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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected US President Donald Trump's 15-point plan for Gaza, stating that no military pull-out will happen until Hamas is "genuinely" disarmed.

Trump's Board of Peace said last month it had reached an agreement for the "complete disarmament" of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.

But Hamas said handing over its heavy weapons was contingent on Israel ending "all forms of aggression" and withdrawing its forces from Gaza.

Israel has continued to carry out strikes on Gaza since agreeing to an initial ceasefire in the territory last October.

"Israel rejects the 15-point document," Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting on Sunday.

The Israeli military "will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed and will continue to thwart threats against our forces and our citizens", he added.

Trump last month announced "a monumental step toward lasting peace and security" after Hamas said it had accepted a disarmament plan for Gaza.

But Netanyahu said that Hamas had to disarm before Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza, adding it couldn't be some "fictitious disarmament".

He said he was now in discussion with US officials about how to go forward.

"They have ideas; some of them are acceptable to us and some are not, and we know how to stand our ground on these matters," he said.

Just months before Israeli elections, the Israeli prime minister is unlikely to want to make concessions.

He has faced calls from his far-right allies to hold a new cabinet vote and end the Gaza plan, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir who dismissed the draft as "not acceptable".

It signals another blow for Trump's Gaza peace plan which was announced in September last year.

The plan 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.

Suspected crime boss Daniel Kinahan to be returned to Ireland in high-security operation

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62qd5plzp6o, today

A large-scale security operation is in place in the Republic of Ireland as the authorities prepare for the extradition of alleged crime boss Daniel Kinahan.

The 49-year-old was arrested in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in April and on Saturday an Irish government jet flew to Dubai to prepare to collect him.

The plane is expected to return to Dublin on Sunday and Kinahan will then be taken to the Special Criminal Court.

Ahead of the extradition, the Irish Prison Service bought a bulletproof and bomb-proof van which can be used to escort prisoners who are considered high-risk.

Irish authorities are expected to prosecute him for his involvement in leading an organised crime group.

Kinahan is not only wanted by the authorities in Ireland - the US Treasury Department once described the Kinahan cartel as one of the most dangerous in the world.

The US government imposed sanctions on Kinahan in April 2022 after he and other members of his family were identified as leaders of the Kinahan organised crime cartel.

He fought attempts to extradite him back to his native country, where the Kinahan cartel was involved in a long-running gangland feud that claimed 18 lives.

Kinahan himself became a target for murder and escaped an attempt on his life during a fatal shooting at a Dublin hotel in 2016.

He left Ireland and spent time living in Spain and more recently in Dubai, where a warrant for his arrest was issued by the Irish courts in April.

He appealed the extradition order over the past few months but his attempts were unsuccessful.

It is expected that shortly after his arrival in Ireland he will be taken to the non-jury Special Criminal Court in Dublin to face charges for alleged involvement in leading an organised crime group.

Sunday's security operation will involve armed gardaí (Irish police) and members of the Irish Defence Forces as well as the Irish Prison Service, according RTÉ News.

The broadcaster also said facilities have been upgraded in the maximum-security Portlaoise Prison in County Laois where he is expected to be held on remand.

An extradition agreement is in place between the UAE and Ireland and it was used to extradite Sean McGovern, a "senior lieutenant" in the organised crime group.

He was sentenced to 24 years in prison in June for directing the activities of a criminal organisation.

What is the Kinahan cartel?

For more than 20 years the group has been responsible for importing tonnes of drugs and firearms around the world, the National Crime Agency (NCA) previously said.

The NCA said the crime group is linked to more than a dozen gangland murders.

According to former Gardaí (Irish police) Commissioner Drew Harris, the gang is estimated to have made more than €1bn (£836,590,000) globally from its activities.

The US Treasury Department has in the past compared the gang to crime organisations such as Italy's Camorra, Mexico's Los Zetas and Japan's Yakuza.

A reward of up to $5m (£3.84m) has also been offered by the US for information on the three most senior Kinahan gang members - Daniel, his father Christopher Snr, 65, and brother Christopher Jnr.

In 2022, Thomas Kavanagh, who the NCA said ran the group's criminal operations in the UK, was jailed for 21 years alongside Gary Vickery and Daniel Canning, who were sentenced to 20 years and 19 and a half years respectively.

The NCA said evidence showed they were responsible for cocaine imports estimated to be up to £23.4m, and cannabis imports worth about £6.4m.

Daniel Kinahan's lawyer previously told BBC Panorama that he has no criminal record or convictions and allegations about him being a crime boss are false and have no evidential basis.

Drones spotted over German base days after Leipzig bomb incident

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyeg1ljp2eo, today

Two drones were spotted over a military base in western Germany just days after an explosive-laden device was found at Leipzig airport.

Germany's armed forces (Bundeswehr) confirmed they were seen on Thursday evening at a base in Mechernich, near Bonn, reportedly housing components for US-made Patriot air-defence systems.

A spokeswoman for the Bundeswehr Joint Force Command said military police were deployed to the site before the matter was handed over to local police.

It is the latest instance of drones being spotted near military bases or airports in European nations supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia, on which suspicion has fallen. Moscow has consistently denied any involvement.

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told newspaper Bild on Sunday that Germany had become a regular target of "destabilising" attacks.

"We're not at war, but we are the daily target of hybrid warfare," he said.

Germany is currently investigating how a drone laden with explosives was able to reach a runway at Leipzig/Halle airport, which is used by Nato, the Germany military and serves as a base for Ukraine's Antonov Airlines.

The Bundeswehr declined to comment on the ongoing investigation when asked by the BBC on Sunday about the suspected origins of the drones spotted above Mechernich.

The local police force has been contacted for comment.

German media reports that the base has a storage facility for equipment and spare parts used to maintain the Patriot missile batteries.

The air-defence systems have become crucial to Ukraine's ability to intercept Russian ballistic missiles since Moscow's full-scale invasion began in 2022.

However, President Volodymyr Zelensky this week pleaded to allies for further supplies, warning that Ukraine was running out of interceptor missiles.

After initially offering Ukraine license to make Patriots in early July, US President Donald Trump last week denied any such agreement.

A spate of drone sightings in European airspace last year left the continent on high alert, prompting the EU to discuss a continent-wide "drone wall" of air defences.

Some European officials have blamed Russia for these drone sightings, claims Moscow has previously described as "absurd".

Hundreds arrested over French wildfires, but who is to blame?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgxjn92x9jo, today

After wildfires caused more damage in France this year than at any time since World War Two, many are left asking a single question: Why?

A major driver is that climate is changing as a result of the well-documented way humanity is burning fossil fuels. Temperatures are only rising.

But with records showing that nine out of 10 French wildfires are started by humans, the government in Paris is trying to attribute blame - although it is itself accused of being underprepared for the infernos that have now scorched more than 300,000 acres this summer.

The interior ministry has announced 420 arrests of people alleged to have either started the fires deliberately or by accident. Among them are 166 minors.

In one case, a 23-year-old man has been accused of deliberately starting 10 fires in the space of five days in the south-eastern Var area last month. He faces 15 years in prison and a €150,000 (£128,000) fine, if convicted.

Many others have been tried and immediately sentenced, such as a man who received a three-year jail sentence for starting three recent fires in the Raon-L'Étape forest in the Vosges region.

"Only a few square metres of vegetation went up in smoke," noted L'Est Républicain, the newspaper that reported the story.

Other prosecutions have been perceived as heavy-handed and unjust. A homeless man and someone with severe autism have reportedly been handed jail terms for throwing cigarette butts.

"I was amazed at the number of arrests, it feels excessive," admits Muriel Gestas, a lawyer who has represented several people accused of arson, including two firefighters. She doubts many will lead to a conviction.

The newspaper Le Monde is also unconvinced. It questions to what extent police have examined these cases, given the short time frame.

The authorities' silence on the details - the specific charges, notably whether they involve intent and how the numbers compare with past seasons - rules out any meaningful comparison with previous years, it argues.

But Bordeaux prosecutor Renaud Gaudeul told Le Monde that a tough approach was justified by current circumstances.

"The conditions for a charge of endangering lives are met for those who throw a cigarette butt or light a barbecue in wooded areas. It only takes a tiny spark for it to start," the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Working out how a fire started is, unsurprisingly, not easy.

"In periods of drought such as this one, all you need is a simple lighter," explains Eric Dufayet, an officer who investigates fires.

Once a fire is out, Eric's first task is to map its outline along the edge of the burnt vegetation, then trace it back to its point of origin. If the wind has been steady, that outline often forms a "V" shape. From there, his team works backwards along the path the flames took.

"If someone deliberately starts a fire, they may not have used only one device," he says. It improves the chances of a DNA or fingerprint sample being found.

Experts believe arson accounts for only a small fraction of fires. Most are believed to be accidental, with sparks potentially coming from construction work, faulty electrical equipment, cigarette butts and barbecues.

"With cigarettes, it's called the '30' rule," says Eric Dufayet. To start a fire, he explains, there must be "a temperature of at least 30C (86F), a maximum of 30% humidity, wind of less than 30km/h (19mph), and at least 30% of the cigarette unburnt."

In the current drought, he says it is even easier. If those conditions are met, a fire can easily spread, and fast.

According to Michel Lejoyeux, a professor of psychiatry and addictive behaviour at Paris 7 University, people who start fires fall into three categories: those who are careless, those who benefit - with an insurance payout, for example - and pyromaniacs.

"The pyromaniac doesn't get money, has no spirit of revenge, has no utility of the fire, but he likes the fire," he says.

However, pyromania is a rare psychiatric disorder that Lejoyeux says is very difficult to diagnose, and accounts for few arson convictions.

Lawyer Muriel Gestas, who has handled several such cases, says some firefighters alleged to have started fires may have wanted to be seen as saviours. For others - notably volunteers earning tax-free overtime - the motive may be financial.

Amid concerns over how officials are pursuing suspects, broader worries about wildfires are far from abating. Forecasts suggest France's next heatwave is only days away.

President Emmanuel Macron says criticism should not be the priority right now. "We will have to replant and rebuild a different kind of forest because we must adapt to the structural conditions of climate change," he said this week.

"The time for reviewing lessons learned will come," he insisted. "In the meantime, the country must remain united."

Even so, the damage these fires have inflicted on the environment, hundreds of homes, tourism, local businesses and air quality has left the French public with a lot of questions.

Israel accused of weaponising archaeology at ancient West Bank sites

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20d8qre98do, today

Up in the hills above the Roman columns of the ancient site of Sebastia, in the occupied West Bank, are olive fields that have been cultivated for generations by Palestinian families.

One of the landowners, Abu Mudif, says he has received notification that his land is part of a tranche of about 450 acres that the Israeli authorities are taking possession of in order, they say, to protect and develop the site for a major new national park.

Typically, Palestinian landowners receive little or no payment for such land expropriation. And even when it is offered, most refuse it as they see accepting it as giving recognition and legitimacy to the loss of what they see as their patrimony.

It's a vital income for Abu Mudif to lose of course, but it goes deeper than that for him.

"If I wanted to describe it, the closest description I can give is that it is like having your soul ripped away. I cannot imagine myself without my land."

Nahed Sakha owns a local restaurant that is under threat of demolition.

He says the Israeli plan seems to be to cut Palestinian residents off from the archaeological site, which dates back thousands of years and has significant remains from the ancient Jewish past, as well as many other eras including the Romans, the Crusaders and the Ottomans.

"Restoration work has now begun along with excavations," he says. "Landowners were told that no-one would be allowed to use or plough their land."

The concerns of the village that surrounds Sebastia have been echoed by the United Nations culture and education agency, Unesco, which has now declared it not just a World Heritage Site but also added it to the List of World Heritage in Danger.

Unesco says that the main threat facing the site concerns what it calls the "planned expropriation and creation of the 'Samaria' (Shomron) national park, which could divide the property".

Standing on a path between the entrance car park in Sebastia on one side - where the Roman-era forum once stood - and the columns of the basilica on the other, the village mayor, Mohammed Azem, looks down to his right at some rubbish left in the ruins.

He says locals are now worried about reaching down to clean the area as it might cause problems with Israeli security forces and settlers.

The path on which he stands divides the site between Area B of the West Bank - which is under Palestinian civil and Israeli security control - and Area C, which is under full Israeli civil and security control.

Last week, Israel allocated roughly 113 million shekels (£27.8m) to expanding its control over archaeological sites in the West Bank. Some projects involve sites in areas administered by the Palestinian Authority.

In the remains of the Roman theatre, Israeli activist Alon Arad - who heads Emek Shaveh, an Israeli group that aims to ensure that the ancient heritage of the region belongs to all communities - says that the Israeli authorities have bypassed consultation with the local administration and residents of Sebastia.

"The thing is that Israel is not the owner of this place. This is a Palestinian heritage site. And in order to develop it in a positive way, it has to be done with the local community, with the municipality, so they can benefit."

The Israeli plans would see Sebastia's entrance moved to the other side of the vast site, away from the village and current car park and shops.

The Palestinian tourism and foreign ministries have expressed their hope that recognition by Unesco may buttress international support for their opposition to Israeli land seizures in Sebastia.

But the Israeli Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar, has portrayed Unesco's move as enabling Palestinian efforts to diminish historic Jewish ties to the West Bank.

"No vote in an international organisation can change history," he asserted.

Further to the south in the West Bank and just in sight of Jerusalem is Herodium, a manmade hill with an extraordinary palace built on its summit by King Herod, who ruled the Kingdom of Judea just before the Christian era.

Recently here, too, Israel has begun to expropriate land - this time about 80 acres - for what it says is the "preservation and development" of the site.

Peace Now - an Israeli organisation that monitors settlements - says: "Under international law, as well as according to rulings of the Israeli Supreme Court, Israel is prohibited from expropriating land for settlement purposes or exclusively for the benefit of Israeli citizens".

"Consequently, in order for the expropriation to be considered lawful, the state will likely argue that the site is intended to serve both Palestinian and Israeli populations, despite the apparent fact that its primary rationale and purpose are linked to settlement expansion and Israeli control."

For Shmuel Browns, who has worked on excavations in Herodium and leads deeply enthused guided tours, it's vital for Israeli archaeologists and officials to be able to oversee and protect places that are so freighted with historical and religious significance.

"Israel feels responsible to look after the archaeology, the artifacts, the history of this land," he says.

But there has also been a drive to go further than this among far-right members of Israel's current government.

A new law was proposed earlier this year that would have transferred control of archaeological sites to the Israeli heritage ministry from the Civil Administration, which operates under military authority, and given it sweeping powers to seize land for archaeological preservation across the West Bank.

That bill passed its first reading in parliament in May but is now on hold as elections are coming up. It may never re-emerge.

Back in Sebastia, the Israeli activist Alon Arad says the very fact that the bill was put forward shows how archaeology itself has been weaponised in the West Bank.

"This is exactly how the mechanism works. You use archaeology, you use it in order to do excavations and to the narrative, to rewrite history, but you also use it in order to allocate lands or reallocate lands from Palestinian to Israeli," he warns.

Increasingly, Palestinian residents of Sebastia fear that their close connection with the ruins is in danger of being lost.

Man arrested after boat capsizes near Statue of Liberty killing woman and infant

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c935w1d05d7o, today

The operator of a boat that overturned near the Statue of Liberty, killing a woman and baby, has been arrested and charged with reckless endangerment, New York police said.

Officials said a large search and rescue operation was launched after the incident near New York Harbour on Saturday night.

A Good Samaritan vessel rescued 12 people from the water before police arrived, the Coast Guard said. New York police divers later found a 27-year-old woman and a five-month-old girl, who were transported to a nearby hospital where they later died.

The names of passengers and the specific cause of the incident have not been released.

Around 22:25 local time (03:25 BST), police received a 911 call reporting an overturned boat in the waters near Liberty Island, which houses the iconic statue.

The rescue involved two Coast Guard boats, four fire department boats, two police boats and a police helicopter, the US Coast Guard said.

The investigation into the incident is ongoing, officials said. The boat's operator, a 46-year-old Manhattan resident, faces 13 counts of reckless endangerment, officials said.

Coast Guard investigators are also determining whether the boat was illegally chartered.

"We are extremely grateful for the heroic, swift actions of our partner agencies and Good Samaritan vessel who assisted in rescuing survivors from the water," said Capt Doreen McCarthy of the Coast Guard.

Ancient Roman shipwreck discovered off Sicily coast

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgx1kpz17go, today

Italian divers have discovered an ancient Roman shipwreck off the coast of Sicily, believed to be more than 2,000 years old.

The vessel was found piled high with hundreds of well-preserved containers, which were used to transport goods such as wine and olive oil.

Italy's Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli hailed the wreck as "one of the most important underwater archaeological discoveries of recent years".

Specialist police divers found the ship around 46m (150ft) deep, after a tip-off from fishermen. The wreckage is 21m (69ft) long and 6m (20ft) wide, according to reports in local media.

The culture ministry says it dates from the second or 1st Century BC.

Fisherman and free-diver Giacomo De Mola described stumbling across the historic vessel while surveying the seabed near Mazara del Vallo.

In a social media post, he said he decided to dive and investigate after seeing something that appeared to be a large rock on his scanner.

"I get closer. And my heart stops. It wasn't a rock," he said. Instead, he saw hundreds of amphorae - tall ceramic jars used to store goods in the ancient era, mostly wine, oil or grain.

"This is, without a doubt, the most incredible discovery of my life," he said. "It's hard to describe what it feels like to be among the first humans, in nearly 20 centuries, to see that place again."

He posted a video of the wreck, showing eels, snappers and "countless marine life" living among the jars, noting: "The sea never ceases to amaze us.

"This time we didn't just find a wreck, we found a piece of our history."

Specialist divers from the cultural heritage protection arm of Italy's police, known as the Carabinieri Art Squad, were sent to the site.

Officials say safety measures will be taken to safeguard it while it undergoes investigation, as experts work to determine the nature of the wreck and learn more about its cargo.

The Mediterranean seabed is thought to be scattered with similar ancient wrecks.

Another 1st or 2nd Century BC vessel was found north-west of Rome in 2023, again laden with hundreds of amphorae.

In 2018, a Greek merchant ship dating back more than 2,400 years was found lying on its side off the Bulgarian coast. At the time, it was hailed as the world's oldest-known intact shipwreck.

Puerto Rico rations water supplies due to intense drought

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqlxgk7r2vwo, today

Hundreds of thousands of people are going without running water for two days at a time in Puerto Rico, as authorities in the US territory take drastic measures to combat a severe drought.

Many households on the Caribbean island have been split into two groups - with each having their water supply shut off for 48 hours on a rotating basis.

Residents in the capital, San Juan, where the taps were turned off on Friday, decried the rationing. Officials have not said when the measure will end.

Most of Puerto Rico is facing moderate to severe drought conditions, according to the US Drought Monitor, which has been compounded by long-term issues with the island's infrastructure.

Puerto Rico's water authority says about 65% of the water it produces is lost or goes unbilled, much of it through leaks and ageing pipes, according to the BBC's US news partner CBS.

The island's Governor Jenniffer González has acknowledged these issues, but says rationing was implemented due to the weather, which has left the crucial Carraízo reservoir depleted.

Puerto Rico experienced its driest July on record, with 68% of the island currently facing drought conditions.

Seven regions usually served by the reservoir have been affected, with 180,000 properties subject to rationing, the government said.

González said the decision was taken "after carefully evaluating the current conditions of the Carraízo reservoir in conjunction with weather forecasts".

"This situation is beyond our control," she said in a statement. "It is the result of the weather conditions we have been facing, which experts had warned about weeks ago."

As the mains outages take effect, people have been queuing at water tanker trucks sent to affected regions to fill up large bottles.

"It's unbelievable to live through this today," San Juan resident Gloriany Baba told CBS, describing the conditions as "brutal".

But there is some confusion in the territory as to which households and businesses will be affected and when.

The Morcelo area, south of San Juan, was promised water on Friday, with the supply set to be shut off on Sunday, after the first 48-hour period had ended. But residents have told local media that running water was not available.

"People are uncertain because they know we're in the 48-hour window where we're supposed to have drinking water," community leader Rubén Torres told newspaper El Nuevo Dia on Saturday.

"What's happening? The first 24 hours have already passed and the water hasn't arrived."

As well as degraded infrastructure and a lack of rain, experts have also pointed to too much sediment in resevoirs as a factor in the water crisis.

Water rationing measures have been tried previously in 2020 and 2015, when some 400,000 households only received running water every third day.

Puerto Rico has previously been shaken by the kind of extreme weather events scientists say are more likely due to human-induced climate change.

The island's electricity grid was devastated in 2017 by Hurricane Maria, which caused thousands of deaths. Scientists say the extreme amounts of rainfall it brought was made more likely due to climate change.

González also told CNN there were more than 1,000 wildfires currently burning in Puerto Rico, and that rain could return when a cloud of Saharan dust drifts away from the Caribbean.

"It's a difficult situation," she said, adding that the US federal government was "helping us out", without elaborating.

BBC News has approached the US disaster agency Fema for comment.

Perez Hilton faces long recovery after self-harm livestream

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg5lnqjz497o, today

The US blogger Perez Hilton is in a "serious but stable" condition after being admitted to hospital, according to his family.

Emergency services were called to his Miami home on Tuesday after members of the public reported concerns while watching a TikTok livestream.

The Miami sheriff's office confirmed they attended a scene of a man "livestreaming acts of self-harm" on Tuesday. They did not confirm his name but said the man was alone in the house at the time.

A statement released on the 48-year-old's website said he "experienced significant blood loss" and his treatment and recovery would be a "long process".

* If you are affected by any of the issues in this story, help and support is available at BBC Action Line.

The statement said Hilton was being held in hospital under Florida's Baker Act, which focuses on providing services for people experiencing a mental health crisis.

The father-of-three, whose real name is Mario Lavandeira, is expected to have surgery in the coming days.

A TikTok spokesman said its automated moderation systems flagged the livestream within minutes to the company's US moderation team for review.

A moderator error caused a delay in the removal, TikTok said, but the company alerted law enforcement to the situation, closed several subsequent streams within 90 seconds, and banned the account.

The pseudonym Perez Hilton is a reference to Paris Hilton who was at the height of her fame when the celebrity gossip blog was launched in 2005.

The website would go on to attract 8 million hits a day at a time when the internet was still in its relative infancy. It was criticised for vicious commentary of stars including Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga.

In later years, Hilton admitted having regrets about being "mean or cruel".

He has also appeared on reality TV shows including Celebrity Rap Superstar and Celebrity Big Brother.

Ecuador charges ex-minister over presidential candidate assassination case

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgjeznj6979o, today

Prosecutors in Ecuador have charged a former interior minister and six others on suspicion of being involved in the assassination of a presidential candidate in 2023.

José Serrano and the head of cartel Los Lobos, Wilmer "Pipo" Chavarria, were implicated in the murder of Fernando Villavicencio at a campaign event in the capital, Quito, days before the election.

Five people linked to the criminal gang were jailed over the hit in 2024, while Pipo was captured in Spain last year, having faked his own death.

Villavicencio, a journalist turned prominent legislator, was known for his anti-corruption stance and was one of few candidates to allege links between organised crime and government officials.

He had continued to appear at public campaigns after being given a security detail due to his receiving a number of death threats.

Daniel Noboa, who ultimately went on to win the election and become Ecuador's president, has taken a hardline military approach to combatting crime gangs.

The five convicted over Villavicencio's murder in 2024 were said to have orchestrated the hit. The alleged gunman was shot dead at the scene, while six other men were found murdered in prison while awaiting trial.

The seven named by the Ecuadorean Attorney General's Office on Saturday were accused of playing an indirect role in the killing - many of whom had links to Los Lobos, or "The Wolves", one of the nation's most powerful criminal gangs.

Five of these were now considered fugitives, it said.

Serrano and Xavier Jordán were currently located in the US, former assemblyman Ronny Aleaga was in Venezuela, while Pipo remained in Spain with an extradition request pending.

The Attorney General's Office has requested Interpol red notices for their capture and extradition.

Ángel Esteban Aguilar, also known as Lobo Menor, was arrested in Mexico City in March and returned to Ecuador after a red notice was issued over the murder of Villavicencio.

He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2013 for the murder of Serrano's brother but fled after being granted parole.

The other accused is senior Los Lobos member Luis Arboleda.

Pre-trial hearings are currently taking place and a judge will decide whether prosecutors have a case that can proceed to a full trial.

Ecuador's location - sandwiched between Colombia and Peru, the world's largest producers of cocaine - has turned it into a key transit country for the illicit drug, with cartels like Los Lobos using corruption and violence to control supply routes.

It is said to have deep connections to the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel in Mexico.

Nigerian army says it safely rescued 33 people kidnapped by gunmen

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89nkkvx2veo, today

Nigeria's army has said it safely rescued 33 people after they were kidnapped by armed men while travelling through the country's north-western Zamfara state.

The army said its troops mobilised alongside the police immediately after hearing about the abduction, in the Tsafe area of Zamfara on Saturday afternoon.

The military found the kidnappers in the process of moving the hostages to an unknown location, the army said, and the gunmen fled into the nearby bush after coming under fire.

Kidnappings by armed groups who hold people for ransom are common in parts of north-western Nigeria and major roads have become targets for attacks.

Analysts say ransom payments by desperate families, intermediaries or, in some cases, Nigerian authorities have fuelled the abductions.

Nigerian army spokesman Lt-Col Aliyu Danja said it was unclear where the abductors were moving their hostages when troops intercepted them, adding that the army was now attempting to track the kidnappers.

"The troops engaged the terrorists with effective fire, forcing them to abandon the victims and flee into adjoining bushes," he said, noting that all the hostages had been recovered without any casualties.

Danja warned members of the public in the region to remain vigilant and pass on relevant information to security forces.

Nigeria's security forces have recorded a recent success in rescuing kidnapped victims.

On Thursday, the country's presidency said that more than 300 people abducted in separate attacks in Nigeria had been rescued.

Those freed included 163 people abducted in an attack in February on the Woro and Nuku communities in Kwara state, where scores were killed. At least 145 others had been taken in Niger state.

The rescue came weeks after 44 pupils and teachers abducted during a raid on a school in Oyo state were freed after more than 50 days in captivity.

Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu said on Wednesday that soldiers would get a pay increase of up to 80% for the government's "deep appreciation" of those battling the nation's enormous security threats.

Tinubu is attempting to curb widespread banditry, kidnappings and violence from various armed groups, including Islamist militants.

Continuing insecurity nationwide has become a major political issue ahead of the 2027 elections.

Residents warned to brace for the worst as Canada wildfire rages out of control

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx25dkwk3e3o, today

A state of emergency has been declared after thousands of people were forced to flee their homes as a fast-moving wildfire spread rapidly in western Canada, doubling in size since it was first detected on Friday.

The Bald Range fire now occupies more than 53 sq miles (136 sq km) across Summerland, Peachland and other areas of British Columbia, according to the BC Wildfire Service.

"We have to brace ourselves for the worst," Summerland Mayor Doug Holmes told Reuters.

Officials said the flames were so high that they had created their own weather systems, which creates lightning.

British Columbia Premier David Eby told a news conference on Saturday that one fire official had likened the fire to "a bomb going off".

"Homes have been lost, and properties have been destroyed. Some people became trapped as conditions changed very quickly, and needed to be rescued," the premier said.

A state of emergency allows the provincial government access to special powers including travel restrictions and supply protections to prevent price gouging, and extra resources to coordinate rescue work.

Summerland has a population of about 12,000 people, according to the 2021 census, and Peachland is home to about 6,500 residents.

The Bald Range wildfires triggered the largest evacuation event this summer and more than 20,000 people across British Columbia have evacuated their homes, officials say.

"A lot of farms have been affected. We don't know how many structures have been lost. They're still busy fighting the fire," Summerland Mayor Doug Holmes said.

Hundreds of residents living in Summerland care facilities, including senior housing, were being relocated to safer areas, according to Interior Health, a publicly funded health authority in BC.

It was not yet clear how many structures had been destroyed in the blaze.

The regional districts of Central Okanagan and Okanagan-Similkameen, as well as Snpink'tn Indian Band and the districts of Summerland and Peachland have issued evacuation orders, with evacuation alerts in some areas, according wildfire officials.

In Okanagan, there are a lot of horses that residents have been struggling to evacuate, Canadian broadcaster CBC reported.

Those unable to relocate their animals left their gates open in the hope the animals would find their own way to safety, local residents told CBC.

Some owners also painted markings on their animals to make them easier to identify later, according to the outlet.

Hundreds of wildfires have raged across Canada this summer, with nearly 200 burning in Ontario in July, sending air quality in Toronto to one of the worst levels in the world for a few days.

Smoke from those Canadian wildfires drifted down into parts of the US, including Minnesota and New York, leading US President Donald Trump to threaten new tariffs on the US's northern neighbour.

Tonnes of rotting food from vast LA warehouse fire creates unbearable stench

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2elpz33zp2o, today

On any typical day, Alexis Sicairos and his girlfriend have a line of patrons waiting to order a banana buzz latte or a cloud matcha at their Los Angeles coffee stand. But now, the street corner where they sit is largely empty.

The reason is clear the second you walk into the neighbourhood: it stinks.

On 17 June, a fire destroyed a large cold-storage warehouse in the area, leaving behind some 85 million lb (39 million kg) of rotting food, including beef, pork, poultry and seafood.

Nearly two months later, residents of Boyle Heights say the clean-up has taken a lot longer than expected, and they've grown frustrated with the pungent odour hovering over the area.

"It smells really bad, like really bad ... to the point that you want to throw up," says Mesha, a 37-year-old security guard stationed outside a marijuana dispensary.

She likens the smell to that of a dead body.

Lineage, the company that operated the warehouse, said that as of Monday about 80% of the food waste had been removed. But city officials said this week that the company's response "has fallen short", and that they have issued public health and safety violation notices.

"It's been tough," Sicairos, 30, says. After shutting down his coffee stand for two weeks because of the fire, Brew Sting has reopened - but the demand hasn't been the same.

He says flies have been swarming relentlessly over the past weeks, since the food that was stored in the warehouse began rotting.

The warehouse workers that would previously line up to buy coffee haven't been showing up over the past two months.

"Due to the fire, obviously most of them aren't here," Sicairos says. "So we lost those customers, but we also lost customers that don't want to be around the smell, the smoke, the flies. It's understandable. But we have to keep paying our bills, so we're still here."

One cannot walk through the area, which is mostly a warehouse district surrounded by homes, without swatting away countless flies, both big and small, including black, blue and green ones.

As Sicairos packs up his coffee stand for the day, flies are landing on his tables and his body. He acknowledges that patrons don't want to see flies when they're purchasing food or drinks to consume.

A city-commissioned inspection report found that waste and high temperatures at the warehouse could speed up the breeding of flies capable of infecting wounds in both people and animals, a local NBC affiliate reported.

The report from a pest control company said it could put people and animals with open wounds at risk of contracting disease.

People in the community have also reported seeing large rats, and they say traps placed along sidewalks aren't big enough to hold them.

Many residents blame the city for what they deem an inadequate response to the fire and a lack of transparency and resources.

"I understand why residents are frustrated," Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told the BBC in a statement. "They deserve transparency, clear communication, and meaningful support. Since day one, I have been in Boyle Heights listening to residents, meeting with families, and making sure their voices guide our response."

The mayor, who is up for re-election this year, said she directed city departments to work with local, state, federal, nonprofit and community partners to deliver immediate support and solutions.

Bass has also issued executive orders to mobilise resources and speed up the cleaning process. The city says they and other local partners have brought mobile health clinics to the neighbourhood and delivered thousands of air purifiers.

Late last month, the county's public health department fined Lineage for "unsanitary and nuisance" conditions with $500-a-day citations.

The mayor has given Lineage a 13 August deadline to complete the cleanup. The company said on Monday they are 80% of the way there - up from 60% on July 31.

"Our goal is to complete bulk food waste removal from the site next week," a Lineage spokesperson told the BBC on Wednesday. They expect to spend between $80 million to $100 million on the cleanup.

Outside the warehouse, dozens of workers in hard hats and neon vests can be seen tackling the effort, some wearing face coverings. Officials with the local air quality authority and sheriff's office were also on site.

In an letter shared on Tuesday, Bass said the company's response "has fallen short".

"Residents, public agencies, and elected officials have repeatedly sought timely information regarding the cleanup, remediation, environmental monitoring, and recovery," Bass wrote in the letter to Lineage shareholders. "Too often, those requests have been met with delayed communication, limited transparency, and insufficient public engagement".

The mayor also directed city departments to halt plans to rebuild the warehouse "until the health and safety of the community are protected".

Lineage, which is a temperature-controlled warehousing and logistics company, says "cleanup crews are working around the clock to remove food waste, clear debris and dismantle damaged sections of the structure.

"However, this is a highly complex operation," they say, adding that reducing odours is a "key priority" in their cleanup effort.

How weight-loss medication is changing relationships with alcohol

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr7kmlg0lxpo, today

When Lisa Rees took her first dose of weight-loss medication in April, she hoped she would end up losing a few kilograms.

What she did not expect, though, was the side effect she has described as the drug's "best benefit": as well as eating less food, she has been drinking much less alcohol.

Lisa used to drink two bottles of wine on a night out, but now, after she has had a couple of glasses, the 46-year-old from South Wales finds that she "just physically cannot drink another drop".

There is a growing body of research into the link between weight-loss drugs and alcohol consumption.

The drugs, with brands including Wegovy, Mounjaro and Ozempic, contain semaglutide or tirzepatide, which mimic a natural hormone called GLP-1. This suppresses appetite and keeps people feeling fuller for longer, helping them to lose weight.

Early research suggests that because these drugs affect the reward response in the brain, they can reduce cravings for substances including alcohol and nicotine, says Dr Christian Hendershot of the University of South Carolina.

He published a small-scale study in 2025 in which participants with alcohol use disorder craved alcohol less while taking Ozempic. Alcohol use disorder, sometimes referred to as alcoholism, is described by the NHS as drinking in a way that is harmful.

A study from the University of Colorado Anschutz published last week also suggested that GLP-1 medications in pill form led to fewer days of heavy drinking in people with mild to moderate alcohol use disorder.

People taking the drugs told BBC News that alcohol had affected them in different ways: some said their cravings for it had gone, drinking had made them feel nauseous or uncomfortably full, or they had got drunk more quickly. Others said they had not noticed any effect on their relationship with alcohol.

Before she started taking Wegovy, Lisa says she drank between six and eight bottles of wine a week with friends. But she had sometimes worried about whether this was too much and whether it could damage her health.

NHS guidance is that people should not drink more than 14 units a week on a regular basis, which is about six medium glasses of wine or six pints. Drinking too much in the long term can lead to liver damage, high blood pressure and increased risk of cancer.

Lisa says that since starting on the medication she has more than halved her consumption. At a recent day festival, she drank three glasses of wine over the course of nine hours. Previously, she would have had two bottles plus a couple of vodka mixers, she says.

Alcohol has always been a big part of her social life and when she stopped drinking for a few weeks in the late 2010s, she realised friends had stopped inviting her to social events. It led her to start drinking again.

This time round, Lisa says that she still looks forward to drinking wine, but after having a couple of glasses she simply cannot stomach any more.

"I still feel involved in things because I'm still drinking but drinking a lot less," Lisa says.

For years, Warren Thomas, 45, from Colchester, had enjoyed an occasional beer with his family after work, as well as one or two heavy drinking sessions with his friends each month.

But when he spoke to his friends on weight-loss medication about his plans to start taking Mounjaro, they warned him that it could affect how much he drank.

Warren says he noticed the effect within 24 hours of his first dose in mid-June. "I just don't want to drink," he says. "I've just got no appetite for it."

When he went out for his friend's birthday last month, he felt "light-headed and a little bit giddy" after two beers, he says.

"My tolerance level to drinking is now zero," he says.

There is no formal advice in the British National Formulary, a guide to dispensing medicine used by doctors and pharmacists, about whether people on weight-loss drugs should stop drinking alcohol, says Prof Russell Hearn, a GP and professor of medicine at King's College London.

But he gives careful advice to his patients. "Alcohol has a lot of calories in it and if your goal is to lose weight, drinking less will definitely help you with that alongside changing your diet while you're on a GLP-1," he says.

For people like Lisa and Warren, drinking less alcohol has been a happy bonus. But recent graduate Faye Goodwin, 20, feels that it has hampered her social life.

When Faye drinks she says she gets nauseous very quickly and sometimes throws up or gets bad acid reflux.

Faye, who got in touch with BBC Your Voice, has been taking Mounjaro since she was 18 and does not really know what it is like to drink alcohol without the impact of weight-loss medication. But she says she once took a month off the jabs and was able to drink without experiencing any nausea.

At her age, alcohol is an important part of her social life, she says.

Sometimes if she is due to go on a night out on injection day, she delays her jab by a day because she feels the impact of her medication on alcohol is the strongest in the day or two after she injects.

She has occasionally turned down plans with friends if she has already taken her dose of medication that day.

When she does drink, she usually consumes much less than everyone else. She feels this has affected her ability to form and maintain friendships, and made it hard for her at university in Cambridge when a lot of social events revolved around alcohol.

"It was difficult to enjoy it knowing I'd have to sit there sober while everyone else has a good time drinking, and oftentimes if I have tried to drink even a glass of wine or something I can't finish it because of the overwhelming nausea," she says.

Observational studies of the general population suggest that people drink less overall when on weight-loss drugs, but the clinical trials to date have focused on people with alcohol use disorder, rather than occasional drinkers.

Data is "accumulating very quickly", says Hendershot, adding that some facilities in the US are already prescribing the medication off-label to people with alcohol use disorder.

Larger studies, with more participants and carried out over a longer period of time, are needed before it can be approved by regulators for the treatment of alcohol use disorder, says Dr Joseph Schacht, who carried out the study on weight-loss pills and alcohol.

There are still unanswered questions around whether it is safe for people without obesity and diabetes to use the drugs for addiction treatment, and whether they will be affordable, says Dr Darren Quelch, who researches addiction at the University of South Wales.

The drugs can also have a number of side effects, including rare but serious pancreatitis.

Researchers are also looking into whether GLP-1 medications could be a treatment for other addictions, including smoking and opioids.

Warren says starting on weight-loss jabs has put him off going out for drinking sessions with friends. "I don't really want to do it… I've just got no real desire for drinking."

Though he never saw his drinking as problematic, it has still been a welcome change. "To cut it out completely has been very refreshing, without really trying," he says.

How a schoolteacher's son became Kashmir's first India Test cricketer

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2elpkg1l0jo, today

"You play with so many cricket stars. Why don't you take selfies with them?"

Bilal Ahmad Dar once asked his young cousin, Auqib Nabi.

Auqib smiled and replied: "One day I will reach a place where they will want to take selfies with me."

Years later, that prediction has come true.

On Monday, the 29-year-old all-rounder became the first cricketer from Jammu and Kashmir to earn an India Test call-up after replacing Jasprit Bumrah in the squad for the two-match series against Sri Lanka, which starts on 15 August.

For a region where conflict, harsh winters and limited infrastructure have long restricted sporting opportunities, Auqib's selection is being seen as a landmark moment.

Raised in a small village in Baramulla district, Auqib grew up playing on local grounds with little infrastructure and few opportunities. His father, Ghulam Nabi Dar, a schoolteacher, initially wanted him to concentrate on academics and become a doctor.

"There was no scope in cricket. We used to think playing sport was a waste of time, so I insisted that Auqib focused on his studies," Ghulam says.

But Auqib's persistence eventually changed his father's mind.

"After seeing his passion for cricket, I accepted it. I realised that, as a parent and a teacher, I shouldn't force him to do something he didn't want to do. I started supporting him."

Auqib's childhood friend, Junaid Dar, remembers growing up in an environment where professional cricket barely seemed possible.

"Auqib was obsessed with cricket from childhood. I used to ask him, 'Why are you doing all this? There's no future in it.' We came from a place where there was no concept of playing sport professionally and hardly any infrastructure."

To pursue his dream, Auqib regularly travelled around 70km (43 miles) to Srinagar to practise on proper cricket pitches. He did not even own a pair of spike shoes when he attended his first cricket trials.

But his work ethic never changed, his cousin Bilal says.

"Auqib is very hardworking and consistent. He knows how to fight obstacles and make a way for himself.

"He would wake up early to go to the gym and then practise for the rest of the day. He did that almost every day for 10 years."

His breakthrough came in 2020 when he made his Ranji Trophy (India's top domestic tournament) debut for Jammu and Kashmir, taking a five-wicket haul against Jharkhand.

Former India all-rounder Parvez Rasool, Jammu and Kashmir's first international cricketer and Auqib's long-time captain, says one quality always stood out.

"I have followed Auqib's progress for a long time, and what stands out about him is his work ethic and discipline."

Success, however, did not come overnight. Auqib claimed 44 wickets during the 2024-25 Ranji Trophy season, finishing as the competition's leading fast bowler, but remained largely outside the national conversation.

"When you do well but don't get recognition, it hurts," his father says.

"But we should never lose hope. Hope is what keeps the world intact. I always believed his time would come."

It did.

The following season, Auqib produced one of the finest bowling campaigns in recent Ranji Trophy history, taking 60 wickets in 10 matches to finish as the tournament's leading wicket-taker and help Jammu and Kashmir win their maiden Ranji Trophy title after a wait of 67 years.

Those performances earned him an 84m rupees (£730,000; $982,000) Indian Premier League (IPL) contract with Delhi Capitals. Although opportunities in the IPL were limited, his red-ball exploits had already caught the attention of India's selectors.

For Rasool, Auqib's Test call-up carries significance far beyond one player.

"Playing Test cricket is the ultimate dream for any cricketer. It was my dream too. Seeing Auqib earn that call-up fills me with immense pride.

"In a way, it feels like a dream many of us in Jammu and Kashmir carried has finally been realised through him. It is a historic moment not just for Auqib and his family, but for cricket across the region."

He believes Auqib's journey is remarkable not just because he reached the Indian team, but because of where he came from.

"Making it to the Indian team is incredibly difficult for any player, but the challenge is even greater when you come from Jammu and Kashmir. For years, we have had limited infrastructure, fewer opportunities and many obstacles that players from other parts of the country don't necessarily face.

"To reach this level, you need exceptional consistency, mental strength and the determination to keep believing in yourself. Auqib has shown all of those qualities, which is why this achievement is so special."

Jammu and Kashmir became affiliated with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in 1957, yet the region still has only two major cricket stadiums, both with limited facilities. Long winters, heavy snowfall and decades of conflict have further slowed cricket's development.

"This is a landmark moment for cricket in Jammu and Kashmir," Rasool says.

"For a long time, people questioned whether someone from our region could make it to India's Test team. Auqib has answered that question. His selection shows players from Jammu and Kashmir can compete with the best if they are given the opportunity."

He believes Auqib's journey will inspire a new generation.

"When I started playing, there weren't many role models from Jammu and Kashmir. Today, things are changing.

"Auqib becoming the first player from the region to earn an India Test call-up will give countless youngsters the belief that they can dream big too. His journey proves that no matter where you come from or what challenges you face, hard work and perseverance can take you to the highest level."

Back in Baramulla, Ghulam Nabi now finds himself recognised everywhere he goes.

"People come up to me, hug me and say, 'This is Auqib's father.'

"It makes me immensely proud."

Nigeria's mass wedding - and how telling lovers from fraudsters is proving tricky

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqx7q17531do, today

Celebrations have turned the northern Nigerian city of Kano into a riot of colour and excitement over the last week as 1,500 couples married at a mass wedding.

For days the city's streets have been buzzing with bridal parties and their families preparing outfits and attending other organised events.

On Friday, brides in red hijabs with grooms in matching red hats and white robes went the palace of the Emir, the city's traditional Muslim leader, for the main ceremony where they officially became husband and wife.

The nuptials culminated on Saturday with a wedding breakfast hosted by Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, who offered his blessing to the newlyweds.

The Kano state government sponsored this initiative, spending 1.5bn naira ($1m; £815,000) to support those tying the knot - providing the bride's dowry and furniture for the couple's first home.

The scheme targets low-income individuals who cannot afford the significant financial costs associated with marriage.

The annual event was initiated in 2012 by the then-governor when 100 couples - primarily widows and divorcees - wed at the palace.

The mass weddings have continued under subsequent governors, with numbers expanding each year as demand has grown and included those in polygamous Muslim marriages.

Such is the popularity of the scheme that 5,000 couples applied this year.

The event is always overseen by the Hisbah - the city's Islamic police force - and one of their main tasks is to vet the couples wanting to wed.

Kano has a majority Muslim population and Sharia operates in the state alongside the secular legal system.

Mujahid Aminudeen, deputy commander-general of the Hisbah, admits it is not an easy task.

"Whenever we find out that there's something dubious or fishy about a couple, we disqualify them," he tells the BBC.

He says some couples will go to great lengths to convince the authorities that they are a genuine love match when their eye is more on the benefits on offer.

The state government has spent approximately 1m naira ($735; £544) on each participating couple.

According to the Hisbah, the support package a couple receives includes essential household items needed to establish a new home: beds, mattresses, bedsheets, pillows, furniture and food supplies.

Each bride receives a dowry of 100,000 naira, while a further 100,000 naira is provided as start-up capital to encourage small-scale entrepreneurship and help the couple achieve financial self-reliance after marriage.

All intending couples must undergo comprehensive medical examinations - including tests for HIV, hepatitis, pregnancy and genotype compatibility - before being cleared for the programme.

Aminudeen revealed that some couples had been disqualified after being discovered to have altered their medical test results.

In one case, an intending bride was found to have presented her brother as the groom in an attempt to benefit from the scheme.

Local journalist Yusuf Ali Abdallah, who has covered the mass weddings for years, said Nigeria's struggling economy had been fuelling desperation among the applicants this year.

"As we all know, marriage involves spending money and the country's economy is not bright at the moment," he told the BBC.

"This makes some people desperate to get on this list."

One couple who were already married had even attempted to present themselves as an intending pair before being detected and removed from the programme, he said.

Other charlatans have tried to take advantage of those desperate to get on the sponsored list, which was made public two weeks ago.

One Kano resident, who asked to be anonymous, said he had been asked to pay a bribe to get on the list.

"But to be fair to the organisers, I later found out those who asked me for money were not Hisbah staff," he said.

He and his fiancée failed to be chosen for this August's wedding but he said he would try again next year.

Aminudeen admitted that the Islamic police were aware of such allegations: "We have found that there are some people asking others to pay certain money so they can make the list."

But the Hisbah officer wanted to assure all those wishing to wed in future that the entire process should not cost them a single naira.

"We want to announce to the people of Kano that the whole process is free: from the selection to the medicals and the goods set aside for couples - all are covered by the government."

One of successful grooms, 43-year-old clothes trader Rabiu Yusuf, agreed the process of applying to be married had gone smoothly for him.

"Personally, no-one asked me for anything. I was told the government would sponsor it all," he told the BBC.

His new wife is Aisha Auwal - the couple met as she regularly visited his shop to buy clothes.

Yusuf, who already has five children with his first wife, said he was "very happy and can't wait to start a new life" with his customer-turned-bride.

Twenty-four-year-old Amina Alhassan echoed his sentiments, adding that she had not encountered any problems when applying to marry 40-year-old Nura Abdullahi.

Their union was first arranged by their families in Dambatta village before they presented themselves to the Hisbah.

"Everything has been free and I want to commend the Kano government for this scheme because without it, many couldn't have afforded to marry due to the high cost of living."

After Saturday's wedding feast, the presentation of the household goods began.

But it will take several more days for the excitement to die down in Kano and as the newlyweds busy themselves with setting up home together.

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

Raw images, no filters: Why MySpace fans want it back as relaunch hinted

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g64152v71o, today

For Monticah Hawkins, a 31-year-old real-estate agent in Atlanta, MySpace wasn't just a website – it was a ritual.

"You could be authentic on MySpace," she says. "Upload raw images, no filters. You could have snot coming out your nose and nobody would judge."

MySpace, once the world's biggest social network, is flirting with a comeback. Its owners, brothers Tim and Chris Vanderhook, say they plan to relaunch the platform, though no date or product details have been announced.

A spokesperson for Viant, which owns MySpace, says the company does not have any updates to share "at this time."

But just the idea of a comeback has stirred nostalgia among people who remember the MySpace days of more than 20 years ago as a place where personal pages were messy, loud, and deeply individual.

It has also caught the attention of creators like Melissa Kristin, a TikTok star with more than 900,000 followers, who grew up on MySpace and remembers it as a more personal digital space.

"It was all very much your own little world, your own corner of the internet," Kristin says.

That sense of autonomy shaped how she expresses herself online today, and she believes that a revived MySpace should avoid the algorithmic, pay-to-play dynamics that dominate modern platforms.

"It would be best served for personal connection rather than performance," she says.

"Just to recapture that high we felt as millennials when we got all the friend requests and comments. It helped us feel connected."

