

While events are happening all week all over the city, the competitions do not start until Friday.

Pádraig Ó Duinnín project lead on behalf of Belfast City Council for the Gig Rig at City Hall, said he was "excited to get started".

"I think it is going to be a fantastic week, it is like nothing we have ever seen before," he said.

"If you are into music, if you are not into music, if you play an instrument or sing, or if you don't, there is something here for everybody.

"You won't be able to move in the city without tripping over musicians."

The biggest change for residents and visitors will be the creation of a large, pedestrianised zone in Belfast city centre over the course of the festival.

This is to ensure safe pedestrian movement and allow for performances and activities to take place.

The city centre zone will be pedestrianised with road closures from 5:00 BST on Sunday and the yellow shaded area in the map above will be closed to traffic.

The roads around the city hall in blue will be open some of the time, closing on a phased basis as necessary.

Main routes across the wider city will remain open, but motorists are being asked to check routes in advance.

Businesses have been gearing up

Michelle Downey from the Downey Group said businesses have been gearing up and working to get ready for the big week.

"Fleadh fever has arrived in Belfast," she said.

"We are planning for St Patrick's Day every day for eight days, so if that happens it will be fantastic."

John Lavery of Fish City said you "could feel the excitement in the air" and that there was a "vibrancy" in Belfast.

He said he had put "substantial" investment in place, and had spent "tens of thousands of pounds getting ready for this".

"It needs to be successful," he added.

Emily Sparling, of Peter Keegan's Bar in Belfast, said it had made a £60,000 investment and had 25 extra staff "across the board" for the event.

"Preparations have been good, we have just loaded around 100 kegs of Guinness in, so we are ready," she said.

"We are expecting a very big week, everyone is buzzing, can't wait."

Dominic Lavery from Lavery's Bar said that planning for the event had taken "five or six months".

"There are going to be hundreds and hundreds of people through here through the fleadh, we are buzzing to be here," he said.

"From Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday hopefully it will feel like your normal Saturday night, and from then on it's going to be like Paddy's day on steroids for the duration."

What public transport will be available?

Belfast City Council and Translink are urging people to plan ahead and leave extra time for journeys to and from the city.

Road closures and diversions came into effect at 05:00 BST on Sunday and will remain in place until 07:00 BST on Monday 10 August.

No parking or waiting restrictions will make driving through the city centre and its vicinity difficult, even for drop-offs.

A full list of road closures can be seen on the council's website.

Anyone travelling from outside the city is encouraged to use public transport.

Sean McGreevy, Belfast Area Manager, said this is one of the biggest events Translink has been involved with in recent years.

"Last year we had The Open golf in Portrush, which was a massive operation. The complication is this is city-wide, it is week-long and it is in a major city, which has its own considerations and other networks to run."

People are being urged to plan their journeys carefully, using Translink's website.

A free shuttle bus will operate from three Fleadh park and ride sites at the Eikon Exhibition Centre at Sprucefield, Giant's Park and Belfast Harbour Estate.

All Metro, Glider, Ulsterbus and train services will operate throughout the event.

There will be temporary alterations to some bus stops and pick-up points around City Hall.

Additional late-night bus and rail services will be in place on Sunday, and again from Thursday to Sunday.

Translink is running special day return bus services from towns and cities across Northern Ireland. These are available to pre-book online.

Taxi services will continue to operate throughout the festival.

Dedicated pick-up and drop-off locations will be located around the edge of the pedestrianised event zone, at Corporation Street, Little Donegall Street, junction of North Street and Royal Avenue, King Street, Adelaide Street and Chichester Street.

A fully accessible city-centre loop shuttle service will operate throughout the festival for people with accessibility requirements or those carrying heavy instruments.

Visitors travelling from the Republic of Ireland can access Belfast via hourly cross-border coach services from Dublin city centre and Dublin Airport, or hourly train services between Dublin Connolly and Belfast Grand Central Station.

Irish language at heart of event

The Irish language will form an important part of the visitor experience at the Fleadh.

A dedicated Irish Language Hub at The Mac will include free taster classes, arts and crafts workshops, circus skills, family entertainment and a dedicated family room throughout the week.

Bilingual directional and wayfinding signage, visitor information, festival dressing and other temporary infrastructure will help people navigate venues, attractions and event facilities.

"Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann presents a fantastic opportunity to celebrate the Irish language as a living, vibrant part of our city and our shared cultural heritage," the lord mayor said.

Alongside activity at the Irish Language Hub, the wider festival programme will also include events celebrating Ulster-Scots language and traditions, including an Ulster Bands Showcase.

Details of all Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann events can be found here.

Artwork at youth centre celebrates young people

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20ew5q9r15o, today

Six new graffiti panels have been unveiled at a new purpose-built youth centre in Jersey.

The art, installed on the hoarding at Ann Street Youth Centre construction site, celebrate the creativity and experiences of young people, the Government of Jersey said.

Pupils and young people from across the island - including Grainville School, d'Auvergne Primary School, Mont à l'Abbé School, Springfield Primary School and several youth projects - all took part in creating the art.

The Children, Young People, Education and Skills Department said children had also shared ideas for the centre through the Ann Street Youth ambassador programme.

The government said 64 young people and 39 parents and interested adults gathered on Jersey Children's Day to discuss ideas about what young people would like to see in the new facility.

Some of the ideas included gaming facilities and places where young people could access support.

The centre, due to open in 2028, would provide modern, inclusive spaces where young people could meet friends, try new activities, develop skills and access support when needed, the government said.

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Scaled down folk festival returns after a year out

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ywg7qd725o, today

A folk music festival has returned after a year's absence with a clutch of star names taking to the stage.

The Cambridge Folk Festival was cancelled in 2025 after making a £320,000 loss.

But a scaled-down version of the festival - put on over two days instead of four - was soon announced and tickets sold out in May.

Run by Cambridge City Council, about 4,000 people are expected to descend on Cherry Hinton Hall over the course of the weekend.

Among the line-up is American singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega, punk and folk guitarist Frank Turner and veteran songwriter Richard Thompson.

CBeebies musician Nick Cope opened the main stage and singer Melody Cole kicked off the festival at the Club Corner stage.

Other acts playing the festival include the return of folk singer and instrumentalist Seth Lakeman, singer-songwriter This is the Kit, singer Amelia Coburn and BBC Radio 2 presenter Mark Radcliffe's partnership with fellow musician David Boardman.

Radcliffe told the BBC: "It's so good to have it back and David and I are honoured to be taking to the stage on Sunday.

"Save us a couple of spiced ciders."

Also performing are Norwich folk duo Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, who are playing on Sunday, and Alden said the pair were "really happy to see it return".

"We've seen some of our favourite musicians from across the world play here, so it's really exciting," she said.

Singer-songwriter Lara Gisborne, from Cambridge, said it was a "real honour" to be playing the festival for the first time, having been invited to perform at Club Corner by the local songwriters who make up The Bridge group.

Cambridge Folk Festival began life in 1965 and in the past has hosted performances from international stars such as Van Morrison, Billy Bragg and Sinead O'Connor.

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In pictures: Ulster Pipe Band Championships

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmr4gexv3wo, yesterday

Thousands of music lovers have visited Bangor for one of the main events in Northern Ireland's piping calendar.

The 73rd Ulster Pipe Band Championships at Ward Park, started at 11:00 BST, with 60 performances from bands as well as more than 50 drum majors.

It finished with a parade of pipe bands at 18:00 BST.

The pipe band contest is running alongside a fringe event for the All-Ireland Fleadh, which takes place in Belfast for a week from Sunday to 9 August.

Erik the polar bear returns to maritime museum

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwye50exqjvo, yesterday

A popular stuffed polar bear is to go on show at Hull Maritime Museum when it reopens after a six-year, £20.4m renovation next week.

Erik the polar bear was captured in the Arctic in the 1860s by the crew of the Dundee whaling ship SS Erik.

He was on display at the museum for more than 40 years, and is now set to take pride of place in the Age of Sail gallery when the museum reopens on 8 August.

Robin Diaper, curator of social and maritime history, said Erik's return was significant not just because of his "enduring popularity" but also because "he helps us tell the story of the deep connections between Hull and the Arctic whaling industry."

Conservation work in 2010 revealed Erik had newspapers from 1874 hidden inside his body.

The museum said this was "a fascinating reminder of the Victorian techniques used to preserve the bear after it was brought back from the Arctic".

Diaper said the bear also reflects "a very different period in history" which offers the opportunity to "explore how attitudes towards wildlife, conservation and the natural world have changed over time."

Mike Ross, leader of Hull City Council, said: "For many people in Hull and beyond, Erik is one of the museum's most recognisable and memorable exhibits, having captured the imagination of generations of families, schoolchildren and visitors over the past four decades."

"The £20.4m restoration has created a fantastic new visitor experience in one of Hull's most important historic buildings, and we are incredibly proud to see it reopening for residents and tourists alike."

Hull Maritime Museum tells the story of the city's maritime heritage that shipped trade, migration, fishing and whaling across Britain and beyond.

It is free to the public but visitors are advised to book a ticket during busy periods.

The restoration of the museum was funded by Hull City Council and The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Erik has been able to return due to a long-term loan from The McManus: Dundee's Art Gallery and Museum.

Listen to highlights from Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North.

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Miner's early painting may unlock clues to artist

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwylr4z33lno, yesterday

A new study of a rare painting could unlock clues about a celebrated miner artist, according to researchers.

Colliery Row by North East painter Norman Cornish has been donated to Northumbria University, which already owns the world's largest collection of Cornish's paintings.

The artwork is considered rare as it was painted in 1947, when Cornish was still working as a miner at Dean and Chapter Colliery Ferryhill, making it the earliest work in the university's possession.

PhD student Jennifer Myers, who will be carrying out scientific analysis of the paining, said her research aimed to look at Cornish's materials and development as an artist.

"This painting gives us a rare chance to study an artwork which may provide more clues about the detail of Cornish's working practice during that transition [from miner to artist]," she said.

"What excites me most about this painting is that it comes from such an early point in Cornish's career, before he left mining to focus on art full time."

Northumbria University said Colliery Row had been part of the National Coal Board's own art collection and displayed at the organisation's headquarters in London.

It became part of the Art by the Miner exhibition held at the Academy Cinema on London's Oxford Street in 1947, a moment considered pivotal in Cornish's career as an emerging artist.

Bryn Morris, a former employee of the British Coal Corporation, bought it in 1997 and has now donated it to the Newcastle university.

He said: "I decided that Northumbria University would be a fitting home and reliable custodian of this important work of art and piece of North East social history."

Academics and students at the institution are due to carry out a full technical study of the painting.

Dr Richard Mulholland, who teaches on the conservation of fine Art MA programme, said the painting from Cornish's early career was "remarkable".

Cornish, who died in 2014 aged 94, was a celebrated artist from Spennymoor who was best known for his works depicting life in the County Durham coalfields.

Among his many works was a mural he created for the County Hall in Durham showing the city's annual miners' gala.

The mural can now be found in Bishop Auckland Town Hall, with County Hall set for demolition.

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Giant Mr Doodle sculptures appear across West End

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy07jk877yvo, yesterday

Five giant sculptures by artist Mr Doodle have appeared across London's West End as part of a new free public art trail.

The artist, whose real name is Sam Cox, is known around the world for transforming everything from sketchbooks to entire buildings with his distinctive doodle style.

The 2m (6.5ft) high installations have been placed in Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and St James's Market, where they will remain until 30 August.

Mr Doodle said he hoped visitors would enjoy "spotting the sculptures, exploring the streets and adding a bit of doodle magic to their summer day out".

Each sculpture has been covered in the artist's signature doodles and inspired by the surroundings, celebrating everything from the West End's theatres and cinemas to its galleries, restaurants and markets.

Mr Doodle said London was "full of great stuff" and that the sculptures celebrated the city's culture.

The artist has built an international following with his playful black-and-white drawings, often filled with bright pops of colour, which have appeared on everything from canvases to entire buildings.

The sculptures form part of Mr Doodle's Doodle Discovery, a free trail organised by Art of London during the school summer holidays.

The group, an arts initiative created by Heart of London Business Alliance, said it wanted to create "something free, fun and easy" for families and visitors to enjoy over the summer.

Visitors can scan QR codes at each sculpture to access a digital map of the trail and enter a prize draw, including tickets to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and a free meal for four.

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Acclaimed Welsh artist Kevin Sinnott dies aged 78

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8ezz1mgvjo, yesterday

One of Wales' leading contemporary artists has died at the age of 78.

Kevin Sinnott who was born in Sarn, Bridgend county, to Irish parents, rose to fame for his painting Running Away with the Hairdresser.

The famous work of art, which portrays two figures running along a terraced street, can be seen at the National Museum in Cardiff.

Museum Wales said Sinnott was one of Wales' most acclaimed painters, with his work held in major collections in the UK and internationally.

Trained at the Royal College of Art in London, Sinnott enjoyed great success in the 1980s with exhibitions at prominent galleries in London and the United States.

His work was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the British Council, the Royal College of Art in London, the British Museum, and Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales.

He continued painting at his home in the Garw Valley until the end of his life.

His wife Susan died in 2017 and he is survived by his four children and 11 grandchildren.

Museum Wales said Running Away with the Hairdresser was one of the most popular works in their collection.

It said: "Much loved by visitors, the painting reflects the emotion, colour and distinctive character that made Sinnott's work so widely admired."

In a post shared on social media, Celf Gallery in Cardiff said Sinnott's "love and zest for life played out in his exuberant and colourful paintings".

"He leaves behind a remarkable artistic legacy that transformed everyday Welsh life into images of universal humanity," it said.

"His paintings will continue to speak of love, memory, place and the enduring spirit of Wales for generations to come".

Sinnott had an exhibition at the gallery set to take place in September, which will still go ahead as a tribute and celebration of his life and work.

'Surreal' moment as Welsh actor joins Ted Lasso cast

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3w04602jyzo, 2 days ago

Rex Hayes has been watching hit comedy series Ted Lasso since it first landed on TV screens in 2020.

But now the Cardiff actor is stepping on to "that pitch, in those football boots" as the show returns for a new season.

"It's very surreal for me to be part of that Richmond world," the actor tells Radio Wales.

Season 4 marks a dramatic shift for the show, with Ted returning from Kansas to coach AFC Richmond's second-division women's team, The Lady Greyhounds.

"It's exactly the same set-up: you meet new people, you fall in love with these characters on, and off, the pitch. There's all the coaching staff that you know and love, but with brand-new footballers," says Rex. "It's very exciting."

Joining a cast which includes fan favourites Hannah Waddington, Brett Goldstein and star and co-creator Jason Sudeikis, Rex plays Siobhan, twin sister to Niamh (Aisling Sharkey), whose sibling rivalry sometimes spills on to the pitch.

"I love this character so much - I can't wait for people to meet her," Rex tells Eleri Sion on The Friday Afternoon Show. "She's very passionate, very silly."

A keen footballer from a young age, Rex describes the role as "a crazy matching of both my worlds".

"I have been playing football for most of my life," explains Rex. "Just me and my dad, at Heath Park, kicking a ball about, for most of my youth.

"I played in the school yard every lunchtime until my A levels - me and the boys. It's been a big part of my life for a long time."

But after giving up football training at 12, the actor "went off to drama school and forgot about it" - only returning to the pitch after moving to London.

Cue, the Ted Lasso audition.

"I had to send in a tape of my football skills," says Rex, who made a tape in a London park.

"I remember when I went in for my first meeting, having sent off that tape, Theo - the casting director - was like, 'you're very good at football'. I was like: 'yes, I am - remember that!"

"And lo and behold, here I am. So I'm very grateful."

Rex credits their early years performing in Wales as fundamental to later success.

"I am under no illusion that going to a Welsh-language school, and being part of the Eisteddfod for most of my youth, is a big part of the reason why I now do the job that I do," says the actor.

"I am incredibly grateful to the Welsh language, to S4C, and to the Eisteddfod for all of those opportunities.

"It gave me a platform and taught me a lot of what I know, and what I have taken on for the rest of my career."

This weekend Rex will be returning to this year's Eisteddfod, in Llantwd (Llandudoch), north Pembrokeshire, to support their mum.

"My mam is singing, and this is my first time getting to watch her.

"It's a lovely passing of the baton - after all the hours that she put in when I was a kid, watching me on that stage. I will be down [in Wales] and I really can't wait."

Sadly, though, we won't be hearing any Welsh in Ted Lasso.

"You won't meet me with a Welsh accent - my character is Irish," says Rex.

Nonetheless, the actor hopes fans will embrace the show's new female football team.

"I would ask audiences to meet us [the new cast] the same way you met the men's team - with open hearts, in the way that Ted Lasso meets everyone.

"One of my favourite quotes from the show is: 'be curious, not judgemental'. That's my ethos for anyone meeting the show this season."

"It's such a privilege to be a part of something like this," adds Rex, reflecting on the support shown by regulars such as Waddington and Sudeikis to the new cast.

"These people have been doing this for a long time, and have really honed their craft. They know what it takes to be good people, both on set and off.

"I've learnt a lot from them, and from my new colleagues."

The Lady Greyhounds include Game of Thrones' Faye Marsay, Abbie Hern, Jude Mack and Tanya Reynolds, as well as Rex's screen sister Sharkey.

"We are best mates. What you see on screen is very much our real life relationship, we adore each other. I can't wait for the world to meet all of them," says Rex.

"Trying on that kit for the first time, wearing that badge that I had fallen in love with... and then stepping out on that pitch, in those football boots, pretending to be a football player - all of it - I will never take it for granted, for sure."

The new series lands on Apple TV+ on 5 August.

Nick Cave surprises fans with rooftop show

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7vglnyv3gyo, 2 days ago

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds have surprised fans with a gig on the roof of an East Sussex record shop.

The Australian singer and his band emerged on to the balcony of Resident Music in Brighton's The Lanes area at 11:00 BST on Friday, where they performed a selection of their own songs and a T-Rex cover.

Cave, who lived for more than two decades in the city after moving there in 1999, played the impromptu show ahead of a huge open air concert at Preston Park on Friday evening.

"Thank you, Brighton - what a thing to be doing," the 68-year-old shouted to the packed crowds below.

With Cave's wife Susie and son Earl watching from the sidelines, the band finished with a singalong rendition of Papa Won't Leave You, Henry, from their 1992 album Henry's Dream.

At the end of the performance, Cave said: "See you tonight. Thank you, and thank you, Resident Records, for this.

"Best record shop in the world."

Gig goers arriving by train throughout the day were also greeted by a "Welcome to Brighton Station" message, especially recorded by Cave.

Hundreds of Bad Seeds fans queued for hours when early bird tickets for the concert first went on sale back in September 2025.

Also on the Preston Park line-up are US psychedelic rockers The Flaming Lips, indie band English Teacher, Welsh singer-songwriter Cate Le Bon and post-punk outfit Warmduscher.

In addition, Brighton's Duke of York's Picturehouse cinema will screen five films selected by Cave himself during the weekend.

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Mahrajan Festival is a 'milestone' for Arabic community

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqx7g9z1gnwo, 2 days ago

Some of the biggest Arabic artists in the world are descending on the UK on Saturday - for a "first of its kind" music festival.

Mahrajan Festival is an entirely Arabic music event and fans have been telling BBC Newsbeat they are ready to "enjoy and celebrate" the milestone.

Organised as a collaboration between Live Nation and ABU Recordings, the event has been billed as a platform to "honour Arabic music across all generations".

Egyptian singer Lella Fadda says she's "super excited" to be one of the performers taking to the stage.

The all-day outdoor festival is taking place at Crystal Palace Bowl and includes a mix of established artists as well as rising stars.

"I have never performed here before - when I perform abroad most of the people don't know me so they get to know me through the performance which I really love," says Lella.

The artist is vocally trained but says she has always loved rap, which is how she got into it.

"Not everyone knows me at the [festival] because I rap in mostly Egyptian Arabic and it's not for all the diaspora to understand, but I'm so happy to be connecting with everyone."

The likes of Saint Levant, Dystinct and Khaled are headlining the one-day festival, which feels like a step forward for Arabic music fan Mariam Azam.

"Growing up we didn't see ourselves in the media at all, and if we did it was never good representation," the 24-year-old says.

"It's just nice to have something for us, especially in London."

Azam says she has been "counting down the days" until the festival - and she's not the only one who's excited.

Natalina Popat tells Newsbeat she's most looking forward to seeing Palestinian artist Saint Levant.

"I'm really hoping that he plays Samra, which is a song about loving a girl with a little bit of a darker skin tone," says the 25-year-old.

"I think in a community where fair is often the more beautiful, that song is really comforting and I love it a lot."

Popat grew up in Dubai and Saudi Arabia and says she was "always surrounded by the culture".

"I feel like I was very blessed to have a lot of my childhood kind of mixed in with that community."

When she moved to the UK, she felt a shift.

"There wasn't as much [Arab music] in the mainstream media, so that's why I'm excited for this festival to meet like-minded people.

"And also have a chance to enjoy and celebrate this milestone in the Arab community."

Popat says that having the festival in the UK is "amazing", and even has a friend flying in from the US for the occasion.

"London has always been a melting pot of diversity and celebrating communities."

"So I think it's really cool that the Arab community is getting their chance to celebrate.

"I think it's bringing together a lot of pockets of community from around London and the UK."

For Lella, Egyptian music has "always been there", she's just glad it's finally getting attention.

"We are changing the narrative, we are good at what we do and we can succeed on a worldwide level and not just for Arabic-speaking audiences."

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here.

Family fun at the Fleadh: All you need to know ahead of the festival

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrv0z3lvx7o, 2 days ago

Belfast is preparing for one of the biggest events in its history. Hundreds of thousands of visitors are expected during the world's largest celebration of Irish music, dance and culture.

From lively céilís and storytelling sessions to street parties and circus performances, this year's Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann is set to offer more than the traditional mix of music-filled pubs and bustling crowds.

While the all-Ireland music competitions remain at the heart of the festival, organisers say there will also be a strong focus on families with dozens of free and low-cost events designed to keep children entertained throughout the week.

This year marks the first time Belfast has hosted the event, with more than 200 events planned across the city, alongside competitions, concerts and street performances running from 2 to 9 August.

What is the Fleadh?

Fleadh Cheoil is an annual Irish arts festival and competition run by Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (CCE) - the society of the musicians of Ireland.

The organisation was founded in 1951 by traditional musicians and Gaelic culture advocates from across Ireland who wanted to enhance traditional music, dance and language on the island.

Each year numerous fleadhanna (festivals) are hosted across Ireland, at county and provincial level.

In oversea regions where fleadhanna are also held, they are sometimes known as "féilte".

The best-known of these festivals is Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, often simply known as the Fleadh, which draws thousands of people, and sometimes a famous face or two.

Earlier this year, CCE confirmed that Belfast will again host the All-Ireland Fleadh in 2027.

Previously the only time the festival was held in Northern Ireland was in 2013, with the event in Londonderry attracting an estimated 400,000 people and 20,000 performers.

Niall McClean, co-chair of the organising committee, said the competition was "essentially the Olympics of Irish traditional music", adding that people come "from all parts of the world".

"A real opportunity for everybody in Belfast to come together, celebrate together, bring traditions together and a real joyous occasion, a real family occasion as well," he told the BBC's The Nolan Show.

When does the Fleadh begin?

The opening ceremony starts at noon on Sunday 2 August on a specially-constructed "Gig Rig" stage in the grounds of Belfast City Hall.

It will showcase traditional music, song and dance with performances from local musicians, highland pipers, south Asian dancers, and a Riverdance star.

More than eight hours of free live performances are planned, with acts including the Hot House Flowers, the Blackwater Céilí Band and Sharon Shannon on the bill.

Shannon, an internationally acclaimed accordion player, has previously performed with the likes of U2's Bono, Willie Nelson, Steve Earle and The Waterboys.

"I'm really looking forward to the gig," she told the BBC's Good Morning Ulster programme.

She recalled competing in the All-Ireland Fleadh herself as a child.

"It's hugely important," she said. "It's a focus for a lot of young people when they're learning music."

Shannon said the event also provided an opportunity for young people to meet musicians of their own age from all over the island.

"For us, it wasn't just the competition, it was the excitement of meeting up with friends and having sessions."

What family-friendly events are planned?

Organisers have placed a strong emphasis on activities for families and children.

A dedicated Irish Language Hub at The Mac will include free taster classes, arts and crafts workshops, circus skills, family entertainment and a dedicated family room throughout the week.

As well as core events, the city's fringe programme will feature more than 90 community events with family-focused gatherings taking place in neighbourhood venues across Belfast.

At Titanic Quarter, there are outdoor movies, carnival games, pop-up céilís and food events, while the Waterfront's Craic and Craft Market will combine street food, live music and children's activities, including a Ferris wheel, face painting and a trading card and pop-culture event.

Belfast City Council will also run free sustainability workshops, where children can create musical instruments from recycled materials and make festival bunting.

Pupils and tutors from Glengormley School of Traditional Music will play an active role in the festival, performing on stage as well as leading workshops at 2 Royal Avenue and Children's Trad Trail sessions.

The family-friendly sessions allow for children to play music "away from the bars, and away from other adults,"tutor Maria Rafferty explained.

"It's not very formal, it's more like a social gathering but via the medium of music and it's very inclusive as well.

"If you're not playing music it's something you really should try and experience."

The festival being hosted in Belfast is "something I never thought I'd see in my lifetime", she said, adding that the influx of musicians was "delightful".

"All my students are so excited by the events going on," bodhrán teacher Niamh Reynolds said.

"I feel like there's something for everybody... I would say come along and just see."

The event is "good for all communities in Northern Ireland," volunteer Jacob added.

"It's very neutral, playing music is fun. Many people can get involved in that and the best place to be in the next couple of weeks will be in the city, in Belfast."

Libraries NI is also prepared for the festival, with a range of events across the city over the course of the week.

Fleadh serves as a "brilliant opportunity" to showcase a "jam-packed programme" that has been months in the making, explained Service Development Manager Bríd Steele.

Live music sessions, storytelling, interactive workshops, dance classes and family fun days all feature in the programme.

"If you want to take a little bit of time out from all the hustle and bustle, pop into the library, charge your phone, use the water station, pick up a daily newspaper and have a cup of tea," she added.

"It's a brand new experience for us here. Hopefully it will be buzzing and a brilliant atmosphere."

Speaking to BBC Radio Ulster's Good Morning Ulster, the coordinator of the Belfast Traditional Music Trail, Maureen O'Donoghue, said hosting the Fleadh would showcase Belfast's thriving traditional music scene to thousands of visitors.

"It is just so wonderful that everyone is working together to bring the Fleadh to Belfast for the first time."

The music trail have planned a series of special events during the Fleadh, including a music trail on the water and traditional music sessions aboard a barge open to the public.

Also contributing to fringe events, Duncairn Arts will be taking the Fleadh beyond the stage through a series of inclusive engagements, bringing music to Northern Ireland Hospice, as well as to children and adults with additional needs, older people, and people with disabilities across Belfast.

Food, markets, campsites and places to relax

There are options for families looking for somewhere to take a break between events.

A food and drink village beside Belfast Cathedral will feature local producers, live music and communal seating.

St George's Market will open throughout the week of the Fleadh, extending beyond its normal trading pattern.

Additional food festivals and markets are planned along the Maritime Mile with organisers keen to showcase Belfast's growing culinary and crafts scenes.

The Titanic Quarter site will offer campervan and caravan facilities, while traditional tent camping will be available at Ormeau Park in south Belfast.

Both will provide visitors with convenient access to the city centre.

Alongside toilet, shower and parking facilities, each venue will have food vendors and bar facilities on site, as well as support staff and 24-hour security.

Fleadh road closures

The biggest change for residents and visitors will be the creation of a large, pedestrianised zone in Belfast city centre over the course of the festival.

This is to ensure safe pedestrian movement and allow for performances and activities to take place.

Many roads will be closed to general traffic from 05:00 BST on Sunday 2 August until 07:00 on Monday 10 August.

A full list of closures can be seen on the council's website.

Drivers are advised to plan ahead, allow for extra travel time and consider alternative routes where possible.

How can people get into Belfast for the Fleadh?

Visitors travelling to Belfast for the festival are being encouraged to use a dedicated park-and-ride network.

Three sites will operate on the main routes into the city:

* Eikon Exhibition Centre in Lisburn (near the M1)

* Giant's Park (M2)

* Belfast Harbour (M3)

Visitors can park outside the city centre and use free, fully accessible, shuttle buses operated by Translink, with services running regularly to Grand Central Station and Laganside Bus Station, both within easy reach of the festival zone.

Parking costs £10 per vehicle per day and can be booked in advance through RingGo or paid for on the day, subject to availability.

Will public transport still operate?

Yes.

While the central event zone will be pedestrianised, public transport services will continue to operate around the city.

Translink has encouraged visitors to use public transport, park-and-ride facilities and active travel options during the festival.

To accommodate the event, additional late-night bus and rail services will operate on 2 August and 6-9 August, alongside special coach services to Belfast from locations including Derry, Omagh, Enniskillen, Armagh, Craigavon, Newcastle, Limavady, Dungannon and Crumlin.

A fully accessible city-centre loop shuttle service will operate throughout the festival for people with accessibility requirements or those carrying heavy instruments.

Additional transport information will be available throughout the week and visitors are being encouraged to check travel advice.

Sean McGreevy, Belfast Area Manager, said this is one of the biggest events Translink has been involved with in recent years with "hundreds" of extra services.

"We have a number of options, for example our bus and rail network.

"We also have additional ad hoc resources to respond to bursts in demand. And we've upped our resilience in terms of the Metro offering in the city centre as well, that's in addition to park and ride offerings.

"In totality we have a good package that should cater for people coming to the city, from wherever and however they're getting here."

Who will be helping visitors?

More than 1,300 volunteers have signed up to support the Fleadh.

They will be stationed throughout the city, helping visitors find venues, navigate transport links and access information about events.

Volunteers will in bright yellow clothing.

Instead of the usual street bins, 40 on-street recycling stations will encourage visitors to sort and bin their waste, with collections for mixed dry recycling and food waste, alongside an additional 200 general waste bins at key footfall sites.

There will also be enhanced street cleaning during the week with dedicated night-time crews maintaining the city centre to ensure the area is refreshed and ready each day.

Organisers have said public safety remains a top priority, with ongoing engagement with the Police Service of Northern Ireland, emergency services and local businesses to ensure a safe, well-managed event.

What's the wider significance for Belfast?

As well as attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors, organisers have said the Fleadh represents a major opportunity to showcase Belfast's culture, heritage and hospitality.

The event will "provide an amazing platform to highlight our people, diversity, traditions and stories," according to the Lord Mayor of Belfast Róis-Máire Donnelly, and is expected to create benefits "which will be felt for years to come".

"We have a unique opportunity to really engage communities in the staging of one of Europe's biggest cultural events and encourage visitors to explore everything we have to offer, right across our city," the Sinn Féin councillor added.

The city centre will host events, while local communities across Belfast will play a key role through the wider fringe programme.

For many visitors, it will be their first experience of Belfast.

The event is expected to deliver a significant boost to the city's economy during one of the busiest weeks Belfast has experienced.

For families already living in the city, organisers hope it will provide a packed week of free and accessible entertainment on their doorstep.

Details of all events can be found here.

What your summer reading list says about you

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd69glgl2jzo, 3 days ago

You've been dreaming about that summer break on the sun lounger, book in one hand and drink in the other, for months. Now the dash to the airport gate, train station or hours-long drive is all that stands in your way.

But what does the book you've just shoved in your suitcase say about you?

"It's definitely not a random choice," says Edgar Dubourg, a cognitive scientist at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. "Your reading list is basically a map of your personality.

"When you pick a thriller or romance or horror or science fiction you're not escaping your psychology, in a way, you're really feeling very intuitive and very old parts of your brain.

"Fiction isn't inventing new emotions in you. It's pressing on those pre-existing motivations like instincts."

Studies have shown that our book choices can subconsciously reveal important parts of our personality - including what gives us pleasure and what makes us feel emotion.

Research by Dr Valerie van Mulukom, a senior lecturer in psychology at Oxford Brookes University, suggests that our inner anxieties (or what she calls existential insecurities) determine which book we pick from the shelf.

During her study, she used how often someone might engage with a certain genre to match it up with one of the following four clusters:

* Epic other-world adventures (action, adventure, science fiction, dystopian/post-apocalyptic, fantasy)

* Everyday life and human relationships (comedy, romantic, drama, family, musical)

* Threat and danger (true crime, crime/mystery/thriller, horror)

* Facts and histories (documentary, biography, historical)

But what do they mean? And how do they match up with our own anxieties?

Can't resist a murder mystery? You're probably intrigued by danger

If, like me, you're big on crime novels, then this suggests you're concerned with - or intrigued by - threat and danger.

This isn't just limited to old-fashioned detective novels or psychological thrillers, but can be anything from true crime and spy stories to supernatural horrors like the works of Stephen King's books.

The UK bestseller lists have a range of titles that sit in the "threat and danger" category defined by the research, including:

* The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown (Penguin)

* The Family Friend by Claire Douglas (Penguin)

* London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe (Picador)

Beach bag full of romance novels? You likely worry about your relationships

Meanwhile, if lustful romance is more your thing (very much not mine), then your insecurities are more likely to be about your relationships, both romantic and platonic, and your thoughts on social status and reputation.

The UK bestseller lists have a range of titles that sit in the "everyday life and human relationships" category defined by the research, including:

* The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (Penguin)

* The Names by Florence Knapp (Phoenix)

* Heartstopper Volume 6 by Alice Oseman (Hodder)

Spending summer in Westeros? You may be someone who worries about humanity's future

At the opposite end, someone who likes science fiction or fantasy novels tends to be more concerned with the state of the world.

If you're spending your summer holiday finally reading the Game of Thrones novels, known for mixing political intrigue and medieval battles with tales of dragons and undead armies, then you're likely to be someone who worries about climate change or the threat of war.

The UK bestseller lists have a range of titles that sit in the "epic other-world adventures" category defined by the research, including:

* Duskbound by Bree Grenwich and Parker Lennox (Penguin)

* Red Dwarf: Titan by Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall (Gollancz)

* To Flame a Wild Flower by Sarah A Parker (HarperVoyager)

Prefer non-fiction? You might be searching for answers rather than adventures

For me, holiday reading is serious work. On my last trip abroad, I took eight books for a three-week holiday, ranging from Frank Herbert's sci-fi epic Dune to James Ellroy's noir throwback The Black Dahlia.

But not everyone likes disappearing off into fictional worlds. What if autobiographies or books about history are more your thing?

Dr Dubourg says it is narratives that are important, not necessarily whether they're fact or fiction.

"Everybody consumes narratives, be it in the form of actual news, of anecdotes, of stories that people tell in neighbourhoods."

The UK bestseller lists have a range of titles that sit in the "facts and history" category defined by the research, including:

* Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan (Simon & Schuster)

* Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy (Penguin)

* Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams (Pan)

So next time you pick up a book, what you think is just something vaguely interesting might actually make up an important part of your psychology.

Building panto sets in heatwave is 'quite surreal'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2vl1877plo, today

We may be in the middle of one of the hottest summers on record, but behind the scenes at some West Midlands theatres, the making of a winter tradition is well under way.

At the Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, festive jokes and songs are already taking shape as preparations begin for this year's pantomime, Treasure Island.

For Ian Adams and Tam Ryan, who write and star in the show's annual production, Christmas is never far from their minds.

"It constantly occupies our thoughts," Ryan said. "We're constantly thinking about what we are going to do in December in July, which is quite disorientating."

The pair started working on the script last September, picking it up again in January after last year's panto run.

As for what the next few months will hold as panto season fast approaches, Adams said: "When the script is written, the show is then cast. Once we know who is playing the roles, we can adapt things as necessary."

"Autumn is where we really hit the ground running," Ryan added.

While sets are already being built, he said that the cast would be fitted for their costumes ahead of the press launch in October, before assembling for rehearsals in November.

The Grand Theatre's production of Treasure Island will run from 28 November until 3 January, starring Adams and Ryan with celebrity casting yet to be announced.

Last year, their production of Sleeping Beauty was named Best Pantomime over 950 Seats at the UK Pantomime Awards.

Meanwhile, in Stafford, work is well under way on the scenery and props for Lichfield Garrick Theatre's production of Robin Hood, as well as about 10 other pantomimes.

Pete Bruus of Staffs Scenic Solutions and Tim Murley of Unit 1 Scenery spend a significant amount of their time working on pantomime sets. Bruus is in charge of building the sets, before passing them over to Murley to paint them.

Bruus said it felt strange creating festive scenes while temperatures soared outside.

"Sometimes when you are working in here and it's as hot as it is and you're doing Christmas shows, you are building panto sets, it is quite surreal," he said. "But that's the industry. That's what we do."

Bruus, 43, has been working in theatre since he was a teenager, starting as a stagehand at the Stafford Gatehouse Theatre. He went on to study theatre at university before working at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry for 13 years. He now runs his own business.

"Panto has been very much my life since 15 years of age," he said. "I couldn't tell you how many panto sets I've built, I've built so many."

Bruus said that Lichfield's production of Robin Hood had been on his radar since January, and he had since picked up more panto and Christmas work, designing sets for Imagine Theatre and Wise Owl Theatre. He added that he expected more festive projects to come in over the next few months.

"We want to make sure that we don't overwork ourselves," he said. "Realistically we only have three months - pantos start going in November. The next three months is going to be full on pantomimes and Christmas shows."

Murley added: "I'd say half the year's definitely taken up by panto and other Christmas shows and it just builds up, particularly from now, it really starts to build up until November."

Daniel Buckroyd, chief executive and artistic director at Lichfield Garrick Theatre, said that he was "chuffed" to see the panto set "coming to life".

"We started work designing our production of Robin Hood last autumn, but it was just designs on paper and designs in a model box, so it's fantastic to see it coming to life and working with creatives like the team here, the set builders, to bring that vision to life," he said.

"It's brilliant and colourful and the audiences are going to love it."

Robin Hood opens on 20 November and runs until 10 January.

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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child marks 10th year

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz64gp8yv4go, 4 days ago

Harry Potter And The Cursed Child is set to celebrate its 10th anniversary at the Palace Theatre in London.

The two-part play, a sequel to JK Rowling's book series, premiered in the West End in 2016 and has been seen by more than 2.5 million people. It has also featured a total of 276 cast members, including 45 actors making their professional stage debut.

Part 1 and Part 2 of the Jack Thorne-written play, which takes place 19 years after the events of the book Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, have been performed a combined total of 1,762 times.

Thorne praised "a collective effort, shaped by the passion, creativity and dedication of every person involved in bringing our show to the stage".

The shows follow Harry Potter's son Albus Severus as he arrives at Hogwarts expecting to be sorted into Gryffindor house, but instead finds himself in Slytherin, making him feel unable to live up to his father's legacy.

Thorne said the crew was "delighted" to be celebrating the show's 10th anniversary.

He said: "One of the things that makes theatre so special is the shared experience between the audience and performers who journey through the story together, and to have brought new audiences to the Palace Theatre to have their first theatregoing experience at our show is something we are all proud of."

Director John Tiffany said: "It has been an incredible 10 years for everyone who has been involved in Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, and a joy for us to bring this show to our fantastic audiences in London and around the world.

"We wouldn't be reaching this milestone without the many brilliant artists, both on stage and behind the scenes, who have all contributed their astonishing talent and unwavering enthusiasm to bring this remarkable story to life at each and every performance."

Harry Potter And The Cursed Child received a record-breaking nine Laurence Olivier Awards, the highest number awarded for a play.

It has also received multiple other UK theatre awards, and a record 60 major honours globally, including six Tony Awards.

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Joe Lycett wants art exhibition to inspire others

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1d1e0gv1kro, 5 days ago

A life-sized pink woolly mammoth, Ozzy Osbourne, and an old phone are among some of the subjects comedian and artist Joe Lycett hopes will inspire others to get creative.

Everything Must Go at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery was inspired by "things that are no longer with us", he said, describing his first major solo art exhibition as "a neon graveyard, full of colour".

"I want people to come in and go, 'well I could do that', and then go and do it, please, go and do it better," he said.

"It's so good for you and I really get cross when people go, 'oh I'm not really creative'. If you can put pen to paper, you're creative, you can make things."

Lycett has been working on the collection, which opens on Wednesday, over the past year.

He said it sprang from his love of painting animals, then became an "exercise in looking into grief", also honouring friends who had died.

Its centrepiece is the mixed media sculpture of Martin the mammoth, which has ceramic yellow toenails and a latex tongue.

He decided to make it one night "at 4am, which is when all my ideas come".

It was available to buy for £80, he joked, "but you do need to get it out yourself".

The Nokia 2210, an acrylic on canvas, depicts the comedian's favourite-ever phone, and features a message saying, Snobs?, referring to a legendary city nightspot.

He said he was inspired to paint Ozzy after attending his final show at Villa Park last July. "I was so moved by it," he added.

Elvis Presley, Napoleon Bonaparte and BBC Ceefax also feature, as does a clay sculpture of a dodo and a digital sculpture of Blind Date TV presenter Cilla Black, with her body being replaced with a parking meter.

Lycett has worked with other local contemporary artists on the collection, including his own mum, who took up painting watercolours after retiring as a designer at Cadbury.

"I asked her if she would do a collaboration with me, so we've done Morecambe and Wise. She did Morecambe and I did Wise," he said.

He said it was important to him the exhibition was in his hometown, not only because it was "really convenient" to get there on a new train line from Kings Heath.

"This place is amazing and so much of it is closed off," he said, referring to the 19th Century museum and art gallery.

"This building is grand because when it was built people believed in the arts and spent money on it, and that's because art has value for humans and we should be doing a lot more of that," he said.

Everything Must Go can be seen from Wednesday until 21 February next year, every day during school holidays and between 10:00 BST and 17:00 BST from Tuesday to Sunday.

Lycett's next focus is a new live TV show, The Lycett Arms, coming later this year to Channel 4, and he is also planning a tour for next year.

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Unseen work by Virgin's Scarlet Lady artist on show

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrvd8n3mdlo, 7 days ago

Previously unseen works by the artist who created the Scarlet Lady depicted on Virgin Atlantic planes, as well as other murals for the company, are on display.

Ken White, from Swindon, died in December 2025 but had been organising the exhibition in Marlborough, Wiltshire, before his death.

The show at The Little Gallery now has input from his children, who have put the last piece he was painting in there, although it is not known if it is finished.

His son Asa White said he was going through the attic, finding work that would likely never have been seen in public before.

Virgin boss Richard Branson called White "one of the most extraordinary creatives of our time", explaining that he had painted for record shops, recording studios, hotels and airport lounges, as well as the planes.

White hand-painted the first few Scarlet Lady images onto the planes.

The last painting was sitting near a chest of drawers where he would keep his supplies, but the top was used as his palette, which he never scraped the paint from. The paint built up on there is a few inches thick after decades of use.

White was well-known around Swindon, particularly for his local murals. A lot of the time his subjects involved local people and places. He started off working as a sign painter for Great Western Railway.

"Walking around Swindon, he was always getting stopped and people were saying 'hello, Ken', wanting to speak to him," said Asa.

"He always shied away from the term artist and if he was asked if he was an artist he would just say 'no I'm a painter'. He was very humble and very modest."

However, his work, which included painting adverts for musicians, linked him with a number of famous names, including Mike Oldfield, XTC and the Sex Pistols.

"You'd go to parties with him and he would know lots of famous people because he worked in recording studios a lot," said Asa.

"You'd mention someone famous and [he'd] say, oh, I met them. It almost became like a running joke that anyone you mention is famous, dad's met them."

Many of the works at The Little Gallery in Marlborough are for sale and reflect White's roots in Swindon, but there are also some showing a more pop art style and his interest in topics like animal testing.

A few are not for sale - the family have each chosen a few favourites to keep. One of them is a large painting of the Beatles in a nude style.

Antiques Roadshow expert Grant Ford, who owns the gallery, said: "[White] was a local man that deserves more recognition as a British artist.

"From my perspective, as someone who's been in the art world for a long, long time, I think his work needs to be appreciated by a much broader audience."

Ford called White's Swindon murals "iconic statements for the town".

"He was kind of before a number of those significant graffiti pop artists that did graffiti art in our cities. So he's quite advanced ahead of that game."

He is expecting the works to sell from £100 up to £15,000.

The exhibition runs until 12 August.

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How anti-gay law derailed artist's windmill quest

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9v4ykk8l0po, 7 days ago

A new exhibition tells the story of an artist whose quest to paint every windmill in the UK was cut short after he was convicted under a law that criminalised sex between men.

Karl Salsbury Wood saw windmills as an example of Britain's disappearing rural industry and wanted to document them all.

The war veteran painted 1,394 of them before his arrest in Lincolnshire in 1951 for "gross indecency".

Emily Andersen, a filmmaker who has made a short film for the exhibition at The Hub, in Sleaford, said Wood's work had "been buried in a way" because of his arrest and it was "vital" to share his story now.

She described him as "an eccentric" who would "go around on a bicycle with his paints on the back of his bike".

"He'd wear breeches and colourful shirts and dickie bows. He was somebody everyone knew."

Wood was born in 1888 in Derbyshire. He served his country during World War 1 before settling in Gainsborough.

He developed a fascination with windmills, which he described to a local newspaper as "fast-passing relics of the past", and spent years cataloguing hundreds of the buildings between 1920 and 1951.

Andersen said Wood wanted to make a book of his work.

"He was very, very fastidious about how he was making these trips and what he was doing it for," she added.

In 1932, Wood told the Gainsborough and Isle of Axholme News that he went about his quest on a bicycle because he had learnt "that unless one works for a thing, it is scarcely worth the having".

He said the public had an "extraordinary interest" in windmills and he thought their use led to the development of the "modern science of engineering".

Following his arrest, Wood was sentenced to four years in jail. His book, to be called Twilight of the Windmills, was never finished.

The crime of gross indecency was also used to convict the war hero Alan Turing and the writer Oscar Wilde.

In 2017, under Turing's Law, the government officially pardoned thousands of men for their convictions for consensual same-sex relationships.

In 2023, Lincolnshire Police issued a public apology over the "unacceptable way in which homophobic laws were enforced" in the past.

Andersen said: "It's just the reality of what happened if you were homosexual.

"I think we forget in 2026 in the West that it's possible to be gay, homosexual, LGBTQ and so on. I think it reminds people of times when it was harder."

The story of Karl Salsbury Wood forms part of an exhibition, called Common Ground: Sleaford's Shared Stories, which runs until 8 November at The Hub in Sleaford.

Clarification, 27 July 2026: An earlier version of this article stated that Emily Andersen was a researcher for the exhibition. She is actually a filmmaker who has produced a short film for the exhibition. We are happy to clarify this.

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The market town performers stepping into the West End spotlight

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gwxvlelx9o, 8 days ago

When you think of theatre, the West End comes to mind, a hubbub of voices as the audience enters, curtain up; for many, a creative heart of London...

The sweeping hills of Shropshire might not come to mind as quickly in this context - but maybe they should, as Shrewsbury is emerging as a training ground for musical theatre talent.

Several local performers have recently secured lead roles in the West End.

Among them, Stephenson Ardern-Sodje, who took over the title role in the musical Hamilton last month, having first performed it a decade ago.

Meanwhile Asha Parker-Wallace, who also first trod the boards in the town, is playing Nala in the Lion King at the Lyceum Theatre.

Paying tribute to her Shrewsbury upbringing, she said: "There's places where you can go to work on your craft and they're actually fantastic places to be."

In his first job out of drama school, Ardern-Sodje was third cover for Hamilton as part of the original cast, and ended up being called on to perform.

"Going on for the first time as Hamilton is something I'll always remember," he said. "This really does feel like coming full circle now."

His earliest experiences were in Shrewsbury amateur dramatics, and he remembered being in productions at Severn Theatre and in Les Mis at his sixth form college.

Unsure how to turn his hobby into a career, taking part in an open casting call for Hamilton changed the course of his life.

"They liked me and actually sent me to drama school to study," he explained.

He has since performed Shakespeare at the Globe and played Simba in the Lion King, also appearing in the role at Manchester Arena in front of 12,000 people, "which made me feel a bit like a rock star".

He said his drama and music teachers at Wakeman School and Arts College had always championed him – as had local am-dram director Alex Hinton who still travels to watch him on stage.

"Having people there, just to know it's possible, is a really big key to open the door," he said.

"It's a real shame that's not something that's necessarily available to kids and adults all over the country."

Parker-Wallace signed up to Stagecoach performing arts classes when she moved to Shrewsbury, which she said awoke a love for musical theatre.

She later joined local company Curtain Call Studios, which she described as "fantastic". It was there that she first thought: "I need to take this seriously... I think I might have a talent for it."

A former pupil of Thomas Adams School in Wem, she signed with an agent while still at drama school and booked Burlesque, her first show, a couple of weeks before graduating.

Appearing on the West End stage after dreaming about it for so long was "actually insane", she said, "like an out-of-body experience". "I think I cried."

Lion King was the first show she had ever seen, as a six-year-old in London with her parents.

"I remember watching it and feeling so inspired by the performers on the stage," she said.

"Now I can be in the position where I can potentially inspire the next generation of people to pursue a career in this, or to pursue their dreams."

Ahmed Hamad, who is starring as Charles Cholmondeley in Operation Mincemeat at the Fortune Theatre, also highlighted the number of lighting designers and directors from Shrewsbury.

A former member of Mad Cow Productions and Get Your Wigle On, he said there were "so many" theatre groups in the town comparative to its size.

The performer, who has Sudanese and Saudi Arabian heritage, said he felt fortunate to be working at a time when opportunities were open to him.

"If this show had been done maybe 20 years ago, I probably wouldn't have been seen for it," he said.

"I remember saying to my agent after graduating, 'I'd love to be in shows like Hamilton and Lion King, but I also don't want to be in a show just because of my race'.

"I also want to play roles that haven't been played by a black person, North East African, Middle Eastern person."

Additional reporting by Susie Rack.

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Students' art highlights concerns about fishing

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8xle3ry4no, 8 days ago

Artwork created by students are set to go on display at a festival as part of a campaign calling for greater protection of marine habitats.

The Falmouth University students have teamed up with environmental charity Oceana and Boardmasters festival to produce protest pieces highlighting the impact of bottom trawl fishing.

Boardmasters said the collaboration aimed to use creativity to raise awareness of threats facing the coastline and seas around Cornwall.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said bottom trawling had been banned in more than 100 Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and proposals to extend restrictions to a further 41 sites were being considered.

Oceana said in a 2025 report that the MPA off Newquay, where the music and surfing festival takes place from 5 to 9 August, recorded 2,494 hours, or more than 100 days of suspected bottom trawling in 2025.

Bottom trawling involves dragging large weighted nets along the sea floor to catch fish.

Executive director of Oceana UK Hugo Tagholm said it had been "inspiring to work with the Boardmasters team and passionate local arts students" to bring the "vital message" to festival goers.

"We must ensure our marine sanctuaries are properly protected to safeguard ocean health and allow UK seas to thrive once again," he said.

A Defra spokesperson said: "Damaging fishing activities including bottom trawling are banned in over 100 of our Marine Protected Areas and we have recently consulted on proposals to stop bottom trawling in a further 41.

"All our Marine Protected Areas are safeguarded by strict legislation to protect our marine environment and support sustainable fishing, helping industry and local communities to thrive."

Defra said nearly 60% of England's 181 marine protected areas already had management measures in place to protect habitats and species from damaging fishing activities.

Boardmasters director Rob Spring said the work of students could "help shine a spotlight on this vital issue through their creativity".

"It's part of our ongoing effort to protect the coastline we're lucky to call home," he said.

The artworks will be exhibited at the festival's View stage.

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The tiny Spanish village where darkness will fall twice in one night

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260731-the-tiny-spanish-village-where-darkness-will-fall-twice, today

With almost no residents, no restaurants and barely any visitors, Avellanosa de Muñó is preparing for one extraordinary night.

There are villages that feel quiet and then there is tiny Avellanosa de Muñó in the northern Spanish province of Burgos. It has no restaurants and no shops. A bar that never opens and a bodega that never will again.

But listen closely, and a subtle melody begins to sound. A low bassline murmurs from carpenter bees hovering in a trance around lavender bushes toasted by the harsh summer Sun. Above them, birdsong from black-and-white swallows darting between stone rooftops echoes through near-empty streets. Beyond the houses, the rumble of a lonely tractor is often the only vague sign of human life.

That is, until an unassuming white van from a nearby bakery snakes through once a week to deliver bread to the handful of residents who still live here, briefly stirring them from the village's sleepy spell.

For these few people, this is the rhythm that shapes that shape daily life in a place where, on most days, nothing really happens at all. Yet this summer, a village usually characterised by its abundance of absence will transform into one of the most exciting places to be on the planet.

On 12 August 2026, a total solar eclipse will sweep across the Atlantic, marking the first time since 1999 that one will be visible from mainland Europe. According to Madrid-based physicist Dr María Teresa López Sánchez, it will be the first total solar eclipse visible from mainland Spain since 1912. However, totality will be visible only along a narrow path across the continent, and Avellanosa de Muñó lies directly within it. But what makes this tiny village such a compelling place to watch is the landscape: golden wheat fields and low hills open onto a broad western horizon, with few buildings, little artificial light and almost none of the crowds expected at better-known viewing sites.

The timing makes the eclipse even more special. Because it will take place shortly before sunset, it will create a double twilight effect – "like living two sunsets in a few minutes", as López describes it. Later that night, the Perseids meteor shower will also be visible, creating a rare convergence of celestial events.

For resident Sara Álvarez Rodríguez, there is no doubt where she will send people. "Go up towards the cave," she says, "from there you can see everything."

Born in Avellanosa de Muñó in 1937, Álvarez has never lived anywhere else. In her nearly nine decades here, she has watched the village completely transform. In the 1950s, she tells me, the village had roughly 200 inhabitants and several small shops. Fishmongers from here would travel by bicycle to nearby villages to sell their catch. Raúl Grande Revilla, who was born here 73 years ago but moved to Madrid as a child, remembers a postman arriving by donkey to deliver letters and newspapers. Half-asleep in the saddle, the postman could rely on the animal to know where to stop, including at the small post office that used to tail end the village.

For generations, the village survived on dryland agriculture, vegetable gardens, vineyards and livestock. Then agriculture became mechanised. With few other jobs nearby, people left for cities like Madrid, Bilbao, Barcelona and beyond.

Today, more goats graze the surrounding hillsides than people live permanently in the village, and vast fields of sunflowers stretch across the landscapes where hundreds of villagers once worked the land.

But this summer, the eclipse is beckoning some of those families back.

For the event, Grande will return with his partner, his son, grandchildren and their extended group of friends. His brother will also come with his three children, grandson and sister, together bringing a band of around 20 people and doubling the village's population for a night. And it won't stop there. Álvarez tells me that other neighbours will also host friends and relatives of their own, with people travelling from across Spain, and even from the UK, France and Venezuela.

Dr Lucrezia López, a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Santiago de Compostela, says one-off events such as the eclipse can encourage people "to rediscover a place they already have some connection to". In Avellanosa, that rediscovery is already extending beyond former residents and their families.

The nearby Parador de Lerma hotel, housed in the former palace of the Duke of Lerma, has been booked up for the event since 2022, and Alberto Bosque Coello from Castilla y León's tourism board says the same pattern is playing out across the region.

"Most of our accommodation is fully booked. In fact, it was booked well in advance," he says, adding that eclipse specialists were looking for "the best place, not the best-known place" because they wanted optimal viewing conditions.

Grande tells me about a Californian family planning to travel to Spain for the eclipse. Not wanting them to miss totality in Madrid, he went from house to house asking whether anyone in Avellanosa could host them instead, so they could experience the eclipse from what he believes is Spain's finest viewing point.

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I ask him what it feels like for a village of around 10 people to suddenly find itself in the spotlight. Grande laughs and nods. "Tal cual" (That's exactly it), he says, amazed that his tiny village is, however briefly, drawing the world to its doorstep.

Across Burgos, communities are preparing viewing points and gatherings for the eclipse. But in Avellanosa de Muñó, locals and visitors will head to the caves above the village.

With the Sun just eight degrees above the horizon during totality, an unobstructed western view will be crucial, making the elevated caves a front-row seat to this once-in-a-generation celestial display. Yet the caves are not just a good vantage point. For generations, this dwindling community has gathered here to watch the sunset together, and one former resident even chose to have his ashes scattered here. It's a place of deep sentimental value to the village.

Avellanosa is a place that Álvarez never left and never will. Grande has returned almost every year of his life. Every summer, Álvarez's daughters return home and will continue to do so long after their mother is gone. Grande now brings his sons, their children and, increasingly, their friends. He hopes to create the same bond he formed here as a little boy, so that one day his grandchildren will feel compelled to come back too. "What matters most to me is that my children and grandchildren feel for the village the same affection that I do," he tells me.

On the day of the eclipse, Avellanosa de Muñó will once again be filled with chatter. The smoke from grilled lamb chops will take over the spaces of non-existent restaurants, and the laughter of children will sound from where a school once stood. Then, for a few extraordinary minutes, darkness will fall twice. And, by a remarkable accident of geography, one of Spain's most overlooked villages will briefly become the centre of the world.

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An epic 1,000km bike ride around Taiwan

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260731-taiwans-epic-1000km-bike-ride-around-the-island, yesterday

Each year, thousands of Taiwanese ring the island as a rite of passage. Now, a growing number of tourists are cycling it, and experiencing a side of Taiwan few outsiders see.

Recently, a Taipei-based cyclist named Ethan pedalled along a lonely road clinging to the side of a cliff along Taiwan's remote eastern coast. After cutting through a lush forest, he eventually reached the top of the Seaboard Mountain Range, where the glassy expanse of the ocean spread out before him and stretched towards the horizon.

"Some people say if you don't do the Huandao at least once in your lifetime, you're not really Taiwanese," the cyclist joked.

Literally meaning "around the island", the Huandao is a beloved journey for many Taiwanese residents. Each year, thousands of people ring the island on a nearly 1,000km (621-mile) route clockwise from Taipei. Along the way, they pass the north coast's dramatic rock formations and rugged fishing villages, venture down its sparsely inhabited eastern shore, ride through the southern tip's white-sand beaches and pedal up its heavily urban western coast.

While the Huandao can be done by car or motorcycle, many Taiwanese cycle it as a rite of passage while in school or before starting university.

Ethan said he's cycled the Huandao four or five times. "Every time I go a different way, in bigger or smaller circles," he explained. "Taiwan is so beautiful and there's always something new to see."

The birth of a 'national' cycle route

Long-distance biking has been popular in Taiwan for more than 50 years and the island is known as one of the world's great cycling destinations. But the idea of circumnavigating Taiwan by bike entered the national imagination following the release of the 2006 film Island Etude, in which a college student spends seven days cycling around the island.

In the film, the student visits historical sites connected to Taiwan's past Japanese occupation, hears ancient Indigenous folk songs and meets strangers in the countryside who are quick to offer a bed or meal. Ever since, real-life students have followed his path, hoping to similarly discover a different side of their island home.

As more Taiwanese cyclists set out on the Huandao, the Taiwanese government inaugurated the circular route as Taiwan Cycle Route No 1 in 2015 – creating a sort of "national" network of cycle paths and roads.

Circumnavigating Taiwan on two wheels

While most cyclists begin and end their journey in Taipei, the beauty of the Huandao is that you can start anywhere – or just tackle portions of it, like I did.

On two previous visits to Taiwan, I had largely stayed in the populous north and west. This time, I set out to cycle 500km (311 miles) along the island's lonely eastern coast, from Taipei to Taitung, to see a side of Taiwan few travellers experience.

Leaving the capital, I followed designated bike lanes below the overpasses towards the port city of Keelung, stopping for soup dumplings and braised eel at its famous night market. But the real biking fun began some 30km (18.6 miles) east in the seaside town of Fulong. There, the Old Caoling Tunnel, a historic 2.1km (1.3-mile) railway tunnel, has been converted into a bike path. I cruised through the stone passageway under flickering lights before emerging in the northern edge of Taiwan's eastern coast – and what felt like a different world.

While the island's north and west are dominated by modern, sprawling cities, the east is rooted in the island's Indigenous culture. Because central Taiwan is marked by an impenetrable mountain range and there isn't much flat land in the east, most 20th-Century Chinese settlers and developers remained in the western flatlands, which has helped preserve the island's Indigenous culture in its isolated east.

This cultural and geographical divide remains visible today. Taiwan's high-speed rail can't pierce its central mountains, so it only shuttles tourists up and down its western cities. In the east, there is a sensation of open space. The mountains are bigger, the palm trees taller. Because it faces the vast Pacific rather than the narrow Taiwan Strait, the water is deeper and darker blue. Carved wooden totem poles, geometric mosaics and Indigenous food traditions all testify to the fact that long before Han Chinese and Japanese settlers arrived, Taiwan was home to Amis, Truku and Puyuma Indigenous people.

Cycling south, these layers of history and identity gradually revealed themselves. Today, the majority of Taiwanese are Buddhist, Taoist or practice Chinese folk beliefs. Yet, Christianity, which was introduced by European missionaries in the 1600s and is only practiced by about 5% of Taiwanese today, still survives in these isolated villages.

Roughly 100km (62 miles) south of the Old Caoling Tunnel, I spotted my first church in the village of Heping. Marked by a white cross against a towering mountain range, it primarily serves the area's Truku residents. Nearby, crosses sit atop traditional horseshoe-shaped tombs in Chinese cemeteries.

Rural hospitality

I mostly stayed at family-run guesthouses during my 11-day journey: a treehouse on a mountaintop, a hut in the mouth of a marble gorge, and a bed and breakfast by an empty shore.

Siloko Akila, an Amis resident who manages the WaGaLiGong guesthouse in Dulan, where I spent one night, said that even though the Huandao has taken off in recent years, few travellers spend much time immersing themselves in the Indigenous cultures of the island's east.

"We still need to draw [more] people in," she added. When I asked Akila what the main attraction is in Dulan, she said: "The people [here] are friendly, warm and helpful. It simply has the human touch."

In the guesthouse, a documentary highlighting the Amis peoples' close relationship with nature was playing behind the bar. More than 95% of Taiwan's residents have Han Chinese ancestry, but there is a growing desire to learn more about the island's original residents. One young Taiwanese guest explained that he'd chosen to learn one of the island's Indigenous languages in high school. By the end of the night, Akila and her friends were singing haunting Amis folk songs accompanied by a guitar.

This familial-like hospitality extended across the island. When I got a flat tyre on the north coast, a Taiwanese cyclist stopped to help me patch it up. When I arrived in the eastern village of Ruisui at dusk, the owner of a fully booked guesthouse called every other hotel until she found me an inn to stay at. When I arrived, a family staying there insisted on feeding me stir-fried noodles and pork soup.

A coming-of-age ritual

Though I finished my half Huandao in Taitung, many cyclists continue their journey back to Taipei by first passing Kenting, Taiwan's oldest national park, where wild deer brought back from the brink of extinction roam free in evergreen forests, and white-sand beaches line the island's only tropical national park.

Now 30, Yafan Chang set out on her first Huandao journey as part of a school trip in 2012 when she was 16 years old. Like many cyclists I met, she told me her favourite portion of the route was a mountain pass just north of Kenting National Park.

"It's like 12km [7 miles] uphill, and then after that you just glide all the way down," she recalled. "You're in a field of grass but you can also see the glimmering ocean at sunset."

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After 12 days of cycling and with fewer than 100km to go, Chang ran into a typhoon outside Taipei and was unable to complete the full Huandao. A few years later, she set out again with her brother and uncle because they felt it was important to see the full island.

"It's a very rewarding feeling," she said, explaining that people all over the island encouraged her to keep going when she grew tired. I experienced this myself, as passers-by frequently leaned out of their car windows to flash a thumbs up, or shout "jiāyóu!" (literally: "add oil!").

Besides not completing the full Huandao, my only regret was not building in more rest days to fully immerse myself in Taiwan's seldom-explored countryside. One day while I was cycling along the east coast, I met Doris Kwok and her friend Jessie Chan from Taiwan, who told me they had actually completed the full Huandao on foot.

When I asked why they'd chose to walk and not bike or drive the Huandao, Kwok told me something that still rings true: "Taiwan is simply too beautiful not to take your time."

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Why do we act and sound like someone else after a trip?

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260730-why-do-we-act-and-sound-like-someone-else-after-a-trip, 2 days ago

Instead of bringing back souvenirs, some travellers return home from holiday with an entirely different accent, look and mannerisms. But why?

When I was in my 20s, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I had a yen for travel, so I settled in Prague. Three years and hundreds of pints of Czech pilsner later, I moved back to the US with something I hadn't planned: a new look and accent.

Out was my long, dark-blonde hair and my utilitarian jean-and-T-shirt style of dress; and in was my cropped bleach-blond hair, an androgynous fashion sense and a new affectation that sounded somewhere between central Bohemian and pretentious.

My family hated this new me. And looking back, I would have hated me, too.

Many people just back from their summer holidays this year will show friends and family photos to convey how transformative their trip was. But there's a whole other subsection of travellers who physically transform by bringing home the accent, dress or customs of a place and incorporating them into their daily lives.

Remember Madonna's widely mocked British lilt during her time in England? That's just the tip of the iceberg. But it turns out that she and other travellers may not be able to help themselves.

The internet is filled with viral videos poking fun of people who start chain-smoking and wearing all black after three days in Berlin, saying "bollocks" on their first day in London and pronouncing "Airbnb" with a Gallic flourish after five days in Paris. But while it's easy to mock these "semester abroad accents" and seemingly forced newfound mannerisms, I was curious to know why some of us are susceptible to this.

It's actually not that difficult to pick up an accent – especially if we spend enough time in a place. Studies have suggested that we even unconsciously imitate other accents, since human beings frequently adjust to each other's ways of speaking. Travelling somewhere new may bring this out.

For many people, travel can be both influential and addictive. Learning about other cultures and experiencing how people around the world live can have a profound, lasting effect on us in ways both big and small.

According to Dr Charlotte Russell, a clinical psychologist and the founder of The Travel Psychologist these revelations can quickly become personal rituals. "The most obvious motivation [why some people incorporate foreign customs or speech] is that someone has really connected with a part of their experience in a particular place, and want to 'hold' onto their experiences and their sense of connection," she said.

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Russell gave a personal example of "the quieter kinds of things we might bring back with us" from travelling abroad. She loves the Greek word parakalo, which translates to "please", but has a much deeper function in the Greek language.

"I really like the sound of the word and how it's used to show courtesy to others in a way that we might say 'after you' or 'how can I help you?'," she said. "Despite connecting to the word and the culture in Greece, I choose not to use it loudly or to strangers who don't have any context. I use it when I'm in Greece and with any of my Greek friends when I'm back home. For me, using the word [selectively] is about the connection I feel to the Greek culture and my experiences there."

But then there are the more explicit things we drag back from our trips. I know an American woman who suddenly started signing off her emails with "Namaste" after returning from Bhutan. A friend of mine briefly lived in Italy and now pinches his fingertips and shakes his hands up and down whenever he's confused. And most everyone I've met who goes to Costa Rica now won't stop saying "pura vida!" while strangely flashing the Hawaiian "shaka" sign.

"The second motivation might include this sense of connection to a place, but [it's] not quiet – it's about signalling to others that I am well-travelled, and perhaps in some cases, even a sense of superiority because of this," Russell said.

According to Gareth Barkin, an anthropology and sociology professor at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, some travellers may adapt foreign customs out of respect or even reverence for the local culture. Barkin points to the work of French philosopher René Girard who coined the term "mimetic desire" and argued that when we travel, we don't want to only consume food and sights, but also to absorb the host culture itself.

"Even if it's another highly developed country like France or Japan, the argument is that we will often see it as somehow more 'authentic' and 'traditional' than our own fractured, modern lives," said Barkin. "By adopting their accent or mimicking their physical posture, we are engaging in – often unconsciously – an attempt to 'yield into and become the Other,' to quote [anthropologist] Michael Taussig. We're hoping that their more authentic state of being will somehow transfer to us."

Interestingly, Barkin says that not every destination possesses the same allure for travellers when it comes to mimicry. Whether a culture is more or less likely to inspire this imitation usually boils down to the sociolinguistic power of "prestige bias", the idea that we adopt the tendencies of people or places that we hold in high esteem.

"In the travel world, certain destinations wield a lot of overt prestige for Americans – the UK, France, Italy or Greece – countries associated with the classical canon of Western culture," he said. "When an American tourist adopts an English accent in London or tries to mimic local hand gestures in Rome, the idea is that they are using mimicry as a shortcut to 'borrow' some of the destination's social capital. And to signal to locals that they belong there."

Another reason why some travellers come back from a trip with a slight affectation or peppering their conversations with newly acquired foreign words may also be linked to overtourism. As mass tourism has increased, Berkin claims that the allure of those historically "high-prestige" destinations has waned, and we are currently seeing a surge in "covert prestige" thanks to social media.

"With covert prestige… middle-class [Western travellers] romanticise rural, Indigenous or less-developed communities, and in so doing, contrast themselves against traditional tourists," he said. "[They're broadcasting] a specialised cultural capital meant not just to associate themselves with the host culture, but also to signal their elevation above conventional tourists who visit more traditional, accessible destinations."

We all know the type: the gringo who spent a month learning Spanish in rural Guatemala and will now only eat masa tortillas, the Canadian just back from Laos who now clasps his hands and bows whenever you hand him anything, the Europeans who backpack through India donning saris and wrap-around dhotis.

In a way, people adopting the local culture from their travels abroad can be viewed as a sort of one-upmanship. Okay, so you waited your turn to get that perfect sunrise photo of yourself at Machu Picchu doing the Warrior II pose and you can't wait to post it on Instagram. But there's someone returning home right now who is going to show the world how to make perfect pisco sours and ceviche on TikTok while perfectly pronouncing "aji amarillo", despite having never had heard of these things before their trip.

I suppose this is what I was doing when I moved back to the US from Prague. With my new look and my new way of speaking, I was unconsciously trying to re-introduce myself to old friends and show that I had been transformed by a culture different than my own. In hindsight, this fleeting act may have been more for me than others – a way to myself how much I had changed. Everyone else likely just thought I was a pretentious idiot.

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Retracing the defiant walk that changed Britain

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260727-the-kinder-mass-trespass-the-derbyshire-walk-that-changed-britain, 3 days ago

Seventy-five years after the Peak District became Britain's first national park, visitors can retrace the mass trespass that helped open the countryside to everyone.

I am 636m (2,087ft) above sea level at the blustery plateau of Kinder Scout, the highest point of England's Peak District. The faint Manchester skyline is hazy in the distance, sitting behind the Dark Peak's stretches of barren moorland and its scattered, tumbling gritstones. This was once the stage of one of the most famous protests in English history.

Seventy-five years ago, the Peak District became England's first national park. Split into two distinct areas – the Dark Peak, with its barren moorlands and gritstone edges, and the White Peak, with limestone gorges, bright green dales and flowing rivers – it covers 550 square miles (1,483km) and attracts more than 13 million hikers, cyclists and climbers each year.

But before the Peak District was established, much of its land was privately owned and off limits to the public until some young, local workers fought for their right to access this sweeping northern stretch – and in doing so paved the way for the creation of the national park system in the UK.

Having grown up on the fringes of the Peak District, I have always delighted in walking across its dramatic landscapes, while being largely unaware of its role in shaping public access to the English countryside. Today, I'm retracing those bold rebels' steps where it all began.

The Kinder mass trespass

During the early 20th Century, England's industrialised northern cities were frequently filled with smog. Many factory and mill workers sought to spend their time off rambling in the fresh air of the rural countryside, but they were often turned away by landowners and gamekeepers.

Organised trespassing and political action against private land ownership at this time was not new, nor was the desire for public access to the countryside. The first freedom to roam bill was introduced to Parliament in 1884, inspired by the establishment of the world's first national park, Yellowstone, 12 years prior in the US. The bill failed, but campaigning continued through the creation of rambling groups across the country, who often organised protests like the Winter Hill mass trespass of 1896 in north-west England.

However, the Kinder mass trespass of 24 April 1932 is often cited as the catalyst that led to the birth of England's own national park system.

Led by 20-year-old Benny Rothman, the protest included some 400 young men and women from Manchester, Sheffield and the surrounding mill towns who defied the law and walked across the privately owned plateau of Kinder Scout, which was then used for grouse shooting. With strength in numbers, they were arguing for their right to roam freely in nature.

Like me, you can walk in their footsteps in the Kinder Scout mass trespass walk. Beginning at the Bowden Bridge car park (the rallying point for the trespass), the eight-mile (12.8km) path starts with a gradual ascent next to the shimmering Kinder reservoir, until you reach the foot of William Clough valley and join Snake Path – a winding, rocky and at times uneven trail surrounded by flowering purple heather and lush ferns that grow alongside a cascading stream. The ascent begins to steepen here – and it's at this point during the trail where about 200 Kinder Scout trespassers were confronted by gamekeepers and bailiffs. They were staved off, injuring a gamekeeper in the process, until the ramblers made it to the top.

Despite their victory, five walkers (including Rothman) were arrested sentenced to between two and six months in prison. The trespass was controversial, however their punishment was met with a public outcry.

The mass trespass was "extremely powerful as it drew attention to the unfair countryside access laws and class divisions in Britain," says Hayden Bridgeman, ranger team leader at the Peak District National Park Authority. "[It] helped change environmental history and the attitudes about who the countryside is for – something we continue to think about today."

The ongoing right to roam campaign

The Peak District National Park was opened in April 1951, shortly followed by the Lake District, Snowdonia and Dartmoor. But the crusade for access to England's landscape was far from over.

People in England are still fighting for access to land. In effect, Rothman and the protestors weren't simply advocating for a national park, but the broader right to roam.

From Sweden to Scotland, a handful of countries allow people to freely wander, explore and even camp on public land. But nearly 90 years after the Kinder mass trespass, only around 8% of the nation's land is designated as "open country", due to persisting private ownership.

However, the campaigning organisation Right to Roam in England and Wales argues that much of this land is in remote areas, unevenly distributed and not accessible as part of people's day-to-day lives. Additionally, it doesn't cover the activities that can be carried out on this land, such as wild swimming or even paddle boarding down rivers, for example.

"We have this idea that England's crowded, England's full. That's not the case, but it may feel like it, because there's very little land that most of us can legally access," says Jon Moses, a campaigner for Right to Roam.

In effort to secure the same rights as Scotland, where you can walk on nearly all land provided you behave responsibly, Right to Roam have reprised the British tradition of the mass trespass.

"We do peaceful trespasses on large bits of land that are excluded from the public," Moses says. "We try and make them joyful occasions as much as anything, rather than just traditional protests, but it's basically to demonstrate that there are large swathes of England that are still off limits to people." For example, in 2024, campaigners found that there are designated parts of open country which are inaccessible by footpaths or roads – referred to as "access islands".

Right to roam has wide range of supporters, Moses says. "Families come trespassing – old people, young people. You feel enriched by the end of an action, rather than angry or drained. It shows you're for connection to the land, not against the landowner."

But mass trespassing isn't just political – it's about health and wellbeing, too. Research shows that being close to nature has innumerable benefits to our physical and mental health – from our cognitive functioning to emotional wellbeing and even self-esteem.

And for campaigners, it's also about belonging. "We're really trying to propose a kind of more positive idea of what it means to belong, which is about connecting to the land and having the right to connect to that land, but then also to care for it, to act as an environmental guardian," he says.

Conserving and respecting the land which was so vehemently advocated for is crucial in ensuring that everyone can enjoy the beauty of the peaks. In the height of summer, moorland and woodland fires are a major problem – and use of campfires or BBQs are strictly banned. "Something we are passionate about here is empowering people to do their bit for conservation so that the PDNP is here for another 75 years," Bridgeman says.

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Kinder is now looked after by the National Trust and is a national nature reserve.

Walking around the ridge, I can hear the moorland birds through the wind. And though I chose a blaringly hot day to tackle this walk, it hasn't stopped me, nor the cheerful hikers I've passed, nor the mountain bikers or boulderers. Many of us found relief today from the blistering Sun by sitting in the shade under one of the many huge gritstone rocks that were formed over 320 million years ago.

As I pass the lower trig point and begin my descent back to Bowden Bridge, I'm greeted by a view of the peaceful Edale Valley, nestled beneath the mighty ridges of Kinder and Mam Tor. Considering that the polished stone path I'm walking on wouldn't have been there all those years ago, I wonder if the ramblers' view was much the same.

Regardless, I'm just grateful to be able to walk here – I owe them great thanks.

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An up-close encounter with giant sharks in Ireland

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260724-an-up-close-encounter-with-giant-sharks-in-ireland, 6 days ago

Basking sharks are one of the world's largest and most elusive fish species. But off the Irish coast, these gentle giants swim so close to the shore you can nearly touch them.

Word quickly spreads along the coast of Ireland each year when the giants arrive. Despite visiting their breeding grounds in County Mayo for more than a decade, I had never seen one myself until I was standing at a dizzying height on a wind-whipped hill on Achill Island.

Shielding my eyes from the Sun's glare, I followed the clear blue water away from Keem Beach and saw two basking sharks lazily cruising just offshore beneath the sweeping cliffs. From the moment I spotted the behemoths swishing through the bay from a distance, I knew I had to see them up close.

Fast-forward a week later and I'm peering over the side of a boat as it putters to a stop. My knuckles grasp the railing, and I steady myself as I lean forward and prepare to come face to fin with one of the world's largest and most elusive sharks.

Each year from April to early July and then again in August and September, hundreds of endangered basking sharks come to Ireland's western and south-western coasts to feast on copepods and plankton blooms so large they can be seen by satellites. In fact, the area from Donegal Bay to County Cork is arguably the best place on Earth to see basking sharks, as these temperate-water titans swim so close to the shore in shallow-water bays that you can almost reach out and touch them.

According to Dr Chelsea Gray, a researcher with the Irish Basking Shark Group (ISBG), "basking sharks are global citizens". But while the animals live in cold waters from Scotland to New Zealand, she notes that "Ireland is really unique in that they come so close to shore", making it easy to spot them from both the land and sea.

Basking sharks are the second-largest fish in the world and just one of three plankton-eating sharks. A closer relative of great whites than its fellow filter feeder, the whale shark, these slow-moving gentle giants can grow up to 10m (33ft). Their name comes from their propensity to swim along the ocean's surface to feed on zooplankton, making them appear to bask in the Sun's rays. As a result, the fish's local Gaelic name is liamhán gréine, or "sun fish".

Since Ireland's shallow coastal shelf attracts zooplankton especially close to its beaches, the island has become the place for travellers seeking a close encounter with the mammoth creatures.

Back from the brink

Basking sharks are longtime visitors to Irish waters. During the 1950s and '60s, Achill Island served as the world's largest basking shark fishing and processing hub. Their one-tonne livers were harvested for oil and used for everything from cosmetics to commercial lubricants and as a medicinal treatment for healing wounds. Their fins were also highly sought after for shark fin soup.

Beyond Irish waters, Norwegian, Japanese, Canadian and other fishermen also hunted the massive fish extensively. As a result, basking sharks were nearly hunted to extinction across the globe by the late 20th Century.

Today, more than 40 years after the last basking shark was caught off Ireland in 1984, their numbers and sightings are up around Ireland. Globally, it's a different story, and as recently as 2018, the shark was added to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List.

Ireland's breathtaking coastlines and diverse marine life have made it a popular spot for tourism since 1991, when Ireland became Europe's first recognised whale and dolphin sanctuary. With the steady growth of shark numbers over the last few decades, basking shark tourism has slowly transformed from a niche activity to one of the most memorable experiences visitors can have in Ireland.

An up-close look at giant sharks

Despite the May sunshine, it's breezy on the water as our group sets out on Blacksod Sea Safari's tour boats along the Mullet Peninsula. I scan the waters as we head further from shore. Pods of dolphins leap between the waves. Gannets dive into the sea. Sometimes you can see minke whales, but we didn't see any on this trip. I'm more keen to spot that rare grey fin, and luck is on my side.

As our guide switches the engine to neutral, it's up to the sun fish to come to us. We wait, breathlessly hoping the giant will approach the vessel. Then all of a sudden, stark grey against the cerulean waters, there it is, easy to spot as it passes 9m (30ft) from the boat. Its tail swishes back and forth, slowly moving in our direction. Measuring about 7m (23ft), the shark appears utterly uninterested in us. It's a marvel that a creature can grow to such an immense size while feeding on organisms too small to see. I've never seen anything like it.

Since 2022, basking sharks have been listed under the Irish Wildlife Act, and it is the only fish species that is illegal to hunt, harm or disturb their feeding and breeding areas in Irish waters. Scientists and conservationists like the researchers at IBSG are working towards codifying a code of conduct into law to add an additional layer of protection for the sharks.

For tour operators, this means maintaining a distance. The code of conduct states boats should avoid approaching the sharks and switch their engines to neutral when within 50m (164ft) of the animals.

"Our priority is not to interfere too much with the animals. We tend to lie way back and let them come to us. If we can intercept their path at a safe distance, sometimes they come up and have a look, then move on," says Paddy Byrne, owner and skipper at Sliabh Liag Boat Trips, which offers basking shark excursions around Donegal's Sliabh Liag Cliffs. "They're wild animals, and we're privileged to see them."

Due to their unpredictable nature, basking shark encounters aren't a given, but even without spotting one, tours often pass by seals, dolphins, seabirds and the occasional minke whale. For those fortunate enough to see the sharks, the experience often stays with them forever.

"We saw a baby basking shark before we even left the first bay," says Isle of Man resident Izzy Sharpe. Growing up, Sharpe could spot the sharks off the coast of her home, but she says her trip with Blasket Islands Eco Marine Tours in County Kerry proved better than she hoped for. "It was on the way back that suddenly hundreds of basking sharks appeared – every direction you looked in you could see them surfacing. It was incredibly special."

Longtime Achill Island visitor Hazel Keegan recounts how the sharks treated her group to a close-up during their trip. "They ended up just swimming around the boat. We could see the white of the inside of their mouths quite clearly. They constantly kept passing under the boat! Only then did I really understand the length of them."

Laura Brown had always wanted to see the basking sharks, and brought her family to Achill Island in the hopes of glimpsing one, but to their great disappointment, none appeared during their sea safari. "Our last day was a glorious sunny day, and we decided to take one last trip to Keem Bay. We looked down into the bay and there were around six to eight basking sharks! My son, his friend, and I raced down to get the stand-up paddle board in the water. They swam underneath us and around us. It was truly magical," she says.

"We spent the rest of the day at the beach just watching them."

Seeing the basking shark up close from the boat renewed my appreciation for these glorious creatures' immense size, power and beauty. I can only hope we'll meet again here in Ireland.

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Sleeping in Dylan Thomas' house in Wales

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260724-sleeping-in-dylan-thomas-house-in-wales, 7 days ago

Part time portal, part museum, the legendary poet's childhood home offers travellers an all-access stay in Swansea – and a surreal experience.

Walking up to No 5 Cwmdonkin Drive is murder on the calves. The semi-detached house sits near the top of a too-steep hill, in a middle-class Swansea suburb called The Uplands. To the untrained eye, it might look like just another Edwardian amid many Edwardians, but the blue plaques near the entrance reveal that it's the childhood home of legendary Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, the self-titled "Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive".

After catching my breath, I knocked on the front door and prepared to sleep in my literary hero's bed.

From Jane Austen's country cottage in Hampshire to Charles Dickens' Georgian house in London, Britain is filled with writer residences-turned museums that travellers can tour. But while The Dylan Thomas Birthplace is open for self-guided tours, the real joy is in spending the night where he slept – a part time portal, part museum, all-access crash pad where you can learn about the author while living like him too.

An all-access stay

Thomas was born here (literally, in the front bedroom) on 27 October 1914 and lived in the house for the first 20 years of his life. The interior has since been restored, with every item harking back to Thomas' time. The website promises that "no rooms are out of bounds" for guests, and that's no exaggeration. Guests can cook in the kitchen where Thomas' mother prepared meals on a tight budget, write on the poet's desk, play a few tunes on the pianola in his father's study and even sleep in Thomas' childhood bed. The experience, much like Thomas' writing, often feels surreal.

I started with a tour from the home's current owner and lifelong Uplander, Geoff Haden. The former structural engineer decided to restore the century-old home from a student boarding house in 2003, after visiting it on the 50th anniversary of the poet's death. The house had suffered years of neglect – with worn-down carpets, tattered windows, crumbling walls – but after receiving and locating items that once belonged to the Thomas family, and furnishing the house in the Edwardian style, Haden opened No 5 to the public in 2008, inviting people to stay the night.

Haden started by offering me a brief a tour, available to all overnight guests. We started in the parlour room, which Thomas references in his work. "Large men sat in the front parlour, without their collars, uncles almost certainly," he writes in A Child's Christmas in Wales. A corner table is dedicated to "Thomas the plagiarist". The young poet was notorious for copying poems from other writers. "Immature poets imitate. Mature poets steal," TS Eliot wrote. Teenage Thomas certainly stole, with 12 out of 24 early poems evidently plagiarised.

Haden told me that in recent years, an array of famous faces have travelled to the Uplands to pay respects to Thomas, including Johnny Depp, Lord David Owen and singer Cerys Matthews. The residence recently welcomed a swarm of Swifties armed with selfie sticks, after the singer-songwriter referenced Thomas in her 2024 album, The Tortured Poets Department.

As Haden finished the tour, he explained that certain lights only work when others are switched off and showed me a few gifts left behind for guests, including Welsh cakes, tea and two beers. Then he handed me the keys and I essentially had free reign of the place.

It's a strange feeling, sitting alone in an Edwardian Parlour room with 10ft-high (3m) ceilings and bay windows, a room where the Thomas family listened to a crackling wind-up phonogram and the tick-tock of a grandfather clock. I was too giddy to sit, so I made a cuppa and continued exploring, seeking further curiosities.

Living like Thomas

One of the joys of staying at No 5 is reading the framed scraps of writing left in each room, revealing how the space influenced the budding poet. I stepped into the smallest one and saw a note Thomas wrote to his first girlfriend, Pamela Hansford Johnson: "My room is a tiny, renovated bedroom… Smelly. Painful. Hot water pipes very near. Gurgle all the time. Nearly go mad."

Today, Thomas' childhood bedroom is a masterpiece of restoration and recreation. And, as ever with No 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, nothing is off limits to the all-too-curious visitor.

I sat at a desk covered by Thomas' favourite things: a Woodbine ashtray; portraits of writers he admired like William Shakespeare, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf; and a pint-sized bottle of Hancock Ale. Framed prints of birds graced the walls, with an illustrated heron receiving pride of place. I laid my head on what Thomas called the "warm, safe island" of his bed and felt my toes reach over the edge.

I went back downstairs and played the pianola, trying to remember the few songs I could actually play. Then, after ruffling through the wash house and coal shed, I decided to take a walk and explore Thomas's neighbourhood.

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"[The Uplands] was more than just a place he was raised," says Dr Siân Round, a fellow at Swansea University's English Literature department. "It shaped Thomas' writing."

My first stop was Cwmdonkin Park, a park where Thomas spent a lot of time as a boy. He revisits the park several times in his writing, most notably in his book, Portrait of Artist as a Young Dog and in BBC radio broadcasts. It was in Cwmdonkin Park that Thomas "endured, with pleasure, the first agonies of unrequited love, the first slow boiling in the belly of a bad poem".

The park might have shaped Thomas, but now Thomas shapes the park. You can hardly take a step without seeing some reference to him. His name adorns a huge, foreboding memorial shelter. His chubby cheeks are painted on a park bench. Signposts point out myriad Thomas hotspots like 5 Cwmdonkin Drive and The Dylan Thomas Centre, which tells the story of his life – unhelpful to anyone who is actually lost. And, by an algae-filled pond, a memorial stone from Cwmrhydyceirw Quarry displays the final lines of the poem Fern Hill.

I walked through Cwmdonkin Park to a place Haden had recommended – a place where Thomas also spent much of his time: the Uplands Tavern. "My sane mother saved my sanity," Thomas once wrote to a lover, "driving me out to the pubs with a stern and sad demand to drink myself steady."

Haden told me how, as a young man, he'd walk into the tavern and every head would turn to the door, just to make sure the new arrival was a local. Now only students run amok. When I myself entered, every head turned to door, but only because I'm approaching 40. I settled down with a beer, stared at the Thomas mural on the wall and then flicked through a few of his poems that I'd brought for the journey.

After a few pints, I stumbled back up that too-steep hill, destroying what was left of my calves. I stepped into the kitchen, with adjacent pantry and scullery, and made myself another cup of tea.

After a long day of exploration, I eyed the deep cast iron bath, of which Thomas wrote that the "click, click of the geyser sounds like the distant champing of a lady tenor". It turns out that the family bath was much larger than Thomas' childhood bed – and far more comfortable. I settled into the quiet of the evening, the water washing over me, the only sound the caw of Upland crows.

Thomas was born in his parents' bedroom, and that night, his father celebrated by going to the Uplands Tavern (then called the Uplands Hotel) and drank so much that the maid had to take off his boots. Mine was a tamer evening.

After the bath, I climbed into the bed in the same room where my childhood hero was born. I had borrowed a copy of A Child's Christmas in Wales from the parlour room, and before slowly drifting off to sleep, I re-read words that had inspired me so many years ago.

"I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steadily failing night. I turned the gas down. I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept."

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The lonely road to Europe's Arctic edge

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260717-the-lonely-road-to-the-edge-of-western-europe, 13 days ago

Most visitors come to Norway for its dramatic western fjords. But the country's most extraordinary drive heads in the opposite direction – into a treeless Arctic wilderness where Europe finally runs out.

In Norway's remote far north-east, the small town of Tana Bru sits at the crossroads of four very different worlds. Across the river and to the north, a quiet road leads over a high plateau to the forgotten fishing village of Kongsfjord. South lies the Sami community of Karasjok. South-east is Kirkenes and the Russian border. But the true treasure lies in a shore-hugging road that takes you further east than any other in Western Europe.

This is the E75. It branches east from the E6 – Norway's longest road, which runs 2,578km (1,602 miles) from south of Oslo to Kirkenes. Here, the traffic falls away and the landscape begins to feel like nowhere else in Norway. Unlike the country's natural drama further south-west there are no cliffs, no green meadows; only a narrow strip of tarmac that unfurls beneath a long line of mountains, along a narrow coastal plane above the widening inlet of Varangerfjorden. I can no longer see tourist Norway, not even in the rear-view mirror.

Into the true Arctic

I've only been driving for about 20 minutes when, out on the shoreline, the sun picks out the white-spired structure of Nesseby Church, one of the loveliest in Norway, as storm clouds gather and purple mountains that could be Norway, could be Russia, provide a backdrop far across the water. Poignant and glistening from a distance, the church is so perfect it feels like a miracle. And perhaps it is. Built in 1858, it was one of few buildings to survive the scorched-earth destruction of defeated German soldiers as they retreated at the end of World War Two. Up close, wild seabirds wheel and screech in strong winds, dodging the spire as they go.

A little further on, after rounding a headland where the road is all that separates mountain and sea, the E75 eases down into Vestre Jakobselv, a narrow village of colourfully painted wooden homes fringed with A-frame racks where salted cod, hung like Polaroid prints, dries in sub-Arctic winds.

Around 18km later, I reach Vadsø. Vadsø is what passes for a city in these parts despite a population of fewer than 6,000 souls. It is shrouded in low clouds and its streets are empty. The view out into the frigid Barents Sea runs only for a few hundred metres before disappearing into sea-level mists. On land, the rain comes in horizontal sheets. It feels like Siberia.

"In winter, this would be a good day," Astrid Carlsen, a local hotel manager out walking her dog, tells me.

When I venture that it must be a difficult place to live, she looks out to the horizon.

"Yes, it can be hard. But there is a strange beauty to this place in winter. It makes you appreciate things, like sunshine, a warm house, family. Live here long enough and you come to see the wintertime as something special. You even look forward to its return."

And yet, by morning the clouds have gone, the sun is shining; there is no sign of Astrid.

Bathed in the crystalline light of the north, Vadsø is a place transformed. It is possible to see across the Barents Sea to Kirkenes and beyond to Russia. Small clusters of birders stake out the Steller's eider, a celebrated summer visitor to these parts, while elemental blues, greens and whites define the boundaries of land, sea and sky. It no longer feels like Siberia. As I travel beyond Vadsø, all trees are gone and the mountains flatten; the landscape held in thrall to an austere moor-like beauty.

The true Arctic, it turns out, is defined not by the Arctic Circle, says Rolf Anker Ims, who knows this land better than anyone. A professor of ecology at the University of Tromsø, Ims is a world renowned expert in Arctic ecosystems. He spends part of every year along the road, studying what he describes as the only truly Arctic system in mainland Europe.

"If you use the ecological definition, the Arctic is defined by those areas north of the Arctic treeline," he later explained to me. "The Arctic is restricted to those areas where there are no trees, no forests, at sea level. You cross that border between the Arctic and the Sub-Arctic at Vadsø."

Another way of looking at it, he says, is that the Arctic is where the average daily temperature in July is lower than 10C.

Apart from here on the Varanger Peninsula, only small strips of mainland Europe – found around Nordkapp, on the remote Nordkyn Peninsula, some areas in Iceland – qualify. This peninsula covered by the E75 is by far mainland Europe's largest slice of the Arctic.

As I drive, villages come and go. At Ekkerøy, the village occupies a narrow isthmus between two bays, a charming hamlet with little to shelter it from the force of Arctic wind and weather. The road continues into the east, passing empty beaches and tiny, one-street towns.

At Europe's outer edge

At Vardø, the E75 reaches its eastern end. Vardø is actually an island but an undersea tunnel connects it to the mainland. The road emerges from beneath the sea alongside a quiet harbour, where gulls have colonised every available ledge to nest and squabble. Here, further east than St Petersburg, Vardø sits upon the outermost rim of Western Europe.

This remote isle is also known as the Salem of Norway. In the 17th Century, 91 local women were tried and executed as witches. Now, the Steilneset Memorial, designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, is reclaiming these women and their stories from the past on the site where many of the executions took place. In the striking memorial hall, there is an illuminated window for each of the victims.

Burnt at the stake here in 1612 was Lisbet, convicted of "having cast a fatal spell on a child and two goats". On 13 May 1620, it was the turn of Karen Edisatter, for calling down sickness and death on several persons, her guilt proven when she was "subjected to the water ordeal and floated like a bob". Find Thorsden died on 31 August 1621 for "giving Christen Nilsen pains every time the two of them quarrelled". Each story is a fascinating tale of superstition and hardship, a strangely intimate catalogue of neighbourly bickering that cost these women their lives.

Haunted by these tales, I turn off onto the Fv341, a northbound road that hugs a coastline that itself seems otherworldly. Nightmarish black shards, great striations of geological time, jagged ramparts of petrified waves – all along this road, there is a feeling of an entire continent groaning and pushing the mountains towards the water. At a narrow pullover, I step out of the car and look out to sea, feeling the weight and shadow of an entire continent behind me.

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But all roads must end somewhere, and the Fv341 does so just beyond a small, grassy river delta populated with small herds of wild reindeer. Here, Hamningberg huddles beneath high hills on the northern shore of a perfect arc of bay. Once one of the largest fishing villages in north-eastern Norway, it was abandoned in the 1960s.

What must it have been like to live here, I wonder. To live somewhere not just physically remote but a place where an awareness of isolation hangs above everything, like the low winter clouds of Varanger. There is no one left to tell us, and the gulls that screech in the wind are having none of it.

I stay, and sit in silence by the old church, then the crumbling docks, before the wind drives me back into the car. Reluctantly, I start the long journey back towards the world and its noise.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story stated that Vardø was further east than Moscow. That has since been corrected.

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Peak District's rebrand deal brings in cash - but also criticism

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c235gykvjkjo, today

A deal between Peak District bosses and car firm Skoda to put up temporary signs welcoming tourists to "the Peaq District" in honour of the firm's new electric model has given the park authority's coffers a welcome boost.

However, it has also sparked protests from campaigners and residents unhappy about the commercial aspect of the arrangement.

One campaigner said: "If national parks are prepared to sell their very name to the highest bidder, then we're already on the path to industrial extraction of the most protected landscapes."

Park bosses have defended the "fantastic" deal and said the partnership brought in extra funds for conservation and heritage work.

With national parks continuing to grapple with funding pressures, could the partnership be a sign of things to come for the Peak District and beyond?

Announcing the link-up, Skoda UK said the partnership was meant to "spark positive conversations" and to "encourage more people to get out and enjoy the Peak District in a responsible way". But campaigners are not convinced.

They told the BBC the partnership had raised "broader questions" about how national parks were funded and whether "increasing financial pressures" were leading authorities to seek commercial partnerships that "conflict with their environmental purpose".

National parks are primarily funded through the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), with the Peak District receiving £6m for 2025-26.

According to the Campaign for National Parks, government funding for National Park Authorities was reduced by 9% in that financial year, which it said had contributed to an estimated 40% real-terms reduction in funding since 2010 at a time when visitor numbers "continue to reach record levels".

The government says it is investing £37m in national parks over the next three years plus a further £30m for special habitats and species.

Phil Mulligan, chief executive of the Peak District National Park Authority, said the temporary rebranding was "exciting" and the money would help conservation, heritage and access works.

He declined to reveal the sum received but described it as a "reasonable amount".

Campaigner Harry Brook was part of a protest at one of the signs at Surprise View car park near Hathersage.

"I don't think what we have seen recently in the Peak District National Park is anyone's vision for the future of our national parks," he told the BBC.

"If you've had a sugar high, you're likely to go back again, aren't you?"

Brook added he "wholeheartedly sympathised" with Mulligan and said there was a lack of funding going into national parks.

However, he said: "It's silly we are at the point where we are having to resort to this type of funding to back national parks.

"Phil's said it himself, we're in a climate and biodiversity crisis, we know investing in our national parks is a strategic investment, so why are we having to resort to on the 75th anniversary of the park to selling the rights to the name?

"These landscapes are not there for commodification."

Asked whether he anticipated the negative response from some residents, Mulligan said he did because people were "passionate about the national park".

"The national park brings wonderful benefits to the nation and how it's here for everyone and how it's free for everyone," he said.

"But unfortunately, it's not free to deliver and with a declining government grant, we always seek to work in partnership with others.

"This Skoda promotion, I think, is fantastic... we're not actually changing the name of the national park, it's a one-week promotion.

"It allows us to receive a financial contribution that we can put to conservation, heritage, access works, so it's really positive.

"While I understand some people will have some concerns about it, it's quite standard really to have a very temporary digital takeover and I think it's for the enhancement and betterment of the national park and visitors."

Visitors approached by the BBC at Surprise View were both for and against the deal.

Dawn Fleetham disagreed with the rebranded sign.

"I don't think they should be doing that to the Peak District - somehow it just doesn't fit," she said.

A male visitor said: "I'm against some of the capitalist, advertisment stuff - it's like the same with football stadiums being named after brands. Having the traditional names is better in my opinion.

"I know they're giving [the park] money so it's good but it's a hard one."

Another visitor disagreed, sating: "It's just one sign... I think it's good advertising. It gets seen a lot."

But James Dawson said: "I thought it was a bit peculiar, the Peak isn't spelt that way, it's not spelt with a Q.

"I don't know what relevance Skodas have with the Peak District."

This is not the first time a corporate brand has partnered with a national park.

In the face of growing funding pressures, National Park Partnerships was established in 2016 specifically to create commercial relationships with places like the Peak District.

The partnerships fund conservation, visitor access, climate and community projects while allowing brands to associate themselves with protected landscapes.

One recent example is BMW UK, which formed a three-year "Recharge In Nature" partnership with national parks in 2022.

The aim was to to enhance the electric vehicle (EV) charging network across all 15 parks in the UK, while supporting a range of projects including nature restoration, biodiversity, regenerative tourism, and wellbeing initiatives.

Other brands involved with partnerships on conservation projects include high street bank Santander UK, mobile phone networks Vodafone and Three, and beauty giant Estée Lauder.

National Parks England executive director, Debbie Stockwell, said authorities needed to be "innovative" to raise money from a "range of sources".

"We welcomed the funding settlement from central government for 2026-2027, which enables national park authorities to deliver core services and projects," she said.

"However, over the last decade, the national park authorities that maintain these cherished places have faced the challenges of reduced central funding and rising costs.

"We are committed to diversifying our funding, and National Parks Partnership has been established to secure corporate and philanthropic giving.

"National Parks need to be innovative to raise income from a range of sources and were recently given increased powers by government in order to do this."

Additional reporting by Ian Skye and Rachel Royce

Listen to BBC Radio Derby on Sounds and follow BBC Derby on Facebook, on X, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk or via WhatsApp on 0808 100 2210.

How King Charles saved Scotland's forgotten treasure

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260724-how-king-charles-saved-scotlands-forgotten-treasure, 8 days ago

As the Royal Family's summer holiday home, Balmoral Castle is one of Britain's most famous royal attractions. But few people know King Charles III has another remarkable estate in southern Scotland.

Several hours south of Balmoral, near the former mining town of Cumnock in an overlooked corner of East Ayrshire, Dumfries House hides in plain sight. Even many Scots have never visited the 2,000-acre estate, despite its grand Palladian mansion, extraordinary Thomas Chippendale collection and sprawling gardens.

The historic estate came close to being lost forever in 2007 when the Marquess of Bute put Dumfries House on the market and its priceless contents were prepared for auction. Furniture was already being removed for transport south to London when Charles, then Prince of Wales and now King Charles III, was made aware of the imminent sale and led a £45m ($90m) rescue to save Dumfries House for the nation.

As the King said at the time: "When Dumfries House's desperate situation first came to my attention I knew we had to do something to prevent a priceless treasure being lost forever."

The rescue preserved more than a historic house and its collection. Over the next two decades, the estate became the headquarters of The King's Foundation and a testing ground for the King's ideas about heritage-led regeneration, practical education and sustainable communities. Today, visitors can tour the house, explore the 2,000-acre grounds and even stay overnight at this royal estate that remains surprisingly overlooked.

Inside the rescued estate

Completed in 1759, Dumfries House was built for William Dalrymple-Crichton, the 5th Earl of Dumfries, before passing through marriage to the Marquesses of Bute. Successive owners spared no expense on the baronial pile. The building was one of the first in Scotland to have electricity, and its symmetrical design is thanks to celebrated Scottish architects Robert and John Adam. Furnishings were ordered from Thomas Chippendale in London, and 50 preserved examples of his renowned craftsmanship now sit within the manor like a career-spanning retrospective.

My tour with local guide Joanne Morris began in a sitting room with an unexpected royal touch: watercolours painted by the King himself, many depicting Royal Lochnagar and the mountain landscapes around Balmoral. From there, she led me through rooms that opened one after another like a giant jewel box, revealing 18th-Century floral carpets and Murano glass chandeliers. We walked past paintings by Sir Henry Raeburn, a portrait painter to King George IV, and into a grand hall embossed with Flemish tapestries and ornate plasterwork of birds, leaves and thistles.

"In this sitting room alone there is around £45m worth of antique furniture," Morris told me, as we moved into the house's showpiece. "His Majesty feels that a house's heartbeat is a clock. Which is why we have 38 grandfather clocks, some dating back to 1711."

Outside, blooming Victorian walled gardens, spritzing fountains and manicured hedgerows were bursting with life, giving little hint the estate was once close to being dismantled. I wandered through the five-acre Queen Elizabeth II Walled Garden and the arboretum, home to around 500 tree species, before crossing the stone Adam Bridge and an ornamental Chinese span over the Lugar Water.

Beyond the stately home

But the mansion and gardens are only part of Dumfries House's appeal. The estate is also the headquarters and flagship education site of The King's Foundation – the centrepiece of the King's long-held vision to revive traditional crafts, create new opportunities and help regenerate the surrounding community. Here, apprentices learn everything from stonemasonry, blacksmithing and joinery to glazing, horticulture and textile making. The campus also has a cookery school and health and wellness centre.

In a part of Scotland where opportunities dwindled following the decline of mining, the transformation has been striking. Where there was once a dearth of opportunity, there is now possibility, with around 10,000 students studying on the estate each year.

Later that afternoon, education qualifications coordinator Mel Wright took me into the estate's training quarter, showing me an open timberyard alongside the Cook School, Textile Centre, Engineering Centre and Jameel House for World Traditional Arts. Classes were not running during my weekend visit – and the training facilities aren't part of the standard visitor experience – but the cluster of workshops and classrooms offered a glimpse of Dumfries House's second life as a centre for vocational education.

"There is so much value in the skills we teach here that otherwise might be lost," Wright said. "There was a huge textile industry in the area, but that unfortunately closed down." Now, The King's Foundation has stepped in to help offer a multitude of new possibilities and opportunities.

"The community is so proud of what His Majesty has done here," she added. "In fact, many of these traditional skills are more sustainable and have less impact on the environment — and all of this is driven by King Charles' desire for harmony with nature."

A model for the future

Even so, it would be wrong to downplay Dumfries House as a one-off. The King's Foundation has other strategic sites across Britain, applying a similar model that combines heritage conservation with education, employment and local economic development.

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Five years ago, the foundation assumed stewardship of The Castle & Gardens of Mey, mainland Britain's most northerly inhabited castle in Caithness, and is busy encouraging greener tourism. Highgrove Gardens in Gloucestershire, the private residence of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla, meanwhile, is pivoting towards community outreach. Like Dumfries House, it offers a whole curriculum of heritage, furniture and textile-making workshops for schoolchildren to post-doctoral academics.

"These projects offer one vision of the future," said Wright. "One rooted in nature and tradition but harnessing the skills of the past."

Another enterprise is more far-flung and, perhaps, a statement of intent. Having been handed the keys last April, The King's Foundation is transforming the historic Hillview Estate in New South Wales, Australia. Using Dumfries House as its model, the charity has plans to turn the former vice-regal summer residence of the Governor of New South Wales into the first international hub for education and training programmes in heritage crafts.

Nearly two decades after it came within hours of disappearing forever, Dumfries House has become one of Britain's most unexpected royal attractions. Its grand interiors and magnificent gardens are only part of the story; beyond them is a working centre where traditional skills are being taught, preserved and passed on. What was almost lost has become, in the estate's own words, "the resurrection of a lost dream".

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Blood tests and ultrasounds: Korea is becoming one of the world's global healthcare hubs

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260723-south-koreas-medical-clinics-are-drawing-tourists, 9 days ago

Travellers are increasingly adding comprehensive health check-ups to their South Korea itineraries, drawn by affordable prices, fast results and English-language support.

Liping Chao has just arrived in Seoul and beyond his cab window, the city's famous skyscrapers beckon. But instead of hiking up Namsan Tower or browsing Myeongdong's famous shops, he heads to the city's Mapo district, where he enters Medione Medical Center. In the clean, spacious waiting room, he notes more foreign faces than Korean ones. He changes in the locker room and stores his belongings. A nurse brings over his chart and takes him to the first station.

This was no medical emergency; just a part of his travel plan. Chao is one of a growing number of overseas travellers who are adding medical services to their South Korea trips. In between noraebang sessions and street food crawls now come blood tests and ultrasounds. Even colonoscopies.

A contagious trend

It's a trend that shows no signs of slowing. According to South Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2.01 million foreign patients visited in 2025, up 71.7% on the previous year. Patients mostly come from China and Japan, followed by Taiwan and the US. Donkyo Seo, CEO of Himedi, a Seoul-based medical concierge, explains "for Korea, medical tourism is an export industry", actively supported through legislation designed to promote overseas medical expansion.

But why fly all the way to South Korea for medical care? Haemin Yim, CEO of Seoul-based travel planner Creatrip, says it ultimately comes down to cost and efficiency. While patients in many countries face referrals, insurance approvals and long wait times, many Korean screening centres offer complete comprehensive health checks in a single visit. Even better: healthcare in South Korea, ranked second best in the world by the 2025 CEOWorld Healthcare Index, is highly affordable thanks to its government regulation of medical prices. "The difference is significant," says Yim. "In many cases, the price of a single MRI in the US can cover a comprehensive full-body screening in Korea... Even after factoring in airfare, it can still be more affordable." Apart from the appeal of its high-rated healthcare and lower costs, Hyeonah Hong, Head of Division at Korea Medical Institute (KMI), says "Korea has a well-established prevention-focused healthcare system, providing an environment where diseases can be detected early."

This was Heather Barlow’s reasoning for adding a doctor's visit into her holiday activities. "I have some underlying health issues and my GP recommended that I get a full health panel," she explains. "A similar health panel in my home country [of Hong Kong] would cost three to four times of what I paid in Korea."

Medical odysseys

Like many medical tourists, Chao and Barlow first learned of South Korea's health screenings through friends who had undergone procedures.

Chao booked his flight from Los Angeles to Seoul in April 2026 and began researching health clinics on Google and social media. Watching videos of so many satisfied travellers undergo successful check-ups inspired his trust. "[South Korea is] a mecca of beauty. Health is somewhat adjacent to that, which made me trust it more," he says. "The sheer amount of exams they perform made me comfortable in trusting the healthcare workers."

While the practice is gaining popularity among non-Koreans, for Koreans living overseas, travelling to South Korea for medical check-ups has been common practice for years. Rebecca Gladstone, a Korean American based in New York City, heard about affordable, advanced South Korean checkups through Korean friends and family, and followed up with her own research. "I already had plans to be in Korea, so I knew I'd take the opportunity to book one," she says. "I'm still amazed you can get a full body checkup done in a single visit." She booked a comprehensive women's health panel at CHA University Medical Center for just under 754,951 won (£387/ $516).

Barlow describes a seamless, fast experience at KMI Gwanghwamun. She had scheduled a mid-tier package that included routine labs, X-rays, ultrasounds and a few minimally invasive procedures. The wait between each station was short. The longest I had to wait was 15 minutes," she says. "You’re allowed to have your phone or book on you at all times, so I was never sitting around bored or anxious. Staff, nurses, and doctors were all kind and patient, and I never felt like I was rushed through a test, despite the whole set-up being highly efficient." Barlow checked in at the clinic at 08:30 and was finished by 13:00.

Chao recalls being a little nervous at his screening. He booked a basic package that included a blood test, chest X-ray, ultrasound and endoscopy. "The exam from start to finish took around three hours. This included being sedated for an endoscopy… I was told I couldn't eat for about four hours after the exam because they removed polyps from my stomach." His total bill? 456,706 won (£234/$312).

Even with the surprise stomach procedure, Chao describes his exam as a "smooth and comfortable experience and very foreigner friendly". Done by noon, afterwards he met with a friend in trendy neighbourhood Seongsu-dong, had a hair appointment and then ended the night with dinner in Gangnam.

Nothing lost in translation

But potential language barriers and unfamiliar systems can make booking healthcare abroad confusing. Gladstone, who speaks Korean fluently, booked her comprehensive women's health panel through Himedi to help manage the logistics. Even with recommendations from friends, I had to contact the clinics and figure out how to book," she explains. "Whereas, [Himedi] already had contacts and finalised the booking for me and provided an interpreter [to clarify medical terms]."

At the clinic, she recalls, "My designated interpreter, JeeSu, found me and then things went smoothly as she escorted me from one testing room to the next. I also had a brief consultation with one of the doctors to go over any questions before starting my checkup."

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When she received her password-protected results in English by email a few weeks later, a pelvic ultrasound flagged a finding that required follow-up. Through the clinic and booking provider, Gladstone was able to ask the Korean doctor a few follow-up questions and had her results reviewed by her home doctor as well. The thoroughness and efficiency of the checkup were just as her friends had described and now she herself recommends a South Korean medical experience to other travellers.

Follow-up appointments can also be done in Korea after the exam. "If a health screening identifies a condition that requires further treatment, we refer patients to our network of affiliated tertiary hospitals and medical institutions so they can receive appropriate care," says Hyeonah Hong, Head of Division at Korea Medical Institute (KMI).

Barlow also requested a translator through Himedi and strongly recommends it for travellers. "While most of the nurses spoke basic English and the doctors I encountered all spoke fluent English, some staff did not and I ended up relying on Papago [translating app] to communicate."

But overall, "My experience [at the health centre] was very positive," states Barlow. "I will likely go back to Korea for another screen in one to two years because some of the tests showed areas that need to be monitored, and the cost and efficiency is still worth it for me despite travel and hotel costs."

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The Riviera of Ulysses: Italy's stunning coast connected to The Odyssey

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260721-italys-overlooked-coast-connected-to-the-odyssey, 11 days ago

Tucked between Rome and Naples, this beautiful, under-the-radar coastline has deep ties to The Odyssey and is a quieter, more authentic alternative to Italy's overtouristed seasides.

From Terracina, the Italian beach town where my family is from, you can see a mountain promontory that seems to rise from the sea. It is squat and jagged. My father has always said it looks like a witch's profile as she floats on the waves.

It's visible from various points throughout the coastline, a roughly 43-mile (70km) stretch that hugs the Tyrrhenian Sea and runs between Rome and Naples, threading through several seaside towns. We can see it from mountaintops or from the beach. Each evening, it glows in stark relief against the sunset, no two ever alike.

On the map, the mountain is called Monte Circeo (Mount Circeo). But throughout this micro-region of Italy – known as the Riviera di Ulisse (Riviera of Ulysses) – we call it la Maga Circe (Circe the Sorceress). It is, we say, where Circe turned Odysseus's men into pigs.

Homer's ancient Greek epic The Odyssey has fascinated for nearly 3,000 years. Its most recent homage, Christopher Nolan's new film adaptation, is making it the buzz of the season. But on this under-visited Italian coast, we're reminded of the myth every day.

How a myth becomes reality

The Odyssey is so intrinsically Greek, it may surprise travellers that several of its best-known episodes are closely associated with Southern Italy. From Sicily to just south of Rome, numerous city names and geological features have Odyssean backstories.

In Book 10, "The Bewitching Queen of Aeaea", Odysseus's ship arrives in the Land of the Laestrygonians before sailing to the isle of Aeaea, where he encounters Circe.

There's no evidence that Homer ever visited Italy – or even existed himself. But by the time the Ancient Greeks reached Italian shores in 750BC, his poems were popular among the colonising sailors, says local archaeologist Lorenzo Ceruleo. "All seafarers were afraid of unknown seas. They increasingly associated recently discovered places with these myths. Something they could associate with what they knew reassured them."

Monte Circeo was cast as Aeaea, while Terracina became the Land of the giant, cannibalistic Laestrygonians. Linking Aeaea to Monte Circeo wasn't a leap: in ancient times, much of the promontory was underwater. Plus, the "island" itself was home to a Roman harbour village called Circeii. It was, says Ceruleo, an irresistible conclusion.

The area's turquoise seas and rugged grottos do seem mythical – it's easy to imagine giants hurling rocks from the ochre-coloured cliffs. Such geographical links eventually became political, says Ceruleo, particularly for the Romans. Tying places to Odysseus and other mythical figures helped establish prestigious ancestral connections – useful when legitimising the new Imperial order. The Roman poet Virgil repurposed these identifications in The Aeneid, his epic about the founding of Rome.

Ceruleo emphasises: "The myth of Circe belongs to the poem's literary world. It's not historical reality."

The Riviera of Ulysses today

Although the coast's association with The Odyssey is ancient, the name "Riviera di Ulisse" is a modern invention, adopted in the 20th Century to promote the region. There is some local debate, but the designation typically encompasses the towns between San Felice Circeo on the slopes of Mount Circeo and Scauri, on the Gulf of Gaeta. Other places along the riviera claim Odyssean ties, particularly the nearby Pontine Islands and the coast's southerly towns of Formia and Gaeta, also dubbed the Land of the Laestrygonians.

"Places often compete over myths," explains Ceruleo. "However, the Laestrygonians were always associated, even in the earliest traditions, with Terracina."

Businesses bear names like Lido di Penelope and Rive di Ulisse. But local identity more closely embraces the area's historical fishing tradition. In Terracina, we call ourselves sang' d' pesc (fish bloods). Like many Italian coasts, the Riviera of Ulysses now lives on summer tourism.

Today, visitors can explore the same breathtaking landscapes that enchanted Ancient Greek sailors. Mount Circeo itself is home to the Parco Nazionale del Circeo, where 9,000 hectares of coastal dunes, lakes and forests are crisscrossed by hiking trails and dotted by artisanal food producers. Scale the promontory's 541m-high (1774ft) witch-faced peaks to find the Roman sanctuary dedicated to Circe and gaze at the crescent curve of the coastline below – beach lidos and the Roman Temple of Jupiter Anxur toy-size in the distance. The park organises guided tours to its Grotta Guattari, where Neanderthal remains were discovered in 1939 and continue to resurface.

On the southern end of the coastline, the Parco Regionale Riviera di Ulisse also offers lush hiking experiences, plus "beautiful beaches, extraordinary sea caves and a coastline that's best explored by boat", says Massimo Giovanchelli, the park's president.

Though not explicitly tied to The Odyssey, the hilltop town of Sperlonga earned Odyssean cache in 1957 when a massive collection of Odyssey-themed marble statues was found inside the grotto of its Roman Villa of Tiberius. In 2019, archaeologist Marina De Franceschini and her collaborators discovered that the grotto had been engineered to illuminate the statues during the solstices. "[The Romans] were enamoured of Greek culture," she says. "It was Tiberius's way of claiming descendancy from Odysseus."

Visitors can explore the villa and admire the statues, currently on display at Sperlonga's National Archaeological Museum, then lounge on Sperlonga's pristine beaches and stroll its bougainvillea-draped Santorini-esque ancient quarter.

But despite its natural and historical riches, the area receives relatively little international visitors compared to other Italian cities. "Our location between Rome and Naples [has] worked against us," says Linda Contreras of Gaeta-based tour operator Centro Guide Turistiche. "We're simply somewhere [foreign tourists] pass through."

Italian and Northern European visitors cause the towns' small populations to swell each summer, but tourism here still has yet to reach the theme park-esque levels of Rome or other seaside regions like the Amalfi Coast. "They should go to places like Sperlonga which are wonderful and outside the other tourism that has become a nightmare," says De Franceschini.

Services and hotels are humbler here. But visitors experience modern Italian life amongst ancient ruins. Boutiques line the streets and fishing boats bob in the ports. Nightlife and excellent dining experiences unfold along the shores, in piazzas or in the towns' romantic old quarters, with their layers of Baroque, Medieval and Roman architecture. Summers bloom with beach umbrellas, festivals and concerts, often held inside the Riviera's spectacular Roman monuments. In off-season, locals enjoy mild-weather beach strolls and fiery sunsets. Year-round, we feast on fresh local seafood, buffalo milk mozzarella and pungently floral Muscatel wine.

"It's a more genuine, authentic, slower tourism," says Giovanchelli.

An unrequited love

Thousands of years after Ancient Greek colonists associated Aeaea with Mount Circeo, residents relate to The Odyssey in different ways. "As people who were born and raised here, we feel very connected to the story and the culture surrounding Odysseus," says Giovanchelli.

Marisa Perroni, owner of beach lido La Sirena del Mare in Terracina, says her late husband felt a profound connection with local myth: "He told the children Odysseus stories every night. They were fascinated, especially [our eldest], Robertino."

Robertino Della Fornace says his father revered Odysseus's intelligence. "The stories inspired his own life, which was filled with travel and extraordinary adventures – many of which I had the privilege of experiencing alongside him." Together, the pair sailed frequently to the Pontine Islands. "We would go fishing with nets at dawn and live off the land… like Odysseus, he wanted to discover what lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules, driven by an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and virtue."

I first came to Terracina as a child to visit family, and then again as an adult. I planned to stay a month, but thanks to a series of distracting encounters with sweet-singing mermen, I stayed for 14 years. I imagined myself as Odysseus's wife Penelope, pining for love that did not return. Now I realise I was like Odysseus, blown off course.

Some locals are more pragmatic about their mythical pedigree.

"It's all marketing," says Terracina native Manuela Gallinari. Growing up, "people talked about la Maga Circe but not as something extraordinary. She was just there." She shrugs: "When you're born into it, you take it for granted."

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Only as an adult did Gallinari realise that parts of The Odyssey were set in her region. "It feels strange to think that they're talking about your home."

Regardless, The Odyssey endures, throughout Southern Italy and beyond. And maybe visitors who do venture past Rome will tell about their time in the Riviera of Ulysses, swimming in crystalline seas under the eye of Circe. Tourism branding or no, this is how myth survives.

"Myth is appealing," says Contreras. "It's like a love that never fades. An unrequited love, because you can never know whether it was real."

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How Australia combines modern tech and Indigenous knowledge to fight fire

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czdmvr984yyo, today

The wildfires currently ravaging Europe feel close to home for Professor Marta Yebra, despite being on the other side of the world.

Originally from Spain, the Canberra-based bushfire expert has spent years developing ways for Australia - home to some of the most fire-prone landscapes in the world - to battle its own blazes.

She heads up the Bushfire Research Centre of Excellence, which was set up in the aftermath of Australia's worst fire season on record: the Black Summer fires of 2019-20, which razed a combined area about the size of the UK.

Her team looks at how technology such as satellites, drones and AI can be used to better detect fires, alongside the knowledge of experienced firefighters.

Equally important, though, is the knowledge and experience that has accrued in Australia over thousands of years, and has been passed down through generations.

This is where Australia has an advantage.

The use of fire has been part of the country's Indigenous culture since long before Europeans arrived in the 18th century - but the value of this ingrained knowledge has only been truly realised in recent years.

From outer space to underground

Yebra has spearheaded an innovative project, bringing together millennia-old knowledge in Australia's Indigenous communities with cutting-edge satellite imagery to help detect where fires are most likely to break out.

The satellite images pick up the "fuel moisture content" in the landscape, which signals where there might be a large amount of fuel, such as dry leaves, grass, shrubs and bark. But such data provides just one part of a bigger picture.

That's where the likes of Adrian Webster come in.

Growing up on the south coast of New South Wales (NSW), Webster learnt how to read the environment or "country" - the term Indigenous Australians use for their ancestral homeland – from his elders.

Using Indigenous ecological knowledge – a plant's colour and scent, for example, or the shade cover of trees - he can verify information in the satellite images from Yebra's team.

"She had all this amazing data, but there was no translation to what it meant on the ground, so it was kind of useless," he explains.

"But through an Indigenous perspective, it was not useless. It was a map that could guide you through the country and, if you understood it, take you directly into a place that is ready to burn."

For Webster, assessing the land involves him "literally digging and going underground," he says.

"We're looking at the subsurface level and then everything from that up beyond the canopy."

Yebra said there was a "remarkable agreement" between Webster's local knowledge and the satellite data, demonstrating the combined value of Indigenous expertise and Western science.

Her team now hopes to get more funding for the project, and work with Indigenous communities to co-design plans to protect the land and manage fires.

For Webster, it's about "allowing our mother – the planet Earth – a voice again".

Fire as friend, not just foe

Another example of ancient wisdom influencing modern techniques can be found in the way Australia fights fire with fire.

Cultural burning refers to a longstanding practice by Indigenous Australians to manage the environment while also maintaining a deep, spiritual connection to the land.

Part of it is lighting "cool fires": small, controlled blazes that create a patchy landscape, so fuel does not build up in one area.

"In Europe, there is no such cultural aspect to this kind of landscape planning," Yebra says.

Wildfire scientists in Spain have blamed a massive build-up of fuel for the blazes currently devastating the country.

"It is difficult to watch what is happening in Spain, but it is not surprising," Yebra says. "Particularly as climate change is increasing the frequency of extreme fire weather across southern Europe."

She believes Europe, facing its worst wildfires in decades, could benefit from Australia's firefighting experience.

"We have decades of experience living with large and high-intensity bushfires," she says. "One of the biggest changes we are seeing in bushfire management is a shift from simply reacting to fires towards anticipating risk and acting earlier.

"The earlier we can identify risk or detect an ignition, the more options firefighters have."

Webster says a key lesson the world could learn from Australia is "don't sit back and wait".

"The longer you leave it, the more fuel there is to burn, so the fire is naturally going to be bigger and harder to extinguish," he says.

"Indigenous people always knew that, so we burnt continuously all the time. That way there was no fuel for big fires."

The practice of lighting cool fires dates back 60,000 years. Part of Webster's role is to assess the area before one is lit, looking for natural signs of oil and water in the landscape so that the blaze remains under control.

"All the answers are in the environment," he says. "There's a sweet spot in the middle where there's enough water to slow that fire down but there's enough oil to push that fire on."

A more modern tactic used across Australia is a prescribed burn, also known as a hazard reduction burn. These carefully planned, often large-scale fires are usually carried out during cooler months, and are increasingly being adopted in parts of Europe.

It's an approach that has become especially vital in the "urban fringes", says superintendent Andrew Shurety from Fire and Rescue NSW.

As Australia's population grows and suburbs expand, more people are moving closer to bushland, making hazard burns firefighters' "main mitigating factor that we try to do to reduce the risk of bushfires because we know they're going to come".

The problem, Shurety points out, is that longer fire seasons and more rain during cooler months shortens the window that such burns can be carried out.

Starving a fire of fuel is also the idea behind "backburning", a widely accepted practice in Australia where a blaze is deliberately lit ahead of a main fire to strip out the vegetation and try to stop it from spreading.

This approach is also being increasingly adopted overseas - as Queensland firefighter Damian Hatfield found out.

When he travelled to Alberta, Canada with a contingent of Australian firefighters to help tackle the country's worst wildfires on record, backburning was not widely used. A year later, things had shifted.

"Backburning was definitely much more at the forefront when I returned in 2024," he says, with Canadian firefighters showing "no hesitation" to include the approach in their operations.

Drones have also transformed how Australia deals with bushfires, says Trent Curtin, from the Rural Fire Service in NSW - particularly in recent years.

"The local crews arrive, send a drone up quickly, have a look at where the fire is and how it's progressing, get some intelligence and make decisions before we can even get our large helicopters or other aircraft down," Curtin explains.

Drones also deliver heavy gear to crews on the ground, start blazes for backburning operations and help assess the damage caused by fires.

The summer ahead

Back at Yebra's centre, the team's work is particularly timely with weather forecasters predicting a super El Nino this summer - which could increase the probability of extreme heat, drought and bushfires.

"Our next fire season is looking like it's going to be a bad one," Yebra says.

That concern is shared by Jason Heffernan, chief officer of the Country Fire Authority in Australia's southeastern state of Victoria. Here, the memories of 2009's Black Saturday bushfires – the country's deadliest on record – loom large.

"For this summer coming, we're bracing for what could be something extremely significant," Heffernan says.

Even in the broader scheme of things, he notes that local fire seasons are starting earlier and lasting longer. "Unfortunately for Australia", he adds, "our environment is designed to burn."

But as the world braces for wildfires that are more frequent and intense, Heffernan also believes "we must take a global perspective".

"No fire service can do this on their own and the key is to have formal and trusted networks," he says - as well as national and international resource-sharing arrangements.

One of the challenges as a fire chief, he explains, is knowing when to ask for help - too late and the benefits will be lost, but too early and resources might be wasted.

Such a call was made just earlier this week, when France sent its first-ever request for help from Australian firefighters. Two dozen crew and several aircraft will be deployed as France battles record-breaking wildfires amid a prolonged summer heatwave.

Australia regularly sends specialist teams to the US and Canada, and vice versa, with many requests for what's known as "arduous fire crews": those who have fought fires in rugged and remote areas.

There are far fewer requests from Europe, Heffernan says - but this may change as "the global fire community is becoming more connected".

As he points out, while forests and climates vary across the globe, "we're seeing bushfires occur in parts of the world that never had bushfires before".

Spain's controversial plan for the world's first octopus farm has been abandoned

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260731-spains-attempt-to-farm-octopuses-has-failed, yesterday

Plans for the world's first octopus farm have been abandoned. As the controversial project folds, several nations and US states are banning octopus farming before it even begins.

The room was dimly lit, and quiet – save for the sound of water tinkling as octopuses drifted lazily across one another in indoor pools. At the test centre for the world's first commercial octopus farm in Spain, this docile scene was proof, officials at seafood giant Nueva Pescanova told me in 2022, that the animals were perfectly happy in captivity, and thus suitable for breeding en masse. Before we departed, the centre's director patted one on the head.

Despite the apparent calm, the project was at the epicentre of an international furore. Since the proposals for the farm were announced in 2021, global protests raged – until, late last week, Nueva Pescanova declared that they were pulling the plug.

It follows a five-year legal battle over the farm's potential environmental impact with the port authority of Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, where the €65m ($74.5m/ £55.7m) plant was due to be built. Nueva Pescanova said in a statement that the plans had been halted based "exclusively on business and regulatory considerations", adding that they would not rule out renewing their efforts elsewhere in the future. Nueva Pescanova declined the BBC's request for further comment.

Campaigners, who held a celebration in Las Palmas at the news, see this not only as a landmark win but a potential first step in stopping commercial octopus farms from taking root more widely. In the past two years, the states of Washington and California have both pre-emptively banned octopus farming, while Spain, Mexico and Chile have put forward bills, too.

The economic potential of Nueva Pescanova's octopus venture was vast. The world's trade in fresh and chilled octopus meat was estimated at $198m (£147m) in 2024.

Yet from the outset, the project seemed doomed to fail. Though longstanding players in the Spanish seafood industry, the firm's plan to farm 3,000 tonnes of octopus meat annually came the year after the release of My Octopus Teacher, a Netflix documentary that became an Oscar-winning hit.

In it, the unique relationship between a freediving documentarian and a female cephalopod highlighted the intelligence of the species – making the prospect of mass producing them in captivity deeply unpalatable to many. At the Las Palmas facility, some one million octopuses – solitary, nocturnal creatures – were to share pools and remain under constant light, before slaughter via freezing to temperatures of -3C (27F).

These plans posed "a serious moral issue", according to Lindsay Hamilton, professor of animal organisation studies at the University of York in the UK. A growing body of research shows that octopuses feel pain and distress, and have the basics of sentience, says Hamilton. "There's something to consider here – that we are actually interfering with animals that can feel and understand what's happening to them."

Her view was reinforced by the UK Animal Sentience Bill, which was amended in 2022 to include cephalopods, and a 2026 assessment that concluded that "there is strong evidence of sentience in octopuses". (Read more about the effort to understand octopus consciousness).

Commercial octopus farming poses other issues, too. Cramming them into a shared tank causes stress and aggression, says York. At one facility researching octopus farming in Sisal, Mexico, cannibalism among the octopuses was reported to be a significant problem.

When I met senior staff at Nueva Pescanova in 2022, they dismissed concerns over farming octopus as an "artificial debate", pointing out that no one was outraged by the hundreds of thousands of metric tonnes of other fish and seafood they produced each year.

As we went from their Biomarine Centre's boardroom past the gift shop (I was given a t-shirt emblazoned with a mustachioed prawn) and downstairs to labs with metres-high neon algae-filled tubes, they insisted that octopuses were no less viable a candidate for farming than any other ocean-dweller. Embracing aquaculture, they said, would also relieve growing demand on the wild fisheries responsible for producing 420,000 metric tonnes of octopus each year.

Some studies have found that small-scale artisanal octopus fishing can be sustainable. However, overfishing and destructive fishing methods can harm wild octopus populations. Trawling for octopus has significant environmental impacts, while even hook fishing can be harmful if brooding females are caught.

Countries including Japan, Australia, China and Chile have made attempts to farm octopuses for food. Even as these projects developed, a growing understanding of the detrimental effects of farming octopuses soon became a public concern, says Strom Peterson, the member of the Washington State House of Representatives behind the Washington ban.

As such, Peterson, who is part of a caucus known as the "fur fighters" for their stance on animal rights, saw his proposed legislation banning octopus farming sail through in 2024. "This was one of those bills that took off rather quickly. I was expecting it would take a couple of years to socialise the idea, and it caught wind internationally."

Peterson took calls from supporters in the UK to Mexico and Portugal; people were fundraising for his campaign, desperate to lend their support, he says. "The timing was just one of those where it was not long after My Octopus Teacher came out and I think there was just a real sense in this animal welfare space about the importance of octopuses."

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• The blackwater diver who photographs the creatures of the deep

• The twilight zone: Every night trillions of tiny creatures rise from the ocean depths

California became the second state to pass such legislation six months later, enshrining their ban in law in January 2025, soon to be followed by New York, where their bill is awaiting the signature of Governor Kathy Hochul.

Other states are also in discussion to enact a ban, while a federal bipartisan bill that would outlaw octopus farming throughout the US has also been proposed. In March, Mexico put forward a bill prohibiting nationwide cephalopod farming, while similar proposals are afoot in Chile and Spain.

Regulatory issues were the reason Nueva Pescanova stated for dropping the Las Palmas project. But global legislative momentum could be a spanner in the works for octopus farms more broadly. Hamilton says that she "welcomes the decision" to halt Nueva Pescanova's project, though she is mindful that "it's still possible that another scheme could go ahead".

Elena Lara, senior research and policy advisor at the animal welfare campaigning organisation Compassion in World Farming, was at the celebrations in Las Palmas last weekend. She argues that "if policymakers listen to science, listen to people and see what's happening in other countries", no further facilities need ever become a reality. "I want to think that's not impossible."

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The devil worm is the deepest-living animal. It's redefining life at its limits

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260729-devil-worm-the-worlds-deepest-living-animal, 3 days ago

When a single worm was discovered in the depths of our planet's crust, it began an extraordinarily lucky series of events that transformed our understanding of life at extreme depth.

If you could drill into the ground beneath you and descend into Earth's crust, you'd be uncomfortable pretty quickly. As sunlight vanishes and you sink a little closer towards the planet's molten core, the temperature and pressure mounts, while deep groundwater fills the cracks and holes in the rock. At torrid depths of 0.8 miles down (1.3km), you'd be forgiven for thinking nothing could be alive down here.

But if you're lucky, you might see them: billions upon billions of bacteria, sometimes forming bright orange or white mats – and if you could whisk out a microscope, maybe even a tiny worm using appendages on its mouth to hoist itself along the rock.

This is Halicephalobus mephisto, the devil worm, on the prowl for microbes. Though miniscule – only as long as the width of several human hairs – it's a whale in this Lilliputian ecosystem. When it dies in the snot-like microbial film growing on the rock, scientists imagine, its body is consumed by bacteria and other life forms, helping to fuel this strange, Hadean cycle of life.

Before the 1980s, most biologists didn't think that life existed more than 30cm (1ft) or so below the ground. The detection of deep-dwelling bacteria – and the 2011 discovery of the devil worm – represented a seismic shift in our understanding of the Earth's depths.

The worm's story demonstrates how life, even animal life, finds a way without the Sun's energy or an oxygen-rich atmosphere, radically expanding what scientists thought was possible for living things and sparking new ideas about life's origins and future.

"If you can find a worm down there, what else are we missing?" marvels geomicrobiologist Karen Lloyd of the University of Southern California. "It's just full of possibilities."

Thanks to an extraordinarily lucky series of events, scientists managed to produce offspring from that single devil worm and have been avidly studying its descendants to understand how the species survives in the hot, dark Earth.

Enter the deep biosphere

The first convincing reports of deep-subsurface life emerged in the 1990s. In 1997, for instance, bacteria were found as deep as 2.8km (1.7 miles) deep inside a gas borehole.

In the early 2000s, the worm biologist Gaetan Borgonie, who founded the non-profit research institute Extreme Life Isyensya in Belgium, wondered whether a group of small worms called roundworms, or nematodes, might also exist deep underground.

Borgonie recalls older scientists scoffing at the idea that more complex life might exist in the depths. But Borgonie, knowing how tough the little animals are, felt it was worth exploring. After all, when the space shuttle Columbia catastrophically disintegrated into the atmosphere in 2003, and an on-board experiment with nematodes fell 64km (40 miles) to the ground, the animals survived – and were found happily multiplying.

In 2008, Borgonie teamed up with other experts in extreme life to visit the Beatrix gold mine in South Africa. At 0.8 miles (1.3km) down, the team accessed holes that had been drilled into the mine's walls to tap the roughly 37C (99F) water inside the rock and let it run through filters designed to catch small life forms, Borgonie recalls. After filtering more than 6,000 litres (1,300 gallons) of water, they caught one tiny worm.

At two other South African mines, they filtered even larger amounts of water – more than 12 million litres at one of them – and found a handful of different species of roundworms, along with some other invertebrates, fungi, and several microscopic life forms.

"I had never expected to find an entire zoo," Borgonie says. Most of the species are also known from surface environments, but the worm from the Beatrix mine – whose tail was broken from the filtering process – was a species Borgonie didn't recognise. In 2011, they reported that it was new to science and gave it a name: Halicephalobus mephisto.

A broken tail is a death sentence for a nematode. But fortunately, the individual was a female, and it was parthenogenetic – meaning it can reproduce by itself without having to mate – and laid eight viable eggs before it died. "We were very, very lucky" that the individual survived, says Borgonie; he's never found another devil worm.

"It was the worm that lived. Like Harry Potter," marvels John Bracht, a genomics researcher at American University in Washington, DC.

Some of the worm's descendants have ended up in Bracht's lab, where they're raised in petri dishes under similar conditions as the devil worm's cousin, Caenorhabditis elegans, an intensively studied nematode species that lives on rotting fruit. There are some differences; mephisto doesn't swim in water and instead clings to the sides of a plastic tube, an ability that probably helps it latch onto underground rocks.

Evidently not a fan of eating Caenorhabditis elegans' food – the bacterium E. coli – devil worms wriggle towards other bacteria that land and establish colonies in the dishes. Importantly, mephisto does poorly at room temperatures; at 20C (68F) where its growth slows down and takes eight days to complete its life cycle. It prefers temperatures of 37C (99F) – conditions that usually kill Caenorhabditis elegans but where mephisto happily reproduces every two days.

Adaptations for resilience

It's challenging to study a species by only examining the descendants of a single individual, especially ones that have been away from their native habitat for a long time. But Bracht has found clues as to how the worm survives deep underground.

When he and his colleagues sequenced mephisto's DNA in 2019, they discovered unusually high numbers of genes that produce heat-shock proteins, molecules that protect other proteins from damage caused by extreme temperatures.

More recently, in 2024, Bracht's team took a close look at another molecule called cytochrome oxidase c, a key component in the process of consuming oxygen and using it to make the energy required to sustain life.

Through a series of experiments, Bracht learned that mephisto's cytochrome oxidase c only performs at high temperatures; at room temperature, the molecule shuts off, slowing down energy generation – explaining why the worms are so sluggish in these conditions.

Bracht hypothesizes that that off-switch could be a survival tactic. "They're ensuring that they reproduce more in the better environment, which would be the warmer one," he says.

Bracht is currently studying whether the devil worm's parthenogenetic reproduction strategy is also a survival tool. Because devil worms may not often encounter others of their kind in the vast expanses of the underworld, this kind of asexual reproduction may sometimes be their only way to make offspring.

Asexual reproduction is thought to come at a cost, however, as it doesn't create the healthy genetic diversity that comes from the mixing of genetic material when males and females mate – which is why many scientists consider asexually reproducing species to be doomed to extinction. (Read more about the surprising success of some all-female species.)

Perhaps devil worm males do exist – allowing for some sexual reproduction when individuals encounter one another – but they just haven't been discovered yet, Bracht speculates. In any case, the worms showcase just how adaptable nematodes are. "Any place you find a food source, and there's a possibility for animals to get there, nematodes will evolve to land in that niche."

Resilience in the depths

It's a mystery how these life forms got here. Research by Borgonie and geobiologist Cara Magnabosco at ETH Zürich in Switzerland suggests that at least some nematodes move down from surface environments through water, perhaps helped along by the shudders of earthquake activity; some species survive whereas others perish.

"There must be some connectivity and transport of them from the surface to this deep environment," Magnabosco says.

In all, Magnabosco and others have estimated that microbes of the deep biosphere make up a considerable chunk of life on the planet, accounting for 12 to 20% of the total biomass of Earth's microbes. These underground bacteria – which have evolved sophisticated strategies to source carbon and energy from the dark world around them – probably play an important role in supporting more complex life forms like nematodes.

They not only provide food, but may also produce small amounts of oxygen that deep nematodes need, Lloyd says. And by influencing the acidity levels inside deep watery caverns, "they can help create a clement environment for larger things to grow in", Lloyd says. The invertebrates, in turn, provide food for microbes: nitrogen when they defecate, and carbon from their bodies when they die, Borgonie adds.

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• The deep cave bacteria resistant to modern medicine

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Such underworld ecosystems may have been thriving for aeons. Research by Maggie Lau of China's Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering and her colleagues has found evidence that one species of deep-dwelling bacterium may have been in the Earth's crust since the fragmentation of the supercontinent Pangea, which began about 165 million years ago, back when dinosaurs roamed the world.

The devil worm and its subterranean brethren may well be some of the most enduring kind of life on Earth. Studying the deep biosphere, experts say, could help us better understand the conditions under which living things first came into existence, and even help inform searches for extraterrestrial life; if there is life on Mars, it's probably lurking under the surface.

And should a life-killing asteroid hit Earth and sterilise its surface, life could arise again from the critters that dwell underneath.

"As humans, we think we rule the world, but we don't," says biochemist Esta van Heerden, a lead environmental scientist at the South African bioremediation company iWater, who was part of the team who discovered the devil worm. "That has been extremely humbling for me – to understand they have been here for millions, if not billions, of years and they will remain here long, long after we've gone."

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'Signs of life' seen at site of heathland fire

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70g1602l1no, today

"Signs of life" have already been spotted in among the blackened remains of a Suffolk heathland damaged by a wildfire, the National Trust has said.

The fire at Dunwich engulfed 371 acres of land (150 hectares) at its height - equivalent to the size of 210 football pitches - affecting Dunwich Heath, which is owned by the National Trust, and nearby RSPB Minsmere.

Andy Beer, the trust's chief operating officer, said the heathland had suffered "extensive damage".

"One of our team who was on site [on Saturday], was still observing signs of life already in and amongst the burnt landscape, so we hope some of the species who live there will have managed to escape," he said.

Talking to BBC Radio 5 Live, Beer added: "Obviously, we would have lost many things, but we hope in the spring next year we will see where we are in the terms of recovery... but it is a bit too early to tell for that.

"We have faith in nature's dealings in these problems."

More than 100 firefighters have been battling the blaze after it started at about 17:00 BST on Wednesday.

The "large-scale, wind-driven" fire was declared a major incident on Thursday morning, due to the size and complexity of the blaze.

Crews tackle field fire as public told to avoid area

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce342w9e5zpo, today

About 50 firefighters were tackling a "large" field fire in Hampshire on Sunday, said a fire service.

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service (HIWFRS) said crews from Basingstoke, Alton, Andover, Beaulieu, Whitchurch, Overton, Alresford, Rushmoor, Sutton Scotney and Stockbridge were at the scene of the blaze on Drove Road in Chilbolton.

An Incident Command Unit and crews from Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service were also working to extinguish the blaze after it was first reported shortly after 16:30 BST.

HIWFRS asked members of the public to avoid the area due to the number of emergency services vehicles on the scene.

Helicopters fighting Greece wildfires collide in mid-air

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1417713ve6o, today

Two helicopters have collided in Greece as they were battling to control wildfires.

Video of the incident some 65 km (42 miles) west of the capital, Athens, shows one of the helicopters hitting the propellers of the other, which bursts into flames. Both fell into a ravine. Two of the four crew members involved were found unconscious, Greek media report, with the others sustaining light injuries.

Several fires have broken out in Greece this week, prompting many people to leave their homes. Strong winds have hampered efforts to bring the blazes under control.

Several other European nations have suffered devastating wildfires after a succession of heatwaves created favourable conditions for them.

Early this week, France and Spain battled huge fires - two of the main ones were close to Madrid and Bordeaux respectively. Those have now been contained, though they are still burning. Some 300,000 people who were evacuated have started to return to their homes.

In Greece, media reports describe "a titanic battle" along a swathe of territory that includes Porto Germeno, Psatha, Fokida, Megara and Kefalonia, where more than 500 firefighters have been struggling to bring the situation under control over the past 72 hours.

The mid-air collision occurred "during a forest firefighting operation in the Psatha area," the Fire Department announced.

The crew members - two Greek and two Romanian, according to Greek media - have been taken to the 251st Air Force General Hospital.

Most wildfires are sparked by people, whether intentionally or accidentally, but climate change is making the conditions for them more common.

Last winter was mild and wet, encouraging vegetation growth, which has then dried out in successive hot spells, generating fuel for wildfires.

Crews tackle fire in North York Moors forest

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3v0zz34gzgo, today

A blaze has broken out in a forest in the North York Moors National Park, according to the fire service.

Five engines and specialist equipment are fighting the blaze in Wykeham Forest, seven miles (11km) from Scarborough, which has spread 20 x 20m (65 x 65ft) among trees, bushes and undergrowth.

The fire was first reported by a passing cyclist at about 11:41 BST.

North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service urged the public to avoid the area.

Wykeham Forest is a popular area for hiking and mountain biking, and has a raptor viewing point for birdwatching. It is managed by Forestry England.

Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.

Groups invited to apply for climate change fund

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cre455z91wxo, today

Community groups in Surrey are being invited to apply for a share of £125,000 for projects that will help tackle the effects of climate change.

Surrey County Council (SCC) says that town and parish councils, community, voluntary and faith groups are able to apply for individual grants capped at £16,000.

The new Community Resilience Grant has been designed to help residents who are confronted with increasing risks from extreme heat, flooding, and wildfires, the council says.

Marisa Heath, cabinet member for environment & planning said, "We're acutely aware that many of the UK's community spaces were not built to withstand some of the conditions we are now experiencing."

SCC said it will work in partnership with Surrey Fire and Rescue Service SFRS to support local groups and help deliver the projects.

SFRS area commander David Nolan said: "We're proud to be working with Surrey County Council to support local groups making a difference across Surrey."

There are two stages for the grants, with deadlines set for 16 and 30 September.

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Research helping farmers grow food in saltier soil

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz05898298eo, today

Scientists researching how to protect crops from increasing soil salinity have said their latest findings will support future food security.

The study, by the University of Lincoln, is looking at how farmers can continue to grow food in soil that is saltier due to climate change.

Prof Matthew Goddard, who is leading the study, said research has shown that naturally occurring soil microbes can be "trained" to better tolerate saltier conditions.

He said experiments using small amounts of seawater had shown farmers could "engineer natural agricultural microbiomes to support food production under climate change".

The researchers said saline levels in soils were increasing due to rising sea levels, changing rainfall patterns and increasing temperatures.

Goddard said that in Lincolnshire in particular, farmers are facing a "double whammy" of sea surges on their land and more seawater in their irrigation channels.