MySpace launched in 2003 and quickly became a cultural hub, helping artists like Arctic Monkeys, Adele, and Nicki Minaj find early audiences.

But its highly customised pages, auto-playing music, and busy layouts eventually became a liability.

Facebook's cleaner, simpler design pulled users away, and MySpace struggled through redesigns and ownership changes before fading from mainstream use.

Marketing experts say any comeback will depend on learning from that history.

Dr Alexa Fox, a marketing professor at the University of Akron, says the platform was a "first mover" in social media, but one that became too complex for many users.

She believes MySpace's original strengths – music, creativity, and personal expression – could still resonate, but only with more accessible design.

"It could be more user-friendly, with less coding involved," she says.

Alex Mills, a social media strategist who has led campaigns for Spotify and Adobe, says the very thing people are nostalgic for, a feed without algorithms, was also "the thing that killed it."

"People still want a feed," Mills says. "They just want a better one than the ones optimising for rage bait."

Kevin McClary, head of performance marketing at Gorilla 76, believes MySpace should not try to compete directly with Meta, TikTok, or X.

"They can be successful and sustainable even as a niche platform," he says, arguing it should be rooted in 2000s culture.

McClary says leaning into MySpace's music identity could be a smart move, from profile songs to 2000s-themed festivals and merchandise.

He believes the audience could be broader than former users, with younger generations embracing the early-2000s aesthetics they never experienced firsthand.

"You see younger generations now buying old point-and-shoot digital cameras, MP3 players, even film cameras," McClary says. "They clearly have an interest in the past."

MySpace could meet users where that trend is growing by becoming a place rooted in a "specific time," he says. He noted that creators making 2000s-style content on other platforms are often at the "mercy" of algorithms.

Fox agrees that differentiation is essential.

"MySpace shouldn't hang their hat on features other platforms already dominate," Fox says, pointing to Reels and short-form videos.

Popular formats can be added, she says, but they should not define the platform.

She also sees an opportunity to offer a calmer experience. Today's feeds, she notes, are "algorithmic-driven AI, constantly in your face."

A platform where users have more control, or simply feel less overwhelmed, could stand out in a crowded market.

For fans like Hawkins and Kristin, the appeal is emotional as much as practical. Both say they would return if MySpace kept its original spirit.

For now, its comeback exists mostly as a promise – a reminder of a time when social media felt a little less polished and a lot more personal.

"Are you still gonna have that same feeling?" Hawkins says. "Are you still gonna feel like, 'oh my god, somebody loves me?'"

Zendaya saw me on the red carpet and her jaw dropped - I'm still in shock

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq56j53g9yeo, today

"I can't zip this! Mummm?"

This was 29-year-old Zainab Jiwa, calling out for help squeezing into a corset while filming a "get-ready-with-me" TikTok video. It's a scene many 20-somethings still living at home will relate to.

The difference is, Zainab was on her way to the recent London premiere of The Odyssey, one of the summer's biggest blockbusters.

She was invited there as a guest and says she caught the eye of Hollywood megastar Zendaya, thanks to her custom look: a striking gold gown complete with a hood.

"She just walked past, and she saw me there. Her jaw just dropped, so did mine," Zainab tells me.

"It was just a stare-off for a minute, and she was like, 'Oh my god, amazing, amazing,' and then she just walked off."

"I’m still in shock,” she adds. “The thought of her noticing my outfit blew my mind."

The interaction went viral with 19m TikTok views. Her phone blew up.

While Zendaya has been ruling the red carpets with high-fashion "method dressing" – where stars match outfits to a film's themes – Zainab is perhaps proving that independent creators like her can give Hollywood a run for its money.

Zainab, who is Muslim and wears a hijab, is also often one of the only people covering her hair at premieres, but she says finding ways to incorporate modest wear is part of the fun.

"Even though you're covered, you can still find a way to be on theme.”

Arriving for our interview at BBC Broadcasting House this week, her look was on-point in an olive shirt, tie, and brooches. "I put in effort today," she says.

She's a self-confessed fashion addict. "From the womb," she says, when I ask her when her passion started.

Her other love is film - but she initially kept that as a hobby. Still, she posted videos on social media for fun about her favourite films and outfits inspired by them.

Soon, major studios took notice. Disney was first, offering her a junket interview for the series Moon Knight, where she got to interview stars on the red carpet.

"I thought it was a scam,” she says. “I can’t watch that back. I was NOT good.”

Today, Zainab is a full-time creator and presenter, interviewing A-listers like Denzel Washington, Paul Mescal and Tom Hiddleston – while decked head to toe in outfits paying homage to the films.

She's one of many digital content creators on the red carpet, with others including Chicken Shop Date’s Amelia Dimoldenberg, Reece Feldman and social media personality Jake Shane.

It's not always easy. Sometimes, Zainab gets invites to premieres the night before, meaning a mad rush to sort her look before travelling to the event - often by public transport (“and I look ridiculous”).

She works with a range of designers and brands, but says she also keeps costs down by reusing items as much as possible.

Her outfits are purposely bold, allowing her to "break the ice" with stars. For House of the Dragon season two, she wore a red gown by a student designer featuring three faces wearing hijabs.

"I'm a bit extra, but I like to add culture in everything I do," she says.

For Spider-Man: Brand New Day, she customised her look with spiderweb henna. For Gladiator II, she wore gold armour.

She admits she has worried whether dressing modestly will make it harder for her to succeed in this industry, but she finds pleasure in it too.

"I have a fun time working around the fact that I cover my hair or I cover my arms," she says. "I'd call it halalify the look. I'd always say, ‘'but how do I halalify this?'"

"I enjoy that bit the most because it shows there's no restriction really here."

But while Zainab spends much of her time rubbing shoulders with Hollywood royalty, home life in Harrow, north-west London is completely different.

"Oh my god, my house is chaos," she laughs. Storage space is at a premium, and outfits often end up "shoved somewhere".

She has a cat, siblings who often pop in, and parents who are frequently enlisted for wardrobe emergencies.

Despite it not being the career trajectory they’d expected for their daughter, Zainab says her parents are now "so supportive".

With 660,000 followers on TikTok and close to 400,000 on Instagram, she's becoming a key content creator in this field. But she also faces criticism - including from some who claim her outfits are not modest enough.

"There's always hate in this industry," she says.

But she adds: "For every negative comment, there's so many positive ones.

"If I'm doing it to inspire other people, or entertain other people, or educate other people, if that's still happening, then I really don't care about the rest."

For now though, Zainab is swept up in enjoying a string of blockbusters.

"The summer's felt good for film - I think it's exciting," she says.

"And there's loads more coming. We've got Dune. We've got Doomsday," she says.

"I love film and TV. I think it's a really fun way to build community," she adds. "I'm just a fan. At the end of the day, I'm just a fan."

Australia is the planet's extinction hotspot, but one animal offers a glimmer of hope

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9q94lxqrzzo, yesterday

"Eyes peeled," comes the order from the front passenger seat.

Obediently, we scan the ends and tops of logs, looking between low scrub and patches of vivid wildflowers for a flash of stripes or a dart of movement.

Eluding us is the numbat, a rare Australian marsupial which could be the love-child of a chipmunk and an anteater.

Numbats were once populous across the bottom half of the continent, but Dryandra Woodland – in the south-western corner of Australia – is one of the few places they remain.

As we slowly roll along bush tracks, researchers explain how this annual trip helps plot the species' survival.

Classified as endangered until this month, numbats have been bouncing back. This team's efforts have seen them scratched off the international red list of threatened species - a rare glimmer of hope in a country facing an extinction emergency.

This part of Australia is the front line of that crisis: a last stand for many species driven to the brink by feral pests, disease, urban development, habitat destruction and climate change.

Winging over our car at one point is the endangered Carnaby's cockatoo. On an island just off the coast is one of the last surviving pockets of the world's rarest marsupial, the Gilbert's potoroo. Diving in the sapphire waters around it is the increasingly scarce Australian sea lion.

Australia has long been celebrated as a nature haven, home to some of the world's most unique plant and animal species. More than 80% cannot be found anywhere else.

But it has arguably become the extinction capital of the world, losing roughly four species every decade - and the decline is only worsening.

Dedicated volunteers and under-funded conservationists have been slowing the army of increasing threats, but experts fear that without urgent action and political courage, the biodiversity Australia says it loves is headed for a bloodbath.

"It's not even a case of imagining it, it's happening in front of our own eyes," Professor Euan Ritchie tells the BBC.

The many threats driving extinction

If spotting a rare creature in the wild wasn't challenging enough, the numbat is a squirrel-sized camouflage connoisseur, explains Dr Tony Friend, the godfather of conservation in the state of Western Australia.

"They just slept in today," jokes Rob McLean, president of the Numbat Taskforce, a volunteer group which makes a lot of Tony's thinly-resourced work possible.

For two weeks each spring, as the young start venturing from their burrows, this team drives a daily circuit and records every numbat spotted. They log GPS coordinates, measure the distance to the road, and use a complicated equation to estimate the density of the animals in these woods and, from that, broader population health.

One person sits in concentrated silence at each window, another perched in the back of the pick-up truck, ducking for the occasional limb branching from trees which rise around us.

Through the trunks, we get the occasional glimpse of the razed farmland which tightly fences this pocket of protected woodland. On the side of one trail is a machine which detects and sprays feral cats and foxes with poison, another reminder of the perils numbats face.

"This year's been a bit of a feast," Rob admits.

For hours on end, we cruise around, seeing parrots, wallabies, a goanna and a couple of echidnas - but no numbats.

Tony arrived at Dryandra back in the 80s to find a numbat population fewer than 50. Many of the culprits then were the same as those still driving extinctions across the nation today.

Swathes of critical habitat are being cleared for development or industries like farming, mining and timber.

Leaving a trail of destruction in their wake are introduced pests: fire ants, cane toads, rabbits, foxes, feral cats.

Invasive weeds like lantana are choking the Australian bush, chlamydia has sent koalas to the edge of existence across much of the country, while the skin-eating chytrid fungus has caused seven frog extinctions here and counting.

The changing climate is creating unliveable conditions for some species, like native flying foxes which are dropping out of trees in their thousands due to extreme temperatures.

For others it is eliminating their food or their homes.

Climate change is also driving natural disasters which fry and drown both plants and animals with now frightening regularity.

The infamous Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20, for example, killed an estimated three billion animals. The successive years of record-breaking flooding which followed were so widespread it's impossible to estimate the impact on wildlife.

Many species once abundant across the continent are now isolated to increasingly small and disjointed patches, each impact compounding and leaving them more vulnerable to the next.

There are small, yet determined, efforts to slow the momentum of decline.

As a young numbat scoffs his breakfast – custard with "termite sprinkles" – at Perth Zoo, a keeper explains how this stud's upcoming release at Dryandra will help boost genetic diversity.

"When you get that feedback: your babies have got babies, it's very satisfying," Vicki Power says.

Breeding programmes like this have also made setting up additional populations of an array of threatened species possible.

But many cannot survive in the true wild, where large-scale predator control remains an endless battle, and are instead sent to fenced nature reserves, themselves high-maintenance undertakings facing problems like in-breeding and overpopulation.

Habitat protection or restoration projects have been ramping up, but they are not keeping pace with destruction, particularly in the most critical areas.

Scientists are also trying to fight disease, though that's an expensive and laborious endeavour, which for most species buys only a little more time. Others are preserving genetic material in case we ever work out how to resurrect species from the dead.

A hundred species lost - and counting

Scientists agree that we're living though the world's sixth mass extinction event, the first caused by humans. But Australia is at the front of this trend.

It leads the world in mammal extinctions, and medals when it comes to the loss of other species classes too.

"Despite Australia being one of the wealthiest countries per capita in the world and having more than its fair share of world-leading scientists… we have a truly awful record of conserving species," Ritchie says.

"And things aren't getting better."

The Australian government's official extinctions list sits at 67, but researchers are confident at least 100 plant and animal species have been lost forever.

They suspect the true figure is far higher. The country is still discovering species which have already been wiped out.

Though the rate of extinction in Australia has stayed stable, at around four per decade, the number of threatened species is still climbing quickly, and the deterioration of many is only gathering speed.

This trajectory has some scary flow-on effects, experts warn. Australia's biodiversity "underpins everything", ecologist Jack Pascoe says.

Think food production, tourism, construction – much of the economy. Potential scientific breakthroughs could be stymied: in medicine, agriculture and even climate change adaptation. And for First Nations Australians, the decline also threatens their culture.

"We think of ourselves as custodians of all life on Earth… so there's a much more personal and social feeling of loss that comes when these things are not doing well or we lose them forever," Pascoe, a man from the Yuin Aboriginal nation, says.

Decades of failures

Though environment protection is a state responsibility, the federal government oversees matters of national importance.

Labor took office in 2022, promising no new extinctions under its watch, and it has sought to make nature protection a defining feature of its second term.

"It's well understood that nature is facing many challenges in the world today, both here in Australia, and overseas… we are losing biodiversity at an alarming rate," Environment Minister Murray Watt told the BBC in a statement.

His party has significantly increased Australia's emissions reduction efforts and massively boosted renewable energy projects. There is some praise for their work on drawing critically endangered mammals back from the brink. And the passage of revamped environment laws last year was heralded as the most significant reform in a generation.

The country also has an ambitious goal to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.

But there's limited optimism that this will be a real turning point.

The new laws are only the scaffolding of change. The substance of it is still being worked out – in the form of National Environmental Standards (NES) and a federal watchdog to enforce them.

And many in the sector say the problem is not so much the regulatory tools available, but rather the political will to use them.

Successive governments have failed to adequately protect the environment over the past 30 years, Australia's longest serving environment minister tells the BBC.

That includes his own administration. "We should have done more too," says Robert Hill, who lead the last major reforms in 1999 under John Howard's conservative coalition.

Many of the challenges of his era still haunt leaders today.

The nation's wealth has largely been built off the back of its natural resources – often at the expense of the environment. Those riches still underpin the economy and help fund government spending on essentials like healthcare and housing.

Then there's the added pressure applied by industry and the competing interests of states - whose stake in regulatory controls blurs the lines of accountability and increases bureaucratic hurdles.

These battles leave even the toughest environmental advocates within governments bruised.

For example, the Albanese government last year rushed through laws protecting salmon farming after lobbying by Tasmanian state officials, silencing opposition from within and ignoring advice from its own department concerning the impact of the A$1.4bn (£733m; $989m) industry on the survival of the Maugean Skate, an endangered ray.

"The axe falls on the environmental outcome if there's the alternative of an economic one," Hill says.

"Even if [the federal government] does want to act, it's still got to have the political strength to turn its aspirations into reality."

There is also a belief that greater regulation alone will achieve little.

Too much conservation work currently relies on philanthropists' cash and devoted volunteers, those in the sector say, and much more languishes on the to-do list due to a lack of money.

The federal government directly spends about A$700m on nature protection, a fraction of the A$33bn – or 1% of GDP – conservationists say it should be. That is an eyebrow-raising figure, people like Paul Elton concede, but one they argue is reasonable.

According to his research – which the government disputes – more than A$26bn is still being spent on subsidies for things like mining, intensive agriculture or fuel despite Australia signing global pledges to wind them back.

"For every dollar the government is spending on positive biodiversity conservation action, there's A$26 being spent on subsidies that are causing harm to nature," he tells the BBC.

"That's a pretty stark imbalance."

Minister Watt didn't directly respond to questions about conservationists' demands, but said: "We remain committed to long-term environmental recovery, in partnership with state and local governments, community and environmental groups."

Though public sentiment is shifting, there's scepticism the government will prioritise the environment amid competing demands and compounding crises until voters force them to do so.

"The community will say to you, we should spend a lot of money on the environment. And then if you say, 'Well, what are you prepared to sacrifice to ensure that funding base?', then they're no longer interested," Hill says.

In the face of so many challenges and what they see as little progress, advocates admit it's hard to hang on to hope.

"We know what the problems are. We know how to address them. We know when we spend money on the environment, it pays back many times over," Ritchie, a mammal ecologist, says.

"It's like being a doctor and seeing all these sick people in the community and you know how to fix them, but no one will let you do that."

Small wins, like the future of the numbat, keep them fighting.

There are now around 3,000 nationwide, and in Dryandra numbers have increased ten-fold. The animal has recently been taken off the international endangered species list and is now classified as near-threatened.

It takes five hours, but finally synchronised cries of excitement come from the driver's seat and the back of the pick-up truck. The cause of the commotion stands frozen and alert at the end of a hollowing log.

"It's not a competition," Rob says. Chuckling, he points at his rival spotter: "But I beat him by a second."

The dam has broken. Over the next little while we see eight numbats, including two pairs of babies, blinking at us in the dusky light.

This year's full count, Tony later tells me, is one of the best yet.

"But I remind people they're not out of the woods yet," Tony says.

The relief at the numbat's revival is tempered by worry this will make it harder to access the funding and support needed to cement those gains.

The woylie, or brush-tailed bettong, is a cautionary tale. It recovered slightly and was taken off the threatened list only to be added again a decade later, in a worse state.

"We can't walk away," Tony says, "and say 'no, they're fine,' you know?"

"It's got to be accepted that continued work is needed to keep that animal on the planet."

Hormuz talks positive, Oman says, as Iran warns deal would not open strait

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c934j5y2lq9o, yesterday

Oman has said positive talks have been taking place with Iran over an agreement to secure a shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz, as Tehran warned that any deal would not see an immediate reopening of the vital waterway.

Both sides suggested on Saturday that discussions were progressing, but a timeline on any deal being finalised remained unclear. Oman's foreign ministry warned against attacks on shipping that could hamper that.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said talks were in their final stages but the reopening of the strait remained "subject to other conditions".

Tehran has effectively blockaded the waterway, through which around a fifth of the world's oil and natural gas usually flows, since the US and Israel began attacking it in February.

Talks in recent days have focused on the possibility of a deal between Iran and Oman on a new route through the strait, which they would both have responsibility for and is hoped would lead to progress in resuming shipping traffic.

But Araghchi said a full reopening of the typically busy maritime route depended on other conditions being met, of which he provided a cursory appraisal.

He said the conditions included Iran receiving compensation from the US for what Tehran described as violations of the deal both sides signed in June to cease fighting and advance talks to end the war.

That deal - called a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) - quickly fell through, as did diplomatic talks, with tit-for-tat attacks resuming just days after it was signed.

Separately, Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, Iran's security chief, told the semi-official news agency Tasnim that the Strait of Hormuz would not reopen until the US "corrects" its behaviour.

He said the US needed to meet six Iranian demands, including a halt to threats against Iran, removal of its naval blockade of Iranian ports and release of Iran's frozen assets.

Another blockade, on Saudi Arabia's ports in the Red Sea, had been imposed by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis since 20 July.

Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump said a deal with Iran "could be soon", but Vice-President JD Vance appeared to be more sceptical on Saturday, telling Fox News that work remained to be done even if progress was being made.

"We're really in the middle of the game here," he said. "This thing is not over."

Vance added that "we're applying a whole host of tools - diplomatic, economic [and] military tools - to ensure that we get the best outcome for the American people".

Additionally, he claimed that the "same amount of oil" will emerge from the Gulf as did before the US military operation began on 28 February, although he offered no details.

"What we're really working through now is how you can actually set up a traffic scheme so that the ships can pass through safely," he added.

One of the main points of disagreement between Tehran and Washington has been Iran's reported threat to impose a fee on vessels wishing to cross the strait.

Reuters - citing an Iranian official - previously reported that Tehran was seeking fees of between 5% and 7% of the price of cargoes from vessels who travel through it.

Vance downplayed those reports, saying: "The Iranians have told us they have no plans to toll the Strait of Hormuz."

Oman's warning against attacks on ships in the strait came as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) said on Saturday that Iran had targeted a tanker affiliated with Adnoc, its state-owned oil company, as it passed through.

The UAE's foreign ministry said in a statement that a "hostile Iranian attack" had hit an Adnoc tanker "with a missile". It added that there were no casualties.

Later on Saturday, the UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) agency also reported a ship being struck by "an unknown projectile" off the coast of Oman, causing "a fire that has been extinguished" but no casualties.

It is unclear whether UKMTO was referring to the same ship as the UAE.

Banksy works cost public almost £150,000

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2vnny7j5zo, today

Three artworks by street artist Banksy have cost taxpayers almost £150,000 in cleaning operations and security so far, with the bill expected to rise.

The largest single cost relates to a mural painted on the Royal Courts of Justice in September 2025, where removal efforts and security have so far cost more than £85,000.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) says it has spent £50,000 trying to remove paint from the wall of the Grade II-listed building in Carey Street. A further £35,300 was spent on overtime and security costs.

The spending was disclosed to the BBC through Freedom of Information requests and is likely to reignite debate over whether Banksy's work is vandalism or valuable public art.

Banksy, who emerged from Bristol's graffiti scene in the 1990s and became one of the world's most famous street artists, is known for murals and installations that often appear overnight and attract large crowds.

The latest costs relate to a mural depicting a judge in a wig battering a protester with his gavel, which appeared on the Royal Courts of Justice in London on 8 September 2025.

Banksy claimed the image as his own work, by posting it on his website and Instagram account.

Costs mount at Royal Courts

A HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) spokesperson said: "The Royal Courts of Justice is a listed building and HMCTS are obliged to maintain its original character."

The Metropolitan Police have confirmed: "On Monday, 8 September officers received a report of criminal damage to the side of the Royal Courts of Justice.

"At this time, no arrests have been made and the investigation remains ongoing."

Court staff barricaded off the area and guarded it. Attempts to clean off the mural began immediately.

But the fact he has painted on an historic court has divided opinion.

Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy said: "It's outrageous that tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money – maybe more – will have to be spent cleaning up after Banksy, who seems to believe he has a right to deface public buildings with impunity.

"Our courts are a national symbol of justice and the rule of law.

"Banksy's vandalism should be stopped and he should foot the bill for the costs he imposes on others."

However, art critic Estelle Lovatt defended Banksy's work and pointed to the benefits for tourism: "Some people visit Buckingham Palace and others visit Banksy's art.

"His work brings people together in a way that politics can divide us. He's like the Pied Piper or a town crier.

"It can be intimidating if a mural appears on your building, in terms of the crowds, but he makes art accessible because there's no gallery fee."

It's not the first time Banksy has painted on a listed building.

His early works in Bristol included a mural of a man hanging from a window, on a Georgian house.

First attempts to scrub off the paint on the court were not completely successful, so contractors have been on site using "laser technology".

Westminster City Council will have to inspect the wall and if the removal is deemed incomplete, another cleaning method will have to be used.

As a final option, the affected stonework may have to be removed and replaced.

A Listed Building Consent (LBC) application has been submitted for the installation of railings across the wall that Banksy targeted.

If approval is granted then the costs to install the railings are not yet known.

Previous works incurred expenses

The court mural is not the first of Banksy's works to create costs for public bodies.

In April, a statue of a man carrying a flag appeared in Waterloo Place near Trafalgar Square.

The flag covers the man's face and he appears to be about to step and fall from the plinth.

Banksy claimed responsibility with a video on Instagram showing the night-time installation.

Westminster City Council, which owns the land, says it had no prior knowledge of the statue.

The authority said it had spent almost £60,000 on safety barriers, administration and paying for a security guard to keep watch over it.

In response to a Freedom of Information request, Westminster Council said: "Ownership of the statue now sits with the council as landowner.

"The council has notified the artist's agent that it is reviewing options for the short, medium and long term."

The BBC has asked for more clarification on this statement.

In August 2024, Banksy painted piranha fish on a City of London Police sentry box.

The sentry box had been installed in the 1990s as part of security measures introduced after IRA attacks in the City of London.

After Banksy painted it, the box was removed at a cost of £2,200 and was never replaced.

It was put in storage and is due to be displayed at the London Museum when it reopens in November.

The works are a reminder of Banksy's continuing influence more than three decades after he first became known in Bristol, where surviving murals remain among the city's best-known tourist attractions.

Follow BBC Bristol on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630.

Andy Burnham to embark on cost of living tour through the UK

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0l5j8y388lo, today

The prime minister is set to announce "a series of measures to make life easier" for those struggling with the cost of living in the coming days, Downing Street says.

No 10 says Andy Burnham's plans are to "give people some room to breathe". He will also focus on ways of "improving high streets" as he embarks on a tour of the UK.

But the government is facing continued pressure over its early release scheme for prisoners in England and Wales – with criticism of the fact that two of PC Andrew Harper's killers will be eligible from next year.

Burnham is also likely to face pressure for more action on the cost of living – although significant interventions are unlikely before October's Budget.

Even then, Chancellor John Healey has made it clear he will oversee "strong fiscal discipline" – which will limit how much the government has to spend.

The prime minister has been on holiday this week, but Downing Street said he would be in "listening mode" in the coming days as he tours the UK's nations and regions and works on a "10-year plan to bring back hope".

A spokesman for the prime minister said: "He thinks Westminster has got used to telling people that everyday hassles – like hidden pricing and consumers being ripped off – must be accepted as part of life.

"He doesn't think that's right. That's why he's going to start rolling out a series of pro-consumer cost of living measures to give people some room to breathe."

The spokesman added: "He's also going to be kicking off his summer tour around the country, getting out of Westminster and meeting people where they are.

"The prime minister is going to be in listening mode to help inform his 10-year plan to bring back hope and make Britain better off."

There are, though, likely to be continued questions about the forthcoming early release scheme, due to start in October.

One of Burnham's first acts in Downing Street was to order a review which limited the range of people who would be eligible.

But those convicted of manslaughter will still qualify for the scheme – including two of the killers of PC Andrew Harper.

The prime minister has faced calls from PC Harper's family, former senior police officers and opposition politicians for them to be denied early release.

But he has said he cannot go any further without risking prison capacity. Downing Street said on Saturday night that position remained unchanged, despite reports the prime minister could revisit the case.

The Conservatives said the government's "tax hikes and red tape are hammering our high streets".

Shadow chancellor Mel Stride said: "This is breathtaking hypocrisy from Burnham… they are forcing businesses to close, destroying jobs and driving up prices for the public.

"Meanwhile, Labour are plotting to release dangerous criminals onto our streets, leaving people feeling unsafe in their communities."

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokeswoman Daisy Cooper said struggling high street businesses "need more than a new PM embarking on a vanity tour this summer".

She said the PM should adopt the Lib Dem plan for high streets: "That means reversing the damaging jobs tax, delivering an emergency VAT cut for hospitality, replacing broken business rates and cracking down on the ghost landlords leaving our shop fronts vacant."

Reform UK's economic spokesman Robert Jenrick said: "If Andy Burnham wants to help people with the cost of living, he should scrap the green levies and taxes on energy bills and rule out tax rises at the Budget."

Typhoon Dolphin batters Japan's Okinawa before bearing down on China

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvglp2zlvrlo, yesterday

Typhoon Dolphin has cut power to at least 44,000 buildings and injured at least five people after hitting Japan's Okinawa island on Saturday.

Flights to and from Okinawa's main airport - Naha International Airport - were cancelled as it closed on Friday as the storm arrived.

The storm had maximum wind speeds of 162km/h (101mph) on Saturday and has been categorised as a "very strong" typhoon by the Japan Meteorological Agency, which warned of high waves, storm surges and lightning strikes.

Dolphin is expected to make landfall on China's eastern coast late on Sunday or early on Monday. Authorities there have shut ports and schools ahead of its arrival.

The main areas in Japan affected by the typhoon are the islands of Okinawa and Amami in the far south-west of the country.

Five elderly people suffered non-life-threatening injuries, according to the Okinawan prefectural government. Three of them fell because of the strong winds, it said.

Japan's national broadcaster NHK reports numerous accounts of trees being toppled by strong winds throughout Nago city in Okinawa, while a car was found overturned and leaking oil in a parking lot.

In China, Zhejiang's Ningbo Lishe International Airport said it would stop its operations from 23:30 local time on Saturday (15:30 GMT) and suspend all flights on Sunday.

A coastal typhoon alert in Zhejiang has been raised to its highest level, and port and ferry services have been halted in the Chinese province.

In Hong Kong, its weather observatory posted a record high temperature of 36.9C on Sunday as Typhoon Dolphin swept warm air over the city.

Typhoon season in the western Pacific typically occurs between May and October, when typhoons are considered more commonplace. This year is a strong El Niño year, which experts say means typhoons can grow to be more intense.

In an average year of 25 cyclones reaching tropical storm strength in the region, around three usually make landfall in Japan, according to the country's meteorological agency.

Some of these will be strong enough to be classified as typhoons – as was the case with Dolphin.

A typhoon is the term used for storms that form in the north-west Pacific, whereas a hurricane is the term used for storms that form in the Atlantic or eastern Pacific.

Harry Potter fans force diversion of UK-Ireland power link to avoid 'Dobby's grave'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8mgpl27dpo, today

Harry Potter fans succeeded in diverting a multimillion-pound power link between the UK and Ireland after they complained it would disturb a "memorial" to Dobby the House Elf.

The £430m Greenlink interconnector links the National Grid to Ireland via 125-mile cable between County Wexford and Freshwater West, a beach in Pembrokeshire where the death of fictional character Dobby was filmed in the Potter films.

Project manager Simon Ludlam told the Energy Revolution podcast the cable was originally "going to go straight through" the tribute, before fans began leaving his firm "hundreds of calls".

"Actually we went quite close to some real Bronze Age remains, but we avoided Dobby's grave," he said.

Ludlam, founder of Etchea Energy, said a BBC News interview about the project had turned into a public relations nightmare after fans got wind of what was to happen.

He told the podcast that during the filmed interview he had pointed out where the cable would go underground, saying: "We did the shot, we finished I went back to London, and they then aired it a couple of weeks later.

"And we got hundreds of calls, I mean hundreds of calls."

He said a colleague told him the nature of the calls, and that "apparently we're going to go straight through Dobby's grave".

"I said 'Dobby, who's Dobby? I don't know Dobby?'

"I said 'he's a fictitious character in a fictitious book, the whole thing is fictitious what are you talking about?'

"[The colleague] said 'no it's very, very serious'."

Ludlam said he then discussed with planners "exactly how to reroute the cable so we wouldn't go anywhere close to Dobby's grave".

He added: "A lot of people were very happy about that, and the project is now going [ahead] and Dobby's happy."

The Bronze Age remains the cable went close to were mentioned in Pembrokeshire council planning documents about the power link.

It said archaeological trenches dug near the route of the underground cable "contained the rim of an inverted pottery vessel whose fabric suggests a Bronze Age collared urn circa 1700-1500BC, typically associated with human burial".

The cable diversion is not the first time Dobby's grave has been saved.

In 2022 the National Trust agreed it could remain in place following a consultation, but urged visitors not to leave souvenirs.

Fans were asked not to leave socks on the mock grave, made of pebbles with messages written on them, because the beach was environmentally sensitive.

Rare turtle to be sent back home in 5,000-mile 'incredibly emotional' trip

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62vd6j5llgo, today

A rare turtle that washed up on a Welsh beach is being flown 5,000 miles (8,047km) back home to the Gulf of Mexico.

Rhossi the Kemp's ridley sea turtle was found close to death in December 2023, and has been nursed back to health by staff at the Anglesey Sea Zoo.

Now, conservationists have begun a carefully co-ordinated operation to fly him across the Atlantic ocean, making sure he does not dry out along the way.

"For his skin, we use KY Jelly - better known as a sex lubricant - because it's gentle on the eyes," said Matt Davidson, curator of Anglesey Sea Zoo.

It has taken almost two years to plan, including building a special temperature-controlled crate for him, and co-ordinating complex paperwork across two countries.

Rhossi normally lives in the sea, but has to travel out of the water – first by helicopter from Anglesey to London, then by cargo flight to Houston, Texas, USA.

It means the journey needs to be completed as quickly as possible, and staff have to be constantly on hand to make sure he does not dry out or dehydrate.

Davidson said: "We have to make sure that the shell is really well lubricated, so we spread Vaseline all over to stop it drying out and flaking off.

"The same for the skin – it's really delicate – and especially the eyes, which both have to be lubricated before he goes into the crate and again just before takeoff, or he will start to peel like someone getting sunburned.

"But I have had to go to the checkout in a chemist's with about eight tubes of KY Jelly and three tubs of Vaseline and explain what's happening when I get strange looks."

Rhossi got his name because he was found on a beach near Rhosneigr on Anglesey in December 2023 by a dog called Meg, out for a walk with her owner.

He was less than two years old and was only just alive, in a state that conservationists call "cold-stunned" from being in much cooler water than his normal habitat.

Staff at the Anglesey Sea Zoo believe he lost his way while in warmer seas because of strong winds.

They have cared for him over the past two-and-a-half years as he tripled in size and grew from weighing under 1kg (2.2lb) to 21kg (46lbs).

Frankie Hobro, owner of the Anglesey Sea Zoo, said: "Cold-stunned turtles rarely survive without specialist help - we didn't know if he would make it in the first week or two.

"Turtles belong in the wild, not in captivity, so it's incredibly emotional because this is what we've been working towards for more than two years.

"But we have got to know him and his individual quirks while caring for him, and we know that soon, a little piece of us is going to be swimming off into the Caribbean Sea, and we'll never see him again."

Kemp's ridleys are the rarest sea turtle in the world, and lay their eggs on only two beaches in Mexico and in Texas, USA.

The Anglesey Sea Zoo hopes that Rhossi's release back into the wild will be a small step towards the survival of the species.

Rhossi is the fourth sea turtle to be rescued and rehabilitated by the zoo over the past decade.

Staff are currently planning to build a special turtle rescue centre to care for any more sea turtles found cold-stunned around the Welsh coast.

'I'm only here as a family supported organ donation'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgxr747memo, today

With only a small chance of survival, Louise Prashad says another family's decision to go through with organ donation meant the 22-year-old gained a second chance at life while she was 37 weeks pregnant with twins. After new research finds organ donation consent rates are dropping, Louise is backing a new drive asking people to leave a "lasting legacy".

After her liver went into failure, Louise received another from 52-year-old Sarah, who saved a total of nine people through successful organ transplants.

"I'm only here today because 10 years ago, one family supported organ donation during the worst moment of their lives and their decision gave me the greatest gift imaginable," Louise, now 33, says.

According to NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT), 1,132 patients are waiting for a transplant in Yorkshire and the North East, with national family consent rates for organ donation dropping.

New NHSBT figures found 57% of families agreed to their loved ones donating their organs this year, compared to 69% five years ago.

"Families are approached for this decision at the most devastating moment of their lives and uncertainty can make an already impossible situation harder," Louise, from Easingwold, North Yorkshire, explains.

"These are really difficult conversations, and I think if we break the very British taboo around talking about death we can make organ donation a normal family conversation rather than something people only face in a crisis."

NHSBT is launching an appeal for one million further people to register their decision to be an organ donor by the end of the year, aiming for a total of 30 million registered donors.

Louise says the campaign is "fantastic" to renew discussions around organ donation and stresses that families still have the final say despite a registered decision.

After connecting with Sarah's family and talking to them about their choice, Louise describes it as "the hardest decision" of their lives.

"My donor's family knew that Sarah wanted to donate her organs, because they'd already had that chat and that did make it a little bit easier," she adds.

"Some people go on to regret the decision that they've made, so it's so important that families are having those conversations while they can."

When Louise woke up from her induced coma in 2016, she was given the news her twin son and daughter, Mia and Leo, had passed away.

She says her transplant spurred her on through her grief and she went on to have two further children.

"I'm just so incredibly proud that my donor and her family had that conversation, because it's helped me to become a mum," she says.

"It's helped me finish my degree. It's helped me marry the love of my life.

"And now I get to spread the word about organ donation and try and save more lives."

Anthony Clarkson, director of organ and tissue donation and transplantation at NHSBT, says family support for organ donation has seen a steady decline over the last few years.

"For many families, even when their loved one has expressed a wish to donate, they still override that decision for whatever reason, meaning hundreds of potential organ transplant opportunities being lost each year," he says.

"I would urge people who haven't already done so to express your decision to donate via the organ donor register and for families to remember that decision and honour it should the time come.

"It's the final act you can do for them to honour their memory and leave a lasting legacy to be proud of."

Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.

Is football AI-proof? Why tech investors wanted a slice of the World Cup

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd7l4e3v238o, yesterday

Fifa has been forced to U-turn on plans to sell off a slice of the World Cup after fierce opposition, with threats of future boycotts and calls for the governing body's president, Gianni Infantino, to quit.

But why were a group of tech investors interested in the World Cup in the first place, and are similar proposals in the future inevitable?

In a world in which AI could upend human recreation and pastimes, executives at Thrive Eternal, a spin-off of venture capital firm Thrive Capital, saw an opportunity to lead a group of investors to place cash in the biggest sporting competition on the planet.

The football World Cup was seen as the latest in a new strategy from the firm, which believes that sport will not only survive the AI revolution, but grow in value.

Run by Joshua Kushner, the brother of US Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared, Thrive mainly invests in technology companies developing artificial intelligence (AI) and it has been a major financial backer of OpenAI.

But in April this year, the New York City-based entity created the new investment arm Thrive Eternal in order to invest in areas that have "qualities that cannot be replicated by technology".

Sport is central to that strategy, and that is where football - and securing a minority stake in the World Cup under Fifa's proposed Forward Enterprise (FFE) - became an opportunity.

The view is that the tradition, cultural and identity aspects of football will protect the sport from being upended by AI compared with other forms of entertainment such as movies and music, which are already seeing the technology start to replace humans.

Professor Simon Chadwick has worked in the global sports industry for 30 years, including working with both fan groups, football clubs and governing bodies Fifa and Uefa.

He said investment interests and commercialisation in general meant a lot of decisions were being made on behalf of football and fans "in Wall Street and Silicon Valley".

"It is almost as though it's crept up on us and a lot of people haven't really thought about what's happening," he told the BBC.

While it raised governance questions for Fifa, he added: "Whether people like it or not, private equity investment in sport is happening."

Despite this summer's World Cup, hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico, providing a clear picture of World Cup commercialisation, the BBC understands talks over the FFE proposal involving Thrive started last year, with Greg Maffei, the former boss of Formula 1 owner Liberty Media, brought in as a commercial adviser.

Thrive also hired former Disney chief executive Bob Iger.

Thrive Eternal already invests in other sports. As part of its launch, it announced it had agreed to buy a chunk of the San Francisco Giants baseball team There are also reports the firm is eyeing up a bid for a new NBA franchise in Las Vegas.

It believes that such "iconic franchises and cultural institutions rooted in tradition, identity, and shared experience" will not just survive the AI revolution, but "will matter even more", according to its website.

Kushner and Thrive Eternal have remained silent on the Fifa investment plan and the subsequent fallout.

But a source close to the firm told the BBC the strategy behind the plan, which would have required the backing of Fifa's member associations, was that it would not be like a "typical investment fund looking for a speedy return on investment".

The source said investors preparing to stump up the $4.2bn (£3.1bn) initial investment were doing so with the view of not seeing any return for a "long period of time - decades", due to Thrive Eternal being structured as a holding company.

They higlighted had the FFE proposal been activated, it would have given each member association a stake worth as much as $91m each based on its $20bn valuation - stressing that the equity would be controlled by Fifa, not investors, and to sell part of that equity would have been down to individual member associations.

"The idea of outside investment...was to channel more resources upfront to countries that wouldn't typically get access to outside funding - so they could invest in things like stadiums and training to be able to develop their game domestically," the source said.

According to Fifa, the aim of FFE was "to separate the business of football from the governance of the sport".

In England, the business of football has exploded, especially since the establishment of the Premier League, so much so that the financial rules, transfer deals and boardroom gossip have become just as popular conversation topics between fans as the action on the pitch.

US investment in football is not new, and the amount of American dollars being poured into English and other European clubs has been growing broadly since the Glazer family bought Manchester United more than two decades ago.

But some question whether Fifa - and the World Cup - needed this cash injection.

Fifa has claimed the World Cup is "under-monetised", but hydration break adverts, dynamic ticket pricing and record broadcast and sponsorship rights have put the 2026 edition on track to generate record revenues.

The 48-team tournament and potential for an even bigger 64-team competition gives a view of further commercial opportunities. More countries equal more viewers, which equals more money.

Christina Philippou, an associate professor in accounting and sport finance at the University of Portsmouth, said the approach by Fifa to seek outward investment had been seen in other sports and by individual football clubs when cash flow had been a problem.

"Fifa are not in a position where they are desperate for money. In fact, they could very easily, with the money they already have, increase those payouts to the member associations. So there is no need to go external."

Thrive Eternal is understood to respect the decision to take the plan off the table, but it is clear that interest, with or not this specific investment group, remains focused on football.

The cost of being single – and how friends are teaming up to beat it

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly7dqprlnvo, 5 days ago

When Leanne split up with her partner in her late 20s she thought she'd have to put her dream of a buying a home in the area where she grew up on hold.

She was earning a good salary but the properties she was hoping for - with a garden and parking space - were too expensive on her own. While she'd just started seeing someone new, it was very early days - far too early to discuss living together.

Her friend since school, Sarah, was single and renting a room in a shared house in Brighton. She also wanted to move back home to Kent, but was worried about how she'd get on the housing ladder on her cabin crew salary.

When Sarah suggested they buy together, Leanne admits she "totally baulked". But after chatting with a mortgage adviser they went ahead - and say it's helped them avoid the so-called singles tax.

Not being partnered up can mean extra costs. It's tricky to quantify and varies by location - estimates suggest it could be anything from hundreds of pounds to £10,000 on average extra a year.

The cost of rent or a mortgage, household bills and subscriptions can't be shared. And a single person pays 25% less council tax than a couple - not half.

Many discounts involve pairing up - 2-for-1 cinema tickets, Two-Together railcards, couples gym memberships - plus solo travellers often pay a single person supplement.

This affects a lot of people. Some 18.5m people had never been married or in a civil partnership in 2024 – 36.8% of the population aged 16 and over, official figures show.

And overall 8.6m people were estimated to be living alone in the UK last year - that's nearly a third of all households.

Ahead of their house purchase, Sarah and Leanne agreed a minimum amount of time they'd live together for - two years, which they then extended to four - and discussed what would happen if one person wanted to leave.

Their mortgage payments were split proportionally to take into account their differing salaries, and the arrangements detailed in a declaration of trust so they would be protected when they came to sell.

They were able to split the household bills - with these coming out of a joint account and self-professed "bill keeper" Sarah keeping track of what they needed to transfer each month - but also cut costs by sharing some meals and the cooking as they had similar eating habits.

"We called it our happy home, not our forever home," says Leanne.

"And it was a very happy home," agrees Sarah.

Benefits to buying a home with friends include a bigger deposit and budget, and split costs, according to the Homeowner's Alliance. But it says people should consider potential pitfalls seriously and plan ahead by being upfront about their finances, seeking separate legal advice and drawing up a formal agreement.

Sarah and Leanne sold their house for a profit four years after moving in, and they put the equity they'd built up toward their next, separate purchases.

"Neither of us would have been able to do what we've done without having the property that we had together," says Sarah. "It's brought us a lot of freedom."

Leanne thinks she would have been able to afford what she wanted in time, but the financial benefits from buying with Sarah made this possible much sooner.

"The hidden singles tax is that everything has to take so much longer for you to be able to be in a position of affordability to do what you want to do," she adds.

Their success inspired their friend Philly to set up Cucoon - an online platform matching up singles to potentially buy together.

She says her aim is to "level the playing field", adding the singles tax is particularly high when it comes to housing.

How to cut costs if you're single

* Monetise your real estate: rent out rooms, car parking spaces and garages

* Shared dinners: hosts take turns to cook with larger, cheaper products

* Borrowing circles: one person buys an expensive item, such as a lawnmower, and passes it along

* Errand pooling: friends share fuel costs by taking it in turns to drive to the supermarket

Julia Pearson, from Hampshire, set up the Just4One website about nine years ago when she wanted to go on holiday and discovered many places would charge her extra if she went alone.

Alongside practical support for solo life, the platform lists travel providers which do not include the single supplement.

Being single feels like a "constant review of your costs all the time", she says.

In a list of a money-saving tips for drivers, the RAC suggests adding a named driver onto your car insurance.

It's something Julia has tried - and says it's saved her 8%.

The RAC says this can bring your premium down, but warns it can also do the opposite.

Julia also shares items with friends – she has borrowed tools to renovate her home and given people plant cuttings from her garden.

"I think as a society, we are becoming more social in terms of our sharing and thinking.

"Rather than thinking, 'I've got to go out and buy that', think about how else can you play that, what else can you do aside from having to buy something?

"And it's good for the social side as well, two benefits in one."

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'I feel like I dug my own grave': The workers caught in the AI transition

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgr7nxve05go, 5 days ago

For 15 years, single mother Lisa made a living from content writing.

She began writing straight out of college, freelanced for years and eventually followed a path taken by many young Filipinos: joining a multinational in the country's booming outsourcing industry.

Lisa says she never felt the need to use artificial intelligence (AI) in her work.

"I can say that I am able to do my job, I meet deadlines. In my opinion, there is no need for [AI]," she told the BBC.

Eight months into her latest role, and one month before the position was due to become permanent, she was made redundant.

In the months before, Lisa says a public relations agency had been tasked with producing AI-generated material that she and her colleagues were asked to edit. She says her skills were used to train the AI on the company writing style.

"I feel like I dug my own grave," she says. "We were the ones who trained the artificial intelligence that replaced us."

Lisa, not her real name, is one of several former outsourcing employees the BBC spoke to who asked to remain anonymous. They signed confidentiality agreements in return for severance pay, and fear that speaking publicly could hurt their chances of finding work in an industry which has a small network.

Their experiences offer an insight into a question confronting emerging economies like the Philippines: what happens when AI begins to automate the jobs that helped lift millions of people into the middle classes?

Building an industry

Every evening around 5pm, streams of workers wearing company lanyards spill out of high-rise offices in the district of Cubao in Manila.

It's one of several areas of the capital where multinational companies have premises – providing all sorts of outsourcing work including call centres, accounting, software development and marketing copy services for clients thousands of miles away.

For over two decades, these business districts have symbolised one of the Philippines' biggest economic success stories.

Beginning in the early 2000s, the country was promoted as an English-speaking alternative to India for what's called business process outsourcing (BPO).

Successive governments offered tax incentives, invested in infrastructure and encouraged multinational companies to set up large operations.

Global groups like Accenture, Concentrix and Teleperformance built sprawling campuses, employing hundreds of thousands of Filipinos.

Today, the outsourcing industry employs roughly 1.9 million people, and generates $40bn (£30.1bn) in revenues every year, accounting for about 10% of the Philippines' economy.

But experts say the industry is disproportionately vulnerable to the impact of AI.

The International Labour Organization estimates that 12.7 million Filipinos - more than one in four workers - are employed in occupations exposed to generative AI, the highest share in South East Asia.

The organisation expects many roles to change rather than disappear but the types of service jobs that people do in the Philippines leaves it particularly at risk.

Jack Madrid, president of the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP), admits that AI is being adopted by the sector.

More than two-thirds of IBPAP's members are already running AI pilots, he says.

"Agentic AI has the potential to automate at a much more accelerated pace," Madrid says. "Obviously, there's a layer of jobs that are automatable or have been automated."

But he adds that the vast majority of affected workers have been redeployed within the same organisations.

Madrid says any weakness in hiring reflects more than the impact of AI.

"We've seen a slowdown in investment decisions on whether certain job functions or processes should be offshored," he says, pointing to slower global demand and uncertainty over how companies will ultimately deploy the technology.

Even so, he acknowledges the challenge. "We cannot do enough to be prepared," he says. "The importance of reskilling" cannot be overstated.

The pressure to automate

Mary, another former content writer whose name we've changed, says her employer encouraged the use of AI as a productivity tool.

Instead of making her job easier, she says it created additional responsibilities.

"We had to edit more, fact-check more because the data AI produced was inaccurate," she says. "Technically it was more work for us."

Like Lisa, she was later made redundant.

Companies are under pressure to implement AI, to reduce costs and increase productivity, experts say.

Teleperformance, the world's largest call centre operator and one of the Philippines' biggest private employers, has said AI offers an opportunity to augment rather than replace its workforce.

The company expects AI to handle routine interactions while human agents move into more complex roles.

Teleperformance has also said it plans to retrain employees.

Accenture has similarly said that generative AI will reshape almost every job rather than eliminate positions.

The firm has promised to invest billions of dollars in AI capabilities and workforce training.

Concentrix - which is the biggest outsourcing firm in the Philippines - says its AI systems should remain under human oversight and has committed to training employees in the new technology.

Some Filipino managers are uneasy about AI and want to slow down adoption, according to Paul Quintos, from the University of the Philippines-Diliman.

They are concerned about how much of the domestic workforce might be displaced.

"But there's tremendous pressure from foreign clients to adopt AI," he says. "It's a major cost-cutting measure."