Describing this study, Goddard said they have "emulated the east of England 20 years from now" using existing rainfall patterns.

He said the experiment set out of find out whether they could "teach soils and prepare soils to be ready for one particular aspect of climate change, which is sea level rises".

According to the scientist, the study showed that by exposing soils to low levels of saline irrigation, it encouraged "naturally occurring microbial communities" within the soil to adapt over time.

He said these adapted communities were better able to function under increased salinisation, helping established crops continue to grow and maintain yields, where higher salinity would normally have a damaging effect.

Goddard added: "This approach could be integrated with other methods into a holistic management approach that could help secure food systems for future climate change conditions in a sustainable way."

The scientists will now look at how salinity reacts with fertilisers, and how it reacts with crop pathogens, with early research suggesting increased salinity could help reduce potentials blights.

Listen to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North.

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Hundreds of dead fish in river linked to heatwave

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgd4d3280yo, today

Hundreds of fish in a city centre river are believed to have died as a result of the recent heatwave and contamination from drainage water.

Residents and wild swimmers were horrified to find them washed up on Saturday, appearing to gasp for air, in the River Wensum through Norwich.

Local river campaigner Sarah Eglington said the scenes were "absolutely heartbreaking".

The Environment Agency said it believed the incident was the result of the recent heatwave - ultimately depleting the river's oxygen - and because heavy rainfall on Thursday had likely flushed in contamination from surface water drainage systems.

A spokesperson explained that high temperatures created the conditions that "significantly" reduced dissolved oxygen levels in the water.

Eglington is from the Wensum Riverkin group, which campaigns for better maintenance of the river, and said the water appeared "beautiful" when she swam there with her son on Wednesday.

She said "you wouldn't recognise" it was the same river.

"I could cry," she said.

"I can't quite believe what I'm seeing. It's absolutely heartbreaking."

Lucy Galvin, the Green Party leader of Norwich City Council, said she was "absolutely devastated" by what she had seen when visiting the river at Cow Tower.

She said she and other residents had noticed dead pike, carp, roach, eel, rudd and dace.

"What we are seeing are the effects of climate change and it is catastrophic," said Galvin.

As has been well documented by scientists, climate change is causing hotter and longer heatwaves across the globe.

Rose, 24, is part of swimming group Cow Tower Dippers which meets at the river most weekends.

"It's never been like this, it is devastating."

The River Wensum, which stretches about 44 miles (71km) through Norfolk, is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest and Special Area of Conservation.

It is believed to be home to more than 100 plant species and rich invertebrate fauna, and is recognised as one of the most important chalk river habitats in England.

The Environment Agency said its officer "promptly attended the scene" and its investigation concluded: "The most likely cause of the incident was heavy rainfall on Thursday evening flushing contamination from surface water drainage systems into the river.

"This has coincided with a period of low river flows and high temperatures, creating conditions that significantly reduced dissolved oxygen levels in the water."

It would continue to monitor the river and work with partner organisations, they added.

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Italy putting nearly all major cities on highest heat alert

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr7k4gdrgljo, yesterday

Italy is putting nearly all of its major cities on the highest "red" alert for high temperatures, as a new heatwave grips the country.

Health officials say 19 cities from north to south - including the capital Rome, Milan, Venice and Naples - are already at red alert, and by Monday all but two cities will be.

Temperatures hit mid-30s C in many places on Saturday, and authorities are warning of risks to even healthy and active people - not just groups including the elderly, very young children and people with chronic illnesses.

The warnings come as several European nations battle devastating wildfires after a succession of heatwaves that have created favourable conditions for blazes.

In its latest heatwave bulletin published on Saturday, the Italian health ministry says that by Monday, some 25 of the country's 27 major cities will be on red alert.

It says it expects only two - Reggio Calabria in the southern tip of Italy's "boot" and Messina, facing it across on the island of Sicily - to be on the second-highest "amber" alert.

The ministry urges residents in the affected areas to avoid exposure to heat and direct sunlight during the hottest hours between 11:00 and 18:00, stay indoors and drink plenty of fluids.

The extreme heat is being caused by a subtropical anticyclone from North Africa that is now strengthening over the Mediterranean.

Meanwhile, firefighters in Greece, France, Portugal and Spain are still tackling blazes spanning thousands of hectares.

In France, some 2,500 people were evacuated in the south-eastern Var region on Friday evening after a blaze - which had been contained for several days - reignited, local officials said.

But a massive fire in the south-western Gironde region is now under control, and some 200,000 local evacuated residents have been able to return to their homes.

In Greece, hundreds of people - mostly tourists - have been evacuated by sea from a coastal town of Viotia hemmed in by one of the many wildfires raging across the country.

And in Spain, more than 200,000 hectares of land has burnt in 2026 - roughly five times above the average by this point in the year - while the burnt land in Portugal is also higher than usual, EU data shows.

Climate change is driving up temperatures around the world, and Europe is the fastest warming continent, heating up twice as fast as the global average, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

This is causing increased summer heatwaves, greater pressure on Europe's water supply, and more intense wildfires.

Satellite images show impact of heatwaves and drought on UK landscape

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgv657e1yko, 3 days ago

Satellite imagery shows the toll taken on the UK landscape from this year's long hot summer.

BBC Verify analysis of satellite data shows where in the UK has been most affected by heatwaves and a lack of rain.

We can see parts of the country are suffering from "vegetation stress" where the development and growth of plants, grass and crops can be severely affected.

Experts have said the combination of next-to-no rainfall and prolonged hot weather is likely to cause significant issues for the farming industry and have an impact on agriculture and food supplies.

Scientists also warn the UK is facing a growing risk of water shortages in the decades ahead, driven by human-caused climate change and increased demand.

A comparison of satellite imagery of the UK in May and July shows the stark differences in plant health. To assess this, we have used something called the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) - a measure of how green and healthy vegetation is.

The biggest changes are visible across Conwy, Flintshire, Denbighshire and Merseyside, where areas that were previously a patchwork of green fields and grassland are now covered by light brown tones, indicating extensive vegetation stress.

Elsewhere, the data highlights more localised hotspots of stress around Peterborough, Lincolnshire and parts of mid and east Devon, where fields also appear significantly browner than a year ago.

This is in stark contrast to upland Britain - including much of Scotland's highlands and the Welsh mountains - which has remained closer to normal or, in some places, appear slightly greener.

Vegetation turning brown, even on this scale, does not mean the plants have disappeared or died, as grass, shrubs and some trees can recover once rainfall returns, provided their root systems remain intact.

However, falling groundwater levels during prolonged dry periods can also remove an important backup water source for trees and other deep-rooted vegetation.

And perhaps counter-intuitively, prolonged dry weather can raise the risk of flash flooding when it eventually does rain. That is because parched, rock-hard ground may struggle to absorb water at first, so some rainwater may simply run off the surface instead.

Dr Jess Neumann, an associate professor at the University of Reading, said while it is not unusual to see some browning in the summer, the "large expanses of dry grass in parks, lawns and gardens" are particularly noticeable this year.

Neumann added that British plants are "not adapted to prolonged summer droughts and hot weather", unlike in places like the Mediterranean.

This summer's "flash" drought is also notable for how quickly it has developed, given in early spring river flows, soil moisture and reservoir levels were generally around or above normal following a very wet start to 2026.

The recent repeated heatwaves have sapped moisture from soils and vegetation via evaporation, which has in turn increased demand for water for farming, industry and household use.

"The drought could have a direct knock-on effect on food supplies," said Dr Pauline Scheelbeek, associate professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

She added that it is possible there will be "less British produce and at higher prices in our supermarkets" because less reliable access to water may reduce crop yields.

Another impact on UK agriculture is low grass stocks forcing some farmers to use winter feed for their livestock during the summer leaving supplies short for later in the year.

Prof Michael Singer from Cardiff University has expressed concern about the effect on wildlife, as "many animals and plants in the UK are not well adapted to extreme drought conditions."

While the impact of the lack of rainfall is clear on plant life, the data shows reservoirs have not been as significantly affected thanks to a particularly wet winter.

Satellite imagery shows the banks of the Clywedog reservoir in mid-Wales are more exposed this July compared with last year.

Low reservoir levels have not been the primary cause of recent hosepipe bans and drought declarations - which are ultimately triggered by a lack of rain - across large parts of England and Wales.

But reservoirs are still lower than is typical for this time of year.

The EA has reported that reservoir storage is now at 75% in England, which is below the long-term average of 83% for the time of year but higher than during last year's drought.

Reservoirs are vital for water supply because they store excess rainwater from wetter months and hold it for use during drier summer periods. They are one of the UK's three main water sources, alongside rivers and water from deep underground.

Reservoirs are especially important in northern England, Wales and Scotland. South-east England relies more heavily on groundwater.

Levels are lowest in the South West, with Wimbleball and Blagdon classed as exceptionally low. Reservoirs in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are all reasonably stocked for the time of year despite the hot weather.

The widespread restrictions on water use have raised questions about how effectively resources are being managed, and whether the UK is prepared for drier summers expected with climate change.

Graphics by Jess Carr

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Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0nqv05g0do, 3 days ago

Hungary's only nuclear power plant will be forced to shut down entirely for the first time due to record low water levels of the River Danube, Prime Minister Péter Magyar has said.

The Soviet-era Paks power plant uses the Danube for cooling but the water level is so low that the suction nozzles cannot reach it.

Magyar warned Hungary's energy supply could become "critical" from Monday due to the Paks shutdown and the ongoing heatwave, which will see temperatures hover around 37C for a week.

Like much of Europe, Hungary has seen very low rainfall and high temperatures for much of the summer.

The waters of the Danube have fallen to the lowest levels for 30 years in several countries, including neighbouring Serbia and Romania.

Magyar asked Hungarians to limit activities that required significant energy consumption between the peak times of 17:00 and 22:00, including charging electric cars and using air conditioning equipment.

A "rotational shutdown regime" was also possible if the other combined efforts were not enough to maintain the balance of the national grid, Magyar said, adding the government would compile a list of electricity and water consumers whose consumption could be limited.

In Romania, one of the country's only two nuclear reactors has been shut down at the Cernavoda power plant, which provides about 20% of the country's power.

The first of the two 706-megawatt reactors was shut down earlier this week because the Danube's levels were so low, and state-owned company Nuclearelectrica was trying to avoid closing down the other on Thursday. If the second reactor is shut down Romania will, like Hungary, be temporarily without any nuclear energy production.

Climate change is driving up temperatures around the world - but particularly in Europe.

It is the fasting warming continent, heating up twice as fast as the global average, according to the Copernicus climate service. This is causing increased summer heatwaves, greater pressure on Europe's waters and more intense wildfires.

Romania's National Institute of Hydrology says the average river flow where the Danube enters the country is 4,700 cubic metres per second in July, whereas on Wednesday it was down to less than a third of that, at 1,600cm per second. The institute forecast it would continue to fall to 1,500cm per second by Tuesday.

The Danube runs 2,857km (1,775 miles) through 19 countries.

The Upper Danube goes from Germany to the Slovak capital Bratislava, the middle basin runs from Bratislava to the border between Serbia and Romania and the Lower Danube extends through Romania and Bulgaria into the three main branches of the Danube Delta that flow into the Black Sea.

The low waters of the river have resulted in several unexpected discoveries. The remains of a sunken Hungarian cargo ship resurfaced in Croatia, while the hulks of a German river flotilla was seen in Serbia.

And a resident of the northeastern Bulgarian city of Ruse found bones on the Danube river bed, which experts determined were the remains of a mammoth.

They were able to recognise a lower jaw, two tusks, and possibly a mammoth rib.

Shipping has ground to a halt on the river in Bulgaria, and border police had to evacuate 186 river cruise passengers from the Viking Ullur ship earlier this week when it ran aground close to Vidin, a city that sits on the border with Romania.

There were reports of passengers running low of food and water because the cruise ship was unable to dock in Vidin, but Viking later told the BBC that "sufficient water remained available for all guests and crew throughout the incident. At no point did the vessel run out of provisions or experience a shortage".

"I have never heard of such low levels over the years. There has certainly not been a similar situation since 1990," Ivan Zhekov, head of river supervision at Bulgaria's maritime administration agency told BTA news agency.

It is not just the Danube where river levels are low. In Serbia, the levels are also very low on the Sava and Tisa, which are both tributaries of the Danube.

Serbian hydrologist Dejan Vladiković said the problems were not just down to the current high temperatures but also to low rainfall during the spring.

He told Serbian TV channel N1 that the Danube was down to levels not seen for 50 to 60 years, and climatologists did not expect to see any improvement until mid-September.

Temperatures in Serbia are set to climb as high as 38C on Friday, and locally up to 40C, with night-time temperatures in Belgrade as high as 26C.

Elsewhere in Europe, forecasters say fire-prone conditions are expected to spread towards central Europe, with Greece and Turkey among the countries worst affected.

Vast areas of France and Spain have just experienced some of the most intense and widespread wildfires in living memory, leading to hundreds of thocusands of evacuations.

Correction 1 August: This article originally stated that food and water had been running low for passengers on the grounded Viking Ullur and another boat was unable to get close enough with provisions. It was later amended with the company's denial of any shortage.

Climate change leads to blackcurrant struggles for Ribena

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyvlj34mj31o, 4 days ago

On the outskirts of Ledbury in Herefordshire, I have come to see a brand new, multimillion-pound factory. Its job is to turn the nation's blackcurrants into concentrate for a well-known brand of squash.

About 90% of the entire harvest in the country goes into making Ribena.

But it has been a tough year for growers sending blackcurrants here, both locally in Herefordshire and from further afield in East Anglia and Scotland.

The difficulties the growers have faced include "heavy rain and hail, and then we've have three major heatwaves," according to Harriet Prosser, the agronomist for Ribena.

"For a little black berry on a bush that can cook in the sun, get up to 40 or 50 degrees, we've had some real challenges."

As an agronomist, Prosser's job is to help develop new varieties that can cope better with climate change extremes.

But it is a juggling act, you also need blackcurrants that ripen at different times so this big new factory has a consistent supply and is not overwhelmed.

Donning hairnets and steel-capped boots, Prosser invites me to check out the latest delivery of boxes filled with currants.

"Each one contains about 500kg of berries," she tells me.

The plant will process 400 tonnes each day, or 10,000 tonnes over a harvest.

But there is good and bad news.

The bad news is the harvest will be down this year because of the challenges of a changing climate.

The good news is that some of the newer varieties - all traditionally named after Scottish mountains - have performed very well this year.

Those new varieties take time, so Prosser is also looking at ways to improve things now by tweaking farming methods.

"We are trying different ways to increase organic content in the soil so it acts like a sponge, holding more water and making those bushes more resilient to drought," she said.

At this time of year Prosser is usually focused on farming, but her role means she must also keep an eye towards the harvest - making sure the currants are the right quality, at the right time, and that they make good juice.

She takes me on a tour of the new juice plant, working flat out dealing with its first harvest.

The first thing you notice is the noise from the machinery and the second the amazing smell of crushed fruit.

That fruit is turned into a concentrate that forms the basis for Ribena, which is mixed and bottled at its factory in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire.

The concentrate also stores very well, so while this year there will be less thanks to climate change and the weather, supplies can be topped up with juice from the bumper harvests of 2024 and 2025.

"But the challenges of climate change are increasing" Prosser told me, "and we need to think long term about how we deal with that."

The hope is new varieties, along with adapting how the blackcurrants are grown - which means often working with farmers who have grown them for generations - will keep this new factory busy every harvest.

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Pictures show scale of drought across England as rivers dry up

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgljz92j0j0o, 4 days ago

Drought has been declared across more than half of England as hot, dry weather takes its toll on the country's water supplies.

The announcement means there have been three droughts in the past five years - 2022, 2025 and now 2026.

Photos from across the country have captured some of the dry conditions - including receding rivers, parched parks and sportspeople trying to play on.

There is no single definition of drought, but it usually refers to a period of prolonged unusually dry weather that can have impacts on people, nature and the environment.

A lack of rainfall has meant rivers have lowered, including the River Redlake in Bucknell (above), where a height marker was left completely dry at a ford.

The riverbed of the River Wye in Hereford (below) was seen bare after weeks without rainfall.

Some areas of the country have now entered their fourth heatwave of the year.

Beauty spots and parks have been left yellow and parched, including London's Greenwich Park, Blackheath, Primrose Hill, Hackney Marshes, Peckham Common and Leyton Flats.

While droughts happen naturally, scientists say that climate change is raising the risks, with higher summer temperatures drying out soils more quickly. This can lead to more severe and longer-lasting droughts.

The sight of scorched brown leaves has become a familiar view.

Hollow Pond in East London was seen diminished in size.

And golfers at Woldingham Golf Club found their normally lush course had turned to patches of green.

Similarly, a shrinking island of green was played on by cricketers as Maidenhead & Bray club took on Boyne Hill in the village of Bray in Berkshire.

Reservoirs have also shrunk, including the Walthamstow Wetlands.

And Howden Reservoir in the Upper Derwent Valley in the Peak District has receding shores.

More than half of England in drought, Environment Agency declares

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg35n7yny3o, 4 days ago

Drought has been declared across more than half of England as hot, dry weather takes its toll on the country's water supplies.

The Environment Agency (EA) announcement covers much of central, eastern and southern England, and is a public sign that further restrictions on water use might follow.

It added that the impacts are already being felt, including low river flows, early harvests and high risk of wildfires. More than 20 million people are already under hosepipe bans.

North Wales and the Upper Severn river basin entered drought conditions last week, Natural Resources Wales said.

Scotland does not declare drought but monitors "water scarcity". Some parts of eastern Scotland are in the most extreme category of "significant scarcity", according to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.

Northern Ireland is not currently in drought.

The full list of English regions in drought conditions are:

* East Anglia

* Hertfordshire and the whole of London

* Thames Valley

* Hampshire and the Isle of Wight

* Devon and Cornwall

* the West Midlands

* Wessex, covering Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire, and South Gloucestershire

There is no single definition of drought, but it usually refers to a period of prolonged unusually dry weather that can have impacts on people, nature and the environment.

The EA considers all of these factors before deciding whether to declare a drought in England.

The declaration is a public sign that the EA is stepping up its response to the dry conditions, including increased monitoring and controls on how much water can be taken from rivers and groundwater.

It can mean hosepipe bans being introduced if they are not already in place.

"The hot and dry weather means we are currently using water faster than nature can replenish it," said Helen Wakeham, director of water at the Environment Agency and chair of the National Drought Group.

'Flash drought'

This year's drought is somewhat unusual because January and February were very wet for much of the UK, helping to replenish reservoirs and groundwater.

But late spring and summer have been exceptionally hot and dry. The quick switch between wet and dry conditions is sometimes called "climate whiplash".

In particular, July has seen 7% of the average levels of rainfall in England so far, with just 1% across southern England. Some parts of Devon and Hampshire have gone more than a month without rain.

"The warm and exceptionally dry conditions experienced across much of England over recent months are continuing to have a significant impact," said Will Lang, chief meteorologist at the Met Office.

Early August could bring some rain to parts of the country, but the Met Office has said there is no sign of sustained rainfall that would make a significant difference to the dry conditions.

The combination of low rainfall and prolonged high temperatures - meaning greater evaporation of moisture - has quickly depleted water reserves in soils, vegetation and rivers.

These conditions have led to a "flash drought", the EA has said. This is where drought begins suddenly rather than over many months or years.

Today's announcement means there have been three droughts in the past five years – 2022, 2025 and now 2026.

Some researchers have also highlighted underinvestment in water infrastructure as an issue.

The EA has previously warned that England's public water supplies could face a shortfall of 5 billion litres per day by the middle of the century without urgent action.

"This drought isn't just about a lack of rain," said Prof Hayley Fowler of Newcastle University. "It's the result of hotter temperatures from a warming climate, rising water demand, ageing infrastructure and too much water being lost through leaks."

The government has committed to improving the water industry and water companies have announced plans for investment, but bills are rising as a result.

Food production 'riskier and more costly'

The dry conditions have consequences for nature, with Atlantic salmon unable to move upstream where river flows are low. Agriculture has also taken a hit.

Paul Tompkins, deputy president of the National Farmers' Union of England and Wales (NFU), said: "Farmers and growers have always had to contend with the weather, but what they are experiencing now is climate change in action. More extreme conditions [are] making it harder, riskier and more costly to produce the nation's food."

He added the issue of drought is something that "should matter to everyone" as it affects the country's food security.

Some areas of the country have now entered their fourth heatwave of the year.

Amber and yellow heat health alerts have come into force for parts of the UK, with temperatures potentially peaking at 35C in parts of south-east England on Wednesday.

The hot, dry weather has created ideal conditions for wildfires to spread. The National Fire Chiefs Council has warned that wildfire risk "remains elevated across the UK".

More than 200 wildfire incidents have been reported in England and Wales over the past two weeks, it said.

The Met Office has separately announced that the new June temperature record set last month was even higher than previously thought, following verification processes.

The previously-reported figure of 37.7C in Lingwood, Norfolk, on 26 June 2026 has been updated to 38.0C – smashing the UK's previous June high of 35.6C.

Additional reporting by Jess Carr

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The spotted lanternfly is ravaging the eastern US. Pet dogs are coming to the rescue

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260727-the-spotted-lanternfly-is-ravaging-the-eastern-us-pet-dogs-are-coming-to-the-rescue, 5 days ago

Frequently found plastered across windscreens along the US's Atlantic coast, spotted lanternflies are an invasive pest and a multimillion-dollar disaster for the US's wine industry. Meet the good boys and girls of the resistance.

Fozzie was panting in the viscous humidity of the Virginia summer when I met him. At 11 years old, the labrador mix hardly looked like he had an important job to do.

"He was puppy-trained to be a service dog and washed out of the programme," his owner, Scott Hurst, tells me.

However, by the time I met him, Fozzie had found his calling. Nose pressed to the ground, he eagerly weaved through rows of bushes on a berry farm in Blacksburg, Virginia. Fozzie was on a mission to find the eggs of one of the most destructive invasive species propagating across the eastern United States: the spotted lanternfly.

Along the Atlantic coast, the spotted lanternfly is the inch-long (25mm) bug with scarlet underwings you might find plastered across your windscreen or flying into your face in the peak of summer.

Spotted lanternflies are more than a nuisance. They're an ecological and economic scourge. With very few natural predators and a broad diet, these insects threaten vineyards, orchards, hardwood forests and urban ecosystems. In the worst-case scenario for their predicted spread through the Midwest and on towards California, they pose an existential threat to the US's wine industry.

Fozzie and his four-legged colleagues are part of the resistance. A citizen-science programme is training pet dogs on demonstration plots like this to find the eggs before they hatch so they can be destroyed. It's revealing the surprising power of pet dogs' noses, with even unconventional sniffer-dog breeds like the humble pug able to play their part.

A pest ravenous for US grapes

Native to China and Vietnam, spotted lanternflies were first detected in the United States in the 2010s, after hitching a ride on imported goods.

"Spotted lanternflies are good hitchhikers," says Julie Urban, associate research professor in entomology at Penn State University in the US. "They can hang on at high speeds."

These voracious planthoppers eat sap with a straw-like beak along their abdomens that punctures fruit and damages crops. The sap passes through their digestive tract and is excreted in the form of a sugary substance called "honeydew". This can fall onto the fruit they feed off, and cause the growth of thick, black sooty mould. This mould impacts fruit quality, ruining the vegetation.

Spotted lanternflies feed on more than 70 different species of plant found in North America. Their ravenous appetite comes at a high cost.

In Pennsylvania alone, experts estimate that spotted lanternflies already cost the state's logging and agriculture industry $50m annually (£37m), which could rise tenfold in coming years under a worst-case scenario of the insect's spread.

The biggest impact will be on the grape industry, says Urban. Spotted lanternflies feast on grapevines, causing crop losses of up to 90%.

It's an infestation that's escalated into a multi-million-dollar threat. In New York, researchers estimate that spotted lanternflies will cost the state's grape industry over $14m (£10.4m) in the first three years of invasion. In Virginia – where this team of dogs detects egg masses – uncontrolled spotted lanternflies may cost the state $324m (£242m) annually.

Spotted lanternflies have infiltrated 19 US states and the District of Columbia, per the latest figures from the US Department of Agriculture. As climate change brings warmer temperatures to the country, it will exacerbate the spread of the insect.

Without proper management, spotted lanternflies are expected to spread westward and reach California sometime between 2027 and 2033. California drives 95% of all US wine exports. All in, the US grape and wine industry is worth $320bn (£238bn) annually.

The canine squad

Bellows of "good boy!" echoed throughout the farm of blackberries, blueberries and raspberries nestled in the Blue Ridge Highlands, as Fozzie successfully found and signalled spotted lanternfly egg masses on the bushes, each containing 30-50 eggs.

Since 2020, dog detection has joined the arsenal of responses to the spread in the US. Spotted lanternfly egg masses are difficult for the human eye to spot, but easy for dogs to smell. Deploying trained dogs can help humans destroy lanternfly egg masses before they hatch.

Professionally trained working canines are expensive and scarce. Pennsylvania, for instance, proposed a $145,000 (£108,000) budget to support its second lanternfly detection dog (Ruby, a Dutch shepherd).

Partnering with Texas Tech, this Virginia Tech programme aims to fill that gap by turning everyday pet owners into volunteer dog-handler teams, says Erica Feuerbacher, a professor of applied animal behaviour and welfare at Virginia Tech.

Feuerbacher, who runs Virginia Tech's Applied Animal Behavior & Welfare lab, had her epiphany on a hike with her pooch. "Wouldn't it be fun if I could contribute to solving environmental issues while I'm playing with my dog?"

Fun and effective, according to her team's findings. Pet dogs trained by their owners can detect lanternfly eggs with accuracy comparable to professional detection dogs. And, in dense vegetation, pet dogs outperform humans by finding up to three times more egg masses.

In fact, these dogs correctly identified spotted lanternfly egg masses 82% of the time in controlled odour-recognition tests and 61% of the time in field trials, according to a 2025 study.

"Any breed can be an olfactory detection dog," says Feuerbacher. "In fact, there's data suggesting that pugs can outperform German shepherds on some tasks."

Today, 80 volunteer dog-handler teams have passed the programme's certification test – and more than 50 teams went on to complete field trials, says Sally Dickinson, a postdoctoral researcher at Virginia Tech.

The training tests whether the dog can independently acknowledge odours and communicate with the handler, says Dickinson, who helped develop the citizen scientist model of canine detection. Dogs learn to associate the scent of egg masses with a prized reward.

"We say to the dog, 'What is your most favouritest thing in the whole wide world? I will give you that in conjunction with this odour.'"

For those living in areas affected by lanternflies, could your dog help? It's not too far-fetched. The nationwide citizen-scientist project has expanded in reach since it started in 2021. "If we get enough of these teams together, we can have a big impact," argues Feuerbacher.

Even if you don't have a pet dog, there are ways you can help tackle the spotted lanternfly. Government agencies, like the US Department of Agriculture and several state extensions, have implored citizens to destroy spotted lanternflies on sight.

"If you don't kill it, you'll carry it," says Urban. "Stomping spotted lanternflies buys important time for these other solutions to improve."

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Spain and France brace for new heatwaves as wildfire closes in on Bordeaux

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg34128nvpo, 6 days ago

Spain and France are bracing for new heatwaves with temperatures expected to soar past 40C in some regions.

Spain's national weather service says the severe weather is forecast to last until "at least" Sunday, and warns of "extreme" fire risks as firefighters continue to battle the some of the worst blazes in the country's history.

France's south-west regions Gironde and Landes are under "yellow alert" for a heatwave expected to peak on Wednesday, further hampering efforts to contain "very unpredictable" blazes in Gironde.

The mayor of Bordeaux has said he is preparing for "all eventualities", as one of the wildfires burning in France is 15km (nine miles) from the south-western city.

"We are preparing to accommodate a large number of people should further evacuations be ordered," said Thomas Cazenave.

Some 220,000 people have been evacuated in France and more than 100,000 in Spain, where fires are burning "uncontrolled" west of Madrid.

President Emmanuel Macron, visiting the fire-ravaged area in the Gironde region, said the country was facing a "completely unprecedented wildfire" - the "toughest since World War Two".

Macron said a smaller fire in the Landes region had been contained, but the fight continued in neighbouring Gironde.

While firefighters had made progress on Monday, Macron warned that "temperatures are set to rise again, the wind is still present, and therefore we must remain humble".

Earlier, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez had said the fire "has a life of its own".

Jerome Steffe, the mayor of Cestas, a town south of Bordeaux, told the BBC this "will be the fire of the century".

He described how 17,000 residents were evacuated from his town during the night when the fire swelled two days ago. So far, he said, the region has seen 42,000 hectares (103,000 acres) of land burned and 240 houses destroyed.

"In my city the situation is really catastrophic," he added.

And although the fire is no longer moving as quickly, he said his teams have "won only a small battle" and emphasised that the risk remains from flying embers or a sudden change in wind direction.

"We put all our energy into creating protective firebreaks," he explained, but admitted "we are all scared in front of this situation."

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu warned the country "is going through an unprecedented fire season", with 116,085 hectares (286,852 acres) burned and 13,566 fire starts recorded since January.

The minister revealed in a post on X that nine out of 10 fires "are human-caused and most arise from carelessness: a cigarette butt, a barbecue, work carried out without precaution".

But he also said that not all these fires are accidents and some are deliberately set, adding that since 6 July, 162 arrests have taken place.

Wildfires are also burning in several other French regions, including Var and Landes, and also in Haute-Corse on the island of Corsica.

Meanwhile, neighbouring Spain on Monday entered its fifth day of a national emergency because of raging wildfires west of the capital Madrid.

BBC Verify has been analysing satellite imagery showing the spread of the wildfire west of Madrid, which has now affected more than 27,000 hectares.

Satellite images, captured on 24 and 26 July, show how the fire spread over two days after several blazes in the Almorox, Villa del Prado and San Martín de Valdeiglesias areas merged into one large fire.

The images show the rapid expansion of the burn scar as the wildfire spread.

Local officials have warned that the region faces the "worst fires in its history".

This is causing increased summer heatwaves, greater pressure on Europe's water supply, and more intense wildfires.

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Wildfires 'stark reminder' of extreme climate challenge, says William

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg97dj5n16o, 6 days ago

Wildfires in the UK and Europe are a "stark reminder of the challenges posed by an increasingly extreme climate", the Prince of Wales has said.

More than 300,000 people have so far been evacuated from parts of France and Spain as wildfires continue to rage on the continent, with another intense heatwave on the way.

In Scotland a major incident was declared at the weekend as a result of a major wildfire in the Cairngorms, while a number of smaller fires have burned elsewhere in the UK.

Prince William wrote in a post on X: "Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the devastating wildfires across France, Spain and the UK.

"We are deeply grateful to the firefighters, emergency services and volunteers working tirelessly in extraordinarily difficult conditions.

"These events are a stark reminder of the challenges posed by an increasingly extreme climate and the importance of protecting both people and nature."

Climate change is driving up temperatures around the world - but particularly in Europe. It is the fastest warming continent, heating up twice as fast as the global average, according to the Copernicus climate service.

This is causing increased summer heatwaves, greater pressure on Europe's water supply, and more intense wildfires.

Wildfires are currently tearing through France and Spain.

France has seen its worst fires in two decades, while officials in the Spanish capital Madrid say they are the worst the region has ever experienced.

In the UK, an assessment by the Met Office showed that fires could be exceptionally severe by Wednesday if they were to start in parts of London, the south east or the east of England as a result of hot, dry conditions.

On the Isle of Wight, campfire remains where discovered at the site a fire which burned the equivalent size of almost 13 football pitches and lasted almost five days.

Two people had to be rescued after trying to film a wildfire in Wales with a drone. Emergency services have fought multiple wildfires across north Wales in recent days, including at the Rhinogydd mountains where the smoke was visible from space.

London Fire Brigade said it dealt with more than 1,300 incidents over the weekend - including grass fires, property fires and rescuing a person from the Thames.

It has urged people to avoid disposable barbecues, dispose of smoking materials and put litter in the bin or take it home to avoid starting wildfires.

Temperatures are expected to rise again later this week, with a fourth heatwave of the year looming for some areas. Amber heat health alerts have been issued for much of eastern England.

According to provisional Met Office data, the month of July has been 3C above average across the UK, which could see it end up as one of the hottest Julys on record.

The prince has followed in the footsteps of his father King Charles III in working to protect nature and the planet.

In 2020, William founded the Earthshot Prize - a 10-year scheme launched to find innovative ways of saving the planet, with £1m each in funding for five winners every year.

The nature reserve where 'magical' glow worms thrive

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c151gkzd008o, 7 days ago

It is a warm but windy evening in East Sussex and we are on the hunt for glow worms.

As the sun sets on the Benfield Hill Nature Reserve, just outside Hove, a distinct green glimmer starts to flicker in the chalk grasslands.

This site is hailed as a "stronghold" for glow worms in Sussex and with the insects' summer breeding season well under way, conservationists say they have spotted 60 glowing females on one evening at the reserve.

It is Brighton and Hove's oldest local nature reserve and a team of volunteers has been helping to manage the grasslands to promote glow worms.

The glow worm population is thought to be at risk nationally from loss of habitat, climate change and light pollution.

Sally Wadsworth, chair of Benfield Wildlife and Conservation Group, says some areas of grass are kept longer so that the females can crawl up the stalks for mating.

"We're trying different techniques and I think it is working because we've got such a good population here," she added.

On a windy summer's evening, she is out on the nature reserve trying to spot them.

"The females stick their bottoms in the air and switch on a green light, which is bioluminescence," she says.

"You can see little green stars all dotted around."

Every summer, female glow worms put on a remarkable display, emitting a bright green light to attract males.

It is a spectacle that has fascinated people for centuries and one that conservationists are working hard to protect.

"If there's a lot of light pollution around, the males can't see the females and come in and mate with them," Wadsworth says.

Protecting existing populations is particularly important because glow worms don't spread far.

While males can fly, females have no wings and rarely move far from where they hatch.

Wadsworth explains that if you lose glow worms in an area, they are lost forever unless you carry out a reintroduction program.

Earlier this year, volunteers and rangers from the South Downs National Park released 250 glow worm larvae at a site near Alton in Hampshire, in an attempt to reintroduce them to an area where they had disappeared.

The larvae were sourced from Devon and introduced with the help of specialist consultants.

"It's a bit of an experiment," says Jan Knowlson, biodiversity officer for the South Downs National Park.

"We don't know quite what's going to happen, but hopefully they'll survive and thrive and we'll have lots of little glow worms in the future."

Across Europe, five species of glow worm are threatened with extinction, while the common glow worm is classified as near threatened.

According to the Wildlife Trust, the UK has lost more than 80% of its chalk grasslands since World War Two - a habitat the glow worms enjoy.

Artificial light is also thought to have had an impact on glow worm populations.

The South Downs National Park is considered one of the best places in the region for glow worms because it contains some of the country's darkest skies.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the South Downs being designated an International Dark Sky Reserve and protecting those dark landscapes has become an increasingly important part of conservation efforts.

Knowlson says keeping that dark sky is vital for the glow worms' survival, saying that during the summer, adult females have "got one job to do".

"They don't eat, they just breed and then lay eggs and die. If there's light pollution that's going to really disrupt that final stage of their life cycle," she says.

The National Park Authority has also made increasing dark sky coverage a priority within its five-year Partnership Management Plan, with ambitions to expand the darkest core areas by 10% by 2031.

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Macron calls crisis meeting as wildfires threaten Bordeaux and heatwave looms

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2350zlyy1yo, 7 days ago

French President Emmanuel Macron will a hold a crisis cabinet meeting on Monday as wildfires close in on the south-western city of Bordeaux.

Another heatwave is set to complicate efforts to tackle the expanding blaze, which is about 15km (9 miles) from Bordeaux, mayor Thomas Cazenave said. Earlier he said there were no plans to evacuate the population of about 850,000.

Wildfires have raged across Europe over the past week, primarily in France and Spain, where more than 330,000 people have been evacuated across both countries.

Macron said on Saturday that France would "rebuild" and his government would "be there for as long as is needed".

Tens of thousands of people have already been evacuated from Bordeaux's surrounding region, with France's Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez saying the situation remained "very unfavourable" and the fire was "moving erratically" towards the city.

Weather forecasts for the country warned that temperatures could spike to 40C in some areas from Tuesday.

France's main fire in the Gironde region has caused an unprecedented "pyrocumulonimbus" - a giant fire thunderstorm fuelled by its own winds and lightning, said the National Firefighters Federation of France (FNSPF).

"We don't know how the blaze will spread, the fire front is constantly shifting. We cannot fight it directly," said spokesman Eric Brocardi.

"It's a David-versus-Goliath scenario."

He added that to control the blaze, it would need to rain "heavily for three days" or require firefighters steering it towards a place where it can die down on its own, like the sea.

The wildfires have badly affected France. About 42,000 hectares have been burnt in the south-west, in one of the largest forest fires since World War Two. Since the start of the year, about 98,000 hectares have been scorched.

More than 220,000 people have been evacuated in the south-west of the country.

Meanwhile, firefighters in Spain battled a new blaze on Sunday near the eastern coastal city of Valencia where around 15,000 people have been forced to flee their homes.

Pilar Bernabe, the central government's delegate to Valencia, said the fire had been "very intense" and weather conditions were expected to worsen.

Spain's Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, who is expected to visit affected areas in Valencia on Monday, said the fires were advancing slowly.

"Difficult hours lie ahead," said Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez during a visit to the fire zone in Ávila province, west of Madrid.

He also called for "a major public pact on the climate emergency".

Spain's King Felipe VI said the wildfires had caused "incalculable" damage to the country's natural heritage, as he toured an emergency shelter in Villamanta, south-west of the capital.

Around 77,000 hectares have been affected by the fires in Spain, minister for ecological transition, Sara Aagesen, said on Sunday.

She added that the wildfire burning in the Ávila region is the largest in the country's recent history.

Among the residents evacuating surrounding areas is Olga Congacha, 50, who had to hastily flee her village Robledo de Chavela, west of Madrid.

She said she felt "panicked" when she was told to leave her home.

"I didn't know whether to cry or what. It was a moment when you feel awful," she added.

Returning to her home briefly on Sunday to get medicine, she said the streets were deserted and her house had been covered in ash.

Authorities say winds were pushing the wildfires near Madrid to the south and away from the capital, but have forced the evacuation of more villages in its path.

More than 90,000 people have been evacuated from the regions around Madrid and Ávila.

Sewage, rat pee and toxic algae: Open water swimming is booming, but is it bad for your health?

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260722-how-safe-is-wild-swimming, 7 days ago

Swimming in rivers and lakes is booming, but heavy rain, sewage overflows and farm runoff can lead to disease outbreaks. Here's how to spot when the risks to health are highest.

On a heat‑bleached Saturday, a line of swimmers waits by a London slipway, dry robes flapping, phones glowing in their hands. A pollution app shows an amber warning for the tidal Thames River. Some people shrug and put their phones aside before wading into the water despite the waiting sewage, joking about getting "a bit of vitamin S".

Others, more cautious, pause. They sniff the river, think about the storm that hammered the city the night before, and decide to sit this one out.

Open‑water swimming, also known as wild swimming, have boomed in countries from the UK and the US to Australia in the past decade, fuelled by social media, urban "blue space" campaigns and a search for low‑cost ways to feel better in difficult times. Studies suggest that spending time in or near natural water is associated with better mental health and lower stress, even after accounting for exercise and income. (Read more about the surprising benefits of blue spaces.)

But with health authorities regularly issuing warnings about disease and pollution lurking in lakes and rivers, there are health risks associated with going for a dip too. So how safe is wild swimming really? And are there ways to judge for yourself whether it's a good idea to get in?

Sewage, rats and toxic algae

Almost two centuries ago, hot weather combined with a seriously polluted Thames to create a stench so nauseating it became known as the "Great Stink". The public outrage over the smell led to reforms including a new sewage system for London.

These days, the river is busy with the bright tow‑floats and bobble hats of swimmers. Similar scenes play out along revived rivers from the Seine to the Danube and the Hudson. In Basel, Switzerland, some companies even give new employees "wickelfisch" – a fish shaped swim bag that locals use while swimming in the Rhine.

Rivers, once treated as open sewers, are now increasingly seen as clean and swimmable. Paris has invested about €1.4bn (£1.2bn/$1.6bn) in cleaning up the Seine, building a vast underground basin at Austerlitz that can hold about 50,000 cubic metres – roughly the volume of 20 Olympic pools – of stormwater instead of dumping it straight into the river.

Meanwhile London's Tideway "super sewer", a 15-mile-long tunnel (25km) that traces the Thames, can store around 1.6 million cubic metres of combined sewage and rainwater before sending it for treatment. Governments are designating more official bathing waters each year.

Yet a summer storm can undo weeks of clear test results as water quality is often hit by weather events. In the US, stormwater runoff and sewage overflows are among the main sources of pollution leading to public warnings and beach closures along lakes or coastlines.

"After heavy rain and storm events, urban rivers typically become microbiologically unsafe for swimming for at least 24 to 72 hours, mainly due to sewage overflows, runoff and disturbed sediments," says Isabel Douterelo Soler, a senior lecturer in environmental microbiology at the University of Sheffield in the UK.

"When there is too much rain, these systems can become overloaded," she adds. When that happens, water companies release sewage-polluted water directly into rivers to prevent it backing up into homes or overwhelming treatment plants. Those overflow outlets into rivers are known as "combined sewer overflows".

Substantial outbreaks of infectious disease have been reported among wild swimmers, with risk linked to swallowing river water. Even when routine monitoring seems reassuring, river swims can trigger significant illness depending on the conditions on the day.

Studies on health and wild swimming show a consistent pattern: the more contact people have with the water (especially if they swallow it), the higher the risk of gastrointestinal illness.

The clearest increases are seen in sports such as surfing, coasteering and extreme kayaking. Children tend to be at higher risk than adults, partly because they swallow more water when they swim.

Most of these illnesses are short‑lived bouts of diarrhoea or stomach cramps. Occasionally, the pathogens are more serious.

Leptospirosis, a bacterial disease carried in the urine of rodents and livestock, can cause organ failure and death. It remains uncommon in temperate countries, but there have been outbreaks among triathletes in the UK, for example, who swim in open water as part of their competitions.

Public health agencies advise avoiding floodwater and rodent-infested areas. You should try to swallowing as little water as possible, shower after swimming, cover cuts and scratches before swimming and seek medical advice if you develop symptoms such as fevers, chills and headaches after a river swim.

Slow-moving or warm stretches of river can also support blooms of cyanobacteria, sometimes called blue‑green algae. These can release toxins that irritate skin and eyes and, more rarely, affect the liver or nervous system of people.

Antimicrobial resistance adds another risk to wild swimming and other wild water sports. For example, research suggests that regular surfers are much more likely to carry antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria in their gut than non‑surfers. (Read more on the antimicrobial resistance crisis in rivers and seas.) These superbugs are present not just in seas but in rivers too.

"Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are present in river environments, which could have come from pollution sources like wastewater treatment plants," says Isobel Stanton, an environmental microbiologist from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

This antibiotic resistance makes any infections harder to treat, adds Douterelo Soler.

Tests don't tell the whole story

Many swimmers assume that official tests will capture most of these risks. The reality is more complicated, especially for rivers.

Under European Bathing Water rules, designated sites are monitored for two main faecal indicator bacteria: E. coli and intestinal Enterococci. In England, the Environment Agency typically takes around 20 samples each season at each site. Classifications such as "excellent", "good", "sufficient" or "poor" are based on the previous four years of data rather than a single result.

In the US, the picture is similar but varies by state. Federal guidance focuses on the same kind of faecal indicator bacteria – E. coli (mainly in freshwater) and Enterococci (especially in marine waters) – rather than testing routinely for every pathogen.

Many coastal and Great Lakes beaches in the US are monitored, with sampling frequency varying by location (often weekly, sometimes more often). However, it usually takes about 24 to 48 hours to produce results – so public warnings can arrive after people have already swum. Faster same‑day DNA‑based detection methods exist but are not universally deployed.

Essentially, the current approach to monitoring is designed to track longer‑term trends, and tends to work best at more stable coastal sites. It's less useful for on-the-spot decisions, such as deciding whether a river is safe the morning after heavy rain – because short pollution events can be missed by routine sampling.

Because pollution is so influenced by changing weather conditions, even an official, designated bathing site may at times actually not be safe to swim in. Heavy rain often stirs up sewage and farm run-off and can overwhelm sewage system, leading to spikes in pollution.

Generally, inland sites such as rivers, ponds and lakes lag behind coastal places in terms of water quality, because inland rivers and lakes are more exposed to sewage from the land, and the pollution doesn't dilute as much as it would in the sea.

More like this:

• How hygienic are public swimming pools really?

• Record-breaking divers are pushing human limits

• How the colour of your swimsuit can save your life

In farming areas, heavy rain washes livestock manure and soil from fields into rivers, creating short‑lived spikes in faecal indicator organisms and adding nutrients that fuel algal and cyanobacterial blooms.

In short, alerts help, but they don't replace making a personal judgement by observing the river and the weather and thinking about who is swimming. Avoiding wild swimming in the days after a storm or heavy rain may be a safer choice. Checking the water for blooms, cloudiness, brown flow, sewage or chemical odour, surface scum, pea‑soup green water or foam in slow eddies, or any sign of dead fish can provide other clues that you should skip a dip.

Areas away from outflows, marinas and livestock fields, with an easy way in and out, are likely to be cleaner and safer than those close to sources of pollution. Extra caution is required – and in some cases, avoiding the wild swim altogether – if you have a weak immune system, are ill, have open wounds, or plan to swim with children. In addition to pollution, cold and currents can pose risks, as can swimming alone with no one around to help in an emergency.

The point is not that rivers are off-limits, but that the pleasures of wild swimming are best preserved when enthusiasm is matched by caution, timing and local knowledge.

For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

Trump administration drops Reflecting Pool vandalism charge and admits 'botched' repairs

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz05yx5dd7yo, yesterday

US prosecutors have dropped charges against a former Olympian who had been accused of vandalising the Reflecting Pool in Washington DC, saying the damage is now believed to be "the result of flawed installation by the contractor".

A court document filed on Friday said new information "strongly suggests that a rushed and botched installation" job overseen by the US Department of the Interior led to the damage.

On Saturday, President Donald Trump conceded "there may have been some contractor difficultly" but reiterated his claim that the "major damage" was caused by vandals.

David Hearn, a champion canoeist, had been facing a 10-year prison sentence if found guilty after his arrest last month.

In a statement, Hearn's lawyers accused the Trump administration of abuse of power, and said it "owes Mr Hearn an apology".

Hearn previously told the BBC that he "didn't destroy, rip, tear, peel, or remove any part" of the paint in the pool. Asked by the BBC on Friday if he is planning legal action over the government missteps that led to the charges and false public accusations, he declined to comment.

The document filed by US Attorney for Washington DC Jeanine Pirro blames contractors for rushing the paint installation process as part of Trump's efforts to beautify the city ahead of the country's 250th independence anniversary on 4 July.

Hearn was arrested after he said he reached down to touch the pool after a bike ride in the area.

He was not the only one. At least three others were charged with vandalism, court records show. Five more received citations from police, an administration official told CBS News, the BBC's US partner. They include one person who Trump claimed had used a blade to "put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade". It's unclear if all of the charges now have been dropped.

In the court filing on Friday, the Trump administration said new information from the Department of Interior (DOI) indicated "that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor" and "the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026".

"It was not until after these documents were produced that [prosecutors] first became aware of information showing that the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism as initially represented by DOI."

The BBC has contacted the contractor for comment.

Hearn's lawyers said in a statement to BBC News, that the case "should have never been brought".

"Its dismissal today does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American who did nothing wrong. The government's approach was ready, fire, aim."

The Reflecting Pool underwent a multi-million dollar resealing and painting project this spring.

The monument had long been beset by structural failures and leaks, and Trump championed the project as part of his bid to beautify the capital city.

But, despite the makeover, which cost an estimated $16m (£12m), the pool had continued to be plagued by algae, and pieces of the blue sealant peeled off within days after its application.

The project, whose original budget was less than $2m, was awarded to a contractor chosen by Trump himself, CBS reported, and was not open to bidding from other companies as is typical for government work.

The admission on Friday represents a stunning about-face by Trump and his administration.

The US president at one point claimed the pool had been targeted by "sick, deranged" vandals, and was "given a 300 foot long gash" by a blade. Pirro accused Hearn of "a deliberate act to damage the Reflecting Pool."

Pirro submitted the court filing on Friday dropping the vandalism claim and blaming the contractor for the botched job and Department of Interior officials for failing to provide prosecutors with complete information about what caused the problems with the pool.

"DOI provided less than fulsome information at the outset of this case," the document said. "Had DOI been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment."

On Saturday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he disagreed "100%" with Pirro's decision to drop the charges, restating his claims about vandalism but admitting that other factors were in play.

"There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!" the president wrote.

Crews have now drained the Reflecting Pool for the second time in three months. It remains empty.

Trump now 'not sure' about letting Ukraine build Patriot missiles

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c86n0336082o, yesterday

President Donald Trump says the US has "not agreed" to allow Ukraine to produce Patriot interceptor missiles - three weeks after offering the country the right to make the weapons.

"We have not agreed to that. We're talking about it. But it's a hard thing to give away, that kind of technology," Trump said at a cabinet meeting on Friday.

"These weapons are incredible. We have to be very careful about letting somebody build them."

Kyiv has long sought the missiles, regarded as one of the world's best air defence systems, which it wants to use to defend its cities from Russian drone and ballistic missile attacks.

"I don't think this would ever happen, but, you know, those people that you give that technology, they can someday turn on you," Trump said.

He also told the Financial Times newspaper that he was "not sure" about letting Ukraine build Patriot missiles, and that "we're looking into it".

Trump is quoted by the newspaper on Friday as saying: "It's a very extraordinary weapon, and. . . we have to be a little bit careful of who we licence to. We don't really licence equipment".

He also said his envoys Jared Kushner, who is also his son-in-law, and Steve Witkoff, a former real estate magnate, would visit Ukraine in the coming days.

"Very simply put, we want the war in Ukraine with Russia ended," he told the newspaper.

Trump's latest comments regarding Patriot missiles come weeks after he offered to give Ukraine the right to produce them.

"We are gonna give you a licence to make Patriots," Trump told Zelensky at a Nato summit in Ankara. "I think they can produce them very quickly once we explain it."

Earlier this week, he hosted Zelensky at the White House, where they again discussed Kyiv's hope that the US would help bolster its air defences.

There was no official US confirmation of military assistance to Ukraine, but Zelensky said afterwards that Trump had agreed to give Ukraine licences for domestic production of Patriot missiles.

"He accepted that he will give us licences," he told Fox News.

On that same visit, Zelensky also met with leaders from the US weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin, which produces Patriots.

Zelensky said in a post on X on Friday that he had had a "good" phone call with Vice President JD Vance, in which they followed up on the Ukrainian leader's meeting with Trump earlier this week.

"As Russia's air attacks on our country continue unabated, air defence – specifically Patriot interceptors against ballistic missiles – remains a top priority," Zelensky wrote.

The two agreed to "stay in touch and work through everything discussed today," he added.

Ukraine's air force said recently that a shortage of interceptor missiles was hampering its attempts to shoot down ballistic missiles fired by Russia.

The Patriot is one of the few air defence systems able to intercept ballistic missiles.

It can catch rockets with flight ranges of up to 1,000km (620 miles). One battery can simultaneously track up to eight targets and detect more than 100.

Each missile for the Patriot is estimated to cost from $3m (£2.2m) to $5m.

Zelensky and the Ukrainian army have previously said Ukraine needs 25 Patriot interceptor systems.

Earlier this week, Zelensky condemned as a "horrific crime" a Russian missile attack that killed five members of the same family.

He shared a picture of the Voronov family on social media, writing that parents Artem and Olena and three of their children - Mark, Azariah Ilay, and Emilia - had all been killed after a missile decimated their home.

That was part of an overnight attack in which Russia launched more than 70 missiles and over 280 drones.

Race to rescue remaining climbers after deadly avalanche in Pakistan

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cddjz1r01l8o, yesterday

Rescue teams in Pakistan are carrying out a second day of search for climbers caught in an avalanche on the world's 12th-highest summit.

Among the seven still missing from the 10-person expedition on Broad Peak, on the border with China, is renowned Nepal-born climber Nirmal Purja.

The operation has expanded with local Pakistani climbers volunteering, together with others from Nepal who have halted their expeditions on nearby K2.

Bad weather has been hampering the search. Pakistani officials say the bodies of three climbers have been recovered.

They have been named as American Mallory Geis, Nadhira Ahmed Abdullah Al Harthy from Oman and Pur Bahadur Gurung from Nepal.

On Friday, the Alpine Club of Pakistan said several climbers had been spotted by drones but their condition was unknown.

The club's secretary general, Ayaz Shigri, told the BBC rescuers were concerned about the risk of further avalanches.

Military helicopters are on standby to fly to assist, weather permitting.

The search and rescue operation for the team began after reports of an avalanche on Thursday on the 8,047-metre (26,400ft) peak in the Karakoram range.

The multinational climbing group was being led by Purja. He is known for climbing all 14 of the world's 8,000m-plus mountains in just over six months in 2019.

Purja joined the British Army in 2003 and the Special Boat Service - the special forces unit of the Royal Navy - in 2009.

In 2012, he reached the summit of the 6,119m Lobuche East mountain in Nepal - his first peak.

In June, Mallory Geis posted on social media that she was ready for "her first big kid climbing expedition in Pakistan".

Pur Bahadur Gurung - also known as Yukta - was certified by the International Federation of Mountain Guides Associations and close to completing the 14-peaks challenge.

Also among the group is Kili Pemba Sherpa Kili, who has so far scaled Everest 15 times. In 2021, he was a member of a historic K2 winter expedition, along with several Nepali climbers including Purja.

Broad Peak is regarded as one of the more challenging mountains for climbers. The first successful ascent was in 1957, when an Austrian expedition reached the summit.

Since then, many more have climbed the mountain, but dozens have lost their lives.

One of Broad Peak's deadliest years was 2013, when at least six fatalities were recorded.

Correction 31/7/26: A previous version of this story stated that four members of the expedition had been found dead, citing the Alpine Club of Pakistan. This was a miscommunication on its part and has since been amended.

Minnesota not Iran to blame for state's water issues, says Trump

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgwe2qpgq1o, yesterday

US President Donald Trump says Minnesota and its governor are to blame for recent cyber-attacks on water systems in the state after US investigators suggested Iran may have carried them out.

"They blamed it on Iran. I don't think so. I think I blame it on Minnesota because they're grossly incompetent," Trump said without evidence during a cabinet meeting on Friday, calling the state's Democratic Governor Tim Walz "corrupt".

Walz responded by saying: "Trump knows exactly who is responsible for this attack, and knows that other states were hit too."

Their remarks come after Minnesota’s state IT agency said dozens of community water systems faced a “coordinated cyber-attack” earlier this week.

The incidents happened on 26 and 27 July, when equipment was remotely monitored and controlled, according to the agency.

US investigators have since been looking into whether the incidents may have been carried out by Iran, according to media reports.

The investigators cautioned that their assessment was preliminary and could change as more data was collected, but comes amid the US-Israel war in Iran and on-and-off negotiations to halt the constant stream of strikes in the region.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) later warned of a significant increase in hackers targeting water and wastewater systems.

The BBC contacted the CISA, which would not confirm the reports about Iran's possible connection to the Minnesota attacks.

They said hackers have been targeting automated computers that control systems, known as PLCs, and changing passwords to lock out operators. Boil water notices been issued and systems have had to be operated manually as a result.

"They like to say, 'Oh, is Iran.' Iran should be so lucky. Iran's got bigger problems than worrying about Minnesota," Trump also said on Friday in an apparent reference to the ongoing conflict between Tehran and the US.

Walz, meanwhile, said the cyber-attacks are an example of "what modern warfare looks like, and it further illustrates there's no plan to win a war with Iran".

He accused the now defunct Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), the government body formerly tasked with reducing US government spending and cutting jobs, of gutting the CISA - leaving the US exposed to cyber-attacks as a result.

"Thankfully, our experts in Minnesota were able to identify the vulnerability quickly and work with local communities to stop it," Walz added.

The FBI and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have also issued a joint public service announcement to warn that water and wastewater companies in at least seven states had reported similar incidents, with some of these leading to "degraded water options".

"After remotely accessing internet-facing devices, the actors changed the IP addresses and passwords, resulting in a loss of monitoring and control functionality," they stated.

The US has 152,000 public drinking water systems and more than 16,000 wastewater treatment systems. According to the CISA, these systems are vulnerable to threats.

Regarding the Minnesota incidents, the state's IT agency said in a statement that while investigators confirmed there had been "malicious activity involving a system's technology", not all communities there were impacted by a disruption of services.

"We have provided relevant information to the federal government, which is evaluating this activity in the broader national context and leading efforts to determine whether it can be attributed to a specific threat actor," John Israel, Minnesota's chief information security officer, said in a statement.

US federal agencies have previously issued advisories warning about the threat of cyber-attacks on water and wastewater systems from foreign groups, including groups from Iran.

In April, CISA issued guidance warning that Iranian-affiliated hackers were attacking internet-connected operational devices, including PLCs, made by Rockwell Automation.

Earlier this month, it updated its advisory to include devices manufactured by other companies.

Four women accuse Jared Leto of criminal sexual conduct

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd7lg2nz2x2o, 4 days ago

Warning: Contains graphic details of alleged sexual offences and misconduct, as well as strong language

Four women have accused Oscar-winning actor and Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman Jared Leto of criminal sexual conduct, with the alleged offences having taken place when they were teenagers.

One of the women says she was sexually assaulted in a motel bathroom when she was 17. Another says the Hollywood star threatened her with sexual assault when she was 19, and had been unexpectedly left alone with him in a hotel room.

A third describes how she had under-age sex with the star in California when she was 17 - which would be classified as statutory rape. Leto "shrugged off" a conversation about the age of consent being 18 in the US state, she says.

The fourth woman describes being groomed by Leto, saying he abused his celebrity status by making repeated sexually explicit phone calls to her when she was 16. On at least one occasion, she says he suggested they should have sex.

She was subsequently sent a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to prevent her from talking about her relationship with Leto, which the BBC has seen. However, she refused to sign.

Four further women also say they received strange and often very sexual phone calls from Leto when they were younger.

Another woman says, when she was 14, he instructed a security guard to take her backstage at a music festival after having made a lewd comment about her chest during an autograph-signing. The girl's mother confronted Leto, but he repeated the comment, it is alleged.

In total, 10 women have spoken to the BBC documentary - Jared Leto: Hollywood's Dark Secret - with nine of them sharing their stories publicly for the first time.

All the women say they encountered Leto between 2002 and 2016, when he was in his 30s and 40s. He is now 54.

"This was 25 years ago… he has gotten away with it," says one of his alleged victims.

The BBC has corroborated a number of the women's accounts with friends and family who were told about the encounters with Leto at the time. In some cases, we have also seen pictures and messages that support the women's accounts.

Two men who worked with Leto's band for many years also told the documentary how uncomfortable staff felt about the way Leto would interact with teenage girls, sometimes inviting them backstage to his dressing room or inviting them to the house where he was recording.

"I think everyone thought the age gap was way too big," one says.

Despite repeated attempts to contact Jared Leto before publication, he did not respond to the allegations put to him by the BBC.

After this story was published, Leto said in a statement released by his representatives to the BBC: "I have never sexually assaulted anyone in my entire life. These claims are absolutely and categorically false".

Leto has been a prominent actor since the 1990s and won the 2014 Academy Award for best supporting actor for Dallas Buyers Club. He has appeared in hit films such as Fight Club, Blade Runner 2049, Suicide Squad and, most recently, featured in Masters of the Universe.

His award-winning rock band, Thirty Seconds to Mars, was formed in 1998 and is touring mainland Europe and the UK next spring, with concerts at the O2 London and Manchester's Co-op Live arena.

Allegations against Leto have lingered for decades. The BBC has counted more than 120 separate allegations made online relating to his behaviour towards women, some of them historical.

Last year, allegations flared up again when a Los Angeles DJ named Allie Teilz posted on social media saying she had been assaulted by the actor when she was 17, prompting several other women to come forward with similar claims.

Nine women last year also accused Leto of sexual impropriety in an article by US media outlet Air Mail. He denied all the allegations.

'Dingy gross motel'

In the BBC documentary, the four women who allege criminal behaviour - Isabel, Alex, Clara and Etta - describe in detail what they say happened to them in their encounters with the star.

Now in her 40s, Isabel (not her real name) says she only recently stopped blaming herself for the sexual assault that she says took place in 2002, when she was 17.

"Most of my life I had viewed this event as, I was a stupid girl… and so this bad thing happened."

Isabel says she agreed to meet Leto at his hotel after she had shown the actor and his friends around the Las Vegas store where she was working.

The address she was given turned out to be a "dingy gross motel", but she says she presumed they would be heading out somewhere else.

Isabel says she was sitting on the bed waiting for Leto to get ready, when he called her into the bathroom so the pair could talk while he showered.

"I don't think there was many words exchanged and he opened the shower curtain and started kissing me," she tells the documentary.

He then grabbed her hand and used it to masturbate himself, she says.

Taken by surprise, the then-teenager says she pulled away and told him she wanted to leave.

Putting on a towel, Leto went outside and appeared to check who was around, she says, before letting her out of the room.

It was only later, she says, when she looked up the actor online, that she realised he was in his 30s.

'Age is just a number'

In the 2010s, Thirty Seconds to Mars was headlining in major international arenas, and crew working with the band would call local modelling agencies to offer female models free VIP tickets, according to one ex-crew member we are calling Brad.

"That [request] was direct from Jared," he says.

There would be a backstage room for the models, he confirms, describing the task of requesting only females as "a little bit uncomfortable".

Ex-model Alex says her agency was invited to the band's concert at London's O2 arena in 2013. Leto's female assistant then invited her to an after-party at Shoreditch House in east London, she says.

Alex was 19 at the time, but says to protect herself she "felt the need" to pretend to be younger when she met Leto.

She says she told him she was 17, and that Leto, then 41, replied: "Age is just a number, and anyway, we're in Europe."

Although her phone battery was dying and she felt drunk, Alex says, one of Leto's assistants encouraged her to go to another party at a nearby hotel later.

"I get into the hotel room, it's really dark, and then I see that it's just him," she tells the documentary. "Weren't there supposed to be other people?"

She says she then asked whether he had a phone charger or any cash, so she could get home, but that Leto said no to both.

Out of options, Alex says she considered whether she might be able to sleep on the chaise longue in the room.

But when she asked Leto if she could do that, Alex says the star responded by saying that, if she did, she would wake up "with a dick in her ass".

He repeated this response several times, she says - and it was then that she realised "I'm not safe" and left the room.

Alex says she later texted a friend to tell her what had happened.

"He was threatening sexual assault, you should report him," her friend replied.

For a long time, Alex says she tried to dismiss what happened, but she now believes the hotel encounter had been "all planned out".

"The assistant knew what to say, to lure me into his hotel room," she tells the BBC.

Brad, the former crew member, describes young girls joining Leto on stage for final songs at gigs, and then crew members being instructed to invite them backstage.

"And he [Leto] would talk to them in his dressing room. I couldn't tell you what happened from there," Brad tells the BBC.

Another man who worked with the band, whom we are calling Simon, says at one point there would typically be about two girls a day stopping by to see Leto at a house where the band was working.

'Naive and vulnerable'

A woman we are calling Clara alleges that she first had sex with Leto when she was 17 - and he was aged 34 - at his house in California.

"He told me, 'I would like you to call me daddy'. And it was either pretend to be a little girl or 'my little girl'," she tells the BBC.

Clara says she was "so naive and vulnerable" at that age and had no sense of how "normal" this kind of behaviour was in an adult relationship.

"It was only as time went on that I realised more and more how scary that really was," she says.

An associate of Leto's in his 40s had approached her on the musician's behalf and got her phone number, she says, while backstage at a Thirty Seconds to Mars gig in 2006.

Clara says she remembers having a conversation about the age of consent in California with Leto, because her father worked in law enforcement at the time.

"He [Leto] just kind of shrugged it off, like it wasn't a huge concern for him," she says.

They went back to Leto's house, she says, and had sex while her friend waited in another room. It was the first of three or four visits to Leto's home, according to Clara.

If an adult has sex with someone below the age of consent in California it can constitute the criminal offence of statutory rape and lead to prison time.

"There is no well-adjusted man in his 30s who's going to look at a teenager and think… she would be a great partner," says Clara.

'There was nothing I could do'

Another woman tells the BBC her encounter with the star at a music festival, when she was 14, stopped her from going to concerts altogether.

Taylor says she met Leto with her mother in 2005, after watching Thirty Seconds to Mars perform.

The band had offered to meet fans and sign autographs, and the teenager held out the T-shirt she was wearing for Leto to sign - maybe on an arm or across her stomach, she explains.

"Instead he chose to sign my shirt across my breasts, and he told me 'you have a nice rack'," Taylor tells the documentary.

"He was asking his bodyguard to go ahead and take me backstage, he didn't even ask me if I wanted to go," she continues.

It would have been "very obvious" she was a teenager, she says, explaining that she was very short and wore braces on her teeth at the time.

Taylor says her mother witnessed what happened and confronted Leto.

"He looked at her and said 'it's still a nice rack'. He just did not care," Taylor says.

The encounter "really altered my life… there was nothing I could do about what happened to me."

Sexual phone calls with teenagers

Etta - not her real name - is one of the five women who tell the BBC they received strange and often very sexual phone calls from Leto. Four of them were teenagers at the time.

Sixteen-year-old Etta met Leto when she walked into a modelling agency in Los Angeles with her mother in 2014, she says.

The star took an interest in the teenager's ambition to be a model, according to Etta, and asked for her email address, to invite them both to his Oscar party.

"He did email me and then very quickly it turns into this sexual thing on the phone," she tells the documentary.

Leto knew she was 16 and asked her questions such as: "Are you a virgin? Do you have any kinks?" - and other more explicit questions, she recalls. "He did at least once mention him and I having sex at some point."

Etta remembers feeling "nervous", "anxious" and "uncomfortable", but says she had a hard time putting up boundaries at that age and saying no.

* Information and support is available at BBC Action Line if you have been affected by issues of sexual abuse or violence

She says Leto asked if he could pass her number to a friend of his, making it sound like the friend could be a good contact for her career - and she agreed.

Then that friend, who she knew as "Christian", would call a lot and ask her to shoot porn, saying it did not matter if she was under age, says Etta.

Both "Christian" and Leto would ask similar, explicit questions, she says - adding she "would not be surprised" if they were the same person.

Two more of the five women who allege they received similar phone calls from Leto say they were also called by other men around the same time. Like Etta, they also believe the men could have been Leto playing characters.

Etta says she got a call from Leto in 2016 who told her his lawyer wanted to send her a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). The lawyer had been concerned about his relationships with women, he said.

Etta says Leto "chuckled" at that, as if it were funny.

She did not sign the NDA, which the BBC has seen - alongside corresponding texts and email exchanges.

Update: This story has been updated to include a statement issued by Jared Leto to US media after the BBC investigation was published.

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What to know about 'explosive diarrhoea' parasite outbreak in US

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c621m66qm76o, 4 days ago

More than 18,000 people in the US may have been infected with a diarrhoea-causing parasite, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said in its latest update.

Cyclosporiasis is an infection caused by a microscopic parasite, with the main symptom being frequent, watery and explosive diarrhoea. People can become infected by consuming food or water that contains the parasite.

The outbreak has now spread to 45 states. Michigan is hardest hit, reporting more than 10,000 cases so far, according to the state's health department.

No deaths from the recent infections have been reported in the US. While the source has not yet been identified, past outbreaks have been linked to raw produce.

Where have cases been reported?

The CDC said on Wednesday that 6,707 people nationwide were confirmed to have cyclosporiasis. Another 11,500 cases were under investigation.

No deaths have been reported, but 423 patients have been admitted to hospital, the agency added.

According to the CDC, Michigan and Ohio are the states that have reported the most new cases.

Each state also reports its own figures on the number of cases, which may differ from the CDC's tallies.

* Michigan - 10,077 reported cases across the state as of 29 July, according to the state's health department

* Ohio - 2,576 cases have been reported as of 23 July, according to local media citing the state's health department.

* New York - 787 cases reported, with more than half coming from New York City alone, according to the state and city

* North Carolina - 718 people have been sickened since 1 May, with 24 cases requiring hospital admissions, according to the state

* Illinois - 707 total confirmed and probable cases as of 28 July, including 47 hospitalisations, according to the state

Other states with a large number of cases include Indiana, Illinois and North Carolina, according to the CDC.

The number of people sick with cyclosporiasis is likely higher than the number reported because some people recover without medical care and are not tested for the illness.

The CDC said it anticipates the case counts will continue to rise as new data comes in.

What is cyclospora?

Cyclosporiasis is an intestinal illness caused by a microscopic parasite, according to the CDC.

People can become infected by consuming food or water that contains the parasite.

The illness is not usually life-threatening, according to the CDC, and is less common than other foodborne illnesses such as salmonella and E. coli.

People who are infected with cyclospora may or may not experience symptoms. The illness usually causes diarrhoea "with frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements", says the public health agency.

If untreated, the illness may last from a few days to over a month, and symptoms may return after appearing to dissipate.

It usually takes about one week after infection to become sick.

Person-to-person transmission does not occur, according to Dr Caitlin Rivers, of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

The epidemiologist wrote in an 8 July newsletter that transmission was exclusively faecal-oral via ingestion of contaminated food or water.

What's causing the outbreak?

Those who were infected "became sick after eating food in the United States", the CDC said, and did not report any travel during the 14 days before they got sick.

No specific type of produce or any grower or supplier has been identified as the source.

"Contamination typically occurs at the farm or irrigation level, making traceback investigations difficult," Rivers wrote.

Previous cyclospora outbreaks in the US and Canada have been linked to bagged salad mixes and kits, fresh cilantro, fresh basil, raspberries, snow peas and green onions.

How to stay safe

Given the large and increasing number of cases, Michigan's health department has recommended that restaurants and kitchens preparing or serving raw produce reduce risk by thoroughly washing greens, cooking raspberries and leafy greens when possible, and removing outer layers of lettuce and green onions.

Amid speculation over the source of cases across the nation, the fast-food chain Taco Bell released a statement saying it was "voluntarily and temporarily removing limited ingredients at select restaurants as a precautionary measure".

While public health officials have not confirmed a link to any specific ingredient, supplier, restaurant, or retailer, Taco Bell says it intends to closely monitor the situation and follow the guidance of the authorities.

While the US Food and Drug Administration says rinsing produce is unlikely to be effective, the CDC still recommends it.

People who are experiencing diarrhoea are urged to contact a health provider and ask about possible infection, officials said.

'Don't wait until you want revenge' - why prenups are on the rise

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgmkgvy3lv4o, 5 days ago

Celine Tsoi and Charles Mock met two years ago in Goleta, California when she was just 23 and he was 27. Eight months later they were engaged.

Friends immediately asked: "Oh, are you getting a prenup?"

"A lot of things could happen in a marriage and you want to discuss them when you still love each other rather than when things go bad and you want to take revenge," says Celine.

These days it's not just the rich and famous; more of us are deciding it makes sense to have a legal agreement that sets out what happens to the money if the marriage ends, with younger couples particularly likely to sign one, even when there aren't great wealth differences to consider.

Charles, a nurse, earns more than Celine does as a PhD student, but she had a bit more saved, so the disparities weren't big, but they wanted to face up to important financial questions from the start.

She was particularly touched that Charles wanted the prenup to say if they split up, she should have the house.

Just having the conversation "can show you what the person you're going to marry is like", she says.

In the US, where divorce courts have always tended to uphold them, more than half of engaged or married Americans under 45 now report they have a prenup, according to a recent Harris Poll for Bloomberg News. Overall in the US around one in five married couples has a prenup.

In the UK research suggests around one in ten couples now has a prenup, following a legal shift in England towards greater recognition.

Here too it is younger couples leading the way, with around one in three married under-35-year-olds having signed one, according to surveys.

'It's fair'

London lawyer Mark Gilmartin at JMW Solicitors says in the past 18 months he has seen a big increase in demand for prenups, with the billionaire-and-barmaid stereotype fast giving way to demand from "start-up professionals" including entrepreneurs and influencers.

"It's the attempts to protect the fruits of what's going to be, rather than what is," he says.

But beyond the would-be TikTok stars, he sees a significant trend towards "every-day you and I" couples wanting them, often in order to protect inherited wealth.

Among them is Becca Gibson from West Sussex. In a few days time when she walks down the aisle to marry Dave Howells, they'll be focused on their future not whether the marriage might fail. But they do have a plan just in case.

From his job in finance, Dave earns more than three times what Becca earns from her business offering eyelash extensions.

"I was very open to the idea [of a prenup]," says 33-year-old Becca, especially after her first marriage "didn't end very well".

She knows a court-determined settlement might produce a better outcome for her, as she has three children from her first marriage, and Dave has only one from his.

"It's not an advantage for me... but it's a fair situation," she says.

Becca expects to inherit a significant amount of property from her parents, which she wants to protect, so in the event of a split, each will walk away with what they started with.