Philippine outsourcing companies compete directly with rivals in India and elsewhere for contracts from multinational corporations.

Increasingly, those clients expect suppliers not only to provide cheaper labour, but also to integrate AI into the services they deliver.

Despite hundreds of billions of dollars being invested globally in AI, Quintos says there is still limited evidence about how much productivity many workplace tools actually deliver.

"There is a term called 'AI washing'," he says.

Some layoffs are presented as being driven by AI when companies are in fact responding to weaker demand or slowing economic conditions, Quintos says.

Attributing redundancies to AI, he adds, can make restructuring appear like technological progress rather than a response to market conditions.

The next transition

Labour groups have told the BBC that existing employment laws in the Philippines govern redundancy but offer little guidance on how companies should introduce AI into workplaces or consult employees over its use.

The Philippines' outsourcing sector is also non-unionised, leaving many workers with little formal say over how new technologies are deployed.

The government says that it, and the private sector have a responsibility to retrain workers, and risks falling behind competitors like India and Singapore.

"To be completely honest, I think we're slightly behind. We have to catch up," says Leandro Aguirre of the Philippines Department of Information and Communications Technology.

"We have to double our efforts to put our people in a position where they will not be displaced but actually thrive in this growing AI race."

The government has committed to upskilling more than 300,000 outsourcing workers, but Aguirre acknowledges that the Philippines may need to rethink the economic model that helped make it an outsourcing centre.

"We relied heavily on foreign direct investment," he says. "But I think we also need to focus on local talent and local companies."

The ambition, he says, is to build home-grown AI companies capable of creating higher-value jobs.

Aguirre rejects calls for sweeping new AI legislation, arguing that existing labour, privacy and consumer protection laws can be adapted more quickly through regulatory guidance.

"The benefits of AI have to trickle down to people," he says. "It can't just benefit employers."

For more than 20 years, the Philippines built one of the world's most successful outsourcing industries by selling the skills of its people to multinational companies.

AI may not end that model, but it is certainly changing it, and risks leaving some workers behind.

Additional reporting by Jaltson Akkanath Chummar and Regine Cabato

Trump administration to pay German firm $1.2bn to halt US wind projects

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1e1vg0gjl5o, 2 days ago

German energy company RWE has said it will abandon its offshore wind projects in the US after reaching a $1.2bn (£892m) payout deal with President Donald Trump's Department of the Interior (DoI).

RWE said that it will now reinvest the sum into conventional gas projects, including $900m (£669m) in a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal project in Louisiana.

"After careful consideration, it was determined there is no path forward to permit these projects in the US for the foreseeable future," the company said in a statement.

Trump has derided wind power for years and often uses his rally speeches to rail against "ugly" turbines.

RWE said it has agreed to relinquish its leases off the California and Louisiana coasts as well as in the New York Bight.

Overall, the German firm plans to invest approximately €17bn (£14.5bn; $19.6bn) in the US over the next six years "to grow its generation capacity".

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement posted on X that Americans deserve an energy system built on common sense and not one dependent on "costly subsidies".

"We welcome RWE's agreement and voluntary investment in projects that strengthen our nation's energy security," he added.

The deal is the latest the Trump administration has reached this year as Trump, a vocal supporter of the fossil fuel industry, continues his push to halt offshore wind projects.

Trump has sought to boost government support for fossil fuels after campaigning for the presidency under the slogan "drill, baby, drill".

Days after his return to office, he said "we're not going to do the wind thing" and called them "big, ugly windmills" that were dangerous to wildlife.

And this week, he said that "any country with windmills is a loser".

In March 2026, the DoI reached a deal with TotalEnergies putting an end to the French company's offshore wind projects in the US.

Instead, the firm agreed to reroute investment to build a LNG plant in Texas and to develop "upstream conventional oil" in the Gulf of Mexico.

The administration signed a similar $129m (£96m) agreement with Charlotte-based Duke Energy last month in exchange for the termination of the company's offshore wind lease in the Carolina Long Bay area.

Trump imposes 15% tariff on key chip material to counter China

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrvn686dljo, 3 days ago

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that imposes a 15% tariff on imported products made from polysilicon, a crucial material used in semiconductors and solar panels.

The order also set minimum import prices on polysilicon and related products. It comes after a national security investigation into the production of the material overseas.

The move is intended to help protect US manufacturers as they face increasing competition from China's chip industry - a key source of friction between the world's two largest economies.

The Chinese embassy in Washington said the move "seriously disrupts" trade between the two countries and Beijing will act to protect its companies.

Washington is "abusing state power to go after Chinese businesses," the embassy said, adding that protectionism will not make the US more competitive.

Trump said in the order that he had accepted recommendations by Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to set minimum import prices as well as a 15% tariff on polysilicon and related imports.

The measures are due to take effect in December.

The US will also offer incentives to boost domestic production, it added.

For decades, the US has allowed "foreign firms to weaken United States producers in the polysilicon sector," said Trump, who has long advocated for the use of tariffs to protect American jobs and boost the economy.

The material is critical in military equipment and electronics, yet imports have led to the US' share of global polysilicon production to fall from 50% in 2005 to less than 2% in 2024, Trump said.

China holds a near monopoly on the production of polysilicon.

The order is likely to benefit Hemlock Semiconductor and Wacker Chemie, which are the main producers of the material in the US.

The production of computer chips is central to the race between the US and China to develop artificial intelligence (AI). Washington and Beijing have also been locked in a tit-for-tat tariffs war, which has been on hold since May 2025.

Analysts quoted by Chinese state media outlet Global Times said the new tariff marks the latest escalation in Washington's efforts to limit China's role in critical technology supply chains.

The move follows other US restrictions on the imports of drones, humanoid robots and other tech products from China.

China announced a range of countermeasures this week, including tighter export controls on drones. Beijing also launched a national security review into imported printers and copiers.

Doge overstated claims to have saved Americans $110bn, watchdog finds

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg0rg9wmvlo, 3 days ago

Some estimates made by Doge, the body charged with reducing US government spending, that it saved billions of dollars are "incorrect or lack supporting evidence", a watchdog has found.

A report released on Thursday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has given an extensive review of Doge's claims about its so-called "Wall of Receipts", which reported savings of $110bn (£82bn) across contracts, grants and leases.

"Several issues limit the transparency and reliability of these reported savings," the report stated.

Asked for comment, a White House official said the administration told the GAO that all employees had to complete ethics training and follow financial disclosure requirements.

Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, was not an official government department. It launched at the start of President Trump's second term but closed last month. Its Wall of Receipts was a way of showing its purported savings in taxpayer money online.

Elon Musk, the billionaire boss of Tesla and SpaceX who formerly led Doge but left in May 2025, initially promised to save as much as $2tn a year by slashing federal jobs and shuttering government programmes, among other cost-cutting measures.

Even by Doge's own estimates, it fell short of that goal, as its website claims to have saved an estimated $214bn.

"While Doge provided some information about estimated savings, several issues limit the transparency and reliability of these reported savings," the GAO report stated.

It said Doge had not been transparent regarding the methods it used to calculate savings, highlighting it "did not provide sufficient information to verify the method used to calculate 96% of Doge-reported savings".

Among its specific findings was that 108 of the 264 leases identified by Doge for termination were already in the process of ending before the body was established.

That accounts for about $15.3m of the total $53.5m in savings Doge claimed.

"The Wall of Receipts does not include an explanation of how the savings from terminated leases were calculated," the GAO said.

Claims were also made about savings that were not achieved, like $1.7bn for ending a defence department contract for IT services. However, the contract was never terminated and thus no savings were achieved, according to the congressional watchdog's report.

"While the Wall of Receipts includes some information about the data and sources underlying reported savings, it does not sufficiently disclose limitations affecting data quality," it assessed.

The GAO audit, which was carried out at the request of Democratic Senators Gary Peters and Richard Blumenthal, covered savings data reported from 20 January 2025 through 7 July 2026.

"Everyone supports rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, but Doge was a slapdash and deceptive effort that misled the American people while doing real damage to the government's ability to serve them," Senator Peters said in a statement on Thursday.

Under Musk, Doge pushed for massive reductions in the federal workforce, as well as the shuttering of programmes and even agencies such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Some of Doge's moves were met with legal fights, or were reversed. When the group's cost-cutting resulted in bird flu officials at the US Department of Agriculture being fired, the Trump administration looked to re-hire them days later.

In a social media post last month announcing its closure, Doge said: "While the formal mission of Doge has come to an end, the mission to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse will continue. Good stewardship of taxpayer dollars and accountable government are not temporary initiatives."

What you wear can help you get a job - here's how

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c80neg5rd81o, 12 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."

Why airlines are warning over lithium-ion batteries

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyl6yz719jo, 3 days ago

Ben Wodecki is used to travelling the globe and is used to seeing airline crew at work.

But flying into Las Vegas in June, the technology journalist saw something he'd never seen before, as worried looking flight crew dashed to the rear of the plane. "There was a glint of fear. They were dour. This was something more than someone being ill. It was something that affected them."

As smoke, then distressed passengers emerged from the rear of the plane, it because clear what had happened. A passenger had been using a battery pack during the flight, and it had overheated before bursting into flames with a seat catching fire.

Flight crew dropped the device into a container of water, Wodecki says. The plane then landed "fast and aggressively" at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, he explains, where it was met by fire crews on the runway.

It was a dramatic end to a routine flight – and it illustrates why flyers are hearing more frequent and more insistent warnings about the dangers of bringing battery powered devices and specifically lithium-ion batteries on flights.

These include warnings about trying to retrieve devices that slip into seat and pleas not to put lithium-ion devices in checked luggage.

According to Jonathan Nicholson at the UK's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), for the airline industry, lithium-ion batteries are "if not number one, within the top three risks for a good few years now".

A US recent study showed the industry was affected by two lithium-ion battery related incidents a week worldwide, he adds. Those incidents could range from passengers belatedly realising they'd left a device in checked baggage, to devices smoking or catching fire in airport baggage halls, or on flights.

But the results can be far more extreme. In January 2025 an Air Busan plane was destroyed on the tarmac in Gimhae Airport in South Korea, with investigators concluding a power bank battery pack left in an overhead luggage compartment was the culprit.

This prompted the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to launch a global campaign to encourage passengers to "Travel Smart with Lithium Batteries".

There is nothing about flying that makes lithium-ion technology more dangerous, explains Nicholson. Rather, he said "it's a lot harder to deal with at 32,000 feet in an aircraft cabin".

Nicholson said the prevalence of lithium-ion related incidents was down to "more people, more flights, more devices".

The US Federal Aviation Administration says that battery safety is a priority. Its data "continues to show an increase in confirmed incidents", with 51 verified incidents for the year to July 15.

Pierre Kubiak, a principal engineer specialising in battery technology at the UK's National Physical Laboratory, adds that while cell phones, power banks, tablets and laptops are the most obvious portable devices people bring on planes, smart watches, smart glasses and vapes were increasingly common.

"The lithium by itself doesn't burn, it's more all the organic material and plastic," he explains. "The point is that it gets very, very hot, very fast. I mean, more than 700 to 1000 degrees super fast."

The dangers of lithium-ion batteries really broke into the public consciousness following a series of phone-related fires about a decade ago.

Kubiak says that this had been down to flawed designs, and that manufacturers had since addressed concerns. South Korea is a leader in this space he adds.

But it was hard to control the proliferation of cheaply produced battery packs from East Asia, as well as vapes and other powered devices, with questionable quality controls. "Price is everything," he says. Moreover, he adds, passengers often contribute to the problem by using unsuitable cables and not caring for devices.

This leaves airlines with little option but to reiterate their warnings and stick with tried and tested methods of ensuring staff are drilled to quickly deal with incidents when they occur.

The CAA's Nicholson says "the most important thing is to bung it in water and cool it down," though some airlines did use specialised containment devices. But that is why it is essential that devices are kept in the cabin, not in overhead compartments, and definitely not in the hold.

Nicholson added that customers seemed to bear the warnings and restrictions well. The biggest problem is simply that they are often unaware of just how many devices rely on lithium-ion battery technology.

There are no economic alternatives to lithium-ion technology at present, Kubiak adds. The tech and personal device industries are heavily invested in the technology.

One alternative is sodium-ion batteries, but the technology is currently double the cost of lithium devices for consumers, Kubiak says. "It's not just a technical solution. It's also a societal solution that we have to take."

He suggested there should be more of a focus on safeguarding around the existing technology. "We don't necessarily want to have battery banks banned from every plane."

How a 90-second power outage sparked chaos for rail commuters

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3ekd5784k5o, 2 days ago

The power failure which hit a Network Rail operations centre in Manchester was a rare incident.

But after commuters were left facing chaos, it has raised questions about how a short outage at one operating centre could have a widespread impact.

Network Rail will face scrutiny for how its systems coped and responded to the outage.

That's the publicly-owned body whose job it is to operate and maintain Britain's railway infrastructure. That means the tracks, signals, embankments and major stations.

It was at Network Rail's operating centre in Manchester that the problem started. Its operating centres are where crucial controls are housed that let trains run safely across the country, with Manchester's centre responsible for large parts of the North West.

It was hit by a power cut in the area, which was resolved within 90 seconds. Given the centre's importance, backups are in place. But questions have been raised about how they responded.

Chris Wright, north-west route director at Network Rail, told the BBC "we didn't experience a 90-second interruption," insisting its systems were back online sooner.

But he said some of Network Rail's communications systems "did not respond how we would have expected, and then needed reconfiguring and replacing".

"We've got to work really hard very quickly now to understand why that's the case," he added.

Because signalling was affected - think of that essentially as the traffic lights of the railway - trains had to stop.

Systems had to be rebooted. But there was some damage to those that control signalling, which took time to fix because of the need to replace certain parts.

Thinking about how busy parts of the rail network are, and how many trains and crews were left out of position across the North West of England and beyond, helps explain why the impact was so big.

Network Rail has apologised to customers and opened an investigation.

Bosses say engineers have been working hard to "build additional resilience into our signalling systems to ensure that this doesn't happen again".

Network Rail has moved towards having 12 so-called Rail Operating Centres across Great Britain, replacing a previous structure of hundreds of older signal boxes. They are meant to be high tech hubs which centralise control of the network.

Manchester's Rail Operating Centre was opened in 2014.

Experts have warned consolidating in this way means that if one centre is badly affected, the impact is much broader.

Rail writer Christian Wolmar said the problem they have created is that "if one thing goes wrong, it can wipe out, as we saw, quite a lot of the network".

"So really they've got to start thinking about both resilience, but also whether the centralisation of all the signalling and communications into a very small number of places is the right thing to do," he added.

There's nothing to specifically link this particular incident to other recent problems experienced by rail users; for example the impact of speed restrictions and infrastructure failures during the recent extreme heat.

But it is unlikely to inspire confidence among passengers who have in the past few years suffered from issues such as poor performance among operators, strikes and rising ticket prices. Regulated fares have been frozen in England this year.

Rail engineer and writer Gareth Dennis also drew a link between the incident and the funding pressures and job cuts Network Rail has faced. He said it raised questions including: "Are their staff suitably resourced? Are there enough staff to be ensuring that things like those checks of that supply are happening?"

Network Rail gets five-year funding settlements, signed off by the government. The latest one started in 2024.

The government committed £44.1bn for the 2024-29 period of the strategic business plan, a £3bn increase from the previous five years.

Factors including rising costs due to inflation and a rise in extreme weather events have left its funding under severe pressure.

Introducing Network Rail's new business plan, former chief executive Andrew Haines said that, given the constrained budget, funding would "need to go further than ever before".

The government's current rail policy centres around nationalising the passenger rail operators who weren't already in public control (a number of operators had already been nationalised under past Conservative governments) - then bringing the running of train services and the infrastructure under a new organisation called Great British Railways.

Network Rail is expected to be abolished as a separate entity. Ahead of that, some joint management teams have been formed, for example in the South West.

The question of how much taxpayer money to spend supporting both passenger rail services, and investing in infrastructure, is a significant one - and government budgets remain squeezed.

With additional reporting by Mark Allison

Argos is getting a makeover - but can it attract new shoppers?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2lqvwewgp2o, 3 days ago

Do you still shop at Argos? And if so, what do you think of it?

The chain has been a fixture of the British High Street for more than 50 years and is still used by around half of all UK households.

But it has struggled to thrive in recent years amid fierce competition from online giants like Amazon, with sales stagnating.

Its owner Sainsbury's recently announced it was selling the chain for a lot less than it paid for it just 10 years ago.

But the new owners say they see "real opportunities" for growth, including opening new standalone shops. Can they succeed where Sainsbury's did not?

When the BBC spoke to shoppers in central London this week, the retailer seemed to divide opinion.

Some, like Enrico, 28, said they loved the convenience of same-day collection, and felt nostalgic towards a brand which unlocked fond childhood memories.

"It was a great way of doing your Christmas shopping," he told the BBC. "We'd go into our local Argos and we'd get the massive print catalogue."

Argos's encyclopedia-like catalogue was once dubbed "the laminated book of dreams", but the company stopped printing it in 2021.

At one point it was Europe's most widely printed publication.

For others, though, Argos has not moved with the times and is at odds with the seemingly endless online choice.

"I feel Amazon is a lot easier because it gets delivered straight to your door with Prime," said Emily, 22, adding that she only used Argos to buy appliances, not "day to day" items.

Jack Cunningham, 26, from Kent often uses Argos to pick up things when he's at work in London.

The scientist said the big draw was convenience: "If I need something in the moment and can't wait for delivery, normally I'll get it in Argos.

"You can order something really cheap on Amazon, and it might come and be the wrong size," he added.

For years, commentators have asked whether Argos could build a business to take on Amazon, the biggest online seller in the UK.

But while Argos has invested a lot in digital, it never quite happened. It made £4.1bn of sales last year, compared with £32bn for Amazon in the UK.

'Remind people it exists'

Argos does, however, offer something its online rivals don't - a large network of stores, concessions in Sainsbury's shops, and collection points that mean customers can click and collect on the same day, free of charge.

Retail analyst Catherine Shuttleworth thinks Argos could capitalise on this, along with its reputation as a trusted British brand.

However, she thinks it needs to improve its app so it can compete with online players like Amazon, Shein and Temu.

"I think if you asked people to name five High Street retailers, they wouldn't name Argos," she added. "It's almost about reminding people it exists."

Argos hasn't been front of mind for Georgia, 27, for ages. She thinks it is outdated and not for her. "It's very old school isn't it? I'm more of an Amazon shopper."

Argos could also do better on customer service, thinks Hugh Radojev, editor of Retail Week.

"It's not an exciting place to shop, or what it used to be for kids around Christmas. Under a new ownership you'd hope they could get it back into the zeitgeist."

Since 2012, Argos has gone from having 845 standalone shops to around 200 - although it also has opened about 450 shop-within-shops in Sainsbury's stores.

This was seen as a smart move, allowing Argos to tap into Sainsbury's large customer base. Argos will keep all of those concessions after the takeover, and customers will continue to get Nectar loyalty card points for all their purchases.

But Nicole, 40, an Argos fan from South London, says she wants the chain to expand further.

"It would be nice if they could go in other supermarkets like Tesco," she added.

'Argos has a history of being different'

Argos's new owners have ruled out deals with rival supermarkets, but they do plan to forge other "partnerships" and open new standalone stores.

The group, called Swift Partners, includes several seasoned retail veterans, one of them a former boss of Co-operative Group. Retail analyst Richard Hyman thinks this ownership will be a better fit than Sainsbury's, which was focused on selling food.

But he is sceptical about how much Argos can grow in such a "tough retail market".

Shuttleworth is more optimistic, saying with a "ruthless focus" Argos can thrive and even put Amazon under pressure.

"Argos completely revolutionised the way we shop when they came out and they have a history of being different," she said. "If I was marketing director I would be thinking about how to bottle that for 2027."

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EasyJet agrees to £5.7bn takeover by US firm

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjejzjpy98wo, 3 days ago

No-frills airline EasyJet has agreed to be taken over in a £5.7bn deal by US firm Apollo after a rival bidder dropped out.

The takeover was agreed after US investment firm Castlelake, which had made a series of offers for the carrier, said it was withdrawing from the bid battle.

Apollo said it wants to help the airline grow and that it does not intend to cut any jobs in the first 12 months after the takeover has been completed, implying that passengers can expect largely the same service.

EasyJet is one of Europe's largest airlines. It employs more than 19,000 people, and flies around 1,200 routes across 35 European countries.

It was founded by Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou in 1995 to offer cheap air fares to Europe from the UK. Its first flights took off in November 1995 flying from Luton to Glasgow and Edinburgh, with its first international flights the following year.

Sir Stelios and his family still own around 15% of the business, and he said he supported Apollo's plans for the airline "to create more growth".

"My family and I intend to remain invested as long-term major shareholders of EasyJet for the next chapter in the company's journey," he said in a statement.

The future ownership of EasyJet has been uncertain since it emerged in late May that Castlelake was considering a bid for the airline.

Castlelake made a number of approaches for EasyJet, which were rebuffed initially after the carrier accused the US firm of trying to buy it "on the cheap".

In early July, EasyJet and Castlelake said they had agreed a deal in principle, but then Apollo - which owns Wagamama parent The Restaurant Group - swooped in with a higher bid.

Under the offer from Apollo, EasyJet shareholders will receive £7.15 per share.

AJ Bell's head of financial analysis, Danni Hewson said while the offer was significantly above where the company's shares were trading before the Iran war, the figure was "still woefully short of the company's pre-pandemic highs".

Apollo said it was "highly supportive" of the airline's existing strategy, adding there was "a significant opportunity to accelerate the operational and commercial ambitions" for the EasyJet Group.

"EasyJet is a leader in European aviation, having built a differentiated market position through its compelling customer proposition, expansive network and strong brand," said Alex van Hoek, partner and European private equity lead at Apollo.

EasyJet chief executive Kenton Jarvis said "We welcome Apollo's commitment to our business and our people, and believe that its experience in the aviation sector makes it a strong partner for EasyJet."

The deal will still need to win approval from regulators, including in the EU where rules mean EasyJet's owners will have to be majority EU-based.

Apollo anticipates this can be achieved by making the Haji-Ioannou family, and other EU-based shareholders, owners of around half of the business.

Apollo said though it does not intend to cut any staff for at least 12 months after the deal goes through, if the deal completes and EasyJet delists from the stock exchange to become a private company, some jobs related to maintaining its public-listed operations could go.

The firm said that would be a "limited number of roles in specific areas."

AJ Bell's Hewson said the potential loss of another well-known name from London markets will be seen as a blow.

"Air travel might not be as sexy as space travel, but retail investors understand it and names like EasyJet can't easily be replaced," she said.

Cashing in on SpaceX: 'Every chance I get, I'll sell a little more'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2g0j3y339o, 3 days ago

Andre Lavoie joined SpaceX in 2009 as an engineer, designing the pressure tanks that help power its rocket. He was paid partly in stock - a common trade-off at start-ups as a hiring incentive.

Some 17 years on, those 200,000 shares he was given are worth about $23m (£17m) - and the 63-year-old says he's ready to start cashing them as soon as he can.

"Every chance I get going forward, I'll sell a little bit more," he tells the BBC.

"The shares have been going up so radically it keeps messing up my life plans - you really can't know the future, so it's better to sell early and in intervals."

Lavoie is far from being the only one who has seen the value of his stake in SpaceX rocket over the years.

The company's founder, Elon Musk, said on Fox News that SpaceX's listing on the stock market in June had likely made "several thousand" employees millionaires - including staff "who were working on the production line".

According to reports, there are estimated to be 4,400 new millionaires created by the listing.

Unlike most newly-listed firms, SpaceX shares are set to be released in stages: the first 20% on 6 August, with more due in batches through the rest of the year.

Whether or not shareholders decide to sell their stake at the first opportunity is a matter for individuals. Unlike Lavoie, some may choose to hold onto their shares altogether in the hope of bigger gains later.

SpaceX listed on the Nasdaq in June, in the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in history, valuing the rocket and satellite firm at more than $2 trillion.

It briefly made Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire, before the stock cooled and his fortune slipped back below the milestone within weeks.

In its first results as a public company this week, the firm's quarterly revenue was shown to have nearly doubled to $7.8bn (£5.8bn) from a year earlier, while its spending ballooned to $18.3bn - more than six times what it was a year ago.

Overall, SpaceX made a net loss of $143m in the three months to June, and a loss of $2bn during the first six months of the year.

Musk pushed back against sceptics on an earnings call: "I think people are really underestimating Starlink". He predicted the satellite internet service - the one part of the company that is currently making a profit - could one day deliver a majority of the world's internet.

But shares in the company tumbled on the back of the earnings report, with investors generally spooked by the huge amounts of money being spent on AI.

SpaceX shares fell 13.6% on Wednesday to $108.27 (£80.44) - well below the initial listing price of $135 a share.

Lavoie plans to use his money from selling some of his shares to fund a hotel he is renovating in Pontebba, Italy's northeastern Friuli region, plus a small brewery.

He says his priority for the future is raising awareness of air pollution in the area, in partnership with a local environmental group.

Before he was hired, Lavoie was interviewed by Musk himself.

"He's a very charming person when he wants something," Lavoie says.

He wouldn't be drawn on Musk's politics - "that's his business" - but is unreserved about the company: "I've always been happily supportive and impressed, and would work hard with those incredible people again."

Some analysts value SpaceX at less than half its current stock market price, warning its ties to xAI carry real financial risk - part of a broader worry on Wall Street that sky-high valuations for AI-linked firms, including SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic, could prove overdone.

Sinead O'Sullivan, an economist who has previously worked for Nasa, told the BBC in June she thinks SpaceX is an "Elon Musk ego project".

"You're buying a share of the Elon Musk brand more than any kind of space industry," she said.

But Ron Epstein, an aerospace analyst at Bank of America Securities, says the recent share price swings say more about the market than the company.

"A lot of it has to do with macro trends," he says. "None of it really has anything to do with what's going on fundamentally at the company."

He says investors judging SpaceX purely as an AI bet are missing the point: "They're not just a compute provider. They're not just an AI company. It's a far more complicated picture than that."

SpaceX, he adds, has cut the cost of reaching orbit from around $10,000-$20,000 a kilogram to about $2,000 with its Falcon 9 rocket - "they have built a railroad to space."

Lavoie, for his part, isn't rattled. He says: "The solid business model of SpaceX will prove itself to be worth the investment,"even as he takes some of his own winnings off the table.

Shorts, strappy tops and sandals: What is acceptable to wear to work?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cre49389g1qo, 3 days ago

Yet another summer heatwave could be on the way to make your commute sweaty and your workplace stuffy.

What to wear to work in the summer can be a surprisingly difficult decision. Shorts, strappy tops and sandals may keep you cool - but will they be judged too casual, revealing or unprofessional?

There's a bare-legged backlash in Tokyo where officials encouraged men to swap suits for shorts at work, prompting complaints about hairy legs in the office.

So what is acceptable to wear to work, how can you successfully style your summer wardrobe and can your boss tell you what you can and can't wear?

Shorts

Conor, who works in media, has regularly worn shorts to the office during the recent hot weather. "Who gives a monkey's what you wear?" he says.

"If you're able to do your job safely, professionally and appropriately, there's a lot to be said for letting people be comfortable."

And many seem to agree - a recent poll by market research firm Ipsos found 62% of adults thought it was acceptable for men to wear shorts to work in hot weather, while 63% said the same for women.

But we aren't talking short-shorts or denim hot pants fashion designer Amanda Wakeley points out: "If you're asking yourself whether they're too short, they probably are".

She says shorts are "the trickiest item to get right in a professional environment" and recommends tailored, longer shorts paired with a crisp shirt or lightweight blazer for both men and women.

Stylist Clare Chambers agrees shorts should sit around the kneecap for both men and women. For men, she recommends tailored chino-style shorts with an untucked T-shirt or shirt.

Sandals

Wakeley describes flip-flops as one of the few definite "no" items in most offices. "They instantly signal leisure rather than professionalism and can make even the most polished outfit feel underdressed," she says.

Chambers agrees, and says even during the hottest weather, woven flats are a better option because they are breathable while still covering the foot.

Almost two-thirds of people questioned by Ipsos said they were unacceptable for men in the workplace, while 58% said the same for women.

Sandals, however, are a slightly different matter as Wakeley says refined leather sandals can be entirely acceptable in many offices, provided they are clean and well maintained.

The difference, she says, is whether they look like part of a considered outfit or something that would normally be worn around a swimming pool.

She adds that while socks and sandals have become a viral fashion trend "it's important to consider whether a trend aligns with the image you want to communicate professionally".

"This combination can read as highly casual and youthful, which may unintentionally detract from giving you a credible and authoritative presence."

Strappy tops

Some 40% of adults considered tank tops or vest tops acceptable for women at work, compared with only 24% who said the same for men, according to Ipsos.

Natasia, a teacher in London, says at a previous school she and other staff had been summoned "regularly in the summer months to tell us off about our outfits."

She says she was also told to cover up her tattoos. "It should be OK to have your arms out at work especially when it's hot," she says.

Wakeley says a well-cut camisole or strappy top can work when worn beneath a linen overshirt, lightweight jacket or tailored co-ord. On its own, however, it may feel too informal.

Chambers says if you're wearing a strappy top "you must wear a strapless bra as it utterly kills an outfit when you can see bra straps".

She explains that thicker straps are a safer option where the dress code is unclear and recommends satin camisoles as a more polished alternative to basic cotton vests.

She adds that while bandeau tops are "such an on-trend look this summer, they are a no-go for work".

"The constant need to keep fiddling to pull them up displays an uncomfortable and unconfident demeanour," she says.

How to style summer clothes at work

Wakeley and Chambers both say that you don't need to lose your personal style when dressing for the office and you can still inject plenty of personality while following a dress code. Here are their top tips on how to style summer clothes for the office.

Can your employer tell you what to wear?

Climate change is expected to bring more severe, frequent and longer-lasting heatwaves in UK summers in the coming years.

Employers are allowed to set standards around clothing and appearance, particularly where there are legitimate reasons such as safety, branding or maintaining a professional image.

But employment lawyer Sarah Tahamtani says dress codes should be "reasonable, proportionate and capable of justification".

"During extreme heat, employers should consider whether existing requirements remain practical and whether greater flexibility can be introduced."

They must also consider employees with disabilities, medical conditions or other vulnerabilities that may be worsened by high temperatures.

An employee who believes a request is unreasonable or inconsistently applied should first raise the issue with a manager or HR and explain how the rule is affecting their comfort or ability to work safely.

'I've had to Botox my CV': Are AI recruitment tools affecting women's careers?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyvl8y141e4o, 3 days ago

The fear of becoming surplus to requirements because of advancements in AI is one shared by millions of workers, but are AI recruitment tools posing a specific threat to women trying to return to employment?

After a career spanning decades, with senior corporate roles in fashion, and a period of freelancing, 52-year-old Stacey Duguid decided to find "one last job".

What followed was 16 months of sending "gazillions" of CVs, with little more than a handful of automated replies, despite never previously struggling to find work.

Feeling "lonely and shameful" and wondering if it was a "me problem", she posted on social media asking whether other women her age were having the same experience.

The response was overwhelming, with thousands of women saying they were facing similar struggles.

Stacey, who lives in north London, believes AI-powered recruitment tools could be contributing to the problem and has "Botoxed" her CV by removing references to her age and experience.

"AI holds a mirror up to society. It's a reflection of our bias," she said.

"I'm not saying this is just a women's issue; I've had messages from men too. My point is about gendered ageism."

Confidence 'taken a hit'

The BBC has since spoken to more than 60 women aged 40 to 65 across a range of industries who have been struggling to find work.

Most have decades of experience in senior roles and say they've submitted countless CVs, only to receive automated rejections or no response at all.

Like Stacey, many believe AI recruitment tools are playing a role.

Koeyli Jaluka, 49, has held senior roles across manufacturing, corporate and healthcare.

"I've never been in this position before. For the last 10–12 years I've been headhunted. Now I'm hunting for jobs and being relentlessly rejected."

Made redundant nine months ago, she's applied for 442 jobs and has heard back in only a few cases. She's occasionally been told she's "too senior" – which she believes is "code for old". Despite two decades of experience and two degrees, she says her confidence has "taken a hit".

She believes tighter budgets, AI screening and increasingly narrow hiring criteria are all contributing.

"A lot of us have been told by career coaches to shave off the first 10 years of work on our CVs just to ensure we don't come across as having worked for too long."

'I'm on jobseeker's allowance'

Anna Cowie, 52, had a 30-year career in advertising but has been unemployed for almost four years.

She's lost count of the number of CVs she's sent, despite having never previously been without a job.

After decades of working for big brands, most recently helping to launch the new Battersea Power Station, she's now on jobseeker's allowance.

Anna has turned to volunteering for community festivals, and has found networking with real people a much more promising approach.

"You're seen as a human and not just lines on paper."

'Huge repercussions'

While it is impossible to know in many cases whether AI tools played a role in a screening or a rejection because employers rarely disclose details of their recruitment processes, there are widespread fears that AI recruitment tools are disadvantaging mid-life women.

The City of London Women Pivoting to Digital Taskforce, which focuses on women in the financial and professional services sector, has raised concerns about the growing use of AI in recruitment and its impact on women.

Chair Caroline Haines said the taskforce's research found significant concern that AI used to screen job applications and CVs does not recognise the skills many experienced women can bring.

"There is a high level of concern that AI at initial recruitment level... doesn't account for the skills of a vast body of women that could be very effective and therefore promote economic growth," she said.

For example, women who have taken time out of work for childcare may have gaps in their CVs that some AI screening systems could interpret negatively.

In terms of the bigger picture, the taskforce estimates AI and automation could displace hundreds of thousands of women's jobs by 2035.

Using data from Market and skills projections: 2020 to 2035, Department for Education, the taskforce estimates that without significant investment in retraining, firms could face more than £750m in severance costs.

In the digital taskforce's recent survey of over 1,000 women, 68% said they had not been given the opportunity by their employer to retrain or transition into digital roles.

"When the country is desperate for economic growth, we need to use whatever resource we have, and the resource of women who are mid-career, mid-experience. If they drop out of the market there are huge repercussions," Haines said.

The BBC understands that some London-based companies have stopped using AI tools for fear of bias in their recruitment.

Laura Holden, an AI lawyer and founder of the Bonsai AI and legal consultancy, said companies often do not understand how the tools work, which has the potential to cause "significant harm".

She argued it is difficult to determine whether there is bias because "there is a lack of regulation globally that requires providers to show how their tools work".

She pointed to CV screening tools and AI-scored interviews as examples of where bias can emerge.

One tool, she said, grades CVs from A to D, encouraging recruiters to prioritise higher-ranked candidates. Others flag factors such as a seven-year career gap as a "thing to note", potentially influencing decisions unfairly.

Holden said providers were "very quick" to claim their tools are safe and reduce bias, while designing and marketing them in ways that encourage employers to reject large numbers of applicants based on AI-generated scores. Although companies describe them as decision-support tools, she said they often functioned as "automated decision-making systems".

She called for mandatory testing and stronger regulation before AI recruitment tools are deployed, arguing existing laws were not designed with AI in mind.

'Completely faulty' logic

Dr Eleanor Drage, a senior researcher at the University of Cambridge, said concerns about AI disadvantaging women in recruitment are "very justified".

She argued that human recruiters were better able to recognise the value of candidates returning from career breaks, such as maternity leave, and the transferable skills they bring - qualities AI may overlook.

While Drage said it was "very difficult" to prove AI recruitment tools are inherently biased, she argued the logic they operate by is "completely faulty" because they cannot assess a person's intrinsic value or personality in the way a human recruiter could.

She added that many recruiters do not fully understand how these tools work, and said companies should use AI to evaluate their own hiring practices rather than to assess "vulnerable populations, like older women going back into the workforce, or people who've had a career break".

While Drage acknowledges the benefits of using the tools, including helping hiring managers identify candidates with similar characteristics to people who have previously been hired, she says often "they're not on the side of the jobseeker".

'Rigorously tested'

The concerns raised in this article by interviewees relate to the use of AI-powered recruitment tools more broadly and are not directed at any single provider.

Workday, the maker of popular AI-powered human resources software, is facing claims that it violated Californian law thousands of times by weeding out job applicants at many major companies for discriminatory reasons.

The case is proceeding, with a ruling expected later this year.

The BBC contacted Workday, which said the claims in the suit were false, adding that its tools don't make hiring decisions.

More generally, Workday highlights that its recruitment tools help recruiters identify candidates who best match a job description based on their skills and experience, supporting rather than replacing human judgement.

The company said its AI was "rigorously tested" through its Responsible AI programme and "does not consider traits such as age or gender".

Workday added that, when used responsibly, AI can help qualified candidates avoid "getting lost in the pile".

Prime Minister Andy Burnham recently raised concerns about AI used in hiring, and that it hadn't made "recruitment fairer".

A government spokesperson said: "While AI can help employers manage large volumes of applications and reduce administrative burdens, it is vital that recruitment processes remain fair, transparent and accessible.

"Existing legal protections, including equality and data protection law, already apply to AI systems, and we will act where additional protections are needed."

A spokesperson for Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan said AI presented both opportunities and challenges, particularly as women are more likely to work in AI-exposed roles. They said the mayor had backed recommendations from the London AI and Jobs Taskforce to help employers adopt AI responsibly and support workers through the transition.

As for Stacey, she has set up a community chat and platform to help women feel less alone, and to help companies address the issues in question.

"I want us, as a group, to be heard and seen. And for gendered ageism to become a thing of the past.

"Because if we're lucky, we all get old."

Listen to the best of BBC Radio London on Sounds and follow BBC London on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to hello.bbclondon@bbc.co.uk

Meta becomes latest firm to say its AI hacked another company

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2kgdnyk2po, 4 days ago

Facebook owner Meta has become the latest tech firm to say one of its AI models was able to connect to the internet and hack into another organisation's systems, during testing.

The incident, which Meta says occurred during an evaluation by an independent company, is the fourth recent incident of its kind disclosed by AI companies.

Similar breaches by OpenAI and Anthropic models have raised cyber-security concerns and prompted calls for tougher safeguards and more rigorous testing.

A Meta spokesperson told the BBC that it was investigating the hack, which it said had been caused by a "misconfiguration" by its independent tester.

It also described what happened as similar to previously reported incidents at other firms.

Meta said the security trials were conducted by Irregular, the same AI security vendor that carried out tests for Anthropic's AI model that had gained access to three other companies' systems.

An Irregular spokesperson said the Meta incident "is the exact same evaluation-environment issue that was already disclosed by Anthropic last week."

Irregular is working on a report on how to securely run cyber-security tests involving AI agents, the firm's spokesperson told the BBC.

Meta also said it will publish more information on the incident "once we have all the facts."

In the past two weeks, AI leaders OpenAI and Anthropic have also reported incidents in which their models hacked into other organisation's systems during testing.

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said in a series of announcements that its agents attacked several publicly available services, including AI tools hub Hugging Face.

OpenAI's disclosure prompted rival Anthropic to conduct its own checks, leading to the discovery that its Claude AI model had carried out similar attacks on several firms after a "misconfiguration" gave it access to the internet.

Daniel Hulme, global chief AI officer of advertising firm WPP, told the BBC that such AI models "are not conscious — they're not deliberately doing something devious".

"What they're doing is coming up with very sophisticated strategies or cyberattacks to be able to achieve the goal that they've been given," he told the Today programme.

"When you give an AI a goal, if you don't think of all the ways it might be able to achieve the goal, it will find a way to achieve a goal that you haven't thought about."

Some commentators have questioned the timing of disclosures about the incidents as tech firms wrestle for dominance in AI development.

OpenAI and Anthropic are preparing blockbuster stock market listings that are expected to value each firm at around $1tn (£740bn).

This week, the UK's AI Security Institute (AISI) said that its testing had found that some models tried to carry out cyber-attacks by creating fake human profiles to try and trick people.

In the most serious case, the AISI said Anthropic's Mythos AI tried to gain access to a service by sending private messages using fake accounts mimicking real people.

Anthropic said AISI's tests were not "representative of any of our production models". OpenAI, whose models were also tested, said AISI's evaluations did not reflect ordinary use.

US beef prices have soared but farmers aren't making more money

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrv0k0j662o, 4 days ago

With US beef prices soaring to record highs, you might think that South Dakota cattle rancher Eric Gropper would be celebrating.

Yet while the cost of the meat in US supermarkets is now 12% higher than it was a year ago, a rise more than three times the rate of general inflation, Gropper says that he and all the other beef farmers aren't making any more profit than usual.

The BBC World Service's Follow the Money series spent a week tracing the American beef supply chain to find out what has caused the price jump and discover where all the cash is going.

The rancher

Eric Gropper has about 350 breeding cows on around 8,000 acres of grassland in south-west South Dakota. Most of it he leases from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

He is seven miles from the nearest paved road, and two and a half hours' drive from the closest town of any size.

Gropper doesn't set the price for his calves. Instead once a year he takes them to a livestock auction where buyers place bids and the hammer decides.

Right now the bids are the highest he has ever seen - around $2,500 (£1,883) for a 600lb (272kg) calf, up from $2,000 two years ago.

These record prices are driven by a simple fact – there are not enough cattle. Due to a combination of drought in many states, and disease pressure, at the start of this year the US had fewer cattle than at any point since 1951.

Gropper is experiencing drought first hand, as the 13 natural wells across his land that provide ground water for his cattle have run dry. He has to use a water tanker instead.

Due to the national shortage of cattle, Gropper is getting record prices for his. But unfortunately his costs have equally climbed to new highs.

A new pick-up truck that once cost $40,000 now runs to $100,000. A wooden fence post has gone from about $6 to as much as $19. A quarter-mile roll of barbed wire has doubled, from $60 to $130. Everything he uses day to day, he says, has jumped in price since the Covid pandemic.

And with little grass on parched fields – well over 60% of US cattle are now grazing on drought-hit land - farms like his are having to buy in hay, silage and other fodder for their cattle.

"I'm able to pay my bills, but my input costs are so drastically high that if we didn't have these record prices we'd all be broke. I sit down to do my taxes, and it feels like I made a lot of money. But in the end I really didn't make any more."

The feedlot

Gropper's calves don't go straight to slaughter. At around six-months-old they are bought by companies that run feedlots – large yards where the animals are fattened on corn and other grains for the final three to six months of their lives.

The biggest yards hold well over 100,000 cattle at a time. Around 95% of US cattle are finished this way.

Brenda Boetel, professor of agricultural economics at the University of Wisconsin–River Falls, watches this part of the chain closely.

She says that while the feedlot companies are currently selling cattle at record prices, they are having to buy them at all-time highs in the first place. So they are not making bigger profits.

The meatpacker

A meatpacker is the plant that slaughters the animal and breaks the carcass down into the cuts that reach shops or restaurants.

Four companies - Tyson, JBS, Cargill and National Beef - control around 85% of American beef processing.

That high level of market concentration has drawn accusations of price-fixing, even from President Trump.

So you might expect that those four firms are currently making huge profits from high beef prices. Yet the opposite is happening.

Tyson, the biggest of the four, reported in May that it had lost more than $500m on beef in the first half of its financial year.

Again, it might be selling its beef for record highs, but it is also buying the cattle at all-time peaks.

Jamie Crumley owns one of the remaining smaller meatpackers - Harpley's Meatpacking in central North Carolina. She says the price companies like hers have to pay for the live animals has gone up by as much as 60% over the past three years.

And while meatpacking companies have increased the prices they charge for their beef, there is a limit. This is because supermarkets, restaurants – and US consumers – can, and will, simply switch to buying chicken or cheaper imported beef instead.

Then there is the inefficiency of running the meatpacking plants at much less than full capacity. For example, Harpley's is built to handle 425 to 450 cattle a day. But it is currently running at just 350 because it cannot get the additional animals.

The building, the line and the staff cost the same either way, so those fixed costs now spread across fewer animals. On any given day Crumley says she can lose anywhere from $100 to $400 on a single head of cattle. This helps to explain Tyson's giant losses.

The restaurant

At the end of one beef supply chain is Paul and Jessica Urban, who own Block 16, a burger restaurant in Omaha, Nebraska. They go through about 300lb (136kg) of ground beef a week, making 2,800 burgers a month.

When Block 16 opened back in 2010, a burger cost $8.95. Today it's $11.95, but profits are limited due to the much higher price of mince.

"To maximise our profit, maybe we'd have to charge $13 for a burger," says Paul. "Well, we don't feel comfortable doing that. I wouldn't want to walk in here and have to pay $13 for a cheeseburger.

"So we don't make the profit that we'd like — but you're still getting people through the door, and it's not always about the money."

So where did the money go?

The rancher is selling calves for record sums, but is not better off because he has higher costs. The feedlot company is selling for all-time high prices, but it also has to pay them in the first place.

Then the packers are losing money because there is a limit to what they can charge. Restaurants and supermarkets also can only increase prices by so much.

Everyone is turning over more money than they used to, but not keeping any of the extra. It's a situation that won't change until significantly more US cattle come to market.

Yet as Eric Gropper puts it, you can't conjure a cow overnight. Instead a heifer, a young female cow, needs two years before she is able to produce a calf. And that calf needs another year to reach slaughter weight, so the extra beef takes three years to arrive.

What tariffs has Trump introduced and why?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn93e12rypgo, 4 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.

About $100bn (£74bn) has since been refunded to companies that paid those "Liberation Day" tariffs.

This represents roughly 60% of the roughly $166bn collected under the government policy, according to a recent court filing.

Around $29bn in potential refunds are still being reviewed by trade authorities, while a further $1.6bn remains unpaid because importers have not provided the banking details needed to process payments.

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.

Twenty-five US states, all Democratic-controlled, have launched legal action which calls these tariffs "arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law". The lawsuit accuses the administration of using forced labour as a pretext to continue tariffs.

Trump also used Section 301 to levy a 25% tax on certain goods from Brazil, claiming that Brazilian policies have harmed US trade.

And he 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.

UK petrol prices hit highest level since Iran war began

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20zgjzz0e4o, 4 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 more than 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. The fighting has 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 $80.

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 161.5p a litre while diesel costs 181.5p a litre.

RAC's head of policy Simon Williams said the price of fully filling a diesel family car was now £100 again, "something drivers haven't had to endure since early June".

The petrol equivalent is £89.

Williams said there was hope that prices at the pump could come back down, pending talks to re-open the Strait of Hormuz.

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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Prioritise new jobs over green targets to win public contracts, firms told

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgdmv7elg8o, 4 days ago

Andy Burnham will tell firms bidding for public contracts to prove they are creating jobs rather than meeting green and social targets in a bid to get more people into work.

The prime minister will overhaul the £90bn public procurement system so bidders have to show they are supporting young people into work and addressing local skills shortages.

It comes as the government seeks to tackle the youth unemployment crisis, with Burnham saying he wants to create "growth in every postcode".

But green groups criticised the plans, arguing supporting young people into work should not come at the expense of the environment.

Companies bidding for government contracts are judged on a range of measures, including value for money and the extent to which they bring benefits to the local community.

Under the changes, the weighting given to the benefits brought by companies will be doubled, from 10% to 20% for contracts worth £5m or more, the Cabinet Office said.

Previously, this accounted for how companies created social value through measures such as equality and diversity, net zero and the post-Covid recovery.

The new 20% measure will instead be based on job creation. Bidders will be given extra credit for creating local jobs paying above the minimum wage, plugging local skills gaps by offering training and particularly by offering 45-day work experience placements for young people.

Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures show more than a million people aged 16 to 24 are currently not in education, employment or training (Neet).

Burnham used a similar initiative to oversee a rise in the latter during his time as mayor of Greater Manchester.

First Secretary of State Louise Haigh — who is effectively Burnham's deputy prime minister — said the procurement process in its current form was a "tick-box exercise".

"Every pound of taxpayer money should be spent in a way that benefits local communities — creating good jobs and giving young people the skills they need for the future," she said.

The new model will apply to both British and international firms bidding for public contracts.

Haigh said: "These new rules will ensure the £90 billion that is spent each year through government contracts supports British jobs, skills and people in every postcode."

Cabinet Office Minister Mark Ferguson said that businesses who secure government contracts "have a responsibility to give back".

"Businesses that benefit from the billions of taxpayer pounds spent by government, will have to create more local jobs and opportunities for young people in their area," he said.

But Greenpeace UK's head of politics Ami McCarthy said protecting the environment and helping young people into work are "mutually beneficial and one shouldn't come at a cost to the other".

"Companies should be held to account with environmental targets to help achieve a better future without leaving young workers behind," they added.

Vegetables to get smaller and more expensive due to hot weather, farmers warn

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gwv9590xeo, 5 days ago

This year's harvest could be the worst on record as farmers warn the exceptionally dry spring and summer could lead to "shrinkflation" in UK supermarkets.

England and Wales saw their driest July since records began 190 years ago, according to the Met Office, and a drought has been declared across large parts of the country.