"It's nice knowing that if anything were to happen, I would just go back to how life was before," she says.

Dave, 45, admits it's unromantic but says, given the statistics around divorce, he wants to be pragmatic.

"A court of law could potentially say, hang on, this guy's earning a lot more than her, he needs to pay her.

"I built a home for myself. I've built a future for myself, including pensions.

"Park the emotional side of me loving both her and the kids, I'm no different now to when I met her, and yet she was independent. Why on earth would I have to pay something towards her life in the event of us splitting up?"

The 'great wealth transfer'

Lawyers say a desire to avoid repeating the pain of a previous separation, or the messy splits that they saw their parents go through, is a prime motivation for many couples.

But prenups have also become much more accessible with the rise of online platforms that make it faster and cheaper.

Dave started down the traditional route using a local law firm, expecting to pay around £5,000. But later switched to Wenup, a semi-automated service which charged him a fixed fee of £1,600 instead.

Couples are also getting married later, points out Julia Rodgers, cofounder of US prenup platform HelloPrenup.

"You may have some [university] debt, maybe started a business or purchased a home. So you have a lot to protect and to lose by the age of 34," she says.

What's become known as "the Great Wealth Transfer" means some members of the younger generation are receiving huge assets to manage. It is often their parents who are the driving force behind ring-fencing those inheritances.

And while in the past prenups have been criticised for limiting women's rights, Rodgers argues they have evolved and now benefit women like her by giving them the chance to clarify their rights from the start.

"We want to make sure we have the honest, open, transparent conversations about life goals, about finances, about roles and responsibilities in the home, so that we can have a long, happy marriage and not end up in that position that we saw our parents in," she says.

Celine says most of her friends think prenups are a good idea.

It only cost her a few hundred dollars online, but even if she had had to pay lawyers it would have been a worthwhile "investment" in the marriage she says, and less expensive, but probably more important than the wedding itself.

Best of all she and Charles have got the "hard conversations" out of the way.

"We haven't had a single argument about finances," she says.

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As the US pauses the war with Iran, is Trump really running out of weapons?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0qvnk2ezp7o, 6 days ago

When US President Donald Trump took the stage earlier this month at the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit, flanked by the CEOs of some of America's largest defence firms, he had one message in mind: build more weapons, and build them faster.

"We have the best quality in the world," Trump told the armsmakers gathered at the US Army War College, with 'Secretary of War' Pete Hegseth at his side. "But we need a little more speed."

The Trump administration framed the summit as part of a two-pronged approach to revitalise American industry and bolster US warfighting capabilities and, in Hegseth's words, its "arsenal of freedom".

Largely unspoken, however, was the vast expenditure of sophisticated and difficult-to-manufacture weapons used during nearly 40 days of intense combat operations in Iran during Operation Epic Fury earlier this year and tit-for-tat strikes that have taken place since. So far, the US government says the war has cost $37.5bn (£28bn), and the vast majority of that has been spent on munitions.

By the time a tenuous ceasefire took effect on 8 April, US forces had struck over 13,000 targets across Iran, according to the White House. American air defences intercepted over 1,700 Iranian drones and ballistic missiles over the same period.

Now, the US has paused its strikes on Iran to allow negotiations to go ahead. A New York Times report says that Trump was advised to shelve plans to escalate the conflict as it would further drain American stockpiles.

On Monday, Trump denied there was a shortfall, telling the Wall Street Journal: "We have far more munitions than anyone in the world, and far more than we need."

This has been a touchy subject for some time within the US administration. Last month, when pressed on the subject, Hegseth denied that supplies were thinning out.

His position seems to have changed since. Last week, he told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the Pentagon needed another $87bn (£68bn) to address "critical shortfalls", including equipment.

Exact ammunition expenditures and remaining stockpiles remain classified. But publicly available data compiled by the Washington DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) paints a stark picture of depleted stockpiles that, in the short-term, are difficult to replace.

"It depends on the munition - but one to five years [to make a single missile] is the bottom line," says Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and senior adviser at CSIS who has been researching the issue. "And there's nothing you can do to speed that up."

But is the US really eating through ammunition so fast that it may struggle to fulfil its military duties and objectives?

A depleted US arsenal

The critical munitions used in the war span two categories: long-range ground attack systems, and the air and missile defences used to intercept incoming Iranian attacks.

Among the ground attack systems that saw the greatest use was the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile - or TLAM - that is typically fired from ships or submarines at targets that could be well over 1,000 miles (1,600km) away. These weapons allow the US to conduct precision strikes against hardened military targets, such as command bunkers or fortified military facilities, without putting manned aircraft in harm's way.

More than 1,000 Tomahawks have been fired during the war, the CSIS estimates, and the stockpile may not return to pre-war levels until 2031. According to the CSIS, the latest variants of the TLAM cost about $2.6m (£2m) per missile.

Of the air defence systems used in the war, the most heavily used was the Patriot, a ground-based missile used to target aircraft, as well as ballistic and cruise missiles. According to the CSIS estimate, as many as 1,430 were used during the conflict from an estimated pre-war stockpile of about 2,330. Each Patriot interceptor costs approximately $4m - an expensive but effective option repeatedly used to shoot down Iranian drones that themselves only cost between $20,000-50,000 each.

These will be hard to replace. "It takes several years to produce a missile. If you put money into the system today, you wouldn't get a missile for three or four years. Sometimes even five," Cancian says. "What we're getting [now] are missiles that were funded in 2023."

Also used was a newer, more sophisticated system known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, which has a longer range and higher intercept altitudes than the older Patriot. Supplies were already limited, with CSIS estimating that between 190 and 290 were fired out of an estimated pre-war stock of 360. With only nine THAAD batteries operational in the world - and seven of them American - sustained expenditure could leave US forces without a system that would be critical to defending ballistic missile threats from countries such as Russia, China or North Korea.

All eyes on Taiwan and the Pacific

The war with Iran comes just before what is often referred to as the "Davidson window", in which a Chinese effort to invade Taiwan becomes, in the eyes of some US military planners, more likely.

The controversial concept - which is central to US military thinking in the Pacific - stems from a 2021 congressional hearing in which Admiral Philip Davidson, then in charge of US forces in the region, warned that an invasion would happen "in the next six years". In 2023, then-CIA director William Burns predicted China would be ready to invade by 2027.

China has long vowed to "reunify" with self-governing Taiwan, which it views as a breakaway province, and has not ruled out the use of force.

Whether or not the US will defend Taiwan and go to war with China is a hotly debated topic. Despite the ambiguity, the US provides the island with defensive weaponry.

Cancian refers to the munitions shortfalls as a "window of vulnerability" in which the US "is not going to have the depth of the preferred munitions it needs" if there is a conflict in the Pacific.

This, he believes, increases the risk of US forces being left unprepared to face a vast arsenal of Chinese missiles and aircraft it could bring to bear in a Pacific conflict.

China - which US officials say has been closely studying US air defences in the Iran war - has invested heavily in missile technology in recent years, including hypersonic glide missiles far more sophisticated than the missiles and cheap drones used by Iran.

Beijing has also heavily invested in developing massive "drone-swarm" tactics.

However, not everyone views the depleted US stockpiles as purely a liability.

Jacob Olidort, a veteran of the CIA and former adviser on Middle East Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, points out that using these weapons in combat also sends a powerful message.

"Weapons create deterrence, not merely because nations have them, but also because they demonstrate a willingness to use them," said Olidort, now director for American security policy at the conservative-leaning America First Policy Institute.

He adds that US "successes at eroding Iran's military capabilities with precision, with record time, send a signal to other adversaries, including China and their ambitions."

What about Europe?

The apparent tension between arming allies and preserving US reserves is one that has already been played out over Ukraine.

Back in October 2025, months before Operation Epic Fury began, Trump declined to give Ukraine Tomahawks, citing a need to avoid depleting US stockpiles.

The episode was a preview of the trade-offs now shaping the post-Iran debate over the wider arsenal. Ukrainian officials say they urgently need Patriots and other air defence systems to stem wave after wave of Russian drone and missile attacks.

"In addition to energy prices, it [the Iran war] means the depletion of US reserves, and the depletion of air defence manufacturers," Zelensky told the BBC in March. "So we [Ukraine] have a depletion of resources."

Zelensky put numbers to the concern: the US produces roughly 60 to 65 missiles a month, or between 700 to 800 a year, with 803 used on the first day of the Operation Epic Fury alone.

More recently, however, Trump surprised many European officials by offering to give Ukraine the right to produce Patriots domestically. Similar arrangements already exist in Germany and Japan.

Elaine McCusker, a 13-year veteran of the Department of Defence who now works as an expert with the American Enterprise Institute, says Ukraine's experience fighting Russia - as well as the US experience fighting Iran - could help create cheaper, mass-produced systems to complement existing high-ticket items.

"We've known for a long time that we don't want to be shooting $6m interceptors at $1,000 drones," she says. "I think we now have more focus on that solution, and more people focusing on manufacturing more attritable solutions that don't cost so much".

The aftermath

Despite it all, there is little near-term alarm about the prospect of munitions running out - not because US stockpiles are unlimited, but because Iran's are in far worse shape.

"The United States military has more than enough munitions, ammo, and stockpiles to serve all of President Trump's strategic goals and beyond, and Operation Epic Fury has exposed what happens when you mess with the United States," White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement sent to the BBC.

"Even still, the president has urged our defence contractors to constantly produce more made-in-America weapons," she added.

Recent strikes announced by US Central Command have been largely focused on degrading Tehran's ability to threaten ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the vital shipping lane that Iran and the US have blockaded.

Iran's military losses have been far greater than America's following wave after wave of US and Israeli strikes - and the country has extremely limited ability to address those shortages anytime soon.

"A lot of commentary portrays Iran as having an almost unlimited amount of weaponry," says Jason Brodsky, policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran.

"I think we have to realise that there are limitations there, and that the US has degraded their defence industrial base to a very significant extent," he says.

He adds that Iran's "capacity to produce, at scale, the kinds of missiles, drones and other weapons systems" it needs has been largely destroyed.

Iran's remaining stockpiles, according to Brodsky, are being funnelled towards what he termed Tehran's trump card - its ability to threaten the Strait of Hormuz. In his view, it is a fading capability. "The Iranian regime is running out of time here."

The current, manageable conflict with Iran - what Brodsky called the US military's "centre of gravity" takes immediate precedence for Washington, even as officials acknowledge it would be "irresponsible" to ignore the broader stockpile picture.

"The Indo-Pacific is a more distant threat right now," he says. "Policymakers have to prioritise, and the Middle East right now has the president's attention."

For now, every missile fired at an Iranian target, sent to Ukraine's frontlines or held back for Taiwan, comes from a pool that has steadily shrunk. Despite this, Washington is betting it can get through this conflict while production catches up.

Lead image: Getty

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Musk takes 'crusade' to Europe with Armie Hammer film

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y4w5nwk00o, 6 days ago

An American vigilante tears across an unnamed European country, killing dozens of police officers and judges, slaughtering a gang of rapists, and killing a refugee family and a random civilian – all in the name of a crusade against Muslim migrants and "woke" government officials.

Citizen Vigilante, a film from German director Uwe Boll and starring actor Armie Hammer, is violent – and very schlocky – stuff.

Initially denied a rating by German's film regulator, it would likely have garnered very little attention, had it not caught the eye of the world's richest person.

Elon Musk made the film free to view via his social media platform X for 48 hours in late June, and the subsequent attention briefly pushed the movie into the top of the charts of several streaming providers including Apple and Amazon.

At one point he reposted a message about the film that described vigilante murder as the "moderate response" to violent crimes committed by immigrants.

It's just one of many recent examples of the tech titan's increasing interest in extreme ideas and activists, and in particular his support of political parties and politicians on the right in Europe.

Musk left the Trump administration more than a year ago and his Doge project, which aimed to slash the size of the US federal government, has since been wound down.

But he has recently sought to conquer other political territory.

"This is a crusade," says Georgios Samaras, an assistant professor of public policy at King's College London who studies the European and US far right. "Musk uses the power he has to amplify the ideas that he thinks should dominate society. He knows he has the money and he knows he has the influence."

'Radicalised by his own network'

Much of that influence comes via X, formerly Twitter, the social media platform that Musk bought outright in 2022. Since stripping away many of the old Twitter's content moderation rules - derided as censorship by Musk and others - the network has become a haven for far-right beliefs and conspiracy theories.

In turn, X appears to have shaped Musk.

Although it's difficult to glean a cohesive worldview from social media fragments - Musk did not respond to requests for comment for this story - his output has demonstrated a growing obsession with race and white people in particular.

He has posted and reposted a slew of messages - often from white nationalist and far-right activists - portraying white people as under threat, including messages like "Whites are a rapidly dying minority" and "If White men become a minority, we will be slaughtered".

He has endorsed the leader of France's hard-right National Rally party, Marine Le Pen. "She is France's last hope," he wrote.

Musk also recently reposted a video from the far-right activist Tommy Robinson that suggested police are going easy on criminals if they have brown skin, with the comment "literally true".

He's also boosted right-wing politicians and parties in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and the UK.

Although at one point he toyed with donating huge sums of money to Reform UK, he since broke with Nigel Farage over Farage's shunning of Robinson, and more recently has boosted the profile of Rupert Lowe's breakaway party Restore Britain – a Reform rival that seeks to take an even tougher line on immigration.

In June, after a Sudanese man was accused of a brutal stabbing in Northern Ireland, Musk shared a list of street protest locations posted by Robinson, adding: "Only by protesting REPEATEDY and LOUDLY will there be any change!!"

In other posts he claimed that former Prime Minister Keir Starmer "hates white people" and shared an image of the stabbing suspect with the comment "millions must go".

Mobs rioted on the streets of Belfast, where the stabbing happened. Police highlighted the role of social media in co-ordinating the disorder.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate, a research and advocacy group that has been the target of legal action by Musk in the past, tallied 4,000 calls for violence on X written as responses underneath posts by Musk, Lowe and Robinson.

"Many people on the right use Musk as a means to an end," says AJA Woods, a historian studying conspiracy theories and reactionary politics.

"He's seen as a source of funds, or someone who's in control of X so can be used to promote their ideas… he's a convenient ally."

When contacted for comment, Lowe described the CCDH report as "embarrassing guff" and called the BBC a "disgrace".

Remigration exported

Despite being in charge of several enormous companies, Musk regularly wades into ostensibly local disputes, not just in Belfast but across Europe, apparently gleaning much of his knowledge from people he follows on X.

"You find a tutoring relationship, one in which Musk is inducted into their talking points," says Ben Tarnoff, co-author of Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed.

One of those talking points is his embrace of the term "remigration". Anti-immigration advocates use it to refer to mass deportations, even of legal migrants.

In its extreme form, it means the removal through force or heavy persuasion of all non-whites or foreigners, even if they were born in or and have deep roots in their home countries.

Slightly more moderate versions focus on recent migrants or those not fully integrated into European societies.

The concept has been linked to violent activity, experts say, and Musk and X have not only been instrumental in spreading the idea across Europe, but in importing it to the United States, Tarnoff says. Last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees US immigration, posted an X message consisting of one word: "Remigrate".

"Something that Musk shares with members of the American right and particularly with Donald Trump's circle is a view of Europe and the UK as the ancestral home of white civilisation, but a home that has surrendered itself to the woke forces of multiculturalism," says Tarnoff.

Saturday's attack at a Berlin Pride event - which was described by officials as an "Islamist terror attack" - gave far-right influencers that Musk converses with on X another opportunity to warn of civilizational collapse and call for drastic measures in response.

Musk later wrote in response to a Spanish anti-immigration influencer: "Anyone who opposes remigration is a traitor".

'Astonishingly bad' and 'fascist propaganda'

Citizen Vigilante was cheered by many far-right activists on X, even as others slammed the movie, not only for its politics but for its thin plot, cheap-looking special effects and abundance of gore.

After the publicity boost, Boll estimated that the film made about $600,000 from streaming, against a budget of $2m. Critics were scathing. Variety called it "astonishingly bad" while prominent American conservative commentator Rod Dreher called it "fascist propaganda", although he and some others on the right defended its depiction of a Europe in turmoil.

The film's portrayal of European society dovetails with the bleak vision pushed by Musk and others on the right – that citizens have been utterly betrayed by a corrupt establishment, that migrants are at the root of violence and chaos, and that extreme measures are needed to restore order.

"People who are complaining that he spends the first half of the movie murdering white people not migrants fail to understand… Always hang a traitor before you shoot an enemy," read one message reposted by Musk.

Challenged last week in an Economist interview on whether he was being irresponsible to promote a film which glorifies the murder of a Muslim family, Musk said: "It's a movie and it's worth watching."

"I don't think Europe's a hell hole," he said, but also insisted that "there was out of control rape and murder."

He also stood by previous statements that he believed civil war in the UK was "inevitable", and referring to Muslims, he said: "If you have a large and rapidly growing group of people whose beliefs are antithetical to Western beliefs, at some point there will be a reckoning."

The tech titan also said he had not visited the UK in several years.

Musk's defenders have often praised his professed support for unfettered online speech and have chalked some of his more extreme stances up to online exaggeration.

Others say his influence over politics in the UK and Europe is limited.

"I don't think he has much political sway in Britain or on the continent," says Gawain Towler, a former Reform UK director of communications who still supports the party.

Towler says he credits Musk with highlighting rape gangs in British cities and says he is relaxed about the tycoon's support for Lowe and Restore.

"I generally prefer the stuff he says about his businesses," he says.

Spain's PM blames traffickers after 60,000 migrants reach Ceuta from Morocco

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2kp639yx4o, 2 days ago

Spain's prime minister has blamed trafficking gangs after about 60,000 migrants crossed into the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta from Morocco. At least 57 people died during the surge, according to local media.

Pedro Sánchez called the incident a "violation of Spain's territorial integrity". Italy has responded by suspending the EU's border-free Schengen arrangements with Spain.

The influx comes after Spain's Supreme Court ruled that migrants stopped at sea while trying to reach Ceuta or Melilla, another Spanish enclave, cannot be summarily returned to Morocco.

As of Friday evening, more than 48,000 people had voluntarily returned to Morocco, Spanish officials said.

One man told Reuters news agency he was going back, adding: "It's not good at all, and it's not fun either. I mean, people are dying here. I beg you, please, if you haven't come yet, don't come. Don't do it."

Ceuta on the North African coast is separated from mainland Spain by the Strait of Gibraltar. It has long been a focal point for migrants attempting to reach Europe. During the summer months there is often a big push to reach Ceuta, typically organised over social media.

Coveted by Morocco, Ceuta and another Spanish enclave Melilla have long been a flashpoint in diplomatic relations between the two countries. They form the European Union's only land borders with Africa.

Local officials had appealed to Madrid for help after a recent rise in attempted crossings, but there were chaotic scenes on Thursday as border controls apparently broke down.

Carmen Gonzalez Bermudez who was in the city to see her parents told the BBC that the past day had been "very overwhelming".

She said she saw "thousands and thousands of people in swimming costumes and all wet, just coming from the sea", adding that "I know most of them are nice people just looking for a better future for themselves. But we cannot give that to them".

Víctor Ortiz Sotomayor told the BBC he had "never seen anything like it", describing the city as "packed with immigrants, in every square and street, mainly looking for food".

"There were only a few stores open, but in the end the police advised them to close because of the overwhelming influx of people," he added.

"My friends, my family and I are all staying at home. We haven't gone outside because we're scared."

Referring to a previous surge of migrants into Ceuta, Carmen Gonzalez Bermudez said: "In 2021, we saw our police and our military doing something. Yesterday, they were in the streets, but they weren't doing nothing. So that for starters feels really scary."

Ceuta's President Juan Jesús Vivas said the arrivals amounted to around 70% of the city's population - which sits at around 83,600 according to the latest local figures. Spain's Interior Ministry told the BBC that its estimates were slightly lower, citing 50,000 arrivals since the early hours of Thursday.

Spain has now deployed its armed forces to bolster security in Ceuta and at its sister city of Melilla, where between 300 to 400 crossings were also reported overnight.

Speaking on Friday during a visit to Ceuta, Sánchez said the surge was caused by criminal networks purposefully misinterpreting the recent Supreme Court ruling.

"What has emerged from our talks with Moroccan authorities is that trafficking mafias took a self-serving interpretation of a Supreme Court ruling" which "spread like wildfire", he said.

He added that the government would look at reinforcing the border with Morocco, and that Moroccan authorities were co-operating with the return of those who had entered illegally.

Most of those entering Ceuta have been young men, although there are also women and children in the crowds and even babies. Officials estimate that at least 7,000 of those who crossed illegally into the territory in the last 24 hours are minors.

Usually, to try to enter Ceuta, migrants swim several kilometres from further up the coast. This time they appear to have been able to get close to the border fence itself with ease. At the start, some even walked along the rocks on the jetty and around the end of it, but most had to swim out and around to reach the beaches on the other side.

It's not clear where the Moroccan border guards were at this point and why the groups of migrants were not dispersed or stopped.

Morocco, which has a high unemployment rate, witnessed several Gen Z anti-government protests last year - with young people demanding better opportunities and improvements to public services.

BBC Verify has looked into migration data released by the UN, which reported 2,826 people had crossed into Ceuta up until 15 July this year with another 181 entering via Melilla.

The number of migrants crossing into these two territories was already high compared with recent years, which saw 994 migrants enter in 2025, 476 in 2024 and 467 in 2023.

Italy's right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni described the images from Ceuta as "shocking", writing on social media that such "uncontrolled immigration" was a security threat to Europe.

Later on Friday Italy suspended the Schengen zone agreement with Spain on free movement. Since the two countries don't have a land border this would only apply, effectively, to flights - which appears simply to mean extra checks for passengers.

The Spanish foreign minister said such remarks were "improper" for "a partner and friendly country from which we expect European solidarity and not partisan demagoguery". He also summoned the Italian ambassador to Madrid on Friday.

Czech Republic's Andrej Babiš also called for the temporary suspension of Spain's Schengen membership.

Responding on X, Sánchez said: "Solidarity and empathy are optional. Respect for European treaties and data is not."

US President Donald Trump meanwhile called the situation in Ceuta a "catastrophe" and blamed it on "weak law, bad management".

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said the images out of Ceuta were "unacceptable" and must "stop immediately".

Finland's Interior Minister Mari Rantanen backed Meloni and said Spain had failed to protect its border, while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz demanded Morocco "take back illegal migrants immediately".

The Schengen Area is a system of open borders spanning 29 European countries that have officially abolished controls at their common borders.

Additional reporting by Tamara Kovacevic, BBC Verify, Basma El Atti, BBC Focus, Isabella Bull, BBC World Service, and Marina Costa

Nigeria date removed from South African pop star Tyla's world tour after boycott petition

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7vglz56gg5o, 2 days ago

Just days after South African singer Tyla released the dates for her upcoming world tour, Nigeria has been removed from the list of destinations.

On Monday, the Grammy winner announced details of her globetrotting appearances coming on the heels of the release of her second album A*POP.

Her official website initially named 34 cities, including Lagos, Johannesburg and Cape Town, where she would be performing, but by Friday, an updated list was published without the Nigerian city.

No reason has been given for the change but there have been growing calls in Nigeria for the 24-year-old to cancel her concert in the country over the recent wave of anti-migrant sentiment in South Africa.

Relations between Nigeria and South Africa have soured over allegations that Nigerians have been the target of xenophobic violence.

Nigeria, along with other African countries, has accused South Africa of not doing enough to deal with attacks on foreign nationals.

There have also been a series of protests with people calling for all undocumented migrants to leave South Africa. Tens of thousands of foreigners have left the country, including Nigerians, many of whom boarded specially chartered repatriation flights.

While there have been diplomatic efforts to calm tensions, most recently with a meeting between their foreign affairs officials in Abuja, the issue has spread beyond politics.

On Wednesday, an online petition titled "Ban Tyla from entering Nigeria until xenophobic attacks stop in South Africa" was launched in Nigeria and it has already attracted thousands of signatures.

On Tyla's social media pages, where the initial tour dates still appear, Nigerians cautioned her against performing in the country as they criticised her for failing to speak out against the protests in South Africa.

Tyla has so far not responded to a BBC request for comment.

Tyla is not the only South African artist facing a backlash for their seeming silence on the anti-migrant protests.

Comedian Trevor Noah also came under fire following an advert he fronted for the Tourism Business Council of South Africa.

The promotional clip, shared across the council's various social media accounts, generated many comments criticising the former Daily Show host for promoting South Africa but failing to call out xenophobic attitudes.

Users even went as far as to add context under the video saying South Africa was "a xenophobic country [that] doesn't allow visiting migrants".

The backlash has extended beyond criticism; some South African artists have reportedly lost out on performances across the continent.

South Africa's Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi said in June that a local artist had told her that "all her gigs were cancelled". The minister did not name the artist.

"So the [South Africa] brand does get affected," she said at the time.

The South African government has also pushed back on the growing wave of criticism.

It says that it does deal with anyone who takes the law into their own hands, pointing out that more than 900 people were arrested after recent protests, but that it has a right to control migration into the country.

The online debate around Tyla's world tour has opened a much wider conversation on whether African artists be held responsible for the political tensions between their countries.

Nigerian activist, opposition politician and former presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore said on X that anger over anti-migrant attacks should be directed at political leaders in Nigeria and South Africa, rather than artists.

In a post, he said: "No-one should hold a talented musician like Tyla vicariously liable for the crimes of xenophobia. Artistes are not responsible for the failures of politicians except where there is ample evidence they're enablers."

Nigerian culture journalist Mayowa Idowu told the BBC that while the anger may come from a desire for accountability, directing it towards an artist risks missing the wider issue.

"I think they are well intentioned because people are seeking accountability and they're looking beyond governments who they do not trust or have faith in. That said, I think they are misguided and they risk devolving into acts of hypocrisy. The artist in question has worked with Nigerian artists and performed in Nigeria previously," he said.

Idowu argues that performers should not be pressured into taking political positions simply because of their nationality.

Tyla has found herself at the centre of rivalry between the two countries before.

Earlier this year, she beat four other African artists, including three from Nigeria, to clinch her second Grammy award in the Best African Music Performance category.

She won the inaugural version of the prize in 2024, again beating a field that included Nigerian heavyweights such as Burna Boy and Davido.

With two wins in the category's first three years, Tyla has become one of the biggest Grammy success stories in African music - while also becoming a symbol in a fan rivalry that often frames Nigerian and South African artists against each other.

UK-based Nigerian culture journalist and writer Dami Ajayi said that Tyla has never presented herself to be anti-Nigeria but "we interpret her winning two Grammy Awards in a nominations list full of Nigerian musicians as being anti-Nigerian".

"These targeted retaliatory campaigns are not particularly new. There were also calls to boycott the recent hit Netflix show The Polygamist, adapted from Zimbabwean Sue Nyathi's novel and co-directed by Akin Omotosho, a Nigerian living in South Africa," he added.

South African journalist Thango Ntwasa said that while it was difficult to comment on the removal of Lagos from Tyla's world tour line-up, "it's a very interesting time because we're seeing arts and politics... really confronting each other now more than ever".

He also touched on the criticism levelled at artists like Tyla and Noah on their apparent silence on the migration issue, saying that while it's understandable for artists to want to be apolitical, it was important for "celebrities... to understand that as a public figure, your opinion or position on a political issue does matter".

Ntwasa noted that South African artists had reported facing animosity when visiting other African nations and that, because touring is a big part of how they make money, the negative attitudes could affect them down the line.

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

Why Uganda seems to be winning the battle against Ebola as virus spreads in DR Congo

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyemjn44qqo, today

The Ebola outbreak in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo has become the second-worst on record, with the official death toll passing a grim milestone of 1,500.

Experts believe the true number of fatalities during this outbreak, which was declared in May, is much higher. And in another alarming update, authorities in DR Congo confirmed on Thursday that the virus was spreading much faster than in previous outbreaks.

Next door in Uganda, a country that also reported infections in May, the picture is entirely different.

The country's health minister described a "moment of joy" as the last Ebola patient was released from hospital two weeks ago.

Uganda only ever recorded 20 cases and two deaths from the virus.

According to Dr Kasonde Mwinga, the World Health Organization's Uganda chief, the relatively low number of casualties was not "by luck or chance".

"It's because people invested in preparedness," she told the BBC.

This outbreak is the 17th to have emerged in DR Congo since Ebola was discovered 50 years ago. By comparison Uganda has had nine since 2000, with officials there saying lessons learnt from past tragedies have allowed them to stop the disease ripping through the country on various occasions.

One example is the case of a 12-year-old girl who arrived at a hospital in the central district of Luwero in 2011.

Her symptoms sparked caution: she was isolated, medics wore personal protective equipment when treating her and when she died three hours later her body was carefully sealed in a coffin. These precautions were able to halt the spread of what a blood sample later confirmed to be Ebola.

"We know Ebola. It's been here a few times, we know how to deal with it," government spokesperson Alan Kasujja told the BBC's Newsday programme.

Uganda's first known case this time was a man from DR Congo who crossed the border for treatment.

Once health authorities confirmed multiple cases had been imported from DR Congo, they activated a specialist Ebola treatment centre at Mulago hospital, in the capital city, Kampala.

The facility, which was used during an outbreak of Ebola last year, held leftover medical supplies and had an "emergency medical team" on standby, Dr David Kaggwa, head of the facility, said.

"It was a matter of sorting and ordering a few more supplies, and then actually in one day we were ready to receive the patients. So, it is easy, it's not that we're starting from scratch," he said.

Out of the 20 people who tested positive in Uganda, 15 came from DR Congo.

The first two cases, it is thought, might not have known what condition they had. But after Uganda and DR Congo jointly declared the Ebola outbreak on 15 May, people with symptoms - which include headaches, fever and vomiting - "came direct to the treatment unit," Dr Kaggwa said.

He suspects that because these patients did not pass through general hospitals, and come into contact with those patients and medics, there was little opportunity for community transmission.

In a bid to stop the disease spreading, the authorities also closed the border between Uganda and DR Congo, despite the financial impact this would have on Ugandans who travel between the two countries to trade.

Uganda acted fast, but it also had an advantage over DR Congo when it came to responding to the virus.

Before the first cases were reported in DR Congo, Ebola had been spreading undetected for weeks. This was because health officials poised to pick up outbreaks had been testing for common species of Ebola, and not the rare species behind the current outbreak, named Bundibugyo.

Uganda only detected its first case after DR Congo had identified and publicised multiple infections - knowledge of the outbreak was out in the open and Uganda could therefore act quickly to contain the virus.

"Surveillance mechanisms were put in place then it was easy to identify all the patients quickly," Dr Kaggwa said.

Comparatively, DR Congo has had a harder time with surveillance and contact tracing.

One field investigator tasked with tracking the virus across Bunia, a city at the epicentre of the outbreak, told Reuters that surveillance had been hampered by poor planning, logistical bottlenecks and the recruitment of inexperienced staff.

"We discover the disease only after it has already spread," Dr Moubarack Kano said. "We're just chasing it."

This is not helped by the insecurity that plagues eastern DR Congo. Ituri, the province at the centre of the outbreak, has been under military rule for several years as the army tries to crack down on dozens of armed groups there.

Further south of Ituri there are large areas held by the M23 rebels, a powerful militia that says it has managed to contain the outbreak.

Its Ebola response co-ordinator Dr Fred Kaniki attributed the achievement to early detection and contact tracing, telling the BBC: "In the course of a month we registered two more cases originating from those index cases and successfully followed up 400 people."

But the M23 conflict and other pockets of violence have displaced millions of people in the region - and that makes surveillance difficult in DR Congo. Artisanal mining and cross-border trade also means Ebola has more chances to spread as people are constantly on the move.

In contrast, Uganda managed to quarantine more than 6,000 contacts of people known to have Ebola during the outbreak. These contacts were isolated for an incubation period of 21 days.

"That is very, very important because usually cases come from those contacts," said Dr Kaggwa.

Kasujja concurs. "I would say that our success is mainly due to our promptness and completeness of follow-up," he said.

This is not the first time Uganda has impressed with its response to a health crisis.

In the 1990s and 2000s, the country was widely praised for its successful campaign against HIV and Aids, which saw the prevalence of HIV drop from more than 10% to 6% in roughly a decade.

A huge government programme had preached the "ABCs": abstinence, being faithful and condom use.

The co-operation of the community is also critical in preventing infections during an outbreak, Kasujja adds.

"To this day, despite the fact that there are announcements that Uganda has no Ebola patients [members of the public] are still being careful, still taking the necessary precautions," he says.

This co-operation is illustrated by one of its first cases of Ebola, a nurse who contracted the virus while working in an intensive care unit in Kampala.

It was shortly before the outbreak was officially declared, and she had treated a patient who later died - unbeknownst to her - of Ebola. She told the BBC how she started feeling ill two weeks later, battling headaches, joint and muscle pains. Painkillers were not working and a hospital ran various tests including for malaria.

She sought a second opinion and that is when she heard that two colleagues had been diagnosed with Ebola - and she immediately chose to go into isolation.

Like many other patients, she co-operated fully with the guidelines even during the frightening time when her 11-month-old baby, whom she was still breastfeeding, was taken away from her and quarantined for 21 days.

Uganda has since announced it is totally Ebola-free, going against the protocol of waiting 42 days from when the last patient recovers to declare an outbreak over.

The health ministry said it was able to make this announcement because the first case of the virus was imported and there was never any "unexplained community transmission".

But there is also the reality that a long, porous border with Ituri, the Congolese area with most infections, means that the virus could easily reach Uganda again.

Thus, Uganda has sent dozens of healthcare workers to DR Congo to help their "brothers and sisters" tackle Ebola, Uganda's Health Minister Chris Baryomunsi said on X.

"We are going to where the problem is," Kasujja explained. "Uganda cannot win against Ebola if the Democratic Republic of Congo fails."

Uganda has also increased screening at the border and continues to educate the public about measures for prevent or deal with the disease.

"We're always very prepared," Dr Kaggwa said.

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

Current Ebola outbreak worst ever in DR Congo, WHO says

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy07qe0knvzo, yesterday

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is the biggest in the country's history, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.

As of 30 July, there were 3,605 confirmed cases including 1,587 deaths - a fatality rate of 44%.

The current outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo strain of the virus. It was declared on 15 May 2026 and surpasses the previous biggest outbreak between 2018 and 2020, which had nearly 3,500 recorded cases of whom almost 2,300 died.

There is currently no approved vaccine or treatment for the Bundibugyo strain, but vaccines are being developed in the UK and Singapore.

Ebola, which spreads through contact with bodily fluids, has killed 15,000 people across Africa over the last 50 years.

The WHO said in a statement posted on X that the outbreak was "intensifying, with sustained transmission and continued increases in reported cases and deaths".

It added that during the past week, the outbreak reached its highest weekly total with 567 cases and 296 deaths.

It warned these figures underscored "the exceptional pace of transmission".

"Factors like insecurity, population displacement, and cross-border movement continue to hamper response efforts and increase the risk of further spread," it said.

The centre of the outbreak is the Ituri province in the northeast of the country, which borders South Sudan and Uganda.

But it has also spread to other parts of the country, including the North and South Kivu provinces, where large areas are controlled by the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group.

"The convergence of insecurity, population displacement and mobility, and cross-border movements complicate response operations and increase the risk of further geographical spread," the WHO said.

During the current outbreak, 20 cases have also been reported in Uganda along with one in France.

Two cases diagnosed in DR Congo were later treated in Germany.

On 30 July, the WHO announced that the the "most promising" vaccine would be developed in Singapore, while the trail of a separate jab has begun in the UK.

Death row inmates desperate to escape execution in Saudi Arabia call the BBC

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c80nkgdnl4no, yesterday

There was desperation in the voice of the young Ethiopian man when he managed to get through to the BBC from a phone in his prison cell on death row in Saudi Arabia.

Habtom, whose name - like the other prisoner featured in this article - has been changed to protect his identity, has been held in a jail in the southern city of Khamis Mushait for more than three years.

Above the noise of cellmates shouting behind him, he pleaded for help and sounded angry that his government appeared to be doing little to change his fate.

"One prisoner cannot comfort another. We have no choice but to cry. We are waiting for our turn, even though we do not know when it will happen," said Habtom.

He and some of his fellow inmates had fled war and poverty at home in the hope of finding a better life.

But that quest, which took him through Djibouti and Yemen, led to his incarceration - joining a growing number of Ethiopians in Saudi prisons who face the prospect of execution for drug-smuggling offences.

Anxious to tell their story, some of the prisoners managed to get hold of the mobile phone number for the BBC's Tigrinya language service. In total we have spoken to seven of the dozens - perhaps as many as 200 - Ethiopians inside the prison who are waiting for a death sentence to be carried out.

Other foreigners, including Pakistanis, Sudanese and Jordanians, are in a similar position, but in the first seven months of this year 17 Ethiopians have been executed - the highest number among non-Saudis. Five of those executions happened on Monday.

Two years ago, according to research by Amnesty International, just two Ethiopians were executed, but 35 were put to death in 2025.

It is not clear exactly why there has been an uptick, but it could be linked to more people leaving the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray, where a brutal two-year civil war in Tigray ended in late 2022, leaving devastation in its wake.

"It may also be linked to Saudi Arabia's expanding use of the death penalty for drug-related offences in recent years," Amnesty International researcher Dana Ahmed tells the BBC.

Habtom, who like most of those the BBC spoke to is from Tigray, was found guilty of smuggling hashish, a type of cannabis. In Saudi Arabia, on the judge's discretion, a guilty verdict can result in a death sentence.

But rights groups - including Reprieve, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International - have said that in these kinds of cases due process is rarely followed.

Defendants are not given access to a lawyer or the court papers - while translation, when it is offered, can be inadequate, Amnesty's Ahmed says.

Although there is the theoretical right to appeal, without a lawyer they cannot submit one "and then the sentence is automatically upheld", she says.

"There is a near-total lack of transparency throughout the entire judicial process, from sentencing to Supreme Court review and ratification by the King. People on death row and their families are left in the dark about their fate."

Habtom alleged that he was not given the chance to speak to a lawyer or defend himself. He also said he was forced to sign a document in Arabic, which said he agreed to the sentence, without understanding what he was putting his name to.

Other prisoners that the BBC spoke to had similar stories about the legal system.

HRW has also contacted people close to the cases and learned about "mass sentences, mass trials that lacked any kind of due process and people detained then just waiting with no idea when the sentence would happen", Nadia Hardman, the organisation's senior adviser on refugee and migrant rights, said.

The Saudi authorities did not respond to a BBC request for comment on allegations that the legal process was not fair, but every execution is accompanied by a statement issued through the official press agency. It outlines a clear process: an investigation, a court case, an appeal, a Supreme Court ruling and then a royal decree.

The sentence reflects the commitment to protect citizens "from the scourge of drugs" and the damage they can cause, the statement adds.

Habtom said that although he manged to keep in occasional contact with his family via the wall-mounted phone in his prison cell, he refused to tell them he was on death row: "I would rather they be told after I die than now."

He had dreamt of finishing high school, graduating from college and getting a job to support his parents - but the Tigray war put paid to that.

"My goal was destroyed, so I decided to emigrate," he said.

After surviving the dangerous journey to Saudi Arabia in 2021, Habtom found low-paid work as a goatherder, but his employers offered him and others a chance to earn more money.

They were asked to deliver a package but were stopped by police on the way and were found with the narcotic leaf known as khat - a natural stimulant that is widely used in the Horn of Africa.

The official Saudi statements all refer to hashish smuggling but those the BBC spoke to talked about khat.

"I did not know what we were carrying. But later I was told it was khat. I don't even know what khat is," Habtom said, admitting that he was tempted into the work by the sum of money on offer.

Habtom acknowledged he had "made a mistake without knowing it" and hoped that his sentence could be commuted to prison time.

Three of his fellow Ethiopian detainees were executed in April - another nine were killed in June. The April killings sparked an outcry from rights groups and some leading Ethiopian figures, including the influential head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

Patriarch Abune Mathias urged the government to negotiate with the Saudi authorities and called the inmates "voiceless children" living "under the shadow of death".

In its April report, HRW called on the Saudi authorities to immediately halt executions of Ethiopian migrants and ensure all cases were handled in line with international law. It also asked Ethiopia's foreign ministry to intervene urgently and provide consular support.

The safety of Ethiopians in general in Saudi Arabia was raised at a meeting in Addis Ababa in May between Ethiopian Foreign Minister Gedion Timothewos and Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Waleed Al-Khuraiji.

This was followed in June by a visit to the prison by Ethiopia's Ambassador Tafa Tulu Dadi, though the prisoners told the BBC that they were not given enough time to explain their situation to him.

It also appeared to have limited impact as in the following week more Ethiopians were executed.

The African Union's human rights commission has also urged Ethiopia to safeguard the lives of Ethiopians facing execution in Saudi Arabia.

The BBC has contacted Ethiopian officials in Saudi Arabia and the government in Addis Ababa for comment but has not received a response.

Without referring to the death penalty specifically, Ethiopia's foreign ministry did release a statement on 13 July saying it was in regular contact with the Saudi authorities "pursuing appropriate remedies for Ethiopian citizens facing difficult circumstances".

It added that "to date" nearly 2,000 Ethiopians had "benefited from royal amnesties" - without mentioning the crimes or sentences.

As they await the outcome of diplomatic manoeuvres, the prisoners who spoke to the BBC said they were enduring hardships in overcrowded facilities.

Desta, located in another part of the prison, said there were 200 men in his cell crammed into an area designed for 90 people, with 45 bunk beds arranged around the walls.

During the day, the prisoners sat on the floor in stifling conditions squeezed up next to one another; when the temperature dropped at night, they covered themselves with rubbish bags in lieu of bed sheets, he said.

"The stress of facing execution, combined with the overcrowded conditions, exposes us to illness and anxiety," Desta said.

"The guard only opens the door to bring food, covering his mouth and nose with a mask - that is the only time the door is opened. After he gives us the food, he quickly locks it and leaves.

"It is not possible to ask them any questions or speak to them. Even if you ask, there is severe beating."

He was arrested while trying to cross the border from Yemen more than three years ago and accused of smuggling drugs.

"We were four Ethiopians, and there was one Yemeni with us. He told us he could help us cross the border safely because he knew the safest route. In return, he asked us to carry packages containing khat and even promised to pay us some money.

"Unfortunately, shortly after we crossed, we were captured by police officers. They opened fire on us, and the Yemeni man ran away, but we couldn't. We were shocked and had no idea where to go."

Like all those interviewed by the BBC, Desta said he had never expected to be sentenced to death and believed he would eventually return home after serving time in prison.

Instead, he alleged that he was also forced to sign a document in Arabic that listed charges carrying capital punishment. Later, when he appeared in court, he said that he was denied the chance to challenge the charges and had no legal representation.

"When you appear before the judge on the first day, he asks: 'Do you accept the charges?' On the second appearance, he sentences you to death," Desta said.

As a brick-maker struggling to support his family, he had left Tigray during the war as the fighting edged closer to his home.

Now he worries for his life again - and he, Habtom and dozens of others on death row are begging for outside help.

"We are living in deep fear and cannot even eat the food we are given," said Habtom.

Additional reporting by Damian Zane

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

At least 25 people killed in Algeria bus crash

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg5l0dj86y8o, 2 days ago

At least 25 people have been killed and dozens of others injured in Algeria after a passenger bus overturned near the coastal town of Boumerdes, east of the capital Algiers, on Friday, local officials said.

The country's civil protection department said that the cause of the crash was unknown. Those hurt have been evacuated ‌to ⁠nearby hospitals for treatment.

Algerian Prime Minister Sifi Ghrieb ⁠spoke to emergency service workers when he visited the crash site, where the coach could be seen lying at the bottom of a ravine.

In a separate incident in August of last year, a bus crashed near Algiers, killing 18 people, AFP reported.

In December of that year, 14 people died when their bus overturned in the southern region of Bechar.

Road safety authorities in Algeria say that 3,838 people died and more than 37,000 were injured in traffic accidents last year.

Archbishop of Canterbury committed to £100m slavery fund

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp9e03ymreyo, 3 days ago

The Archbishop of Canterbury has renewed her commitment to a controversial £100m fund over the Church of England's role in the transatlantic slave trade.

Dame Sarah Mullally was speaking on a visit to Cape Coast Castle in Ghana where enslaved Africans were held before being trafficked to the Americas.

She said touring the castle made her reflect on the crimes committed by the institution she leads.

"We played a part in the transatlantic slave trade. That is clear. Part of the Christian belief in repentance is about action, so we are putting in place action to support those communities that feel the legacy of the slave trade," she added.

This is Dame Sarah's first pastoral visit to Africa since being installed as head of the Church of England at a ceremony in Canterbury Cathedral in March.

Reparative justice has been one of the themes running through the Ghana leg of this trip.

At Cape Coast Castle, which came under British control in the 1660s, Dame Sarah was shown dungeons where slaves were held, and the so-called "door of no return" through which they were forced on to ships.

The archbishop said: "You can't help but be deeply moved by the horrific conditions that people were kept in and the way that they were treated.

"It completely throws you off balance and brings home the evil that was transatlantic slavery."

Above the dungeons sits a chapel, which she said was a "stark illustration of the way the church was involved in the slave trade".

The Church of England has previously apologised for its associations with the slave trade.

Its missionary arm ran slave-farmed plantations in the Caribbean to fund the spread of Anglicanism, individual members of clergy were slave owners, and the Church received large donations from slave traders.

Three years ago it was decided the Church would set up the fund for reparative justice work, after an audit of its historical endowment fund also reported large investments made in a company that trafficked slaves.

The aim is for the fund to be spent on "a programme of investment, research and engagement" in communities damaged by the enslavement of African people during the transatlantic slave trade.

But there has since been vocal opposition to the fund. Some have questioned the historical accuracy of reports into the level of the Church's complicity, while others have raised legal concerns about it and ideological objections.

Ghana has been spearheading a global campaign for institutions and nations across the world that benefitted from the slave trade to pay reparations.

The country's foreign minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has praised Dame Sarah.

"What the Archbishop of Canterbury is doing in Ghana on her current visit will begin to send the right signals. And those who are either revisionists or who are obstructionists within the Church of England are going to start thinking twice," he said

"The Christian religion which they brought to Ghana and Africa teaches us that without admission of sins, there can be no salvation. There can be no going to heaven."

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How Mexican drug cartels have outsourced meth labs to Nigeria

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmrnxp4nllo, 5 days ago

The Nigerian judge was formally dressed, the lawyers maintained legal decorum and protocol was followed – but this hearing was not in the comfortable confines of a Lagos courtroom, it was inside an alleged illicit drug laboratory in the thick of a dense forest.

Three Mexicans and seven Nigerians were paraded in handcuffs, as Justice Musa Kakaki inspected the chemicals and equipment they were accused of using to produce the harmful illegal synthetic drug, methamphetamine, commonly known as meth, crystal meth or, locally, ice.

A bitter, pungent smell filled the air of the makeshift laboratory, thanks to a large drum of the liquid form of the drug that was crystallising. Another potent odour came from open vats of a dark, viscous liquid, described as "crude", or unprocessed, methamphetamine.

Other products were scattered around, including propane gas cylinders and bags of caustic soda, in the unfinished building.

This temporary move of the federal high court to a location a two-hour drive from Lagos was an unusual step for Nigeria's judicial system, but the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) said it was necessary to understand the scale of the operation.

When the suspects were arrested in May, the agency described it as the country's largest-ever meth bust. It said it discovered more than two tonnes of the drug worth some $360m (£270m).

The NDLEA at the time announced it had "dealt another crippling blow" and dismantled "a highly sophisticated, multi-million-dollar Nigerian-Mexican methamphetamine production syndicate".

The following month, agents found another meth laboratory hidden in a forest in neighbouring Oyo State.

That time they arrested five suspects, including one Mexican "methamphetamine expert".

The raids underline a broader trend of Africa's, and particularly West Africa's, growing role in the global synthetic drugs ⁠trade and the shift by criminal cartels to use the continent, not just as a trafficking hub, but also as a production base.

Mexican specialists in manufacturing methamphetamine, often described as "cooks", are increasingly being found working alongside locals in laboratories in Europe and Africa, according to law-enforcement agencies.

Meth production has become increasingly sophisticated over the last few decades.

"They perfected it, to the point now it is the highest purity, the highest potency version of meth," James Griego, who leads counter-narcotics operations for US-Africa Command (Africom), told the BBC.

Africom, which oversees US military operations on the continent, has provided several national anti-drug organisations with intelligence to assist with their raids.

"Anybody who is looking to consume methamphetamine, understands that the Mexican meth is the best in the world, for that purpose," Griego added.

The first time the NDLEA announced it had discovered a Mexican-linked methamphetamine lab was in 2016, when it described it as a "super lab".

These laboratories, where Mexicans have been working, have since been uncovered in Kenya, Mozambique and in South Africa.

Since 2023 "we've seen…14 Mexican-operated labs in total [being raided]. We saw the one in 2023 [in Mozambique], we saw six more in 2024, we saw two in 2025 and we've seen five this year," Griego said.

"This last year when I talk about the five labs, four of the five are in Nigeria," he added.

Intelligence from Africom and the US Drug Enforcement Administration have linked some of the laboratories to Mexico's two biggest drug cartels: the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Giving testimony to the US Congress in May, Africom commander Gen Dagvin Anderson alleged that militant groups and narco-traffickers have been working together.

"African-based terror groups are financed to an increasing degree by drug cartels, expanding those terror groups' reach and lethality," he told lawmakers.

Unlike plant-based drugs, such as cocaine or heroin, which can only be grown and processed in certain places, a synthetic drug like meth can be produced anywhere with the right chemicals and expertise, making it easier for organised crime groups to quickly scale up production.

Known for its fast and long-lasting effects, methamphetamine delivers a euphoric high, but deeply unpleasant side effects. There is a serious risk of cardiovascular problems, malnourishment through poor diet and, if injecting, blood-borne diseases.

Withdrawal from the drug is also very hard as it often includes feelings of anxiety, severe depression, fatigue and intense cravings.

As methamphetamine traffickers establish new distribution networks, beyond its historical routes, more people are being exposed to the drug.

West Africa poses numerous attractive benefits to Mexican syndicates, starting with swathes of forested land which makes well for secluded production sites.

"The population is also an attraction for them, especially the huge youth population because with that you get cheap labour and a market for local consumption," NDLEA spokesperson Femi Babafemi told the BBC.

There are fears among authorities that methamphetamine consumption will grow in Nigeria, where a 2018 survey found that 14.4% of the adult population had used an illicit drug - more than twice the global average as estimated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The use of the drug has spread across the continent, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

In East Africa, it has become widely available in countries like Kenya and Tanzania, and also in southern Africa, like in South Africa where it is known as "tik".

Drug syndicates are as interested in international drug markets, as they are in the growing local market, and Africa's location makes it easier to reach Asia and Europe.

Producing drugs in West Africa gives traffickers access to Atlantic shipping routes. Combined with the region's porous borders and weaker regulation of chemical imports, this helps them cut costs to lucrative consumer markets.

In Europe, the UNODC reported a 47% increase in methamphetamine use between 2014 and 2024. In east and south-east Asia seizures of the drug by authorities reached a record high in 2024.

"It's a shortening [of] their [supply] line into Asia and a shortening of their pathway into Europe," said Griego.

Since returning to office in 2025, US President Donald Trump has intensified efforts against Latin American drug cartels and their operations.

"These cartels are feeling the pressure from other parts of the world," said Babafemi, "and so [they] are looking at West Africa as a corporate production hub."

Some experts believe tighter scrutiny of traditional trafficking routes from Latin America may be one factor driving cartels to diversify their operations.

"That has at least been a part of the calculus of why Mexican cartels have escalated their operations in Africa. That to say though, it is only part of the story," said Griego.

"Sinaloa and New Jalisco have always been global organisations. They have operated [in Africa] since the 1990s."

But a recent rise in the number of raids on illicit methamphetamine laboratories in Africa could indicate that the cartels are becoming more entrenched on the continent.

What is clear is that the trade is no longer just transiting through the continent but finding new manufacturing sites and markets.

With measures such as the court hearing at the laboratory, increased surveillance and intelligence use, the Nigerian authorities are adamant they can rise to the challenge.

"It's definitely a concern but it helps us stay vigilant and be proactive. This is why we are able to get them before they're able to move out into our communities and into the international market," NDLEA spokesperson Babafemi said.

"We've been able to prove that Nigeria won't be a safe haven for them."

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

'No safe options' for thousands sheltering in key Sudan city as RSF fighters advance

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gx399l0wyo, 5 days ago

Thousands of people who have poured into the city of el-Obeid hoping to find shelter from Sudan's raging civil war have found themselves under threat again, amid warnings that paramilitary fighters are preparing to descend on the army-controlled city.

Clashes between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the military have escalated in the North Kordofan region - a critical target for both sides in the conflict which could open a gateway into contested territory.

Displaced people have flocked to el-Obeid, which remains heavily defended by the Sudanese military, despite ongoing strikes being carried out on the city as paramilitary forces advance. The UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) said it has become a key refuge for people escaping ongoing violence in the surrounding areas.

Satellite imagery shows the main displacement camp has expanded significantly since March, with aid workers reporting dozens of new arrivals each day.

"Families have run out of safe options to protect themselves," Mohamed Refaat, IOM chief of mission in Sudan, said. "Many have already been displaced before and are once again forced to leave behind their homes, livelihoods and support networks."

The UN and G7 foreign ministers have now issued warnings that the RSF may be preparing to attack the city, raising fears that atrocities akin to those seen during the massacre in el-Fasher could be repeated. Thousands of people were killed in mass executions after the paramilitary overran SAF troops defending the city last October, in one of the worst atrocities since the civil war began in 2023.

Fears of similar reprisals occurring in el-Obeid have grown for weeks and verified footage now shows dozens of heavily armed RSF troops in armoured trucks stationed in Nyala, a key nearby stronghold, vowing to "liberate" the city.

The RSF launched a record number of drone strikes on the city in June, according to the monitoring group Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (Acled). The number of attacks only fell in July because the RSF was responding to Sudanese military attacks elsewhere in Sudan, analysts added.

Satellite images show that despite the strikes, el-Obeid's displacement camp has continued to swell, with hundreds of new tents erected since March. The UN has estimated that more than 83,000 civilians have now fled fighting in other parts of the state and sought shelter in the city.

As the displacement camps have expanded, the conditions in el-Obeid have deteriorated. Last week the UN warned nearly 400,000 people in the city's vicinity are facing food shortages, following a sustained effort by RSF commanders to cut off supply routes into the city for months, creating what one UN official called a "functional siege".

Locals have previously said that supply convoys attempting to reach the city have been targeted by drone attacks, while the charity Islamic Relief - which has operated aid stations in el-Obeid - told BBC Verify that flights carrying aid arriving via the airport have also stopped.

Aid agencies say the food and water shortages have been exacerbated by RSF drone strikes on critical infrastructure. Verified video footage last month showed a massive explosion at a fuel station in the heart of the city after one such strike, while satellite images also appear to damage to power stations and supply warehouses in the city's market district.

One humanitarian official working with Islamic Relief said the slowing of drone strikes in recent days has improved the situation in the city. But he emphasised that while more aid is being distributed and some power has been restored, the situation remained extremely "unpredictable" - with fuel shortages still an issue.

"Every day we are seeing new arrivals due to fighting in areas around El-Obeid. It is not possible to get the exact number of people who are arriving on a daily basis, but it would be about 80 or 100 households daily," the aid worker said.

Meanwhile, RSF fighters and leaders have repeatedly vowed in verified video footage to move on the city. In one clip posted to the paramilitary's official Telegram channel, a commander could be seen waving an assault rifle while addressing a group of troops - promising that they would soon see combat in el-Obeid.

Another verified clip from late May showed paramilitary fighters gathering alongside dozens of armoured vehicles just outside the RSF heartland of Nyala. One fighter seen leaning on the door of an armoured vehicle boasted that the unit's next target was el-Obeid. Recent footage located by BBC Verify placed fighters within 40km (24 miles) of the city.

These threats also appear to be stoking tensions within the city. Volker Türk, the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights, recently said that many displaced people who have sought shelter in el-Obeid have faced suspicion and hostility from locals over fears that RSF sympathisers are infiltrating the city.

Meanwhile, the Sudanese military appears to be digging in and building a defensive berm - or earth wall - around the city, satellite images suggest. Unlike the one built around el-Fasher by the RSF last year, which trapped people inside the besieged city, this appears to be defensive and aimed at keeping attackers out.

On Monday, the military also said that a massive operation had secured a vital highway between el-Obeid and the capital, Khartoum. In response, the RSF's leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who is known as Hemedti, said he was "unleashing" his fighters and ordered his front-line commanders to "move straight forward. No more retreat. No more hesitation".

Nohad Eltayeb, Senior Research Assistant at Acled, told BBC Verify that the city is a key hub for both sides to the conflict.

"It is the critical juncture connecting RSF-controlled western territories with the military-held central and White Nile regions," Eltayeb said.

She added that the RSF "need to regain momentum following territorial losses in the eastern Blue Nile region, alongside internal instability and defections within its Darfur strongholds".

The joint EU/G7 warning of atrocities in el-Obeid urged all "external actors" to suspend "armed, logistical, or financial support to the parties to the conflict". Earlier this month the European Parliament expressly named the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a key backer of the RSF. Emirati officials have repeatedly denied the allegations.

Alan Boswell, Crisis Group's Horn of Africa Group director, suggested that the flurry of early Western interventions may be motivated by the failure to avert the el-Fasher massacre - which was the culmination of an extended siege and RSF build-up.

"Many are trying to turn up the volume on those warnings to prevent another round of mass atrocities in el-Obeid," he said.

"The key is if world leaders will put enough pressure on the RSF and its main backer to make a difference this time."

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Ghana mourns its tallest man - a 'generous and popular giant'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crk52jk0131o, 5 days ago

The death of Sulemana Abdul Samed, Ghana's tallest man, has prompted an outpouring of grief especially in the north of the country where his height had made him a local celebrity.

The 33 year old died in hospital on Monday in the northern city of Tamale, about 160km (100 miles) south of his home village of Gambaga, where he had been admitted because sores on his legs had become infected.

"Everyone knew how generous and kind he was. From when he died until now a lot of people are still coming to the house to find out what exactly happened,'' a relative, Sulemana Abdul Kudus, has told the BBC.

Diagnosed with gigantism in his 20s, he was 7ft 4in (223cm) tall when measured by the BBC in late 2022.

It is likely he had grown even taller before his death.

Known to everyone by his nickname Awuche, which means "Let's Go" in the Hausa language, he had long struggled with complications of Marfan syndrome, the genetic disorder which resulted in his extremely long limbs.

He had also struggled to pay his medical bills, but recently found a benefactor in the brother of Ghana's President John Mahama, who also met the giant of Gambaga.

A successful businessman, Ibrahim Mahama had offered to cover his medical bills at the Tamale Teaching Hospital - and earlier this month gave an update on the planned treatment.

Kudus told the BBC the sores on Ache's legs were not directly caused by Marfan syndrome - but likely to be a complication from his condition.

He had died on Monday morning at the hospital despite doctors saying he had been responding well to treatment.

"Everyone is just sad," Kudus said, adding that the residents of Gambaga were shocked by his sudden death.

Awuche had made their village famous.

''Anywhere he found himself in the country and they asked him, he would say he is from Gambaga and people knew that was where the tallest man was from. It gave the community identity, and he was popular as well," Kudus said.

Awuche had not always been unusually tall - it was at the age of 22 that he started to grow quicker than his peers.

He told the BBC he had been working at a butchers in Ghana's capital city, Accra, when he first started to notice changes.

"I realised my tongue had expanded in my mouth to the extent that I could not breath [properly]," he said.

Days later he realised every other part of his body had started increasing in size. Awuche was eventually diagnosed with Marfan syndrome, which affects the body's connective tissues.

Nine years ago, his height forced him to give up his dreams of becoming a driver and return to Gambaga.

He said that Marfan syndrome had also curtailed his social life, adding: "I used to play football like every other young man, I was athletic but now I cannot even walk short distances."

However, at the time of the BBC's report, he seemed to maintain a positive outlook on life and enjoyed his celebrity status.

The family said they had decided to bury Awuche in Tamale instead of Gambaga as the village would have been overwhelmed with mourners.

Additional reporting by Favour Nunoo

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

My son's not just a champion swimmer – he made me change my life

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgl59egq5no, 4 days ago

Chad le Clos shocked a global audience when he beat swimming legend Michael Phelps to win a gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics.

His dad Bert also became something of a celebrity after his joyous interview with the BBC's Clare Balding went viral.

It's now 14 years on and Chad has become the most decorated athlete in Commonwealth Games history having won his 21st medal on Wednesday night.

Bert said the family wept tears of joy after his son won the first of his three medals at the Glasgow Games last week.

The 34-year-old helped secure a bronze for South Africa in the 4x100m freestyle relay on Friday at the Tollcross International Swimming Centre.

As he celebrated winning his 19th medal, a tearful Chad said: "I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a big moment for me and my family. I'm really grateful."

Le Clos added a 4x100m mixed medley relay silver on Tuesday.

And on Wednesday he won a bronze in the 4x100m medley relay, to take him clear of Australian swimming great Emma McKeon with 21 medals.

Bert said his son had set world records and won gold on a bigger stage - but the freestyle relay bronze medal in Glasgow was "as emotional as the first one".

He added: "I realise that my little kid - who is now a pensioner - was unbelievable in what he achieved."

In a wide-ranging interview with BBC Scotland, 69-year-old Bert said his life had been "revolutionised" by his son.

He recalled how Chad had prompted him to quit smoking when, at the age of 12, he asked his father to give up the habit instead of buying him a Christmas present.

Bert hasn't had a single cigarette since that day.

The grandfather - who weighed 140kg (22 stone) at the time - also stopped drinking every day and lost 41kg (6.45 stone).

"He made me change my life," said Bert.

"I would probably be dead now if I had continued the way I was. That's a good lesson for other parents."

Bert, who was one of 10 children, was born in Mauritius and moved to Durban in South Africa when he was six.

He and wife Geraldine also have a son Jordan, 28, a former African jiu-jitsu champion who now lives in the US.

Bert lists his career experience as "entrepreneur; owner of various butcheries; and bookmaker in the horse racing industry".

Asked about his colourful CV, Bert told how he sold his bookmaker business as he was "playing too big" and "going berserk".

"I was a very naughty boy," he added.

Chad joined the Seagulls Swimming Club when he was eight and started competing for his school at the age of 10.

But Bert was keen to ease his son into the sport before introducing a six-day training programme, which involved 04:45 starts.

He said: "I didn't want him to do too many mornings too early.

"A lot of parents and coaches they push the kids too hard too soon.

"Why would you want your 11 or 12-year-old doing as much mileage as an Olympic champion?

"That's why Chad is still swimming at 34."

Bert was anxious not to force Chad, who played football and rugby at provincial level, in a particular direction.

He said: "Sport will chose your child. You won't choose your child's sport."

Bert also revealed that how no matter how Chad performed he always gave him a "man of the match ice cream".

He added: "You have just got to be there to encourage, not to force."

Chad was 13 when he travelled to Sheffield with Bert for his first international competition.

He made two finals but finished second last and third last.

Bert confronted Chad's coach when they returned home to Durban, saying: "My boy can't swim. He's not an athlete. He's not a swimmer."

But his coach was reassuring – and three years later Chad was named swimmer of the year when he raced the same competitors at the junior Commonwealth Games.

Chad was 18 when he made his Commonwealth debut at the Dehli Games in 2010, winning two golds, a silver and two bronzes.

It was a sign of what was to come.

On 31 July 2012 he stunned the sporting world when he pipped Phelps by 0.05 seconds to win the 200m butterfly Olympic gold.

At the time the US icon was a 14-time Olympic champion and he had not lost in the event since 2001.

But 20-year-old Chad produced the race of his life at the London Aquatics Centre to beat his hero.

As he looked up at the scoreboard in disbelief, his father went wild in the stands.

Afterwards Bert was interviewed by Clare Balding,

He told her the result was "unbelievable" and added: "I have never been so happy in my life.

"It's like I have died and gone to heaven. Whatever happens in my life from now on, it is plain sailing."

Bert became an instant celebrity and Chad has often said since that his father is more famous than him.

That night the celebrations ended around 04:00 and when Bert, Geraldine and Jordan got back to their room they sobbed with joy.

Chad later won a silver in the 100m butterfly as Phelps gained revenge.

The American retired after the 2016 Rio Games with a record 23 gold, three silver and two bronze medals.

In the run up to those Olympics both Bert and Geraldine were diagnosed with cancer.

Despite the stress he was under Chad won two more silvers and became the most decorated South African Olympic athlete.

But by the time the Covid-delayed Tokyo Games came round Chad's mental health had spiralled.

Bert said it had been difficult to help his son during this period.

"When there are challenges in one's family, as a father you have got to love your children... Whatever troubles you have, take it on the chin and try to sort it out."

Chad went on to compete at Paris 2024 and is aiming to qualify for his fifth Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028.

Over his career he has won 16 world titles, seven Commonwealth golds and 10 African titles.

Chad also set up his own foundation with a focus on water safety education and swimming survival skills.

The le Clos family build their holidays around Chad's competition schedule and cherish their Commonwealth Games trips, which stretch back to Delhi 2010.

Bert described the Glasgow 2014 Games as their finest hour as Chad won seven medals.

In doing so he equalled the record for a single edition set by Australian swimming legend Ian Thorpe at Manchester 2002.

He said: "We had the time of our lives. The people make the Games and it was fantastic."

Glasgow stepped in to host the Games for a second time after the Australian state of Victoria pulled out due to soaring costs.

Bert said: "It looks like this one was watered down a bit to be fair but, in saying that, it is still up there.

"The swimming is still world class."

Asked to describe his son's glittering career, Bert laughed and said: "One word - unbelievable.

"How lucky am I?

"Do you think as a father I could imagine that this little rabbit could get all these accolades? Absolutely not.

"It has been beautiful. What a journey."

Oprah Winfrey to close her school for girls in South Africa

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c75gre70vr6o, 3 days ago

US talk-show host Oprah Winfrey says the school for girls that she launched in South Africa nearly 20 years ago will close next year.

At the end of the 2027 academic year, the expansive boarding school campus near Johannesburg is to be handed over to local education authorities as per the original agreement, her statement says.

Students enrolled at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls (OWLAG) who will not have graduated when it closes will be offered full scholarships elsewhere.

More than 1,000 girls have graduated from the school aimed at those from under-privileged backgrounds and inspired after Winfrey met anti-apartheid icon and former South African President Nelson Mandela in 2002.

Since opening its doors, the elite school - built at a cost of $40m (£20m) and located in the village of Henley-on-Klip south of Johannesburg - has not been without scandal, sparking rumours about the reason for its closure.

But a PR consultant working for the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy Foundation denied online speculation it was closing because of mismanagement.

The foundation said Winfrey intended to continue with her education project by funding in a scholarship programme for academically talented girls from communities across the country to go to leading schools.

"The dream was never simply to build a school," Winfrey, 72, explained in a statement.

"It was to invest in the limitless potential of young women. That mission doesn't end with one campus. It continues in every girl whose future can be transformed through education.

"I'm excited that this next chapter will allow us to reach even more young women across South Africa and continue the promise that began more than 20 years ago."

It is not known what the OWLAG campus will be used for once it is returned to the local authorities, but Gauteng province's education department says it is "committed to preserving and advancing the academy's legacy".

"We will ensure that this exceptional institution continues to serve the people of Gauteng while honouring the vision upon which it was established," it said.

When the school opened in 2007, some commentators criticised its lavish campus - it reportedly had two theatres, a yoga studio and a beauty salon.

They questioned whether the money spent on it could have been better used to help more students around the country.

Then months after OWLAG opened, some students accused a former staff member of abuse. She was later cleared on all charges.

There are currently 281 students enrolled at the school.

According to the US star's Oprah Daily website, many of the school's graduates have become doctors, lawyers, engineers, artists, executives and entrepreneurs.

It quotes Andronica Klaas, a graduate of 2012 and now a senior engineering lead at tech giant Meta, as saying: "Every corner of the campus was filled with so much love and care and detail.

"OWLAG convinced me that preparation, character and purpose mattered more than where I came from."

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

Cyanide in tomato pesticide killed 15 elephants, Kenyan officials suspect

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp9e0v5xmdyo, 3 days ago

Fifteen elephants found dead in southern Kenya outside the Amboseli National Park are suspected to have been poisoned by eating tomatoes that had been sprayed with pesticides on nearby farms.

The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) says preliminary laboratory tests found cyanide in samples taken from the animals' carcasses.

Ten of the elephants had been found with signs of paralysis and then died within two days. The other five elephants were already dead by the time they were discovered.

Investigations are continuing, but for the time being wildlife officials have ruled out foul play.

Seeking to reassure the public, wildlife authorities have told local media the toxic substances eaten by the elephants pose no immediate risk to humans.

This incident has raised concerns about expanding farming activities near the park as elephants often stray on to farmland in search of food and water.

The park and its surrounds are known as the Amboseli ecosystem, a vast area that straddles the border with Tanzania, which is famous for its wildlife.

Officials say this is the first time in decades that elephant mortalities on this scale have been recorded in the region where they have successfully cracked down on poaching.

The carcasses include elephants of different ages and sexes, suggesting the deaths are not limited to a single family or demographic.

The KWS said the deaths had occurred over a month between 24 June and 24 July 2026.

According to figures from the Amboseli Trust for Elephants, which monitors the movements of the animals, there were more than 2,000 elephants in the Amboseli ecosystem as of 2025.

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

Veteran Ugandan opposition leader collapses in court and in ICU, his wife says

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0m78xl1k2po, 3 days ago

Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye has been admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) in the capital, Kampala, after collapsing and losing consciousness during his treason trial, his wife has said.

The 70-year-old has been in detention since November 2024. His lead lawyer was arrested last month and charged with allegedly failing to report acts of treason.

The visibly frail politician was objecting to state lawyers being appointed to represent him when he fell, prompting prison guards to rush him to hospital.

"He is unconscious, unable to speak, and unresponsive even to a pain stimulus," his wife, Winnie Byanyima, who heads the UN's agency tackling HIV and Aids (UNAids), wrote on X.

Besigye, who has run for president against long-serving leader Yoweri Museveni four times, was dramatically abducted in Kenya in 2024 and taken back to Uganda.

He has since been held along with his aide, Obeid Lutale, and both have been charged with treason, which they deny.

Prosecutors allege that Besigye and his co-accused plotted to overthrow President Museveni's government.

Treason is a capital offence in Uganda and if found guilty the veteran politician could be sentenced to death.

During Wednesday's hearing at the High Court in Kampala witnesses in court said Besigye repeatedly shouted "stop" about his legal representation before collapsing.

"Before he collapsed, he cried out that he was being injured," his wife posted, adding that Besigye's sister Olive Kobusingye, who is a doctor, was in court but was not allowed to attend to him.

He was transferred to Mulago National Referral Hospital, Uganda's largest public hospital, but was refusing treatment from government medical personnel.

"He will not allow any government official to touch him," Byanyima said.

His wife demanded that Besigye be allowed to receive treatment from his personal physician at a private clinic rather than at a government health facility.

The ICU wing where Besigye is being treated is guarded by heavily armed security officers. Reports say his sister, who is also his personal doctor, has now been allowed to see him.

Besigye's main lawyer, Erias Lukwago, is in jail after being seized by the army last month.

His other lead lawyer, prominent Kenyan Martha Karua, was then barred from entering the country when she flew in to represent him last month.

There have been increasing calls by the family, opposition and human rights groups for Besigye to be released on medical grounds.

On Wednesday, Besigye's son, Adam Ampa, appealed to President Museveni and his son, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who is Uganda's army chief, to show mercy by releasing his father on humanitarian grounds.

"Regardless of politics, no son should have to witness his father reach such a state while standing before the very law he served and dedicated his life," Ampa wrote in an open letter shared on social media.

This is not the first time Besigye has been admitted to hospital since his detention.

In February 2025, he was taken to a private clinic after his health deteriorated while on hunger strike over his continued detention.

He was taken to hospital for a brief stay again earlier this year.

Bobi Wine, a Ugandan opposition politician who fled the country fearing for his life after contesting the January presidential election, said Besigye's appearance in court while clearly unwell was a "shocking violation of his most basic rights".

Besigye once served as Museveni's personal doctor before breaking ranks with him in 1999.

He has been less active in politics in recent years, and did not contest the 2021 election.

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

Ghana hit by nationwide blackout as power plants fail

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmrkgr4z0jo, 4 days ago

A major fault on Ghana's national power grid has triggered widespread outages, leaving the capital, Accra, the commercial hub of Kumasi and much of north without electricity.

Several power plants across the West African nation were forced to shut down in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the state-run power distribution company said.

"Our engineers and system operators are working continuously to restore power in the shortest time possible without compromising safety," Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) has said in its statement.

Ghana has had regular power shortages for years - popularly known as "dumsor", meaning "on and off" in the Akan language - but the situation has been improving.

Wednesday's power cut has left homes, businesses and essential services without electricity across multiple regions of the country.

Many commuters had problems getting to work as those whose phones were not charged had difficulty paying for transport - and in some cases ordering taxis via apps such as Uber.

It has also affected small businesses and people relying on digital services, though big institutions, such as hospitals, tend to have back-up generators.

GRIDCo said it was conducting a comprehensive technical investigation to determine the outage's cause.

It did not say how long it would take for normal supplies to resume.

Ghana, one of the world's biggest producers of both gold and cocoa, has in recent years started using gas to generate electricity to help with demand as the population grows and becomes more urbanised.

Most of the country's electricity is generated by ageing hydropower plants, which have suffered from poor maintenance over years.

The addition of gas has eased power cuts, but the sector remains vulnerable to transmission failures and fuel supply interruptions.

More BBC stories from Ghana:

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Mysterious deaths of elephants in Kenya prompts urgent inquiry

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3w0d7yeqlxo, 4 days ago

An urgent investigation has been launched into the mysterious deaths of 15 elephants in southern Kenya near the Amboseli National Park.

The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) told the BBC that experts were examining the carcasses and said that tissue samples had been sent to laboratories to determine whether the deaths were caused by disease, poisoning or another factor.

The park and its surrounds are known as the Amboseli ecosystem, a vast area that straddles the border with Tanzania, which is famous for its wildlife.

Officials say this is the first time in decades that elephant mortalities on this scale have been recorded in the region where they have successfully cracked down on poaching.

KWS says there is currently no evidence pointing to a single cause of death.

The carcasses include elephants of different ages and sexes, suggesting the deaths are not limited to a single family or demographic.

The KWS said the deaths occurred over a month between 24 June and 24 July 2026.

The wildlife authorities also confirmed to the BBC all the deaths had been recorded outside the Amboseli National Park.

Earlier, KWS's head of communication Duncan Wanyama told local media the bodies had been found at different locations surrounding the park, around 15km (nine miles) to 30km from its boundaries.

According to figures from the Amboseli Trust for Elephants, which monitors the movements of the animals, there were more than 2,000 elephants in the Amboseli ecosystem as of 2025.

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

UK rapper Yung Filly found not guilty of raping woman after Australian show

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crrv7vk0knro, 3 days ago

UK rapper Yung Filly has been found not guilty of raping a fan after performing at a nightclub in Australia in 2024.

On Friday a jury in Western Australia found him not guilty for three counts of sexual penetration without consent.

But he was found guilty for two counts of assault occasioning bodily harm.

The YouTuber, whose real name is Andres Felipe Valencia Barrientos, had been accused of sexually assaulting the woman, then 20 years old, in his hotel room after he performed in Hillarys, a coastal suburb of Perth.

The jury could not come to a decision on three other counts of rape.

Barrientos was also found not guilty for one count of assault occasioning bodily harm and also for strangulation.

The 30-year-old social media star, who pleaded not guilty to all charges, cried when the verdict was read out, local media reported.

He will remain on bail until 21 August, when the court will decide his sentencing date.

Prosecutors will also decide on the next steps for the three hung jury verdicts - whether to press ahead or not on those rape charges.

Barrientos has been on bail since being charged and was allowed to fly home to the UK in September for four months, before returning to Western Australia ahead of his trial.

Differing arguments

During the trial, Barrientos had told the court that he had "fancied" the woman when they met at the concert venue.

Barrientos, who was born in Colombia and brought up in the UK, had been in the VIP area while she leaned over the barrier from the general area.

He denied touching her inappropriately.

"I recall putting my hand on her waist," he told the court. But he said he had not put his hands down her pants or touched her breast.

He said the "vibes were good" between him and the woman when they arrived at his hotel later.

His security guard took the woman's phone away - "standard practice" to protect their privacy, according to Barrientos.

The court heard that the pair had engaged in consensual sex in his hotel room before Barrientos turned violent and the young woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told him to stop.

The woman accused the social media star of biting, bruising and even trying to choke her. Photos of bruises and bite marks on her face and neck were shown in court.

Barrientos denied the woman had repeatedly asked him to stop, but did acknowledge that he bit her several times, explaining that he gave her a "love bite".

During the trial's closing arguments, prosecutor Danielle Clarke said Barrientos was an "entitled" man with a "moderate degree of fame" who had violated the fan "in the most intrusive way possible".

His defence lawyer argued that the accuser's evidence was full of "inconsistencies, embellishments and outright lies".

Barrientos is known for his work with the YouTube collective Beta Squad, and has appeared in the celebrity version of Bake Off on Channel 4 and presented BBC Three shows.

In addition to his 1.8 million YouTube subscribers, he has three million followers on TikTok and and 2.4 million on Instagram.

Who is Nirmal Purja, the famed mountaineer missing in Broad Peak avalanche?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2kp4ndny0o, 2 days ago

One of the most recognised figures in mountaineering today, British-Nepali climber Nirmal Purja holds multiple records.

But his most famous feat was in 2019, when he climbed the world's 14 tallest peaks in just over six months - setting a record at the time for the fastest anyone had scaled all 14 mountains.

Purja, also known as Nims Dai, is among 10 climbers who went missing after an avalanche on Thursday on Broad Peak, a 8,047m (26,400ft) mountain in Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan. Search operations are under way.

Here's what to know about Purja.

From military to mountaineering

The 43-year-old was born in a small village in Nepal's mountainous Myagdi district, located around 1,600m above sea level.

He comes from a family of Gurkhas, a world-famous group of Nepalese soldiers who have served in different armed forces, including the British Army.

Following in the footsteps of his father and elder brothers, he joined the Gurkhas in 2003 at age 18 and joined the UK Special Forces in 2009.

During his 16 years in the British military, he developed an interest in mountaineering.

In 2012, he walked to Everest base camp and, instead of returning to Kathmandu as planned, he decided to learn how to climb "for real", according to his website.

He soon conquered the 6,119m Lobuche East, which was his "first peak", according to his website.

This spontaneous spirit for adventure remained part of his personality, even on his most recent expedition to Broad Peak.

In his last post on X, which was published on Monday, Purja said that he had not intended to climb Broad Peak.

"Initially, the plan was to climb just G2," he wrote, referring to Gasherbrum II, another peak located in the Karakoram mountain range.

But right before he set off for Pakistan, he realised that if he also managed to climb Broad Peak while he was there, he would only have one more mountain to conquer before becoming the "first person in history to climb all 14 eight-thousanders twice. Without oxygen."

An eight-thousander is a mountain that rises more than 8,000m above sea level. There are only 14 of them in the world, all located in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges.

"This wasn't planned," Purja wrote. "But opportunities don't scream: they whisper to those already working in silence."

"Broad Peak, I ask for nothing but safe passage up and back down. I take zero mountains for granted," he wrote.

He had successfully summited Gasherbrum II on 21 July, his 57th summit of an eight-thousander, he wrote in a post on X.

As he became more famous, he also faced scepticism from critics. And troubling allegations emerged about his conduct.

In 2024, a New York Times article detailed sexual allegations two women made against Purja. One alleged that he had sexually assaulted her in a hotel room in 2023 and another said he had grabbed and propositioned her while guiding her on an expedition to K2 in 2022. He denied these claims through his lawyer.

The 14 peaks

His mountaineering achievements earned him an MBE, a civilian honour, from Queen Elizabeth II in 2018.

But the following year he undertook his most ambitious challenge yet: setting a record for climbing the 14 peaks in the shortest amount of time.

While previous records stood at nearly eight years, Purja took six months and six days to do that in 2019.

His record has since been broken by Norwegian mountaineer Kristin Harila, who climbed the 14 peaks in three months and one day in 2023.

Purja's journey, named Project Possible, was captured in the documentary 14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible.

He hoped that the film would inspire others to chase their dreams, no matter what they are.

"It's not about mountain climbing, it's about following your goals," he previously told the BBC, when the documentary was released.

Organising that expedition was not easy. He had to re-mortgage his house to fund the 14 summit attempts. Throughout this, he was supported by his wife Suchi.

Despite the dangerous and physically demanding nature of his challenge, Purja said he did not forget to have fun. He told the BBC previously that he could have climbed Everest, Lhotse and Makalu in three days, instead of five, had he not stopped for two nights "to have a drink".

In between rescuing weakened climbers and chasing a world record, Purja and his teammates would throw booze-filled parties in their camps at night.

He climbed at least one peak while being hungover, as shown in the documentary.

As he approached the peak of Everest in May 2019, he snapped a photo of a snaking queue of climbers all waiting to reach the summit.

That photo of the traffic jam went viral and sparked a conversation about dangerous overcrowding on the world's tallest peak.

After the success of Project Possible, Pujra returned to Nepal a climbing superstar. He has since set up an expedition guiding company and mountaineering apparel brand.

He also used his newfound fame to advocate for Nepali mountain guides, calling for more recognition of their work supporting high-profile ascents of foreign climbers.

In his last post on X this week, he wrote:

"This one is dedicated to everyone who carried me here. Supporters. Critics. All of you. Without both sides, there is no fire. So thank you genuinely."

Massive Attack responds after Singapore ban over Palestine display

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr59qe86yj4o, today

Massive Attack has said it was "surprised and disappointed" by its treatment by Singaporean authorities after expressing pro-Palestine sentiments during a performance in the city-state.

The group wrote on Instagram on Sunday that its members were "detained by the police, isolated and separately questioned", with some subject to hotel room searches and temporary passport confiscation.

The band's two members held up a Palestinian flag during its 29 July show there and shouted "free Palestine" alongside members of the audience.

Singapore, which has stringent rules on public speech and assembly, subsequently said it had indefinitely banned Massive Attack from returning to the country.

A police spokeswoman told the BBC on Friday that the two band members would not be allowed to re-enter Singapore and were barred from performing there.

Robert Del Naja and Grant Marshall were "given stern warnings" concerning alleged offences under two laws that restrict the public display of foreign flags and regulate political expressions at public events.

Massive Attack said that before the show and again at the end "large sections of the auditorium organically led chants of 'Free Palestine', presumably aware but undeterred that this spontaneous expression alone could violate their government's censorship laws".

The band did not address the ban directly, but described the situation as a "surreal experience" and said it "did not imagine that merely holding up the flag of a sovereign state recognised by 157 countries would violate any law".

It added that it was "proud to have made the impromptu expression" with fans in Singapore, who "clearly felt a moral imperative to show solidarity with the people of Palestine".

Massive Attack is known for openly expressing its political stance on a range of issues, including the war in Gaza.

Del Naja was arrested earlier this year on suspicion of showing support for the proscribed organisation Palestine Action during a protest in London.

The 61-year-old sat among hundreds of fellow demonstrators with a sign that read "I Oppose Genocide, I Support Palestine Action".

Singapore has taken a strong stance on public statements on the Israel-Gaza war, with authorities in the multicultural country insisting this was necessary to preserve racial and social harmony.

The home affairs ministry put out a statement in 2023 advising against "the public display and wearing of articles" in relation to the Israel-Gaza war, including foreign national emblems.

Massive Attack is currently on a world tour, with performances next week in Australia following the end of its Asia leg.

The BBC has contacted the Singaporean police for comment.

Greyhounds bound for Australia as New Zealand racing ban takes effect

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y62pe9g3no, yesterday

At least two chartered flights carrying up to 150 greyhounds are set to fly to Australia's eastern states, as a New Zealand ban on the sport comes into effect.

Several greyhound trainers in New Zealand are responding to a new ban by moving their dogs to Australia with plans to continue in the sport, governing body Greyhound Racing New Zealand (GRNZ) told the BBC.

While the ban across New Zealand takes effect on Saturday, the practice remains legal almost everywhere in Australia.

The ban was first announced in December 2024, and legislated in April. Approximately 1,400 greyhounds will retire in New Zealand under the ban and require rehoming.

Australian authorities say that greyhounds arriving from New Zealand are classed as "companion animals" which will undergo screening for diseases such as rabies.

"Australia's import requirements for dogs are based on biosecurity risk, not the intended use of the animal," Australia's Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry told a Senate inquiry in June.

A spokesperson for New Zealand's Racing Minister Winston Peters called the plans to relocate the dogs "the last gasp actions of a dying industry".

Peters said the dog racing industry had "lost its social licence" after multiple reviews concluded that dog and injury death rates "remain unacceptably high", a conclusion that GRNZ disputed.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Peters said: "We understand a small number of dogs are being exported to Australia, but the vast majority (1,300 to 1,400) will be rehomed over the next couple of years."

"This is a one-off final act rather than an ongoing issue," the spokesperson added.

GRNZ Edward Rennell chief executive told the BBC that between six and 10 trainers have expressed interest in relocating to Australia, with most New Zealand citizens not requiring a special visa to live in Australia. Details would be finalised "over the next two weeks", he said.

Rennell said "the details aren't locked in" but that his organisation would cover the full cost of the flights, while other costs would be borne by owners and trainers.

"We will be supporting people that are looking to transfer over," Rennell said.

He said some of the dogs will continue training and racing in Australia, although he noted they are likely to be less competitive in professional racing because breeding has largely paused in New Zealand since the ban was announced 18 months ago.

Kiwis are still able to bet on Australian greyhound racing, which has a larger commercial presence.

Queensland, New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria's industries were collectively worth almost A$2bn (£1.04bn; $1.4m) in 2022-23, which dwarfed New Zealand's $147m total, according to the latest figures published by Greyhounds Australasia.

The dedicated body overseeing the closure of the industry in New Zealand, the Greyhound Transition Agency told the BBC: "We understand that arrangements are being made to relocate some dogs to Australia for racing purposes.

"However, we are not in a position to comment further on these arrangements."

New Zealand announced the greyhound racing ban following three independent reviews into the sport in 2013, 2017 and 2021.

"We acknowledge the industry made advances in safety, but the high injury and death rates persisted with no sign of improvement," Peters's spokesperson added.

In response, Rennell told the BBC: "I will go to my grave saying that the greyhound welfare standards are the best of any racing code in New Zealand."

GRNZ has eyed kennels across eastern Australia as destinations for New Zealand's racing dogs.

A spokesperson for the Queensland Racing Integrity Commission said the agency "has been advised by Greyhound Racing New Zealand of the arrival of racing greyhounds and the potential relocation of industry participants from New Zealand into Queensland".

NSW and Victorian officials said they were not aware of specific relocation plans within their states, noting that greyhounds are permitted to travel across jurisdictions in Australia in New Zealand.

Australia's Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry did not respond to a request to make further comment.

Dozens of greyhounds were also found to have been moved to Australia after New Zealand's ban was first announced.

Officials have confirmed 80 greyhounds were exported from New Zealand to Queensland through a chartered flight in April 2025.

One trainer and his family were drawn to the "shining lights of the new facility" west of Brisbane, Simon Stout from Greyhounds Australasia told a parliamentary committee hearing in Tasmania on Wednesday.

But one federal senator, Mehreen Faruqi of the Greens, told the BBC she was "deeply concerned about loopholes that allow the continued export of racing dogs to this country that neither New Zealand nor Australia seem to care about".

Director of the Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds Kylie Field said Australia already struggles to find residential homes for thousands of retired racing dogs, including 4,100 in NSW.

"In an attempt to solve the rehoming crisis, the racing industry had devised a program of sending retired greyhounds to the US and Canada," Field said.

"More than 2,000 dogs have been sent overseas so far."

Dog racing is banned in the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania has announced plans to phase it out.

Scotland and Wales both passed legislation outlawing commercial dog racing this year. Most US states have imposed a ban, leaving two racing tracks in West Virginia as the last active operations.

India's 'cockroach' protesters have wounds consistent with pellet-gun fire, say experts

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74gwvygkjdo, yesterday

Independent ballistic experts have told the BBC that injuries sustained by some Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) supporters during last week's protest in the Indian capital were caused by pellet guns.

Warning: This story contains images some might find distressing

Central Delhi witnessed overwhelming violence on 20 July when tens of thousands of protesters tried to march to the parliament to seek education reforms and the resignation of the education minister.

Police and paramilitary personnel were seen brutally attacking the crowds with wooden sticks, batons and tear gas. Delhi Police said 60 protesters and 118 of their personnel were injured. CJP said the number of injured protesters was a lot higher than the official count.

In the days following the crackdown, the government has not confirmed media reports that pellet guns were used on protesters.

But the BBC has been able to confirm at least four cases where protesters have been treated at hospitals for wounds that experts say are caused by pellet guns.

Shotguns designed for bird hunting are sometimes referred to as pellet guns. They fire cartridges, known as "birdshot", containing 200 to 400 small metal pellets. When used against crowds, the pellets spread out in a wide arc, striking people indiscriminately. These guns are banned in several countries.

We have spoken to two of the injured men who believe they were hit by pellet guns fired by security forces. We have also shown photographs and videos of them and a third man to two independent armament and forensic experts. A senior official at a hospital has confirmed a fourth man who also received treatment for pellet wounds.

The experts say the dozens of tiny round punctures are tell-tale signs of injuries caused by birdshot.

"The injuries depicted are definitely from a pellet gun," UK-based ballistics forensic scientist Philip Boyce told the BBC, adding that the weapon used is "a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun".

"These pellet injuries can actually be quite devastating, especially at close range. The injuries I see [in Delhi] are not at close range, they're at least 50 feet. But they can actually still be devastating and potentially life-threatening even from 100 feet," he said.

NR Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services (ARES) in UK, told the BBC that "images and video from the protests show the police using shotguns for crowd control" and photos of "injuries are strongly consistent with the use of birdshot".

"While shotguns are a common tool in the less-lethal arsenals of many states, Indian law enforcement agencies have a long history of employing shotgun cartridges loaded with small lead pellets - known as 'birdshot' - in crowd-control scenarios. When loaded with birdshot cartridges, shotguns are sometimes referred to as 'pellet guns'," he added.

"But these pellets are not safe. They can result in life-changing or, occasionally, life-threatening injuries. They also pepper the body with toxic lead, which can sometimes be difficult to remove safely," he said.

That's why many countries have either banned them or restricted their usage. In the UK, Boyce says the guns are widely used for shooting birds and they're fairly freely available. But, he's "not aware" of any instance when they've been used for crowd control.

In Indian-administered Kashmir - where pellet guns have been used since 2010 - official data, compiled by Human Rights Watch, shows they have injured several thousand people, killed at least 17 and blinded dozens.

If it's confirmed that the forces used pellet guns in Delhi, this would be the first time that India would have used them on its citizens in its capital city.

Two of the young men we spoke to told us they were injured in Connaught Place - a major hub near parliament - after 4pm local time on 20 July.

Mohit (name changed) said when he saw a security personnel aim his gun at him, he turned around and began running in the opposite direction.

"Two-three seconds later, I felt a burning sensation on my right arm and back," the 28-year-old journalist told the BBC.

Mohit said he kept running as a searing pain coursed through his body until he reached a café, bought a bottle of water and washed his wounds. "That's when I saw the tiny circular holes on my arm and upper back. I was completely freaked out."

An X-ray taken at Safdarjung hospital, where he was treated for his wounds, shows tiny objects embedded in his arm and upper torso. Medical records that he has shared with the BBC show he has 26 pellet wounds on his right elbow and four on his upper right back. The notes include a diagram showing where the objects are lodged in his body.

Mohit said the doctors told him that surgery could worsen his situation, but he worries about the damage "they can do in future since they remain lodged in my body or whether the ugly scars would ever go away".

"But after seeing photos of other victims who've been hit in the face, I'm feeling fortunate," he says.

Shaikh Irshad Mansoori, who works at a Gurugram-based firm, was not so fortunate.

He was walking from Connaught Place to Jantar Mantar, the main CJP protest venue, when "the police and RAF [Rapid Action Force, a paramilitary force] personnel began beating the crowd with sticks and firing tear gas, causing a stampede-like situation and panic".

"I was with a group of protesters and we were raising slogans when an RAF personnel pointed his gun at us. We didn't think he would fire, but then I suddenly heard a cracking sound nearby and pellets hit me on my left eyebrow and my chin."

Some protesters tried to stem his bleeding with items of clothing, hailed a passing vehicle and took him to Lady Hardinge hospital.

He said scans showed he had more than 40 pellets in his body, including three embedded deep in his neck, left eye muscle and under his nose that doctors told him needed to be taken out.

"Surgeons next morning removed seven pellets, but they had to leave the one in the neck as it was too risky to be taken out. They told me it's now part of your body. They've assured me that it would not cause any danger in future."

More than 10 days later, Irshad says he's "still in some pain".

A senior hospital official told the BBC that Irshad's injuries were caused by "pellet-type small particles", but would not say whether they were fired from a gun. "That's for the forensics to say once they've examined these pellets," they said.

When the first claims of pellet gun use emerged last week, Delhi police called it "completely false and misleading". They said they did not even possess pellet guns.

Since then, Indian media has reported that the shots were fired by the RAF, which reports to the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). The BBC has reached out to CRPF chief Gyanendra Pratap Singh and also sent him questions on email. He's yet to respond.

On Wednesday, government minister Jitendra Singh said in parliament that no "bullets" were fired and only tear gas was used. But he did not comment on the use of pellet guns.

He was responding to allegations by Rahul Gandhi, Congress party MP and leader of the opposition in the lower house, who demanded that Home Minister Amit Shah be sacked since both the Delhi police and CRPF report to Shah.

Last Saturday, Gandhi addressed a press conference accompanied by Sahil Lochab, a 19-year-old Delhi University student, who may lose an eye to pellet injuries.

One side of Sahil's face and the back of his right arm are peppered with tiny holes. Gandhi lifted his T-shirt to reveal dozens more wounds on his underarm and body.

In a video chat with Gandhi and in media interviews, Sahil said he supported the CJP protest, which centred around the issue of repeated paper leaks of key exams, because he wrote an exam to join the police force last year which was cancelled because of the same issue.

He had gone to the protest with three friends but got separated in the chaos when police charged the crowd with batons. He was shot while marching towards the security forces with other protesters.

"I couldn't see who fired the pellet gun but it came from the side where the forces were," he said. "My right eye was swollen so much that it felt it had popped out of my face, I couldn't raise my right arm. I was bleeding profusely and some of the protesters took me to the hospital."

His family, he told Gandhi, had tried to dissuade him from going to the protest, but "I couldn't stop myself".

"I want justice. Whoever did this to me doesn't deserve to be in power," he said.

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Clarification - 1 August: This story was updated to remove a reference to shotguns - or pellet guns - being widely used in the UK to shoot birds of prey, which is illegal.

Millions opposed military rule in Myanmar. Is their dream of a revolution over?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgd3k7xe39o, 3 days ago

"One day we will get our freedom back."

The 22-year-old has spent much of his adult life fighting for it. But now, after five years of civil war in Myanmar, he has had enough of war and political struggle.

"I want to help our people as much as I can. But I choose another way. A non-violent way."

The young man is part of a huge exodus of people from Myanmar seeking sanctuary in the Thai border town of Mae Sot.

He spoke to the BBC from a small, dark room tucked away down a back street – one of a network of safe houses set up by charities to help new arrivals.

Most have very little. They are exhausted, traumatised by their experiences in Myanmar, and very vulnerable. With no legal status in Thailand, the safe houses are their only refuge.

He was 17 when he joined the nationwide protests against the military coup in Myanmar in 2021.

When these were crushed by the army, like many young protesters he travelled to an area controlled by ethnic insurgents to get military training.

He returned to Yangon as part of an urban guerrilla squad, planting bombs outside targets like police stations. "I thought then that non-violent protests were not the right way to get back our freedom."

But he was soon caught and sentenced to seven years in Insein prison, notorious for its brutal treatment of inmates.

He was released last year, and fled to Mae Sot because of the intense police surveillance of his family at their home in Yangon. It is for their sake that he does not want to use his name.

For the millions of Burmese who have risked their lives and left their homes to oppose military rule, these are disheartening times.

They have been dreaming of a revolution which will remake Myanmar as a more democratic and inclusive country, and purge the armed forces from politics.

Instead, they are watching the man they hold responsible for igniting the civil war strengthen his hold on power.

Last month Myanmar's military ruler General Min Aung Hlaing was given a red-carpet welcome by China's Xi Jinping, capping a joint effort by both countries to transform his image from blood-stained dictator to civilian president, increasingly accepted, if not respected, by neighbouring countries.

Chinese diplomatic and military support has been critical in helping the man who deposed the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021 to recover from the catastrophic consequences of his coup.

Over the past year the military junta recaptured much of the territory it had lost to the hundreds of insurgent groups which formed to resist the coup.

A stage-managed election earlier this year, from which the main opposition groups were excluded, has now allowed Min Aung Hlaing to present himself as a legitimate, elected leader.

So where does that leave those who had hoped for a very different future? Many are effectively trapped in Mae Sot.

The town is the main gateway for trade between Myanmar and Thailand, and has always had a large, though fluctuating Burmese population. This has been swollen by refugees since the coup. But you rarely see them outside.

Most are undocumented. They got here unofficially, by crossing the narrow Moei river which marks the border, and live in constant fear of arrest and deportation by the Thai police.

They also fear reprisals against family members back in Myanmar. One former army officer, who defected to the opposition three years ago, told the BBC she only dares leave the room she rents in Mae Sot twice a month.

For those who have just arrived, the safe houses offer them short-term shelter, usually for a maximum of six months. These are warrens of small rooms with basic communal facilities, hidden down the city's smaller side-streets.

Behind every door is a harrowing personal story.

The young urban guerilla who was imprisoned in Insein jail described routine torture and sexual assault by the guards. He also says prison was where he had a change of heart about the struggle.

"I had hoped the revolution would be better. But they did not unite at all [the insurgent groups], they fought each other and I did not like that situation. I saw many casualties from the war, and I could not bear to see things like that."

As the eldest child, he also felt he couldn't risk his life and abandon his family. "So I gave up the armed struggle – not only the armed struggle but other kinds of struggle too, like in politics. I want to help our people in another way."

He has dedicated himself to teaching children in the safe house, and to supporting as best he can friends who are still in prison.

"I try to give them hope that the revolution is not finished yet, and that we still have a chance to win."

Our presence in the safe house drew a crowd of other residents, all with different stories to tell.

There were former members of the people's defence forces which have been fighting against the junta. There was an official from Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, and several young men avoiding forced conscription into the army.

A common refrain among them was that, while they all still believed in the revolution, after five years they were exhausted and needed to earn money for their families. Mae Sot was their only option.

Also here was Yin Yin Aung, a 20-year-old woman with her husband and young son.

They had made an epic, 1,000-mile journey to reach Mae Sot from Sagaing, a region which has put up some of the strongest resistance to the military coup, and suffered terrible reprisals, including relentless air strikes.

Her village, Htomar, was sandwiched between a military base and an insurgent-controlled area. She described the day more than two years ago when soldiers occupied the village, firing their weapons and driving the population ahead of them.

"When the phone signal was cut, we knew something was going to happen. I heard three gunshots, and saw people running between the houses shouting that an army column was coming. We could not carry much. My father took a bag of rice so we would have something to eat, and we ran until we reached a place deep in the forest and hills."

There was nothing there, she adds, so they had to drink the river water, which they also used for bathing, and as a toilet. They fell sick and some of them died. But they stayed in the forest for six months.

The soldiers left the village after one month, but Yin Yin says it had been thoroughly looted, with landmines laid around the houses.

No-one dared move back.

During this time she gave birth to her son, but he has an abdominal hernia which needs surgery.

Over several weeks the family made their way south and east, arriving six months ago in Mae Sot. This is the second safe house they have lived in; they had reached the maximum stay allowed in the first.

They are trying to avoid having to rent a room commercially so she can save up for her son's operation.

Not everyone is disheartened by the military's successes.

In another safe house we met a former Yangon bartender-turned-rebel, with his wife and two month-old-baby.

They had left war-torn Karen State, where he is a member of the Cobra Column, one of the more effective fighting units in the opposition, and come to Mae Sot to have their baby.

But he seemed eager to get back to the war.

"I believe that the revolution we are fighting right now will succeed one day. Because they [the military] are fighting a war against the entire country. They are fighting a war against the very citizens they are supposed to protect and safeguard. There is no way they can win."

The Cobra Column fights alongside the Karen National Union, which is relatively well-armed and has been fighting the central government for nearly 80 years. Morale is still high there.

But other people's defence forces are struggling this year, after Chinese pressure cut their supplies of weapons and technology. Meanwhile the Myanmar military has benefitted from training and new equipment from Russia and China.

Louis – not his real name – is an entrepreneur from Yangon, who left to join the insurgents in Karen State after the coup.

"I thought it was my duty as a citizen, even though I was already 40-something years old. I thought if I don't join now, I will regret it for the rest of my life."

He too was captured and imprisoned by the military junta, but was able to persuade them he was an ethnic Karen combatant, not a member of the civil disobedience movement that emerged in response to the coup.

That at least meant he got treated less harshly. But when he was released last year, he decided his family's need was greater than that of the revolution.

"For the first two or three years, we had high morale and were very motivated. But, since the war is dragging on for so long, a lot of people have other responsibilities that do not stop. Like me, my kids are growing up, they need a good education, a better life. A lot of people feel like this. We have changed under that pressure."

Many of those recruited to fight in Myanmar's civil war are children as young as 13. One activist has dedicated herself to extracting them from insurgent groups, and bringing them to a refuge she has made in an old house in Mae Sot, where she tries to get them work experience.

The adjustment is hard. The youngest boys have become conditioned to military life, and still have family members fighting on the other side of the border. They feel it is their duty to be with them.

"Sometimes I get depressed about the revolution," she says. "Before the coup there were villages which were friends, and now they become enemies because one supports the military and another supports the resistance."

She believes it's time for them to change their strategy. "We have to prepare for a long fight for this revolution, not only with weapons, but also thinking about education and healthcare. There are many displaced people now in refugee camps. What are we going to do for them?"

Yin Yin Aung has been told by a private hospital in Mae Sot she must raise a deposit of 38,000 baht (about $1,140; £845) for her son's operation, a near impossible sum for her and her husband.

Without any official status they have no access to Thailand's state-run health system. Ideally, she would like to go back to her village, but says that so long as Min Aung Hlaing is in charge, she must stay in Thailand.

"He is the very one who caused all of this to happen. So, if you ask whether we could live there with him still in power, we cannot. Because given the choice, I would prefer to bring my parents here."

Despite shedding his uniform Min Aung Hlaing is not letting up on his war against the opposition.

Last month the UN Human Rights Commissioner reported that a minimum of 702 civilian deaths had occurred in the period between the election announcement last August and its conclusion at the end of January, most of them women and children, most killed by air strikes.

Fragmented among hundreds of armed groups and starved of arms, the resistance has lost ground in recent months, but still controls large parts of the country. And yet diplomatic engagement by Myanmar's neighbours has so far produced no meaningful concessions from the regime.

All of this leaves hundreds of thousands of Myanmar's war refugees, including those in Mae Sot, in devastating limbo.

Yin Yin Aung's home is now a small, dimly lit room with a very basic bathroom at the back. It isn't much for a family of three.

Those in the other 19 rooms are living in the same conditions, all carrying the weight of their own terrible memories of the war.

With no end to her exile in Mae Sot in sight, in six months Yin Yin Aung will probably have to move again.

'I won't stop fighting,' says 'cockroach' protester after alleged detention

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gwdz3z5gzo, 3 days ago

The first thing Mohammad Junaid learned about education was that it could change a person's destiny.

His parents had never been to school. They farmed a small plot of land outside Ghaziabad in northern India, and neither of them could read or write. Yet they spoke about ilm - the Urdu word for knowledge - with something close to reverence. Whatever else happened, they told their children, they would study. Education was the one gift they could afford to give.

It is why the 24-year-old law student says he found himself helping run one of India's biggest student protests in recent years.

Now he has approached India's Supreme Court, alleging he was unlawfully detained because of that role.

Junaid alleges police detained him a day before the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protest ended, questioned him overnight and released him the following day. His petition is yet to be heard.

The alleged action against him has drawn criticism from opposition politicians and civil liberties groups, while CJP leaders have accused authorities of targeting volunteers. The Delhi Police has not responded to the BBC's request for comment.

Junaid's petition comes amid allegations of a wider police crackdown. Protesters in Delhi and other states have accused police of unlawful detentions. The Supreme Court has directed authorities not to take coercive action against protesters with no criminal record while it hears the case, and the CJP has warned it will resume its strike unless the cases against protesters are withdrawn.

It is an unlikely turn for Junaid, who, until recently, had never imagined himself as an activist, he tells the BBC.

When the CJP first called on students in June to gather at Delhi's Jantar Mantar over irregularities in a key medical entrance examination, Junaid packed light, expecting to spend just one day there.

He stayed for six weeks.

As the protest expanded into a broader campaign for accountability, Junaid became part of a small group of volunteers who kept it running.

Though never one of the movement's leaders, his constant presence - organising food, water and shelter - soon made him a recognisable face for protesters.

"Now I want to spend my life fighting for that," he says. "I will not stop."

On the first night of the protest, he says hundreds of students decided not to leave the protest site. There was little drinking water, nowhere to sleep and almost no plan for what came next.

So he began collecting donations for bottles of water, followed by some snacks and meals. By the following evening, he was searching for blankets and places where exhausted students could sleep.

He had volunteered during the 2020 farmers' protests and found himself relying on that experience.

"The CJP people were full of passion," he says. "They brought their will. I brought some order."

As the weeks passed, the protest acquired its own routines. Farmers arrived with vegetables. Gurdwaras sent cooked meals. People came with medicines, bottled water and boxes of fruit.

At some point volunteers stopped asking one another where supplies should go. "They'd just say, 'Give it to Junaid'," he says.

The work was relentless. He estimates he slept only a few hours on most nights. What stayed with him, though, were the conversations.

Parents travelled from different parts of India carrying folders with examination papers, admit cards and other documents. Some spoke about loans they took out to pay for coaching classes.

Junaid remembers one couple who came to the protest on what would have been their daughter's birthday. They told him she had died by suicide after the examination paper leaked, and spent the day distributing food to protesters in her memory.

Each story reminded him of home, of his own parents who always believed education would open doors. Junaid says he often finds himself giving his younger brother the same advice: read as much as you can, study hard and never take education for granted.

"After hearing those stories," he says, "I realised it wasn't just about me anymore."

Then came 20 July. Thousands of demonstrators defied a police ban and marched towards parliament, but were met with tear gas, baton charges and mass detentions.

Junaid spent hours trying to account for missing students, finding drinking water, tending to those who had been injured and helping frightened protesters make their way back to camp. He says watching students who had arrived carrying little more than hope return bruised, coughing and terrified left him shaken.

"That day broke something inside me," he says. "After that, I knew I couldn't just walk away."

Five days later, after education minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned, the CJP declared victory and called off the protest. Volunteers packed away the last of the supplies, hugged one another goodbye and began making plans to return home.

Junaid's own story unfolded differently.

Hours before the protest ended, he says, he was detained after leaving a hospital where he had gone for treatment for a stray dog bite. He says he was questioned about his role in the protest in detail. In his plea, he also alleges he was blindfolded by officers on his way to the police station.

The petition also alleges that police targeted Junaid's family, saying his father was "picked up" from their Ghaziabad home on 23 July and questioned for hours before officers searched the house the next day, damaging furniture and seeking IDs and bank details of relatives. Ghaziabad Police denied the allegations, telling the BBC they had only questioned his father without giving more details.

As videos of jubilant supporters flooded social media, another clip - of Junaid breaking down during an interview - went viral.

The experience, he says, left him questioning something else.

Throughout the protest, religion had rarely come up. "Nobody asked whether you were Hindu or Muslim," he says. "We were just students and volunteers."

It was only after the detention, he says, that he found himself wondering whether his Muslim name had shaped the way he was viewed. He says he has no evidence that it did, but the thought has stayed with him. The BBC has reached out to police for comment.

In recent years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has faced criticism from rights groups and opposition parties over what they describe as the growing marginalisation of Muslims, India's largest religious minority. The government has repeatedly rejected these accusations.

When Junaid returned home the next day, his parents asked him not to go back if the students started protesting again.

They had spent their lives believing that education would change their son's life. Instead, he says, it landed him in trouble with the police.

But Junaid sees it as a "small sacrifice" in a larger fight. If students return to the streets, he says, so will he.

'It took everything from us': India's Assam faces worst floods in years

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqlx61p3wz0o, 6 days ago

When Saline Patro watched the rain on 19 July from her home in Jorhat district in the northeast Indian state of Assam, she didn't know that her life was about to change.

In the afternoon, the 18-year-old suddenly heard the sound of rushing water and people shouting.

"Within minutes, knee-deep water had entered our house," she recalled.

Patro helped her elderly parents and younger brother reach higher ground before returning to try and salvage some belongings. But by the time she fought her way back through the water, their house had been washed away.

"We had a television, a cupboard and a sofa. Nothing was left. We couldn't even save a glass to drink water from," she told BBC Hindi from a relief camp.

"The floods took everything from us."

Every year, she said, floods swept through her village, Seleng Sumoni Pathar on the banks of the Jhanji River, a tributary of the mighty Brahmaputra, one of the world's largest rivers.

But this year was different.

Flooding is a recurring part of life in Assam - nearly 40% of the state is classified as flood-prone by India's National Flood Commission. Assam lies on the vast floodplain of the Brahmaputra, which flows down from the Himalayas and is fed by more than 50 tributaries.

During the annual monsoon, heavy rain across the region increases the volume of water in the river. As the Brahmaputra flows across Assam's flat plains, it deposits large amounts of sand and silt, reducing the river's capacity to carry water and making flooding more likely.

But experts say flooding has worsened over time because of upstream deforestation, ageing embankments and heavier rainfall driven by climate change.

Exceptionally heavy rain across parts of neighbouring Nagaland and Assam from mid-July triggered this year's devastating floods, which minister Pijush Hazarika described as the state's worst in six decades.

At least 68 people have died in the past four weeks, including 58 in the past week alone, while around 40 remain missing. Government data says more than 600,000 people have been affected, with tens of thousands displaced and living in relief camps.

On 21 July alone, 21 people died in 24 hours, most swept away or drowned in floodwaters. Others were killed in landslides and house collapses.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said districts in Nagaland and Assam received rainfall between about 435% and 490% above normal over that period, causing rivers to rise at an unprecedented speed.

Upper Assam, where tributaries from the surrounding hills feed the Brahmaputra, bore the brunt of the flooding. Districts including Sivasagar, Charaideo and Jorhat were among the worst hit. As villages were cut off, rescue teams struggled to reach stranded families.

Assam Chief Secretary Ravi Kotta said officials had been deployed to the worst-hit districts to speed up relief and restoration, with priority given to supplying relief materials and restoring essential services.

A mother and her seven-year-old son spent 12 hours in a mango tree after floodwaters engulfed their village.

Rekhamoni Gogoi, from Holang Katoni village in Sivasagar, told local media the water rose to chest level within an hour on 19 July after heavy rain flooded Upper Assam. She first took shelter at a neighbour's house, but fled again as the water kept rising.

At about 20:00 local time, they climbed a large mango tree in the courtyard. Gogoi said other women helped her climb first while carrying her son before joining them on the branches.

"There was darkness all around us. There seemed to be no hope of survival, but I refused to lose courage," she said.

The pair spent the night in the tree without food or water. Gogoi said her son tried to comfort her, saying they could survive by eating the leaves.

"My son's life is more precious to me than my own, so I was determined to protect him at any cost," she told reporters.

They were rescued the following morning and are now staying in a relief camp while waiting for the floodwaters to recede.

Chief Minister Sarma said the government's focus was now shifting towards rehabilitation, with ministers deployed across the state to coordinate recovery efforts.

But for Patro, whose parents are daily wage workers, the future looks uncertain.

"My parents spent years building that house," she said. "I don't know what we will do now. It will take us years to build another one."

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A Japanese town wrestles with identity after protests over its first mosque

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c36d79nd5w8o, 6 days ago

Today, it's a field of grass. But soon, it'll be the site of the first mosque in this Japanese town.

"It makes me worry about how our community might change," says long-time resident Noriko Izumizawa.

Plans to build an Islamic religious site in Fujisawa, a laid-back seaside town about an hour's drive south of Tokyo, have sparked a wide range of emotions.

There is anger and fear, as well as hope and acceptance, exposing the growing anxieties over immigration and social change as Japan grapples with a labour shortage from a shrinking and ageing population.

Although immigration remains politically sensitive and restrictive, Japan is increasingly relying on foreign workers to fill open jobs. That means an influx of immigrants with various cultures, languages, religions and ways of being.

So the debate that is playing out in towns like Fujisawa across the country is one that goes to the heart of how Japan sees itself.

Izumizawa is not alone in the way she feels. She is among a group of Fujisawa residents who are anxious about the increasingly visible Muslim community. She says that the polarising debates around immigration in the US and Europe have also contributed to her unease.

Earlier this year, anti-mosque protests flared up at the local train station, where thousands took to the streets to object to the proposed construction of the mosque. Some argue that a mosque much larger than the nearby Japanese Shinto shrine is disrespectful.

There have also been reports of hate speech and misinformation spreading on Japanese social media. Local outlets say mosques have been receiving abusive phone calls and emails, some of which has prompted anti-hate groups to organise counter protests calling for no hate.

Hiroki Suzuka, who manages a coffee shop opposite the road where the Fujisawa mosque is set to be built, calls for greater understanding and dialogue.

"I'm not particularly opposed, but I wouldn't say I'm strongly in favour either," Suzuka said.

"I think the first step is to learn about them, what Islam is, what kind of people they are, and what values and perspectives they hold. It begins with having an open mind and a desire to understand each other."

Being Muslim in Japan

Businessman Mohamed Mohideen has lived in Osaka for the past 39 years. He moved from his home country Sri Lanka in 1987 for better work opportunities during the economic bubble.

He has dealt gemstones and later worked in trade, exporting used cars to countries like Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

He moved at a time, he says, when there were far fewer foreign residents.

But Mohideen feels that compared to back then, local people have become hostile and started making hurtful remarks at Muslims, both online and in person.

"On social media, there are countless comments like, 'Get out of Japan' and 'Go back to your own country,'" Mohideen said. "People have also started coming to the mosque and shouting abuse."

Mohideen goes to the Osaka mosque every day for prayers and other duties as a member of the local Islamic community. He says he has never felt that his life was in danger.

Despite having good relationships with neighbours for many years, Mohideen has noticed the shift in attitude towards Muslims more recently.

"Now, I feel that people are afraid of us."

The verbal abuse has worsened in recent years. He recalled members of his Muslim community being called terrorists, accused of making bombs, and being told to get out of Japan.

"When that happens, the only thing we can do is be patient. They're trying to provoke a fight or create a confrontation. They want to see how long we'll tolerate it," Mohideen explained.

"So we stay calm, speak gently, and treat them kindly, because Japanese people generally don't know much about Islam."

Still, he thinks there is some shared responsibility for the rift.

"We focused only on our work and, for a long time, didn't make enough effort to help people understand who we are. We also didn't do enough to become part of the society," he said.

"From now on, I want to work harder to increase dialogue and build better mutual understanding."

Shakeel Mohamed, 61, has been representing the Yashio mosque in Saitama prefecture for the past decade. He had worked as a construction site supervisor for 26 years after moving to Japan from Pakistan and speaks fluent Japanese.

Mohamed says the most important thing is to follow Japan's rules, including sorting refuse properly, obeying parking laws, and wearing helmets when riding your bicycle.

"We make every effort to respect the way things are done in Japan and to follow the rules," he said. "Courtesy is important too, even something as simple as greeting people."

He said Japanese locals in Yashio refer to the area's Pakistani community as "Yashio-stan".

"Of course, there are some Pakistanis who behave badly, but they're only a small minority. And the same is true of Japanese people."

Immigration vs identity

Japan is wrestling with its identity in the face of huge demographic shifts.

Muslims in Japan, including foreign residents and Japanese believers, numbered roughly 420,000 at the end of 2024, up from 230,000 in 2019, according to Hirofumi Tanada, a professor emeritus at Waseda University who studies the faith in Japan.

The country's growing Muslim population also reflects a greater nationwide trend. The foreign resident population – which mainly comes from China, Vietnam, South Korea and the Philippines - surpassed four million in 2025. A record 2.57 million of them work in Japan, according to government data. In the same year, Japan's population declined by nearly 1 million.

Government officials have long avoided describing the country as an immigration country, but push visas that are seen as more temporary than permanent. Critics describe this as a "stealth" immigration system.

But even then, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has adopted a highly conservative stance against large-scale immigration. In June 2026, the Japanese government decided to raise visa fees for foreign nationals fivefold, after not having increased the amount for nearly 50 years.

Now, the government is planning to increase the number of employees at the Immigration Services Agency by about 230 people, aiming to strengthen enforcement against foreigners illegally overstaying. Officials may also introduce a limit to manage the number of foreign residents in the country.

As immigrant communities become more visible, the country is being forced to confront a question it has long tried to avoid: Can Japan become a more diverse country while preserving its sense of identity and cohesion that it values?

Back in Fujisawa, Izumizawa admits she has never had a negative experience with a Muslim neighbour herself.

"The truth is, maybe I just fear the unknown," she shrugs.

Additional reporting by Chie Kobayashi

Indonesian babies were trafficked to Singapore. What happens to them now?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7vgeredvlgo, 9 days ago

On Tuesday an Indonesian court convicted 19 people for baby trafficking, wrapping up a high-profile case - but leaving a key question unanswered.

The members of the trafficking syndicate were found guilty of procuring at least 34 babies and selling them for adoption.

Most of the children were bound for Singapore, and at least 12 babies were sent over.

The case has garnered attention in both countries for months. Now that it has ended, its verdict has sharpened the question of what will happen to the babies in Singapore.

Will they - and should they - return to Indonesia?

This is foremost in the minds of the adoptive parents in Singapore taking care of the babies. For months they have been on tenterhooks, waiting to find out whether they will get to keep their children.

Speaking to the BBC after the verdict, David, the Singaporean parent whom we interviewed previously, said he wanted both governments to make a decision soon.

"Since the case is concluded, how can we move on and what will happen to our son? It's been almost a year of fear and anxiety from waiting," said David, who spoke to us on condition we use a pseudonym for him.

"I sincerely hope that both authorities can come to a decision based on the best interests of the children.

"We respectfully ask that, in making this decision, consideration be given to the fact that both our son and our family are victims of the circumstances surrounding this case."

David and his wife Ally had previously told the BBC that they had no idea the child they adopted from Indonesia could have been trafficked. They said they had done their best to do their own background checks.

During the adoption process they had submitted to numerous checks from the Singaporean government which, they said, should have detected the trafficking.

Neither Indonesian nor Singaporean authorities gave definitive answers to the BBC's previous queries about what they intend to do with the babies.

Following the verdict, we asked them again.

Indonesia's foreign affairs ministry said "several aspects require further examination including the children's legal status, the identities of their biological parents, and the ongoing proceedings in Singapore".

It reiterated that it is "committed to prioritising the best interests of the children".

In a joint statement, Singapore's ministries for home affairs and social and family development said they were still working closely with Indonesian authorities for information on the children and biological parents.

The ministries said the children's best interests would be "a key consideration" for the courts to decide on pending adoption applications.

They added that based on available information, they were "presently unable to conclude that any offence has been committed in Singapore, or by Singaporeans or Singapore-based entities".

During the trial the ringleader of the trafficking ring had said four people in Singapore had approached her to procure babies, and the Indonesian branch of Interpol has also publicly named the Singaporean adoption agency that handled the babies.

There is little data on what happens to children who have been trafficked within Indonesia after they are rescued, as the information is generally not made public, according to Ni Made Martini Puteri, a criminologist and lecturer at the University of Indonesia.

It is even less clear what happens to children who have been trafficked overseas.

Anti-trafficking and child rights groups in Indonesia have argued that the children in this case should return to their biological parents, as a matter of principle.

Speaking to BBC Indonesian after the verdict, Ai Maryanti, a commissioner with Indonesia's independent child protection commission, said that as the children's true identities have still not been established, their "best interests have not been given sufficient consideration".

Just because the children may already be adopted in Singapore, that "should not be treated as the final outcome", she added.

"Of course, children who are victims of human trafficking must be returned. Even if they're already adopted, what's the legal basis for that?

"What we don't want is Singapore saying that the adoptions complied with their law. According to our law, we found there was a high level of manipulation, resulting in Singapore easily accepting [the adoption applications]."

During the trial it emerged that the trafficking ring had submitted false information when applying for the infants' birth certificates and family cards.

They had listed the names of members of the trafficking ring as the children's birth mothers.

Local officials had issued the documents based on this information, raising questions about whether they failed to conduct adequate checks.

Uncharted territory

Annulling the adoptions in Singapore and returning the children to Indonesia will likely be complicated, as it goes into uncharted territory.

Lawyers told the BBC they had never heard of a case where an adoption order was revoked in Singapore.

With a framework that is designed with "substantial safeguards upfront" including numerous checks, "adoption orders in Singapore are generally treated as final", said Derek Choo, an associate director with PKWA Law Practice.

If the government applies to revoke the adoption orders, the court could consider several factors, said Lim Fung Peen, a consultant with Yuen Law.

One is the psychological impact on the child, he said. Child psychologists had previously told the BBC that separating young children from their caregivers could have a lifelong impact on their mental health.

The duration that the child has spent in Singapore, and the family and living conditions the child would return to in Indonesia, could also be considered, according to Lim.

The babies are believed to have entered Singapore between 2023 and 2025, which makes the oldest among them at least three years old by now.

Another factor could be whether the basis of adoption is untrue, said Lim. In this case, the babies' birth certificates have been proven to be fraudulent and thus a court could find the basis of their adoption "questionable", he said.

Then, there are other challenges.

Indonesian authorities still have not identified all of the children's birth parents. This means that some children may have no one to return to.

If they are returned, they would be placed into state care. At least eight other babies rescued from the trafficking ring are already in the care of an orphanage in Bandung.

"Suppose a child is recognised as a trafficking victim and returned to Indonesia, but nobody here knows who the biological parents are because our evidentiary system is weak," said Puteri.

"I would argue that if the child has only known life in Singapore since infancy, then it makes more sense for the child to remain in Singapore with the adoptive parents.

"However, if the biological parents are later identified, the child should still have the right to know who they are."

With the verdict, Singapore should now treat these children as victims of trafficking and thus give them protection, she argued.

"Protection should also extend to the adoptive parents because they too may have had no idea what had happened," she added.

David, the Singaporean parent, said that he and his wife only wish to "live a normal family life, like any other couple hoping to raise a child in a safe, stable, and loving home.

"We hope that this matter can now be brought to a resolution so that our son can move forward with certainty and security."

Additional reporting by Farida Susanty of BBC Indonesian.

'This is just the start': India's Gen Z protesters force out a minister, but what next?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8dng1v72lno, 7 days ago

In 12 years of Narendra Modi's rule in India , only one cabinet minister had previously resigned - over allegations of sexual misconduct.

So education minister Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation on Saturday, after more than a week of intense street protests, became a defining moment - one many young people celebrated as a rare victory.

In the words of 22-year-old Sakhi, a student activist in Delhi, "for the first time, it felt like we can make things happen through protests".

Soon after Pradhan quit, social media seized on an old video of a senior Modi minister boasting that "resignations do not happen in our government", reflecting the confidence of the nationwide youth movement that had demanded his exit.

Sakhi says they grew up reading textbooks that spoke about the importance of dissent in a democracy, "but I did not see that around me in the Modi years".

On Instagram, Sakhi posted photos and videos of police assaults and detentions alongside reels mocking officers standing beside them. Many have been viewed millions of times.

Sakhi says the government failed to grasp the movement's momentum because it was out of touch with the language and platforms of the protests. "The government has a hold on mainstream media, Facebook and WhatsApp. But it missed Instagram."

The latest education protests erupted in May after NEET, India's biggest medical entrance exam, was cancelled following a question paper leak, forcing nearly two million students to retake the test. More than 20 students died by suicide, with their families blaming the scandal.

The outrage was channelled by the satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), an online campaign launched after India's chief justice likened unemployed people with "fake and bogus degrees" to cockroaches. Its founders staged a sit-in in Delhi, demanding Pradhan's resignation, education reforms and compensation for the bereaved families.

Initially, the protest drew little attention. That changed on 18 July when Delhi police forcibly removed and hospitalised hunger-striking educator Sonam Wangchuk.

Two days later, tens of thousands marched on parliament at the CJP's call, triggering a police crackdown. Videos of baton charges, tear gas and pellet guns spread rapidly online, fuelling public anger and swelling the protests instead of suppressing them.

The discontent among India's youth and the courage to voice it on the streets spread to other parts of the country.

Somaya Korde was detained at home after urging people online to join a 20 July protest in Mumbai, but went on to attend multiple demonstrations in the days that followed.

Pradhan's resignation, says the 26-year-old, "is not the end, but just the beginning".

"For this generation, this is the first time many of us have stepped out to protest. But there are larger issues to talk about, and we will talk about them," she says.

Korde, the first woman in her family to graduate in law and a recent civic election candidate, comes from a community officially classified as "backward" because of its historic social and economic disadvantage.

Like many young Indians, she saw education as her path to a better life, but says the NEET paper leak shattered her faith in a system that promised hard work would be rewarded.

"Schools and colleges are being privatised, paper leaks are happening, even if you finish education, there are not enough jobs. In a democracy, all this raises questions of accountability against the government," she says.

Her frustration is indicative of a larger picture.

India has the world's largest youth population, yet unemployment among 15- to 29-year-olds rose to 16.2% in June from 13.8% a year earlier, according to government data.

Even graduates are struggling: a 2026 Azim Premji University study found fewer than 7% of jobseekers secured permanent salaried work within a year, and fewer than 4% landed white-collar jobs.

The protests became a rallying point for young people to shed their caution and voice their frustration. Among them was 18-year-old Harshvardhan Kadam, who took a part-time job selling laptops after finishing school to help support his mother following his father's death last year.

On 23 July, a video Harshvardhan filmed during a protest march in Mumbai went viral. In the Instagram reel, now viewed 10 million times, a policeman is seen threatening to frame him in a fake drugs case while detaining him in a police van. The constable has since been suspended.

"I did not wish him to be suspended," Kadam told the BBC, "I just wanted to document how the police were treating me for participating in a peaceful protest." Now, reflecting on Pradhan's resignation he says: "This is just the start. This shows that next time the government will be scared when we raise our voices."

Swaraj Priyo, a 29-year-old screenwriter from Guwahati, says years of protesting under the Modi government had left him disillusioned by the lack of change. But this movement, he says, has restored hope: "This movement has brought back space for question and dissent and the reality check that all is not over."

A growing sense that the Modi government is on the back foot is palpable. Protest sites across the country now display posters declaring: "Pradhan was just an example. It's Modi's turn next".

But alongside this bullishness comes some apprehension.

Varuni Poorva, a 30-year-old aspiring professor from Patna and a student activist for nearly a decade, says Pradhan's resignation shows the Modi government can be "brought to its knees".

But she fears a "witch hunt" against protesters despite the government's pledge not to act against those who organised or joined the demonstrations.

Over the past week, she has sought anticipatory bail to guard against possible arrest. Police have charged more than 100 protesters with offences including attempted murder, and arrested more than 40.

Human Rights Watch says that under Modi, Indian authorities have "routinely prosecuted activists, journalists, and peaceful protesters on fabricated counterterrorism and hate speech laws".

Despite fears of a crackdown, shared by many students' parents, Poorva believes the protests have given young people newfound confidence. With their deeper frustrations unresolved, she says, it will be difficult for the government to return to "business as usual".

At one protest site in Delhi, graffiti captures the mood: "We do not have jobs. If you wipe this out, we will come back tomorrow".

Massive Attack banned from Singapore after pro-Palestine display at show

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyle421806o, 2 days ago

Massive Attack have been banned from Singapore after the British band reportedly expressed pro-Palestinian sentiments during a performance in the city-state.

The band's two members held up a Palestinian flag at the show on Wednesday and shouted "free Palestine", authorities said, with some in the audience reportedly joining them.

Singapore's police force has now banned Massive Attack from future entry into the country, while its media regulator simultaneously said it would not grant future applications for them to perform there.

The Asian nation has strict rules on public speech and what it deems as demonstrations, arguing that it is necessary to regulate them to protect social harmony.

Authorities have previously investigated public events related to the Israel-Gaza war. Earlier this year, they fined several people for organising an unauthorised walk in support of the Palestinian cause.

A police spokeswoman told the BBC that following an investigation the two band members had been issued "stern warnings" concerning alleged offences under Section 3 of the Foreign National Emblems (Control of Display) Act 1949 and Section 16 of the Public Order Act.

The two laws ban the display of foreign flags in public in most cases and set conditions on public events of a political nature, respectively.

The spokeswoman said Singapore's police "take a serious view of acts which could potentially harm the racial and religious harmony in Singapore".

"The peace and harmony between different races and religions in Singapore should not be taken for granted, and we must not let external events affect our society," she added.

Massive Attack is currently on a world tour, with Wednesday's performance their only date in Singapore. Their next show is due to be held in Seoul on Saturday.

The band, which pioneered the trip-hop genre, has long been known for its openly political stance on a number of issues, including the war in Gaza. The group currently comprises of founding members Robert Del Naja and Grant Marshall.

Del Naja was arrested earlier this year when he took part in a demonstration in London. He was accused of showing support for Palestine Action, which is a proscribed organisation in the UK.

A representative for Massive Attack declined to comment when approached by the BBC.

Strict rules in Singapore

Singapore has also taken a strong stance on public expressions of sentiment regarding the Israel-Gaza war.

Authorities in the multicultural country insist that this is necessary to preserve racial and social harmony.

In 2023, the home affairs ministry put out a statement advising against "the public display and wearing of articles" in relation to the Israel-Gaza war, including foreign national emblems.

Singapore police have also launched investigations into offline and online events, and have effectively banned public gatherings related to the war.

The Singapore government has consistently supported the "two-state solution", which would see a Palestinian state exist alongside Israel, as well as full Palestinian membership of the United Nations.

The police spokeswoman said Singapore's media regulator was still investigating possible breaches of a number of licence conditions placed on the concert and "will take necessary action" when this was concluded.

She said among these conditions was one stipulating that there would be no display of flags "in support of any causes".

Australian swimmer celebrated gold with 'no words - just a hug from my Scottish gran'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9d8q68jx2go, 5 days ago

When the state of Victoria pulled out of hosting the Commonwealth Games, many Australian athletes were disappointed to lose the chance of tasting glory at home.

However for swimmer Iona Anderson, the switch to Glasgow has been the next best thing - as she has celebrated success with a hug from her Scottish gran.

Anderson - named after the Inner Hebrides island - stormed to gold in the women's 100m backstroke at Tollcross on Sunday, and secured a silver in the 50m backstroke on Tuesday night.

Cheering the 20-year-old on Sunday were her grandparents, who live in Grangemouth, with grandmother Pam in particular swept up in the excitement.

"I think my mum was having a heart attack worrying gran was going to get too excited watching it," the swimmer told BBC Scotland News earlier.

"It was really emotional - there weren't a lot of words said when I went over, just a lot of emotion and a big hug.

"I was so psyched. I maybe put extra pressure on myself beforehand as I wanted to do them proud, but it was so great to hug her as I don't get to do that often."

Anderson has family from Grangemouth on her mother's side and from Dumfries and Galloway on her father's side.

Her parents were already living in Australia when she was born, meaning this current Games experience is only the fourth time she has ever been in Scotland - and only the second time some of her family have actually seen her swim.

She has, however, already developed a fondness for certain aspects of local culture.

"I always feel I've got a strong connection to Scotland, it's close to my heart," said Anderson, who had her nails painted in a green and gold tartan design for the competition.

"I do like black pudding and link sausages when here, they're much better than what you get back home. I know they might be unhealthier too!"

Sunday marked Anderson's first individual gold medal at a senior meet, as Australia dominate the pool at the Games.

She joked to Australian media afterwards that Glasgow was better than Victoria, and told BBC Scotland the crowd being close to the pool had given her an additional buzz.

Back in action on Monday for the the 50m backstroke heats, Anderson said re-setting herself to go again was a challenge straight after success the previous evening.

"It's been a whirlwind of emotions", she laughed.

"My roommate got bronze in the 1,500m on Sunday [Molly Walker] and we kind of pinged off each other a bit - so getting to sleep was pretty hard.

"But it's a great atmosphere and that gets you going."

Athlete witnessed knife incident during Commonwealth Games training

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr49zdw742no, 5 days ago

An Australian athlete witnessed a knife incident while on a Commonwealth Games training run in Glasgow.

Olli Hoare was in Glasgow city centre on Saturday when he saw someone brandishing a weapon.

It was initially thought that he had witnessed the aftermath of the murder of Paul McMinigal, 44, on Burgher Street, in the east end of the city, on Friday.

But a review of the GPS data on his watch confirmed the incident happened the following day at a different location.

The Sydney Morning Herald has reported that Australian athletes have since been asked to train in small groups and not to run in the nation's distinctive green and yellow team uniform.

However BBC Scotland News has been told this advice is standard protocol at championships and not a Glasgow-specific request.

Despite the scare, it is understood the runaway medal table leaders have no safety concerns.

A Team Australia spokesman said: "We are working closely with Glasgow 2026 to ensure the safety of our athletes, coaches and officials, as well as their family and friends, at the Games."

"Our regular Games security briefings are keeping us comprehensively informed on potential risks across the city, and we're sharing applicable information with Team Members to ensure their awareness and safety."

Officials spoke to Hoare to check on his wellbeing and said there were no ongoing issues.

The middle-distance runner will line up in the mile event at Scotstoun Stadium on Saturday against a trio of Scottish medal hopes.

New world record holder Josh Kerr will start as favourite for gold but he will face competition from former 1500m world champion Jake Wightman and Neil Gourley, who has world and European indoor 1500m medals to his name.

Australian track sensation Cameron Myers - who ran the fastest 1500m by an under-21, in July - will also compete in the event.

This article was originally published saying Hoare had witnessed the aftermath of the murder of Paul McMinigal and has since been corrected as new information came to light.

Australia takes Telegram to court over alleged failure to remove 'pro-terror' material

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmrv4pnexmo, 4 days ago

Australia is taking Telegram to court over its alleged failure to remove "pro-terror" material, including video of the Christchurch shootings, the country's eSafety commissioner has said.

Julie Inman-Grant, who last year led Australia's world-first ban on social media for under-16s, said the platform faced a fine of up to to A$54.6m (£28m, US$38m) for failing to comply with its safety obligations under the Online Safety Act.

The platform had left content "linked to some of the most notorious acts of known extremist violence in recent history" online long after it had been put on notice, she alleged.

"This should concern all of us," she said, adding "no platform is above the law".

The announcement comes a day after Russia charged Telegram's founder Pavel Durov with facilitating terrorism, based on allegations that the messenger app had been used for recruitment by Ukrainian secret services.

Durov was also arrested and placed under formal investigation in France in 2024 for his alleged failure to properly moderate the app to reduce criminality. He was allowed to go home months later, while the investigation continues.

Inman-Grant said her agency had begun inquiring what Telegram was doing to combat terrorist and extremist material in March 2024, and had endured "five very difficult months of unresponsiveness".

Though the platform later started engaging, she said it had retained a "permissive environment" for hosting extremist content that was "very easy to find".

"This only serves to desensitise, to normalise and to sometimes radicalise" users, she said. She also alleged that the platform was "sometimes used to plan attacks".

A Telegram spokesperson said the platform's "extensive" anti-terrorism efforts were "well documented", adding: "We reject these allegations and will contest them in court."

Extremist content that was allegedly accessible on Telegram included video of the 2019 Christchurch mosque and Buffalo shooting in New York in May 2022, as well as videos of terrorist executions, according to Inman-Grant.

With the "painful aftermath" of the attack that targeted a Jewish festival in Bondi in December fresh in Australians' minds, it "is more important than ever that digital platforms meet their obligations to protect the community", she said.

Inman-Grant noted that Australia does not issue licences for platforms like Telegram, but said "we could apply to the federal court and ask that the service be ceased".

"We've never used those powers," she said. "We'll see how this all plays out and whether that kind of action is warranted."

The eSafety regulator also fined Telegram A$1m in February 2025 for failing to respond on time to questions about how it was tackling child abuse and extremist material on the platform.

'If only people knew what a tick could do' - the deadly meat allergy caused by tick bites

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj6g03567edo, 13 days ago

When Myfanwy Webb looks back at her birthday party five years ago, she is overcome with regret - remembering what she now sees as a missed opportunity to save her son's life.

Hours after a celebratory lunch at a restaurant Jeremy began having difficulty breathing. His parents called an ambulance, and the then-15-year-old began vomiting.

At the hospital, doctors noted that Jeremy had a suspected meat allergy, but ultimately blamed the episode on his asthma, which he'd had since he was a toddler. He was sent home the next day.

"I made the wrong decision," Webb says, wishing she had asked for more testing. If she had, doctors might have established that Jeremy had actually been suffering from anaphylaxis, and sent him home with an EpiPen.

Just over a year later, in June 2022, Jeremy died after eating a beef sausage on a camping trip with friends at a beach north of Sydney.

The cause of death was initially recorded simply as asthma. But in February, after an inquest pushed for by his family, a coroner ruled that the asthma attack and resulting fatal anaphylaxis was triggered by tick-induced mammalian meat allergy (MMA).

His death is the first in the world known to have been caused by MMA, also known as alpha-gal syndrome.

Diagnosed cases of MMA have steadily escalated since 2007, when an Australian doctor first discovered the allergy was linked to tick bites. Now, scientists and campaigners are warning that the condition, though easily prevented, can be unexpectedly triggered - and could pose a deadly threat.

Webb had long suspected that her son had a meat allergy, but it was never formally diagnosed and the family had no idea it could be fatal.

"When I looked up the research about it, there wasn't at that time anything to suggest it was more than a food intolerance."

In retrospect, she says, it was "like a ticking time bomb".

Symptoms of the allergy can range from mild to severe including skin rashes, swelling, stomach cramps, vomiting and anaphylaxis, which can be life-threatening.

From around the age of 10 Jeremy had suffered nausea after eating meat, or even occasionally after inhaling the fumes from roast meat – which Webb believes may have set off the episode after her birthday party. On another occasion he had been hospitalised after eating marshmallows, which usually contain gelatin derived from animal parts.

What makes an MMA hotspot?

It was Prof Sheryl van Nunen who discovered the link between MMA and ticks almost 20 years ago, after noticing a correlation in patients at her Sydney allergy clinic.

Working on Australia's east coast, she inadvertently found herself in one of the world's two MMA hotspots. The other is in the US - although cases of the allergy have since been noted on all six continents where ticks live.

In Australia, MMA is caused by the bite of the eastern paralysis tick. After two tick bites 50% of people will develop antibodies to alpha-gal, a sugar molecule found in the tick's saliva, van Nunen explains. After that, they have a 15 to 20% chance of becoming allergic to meat.

"If only people knew what a tick could do," she says.

Jeremy, who grew up surrounded by dense bushland at his family home north of Sydney, had been bitten by ticks since he was a small boy.

It's not clear why the east coast, particularly areas north of Sydney, is an MMA hotspot - in some areas there are more than 700 sufferers per 100,000 people. But there are several hypotheses, says Dr Alex Gofton, a tick expert who led a recent study into the allergy.

One is that more people are coming into contact with ticks there.

"The population in those tick endemic areas over the last 20, 30 years has increased dramatically," Gofton says.

The years between 2020 and 2023 were also rainy La Nina years - conditions in which ticks thrive - and around the same time the Covid pandemic was pushing even more people to move out of cities and into the bush, he adds.

The high rate of diagnosis - there has been a 22% increase in cases every year since 2020 - may also be fuelled by increased awareness and testing, Gofton says. Using lab data, he has concluded there are more than 5,000 suspected MMA cases in Australia - although he believes this is an under representation of the true figures.

An 'anytime not every time' allergy

Despite increasing awareness, diagnosing a meat allergy can be difficult.

Symptoms often develop at night, hours after people have eaten their evening meal, and for those suffering asthma, the two can often be confused.

Van Nunen describes it as "an anytime but not an every time allergy".

Symptoms may sometimes not appear at all, while at other times they may be exacerbated by factors including the type of meat, how it is cooked and if it is spicy, as well as whether a person drinks alcohol with it, exercises after eating or is sleep deprived.

Those who are hypersensitive can also be triggered by mammalian products such as milk and anything that contains a derivative of mammal meat - beauty products and laundry softeners containing lanolin, for example, and even supermarket plastic bags containing stearic acid. Fumes from a barbecue, or petting a cat or dog, can also trigger an allergic reaction.

Elizabeth Rowley, a mother of three who lives in Hannam Vale on the mid north coast of New South Wales, spent years going to doctors and allergy specialists, hoping they could diagnose the mystery illness that plagued her.

But many dismissed her symptoms, which began in 2006 and ranged from memory loss and brain fog to chest pain, numbness in her arms, full body aches, and breathing difficulties that led to her regularly passing out.

"[They said] 'you're turning into a bit of a hypochondriac - it's not anaphylaxis - get over it'," she recalls.

She has since set up a Facebook group to support fellow sufferers.

"It's just mentally horrendous more than anything, just trying to find out what it was," she says. "I thought I was going crazy."

Remy Williams, a 23-year-old psychology student who lives in Sydney's Northern Beaches and was diagnosed with the allergy as a child, says the constant vigilance of watching what she ate tipped over into an eating disorder.

But the even bigger impact, she says, was witnessing the effect on her mother, who also had the allergy and twice suffered severe anaphylactic attacks on aeroplanes.

It was "incredibly scary," says Remy. She "literally almost died in front of me."

Faced with so many potential triggers, everyday life can become tricky to navigate.

Rowley struggled to find work as a bookkeeper because so many locations triggered her allergies. Jobs at shopping centres were ruled out because of the fumes from restaurants, and even in smaller environments her colleagues' eating habits could affect her. One boss's morning toast habit, she says, became a daily trial.

"As soon as the butter hits it, I just go…" she groans. "But you can't keep walking in and saying to the bosses, 'Sorry, you can't eat that'."

Socialising can also be difficult, given that many events and gatherings centre around food.

"You can't do barbecues," says Rowley. "Can't do some restaurants either, or most restaurants."

Van Nunen's biggest concern, though, is the 85% of people who have the allergy without knowing it – people who have developed the antibodies but who do not react after eating meat.

Since MMA can rear its head unexpectedly, these people could still react to medical treatment, van Nunen explains, because many drugs include products derived from animals, such as vaccines that contain gelatin.

At least one person is known to have died after receiving the drug cetuximab to treat colon cancer and going into anaphylaxis. Another died after being given a blood transfusion.

Van Nunen says it is "well known" there have been more deaths from MMA. The best documented, however, are that of an American airline pilot who died hours after eating a hamburger in 2024, and Jeremy's.

The key point to take away from a death like Jeremy's, Van Nunen says, is that 94.8% of people who die from food allergy anaphylaxis die because it triggers their asthma.

"They go straight into status asthmaticus and… unless you intubate them within a certain time, if they have a respiratory arrest, you have four minutes, otherwise they're brain dead," she explains.

One of the things that has given Webb strength since her son's death is remembering the "positive spin" Jeremy put on life. "He fitted everything into it, wouldn't waste a minute," she says.

That has made her determined to raise awareness of the allergy that took his life and improve treatment protocols, so that other families don't have to experience the same pain.

In addition to speaking publicly about Jeremy's death, Webb has co-operated with the hospital where he was treated to help develop training on MMA. She is also working on a paper with van Nunen, which is due to be presented at a conference later this year.

"Now [Jeremy's] positive spin is actually helping people, even though he's passed," she says. "I think he'd be really pleased with us."

How to avoid tick bites:

* Cover up when you're in bushland, tuck your trousers into your socks and wear light coloured clothing so you can spot ticks easily

* Don't lie directly or picnic on the ground

* Wear insecticides containing DEET or picaridin

* Check yourself for ticks after walking in tick territory, and don't forget to check your pets

* If you get bitten by a tick in Australia, remember "freeze don't squeeze" - use a spray to kill the tick and let it drop off by itself rather than using tweezers, which can cause the ticks to expel toxins into the bloodstream

* If you don't have an ether containing spray, seek medical help to remove the tick

* Advice on tick removal differs in other parts of the world due to concerns about tick-borne diseases

* In the UK, the NHS recommends using fine-toothed tweezers to remove the tick as soon as possible. Gently grip the tick close to the skin and pull steadily, without crushing

Update 29 July: This article has been amended to include advice from the NHS and to clarify that guidance varies around the world.

Rapper Yung Filly tells trial 'vibes were good' with woman who accuses him of rape

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2g044ydl4o, 6 days ago

UK rapper Yung Filly has told a court that the "vibes were good" between him and a woman he is accused of raping after performing at a nightclub in Australia in 2024.

The rapper, whose real name is Andres Felipe Valencia Barrientos, took the witness stand at the District Court of Western Australia on Monday - a week after the start of his trial.

He is accused of sexually assaulting the woman, then 20 years old, in his hotel room after he performed in Hillarys, a coastal suburb of Perth.

Barrientos, 30, has pleaded not guilty to six counts of sexual penetration without consent, three counts of assault occasioning bodily harm, and one count of strangulation.

Barrientos told the court he had "fancied" the woman when they met at the concert venue. He had been in the VIP area while she leaned over the barrier from the general area.

He denied touching her inappropriately.

"I recall putting my hand on her waist," he told the court. But he said he had not put his hands down her pants or touched her breast.

The "vibes were good" between them later when they arrived at his hotel, Barrientos said.

His security guard took the woman's phone away - "standard practice" to protect their privacy, according to Barrientos.

The court heard previously that the pair had engaged in consensual sex before Barrientos turned violent and she told him to stop.