The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) thinktank said the UK's cereals and oilseed harvest could be 2.5 million tonnes less than earlier forecasts.

Tim O'Malley, the chairman of Nationwide produce, said it was "as bad as its ever been" and that shoppers will likely see higher prices or smaller vegetables in supermarkets.

The harvest of barley, oats and rapeseed, which are used in beer, breakfast cereals and vegetable oil, is estimated to drop to just 19.5 million tonnes, the worst since records began in 1984.

That is compared with a previous low of 19.8 million tonnes in 2020, and would cost farmers £390m in lost revenue, the ECIU estimated.

The crops are also used for feeding livestock, making them crucial across most of the food chain.

O'Malley said consumers could feel the impact in the vegetable aisle too, where grocers are likely to swap in smaller produce at the same price, which is known as shrinkflation.

"I think we're going to see shrinkflation," he told Radio 5 Live's Wake Up to Money.

"The problem we're going to have this year is a massive reduction in yield and major quality issues," O'Malley said.

He said that will mean smaller sizes for fresh produce.

"We've got crop with stress or we've got quality issues. So you will see a smaller crop," O'Malley said.

He said supermarkets will "do everything" to keep prices where they are, but added: "eventually they will probably have to come to the party and increase the price, particularly if they start importing."

Grocers are already bringing in more products from abroad because of the poor conditions at home.

"We're importing broccoli and iceberg [lettuce] from Spain at this time of year, which in August [is] unheard of. I think we're going to see more of that, unfortunately," O'Malley said.

He added: "Loud and clear, it's grim out there. I think it's as bad as it's ever been … Every record is being broken.

"The difference in this year and last year, last year we had four heat waves. But in between them we had a bit of rain."

Farmers source additional water for their crops and livestock over summer from a combination of stored winter rainfall on site, and by extracting it from natural sources - a process called abstraction.

This can be from groundwater or from surface water, like rivers and streams.

This summer has seen significant low rainfall affecting the amount of water available to draw from.

Half of England and all of Wales have been declared to be in drought conditions by the Environment Agency.

Wales has received just 8% of its average rainfall so far this month. England has received 7% of its average, with that figure as low as 1% across southern England.

The high temperatures and repeated heatwaves have also increased evaporation rates which have particularly hit rivers.

Climate change is expected to bring more severe, frequent and longer-lasting heatwaves in UK summers in the coming years - which could bring more water shortages for farmers.

Tom Lancaster, land, food and farming analyst at the ECIU said: "At the start of spring farmers were hopeful of a better year, but the dry April and July and record-breaking heat have left farmers facing down the barrel of a third awful harvest in a row.

"Farming is now the sector most exposed to climate change and the risks and damage that it brings."

Martin Lines, head of the Nature Friendly Farming Network and a farmer from Cambridgeshire, said this year's harvest "has been a real kick in the teeth".

"After two terrible harvests in a row, the crops this year were looking good and full of potential coming out of spring, only for months of drought and heatwaves to destroy any prospect of a decent harvest," he said.

"I've never known it this dry and hot on our farm.

"Even farmers I know who were sceptical of climate change are now saying they're really worried about the future of their businesses and production, it's just been completely brutal for our industry."

Trump says Iran will be 'hit very hard' if Hormuz Strait not open soon as oil prices fall

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpw9v0gnzxwo, 5 days ago

Donald Trump said the Strait of Hormuz would open "very soon" or Iran would be "hit very hard" as oil prices fell to a three-week low amid hopes of a deal.

The US president was speaking to Fox News after Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent both said talks had progressed to allow shipments potentially to resume later this week.

On Tuesday, the cost of a barrel of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil prices, fell by almost 5% to under $80 (£60) on the news of supply disruptions potentially being eased. It continued to move lower on Wednesday - down about 0.7% in Asian trading.

But the failure of previous talks in recent months to de-escalate the conflict has led to a volatile oil market, with motorists ultimately being hit by higher fuel prices.

"We're having very good discussions," Trump said during a visit to California, insisting Iran was keen to seal a deal to bring an end to months of conflict.

US Central Command (CentCom) said the "southern route through the Strait of Hormuz remains free and open for all commercial vessels seeking to transit the international waterway".

On Tuesday, along with the drop in Brent crude, US West Texas Intermediate prices were down more than 5%, to $76 a barrel. Both contracts dropped to their lowest levels since 13 July.

Rubio said there had been progress made in discussions on getting more ships through the strait with Iran and Oman.

"There's been progress made in those talks, but not finality yet. We're hoping that will happen very shortly," he told reporters at the State Department.

Bessent said a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz could be agreed as soon as Wednesday.

There was a "chance we may have a deal today or tomorrow to open the strait and move towards a more normalised position in this conflict," he told CNBC.

"It would be freedom of movement," he added, when asked whether Iran would be allowed to charge for ships passing through.

While senior figures in the US government have announced talks have been progressing, no details of what a potential deal may look like have been released.

Iran has said it is not negotiating with the US - and has no plans to do so - and is instead talking to Oman.

A spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry said that talks with Oman, a mediator in negotiations, on a new mechanism for vessels going through the Strait, had been positive.

Qatar, which is a key mediator between Washington and Tehran, said it was continuing efforts with other mediators to try to achieve a diplomatic resolution to the war, but admitted no direct talks were currently planned.

With the conflict continuing to drag on, the US has used nearly all of its global stockpile of long-range precision missiles, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told the BBC's US news partner CBS News.

The Strait of Hormuz has been a central point in negotiations between the US and Iran. Before the conflict began in late February, the waterway handled about one-fifth of global daily oil and liquefied natural gas supplies.

Iran has halted most traffic through the Strait since the conflict began, while the US has also imposed a naval blockade of Iranian ports in the region.

Another blockade is in place on Saudi Arabia's ports in the Red Sea, imposed by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis since 20 July.

The route had become a crucial alternative since Iran blocked the strait, but it has become increasingly dangerous, with a spate of attacks on vessels reported in the past week.

On Tuesday, a projectile sank an Indian-flagged vessel near Yemeni waters, the India's shipping minister said, with all 14 on board rescued.

Analysts believe the threat to ships carrying oil in the Middle East is at its worst since the Iran war started.

"Investors are acutely aware of how many times we've already been at this point in the war and how fragile the process of securing lasting agreements can be," said Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell.

The disruption has sent prices at the pumps up across the world. In the UK petrol prices are now at levels seen at the start of the conflict, with the average cost of a litre of petrol hitting £1.60, according to the RAC motoring group.

In the US, gasoline prices are on average above $4 a gallon, according to the AAA. Diesel is almost $5.40 a gallon.

Prices have surged to above $120 when the conflict has escalated and plunged in response to previous talks suggesting a breakthrough.

The elevated prices have led to major oil companies, such as BP, Shell, Chevron and Exxon Mobil, to report bumper profits.

However, Hewson added that despite the huge revenues, oil companies were "at the mercy" of US President Donald Trump's "machinations".

On Monday, Trump warned Iran faced its "last chance" to agree a deal to allow commercial shipping to resume in the Strait.

He said he had called off "massive" strikes on the country for talks to resume.

US stock markets were trading higher on Tuesday following news of the negotiations lowering oil prices and also in response to corporate results related to Artificial Intelligence.

Investors have experienced jitters on Wall Street as results from Big Tech firms indicate spending on the technology is set to continue to soar.

How tech is helping in the battle against wildfires

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62enveg1dpo, 5 days ago

The pictures are familiar, terrifying fires being tackled by firefighters and planes dropping water.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes across France, Spain and Portugal as wildfires tore through forests and countryside.

In France, four men have already lost their lives fighting the wildfires and another 150 have been injured.

But why are humans and 30-year old planes being used? Why can drones replace soldiers in Ukraine but not firefighters?

Chief sergeant Guillaume Millet, a firefighter of 24 years experience heads the Fire and Rescue Service branch of the CFDT union in the Gironde, the region worst hit by wildfires in France this summer.

He says that while the techniques for tackling fire have not changed much, technology in forest fire detection has.

"The big change, especially in my département, is that now we've got cameras assisted by artificial intelligence to watch the forest and see where fires are starting," Millet says.

"In the Gironde, cameras have replaced the human look-outs we had in watch towers in every town throughout the summer months," he says. Those lookouts were often students.

The switch has reduced false alarms, he says. "An AI-assisted camera can distinguish with almost total certainty between smoke and dust thrown up by a tractor in a field, for example."

They have an impressive range as well, detecting fires up to 20km (12 miles) away.

In the Gironde, the system was installed by a company called Midgard. In other parts of France, it's another French start-up called FireTracking.

"As soon as the system detects a fire, there's an alert on the fire fighters' telephones. They open the application and see what the camera is seeing with a x40 [40 times] zoom," explains FireTracking's CEO Jean-Simon Chaudier.

"Next to that real-time video there's a map with the exact location of the fire, the position of any nearby houses and a simulation of how, given the weather, the level of humidity and so on, it is expected to spread from minute to minute," he adds.

And every minute is vital. "For the past 10 days, for example, we have the feedback from a firefighter that our AI detected seven fires 15 minutes before the first phone call. If you can help a firefighter to save 15 minutes, it's the difference between a catastrophe and a fire which can be limited to two or three hectares," Chaudier says.

"After one minute you can put out a fire with a glass of water, after two you need a tank of water, after three minutes you need to send a Canadair," Chaudier says, talking about the amphibious planes that scoop up water from rivers, lakes and the sea to dump it on the flames that are the spearhead of forest fire fighting here and around the world.

FireTracking's cameras are currently surveying a million hectares, mainly in France.

The cost? In the French département of Indre-et-Loire, the company has installed 11 detection sites.

"In all €1.2m [$1.4m; £1m] was spent to cover the whole 6,000 sq km area [2,300 sq miles]," says Chaudier.

It is mainly agricultural land. Crop fires are a huge and expensive problem with some 300 a year in this département alone, Chaudier says.

AI fire detection is going to get better over the coming years. The French civil protection service has a programme called Condor, for example, which is testing solar-powered drones that carry out continuous patrols with electro-optical cameras and AI.

There are also projects with sensors placed among the trees. Spain's SenForFire, for example, which measures gases released before flames become visible.

As for drones, firefighter Guillaume Millet says they're being tested in France for sea rescue, dropping lifebuoys and survival kits, but there's no drone tech that's reached that stage yet for firefighting.

"In fact, the usefulness of technology is very limited in this area," Millet says. "It can help us with detection but it's not technology that puts out fires; you need people to pull the hoses through the forest to attack them."

Not even aircraft can replace that, he says.

"When a Canadair drops 6,000 litres of water on a wildfire it reduces its intensity but then firefighters on the ground have to finish what the Canadair started."

The French are also getting used to the sight of Dash planes that spray fire retardant (ammonium phosphate in the form of an orange powder) in front of the flames to prevent the vegetation from catching fire too quickly.

But again, that's no substitute for the brawn and water brought by troops on the ground.

Not yet, at least.

A French start-up called Daidelos is trying to raise investment for a heavy-lifting, petrol-engine drone.

If it gets off the ground, it will be able to hover over a fire, spraying it with 1.2 tonnes of water.

Companies are also developing drones that drop grenades which explode when they come in contact with extreme heat, covering the surrounding area with a chemical powder that smothers, cools and interrupts the combustion chemistry of the fire.

The hope here is that this could form an autonomous first response, so forest fire detection and drone activation can be so quick that fires can be extinguished as they're starting. It would not be able to do anything against a wildfire once it's really got going.

French researchers are also working on drones that could fly close to the flames. That wouldn't be to fight the fire exactly but to seize vital information about it; to assess the risks – smoke, sudden weather changes, collapse of burning trees or buildings - before the firefighters move in.

Technology is already helping firefighters detect fires faster and react to them more effectively. It might soon be able to make their job less dangerous. But replacing them is unlikely, according to Gironde firefighter Guillame Millet.

"It's always the firefighters on the ground, pulling the hoses, who extinguish the fires," he says. This has been the case since the creation of the first modern fire brigade in the Netherlands in the 1670s. It is not about to change soon.

Fashion brand Jaded has ad banned for 'glamorising smoking'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly843vd3jmo, 5 days ago

A fashion brand has had an advert banned by the advertising watchdog which it said was "glamorising smoking".

Jaded London, whose clothes have been worn by Beyoncé and Kylie Jenner, used a picture of a woman on holiday holding a cigarette in one of its marketing emails.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said the advert was "heavily stylised and presented the model in a fashionable and attractive manner", which made smoking seem appealing.

Jaded London argued that the cigarette was not the "focus of the ad" but agreed to not use pictures of models smoking in future.

The ASA's rules on socially responsible marketing say smoking should not be presented in an appealing way, condoned or encouraged.

The Jaded London email, which went out on 27 May, was investigated after a complaint to the watchdog.

In its ruling, the ASA said the woman was wearing "fashionable clothing and accessories standing in front of a scooter next to a body of water, which the ASA considered evoked an aspirational holiday lifestyle".

"She was holding a slim cigarette with visible ash at the tip, and we considered that suggested it was lit," it added.

The ASA told the brand to stop using the ad and "ensure that their future marketing communications were socially responsible".

Founded by siblings Jade Camber and Grant Goulden in 2013, Jaded London has amassed 1.5 million Instagram followers and is particularly popular among young people.

Its clothes are stocked in shops including Selfridges and Urban Outfitters and it made £51m of sales in the year to June 2025.

Responding to the watchdog, Jaded London argued it was "not clear" the model was holding a cigarette because it was slimmer than normal and "did not appear to be lit".

The company also argued it was "less prominent than other elements of the image, such as the model's clothing and accessories".

However, it said it "understood why it was best to avoid images of models holding cigarettes" and would not use smoking content in future ads.

At the time of writing, Jaded London's Instagram feed contained several other images of people smoking while wearing its clothes.

A spokesperson for the ASA told the BBC it was unable to comment on whether the other posts broke the rules without them going through its formal process.

"We'd always encourage anyone who has a concern about an ad they've seen to report it to us," they added.

Jaded London was approached for comment.

Why Trump Media's sale of fast access to market-moving social posts is controversial

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gdkl9zn8wo, 5 days ago

When Donald Trump speaks, financial traders are among the keenest listeners.

From trade wars to military wars, anything the US president says can shift markets, and so teams of traders - as well as a host of automated computer systems - monitor his statements to perform trades within seconds.

Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) now wants to charge for such market-moving information put out on its Truth Social platform. It has launched a paid service to give Wall Street firms and institutional investors the "fastest access" to the social media site's most influential accounts.

TMTG has not directly said the service includes the account of the president himself, but with some 13 million followers - the most on the site - it's fair to say that his posts would be among, if not the, most influential.

However, the move has prompted a series of legal questions and ethical musings, including whether it is right that a company - of which the president's family remains the majority shareholder - stands to profit from his own public statements.

What is the service all about?

The service launched by TMTG is called Truth API. It is a new data feed that provides real-time access to posts in "milliseconds" from the "highest-ranking Truth Social accounts".

The service was anticipated to become available to institutional customers on 1 August. The Financial Times reported that customers could be charged as much as $100,000 a month for high-speed access, but TMTG has not confirmed the figure.

TMTG says it expects it to create a steady source of new revenue for the firm, which is currently loss-making.

While anyone can pay for the service, it is mainly designed for so-called high-frequency and algorithmic trading firms - those TMTG states are "most impacted by the cost of a delay in information".

For these firms, financial trading is automated. Electronic systems using algorithms buy and sell much faster and at a greater scale than humans, according to Charles Schwab. It is a case of "blink, and you'll miss it", the investment bank says.

"Such systems are often designed to make just a tiny profit on each transaction, but through sheer speed and volume, they can generate large returns for their firms," it adds.

Is it illegal, unethical or neither?

Since Truth API was announced, some have raised the potential for insider trading to occur. The practice, which is illegal, involves people making market trades or bets based on information that is not available to the general public.

Richard Painter, former chief ethics lawyer to President George W Bush, told the BBC even if Trump does not trade himself on US government information, there was the so-called "tipper-tippee liability" under insider trading laws.

"If I have information that belongs to the United States government that I'm not allowed to trade on, and instead of trading, I simply give the information to someone else who pays me for the information and they trade and I know they're likely to trade, then I am also guilty of insider trading and so are they," Painter says.

"This is the law that applies to the president and to everyone else," he adds.

Painter says the law would only apply to certain subject matters and potential posts, such as what the president intends to do with tariffs, wars or other US policy.

"If I were commissioner of the SEC, I would threaten to resign unless they put a stop to this plan or promise that no posts... that have to do with US government business [will be included]," he says.

Political opponents of the president have criticised the service. Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff have written to the US securities regulator to ask if it will investigate whether Truth API breaks the law.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has confirmed receipt of the letter, but has declined to comment on whether it will investigate.

A spokesperson for TMTG said in response to the letter sent to the SEC that Senate Democrats "continue to mischaracterise Truth API either out of ideological opposition to free markets or a failure to grasp the distinction between public and non-public information - or, quite possibly, both".

TMTG has also said "the Senators must have invented a new theory of 'insider trading' based on publicly available information".

Joe Saluzzi, co-founder of Themis Trading, though, points out that many other data providers, news organisations and stock exchanges currently operate similar services, suggesting that provides a "precedent" for TMTG.

However, he adds: "There's a different story when it comes to ethics."

Trump, who owns about 41% of Trump Media through a trust his children oversee, does stand to profit from the service.

"This appears to be an outrageous abuse of the President's office for his personal benefit that undermines everyday investors and the integrity of our markets, while enriching Wall Street and other wealthy insiders," Warren and Schiff said in their letter to SEC.

Who has signed up?

There has been a wall of silence in terms of who has signed up to the service so far.

TMTG says it had customers register in advance of the launch date, but has not revealed how many.

Saluzzi from Themis Trading told the BBC that Truth API was "worthless" to trading firms, including his own, which did not have the complex systems already set up to perform transactions at "nanosecond level fast".

He suggests high-frequency trading firms (HFTs) would be among the most likely to sign up, not only because of the money-making potential, but also because they'll be thinking "if I don't do it, somebody else will".

"This is not for retail [investors], this is not even for sophisticated institutional investors," he says. "This data feed is for high-speed traders who have the systems in place and have spent millions and millions of dollars building the systems."

The BBC contacted some of the major US investment banks and high-frequency trading firms, from Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan to Citadel Securities and Jane Street to ask if they had, or planned to, sign up.

All either declined to comment or did not respond. The White House also declined to comment.

"Nobody wants to talk about this stuff," says Saluzzi.

Half-price rail travel extended to 18-year-olds

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0jyln07r7o, 5 days ago

Eighteen-year-olds will be able to buy half-price train tickets for most services when railcard rules are changed later this month, the Department for Transport (DfT) has announced.

It's an extension of the 16-17 Saver railcard which currently expires when the holder turns 18. From 17 August, they will be valid for a full year from the date of purchase.

It means 17-year-olds will be able to buy the railcard up until the day before they turn 18, making it valid until the day before they turn 19.

Seventeen-year old Lily-Mae from Blackpool told the BBC the move would save her "a few hundred [pounds] a year".

She uses the train to travel regularly from Blackpool North to Preston and Manchester.

"I have been planning to see my boyfriend and my friends, and it's just not really happened because of the price of the trains," she said.

"Also getting to college for me is hard as I go to a college in Preston, but I live in a different town, so now I won't have to save as much money to get there."

The existing rule meant more than 70,000 students each year were an average of £175 worse off than those in the same academic year who hadn't yet had their 18th birthday, the DfT said.

The 16-17 Saver Railcard costs £35 per year and entitles the holder to 50% off most train fares.

Rail minister Lord Hendy claimed this "common sense change" is "exactly what passengers should expect from the railway".

He said the change would "lower the cost of travel at a critical time for teenagers, whether they're pursuing further education, vocational pathways or getting their footing in the jobs market".

Jacqueline Starr, chief executive of industry body the Rail Delivery Group, said the change demonstrates the sector's commitment to "offering better value fares and delivering a more joined-up railway".

Kaynat Ahmad, vice president for further education at the National Union of Students, described the railcard as "essential for young people reliant on trains to get to college, work or training".

Eighteen-year-olds were already entitled to a 16-25 Railcard, but that only entitles them to a third off the cost of travel.

The government said the measure would be paid for through increased train ridership, with more passengers as a result of more people being able to access the discounted fares.

The announcement comes after the government said the cap on most single bus fares in England will be cut from £3 to £2 next year.

'It opens a lot of doors'

Avery, 17, from Somerset, said the extension was a "welcome change".

Having a September birthday means Avery is the oldest of their Sixth Form class but also causes them to "miss out on all the benefits of being young".

"£35 a year for half off rail travel really opens a lot of doors," they told the BBC.

"One trip to London and it's paid itself off since travelling by train in the UK gets so expensive the moment you turn 16."

Additional reporting by Kris Bramwell.

BP's $5.7bn profit highest since 2022 as Iran war pushes up oil price

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg5l11m02j3o, 5 days ago

Profits at BP have surged to the highest since 2022 after the war in the Middle East pushed up oil prices.

The oil giant reported a profit of $5.73bn (£4.26bn) between April and June. That was more than double the $2.35bn made a year earlier and the highest quarterly profit since 2022 when the Russia-Ukraine war began.

The price of crude oil has jumped since the outbreak of the Iran war earlier this year due to major disruption to global supplies of oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz.

Environmental and poverty campaigners blasted BP for "profiteering" off skyrocketing oil prices.

Crude oil prices shot up after the outbreak of conflict in the Middle East, which in turn pushed up petrol and diesel prices and domestic energy costs around the world.

BP said Brent crude – the global benchmark for oil prices – averaged $103.85 a barrel in the April-to-June quarter, up from $67.88 in the same period last year.

The rise in the oil price has benefited all energy companies, not just BP, with rival Shell also reporting a doubling in quarterly profits last week.

On Monday, US President Donald Trump said American oil firms ExxonMobil and Chevron were "making too much money".

He told reporters: "I don't like it, and I should be the last one to say because I'm a big free enterprise guy.

"They ought to give some of that back to the public, and they better cut the retail price, the consumer price."

Despite the big rise in profits, BP chief executive Meg O'Neill said the company was not reaching its full potential.

BP, which employs nearly 14,000 people in the UK, confirmed plans to move further away from clean energy, revealing plans to sell off its US renewable natural gas business Archaea.

O'Neill said this was part of her plan to prioritise "value, not sentiment or history".

"We have to focus on the assets with the strongest potential to deliver competitive returns and long-term value," she said.

Last week, BP announced it was putting its North Sea business up for sale in a move that would end 60 years of production in the region by the company.

Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said the sell-offs intended to make the business more streamlined.

"O'Neill will be aware she cannot rely on oil and gas prices remaining this high indefinitely," he said.

"She needs to make sure it can prosper even when the backdrop is less helpful."

The bumper profits reported by oil companies have led to an angry response from campaign groups.

Angharad Hopkinson, from environmental group Greenpeace, said BP's results showed that "corporate gains have become entirely divorced from the public good".

She said "the one point on which we agree with BP" is its decision to sell off its North Sea operations.

"Prolonging this parasitic relationship by trying to squeeze the last few drops of expensive oil out of the North Sea is sheer folly," Hopkinson said.

Simon Francis, co-ordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, said oil firms "have banked more billions from a crisis that has created real hardship for millions of households".

"The lesson is not to hand yet more tax breaks to an industry posting billions in profit every quarter, but to use Windfall Tax receipts to clear the record energy debt households built up during the crisis," he said.

Energy firms operating in the UK are subject to a windfall tax - called the Energy Profits Levy - that was introduced in 2022.

However, the tax only applies to profits made from extracting oil and gas in the UK.

US states sue to block Trump tariffs impacting dozens of countries

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4kp8jd0ppo, 6 days ago

Twenty-five states sued President Donald Trump's administration on Monday over a wave of tariffs against dozens of countries.

The US says the tariffs, which range between 10% and 12.5%, were imposed due to trading partners - including the UK, China and the European Union - failing to properly tackle forced labour.

In a legal document seen by the BBC, the coalition of Democratic states said the decision was "arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law".

In response, White House spokesman Kush Desai said the US was "using its lawful authority" to address practices that burden American businesses.

Desai added that any foreign countries failing to deal with the importation of goods produced with forced labour was "unreasonable" and must be addressed.

The new tariffs, which came into effect in July, were imposed under Section 301 of the 1974 US Trade Act, legislation which is designed to target nations that use forced labour.

The duties cover 99.4% of US imports, according to the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR).

During Trump's first term, he used Section 301 to impose trade tariffs on China and they survived challenges in court.

Desai added: "Section 301 tariffs have proven to be a legally durable tool since the president's first term, and they remain so now."

The lawsuit said the Trump administration "cannot use forced labour as a pretext to continue its illegal tariff scheme".

"The tariffs the USTR imposed are so broad that they defy the USTR's own stated aims and make a mockery of the statute used to justify them," it said.

The lawsuit added that the last time Trump used Section 301 to impose tariffs, solely targeting China in 2018, officials had investigated claims of forced labour in the country for eight months.

That compares with just two months for the most recent probe, which looked into 60 trading partners, it said.

"Typically, a Section 301 investigation into even a single economy takes much longer to complete," it argued.

"President Trump's illegal tariffs are nothing more than a tax on hardworking families," said New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

In a statement, Oregon attorney general Dan Rayfield said: "Despite losing every step of the way, Trump is trying yet again to inflict more chaos on working families and homegrown Oregon businesses.

"We're all paying the price for these unlawful tariffs, not foreign governments," he added.

Several of the affected trading partners have expressed disappointment over the new tariffs, with Brazil and Japan's governments separately calling the measures "unjustified".

China's foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning described the tariffs as an "excuse for political manipulation". Washington and Beijing have been locked in a tit-for-tat tariffs war which is currently on hold.

Some analysts have also questioned how countries would be able to show that they had properly addressed the forced labour claims.

The lawsuit will pose a "formidable challenge" to Trump's levies, Alex Capri, a business lecturer at the National University of Singapore told the BBC.

There is also a lack of credible evidence to back claims that countries have harmed US firms by violating forced labour rules, he said.

Capri added that he expects "carve outs and walk-backs to gradually take the bite out of these tariffs".

The legal action marks the latest move surrounding a slew of trade policies unveiled by Trump since he returned to office in January 2025.

Many of the wide-ranging duties Trump imposed on global trading partners in his so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs in April last year were struck down by the US Supreme Court.

"The Supreme Court has made it clear that this administration cannot ignore the law to impose sweeping tariffs," Hochul said.

The court's decision prompted tens of billions of dollars in refunds to companies that had paid the levies.

The president has long argued that tariffs protect American workers and boost the US economy.

The tariffs that were struck down were replaced by a temporary 10% levy on all global imports. Those tariffs expired in July.

More tariffs could also be on the horizon as the US is currently investigating 16 countries over claims of manufacturing overcapacity.

Tokenomics: Why making AI pay is tricky

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c872r52x7jgo, 6 days ago

If you have used a free version of ChatGPT or any of its AI rivals, then you are obviously getting a good deal.

Firms like Microsoft, Google and Anthropic have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in developing Large Language Models (LLMs) the tech behind those services.

So getting, ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini to help with your speech or holiday plans is a bargain.

But, naturally, those firms want to recoup their investment, so they offer paid-for versions of their AI, which have extra features for tasks like coding or billing.

Meanwhile, third party firms are building and selling services based on AI agents, usually based on an LLM, which are trained to do specific tasks.

But setting a price for those services is surprisingly difficult.

"Trying to tie someone into a cost model for the next 12 months, two years, three years, it doesn't make any sense, honestly, because we don't know," says Simon Gooch at Saviynt, an identity management company which is incorporating agentic AI into its services.

That's because of rapidly changing economics around tokens, the building blocks of LLMs and agentic AI.

When a user asks an LLM, like ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude to answer a question, generate software code, or automate a process, that prompt is broken down into mathematical chunks called tokens, which can be processed by the model.

The LLM's response also comes in the form of tokens, which are converted back into text, software code, or a set of commands to automate a process.

The problem is this process is not entirely predictable.

Subtle variations in the prompt can produce different answers. The same prompt will not always produce the same answer. Different models will produce different answers.

Meanwhile, in agentic systems, businesses use multiple AI agents together to make decisions and take actions, further increasing both token use and unpredictability.

While the cost of individual tokens – or the credits used to pay for them - has plummeted in recent years, according to analysis by Goldman Sachs, the number of tokens consumed by businesses, and consumers, has skyrocketed.

The bank forecasts that token consumption will increase 24 times between 2026 and 2030 to 120 quadrillion tokens a month, as companies shift to use AI agents.

But companies, and individuals, using AI systems often have a tenuous grasp on just how many tokens they are burning through – until they either run out or get their monthly bill.

Even Microsoft has reportedly reined back its engineers' use of some third party coding tools, while Uber apparently tore through its AI coding token budget for a year in a matter of months earlier this year.

Will Venters, Associate Professor of Digital Innovation and Information Systems at the London School of Economics, said companies can be caught out as they experiment with or implement AI internally, as staff burn through tokens.

"People are finding it really hard to manage that cost… it's a non-deterministic output, so it's a non-deterministic value," he said.

Companies are finding ways to work around this.

Oliver King-Smith, founder of engineering software firm smartR AI, says smaller organisations "can fly under the radar and use [flat fee] personal accounts which I am sure the big vendors don't like."

But, he says, "This has to end at some point in time, because the big guys are taking a bath on those accounts."

Once the big AI platforms start facing pressure from shareholders to show a profit, he predicts: "They will start clamping down."

King-Smith says companies should also think more carefully about what AI models to use.

Companies also needed to be much more precise with their prompts, says Rob Steele, CFO at UK accounting software firm iplicit.

"You wouldn't send someone in your family out to get the weekly shop without any kind of detailed instructions as to what you expect in that shopping basket, right?"

The situation can become difficult to control when companies build AI into a product that could be rolled out to thousands of users, Venters points out.

AI costs could start to balloon. For example, managers may realise they need tokens not just for core software development, but for other tasks such as testing, security, or for implementing guard rails.

"It's particularly hard when you're looking at agentic processes," Ventners says.

Employing more AI agents can be done with the click of a button, whereas expanding the human workforce would involve careful discussions over headcount and hiring, he says.

Venters points out, while token costs might be unpredictable, it might be that the company is ultimately getting more value from their token use with AI.

"It's not quite the same as a calculator," he says. "The more you give it, the more expensive it is, but the better the result may be."

But companies still need to pass those costs onto their own customers.

"Nobody's really figured it out," says Bill Peterson, senior director of product marketing, at Sumo Logic.

The software firm is previewing new security services based on agentic AI, he explains, but is in discussion with corporate customers about how to charge for them.

"We're still having some fun conversations about this internally," he says drily.

Options could include simply raising prices across the board, he says, paying by results, or charging for "bundles" of incidents.

But whatever price structure it chooses could be upended if and when the large language model providers change their own pricing strategies.

"You get into variable pricing, and it's changing every couple of months" he says. "Customers don't like that. That's not how anybody builds a budget."

Zinc dresses and ice creams - how to survive a heatwave wedding

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgr7qrdx4qwo, 6 days ago

"As soon as I put my dress on, my makeup was just falling off my face."

Aimie Seale is one of hundreds of brides whose weddings landed in the middle of a heatwave this summer.

She had chosen a July weekend in the hope of avoiding any wet weather. Instead, she faced 30C heat with her ceremony in a sweltering West Yorkshire church, predominantly made of glass.

"It was just unbearably hot," says Aimie. "I remember looking at my husband at one point, and he was just dripping with sweat, so everybody kept passing him tissues halfway through the service."

Aimie and her now-husband Ryan had to book an emergency marquee to offer extra shade and an ice-cream van to keep their guests cool.

An additional cost on an already expensive day, with the average wedding in the UK costing more than £20,000.

But this last-minute battle to cope with the heat is only going to get worse. Half of the years between 2015 and 2024 saw temperatures above 35C - up from one in ten - as climate change increases the risk of heatwaves.

Zoe Burke, head of brand at wedding planning app, Bridebook, says the behavioural data - what people are talking about online - shows this is an issue couples are increasingly concerned about.

"On platforms, like Reddit, people are discussing what they are going to do to navigate the heatwave," she says.

Searches by brides for fans were up five times last summer compared with what they had been in 2019, she says.

Heatwave costs run into the thousands

Sourcing some additional fans might feel like a relatively minor cost overall, but for those hosting, catering and supplying weddings, the financial impact of coping with this summer's heatwaves has spiralled.

"It has affected the industry massively. You are talking into the thousands [of pounds] for businesses," says Michelle Miles, board adviser to the UK Wedding Association and founder of the Sustainable Wedding Alliance.

One of the biggest costs wedding venues are facing is the equipment and energy costs of trying to keep a space and food cool, she says.

"[Some] venues are having to bring in air conditioning units; they are at a premium when everyone else is wanting those units to keep their houses cool and businesses."

Guests are also drinking more water - which brings another issue for venues.

"There has been a massive hit on alcohol sales. Venues would quite often rely on these to boost their profits, and people are...not drinking alcoholic drinks as much as they would on a temperate day," says Miles.

It is not just the wedding party wilting in the heat but also the flowers. Peonies and roses - some of the most popular choices for a British wedding – saw their flowering window narrow from two months to two weeks.

"It has been an extremely tough growing season with water shortages, drought, no rainfall, slow germination in the heat, flowers going over too quickly," explains Rebecca, from Lilac and Lace Floral Design.

For a recent wedding, she had to go to three times as many growers to get enough stems.

"For now, it's more a time cost than a direct financial one. But using more growers often [has] larger delivery costs - I would estimate it costs £200 more in delivery."

Later weddings, cooler countries

Sarah Haywood has been a wedding planner for more than two decades and says she's seen a shift in the calendar.

"Over the last decade we have been advising people to avoid the heat of July and August [particularly] for destination weddings. And we're busier on what we call the 'shoulder season' which starts earlier and finishes later in the year."

Typically, the shoulder season would be June and September, but she said this is now reaching into October.

The 2026 UK Wedding Report from Bridebook showed that there are significant increases in October weddings in the year following a hotter than average summer.

Couples book their weddings on average 12 to 18 months ahead and some already locked are now looking at shifting the date.

Marie Cavanagh is due to get married in Kent at the start of July.

"The recent heatwaves have made me think a little bit differently…we will definitely be factoring [the heat] into what we are selecting to wear," she says.

Sophie Miller, a stylist at Dotty Bridal in West Yorkshire, said suggestions they have previously made to brides getting married in hotter, overseas locations, can also be applied to the UK.

"We would recommend against a sleeve, lighter fabrics…and with ballgown [dresses] we would suggest putting a hoop in the dress to hold it off your skin."

She said some designers are now innovating fabrics with zinc oxide to make the material feel cooler to the touch.

While temperatures in the UK have peaked this summer in the mid-30s, in Europe they have repeatedly broken the 40C mark.

Samantha Bottomley is a wedding planner in France and says Europe has previously been a popular wedding destination for UK couples looking for guaranteed sunshine - but this summer has changed things.

"It has been a very difficult season so far heat-wise. We have changed to late afternoon ceremonies, for the first time ever this year, we have moved outdoor cocktail receptions indoors."

Her company is looking to offer different locations altogether.

"We are going to be offering northern European destinations in Denmark, Sweden and Norway which are beautiful with lower temperatures."

Adapt or lose customers

For those running wedding venues in the UK they are having to adapt their barns, orangeries and stately homes.

James Matthews is managing director of Xenia Venues which runs two wedding sites in Essex and Suffolk.

A couple of years ago they decided to have a French company construct their orangery because of their experience with higher European temperatures. It was built with an air-to-air heat pump that cools the building, and vents to let hot air escape.

Matthews says if they had not invested in these cooling measures he would be "extremely confident" they would see bookings drop.

"The weather isn't necessarily driving people out of summer weddings, but the weather will drive people out of venues that aren't equipped on an unpleasantly warm day."

Experts' guide to a heatwave wedding

1. Dress cool: Grooms ditch the three-piece suit and brides opt for lighter fabrics

2. Avoid the hottest time of day: Push the start time for your wedding to early evening if you can, as peak heat typically hits between 12:00 and 16:00

3. Provide shade: If outdoors use marquees with sides that can open, parasols (umbrellas will do), or a tree-lined spot to avoid guests standing in direct sun

4. Offer water: Set up a water station separate from the bar so people don't have to queue. Have ushers hand out water as people arrive or put bottles under seats

5. Beware of buttercream: This popular wedding cake ingredient is likely to melt if not kept cool.

Additional reporting by Kris Bramwell

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First OpenAI, now Meta - why do AI hacks keep happening?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp30989ee1wo, 3 days ago

Over the last fortnight, reports of AI models going beyond their expected bounds - be that technically or morally - have been seemingly unavoidable.

What started with a trickle - ChatGPT-maker OpenAI admitting their AI had hacked the site Hugging Face - has turned into a flood of groups revealing they had discovered instances of AI going out of control.

Claude-maker Anthropic, Meta and the UK's AI Security Institute (AISI) have now each reported incidents which seem to paint a worrying picture of a world in which tech going rogue is the norm.

In reality, each case offers a window into the risks posed by increasingly capable AI agents - and the importance of testing their limits before they are released to the world.

The OpenAI incident has, as Hugging Face's co-founder Thomas Wolf described it, come as a "wake-up call" for the tech industry since it happened at the end of July.

It was a big moment which caused big companies to reflect on their own systems - and, in some cases, check they hadn't missed something similarly shocking.

Anthropic was the first to act. On Friday, the company found three instances out of thousands where its model Claude had managed to gain access to the internet.

Then on Tuesday, the AISI, the UK government agency which evaluates cutting-edge models, then said it had detected a "security incident" during a routine evaluation.

It had been testing models by both OpenAI and Anthropic, and found they too tried to carry out cyber-attacks - calling for "scrutiny, transparency, and action".

Finally followed Meta, which revealed one of its AI models had inadvertently been allowed to access the internet due to a "misconfiguration" during a third-party test.

In disclosing the incident, it is following in the footsteps of those before it.

Testing questions

Before AI models are released to the public, they are put to the test in a series of internal and external evaluations.

The aim is to figure out their potential to do good or bad, as well has how they perform in benchmarks measuring their skills.

These typically take place in what are known as "sandboxes". These are protected spaces designed to mirror real systems - but with strict guardrails in place.

In the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident, the AI attacked the sandbox itself, finding a vulnerability which let it access the internet and "go rogue".

Meanwhile the AISI said its own incident, which saw two powerful AI tools create fake human profiles to try and trick people in attempted cyber-attacks, was not down to an issue with the sandbox.

Instead, it was due to how it went about its tests.

The models it tested were granted access to the internet, and the AISI also disabled in-built filters that would usually block dangerous cyber-attacks.

"To some degree, our evaluation design choices and specific configurations enabled the behaviour," it said, while noting its unexpected "signs of novel, potentially deceptive behaviours".

Prof Alan Woodward, professor of cyber-security at the University of Surrey, said these cases - while distinct in what happened and why - tell an important story.

"For 30 years, one rule of software testing held firm: whatever happens in the test environment stays in the test environment," he said.

"In the past month, that rule has been broken three times."

"One model broke out. One walked through a door left open by mistake. One was deliberately given the keys so testers could measure what it would do."

He said these were different causes, but they had the same lesson - "the testing lab is now where the risk lives".

He told the BBC that as models become more capable, more must be done to secure the environments where they are tested.

"Testing an AI agent is less like checking code and more like handling a hazardous material: sealed rooms, constant monitoring of what leaves the building, a rehearsed containment plan," he said.

"AISI contained its incident within an hour. The next organisation may not."

Growing capabilities

For those developing AI tools which are designed to take actions on a person's behalf, there is a careful balance to be struck between harnessing their benefits and exposing their risks.

The benefit is significant. In theory, we could be able to liberate ourselves of dull, menial tasks, such as replying to emails, going to meetings or managing calendars and diaries, by delegating these to capable bots.

The downside is that with great power comes great responsibility, and risk.

It's something particularly realised when handing power to tools which are not, like us, able to bring a range of values, context and understanding to decisions we made.

"Recent incidents of frontier AI models carrying out unsanctioned actions and, in some cases, human-like deceptive behaviour on the open internet are a serious reminder of the risks AI capabilities pose," said Ollie Whitehouse, the National Cyber Security Centre's chief technology officer on Tuesday.

Some believe the sheer volume of tasks that will be handled by these tools will mean human oversight might not be enough to contain the problem of models going rogue.

But in the meantime, many feel strengthening oversight overall is vital if development continues at its same, frenzied pace.

What next?

It is unlikely Meta will be the last to emerge with findings of models showing they have, as Prof Woodward puts it, "gone to school" - and learnt our own ways of finding and exploiting gaps in systems.

For some, these episodes point to clear security failures on the part of AI companies leading the charge on this game-changing, era-defining tech.

For others, they are merely another vehicle for tech firms to hype up their powerful models and compete with rivals.

For me, both theories hold some grain of truth.

But in rearing their head one after another, these events have nonetheless spurred fears about AI's capabilities and where these are headed as developers forge ahead.

And the question inevitably moves to what regulators can and should do next.

Michael Birtwistle, associate director at the Ada Lovelace Institute, makes the point that the UK lacks legal incentives for AI firms to prevent systems from developing capabilities which could pose dangers, and that there are no repercussions if testing protocols fail.

More broadly, Dr Imogen Stead, AI policy manager at the Centre for Long-Term Resilience, told the BBC that with opportunities to test frontier AI systems narrowing for many, governments should follow the UK in setting up dedicated institutes for testing.

Improving third-party evaluations with initiatives such as a "trusted tester scheme" for the most risky types of challenges could also be used to limit adverse impacts, she said.

Rather than fear an AI-cyber apocalypse in the meantime, Prof Woodward says, "it's a case of 'keep calm and fix stuff'".

Additional reporting by Philippa Wain and Imran Rahman-Jones

The secret codewords that scammers hate

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260804-why-your-family-needs-a-secret-codeword, 5 days ago

Deepfake scams might use your voice, but they don't know what's in your head. Five minutes of preparation could save your loved ones from falling for fraud.

"It was the most terror I've ever felt," says Elizabeth Benz, a mother from Buffalo, New York.

In September 2025, she got a phone call. "It was my 16-year-old-son, John," she says. "He was sobbing, 'Mom, my friend is dead. He's dead.'" She panicked, but things were about to get even worse.

A stranger took the phone. Over the course of 20 minutes, the man told her he'd just murdered her son's friend, and he'd do the same to John if she didn't meet him with $7,500 (£5,570) in a Walmart parking lot.

"He said, 'We are going to kill your son,'" Benz says.

Soon she was driving over. But just in time, John's brother got hold of him. He was at a football game. John wasn't in danger, and that wasn't his voice on the phone. It was all an AI deepfake scam. "I couldn't believe it," she says.

If you think you or your loved ones are too savvy to fall for a deepfake, you're wrong. AI is so good now you can no longer trust your senses, and criminals are perpetrating scams like these on a massive scale.

Thankfully, it's a high-tech problem with a low-tech solution – one that could save you a lifetime of regret.

Your family needs a codeword that you use to verify each other's identity in a crisis. The scammer might have your voice. They don't know your secrets. Experts and victims say this is one of the single most important things you can do to stay safe. But the password alone isn't enough.

Just ask Benz. One of the craziest parts of her story is her family already had a password for this exact scenario when she got the scam call.

"It just didn't occur to me to ask for it," says Benz. "These scams get you to an active place of panic where you can't think straight." It means you also need mental preparation. That's a little more complicated, but the tips below can help.

If you get targeted, it could be some of the most important advice you'll ever read.

What's the codeword?

Americans alone lost an estimated $148.2bn (£110.1bn) to online scams and crimes in 2025, up nearly 26% from the year prior. AI-enabled scams accounted for $6.3bn (£4.7bn) of that. Experts say they're growing exponentially.

"This is not hypothetical," says Hany Farid, the co-founder of GetReal Security and one of the world's leading experts on AI deepfakes. "These scams are being perpetrated all over the world.

"Imagine getting a call at 02:00, a voicemail, a video call, a loved one saying they're in trouble," he says. "Or maybe it's your CEO, screaming that he needs help logging in. The average consumer is not ready for this."

Farid and other experts agree a codeword is the easiest way to protect yourself. "My wife and I have a password. If either of us gets an unusual call, we use it to verify identity," he says.

Pick something that's easy to remember and hard to guess. Inside jokes are a safe bet.

"If my wife calls and asks me to pick up milk, I'm not asking for the password," Farid says. "But if I happen to know she's in a meeting, or she says been in an accident and needs me to transfer money, anything unusual, that's when you use it."

But when you get that phone call and hear a loved one in crisis, pressure can tear your plans apart. You need to know how and when to be ready.

Know the red flags

Gary Schildhorn, a lawyer from Philadelphia in the US, dodged a deepfake scam of his own in 2023. The experience was so jarring he now works as a scam-safety advocate in his spare time.

"There are three red flags," Schildhorn says. They all have the same goal: scammers want you isolated and afraid, so there's no time to think.

"One red flag is time. Everything has to be done right away," he says. "Two is they never ask for traceable funds. If they need Bitcoin or gift cards or cash, you know the agenda. And three is they try to control who you speak to."

Knowing the hallmarks of a classic scam are crucial, but awareness alone isn't enough.

"One of the most important things is how you react," says Brian Long, co-founder of Adaptive Security, which makes AI-security training programs for companies. "You need to train your mental model to prepare for this scenario."

And of course, you need to make sure you and your loved ones don't forget the codeword.

The best way to do that is practice, but it doesn't have to be exhaustive.

More like this:

• Is your tech giving you 'phone body'?

• Dancing dots: The iPhone's hidden nausea cure

• The number one sign you're watching an AI video

I've been talking to experts about scams for years, and I've got a simple system for myself: I set up an alert on my phone that goes off every three months.

It reminds me to bug my family to make sure we remember the codeword. And it prompts me to rehearse a little protocol for emergency calls: stay calm, ask for the password and consult someone I trust before acting.

"I share my story because I want people to know how urgent and scary and psychological and realistic these calls can be," says Benz. "Awareness is the greatest tool."

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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, 11 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, 12 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.

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The Chinese robot army transforming the UK's retail industry

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0jl8v23qwgo, 11 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

Band's 'dream' playing on Y Not Festival main stage

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp9ek1y2mllo, today

An indie band from Derbyshire said they found out they had made the shortlist to play on the main stage of a major festival via Instagram.

The Last Orders, who have been playing in pubs and small venues since they formed, said it was a "dream" to be asked to play in front of 20,000 revellers at Y Not Festival at Pikehall near Matlock, Derbyshire.

The band said the experience was "amazing" and that they had "Sunday dinner with Rizzle Kicks" and had a good chat with Dizzee Rascal backstage.

Bass player Morgan Freeman said: "It was mental, there were loads of people I recognised, but I'm also a lot happier that there were loads of people that I didn't recognise. It was great."

The band consists of Ethan Hill, as lead singer and rhythm guitar, Orlando Parkins on lead guitar and backing vocals, Morgan Freeman on bass and Seb Murden on drums and backing vocals.

Hill said the band were ecstatic when they found out they made the shortlist.

"We thought we hadn't made it into the festival and I got a text from someone to check Instagram.

"We'd been picked for the shortlist and we were in band practice and we went mental shouting and screaming.

"I was like 'guys we've got to push this so far' and we made a million social media posts. I sent it to literally every person we know and we managed to get [the slot]."

The band said the experience was nothing like they had ever done before.

"It's a very big stage," Hill said.

"The on-stage sound was really weird, we don't wear in-ear monitors or anything.

"We've been playing in pubs and stuff and then we were on at the main stage, I couldn't hear my guitar, couldn't hear my singing.

"None of us really know how well we did until we were watching videos back and we were like, 'oh, actually we sounded all right'."

The band are growing in popularity and had fans climbing on top of the smoking area of The Bless pub in Derby city centre the weekend before, Hill added.

Speaking about their experience backstage, the band said they had the best time mingling with other artists.

Hill said: "We met people like Dizzee Rascal, people from the Royston Club, we ate a Sunday dinner with the Rizzle Kicks.

"We just sat with them having a Sunday roast and now we're back doing our day jobs, it's been crazy."

Freeman added: "We always said if we do Y Not main stage then we'd be happy but we've now done that.

"For people like us from around here, there's not much of a bigger stage really to do."

The band said the plan was "to do more shows" and then head back to the studio to record more music.

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.

Deepfake victim urges better regulation of 'dangerous' AI

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c75gvyk6d4yo, yesterday

A woman whose modelling photographs were used to create sexually explicit images without her consent is calling for better regulation of artificial intelligence (AI), saying: "It's dangerous."

Georgia Horton said she was horrified after discovering pictures taken from her social media accounts had been manipulated using AI to create pornographic images.

And the person responsible was someone she knew - old college friend Ethan Orchard.

Orchard, from Southsea, was jailed for three years and four months in July after creating and sharing fake explicit images of Georgia and two other women.

Orchard had also posted violent and sexually explicit fantasies about the women online and asked other men to share theirs.

"He would make people choose between us, or ask what they wanted to do to us," said Georgia.

"One of the posts was, 'What would you do if you had five minutes alone with her?' And it got so much worse from there.

"The worst one I saw was, 'Would you save her? Would you rape her? Or would you sell her?'."

Georgia and Orchard had attended college together in Hampshire and she had believed they were friends, she told the BBC.

She said she was speaking publicly about her experience now in the hope of raising awareness of what she describes as the "darker side" of artificial intelligence.

"Everyone seems to be so pro-AI, thinking it's just a bit of fun on a computer screen," she said, adding: "But it's dangerous."

'Becoming much easier'

Earlier this year, new legislation was introduced, making it a criminal offence to create sexually explicit deepfake images of a person without their consent.

The law builds on existing offences covering the sharing of non-consensual intimate images of adults.

Georgia said while "it's a start", the legislation does not go far enough.

She said: "When I heard the law had been introduced, I was so relieved. My case was still going through the courts and we were all pleased to see that progress.

"But it's now come to a standstill.

"The technology to make these images and videos is still out there and still widely available.

"There needs to be more regulation and much tougher safety features built into the programmes themselves.

"The big tech companies say they're tightening safeguards but you can still get around them with just a few changes to the prompts.

"Self-regulation isn't working. It's also becoming much easier for people to create their own AI models and those are completely unregulated."

'So many predators'

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said it was taking the issue seriously.

A government spokesperson said: "The creation and sharing of non-consensual sexual deepfakes is utterly vile and we will not allow abusive images to spread online."

They added: "The law also makes clear [that] it is illegal to create, possess or share child sexual abuse material, including AI-generated content, and platforms must proactively identify and remove it.

"We're holding tech companies to account, from forcing platforms to remove non-consensual intimate images within 48 hours of a report, to holding company bosses personally liable when they fail to comply with Ofcom's decisions on intimate image abuse."

During the police investigation into Georgia's case, officers uncovered what they described as a "truly horrifying" website containing more than one million child sexual abuse images.

Georgia urged parents to be more vigilant about sharing photographs of their children online.

"Photos of children being posted online should be banned," she said.

"There are so many predators out there and you really don't know who is seeing those pictures.

"It only takes one photo to be put through AI and limitless images can be created. The damage that can be done is enormous."

Artist's 'anger and frustration' with internet copycats

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2gvlpr1n5o, yesterday

For many artists, the internet has transformed the way they do business, helping them reach new audiences and sell their work around the world.

But the same technology is also making it easier for their creations to be copied, altered and sold without permission.

An illustrator may spend weeks creating a new design only to discover a near-identical version listed for sale on an online marketplace thousands of miles away.

That is exactly what happened to illustrator Kerrie McNeill when likely copies of her work began appearing on Temu.

As the shock wore off, she said what remained was anger and frustration.

"It makes it not enjoyable, constantly being on edge," she said.

BBC News NI contacted Temu and they said they "do not permit unauthorised use of intellectual property" adding they are taking steps to remove the alleged copies of McNeill's work from their platform.

For independent artists like McNeill, it is not just the artwork they feel has been allegedly stolen, but the income attached to it.

She turns her colourful illustrations into art prints, greeting cards and stationery.

A version of her pink Happy Birthday card, featuring colourful birthday cakes finished with gold foil, is listed for sale on Temu for 96p. The original sells for £3.60 on McNeill's own website.

Placed side by side, the two cards are strikingly similar with only small details setting them apart.

Experts say subtle changes like these have become increasingly common. While artwork can be copied in a number of ways, advances in image-editing technology, including AI tools, have made it quicker and easier to create altered versions of existing designs, making copies harder to spot.

"If artwork is accessible then people think that it is theirs to take," McNeill said.

"Because so many people think that it's okay to do, more people do it, and they just don't care."

When McNeill first discovered alleged copies of her work on Temu, the company removed the listings after she reported them.

But two years on, she said the effort of flagging and removing likely copycat products has become an exhausting cycle.

The alleged fake illustrations continue to appear and each report can take time to complete. McNeill said some alleged copies appear to have been altered using AI, making them harder to identify.

"It's just unfair," she said. "I don't think that it should be my job to take down all these listings of my own artwork that has been stolen."

'It ruins the whole art piece'

Terry Bradley's paintings are instantly recognisable to many people across Northern Ireland.

His contemporary paintings of Belfast dock workers and female figures have earned him an international following, but that popularity has also made them a target for counterfeit sellers.

His son, Hal Bradley, creative director at Terry Bradley Art, said alleged reproductions of his father's paintings regularly appear for sale online, on various different platforms. Temu is not one of them.

One of his paintings even turned up hanging on the wall of a bar in Thailand.

"Terry's put so much time into these pieces," he said.

"When somebody shows us a botched reproduction of his painting, it kills that for him."

Hal said the family regularly spots likely copies in people's homes and for sale online.

"It's not just that it's fake," he said. "It's also that it's attributed to our paintings. It ruins the whole art piece."

Bradley's career began long before online marketplaces became a major outlet for counterfeit goods.

To help distinguish genuine work, every original painting is now embossed, signed and accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.

Like McNeill, Hal said reporting individual listings can be frustrating.

"The people doing it are breaking the law," he said.

"It seems that if we don't do every little thing to remove individual listings, they are just allowed to do it."

Technology outpacing the law

Cyber security expert Kevin Curran said technology has moved much faster than the laws designed to protect creators.

"Legislation is lagging far behind," he said.

For many artists, pursuing legal action is unrealistic because cases can take years and cost thousands of pounds, particularly when sellers are based overseas or operate anonymously.

"The sheer scale is very hard for owners," he said.

"You're faced with a future where you won't be able to claim for your original artwork anymore."

Suspected infringements

Online marketplaces, including Temu, have systems allowing copyright holders to report suspected infringements.

In October, following pressure from the Greeting Card Association (GCA), Temu introduced a bespoke takedown process for greeting card publishers.

Previously, companies had to report every individual listing. Under the trial, they now submit one link, allowing software to identify and remove other listings using the same design, preventing identical copies from simply being re-uploaded.

In relation to McNeill's illustrations, Temu added that their sellers are "required to comply with applicable laws and Temu's policies as a condition of operating on the marketplace".

"Regarding the artist mentioned, we are reviewing the identified listings and are in the process of removing them.

"At the same time, we are adding Kerrie McNeill's works to our IP database for ongoing proactive monitoring to help prevent them from being listed again by bad actors."

Temu stressed that to protect rights holders, Temu uses a combination of automated detection and manual review systems, currently scanning more than 47 million images and more than 9.5m million keywords.

Meta fined $567m in largest child safety ruling against social media giant

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd7lz3wr2rlo, 3 days ago

A US judge in New Mexico has ordered Meta to pay another $567m (£421m) for its failure to warn the public about dangers its platforms posed to children, marking the largest fine against the company over child safety.

Judge Bryan Biedscheid said the social media giant is a "public nuisance" akin to air pollution and that it must put the money in a fund aimed at reducing future harms.

Thursday's ruling is in addition to $375m in fines Meta was already ordered to pay in the case, for a total of $942m.

Judge Biedscheid compared Meta to a factory, with advertising and content as its product and "the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children to be the pollution that must be abated".

A spokesman for Meta, which owns and operates Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Threads, said Thursday: "We disagree with the ruling and will appeal."

"We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content," they added.

"We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts."

Regarding the earlier $375m verdict in the case, Meta had said it intended to appeal the ruling and gave a similar explanation. It was the first time that a state had successfully sued Meta over child safety issues.

Meta is currently facing thousands of lawsuits in the US over similar issues. In addition to the New Mexico rulings, Meta earlier this year lost a landmark case in Los Angeles which found it could be held liable for building addictive platforms.

Bruce Daisley, a former European vice president of Twitter (now X), told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the New Mexico fine, while large, was "a drop in the ocean" for Meta.

In its latest financial results, the social media giant posted $61bn in revenue from April to June - up 28% on the same period a year ago.

"But it's an indication that we are moving to a stage where social media is going to be tackled around the world," he said.

Meanwhile, former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips told Today she believed US court challenges against big tech could enable the UK to take tougher action - without fearing it may damage UK-US diplomatic ties.

Pollution comparisons

The New Mexico case stems from a 2023 lawsuit brought by state attorneys.

It argued Meta should be held liable for the way in which its platforms endangered children and exposed them to sexually explicit material and contact with sexual predators.

In the first phase of the trial, Meta was found to have repeatedly violated New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act as its recommendation algorithms essentially "steered" young users toward harmful content and contacts.

Recommendation algorithms are the tools that Meta uses to automatically curate the content a user sees on its platforms.

In ruling on this second phase of the trial, Judge Biedscheid found that Meta's harms reached the level of "public nuisance" - or an issue of health and safety that has become so widespread it is negatively impacting a general public.

In addition to being the largest fine Meta has received over child safety issues, the ruling also appears to be the first time that a social media company has been deemed a public nuisance.

In his ruling, the judge compared the "harmful effects" of the company's platforms on children to that the way in which "noxious pollution produced by the factory can harm the common public right to reasonably clean air".

Rather than remain confined to its platforms, he said, these effects "migrate to the internet as a whole and, perhaps most concerning, to the real world".

These in turn create "a common, societal burden on and harm to the affected children and their families," as well as schools, hospitals and law enforcement, he said.

Further measures

The fund that Meta has been ordered to create will be used to pay for efforts to mitigate "the wide-ranging impacts of the harm", Judge Biedscheid said.

A vast majority of the money, totaling $420m, will go towards treatment of harms Meta's platforms have already caused, through the funding of "appropriate clinical or other behavioral health programs and professionals," according to the order.

Another chunk of the money will go towards training around awareness and prevention, including for teachers and health professionals on how to deal with social media harms against children.

The judge also ordered Meta to enact other measures, including ensuring that no account of a user under age 18 is recommended to an adult and that no adult can message an underage user.

In addition, Meta was ordered to:

* Ban underage users from sending or receiving nudity

* Enact a "1-strike policy for adult users who engage in child sexual exploitation"

* Eliminate "like" counts for users under 18

* Ban push notifications for such users every day between 10:00 PM to 7:00 AM and to ban such notifications during the typical school year between 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM, except on weekends

* Implement a mandatory usage limit for such users of 90 cumulative hours per month across Instagram and Facebook, or about three hours per day

The UK and EU also want platforms including Meta take similar steps to protect children on their sites, with recent efforts focusing on repairing mechanisms through which children can be seen or contacted online.

But many countries are also forging ahead with plans to ban children from social media entirely.

The UK recently said in addition to blocking under-16s from social media, platforms would also need to stop older teens using social media at night via opt-out "curfews".

Meanwhile, another major trial against Meta begins next week in California. Nearly three dozen US states' attorneys general are suing the company for violating child privacy laws.

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Two people convicted in relation to death of French streamer

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8rnmdy4enpo, 3 days ago

Two people in France have been convicted of aggravated violence, following an investigation into the death of a French streamer known for extreme challenges.

Raphaël Graven, 46, died in a village near Nice in August 2025. His death was live broadcast on the streaming platform Kick.

The internet personality was routinely subjected to humiliation and abuse in his content, which the convicted men, Safine Hamadi and Owen Cenazandotti, said occurred with his consent.

Hamadi and Cenazandotti have each been issued suspended prison sentences for their role in Graven's death, and ordered to pay fines of €5,000 (£4283) and €15,000 (£12,848) respectively.

Neither man was charged with the manslaughter of Graven, also known as Jean Pormanove, after the prosecution said probable causes of death appeared to be related to his poor health and fragile heart.

The court also acquitted them of abusing Graven's psychological frailty, as he had told police prior to his death that he had consented to the stunts, Hamadi's lawyer told Reuters.

Hamadi, who expressed remorse during the trial, received an 18-month suspended prison sentence. Cenazandotti received a two-year suspended prison sentence.

Both men have been banned from posting on Kick for six months.

Kick, the streaming platform, remains under investigation by French authorities. In a statement to the New York Times on Thursday, it said it was not a party to the proceedings against Hamadi and Cenazandotti, and had no comment on the outcome.

It added: "The ruling relates solely to two individual content creators."

Graven had more than one million followers across his various social media platforms and had built a strong community on Kick.

During broadcasts on the platform, other streamers would regularly subject the 46-year-old to acts of violence and verbal humiliation.

Graven was found dead in Contes, a village north of Nice, in August 2025. Local media at the time reported that a livestream on 18 August showed the man lying lifeless on a mattress covered with a duvet.

The video has since been removed from Kick.

TikTok star Sydney Towle, who shared her cancer journey online, dies aged 26

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4n1eyze05o, 3 days ago

Sydney Towle, a popular social media influencer who shared her experience living with a rare, aggressive form of cancer, has died at the age of 26.

Towle's family announced her death, from complications related to bile duct cancer that had spread to other parts of her body, on her social media accounts on Thursday.

"Syd went peacefully last night after an almost three-year-long battle with cholangiocarcinoma," her brother Austin said in a video message, alongside their mother, on TikTok.

Towle, who was moved to hospice care earlier this week, had over a million followers on TikTok and over 200,000 on Instagram.

She spent the last three years chronicling her daily life as a young person going through chemotherapy and living with cancer, with all its hopes, joys and struggles. She had been living in New York City at the time of her death.

"We are so proud of how hard Sydney fought and for sharing her journey with so many people," Towle's family said in a statement.

"She wanted to raise awareness for rare cancers and was passionate about promoting self-advocacy. We will continue her legacy and honour her in every way we can."

Following the announcement of her death, thousands of followers posted messages on Towle's social media accounts paying tribute to her and sending well wishes to her family.

"Sweet angel. Fly high," actress Alyssa Milano commented. "Praying for all who loved her. She is really something special."

"You were such a bright light and will be missed," one person wrote on Instagram, while another said: "How lucky we all are to have found you on the internet. Thank you for sharing yourself and your story."

In May, Towle posted a series of videos from the hospital where she was receiving treatment for complications related to her cancer.

She shared that her cancer had spread to her peritoneum, a membrane that lines the abdominal and pelvic cavities and protects internal organs.

On 19 May, she posted a video of herself, sitting beside her mother in the hospital, in which she said her oncologist had told her he would no longer treat her cancer, recommending she begin end-of-life care. Towle said she would not accept this and vowed to continue fighting, choosing instead to switch to another specialist.

Despite her illness, she expressed fervent optimism and joy for life on her social media accounts. She often posted videos of herself dancing, getting ready, and having fun with friends.

She recently fulfilled her dream of modelling, walking in a swimsuit for The Chemo Club x Post Swim show at Miami Swim Week.

"Rich in life because my friends choose to spend a Saturday fundraising for cancer research," Towle wrote in a post in March.

"Go get a pint of Ben and Jerry's, watch your favourite movie, remember that life is good and bad things happen sometimes but that doesn't make it a bad life," Towle wrote in another post last year.

Towle was not shy about showing her stomach, where she had a hepatic artery pump implanted, on social media.

"I have only recently started seeing the resilience and beauty in this body," she wrote in a post last year, alongside photos of herself in a swimsuit. "Scars that remind me of how far I've come. And I'm reminded that dreams only end when you allow them to."

Author 'devastated' after festival judges accuse her of using AI to write novel

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7dnd9xypeo, 3 days ago

A Welsh learner who submitted a novel to one of the National Eisteddfod's most prestigious writing competitions said she was "devastated" when judges accused her of using Artificial Intelligence to write it.

Romy Wood from Cardiff submitted her entry titled Y Dderwen under the pseudonym Lithedora.

Judges Meinir Wyn Edwards, Llwyd Owen, and Lleucu Roberts originally said it was "disgraceful" one of the nine entrants had used AI in "a competition as important as this one" - something Wood denies.

The independent adjudicators later said they were "deeply sorry to have caused distress", adding: "No doubt, one day we will see this new author for our language wearing the medal".

BBC Wales has seen confirmation that Wood entered the Daniel Owen Memorial Prize, which is for unpublished novels of at least 50,000 words.

All entrants in the main literature prizes in the National Eisteddfod compete under pseudonyms, as a part of the festival's strict confidentiality rule.

During the ceremony on Tuesday, judge Meinir Wyn Edwards said there was "no plan or narrative arc in this novel" and that the "clumsy, flawed expression makes the whole thing almost impossible to read".

"So much so, that we suspect an artificial intelligence machine created the novel and that the author didn't even bother to read through the work," she added.

According to the adjudicators, the novel was placed "at the bottom of the pile".

In response, the published author told BBC Wales that her novel was a "personal story" about her family history, so she was "devastated" after hearing the adjudication broadcast live on S4C.

"I was devastated when I watched it because there was a whole minute of insults and sarcasm and laughing and this feeling that perhaps it had been written by AI," she said.

She added she felt "personally affronted and upset because, like all writers, I'm very nervous about my work.

"It's very personal. I've written for a long time. I've never written in Welsh before."

Wood became emotional as she said her confidence as a Welsh speaker had been "shattered" by the experience.

She has written a letter to the National Eisteddfod asking if it was a acceptable to "laugh and mock each other" in a "public place and in a situation" such as a broadcast on S4C, but said she had not received a response.

Wood also called for respect for those who had entered the competition, adding that "sarcasm and rudeness is for the playground, not for an institution like the Eisteddfod".

Rebecca Thomas from Cardiff won the prize on Tuesday for her novel Ynys Gwales.

The National Eisteddfod said they had a process in place requiring entrants to confirm they have not used AI to create their work - but has no automatic processes or systems to check for AI or plagiarism.

It said because Wood's entry was not placed in the higher category, it "wasn't required" to be checked for AI.

The National Eisteddfod added adjudicators were entirely independent, and that it was "important for us as an organisation to respect that independence".

But it said: "At the same time, we want to see feedback delivered in a respectful and constructive manner; we would never want any competitor to feel that the experience was spoiled by the way the feedback was given.

"Encouraging learners to participate fully in our competitions is also a vital principle for us, as part of our commitment to supporting the growth of the Welsh language and welcoming new speakers to our competitions."

The organisation said it would share the feedback with judges and consider it as it continued to "foster an inclusive and supportive environment for everyone taking part".

In response to Wood's comments, the adjudicators said they fully accepted "the Eisteddfod's guidelines on respect".

They said: "We are deeply sorry to have caused distress, but the three of us were unanimous in the view that the work had been created by some form of artificial intelligence.

"It is wonderful to see learners honing their craft through Eisteddfod competitions. No doubt, one day we will see this new author for our language wearing the medal.

"Very warm congratulations to Rebecca Thomas on creating a truly special novel."

Social group for young islanders growing 'rapidly'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79gxg1nrp8o, 3 days ago

A social group set up to help young adults make new friends and tackle loneliness has grown to more than 80 members.

Inclusive Islanders was founded in May by university graduate Rosalie Van Zutphen, who wanted to bring some of the social opportunities she experienced in England back to Guernsey.

The group which has members aged 19 to 35 organises activities including sea swims, craft sessions and social events.

Van Zutphen said the amount of interest was "quite surprising" and the number of members was "rapidly increasing" with 88 people in its WhatsApp group chat.

'Quite difficult'

Van Zutphen said the group was created in response to what she saw as a lack of opportunities for young people to meet others outside of work, education or established friendship groups.

"Social media gives the perception that we're all very connected, but in reality I think younger people are struggling a little bit to make those connections in person," she said.

Members include people returning to Guernsey after university, as well as newcomers to the island looking to build a social network.

"It can be quite difficult to find your community here if you're not used to being from a small island," she said.

The group has focused on keeping events affordable and accessible, with many activities either free or low cost.

Its founder said there had been less interest in alcohol-focused events, with members wanting outdoor activities and opportunities to try new hobbies.

"It's really expensive to go out drinking here in Guernsey," Van Zutphen said.

"Anything that's really low cost is what we're trying to do at the moment."

The organisation now has its own committee and plans for further events, with organisers expecting membership to continue to grow.

Follow BBC Guernsey on X and Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to channel.islands@bbc.co.uk.

Faster broadband rollout continues in rural areas

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyrp8rk750o, 3 days ago

More than 60,000 rural homes and businesses across Yorkshire and Lincolnshire have been connected to ultra-fast broadband.

Winterton in North Lincolnshire, Fosdyke in Lincolnshire, and Sessay and Linton-on-Ouse in North Yorkshire are among the latest places to benefit from Project Gigabit, which is being funded by the government to the tune of about £300m.

Other villages around Barnsley, Huddersfield, Hull, Bradford, York, Boston and Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, have also benefited.

In total, 12,800 properties in East Yorkshire, 14,600 in North Yorkshire, 7,500 in South Yorkshire, 10,700 in West Yorkshire, 3,000 in York and 11,400 in Lincolnshire, have been connected, the government said.

Ian Murray, a minister at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, said: "Good broadband is about giving families, workers and local businesses the tools they need to get on, wherever they live.

"The whole project being publicly funded is about going into the areas where the market cannot go or will not go because it's not profitable to be able to do so, or the infrastructure is too capital-intensive to be able to install."

The government said it wanted to connect a total of 123,000 premises in the region to faster broadband.

Hull-based company Quickline has been awarded the contract, which has resulted in 130 people joining its apprenticeship programme.

Listen to highlights from Hull and East Yorkshire or Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, and watch the latest episode of Look North.

Download the BBC News app from the App Store for iPhone and iPad or Google Play for Android devices

'Brick phones' among online child safety ideas

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp9ekny9m7zo, 4 days ago

Campaigners from local and national organisations have made suggestions on ways Guernsey could protect children from accessing harmful content online.

The UK's Online Safety Act require websites containing pornographic content to have age verification checks, or they could face fines of up to £18m or 10% of the company's global revenue. Guernsey currently does not have similar procedures in place.

Suggestions included not letting children have internet-capable mobile phones, or two models of online access running simultaneously - a child-safe network and an adult network.

Guernsey's Committee for Home Affairs previously said it was reviewing the online safety bill.

Deputy Sally Rochester said: "I find it interesting with the online protection we provide our young people with, that it is not more of a conversation in our community here in Guernsey.

"Other countries have put in place substantial protection for children in terms of social media bans, age verification, all sorts of things."

Cyber security consultant Daniel Card said if similar online safety to the UK's were introduced in Guernsey, they could still be circumvented.

He said: "There are ways to get around this, from the vulnerabilities in the platform to the protocols themselves, through to using virtual private networks (VPNs)."

VPNs can disguise a user's location online, allowing them to use the internet as though they were in another country, possibly bypassing restrictions.

Emma Lawlor, a campaigner for Smartphone Free Childhood Guernsey, said she believed there were alternatives to age-verification checks.

She said: "We do not feel putting effort into age-restrictions, curfews or VPNs is really the way to go - with any of these things, enforcement is a massive issue.

"Just bring in a 'brick phone' [non-internet-capable mobile phone] policy - make it culturally more acceptable and change the whole thinking of kids going into Year 7, or even younger, needing a smartphone."

'Supporting parents'

James Baker, free expression and platform manager at UK campaign group Open Rights, also stated there were benefits and drawbacks to age checks.

He said: "One of the downsides we have seen is in terms of people's privacy.

"If they hand their data over to a company, then the data can be at risk of being breached."

Baker also said Guernsey could use its smaller population size to its advantage.

He said: "If I was in charge of this, I would make sure every router ships with a child safe network on it and an adult network.

"There needs to be more advice to support parents.

"Somewhere like Guernsey, where you have a smaller, close-knit community, parental education is something you could really lead on."

Follow BBC Guernsey on X and Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to channel.islands@bbc.co.uk.

Marmots facing money troubles turn to OnlyFans

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ywqp5z5yzo, 4 days ago

Marmots - chubby, ground-dwelling squirrels - are the latest stars on the adult platform OnlyFans.

That's thanks to the efforts of Colorado-based biologist Dr Daniel Blumstein, the head of a long-running field study on marmots, who was worried about its financial future after federal funding to universities was cut.

Blumstein told the BBC he recently launched an account on OnlyFans, which is known mostly for sexually explicit content, and began posting "uncensored marmot content" in "an act of desperation".

This content is family-friendly videos of the rodents scurrying around and popping out of their burrows, which so far has generated more than $5,000 (£3,712).

After OnlyFans takes its share, the UCLA-affiliated Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado will make about $4,000.

The Marmot Project, which has been running for more than 60 years, is the second-longest study of individually identified mammals in the world, after Jane Goodall's chimpanzee study in Tanzania.

It studies the yellow-bellied marmot, one of the 15 recognised species of marmot found in the Northern Hemisphere.

Because the species is neither threatened nor endangered, it helps scientists to understand the factors that drive population changes, according to the lab.

Blumstein said long-term studies such as these are really effective but, despite this, he has been unable to secure federal support.

While the lab will probably not be able to generate enough money through OnlyFans to save the project from spending cuts, he believes raising awareness about their work is also important.

The OnlyFans idea came to him when he sat in a meadow waiting for some marmots to pop out of the ground.

Blumstein had recently watched the TV show Margot's Got Money Troubles, where Elle Fanning's character starts an OnlyFans account to support herself as a single mother.

"Marmots' got money troubles," he thought to himself. "Maybe we should do something a little risqué".

He raised the idea with his lab students, and they came up with the name OnlyMarms. One student helped him set up the account.

That's when he hit a slight snag. He had to upload a photo of his driver's licence to verify his identity. But the platform flagged that he did not look like the account's profile photo of a marmot. A quick email exchange cleared the way for them to start posting videos.

On OnlyMarms, users can see the Rocky Mountain marmots in their natural habitat. They aren't as social as their alpine counterparts, Blumstein said, and the female marmots get grumpier as they age.

In one video, a female marmot chases away a male who got too comfortable in her burrow. In another, a female is dubbed "the queen of the town" as she is caught on camera in the sun.

The lab doesn't give their subjects human-sounding names, in an effort to avoid bias in their research. Instead, they mark the rodents with dye and call them things like "dans_hat", "open_kite" and "Citroën".

The scientists have also launched Fat Marmot Week, styled after Fat Bear Week, where the public can vote for their favourite rotund rodent in a bracket-style tournament at the end of August. As hibernating animals, marmots put on weight before winter.

"It's fun to root for the chunkiest marmot, but behind the fun and games is a deathly serious competition against nature to pile on fat to survive the long, cold winter," Blumstein said in a press release announcing the tournament.

Widow's Bay to DTF St Louis: 19 of the best TV shows of 2026 so far

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260403-the-best-tv-shows-of-2026, 2 days ago

From a surprise horror-comedy hit to a suburban whodunnit with a difference and the latest runs of Rivals and Ted Lasso, we pick the year's greatest programmes to stream right now.

1. Furious

It’s your classic cat-and-mouse set-up: a dogged cop on the hunt of a killer. But Furious subverts that formula with a horrible and timely twist – and the result is easily the best crime thriller of the year so far. Emmy Rossum, best known for TV's Shameless and graduating to the role of her career here, is brittle and enigmatic as Alice, an FBI agent battling the sexism of the institution and demons from an abusive relationship with a colleague. Her quarry, mesmerisingly played by Irish actor Lola Pettricrew, is a serial murderer with a difference: a former sex trafficking victim taking revenge on the Epstein-like circle of rich men involved in her, and many others', abuse. What's so impressive about New Girl and Dying for Sex creator Elizabeth Meriwether's latest show is its seamless tonal shifts, from dark comedy-evoking Promising Young Woman, to truly haunting drama. The result is a scintillating and dare we say it, important post-MeToo howl of rage at the very grimmest underbelly of our society. (Hugh Montgomery)

Streaming weekly on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK

2. Widow's Bay

Even with the terrific Matthew Rhys as the star, no one expected this inventive horror-tinged comedy to become the breakout hit that it has, gathering 19 Emmy nominations. Rhys finds comedy by playing it straight as Tom Loftis, the mayor of Widow's Bay, an old-timey town on a New England island that he hopes to make a tourist destination. If only it weren't haunted by an evil spirit, a reality Tom doesn't believe until he has to. It's easy to see why the show arrived so quietly. It has a distinctive comic-horror tone that doesn't fit any cookie-cutter category. Its knowing wink at horror is not intended to make you jump. But while the humour nods at classic horror tropes from Jaws to The Shining, it is never as broad as a spoof. That works beautifully because the town is populated by such vivid, down-to-earth characters. Rhys holds it all together, with a perfectly synced-in cast that includes Stephen Root as Wyck, the sea captain who tries to warn the mayor about the spirit, and Kate O'Flynn as Tom's tightly-wound assistant, Patricia. (Caryn James)

Available on Apple TV internationally

3. Rivals

The UK lost a literary legend when Jilly Cooper, joyous author of the erotic upper-crust romps which epitomised the so-called "bonkbuster", passed away suddenly last October. But there could be no better tribute to her than the second series of this adaptation of her novels set in her mythical Cotswolds-like country Rutshire. In these six instalments (the second batch of six will be released later this year), it was even more on-point in capturing Cooper's balance of raucous comedy and emotionally sharp examination of class, relationships and matters of the heart. On one hand, there's the exquisite farce of episode two, in which a dinner party devolves into beautifully-choreographed chaos; and on the other, some devastating moments of marital upset, many provided by Claire Rushbrook, giving this run of episodes' most powerful performance as the villainous Tony Baddingham's stiff-upper-lipped, but quietly agonised wife, Lady Monica. It's hit such a confident stride that I suspect it could run and run. (HM)

The first six episodes of season 2 are available on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK, with a further six episodes premiering in November

4. Ted Lasso

After three years away and no guarantee it would return, Ted Lasso came back with all its warmth and humour intact. Don't be put off by the lame first episode, which finds Ted in Kansas City and strains for laughs. By episode two he is back in London, coaching a new Richmond women's football team. Like his old men's team they are underdogs, and unlike the men they face a whole set of sexist problems. Ted is still a wonder of a character, both goofy and unaccountably wise about human nature. And Jason Sudeikis, so comfortable in the role, is surrounded by the familiar, still-winning cast: Hannah Waddingham as Rebecca, Juno Temple as Keeley, Brett Goldstein as Roy and Jeremy Swift as Leslie. Tanya Reynolds is a sharp addition as a deadpan new coach. Ever since it arrived, during the pandemic era, the series has been synonymous with a reassuring, positive message summed up by Ted's motto, "Believe." Then and now, it is rare in the way it manages to be uplifting without being preachy or sugary. (CJ)

Available on Apple TV internationally

5. DTF St Louis

From David Lynch to Desperate Housewives and beyond, the dark underbelly of American suburbia is extremely well-trodden narrative territory, and any one taking it on has a task on their hands to avoid cliché. Which makes the achievement of this seven-part HBO miniseries set in the titular Missouri city all the more impressive. For while its initial set-up – a love triangle, a murder investigation – may be nothing too remarkable, what it reveals is a finely tuned, remarkably tender appreciation of the oddities of the most ordinary-seeming human beings: to reference a line which forms the show's thesis, "No one's normal. It just looks that way from across the street". It also contains a game-changing performance from Stranger Things star David Harbour as Floyd Smernitch, an overweight cuckolded husband plagued by debt, whose open-hearted approach to life is nevertheless inspiring. In fact, all the lead performers bring their A-game. As Floyd's wife Carol, Linda Cardellini offers a poignant depiction of middle-class disaffection, while even Jason Bateman's smoothie weatherman reveals hidden and strange depths. With its absurd humour, dramatic dysfunction and atmospheric score, it perhaps most evokes that Oscar-winning suburban classic American Beauty, although both the writing and characterisation are much more sophisticated. (HM)

Available on HBO Max in the US and NOW in the UK

6. The Other Bennet Sister

Of all the television shows, films and novels that spin off from Jane Austen – an industry in itself – few are as delightful as this. Ella Bruccoleri is endearing as Mary Bennet, the bookish sister in Pride and Prejudice, always overshadowed by her siblings. The series is true to the spirit of Austen – the family warmth, the dances, the fought-for romance and above all the sardonic view of society in all its inanities. Yet it manages to give the commonsensical, spectacle-wearing Mary a life of her own. The early episodes stay close to Austen, with Richard E Grant dream casting as Mr Bennet. When the plot goes beyond Pride and Prejudice, Mary heads to London to live with her aunt and uncle, where she finds two suitors and a very Austen like ending. Indira Varma is elegant and full of good advice as Mary's smart and helpful aunt, with Dónal Finn and Laurie Davidson as the men, very different from each other, whom Mary falls for. Colourful and spirited, the series doesn't have a trace of the cringe that often comes with attempts to fill in the blanks Austen left behind. (CJ)

Available on Britbox in the US and BBC iPlayer in the UK

7. Margot's Got Money Troubles

Several A-list actors shine in this unlikely dramatic comedy. Elle Fanning is empathetic as Margot, whose affair with her married college professor leaves her as a single mother who can't afford daycare. But she can make money from home on OnlyFans. Michelle Pfeiffer once more proves how good she is at comedy as Margot's mother, Shyanne, a former Hooters waitress determined to marry a good-guy minister (Greg Kinnear). Nick Offerman brings nuance to the role of Jinx, Margot's father, a former wrestler and recovering addict who becomes the live-in babysitter and advisor on her elaborate but not explicit videos. Nicole Kidman even turns up as a wrestler turned lawyer. Non-judgmental and realistic about sex, clear-eyed and funny about family dysfunction, the show may be about money problems and adult websites but it's also remarkably heart-warming. (CJ)

Available on Apple TV internationally

8. Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed

Tatiana Maslany came to public consciousness with her virtuosic performance in sci-fi series Orphan Black, in which she played 17 different clones, masterfully differentiating each one. Since then, though, she has struggled to find a role worthy of her talents – until now. In this delicious little Hitchcockian thriller, she plays a spiky divorcee and single mum who finds some relief in her sessions with an online sex worker, only for him to wind up dead. From there, spins out a plot in which she becomes both prime suspect and target of the real bad guys. Beyond the suspense and twists, though, this is at heart a compelling portrait of a woman hitting rock bottom, but in the process finding herself. And that element is carried superbly by Maslany's powerhouse screen presence and her winning mix of toughness and vulnerability. (HM)

Available on Apple TV internationally

9. Alice and Steve

Friendship and vengeance go together in this funny, caustic comedy with a dramatic undertone. Nicola Walker and Jemaine Clement, each wonderfully edgy actors on their own, make a terrific pair as the title characters, who have been best friends for 30 years. Then he starts dating her 26-year-old daughter, who, to be fair, made the first move. When Alice furiously tries to thwart the relationship, sabotaging Steve's hair-styling career, he retaliates and their outlandish, destructive pranks escalate. The unpredictable final episode is likely to divide opinions. I didn't buy it for a second, but that didn't spoil the fun of watching Walker and Clement. Throughout this bracing, fresh series, they find a perfect balance of genuine feeling and outrageous comic behaviour as they grapple with the meaning of love, friendship and jealousy. (CJ)

Available on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK

10. Industry

This BBC/HBO drama has been on quite a journey since it kicked off 2020: where it began as a tight, claustrophobic drama about London graduates trying to make it in the cutthroat world of the banking industry, in its fourth series its young protagonists are now power-players, and its scope has expanded to equally incorporate the worlds of media, politics and Britain's landed gentry. The new thematic ambition is admirable, turning it into something like a state-of-the-West drama, albeit an extremely pessimistic one – but what remains most impressive is the sharpness of the writing and performances. As frenemies Harper and Yasmin, Myha'la and Marisa Abela continue to anchor the show with a chilly magnetism, while Kit Harington has never been better than as the mentally broken, failed politician-cum-entrepreneur Sir Henry Muck. It's been announced it will wrap up with one final season, which feels about right – and hopefully before it ends, it will finally get the awards attention it deserves. (Hugh Montgomery)

Available on HBO Max in the US and BBC iPlayer in the UK

11. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast

This thoroughly winning romp from Lisa McGee, the creator of Derry Girls, is a comedy and a mystery, along with a road trip across Ireland and beyond. And at heart it is another of her stories of female friendship, no matter how unlike each other those friends are. We believe the three late-thirty-something heroines have stayed close for 20 years despite their diverging paths: Robyn is a polished but harried mother of three, Saoirse is a successful TV writer clearly engaged to the wrong man, and awkward Dara is a carer for her mother and still mourning a broken romance with the woman who was her true love. The series is expansive enough to delve into their relationships, complete with tensions and irritations, while each fast-paced, cliff-hanging episode propels the increasingly outlandish and funny plot, which ramps up from finding the wrong body in a casket to spying and kidnapping, with some romantic attractions along the way. McGee's unique voice comes through in a show filled with droll, perfectly-delivered dialogue, along with wacky humour and action. (Caryn James)

Available on Netflix internationally

12. The Beauty

While super-producer Ryan Murphy seems to become ever-more prolific, he definitely has issues with quality control: see last year’s universally slated legal drama All’s Fair as an example. But he's certainly had a strong run in 2026 so far: Love Story, telling the story of the tragically cut-short relationship of John F Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette, was a real watercooler hit, although it came under fire for its looseness with the facts. But body horror The Beauty was a more unqualified success: based on a comic book, it satirises today's vanity-driven age with its story of a wonder drug that literally causes people to be reborn as a more physically attractive version of themselves – with the unfortunate side effect that they may, at some point, explode. Like recent film The Substance, with which it shares much DNA, it's not exactly subtle in its messaging, but that's hardly the point: it easily carries you through its 10 episodes with its in-your-face brio, humour and game performances from the likes of Evan Peters, Rebecca Hall, Ashton Kutcher and Isabella Rossellini. Plus, it finishes on a great cliffhanger, which suggests a second season must be on the cards. (HM)

Available on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK

13. The Night Manager

There aren't many series so good that they can afford to wait 10 years between seasons, but this espionage drama is a thrilling exception. Tom Hiddleston once more plays Jonathan Pine, now an MI5 agent who is as tightly wound as they come, but somehow still endlessly charming. The first season used up the plot of John le Carré's novel of the same name, but writer David Farr does a first-rate job of channelling him to create a new story involving gun-running and political intrigue in Colombia and the corrupt involvement of MI5 itself. Diego Calva gives a magnetic, star-making performance as a new villain, the arms dealer Teddy Dos Santos. Steamy scenes tease an attraction between Teddy and Jonathan, the settings range from luxurious homes to the jungle, and the series even pulls off a welcome surprise concerning the fate of Hugh Laurie's character, Richard Roper, called "the worst man in the world." True to its origins, it has all the danger, tension and glamour of the best spy stories. (CJ)

Available on Prime Video internationally and BBC iPlayer in the UK

14. Lord of the Flies

After writer Jack Thorne had a global mega-hit with his Netflix drama Adolescence, it might seem foolhardy for him to follow it up with another piece focussed on boys behaving violently. Yet his adaptation of William Golding's celebrated parable about a group of schoolkids stranded on a desert island is a triumph. While it retains the book's period setting, it's a fresh, innovative retelling, which makes an inspired decision to present each of the four episodes from a different character's point of view, giving it an immersive quality that is intensified by the queasy, over-saturated visuals and White Lotus composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer's disturbing, discordant score. The result is both a tense thriller and a chilling inquiry into the dark side of human nature, with an expertly-cast ensemble of child actors all impressing: in particular, watch out for David McKenna, who plays the doomed Piggy, in years to come. (HM)

Coming to Netflix in the US on 4 May, and available on BBC iPlayer in the UK now

15. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

This lively standalone series may be a prequel to Game of Thrones, taking place in author George RR Martin's familiar world, but its refreshing wit and lightness set it apart. There is no cutthroat palace intrigue because the immensely likeable hero is the impoverished Ser Duncan (Peter Claffey) – low in rank, tall in height and possibly not even a real knight given the dubious way he was made one. His clever sidekick and squire is an even more likeable character, a sardonic little boy known as Egg (the delightful Dexter Sol Ansell). There is colourful medieval-style action at a jousting tournament, but the characters are the point here. Daniel Ings is practically effervescent as the high-spirited, carousing Ser Lyonel Baratheon. A major character turns out to have links to one of the many GOT royal families, but even so, it's a treat to watch a Game of Thrones show that doesn't require doing homework on the characters' genealogy to make sense of it all. (CJ)

Available on HBO Max in the US and UK

16. The Comeback

Lisa Kudrow's mockumentary about a sitcom actress, the irrepressible Valerie Cherish, desperate to stay relevant, has had a fascinating trajectory. Initially cancelled after just one season in 2005, before garnering a cult following, it has subsequently returned every 10 years to reflect on the state of Film, TV and popular culture in scathingly hilarious style. This third run takes on Hollywood's looming AI crisis as Valerie signs up to appear in a new multi-camera comedy written by machine, her qualms outweighed by her need to keep her career afloat. Sharply satirical, but with a more poignant and searching undertow of melancholy than ever, it's a sophisticated piece of work, but most importantly, it's still laugh-out-loud hilarious. Seeing Valerie in the first episode during rehearsals for a run in Chicago – a plot turn too perfect for words – is something from which you may struggle to recover. (HM)

Running weekly on HBO and HBO Max in the US, and NOW, Sky Go and HBO Max in the UK

17. Rooster

Steve Carell is a comic master at turning unlikely characters into loveable, messy heroes. And Bill Lawrence, co-creator of Ted Lasso, Shrinking and many other series, makes shows that are heartfelt and sincere without being saccharine or feeling fake. They've combined those strengths in this smart sitcom that isn't afraid to be silly. The premise is beyond improbable: Greg Russo, a writer of commercial novels, is hired to teach at a college he happened to be visiting to check in on his daughter, an art history professor going through a messy public divorce from a colleague. But Carell soars above the goofy premise. So does the ensemble cast, including Danielle Deadwyler, Phil Dunster (Jamie on Ted Lasso) and John C McGinley, who is especially funny as the college's benign, clueless, gossipy dean. The feel of the show is breezy and low-key, which is another asset. In a landscape of intense dramas and strained, unfunny sitcoms, this one is a gem. (CJ)

Available on HBO Max in the US and UK

18. Bait

If there's one good thing to come out of the endless, exhausting speculation game that is the hunt for the next James Bond, it's this inspired, very meta show created by and starring Riz Ahmed. It sees the British-Pakistani Oscar nominee play Shah Latif, a down-on-his-luck actor, formerly a rising star, now broke, who gets an audition to play 007. After he then deliberately gets himself papped leaving the building, he finds himself at the centre of a media circus – one that leads to attacks on all sides, from those who believe Bond should remain a white man, to Muslim peers who think he's selling out by taking on such an establishment role. What's most exciting about Bait is how determinedly it evades classification: through its six sub-half-hour episodes, it manages to at once be a penetrating industry satire about the knotty issue of "representation", a delightful family comedy, and an involving psycho-drama. And that's all topped off by some inspired splashes of surrealism: see the way it integrates pastiches of Bond action sequences, and features, of all things, a disembodied pig's head voiced by Patrick Stewart. (HM)

Available on Prime Video in the US and UK

19. The Pitt

Anchored by Noah Wyle's intense, empathetic performance as Dr Robby, this compelling medical series found an ideal formula that it carries seamlessly into season two. As it goes through a single 15-hour shift at a Pittsburgh trauma centre in real time, it captures – often in gut-wrenching detail – the life-or-death stakes and the personal stories of the doctors, nurses and other staff. But even patients who are treated briefly emerge as vivid characters rather than case studies, in line with the show's humane tone. The latest season arrived in the US before the first landed in the UK last month, but even for viewers catching up it's no spoiler to say that Robby, who has a kind of PTSD from years of treating patients who can't always be saved, is more on edge than ever. Among the strong cast, Taylor Dearden is a standout as the supersmart, neurodivergent Dr Mel King. The series has been seen as a throwback to older episodic television, but it's the up-to-the-minute portrait of stress in the medical profession that resonates. (CJ)

Available on HBO Max in the US and UK

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'Deadpan do-gooder' to 'ultra-violent vigilante': How 1980s comic The Dark Knight Returns transformed Batman

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260805-how-the-dark-knight-returns-transformed-batman, 3 days ago

First published 40 years ago in 1986, Frank Miller's graphic novel transformed the Caped Crusader from a camp, comical figure into a brutal new kind of superhero. He tells the BBC how it became a sensation.

A deadpan do-gooder who wears underpants over his tights, and always carries a can of shark repellent spray.

For a long time, that was Batman – or, at least, Batman as the general public saw him, thanks to the camp 1960s television show and film. In his DC Comics adventures, he was depicted as a more serious and even sinister character, but the average person still saw him as Adam West in a self-mocking comedy with an infuriatingly catchy theme song.

Then came the graphic novel that changed everything – not just Batman, but superhero comics, and the many Hollywood films those comics would inspire.

First published as a four-issue mini-series in 1986, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns was an edgy satirical masterpiece that demonstrated just how sophisticated and intelligent the genre could be. "In superhero fiction, we're dealing with symbolism, with metaphor," Miller tells the BBC.

"We do not have a Superman in the real world, but we do have huge military forces which can be used for good or evil. We do not have Batman out there, but we do have people's own desire to resist the use of force against them, and so on. I wanted to use the machinery and iconography of a children's story to tell a story for an older audience."

Described by Star Wars creator George Lucas as "the Michelangelo of our time", Miller is notable in the world of superhero comics in that he is a writer-artist who both writes and draws to the same breathtaking standard. He made his mark on the industry with an influential run on Marvel's Daredevil comics in the early 1980s. The Daredevil TV series and films, the entire Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise and the ninja gang in the new Spider-Man film all borrow from or pay homage to those comics.

Miller has since had phenomenal success with his own independent creations: 300 and Sin City each had two film adaptations. But he is best known for The Dark Knight Returns, which Stephen King rates as "probably the finest piece of comic art ever to be published in a popular edition".

'An out-and-out resurrection'

As he recalls in his newly published memoir, Push the Wall, Miller was still in his twenties when he was commissioned by DC to "breathe new life" into a character who was at the time "emasculated" and "a second-class citizen in comics".

He tells the BBC that "everything else started falling into the place" when he set his story in the near-future and made Bruce Wayne a middle-aged man who had given up being Batman a decade earlier. "It was a matter of wanting to make him look as big and fatherly and square-jawed as he was when he was drawn in the '50s when I was first reading him as a child, and then combining that with a gritty, muscular, Dirty Harry / Death Wish kind of character."

Also, the time shift allowed Miller to bring Batman out of retirement after a long absence. "And nothing brings back a character more powerfully than an out-and-out resurrection."

The idea was that while Batman was absent, Gotham City had crumbled into an urban hellhole, overrun by murderous gangs. The setting was based in part on Miller's own experiences. He moved to New York in the 1970s after a childhood in idyllic rural Vermont, and while he adored his new metropolitan home, "it was really a city in pretty serious decay".

Luckily for Gotham, the Batman of The Dark Knight Returns is no longer a gentlemanly sleuth, but an intimidating, ultra-violent vigilante who takes a grim satisfaction in breaking criminals' bones. He's so brutal, in fact, that it's almost incredible that DC's editors didn't object.

"There were countless discussions back and forth and tussles, but there always are," Miller shrugs. "It was a healthy collaboration between me and them – as loud as it got from time to time."

Most radical of all, Superman became a government stooge, loyal to a president who happened to resemble Ronald Reagan. And the Joker became a monstrous sadist. When the mini-series was first published, these revisions seemed iconoclastic, but Miller maintains that he was looking back as well as forward.

"If you go back to 1940 when they first introduced the Joker, he wasn't funny, he was a clear-cut psychopath who killed a lot of people," he says. "I was dragging comics back towards pulp fiction, back towards The Shadow and the other pulp heroes, which is where comic books came from to begin with."

Still, comics had never been as intense or as apocalyptic as The Dark Knight Returns – a grenade explodes on the subway, a plane crashes into a building, nuclear Armageddon looms – nor as tightly packed with storylines, jokes, characters and perspectives.

'My life changed overnight'

Miller crammed an astonishing amount into The Dark Knight Returns. In 1986, the average superhero comic had 22 pages, and each page had six or seven pictures or panels. Every issue of The Dark Knight Returns had 46 pages, and Miller would divide many of them into 16 tiny panels. "I was out to do the densest thing anyone had ever seen," he smiles. "And also I wanted that chop-chop-chop-chop rhythm. The idea was to make it impossible to take your eyes off it. So your teeth would be as gritted as tightly as Batman's were."

The Dark Knight Returns was enhanced by Klaus Janson, the inker who added the finishing touches to Miller's drawings, and by Lynn Varley (Miller's then partner), who added the rich and subtle colours. But fundamentally all the words and pictures were his, so it was a colossal undertaking, and each issue was delayed by months.

"Some people at DC Comics came close to hospitalisation worrying about that," says Miller. But the mini-series' sales kept rising with every issue. It was immediately clear that The Dark Knight Returns was a sensation.