Barrientos, who had been touring Australia at the time of the alleged offences, is also known for his work with the YouTube collective Beta Squad, and has appeared in the celebrity version of Bake Off on Channel 4 and presented BBC Three shows.

He has been on bail since being charged and was allowed to fly home to the UK in September for four months, before returning to Western Australia ahead of his trial.

In addition to his 1.8 million YouTube subscribers, he has three million followers on TikTok and and 2.4 million on Instagram.

Australian court upholds racial discrimination ruling against Pauline Hanson

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2k5v9202wo, 7 days ago

Australian populist leader Pauline Hanson racially discriminated against a Muslim senator in a 2022 tweet by telling her to return to Pakistan, a court has said, upholding an earlier ruling.

The One Nation party leader had appealed a 2024 ruling that she had breached the racial discrimination act when she responded to a post by Senator Mehreen Faruqi with an "angry personal attack" that was "anti-Muslim".

Hanson had argued at the Federal Court that political communication should be protected but Justice Melissa Perry dismissed her appeal on Monday.

"Today's win is for every single person who has been made to feel that their belonging in this country is conditional," Faruqi said outside court.

"This case was always about holding to account racism and holding to account those who perpetrate racism," she added. "Hate speech is not free speech."

On the day of the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022, Faruqi had offered condolences to those who mourned for the queen in a social media post. But, she added, "I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonized people."

Hanson responded with a post that was "a variant of the slogan, 'go back to where you came from'", Judge Angus Stewart ruled in 2024. The phrase was "a racist trope with a long history", and "implicitly" targeted Muslims, he said.

He ordered Hanson to delete the tweet and pay Faruqi's legal costs.

Faruqi, the deputy leader of the Greens party, took Hanson to court after the tweet was posted, arguing it breached the racial discrimination act.

It was reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or group of people and was done because of her race, colour or national or ethnic origin, she argued.

Hanson said she was "disappointed" with the decision and that she and her legal team would review it "with a view to commencing an appeal in the High Court of Australia".

Hanson has in the past advocated for a "Muslim ban" on immigration and earlier this year attracted criticism for an interview in which she suggested there were no "good" Muslims.

This month Hanson denied that she was advocating for a return of the "White Australia" policy - when from 1901 to the 1970s the nation banned non-white immigrants - in a podcast with British far-right activist Tommy Robinson.

In the podcast, Robinson asked Hanson how Australia had ended up with "Pakistanis, Somalis, all of these African problems with violent Africans?" to which Hanson responded that it began when "they opened up and got rid of the White Australian policy".

Man admits killing Scottish woman found in suitcase, Greek police say

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89ndd4g0gjo, today

Greek police say a man has admitted killing a Scottish woman whose body was found in a suitcase in an abandoned building.

Elisabeth-Jane Ross, 38, was found in the Kypseli district of Athens on 18 July, days after she was reported missing.

Local officers launched an investigation with cooperation from authorities in the US, the UK and Scotland, and now say they have arrested a 26-year-old man - the BBC understands he is from Afghanistan.

The force said he was brought to police headquarters on Thursday where he "confessed to his actions". He was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, robbery and weapons offences, but the exact charges have yet to be finalised under the Greek legal system.

Police said Ross, known to her family as Lisa, arrived in Greece on 26 June and stayed in the Piraeus area until 10 July, when she left for an unknown destination in Attica.

After carrying out investigations and analysing video footage, police said they identified a 26-year-old man was connected to the case.

They claim he transported Lisa's body to the abandoned site in a suitcase and subsequently used her bank cards to withdraw money.

During searches carried out at his home, police said a replica pistol and a knife were found and seized.

Lisa had initially stayed in the area of Keratsini, 5.9 miles (9.5km) west of central Athens, with Greek friends.

She had told them that on 15 July she would go to Kypseli, where her "American friends" or acquaintances were.

On Saturday Greek police said they were fast-tracking toxicology reports in order to ascertain the cause of her death, potentially "in the coming days".

Test results can take anywhere from several weeks to a few months depending on the complexity of the case and the workload of forensic laboratories.

They were also looking to trace Lisa's American friends, who they said were also staying in Kypseli.

First Minister John Swinney called it an "absolutely appalling case".

EU calls emergency meeting to discuss Ceuta migrant crossings

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7d17r455go, today

The European Union will hold emergency talks on Tuesday to discuss the migration crisis in Ceuta after tense exchanges between Spain and other member states.

Twenty-two member states issued a joint letter calling for co-ordinated action and the strengthening of the EU's external borders, after some 60,000 migrants entered the Spanish enclave from Morocco.

Spain condemned "selfish, polarising and unlawful" reaction to the crisis after Italy suspended the EU's border-free Schengen arrangement with Spain - a move backed by Finland and Denmark.

Officials say almost all those who reached Ceuta on 30 July have returned, while deaths from the surge in crossings had risen to at least 67.

The EU members' letter addresses concerns around "hybrid threats to create the perception that illegal entry into the European Union is possible," adding that the perception "would encourage further attempts, undermine confidence in our common migration policy and have repercussions for all Member States".

Leaders of the Netherlands, Finland and Belgium are among 22 signatures on the letter, addressed to EU President Antonio Costa, president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and Taoiseach Michael Martin, as Ireland currently holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union.

In a separate letter to von der Leyen, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said he had "serious concerns" about some European governments.

He said the Spanish government had fully restored control over the border and prevented any "unauthorised onward movement towards continental Europe" in less than 48 hours.

While most had shown "support and solidarity", Sánchez said other European governments had chosen to attack Spain, "driven by prejudice, fake news, ignorance, or political interest", and pointed out that Ceuta was not part of the Schengen area.

On Friday, Sánchez accused migrant traffickers of exploiting a decision recently made by the country's supreme court which constrained the government's right to immediately deport people who had arrived by sea.

The country's Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, said in a news conference on Saturday that the situation had almost returned to normal and the country was working on inflatable barrier to prevent illegal migration via the water.

"Almost all of [the migrants] have already left Ceuta," he said adding that businesses there had now reopened.

Some criticism of the situation has involved concerns over the Schengen Area - an agreement which eliminates border checks and now encompasses more than 450 million people and 29 countries in Europe.

In addition to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suspending Italy's Schengen agreement with Spain for a month, Finland, France and Portugal have all said they were either looking at, or considering, border checks.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen urged the EU to "consider all options, including a suspension of Schengen co-operation".

Von der Leyen said the images from Ceuta were "unacceptable". Writing on social media, she said: "We cannot allow anyone to come to our Union without abiding by our rules."

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz demanded that Morocco "take back illegal migrants immediately", while on Saturday, UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he had spoken to Sánchez and the UK was "providing what help we can".

Morocco witnessed several Gen Z anti-government protests last year, with young people demanding better opportunities and improvements to public services.

Together with Melilla, Ceuta forms the European Union's only land borders with Africa. Migrants can enter the enclave by swimming several kilometres.

While the surge of migrants this year is extraordinary, Ceuta has long been a focal point for migrants attempting to reach Europe. During the summer months, there is often a big push to reach Ceuta, typically organised over social media.

In 2021, about 8,000 people entered Ceuta over a matter of days, exacerbating Spain's diplomatic tensions with Morocco.

Spain has a relatively friendly approach to immigration. In April, the government approved plans to give legal status to 500,000 undocumented migrants, allowing them to be formally integrated into the workforce.

Missile that left crater deep inside Poland was probably Russian - Polish PM

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwymkgenv2ro, 3 days ago

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said an object that crashed into a field in eastern Poland in the early hours of Thursday was "in all probability" a Russian cruise missile, and it was armed.

It left a10m-wide (33ft) crater a short distance from the village of Tarnawa Kolonia, 92km (57 miles) from the border with Ukraine during a large-scale Russian attack on the cities of Lviv, Kyiv and near Kryvyhi Rih.

Tusk said initially that "all the indications" were that the missile that violated Polish airspace was a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile, during a specially convened meeting in the eastern city of Lublin.

He then went to the site of the incident and said that according to military experts the majority of "recovered fragments point to it being a Russian Kh-101 missile".

Although no casualties had been reported in Thursday's incident near Tarnawa Kolonia, the Polish prime minister made clear it was being taken very seriously.

There was no immediate threat as it had not landed in a built-up area, he said, adding that "we were prepared to shoot it down if had continued its flight".

Nato said it was in close contact with Polish authorities and the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Gen Alexus G Grynkewich, said the Western defensive alliance would "continue to take all necessary measures to defend Nato territory".

Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said about 20 objects were seen close to Polish airspace overnight and pyrotechnical analysis was being carried out.

Ukraine's acting Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha had earlier declared definitively that a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile had "crossed into Poland as part of Russia's massive strike against Ukraine, violating Nato airspace".

Tusk said he was in contact with fellow European leaders and the head of the European Council António Costa said Russia's "massive combined strike against Ukraine" had underlined again that "Russia's aggression is a threat to the security as a whole".

At least eight people died and dozens more were wounded across Ukraine, including six members of one family in a village near Kryvyih Rih. Dozens more were wounded in Lviv, not far from Ukraine's western border with Poland.

A number of Russian drones and one unarmed Russian missile have landed in Poland since Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine began in February 2022.

Two Polish farmers were killed by a missile that landed just over the border from Ukraine in November 2022, but that was believed to have been a Ukrainian air defence missile responding to a Russian attack.

Poland's military detected the object at about 03:40 on Thursday (01:40 GMT) and sent an F-16 fighter jet to intercept it before it disappeared minutes later from radar systems. A military helicopter was then sent to search the area.

Air raid sirens blared in Lublin and Krasnystaw further to the south-east because of the Russian airstrikes in neighbouring Ukraine. Residents in Tarnawa Kolonia reported hearing a loud bang at about 04:00 and police found the crash site about an hour later.

The Polish leader had met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Lublin the previous evening as Zelensky was returning from talks with US President Donald Trump.

Devastating European wildfires in maps - and how they're being tackled

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj638jx0l53o, 4 days ago

Since mid-July wildfires have torn through France, Spain, and Portugal forcing more than 300,000 people to evacuate their homes.

Officials in the Spanish capital Madrid have said the fires are the worst the region have ever experienced.

French President Emmanuel Macron, visiting the fire-ravaged area in the Gironde region, called the "completely unprecedented" wildfire the "toughest since World War Two".

The fires have broken out amid a sweltering summer of heatwaves across Europe. Both France and Spain are now seeing another sharp rise in temperatures, with peaks of 41-42C expected in France.

Wildfires in the regions outside Madrid have burned about 606 sq miles (1570 sq km) since 1 July, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis). That is an area more than twice as large as the city itself.

In France, the worst affected area has been the Gironde, around the city of Bordeaux, where more than 200,000 people were forced from their homes.

From 22 July the blaze spread rapidly, tearing through forests and fields in France's famous wine region, and burning more than 162 sq miles (420 sq km) in less than four days - an area roughly four times the size of Paris.

At its peak, the wildfire came as close as nine miles (15km) from the south of Bordeaux, although the city was never under serious threat.

The fires have also came close to a number of sensitive military and industrial sites in the area, including facilities that work on French ballistic missiles, rocket motors, and the processing of hazardous chemicals.

The fires became so extreme they created their own giant fire thunderstorm.

A rare weather event, storms like these are formed when heat from the wildfires makes the air above the fire rise rapidly, carrying smoke, ash and water vapour high into the atmosphere.

As the air rises, it cools, and the water vapour condenses into a cloud. If the fire is powerful enough and the atmosphere is unstable, that cloud can grow into a cumulonimbus - the same type of cloud associated with thunderstorms.

If these clouds then become large enough, they can produce their own lightning, which can then start new fires. They can also occasionally bring hail and rain.

These extreme and unpredictable conditions make the fires all the more difficult to stop.

To combat them, French firefighters have been using planes loaded with fire retardant, as well as planes like the Canadair, which can scoop 6,000 litres of water from lakes or the sea in 12 seconds and drop it directly on the fires.

On dangerous days, loaded aircraft patrol high-risk areas before any fires have been reported, so they can drop within minutes of a sighting. Planes often fly in a continuous shuttle while retardant is laid along the edges of the fire and ground crews attack the flames directly.

In Gironde, about 2,500 firefighters, 1,500 military personnel, and 1,200 police officers and gendarmes have been involved in tackling the blaze.

Four French firefighters have died while on duty, officials say.

But even with these numbers, Gironde official Jean-Luc Gleyze told the BBC that authorities don't have enough people to combat the fires.

"We don't have enough people and enough trucks and even I think France don't have enough," he said.

Around the town of Lacanau, bulldozers, diggers and mechanical shovels were used to carve a firebreak that is 100m (328ft) wide at points, according to French media.

A firebreak is a stretch of land that has been stripped of all vegetation to stop the fire from spreading - removing any potential fuel before the fire has a chance to reach it.

Spanish teams have been using many of the same techniques to tackle their wildfires, which are on course to become the worst the country has seen in two decades.

Francisco Martín, a government delegate in Madrid, described one of the fires as "undoubtedly the largest fire in the history of the Madrid region".

This summer's fires have been aided by the hotter, drier conditions caused by climate change, which allow fires to spread faster and burn more fiercely.

"The climate emergency is worsening year after year, and we are required to be united to fight against fire, as well as in prevention and reconstruction," Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has said.

Appealing to his country's regional governments, Sánchez added: "Climate denial is the worst fuel for the fight against the climate emergency."

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Rizzini and Helen Willetts. Visual Journalism by Pilar Tomas, Camilla Costa and Kate Gaynor.

Influx of migrants to Ceuta gives Spain diplomatic headache

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr7k49p7enjo, yesterday

As many of the 60,000 migrants who swam or scrambled their way into Ceuta trickle back into Morocco, the prospect of a dramatic crisis has begun to gently recede.

The political and diplomatic pressure that had piled onto prime minister Pedro Sánchez after the breaching of this key border outpost may begin to fade as an expanded military and police deployment makes itself felt and the authorities process and return those new arrivals who don't leave of their own volition and fail to qualify for a right to remain.

Many appeared to be Moroccan locals, quite unprepared for the sort of arduous long distance trek undertaken by sub-Saharan migrants who cross the Sahara or risk their lives in fishing boats crossing to the Canary Islands.

Sánchez had rushed to Ceuta on Friday morning to accuse migrant traffickers of exploiting a recent supreme court decision that had constrained the government's right to immediately deport people who had arrived by sea.

The last such big incursion into Ceuta, in 2021, saw 10,000 break into the territory, just a sixth of the number estimated to have climbed over or through or swum around its boundary fence in less than 24 hours this time.

In immediate practical terms this episode appears to have been encouraged by Moroccan border guards' readiness to stand aside and allow anyone – mostly younger or middle aged men but also some women and children - to try to penetrate this nugget of European Union territory on the North African coast, whatever the risks.

And those were considerable: at least 57 people died in the attempt, many seemingly drowned.

But the bigger question is why Morocco allowed its normally efficient forces to take such a laissez-faire approach.

And that harks back to acute sensitivities surrounding the kingdom's relations with both Europe and its neighbour Algeria – a context in which Spain plays a special role.

For it is now more than 50 years since Madrid surrendered the control of what had been its Spanish Sahara territory, in the face of a takeover by the then king of Morocco, Hassan II, while Algeria instead opted to support the indigenous independence movement Polisario, going on to house its supporters in desert refugee camps and host its political leaders.

Today the two Maghreb governments remain locked in a bitter diplomatic cold war over the territory, known as Western Sahara, a dispute that still keeps a large UN peacekeeping force positioned to monitor the fragile calm between Polisario guerrillas and the Moroccan army.

It is an issue over which European governments for decades tried to avoid taking sides.

But occasionally they have toppled off the diplomatic tightrope, provoking fury in either Algiers or Rabat.

And the latter has already shown its readiness to deploy migration pressure as a retaliatory tactic against Spain, which is particularly vulnerable to such pressure because it has two small city-territories, Ceuta and Melilla, on the North African coast, their only land borders with Morocco.

The May 2021 influx of 10,000 migrants into Ceuta followed Madrid's decision to allow the Polisario president Brahim Ghali to be treated for Coronavirus in a Spanish hospital.

Yesterday's equally sudden, albeit much larger surge of incomers, comes after a recent visit to Algiers by Sánchez.

And that trip itself had been an exercise in diplomatic fence-mending to sooth Algerian anger at a 2022 Spanish decision to abandon neutrality and back Morocco's plan to grant Western Sahara autonomy but deny it independence. The UK has taken the same position.

France too has struggled to maintain warm relations with the two bitterly opposed Maghreb rivals. But it is Spain that finds itself particularly vulnerable because of Ceuta and Melilla.

Both towns have origins dating back millennia to the Phoenician era, then later fell under Arab rule before being seized by Spain in the 16th Century, in the aftermath of the Christian reconquest of the Iberian peninsula.

But in practical modern terms, both are outposts of EU terrain on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, bounded on the landward side only by Morocco.

So yesterday's influx of migrants, however temporary, is a practical challenge for Sánchez and a political and diplomatic headache. Spain's mainstream conservatives - the Partido Popular - and hard right Vox have seized on the issue, while several other European governments have raised concerns, with Italy talking of suspending Spanish membership of the Schengen open borders regime.

But actually, because of the distinctive geographical position of Ceuta and Melilla, Spain operates a strict internal border on flights and ferries from these two cities to the mainland, thus controlling travellers' access to the rest of Schengen Europe.

Behind the fuss over yesterday's dramatic influx of people lies a deeper difference in outlook and policy.

Sanchez has pursued an "immigration positive" agenda starkly contrasting with the more restrictive attitudes of most EU states or the UK, even instigating a programme to bring Senegalese to Spain on a temporary basis as seasonal workers, mainly for the horticultural sector.

The long term political and economic sustainability of that approach remains to be tested. But it sends out a public messaging that some other European governments perhaps find unsettling and may explain their reaction to events in Ceuta.

Paul Melly is a consulting fellow with the Africa Programme at Chatham House in London

What tariffs has Trump introduced and why?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn93e12rypgo, 9 days ago

Tariffs have been one of US President Donald Trump's favourite economic tools since he returned to the White House.

He argues these import taxes boost US manufacturing and create jobs. But critics say they have put up prices for American consumers and disrupted and damaged the global economy.

What are tariffs and how do they work?

Tariffs are taxes on imported goods.

Typically, the charge is a percentage of a good's value.

For example, a 10% tariff on a $10 product would mean a $1 tax on top - taking the total cost to $11.

The tax is paid to the government by companies bringing in the foreign products.

These firms may pass some or all of the extra cost on to their customers, which in this case means American consumers and other US businesses.

Companies may also decide to import fewer goods.

Why is Trump using tariffs?

Trump argues tariffs increase the amount of tax raised by the government, encourage consumers to buy American-made goods and boost investment in the US from foreign companies.

Parts of the US were hollowed out economically when free trade deals resulted in industrial jobs heading overseas.

Trump also wants to reduce the US trade deficit - the gap between the value of goods it buys from other countries and those it sells to them.

The president argues that countries that sell more products to the US than they buy from it are cheating the US and that tariffs correct this imbalance.

What did the Supreme Court say about Trump's tariffs?

In February 2026, the US Supreme Court said that Trump had exceeded his authority when he used emergency powers to introduce tariffs on specific countries without approval from Congress.

That ruling affected all tariffs Trump brought in under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

That includes the first tariffs Trump announced in early 2025 which targeted Mexico, Canada and China.

The ruling also covers those announced on Trump's so-called "Liberation Day" in April 2025, when the president set out tariff rates of up to 50% for dozens countries, including Cambodia, Vietnam and Malaysia.

Tens of billions of dollars have since been refunded to companies that paid them.

Has that ruling killed Trump's tariff policy?

No. The White House has been looking at alternative ways.

After the Supreme Court ruling, Trump used different legislation - Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 - to impose temporary 10% tariffs on all global imports.

Those tariffs expired on 24 July, but have been replaced by tariffs of 10% to 12.5% on all goods from the top 60 US trade partners, including the UK, the EU and China.

The action is being taken under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, based on claims that the US's economic partners have failed to properly tackle forced labour.

However, one trade expert said the move was not about forced labour but Trump simply looking for a legal way to impose tariffs.

And in recent weeks, he has also used Section 301 to justify imposing tariffs on a range of countries, including a 25% tax on certain goods from Brazil, claiming that Brazilian policies have harmed US trade.

Trump has also announced a 50% tariff on a wide range of goods imported from Canada, in retaliation for what he called "unequal treatment" of US cars, dairy and alcohol, under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930.

Which tariffs apply to the UK?

The UK had already negotiated a 10% tariff with the US on most goods in June 2025.

The latest announcement does not change that, but tariffs have been removed on whisky imports, something Trump had said he would do after the King's state visit to the US earlier this year.

In 2024, the UK exported about £58bn of goods to the US - mainly cars, machinery and pharmaceuticals.

Under the terms of the 2025 deal, the 10% rate applied to the first 100,000 UK vehicles exported every year - roughly the number sold in 2024. Additional cars face the standard 25% tariff.

UK steel exports to the US are also subject to 25% duty, compared to the 50% rate which applies to steel and aluminium products from the rest of the world.

Have prices gone up for US consumers?

Many firms said they would pass on the cost of tariffs to US customers, including Target, Walmart and Adidas.

Some products have become more expensive - including toys, appliances and furniture as well as certain foodstuffs.

The cost of some goods manufactured in the US using imported components has also gone up.

In October 2025, a study by Goldman Sachs estimated that about 55% of the tariff charges were passed on to US consumers.

And in April, a Federal Reserve study said Trump's sweeping 2025 tariffs had caused a surge in inflation this year.

The White House has always maintained that it will take time for the tariffs to pay off, pointing to promises by firms and countries to make big investments in the US.

Despite the new barriers to trade, US imports actually increased by 4% in 2025.

How have tariffs affected the global economy?

Trump was accused of throwing the global economy into turmoil when he announced the first tariffs of his second presidential term in early 2025.

Share prices around the world fell sharply, as did the value of the dollar.

Although the US currency and global financial markets have since largely recovered, the ongoing uncertainty around Trump's tariff policy has continued to destabilise international trade.

Some US allies have looked to alternative markets, causing what some economists describe as a "re-wiring" of global trade.

In January 2026, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said the tariffs had "definitely [slowed] down global activity", and warned further trade tensions could threaten economic growth.

Since then the Iran war has restricted the global supply of oil and fertiliser, pushing up prices.

Russia's businesses under strain from Ukraine's attacks on Wildberries

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg9n2y61w6o, 11 days ago

Ukrainian drones have hit several retail warehouses belonging to Russia's biggest online retailer, Wildberries, in a matter of days, dealing a blow to a large number of small and medium-sized businesses.

After months of drone attacks on oil depots and refineries, Kyiv says it is now targeting logistics hubs used by Russians to buy military equipment, and disrupting supplies to the Russian army.

But it has also frustrated hundreds of Russian sellers who depend on online marketplaces for their livelihoods, making the war feel closer to home after almost four and a half years.

"I am a mother of a disabled child, I've built the business myself," one woman complained on an expletive-laden social media post that went viral.

"I've lost 1m roubles (£9,500; $12,700)... We're already getting screwed over from every direction as it is."

In Ukraine's first attack on Wildberries at the weekend, two warehouses were hit, at Elektrostal east of Moscow and in Kotovsk in the Tambov region, some 400km (250 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

Seven workers on a nightshift were killed in Kotovsk and one was fatally wounded at Elektrostal. Dozens more were injured and goods worth an estimated at £750m ($1bn) were destroyed.

Kyiv said it had struck "major logistics facilities" used to "supply sanctioned components for drone production and navigation equipment".

More logistical sites were targeted early on Monday, including another Wildberries warehouse in Koledino south of Moscow. Further attacks overnight into Wednesday hit Wildberries logistic hubs at Krasnodar and Nevinnomyssk in the Stavropol region.

The company's owner Tatiana Kim said further casualties had been reported.

"We are, quite justly, bringing the war back home - to Russia," said Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Russia has targeted Ukrainian cities with drones and missiles since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022 and recent Russian attacks have hit Ukrainian warehouses and cargo terminals.

Sorting terminals for Ukraine's largest private postal operator, Nova Poshta, have come under attack, so too have warehouses owned by retail chain ATB and confectionery group Roshen.

With the situation on the front line now close to a stalemate, Ukraine's long-distance drone campaign has hit supply routes and energy facilities, in effect cutting off annexed Crimea and leading to fuel shortages across Russia.

Businesses had already been disrupted before the warehouse attacks, but now some have lost much of their stock overnight.

Wildberries and its rival Ozon are used by 85-90% of Russia's economically active population, it is estimated. In many remote places lacking accessible stores, Russians depend on them for much of their shopping, from clothes to household appliances.

The Kremlin has denied that online platforms are used for army supplies, but a variety of military-related goods such as body armour are on sale, alongside items with both civilian and drone-production applications.

Pro-war bloggers say the platforms are routinely relied on by volunteers to buy kit that is then sent to the front.

There is, however, no independent confirmation that the warehouses targeted in the attacks stored these supplies.

Unlike Western retail giant Amazon, which sells goods directly alongside its marketplace business, Wildberries and Ozon act almost entirely as marketplaces, connecting independent sellers with buyers across Russia, storing and delivering their goods and handling payments.

This means many of the losses incurred in the attacks have been borne by businesses.

For one woman, who sells stationery items, Wildberries is the only distribution channel. The day after she delivered her goods to the Elektrostal warehouse near Moscow last Friday, she learned that it had all gone up in flames.

She still has other inventory left, but this time of the year is important for her business, as parents and students stock up for the new autumn term.

Another Wildberries trader who sells teenage clothing, told the BBC she had lost about 1.4m roubles (£13,300) worth of stock. She is halting new supplies for a few weeks.

"The outlook for working with Wildberries is very murky," she said. "Right now I have enough of a safety cushion to survive the current losses, but if there are more strikes, I probably won't manage."

Neither woman expects compensation. Earlier this month, less than two weeks before the attacks, a clause was added to their contracts, including drone attacks in the list of "force majeure events" for which Wildberries is not liable.

Company owner Tatiana Kim has promised "not to abandon" the sellers and some compensation has been paid to a number of small businesses. She has also offered temporary discounts and waived shipment fees, but this has done little to calm fears of further attacks.

Supporting small and medium-sized businesses has been among Vladimir Putin's declared priorities even in wartime, and framed as a backbone of resilience in the face of Western sanctions.

But the Russian state has been unable to shield the sector from the war's impact, and there have been several shocks to businesses since the start of the year.

VAT went up from 20% to 22% in January, with extra funding earmarked for defence, and tax breaks for some businesses were scrapped.

Some 209,000 small and medium-sized companies closed in the first quarter of 2026, according to business intelligence platform Kontur.Fokus. That is 9% more than in the first three months of 2025.

Widespread internet shutdowns and a crackdown on popular messaging apps led to further troubles, and Moscow businesses lost tens of millions of dollars in one week in March, according to some estimates.

And then came the fuel crisis, triggered by Ukrainian strikes on oil depots, refineries and supply routes.

"There are already a lot of nails, and they keep hammering them in. Is [the attack on Wildberries warehouses] another nail in the coffin? Well, yes, of course," Prof Ruben Eniklopov of Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona told the BBC.

Small businesses in Russia have proved resilient in the past, but inflation is high, the budget deficit is widening, and oil and gas revenues are 23% lower than in the first six months of last year.

Russia has vast financial reserves, accumulated in peacetime, but its war in Ukraine is increasingly swallowing resources, starving the civilian economy of growth.

Additional reporting by Olga Shamina.

‘Everyone's afraid to die’: Struggle to recruit soldiers in Ukraine turns violent

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr7k5ngde3vo, 14 days ago

Vasyl Krupych knows what it is to fight for Ukraine.

He describes terrifying scenes from battles in the eastern Donbas region where, sometimes praying, sometimes crying, the machine gunner somehow survived the onslaught by Russian troops.

But last December, by then serving in the rear, Krupych was attacked by his own countrymen whilst out searching for draft dodgers.

He says two men ignored demands to show their documents and fled. When his patrol gave chase, Krupych was badly beaten with a crowbar. He spent six weeks in hospital.

"He broke my rib, I was lying there and couldn't breathe," the veteran recalled in a recent interview.

"What did we fight for, if soldiers can now get beaten?"

Surge in violence

Ukraine's military ombudswoman says such attacks are now "regular" and "a major problem" as the country struggles to mobilise men to fight in the fifth, draining year of Russia's full-scale invasion.

It's not a topic people here care to discuss much, wary of feeding Russian propaganda.

But the latest National Police Service report recorded more than 600 assaults on recruitment officers to date and warned that the aggression has become "increasingly threatening".

The first big alert came in April when several recruiters were stabbed, one fatally. Then this month in Lviv, some 200 protesters surrounded officers attempting to detain a suspected draft dodger and smashed and overturned their car.

The riot made headlines as President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned violence against serving soldiers.

His controversial decision since then to sack Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov – over a clash of character and vision with Ukraine's commander-in-chief – means attempts to address the conscription crisis will stall.

But the anger that just exploded in Lviv suggests that the need is urgent.

'Busification'

The reasons appear to range from plain fear of the front line – now everyone knows someone who's been injured or killed - to a reluctance to sign up for a war that has no end in sight.

The only surge of enthusiasm since the initial rush to the front was in late 2023, when Ukraine launched a counter-offensive to seize back territory in the south-east.

It didn't last.

That's when the "brutal mobilisation" phase began, according to opposition MP Oleksandr Honcharenko.

He blames that for the backlash.

"These officers are hunting for people on the streets and sometimes using quite violent methods," the MP says.

"Violence leads to violence. It's a huge problem and it's going to get worse."

Military analyst Ivan Stupak agrees.

"We started to suffer a lack of manpower on the battlefield, constant losses," he recalls. "Ukraine's high command had to refill these losses so they started busification."

That's the term Ukrainians use for mobile patrols that end up with men bundled into buses, and off to serve.

"When they need an extra 5,000 men, they start grabbing them - and if they refuse it turns into fights on the street."

The professor's story

So for every story of a draft officer attacked, there are accounts of violence by recruiters themselves.

Ukraine's Human Rights Commissioner recorded more than 6,000 such complaints last year - double the 2024 tally. They include claims of abuse and unlawful detention as well as poor conditions at recruitment centres.

Kyrylo Ogdansky still gets upset when he talks about what happened to him in Dnipro last November.

The university professor, who is exempt from the draft, was approached in the street by a man in plain clothes who wanted to check his call-up status.

There are rules about such patrols, including having police officers present, so Ogdansky objected.

Then he was assaulted.

"One of them knocked the phone from my hand and two pushed me into the bus from behind. When I asked what's happening, one started to beat me to the head. He hit me in the nose several times," Ogdansky tells me.

He remembers the threat to send him straight to the front line. "He said 'I can call the commander and you'll go to Pokrovsk'."

Instead, the professor spent two weeks in hospital with a suspected neck injury and big purple-black bruises beneath his eyes.

He has made formal official complaints but was hesitant about speaking publicly, aware that such things look bad for Ukraine in the middle of a war.

"Russian propaganda uses such things very actively. But such a problem exists," Ogdansky explains his decision.

"If everyone is silent, then why would it stop? I understand the problem of conscription, but no official has the right to act like this."

Vasyl's story

It's clear that Vasyl Krupych experienced horrors at war.

He volunteered at the very start and has survived some of the grimmest battles.

Krupych is proud of his service - a tattoo on his neck declares "Glory to the Ukrainian Armed Forces" – but he suffers from nightmares.

When his vehicle was hit by an FPV drone, he was badly injured but managed to drag one friend to safety. He saw two others burned to death.

Now, when we discuss the increase in attacks against draft officers, his words drip with hurt.

It's not just about what he suffered himself: that case is still going through the courts. It's also the gulf between what he has endured and those doing everything possible to avoid the same.

"We are doing our duty. We fought, we defended our people - and now they are attacking us."

I wonder what he thinks might motivate people to serve, instead of coercing them, and he mentions raising salaries.

But then he shrugs.

"It can't be done differently, it can't. Our lads need to be replaced. But nobody volunteers," he says.

"Everyone is afraid to die."

What to do?

In his six months as defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov did start introducing reforms to tackle the growing crisis.

He began with moves meant to make military service more attractive: fixed-term contracts for new recruits, with the option to defer further service, and better salaries, especially for the riskiest roles.

But it was an early work in progress and overhauling conscription was still on his to-do list when he was sacked.

Proposals have included handing draft patrols over to police, who are less personally invested in the task. There's talk of proper training, too, for officers, and psychological screening.

Ukraine does admit openly that it has a problem, which is new.

But it now has only an acting defence minister, and still no solution.

Additional reporting by Volodymyr Lozhko, Mariana Matveichuk, Anastasiia Levchenko, Sophie Williams and Kamila Hrabchuk.

Island residents fear delays to emergencies amid changes to fire service

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g68rvmgkro, today

Concerns have been raised by residents on an Irish island about plans to replace its firefighters with volunteers after they retire.

The fire service on Arranmore has traditionally been run by two retained (paid) firefighters supported by volunteers, but Donegal County Council (DCC) is now moving to have a volunteer-run service.

Firefighter Finbar Gallagher said residents fear there might not be an effective emergency response, as some residents volunteer with the fire service, lifeboat and the ambulance service.

The council said recruitment of volunteers would continue, adding that its support already "exceeds the requirements set out in government policy" for inhabited offshore islands.

'People on the island are angry'

Speaking to BBC Radio Foyle's Mark Patterson Show, Gallagher outlined some of the challenges involved in maintaining a volunteer fire service on an offshore island, where firefighters have to balance work, family and other commitments.

Gallagher said a petition has been launched by residents who want assurances about the long-term future of the service.

"We do need retained firefighters on the island, especially at this time of year because we're prone to gorse fires," Gallagher said.

"The population of the island also swells to more than four times its usual size during the summer months. On any given weekend, we could have up to 900 people on the island at one time."

Gallagher said people of Arranmore already make significant voluntary contributions to their community, particularly through the RNLI lifeboat crew, and should not be expected to volunteer for another essential emergency service.

"Most of the lads on the fire brigade are also members of the lifeboat crew as well, and some of us are also part of the ambulance crew, so it's all voluntary," Gallagher said.

"I think the days of relying solely on volunteers, especially in the fire service, are gone.

"Everybody else on the mainland has retained firefighters, so I don't understand why the council cannot retain a couple of firefighters here. Financially, it's not going to cost them that much."

Siobhan Cox belongs to a committee that started a petition to have six paid firefighters on the island.

She said residents are "very concerned" about the council's plans.

"There might not be enough volunteers on the island to actually run that service and they might be relying on the service from the mainland to come in," she told BBC News NI.

"And that might not be possible sometimes if the sea is too rough, and there's no ferries running, and it'll also take maybe up to an hour for the fire brigade from the mainland to come in on a ferry," she added.

She feels it will make "a massive difference" if a house is on fire having a fully paid team.

Cox said there was a gorse fire the day the islanders set up the committee.

"The fire brigade was able to make it to that field and put out that fire in 10 minutes. Whereas if they're relying on services coming in from the mainland, that could have gone out of control or even reached houses at that stage."

'A major difference'

Cox grew up in Arranmore and thinks a paid service would also help the island in other ways.

"If there were more paid positions, we would encourage more younger people to come live on the island as well," she said.

She says the committee feel that the council is not responding to their concerns and are "trying to brush it under the carpet".

"We're only asking for six positions here in Arranmore and they have 12 in Aran Islands.

"I just don't really see why there's such a major difference," she added.

What has the council said?

DCC said Arranmore brigade currently has five volunteer firefighters and is equipped with a fire appliance which, it said, has "essentially the same functional capability" as those used by retained brigades, apart from carrying a smaller water supply and not having a 13.5-metre ladder.

To address one recent and one pending retirement, DCC said it had already identified five island residents who have expressed an interest in becoming volunteers.

Where is Arranmore?

Arranmore is the largest inhabited island off the coast of County Donegal in the Republic of Ireland.

Located in the Atlantic Ocean, it lies about 5 km (3 miles) off the Irish mainland and is reached by a short ferry crossing from the village of Burtonport.

About 500 people live on Arranmore year round, although numbers increase significantly during the summer months as many tourists visit the island.

The island is part of the Donegal Gaeltacht, where the Irish language is recognised as the community's traditional and everyday language.

Tourist plane crashes in Peru, killing 13

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70g132erlko, today

A small plane carrying tourists has crashed in Peru, killing all 13 people on board, according to local news reports and Peruvian officials.

The aircraft had been flying over Nazca Lines archaeological site when it went down on Saturday. Eleven passengers and two pilots were on board.

The cause of the crash and the identity of the passengers is not yet clear.

Nazca Lines is a popular tourist attraction and UNESCO World Heritage site in southern Peru that features ancient drawings in desert sand.

The crash happened around 13:00 local time (19:00 BST) in the Pueblo Viejo region after the plane departed from an airport in Pisco, Peru.

"Given the severity of the accident, there are no survivors. We have recovered four bodies so far," Police Major Jorge Andrade said, according to AFP.

This isn't the first plane to crash over the famed site in the last few decades.

In 2022, another small tourist plane crashed during a flight over the Nazca Lines site, killing seven on board.

And in 2010, a tourist plane went down over the site, killing six people on board.

Peru's ex-president leaves jail after 15-year jail term for corruption overturned

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2j9nj88rro, yesterday

Peru's constitutional court has overturned a 15-year jail sentence handed to the country's former president after he was found guilty of corruption.

Ollanta Humala, who led the country from 2011 to 2016, was convicted in 2025 of accepting illegal funds from the Venezuelan president and Brazilian construction company Odebrecht to fund his election campaigns in 2006 and 2011.

The former president had said he would appeal against the verdict, and now Peru's constitutional court has declared the entire criminal proceedings against him null and void.

Humala was released from Barbadillo Prison in the capital Lima on Friday night, with a crowd of supporters on hand to see his release.

After the ruling, Humala's lawyer Julio Espinoza Goyena wrote on social media that the court had decided the contributions his client received on electoral campaigns "do not constitute money laundering".

He said: "The Criminal Chamber currently handling the case must order the definitive dismissal of the proceedings and the FREEDOM of former President Ollanta Humala".

When Humala was convicted, his wife Nadine Heredia was also found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

However, she was granted safe passage to Brazil after seeking asylum in the Brazilian embassy.

"We have been victims of political and judicial persecution," Humala told reporters outside the small prison facility.

Humala was the first of four Peruvian presidents to be investigated in connection with the Odebrecht scandal.

Alejandro Toledo, who governed from 2001 to 2006, was sentenced last year to more than 20 years in prison for taking $35m (£26m) in bribes from the company.

Alan García, president from 1985 to 1990 and 2006 to 2011, killed himself in 2019 as he faced imminent arrest over allegations he was bribed by Odebrecht. He had denied the accusations.

Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, in office from 2016 to 2018, faced impeachment proceedings after it emerged that Odebrecht had paid him millions of dollars in his previous government role.

The investigation is ongoing. Kuczynski has always maintained the payments were not illegal.

At their own trial, Humala and his wife, with whom he cofounded the Nationalist Party, were accused of accepting $3m in illegal contributions from the firm, which they used to finance his 2011 presidential campaign.

They were also accused of taking $200,000 from Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez to bankroll the 2006 campaign.

But the couple always maintained that they were the victims of political persecution.

Humala, a former army officer, came to national prominence in 2000 when he led a short-live military rebellion against then-president Alberto Fujimori.

In 2006, he ran for president on a platform inspired by the socialist revolution of Venezuela's Chávez.

After an unsuccessful first attempt, Humala ran again in 2011; this time on a more moderate platform emulating the policies of Brazil's then-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to defeat right-wing rival Keiko Fujimori, the eldest daughter of Alberto Fujimori.

His legal troubles started shortly after his term finished in 2016, when Odebrecht admitted to bribing Latin American government officials and political parties with hundreds of millions of dollars to win business.

Prosecutors accused Humala and his wife of receiving millions from Odebrecht, as well as the illegal funding from Chávez to finance the 2006 presidential campaign.

Humala and Heredia were subsequently placed in pre-trial detention for a year, before they were eventually convicted in 2025.

On the front line of Ecuador's drugs war, police fight gangs, guns and corruption

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdx7n1r54nno, 6 days ago

In the Ecuadoran city of Durán, riddled with drugs and rival gangs, Police Captain Jean Carlos Bustamante knows exactly what he is up against – not just the criminals who kill and sometimes dismember their rivals, but also the enemy within.

"We have many, many bad people inside our unit, inside the state, inside politics," he says. "We have many, many guys that are corrupt. They are in the pay of the gangs."

The only police officers he can trust, he says, are the ones right beside him - members of his hand-picked team. At 34, Captain Bustamante is the oldest among them and moves like the special forces officer he used to be.

With the sun setting, he leads his team into a hardscrabble neighbourhood where windows are sealed off behind metal grills, and lips are sealed by fear. This is the heart of gangland, controlled by a group called Los Aguilas (Spanish for The Eagles).

I ask what happens if local people speak out against the gangs. "They kill them," the captain replies. "So that's why they never say nothing."

He's heading for an abandoned house where he believes weapons have been hidden (gunmen don't keep their guns at home). He and his team line up, hugging the wall, heavily armed, and tightly packed. A battering ram gets them through the door.

They find two handguns – one rusty but the other ready to be fired - and ammunition for an assault rifle.

The captain says he's happy with the result. "The first reason is because we are safe," he says. "The second is that there are two guns less for the gangs."

But this is a small victory, in a war of attrition. He admits the gangs have "many weapons and much more money than the state".

He knows the risks only too well – having lost three close friends fighting the gangs. He has also lost his fear he says, "years ago", but his parents have not.

"My mum says 'be careful, maybe you can die there'," he tells me. "My dad calls all the time and asks 'my son, are you good? Tell me that you are good.'"

A line can be traced - in dollars and in broken lives - from the back streets of Durán to the hotspots of London, and other capital cities. Around 70% of the cocaine reaching Europe and the US is funnelled out of Ecuador, according to the country's President, Daniel Noboa.

How did it come to this?

The drug pours in from neighbouring Colombia and Peru – the two biggest producers in the world. Powerful home-grown gangs – with links to Mexican cartels and Albanian mafia groups – help smuggle the cocaine onwards. They take advantage of Ecuador's weak border controls, underfunded security forces, and long Pacific coast.

In the process what was a peaceful tourist haven in South America has – in under a decade - become a killing ground.

Last year the murder rate was one of the highest in the world, with more than 9,200 people killed, according to Ecuador's interior ministry. That's despite an iron-fisted crackdown by President Noboa over the past two years. Critics say it has backfired. Top crime bosses have been arrested, causing the gangs to fracture, but also to multiply.

Many here believe the war against the gangs will never be won.

Captain Bustamante keeps fighting.

When we join him for another operation he's lying in wait getting a bird's eye view of the back alleys from a drone. He sees three figures moving around at the edge of a playground – "micro-traffickers" - caught in the act, he says. They are at the bottom of the drug chain, selling locally, in minute amounts, not kilos.

Within minutes he and his team have tracked the suspects to their door. The battering ram is out again, and soon they are in the kitchen, where a middle-aged woman protests, and a young girl bursts into tears.

The police move from room to room, by torchlight - there's no power - opening wardrobes and lifting mattresses. Upstairs, they find a hiding place behind a window. A young suspect emerges and is detained. Two others are handcuffed in another room. All three are led away, denying that they were dealing drugs.

Nearby the captain finds tiny paper packets of "H" stashed in a flowerpot. It's a highly addictive mix containing small amounts of heroin sold by neighbourhood dealers for $1.00 (£0.75) per packet.

One of the suspects is charged, and if convicted, he could get five years in jail. Prosecutors release the other two. Senior officers say that happens a lot. They blame corruption in the justice system, and the prosecutor's office.

"We imprison them [gang members] and they release them," says Colonel Santiago Gavilanez, deputy commander of Durán police. "We know because when we carry out raids, we recapture them. Some of those who are released kill people and leave orphans behind." He tells us that the gangs have money to "buy laws, judges, and politicians".

We get an example of the buying power of the gangs from another police officer, in a different location. For his safety, we cannot reveal his name or where he is based.

He told us he was contacted twice by text and offered a massive bribe - "enough money to retire on". He turned it down.

Someone – a colleague perhaps – had informed the gang exactly where he worked and what he did.

"You never know who is watching," he said. We heard that a lot during a week in Durán, and surrounding areas.

Back at the playground it's the end of another long day in body armour, but Captain Bustamante says he has to keep going. "Maybe, I am a little tired," he admits, "but it's my work. I believe we can win this war. We have to do it."

As we speak, one of the main gang bosses in the area has been spotted nearby. "We know he controls the dealers," says the captain, "but we have no leads or evidence, so we can't arrest him".

But police here insist they are having an impact. The murder rate in Durán is down by half, they say, in the first six months of this year.

There are other indications of progress, they tell us, with streets no longer deserted after 19:00 local time, and bodies no longer found beheaded or dismembered. That used to be common, according to Colonel Gavilanez.

"We have managed to contain the gangs," he says. "Getting complete control is going to be a medium-term process."

Elsewhere the criminals are containing the police. Through a contact we arranged to meet a local gang on their home turf, about an hour's drive from the city. Their leader – whom we are calling Jonathan – told me he had four officers on his payroll.

"Whenever they're going to do an operation, they call me," he said. "They tell me to hide things, and to get out of here. When they arrive, they find nothing."

That early warning systems costs him about $1,500 (£1,100) to $2,000 (£1,500) a month.

At 37, Jonathan is just a few years older than Captain Bustamante, but he's across enemy lines. He says he joined a gang, at 18, to put food on the table.

He and his men (and boys) strolled through the rough-hewn streets, in broad daylight, brandishing weapons - including a semi-automatic rifle and a pistol. The youngest gang member we saw was a lean 17-year-old, wearing a bulletproof vest, and flip flops. All covered their faces.

Jonathan answered our questions inside a narrow room in a breeze block house, with his lieutenants crowding in. Most of the space was taken up by a bed. He admitted to being a drug pusher and a killer. "How many lives have you taken?" I asked.

"Well, until now about eight, I think. I don't remember well," he replied, with a handgun in his lap, pointing in my direction.

Jonathan claimed his gang didn't kill innocent people, just a rival criminal group trying to replace them. "They want to force their way in here," he said, "they come killing people, and we respond. The main thing for us now is to eliminate the other gang."

As we spoke, local people gathered near the doorway, children among them. Human rights workers in Ecuador told us boys can be recruited into gang life by the age of 12. Three years later they can be hitmen.

Jonathan makes no apologies for putting guns in the hands of teenagers or selling cocaine in the neighbourhood he claims to protect. He insists the drug trade cannot be rooted out.

"I think it's an issue that will never end," he says. "If they shut us down, another one [gang] will come along, and if they shut that one down, there will be another."

He expects to die, as he has lived – by the gun. "Death is paid by death," he said. "But if they come to kill me, I won't make it easy for them."

Two nights later, back in Durán, we saw how gangs settle scores. The body of a man was visible under flashing police lights, lying where he fell, beside a motorbike. Bullet casings were still on the ground. Neighbours stood looking on, mostly in silence.

A man and woman held each other and wept – relatives of the dead man.

Police suspected a revenge attack – one gang against another.

Forensic teams lifted the body onto a stretcher, and into the back of a refrigerated van: violent death, on repeat. Another corpse was already inside.

A witness was willing to speak – but not to be named. "He already had a bullet in his back," he told us. "As he fell, they finished him off with a shot to the head. He was shot six times by two men on a motorbike."

"We are used to this now because it happens every day," he said. "You might just step outside and catch a stray bullet. You can't even go out or talk to friends or family because someone could shoot you."

He does not expect the president's fight against the gangs to deliver any change.

"Criminals are like ghosts," he said, in a low voice. "They pop up wherever they please."

Then he melted away, into the warm night air.

You never know who is watching.

With additional reporting by Wietske Burema, Lee Durant, Chris Gibson, Thalie Ponce and Mauricio Torres.

Nicaraguan leader proposes extending presidential term by another year

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0m78k3k31jo, 3 days ago

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who has been in power since 2007, has proposed extending the presidential term by another year.

The government-controlled National Assembly is expected to approve the extension in September.

It is part of a proposed constitutional reform which also includes plans to bar members of the opposition deemed by the government to be "traitors" or "coup plotters" from running for office.

The 80-year-old's rule has become increasingly authoritarian, with political opponents jailed, sent into exile and stripped of their citizenship.

During Ortega's 19 years in power, there have been several changes to the presidential term already.

In 2014, the country's National Assembly scrapped presidential term limits and in 2024 it extended the term from five to six years.

The legislative body also approved Ortega's plan to name his wife, Rosario Murillo, as "co-president".

It thereby paved the way for her to assume as president should Ortega, who is believed to be in frail health, be declared "permanently absent".

Presidential elections were last held in Nicaragua in November 2021.

The one-sided contest was won by Ortega following a brutal crackdown on the opposition.

Any rival potential candidates with a chance to garner a significant number of votes were detained and disqualified from standing for office or forced into exile. Dozens of other opposition members were also arrested.

Only a small handful of little-known candidates, who were unlikely to get much support, were allowed to stand.

United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk has warned that government repression has deepened further since then, with the rule of law steadily eroded and the persecution of political dissidents escalating.

Few Nicaraguans have dared to speak out in public against Ortega and Murillo since more than 300 people were killed when the security forces quashed anti-government protests in 2018.

Dissidents living in exile have also been targeted with many stripped of their citizenship by the Ortega government, their homes they left behind in Nicaragua seized and sold.

Brazil's president confirms two US government officials were denied visas over election interference fears

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g3dv60ry9o, 3 days ago

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has confirmed that his government has denied visas to two US officials who planned to travel to Brazil, accusing them of trying to interfere in October's election.

"We had to deny visas to two young folks they were sending to Brazil to meddle in Brazil's elections," Lula said on Wednesday.

Two state department officials were due in Brazil in late July for what they said was a visit regarding freedom of expression and religion, and election integrity. They were also expected to meet the right-wing candidate Flávio Bolsonaro.

Previously, the US state department has called the suggestion they sought to undermine Brazil's elections a "baseless lie".

Brazil's election will pit the 80-year-old incumbent left-wing President Lula da Silva against Flávio Bolsonaro, son of Jair Bolsonaro, a former president who was handed a 27-year prison sentence for plotting a coup after losing the last election.

Jair Bolsonaro was banned from running for office even before his coup conviction last year because he repeatedly spread unfounded claims that the electronic voting machines could be rigged - both after his win in 2018 and during the 2022 campaign.

He once notably cast doubt on the integrity of Brazil's election system to a room full of foreign diplomats.

And after he lost in 2022, his supporters violently stormed Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Presidential Palace on 8 January, 2023 - Brazil's version of the 6 January Capitol riots in the US.

A few weeks ago, his son Flávio - who has received endorsements from Argentina's President Javier Milei and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - told a room of diplomats that Brazil's machines have the same origin as Venezuela's, and cited a CIA report about electoral fraud in that country.

Flávio Bolsonaro later denied he was questioning the integrity of the system, saying he instead wanted as many international observers as possible.

But following the meeting, the Brazilian government blocked visas for a US delegation citing concerns they would try to cast unfounded doubts on the election.

That included two senior state department officials, who have been identified as Riley M Barnes, an assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, and Samuel Samson, a deputy assistant secretary in the same section.

Flávio Bolsonaro's claims about the country's electronic voting machines have been refuted by Brazil's Superior Electoral Court. Brazil has its own system which has been praised by experts as one of the most secure in the world.

Electronic voting has been used in Brazil since 1996, with no systemic fraud ever recorded. The machines use fingerprints to verify voters' identity to stop people voting on behalf of others, or registering twice.

Each machine also prints a paper copy of its tally and displays that, so anyone can compare it to the official count. The results are independently audited.

Experts are also invited ahead of time to try hack the machines or find irregularities, to try and reassure the public

One month after earthquakes, Venezuelans still search for loved ones and answers

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39e17weydwo, 10 days ago

The worst day in Victor Calderón's life – a month ago to the day – unfolded while he was at sea.

When the powerful twin earthquakes devastated Venezuela's northern coastline, the 49-year-old fisherman had been on the boat for 18 days and was told by radio that the building he and his family lived in had collapsed.

When he got back to shore, a staggering 26 members of his family were gone.

They include his sisters, their children and grandchildren, as well as his stepfather and nine cousins. Their ages ranged from two years old to their late 70s.

"It's a terrible, terrible thing," he says, struggling to find the words.

"I haven't cried for them yet, not until I find the last ones who are missing," he adds with stoicism.

Victor's entire family lived in a public housing complex known as OPPE 26, located in Caraballeda. The town in La Guaira state is considered the Ground Zero of the tragedy.

His daughter and granddaughter thankfully survived and their much-reduced family now lives in a tent on a golf course.

One month on from the disaster, he is not the only one still searching for, and finding, loved ones.

More than 5,300 people are confirmed to have died in the quakes and more than 16,500 were injured, according to a tally updated almost daily by the government.

The government has not said how many people are still missing, but the figure is estimated to be in the tens of thousands.

As the afternoon sun went down at OPPE26, three bodies were pulled from beneath the rebar and rubble, including that of an 11-year-old girl.

Her father, heaving deep sobs, now finally able to grieve after his desperate month-long search for her has come to an end.

Rescue workers downed tools or said a prayer as the child's body was delicately removed in black plastic sheeting, her father's howls piercing the air and drowning out the sound of earthmoving equipment working nearby.

"This is soul-destroying," says Magin Hernández, a member of another search team, weeping quietly. "For the rescuers, the families, the friends; just soul destroying".

For most survivors and victims' relatives the soul-crushing grief is also combined with a deep and growing sense of anger at the authorities.

The resentment is palpable. Almost everyone you speak to at the Caraballeda housing complex asks the same questions: how could ten of 12 housing blocks collapse? Were the building plans flawed or corners cut or inadequate materials used? Is there evidence of negligence?

I put some those questions to Public Works Minister Juan José Ramírez as he toured the site.

The buildings were sound, he insisted, adding that no nation could have coped with the sheer scale of the disaster.

"This wasn't one but two almost simultaneous earthquakes, both moving in different directions," the minister argued.

"All around us you can see both public and private buildings were brought down," he said, motioning across the road to other destroyed apartment blocks.

"The earthquake didn't discriminate between the two."

At one of the pancaked private buildings, in the coastal town of Catia La Mar, an unlikely rescue took place eight days after the earthquakes struck.

From beneath the concrete slabs, a security guard, Hernán Gil, was pulled out alive from an underground car park.

The jubilant scenes briefly lifted Venezuela's spirits.

Today, Laura Barrios continues to search in the same building for her brother-in-law, whose body remains trapped in the same subterranean car park.

Most of the international crews that rallied for Gil have long since gone home and now even the earthmover, which was clearing the unstable debris, has been sent to another site.

The news that Laura's family are searching on their own again came a day after they located the bodies of her sister-in-law and the children, aged 10 and three, huddled together in their bedroom.

"The other day was the Day of the Child in Venezuela," Laura sobs. "But we have no children to celebrate. Ours are gone."

She has been furious at the authorities for reacting slowly.

But she says the news that the heavy machinery is pulling out when her family still needs it has sapped her of the will to fight.

"What more can we say that this rubble doesn't already tell us?" she asks, looking at the devastation surrounding us.

"Lost T-shirts, cutlery that was never used, crockery sets, toys. Entire lives, gone in just 39 seconds."

In the queue for a hot meal at the World Central Kitchen – one of the US-based humanitarian agencies operating in Catia La Mar – people show characteristic Venezuelan good humour in the face of greater adversity than most have ever known.

While people need the food and bottled water, they also appreciate a smile or hug, gestures of human kindness and camaraderie.

Yet they return to cheap nylon tents, pitched on the curbside, their temporary homes for the foreseeable future.

This week, the government of Delcy Rodríguez donated 200 homes to affected families.

The overall need, though, may be 100 times higher. Reconstruction will take years and billions of dollars in investment - the World Bank has estimated that the twin quakes caused $19.6bn (£14.7bn) in damage.

Rodríguez was sworn in as acting president in January days after US forces seized Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and took him to New York to stand trial on charges of "narcoterrorism".

While she has the backing of the Trump administration, it is Washington which is in control of Venezuela's oil industry - the main source of revenue in this oil-rich country - so it is far from clear how the rebuild will unfold.

Many of those in tents once lived by Playa Pirata – a short stretch of beach which was full of visitors on the public holiday when the earthquakes hit.

They watched in desperation as their homes collapsed in front of them and ran towards their apartments to try to save relatives and pets trapped inside.

Theirs are just some of a thousand horror stories which Venezuelans still struggle to comprehend, and which have forever scarred a nation ill-equipped to cope.

This farmer wanted to quit the cocaine industry - he couldn't

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0kyml1zxz4o, 14 days ago

When Perea stopped growing coca - the raw material used to make cocaine - he vowed never to plant it again.

He uprooted the green bushes on his small farm in a remote corner of the province of Meta in Colombia, reachable only by river, and replaced them with legal crops like cassava and plantain.

Perea was one of thousands who joined a government-run crop substitution programme aimed at helping farmers abandon coca.

But much of the promised assistance never arrived, and a lack of roads and recurring floods made it difficult to sell his produce.

In 2024, disillusioned, he began planting coca again.

"It's a tragedy," says Perea. "But when you have children and no work, what choice do you have? If no help ever arrives, you go back to growing it."

The coca leaf is an ancestral crop traditionally used by indigenous communities in teas and medicines. But today most of it is processed into cocaine. An estimated 70% of the global supply of the illegal drug comes from Colombia.

"Coca has some major advantages over other crops," says Lucas Marín Llanes, a Colombian researcher who focuses on the coca economy and substitution strategies. "Harvests are quick - farmers can get three or four a year - it's easier to transport, and farmers know what price they'll get."

Research Marín has worked on shows coca cultivation can also boost local economies, increasing municipal GDP by as much as 10% in some areas between 2014 and 2019.

Substitution programmes were designed to help Colombian coca farmers move away from the crop and build legal livelihoods.

Yet today the planting of coca is at record levels at more than 250,000 hectares - and many Colombians in substitution programmes say they have been let down.

Elena Hernández moved to the coca-growing region of Guaviare during the boom of the 1990s, lured by better pay.

"There was more money back then - you could see it everywhere," she says. "I managed to save and buy a small house."

But the coca industry also brought violence and insecurity. Armed groups fought for control, while the government tried to curb production through manual eradication, aerial fumigation and arrests.

These efforts cut off families' incomes but failed to stem cultivation.

So when a nationwide substitution programme was introduced by the then government in 2017, Hernández was eager to sign up, joining around 100,000 families who were promised financial support in return for moving away from coca.

Each household was due to get 36m Colombian pesos ($11,000; £8,000), spread over a two-year period.

"The way it was presented to us, it seemed very promising for the development of our territory," says Hernández.

The programme, known as the National Comprehensive Programme for the Substitution of Illicit Crops (PNIS), was born out of the 2016 peace deal between the government and Colombia's largest guerrilla group, Farc.

In exchange for uprooting their coca plants, farmers would also get technical support, including from agronomists, and advice on soil management.

While substitution programmes had existed before, they remained limited in scale. PNIS was the most ambitious attempt to date - and at first appeared to be working.

In parts of southern Meta and Guaviare, coca fields were replaced by lemon trees, banana crops and small livestock farms. Many farmers, like Hernández, stayed away from coca.

Yet that does not mean they consider it a success.

"The government wasn't very committed to us farmers. We were treated badly," explains Hernández, pointing to problems that emerged early on.

Payments were delayed, and technical support frequently failed to materialise. Weak state presence in rural areas and poor coordination between agencies meant support often did not reach communities.

Momentum behind the programme weakened as political priorities shifted. Iván Duque, who became Colombia's president in 2018, refocused the government's approach on eradication and security strategies.

By the time current President Gustavo Petro took office in 2022, PNIS was behind schedule and struggling to reach communities.

But some farmers did report improvements. For Doralba Bejarano, from Puerto Rico in southern Meta, her situation improved as stalled support began to arrive.

"Before the programme we were terrified," she says. "We had to hide the coca paste because the police, the military, would put us in jail." Coca paste is a more concentrated form of coca used to produce cocaine, allowing growers to earn more than selling raw leaves.

Now, she says, she has peace of mind: "I go wherever I want. I have no reason to hide."

She says many in her community are now receiving government support to promote and sell their non-coca crops and other foodstuffs.

The challenges facing substitution are also driven by forces beyond Colombia's borders – continuing huge appetite for cocaine in the US and Europe, as well as newer markets elsewhere.

"Right now there is expanding demand, and so there will be supply to meet that," says Michael Weintraub, co-director of the Centre for the Study of Security and Drugs at the University of the Andes, which is based in Colombia's capital Bogota. "That means Colombia will grow coca for the foreseeable future."

Weintraub also describes the security context in Colombia as "fragile" - making it difficult for substitution programmes to operate effectively in many rural areas.

Although the 2016 peace deal led to the disbanding of large parts of Farc, other armed groups have moved in to fill the vacuum, and often control trafficking routes and the local economies.

The current government has sought to address this through its "Total Peace" policy, by which it holds peace negotiations with all the various armed and criminal gangs. But analysts say progress has been limited.

Last year, the government began rolling out RenHacemos - a substitution programme aimed at building on PNIS while addressing its shortcomings - in pilot areas.

While farmers will still get financial support, the programme also focuses on diversifying local economies beyond crop replacement. Wider assistance will include road improvements, access to university education, digital connectivity and better housing.

"Coca is a business," says Gloria Miranda, director of the government agency in charge of illicit crop substitution in Colombia.

"It's a criminal enterprise, but it functions like any other business. RedHacemos aims to replace not only the coca plant, but the entire economy surrounding it - from processing and agro-industry to transport and logistics."

Yet for many analysts, questions remain over whether such approaches can deliver lasting change. Llanes says the continuing growth of coca cultivation shows that repeated interventions haven't worked.

Perea is sceptical that government support to move away from coca will come anytime soon to him and his neighbours.

"The state has completely abandoned us," he says, standing amid the coca plants that surround his weathered wooden shack. "We live day to day, sometimes even running out of food."

For now, he says, he will continue to grow coca - not because he is a criminal but because, he says, it is his only option. "We are not the drug traffickers - if I was, I wouldn't be living like I do."

Peru's new president says military will lead crime operations in emergencies

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmrkpk9dlno, 5 days ago

Keiko Fujimori has been sworn in as Peru's first female elected president - the latest conservative leader to come to power in Latin America.

At Tuesday's ceremony in Lima, the 51-year-old said the military would temporarily lead security operations in crime-ridden areas during emergencies until order was restored.

More than 100 protesters gathered in the capital against Fujimori's inauguration, the AFP news agency reported.

Many were relatives of state violence victims, including some from during the presidency of her father Alberto Fujimori, who was jailed for corruption and human rights abuses during his campaign against a left-wing guerrilla insurgency in the 1990s.

Keiko Fujimori is Peru's 10th president in a decade - a tumultuous period in which no leader completed a full five-year term.

A number of foreign dignitaries were present at her inauguration in Lima - among them the right-wing presidents of Argentina, Ecuador and Chile.

In June, she defeated her left-wing rival Roberto Sánchez in a razor-thin presidential run-off in her fourth attempt to win the job.

In her first address as president, Fujimori said she had received Peru in a catastrophic condition - but the country had infinite potential.

Her hardline campaign against insecurity featured heavily, as she announced that the military would at times take charge of maintaining order in areas with high crime.

"During states of emergency, the armed forces will temporarily take the lead in security operations," she said.

It was a statement that echoed the role of the military under her father, who died in 2024.

She also vowed to protect citizens against effects of the El Nino weather phenomenon and increase the minimum wage, lamenting that inequality in Peru was the highest in Latin America.

Peru is experiencing its worst security crisis in decades, fuelled by expanding local and foreign criminal gangs that oversee contract killings and extortion.

Chile captures fugitive convicted of singer Victor Jara's murder under Pinochet

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3w0xwj8vzyo, 6 days ago

Police in Chile say they have captured a man convicted years ago of the kidnapping and murder of popular folk singer Victor Jara under military ruler Augusto Pinochet.

Nelson Haase was one of a group of officers given jail terms for the killing, which took place just five days after the coup which brought Pinochet to power in 1973. He was sentenced to 25 years.

Haase took flight when the sentence was announced in August 2023 but was found by police on Saturday in the south of the country.

Jara, who became famous in the 1960s and 70s for his protest and pacifist songs and supported the ousted socialist president Salvador Allende, was subjected to torture and shot 44 times.

He was one of about 5,000 people, arrested in the immediate aftermath of the coup, who were taken to a sports stadium in the capital.

Those who survived the ordeal recounted how the singer was tortured, with soldiers crushing his fingers and telling him he would never be able to play his guitar again.

His case is one of the most striking examples of how the Pinochet dictatorship dealt with its enemies.

Thousands were tortured, executed or disappeared during the 17-year regime.

Haase, a retired colonel, was one of eight officers found guilty of Jara's murder in 2018.

After five years of appeals, the country's Supreme Court made a final judgement in the case, sentencing Haase for 15 years for murder and another 10 for kidnapping.

The then 80-year-old failed to appear voluntarily to serve his sentence, and disappeared for nearly three years. Local media said he was found by police agents in Puyehue, in the Los Lagos region 950 km (590 miles) south of the capital Santiago on Saturday.

Another of the seven men convicted of murder, Gen Hernan Chacon, died by suicide when police came to arrest him. The remaining five are all in jail.

Also in 2023, the US extradited to Chile retired army lieutenant Pedro Barrientos, who a Florida jury had found liable for Jara's murder.

Bowen: Plan for Hamas to disarm faces big obstacles, yet it offers rare hope for Gaza

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2dkje4p4klo, 2 days ago

There are many reasons why it might not work.

At the same time, it is potentially a rare chink of light in a bleak picture. Hamas has never agreed to disarm before now. Handled carefully and well, there is a chance now to make diplomatic progress.

A bargain lies at the heart of the new proposition for Hamas to disarm in Gaza.

The idea is that as Hamas hands over its weapons, Israel pulls out of the 70% of Gaza that it occupies.

That may sound simple, but the realities of politics, war, zero trust, the deaths of thousands and the destruction of Gaza make the process very complicated.

Life in Gaza is catastrophic for well over 2 million Palestinian civilians who are living in desperate conditions.

For most, Israel has destroyed their homes and their livelihoods. Israel killed more than 70,000 Palestinians during the war, and more than 1,000 more since the ceasefire, according to the Hamas-run health ministry whose figures are seen as reliable by the UN. Unicef says that Israel has killed more than 20,000 children since 7 October 2023, with at least 1,000 babies among the dead and wounded.

Much of Gaza is rubble. It is not just the damage caused by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) military operations. There has also been an organised, officially sponsored project to destroy communities and smash infrastructure. Civilian demolition contractors from Israel have been contracted to finish the job started by IDF bombs.

Many Palestinians believe Israel wants to force them out, by making life so insupportable and appalling that they will leave if they get the chance. Leaders and senior officials inside Jordan and Egypt also believe that powerful individuals in the Israeli government are working to create the conditions for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, most likely across their borders.

On the Israeli side, there is a strong sense in the Jewish majority of 80% or so that Hamas will remain a potentially deadly threat until it is totally disarmed and stripped of any vestige of power.

On 7 October 2023 Hamas and other Palestinians attacked Israel, killing almost 1,200 people, around two thirds of whom were civilians including children, and taking 251 people into Gaza as hostages. Many Israelis believe Hamas would do that again if it had the chance.

The diplomatic process that produced the agreement with Hamas does not operate in a bubble. Making the plan work depends on broader issues too.

Israel has a general election at the end of October. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is behind in the polls and fighting not just for his political life and legacy but potentially for his liberty. While he remains in office, his long running trial on corruption charges that could carry a jail sentence has been slowed to a crawl. That would change if he lost power.

Netanyahu faces pressure at home and abroad. Domestically he does not want his political opponents to be able to accuse him of being soft on Hamas. Internationally the only address that matters to him is in Washington DC.

The US also has elections looming with midterms in November. President Donald Trump cannot achieve a win in the war on Iran, so he needs one in Gaza. If Trump's Republican party loses badly, the power he relishes using will drain away. Trump will blame Netanyahu if he decides he is preventing the victory he wants and needs.

One of Netanyahu's boasts to Israel's electorate is that he can handle the Americans, including Trump, better than any of his rivals. A Trump tirade before election day in Israel scuppers that proposition.

Netanyahu is an expert at playing for time when faced with a big challenge. He will try to juggle pressure at home and pressure from the Oval Office until election day.

Hamas is also under severe pressure. Most of its senior men and thousands of its fighters were killed by Israel. The IDF still assassinates senior Hamas figures when it gets a chance. As I write, a flash from the IDF on my phone says it has killed a commander of a Palestinian militia who it says took hostages on 7 October 2023.

Many Palestinians blame Hamas for the consequences of its decision to attack Israel on 7 October. Hamas also faces challenges from powerful families and by militias funded and backed by Israel.

It is trying to rebuild grass roots support. This was how the BBC's Gaza correspondent Rushdi Abu Alouf put it to me: "For months, Hamas increasingly shifted part of its focus back to social and political outreach, expanding Quran memorisation programmes and charitable activities aimed at children, teenagers and young people, while taking advantage of the severe humanitarian crisis and the growing dependence of so many families on aid."

Khalil al Hayya, the newly confirmed political leader of Hamas, was a crucial player in the decision to drop objections to the framework. Egypt and Turkey did much of the hard diplomatic work to get him there.

Hamas concessions are linked to Israel agreeing to pull back in Gaza. Israel is on record as demanding full Hamas disarmament as a pre-condition for withdrawal.

Only a step-by-step agreement, starting small and building confidence, has a chance of working. Trump will have to stay engaged, which is far from certain with a war with Iran among a planet full of other challenges.

Just keeping the process going will require sustained diplomatic engagement and no sudden shocks that make meditation impossible.

That will be difficult. The occupied West Bank is on the verge of an explosion of even worse violence. Figures gathered by ACLED, a group that monitors armed conflict, says that 2026 is on track to become the most violent year in the West Bank since it began monitoring the territory a decade ago.

Jewish settlers have been allowed by the IDF and encouraged by extremists in the Netanyahu government to run riot, attacking and sometimes killing Palestinians and driving them off their land.

Palestinians have been organising themselves to resist. Some opponents and critics of Netanyahu believe that he wants a major crisis on the West Bank to justify a tough response before the elections and remove any pressure to pull back in Gaza.

Netanyahu and prominent ministers in his cabinet have said repeatedly that there will never be a Palestinian state.

Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, is committing the government to decisions aimed at increasing Jewish settlement and killing off the prospects of an independent Palestine. Smotrich is an extreme religious nationalist who has been sanctioned by major Western countries and banned from entering the UK, France, other leading European nations, as well as Australia and New Zealand. Israel condemned those decisions as antisemitic.

A process that does not give Palestinians a political horizon and a route to self-determination will not work, condemning another generation to lives dominated by war.

Diplomatic failure would not benefit Palestinians or Israelis. It would play into the hands of those on both sides who believe their conflict has no solution other than defeating their enemy.

What's in the Gaza peace deal roadmap?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20e94k2ex5o, 2 days ago

Hamas says it has accepted a disarmament plan for Gaza which will see it lay down its arms - a decision US President Donald Trump has described as "a monumental step toward lasting peace and security".

The group said it had negotiated "responsibly and positively" and reached "national consensus" among the Palestinian factions.

Israel – which remains highly sceptical about Hamas's willingness to disarm – says it will not withdraw from Gaza until it does so.

In addition to a 15-point roadmap published by the US-led Board of Peace, the BBC has seen a four-page plan for the phased disarmament of Hamas and gradual Israeli withdrawal.

What does the plan say about Hamas disarming?

Hamas giving up its weapons - as predicted - has been a main sticking point in advancing President Trump's 20-point plan for ending the war in Gaza.

That plan, unveiled in September last year, included the creation of the Board of Peace to oversee the agreement's implementation and "handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza".

The principles in the roadmap and the document seen by the BBC say: "A process shall begin to inventory and store heavy weapons, military production sites, weapons depots, and tunnels". It says this is conditional on Israel meeting its commitments under the initial ceasefire agreement reached in October last year.

This clause still sounds like a significant breakthrough.

The process would be overseen by the Palestinian National Committee - a group of independent technocrats to which Hamas has agreed to hand over power - and with the deployment of the International Stabilisation Force to Gaza. The document refers not just to Hamas but other Palestinian factions joining the disarmament process.

The roadmap documents then links this "to a phased Israeli withdrawal" and specifies that "no weapons shall be transferred or handed over to Israel or to any non-Palestinian party".

Can this be done?

The exact mechanism of how the handover of weapons would work is not clear. It is believed that all heavy weapons – including Hamas's remaining rockets - and other military hardware would be moved into a secure storage managed by the National Committee. As yet, the committee has not entered Gaza. It has been working from Cairo.

In terms of timeframe, the document we have seen says only that this would happen "in a gradual, sequential, and time-bound manner, based on an implementation schedule to be prepared within 14 days."

Hamas has since said giving up its heavy weapons is contingent on Israel ending "all forms of aggression" and withdrawing its forces from Gaza.

Israel's commitment to ending its attack on Gaza is a "fundamental prerequisite" for moving forward with the deal, the group said in a statement.