Such was its popularity that "my life changed overnight", Miller says. "It was very heady. But it was a wonderful time, there's no denying it."

Numerous articles were written about how superhero comics weren't for children anymore. And the influence his work had on the comics industry was "pretty obvious fairly quickly", he admits – as were the shameless imitations. "But that's the nature of the beast. If something succeeds, there's a natural inclination by not just the publishers but the talent as well to imitate it. It's certainly nothing to resent or deplore."

His influence on the film industry was clear, too. Every single modern Batman film, from Tim Burton's 1989 blockbuster onwards, has taken some of its toughness and noirish style from The Dark Knight Returns.

Christopher Nolan's second and third Batman films took their name from it. And Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice lifted whole sections directly from its pages. Beyond those, it could be argued that Hollywood's current understanding that superhero stories can appeal to all ages, without being dumbed down, can be traced back to Miller.

But he stresses that he was only one of several writers and artists who were revolutionising the genre in the 1980s. And he isn't losing any sleep over the many films that owe their existence to him. "It's better for sanity's sake and blood pressure's sake to take it all with a good nature," he says with a cackle.

More like this:

• How the dark, violent origins of Robin Hood were erased

• Why Spider-Man needs to evolve - or quit

• How Superman started out as a radical rebel

Besides, he points out, he didn't invent Batman. Bob Kane and Bill Finger created the character in 1939, and since then, a long line of enthusiasts have added to his lore. "When you contribute to a myth," says Miller, "you can't complain about the next priest."

Push the Wall is published by Simon & Schuster in the US and by Canongate in the UK.

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Miss North Carolina USA stripped of title after 'information' surfaces

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jnwd7w19yo, 3 days ago

Miss North Carolina USA has been stripped of her title after a "thorough review" of information that surfaced, organisers of the event say.

Pageant organiser A Blaize Productions did not share details, but stated that it had made the "difficult decision" to "conclude Brittany Boltinhouse's reign" as Miss North Carolina USA.

"The Miss USA organization does not tolerate racism, homophobia, transphobia nor language that strips any person of their dignity," Thom Brodeur, president of the Miss USA organisation said in a separate statement.

It is unclear what "information" was found. Brodeur said Boltinhouse had apologised and would release a statement of her own. The BBC contacted her for comment.

"What was brought to us was not a single moment," Brodeur said. "It reflected conduct over an extended period of time. That is why this outcome was reached, and I stand behind it without qualification."

Boltinhouse, 27, won the title in June and was preparing to represent her state at the 75th annual Miss USA pageant in Miami later this month.

She was formally dethroned of her title on Wednesday.

"This decision was not made lightly," the organisers said in a statement. "It followed a thorough review of recently surfaced information and was based on the totality of the circumstances and our responsibility to preserve the integrity of the Miss North Carolina USA title and the values of our organization."

Runner-up, Myla Hadley, will now represent the state at the Miss USA pageant in Miami. The winner of that pageant will represent the US at the Miss Universe pageant in November.

Hadley thanked her supporters while acknowledging the task ahead.

"I understand the seriousness and level of prestige that this title carries, and I can confidently say that both my team and I are ready to take this on," she said in a statement on Instagram.

"While this may seem like a two-week turnaround given the circumstances, I've been preparing to represent at Miss USA since I first competed with this organization. I am ready to represent North Carolina."

Kellie Bright to leave EastEnders after 13 years

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cre40875r9vo, today

EastEnders star Kellie Bright is to leave the soap after playing one of its key characters, Linda Carter, for 13 years.

She arrived in Albert Square with on-screen husband Mick, portrayed by Danny Dyer, when they became the new owners of the Queen Vic pub.

Carter's matriarch character has been central to major storylines including plots about murder, sexual assault and alcoholism.

Bright said she made the "tough decision" to leave more than a year ago but "happily" agreed to stay on to be part of an "exciting storyline".

The BBC has promised "unmissable drama" before her on-screen exit, which is said to be a "while away" yet.

Executive producer Ben Wadey described the actor as being "the beating heart of EastEnders" and said she had become "a classic EastEnders icon".

Viewers have seen the much-loved character at the heart of many emotional storylines including in 2014 when she was raped by her brother-in-law Dean Wicks.

More than 7m people watched the episode which prompted dozens of complaints. The sexual assualt led to long-running story arc about family conflict and trauma.

In 2022, Linda Carter's husband vanished into the sea trying to save Janine Butcher. The soap followed her as she grieved and began to navigate life as a single mother.

She was also at the centre of the 2023 Christmas Day episode where she stabbed Keanu Taylor to death to save the life of her friend Sharon Watts, played by Letitia Dean.

More recently, the character opened a B&B and had several romances.

"I will miss my friends and colleagues hugely, but I am looking forward to my next chapter and spending more time with my wonderful boys," Bright said, referring to her husband and three sons.

Bright appeared on Strictly Come Dancing in 2015, and has starred in films including Ali G Indahouse in 2002 and 2005's Kinky Boots.

Strictly dancers Ola and James Jordan separate after 23 years of marriage

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy9wyzrn57wo, yesterday

Former Strictly Come Dancing stars James and Ola Jordan have confirmed they have separated after more than 20 years of marriage.

The former professional dancers were regulars on the show for several series after first featuring in 2006.

The couple in a statement said they were "taking some time apart as we work through very difficult personal challenges".

"This has been an incredibly painful and emotional journey for us both and it certainly wasn't an easy decision," they said in a joint post shared on their Instagram accounts.

The couple said James had moved out the family home some time ago and they "don't know exactly what the future holds".

"Right now, more than anything we ask for kindness, empathy and a little privacy as we work through this as a family."

The couple's manager Vickie White had prevously said in a statement: "It is with great sadness that I can confirm that James and Ola began a trial separation some time ago

"Their shared priority remains co-parenting their daughter, Ella, and they are committed to putting her wellbeing first.

"They would greatly appreciate your understanding as they navigate this difficult time."

Ola Jordan won the Open Polish Championship in 1999 when she was 17 years old and became James' dance partner shortly afterwards in March 2000.

She moved to England a month later and the pair got married in October 2003.

James appeared on Strictly from 2006 to 2013 while Ola appeared on the show until 2015.

Ola's celebrity partners included wildlife presenter Steve Backshall and Welsh sprinter Iwan Thomas, while James danced with former international gymnast and broadcaster Gabby Logan, as well as The One Show presenter Alex Jones.

Madonna pays tribute to 'genius, otherworldly' producer William Orbit

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cewr8wel4z8o, yesterday

Madonna has paid tribute to her regular collaborator and acclaimed music producer William Orbit, who died last month at the age of 69.

"You pressed a magic button inside of me and I fell into a galaxy of unrealised dreams," the pop superstar wrote on Instagram on Saturday. "Your music gave me a magic carpet to fly on and I visited many places."

Orbit's family announced "with profound sadness" on Friday that the Grammy-winning producer died at home on 23 July. No cause of death was given.

The British producer, whose real name was William Wainwright, helped reinvigorate Madonna's career in 1998 with Ray of Light, an album that blended electronic dance music and ambient techno with pop and trip-hop.

With its genre-bending sound, Ray of Light went on to win three Grammy Awards and is still considered by many to be the Queen of Pop's greatest record.

"I had an epiphany when I met you and started working with you," Madonna wrote in her post, alongside a video of herself standing beside Orbit to accept a Grammy Award. It also includes clips of the music videos and work she and Orbit created together.

Madonna said Orbit inspired her to sing and write in ways she never had before, without caring if her words "made sense or not".

"In many ways you were my Ray of Light - as was my daughter Lola who was born around this time," the singer wrote.

At the time she began working with Orbit, Madonna said she was beginning a new chapter, and Orbit stayed by her side with his "genius way of hearing music".

"The studio was often church-like and I would sit in silence, waiting for your ideas to explode out of your keyboard or your guitar and then I would run with them," she wrote. "I miss those days."

In addition to Ray of Light, Orbit also worked with Madonna on her 2000 album Music and produced several tracks for her 2012 album work MDNA.

The London-born producer was also renowned and sought-after for his production work, collaborating with artists from across the music world including Blur, Pink, U2, All Saints, Robbie Williams and Britney Spears.

"You were so otherworldly. So singular," Madonna wrote in her tribute.

The pop star said even though she worked with other producers over the years, she never forgot Orbit and "the magical time we spent together".

"I was so lucky to have known you and fallen down the rabbit hole with you."

Digital cameras and wired earphones are back - and 'a bit more real'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly599xlllyo, yesterday

It's Saturday afternoon and I've nearly fallen at the first hurdle – I've left my digital camera battery on charge at home.

Forgive me, I last took this camera out with me 15 years ago on a family holiday to the Canary Islands.

Take two. Now with the charged battery in hand, I'm taking my digital camera to a DJ set as an experiment.

It's because older technology is having a bit of a moment – social media is full of people talking about why they're going back to basics with the likes of digital cameras, wired headphones and early MP3 players.

Sales of iPods and Walkman portable audio players in the UK on eBay increased by nearly 50% in 2025, the online marketplace told us, while searches for iPod minis on the platform have increased by 48% over the last year.

Digital cameras - smoother than phone pics?

Luckily I'm out with my photography-loving best friend, who helps adjust the settings on the camera and gets snapping while I'm otherwise engaged on the dancefloor.

The mere sight of us pulling out the camera and squinting through its tiny viewfinder draws attention – "I've not seen one of these in years", a man remarks.

He's right – digital cameras had their heyday in the late 1990s and early 2000s, just before smartphones took off.

There are currently 42 million active film camera users globally, more than a third of these aged 18–30 and largely influenced by social media trends, according to a market research report last year.

So why, when we're surrounded by more advanced tech here in 2026, are they seemingly making a resurgence?

For Lily Redman, a 26-year-old content creator from South Wales, digital cameras "capture a quality that my phone just can't replicate".

She's been taking one on nights out and to concerts and feels the flash on her phone "is grainy and too high definition" compared to the "more smooth" finished product on a digital camera.

"I think people are looking for a bit of grit or something that feels a bit more real," she says.

That may also explain why low exposure photos taken on iPhones and Androids – where people dodge ready-made filters to artificially crank down the exposure setting and produce a darker image – are also popular on socials right now.

With digital cameras offering an element of surprise when you plug in the memory card reader to your computer at home, digital cameras capture a moment in time.

"If I look back at photos my mum took when I was two, they look so old but when I look at photos I took five years ago, they look like they were taken yesterday," says Redman.

"Phone photos have warped our perception of time."

Early MP3 devices - a reminder of 'simpler times'

It's not just digital cameras returning from the archives (or a dusty cupboard), but early MP3 devices like iPods too.

According to refurbished tech website Backmarket, iPods are "driving the trend" in sales of older MP3 devices with a 48% increase in sales between 2024 and 2025, with demand for MP3 and MP4 players "accelerating further into 2026".

Cheri Sanih, 30, runs a Tumblr account about older technology which she says has gained thousands of followers recently.

As she scrolls through the music library on her mint green iPod, filled with album artwork from 15 to 20 years ago, childhood memories of receiving one as a Christmas present come flooding back.

For her, it's all about nostalgically "wanting to remember simpler times"; being able to "bury into escapism".

Sanih points out how her "phone is always getting notifications and sometimes I just want to be outside, blissfully listening to music".

She thinks iPods have become popular again because of their "beautiful design" and the way the music player is "the first bit of technology really catering to humans with a less cluttered user interface".

Move over bluetooth, we're wired

And speaking of back to basics, wired headphones are perhaps as simple as you can get, but again proving popular online.

These are now a daily staple for 23-year-old Monique Wellman-Mason from Bristol, who grew tired of losing her wireless earbuds.

"Every single time I get them out my bag I spend two minutes trying to detangle them which is a bit of a pain," she jokes, "but at the same time I love that they have a microphone and I'm [always] connected to my phone".

She tells the BBC that the clear mic is useful for her job as a social media manager and she enjoys being able to "spark that nostalgia", while another positive is wired earphones are "really cheap" at about £20.

Monique made the switch from bluetooth wireless to wired earphones a few months back and says she hasn't returned to the former since.

"Technology only goes up and we're always looking for the quickest thing but this is a step back in a way – I love it," she says.

Whether it's digital cameras, iPods or wired earphones, does a renewed love for early-digital gadgets among some young people tell us something more?

It's been on the mind of Andrew Przybylski, professor of technology and human behaviour at the University of Oxford.

Underpinning a fondness for more basic tech is "people's desire on a very deep level to be in control of their experiences," he argues.

He says the modern digital world often leaves us inflicted by decision paralysis - the inability to choose because there are so many options.

When a new series comes out, he explains, "binge watching it automatically" often feels like a decision that is made for us.

In contrast, when you choose to turn on a digital camera and play with its settings or add an album to your iPod library "you move towards something you want versus it coming at you".

Andrew says "people want more than to just rent the things [and experiences] they're passionate about" and that buying your own music or taking your own pictures creates a sense of connection.

He references Xbox's server outage in late July, in which users couldn't play games even if they owned the discs and how "nobody liked that".

"Imagine if a book worked that way," he adds.

Additional reporting by Amy Walker.

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, 12 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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'Movies are getting horny again': Why Hollywood is no longer a sex-free zone

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260804-how-hollywood-films-are-getting-horny-again, 4 days ago

For a while, mainstream cinema was seen to be shunning sex and sexuality. But a wave of films, from I Want Your Sex to The Invite, are now exploring it in bold and provocative ways.

Sex on screen. For years it's raged on: are sex scenes "necessary" in movies? Is there enough sex? Or just the wrong kind? For a time, it seemed like every film-maker or actor would be asked about it in interviews. It does not seem coincidental that in a 2019 survey, statistics showed US films contain fewer sex scenes now than they have in the past 50 years. Gen Z are, apparently, having less sex than previous generations. Lots of plausible reasons have been suggested: siloed-off social media addiction, sensitivity to sexual politics, or over-investment in the mass availability of porn online.

Warning: This article contains language and explicit descriptions of sex acts that some may find offensive.

But now in 2026, might the cultural winds be shifting yet again? Recently, there has been a wave of films foregrounding sex again – and depicting it as both transformative and fun.

Indie provocateur Gregg Araki certainly has this point to make in his new film, I Want Your Sex. Araki is a veteran of the New Queer Cinema of the 1990s – a gay-centred movement which produced films with raucous and progressive attitudes towards sex. Araki, with works like The Doom Generation (1995) under his belt, is no stranger to racy controversy. His oeuvre regularly explores the polyamorous, the sado-masochistic, and the generally non-vanilla.

His latest film focuses on a young art world intern Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) who falls hard for his older employer Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde). She’s a famous artist and a latex-clad, self-confessed "sexual astronaut" who revels in domination. Their inappropriate workplace affair spirals out of control, but Elliot doesn't seem to mind much for the majority of the movie. He's too busy loving being spanked, tied up and forced into submission.

In the years while Araki was working on his screenplay, he noted the curious, near-puritanical attitudes about sex that had cropped up among even the most progressive young people. "They're afraid of making mistakes. But mistakes are how you learn," he recently told Empire Magazine.

But as film critic and erotic thriller specialist Travis Woods says: "Movies are getting horny again. Perhaps not overtly, and certainly not to the level of the sweaty and vivid [erotic films] of the 1980s and 1990s. But film-makers are – however gently – beginning to explore sex and sexuality once again, on increasingly mainstream canvases. And why not? Sex is an essential component to the human experience."

The new sexy cinema

He's right: I Want Your Sex is not the only recent film which puts being horny – and horny in bondage – front and centre. You may recall the buzz around Halina Reijn's 2024 workplace/BDSM romance Babygirl, starring Nicole Kidman as a corporate hawk who wants nothing more than to get down on her knees for her dominant young employee (Harris Dickinson). British debut director Harry Lighton made waves recently with Pillion, a funny, explicit, and poignant romantic comedy about a shy young gay man (Harry Melling) who falls hard for an Adonis-like biker (Alexander Skarsgård) with extreme dominant tendencies. If an old complaint about screen sex is that it can be "boring", this new wave of films do everything to ensure the opposite, depicting sex as silly, fun, and sometimes ridiculous.

If the obvious link between many of these films is that they deal with BDSM and kink, it's not their only common ground. Each was made by queer and/or women film-makers, and each offers a rompy but complex view of sexual experience. They incorporate a winking defiance of conservative mores around monogamy and promiscuity, and most of all, an understanding of both the highs and lows of exploratory sex.

Another new release exploring similar themes is The Invite, Olivia Wilde's second film as a director. A chamber piece on polyamory, narrow minds, and marital dissolution, it stars Wilde as a neurotic wife hosting a dinner party for her neighbours alongside her sarcastic, disinterested husband (Seth Rogen). The neighbours, played by Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton, turn out to be a freewheeling, open-minded polyamorous couple, and they offer the unhappy couple a chance to sexually experiment. Of course, all hell breaks loose. While the film does not feature sex scenes as such, its frank discussion of marital sex – or lack thereof – is bracing.

As Woods points out, we're not exactly at the point of another cinematic sexual revolution just yet. But these new films are, he says, "reminding us of how hot cinema can be. And how playfully, thoughtfully, and enjoyably it can engage with what turns us on. It's a very intriguing cinematic foreplay to something just around the corner." It should be noted too that TV, as well, has been leaning into frank, unabashed explorations of sexual desire and kink of late, with shows like DTF St Louis, Dying for Sex and Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed.

Why sex scenes matter

Often, Hollywood films of the last few decades might have treated sex as an afterthought, avoiding detail and throwing in a few visual stereotypes of hands in the bedsheets and moving on. It can be understandable if the motivation is to make the shoot more comfortable and safer for all involved, but the result can sometimes mean a generic, let's-get-it-over-with sex scene that adds little to the characterisation or narrative. The rise of the on-set intimacy co-ordinator may have gone some way in changing this. Given their specific work is to both protect actors on set and to choreograph these scenes in detail, the idea of rushing through a sex scene may be a thing of the past.

The prevalence of BDSM in many of these new films is also significant, beyond the bold aesthetic appeal of whips and latex. If all sexual relationships have power dynamics, BDSM makes them literal. Though film-makers like Araki, Lighton and Reijn depict how labels like submissive and dominant may be misleading – how power can be wielded even on the "sub" side of the equation. Through kink, the very fact of acknowledging power dynamics can become empowering for both parties. Whether these sexy power struggles stay in the bedroom or creep outside of it, they matter to our lives in more complicated ways than we like to admit.

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As with Kidman's powerful feminist CEO in Babygirl, the role a person inhabits daily can be the opposite of what they want in bed. She is so completely in control of her career that she yearns for someone else to take over during sex. In I Want Your Sex, Elliot – unsure of what he wants from his life as a recent art-school grad – says he loves being submissive because "he doesn't have to make any decisions". Lust can reveal things to us about ourselves and our needs.

"For these protagonists, digging into their sexual fantasies brings them closer to self-actualisation," says Jourdain Searles, a film critic for The Hollywood Reporter with a specialism in female screen sexuality. "Recent films like Pillion and I Want Your Sex approach sex from both an emotional and psychological place."

Of course, to be horny and act on it is not without downsides. In Babygirl, Kidman's affair risks capsizing her career and marriage. In I Want Your Sex, Erika humiliates Elliot and nearly implicates him in a felony. He complains that Erika has ruined his life, but the pair still have affection for one another. This sexual misadventure has not ruined anyone's life, but it has made a short-term mess. The understanding of this nuance is what makes Araki's film so smart: pain and pleasure, or eroticism and discomfort, often come hand-in-hand.

A similar idea plays out in Lighton's lower-key, realistic Pillion: in spite of the most direct stated boundaries and parameters, sex has a tendency to surprise. It can be awkward, funny, erotic, aggressive: sometimes in a matter of moments. And it becomes easy to confuse with love. Erika tells a rapturous Elliot that she loves him in I Want Your Sex. Then she laughs and says she's teasing him. In Pillion, the promise of real romance blooms, but Skarsgård's stoic, avoidant biker was always going to break hearts. It's a tenderly-sketched theme: sex is essential, but it may teach you lessons the hard way.

Wilde, involved in two of these sexy new releases, has some thoughts on the matter. In a recent interview, she was asked to give advice to young people who are embarrassed by sex. She said: "Every embarrassing thing that will ever happen to you is a badge of honour. If you live a life without embarrassing moments, you've lived a boring life."

In these recent films, this advice bears itself out. In all their outrageous glory, they remind us that joy – and embarrassment – is part of the deal when it comes to sex. What could be more necessary than that?

I Want Your Sex is out now in US cinemas and released on 28 August in UK cinemas. The Invite is out now in both US and UK cinemas.

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'A hypnotic effect that fills you with joy': The incredible story of 96 Tears, the US's unlikeliest one-hit wonder

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260803-96-tears-and-the-uss-unlikeliest-one-hit-wonder, 5 days ago

In 1966, a Mexican-American teen band made one of the great smash-hit singles and helped invent garage rock, a genre that has inspired artists for decades.

The strangest song to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966 wasn't 96 Tears by ? and the Mysterians. It was probably Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler's pro-war dirge The Ballad of the Green Berets or perhaps the New Vaudeville Band's bassoon-driven music hall pastiche Winchester Cathedral.

But 96 Tears was certainly the unlikeliest number one: an ultra-lo-fi wig-out of a debut from a group of Tejano teens from small town mid-Michigan, recorded in a home studio for a tiny Tex Mex music label. "We were kids," guitarist Bobby Balderrama told the Two Guys Talking About Records podcast. "I'd be walking down the hall and people would say, 'There's that guy with the hit record,' and I kept thinking, 'Are they talking about somebody else?'"

In contrast to Adler's and the New Vaudeville Band's efforts, 96 Tears wasn't a novelty song. It was a deadly serious two-minute tale of adolescent heartbreak and bitterness, delivered by a too-cool-for-school singer over a groovy haunted-house organ riff. There were no gimmicks or tie-ins that aided its ascent.

Instead, it was a steady-rising, radio-driven, honest-to-goodness pop smash. Released 60 years ago this summer, 96 Tears spent nine weeks in the US top 10 and one week at number one. It ended 1966 as Billboard's second best-charting single of the year, behind only the Mamas and the Papas' California Dreamin', and beating all-time classics from The Four Tops, The Supremes, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles.

It was also, by most people's definition, a total one-hit wonder: a follow-up single and debut album reached 22 and 66 respectively, but the band's second LP and subsequent singles went nowhere. By 1969, before its youngest members had finished school, ? and the Mysterians had split up.

Yet 96 Tears had a second life, as a founding text of garage rock and a set-list staple for countless other back-to-basics basement bands. Punk magazine founder Legs McNeil called it "a safe candidate for first punk rock song ever". In 2003, a panel assembled by Mojo magazine ranked 96 Tears eighth in its list of the greatest jukebox singles of all time.

The birth of garage rock

"Garage rock only came to be defined as a genre well after the original bands, like ? and the Mysterians, had mostly disappeared," ethnomusicologist José Vicente Neglia tells the BBC. In the early 70s, weary of rock's excesses, critics began retrospectively championing simpler sounds from forgotten regional guitar acts. Inspired by the British Invasion, hundreds of these bands had sprung up across the US in the mid-60s, playing rough-and-ready takes on contemporary pop and R&B. Some cut singles and achieved local renown via AM radio stations. And a few of these singles, like Louie Louie by the Kingsmen, crossed over and became national hits.

The apex of this wave of garage one-hit wonders was 1966, with top 10s for the Count Five's Psychotic Reaction, Syndicate of Sound's Little Girl and the Shadows of Knight's take on Gloria, and a handful of garage-adjacent number ones. But even bare-bones chart-toppers like Tommy James and the Shondells' Hanky Panky sounded slickly professional compared to 96 Tears.

Neglia argues that garage revivalists have "projected a certain idealism onto the original bands", but ? and the Mysterians came as close as anyone to that ideal: young and unpolished, the DIY product of a hyper-local music community, yet full of wide-eyed pop ambition.

"96 Tears belongs to a class of songs that we could call 'unhinged frat-rock', a category that includes the Troggs' Wild Thing, The Kingsmen's Louie Louie, and Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs' Wooly Bully," garage historian Seth Bovey tells the BBC. "The lyrics of these songs are so sublimely inane they take on the quality of Dada poetry, and their feel-good tunes are amazingly rudimentary."

The band's Bay City origins

Bay City, Michigan's most famous former resident, Madonna, once described it as a "little smelly town". The scent that permeated the singer's childhood summers came partly from factories processing beet sugar. They drew Mexican migrant farm workers up from Texas, many of whom stayed after finding better jobs making car parts for the giant General Motors plant in Detroit. This was the case for Bobby Balderrama's family. With his father and brother working for GM, the Balderramas could afford their own farm between Bay City and Auburn. The farm, in particular its garage, became an important part of the ? and the Mysterians story.

Named after a 1957 Japanese sci-fi film and initially a three-piece with Bobby's nephew, Larry Borjas, on bass and Robert Martinez, from nearby Saginaw, on drums, The Mysterians rehearsed in the Balderrama family garage, playing surf rock instrumentals by The Ventures and The Surfaris.

Not long after their first gig, the trio invited Robert's older brother Rudy to join as frontman. Rudy Martinez, soon to be known only as Question Mark, brought with him dance moves, songwriting ambitions and weirdo rock-star charisma, and quickly became the band's focal point. The group added Beatles and Stones covers to their repertoire and played teen dances in lieu of being old enough to perform in bars.

Frankie Rodriguez, a local piano prodigy, was next to join. The group gigged throughout 1965 until Borjas and Robert Martinez enlisted in the army. It was around this point that the remaining three members, 15-year-old Balderrama, 14-year-old Rodriguez and 20-year-old Question Mark, sat down to write their future number one single.

Rodriguez improvised an organ riff, Balderrama worked out guitar parts, and Question Mark sang lyrics he'd previously written: "Too many teardrops / For one heart to be cryin' / Too many teardrops / For one heart to carry on".

"The tune is little more than a two-chord progression propelled by choppy one-chord organ lines that alternate with a pair of carnivalesque organ riffs", says Bovey. "The resulting concoction has a hypnotic effect that fills listeners with joy and makes them want to dance."

With a mostly complete line-up and at least one killer tune in their arsenal, ? and the Mysterians auditioned for local band manager Lillie Gonzalez.

Lillie and her husband Joe owned a Mexican grocery store in Saginaw and had run a record label specialising in Tejano folk music back in Texas. In April 1966 she booked the Mysterians into a studio located in the rec room of a small house in Bay City. ("We had to move the pool table," Balderrama recalled.) Lillie and Joe made 96 Tears the second single on their new Pa-Go-Go label. Distribution was as DIY as the recording process. Pa-Go-Go pressed 500 copies and Lillie, with little experience outside Tejano music, set the band themselves the task of getting the record into the hands of local DJs.

Soon 96 Tears was receiving regular airplay on both Bay City and Saginaw radio, and filtering its way through to other Michigan stations. Within weeks, the single was number one in Detroit and had caught the attention of the Philadelphia-based Cameo-Parkway label, which began promoting it nationally. By September it had crept into the Billboard Hot 100, and by the end of October it was the number one song in the country.

Things fall apart

But just a few months later, things began to fall apart. The lead single from the band's second LP, a cover of The Four Seasons' Can't Get Enough of You Baby, had a familiar organ riff tacked on at the label's request, transforming the track into a pretty shameless soundalike of their number one. It peaked in the lower reaches of the Hot 100. Five more singles followed, on five different labels, but none were hits. Band members drifted away.

Question Mark bought the rights to the group's name and began performing with new line-ups. A nadir came in 1969 when a reconstituted ? and the Mysterians played on bills alongside entirely fake versions of The Zombies and The Animals.

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The band's second act began almost as soon as its original run had faded from the collective cultural memory. In 1972, guitarist Lenny Kaye put together Nuggets, a compilation of old garage rock singles by the Count Five, The Standells and others (96 Tears was included on Kaye's tracklist for a never-released second volume). The LP was hugely influential, particularly on the emerging punk scene, and inspired numerous other collections of garage curios, like the Pebbles and Back from the Grave series. By the early 80s a full-on garage rock revival had begun, led by bands like The Fuzztones and The Cramps (whose Human Fly, on their debut EP, cried "96 tears in 96 eyes").

Like its 60s forebears, latter-day garage thrives in close-knit regional scenes. One of these emerged in Michigan in the late 90s, producing groups like The Dirtbombs, The Detroit Cobras and a primitive guitar-and-drums duo called The White Stripes. Earlier this year, Jack White served as musical director when Stephen Colbert guest hosted the Michigan public access TV show Only in Monroe. His first musical cue was an unmistakable organ riff by the state's original garage rock heroes.

The 14-year-old responsible for that riff reflected on its impact many years later. "I didn't think 96 Tears was gonna go anywhere," a then-71-year-old Frankie Rodriguez told Goldmine magazine in 2023. "But it did real good."

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'One of the Third Reich's most fearsome weapons': The daring mission to smuggle a V2 rocket out of Nazi-occupied Poland

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260731-the-daring-mission-to-smuggle-a-v2-rocket-out-of-nazi-occupied-poland, 6 days ago

In 1977, the BBC looked back at the summer of 1944, when Allied agents spirited away pieces of Hitler's "wonder weapon" – by hiding them in the apartment of a German officer.

On 6 August 1944, the Soviet Union's Red Army reached the village of Blizna, northwest of Rzeszów in Poland, liberating it from Nazi occupation. A remote rural settlement surrounded by agricultural fields and dense pine forest, it might have seemed to be of little military significance. Yet deep craters on the woodland floor, metal debris and fake farmhouses hinted at its secret purpose.

Before the Nazis had retreated a few days before, Blizna had been the test launch site for a new weapon, one that Adolf Hitler hoped would turn the tide of the war against the Western Allies. Known by the Germans as the Vergeltungswaffe (Vengeance Weapon) 2, the V2 rocket was the world's first modern ballistic weapon. Designed by the engineer Wernher von Braun, with a range of approximately 170 miles (280km) and a warhead weighing one tonne, the rocket's supersonic speed and high flight altitude made it a "wonder weapon", capable of exploding without warning in the cities it targeted.

But in the summer of 1944, parts of the V2 were smuggled from Poland to Britain in one of World War Two's most audacious covert missions.

The Nazis began developing the V2 in 1936. However, British intelligence hadn't been aware of the rocket's existence until early 1943, as experts told the BBC in the 1977 documentary The Secret War. "There'd been a little information before 1939 that the Germans might be developing long-range rockets," said Dr RV Jones, the Chief of Scientific Air Intelligence. "Then we heard nothing more until December 1942, when a new agent, who turned out to be a Danish chemical engineer, told us he'd overheard a conversation in Berlin between two engineers who said that there was a new weapon being developed and tried up on the Baltic coast."

The turning point came in 1943, when two German generals who had been captured separately were brought to Britain for interrogation – and then allowed to talk alone together, not suspecting that the room was bugged. They debated why the rockets hadn't been used yet, saying that something must have gone wrong because they'd been told more than a year earlier that the weapons would be ready in only a few months. According to Jones, one of them said, "Well, we're somewhere near London, and we've heard no bang, so nothing could have happened."

As Jones recalled in 1977, "[Intelligence analyst] Charles Frank… was just sitting opposite me, and he suddenly looked up from reading the interrogation report and said, 'Look, we'd better take those rockets seriously.'"

The British discovered the Nazis' secret V2 research centre at Peenemünde, on an island close to the Baltic coast, and bombed it in August 1943. After the air raid, the Nazis moved their testing, training, and launch site for the V2 rocket away from Germany. They chose a location further east in Poland, about 150 miles (240km) south of Warsaw, protected by forest cover. Blizna was considered so strategically important that it was visited in the following months by both Hitler and his architect of the Holocaust, Heinrich Himmler.

Yet there was a flaw in the V2 test weapons that was to delay their deployment by almost a year. Most of them broke up in mid-air, just short of their target 200 miles (320km) away, near the river Bug in East Poland. A special detachment of German troops was stationed there to recover the pieces of the fallen rockets for analysis by scientists.

Hidden under vegetables

As the narrator of The Secret War William Woollard recounted in 1977, however, "The main disadvantage of this new location was that the local civilian population was less than enthusiastic about German secret weapons falling on them from out of the sky. They'd been asked by the Polish resistance movement to try to collect the wreckage before the Germans got to it."

In May 1944, a V2 rocket crashed – relatively intact – into the marshy banks of the river Bug. Local villagers covered it with reeds and called in a Polish resistance leader, Lieutenant Tadeusz Jakobski. "It was here that the rocket landed without exploding," he told the BBC from the site 33 years later. "The Germans failed to find it, and after a few days they stopped looking altogether. We then pulled the rocket up to the bank, and the team of experts came from Warsaw to dismantle it."

The parts were loaded into sacks, which were hidden under vegetables and transported on carts to Warsaw along little-used country roads – shadowed by armed partisans in the woods. Despite constant security checks in the Polish capital, the rocket fragments were successfully smuggled into the city, and the scientists tasked with analysing electronic components included the physicist, Professor Janusz Groszkowski. With fears that his laboratory at the university might be searched by the Gestapo, the resistance decided that a private apartment would be better suited for his work – the apartment of an unsuspecting German officer.

The electronic units were hidden by night in one of the officer's own suitcases. "Before my visit, this case was taken from the room of the officers to the special room prepared for me to make [my] investigation," Groshkowski told the BBC. He worked for hours at a time in the small room, with the constant danger of the officer returning unexpectedly.

Yet, Groszkowski recounted, "[That] never happened during my stay there." Resistance agents were monitoring the German officer. "The servant asked him by telephone what he wished to have for the dinner… to make sure that he was at that time in his office in the airport," said the physicist. "But if he said, for instance, that he's ready to come earlier, I would [disappear]."

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The subterfuge in Warsaw was followed by a top-secret operation to extract the components, codenamed Wildhorn III (or Operation Most III). On the night of 25 July, an RAF Dakota transport plane fitted with additional fuel tanks to allow for a flight time of 18 hours landed at an abandoned airfield near the Polish village of Wał-Ruda – in territory surrounded by German military units. It was to be loaded with 19 suitcases containing key V2 fragments, technical blueprints, and scientific reports.

Informed about the operation through encrypted codes broadcast over BBC radio, the partisans emerged from nearby woods as the Dakota landed just after midnight. However, once the cargo was loaded, the plane was unable to take off, its wheels stuck in the muddy ground. Twice everything was unloaded, and attempts were made to wedge straw and planks under the wheels to add traction, some partisans digging the mud away from the wheels with their bare hands. At one point, the operation's commanders believed they would have to evacuate the passengers and burn the aircraft. The crew even splashed gasoline on the landing gear. But the plane finally succeeded in taking off.

The only way to beat the V2

The daring Allied airlift had allowed one of the Third Reich's most fearsome weapons to be spirited out of Nazi-occupied Europe, from right under the noses of the German army. The V2 rocket arrived safely in London on 28 July 1944, and British intelligence began to analyse Hitler's "wonder weapon".

"Moving the whole rocket was unnecessary and impossible – V2s weighed about 12.5 tonnes and were 14m (46ft) long – but the Poles meticulously stripped it down so that all the essential components were included on the flight back to Britain," Guy Walters, the historian and author of Stealing Hitler's Rocket, tells the BBC. "These pieces were absolutely vital because for the first time the British scientists were able to get their hands on parts that hadn't been partially destroyed."

The covert mission had provided crucial information about a terror weapon that was to strike London for the first time less than six weeks later. "What the British didn't know was whether the rocket had a guidance system. If it had a guidance system, then work could be done to jam it remotely, thereby causing the rockets to go off course. What the stolen rockets taught the Brits was that the rocket did not have a guidance system, which thereby saved British scientists oodles of time from trying to develop countermeasures. The only real way to beat the V2 therefore was to win the war."

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'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, 9 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?

These summer houses are all about dipping into a simpler, more traditional lifestyle, as seen in the film The Summer Book (out soon in UK cinemas) which is based on the novel by Finnish author Tove Jansson.

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.

The Summer Book is out on 7 August in UK cinemas.

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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, 13 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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In pictures: Belfast hosts Fleadh for the first time

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpw91wkv2rpo, today

Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, the largest celebration of Irish music and culture in the world, is under way in Belfast.

Hundreds of thousands of visitors are expected to descend on the city.

More than 200 events are planned across the city, alongside competitions, concerts and street performances running from 2 to 9 August.

The opening ceremony began at noon on Sunday on a specially-constructed "Gig Rig" stage in the grounds of Belfast City Hall.

Fan club platform opens to independent artists

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgxjx9kexmo, today

A free fan club service says it wants to give independent musicians the chance to "earn more" by opening up its platform to all artists.

Banbury-based Hootenanny, which previously only worked with hand-picked acts like Oxford indie-folk band Stornoway, has scrapped its waiting list.

Independent artists would now be able to use its services to give fans exclusive music, tickets and merchandise, its founders said.

The company said "dozens of artists are signing up each week" as many struggle to make money from streaming and touring.

Co-founder Chris Peabody said: "Every artist deserves to earn properly from their fans.

"I spent a decade running a label from Banbury and watched too many talented musicians give up because the money didn't work."

'A proper community'

The company said the change came as more than three-quarters of tours lost money and most independent artists earned less than £10 a month from streaming.

Fans pay a yearly subscription to Hootenanny for unreleased music, early ticket access, exclusive merchandise and behind-the scenes content, and artists keep 90% of the revenue.

Most artists had earned more in their first week on Hootenanny than they would in a year of streaming, the company said.

Peabody said: "For fans, it means no more anxiety about getting a ticket, and being part of a proper community with access to music, merch and behind-the-scenes content no-one else gets."

Visitors' seal of approval for new-look museum

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx25d7zel6po, today

Visitors and volunteers have told of their delight at being welcomed back to Hull Maritime Museum following its £20m refurbishment.

The city centre museum tells the story of the city's maritime heritage as a hub for trade, migration, fishing and whaling across Britain and beyond.

It reopened on Saturday and features about 1,300 objects, including interactive displays, models, maritime art and a 40ft (12m) whale skeleton.

Katy Robinson, 27, who travelled from Driffield for the reopening, said: "It's brilliant. The work they've done is incredible and all the exhibits and everything here is so interesting."

She added: "It's one of those places that if you live in the area you probably came with your grandparents when you were younger, or on a school trip.

"I was really excited to come and see the refurbished building.

"It's brilliant - the work they've done is incredible and all the exhibits and everything here is so interesting."

Ruth Toynton, 43, and her family were among the first to step inside.

"We are just really impressed," she said. "We booked out tickets as soon as they were available as we knew we wanted to come."

She said the family had visited in the past, and it was nice to see how it had changed.

"It's also nice to see this amount of investment in Hull," added Toynton.

Janet Bark, 72, a volunteer at the museum, described it as "absolutely beautiful".

She said she could not wait to return.

"I got my uniform on, and it was like going to my first shift.

"I got on the bus, and I was like, 'the maritime [museum] is opening and I'm going to be there'.

Ralph Marks, 82, who has also returned as a volunteer, said the new-look museum was wonderful for the city.

"People should take advantage of it," he said.

He said the museum was a fantastic resource for both school children and adults, and he expected it to "draw people in from far and wide".

"It's a great asset for Hull," he added.

Entry is free. However, visitors are advised to book during busy periods.

The restoration was funded by the city council and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Hull City Council leader Mike Ross said: "There's 50% more floor space, more exhibits, and people are going to be able to see parts of the building they couldn't get to before.

"We know that the public are going to love it and are going to want to come time and time again."

Listen to highlights from Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, and watch the latest episode of Look North.

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Day of 'storytelling and creativity' at WordFest

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz64ydgjppgo, today

A Lincolnshire town will host a day of literary events as part of WordFest.

Taking place in Gainsborough on Saturday 12 September, events will include children's theatre, family workshops, talks from authors and creative writing sessions.

The event, with activities for all ages, follows on from previous events in Welton, Nettleham and the Lincolnshire Wolds, including activities in Caistor and Market Rasen.

Councillor Owen Bierley, of West Lindsey District Council, described the event as a "wonderful celebration of creativity, storytelling and community".

He added: "It is fantastic to see such a varied programme of events taking place across the town, encouraging people of all ages to get involved, try something new and enjoy everything our district has to offer."

Highlights of the festival, which is free to attend, include a Winnie the Pooh family kite craft workshop, author Gillian Poucher presenting A Question of Perspective, and Helen Hagon exploring Lincolnshire: Home of Poets.

Isabelle Macpherson, of West Lindsey District Council, described the event as "a brilliant opportunity to bring people together through stories, creativity and shared experiences".

She said the council was "delighted" to support an event that "celebrates the important role that culture plays in strengthening our communities".

The full programme will be released in due course, with some events available to book in advance.

Listen to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North.

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Female artists garden told to vacate roof terrace

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg042197gko, today

A free public sculpture space dedicated to the work of female artists has been told to vacate its central London site.

The Artist's Garden on the roof of Temple Station has been told by owner Places for London, Transport for London's commercial property arm, to move out so that the area can be assessed for potential repairs.

Alice Walters, deputy director at theCOLAB, the charity that organises art for the garden, said she was worried the project would be "gone for good" after it moved out.

Westminster City Council, which manages the terrace space, said it was supportive of The Artist's Garden and would work with all parties involved to find a solution.

The sculpture garden, which has existed for five years on the roof, allows visitors to sit with, touch and interact with art.

Walters said: "We welcome over 100,000 visitors here each year completely for free.

"We were told that Places for London would like us to vacate the site entirely by 1 October.

"They've cited the need to carry out essential safety repairs, but once a project like this is gone, it's gone for good and it's not coming back."

Places for London said that the space was legally protected and would always remain publicly accessible.

It added that while it was developing future plans for the terrace at Temple, the organisation was working with the council and stakeholders to explore alternative nearby locations nearby for The Artist's Garden.

Lakwena Maciver exhibited an installation at The Artist's Garden when it opened in 2021.

She said: "I was the first ever artist to exhibit here and it was a takeover of the whole roof terrace with a tiled mosaic.

"For me it was about a return to public space post-lockdown.

"It's just really important to have places that are open access that anyone can come to that you don't have to pay for or book - it's really important that we keep these types of spaces."

Visitors to the sculpture garden told BBC London it was a "gorgeous" place to visit in the capital.

One woman said: It's wonderful to have it in the heart of the city, surrounded by buildings and the river. Just to have this immersive art space, it's great."

Another added: "It's a nice, peaceful place to come, just in the middle of the city. It's just beautiful and there's loads of seating. It's just gorgeous."

Lisa Vandy, who has exhibited two sculptures in the garden, said the site promoted visibility.

"I don't remember in my childhood ever seeing someone like me or their work, so it's [about] visibility, it's cultural importance, it's educational importance. This really has to stay here."

A spokesperson for Places for London said they recognised how the "much-loved" garden had contributed to "artists, young people and the local community".

"However, the terrace and station roof may now require essential repair and safety works, and the space needs to be cleared for the assessment of the extent of the works required," they said.

Places for London said any future proposals for the terrace would protect public access and support the area's cultural character.

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'What's the scariest thing I could do? Sew on TV'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62elj24ljyo, today

Spoiler warning: This story contains details of episode three of the current series of The Great British Sewing Bee

The Covid-19 lockdowns saw many people develop new interests and hobbies - and for Anna, an amateur sewer from York, it was the chance to research fashion history and recreate historical garments.

Anna's fascination has now taken her onto our TV screens, with the 27-year-old currently taking part in hit BBC One show The Great British Sewing Bee.

The TV competition, now in its 12th series, sees 12 amateur sewers competing to create three outfits per episode, with themes such as sport, summertime and "kids week".

Anna says she signed up to the contest after spending years stitching as a hobby, originally repairing clothes in a bid to be more environmentally-friendly.

"For a long time I've had this dream - I really want to work in costume," she explains.

"I just wanted to do something which would push me out of my comfort zone, something that would really challenge me and I could learn new skills.

"I thought, 'What's the scariest thing I could do? Sew on TV'."

Anna's project has seen her stitching her way to success in episode three of the current series, with one of her creations deemed "garment of the week".

Judge Patrick Grant was even moved to tears, saying it was "one of the best things we've ever seen".

While hailing her experience filming the programme as "absolutely amazing", Anna says time pressures made it "incredibly stressful".

"Half of that five-hour timeslot we get, you have to be chatting to the camera, and that takes a lot of time as well," she says.

But for Anna, deadlines are not a bad thing.

"I really like a bit of pressure behind me. I think I do my best work."

Away from the bright lights of the Sewing Bee set at a former mill complex in Leeds, Anna lives on a narrowboat in York with her boyfriend Sebastian.

They met at a gig while studying Sociology at university in Manchester, and they renovated their floating home together.

Anna works part-time as a member of the retail team at the St Leonard's Hospice charity.

Since being announced as part of the cast for the current series of Sewing Bee, Anna says she has been stopped by fans on a few occasions, which "definitely takes a bit of getting used to".

"It's quite a strange sensation, but everyone's been so so lovely."

Before appearing on our TV screens, Anna says she had to keep her participation in the show very much a secret.

However, she could "let out all my excitement" to a small group of "supportive" family and close friends.

"If not, I think I would have exploded," she smiles.

"My mum is potentially more excited than I am."

Understandably, Anna remains tight-lipped about the final result of the competition.

"Every single person, even to get in that room, they're all so, so talented," she says.

"Anyone is more than capable of winning in that group."

But Anna says that whatever the outcome, "genuine friendships" have been forged.

"The atmosphere in there is lovely", Anna says.

"They're such a lovely bunch. We all hang out regularly."

Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.

Think you can dance? Ashley Banjo backs bursary programme

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czjl03yn1xko, today

Ashley Banjo MBE said it could have been more difficult if his dance group Diversity were starting out today due to the way the world had changed.

In 2007, the street dance troupe was formed with 11 members from London and Essex, before winning ITV's Britain's Got Talent two years later.

The 37-year-old, who worries that the next big dance group could be missed due to rising living costs and reduced opportunities, has backed a programme to support 20 individuals in professional dancing.

It came as the number of working dancers and choreographers has been cut by a third since 2019, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Banjo, who grew up in Wickford, Essex, said the world is "very different" from when he started out and thinks the costs can be overwhelming.

"It's hard to imagine yourself saying, 'okay, well, I'm gonna put this aside for travel just so I can go and dance and do lessons'," he said.

"You feel guilty, don't you? For spending this time in the studio when you should be making ends meet."

Banjo said the breathing space he needed to get creative was "made possible" because his parents had a dance school in Dagenham, East London.

He said: "They always supported me, and they gave me space to train and learn, and they gave space for those initial seeds of Diversity to grow."

"I wasn't thinking about anything pioneering or wasn't thinking, 'oh, this idea is really fresh'. I was just thinking, 'oh, this is fun, and I love what I do'."

'Right place, right time'

The era of Diversity's success was about seizing their moment, according to Banjo.

"We were in the right place, at the right time, with the right product, and the world is definitely very different now," he continued.

"We were right at the end of an era where people would wait for the release of music videos.

"I think that nowadays, to create moments is more difficult... people's attention spans and the sheer amount of content is so huge."

Banjo said even building a presence on social media could require financial support.

He continued: "If you've got the time and the money and the space to just be creating content left, right and centre and funding project after project, you can be noisier. You can rise to the top of the pile quicker.

"You have to either be extremely consistent and extremely noisy, or it has to be something huge."

In contrast, he said Diversity had the freedom to "hibernate" with their ideas and sit in "deep creative thought". Even for shows that lasted just a few minutes.

"For Diversity, we could focus all of our energy, and we could put it into a place that worked," he said.

"I think nowadays, we'd probably end up being slightly more scattered, and whether we would end up with the same creative output, it's hard to know. I just don't know. I have no idea."

'Muggle jobs'

Other performing artists said they had suffered in the cost of living crisis.

Hannah Kiss told the BBC she had to get "a regular job" alongside performing for the first time in her career.

The 32-year-old from Stanford-le-Hope said they are known as "muggle jobs" in the industry.

She added: "I've gigged in bars, clubs, pubs, that sort of thing as a singer since I was about 18... and the wages haven't changed. So, the amount that I would be paid when I was 18 years old is the same amount I'm paid in my 30s.

Kiss said her colleagues have been unable to attend rehearsals due to the cost of travel, including petrol rates or train fares.

Banjo said funding is "like a barrier to entry" for the arts.

"Especially people from certain areas and certain backgrounds," he added.

"That made me feel really sad."

This week, he became an ambassador for The Julia Rausing Sky Arts Bursaries - a programme that will support 20 dance-makers with funding, mentoring, and professional development.

"What I would love to happen is for it to just turbocharge their creativity," he explained.

He hoped it will bring about "the next Diversity".

People aged over 18 whose creative practice is rooted in dance and movement can apply to the scheme up to 9 September.

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Memories of rock royalty in my garden in Knebworth

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgjewld6lj1o, today

Not many people can say Queen and Oasis have played in their back garden. Henry Lytton Cobbold can.

Forty years ago, on 9 August 1986, Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon brought Queen's sold-out European tour to a close at Knebworth House in Hertfordshire.

Lytton Cobbold, now the owner of the estate, was 24 at the time and remembers the suitably rock-and-roll celebrations backstage afterwards, complete with fairground rides and naked women mud wrestling.

"They had a lot to celebrate," he recalls. "They'd really smashed it live the year before... And then of course it became legendary for various rather sadder reasons."

Five years later, Mercury died from bronchial pneumonia resulting from AIDS. His performance in front of 125,000 people at Knebworth was his final time on stage with Queen.

Lytton Cobbold says: "He was at the top of his game and nobody knew about his illness at that point.

"The other thing, of course, that makes it legendary is this bizarre fact that although the field was full of screens nobody pressed record.

"The only record we've got of the show is a little bit of news footage from the beginning and then a really bizarre bootleg that a Dutch guy took on his little home video camera of a screen at the back of the audience.

"I mean, imagine going to a Freddie Mercury gig and spending the whole time at the back of the audience filming the screen with your wobbly video camera."

Lytton Cobbold never met the band, unlike some of the other stars who had played Knebworth in earlier years.

"Back in the old days, they didn't used to helicopter off the minute they'd done the encore, they would come up and chill at the house until the roads cleared."

Knebworth Park has hosted live music since 1974. Pink Floyd were the first major act to play the venue in 1975, with the Rolling Stones following a year later.

He said: "My mum and dad generally loved a party.

"I mean my dad's birthday was on 14 July, and every summer holiday began with a big party and the concerts just gave us that encore party. "

Genesis, Led Zeppelin, The Beach Boys and Cliff Richard were among the names to play Knebworth in the 1970s and 80s, but it was the 90s when guitars in Hertfordshire were heard around the world.

There was a lot happening in the UK in the summer of 1996: England hosted Euro 96, the Spice Girls made their debut, Dolly the sheep was cloned, and Oasis played two nights at Knebworth to 250,000 people.

"Our catering company did the bars in 96 and that was one of our biggest trading days ever... Quite a lot of beer was drunk that day," he recalls.

The band slept backstage in Winnebagos. Then, on the Monday morning, a dishevelled Noel Gallagher appeared at the back door.

Lytton Cobbold says: "We've got a four poster bath as part of our main guest room, our old Tudor guest room, and so my dad brought him a bottle of champagne in the bath.

"Subsequently in interviews he said that he was brought champagne by a liveried servant- it was actually my dad!"

Oasis only released recordings from those shows in recent years, but their Knebworth legacy has stayed strong.

Two turrets attached to the house, named Noel and Liam, were built using income from the 1996 shows.

Lytton Cobbold said: "The rest of this house is still falling down and you know, we've got massive repairs and bills still to pay to to do the rest of the house.

"So, we do need them to come back and help us fix the rest of the roof!"

Earlier this week, SJM Concerts, the promoter behind Oasis' 2025 reunion, was granted a licence to host large events at Knebworth.

However Lytton Cobbold insists "there is nothing set yet".

He adds: "I'm confident that Oasis will play Knebworth again, and I would love it to be next year, I would love it to be whenever they want to come, whenever feels right for them."

When asked if it would be fitting to announce a return on Monday, the 30th anniversary of their Knebworth shows, he agrees, but says his wife handles bookings and he does not know what is planned.

"They have got a documentary coming out in September and they'll want to make a bit of buzz around their documentary. If they want to make some announcements, I would have thought that would be more of the time to do it.

"We're delighted that our local authorities are supporting the licence, that's great, fingers crossed that all comes together, but it's not happening as of today."

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The people using music at the Fleadh to bring others together

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly83y19jyeo, yesterday

As the largest Irish music festival in the world, Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, continued in Belfast on Saturday, those in attendance were also able to experience music from other countries and cultures throughout the world.

Tunes Translated is an intercultural music integration project that brings together migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers with the indigenous population of Belfast.

On Saturday the group hosted a concert and its organiser Catherine Crean said there were 22 different nationalities performing in the band.

She said they use "indigenous and international music" to bring those groups of people together.

"This is the first Fleadh we have performed in and it's been crazy, we have had an event every single day. I just think it's been amazing.

"Music is such a powerful tool for integration as it's a universal language. We specifically take tunes from the participants home countries. We play their tunes, and they play our tunes."

'This is my first Fleadh – I've loved it'

Attendance numbers at the Fleadh has so far exceeded expectations.

The organising hosts - Belfast City Council, Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (CCÉ) and Ards CCÉ - had originally predicted about 800,000 visitors over the eight days.

But the Belfast One Business Improvement District has already recorded a total footfall of 900,020 in the city centre from Sunday 2 August to Thursday 6 August.

The Department for the Economy (DfE) had originally predicted a £53m economic boost but on Friday it said that prediction looks set to be exceeded.

The All-Ireland competitions continued on Saturday, with 5,000 musicians and dancers from 22 countries taking part, as well as street performances and pop-up fringe events on the outskirts of the city.

Shayan Kargaran is originally from Iran. He plays the piano and guitar and has introduced several Iranian tunes to the group.

"It's been brilliant learning Irish music, very beautiful – I love the music. Since the day I listened to it I've loved it."

"Music has helped me interact more here – I've almost found my family – it's more than a group for us.

"This is my first Fleadh – I've loved it."

'Music is universal'

Susan Curran is from Northern Ireland and has been playing the fiddle with Tunes Translated for over three years and says the group was very welcoming:

"It has given me such an appreciation for the beautiful music that is coming from Iran, Sudan, Somalia and Palestine.

"Music is such a universal thing – there are challenges in learning the different beats and lilts. It's an eye opener and your ear almost has to do a little different bit of a job."

Musicians to perform by eye movements at BBC Proms

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2r5x14ld8o, yesterday

A musician who plays an eye-controlled instrument hopes that his BBC Proms performance will prove what disabled people can achieve.

The National Open Youth Orchestra includes musicians who play the Clarion, an instrument that can be played by eye movement or using a tablet, which was developed by Bristol company Open Up Music.

The orchestra is set to perform at the BBC Proms for the first time on Sunday at the Bristol Beacon.

Clarion soloist Alessandro Vazzana, 28, will perform the first-ever solo concerto written specifically for the Clarion and hopes everyone will enjoy the "sound and experience".

He added: "I hope they listen to great music and don't just think about disabled musicians."

Evie Read plays the Clarion by using a tablet and also performs in the National Open Youth Orchestra, which is made up of 11-25-year-old disabled and non-disabled musicians.

Read, 19, said: "I want to show to people who have a disability or are neurodivergent that they can do anything that a non-disabled or neurotypical person can do.

"I want to show people that anyone has the potential to thrive in music. I hope that they can go back knowing that they are capable of making music no matter what it looks or sounds like and maybe pick up an instrument themselves," she added.

Bea Hubble, programme manager for the National Open Youth Orchestra, has said one of the things she loves about running an inclusive orchestra is the instrument is secondary to who they are as people.

"Our repertoire and our performances and the sound the group makes is different every year because there's different people every year," Hubble added.

She said she hopes by showing that it can be done, the orchestra is providing a blueprint for other groups.

"Maybe people think it's too difficult to have people with additional needs in an orchestra. It is complicated, but it is also possible and it's incredibly rich and rewarding for everyone," Hubble said.

She added it means a lot to the musicians to play the Proms.

"One musician said it's really cool we're doing one of these because all their friends have done Proms and we've never done before," she said.

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Record delegation honoured at Interceltic Festival

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2kdgq7ppxo, yesterday

Nearly 200 people represented Cornwall at this year's Interceltic Festival after the county was named the honoured nation for the event.

More musicians, singers, dancers and wrestlers from Cornwall took part in the 55th festival in France then ever before.

Lowenna Hosken, producer for the Cornish delegation at the Lorient Interceltic Festival, said being chosen as the honoured nation showed "just how far we have come, we are no longer a small nation, we are standing up and really taking a presence on a world stage".

Organisers said the festival had attracted about 950,000 visitors and the main stadium show had been watched by about 2.5 million television viewers.

Cornwall's food, drink, film and art were showcased throughout the event, which ran from July 31 to August 9.

The delegation opened the festival with a performance called Kernocopia and later appeared in the main stadium show.

The show featured a new composition called The Mermaid of Zennor which was composed by Cornish conductor Gareth Churcher and performed by the ensemble Senyans Kernow, the Celtic Male Ensemble and dancing group Kekezza.

A new light sculpture called the Bal Maiden was also premiered during the performance.

One of the show's participants, Amanda Harris, said: "Everyone at home should feel so proud."

Councillor Leigh Frost, leader of Cornwall Council, said the festival was "firmly putting Cornwall at the centre of a massive audience".

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Trainees sought to work in filming of Bergerac

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4ndyzlrglo, yesterday

A television production company has launched a new paid trainee scheme.

The creators of Bergerac have offered 10 paid placements for residents aged 18 and over, giving successful applicants the chance to work alongside the cast and crew during filming in September.

A spokesperson from Westward Studios said the six-day programme was designed to help aspiring film and television workers gain experience across a range of departments, including production, camera and costume.

Applications for the trainee scheme are set to close on 14 August.

The producers asked trainees to select their preferred departments when applying and said they hoped the successful applicants could work in at least one of their chosen areas.

Successful applicants would be required to attend all six training days between 13 and 19 September, they added.

A spokesperson from Westward Studios said the trainee scheme had already helped introduce local people to careers in television production and had offered behind-the-scenes experience on one of the island's biggest screen productions.

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Three Counties art exhibition marks 30th year

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2gyqqr9p0o, yesterday

More than 140 artists are being featured in regional art exhibition as it celebrates its 30th anniversary.

The Three Counties Open Art Exhibition, which brings together artists from Staffordshire, Cheshire and Shropshire, has returned to Fenton Town Hall in Stoke-on-Trent until 29 August.

This year's event had attracted the highest number of submissions since the exhibition began three decades ago and was the "largest display of artwork in its history", organisers said.

Kerry Jones, from event organisers ArtsKeele at Keele University, added: "The quality and variety of work on display demonstrates the strength of artistic talent across the three counties."

Among artists whose work is on display is Emily Galvin-Wilson, who became Staffordshire's first female Poet Laureate in 2017.

She said she didn't have the most straightforward introduction to art.

"At school, I was put off because I struggled with realism and wasn't encouraged to develop my artistic side. It wasn't until later that I discovered watercolour as a hobby, often using it alongside my poetry," she said.

Galvin-Wilson's piece on display, called Take Me Out To Sea, was a mixed media abstract piece "created as a response to music through synaesthesia".

"After having my daughter, I found it difficult to find large blocks of time to make art, and so I began to curate 15-to-20-minute playlists for myself, which created little pockets of atmosphere to complete a piece in bursts over the course of weeks," she explained.

This year's exhibition received a record 308 submissions, with exhibitors ranging from 16 to 91-years old, organisers said.

It features a wide range of creative work, including painting, printmaking, drawing and photography, as well as sculptures and textiles.

Visual artist, Laurel Gallagher, a former secondary school art teacher who now works under the name Feral State, is exhibiting a self-portrait diptych, digital photograph at the showcase.

"Art is always the thing that carries me through change. Every period of transformation in my life, art has been there," she said.

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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, 10 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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What your summer reading list says about you

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd69glgl2jzo, 10 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.

Stars wish seaside theatre a happy 100th birthday

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gdp948kg2o, today

The first time Alfie Boe played the Embassy Theatre on Skegness seafront, he felt like a pop star.

"I remember turning up and there was like a funfair, I think, going on next door, and I was singing away," the singer recalls.

"All I could hear were these screams from the funfair, from the rides, and I was thinking this must be what it's like being a pop star, having people scream.

"Because my audience don't scream when I sing. So it felt pretty cool."

Like the funfair, the Embassy is as much a part of Skegness's culture as fish and chips, amusement arcades and donkey rides.

This week, the grand old venue is celebrating its 100th birthday, as the Secret Lincolnshire podcast has been discovering.

"It was originally the Embassy Theatre Ballroom, or La Piazza. It's had many different incarnations," explains Pollyanne Trapmore-Shaw, the manager.

"We're still on the same site. If we go down into the bowels of the building, you can actually still see the old sea wall, because of land grabs and erosion and what have you."

In 1978, the theatre survived a devastating storm, which swept away sections of the nearby pier.

"The embassy complex at the time suffered a great deal at that but it was the one that really rose from the ashes," Trapmore-Shaw says.

Today, the venue has 1,081 seats.

"When it's full, it bounces," says Brendan Bugg, the sales and marketing manager, who has agreed to give us a look through the archives.

He pulls out a box full of photos of performers who have played here over the decades. The first is Norman Wisdom, then comes Rick Mayall.

"David Essex, Lenny Henry, that's Barbara Dickson, isn't it?" he says. "Max Bygraves... I could sit and look through this for hours."

One of the most famous names connected with the venue is Sir Ken Dodd, the late comedian, who brought his Happiness Show to the Embassy for 45 consecutive years.

His widow, Lady Anne Dodd, has many fond memories of their time spent here.

"He did love Skegness. He loved all the east coast people. He also said you get the best fish and chips," she says.

"Long, windy roads on some of the journey, but it was always worth it. Fabulous audiences, all from the Midlands."

Sir Ken would play two shows a day and always gave his fans their money's worth.

"You used to have to come off stage and walk through a public area to get to the dressing rooms," Lady Anne recalls. "You know, with two houses, Ken's second house would be queuing to get in because he did slightly overrun a bit.

"Coming off stage from the first show, he'd plough through the second audience waiting there. 'Oh, give us an autograph' [they'd say], so he'd delay everything even further."

Bugg takes us backstage to dressing room number one, which he describes as "the big one".

"Everybody that is great and good in British entertainment has stood in this room," he says.

"Comedians from the 20s, 30s, the 40s, right up to the present day, from West End tours, the cast of [the musical] Six, Jason Donovan, Jimmy Carr, Sarah Millican.

"It also has a full en suite, so the artist can chillax after the show, take a shower and take a breather."

Not everything has always gone to plan for the headliners, however.

In 2023, the theatre experienced one of its most bizarre moments when the comedian Joe Pasquale was impaled by his own moose antlers in a freak accident.

"When everybody mentioned Skegness, I just say that was nearly my demise," Pasquale says.

"Luckily, I'd just watched the new Mission Impossible film with Tom Cruise. I managed to twist in mid-air and land in the middle, and the only thing that got impaled was the back of my leg.

"The next day, it's all over the papers and it said 'legendary comedian has near-death experience'.

"I wondered who that was. I started reading and it was me," he jokes. "It was the best publicity I've ever had and all came from a moose in Skegness."

Bugg leads us down to the bowels of the theatre, the oldest part.

"We're going back to 1926. We are under the oldest part, original construction.

"This is the old seawall, the iron work and the girder work and the flooring that's been here for 100 years."

This year, the theatre is due to welcome Francis Rossi, of Status Quo fame, Leo Sayer and Elkie Brooks, among others.

Trapmore-Shaw says they will mark their birthday in style.

"This building is so special to so many and we are so excited to be able to take it not just out of its first hundred years but well into its next hundred years.

"People need entertainment, they need theatre and they need that connection. This is very much a place for the people."

Alfie Boe is among those raising a glass for the centenary.

"I'll definitely be celebrating it and commending them for their service to entertainment," he adds.

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Extensive restoration 'safeguards' stately home

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y3dgm6x4eo, yesterday

An extensive restoration project that has seen historic artwork restored, a roof repaired and a pond renovated at a Grade I listed stately home has "safeguarded" it for future generations.

Boughton House, near Kettering, Northamptonshire, which dates from the 15th Century, said the "scale and significance of this work cannot be overstated".

The work included the replacement of its 100-year-old Collyweston slated roof, the conservation of the Great Hall's ceiling by French artist Louis Chéron, and the restoration of Star Pond.

Sam Rees, its estate manager, said it showcased the "rare and highly skilled crafts" needed to maintain the grounds and building.

The building, the home of the Buccleuch family, is cared for by the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust.

The house said a decade of work had been completed to conserve a series of painted murals by "renowned artist Louis Chéron (1655–1725), whose work encompassed nine prominent rooms, including the Egyptian Hall and the breath-taking Great Hall".

In the Great Hall a team of 10 specialist conservators conserved and restored one of Chéron's original pieces.

They "sensitively removed an accumulation of dirt and grime", and some earlier restoration work which had discoloured, revealing the artist's "original schemes as they were meant to be seen, three centuries ago".

Work on the roof started in October and was finished by June.

In total more than 20 tonnes of new lead was placed on the roof along with timber sourced from an oak tree from the estate.

The cost of the completed works has not been revealed, but the ceiling work was paid for by the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust, and other work by the estate.

Star Pond, one of its "key features" of the gardens and parkland, is believed to have been inspired by the Palace of Versailles.

It has been extensively updated and includes new wetland areas and work designed to alleviate flooding.

David Cullum, its parks and gardens manager, said: "We were keen not only to bring back its dramatic visual impact but also to ensure the work created an environmental legacy.

"We installed a fish pass so that fish can continue safely on to the River Ise."

Rees said: "The scale and significance of this work cannot be overstated.

"Each project has played an important part in safeguarding Boughton House, its historic interiors and its remarkable collection for generations to come."

Scott Macdonald, director of collections for the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust, said: "Through this restoration, we have revealed Chéron's original intentions, the colour vibrancy and dynamism of his greatest series of masterpieces, which can now be seen for the first time in over 300 years, as the artist intended."

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Play keeps spotlight on jail where 'they don't seem to care'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4k8lkqjxpo, yesterday

"I felt anger, disappointment, I even felt some sadness."

Linda Stokes is talking about her feelings at reading about the conditions inside HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes.

Her son Chris Carpenter, from Reading, took his own life at the prison in 2018 when she believes living inside was "horrendous".

In the last three years, the jail has twice more been put into special measures and Linda, 67, believes those reports show nothing has changed.

Chris's story is one of three told in a play about men who died at the prison.

First staged in 2023, it is now being put on again after the latest highly critical inspection report.

Chris was serving a 40-month sentence when he died in 2018, aged 34.

He had previously been diagnosed with "severe mental health problems" and had several stays in hospital, Linda says.

In 2015, police were called to a block of flats and found him in a corridor with a knife and he was charged with possession of a bladed article and threatening to kill.

"Chris needed help, not punishment. He was given a prison sentence that turned into a death sentence," Linda says.

At the inquest into his death, a jury found there was "unsatisfactory risk management of a very vulnerable prisoner".

The conclusion found failures in areas including co-ordinating concerns; documenting and sharing information; and carrying out searches of cells.

In 2018, the year Chris died, the death rate at Woodhill was described by inspectors as "staggering".

In 2023, the first production of Woodhill was performed, designed to draw attention to conditions inside the prison.

Shortly afterwards, the jail was placed into special measures.

* If you are suffering distress or despair, details of help and support are available at BBC Action Line.

The production is now returning for a run at the Edinburgh Festival and a nationwide tour after another highly critical report in March.

Levels of violence, drug use and self-harm were found to be among the highest in the prison estate.

"It just seems like they don't care," Linda says.

After the inquest, Linda says she was "very lost" and left asking "Is that it? Is there nothing else?".

She was then introduced to the campaigning theatre group Lung, based in Barnsley.

Its production, titled Woodhill, uses pre-recorded voices of actors reading the words of family members while dancers perform on stage.

Linda and members of other Woodhill families have had regular meetings with the producers before and since the first tour.

She says she was "amazed" when she first saw the production.

In one powerful scene, the words of Linda and her daughter Carole recount a phone call from Chris the day before he died.

"Chris told me he was scared... Chris told me he was being threatened," reverberates around a rehearsal room in east London where the cast are preparing.

"It is a very hard watch for me. It brings it all back," Linda says later, fighting away tears.

In the phone call, Chris asked Linda to call the prison to raise concerns.

Linda says she did, but no record of it could be found when the time came for the inquest.

Chris's story sits alongside those of Kevin Scarlett and Stephen Farrar.

Director and writer Matt Woodhead describes it as "devastating" that the performance was designed to encourage change, yet three years on from the first run the prison is again in special measures.

"Grief when it is channelled into rage can be a very powerful thing and it can be a radical act," he says.

Miah Robinson is a returning cast member and believes "this is not something that is just going to be fixed".

"I am not looking at it like, 'Change hasn't been done.'

"I'm looking at it as an opportunity to regurgitate a message that needs to be heard."

The Prison Service says its thoughts remain with the loved ones of these prisoners.

"HMP Woodhill has taken action to reduce self-inflicted deaths through improving staff training and care plans," a spokesperson says.

"Communication between prison officers and healthcare staff has also been strengthened, helping to share concerns across teams to support vulnerable prisoners."

Eight years on from Chris's death, having read report after report criticising the conditions in the prison, Linda still believes change is possible.

"I always have hope that there will be change," she says. "I hope it happens while my eyes are still open, while I am still here."

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Carer 'grateful' after making talent show final

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg4nrp95rwo, 2 days ago

A carer has spoken of her delight at making the final of a national talent competition for the second time.

Keeley Bayley will be among the 12 contestants competing in the grand final of Homecare's Got Talent 2026 in Birmingham later - held to celebrate the care industry.

The 26-year-old from Stafford got through the semi-final after impressing the judges with a "stunning" contemporary dance performance to Tommee Profit's version of Cry Me A River.

"I cannot believe I'm in the final but I'm so grateful to be there," she told BBC Radio Stoke.

"I'm the only dancer this year so I'm very proud to be representing all those dancers."

Bayley, who has been a dancer for the last 10 years, said she would be "expanding on the story" of her semi-final performance and will add a couple more songs.

After making the final in 2025, she said the friends she made during the contest were the reason she decided to compete again in 2026.

"That's the power of this competition, she added. "Everybody is so supportive of one another."

Bayley, who has worked for Bluebird Care Stafford for the last two years, said she felt "incredibly blessed" to do the job.

"I think of that really quiet 18-year-old who first became a carer who had no social skills or anything," she said.

"Then I look at the person that I am, all these years down the line, and all those people I've met – the impact they've had on me, that I've had on them – I would not change my job for the world.

"There is no job that I'd rather do than the job I have now."

She described communication as being one of the most important parts of her job and said it had helped to build her character.

"Working with people helps but the people I care for are so supportive and understanding," she continued.

"They've got so many stories to tell. It just makes for such a lovely work environment."

Homecare's Got Talent was created as a celebration for the people who devote their lives to caring for others.

People enter the competition by sending over a short video showcasing their talent, which are then assessed by a panel of judges.

Founder Dan Archer said: "Carers are such humble people, they give so much of themselves to their profession.

"I think this is really a chance for them to be in the spotlight. What we're desperate to do is give them a moment in front of a sold-out audience."

The final will take place at 18:00 BST today at the Crescent Theatre in Birmingham.

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Theatre rebuild could be expanded

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyj16vgeywo, 2 days ago

Plans to redevelop a theatre have been revised and extended after a reassessment of the site.

Telford and Wrekin Council said Telford Theatre would have a new-look entrance foyer and box office, larger community and rehearsal spaces, bigger bar areas and additional toilet facilities.

The authority said the space was looked at again following the demolition of the previous theatre on the Oakengates site and it revealed there was extra space to expand into.

The revised plans have been submitted and a contractor has been appointed, with the aim of starting construction work in the autumn.

The previous theatre was built in the 1960s and the council said it needed replacing because it was "suffering from significant structural defects as well as reaching the end of its building life".

The new theatre will include a 766-seat main auditorium and a separate studio theatre for community groups and smaller acts.

There will also be a new community art room, foyer, dining area, bar areas and modernised backstage facilities.

The council said it expected the new theatre to attract roughly 100,000 visitors across 300 shows annually during its anticipated 60-year life span and described the rebuild as one of its biggest projects.

It is part of a wider regeneration of the Oakengates area with refurbished shops and a paved events area outside the theatre.

The authority also urged people to continue supporting the shops in the area and said they would remain open during the regeneration work.

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Big acts like Blue set to perform 'in car park'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2dp17p59lo, 3 days ago

It might be a venue in a car park, but promoters have still managed to bag big names like James Morrison, Blue, Russell Howard and Al Murray for a series of shows.

The stars have been booked to play at The Amp, a temporary 1,400 arena that has been set up outside The Courtyard, Hereford's 400-seater theatre.

Courtyard CEO Ian Archer said the county deserved "something other than just a 400-seater theatre", with the new venue opening its doors on Friday.

After already maxing out the indoor theatre's capacity, Archer said: "I wanted something that would bring artists here, the artists that we can't bring to The Courtyard but the people of Herefordshire deserve to see."

The temporary venue will also host K-Pop All Stars, The Shires, Simon Reeve, The Bootleg Beatles, Chris Ramsey, and even Harry Redknapp and Paul Merson.

It will then be dismantled on 31 August before plans begin to find it a more permanent home next year in Hereford.

"For The Courtyard, in a way it's securing its future," Archer said.

"It's getting harder and harder to make things work financially on a 400-seater theatre.

"Costs rise but we can't keep increasing ticket prices exponentially, so how can we achieve something that is different than The Courtyard?

"[But] we can't keep doing it on The Courtyard car park, so where do we take it in future?"

Archer also revealed more than 16,000 tickets have already been sold for shows at The Amp.

Paul Stevens, a board member at The Courtyard and also the Chair of the Hereford City BID, said: "I am very excited.

"There's nothing of this size that's been in Hereford since the late 90s when the leisure centre hosted the Manic Street Preachers and Pulp.

"It's going to get some big names back into the city."

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From blog to stage: The body-acceptance journey hoping to help others

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gj9zxvx8lo, 3 days ago

For many years, Nuala Moore shared her personal weight and mental health journey online but now those experiences have hit the stage – and she hopes it could encourage anyone struggling to ask for help.

Through her blog "From Phat to Phabulous", Moore initially focused on weight loss following the death of a relative but that changed due to issues with her mental health.

Online followers encouraged Moore to tell her story and the stage play "My Phat Life" was born.

Reflecting on how her blog has transformed, Moore said it has grown to include "life, love, mental health and everything in between".

"My Phat Life" is a one-person play that follows the character Ciara who is played by the actress Caroline Curran.

Moore, who is from north Belfast, said that being able to reach a whole new audience with the play has been incredible.

"I would love people if they are struggling to reach out and ask for help – or on the other hand if someone sees someone struggling – offer help – because sometimes it's really difficult to ask," she said.

"There is a universal message that men or women can take home – and it's that it's okay to ask for help."

"My Phat Life" has been running as part of the west Belfast Féile an Phobail festival.

'Social media can be a blessing and a curse'

Looking back at dealing with the grief of losing her loved one, Moore said she was trying to deal with it through the gym but she "wasn't sticking at it".

And while she received so much support online through her blog, faceless trolls would sometimes leave their mark.

"Social media can be a blessing and a curse," Moore said.

"What's really good about it is, I've been really lucky in that it has brought strangers into my life who I now consider as friends, who have been so supportive from the beginning.

"But with social media because it's faceless essentially, people feel that they can sit behind a keyboard and throw words at you, they can walk away and it has no impact, but it does - words can be destructive.

"As powerful as words can be in building someone up, they can also tear someone down."

'We can all strike up a conversation'

Curran said she was not aware of the blog before she auditioned for the part.

"I read it as a script with loads of heart, loads of humour – with a really good message at the end of it .

"With it being a one-woman show I knew it was going to be a lot of hard work: I play nine different people – men and women.

"I think the positive message from this play is that the character did get help and other people wanted her to get help."

Curran added that "body image touches all aspects – all different types of people".

"We have had a lot of men in [to watch the show] which is great, from all ages, and sometimes men find it hard to talk about mental health as well, as some women do, so I think it's great that we can all strike up a conversation."

If you have been affected by the issues in this story, support is available on the BBC Action Line.

Cast reunites 25 years after life-changing play

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c77g3j17kxeo, 4 days ago

When a group of boys who were excluded from mainstream education were invited to create and perform a play, they had no idea how it would transform their lives.

In 2001, seven pupils at the former Penwithen School in Dorchester worked with Bournemouth community arts charity Vita Nova on a production they performed in schools and universities, and even at a European arts festival in Latvia.

Years later, project leader Sharon Coyne was trying to find out what had become of the boys when one of the cast, Dan Stanaway, arrived at her door to fit her new oven.

Stanaway is one of four original participants who have since reunited and says the play had been a pivotal moment.

"I was a naughty child," said Stanaway, standing in front of what was Penwithen School on the outskirts of the town.

"I got excluded from pretty much every school in the Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch area so they sent me here."

Penwithen closed in 2005, but when Stanaway stayed here it was a residential special school for children with behavioural difficulties.

It was to this school that Coyne's theatre group, Vita Nova, brought a play in 2001 all about drug addiction.

The stories from the cast, who were all in recovery for drug and alcohol addiction, so resonated with some of the pupils at the school that one of their teachers came up with an idea.

"Eileen Clews had the inspiration to call us up and say could I make a play with the young men here," Coyne said.

And so began weekly trips for an unlikely troupe from their Dorchester school to the Bournemouth Centre for Community Arts in Boscombe.

"One of the group was an attempted murderer," she recalled.

"They were out there."

Eventually, Stanaway and his friends co-created Til It All Went Wrong - a play about "basically real things that happened in our lives, gangsta rap, shoplifting, fighting, taking drugs".

They performed that show in schools from which they'd been excluded, at an international social inclusion conference at the University of Exeter and even a life-changing invitation to a European arts festival in Riga, Latvia.

Stanaway says it was a turning point in his life.

"They were trusting us to go into schools and show them that we're not bad kids, we've just got problems and look what we can do if you just give us that voice.

"I'd never left the country before. The passport that they got for me to go to Riga was the passport to join the army."

Years later Coyne was working on her PhD on social inclusion and wondering what had happened to her boys when Stanaway literally walked through her door.

"I was procrastinating because I really didn't know how to find them, and then I got a phone call from my husband saying 'you're not going to believe this'."

Coyne has now written about the Penwithen story in a book called Theatre of the Lost and Found, and the biggest endorsement of her work comes from another member of the group, David Bishop.

"I was going down a slippery slope," he said.

"I've proved everyone wrong. I've actually taken a straight and sensible path."

Pedal-powered artist stitches Pavilion portrait

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c934w80w8x8o, 4 days ago

A pedal-powered artist who uses a bicycle to help sew her work says she wants to "get the Brighton personality" into her latest piece of the Royal Pavilion.

Harriet Riddell, 36, uses a sewing machine powered by a bicycle ridden by members of the public to sew pictures of people and places across the world.

She began her latest work in the Pavilion Gardens on Wednesday and will continue on Thursday, adding that it was "quite a privilege" to be able to stitch the building.

Riddell, who lives in Fair Oak in Hampshire, said: "I really like the collaboration between me and the riders."

The artist added: "People chat to me while I'm working. I hear stories, and I love that as I work.

"The Pavilion is so beautiful. It's quite a privilege to be here stitching it. I want to get the Brighton personality in there."

Riddell, originally from Oxfordshire, said that she took up sewing as an artform through life-drawing work at university.

After honing her craft stitching in cafes and pubs, she began to power her machine using motorcycle batteries, allow her to travel and work in India and elsewhere in the world.

'Bring people together'

In 2016, Riddell transitioned to using a bike to power the machine, which she said allowed her to connect with people on the street who ride the bike, which generates electricity for the sewing machine.

She documents her sewing projects on social media, with a following of more than 220,000 people on Instagram.

She added that she would do as much of the work as possible while in Brighton, before completing the project at her studio in Eastleigh.

Hedley Swain, chief executive of Brighton and Hove Museums, said: "The Royal Pavilion Garden has always been a vibrant space for creative encounters, and hosting Harriet's unique live-stitching project is a wonderful way to bring people together."

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Poland's Tatras: The affordable alternative to the Alps

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260807-polands-tatras-the-affordable-alternative-to-the-alps, today

Breathtaking alpine scenery and budget prices make this overlooked Polish escape an alternative to Europe's overcrowded mountain regions.

I had been hiking uphill for 10 knee-jarring kilometres (6.2 miles) when I finally arrived at a two-storey mountain hut. I was ready to drop to my knees, but not from fatigue. Before me was a cathedral of snowcapped mountains enveloping the glacial lake of Morskie Oko. It was mid-April, but the water was still frozen solid, with locals and tourists alike testing their weight on its icy edges.

These are the Tatras, a rugged slice of the Carpathian Mountains along the Slovak border. With alpine scenery, spectacular cave sytems and idyllic ski villages, they are also one of Europe's most affordable hiking regions. And yet, they remain consistently overlooked in favour of the crowded and pricey Alps and Dolomites.

An under-the-radar budget hiker's paradise

We found ourselves in the Tatras to celebrate a friend's 30th birthday. Nothing less than a stunning outdoor destination would do but it had to be budget and, with 10 of us along for the party, somewhere we wouldn't have to strain our limited funds by renting a car. We decided on Zakopane, a resort town bordering Tatra National Park.

Our choice was strategic: Zakopane is the premier hub for the Tatras, offering the widest array of accommodations and proximity to bus routes leading to the major Polish trailheads. The widespread, inexpensive Bolt ride-hailing service and low-priced minibuses known as busy meant our large group could easily explore the region's woodland trails, lakes and waterfalls. The more intrepid members of our crew particularly looked forward to hiking the 2,499m (8198ft) high pyramid-shaped peak Rysy, the highest summit in Poland.

And the Polish złoty meant were able to enjoy this alpine scenery without the Alpine prices; five nights at our premium chalet, the Villa Birdhouse featuring a sauna, terrace, barbecue and five rooms, would cost 1079.50 PLN (£225; $303) per person.

Mountains you can navigate by bus and taxi

Zakopane is dominated by Krupówki Street, a pedestrianised drag filled with gear shops, bars and restaurants. Over the five days, we became fond of Placki Ziemniaczane, an eatery serving "solid potato" on one side of the shop and "liquid potato" on the other (vodka).

However, most of our time was spent in the national park. We celebrated our first full day with a hike to the oval-shaped Morskie Oko, its name translating to "Eye of the Sea". After catching a thrifty Bolt to the trailhead, we hiked through deer-filled woodlands, sharing the well-marked, tarmacked trail with horse-drawn carriages carrying tourists. Along the way were scenic alpine bars, where we stopped for coffee to fuel us for the final push to our destination.

As we admired the wintry scene of imposing mountains hugging the frozen lake, we heard the rush of snow shifting down and witnessed the helicopter rescue of at least three hikers. This sobering reality of hiking in the quickly warming shoulder season made us reconsider our ambitious plan of climbing Rysy later in the week.

But upon returning to the trailhead, we were delighted to see a bus waiting. Busy function like the region's public buses but only accept cash. They run between Zakopane and popular trailheads or attractions, only leaving when they're full. After the 50-minute ride back to Zakopane centre, one of my friends and I decided to try Karczma Zapiecek, a traditional Polish Highlander restaurant where carvings and sleds hang from the ceiling. Waiters in traditional Polish dress filtered between rough-hewn wooden tables. I ordered two starters: pierogies filled with oscypek (smoked sheep's milk cheese), and potato cakes topped with mushroom sauce.

Upon taking my order, the waiter asked if I was sure. As soon as the enormous portions arrived, I understood why.

The great Polish outdoors

Three days into our trip, with more snow shifts on the mountains, we continuously checked local avalanche reports to plan our next move. Our group still hoped to tackle Giewont, but the 12km (7.4 miles) hike would require chains for the summit section, and some of us weren't feeling confident.

We decided to take a 15-minute bus to the Kuźnice trailhead, where we would all walk together until the fork in the path. Some of us would head off for a calmer hike to Dolina Strążyska valley. The others would go on to Giewont.

From Dolina Strążyska, it's a beautiful 400m (0.2 mile) walk to Wodospad Siklawica, the second-highest waterfall in the Polish Tatras. Shrouded in mist, the woodland feels otherworldly with the trickle of the Strążyski Potok River and snowmelt. Unlike our approach to Morskie Oko, the terrain was decidedly icier, so microspikes were essential. The Tatras are bear country, but deer, lynx, and other animals also roam free through the trails. More than once, our group spotted concerningly large paw prints in the snow.

As for our adventurous friends who had persisted towards Giewont, our reunion was earlier than expected. With low visibility, the sight of bear tracks and deep snow, they'd decided to turn around after just a couple of hours. Our birthday honouree later remarked, "I didn't think I was going to make 30".

Relaxation – and birthday celebrations – were certainly in order for our final full day. A 30-minute bus ride brought us to Chochołowskie Termy, the largest thermal bath complex in Poland. The Tatras, teeming with natural springs, are also home to a healthy thermal spa culture. We made a beeline for Chochołowskie Termy's steamy pools, strapping on wristbands to track how many drinks we would order from the outdoor beach-style pool bar. Soaking in the saunas, salt rooms and rapids proved to be the perfect antidote to five long days in the mountains.

More like this:

• Walking on water in Slovakia

• Europe's 'underdog leader' in slow-travel biking

• An 'Uber of the Alps': The Swiss ski resort reinventing winter

Three hours later, our muscles were so pampered, we could barely walk. Luckily, in the Tatras, you never have to look far to find a friendly busy driver, ready to transport you to a mountain of cheese dumplings and yet another pint.

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The five meals Andrew Zimmern will never forget

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260807-the-five-meals-andrew-zimmern-will-never-forget, yesterday

The celebrity chef and lifelong traveller has eaten it all, but these are the five meals that he'll remember for the rest of his life.

Just by looking at a plate of food, Andrew Zimmern believes you can see a place's history.

"Food is the way to understand another culture," says the chef, TV personality, author and lifelong traveller. "If someone from outer space came down and said, 'Show me your hometown', I wouldn't take Mr Spaceman to the museum. If you want to understand a human being, sit down and have a meal with them."

We asked Zimmern to choose the five meals that have shaped him – no small feat for a man who has been everywhere and eaten literally everything; no organ ever unturned. The result is less a list than an autobiography, tracing a life savoured through food.

From the savoury French bite that cemented his destiny, to meeting a culinary hero, here are the five meals Andrew Zimmern will remember for the rest of his life.

1. Liver pâté at Restaurant Paul Bocuse, Lyon, France

It was 1976. I was 14 years old, [skiing in Val-d'Isère] with my father's best friend and his family. It snowed for six days straight and we were stuck in the hotel for seven days. The last meal we had before we could leave town was stale bread and sardines. So the seven of us drove to Lyon and I had my first meal at Restaurant Paul Bocuse.

I ordered the largest tasting menu: 15 courses. There was chicken cooked inside a pig's bladder, truffle soup with a beautiful puff pastry dome. The fourth or fifth course was a tiny timbale (mould) of liver pâté; warm, with a sauce of wine and liver. To this day it's one of the 10 best things I've ever put in my mouth.

The staff was intrigued that a young person would order this. I was asked if I liked it: "Yes, very much. Can I have another?" About two minutes later, Paul Bocuse himself came to the table. "You want another one?" "Yes, please. That's the best thing I've ever eaten in my life."

Within seconds, another was at the table. My family just stared at me. [But] I'd never seen a restaurant run that way. It had a garden; you could see women picking vegetables throughout the dinner. They were baking bread during the meal service. The restaurant made its own butter. It convinced me that food had no limits… that there was a sense of craft bigger than I had even imagined. I walked into that meal, knowing that I was going to be in the food business, but I left that meal convinced.

2. Grilled aubergine and corn soup at Hokusai Fine Dining on the Mitsui Fuji Princess, Japan

I have been obsessed with chef Kiyomi Mikuni since the early 80s. He started the French-Japanese food mashup. His first cookbook was called the Food Fantasy of Hotel Mikuni. I was a young cook, had spent seven months cooking in Paris, and the book blew my mind. The idea that these two cuisines could be married so perfectly, and that there was a guy only a few years older than me talented enough to pull that off… I fell in love with him, professionally.

Every time I went to Japan, I never met him. But I just got back from Japan yesterday, and on this trip, I told the folks who were handling me, "I need to eat [at his restaurant]." He has, like, 12 restaurants, [including one] on the boat that we were taking to South Korea. One seating cost a ridiculous amount of money but there was no way I wasn't eating there.

[The menu] was almost straight up French. He spent the whole night talking to us, giving us food. You know how they say never meet your hero? This guy was just so kind, he was so funny. He served grilled aubergine with greens, dressed with olive oil and shallots, then put a piece of grilled eel with a dehydrated and fried eel bone on top. We had corn soup layered on a gelée of beef consommé. Very French, but he used Japanese corn.

On top of it, he put a tempura sweet fish, which is very bitter. He told everybody, "You eat it in two bites, head first, and then the rest." Then you wash it down with the soup, and finish with the consommé at the bottom, which was clarified and very beefy, very intense. It's just a beautiful mix of French and Japanese, and it was quite extraordinary. Best food on any cruise line I've ever experienced.

3. Liver crostini at Trattoria Sostanza, Florence, Italy

My father, when he was on honeymoon with my mother, went to Trattoria Sostanza in Florence. In the '50s, it was two communal tables, an open kitchen and a hand-written menu. [When] he took me there in the late '60s, one of the waiters who had served him in the '50s was now the maitre d'. [We] went back in '74 or '75, then I went in 1979 with a friend. The waiter-turned-maitre d' was now the manager. He was old. [But] the restaurant hadn't changed. When I went back in the 1980s, it had started to change because the staff [only] left when they couldn't work anymore. The magic of the place, to me, was the old version.

They still serve crostini di fegato (liver crostini). The first few times I was there, there was a pot and a basket of sliced stale bread from the night before. The cook would take the bread, scatter it on a platter, take a spoon and spread this hot liver mush on top. It was insane. If you said, "name one food you're going to have as your last bite," I might pick that.

Over the course of the night, they just kept dumping vegetable scraps and chopped livers and organs [in the pot], and when there was [just a little] wine left in a bottle, they would dump it in. I don't think the pot ever came off the stove in 40 or 50 years.

Every single time I went there I would have the crostini, their pasta al sugo (pasta with meat sauce) and grilled squab. Over time, I would experiment with different things. But going there with my father and having that same food and understanding that staff can stay forever, a restaurant can stay forever – it can change but still be the same – was a great piece of learning for me.

4. Tuna cheek and jawbone at Badjao Seafood House, Palawan Island, Philippines

I'm obsessed with seafood, so to be on an island that traditionally has earned its living from the water, I wanted an interesting seafood meal there. You park your car at the edge of the dock, [and] at the end of this dock is a wooden house on stilts. That's the restaurant. There's a hole in the middle with a ladder that goes down into the water.

Five or six times during the two hours that I was eating there, fish, vegetables, various things, arrived by canoe. They'll go out, they'll throw a net, they'll catch a pound of shrimp. Kids will dive off these little boats and go down to the bottom and pull up crabs and lobster and other shellfish. They'll sell it to the chef, so the menu is constantly changing throughout the night based on what's coming through the hole.

I had tuna cheek and jawbone, grilled over coconut husks, and served to me [in] distinctly Palawan style, with little leaves and lettuces to wrap with pieces of tuna that you would pull off the jawed cheek. It was remarkably delicious. I had a spicy shrimp and chilies dish tossed in a wok, and a fish soup. They had an entire banana stalk in the corner of the restaurant; it probably had 200 bananas on it. They mashed it for dessert and put date syrup on top and rice. It was like their version of mango rice. Still one of the greatest meals of my life.

5. B'stilla at Riad Laaroussa, Fez, Morocco

Riad Laaroussa [is] generally considered to be one of the best riads in Fez, but no man is ever allowed in the kitchen. The women who work there let me in to cook with them: "You're the first man. Our husbands don't even come in here." I asked them why and they said, "This is our place. We can all just talk to each other, without men around, about what life is really about."

They gave me chores, like, chopping parsley and cutting tomatoes. I finally said, "I'm a professional. This is what I do, too." I told them I wanted to make b'stilla with them, pigeon pie made with a very thin crepe called warqa. Two or three of the women lined up, and we worked on it for two, three hours.

When it came out of the oven, [the head chef] smiled because she was so happy that I had made a b'stilla that was just like theirs. I went to give her a big hug. She bent back like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, and I realised, "Oh, my God, I can't touch her." She had to leave the room. I felt terrible.

After cooking everything with them, I sat down to this meal and we had all the typical Moroccan starters and tagine but the highlight was knowing that everyone in the room was eating b'stilla that I had made.

I learned everything I needed to learn about Moroccan culture in that room. That the Muslim women took sanctuary in that kitchen… it changed the way I looked at womanhood.

This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.

BBC Travel's The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers.

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This loophole allows tourists to reach Scotland's most remote and majestic scenery

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260806-scotlands-tiny-cruises-go-where-others-cannot, 2 days ago

Tourism to Scotland's coastline was dominated by giant cruise ships until a flotilla of converted fishing boats took to the waterways, unlocking its most remote, authentic experiences.

The majestic wooden-hulled cruise ship glides through the cobalt waters of Scotland's Sound of Mull, accompanied only by a sea eagle and a breaching minke whale. Now approaching the brooding Highland massifs, it shows no signs of slowing. But this is no typical cruise ship. Thanks to its tiny size, it squeezes through a razor-narrow inlet, where all 10 passengers are greeted by an otter lounging on the craggy shore. There is an appreciative murmur and a clink of Champagne glasses. Moments later, a four-course Scottish farm-to-table dinner is served.

Scotland's coastline was traditionally explored by hardy sailors or aboard giant cruise ships. But an obscure maritime rule has helped create a very different kind of cruising here: tiny luxury vessels carrying no more than 12 passengers into lochs, inlets and anchorages beyond the reach of mega liners.

The loophole that changed Scottish cruising

In the 1990s, as ever-larger vessels became increasingly impractical for accessing smaller isles and lochs, skipper Rob Barlow set out to create small-scale, authentic Scottish seafaring experiences from Oban.

He and his family made canny use of a legal quirk: under Scottish maritime law, vessels carrying up to 12 passengers are not classified as cruise ships, meaning they're not subject to the same regulations – and, crucially, costs – as the massive vessels. This opened up some of Scotland's wildest and least accessible coastal landscapes to a new kind of traveller.

In 1996, the family launched Hebrides Cruises with the 12-passenger Elizabeth G, a converted Norwegian rescue vessel with compact private cabins, a saloon, bar and restaurant. The ship's maiden voyage was more cosy than luxurious, featuring tasteful tartan décor and traditional Scottish music playing in the background. But the vessel's "open bridge" policy meant that passengers could chat with the captain, creating a social but intimate feel, and its petite size allowed it to squeeze into the narrow entrance of Loch Spelve on Mull, get close enough to the white sands of Gallanach on Muck for a wet-footed beach landing and spend the night anchored off the uninhabited Monach Isles. Hebrides Cruises eventually acquired two more vessels, including the hot tub-sporting 10-passenger Emma Jane and the yacht-style, eight-passenger Lucy Mary.

"We grew from a family belief that Scotland is best experienced slowly and at close quarters, not simply viewed from afar," says Barlow's daughter Emma Fairbairns, Hebrides Cruises' shore manager.

A growing demand for intimacy

More operators followed, including the family-run Argyll Cruising, Skarv Lines and The Majestic Line. But the Scottish tourism industry was initially sceptical, say Majestic Line founders Ken Grant and Andy Thoms, who faced doubters in the early 2000s when converting their two old, wooden hulled fishing boats. "[The market] didn't exist at the time," says Grant.

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The pair persevered, turning their vessels into bespoke 11-passenger cruise ships with ensuite cabins, a saloon, dining areas and panoramic windows. And the new Scottish cruise formula was set: small ships that could thread through sea lochs beneath Highland mountains, anchor off remote beaches and slip into tiny harbours. They also swapped casinos and buffet restaurants for expedition-style excursions, communal dining on fresh Scottish produce and even the opportunity to catch mackerel with the crew for that day's lunch off a deck low enough to the water to make it possible.

"I enjoy this different luxury," says veteran passenger Stewart Norton. "The crew know your name, how you like your tea and share the joy of spotting wildlife with you. It's a really personal bijou experience."

On small ships, the skipper can react quickly to track wildlife and easily switch overnight anchoring plans, bringing visitors even closer to Scotland's swathes of marine mammals, from pods of dolphins and porpoises to humpback whales and orcas, as well as splashing otters, red deer and bushy-tailed red squirrels.

"It's like a glossy TV documentary, one you get to be part of," explains Will Tunnell, a small ship cruise fan. "The small vessels get into the nooks and crannies the big ships cannot reach and access remote scenery you'd struggle to experience any other way."

Scotland's small ship cruises also stop at postcard-pretty villages like Tobermory and Plockton, known for their traditional pubs and shops. "The wildlife thrills when you're on the water, but the wee communities and the historical legacies are an essential part of the pull," says Norton. "On these small ships, you experience them without the crowds you get on the mega ones."