Underground tunnel networks, weapons stores and manufacturing sites would be mapped and destroyed.

Remaining personal arms and police weapons would need to be registered and handed over in stages to the new Palestinian police force working under the supervision of the International Stabilisation Force (ISF). Hundreds of new Palestinian police recruits have already been trained in Egypt and Jordan. Israel's cabinet recently approved some 200 international troops from "friendly countries" entering Gaza as part of the ISF, but it has not yet been deployed.

Hamas has been seeking assurances that pro-Israel militia in Gaza will be dismantled and will also give up their arms.

What does Israel make of the plan?

Israel is deeply sceptical about Hamas' willingness to give up its weapons or its control in Gaza.

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said via Telegram the plan is "not acceptable" to Israel.

Israeli officials have insisted that there will be no Israeli withdrawal from the Yellow Line - which demarcates the area it controls - before Hamas is disarmed.

What makes this more unclear is that Israel currently controls more than the 53% of Gaza in which its troops were set to remain under the terms of the October ceasefire deal. As the BBC has recently reported, yellow concrete blocks delineating the Yellow Line have been moved westwards so that Israel controls more than 60% of the strip.

Part of the document seen by the BBC is an annex. This requires Israeli forces to withdraw to the agreed Yellow Line "within 24 hours of the Israeli government's approval of the plan." It says they should not return "as long as Hamas complies with the implementation of the agreement."

The plan talks about civil servants – what is this about?

Hamas announced earlier this month that it had dissolved its government in Gaza and was preparing to transfer power to the National Committee as part of the ceasefire deal. In negotiations it has wanted to ensure that the tens of thousands of civil servants that its government employed in Gaza prior to the war should be compensated or given new jobs.

The public workers include Hamas police and security forces but also health and education staff. Many, though not all, are likely to be supporters of Hamas.

The plan agrees to treat all public employees "lawfully, fairly, and with dignity regarding their rights."

It remains to be seen what security vetting will be used for civil servants working with the National Committee.

Why is Hamas agreeing now?

In recent talks on advancing Trump's peace plan, Hamas has been put under intense pressure from regional mediators - who were themselves being pushed by Washington to show progress.

The recent appointment of the Hamas chief negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya as overall leader of the group - replacing a five-member council - has simplified decision-making. He has strong backing from Gaza members and the Hamas armed wing.

Regional events may also have played a role in timing. Early in the Iran war, Hamas officials were said to be taking more hardline positions, hoping that Tehran - a backer of the group - would emerge victorious and that this would strengthen their position. Those close to Hamas, say they have since lost hope in this idea.

Palestinian officials involved in the talks suggest the new leadership was ready to take this landmark political decision driven by the devastating humanitarian conditions in Gaza.

What is it like in Gaza today?

The announcement has, so far, been met with little enthusiasm in Gaza, though some people told the BBC they saw a glimmer of hope. After years of failed ceasefires and collapsed agreements, many Palestinians have grown deeply sceptical of a new political deal.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed to the BBC earlier reports of an Israeli strike on Gaza just hours after Trump announced the deal, in which it was reported that several Palestinians were injured.

More than two million Palestinians are living in terrible conditions in Gaza, battling disease, a lack of access to food, clean water, and adequate shelter.

These people are living in a shrinking chunk of land, as Israel continues to build land barriers, further displacing families and expanding its "Yellow Line" temporary control area deeper into the territory.

At least 1,168 Palestinians including children have been killed in Israeli attacks since the ceasefire took effect, according to figures from the Hamas health ministry whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.

Four Israeli soldiers have been killed in Palestinian attacks in Gaza over the same period.

According to UN estimates, around 60 million tonnes of debris has been generated since October 2023.

Israeli West Bank settler tells BBC attacks on Palestinians are justified as revenge

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g4djgdyk2o, yesterday

The Israeli settler outpost of Havat Gilad, deep inside the occupied West Bank, is spread across several hilltops, its sheds and simple block houses clearly visible from neighbouring Palestinian villages.

Last weekend saw a wave of settler attacks on Palestinian villages in the area, after an Israeli security guard from Havat Gilad was killed during a confrontation between Palestinians and Israelis in the village of Tal last Friday.

Four Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were also killed in the incident, the original cause of which is disputed.

After spending the weekend speaking to Palestinians around Havat Gilad, we drove into the outpost itself, to ask one of its residents about the violence, and the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

It is rare for an international media organisation like the BBC to be allowed into these outposts. But on this occasion, Yehuda Shimon, a lawyer with an organisation that represents Israelis arrested for violence against Palestinians, agreed to speak.

He told me that attacks on Palestinian villages last weekend were justified as revenge for the killing of the outpost's security guard.

"I think now, after they killed one Israeli, we need to kill all the people in Tal and Sarra, even Jit and Farata," he said, naming the Palestinian villages closest to the outpost.

I put it to him that he was equating one Jewish life with hundreds or even thousands of Palestinian lives.

"No," he said, "millions. One Jewish life, it's 10 million [Palestinians]."

Challenged on the racism of his statement, he did not deny it.

"Yes, I know," he replied. "But this is the truth, because God chose us [and] because of this you are jealous."

These extreme views – rejected by many Israelis – are crucial to understanding the conflict playing out across the West Bank, as Israel's settlements and outposts expand, and violence against Palestinians grows.

Many settlers here, especially in unauthorised outposts like Havat Gilad, built without Israeli planning permission or legal oversight, see the West Bank as land given to the Jewish people by God.

Both Israel's official settlements and its unauthorised outposts are illegal under international law.

Havat Gilad was established more than 20 years ago, in memory of an Israeli security officer murdered by Palestinians – a loosely scattered collection of houses with a vineyard perched high on one hill.

When we visit there is a row of newly burned buildings near the entrance – the result, Shimon says, of an arson attack by Palestinians. Israeli media reported that police were treating the fire as accidental, caused by cigarette butts thrown from a car window.

Israel's government has previously said it would legalise Havat Gilad. The Israeli organisation Peace Now, which monitors settlements, says it has been unable to do so because much of the land it is built on is recognised by Israel as privately owned by Palestinians, and that the government has instead designated a patch of land to the south of the outpost as state land, to enable settlers to build there.

These issues were dismissed by Shimon, who said international law was irrelevant, because the Bible gave Jews their right to West Bank land.

He criticised Israel's government and army for failing to back Jewish claims to the land strongly enough, despite a vast expansion in settlements and outposts under the current Israeli government, and the presence of far-right religious-nationalist ministers around the cabinet table who are driving it.

And he criticised the Israeli army for not using lethal force often enough against Palestinians, during confrontations with Israeli settlers.

"The Israeli government and the Israeli army, they like the United Nations – if Palestinians come and Jewish people come, [they] don't kill the Palestinians, [they] just separate the people," he said. "Afterwards, because they don't kill Palestinians, the Palestinians kill us."

The figures for numbers killed and injured in the West Bank contradict his statement.

The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which tracks these numbers, says 64 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank from the beginning of this year until 20 July - 18 of them during settler attacks.

At least 12 of those were killed by settlers, three by Israeli forces, and in three other cases it is not yet clear whether soldiers or settlers were responsible. It says one Israeli was killed over the same period.

The number of injuries inflicted by settlers during these attacks has risen sharply to more than three per day this year, OCHA says.

An Israeli soldier who served in the West Bank recently told me he only ever saw fear on the faces of Palestinians, and "never on the face of any Jew that lived there".

Challenged on this, Shimon accused the global media of "buying the narrative of the Palestinians", alleging that every Palestinian in the area owned two guns and was preparing to repeat the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023.

"If we don't wake up and drop them all from this area, from all areas of Israel, even Gaza too, they will come back, and come back [again]," he said.

The conflict between Israeli settlers and Palestinian residents in the West Bank is not an equal one.

Israel occupied the territory during the 1967 Middle East war, and has since built hundreds of settlements and outposts there, housing more than half a million Jews.

Those settlers are protected by Israel's powerful army, and also by local armed security units which are staffed by settlers themselves.

Israelis in the West Bank are still subject to Israel's civilian law and enjoy widespread freedom of movement, while Palestinians are subject to Israel's military occupation and military courts, and are tightly restricted by road closures and checkpoints – a system described by some prominent human rights groups as "apartheid".

Israel has rejected that label as "absurd and distorted".

Asked about the Palestinian residents of the West Bank, Shimon laid out three options: live quietly under Israeli rule and ownership of the land; voluntarily emigrate to other Arab or Muslim nations; or "if you don't want to make peace with us, and you don't want to get out, I don't have a choice: I must kill you, and I kill you all," he said.

This vision from one radical settler seems strikingly close to a plan outlined by Israel's now-Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, in a blueprint published in 2017, before he joined the government.

In it, he presented a plan for the West Bank in which Palestinians would be told to give up any struggle for a Palestinian state and live quietly under Israeli rule. Those who had "difficulty letting go of national ambitions" could leave the territory, he said at the time, and those who stayed and continued armed struggle against Israel would be killed by Israel's armed forces.

More recently, while in government, he has pushed for the "voluntary migration" of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the re-settlement of Israelis there, and has described Palestinian identity as "an invention".

One Palestinian living within sight of Havat Gilad told me she watched the outpost from her window constantly, for signs of an imminent settler attack.

Many Palestinians we spoke to said they felt unprotected – that Israel's occupying army was focused on protecting Israeli settlers, that their own security forces were absent, and that the international community had abandoned them.

"It's a very bad situation," one told me. "Europe is busy, America is occupied with Iran, China doesn't care, Russia is fighting Ukraine, the UN are finished and the Arabs have internal problems. We don't know what we can do."

From Havat Gilad, the nearest Palestinian villages are less than a mile away, but the landscape here is divided by Israeli law, Israeli power and mutual hostility.

Additional reporting by Oren Rosenfeld and Rebecca Hartmann

Israeli official says troops won't pull back in Gaza without 'genuine' Hamas disarmament

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd9wjj4qleeo, yesterday

A senior Israeli official has said troops will not pull back from their current positions in Gaza without the "genuine disarmament" of Palestinian armed group Hamas in the territory.

Hamas meanwhile said handing over its heavy weapons was contingent on Israel ending "all forms of aggression" and withdrawing its forces from Gaza.

It comes after Donald Trump said the Board of Peace had reached an agreement for the "complete disarmament" of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.

On Friday Trump insisted that Israel was "very happy" with the proposed agreement, describing it as a "big step for the Middle East". However far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir dismissed the draft as "not acceptable".

It is part of the second phase of a US-brokered Gaza ceasefire plan that aims to end the war in Gaza.

Speaking at a cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday, Trump said he had an "understanding" with Israel over the latest disarmament proposal agreed with Hamas, adding that "Israel's very happy about it".

Asked whether Hamas would disarm before Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza or vice versa, Trump did not answer directly but said Gaza remained "a very complex situation".

Hamas weapons would be handed over to the Board of Peace, he added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not yet commented on the latest proposal.

But a senior Israeli official said the country's position remained that "there will be no IDF [Israel Defence Forces] withdrawal from the current Yellow Line without the genuine disarmament of Hamas".

The Yellow Line is the designated demarcation point within Gaza that Israel agreed to withdraw its forces to following the US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas last year.

The deal was meant to leave Israel in temporary control of the area behind the Yellow Line - equating to 53% of Gaza's territory. However, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) controlled more than 60%. In May, he said publicly that his "directive" was to move to 70%.

In its statement, Hamas said Israel's commitment to ending its attack on Gaza was a "fundamental prerequisite" for moving forward with the deal, as well as a guaranteed right to "self-determination, establishing an independent Palestinian state".

The group said it had negotiated "responsibly and positively" with "national consensus among the Palestinian factions".

Palestinian officials involved in the talks believe the decision of Hamas's new leadership - which they described as the most consequential in the group's history - was driven by the devastating humanitarian conditions facing more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.

Earlier on Friday, the Board of Peace published what it described as a roadmap for Gaza, reaffirming its proposal for the phased disarmament of Hamas, a gradual Israeli withdrawal and the deployment of an international stabilisation force.

Some Palestinians in Gaza and Israelis have been giving their reaction to the plan to the BBC.

Tala, an 18-year-old who has been living in a tent in Gaza since her home was destroyed in air strikes, said "every time people hear about a possible ceasefire, we hope that it will finally end".

"But when these promises are broken, it creates more fear," she told BBC Newsbeat.

The university student said daily life remains "very challenging", adding: "Every day comes with a new difficulty, and we are constantly thinking about safety and basic needs."

"What matters most is stopping the fighting, protecting civilians and setting a new chapter of re-building," she said.

In Israel Jonny said he "prays" that the ceasefire in Gaza can work. "I don't see an ending to this cycle, but I pray it's the case," he told the BBC.

Israel's ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, told CNN that Israel is "looking forward to implementing" the deal, but added: "We have to verify what they [Hamas] are doing, not what they are saying."

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres described the proposed agreement as "the only good news in recent days".

UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said the focus must be on implementing the full 20-point peace plan, including "withdrawal of the IDF from Gaza and respect for the ceasefire by all parties".

He added that conditions "remain appalling" in Gaza and said Israel "must immediately end the unacceptable restrictions on aid". Israel denies it is restricting the entry of aid.

The war in Gaza was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Israel responded to the attack by launching a military campaign in Gaza, during which more than 73,290 people have been killed, according to the territory's health ministry whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.

Why limited war with the US may suit Iran better than peace

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78gnyq3wvdo, 3 days ago

At first glance, Iran's surprise missile strike on a US base in Jordan earlier this week appeared difficult to explain. The attack effectively ended the fragile pause in direct US-Iran fighting and prompted Washington to resume strikes inside Iran. It was also unusual.

If Tehran's priority had been a ceasefire, the strike is difficult to explain. But if Iranian leaders judge that a controlled confrontation could offer greater strategic leverage, the decision becomes more understandable.

One possible explanation is that Tehran believes that, despite its risks, a limited war serves its interests better.

Today, neither side appears ready for an all-out war. Washington has shown little appetite for a much broader regional conflict that could threaten energy infrastructure in the region, draw in more countries, push oil prices higher, and further stretch US military resources.

Iran may also try to avoid an all-out war because its weakened air defences, vulnerable industrial infrastructure and sanctions-constrained economy make rebuilding losses increasingly difficult and expensive.

Iran may have concluded that this creates room for a strategy based not on military victory but on sustained pressure.

A prolonged ceasefire under current conditions could actually leave Tehran in a weaker position. The US naval blockade of Iranian ports would continue, sanctions would remain, and Iran would still be largely excluded from international energy markets.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and other oil and gas exporting countries in the region could gradually resume normal exports while Iran remained economically isolated.

A limited conflict could change this landscape for Iran. Although Iran is paying a heavy military and economic price, disruption in the Strait of Hormuz and, through the Houthis, pressure around Bab al-Mandab continue to affect global shipping, insurance costs and energy markets. Even limited uncertainty forces governments, shipowners and importers to pay attention to Iran's demands.

In effect, Tehran may believe it still possesses leverage.

Iran also appears to be trying to reshape the diplomatic discussion. Rather than accepting unrestricted freedom of navigation, it has repeatedly signalled that shipping should operate under rules agreed with or administered by Iran. If that interpretation is correct, Tehran's objective may be that any future reopening of the Strait of Hormuz reflects Iranian influence rather than a return to the pre-war status quo. An ongoing, limited conflict would allow Iran to keep the pressure on to achieve this goal.

From Tehran's perspective, keeping the crisis alive below the threshold of total war may therefore be preferable to accepting a ceasefire that leaves sanctions, the blockade and economic isolation largely unchanged.

There may also be domestic calculations. Iran continues to face very high inflation rates, unemployment, economic hardship and public dissatisfaction. During periods of external conflict, governments often find it easier to suppress internal opposition, justify tighter security measures and rally support around national defence. That does not remove Iran's economic problems, but it may reduce the immediate political pressure created by them.

None of this means the strategy is without significant costs. Iran continues to absorb repeated military strikes, economic uncertainty, and there is no guarantee that the current balance can be sustained.

That is the main paradox facing Tehran. A controlled conflict may currently offer more leverage than an imperfect peace, but controlled conflicts have a habit of becoming uncontrolled. Iran may believe it can calibrate escalation carefully enough to keep pressure on the United States, global energy markets and regional diplomacy while avoiding all-out war.

But that calculation also carries significant risks. Beyond the possibility of a much wider war, a prolonged conflict with no clear end in sight could gradually strengthen international support for a tougher response.

There are already signs that the conflict is widening. Saudi Arabia, which had initially sought to avoid becoming directly involved, has carried out strikes against Iran-aligned Shia groups in Iraq and taken military action against the Houthis. If disruption to global trade and energy markets continues, other countries that have so far tried to remain on the sidelines could become more willing to support efforts to increase pressure on Iran.

Some governments may also conclude that bearing the costs of a more robust response is preferable to living with repeated crises affecting international shipping and energy supplies.

Whether those possibilities laid out above - including more countries getting actively involved - prove correct remains uncertain. Much may depend on whether Tehran is able to maintain calibrated actions without triggering a response that fundamentally changes the political and military calculations of the United States. The next unexpected strike could determine which path the conflict takes.

Drone attack caused fire on gas ships at Mediterranean port, Egypt says

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39ez3klwmro, 3 days ago

Egypt's cabinet has confirmed that a drone attack caused the fire that broke out on Wednesday on two ships at the Mediterranean port of Damietta, a key liquified natural gas (LNG) hub.

"No party has claimed responsibility," a statement said, adding that authorities were continuing to investigate the incident and "take the necessary measures to preserve Egypt's interests and national security".

The drone reportedly hit a US-owned floating storage and regasification vessel, Energos Winter, sparking a blaze that spread to a Greek-owned LNG tanker, GasLog Salem.

Verified videos posted on social media showed clouds of black smoke rising from the port and tugboats hosing down the ships with water.

The fires were extinguished and no casualties were reported by Egyptian authorities, who said the port was continuing to operate at full capacity on Thursday.

Energos Winter and GasLog Salem left the port and moved offshore following the incident, according to ship tracking data.

It is not clear where the drone was launched or who was behind the attack.

However, Iranian forces and Iranian-backed armed groups have carried out similar attacks on tankers in the Gulf and Red Sea as well as energy infrastructure in several Arab states during the US and Israel's war with Iran, disrupting global trade and causing oil prices to soar.

Egypt - a US ally - has so far not been directly attacked by Iran.

US President Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he had been briefed on what happened in Damietta and implied that Iran or its proxies were responsible.

"It's a little more of the same. But it's going to be straightening out," he said.

The Damietta attack came hours after the US and Saudi Arabia carried out joint air strikes on Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq that they said had attacked Saudi oil facilities with drones 30 times in recent days at the direction of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Iraq's paramilitary Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), which is dominated by Iran-backed Shia militias, said at least 20 of its members were killed in the strikes, which they called an "extremely serious escalation".

Iran's foreign ministry also condemned the strikes and warned of "dangerous consequences".

On Wednesday night, the US carried out what it described as a "heavy wave of strikes" on Iran in response to an attempted "surprise" missile attack on US military facilities in Jordan.

Israel building new land barriers in Gaza and displacing families

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpvwjmme3p0o, 4 days ago

"We've been displaced from place to place, and now we have nowhere left to go," says Umm Mohammed al-Shawish.

She is desperately searching for somewhere to live after Israel moved yellow concrete blocks that mark out where it controls in the Gaza Strip.

Families living in al-Tuffah in northern Gaza woke on Monday to find the blocks had been moved westwards into the centre of Salah al-Din road, a key north-south route through Gaza.

Nearby, an Israeli flag was flying on top of an earth barrier around 3m (10ft) tall.

The al-Shawish family home was destroyed during the war. On Sunday, they had to flee again after the Israeli military called to warn of an attack on a nearby building. Their only shelter was a tent, which was torn apart by the strike.

"We are going to die here," Mohammed al-Shawish said. "Death is better than humiliation. No-one is standing with us."

Under the terms of the US-brokered ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas last October, Israel agreed to withdraw its forces from across Gaza to a designated demarcation - the Yellow Line.

Hamas accuses Israel of violating the October ceasefire agreement by moving the Yellow Line westwards. A senior Israeli government official said Israel rejected Hamas's claims outright. The BBC was told: "IDF deployments and security lines are operational measures taken to protect Israeli citizens and prevent Hamas from rebuilding its terror army. Israel will continue to act against any ceasefire violations."

The Israeli military initially marked the Yellow Line with concrete blocks, before moving some markers further into Gaza. But Israel has now constructed a network of barriers, having started soon after the ceasefire. The barriers now stretch more than 42km (26 miles) and cover 85% of Israel's Yellow Line, with the longest section already 13.8km (8.5 miles).

Experts have told the BBC that the earthworks suggest Israel is planning for a long occupation of the strip. In some areas the earth barrier effectively moves the de facto "border" - the Yellow Line - deeper into Gaza, further increasing the deadly no-go zone for Gazans.

One section of the embankment near the al-Mawasi camp is more than 1.5km beyond where the Yellow Line was originally mapped. Another section in Khan Younis is positioned more than 500m over it.

The IDF says it is working to "clearly and visually mark the location of the Yellow Line on the ground" to "reduce friction". It has previously rejected "all claims that the Yellow Line has been moved or its crossing by IDF troops".

Other incidents of displacement have been reported in Gaza in recent months as the army has moved yellow blocks further into the territory into areas where Palestinians have been living during the ceasefire.

On 18 July, dozens of families hurriedly piled motorcycles with mattresses and any belongings they could manage as they fled the Zeitoun area, east of Gaza City. The IDF had issued an order to leave, and Gazans said they assumed this was a sign that the Yellow Line was being moved again. Some simply left empty-handed in their hurry to evacuate.

Locals described shooting from Israeli military vehicles, quadcopter drones and artillery shelling.

"The war is not over. That's a big lie. Every day there are strikes, displacement and evictions," declared Ismail Kashko. He said his family feared being hit by Israeli fire as troops approached: "We are living in tents, not in houses. There's no concrete to protect us."

According to the UN's humanitarian office, OCHA, some 30 families lost their tents in Zeitoun and had to be helped with basic supplies. Satellite imagery shows scores of temporary shelters disappearing from the area in July.

Residents of Zeitoun say that to the east, they have seen Israeli bulldozers and heavy machinery where the army has been building a new base and earth banks.

The Israeli military told the BBC their "defensive posture" includes "a security zone, a physical barrier, intelligence capabilities, technological means, and operational activity by IDF troops".

It said: "These measures are intended to prevent infiltrations and hostile activity, and to protect both the troops and surrounding communities. For operational security reasons, we will not provide further details regarding the components of the deployment, the route of the barrier, or its extent."

To the east of the central city of Deir al-Balah, families living on farmland told the BBC they were given two days' notice by the Israeli military before the area was razed. Satellite images show tank tracks and destroyed structures in the area, with an olive grove more than 500m beyond the Yellow Line apparently torn down. Verified video shows three yellow blocks recently placed there, the furthest of which is more than 300m from the Yellow Line mapped after the ceasefire.

Further to the south, near al-Mawasi, Palestinians say other blocks to mark the Yellow Line have moved closer to their camps. They describe daily movements of Israeli tanks, recurrent gunfire and the construction of tall sand embankments.

The founder of intelligence analysis firm MAIAR, Tony Reeves, analysed satellite images and estimated that one section of the embankments in Gaza was up to 7m tall.

Verified videos and satellite images show land and roads have been churned up and some buildings flattened to make way for the earth barriers, while Israel has continued its demolition campaign across Gaza since the ceasefire.

In June, days before beginning construction of the barrier near the southernmost city of Rafah, Israeli troops destroyed structures and rows of greenhouses in its path, satellite images show. In nearby Khan Younis, IDF drone footage showed a controlled demolition of a cluster of buildings beyond the Yellow Line. By July a barrier had been constructed nearby and many more buildings were destroyed.

In July alone, satellite imagery shows scores more buildings had been destroyed beyond the Yellow Line in Khan Younis, Deir al-Balah, Zeitoun, and in the northern towns of Jabalia and Beit Lahia.

The military has also built dozens of bases, outposts and staging areas behind the barrier along the Yellow Line. Fourteen new positions have been established since the October ceasefire, including two currently under construction, while a further seven set up before the ceasefire have been paved or extended.

The IDF did not directly respond when asked about demolition activity beyond the Yellow Line. "IDF troops under the Southern Command are deployed in the area of the Yellow Line in accordance with the ceasefire agreement," it said.

Retired Israeli brigadier general Assaf Orion, a senior researcher at Israel's Institute of National Security Studies (INSS), said the construction of barriers and bases suggests "the IDF is preparing for a long stay along the Yellow Line, as little (if any) progress has been made in disarming Hamas".

Dr Andreas Krieg, a security expert from King's College London, said the BBC's findings indicate that "Israel is turning the Yellow Line from a temporary withdrawal boundary into a de facto internal border".

People in Gaza say the Yellow Line is already having a devastating effect, squeezing the population of more than two million into an ever-smaller space amid dire humanitarian conditions. "The Yellow Line keeps moving day by day," said Abu Kamel Hamami who is displaced in Gaza City.

"We're constantly moving from one street to another. Everywhere is overcrowded with people, tents and displacement camps."

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

'End this nightmare': Wife of ailing Briton jailed in Saudi Arabia appeals for release

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg4jxxn4ggo, 4 days ago

Amaher Nour breaks down in tears thinking of the husband she hasn't seen for almost two years, and the impact his absence has had on her four children.

Ahmed Al-Doush, a British business analyst from Manchester, has been in jail in Saudi Arabia since August 2024, apparently over a handful of social media posts dating back several years.

The human rights group Amnesty International, which is campaigning for his release, says he was convicted in an unfair trial on charges which violate his right to freedom of expression.

Al-Doush and his family had been visiting Nour's brother when he was arrested at Riyadh airport as he was returning home with his pregnant wife and three children.

"[Our children] ask about their dad all the time," Nour tells me. "I tell them that he's away working because I don't want to say that he's in prison, as they're old enough to know that prison is a place where you go if you've done something bad. And he's done nothing wrong."

She says she doesn't know exactly why the 44-year-old is being held, but she knows - from the phone calls he is allowed - that he is struggling mentally.

"His voice is often unrecognisable, he is fatigued and confused why the British government aren't doing more to get him home safely," she says. "He has been on multiple hunger strikes and we have often been kept in the dark about this."

He hasn't met his youngest child.

The UK Foreign Office says his case has been raised with the Saudi authorities.

Its current travel advice warns that it is illegal in Saudi Arabia to say anything publicly that the authorities "deem disruptive to public order". And it urges visitors to avoid commenting on the royal family, the Saudi authorities, or "issues that could be perceived as political".

"Speaking publicly about these issues can be defined by the Saudi authorities as posing a threat to national security," the advice states.

It adds: "Statements made on social media many years ago, or those published outside Saudi Arabia, may be taken into account. Punishment can include long custodial sentences."

Al-Doush's legal team in the UK say that neither they, his family, nor the UK government have been allowed to see any of the legal papers related to his case, including the judgment, despite repeated requests. So they don't fully understand the charges against him or the basis of his conviction.

But his London-based lawyer, Haydee Dijkstal, says he appears to have been questioned over several tweets posted in 2018 - and subsequently deleted - about Sudan, where he was born, and over his acquaintance with the son of a UK-based Saudi dissident.

She says Al-Doush was initially held for five months without charge, and interrogated without a lawyer before being sentenced in May 2025 to 10 years in jail by Saudi Arabia's Specialised Criminal Court, which is understood to have convicted him of using social media to spread fake news against the government. Human rights groups say the court has been used as a political tool, relying on vague counterterrorism and cybercrime laws to punish online expression.

This April, Al-Doush's sentence was reduced on appeal to five years. But his physical and mental health are still deteriorating, according to his wife.

Amnesty International says he is being held in a cell built for six to eight people, currently housing around 16 prisoners. His phone calls home have been frequently restricted, the group says. And he's been warned that he will be punished if he discusses his health, or his legal case.

"Ahmed Al-Doush has a family in the United Kingdom who urgently need him. He has been imprisoned for nothing more than social media posts - posts that would raise no eyebrow in any democratic country," says Eilidh Macpherson of Amnesty International UK.

"His health is now in crisis, and every day he remains detained is another day of unconscionable injustice inflicted not just on him, but on four young children who are growing up without their father."

"The Saudi authorities have the power to end this nightmare today," she adds. "We call on them to act without delay: release Ahmed Al-Doush and allow him to return home."

The group has also appealed to governments around the world to update their travel advice to ensure visitors to Saudi Arabia are aware of the risks that their past social media activity could entail, as the country gears up to host the World Cup in 2034 and other major events.

The Saudi embassy in London has not responded to a BBC request for comment on Al-Doush's case.

But the Saudi authorities told the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) that "there was evidence proving that Mr al-Doush had committed terrorist crimes, including his support for terrorist ideology."

UNWGAD's independent experts concluded in March, however, that his detention was arbitrary under international law, based on a series of violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in his case. And it called for his release.

"The government has not provided detailed or substantiated information indicating why Mr al-Doush presented a violent threat to the community through his actions such that detention was strictly necessary," they said.

In May, Al-Doush's wife appealed directly to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, to grant him clemency on humanitarian grounds.

"Ahmed's absence has left a void which is impossible to fill," Nour tells me. "The children constantly ask for their father and struggle to comprehend why he isn't home for bedtime or take them out as he used to. He was a very loving, involved father."

She has hidden his clothes away so that the children are not constantly reminded of him.

"I am pleading for the UK government to recognise the UN's finding on arbitrary detention and the need for his immediate release, and to support the request that he is granted clemency on humanitarian grounds given his deteriorating wellbeing and need to be reunited with his young children," she says.

Saudi Arabia's dilemma as it tries to stay out of US-Iran war

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyx83l8jv8o, 4 days ago

Saudi Arabia is facing a difficult dilemma. Ever since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran on 28 February, the Saudis have largely tried to stay out of it.

But now, after being attacked from three sides, the Saudis have had enough. This week, they carried out joint strikes with the US on Iranian proxy militias in Iraq who they believe have been launching drones at the Kingdom.

For Saudi Arabia the dilemma now is whether to keep on hitting back as a deterrent, or whether to try to de-escalate the situation, perhaps by paying off some of their adversaries.

So who is attacking who and why?

First, a bit of context. There are broadly two sides in the conflict that has been consuming the Gulf and other parts of the Middle East for five months now.

On one side there is Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Allied to them are the Houthis in Yemen, a tribal group who took over much of the country in 2014.

Also backed by Iran are the Popular Mobilisation Forces in Iraq, the paramilitary group that has allegedly carried out 30 drone strikes on Saudi Arabia and has now been attacked in return.

Then there is Hezbollah in Lebanon, still a potent force but one that is currently lying low.

On the opposite side of this conflict is the US with its immensely powerful Central Command (Centcom) forces plus - to varying degrees - the Gulf Arab states and Jordan. Israel remains a close US ally but is currently not an active participant in this war.

Iran has most recently been concentrating its drone and missile attacks on Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain, as well as targeting any commercial shipping that tries to slip through the Strait of Hormuz while avoiding Iran's new rules and routing.

The addition of Iraqi militias and the Houthis in Yemen is a relatively new phenomenon and it shows how - without a lasting peace deal between the US and Iran - the region risks becoming ever more embroiled in a widening conflict.

There are a number of reasons why Saudi Arabia is trying not to get sucked into a full-scale conflict.

Its de facto ruler, the relatively young Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, has embarked the country on a course known as "Vision 2030".

His aim is to diversify the Kingdom away from its dependence on oil revenues and create vibrant, modern, domestic industries that will provide meaningful jobs for the hundreds of thousands of graduates and school leavers pouring onto the job market each year.

Part of Vision 2030 involves attracting foreign investment. Part of it also involves building things like data centres that are vulnerable to attack.

This is not going to work if Saudi Arabia finds itself under an enduring, long-term threat from drones fired across its southern border by the Houthis in Yemen or ballistic missiles fired directly by Iran.

Back in September 2019, the Saudis suffered an unpleasant shock.

With relations with Iran in a poor state, the Saudis woke up to find that an Iranian proxy militia in Iraq had launched a fleet of drones at two of its most vital oil facilities, at Abqaiq and Khurais.

At the time there was a suggestion that the attack had come from the Houthis in Yemen but I visited the site straight afterwards and I could clearly see the holes in the superstructures all facing northwards.

That attack knocked half of Saudi oil exports offline for several days and it was a wake-up call to Riyadh as to just how vulnerable its critical national infrastructure is to attack.

On Monday, satellite images showed the Abqaiq oil facility was struck by drones launched once again by Iranian proxy militias in Iraq.

Then there is oil, still the lifeblood of the Saudi economy.

Iran retaliated against US and Israeli attacks in February by effectively closing off the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping channel between Iran and the Gulf through which 20% of the world's oil and liquified natural gas travelled.

In response, the Saudis pumped as much oil as they could – around five million barrels per day - through their east-west pipeline to their export terminal on the Red Sea, on their opposite coast, at Yanbu.

From there it was loaded onto tankers that headed south, out into the Arabian Sea and off to markets in Asia.

So far so good.

But on 13 July, the Saudis bombed Sanaa airport just outside the Yemeni capital. The strike was claimed by Yemen's Saudi-supported government, which said it wanted to prevent an Iranian plane from landing. In retaliation, the Houthis attacked regional Saudi airports at Abha and Jizan.

More worryingly for Riyadh, the Houthis have begun attacking Saudi shipping in the Red Sea, making it extremely dangerous for ships to pass through the narrow Bab El Mandeb strait at the southern end of the Red Sea. That in turn chokes off Saudi oil exports to Asia.

Saudi Arabia spent seven years trying to bomb the Houthis into submission and failed.

The war that raged across Yemen was one of the worst humanitarian disasters of our time and its effects are still being felt.

In 2022, Saudi Arabia agreed to an uneasy truce with the Houthis and there were reports of payoffs, but now the richest country in the region, Saudi Arabia, is once more facing the threat of drone and missile attacks from its southern neighbour at the same time as attacks from Iraq to the north.

None of this was envisaged in the plans for Vision 2030.

If Hamas disarmament plan holds, it could mark first credible step to ending Gaza war

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9d8gd87d83o, 3 days ago

After months of marathon talks, Hamas has, for the first time, accepted a framework of the Board of Peace's plan to completely disarm in Gaza.

The plan provides for the inventorying and storage of its remaining heavy weapons under Palestinian supervision, potentially removing the most significant obstacle to advancing the Trump-backed peace initiative for Gaza.

The move comes soon after Hamas concluded leadership elections that brought Gaza-based leader Khalil al-Hayya to the head of the movement.

Palestinian officials involved in the talks believe the new leadership was prepared to take what they describe as the most consequential political decision in Hamas's history, driven by the devastating humanitarian conditions facing more than two million Palestinians in Gaza.

A senior Hamas official and member of the movement's negotiating team told the BBC that the talks were "long and extremely difficult", with Hamas insisting on the wording "inventorying and storing weapons" under Palestinian oversight rather than handing them over to Israel.

It remains too early to judge whether the agreement will be fully implemented or whether all parties will honour their commitments.

But if it holds, it could mark the first credible step towards ending a war that has lasted for nearly three years and opening the way for a broader political process.

In Gaza, however, the announcement was met with little public enthusiasm.

After years of failed ceasefires and collapsed agreements, many Palestinians have grown deeply sceptical of new political breakthroughs.

Some residents shared their views online, saying they are less interested in the details of negotiations than in whether this deal will actually end the war, allow displaced families to return home and bring lasting relief.

For many, confidence in both Hamas and Israel remains low, with previous agreements having repeatedly broken down before delivering meaningful improvements on the ground.

Houthi attacks raise fears of wider Middle East conflict and more global economic damage

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgve0vxy1yo, 10 days ago

Yemen's Houthi fighters claim to have attacked shipping in the Red Sea - a move that threatens to further escalate the already volatile situation in the Middle East.

By forcing ships to turn back from the narrow Bab El Mandeb strait, they have threatened to choke off the main maritime route from Europe to Asia.

It comes as US-Iran strikes continue and while a deal to develop Saudi Arabia's nuclear industry prompts fears of an arms race.

So is the Middle East becoming more dangerous?

So far, 2026 is sadly proving to be one of the more violent years for parts of the Middle East.

For 13 consecutive nights, US Central Command (Centcom) has carried out air strikes on Iranian targets.

"Iranian military command centers, drone storage facilities, communication networks, coastal surveillance sites, and maritime capabilities to further diminish the threat Iran poses to civilian mariners and commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz," Centcom said in a statement on Thursday night.

The Gulf Arab states, in normal times a haven of low-crime tranquility and minimal taxation, are having to learn to live with constant attacks from their well-armed neighbour across the water: the Islamic Republic of Iran.

And now the Iran-backed Houthis of Yemen have entered the fray, after a 2022 ceasefire with neighbouring Saudi Arabia appeared to have broken down.

Two Saudi vessels were hit by missiles in the Red Sea this week, while the Houthis claim to have turned back 10 others after warning ships to avoid Saudi ports, disrupting shipping passing through the strategic Bab El Mandeb Strait that links the southern end of the Red Sea with the Indian Ocean.

This matters because, on top of the ongoing disruption to global energy and fertiliser supplies caused by Iran effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz, it is a further obstacle to vital maritime trade that will soon impact the global economy.

Saudi Arabia has been trying to distance itself from the Iran-US war and has been largely spared the Iranian drone and ballistic missile attacks that have rained down this month on Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan.

With the Strait of Hormuz closed, the Saudis have been able to partially mitigate the disruption to their oil exports by shipping millions of barrels a day through the East-West Pipeline that traverses the entire breadth of their huge country, from the oilfields of Eastern Province to the Red Sea export terminal at Yanbu' Al-Bahr.

From there, they have been able to ship oil in bulk to customers in Asia using tankers that depart south, past Yemen and that Bab El Mandeb Strait, and out into the open Indian Ocean.

But not anymore - at least not while the Houthis are threatening vessels that pass by their coast.

US President Donald Trump has vowed to "take care of the Houthis" but that has not worked before - and without a deal, it will not work this time.

The Houthis are a Shia tribal group from the far north of Yemen, based around the city of Saada.

In 2014, taking advantage of the turmoil of the recent Arab Spring protests that rocked the Middle East, they marched south and took over the capital, Sanaa. They have since taken over most of the populated parts of Yemen, including the strategic port of Hodeidah.

The Saudis went to war with the Houthis in 2015 in support of the legitimate but ousted Yemeni government, as they did not want an Iranian-backed militia in power on their southern border.

They expected that their vastly superior, Western-supplied air force would soon be able to bomb the Houthis to the negotiating table and that the rebels would quickly sue for peace.

But the Houthis never capitulated, despite horrific civilian casualties largely caused by years of air strikes, and today they are firmly entrenched in power.

For two years, from 2023 to 2025, the Houthis attacked what they claimed was Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea, action which they said was in support of the Palestinians in Gaza.

They also launched powerful modern missiles at the US and British warships that tried to subdue them.

Just like the Iranian coastline around the Strait of Hormuz, Yemen's Red Sea coastal mountains contain an infinite number of caves, tunnels and hiding places for munitions that can be brought out at short notice to attack shipping.

The Houthi campaign caused a major diversion of global shipping and higher shipping costs, and triggered military intervention by the US and UK to protect maritime commerce.

There is now a fear this could happen again.

So what effect is all this having on the wider region?

Firstly, it is important to note that two countries previously wracked by ruinous civil wars – Iraq and Syria – are now largely peaceful and stable, at least compared to where they were.

The Gaza War is technically in a ceasefire, although Gazans continue to be killed in air strikes, while Israeli settlements, illegal under international law, are proliferating across the occupied West Bank. Israel's war with Hezbollah in Lebanon is on hold as the two countries continue negotiations.

But right now it is the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula that are worrying analysts the most.

Trump has got himself into a war with Iran that he cannot seem to find a way out of.

Night after night of US airstrikes are failing to force Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to give up control of the Strait of Hormuz.

With every air strike, the IRGC hits back at those neighbouring Arab states that host US bases, trying to drive a wedge between them and Washington.

From an economic perspective, the clock is ticking. Every day that Gulf oil, gas, fertiliser and other essential products cannot get through the Strait of Hormuz to markets puts pressure on global supply chains and eventually prices.

If the Bab El Mandeb Strait is also going to be shut for some time then the impact on the world economy will be exacerbated further.

From a military perspective, tensions have been raised another notch by the deal announced on Wednesday, paving the way for US firms to help Saudi Arabia develop its own domestic civil nuclear power programme.

There is no indication that the Saudis will use this as a first step towards building a nuclear bomb.

But there are still fears it could potentially trigger an arms race across the region in the future, with both Turkey and Egypt stepping up their own nuclear activities as they seek some form of deterrence and protection.

The Middle East has suffered numerous spikes of violence in its recent history and this is not the worst of those.

But taken together, there are a number of worrying strands here that - without a lasting, comprehensive deal between the US and Iran - could well indicate a prolonged period of instability for the region.

'What was their crime?': BBC visits Iran school where strike killed 120 children

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cewrx0ldlkko, 11 days ago

This report contains distressing descriptions of the deaths of children.

Amaineh Nademi walks carefully through what is left of her old school. Chunks of broken concrete hang precariously from the damaged upper floor. A few classrooms are still standing, their brightly coloured walls decorated with painted balloons and flowers.

The 33-year-old teacher knows exactly what was where - the girls' classrooms on the upper floor, the boys' classrooms below, the headteacher's office, the prayer room.

Rubble is all that remains of her classroom, where she taught first-grade girls at Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, a small city in southern Iran.

On 28 February, in the opening hours of the US-Israeli war with Iran, a strike on the school transformed an ordinary Saturday morning into one of the conflict's defining tragedies - and its deadliest single incident for civilians.

In total, 156 people, including 120 children, have been confirmed killed, including a pregnant woman and her unborn child, according to the Minab prosecutor's office.

Experts say evidence indicates that US forces hit the school, which is next to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) compound that satellite images show was struck several times.

The US has not admitted responsibility, though US media have reported that military investigators believe it is likely that US forces carried out the strike unintentionally.

The pain of what happened here is still raw. Teachers tell us they pray at the site every day. Rescue workers are still searching for remains of those killed here.

Much of the upper floor collapsed into the one below. "You can't call it a school," says Amaineh – just "walls that smell of death, grief and the blood that was shed here".

The Iranian authorities were keen for us to visit the school – it is evidence, they say, that a campaign presented by Washington as an attack on Iran's military and security apparatus has instead inflicted a devastating cost on civilians.

'We were all sent flying'

The school day had begun as usual, Amaineh says.

Because it was the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, the children gathered inside the prayer hall to recite the Quran, she recalls, before she began teaching her pupils a new letter of the Persian alphabet.

But, as the first attacks of the war unfolded across Iran, she says the headteacher announced the school would be closing, and teachers began contacting parents, urging them to collect their children.

Only five of Amaineh's 15 first-grade pupils were left in her classroom on the upper floor, she says, when she first heard an explosion not far from the school. She says she was in the corridor and rushed back for the children.

"Just as I went to leave, a missile struck the school," says Amaineh. "Something hit my head and my students' heads - we were all sent flying."

Then, she says, thick black smoke filled the classroom: "I couldn't even see the pupils I was holding in my arms. We couldn't breathe."

She says she remembers hearing another explosion, as well as the sounds of screaming, children crying and then the school itself collapsing – "destroyed all at once".

"Blood was pouring from me and the students," she adds.

When the smoke briefly cleared, she says she passed the injured children down to people below and clambered past fire and rubble towards the school gate, where she saw a crowd of parents. Many had rushed to the site without even putting shoes on, she recalls.

She says she could not understand why the parents were running towards the school, believing in her shock and confusion that everyone else had already escaped the building: "I didn't know that all of them were under the rubble."

Amaineh had taught first grade at the school for six years. She lists the names of students and colleagues killed that day: Adrina from her first grade class, who she says was killed on the stairs with her mother, Fatemeh in second grade, and many others including students in sixth grade she remembers teaching the alphabet to, as well as the headteacher, deputy head, PE teacher and Quran teacher.

'Find my son'

Within minutes, emergency workers began arriving.

Reza Besharati, a worker with the Iranian Red Crescent Society, says he was among the first rescuers on the scene, and found the roads near the school filled with traffic as desperate families rushed to look for their children.

Minab is a small city. As Reza made his way through the crowd and into the wreckage, he says he recognised people he knew, including some of his own relatives.

"We started to find the people, thinking maybe someone would be alive," he says. "But unfortunately, nobody was."

He says the dead were found grimly disfigured: "Maybe just a hand, maybe just a leg… Nobody had a complete body." Many families recognised their children by their shoes or clothing, he adds.

One of Reza's relatives was searching and begging "just find my child, find my son", he says. "I couldn't tell her that her son was not alive. We were all just crying."

Reza says the sights he saw while searching the collapsed building have not left him: "I couldn't sleep for a few days," he says. "When I close my eyes… I just remember these things that I have seen here."

Strike investigated

As details of the strike emerged, President Donald Trump first blamed Iran, without providing evidence.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the military was investigating and that US forces "never target civilian targets". He later announced a higher-level investigation, led by an officer from outside US Central Command (Centcom). The Trump administration has still not released the findings.

Several US media outlets have reported - citing people familiar with the US military investigation - that preliminary findings concluded it was likely that outdated data supplied by the US Defence Intelligence Agency led to the school being treated as part of a military site.

Expert video analysis has shown the IRGC complex next to the school was hit by a precision guided Tomahawk missile - a type of cruise missile that neither Israel nor Iran is known to possess. Satellite imagery showed the school and several buildings in the compound had been hit, and verified videos showed the area was hit by a series of strikes. US military maps also confirm American operations in southern Iran – including the Minab area - at the time.

Historical satellite images show the school area was previously part of the IRGC complex, but has been walled off since 2016 and has its own entrances and yards.

Also, information indicating the site was a school was publicly available online. Archived snapshots of the websites for the girls' and boys' sections of the school – taken in the months before the attack - include the address of the site.

The head of Centcom told a congressional committee in May, without giving further detail, that the investigation was "complex" as the school was "on an active IRGC cruise missile base" – which Iran's foreign ministry rejected as a "baseless fabrication".

The IRGC runs some community and medical facilities in addition to its extensive military, security and economic activities. Local residents have told BBC Persian that the site had previously been a base for an IRGC naval brigade, but that they believed its military use had ceased several years ago. Photographs show buildings on the compound included a clinic and a car wash.

The BBC approached the Department of Defense and the US military for comment. Officials said the investigation was ongoing and there were no further updates.

'Identified by her socks'

A short drive from the ruined school is the cemetery where many of the pupils and teachers are buried.

Every evening, families gather beside the graves. Mothers wipe dust from photographs of their children. Parents sit and pray long after darkness has fallen.

Around them, brothers and sisters play between the headstones of siblings whose lives were cut short.

Masoumeh Mehran Shekhabadi comes to visit her nine-year-old daughter, Setayesh, every day, often staying long into the night.

She was among the parents who ran to the school after the strike. "There was no school," she says, her voice breaking. "There was only smoke, children's hair, a hand on one side, a foot on the other. They had been torn to pieces."

Masoumeh adds: "I kept calling out, not only to Setayesh, but to all the children: 'Children, where are you?'"

Setayesh's family did not receive confirmation of her death until the early hours of the following morning, Masoumeh says. She remembers being repeatedly asked what colour socks the child had been wearing, and replying that they were cream. Setayesh was then identified by her socks, she says.

The nine-year-old had wanted to be a teacher, her mother adds. "She would line up her dolls on the couch and say: 'I am your teacher. I'm in primary school now, so I am a teacher.'"

As for many parents here, grief has become intertwined with anger. "May Trump be destroyed, so these children's blood is not wasted," Masoumeh says.

'They'd gone to learn'

Iran's government has repeatedly invoked Minab in speeches, international forums and state media coverage - even naming a plane carrying negotiators "Minab-168", in reference to the death toll previously given by officials.

The attack offers the Islamic Republic a powerful counter-narrative to Washington's description of its campaign.

The war has divided Iranians. Some celebrated when the air strikes began, angered by the government's history of detaining dissidents and using lethal force during repeated waves of protest. They hoped military pressure from outside might finally weaken or even bring down the regime.

Some opponents of the government have told the BBC they saw the strike at Minab as a huge blow. It made the idea of a clean, surgical war impossible to sustain and allowed the authorities to present themselves as the defenders of the Iranian people against foreign attack.

In Minab, Amaineh visits the cemetery, walking among the graves of her former pupils.

On a nearby memorial wall are the faces of the children, staff and parents who left home that Saturday morning and never returned.

Setayesh's mother still sits beside the grave of her little girl.

"What was these children's crime? Did they carry weapons? A pencil, a book, a notebook and a schoolbag. They had no weapons… They'd gone to learn," she says.

Additional reporting by Jasmin Dyer

Nawal Al-Maghafi is reporting from Iran on condition that none of her material is used on the BBC's Persian Service. These restrictions apply to all international media organisations operating in Iran.

Trump's nuclear deal with Saudis jettisons longstanding US demands

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz05lx0xpero, 10 days ago

The Trump administration's nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia reversed a years-long stance toward a key Middle East ally.

Past US presidents insisted that Saudi Arabia normalise relations with Israel in exchange for receiving American nuclear technology for civilian energy programmes.

According to reports of the deal's contents, President Donald Trump gave Saudi Arabia what it wanted without extracting concessions for Israel in return - and over objections from critics who argued that it could spark a nuclear arms race in the region.

On Thursday he said in a social media post that the nuclear pact was conditioned on Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, a series of deals reached in his first term that normalised relations between Israel and several other Gulf states.

But it was not immediately clear if that was stipulated in the text of the deal - which has not been released - or that Saudi Arabia had agreed to that condition, or would be forced to join the accords.

The deal appears to be the latest example of Trump jettisoning the traditional American approach to the Middle East, which centred on Israel and finding a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In his second term Trump has focused primarily on strengthening America's economic influence to compete with China and other rivals. Analysts said the nuclear pact with Saudi Arabia sent a signal that the US wants to keep regional allies in the fold even if it means angering Israel in the process.

"Countries in the Middle East want to develop their nuclear infrastructure and they're going to do it even if the US is not involved. Washington at this point is recognising that," said Yusuf Can, a Middle East expert at consulting firm Amena Strategies. With this nuclear deal, he added, "the US is basically saying you don't have to work with China. You can work with us".

Transactional foreign policy has been a hallmark of Trump's second term. The US has ratcheted up economic competition with adversaries like China and Russia in the Arctic and other parts of the world since Trump returned to office vowing to revive his "America First" approach to global affairs.

But signing a nuclear pact in the Middle East is an especially bold move that will raise tensions in a volatile region where the US is at war with Iran.

It represents a major victory for Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has sought a nuclear agreement with the US for years as part of a broader campaign to strengthen relations with the West.

The crown prince, known as MBS, said in 2018 that if Iran develops nuclear weapons then Saudi Arabia should be allowed to as well.

Details of the deal were not immediately released by the administration, but the pact reportedly does not include strict enforcement measures to block Saudi Arabia from developing a military nuclear programme in the future.

In that respect it differs from a 2009 nuclear cooperation agreement struck by the US and the United Arab Emirates which included strict inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Another key difference that critics of the Saudi deal are pointing to is that it reportedly allows them to enrich uranium themselves on their own soil.

Even if Saudi Arabia doesn't race to develop nuclear weapons right away, the potential ability to do so could still give the country a powerful deterrent force in the region, analysts said.

"It certainly helps lay the groundwork for nuclear weapons in the future," said Imran Bayoumi, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank and former policy adviser at the US Defence Department.

The agreement will allow Saudi Arabia to diversify its energy sector and use nuclear power to meet rising electricity demands, energy experts said. Having nuclear power could eventually lessen Saudi Arabia's reliance on oil, insulating it from volatilities in the global oil market, said Christopher Russo, an energy expert at the consulting firm Charles River Associates.

"Oil can be disrupted. You can bomb oil fields. Oil tankers can be stuck somewhere, as we're seeing right now" in the Strait of Hormuz, Russo said. "Nuclear power is pretty self-contained."

Saudi Arabia won't reap the economic rewards anytime soon. It will likely take a decade if not longer for the country to build and open new nuclear power plants.

But the short-term political payoff is clear, as Saudi Arabia - already one of the most powerful states in the Gulf - further cements its status as a major force in the region. Moreover, Saudi Arabia struck the deal without having to recognise Israel or drop its demand that an eventual normalisation deal with Israel be tied to the creation of a Palestinian state.

That concession appeared to reflect a calculus by the Trump administration that a diplomatic breakthrough between Saudi Arabia and Israel isn't likely to happen for some time. The countries were open to talks during the Biden administration, but negotiations stalled after the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza and the US-Israel war with Iran.

The timing for the administration's announcement isn't clearly explained. Officials did not say why the US has chosen to enter this agreement with Saudi Arabia now.

But the war with Iran likely played a part. Washington has sought to ease tensions with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf allies who have been targeted by Tehran since the start of the conflict. Saudi Arabia briefly denied the US access to Saudi airspace earlier in the war, and has pushed the US and Iran to de-escalate.

American companies will likewise benefit from the nuclear deal, though that also won't happen overnight. Saudi Arabia will work with US-based firms to develop its civilian nuclear technology, opening a lucrative market for companies like Westinghouse that manufacture large-scale conventional nuclear reactors.

Nevertheless the deal is already facing criticism in Israel and the US.

As news of the deal emerged on Wednesday, some Israeli politicians argued Saudi Arabia could become a new nuclear threat in the region. Israel is widely believed to have nuclear weapons, though it has not acknowledged so publicly, and it joined the US war with Iran over shared concerns about Tehran's nuclear programme.

"A civilian nuclear program in Saudi Arabia [will] lead to a mad arms race across the entire Middle East," Avigdor Lieberman, a member of the Israeli parliament and a former defense minister, said in a social media post.

Democratic lawmakers in Congress raised similar concerns.

"The deal really is a giveaway to the Saudis, and it's only going to fuel further ambitions from Iran. It's only going to further destabilise the region with Israel," Democratic congressman Ro Khanna of California told the BBC. "It's just not smart policy."

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the agreement would boost the American economy and strengthen national security. Wright also said in a statement posted to social media that the US-Saudi pact would "uphold the highest standards of nuclear safety and nonproliferation."

But the administration fuelled scepticism over the agreement by not immediately releasing more information about it on Wednesday. And perhaps in a telling sign, Trump did not preside over the signing ceremony making the deal official.

Trump attended the dignified transfer ceremony for four US service members who were killed in Iran, before holding a rally in Georgia where he argued that his policies were making the Middle East more stable than ever.

Hamas says it has agreed to disarm after Trump announces Board of Peace plan

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj03m512r4go, 2 days ago

US President Donald Trump says the Board of Peace has reached an agreement for the "complete disarmament" of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.

A senior Hamas official has told the BBC the group has agreed to the Board of Peace's plan to completely disarm in Gaza and that an official statement would be released soon. Israel has yet to comment.

The board, created and led by Trump, said in a statement that the agreement concludes months of "intensive, good faith negotiations", and that its focus is now on implementation.

It is part of the second phase of a US-brokered Gaza ceasefire plan that includes the disarmament of Hamas, the withdrawal of Israeli troops and the reconstruction of Gaza.

The US president said Israel would withdraw from Gaza "as disarmament is completed" and called the agreement "a critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government".

"The International Stabilization Force will work with a new Palestinian police force to take responsibility for Gaza being safe for its residents and its neighbours," he said in a post on Truth Social.

Trump said the agreement marked a "major milestone in the implementation of the Trump 20-Point Plan", and he thanked mediators Egypt, Qatar and Turkey.

The plan, unveiled in September last year, included the creation of the Board of Peace to oversee the agreement's implementation and "handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza".

Founding members of the board, aside from the US, include Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

The UK, France and China are among some of the countries to hold off on joining the group since its establishment, with some citing concerns in relation to international law and the UN.

Though started as part of Trump's Gaza peace plan, it is believed the board has since widened its scope, with its website describing the organisation as a more general, "international peace-building body".

A US official, asked on a call with reporters about how hopeful the US is that Israel will agree to withdraw from Gaza once Hamas has disarmed, said, "We're not asking Israel to do anything other than agree to the 20-point plan that they agreed to, initially. And so we're very confident they will adhere to it."

If Israel decides not to withdraw, Trump would be "very disappointed", the official said. The official said the US believes Israel would continue to be a good partner.

Though it initially agreed to the plan, Israel remains highly sceptical of Hamas's willingness to disarm.

The BBC has seen the agreement, which provides for the inventorying and storage of Hamas's remaining heavy weapons under Palestinian supervision. This potentially removes the most significant obstacle to advancing the Trump-backed peace initiative for Gaza.

US officials said smaller groups in Gaza would be disarmed first, before Hamas begins dismantling what they described as its state-like military infrastructure of tunnels, weapons depots and production facilities - a process they acknowledged would take considerably longer.

The officials said the plan was deliberately built on "zero trust" and with verification, with neither Hamas nor Israel moving to the next phase until the other has fulfilled its commitments.

In Gaza, the announcement has been met with little public enthusiasm.

Many Palestinians have grown deeply sceptical of political breakthroughs, with previous agreements having repeatedly broken down before delivering meaningful improvements on the ground.

According to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry, at least 1,168 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect last October.

Four Israeli soldiers have been killed in Palestinian attacks in Gaza over the same period.

Cairo is set to host a meeting "soon" of the Gaza truce mediators, which also include the United States, Qatar and Turkey, state-linked Al-Qahera News reported early Friday.

Earlier in the day, unnamed sources who spoke to Reuters reported that talks between the mediators and Hamas leaders in Cairo on implementing the US-brokered Gaza peace plan had made rare progress, but an Israeli official said the proposed terms were not satisfactory.

Following Trump's announcement, the Times of Israel reported, citing an unnamed source, that the agreement had been signed between negotiators from Hamas as well as the board and mediating countries.

But it said that "an Israeli office" issued a statement saying the disarmament proposal did not meet Israel's demands.

Earlier in the day, Israeli media reported that Israel was opposed to a deal that was being discussed with Hamas.

In April this year, Hamas rejected the disarmament plan of a top figure in Trump's Gaza peace efforts, a senior Palestinian official familiar with the negotiations told the BBC.

Earlier this month, Hamas elected a new leader, Khalil al-Hayya. He replaced Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by the Israeli military in Gaza in October 2024. As the chief negotiator for Hamas, Hayya led the group's delegations at indirect ceasefire talks, meeting mediators in Egypt and Qatar.

The BBC reported earlier this year that the board was originally thought to be aimed at helping end the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and oversee reconstruction. But its proposed charter does not mention the Palestinian territory and appears to be designed to supplant functions of the UN.

Hamas led an attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

Israel responded by launching a massive military campaign in Gaza, during which more than 73,290 people have been killed, including 21,280 children, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.

In 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC), issued arrest warrants over alleged war crimes for Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and as well as the military commander of Hamas, Mohammed Deif. Israel has said Deif was killed in an air strike.

Prime Minister Netanyahu condemned the ICC's decision as "antisemitic", while Hamas said the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant had set an "important historical precedent".

A UN commission of inquiry said in September 2025 that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Israel's foreign ministry said it categorically rejected the report, denouncing it as "distorted and false".

Correction: Earlier versions of this article used "Jerusalem" when referring to the Israeli government. It has been amended to remove that reference.

'Israeli settlers laid siege to our home': Inside a Palestinian village under weekly attack

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyxgn37lg5o, 5 days ago

The large, bolted gate of the Abu Alia family compound in al-Mughayyir village held firm against the teenage settlers; its thin metal bars ringing with each blow, as they smashed it again and again with their clubs.

But the insults hurled by both sides that day passed freely through the bars.

One offensive slur - almost identical in both Hebrew and Arabic - delivered with nonchalant contempt by the Israeli boys bashing at the gate; and with fear and frustration by the Palestinian man inches away from them on the other side, filming the encounter on his phone.

This gate, on the edge of al-Mughayyir, has become a weekly frontline in the battle for the occupied West Bank. And this kind of attack by settlers on Palestinian homes, a weekly routine in villages across the territory.

When we arrived in al-Mughayyir that day, the confrontation at the Abu Alia compound had already begun.

The Israeli army and border police were already moving through the streets, and residents were running from their vehicles - soldiers, like settlers, are seen as the enemy here. Some young men rolled rocks into the road to block it, as the sound of gunshots cracked over the village.

On the hill above them, the local mosque was calling on people to help the family trapped by the settlers. But slipping past Israeli soldiers has become a dangerous gamble. Residents, medical workers and journalists have all been shot during Israeli military operations in the West Bank.

This is what passes for a normal weekend now in al-Mughayyir, and in villages across the West Bank, but it rarely breaks beyond the local news.

We spent a week around al-Mughayyir, and its neighbouring village, Khirbet Abu Falah, to see what life was like here for a single community, or a single family.

What we found shows how quickly control of this landscape is changing, and how local attacks by settlers here are the tip of a national project to bring West Bank land under Israeli control.

Since occupying the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East war, Israel has built more than 100 settlements housing more than half a million Jews on land Palestinians want for a future state. Some Israeli settlers have also established hundreds of wildcat outposts - often starting with a single tent or caravan on a hilltop, and often very close to Palestinian homes. Both Israel's official settlements and its outposts are illegal under international law.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described those carrying out settler attacks as a handful of misguided young people: "150 juvenile delinquents", he's called them, or "70 teenagers from broken homes".

The settlers smashing the Abu Alia gate that Saturday in al-Mughayyir seemed to be mainly teenagers, but earlier that day, a settler group had put out a call on social media to "expel the enemy", including a quote from the Torah. "If you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, those you leave will become spikes in your eyes and thorns in your sides," it says.

And behind the young faces at the gate in al-Mughayyir were much older settlers - at least one of them armed - standing with Israeli soldiers not far from the house.

There is a widespread belief among Palestinians in the West Bank that Israeli soldiers support settlers during these attacks.

Footage of the confrontation at the gate, filmed by the Abu Alia family, shows soldiers strolling up to the teenagers who are attacking it, and making gentle moves to guide them away. It is not effective: the teenagers return again and again to smash their clubs against the gate, as a woman inside screams at them to get away.

The soldiers standing with them at the gate make no attempt to question or detain the attackers, or even confiscate their clubs.

Footage, also filmed from the Abu Alia compound, appears to show young settlers breaking fencing around the property, as soldiers stand by a short distance away, helmets off, phones out.

In one photo, there appears to be an angle-grinder or similar power tool lying on a log behind them. We later photographed it in the hands of soldiers, then in the hands of settlers, then with soldiers again at the Abu Alias' fence.

We asked the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) about these incidents. It gave no explanation for the events, but said in a general response that it was investigating claims of damage to property.

Rafeeq Abu Alia, who was one of the family members in the house that day, told me the attack had followed a familiar pattern.

"First thing this morning, they came... There were four settlers and they were armed. Then more settlers came and laid siege to the house, insulting and provoking us," he said. "They came with the army. The soldiers entered, followed by the settlers. The army beat people inside the house."

We filmed soldiers trying to break down the Abu Alias' gate that day, while settlers stood beside them. And later saw workers fixing the broken entrance.

Medics told us they had treated several Palestinians for tear gas and beating injuries, and that another person had been taken to hospital with a gunshot wound.

The IDF told us its forces had been in al-Mughayyir that day, responding to reports of a confrontation between Palestinians and Israeli civilians.

It said soldiers had entered a house in the village to search for suspects throwing stones, and separately, that they had detained one person taking part in what it called a "violent riot".

It said it was investigating allegations of violence by soldiers.

It also said masked Palestinians had used slings to hurl stones at soldiers, that its forces fired to remove the threat, and that "a hit was identified", meaning someone was shot.

The rules of engagement for Israeli forces in the West Bank were loosened to allow soldiers to use live fire against Palestinians throwing stones, after the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023 that triggered the Gaza war.

Our repeated requests to film with the IDF on patrol in the West Bank this year have so far gone unanswered.

As Israeli forces fired live rounds, stun grenades and tear-gas canisters into al-Mughayyir that day, we walked down a largely empty road towards the Abu Alia compound, to see the situation first-hand.

Two soldiers appeared in front of us, metres away. Our local Palestinian producer was the first to notice them. We were still filming as one raised his weapon, pointing towards us.

We headed up to a nearby roof for safety - the army vehicle and soldiers visible right below us. Within seconds of our arrival, they motioned for us to stop filming. One raised a tear-gas launcher towards us. We moved back from the edge of the roof. He never fired.

Access to stories like this is getting harder here, even for journalists with official Israeli government accreditation. Palestinian paramedics say they are also routinely blocked.

An ambulance worker with the Palestinian Red Crescent told me that while he was responding to a call from al-Mughayyir that week during another settler attack, Israeli soldiers took the keys to his ambulance, after telling him to turn off the engine.

"If they tell us to stay there, we have to stay and wait, regardless of the situation," he said. "It's something we face all the time."

Al-Mughayyir is an isolated village, surrounded by areas which were temporarily left under full Israeli control during the Oslo peace process 30 years ago. That peace process later collapsed. In the past few years, Israeli settlement outposts - illegal under both Israeli and international law - have mushroomed around it.

A member of the village council, a man known as Abu Waheed, told me that settlers came into al-Mughayyir every day, and that when the settlers told soldiers to do something, the soldiers did it.

"[They come] with the army, and with the cars of the army," he said. "Here and here and here. The army is the settlers, but their clothes are green."

Many Israeli soldiers serving here are settlers themselves and see the West Bank as land given to them by God.

Thousands of settlers were also directly recruited into local security squads here after the 7 October Hamas attacks, and given weapons, with minimal vetting or training.

Army figures say most of those squads have now been disbanded, following multiple reports of abuse against Palestinian residents.

None of the outposts we approached around al-Mughayyir responded to our request for an interview.

But one settler in a nearby outpost recently spoke to an Israeli documentary team about his work in a security squad.

"We are the residents, and we are carrying out a conquest here," Adar Lafair told the Kan 11 documentary team. "We're settling on land that years ago we couldn't have walked on. We wouldn't have dared to walk on. Arabs controlled this area. But today, we're here."

His wife Rivka said she dreamed of the squads being allowed to "conquer" a nearby Palestinian village.

Describing the creation of her outpost by Israeli settlers, she said control of the area was taken by "a group of 17-year-old kids with no weapons, with nothing".

"They simply got into fights over the land. They just showed who was in charge. And we're the ones in charge of this land," she said.

"It shouldn't be that teenagers go up onto a hilltop and safeguard the security of the entire people of Israel by doing that. It should be the army that clears the way."

One Israeli soldier who served in the West Bank recently told me that extremist settlers saw him as the enemy for not supporting their attacks. He asked us to hide his identity.

"There are teenagers there who look at you with hate," he said. "There was one who told us, 'I will put a bullet in your head.'"

He said it was clear that the attacks were not the work of just a few radical teenagers.

"There are bodies that equip them with this ideology, with food and water, and logistical support, and also guidance on how to do this."

Asked about claims by some settlers that Palestinian attacks on them go unreported, he said that claim did not match the reality he had seen on the ground.

"In the Palestinian faces, I saw only fear," he said. "I never saw any fear on any Jew that lived there. They feel there is no law. They feel that they can attack in the middle of the day, and nothing will happen."

In the week we were there, the UN counted 45 Palestinians injured by Israeli settlers in attacks across the West Bank, including 12 children.

It says injuries linked to settler attacks have risen sharply, to more than three per day since the start of this year.

Settler attacks have risen as the number of settler outposts has grown.

These outposts are officially illegal under Israeli law, but that has not stopped Israel supporting them with roads and electricity, or legalising dozens of them after they appear.

The Israeli organisation Peace Now, which monitors settlements, says at least 231 new outposts have so far been created under this Israeli government.

Some, used as settler shepherding farms, now effectively control 18% of the West Bank, it says, driving out more than 100 Palestinian communities.

At a conference of settler leaders in July, the IDF commander for the West Bank, Maj Gen Avi Bluth, said farm outposts "align well" with Israel's security concept, "provided that this is also reflected in operational conduct, as well as ethical conduct, and in accordance with the law".

"All of this greatly strengthens security," he said.

Israel's current government has so far provided 19bn shekels ($6.2bn) to expanding settlements in the West Bank, and is now seeking another 600m shekels ($196m) for settlement programmes, according to Peace Now.

The government, which includes religious-nationalist settlers among its cabinet ministers, has also lifted a 20-year ban on Israelis settling in areas around the Palestinian city of Jenin in the far north of the territory.

It is pushing ahead with construction on more than a dozen settlements there, as well as several new military sites, including one next to the refugee camp in Jenin - the first time Israel has seized land for a military site in an area put under total Palestinian control in the Oslo Accords.

Hagit Ofran from Peace Now says the rapid construction in Jenin is part of a wider race by the Israeli government to expand settlements in the West Bank before Israeli elections are held in October.

And, she says, Israel is also finding ways to funnel state money to settler outposts that were illegal under Israeli law, via allocations for roads, "security needs" or the establishment of "temporary sites" in new areas earmarked for settlement.

In Khirbet Abu Falah, right next door to al-Mughayyir, Brahim Hamayel, an olive farmer I met during a previous settler attack a year ago, told me four new outposts had appeared nearby since then - two of them just in the previous month.

He pointed out one of them on a nearby hill - built, he said, on private Palestinian land, in an area that is supposed to be run by the Palestinian Authority.

And the attacks had increased too, he said, sometimes targeting the village itself at night.

"Since we met last year, the attacks have moved from our farms to our homes," he said. "All my neighbours have been hurt one way or the other; some had their houses or cars burned down. We're putting up barbed wire for protection, as if our houses have become prisons."

While we were talking, we saw smoke rising from the village fields. We watched as settlers moved around the smouldering land.

An Israeli army jeep quickly arrived, but it did not stop the settlers starting a second fire, or driving straight past them, back towards one of the new outposts Brahim had pointed out.

This road past their fields, increasingly overlooked by settler outposts, has become a gauntlet for farmers here, to be run at speed in vehicles without stopping or getting out.

It is the only open route between Khirbet Abu Falah and al-Mughayyir. Twice when we drove along it, we saw an Israeli settler sitting in the empty fields.

One week after the attack in al-Mughayyir, Palestinian residents were still paying the price.

Seventeen-year-old Fadi Hamdallah al-Nassan, shot in the leg that day, had died of his injuries.

A football player with the Palestinian national youth team, he was carried back through the village streets for burial.

The next day, two more Palestinians were killed in another settler attack nearby.

Another routine weekend in the occupied West Bank: roads closed, land taken, villages under siege, families broken.

Additional reporting by Rebecca Hartmann

How the UK's extreme heat is shifting the conversation about air-con

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy5dw4plzvlo, 4 days ago

Mandy Bourne lives with her 80-year-old mum in a top-floor social housing flat in the West Midlands. Both struggle with health conditions exacerbated by the recent heatwaves.

For Mandy, temperature shifts can trigger flare-ups of her chronic lung condition. "I've got COPD and sometimes I can't breathe," she explains.

Across the UK, solid brick homes like theirs quietly absorb heat the way they have for decades. Charged-up walls radiate warmth back into rooms that never get the chance to cool.

Mandy says she is constantly reaching for her inhaler as her flat overheats. "It's red hot in the flat. The sun is just beaming in."

That retained warmth can push night-time temperatures in urban centres up to 7C higher than the surrounding countryside. This is the urban heat island effect and it is at its most dangerous in the early hours when bodies need cooler air and cannot find it. Modelling of a previous West Midlands heatwave by researchers from the University of Birmingham reached the bleak conclusion that the heat island impact alone accounted for roughly half the 130 heat-related deaths.

Jo Shields, head of sustainability for Mandy's housing association Walsall Housing Group, known as whg - which owns 23,000 homes across Walsall and the Midlands - hears the same complaint time and again. "The heat gain stays within the concrete or the brick," she says, "so the night-time cooling becomes harder".

Last summer, as the region baked, the residents of Ellum Pointe - a whg scheme for the over-55s - began telling their landlords they simply could not cool their flats. The response was improvised.

"We took the community room, closed all the windows and doors, and we put a mobile air-conditioning unit in there," Shields says. "And basically, we created an internal cool room." She likens it to the warm spaces opened during the pandemic for people who couldn't afford to heat their homes.

Shields' job has previously focused on decarbonising - reducing the emissions from the housing stock - but she now has to balance those pressures with the need to adapt homes to rising heat. Across the country, landlords are facing similar choices.

As Britain enters a new kind of summer, with homes built to trap warmth and heatwaves intensifying, two questions loom: should we embrace air conditioning despite its costs and consequences, and how much should we spend on adapting homes versus cutting carbon?

Historic choices

For 40 years, wealthy countries have focused heavily on cutting the carbon emissions that cause climate change, known as mitigation. Adaptation such as designing housing so it is more resilient to hotter temperatures and installing air conditioning has not always had the same focus.

Reducing emissions was seen as morally right because richer nations produced most of the gases that have warmed the planet. And with that focus came a funding imbalance.

In 2023, $1.8tn was given to mitigation, while adaptation did not secure even 5% of that – it scraped $65bn globally.

Spending too much on adaption was seen by many as giving up on the fight against climate change. But this mainstream view has now been challenged.

In a memo published last year, Bill Gates - a man who has poured billions into clean technology - argued that the climate movement's "doomsday" fixation on temperature targets had diverted money from the things that most improve lives in a warming world.

Climate change is serious, he wrote, but "will not lead to humanity's demise". Governments, he added, should be investing in cooling for the countries that need it.

The publication sparked backlash from climate scientists who accused Gates of making arguments based on "false dichotomies" - pitting mitigation and adaptation against each other.

Some, including US President Donald Trump, saw it as sign that the billionaire was "finally" supporting the belief that climate change was a hoax.

Gates insisted he was not arguing against cutting emissions, but rather for spending money where it saves the most suffering.

The row that followed exposed the real fault line that's coming to the surface this summer: not whether to cut carbon or adapt to the heat – but how much to spend on each.

Profit wins out

There's another reason that muddies the waters and helps explain why cutting carbon became the prime focus – it was investable. Heat pumps and EVs can be sold. Spending on shade, ventilation and cooler hospitals and homes all produce little in the way of bankable returns - even if it reduces costs of climate change long term.

Baroness Brown - also known as the engineer Julia King, who chairs the adaptation committee of the government's Climate Change Committee - argues this imbalance is written into UK law.

Under the Climate Change Act, the mitigation half of her committee recommends legally binding carbon budgets that ministers must deliver and are marked on every year.

Adaptation has no such teeth: the government writes its own risk assessment and its own plans.

"Essentially, the government writes an essay, and our job is to say, is it doing the things it said would do in its essay. It's not actually to say, are these things any good."

Her committee has spent, she says, "almost 20 years pulling our hair out" - but this year has been different. With exquisite timing it produced a report just as the first heatwave was striking Britain in May - urging lawmakers to set hard adaptation targets.

"We've actually looked at the difference that providing some sort of support with cooling for the 30% of most vulnerable homes, and cooling in our hospitals, [with] preventive care visits. The modelling we've done suggests that that would reduce 40% of the increase in heat-related deaths that are predicted for 2050."

"We're saying these are the actions that can make a big difference."

One of the most controversial ideas in the report is on air conditioning. Right now, only 5% or so of English homes have a cooling unit. The Committee recommends fitting these devices in hospitals and care homes within 10 years, and schools in 25 years.

This goes against years of government advice that passive cooling was the preferred method - using shade, ventilation and other design features to bring down temperatures, not mechanical means.

Prof Mat Santamouris from the University of New South Wales, is the world's most-cited researcher on urban overheating.

Machines, he argues, should be the last line of defence: reflective roofing alone, in one of his studies, dragged indoor temperatures from around 43C towards 30C, while a ceiling fan gives comfort for a fraction of the cost.

Putting up unshaded glass towers in cities, he says, is "crazy". "We cannot air-condition our way out of climate change."

Santamouris is scathing about who is driving the air con demand - the industry, he says, is "extremely powerful" – adding that passive cooling adds its own economic growth, as money is spent on plumbers and builders.

Against him stand those who think Britain's hostility to cooling has curdled into a type of masochism.

David Lawrence, of the Centre for British Progress think tank, puts it plainly: we don't tell people to insulate their homes in winter and then skip the radiators. So why insist shade and shutters are enough in summer?

He points out that air conditioning is standard now in offices, hotels and shops, "but we don't expect it for schools and hospitals - which is kind of odd, because those are places where millions of people are every day", and where heat measurably dents concentration, learning and health.

This dispute over the pros and cons of the technology is becoming political.

Some London councils, following a planning "cooling hierarchy", say low-energy ways of keeping homes cool should be prioritised over air conditioning and in a small number of cases have ordered property owners to remove them; the Conservative front bench calls it "dark ages" miserabilism; other MPs and political commentators demand an "air-con revolution".

Since April, in England and Wales the Boiler Upgrade Scheme has offered £2,500 towards a reversible air-air heat pump: a machine that warms a home in winter and cools it in summer. It is, in all but name, Britain's first air-conditioning subsidy - but it is badged as a heat pump, and only worth a third of the £7,500 for a heating-only model.

Such has been the silence around this grant, that in its first month only around 45 households claimed it. By comparison, the numbers claiming a heating-only model ran into the thousands.

In Scotland homeowners can also get a £7,500 grant for a heat pump via its Home Energy scheme - but for air-air versions that could offer cooling there is no funding at all. And in Northern Ireland there is no universal heat pump grant offered for households.

Under the terms of the England and Wales scheme, some people cannot apply at all. It is closed to social housing and new builds - which many argue shuts out the very people most exposed.

Take Woolwich, in south-east London, where a resident called Keisha says her top-floor flat reaches 43C in a heatwave.

She calls the building "inhumane"; she and around twenty neighbours in Canada Court and Clifton Lodge are taking their landlord, the housing association PA Housing, to court over homes they say are unfit to live in.

Even the landlord half-concedes the ground: its chief executive accepts that a growing number of residents face "uncomfortably warm temperatures … due to the changing climate", in homes "designed to keep heat in rather than keep them cool".

Keisha is exactly the tenant the state's new cooling grant might have been written for. But as a social tenant, she is barred from it.

Baroness Brown's committee finds the most deprived neighbourhoods are more than seven times as likely to be badly exposed to heat.

The government had a long-running scheme for supporting upgrades to social housing - ECO - but it will close after this year over reports of "cowboy" installations. The replacement scheme, if it continues under the new government, will not start until next year.

Demand for air-con

There is a cruel physics beneath the financial unfairness.

Air conditioning doesn't destroy heat, it moves it - out of the flat and into the street, where, Santamouris says, it warms the air your neighbours breathe and drives up the demand for still more cooling, by about a third in his studies of Sydney.

The machines keeping the financially comfortable cool make everyone else's nights worse; and as wealthier households cool their rooms, the rest fall further behind. A thermal divide, opening street by street.

And it lands on the electricity grid at the worst possible moment.

The electricity demand for cooling peaks on still, hot evenings - just as the wind drops and solar fades, leaving gas to supply the extra energy. In so doing, further greenhouse gas emissions are generated, adding bit by bit to the climate change effect – the very one driving the temperatures and the demand for air conditioning.

And the same heat that drives the demand also weakens the supply: gas turbines lose output as the air warms, and in June several UK plants had to be turned down.

But such is the scale of the heat that people are voting with their wallets - demand for portable air con units is through the roof, regardless of grants and the environment.

The evidence from experts is that we should not go down this road.

Santamouris and Baroness Brown reach for the same answer: passive cooling first, machines where genuinely needed, clean power behind them, and the lesson that France learned painfully in the deadly heatwave of 2003 - the vulnerable protected rather than left to improvise.

Cooling every home by machine would strain the grid and warm the streets, hampering the effort to slow the warming that drives the demand.

In Tokyo, Santamouris says, so many air conditioners now pump their waste heat into the air that the exhaust alone generates heat that's measured at close to a thousand watts of warming on every square metre - as much energy as falls from the sky at midday. "It's another sun," he adds with emphasis, "another sun."

"It's not the same in London. But if we continue in the same way, in some years we will have the same results."

The heat of this year and last, and the prospects of it being repeated, is a future Jo Shields is upset by.

"It's our survival," she says. Most days, she tries to bury the thought of it - "because otherwise it terrifies me."

Meanwhile, Mandy says she is grateful that the new community room with its air conditioning is providing some immediate respite for her and her mum.

"We sit there all day with it on, it helps so much I want one in my flat."

Top picture credit: Getty Images

Why the UK is dithering over what to do about e-scooters

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4nvn9w00no, 11 days ago

When I step out of Southampton Central railway station, it takes me just seconds to spot an e-scooter. In this city, these devices have become a normal part of the transport ecosystem, along with e-bikes.

"It's just the most convenient way to commute from home to the station and back," says Keith Reed, who I speak to as he arrives at the station to catch a train to London. Keith says uses rental e-scooters twice a week. His alternative option would be his bike, but he'd then have to worry about where to leave it.

Around the city, there are parking areas for bright orange rental devices everywhere - but they're not necessarily a permanent feature. Southampton hosts one of the numerous government-backed trials around England. This one has been going on since 2021.

It also doesn't take long to find e-scooters which aren't part of the trial, but instead are owned by individuals. I see a man riding one along the pavement outside a parade of shops. He doesn't want to stop and talk.

These privately owned e-scooters are illegal to ride on public roads across the UK, but they've proliferated regardless. One expert told me the situation was a "Wild West".

Among people I spoke to in Southampton, the same concerns came up time and time again: "They're a blinking nuisance," says elderly pedestrian Fred. Another shopper, Martin, says he's "very concerned" whenever he sees them racing through precincts: "An accident's almost inevitable."

The endgame of the trials is to reach a decision on whether to make permanent hired e-scooter schemes such as the one Keith uses - and whether to bring in legislation that would legalise and regulate privately owned e-scooters too.

But six years since the trials started around England, there's still no conclusion - and as the UK government has responsibility for road traffic legislation across Great Britain, officials in Scotland and Wales say they are waiting on Westminster to act.

So why is it taking so long for the government to decide what to do, and what are the consequences of delay? What does the evidence tell us about how safe these things are?

And why are people using them in the first place - are they here to stay as a useful part of the transport offer, or will they end up being viewed as a pest on our streets?

What are e-scooters - and who rides them?

You'd recognise an e-scooter if you saw one. The Department for Transport's (DfT's) definition of an e-scooter includes no pedals, two wheels and a maximum continuous power rating of 500W.

And so far, the trials around England appear to have proved popular. According to DfT research, fom January 2022 to May 2024, 36.9 million trips were made across 30 trial areas outside of London. On average, nearly 19,500 e-scooters were available to hire every day.

Dr Yasir Ali, a reader in Transport Modelling at Loughborough University, says e-scooters are "complementary" to other modes of transport, rather than replacing them. Due to factors such as range and being exposed to the elements, they are less suitable for longer trips, rural areas with less infrastructure or in bad weather. They work best as "a first- and last-mile solution" in urban areas, to reduce reliance on cars for short trips.

Shared mobility charity CoMoUK's 2025 report suggests that for more than half of the people using rental e-scooters, the most common use was travelling to work or school. Its analysis of DfT data suggests the majority of people using hired e-scooters are male and under 35.

"Sometimes it's a bit difficult to take the bus from dot to dot", says Yan Zhang, who works at Southampton university and doesn't drive, "so for shorter distances, I'll take the scooter."

Around half of respondents to CoMoUK's online survey used it in conjunction with another mode of transport - such as riding to a railway station, like Keith.

Earlier evidence from a national evaluation of the trials published in 2022 found that although some users would have driven instead had they not had access to an e-scooter, the biggest "modal shift" - meaning switch in ways of getting around - to e-scooters was from walking. Given walking is an active mode of travel, this has raised questions over how significant the public health impact of e-scooter use really is.

And the usage of privately owned e-scooters isn't reflected in this research. The DfT has said between 760,000 and 1.2 million people in England aged 16 and over own one - despite the fact that it remains illegal to ride them in public.

In the eyes of the law, e-scooters are classed as motor vehicles. Outside of the trials, they can't be insured, and thus can only legally be ridden on private land, with the owner's permission.

The trials themselves are bound by strict rules. The devices' top speed is limited. Businesses who operate the pilots must insure them. Users must have a full or provisional driving licence, and they must not ride on the pavement. Helmets are recommended but not mandatory.

Richard Dilks, CEO of CoMoUK says "mass-scale use of something that is inherently low-carbon, low-impact, low-cost" is a "good thing" but "we also don't have rules of engagement about how they should be ridden".

And as a result of the delays in introducing regulation, Loughborogh University's Yasir Ali says "we are increasingly in a situation where the law and reality have diverged", with "the disadvantages of e-scooter use without securing the full benefits of regulation".

Against the law

Back in Southampton, I meet a lady pushing a black e-scooter, who doesn't want to give her name. She says nobody told her when she bought it that it was illegal to ride on the streets.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency has a unit that carries out surveillance of retailers to check they're complying with the law. But earlier this month, an investigation by the Press Association news agency discovered some retailers were advertising them for commuting purposes.

Police tell me they regularly see children illegally riding private e-scooters. Margaret Winchcomb, deputy executive director at the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS), says some are being specifically marketed at kids.

So what can police do? Forces regularly launch crackdowns where they seize illegally used devices, and often crush them. Each year, awareness campaigns run urging parents not to buy their kids an e-scooter for Christmas. But enforcement is a challenge.

Insp Matt Boiles from Avon and Somerset's road policing team says problems arise even with the legal trial devices - for example, people riding them after drinking alcohol, which counts as drink-driving. Riding with another person on the back is another common issue.

But officers see private e-scooters being illegally ridden in public places "all the time, every single day" and they can be really hard to catch - it isn't always safe for police in a car to pursue someone on an e-scooter, he says.

Insp Boiles despairs over parents buying them for children: "We do have parents attend a police station quite a lot, getting very, very upset that their child's £500 e-scooter has been seized." But "the legislation is really, really clear that you can't have it back".

How safe are they?

For many the biggest concern is safety.

There's a potential risk of fire if unregulated devices with lithium batteries are left to charge unattended. Most train operators have banned e-scooters on board for this reason.

But there's also the fact that riders are unprotected in the case of falling off or being hit by motorised vehicles. And - along with e-bikes - they can end up involved in collisions where pedestrians are hurt. Many trial e-scooters in the UK are restricted to 12.5mph, but privately owned scooters' speeds aren't.

Some coroners have even raised concerns. In 2022, a coroner in London called for action after the death of 14-year-old Fatima Abukah on a privately owned scooter.

According to the DfT, in 2024 - the most recent year for which figures are available - 1,390 casualties were recorded in collisions that involved e-scooter in England, Scotland and Wales, three more than in the previous 12 months. The vast majority, 1,096, were e-scooter users themselves.

Young boys and men appear to be over-represented in the stats. Of the casualties, 302 - the most of any age and sex category - were males aged 10-19.

Six deaths were recorded in 2024, unchanged from the previous year. Five of these were riders and one a pedestrian.

Although the numbers aren't conclusive, it is thought more accidents are happening on privately owned e-scooters. Winchcomb says police statistics "aren't reflective of the number of injuries".

Nonetheless, campaigners believe there is enough evidence to show that regulation is urgently needed.

Carly Calland's 14-year-old son Jacob died in March 2025 of a catastrophic head injury. He was a passenger on an e-scooter that was involved with a collision with a car.

If privately owned e-scooters are legalised for public use, Carly believes, there should be mandatory helmets, a ban on carrying passengers and penalties for parents that allow children to ride illegally.

"If Jacob was wearing a helmet that day, he would still be here," Carly, from Wythenshawe in Greater Manchester, says.

Carly is not against e-scooters. They "are really good for people to get to work, and they are eco-friendly", she tells me, but "they just need to be used in the correct way."

What happens if the current situation goes on? Her answer is emphatic: "More deaths."

What's behind the delay

Meanwhile a number of major European cities have ended their shared e-scooter schemes. Paris abolished them after a referendum in 2023. Brussels is the most recent, announcing theirs would end in 2027, following a rise in accidents.

The last evaluation of the trials in England was in 2022. New findings are expected by early next year.

In recent years, successive British transport secretaries have supported the idea of a new law to legalise and regulate the e-scooters available for sale. E-scooters were mentioned in the 2022 Queen's speech, but nothing materialised.

Winchcomb says some of the "dithering" may be because of the potential knock-on effect of any legislation for users of mobility scooters.

There is some frustration from devolved administrations around the UK about the delays in Whitehall. The Scottish Government "will continue to urge the UK government, which holds powers on registration and licensing over off-road vehicles, to take action in this area", a spokesperson says.

The Welsh Government says it will "monitor developments on legalisation plans and consider the implications for Wales".

Northern Ireland's Department for Infrastructure says it is also monitoring the trials in England, as well as the impact of recent law changes in the Republic of Ireland.

The DfT says it says the trials are "building the real-world evidence needed to get regulation right" and it will consult on longer-term rules, including registration and licensing requirements, within the next year.

"E-scooters have real potential to improve local connectivity and cut emissions, and we want to see that potential realised safely and responsibly across the UK," a spokesperson says.

But Ali says: "The current halfway house becomes harder to justify as usage grows."

Even if legislation and associated technical standards were introduced, Richard Dilks acknowledges enforcing them would remain difficult.

But, he adds: "That problem only gets bigger if you leave it."

Why Andy Burnham will find it so tricky to unite Britain

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c17y7r9yv1ro, 13 days ago

Did you get to see the 2024 film Civil War, with its dystopian depiction of a present day USA in the midst of a violent meltdown?

What made it such an effective thriller was that it all seemed so frighteningly real. Although the two sides in that civil war were fictitious, it hit a raw nerve precisely because of the very obvious divides that scar modern day America.

But interestingly it was actually written and directed by a British film-maker, Alex Garland, and he expressed worries about his home country, as well as the US. In both countries, he told the Guardian, "there's a lot to be very concerned about".

He's not alone. If you are an avid user of social media, you could almost believe that we are a nation disunited enough to have a full-on civil war of our own. And even away from the exaggerated adversarialism online, there are plenty of people worried that Britain is gripped by uncontrollable rage.

It's a sense of discord that Britain's new prime minister, Andy Burnham, seems to recognise. Since announcing his run for the Makerfield seat in May, he's repeatedly urged Britons to forget about party labels or factional identities and instead unite around pride in their local area. "Place first, not party first", is how he puts it.

And as he entered Downing Street on Monday, he called for a "new national sense of unity, of common purpose and positivity".

But it's worth asking: just how divided really is Britain?

Some talk as though the population is ready to wield the pitchforks; that we are close to social breakdown; that a small spark could lead to a serious fire.

Last year, a commission co-chaired by the former Home Secretary, Sir Sajid Javid, warned in a report: "The bonds that hold society together - civic participation, and a shared sense of belonging - are under growing pressure."

Well, I have just had the privilege of spending a month journeying - literally and figuratively - through some of the divisions that define modern Britain, for a Radio 4 series.

Is there any common ground left in the country that Burnham has now inherited - or are we polarised to the point of no-repair?

A defining split

For a long time, Britain had a clear, defining split: social class. What kind of job you had, how you spoke, what time you had your evening meal, what you watched on TV, how you voted… it was all pre-determined by your working or middle class background.

Today, that has got a lot more complicated with a decline in the number of jobs that would have been regarded as "working class", and a big rise in the number of young people going to university from those backgrounds. That's not to say it isn't still there.

But probably the most obvious faultline in Britain and other western countries now is in values, with a marked difference between two sides: progressives on one side, and social conservatives on the other. If we have a civil war any time soon, it'll be the Allied Readers of the Guardian versus the United League of GB News Viewers. That schism is more clearly driven by age and education than it is by class.

This clash defines politics at the moment, and manifests in rows about "woke" values, patriotism, and immigration. And what makes it so intense is a feeling, held by some on both sides, that the other side is some kind of existential threat to their vision of what society should be.

Because this is such a clear schism, we commissioned polling from the More in Common research institute (covering Great Britain, not Northern Ireland).

We asked respondents if they prefer living in communities "where more people come from different cultural backgrounds", or "where most people come from the same cultural background". We found a population split down the middle: 53% prefer a diverse community, 47% said they preferred a more homogenous one.

It poses a challenge for Burnham: it's much harder to settle a national argument where there is a 50-50 divide, than where one side dominates completely.

On the specific question of immigration, however, the country looks more united. Our poll found that about three-quarters of Britons thought immigration was too high. Burnham himself has said that net migration was "way too high" under the Conservative government, and said he'll try to "find the right balance" on the issue.

Faultlines

But that's not the only faultline cutting across British society. From my conversations around the country, I heard a list of other, quite distinct concerns. These are often bound up under one general heading of "polarisation", but it's been illuminating to unpack them.

One specific worry - most keenly felt on the right - is about social integration. It is whether in some cities, there are communities of different culture, ethnicity and even language, residing right next to each other but living totally separate lives. We saw that voiced in Leicester, the city with the highest share of people who speak a main language that's not English.

Jason, a 54-year-old window installer, has watched the city undergo this change, and has made Hindu and Sikh friends. But Jason, who is white British, also has his complaints, and says that Muslim families in the area tend to turn down his services. "They do stick to their own."

He says there's one part of the city he now stays away from, after he was racially abused last year by a group of men in a car "calling me a white so-and-so". And he finds the language barrier particularly difficult. "Sometimes it's very hard to take an inquiry on the phone. You're doing a quote on the windows and you just really can't communicate."

And then there's another worry - perhaps felt more keenly on the left - about what some see as rising levels of racism and violence. From Southport to Southampton, racial tensions have erupted on the streets in the last few years.

Hannah Henderson, who runs a dog-friendly coffee shop in Southampton, says she was recently driving with her daughter when they passed a hotel that houses asylum seekers. "There was a protest happening… people with the St George's flags around their shoulders… police lining up. She felt really unsafe. She's twelve. She didn't really understand, why would people be so cross?".

And then there's the divide between different places. Some residents of deprived, post-industrial towns - areas that have suffered from the disappearance of manufacturing and mining - feel a quiet frustration towards larger, economically flourishing cities. Those smaller towns tend not to have a university, and they tend to have a run down high street, giving a visual sense of decline. Places like Wigan - in Greater Manchester, Burnham's stronghold - often languish next to the bigger cities in whose shadow they sit.

This is a point made by Fiona Hill, the daughter of a coal miner from Bishop Auckland who later moved to Washington DC to become a senior White House adviser. Her book, There's Nothing For You Here, is named after the advice her father gave when she left school in 1984.

"The reason it's called 'left behind' is because you look at health outcomes, education, transport, access to amenities… and all of the [towns] that we're talking about are left behind," says Hill, who is now chancellor of Durham University. "Certainly they're not on the same level as… the flourishing city centres in Manchester, Liverpool, and absolutely not at the same level as London."

Sharing too little

Another, related concern is that we simply share too little these days: we do things at home alone; we don't go to church together each Sunday; we barely go out to the pub like we used to.

And on the national level - in England at least - there's only a vague sense of identity. Yes, most of us might enjoy watching the national football teams. But is that all our sense of nationhood consists of now? Even the flag - and its place on lampposts and signs - has become divisive.

Playwright James Graham thinks that a nation is largely defined via "the story it tells itself" - and parts of England, he says, feel excluded from the national story.

"Some people get bigger roles than others in that story, historically," he says. "If you see yourself on screen or stage, or in film or books or newspapers, if you feel like you're being seen and you're being heard and you feel part of a story, that does temper some of the natural bitterness and resentment that you feel when your economic situation isn't quite so good."

It all suggests Britain is a nation not quite at ease with itself and with a lot to fix.

Common ground

That being said, we found a lot of common ground talking to people around Britain; reasonable folks dispirited by the problems they observe, but ready to navigate their way through them constructively. For every riot, there are volunteers who'll come out the next day to clean up the mess.

Often there's a sports team or community centre that becomes a focal point for neighbourly spirit. At Grimsby Town Football Club, we heard from Christine Green, who started volunteering for the club during a difficult period in her life. "I was going through a divorce and… needed something to occupy my time and my mind so I'm not focusing on negative stuff", she remembers.

She lives in the deprived East Marsh area of Grimsby, a neighbourhood she says is often derided as a place of crime and unemployment. It is an image she doesn't recognise. "I know the person next door and I know the person across the road. My mum lives the next block up and my daughter can take the dogs for a walk. That's nice to me - not living in a secluded house where you've got no idea who anybody is around you."

Lord Stockwood, the Grimsby-born entrepreneur who bought the football club in 2021, says: "In an increasingly complex and crazy world, this is a place of permanence and love and memory for me and for many others."

Indeed, in our poll, it was encouraging that most respondents didn't seem to want to burn their locality down. We asked respondents if the city, town, or village they lived in was a good place to live and work. A full 70% thought their location was "very good" or "somewhat good" as a place to live. (It was less than that, only about half, who thought it was a good place to work.)

But is 70% good enough? You can take a glass two-thirds full or a third empty view of that figure.

Place is a unifying force

I do wonder if one way of finding common ground will be a renewed focus on the idea of "place". Increasingly, there's a push - from politicians and academics - to help people forge (or re-forge) connections to their local areas.

Certainly, Burnham seems to agree. When we embarked upon this journey, we didn't know he would be entering No 10. What fortuitous timing. He must have spent more time outside London in the years running up to his premiership than any other modern prime minister - and it's fascinating to see where that's landed him.

Last year, he told the Institute for Government think tank: "Place is a unifying force. However people vote, they are united by a desire to see the place where they live move forward."

From the capital, the thinking goes, it's easy to think that if we can make Britain work, then each community will flourish. It might be that we really need to do it the other way round - if we can make each community flourish, then the country will work.

That's not straightforward by the way. As Burnham knows, it has been easier to revitalise Manchester than the many towns spread around it. But creating social cohesion where it is lacking, is surely a defining mission of Burnham's premiership.

Top picture credit: Getty Images

Our exclusive behind-the-scenes access at No 10 as Andy Burnham became PM

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79gdjlv78wo, 7 days ago

"You can clap now," a Downing Street official with a clipboard instructed the staff eagerly lining the halls of No 10 in the moments before the new prime minister walked in.

The applause duly began before the famous door opened, so the first sight and sound to greet Andy Burnham and his wife were crowds of clapping staff, crammed into the Downing Street hall. They stretched up the long corridor all the way to the door of the Cabinet Room - left ajar for him to walk straight in and get down to work.

I've seen plenty of prime ministers come and go from outside No 10. But I'd never been allowed inside at that moment before, able to hover outside the Cabinet Room and grab a quick word with the country's new leader at such an intense, symbolic time.

I have rarely seen a politician look as thoroughly delighted as Burnham, pride bursting out of his buttoned-up suit - that's right, the T-shirt and bomber jacket didn't make it to No 10 - or a leader who has wanted to stop and shake as many hands.

No 10 staff are already wondering if they'll ever be able to stick to a regular prime minister's schedule, normally designed with military precision. If Andy Burnham was able to take the time to stop and speak to everyone in the country, I suspect he probably would.

It's a sign of his different style that our team was given permission to be behind the scenes at three key moments in the 59th prime minister's first week in charge - when he became Labour leader, when he walked into No 10, and on day one at his new Manchester outpost, No 10 North.

Most important by far was our half-hour interview in that shiny new office, after weeks during which Burnham was chased by accusations he'd avoided tough questions. But the extra glimpses we were given, alongside Burnham's own voracious appetite for social media, display a prime minister that's not just at ease in front of the cameras, but a leader who wants to bring you along for the ride.

They included revealing moments that are normally hidden - his first steps into the Cabinet Room to appoint his team, rating pub snacks with his Chancellor, John Healey, in an Instagram post, and sharing pictures with us of the family dog, Axel, whom he describes as having "angry little man energy".

"Comms" - how politicians communicate and explain themselves and talk to the public - is not the be-all and end-all.

Burnham's exploits online have already brought mockery and launched a thousand memes. But if a leader can't get your attention to make their arguments - as Keir Starmer found so challenging - ultimately, they are not going to get very far at all.

And the biggest difference of the Labour reboot so far is how the government looks and sounds. They've put an obvious priority on punter-friendly announcements such as cutting VAT from energy bills and tax breaks for pubs - although it is important to note the details on how to pay for all of that are not yet clear.

For Burnham though, telling his story is the easy part. Joking about the unique stink that accompanies Scampi Fries, or showing me his gold disc on loan from The Smiths' guitarist Johnny Marr, won't help him deal with US President Donald Trump, find money for defence, or create a new service to care for the elderly and vulnerable in England. Nor will it be any use as he grapples with the country's huge debts, changing demographics or public concerns about immigration.

Listening carefully during our interview, it seemed Burnham had distinct gears. He was fluent and passionate on his familiar ground: his desire to sort out social care, his track record in Manchester, his desire to run a government that feels relevant and effective where you live, local leaders eager to make many more decisions and able to spend taxpayers' money more freely without permission from Whitehall.

Those are his core beliefs, arguments he's made hundreds, if not thousands of times.

But when it comes to how he'll apply what he thinks in principle to what he does in practice, that was not always so clear. On social care for example, he's long believed there ought to be a National Care Service, like the NHS. But in a speech on Wednesday, that's not likely to be what he unveils.

Instead, he told me he'd "brought it straight forward", understood to mean speeding up the government review by Baroness Louise Casey of what ought to be done, not saying, "here's the plan".

When it came to questions that are on his desk for the first time, there was a contradiction. Burnham told us all many times that he will stick to the manifesto the country voted for in 2024.

But he's also vowed his arrival in office will usher in the biggest change in four decades. You don't have to be a student of political history to find a mismatch there - he's going to stick broadly to Sir Keir's plan, yet shift the government more fundamentally than leaving the EU, or the financial crash? Really?

And beyond the rhetorical tension in several areas, Burnham gave clear indications that he will apply "new eyes". Will he stick to the home secretary's plans to make migrants wait 10 years or more before they can permanently stay in the UK? He's looking at that again he told me, and hinted that care workers could possibly be exempt.

What about welfare? Remember Sir Keir ditched most significant reforms in the face of resistance on the back benches. While seeking not to "blame" anyone receiving benefits, Burnham said the country had to "get serious" about getting the welfare bill down, and suggested he might make it harder for some people to claim, by imposing extra conditions.

He didn't want to give much away about where he was going to find extra billions for defence, or pay for public services. He repeated that he'd stick to the promises on income tax, VAT and National Insurance made in 2024. But the prime minister clearly pointed to a possible shake-up of the council tax system, where those with the most expensive properties might have to pay considerably more. Changes like that to council tax, or to welfare, would be huge political moves that would put him on a collision course with some of his party, and some political opponents too.

Then, when it comes to matters of war and peace, which for Burnham are genuinely new, it felt we could see him thinking in real time how to answer the question, perhaps trying to balance giving a flavour of who he is, without creating a political accident.

Does he trust Trump? Twice he wouldn't say.

"It's a changing world," his second answer.

Would he take a call from Russian President, Vladimir Putin?

A pause, then: "I'd have to know the circumstances".

As mayor, Burnham evidently spent years thinking hard about how to use power, and how he wants to shift the balance in the UK away from Westminster. The impact of that stance could be profound, way beyond some admirably shiny No 10 signs emblazoned all over one floor of a government building in Manchester.

Mayors are expected to get power to spend nationally collected income tax, and crucially to spend billions without strings.

Burnham spent time too as mayor absorbing people's experiences, their hardships and frustrations.

"My strength always is in remaining close to people, close to the public, that will not change because I am prime minister," Burnham told me.

Although don't be in any doubt, he also spent time thinking and planning about how to make a return to the political heart of this country, the Westminster he believes is so flawed.

But when it comes to the gravest matters that prime ministers have to deal with - security, power around the world, or the country's long-term economic stability, we're perhaps yet to see if Burnham's ambition for No 10 is accompanied by truly new big ideas that match the scale of his rhetoric.

There are worries on the right of the Labour Party that Burnham has not absorbed the reality of the country's economic position - years of stuttering growth, and sky-high levels of debt that leave the UK incredibly vulnerable to the financial markets' judgements, whether he likes it or not.

And concerns on the left, that he's tickled their bellies with promises of "authentic Labour", flirting with the ideas of increasing state control of vital industries, but which might not come through. And like most incoming prime ministers, he has precious little experience of handling international events. The moments in our interview where he was least sure-footed were answering questions about how he'd manage relationships with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

One minister said he'd "vibe left, but govern from the centre". Perhaps, as he's tried to give firms and families a "breathing space" when it comes to the cost of living, he'll ask for "breathing space" from the public before his complete programme becomes clear.

Burnham has long been unusual as a politician - a leader who has managed to be popular in a time when politicians often disappoint and are sometimes despised. He knows he's walking into a job that's been marked by failure for a decade. As he told me, "the onus is on me not to be another one who just doesn't change things". He's part of a political generation he proclaims to be "just not good enough".

Remember, his own career has had plenty of failure too. It took Burnham three goes to become the leader of his party. As he arrived, straightening his tie, to be confirmed in the top job in central London 10 days ago, I asked him why he'd taken so long.

He laughed and told me, "I like to make an entrance".

Andy Burnham has now truly arrived. But he knows all too well, there won't be applause everywhere he goes.

Watch Panorama Andy Burnham: The Laura Kuenssberg Interview on iPlayer now, and on BBC One at 20:00BST on Mon 27 Jul 2026.

Top picture credit: Reuters

What Love Island tells us about the changing face of dating

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c935q2k6pxqo, 8 days ago

On the fourth series of Love Island UK in 2018, Megan Barton-Hanson pulled fellow Islander, Wes Nelson, for a chat.

Just moments earlier, she had ended her relationship with Eyal Booker after admitting the pair had little more than physical chemistry. Now, sitting opposite Wes, who had been coupled up with Laura Anderson since the start of the competition, she decided not to wait for him to make the first move.

"I think it's pretty obvious that I do really fancy you," she told him. "And I just felt like, if I didn't say something, I'd regret it massively."

By the end of the episode, viewers had a new nickname for her: "Muggy Megan". Critics accused her of moving too quickly between relationships and breaking "girl code". Others admired her honesty.

At the time, Barton-Hanson argued that she had been treated differently to her male counterparts. "People definitely do give girls a harder time than men… It's sexist."

But eight years later, scenes like Barton-Hanson's no longer feel quite so out of the ordinary. Until this series, the opening coupling had always seen the men choose first. This year, the show's rules were changed, with the women making the first choice.

Alicia Denby, a sociologist at Manchester Metropolitan University, argues the show's tweak is reflective of a broader societal change where "women may now be more likely to approach someone first".

At its peak, around five million people tuned in to Love Island every night. Live audiences are not what they were, but it remains ITV's biggest programme among 16 to 34-year-olds.

For Prof Kitty Nichols, who researches relationships and popular culture at the University of Sheffield, Love Island has become "an important cultural vehicle" allowing us to "reflect on the dating scene and culture at the moment".

Former PE teacher Kai Fagan met his now wife, Sanam Harrinanan, when he won the 2023 series, an experience he says transformed his life.

"My life ever since then has been a fairytale. The whole show is about love. That's the point of it. You're put in a situation to fall in love."

For Fagan, the show delivered exactly what it promised: love. Meanwhile, for thousands watching at home, it has become a window into how modern relationships are formed, tested and understood.

As another series of Love Island approaches its end, what do Love Island's changing dynamics tell us about dating culture beyond the villa? And does women making the first move really represent genuine progress towards equality?

The forever changing rules

For much of the 20th Century, heterosexual dating followed a script that would have felt familiar to the characters in Pride and Prejudice. Men were largely expected to make the first move. They asked women out, paid for dates and, in many cases, took the lead in deciding when the relationship moved forward.

By the 1960s, the women's liberation movement began challenging many of those norms. As Aretha Franklin's Respect became an anthem for a generation demanding greater equality, the widespread availability of contraception changed the ideas about sex. Then with the rise of online dating in the 2000s, millions of people began meeting through websites and, later, dating apps.

But whether these changes have really done anything to shift gender expectations is unclear.

As recently as 2021, sociologist Ellen Lamont reviewed more than 100 studies on heterosexual dating and found traditional dating scripts still remained, with men still expected to make the first move.

For cultural commentator Coco, who goes by her first name and has amassed more than 100,000 followers on TikTok analysing Love Island, this reflects an important distinction.

She argues women aren't replacing men as the pursuers, they simply have greater freedom to act on what they want.

"Women haven't flipped the roles," she says. "Women have just been allowed to exist." She believes women now have "more choice, freedom and opportunity than we've ever had in history".

Love Island's contradiction

But even if women are becoming more comfortable making the first move, Denby argues that this does not mean gendered power relations have disappeared.

She argues that women on Love Island are often praised for their patience and loyalty while male contestants explore connections with other contestants. But she says when women take a more active role in pursuing relationships, they are judged differently.

"It's almost as if women are praised for being submissive in the villa, because when they do take on more of an active or expressive role, they are criticised for it."

On this year's Love Island, in a move that may have reflected the growing trend of women on the show taking the lead, Elicia Bailey took both Aidan Murphy and Finley Maddock to the Hideaway, the villa's private romantic room.

But she faced criticism for it and Denby points to what she sees as a sexual double standard around women's sexuality. Another female contestant on this year's show, Priya Jaswal, was labelled a "sexual person" by a male contestant and accused of "pouncing" on Murphy, comments that Denby argues, suggest "women are judged for taking an active role" in dating.

Nichols sees similar patterns.

She believes Love Island has what she describes as "pockets of diversity" and "little moments of change", where contestants challenge conventional gender roles.

Yet she argues those moments are often temporary, with Islanders reverting "back to the expected gender roles".

According to Nichols, double standards persist. "If a woman behaves in the same way that a man behaves, they get reprimanded."

That reaction can be seen in the programme's history.

For example, Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu's pursuit of Jay Younger divided viewers during the 2022 series. Some accused her of betraying Davide Sanclimenti, who she later won the show with, while others praised her confidence.

For Nichols, those responses reveal something about British attitudes to dating.

"I think audience members receive more positively men diverging from their expected roles," she says.

She said it may be because viewers "don't anticipate" behaviour like that, but adds that, "sometimes women doing so is sort of seen less positively."

What happens when the rules change?

For Tareq Ferguson, a long-time Love Island viewer and TikTok commentator with more than 50,000 followers, one of the biggest changes in recent series has been watching male contestants become more passive.

"The men want to be passenger princesses," he says. "They want to sit back, kick up their feet, while the women do the grafting and do the work."

On this year's show, Lorenzo Alessi was reluctant to make Julia Majchrzak a morning coffee, something many contestants see as an act of care for the person they're coupled up with. It become a flashpoint on the show and sparked debate among viewers.

For Ferguson, moments like those reflect a wider shift in modern dating, with some men appearing increasingly hesitant to take the lead.

But some research suggest that men's reluctance may stem less from disinterest and more from uncertainty about how to navigate dating today.

In a recent Cosmopolitan survey, men said online dating had made them feel judged on their appearance. Ohers said repeated rejection and lack of matches had damaged their confidence.

Research like this echoes what Coco believes is happening both inside and outside the villa.

"Society has rightly expanded what's possible for women," she says. "But we haven't spent the same amount of time helping young men understand what their role looks like in this landscape. The cultural conversation hasn't kept pace with the social change."

She also believes online conversations have contributed to that uncertainty.

"I think the manosphere content we're seeing has done something to women," she says. "It's put their guard up."

But she is keen to stress that does not mean there are "no good men out there".

Instead, she believes men seem to be taking a more cautious approach to dating as expectations around relationships continue to change. "They don't want to be perceived as a creep. They don't want to be seen as trying too hard in front of their peers. They want to come across as relaxed and cool."

What does Love Island tell us about modern dating?

So does Love Island simply mirror the UK's evolving dating culture or actively shape it?

For Prof Nichols, the two are closely connected. She believes the programme doesn't simply entertain audiences. Watched by millions each summer and discussed constantly across social media, it has become part of the conversation around modern relationships.

"I think for young people who are still the biggest viewers of Love Island, it probably creates these norms for them in terms of how they would expect to be treated or how dating functions."

Fagan believes some younger viewers take lessons from what they see on screen.

"Younger people probably get dating tips from a show like Love Island," he says.

But he adds: "In real life, you have a bit more control of how you pursue and what happens and the obstructions.

"On Love Island, you could be with someone for three weeks and then suddenly you're put into a challenge where your relationship is made vulnerable just for the entertainment of the public.

"If that's happening on the outside, you don't necessarily know about it. On the show, you have to confront it head on."

Yet despite those differences, some viewers still believe Love Island influences how people think about dating.

Ferguson believes many young people watch the programme not just as entertainment but as a reflection of what dating now looks like.

"People will look at this, especially the younger audiences, and think, 'if this is how people are being treated, then obviously I can expect this on the outside.'"

One study by researchers at Liverpool John Moores University examining Love Island and relationship education, found some young people do look to reality dating programmes for ideas about romance and relationship behaviour. But it also found most viewers described the programme as entertainment and were aware that what they watched did not necessarily reflect real life.

For Nichols, the influence is undeniable.

"It plays into features of the current dating culture, where we see this propensity towards disposability and a lack of exclusivity," she says.

"It's like a chicken and an egg. I think it normalises that massively."

More than a dating show

Every generation has tended to challenge the dating expectations that came before it. From the move away from formal courtship to the arrival of dating apps and now a generation asking more questions about who should make the first move.

But while analysts argue that Love Island is far from a perfect mirror of society, it nonetheless operates as a cultural stage where shifting gender norms and emerging challenges are publicly rehearsed.

For Denby, that is precisely what makes the show significant.

"Recouplings, comparisons between potential partners and the idea that there is always someone better around the corner can mirror some of the less positive aspects of app-based dating culture", she says.

But she is equally clear that viewers are not watching the programme without question.

"I don't think viewers are simply passive consumers. Many people watch Love Island critically and debate issues like sexism, classism and racism, so the programme both reflects and shapes contemporary dating culture."

Top image credit: Getty Images

ADHD has rewired the workplace. This is what it means for bosses and workers

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70gq125xweo, 9 days ago

Taking one of the UK's biggest grocery chains to an employment tribunal was something that Ryan Toghill says almost took over his life.

"It was all I could think about for 18 months and more," he says.

The deputy store manager at Lidl, who'd told his bosses he'd been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), was called to a disciplinary meeting after breaking company rules by using equipment he hadn't been trained to use. After that meeting, Ryan was dismissed for gross misconduct.

He successfully appealed the decision and was offered a lower-paid role. He rejected it and took his case to a tribunal. Eventually, he was awarded more than £45,000 when the judge found his former employer hadn't fully taken his ADHD diagnosis into account during the disciplinary process.

The judgement found reasonable adjustments during the process hadn't been offered to him, such as additional breaks.

He'd been described by a manager as showing "a lack of remorse," something the tribunal found was clearly linked with his communication differences associated with having ADHD.

"I don't show a lot of emotions," Ryan explains. "I could be incredibly happy, angry, upset, or remorseful, and my facial expressions and tone of voice would essentially remain the same."

The tribunal upheld part of his claims for unfair dismissal, wrongful dismissal and a failure to make reasonable adjustments. Lidl says it's "committed to ensuring that everyone receives the reasonable adjustments, clear communication and support they need to thrive."

Campaigners, lawyers and HR teams say cases like this highlight a shift that businesses should be paying attention to.

Thousands of people have been diagnosed as neurodivergent in the last few years, an umbrella term that covers autism, ADHD and other conditions such as dyslexia and Tourette's syndrome.

Since the pandemic in particular, diagnosis rates for ADHD and autism have been rising, and they're featuring more regularly in disputes in employment tribunals.

While many people who are neurodivergent don't consider themselves disabled, the Equality Act 2010 may give them protection by recognising their condition as a disability, regardless of whether they have a formal diagnosis. They're entitled to reasonable adjustments if they can show that their condition has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on their ability to do normal day-to-day activities. These are widely defined and aren't limited to work tasks.

Cases going to tribunal can be around employers not making those adjustments, but they can also be about how people are treated at work.

For example, a 2025 tribunal found a software engineer who had ADHD had faced discrimination because a manager sighed and made other expressions of "non-verbal frustration" towards him.

"What we're seeing in tribunals is rarely the result of deliberate discrimination," says Lutfur Ali, a diversity and inclusion adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the professional body for HR.

"Cases commonly stem from reasonable adjustments being overlooked, performance processes that were never designed with different thinking styles in mind, and managers lacking confidence because they haven't been given the training or the time to have the right conversations."

So, while awareness of neurodivergence has never been higher, why are more cases like this ending up in the legal system? And are businesses struggling to keep up with the needs of the workforce?

Overdiagnosis or underdiagnosis?

Irwin Mitchell is one of the biggest law firms in the UK, and its lawyers say their caseloads increasingly include grievances linked to neurodivergence at work.

Using the Ministry of Justice's online judgments database, the company identified 517 employment tribunal cases mentioning neurodivergent conditions in 2025, up from 265 in 2020. The most commonly cited conditions were autism and ADHD.

The live database is limited and gives only a partial picture. The Ministry of Justice says the figures should not be considered official statistics.

Diagnosis rates of ADHD and autism have soared, and waiting lists for assessments on the NHS in England are at record levels, with lists even closing in some areas due to the huge demand. Irwin Mitchell says those long waits have an impact on workplaces too. "Anecdotally, we're seeing a lot of people that are either threatening to bring claims or actually bringing claims, that don't have formal diagnoses," says Jo Moseley, a legal director at the firm.

Research from University College London suggests nearly a 20-fold increase in the number of UK adults diagnosed with ADHD between 2000 and 2018. Diagnosis rates for autism were eight times higher in 2018 than in 1998.

Despite these rises in diagnosis and referrals, some studies suggest both ADHD and autism are actually underdiagnosed.

In June, the Lancet Regional Health Europe journal published research suggesting that while around 1.2% of adults in England had an ADHD diagnosis, international prevalence data estimates it affects 3-5% of people. The authors of the study said this indicates it could still be under-diagnosed, particularly in older age groups.

Similarly, research by King's College London last year suggested that around 90% of autistic people over 40 remain undiagnosed.

Diagnosis levels aside, there has been a huge increase in awareness of the challenges neurodivergent people can face - whether it's in communication preferences, personal organisation, or sensory needs. In workplaces, many describe "masking," a term which means trying to hide their traits in order to fit in - something which can put a huge strain on the person's wellbeing.

"Society is playing catch-up," says Ben Branson, an entrepreneur who runs a charity called The Hidden 20%, which campaigns for better understanding of neurodivergence. He was diagnosed with autism in 2022.

"The recognition of adult neurodivergence has exploded," he says. "But we have always been here, we are just not hiding anymore, and there are millions of people finally understanding why they kept moving jobs, why they didn't fit, why they kept burning out and why they felt so exhausted, who are no longer willing to struggle in silence."

This year's City and Guilds Foundation's Neurodiversity Index found that while employers think they're "doing better" when it comes to inclusion, neurodivergent employees say they are seeing only small improvements.

The study found employers' confidence levels in their own "neurodivergent readiness" averaged between 70-75%. However, the proportion of employees who reported feeling psychologically safe telling their employer about their diagnosis, and who believed their organisation understood the impact of their condition, was between 32-38%.

Invisible disabilities

This disconnect between managers and staff is something employment lawyer Jodie Hill is familiar with. Her firm, Thrive Law, specialises in workplace wellbeing and works with both employees and businesses. She set it up in 2018 after getting her own ADHD diagnosis at the age of 35.

"In the last three months, I've seen more than I've ever seen before in terms of enquiries," she says.

So, what are some employers doing that leads to successful action being taken against them? Hill says one thing that comes up a lot is bosses asking for proof of a formal diagnosis, when this isn't the legal test. Another issue can be an employer looking to dismiss someone over performance before considering a possible disability. Both of which could leave them exposed to claims of discrimination.

In the training sessions she carries out for businesses, she says she hears from the employer's perspective that it can feel like "every other conversation is about people wanting support".

Fears over cost, and concern that doing something for one member of staff means they have to do it for all of them, can lead to what Hill describes as an "initial dismissiveness" from some employers. But that, she says, comes from a lack of understanding over what can be an "internal and invisible" struggle.

"There's a mindset from employers that it's very linear… and that all the symptoms are the same every day," she says.

Another challenge can be determining what constitutes a "reasonable adjustment," a sticking point which can be what ends up being decided in a tribunal.

Hill says some employers "don't know where to start" and wrongly assume that making reasonable adjustments means doing whatever the employee asks.

Some tribunals have shown the limits of what's "reasonable." In one case, an autistic claimant had requested extensive changes to the recruitment process at the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC), including simplified questions and advance access to test questions. The JAC had already offered extra time and assistance from a friend and denied the extra requests. When it went to tribunal, the judge found the adjustments the person had asked for were "clearly going beyond what was necessary or reasonable".

While there isn't a check list for employers, lawyers stress that they have to be able to justify why they're saying no to something, and show they've looked at alternative options.

Jo Moseley from law firm Irwin Mitchell explains that when it comes to judging what is "reasonable", a tribunal would take into account factors like the person's role, and the size of the business.

"Big employers will certainly be expected to do more than small employers," she says, stressing that many adjustments can cost nothing or very little, such as looking at how meetings are structured, offering regular breaks, or somewhere quiet to work.

In one tribunal last year, the pub chain Greene King was found to have failed to make reasonable adjustments for a chef who was dyslexic and struggled with reading orders.

He'd asked for a Bluetooth headset. The tribunal found that the company's failure to provide this adjustment had led to his employment ending. He was awarded £24,000. A spokesperson for Greene King said it respected the tribunal's decision and that it was committed to upholding the highest standards of employee welfare.

"Ultimately, the purpose of an adjustment is to facilitate good performance, not to lower the standard of performance," says Prof Nancy Doyle, an occupational psychologist.

"Employers are anxious of challenge, anxious about saying or doing the wrong thing," she adds.

She explains that employers are not expected to keep someone in a job where they're risking safety or delivering less than their peers, but that in some workplaces, managers end up "covering for neurodivergent staff," leaving them in a situation where they are "dependent on kindness, which may ebb away over time."

Daniel Rickman, who runs glazing business Structura, decided not to wait for individuals to ask for adjustments - but instead offer them to all staff.

The company introduced flexible working, fidget toys in meeting rooms, and red or green "busy lights" on desks, that allow staff to indicate whether they're happy to be disturbed.

He says it means the business is "getting the best out of everybody" and he is retaining skilled staff. However, showing the polarisation around the topic, he says he has also been criticised for being "woke."

As awareness of neurodiversity has grown, some businesses such as Microsoft and BAE Systems have created targeted hiring programmes to attract neurodivergent candidates, aware of the skills they can bring to their organisations.

'Nobody fits into neat boxes'

Making neurodiversity a part of how workplaces are designed is what Prof Amanda Kirby believes is needed.

She's heading up the government's expert panel, set up to look at improving the job chances of neurodivergent people, and says a "medical" model of providing adjustments is inadequate.

"Nobody fits into neat boxes", she says, adding that training focused on doing x for dyslexia or y for ADHD is "never going to work."

"It's not neurodiversity over here, mental health over here, unemployment over there," she says, pointing out that those who are not in employment, education or training, and those moving through the justice system are less likely to have a diagnosis and more likely to be neurodivergent.

Kirby's report is yet to be published, but it's part of the government's wider plans to tackle stubborn levels of economic inactivity that remain higher than before the pandemic.

A Government report in 2024 found autistic graduates are twice as likely to be unemployed after 15 months as non-disabled graduates, and last year, the government's ADHD Taskforce estimated that "unsupported" ADHD was costing the economy £17bn a year.

The latest official figures show the number of people receiving Personal Independent Payments topping 4 million, the number of those with ADHD as their main condition was around 100,000 in April, up by 30,000 in the last two years. Just over half of these were aged 16 to 24.

The government is investing £3.5bn into personalised employment support for disabled people and those with health conditions in order to address problems with employment levels.

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson told the BBC: "For too long disabled people and those with a neurodiversity condition have been left behind, ignored, and not given the support they need to get into work."

As well as costly, these tribunal claims are becoming increasingly drawn out as the UK's tribunal system creaks.

Figures from the Ministry of Justice put the number of open claims at a record high of 531,000.

Jenna Ide, a partner and employment law specialist at Thomas Mansfield Solicitors, says that the backlog adds pressure on employers.

"It can take several years for a case to reach a final hearing," she says. "In the meantime, employers are often required to make difficult judgement calls without knowing where a tribunal would ultimately draw the line," she adds.

Law firms say some tribunals are now being listed for 2030 and the backlog is expected to grow with the Employment Rights Act. From January 2027, this will give workers protection against unfair dismissal after six months instead of only after two years.

"Most people, even conservatively, think that there's going to be a huge explosion just in unfair dismissal claims," says Irwin Mitchell's Jo Moseley.

Not only could this backlog create problems in terms of access to justice, but according to Kirby, rising numbers of tribunals could have another troubling effect.

"Some employers will go, 'these people' are potentially going to cause us lots of problems," she says, adding that this could lead to a "hidden bias" in recruitment, where employers consider it too risky to take on someone they believe to be neurodivergent and so find a reason to give the job to someone else.

Ryan Toghill, who says he hasn't worked since leaving Lidl because of poor health, says his experience has left him conflicted over whether he would tell a prospective employer about his diagnosis.

But despite the challenges, his hope is that workplace changes will "trickle through businesses" in time.

"You've got to manage people differently if they're neurodivergent," he says. "You can get the best out of them, if you adapt a little bit."

Lead image: Getty

Andy Burnham's first week pledges - how much do they add up to?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy078kj0ezyo, 9 days ago

Andy Burnham is ending his first week as prime minister by working out of Manchester in the new No 10 North for the first time.

He spent this week making a series of spending announcements mostly aimed at tackling the cost of living, including capping bus fares.

BBC Verify has looked at Burnham's first week of spending commitments, how much they cost and how the government says they will be paid for, which comes to about £1.5bn.

Here's how that breaks down and what could later be coming down the line.

End rough sleeping in England

Cost: £340m over five years, funded

In his speech outside Downing Street on Monday, Burnham said his "first instruction" would be "to end rough sleeping in our country".

The most recent official data suggests that there were around 4,800 people sleeping rough on a single night in England in 2025, up from 1,800 in 2010.

The government announced that Burnham's "instruction" would be delivered by £340m of spending, which it said would support at least 3,000 people over a five year period.

It said this money would come from existing "uncommitted" budgets in the housing department.

This means that the funding has been made available by the Treasury to the department but had not yet been assigned to a specific project.

VAT cut from electricity bills

Cost: £850m, unfunded

On Tuesday morning the Treasury announced that it would cut VAT from domestic electricity bills in the current financial year, knocking an estimated £45 from the typical household's annual bill from the autumn.

It said this would cost £850m in 2026-27 - to be funded by scrapping the previous government's digital ID scheme, which had been estimated to cost £1.8bn over the next three years.

However, the Office for Budget Responsibility, the official spending watchdog, made clear in the last budget that the digital ID scheme was itself "unfunded" at that stage.

That implies that while scrapping the digital ID scheme will reduce a spending pressure on the government it will not, in itself, pay for the VAT cut.

That tax cut will have to be funded in the next budget, either by tax rises or specific spending cuts elsewhere.

£2 cap on bus fares

Cost: £500m, funded

On Wednesday, the government announced it would reduce the cap on bus fares in England from £3 to £2 from 1 January 2027, though this does not include London.

It estimated this cap would cost the Department for Transport more than £500m.

It said most of this would be found by replacing grants for international climate projects with loans. This would save the government money because the loans would be expected to be paid back in full, plus interest, freeing up funds to pay for the bus cap policy.

But there are still uncertainties with this approach, said Max Warner from the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

"It's not clear how much we would expect to be paid back nor what the interest rates will be," he said.

Cut in business rates for pubs

Cost: £100m, funded

On Thursday the government announced it would cut business rates for pubs, clubs and live music venues in England by 20% from April 2027, saving a typical pub £1,100.

It estimated that this tax cut would cost the Treasury around £100m a year.

The government claimed it would be "fully funded" but did not provide details, beyond stating that part of the cost would be met by "reviewing reliefs for businesses that do not make a positive contribution to local communities, such as vape shops". It did not state what other kinds of businesses would fall into this category.

The Starmer government had already announced a business rates support package for pubs in England in January, with a 15% cut applying in the current financial year of 2026-27 and a real-terms freeze in their rates for the subsequent two years.

At that time officials estimated that package would cost £80m in its first year, and the cost in the subsequent two years would be calculated in due course by the Office for Budget Responsibility.

The latest business support for pubs from the Burnham government will come on top of that earlier support - so the Treasury will have to provide an official costing for the overall package announced since January in the Autumn budget.

No 10 North

Cost: Downing Street says no additional cost to taxpayers, funded

Burnham ended his first week as PM by working out of the new No 10 North, based at Heron House in Manchester's city centre, which he claimed will be the "situation room for making Britain better".

He's expected to work from there each week, with other ministers including Education Secretary Lucy Powell and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Louise Haigh, who is overseeing the department as part of her role, also working there on a regular basis.

Up to 300 civil servants are expected to join the operation by the end of the next year, but Downing Streets insists it will cost taxpayers no extra money.

"The running of No 10 North will be covered by existing Cabinet Office budgets. There is no additional cost to taxpayers", Burnham's spokesman told reporters earlier this week.

How does it all add up?

These pledges add up to about £1.5bn. That might sound like a lot, but they are small commitments relative to overall government spending, which is projected to be around £1.4 trillion (£1,400bn) this year - making it about 0.1% of total public spending.

The bigger question is whether Burnham is likely to follow through with some of the more expensive policies he's previously signalled, including reforming social care or expanding council house building.

Burnham earlier this week indicated he could raise the income tax personal allowance, which the Institute for Fiscal Studies has estimated could end up costing £8.5-9bn but the idea of this happening imminently was downplayed within days.

Chancellor John Healey is likely to want to take defence spending from 2.7% to 3% of GDP by 2030, given he resigned as Keir Starmer's defence secretary over the Treasury's failure to commit the money to do that. But that would cost an additional £9bn a year in today's money.

Burnham has also promised the "the biggest council house building programme since the post-war period". While the details are unclear, estimates from the Centre for Cities think tanks suggest that to match the English council house building rates of the 1950s to the 1970s would require another £13bn a year in public subsidy.

Policies on this scale, which could run into several billions, would likely need to be set out in future budgets and spending reviews, alongside detailed plans about how they would be paid for.

However, Burnham has said he will stick to the government's existing fiscal rules - not borrowing for day-to-day spending and having debt fall as a share of the economy by the end of the Parliament.

That means any major new spending commitments would likely require difficult choices: such as raising taxes or cutting spending elsewhere.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Tankers make sharp U-turns after Houthi shipping threat

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0n127lpzgo, 11 days ago

At least seven oil tankers have made U-turns close to Yemen since the Iran-linked Houthi group announced a "maritime embargo" against Saudi Arabia on Monday, ship-tracking data shows.

All of the ships were travelling either to or from Saudi ports and made sharp changes of course after the embargo was announced.

Nearly 15% of global sea trade moves through the Red Sea, which connects the Mediterranean and Gulf of Aden through two choke points - the Suez Canal in Egypt and the Bab al-Mandab Strait between Yemen and the Horn of Africa.

The Red Sea has been a key route for exports of Saudi oil since the US-Israeli war with Iran led to the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has severely restricted the flow of oil and gas from the Gulf.

This has played a "major role in relieving pressure to global markets" and if the Houthis further restrict trade then "prices will go up", said Rosemary Kelanic from the US-based Defense Priorities think tank.

The day before the Houthis announced their blockade, 20 vessels entered the Red Sea and 22 exited via the Bab al-Mandeb strait, according to maritime intelligence firm Kpler.

Kelanic told BBC Verify that any Houthi attacks on vessels in the Red Sea or Gulf of Aden "will suppress all international traffic not just Saudi-bound vessels".

The EU's naval force in the region Aspides recommended on Wednesday that "merchant vessels linked to Israeli, US or Saudi interests avoid transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden until the threat level decreases", according to an advisory seen by Reuters news agency.

Ship-tracking data from MarineTraffic shows the crude oil tanker Rodos, loaded with Saudi crude, departed for India from the Red Sea port of al-Muajiz on Monday evening. The Liberian-flagged ship set off south towards the Bab al-Mandab Strait but about nine hours later made a U-turn and began sailing north instead.

The Liberian-flagged oil and chemical tanker Mica departed Saudi Arabia's Jazan port on Monday afternoon and also headed south before reversing course.

Ship-tracking data shows at least eight ships bound for the Red Sea have made U-turns instead of entering the Bab al-Mandab Strait from the south as well.

Marshall Islands-flagged vehicle carrier Liu Jiang Kou was sailing to Saudi Arabia's Jeddah port from China before completely changing course on Monday in the Gulf of Aden.

A Hong Kong-flagged crude oil tanker sailing from China called New Prime also turned around as it headed towards Saudi Arabia on Monday and now appears to be waiting in the Arabian Sea.

While the reasons for each course change cannot be independently verified, "the timing is consistent with the embargo announcement," said maritime risk management company Vanguard.

In an email to shipowners on Monday, which the BBC has seen, the Houthis said "vessels are banned from loading or discharging cargo at any Saudi ports". It added that ships "may be subject to targeting in any location within the operational reach".

The Houthis have said their embargo is in retaliation to a Saudi blockade of ports and airports in Houthi-controlled north-western Yemen.

Saudi Arabia has condemned the allegation and has vowed to "take all necessary measures to protect its ships in accordance with international law".

Yemen has been devastated by a civil war since 2014, when the Houthis captured the capital of Sana'a from the government. The conflict escalated in 2015, after a Saudi-led coalition of Arab states intervened to try and restore the official government.

There has been an informal truce between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia since 2022. But last week, the Houthis launched missiles at an airport in south-western Saudi Arabia in response to air strikes on Sanaa's airport that they blamed on the kingdom.

The Houthis have previously caused severe disruption to the the 32km-wide (20-mile) Bab al-Mandab Strait.

Shortly after the Gaza war broke out in October 2023, the Houthis began attacking merchant vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, saying they were acting in support of the Palestinians. These attacks led to four ships being sunk, one vessel seized, and nine crew members killed.

Since the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia has diverted more than 70% of its crude exports from the Gulf to the Red Sea port of Yanbu through an east-west pipeline.

About four million barrels per day have been shipped from Yanbu in recent weeks, compared with about 973,000 a year earlier, according to data from Kpler and maritime analytics platform Signal Ocean.

Naveen Das, a senior oil analyst from Kpler, told BBC Verify the only option left to the Saudis if the Bab al-Mandab Strait is effectively closed would be to move oil all the way through the Mediterranean and around the southern tip of Africa to get to Asia.

The impact of the blockade on consumers won't be immediate, but the conflict with Iran has made the global energy system more vulnerable to shocks like these, Das added. "We could weather it for two weeks, three weeks, even a month, but even in that time, we will see higher freight rates, higher energy prices and that bleeds into higher energy consumer costs."

Ships close to the Red Sea are also broadcasting messages in an attempt to deter attacks, a common practise in the region since the Houthis targeted vessels during the war in Gaza.

At least 50 vessels in the region are broadcasting they have armed guards on board, according to data from MarineTraffic.

Martin Kelly, from crisis management firm EOS Risk Group, told BBC Verify that captains will fear the "Houthis might read your situation wrong" and think their ships have "called at a Saudi port in the past, then therefore you could be attacked".

"A lot of these ships are very large crude oil carriers. I think the damage would be catastrophic. There would be certainly be deaths onboard these ships," he added.

Additional reporting by Barbara Metzler

Large rise in offenders sent back to prison, figures reveal

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6298ljegkgo, 3 days ago

There has been a large rise in the number of offenders being recalled to prisons in England and Wales having been released on licence, new government figures show.

There were 51,419 licence recalls in the year ending March 2026, up from 40,259 in the previous year - a 28% increase.

Although recalls in January to March were slightly lower than the previous three-month period, they remain well above historical levels.

The figures follow government schemes to release a number of offenders early in an effort to ease prison overcrowding.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said offenders released on licence face strict conditions "and can be hauled back to prison if they break these rules".

Cassia Rowland, from the Institute for Government think tank, said most recalls are for breaches of licence conditions, such as missed appointments, rather than offenders committing further offences or posing a serious risk to the public.

"The probation service is overwhelmed, with high caseloads and lots of vacancies putting often inexperienced staff under huge pressure," she said.

The most common reason provided for prison recalls between January and March was "non-compliance" (9,683), followed by "failed to keep in touch" (5,025).

There were 2,891 recalls because an offender faced further charges between January and March 2026, a 23% rise on the same period in 2025. More than one reason can be recorded against each recall.

Alex Hewson, from the Prison Reform Trust, said: "Many leave prison facing challenges such as addiction, poor mental health and unstable housing, making compliance with licence conditions difficult."

Responding to the figures, the MoJ said "public protection is our priority" and the statistics "show that we do not hesitate to recall offenders to prison when the risk escalates."

Sentencing Act release scheme paused

The increase in prisoner recall comes after the government introduced an early release scheme in England and Wales to help ease overcrowding pressure in September 2024.

The scheme meant eligible prisoners could be released after serving 40% of their sentence rather than half.

As of March 2026, 70,066 people had been released under the scheme.

Rowland says early release schemes have contributed to the increase in recalls.

"But these schemes have also made it harder for prisons and probation to prepare people for release effectively and give them support with basic things like finding accommodation, accessing job support and so on."

Despite the releases there were still 86,267 people in England and Wales' prisons as of 27 July, meaning the prison estate was 97% full.

In a further attempt to ease prison capacity pressure, Sir Keir Starmer's government had planned to release some offenders after serving just one-third of their custodial term.

The Sentencing Act release scheme was due to come into force from 2 September, but it has been paused by new Prime Minister Andy Burnham following criticism from survivors and victims' families.

The BBC understands around 700 prisoners would have been eligible for early release under the scheme's first phase.

Although the prison population has remained relatively stable since 2010, following rapid growth in the 1990s, government projections suggest it could rise to about 90,000 in 2028.

Using early release to manage prison overcrowding is not new.

Governments led by Labour and the Conservatives have each introduced emergency measures when the prison system has come under strain.

In October 2023, Rishi Sunak's Conservative government began releasing eligible offenders up to 18 days early. The scheme was eventually expanded to up to 70 days ahead of offenders' release date.

Nick Hardwick, the former chief inspector of prisons, says early release alone will not solve the problem, arguing "it's just going to slow the rate of growth".

New prison plans

The Starmer government announced a plan to add 14,000 new prison places by 2031, including four new prisons. It said it would acquire land if necessary and would "make sure the supply always keeps up with demand".

The MoJ previously told BBC Verify the government had delivered about 3,200 prison places so far - 1,600 for each of their two years in office. However, this figure only covers new prison places and does not factor in those taken out of use.

Hardwick says expanding the number of prisons is only part of the answer because "the one thing you can't do quickly is produce experienced staff."

The prison building programme is already costing billions of pounds, he adds, leaving it up to ministers to decide how much they are prepared to spend to keep more people in prison for longer.

"There's no perfect solution... it's a question of what's the least bad option."

Additional reporting by Isobel Cottam

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Andy Burnham wants to fix social care - what are the options?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4k54g0ldjo, 4 days ago

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said he wants major reform of the social care system in England, calling the current situation "bad for everybody".

In a speech at a care home on Wednesday he announced that cross-party talks involving the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats would start later.

Burnham also said he had asked Baroness Casey - who is carrying out a review of social care - to bring forward her report by a year. She will now set out her recommendations in 2027.

He confirmed that her review will also look at the question of how to pay for any reforms.

BBC Verify has looked at four options for approaching reform and how much they could cost.

1. Cap on lifetime care costs

Some people face extremely high costs for care at the end of their life.

It has been estimated that around one in seven people aged 65 and over face lifetime care costs of more than £100,000.

One proposal is to cap these costs with the government picking up the bill above a certain cash threshold.

In 2011 a commission headed by the economist Andrew Dilnot proposed a lifetime cap of £35,000.

Dilnot estimated his proposed reforms would cost between £1.3bn and £2.2bn a year. The cost today would be higher due to inflation and the ageing population.

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, led by David Cameron, accepted Dilnot's recommendations.

But after the 2015 general election, which delivered a Conservative majority, Cameron delayed the implementation of the cap to 2020 over what he said were pressures on the public finances.

In 2017, when Theresa May was in No 10, the Conservatives' general election manifesto proposed a different way to reform social care.

This would have included the value of an individual's home in the means test used to decide what state funding they could get for care in their own homes.

It did not, initially, include any cap on lifetime care costs, with the manifesto saying this was more "equitable" than the Dilnot plan.

The May plan was branded a "dementia tax" by opponents and eventually dropped.

2. A more generous means test

In England people can currently qualify for local authority financial support in a residential care home if all their assets - including their home - are worth less than £23,250.

This is known as a means test - where the level of financial support a person gets is based on the value of their assets and savings.

Some have suggested this threshold should be raised significantly so that many more people would qualify for means-tested support.

Boris Johnson's Conservative government in 2021 planned to raise the means test threshold to £100,000.

The annual cost of Johnson's reforms would have been £1.8bn a year over three years - although this was expected to rise over time as more people qualified.

The Johnson government planned a new Health and Social Care levy to pay for the package, but this was eventually scrapped by his Conservative successors as prime minister, because they wanted to keep taxes down.

3. Free personal care

An alternative approach is to ensure that everyone who is eligible, based on their needs, should get state-funded personal care that is free at the point of use.

This would be provided free regardless of an individual's means and whether it was received by an elderly person in their own house or a residential care home.

Scotland has implemented such a system.

However, it's important to note that personal care takes in things like helping frail elderly people wash and dress and go to the toilet.

But it does not include accommodation, food and everyday living costs which are subject to means testing.

The Health Foundation think tank estimates that implementing a Scottish-style system in England would cost £7.5bn a year by 2036.

Like Scotland, Japan and Germany have systems which base entitlement to personal social care mainly on people's care needs rather than their ability to pay.

Japan and Germany though have a mandatory long-term care insurance system which is funded through contributions from workers and employers.

Both countries also do not usually cover the full cost of personal care so individuals are responsible for some of the expenses.

4. National care service

Some have suggested that the government should set up a national care service in England, similar in ambition to the NHS.

This would mean all personal care would be free at the point of use while establishing national standards and care entitlement criteria.

The Health Foundation has estimated the cost of creating a universal and comprehensive social care system in England would be around £19bn a year extra by 2036.

When Andy Burnham was health secretary in Gordon Brown's Labour government in 2010 he produced a plan for a national care service.

It was suggested this would be paid for through a compulsory contribution from people's estates after they'd died.

But the idea was branded a "death tax" by Labour's opponents. The party lost the 2010 general election and its proposals went no further.

In the 2024 general election Labour again proposed a "national care service" without providing details or how it would be funded.

And after the election then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer effectively kicked the issue into the long grass by commissioning Louise Casey to investigate social care reform and report back in 2028.

It's worth bearing in mind that these four approaches above are not mutually exclusive.

Previous reform proposals have often combined more than one of them - such as a cap on lifetime costs and a more generous means test.

Three reasons why UK electricity prices are so high

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn8n5vnmjlzo, 12 days ago

While the UK government has announced it will cut VAT on domestic electricity this October from 5% to zero in an attempt to help with the cost of living, British households are still paying more for power than many other European nations.

Comparing UK prices with the EU shows that medium-use households here paid the fourth-highest electricity prices in the second half of last year including taxes and levies, although the government has taken steps to reduce bills since then.

Here are three key reasons why British electricity prices are high.

1. The cost of wholesale gas often sets the electricity price

The price energy suppliers pay for electricity is set by a bidding process with each generating company saying what it would be willing to accept to produce one unit of electricity.

Once built, the cost of generating power from renewables like wind and solar is relatively low, so these typically come in with the cheapest bid. Nuclear might come next.

Gas generators often have the highest costs because they have to buy fuel to generate electricity as well as paying a "carbon price" - a charge for emissions.

The wholesale cost is set by the last unit of electricity needed to meet demand from consumers.

This means that even if gas only generates 1% of overall electricity at a given time it can often set the overall wholesale price which gets paid to every type of generator.

That raises prices for households - particularly because the wars in Iran and Ukraine have increased the cost of gas.

Northern Ireland operates on a separate system to the rest of the UK, being part of the Single Electricity Market with the Republic of Ireland.

2. Other countries have a different energy mix

Analysts say that one of the reasons why electricity prices are higher in the UK than some other countries is because we generate a relatively high share of our electricity from natural gas.

In 2025 31% of the UK's electricity was produced from burning natural gas.

This compares with just 3% in France, which generated the majority of its electricity - 69% - from nuclear power.

The US has a higher share of natural gas in its electricity generation mix than the UK - 40% - but American wholesale gas prices are considerably lower thanks to the shale gas production boom of the past 20 years.

3. The UK is building much more electricity grid infrastructure

Higher wholesale gas prices have pushed up UK domestic electricity bills this year.

The wholesale energy costs contribution to a typical household bill in Great Britain rose from £311 in 2024-25 to £320 in 2025-26.

But bills have also been pushed up in recent years by state subsidies to encourage private firms to build wind and solar farms and also national electricity grid network investment costs, which previous governments have added to household electricity bills.

These network costs have been driven by the need to expand and modernise the grid to accommodate new wind and solar farms and transmit their power to homes and businesses.

The network costs contribution to a typical bill rose from £136 in 2019-20 to £250 in 2026, an increase of £113.

"We've probably underinvested in the last decade and now we're trying to catch up so there's quite a lot of spending," says Frankie Mayo, an energy analyst from Ember Energy.

The generation subsidies contribution to a typical bill rose from £127 in 2019-20 to £159 in 2026, an increase of £32.

Network costs are projected to increase further by 2030, adding another £48 to a typical bill, according to calculations by energy analyst Ben James.

However the government and some energy groups also argue that reducing our national reliance on volatile international gas prices via the government's 2030 clean power policy will keep down the UK's wholesale electricity costs and mean household bills will be lower than they would otherwise have been.

This would be by reducing the amount of time in each year that gas sets the wholesale electricity price.

A great deal though depends on future wholesale gas prices which are impossible to accurately forecast.

Some analysts, including the government's Climate Change Committee, also say the government should go further to remove policy costs from household electricity bills and meet them through general taxation instead, in order to avoid discouraging people from using electricity rather than gas to heat their homes.

"The way you allocate those costs matters," says Mayo.

"They may be being put on bills or they may be being paid by consumers in other ways that are less visible, such as taxes."