And standards for Scottish travel experiences are nudging ever higher, adds Fairbairns. "More people are seeking comfort, quality and depth of experience and Scotland's islands and coastline offer that." With guests increasingly expecting local produce, the Oban-based ships snare their fresh seafood from the fishmonger on the pier and often stop in Loch Spelve to send the chef across on the tender to pick up a bag of just-landed mussels.

Today, the industry continues to grow. From pontoons in Oban that were custom-built in 2017 to accommodate demand, Scotland's small-ship fleet navigates along the entirety of the 200-year-old Caledonian Canal, even stopping in Loch Ness where no mega liner could ever dare go. It drops anchor at Britain's most remote pub, the legendary Old Forge in community-run Knoydart. It even ventures far north across the Pentland Firth to tiny isles in Orkney where communities are delighted to meet them, as large vessels never call.

Jane Roy, a tour guide who has worked on Scottish small ships, looks forward to a bright future: "Guests love the small ships. There is something really special about exploring Scotland on the water as our ancestors have done for millennia," she says. "These small ships feel more like a private country house party than a cruise."

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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, 8 days ago

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."

More like this:

• Taiwan's epic train ride through 50 tunnels and 77 bridges

• Tainan: The 400-year-old cradle of Taiwanese culture

• A vibrant celebration of Taiwan's little-known original inhabitants

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 from Hong Kong 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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Retracing the defiant walk that changed Britain

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260727-the-kinder-mass-trespass-the-derbyshire-walk-that-changed-britain, 10 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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• What I learned from walking Britain's entire coast

• The UK's five most beautiful national parks

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, 13 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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'Vast majority' of bags now travelling with passengers after airport fault

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0qv3ld7wgpo, today

The "vast majority" of baggage is now travelling as planned with passengers flying out of Birmingham Airport, it said in an update, but hundreds of holidaymakers have been affected by issues leaving them without luggage.

Outgoing flights have been affected since Friday, with some travelling through the airport describing "absolute chaos" and many still left without their belongings.

No luggage was loaded onto a TUI flight to Turkey, with few bags making it to Cyprus, or a Jet2 flight to Rome.

"We are working with our airlines and third parties to reunite luggage with passengers as fast as possible", the airport said.

The situation at Birmingham was "very significant," but also rare, said Alistair Rowland, a former chair of travel association, ABTA.

"Normally bags go missing, but not all the bags," he said.

Also significant was the communication between the airport and tour operators, and them "letting people know to give them the chance to get off the plane if they so choose," he added.

"But normally bags do arrive within 24 or 48 hours on the next flight out."

What do I do if my bag is missing?

Technically it is the tour operator or airline that are responsible for baggage, rather than the airport, Rowland explained.

It was important that travellers with missing bags fill in a missing luggage form at the arrival airport, he said.

"It does seem like Birmingham Airport didn't do well in this circumstance, [but] actually the claim is based on the client's contract, and that's with the airline or with their tour operator," he added.

What can I claim for?

If you're left without your luggage, "the rules say reasonable expenses" can be claimed, he explained.

"So it would be entirely reasonable to go do some shopping to pick up two or three days worth of clothes, drugs, anything else that's needed that was in the suitcase, and they will be naturally reimbursed," he said.

If the luggage is missing for 21 days, the case is then seen as lost and there's a maximum claim value at that point of about £1,300.

Passengers are also advised to keep as many receipts as possible.

"It shouldn't be a very long claim, it should be repaid within 28 days, but it is entirely frustrating, particularly in a situation like this where there was no awareness at the point of the flight taking off," he said.

Higher value items lost in luggage should be subject to a travel insurance claims, he added.

Behind the scenes

The situation at Birmingham Airport "will be treated very significantly because it's no bags getting on, rather than a couple," he said.

"If it was a couple of bags that didn't get on the plane because of some logistical issue, then it might have to wait till the next scheduled flight goes out.

"But in a situation like this, I'm sure behind the scenes, there will have been planes dispatched to get the bags over there.

"Normally this sorts itself out within 48 hours."

Faith in the airport?

"I'm a bit of a fan of Birmingham," added Rowland, who is also chair of online travel company, Blue Bay Travel.

"I find Birmingham [to be] pretty good. But when things go wrong, they do tend to go spectacularly wrong, and that happened in this circumstance."

Baggage problems were compounded by flights being diverted from Bristol Airport due to issues with their runway, he explained.

"Birmingham generally though, is one of the best airports in the UK," he added.

Birmingham Airport said: "We are working with our airlines and third parties to reunite luggage with passengers as fast as possible and we are sincerely sorry for the inconvenience and stress this has caused some of our passengers."

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Airport baggage issues leave hundreds without luggage

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg0101z0lyo, yesterday

Hundreds of passengers who have flown out of Birmingham Airport have been left without luggage due to issues with its baggage systems.

One described the situation as "absolute chaos" after the airport said it was experiencing issues affecting outbound flights.

In an update at 05:40 BST on Saturday, the airport warned passengers the problems were ongoing, but that engineers were on site working as quickly as possible to resolve it.

Hayley Chapman, from Northfield, who flew with her family to Turkey on Friday said no luggage at all was loaded on to the plane, and they had received no information as to its whereabouts.

She described seeing a "build up" of luggage at the airport, after problems with the luggage belt, but had been assured by staff that it would be loaded on to the plane.

But on arrival at Dalaman they were told by the pilot that no bags had been loaded.

"We have heard nothing about compensation, no communication when our luggage is expected, we've heard nothing about who is liable for it. Is it the airport? Is it TUI? Is it our travel insurance? Who are we meant to go to? We've had nothing from anybody", Chapman said.

"It's just radio silence from the airport, apart from literally telling people 'we've got an issue'".

The first day of their holiday was spent travelling to a shopping centre to buy essentials for "for the next few days" but she added "we have no idea how long this is going to last".

"There are families all over the world at the moment with nothing and no idea of what's going on," she said.

"It's really important that Birmingham Airport are held accountable, and sort this out."

Eve Sandle, who was also on the flight with her mum, received a text from airline TUI saying "some of your bags on TOM810 may not have arrived today," and advising passengers of next steps.

"The text couldn't be further from the truth," she said, "they knew no cases were on that plane."

"Not a TUI rep to be seen to support in the airport, and hotel reps haven't even been made aware of the issues," she added.

"We are in a foreign county with only the clothes we are standing in."

"I have brought my mum here for a week and it's not quite gone to plan," she added.

'Awful' communication

Simon Leyland's bags also didn't make it with him to Rome after he travelled on a Jet2 flight from Birmingham on Friday to join a cruise with his family.

"We were sat there yesterday with no bags, no record of any bags and the cruise line saying 'our coach is going to set off, and if you don't get on it you won't get on the ship'.

"There are 30 other people on our cruise in a similar position," Leyland, from Barton-under-Needwood, added.

While in Messina, on Sicily, he managed to track his luggage to Rome using AirTags. One of the bags had spent the night at Liverpool's John Lennon Airport, while another had visited Manchester.

He is now hopeful the family will be reunited with the luggage in Corfu next week, but said communication about the problem had been "awful".

"Things can go wrong, no reasonable person thinks it should always be perfect, but there should be a point where it's like, 'we understand, it's an issue and we'll just over-communicate and we'll tell you where they are'."

Clive Stokes, from Kidderminster, who travelled to Cyprus, said delays at the airport were "understandable" given the problems.

"But what the airport didn't do is explain the situation to people."

He said he had received an email on Friday evening, "two hours into our flight, saying there was a good chance our baggage wouldn't be there".

On arrival, only "about 20 cases" had came through, he added.

"I've probably spent between three and four hundred euros today on my credit card just to buy stuff, which, I think, I hope they'll reimburse," he added.

"It's not the end of the earth, but there were people on the flight who were getting married, so they've got wedding dresses missing."

Birmingham Airport said holiday company Jet2 had contacted all affected passengers, and other third parties were also working to reunite passengers with repatriated bags.

An airport spokesperson said: "We are continuing to experience an issue with our baggage systems which is impacting some outbound luggage.

"Engineers are on site and working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible. Terminal colleagues are also working hard to ensure baggage in terminal is being processed as quickly as possible.

"We expect this to cause inconvenience for some passengers, and we sincerely apologise for this. Those due to travel today, should still arrive at the airport in line with Airline advice."

TUI has been approached for comment.

Some flights from Bristol Airport are being diverted through Birmingham after flights were suspended due to a runway defect.

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Airport disruption a 'shambles' as flights restart

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1k1lyg94w9o, yesterday

Widespread disruption continues at Bristol Airport after a runway defect saw all flights suspended.

Hundreds of passengers were stranded after the airport's runway was closed from 18:00 BST on Friday until 08:00 on Saturday. While the runway has since reopened, the airport's website says the majority of flights are delayed or cancelled.

A spokesperson for the airport apologised for any inconvenience caused and advised passengers to check the status of their flight with their airline.

Dave Blackwell, travelling home from the Greek island of Rhodes, said it had been "a shambles" since his flight back to Bristol was diverted to Newcastle.

"We were in Rhodes Airport for three hours with no information. Now we have all been told our flight is going to Newcastle and then a five or six-hour bus ride - why Newcastle? How appalling," he said.

No details on the nature of the runway defect have been released, but a spokesperson for the airport told the BBC it did not involve any aircraft.

"We carry out regular inspections of the runway and that was when a defect was identified," they added.

They said repairs were carried out overnight.

'Really poor'

A number of people spoke to the BBC on Friday evening about their experience at the airport - among them Paul Smith, who was due to fly to Glasgow for his son's 20th birthday but had to cancel his trip.

He said: "The communication, advice and support for passengers has been really poor."

Finn Holland, 18, who was stranded in Bournemouth after his plane to Bristol was redirected, said: "It was quite a long day. We got in around 06:00 this morning."

He added: "We had to sort our own taxis back. It wasn't very organised".

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'I'm known as the only solo girl cycling the Americas'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jnrr3w1x3o, yesterday

A cyclist believes she is the only woman currently riding solo from the top of North America to the southern tip of South America, as she takes on a 20,000-mile (32,000km) challenge spanning almost two years.

Naomi Hancocks from Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, set off from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in June, and plans to cycle all the way to Ushuaia, Argentina.

Eight weeks into the challenge, she has already covered nearly 3,000 miles and encountered grizzly bears, moose and long stretches of wilderness while carrying everything she needs.

"At the moment, I'm the only girl on the road cycling solo," she said.

"There are other women cycling, but they're with partners or groups. I'm sort of famous on the road for being the only girl on my pink bike cycling all the way from the top to the bottom of the world."

The route follows the Pan-American Highway, stretching from the northernmost road in North America to the southern tip of the continent.

Hancocks said she first heard about the challenge more than a decade ago and never forgot it.

After travelling around Asia last year, she decided she wanted a more demanding adventure.

She saved money before quitting her job as a graphic designer and set off alone.

The cyclist said she had already encountered more than 20 bears, including grizzlies with cubs.

During one encounter she was escorted past a bear and her two cubs by a wildlife officer in a truck.

"The bear saw me and went for me," she said.

"I had to pedal and get past the truck again. That was pretty scary."

A meeting with a mother moose and her calf was also memorable.

The animals were frightened by a lorry and "they just started running towards me," she explained.

"Luckily, the guy beeps his horn, and the moose scatter, and they run up the hill.

"So I just avoided that one."

She said she and her distinctive bike had become well-known among fellow cyclists tackling parts of the route.

Through online groups and word of mouth, riders recognised her before they met, she said.

"I've had people saying: 'Oh, you're Naomi, I've heard so much about you.'

"People message me asking to meet for coffee because they've heard about my story."

She said she felt overwhelmed by the kindness of strangers so far on the trip.

Campers stopped to offer supplies, with some also offering her places to stay.

"I've slept in the back of people's trucks when it's been raining," she said.

"People stop and ask if I need anything.

"They'll bring cold drinks, food, fruit, it's been amazing."

The challenge is expected to take until early 2028, with the cyclist saying she was looking forward to the Andes, Bolivia's salt flats and Peru's Inca trail.

She is teaching herself Spanish while she cycles by listening to audiobooks on the road.

Despite challenges of freezing temperatures and wild camping she said she hoped to inspire others.

"Every morning I'm excited to start," she said.

"I wanted to be tested. I wanted to have days where I didn't want to do it anymore and see if I could get through them.

"I'd just like to inspire other people, especially women, to take on an adventure and show that these sorts of things are possible."

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Why Estonians invite strangers into their back gardens each summer

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260731-why-estonians-invite-strangers-into-their-backyards-each-summer, 6 days ago

Each summer, home gardens, garages and even bedroom windows across Estonia become temporary cafes open to anyone.

Beneath a giant tent, complete strangers queue to buy lunch. Around them, vegetable beds overflow with cucumbers, strawberries, garlic and courgettes, while an apple tree shades a table laden with rye bread, homemade pickles and a simmering pot of seljanka, a tomato-based soup with ham and smoked sausage. Guests order from a simple printed menu before carrying bowls of steaming soup to communal tables to eat.

At first glance, it looks like a country cafe. It isn't. It's Heiki Kalvik's back garden in the outskirts of Kehra, a small town about 45 minutes east of Tallinn, which he turns into a pop-up cafe each summer.

"I'm very outgoing, and I like to cook. I enjoy hosting, and I’m proud of our outdoor space," Kalvik says as another group of visitors arrives.

Kalvik is one of around a dozen residents taking part in Kehra’s annual Kodukohvikute Päev, or "home cafe day", when locals turn private gardens, courtyards and garages into temporary eateries for one day in July. Elsewhere in town, Karolin Vahtre has converted a garage behind her Soviet-era apartment block into a makeshift cafe, selling tempura sushi rolls, chanterelle quiche, chocolate cake and French fries to anyone who stops by.

More than 150 such events are held across Estonia between April and September, a beloved tradition that has spread steadily since the first event almost two decades ago. Some are elaborate, with rented tents, tables and chairs; others are little more than a lemonade stand manned by children. Together, they give visitors a rare glimpse of everyday Estonian life that is usually out of reach.

How Estonia's cafe days began

Estonia's home cafe tradition began on Hiiumaa, the country's second-largest island, in 2007 when local tourism promoters were looking for a way to attract visitors beyond the peak month of July.

They drew inspiration from Kärdla, the island's capital, and its long association with coffee. In the mid-1800s, the town was home to a broadcloth factory run by a Baltic German baron, who employed coffee-drinking workers from Central Europe. Local Estonians soon adopted the habit, with Kärdla residents eventually earning the nickname kohvilähkrid, or "coffee flasks", for taking coffee into the fields instead of the traditional sour milk or beer.

Fifteen homes took part in Hiiumaa's 2007 cafe days; today, the three-day event in early August attracts thousands of visitors, with dozens of temporary cafes selling homemade food and drinks across the island.

Hiiumaa Museum is one of the few participants to have taken part every year since 2007, re-creating a 19th-Century cafe in its conference rooms at the Long House, the museum's main building and the former home of the broadcloth factory's managers. Its director, Kauri Kiivramees, says the tradition taps into something deeper than food and drink: the islanders' long history of welcoming outsiders.

Kiivramees says even this so-called "island of introverts" has always understood the importance of community: "It's quite traditional to help foreign visitors on Hiiumaa because back then it meant they were here because of [a] shipwreck or something like that, and they needed help."

From island tradition to national phenomenon

Small, rural communities have historically been the backbone of Estonian society on both the country's islands and mainland. While people aren't as reliant on their neighbours as they once were, certain traditions, like the talgud, have endured. These communal work days once involved haymaking or barn raising; today they are more commonly used for community clean-ups. Home cafe days reflect that same spirit of neighbourliness, and after their initial success on Hiiumaa, they soon spread across the country.

Setomaa in south-eastern Estonia, holds its pop-up cafe days every year on the second weekend in August, using the event to showcase its distinctive culture.

"One of the reasons why we started [Kostipäiv] is because we saw that during the summertime we don't have so many events where people are wearing traditional clothes or offering traditional food like sõir, our homemade cheese," said Liis Kogerman, board member of the organising NGO Seto Küük.

The event has become one of the region's calling cards, with some cafes attracting as many as 1,000 visitors. While one has since become a permanent restaurant, most participants simply enjoy selling homemade food to visitors without the pressures of running a business.

The same spirit can be found in the university city of Tartu, where Inga Kulmoja runs a one-day pop-up cafe to indulge her passion for homemade ice cream. Kulmoja lives in an old wooden house with no yard, so each year she lowers ice cream down to the street from her third-storey bedroom window.

"It's very low tech," she said, noting that running the cafe is quite different from her daily work as an entrepreneur in the AI space. "Only cash, and the signs are written on reused paper. We bought some rope, and we have two buckets: one for the ice cream, and the second smaller bucket is for cash. I'm not even using an ice cream machine; I'm just making them in the freezer."

Even though Kulmoja is mostly busy dipping ice cream and filling the buckets, she still likes to see visitors queued up, especially when the same people come year after year. "I think people have some kind of willingness to show what they can offer or how they live," she said. "In Estonian, you would say maybe 'edevus'. It's like the feeling you get being the centre of others' attention."

When strangers become neighbours

Oleg Pun and Iryna Topilina moved to Estonia from Ukraine in 2019, but didn't host their first cafe until 2022, when Pun's parents moved to Estonia to escape from the war. Pun and Topilina encouraged them to participate in their new village's cafe days to learn more about the community.

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"They were so surprised and moved by how many Estonians came to support them. Neighbours from nearby houses even brought over extra chairs and furniture when they saw we needed more seating," recalled Topilina.

Now the family works together to run a cafe during Kalamaja Days in Pun and Topilina's garden. This year they served cabbage varenyky, Ukrainian dumplings made from a family recipe that goes back almost 100 years, and green borscht made with locally foraged sorrel and nettle and cooked over an open fire.

While Estonia's home cafe days may feel like secret celebrations to outsiders, they are one of the few occasions when visitors are invited to wander through private gardens, taste family recipes and glimpse everyday life inside local communities.

As Kalamaja Days organiser Katrin Aedma said, "It is not so often you can see inside of our yards. They are closed. But this is the day when our people open their hearts and their gates."

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Four simple rules behind Japan's most liveable cities

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260805-four-simple-rules-behind-japans-most-liveable-cities, 3 days ago

From neighbourhood shopping streets to accessible transport, Japan's most liveable cities remove the everyday frustrations of urban life.

What makes a city genuinely easy to live in? It's not necessarily gleaming skyscrapers or world-famous attractions, but whether you can get to work without a car, do your shopping on foot, navigate a train station in a wheelchair or push a pram safely down the pavement.

Japan's cities are especially good at this. In the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2026 Global Liveability Index, Osaka ranked seventh and Tokyo rose three places to 10th, making Japan the only Asian country with two cities in the top 10.

This rise reflects perfect scores in the index for stability, healthcare and education, as well as strong infrastructure. But residents say the real difference is in the intentional and accessible design choices that make life run smoothly.

"Japan is built to work for everyone," says Josh Grisdale, a power wheelchair user who runs Accessible Japan and has lived in Tokyo for 18 years. "The same ramps, elevators and space I use as a wheelchair user help a parent with a stroller, an older person or someone lugging a suitcase in from the airport."

For architect Francis Aguillard, who has studied Japan's urban design, the simple daily details often have the biggest impact. "Liveability often comes down to reducing the friction of ordinary life," he said. "Can someone reach work, school, groceries, a park, a doctor and friends without structuring the entire day around a car?"

For many Japanese residents, the answer is yes. We spoke with them and urban planning experts to learn how the country designs cities that work well, and the rules that make them feel so easy.

1. Build cities around everyday life

Much of daily life in Japan plays out in the shotengai (covered shopping streets lined with independent businesses whose owners often live above their own shops). "A greengrocer, old coffee shop, clinic, 100-yen shop and dinner [options] all sit within a few flat, covered blocks," says Grisdale.

Grocery shopping was a chore that American Patrick Lydon dreaded when he lived in the United States. After moving to a modern Osaka neighbourhood, he and his wife traded their cars for bicycles, while a smaller house and a tiny refrigerator meant shopping more frequently.

"Somehow, the experience is really pleasant," says Lydon, who writes The Possible City, an illustrated essay series examining life in Japan and Korea. "Grocery shopping can be transformed from an errand into a daily social experience that connects you to a neighbourhood. Everyone from kids to the elderly move through that street on foot every day."

It's a concept that's difficult to replicate elsewhere, but Lydon compares it to what made old Main Street America so special. Designing at a people-first scale pays off. "The smell of fried croquettes drifting onto the streets, small shops run by the building owners, easy public transit access, a feeling of safety and community for all ages… it's hard to overstate how well this all works."

Japanese cities are also designed so that vehicles fit the streets rather than the other way around, with compact delivery vans and tiny kei trucks navigating lanes built to a human scale. "City streets in Japan often function as shared spaces where pedestrians, bikes, and vehicles can coexist," says Aguillard. "Rather than creating chaos, it creates a beautiful dance of activity."

2. Design transport for everyone

Japan's transit systems are renowned for their reliability, safety and cleanliness. "The amazing public transportation network can take you everywhere," says Keiko Ota, regional operations manager at G Adventures, who has lived in Tokyo for more than a decade. "I don't have a driver's licence, but I still feel complete freedom to go anywhere."

Grisdale likes that in Japan, public transit is accommodating and he doesn't have to plan ahead when travelling as he does in other countries. "Coming from Canada, I still find it strange that I can show up at almost any station [in Japan] and get where I'm going by rail or bus, on time, without reservations," he said. "Elevators are very rarely out of service, and when one is down there's a plan B; staff will bring a portable stair climber rather than tell me it can't be done."

His experience reflects a two-decade national retrofit following Japan's 2006 "Barrier-Free" law. By 2020, more than nine in 10 highly trafficked stations had eliminated the need to climb steps, with lifts installed at thousands of stations across the country.

In Tokyo, Grisdale finds that the city is still responsive to active and ongoing feedback. When flower planters in his local park sat too close together for his wheelchair to pass, Grisdale mentioned it to the parks department. Within days, stickers reminded staff to leave enough room for wheelchair users to pass through.

Japan's approach to accessibility has shaped cities far beyond its borders. The yellow raised paving used by visually impaired pedestrians worldwide was invented by Japanese engineer Seiichi Miyake in 1967 to help a friend who was losing his sight. Within a decade, it had become mandatory at the country's national rail stations. "Japan gave those to everyone," says Grisdale.

3. Preserve a sense of place

Despite its famous bullet trains and busy urban hubs, Japan also values patience, continuity and a respect for tradition.

When Lydon registered his residence in Osaka, the district office worker pulled out a giant map book, erased the previous occupant's name and pencilled his in. "As a guy who grew up working at Silicon Valley tech firms, that blew my mind," he said. "Japan often doesn't replace systems simply because newer technology exists. If something still works reliably, there's less pressure to reinvent it.

That patience shows up in the landscape too, where centuries-old trees survive in ordinary neighbourhoods and even train stations, like the 700-year-old camphor growing straight through the roof of Kayashima Station near Osaka.

"Living in Japan made me notice how often old trees are treated as something worth accommodating rather than removing," Lydon said. "Whether that's because of Shinto tradition or simply people's affection, the result is striking. There's a difference between building infrastructure on top of a place and building it with a place.

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• 10 things all visitors to Japan should know

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Even in the busiest business districts, everyday life is woven into the city. "You'll see people rushing to meetings, then turn a corner and find a small shrine that's been there for generations, or a tiny restaurant where the owner seems to know every regular by name," says Masato Kominami, general manager of 1 Hotel Tokyo, who walks through the Akasaka district most days. "In the middle of a busy workday, you hear birds, notice how the light changes through the trees or catch the scent of the season."

4. Maintain manners in shared spaces

Human-scaled infrastructure only tells part of the story; the people who live in Japan's cities also create the conditions for thriving. "Tokyo is incredibly busy, but people instinctively think about how their actions affect others," said Kominami. "It's not something people talk about much; it's simply part of everyday life."

Grisdale depends on that cooperation, and after nearly two decades living here, he ranks it alongside anything a government can build. "The manners matter as much as the hardware," he said. "People queue on the platform marks, keep the trains quiet and give up priority seats and space without being asked. In a city this size, that keeps daily life calm for everyone."

In Osaka, Lydon found himself changed by the way Japan operates with awareness and consideration for others. "Whether it's lining up for trains, speaking quietly in public, not littering, separating recycling or saying 'itadakimasu' ("I humbly receive") before a meal, many daily habits remind you that you're part of something larger than yourself," he said. "Maybe that's not a magic spell to fix the ills of the world, but personally it did help me lean towards kindness, beauty and peace."

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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, 7 days ago

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 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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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, 9 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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Seagulls are the thieves of the skies. Here's how to stop them stealing your food

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260806-why-seagulls-steal-human-food-and-how-to-stop-them, 3 days ago

When you're visiting the seaside, a simple trick could stop seagulls from robbing you of your lunch.

Sitting in the sunshine, enjoying the sea air – you have no idea a thief has its beady eyes on you.

Suddenly, a feathered assailant appears from the sky, blotting out the Sun with its giant wings. In a flurry of flapping and an explosion of fish and chips, the monstrous herring gull steals your dinner right out of your hands.

Herring gulls, the typical "seagull" of coastal towns across the Northern Hemisphere, are enormous. Weighing in at almost 3.31lb (1.5kg) and with a wingspan of up to 4.9ft (150cm), to have one dive straight at you can be pretty terrifying. But this has become a fairly common seaside occurrence in recent years.

So, how can you stop seagulls from stealing your food?

This was the question Laura Kelley, an animal behaviour researcher at the University of Exeter, UK, set out to answer. She discovered one simple trick that can keep thieving seagulls at bay.

In 2019, Kelley set up an experiment to investigate whether herring gulls are more cautious around food when someone is looking directly at them, and found they were slower to approach. Many animals, including gulls, have this tendency for "gaze aversion", she says, as the stare of a predator often indicates imminent attack.

Consequently, some animals have evolved markings – known as eyespots – that resemble eyes, to scare predators away. The more realistic the eyespots, the more effective. Some even have "sparkle markings" to mimic the reflection of the Sun.

Kelley thought her fish and chips might also benefit from the protective power of eyespots – and found sticking a pair of googly eyes on food packaging was enough to deter herring gulls from pinching it.

Kelley and her team tested the idea in seaside towns across Cornwall, Devon and Dorset in the South West of England, where gulls are known to steal food from people. They gave the birds a choice of two food boxes placed 6.6ft (2m) apart on the ground – one with eyes stuck on, and one plain box.

"We found that gulls were happy to go up to the boxes without eyes," says Kelley. "But with the boxes with eyes, we found the gulls split into two groups. The first group was slightly reticent to approach at the start but became much quicker over subsequent presentations – so they learned that the eyes weren't scary. The other group of gulls just never approached."

This indicates a certain level of personality, says Kelley. Some, she says, are the "problem gulls" that are bold and curious, and more likely to "dive-bomb people for their food".

"They're the ones causing 95% of the mischief," says Kelley. "It's just a small subsection that is giving everyone else a bad name – the bad boys of seagulls."

Herring gulls are at once scavengers, predators and kleptoparasites, meaning they steal food from others. They often find food by watching other animals' behaviour and muscling in when they spot a feast on the go. This includes humans, a skill that makes the birds particularly well suited to urban living.

And, while they may appear to us to be abundant, herring gulls numbers across the world are plummeting. In 2021, both the European and American herring gulls were added to the IUCN red list of endangered species.

This decline may not be immediately apparent to us, though, as herring gulls are increasingly moving into urban areas, where they substitute marine prey for human food.

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"Numbers in their natural areas are collapsing," says Kelley, "due to loss of habitat and lack of natural food available [caused by] overfishing – but also urban environments just offer a lot of food. Gulls are very adaptable. They're curious and tenacious, which helps them to exploit these new environments that they find themselves in."

Even so, gulls do still show a strong preference for a natural diet. Adults who have nestlings to feed, for instance, will go out to sea to forage, rather than foraging in human areas. "This suggests they're only eating human food when there's not really much other choice," says Kelley. "Sometimes, you've just got to eat – so a bag of chips is a good solution."

I'll have what you're having

Gulls observe and learn from humans, not just stealing our food but copying the food choices we make too. Rare interspecies learning like this reveals a high level of intelligence.

"In the past, people thought seagulls were stupid," says Franziska Hacker, a behavioural ecologist and researcher at the Australian National University. "But you just watch them, and you realise they're really smart."

Hacker lived in the lively seaside city of Brighton in 2021, while studying for her masters degree at the University of Sussex, UK. She set up an experiment – in which she ate copious salt and vinegar crisps – to see if her food choices influenced the choices made by seagulls. The results were "crazy" she says.

At the same time as she ate her own crisps from a blue packet, she offered a single nearby gull the choice between a blue and green packet placed on the floor in front of her. "The gull gave one call," she says, "and suddenly there were 20 more".

Hacker, who "absolutely hates" salt and vinegar crisps, managed to keep a straight face as she ate so as not to give any extra visual cues through facial expressions – and the amassed gulls, more often than not, went for the packet that colour-matched Hacker's.

"They use behavioural cues, even ones given by humans," says Hacker. Some domestic animals, like dogs and horses, can understand when a person points or gestures to communicate – but this is a skill rarely seen in wild animals, says Hacker.

Seagulls use many types of cues: sight, smell, sound, the call of another bird. And because "so much of their daily food intake is obtained through stealing", says Hacker, the ability to observe other gulls or other species is really important if they are to be successful – "because to steal someone's food, you need to observe them, you need to time it right".

Two years of research – and lots of packets of crisps – later the results showed gulls preferred the same colour packet 95% of the time. "Which is such a crazy result, right?" says Hacker. "They can understand that I'm eating from something, recognise that the item on the floor is the same as the one I'm holding, and make a food choice based on that.

"In my opinion, that is really smart. That requires a lot of processing – object recognition, object comparison, the assumption that what I'm eating is good for the gull to eat as well."

A harmonious coexistence

Understanding gull's intelligence and behaviour, adds Kelley, could reveal the secrets we need to prevent them from stealing our food.

Kelley offers some key tips for preserving your food at the beach. Sit with your back to a wall, she says. Often, gulls will approach from behind so you can't see them coming. Keep your food covered up, and don't wave it around. Keep an eye on them. If you're looking at them, they're less likely to approach. And if all else fails, shout at them.

Simply changing our own behaviour, says Kelley, could be the answer to living peacefully alongside these birds that are so much part of our "everyday nature".

"They're just trying to make the best of the situation they're in. We need to figure out a way to coexist with them as best we can," says Kelley. "It's all about trying to find strategies for a more harmonious coexistence."

And if that harmonious coexistence involves googly eyes, what's not to love?

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Extreme evolution: The animals evolving at super speed to survive

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260805-the-animals-evolving-at-super-speed-to-survive, 3 days ago

Humans have become one of the world's greatest evolutionary forces. To survive our cities, animals from urban foxes to glass-climbing lizards are responding with extreme adaptation.

In Puerto Rico, the anole lizards living in cities look rather different to their forest-dwelling counterparts. In order to scale buildings and sprint across hot surfaces, these urban reptiles appear to have evolved longer limbs and more toe lamellae – the fine scales on the bottom of their feet. These traits are believed to help them better cling to smooth human-made surfaces like glass and metal. And the change seems to have happened in a matter of years.

Cities have become the planet's newest ecosystem, and many of the animals residing in them have been forced to adapt to survive.

At the extremes, these changes – either behavioural or genetic – happen over very short timeframes, sometimes just a few generations. These speedy changes are happening either to cope with climate change, or direct human activity. Human choices and behaviour, from the use of antibiotics to the transfer of invasive species, have become one of the world's greatest evolutionary forces, driving wildlife species to dramatically accelerate their pace of change. It's known as "contemporary evolution".

"Some animals in cities are responding well," says Andrew Sih, who studies the evolution of animal behaviour at University of California at Davis.

That response can encompass a range of profound changes – from recognising novel predators, finding new ways to get food or shelter, adjusting to the noise and excess light, and avoiding toxins and pathogens.

City living

One study found that animals able to adapt to urban settings sometimes benefit from an more food availability and fewer predators – which can lead to more offspring. This means cities – at first glance an unfriendly environment for wildlife – can actually lead some species to flourish.

British red foxes are a well-documented example of how urban populations often have higher reproductive rates than their rural counterparts due to food availability in the cities. In the US, city-dwelling raccoons – fondly nicknamed "trash pandas" – are physically changing. A recent study found urban raccoons are showing early signs of domestication, developing snorter snouts and becoming less aggressive around humans.

Meanwhile in Denmark, the urban hare has been seen making tentative forays into city life. The animal has adapted to human presence by increasing its tolerance towards human disturbance. This could either be due to a change in how it expresses its genes, or a Darwinian selection process of more tolerant individuals.

Research published in 2025 found animals from urban areas, exposed to higher temperatures and greater pollution, demonstrated "significantly higher" resilience to stressful conditions compared with counterparts from protected habitats.

What makes some animals resilient to city life while others never adapt?

An animal's ability to change its behaviour in response to a changing environment can make all the difference, Sih has found in his research. In some animals, this ability to alter their behaviour is the first step to more profound change.

"Step one is that they need to respond well behaviorally," Sih says. "If they do that well enough, they survive well enough to have a chance to later evolve [genetically] to adjust even better."

In Illinois, armadillos have been spotted more frequently near major roads, which researchers concluded may be because the roads help the animals thermoregulate. Asphalt absorbs heat from sunlight and traps thermal energy, and in the region's winters – which can reach -30F (-34C) armadillos may benefit from the warmth the roads emit.

This is the type of behavioural change that could eventually buy an animal like the armadillo time to evolve in response to the roads that now crisscross its environment – though not all behavioural changes will end up influencing a species' evolution.

Urban birdlife

If you're lucky enough to hear birdsong in a city, it could well be a song shaped by the street you're strolling down. Many birds have altered their songs to be heard above traffic. Numerous studies have shown that birds actively shift their frequency, volume and timing of their songs in response to noise levels.

Take a closer look at urban bird life and you might see other changes. Consider the dark-eyed junco, for instance. Noise, human presence, food scarcity and nesting competition make cities a difficult environment for the junco. In the early 1980s, a group of juncos settled year-round on the campus of University of California, San Diego – giving researchers a chance to document the rapid changes in the birds.

They found the juncos became less aggressive – and even developed fewer white feathers on their tails (a trait used in aggressive displays) as a result. The birds also began breeding earlier, reared twice as many young, and altered their migration pattern.

Scientists studied another urban population that settled at University of California, Los Angeles, and found breeding pairs nested in trees and on buildings instead of their usual nests on the ground.

It's not just the juncos' behaviour that's changed. Researchers found urban juncos have smaller wings, an adaptation believed to come from the demands of flying through dense, built-up cities, rather than long-distance flight over open land.

North America has lost 168 million of the birds in the past 50 years. The juncos' ability to rapidly adapt may be the key to securing its future.

Beyond city limits

Animals aren't just adapting in urban environments, though. They're physiologically changing to survive living with humans. For example, in some places, there has been a rise in the number of elephants born without tusks. That's because poachers are more likely to kill those with tusks – while tuskless ones survive and pass on their genes, including the "tusklessness" trait. In other words, being tuskless has become an evolutionary advantage in places where poachers are a major threat.

Some fish are getting smaller as humans catch the big ones and thereby select them out of the gene pool, leaving the smaller ones free to survive and reproduce. Again, smallness – which may have been an evolutionary disadvantage when faced with non-human predators – can be an evolutionary advantage when faced with humans.

Other changes involve protective qualities. Atlantic killifish are rapidly evolving to become resistant to toxins and industrial chemicals. Through genetic alterations in the biochemical pathways that specifically respond to these chemicals, the fish are becoming less sensitive to them.

The animal kingdom is changing rapidly to keep up with a rapidly changing planet.

But what happens to the animals who can't adapt quickly enough?

"Other animals – often in the same species – simply 'don't get it', and do not respond well behaviourally to these new challenges," says Sih. "If anything, I note that for many animals, they don't really have time to evolve, as things have changed too much too quickly."

Those animals who do adapt to survive amid humans, buildings, climate change and pollution, may still have a long road ahead, says Sih. "In the next decades, they may have time to evolve to adjust even better."

Correction: This article was updated on 7 August to state that the adaptations in the Atlantic killifish are to the biochemical pathways that respond to toxins, not in the thickness of its skin, as the article originally stated.

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See the Sun like never before with most detailed images yet

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c36d4376nd2o, 4 days ago

Scientists using the world's most powerful solar telescope have captured the surface of our Sun in new, unprecedented detail.

Images and footage show "whirlpools" of activity that it has not been possible to see before.

It is the Sun's magnetic field being twisted and moved by the motion of hot gas.

That constant swirling is a driving force behind bursts of energy from the Sun, creating so-called space weather, that can disrupt Earth's power grids and satellites, and could even injure astronauts.

"The Sun is the source of that energy and of all of that space weather," explained Dr David Boboltz from the US National Solar Observatory (NSO).

Capturing more detailed pictures of our solar system's star will help in responding to that weather, he said.

"To figure out and eventually predict space weather, we want to understand the physics of the Sun, all the way down to the smallest scales."

The findings, published in the journal Nature, were made possible by the Inouye Solar Telescope - a facility built on a high peak in Hawaii, where clear blue skies are free of dust.

Zooming in on the Sun's surface, the team captured a detailed view of swirling vortices.

NSO astronomer Dr David Kuridze, told BBC News: "These twisting motions are creating magnetic energy, which can build up to produce those large-scale explosions."

Explosive space weather

The term for what the scientists have discovered on the Sun is "Kelvin-Helmholtz instability".

The phenomenon happens when fluids - in this case hot gases - slide past each other and cause small disturbances to grow into spiralling vortices. In the ocean, it helps explain how ripples become giant, powerful waves.

Dr Friedrich Woeger, also from the NSO, explained that finding it on the Sun's surface not only explained the dynamics behind space weather, but even why the surface of the Sun is so hot.

It shows how energy is transported upwards.

"Once there's enough energy wound up in the higher layers, it can then be released, as a flare or what's known as a coronal mass ejection," he said.

Boboltz added that, as well as the practical need to understand and protect ourselves from space weather, the new findings were a reminder that the Sun is a "unique laboratory".

"It's our closest star," he said. "And it can help us understand some very basic laws of physics.

"The first experimental proof of Einstein's general relativity came from solar eclipse observations.

"So simply for human knowledge," he added, "we need to have experiments like this".

Combine harvester fire warning as next heatwave due

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ydj3ekxy7o, today

Owners of combine harvesters have been warned about potential fires in hot, dry weather, as another heatwave is due to hit.

Cleveland Fire Brigade said crews from Hartlepool and Stockton were called to a blaze involving a combine harvester at a farm in Dalton Piercy on 2 August.

The fire service warned that in hot, dry weather, incidents involving agricultural machinery can become more common, with combine harvesters "containing a number of concealed areas where fire can spread unseen".

Parts of the UK could be heading its fifth this week, with temperatures possibly reaching the mid-30s in some places.

It comes as the UK Health Security Agency has issued yellow heat health alerts for most of England, including Teesside, until 21:00 BST on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Environment Agency has suggested that "several areas" of England could enter drought status as "public water supplies remain under increasing pressure with continued dry weather and high demand".

The brigade said the "hidden hotspots" which include engine compartments, belt systems, bearings, hydraulic components and accumulations of dry crop material, can make extinguishing fires challenging.

It urged those working in agriculture to regularly inspect and clean machinery, to check bearings and moving parts and to carry fire extinguishers.

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Longest serving volunteer helps boost bird numbers

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cewr8y8e55vo, today

A wildlife charity's longest serving volunteer has dedicated 60 years of his life to bird conservation.

Nigel Hewitt first volunteered with the RSPB in1966 during a break from studying for his A levels when he helped to protect ospreys.

Hewitt, 77, has a special place in his heart for the cirl bunting, which was almost lost in the UK, and had helped manage their habitats at the Labrador Bay and Ashill nature reserves in Devon while also being involved in the red-backed shrike project on Dartmoor.

Fellow birder John White said: "His knowledge is unbounded. He loves it. He'll talk for ever about birds."

Hewitt showed the BBC around the reserve at Ladrador Bay near Shaldon and said the small finch-like cirl buntings, which were once common on farmland on southern England but are now on the conservation red list, "don't want to be very obvious".

He added: "They just want to quietly get on with producing young, feeding them in the nest and not being seen."

More than 1,000 pairs were recorded in the last national survey in 2016 and they are mainly found in south Devon, with a reintroduced population in Cornwall, the RSPB said.

Hewitt said: "They're a great little bird. Because we're saving this place specifically for cirl buntings, we're also creating habitat for lots of other birds."

Hewitt said he got the volunteering bug during "a wonderful time" helping Operation Osprey when he helped protect the first pair of ospreys to breed in the UK for more than 100 years.

"We were guarding the ospreys 24 hours a day, so we had schedules where we did different shifts on different days.

"We sat in a hide with telescopes and various hearing systems to protect them."

"Sadly, there had been numerous attempts by people to chop their nesting tree down and steal the eggs. I thoroughly enjoyed the task, and it was the start of 60 years of volunteering."

Throughout his school holidays and later during a 30-year career with Barclays, he volunteered in a range of roles with the RSPB.

He said: "Maybe I shouldn't admit this, because you think ultimately people volunteer because they want to do something good or give something back, but for me initially it was the opportunity to get closer to the birds and nature.

"Just being with wildlife, seeing wildlife, understanding wildlife, whether birds, mammals or insects, is mentally very good for me."

RSPB volunteering development officer Tim Hughes said: "Few individuals can demonstrate such sustained commitment, breadth of impact and enduring legacy as Nigel. "

Hughes added: "He has helped achieve some of the biggest successes in species recovery, notably for cirl buntings, while also strengthening the volunteer culture across the RSPB through his positive, dependable guidance and expertise."

Hewitt said: "The pleasure of seeing a bird that you know you've done work to protect gives me so much satisfaction.

"You get the chance to just get out and do things. It's a wonderful chance to give something back to the world."

He added: "And if I can volunteer for another… well, I won't do another 60 years, that's for sure. But David Attenborough is 100, so I could still be pottering around then."

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Crews return to tackle major woodland fire

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2jg90wxndo, today

Fire crews have spent the night battling a large blaze in an area of woodland in Nottinghamshire.

Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service were called to a fire at Strawberry Hill Heath in Rainworth on Saturday afternoon, at its height there were 12 crews in attendance, with about nine acres of land affected.

Also deployed were the joint police and fire drone team, and a specialist wildfire vehicle.

After being reduced overnight, eight appliances returned to the scene on Sunday morning, but a fire service spokesman said the flames had been contained and the incident was under control.

People have been asked to avoid the area, and residents should keep doors and windows closed, if they are affected by the smoke, the spokesperson added.

Strawberry Hill Heath is a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to it being one of the last areas of heathland which once dominated parts of Sherwood Forest.

There have been several wildfires at the location this summer, including a large fire in July, and a smaller one, just three days ago.

It is one of a number of outdoor fires in Nottinghamshire this week alone, including a field fire in Church Warsop on Monday, a fire on 12.3 acres of grass and forest land in Meden Vale on Tuesday, and a fire in Sneinton on Thursday.

The fires come as an extremely dry spell continues across much of England and Wales, with July being recorded as the driest since Met Office records began 190 years ago.

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Shark species changing due to warmer waters

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crk5705rm5mo, yesterday

Scientists say different species of shark are becoming more common in southern waters because of the rise in water temperature.

Bryce Stewart of the Plymouth-based marine research charity Marine Biological Association said some species were moving north into warmer waters around the Channel Islands and the South West because their prey was doing the same.

Lifeguards asked people to leave the sea after a 10 to 12ft (3 to 3.36m) long, dark grey shark was seen off a beach in Jersey on Saturday.

Alex Plaster, from Jersey's marine resources team, said there had been "rare sightings of the larger sharks like shortfin mako, porbeagle and blue sharks" in the waters off the Channel Islands but the chance of anyone being bitten or attacked by a shark "was effectively zero".

Plaster said there had never been a reporting of anyone being bitten by a shark "in the whole English Channel area, let alone in Jersey itself".

"The species that you read about online like bull sharks and great white sharks that have, these have been incidents around the world and we've never had a confirmed sighting of one of those in our area."

But Stewart said one-off sightings of other sharks were relatively common.

He said: "I think we always get these one off sightings, occurrences like with the smalltooth sand tiger shark that got washed up in the Channel Islands, and a sighting of a large shark, which could be many things.

"It could have been a basking shark, but it could have been another smalltooth sand tiger shark or it could have been a blue shark or a porbeagle.

"These kind of sightings will always happen, especially with large animals that can swim a long way, as they get in a certain current system or weather system than where they normally are."

Plaster said there had been 14 different shark species recorded in Jersey during the last 100 years, most of them measuring between 1 to 2ft (0.3 to 0.6m) long and larger ones between 5 to 6ft (1.5 to 1.8m) long.

"It really is quite a diverse bunch that we have in Jersey's area and the surrounding Channel Island waters," he added.

He said the warmer sea temperatures in winter were having a "huge effect" on marine life.

"More recently, we've been seeing new species in greater abundances, it might be things like gill-head breams, stingrays and some have put bluefin tuna down as a species that's reacting to warming waters around the world and changing predator-prey relations," he added.

Stewart said warmer waters and changes to the availability of prey had lead to both the increase in bluefin tuna in the region and shark species.

"Here off the south west coast we've seen this increase and that really is only explained by shift in their migration patterns," he added.

He said a three-year project with the University of Exeter was studying sharks to learn more about them.

He said: "One of the things we think is happening, and we have quite good evidence for this, is the blue sharks are actually pregnant when they're here and they give birth somewhere off the south west coast of the UK.

"So almost all of the sharks that are seen off the south coast are female.

"So the theory is they are moving to these marginal waters, while they're pregnant, so they can avoid the males.

"During the matings the males are quite violent to the females and the males eat the pups when they hatch.

So, this is just a theory at the moment, but this could be a safe zone for them, it's like a maternity ward, basically."

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How can landscape recover after devastating fires?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yv2wd7e66o, yesterday

A grassfire can reduce a thriving habitat to blackened ground in a matter of hours - but recovery is a much slower story.

Recent fires have torn through nature reserves, beauty spots, farmland and open countryside, leaving conservationists and land managers facing the difficult task of helping to restore habitats and prevent further damage.

But can these places bounce back? And what can be done to protect them in a hotter, drier future?

Dan Brown, deputy chief executive of Birmingham & Black Country Wildlife Trust, said the loss of habitat was a big problem.

"When we lose grasses, wildflowers and trees to fire, we lose the food plants that invertebrates rely on, taking away spaces in which butterflies and bees can thrive. That impact cascades upwards to birds and mammals who would normally use invertebrates as a food source," he said.

Thirty firefighters tackled a blaze at Portway Hill in Oldbury, West Midlands, last week, an area of land managed by the trust.

The site was home to scarce plants including pyramidal and bee orchids, and a rare colony of marbled white butterflies that had relied on common knapweed and red fescue.

"We've lost these plants now, and it will take years of work to restore the meadow so that marbled white butterflies can return," said Brown.

Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service said it had attended about 600 outdoor fires in July, roughly double the number recorded in the same month last year.

Three of them were at Cannock Chase, a protected area of countryside, forest, and lowland heath, where animals including adders and toads were killed.

Jeff Sim, head of nature reserves at Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, said the fires had been devastating years of conservation work.

"Each day we're seeing fires devastate green spaces and my team is incredibly worried," he said. "In an instant we could lose years of careful restoration work. It can take decades for land to recover from fire, even with dedicated intervention and restoration work."

Many other parts of the West Midlands have also been affected. Nature reserves have gone up in flames, blazes have ruined farmers' fields and crops, and deliberate fires started in parks and beauty spots have grown out of control.

The picture has been similarly bleak nationally.

At Dunwich Heath in Suffolk, where a fire that started last week has burned about 371 acres (150 hectares) of lowland heath, conservationists warned the impact on wildlife and the landscape would be felt for years. The National Trust described it as "absolutely devastating".

In Scotland, a fire in the Cairngorms National Park has burned about 10 sq miles (26 sq km) of moorland and forestry. The fire, which started last month, damaged the RSPB's Loch Garten reserve at Abernethy, which is home to thousands of species. Insects, reptiles, trees, lichens and mosses have been killed.

Is restoration possible?

Brown said restoration was possible, but slow.

"We can restore habitat by seeding meadows and planting trees, but this process takes a long time and has to be carefully managed," he said.

Some of the trust's conservation projects have made landscapes more resilient to fire.

Planting native broadleaf trees creates cooler, shadier woodland that is less likely to ignite, while restoring rivers and wetlands helps hold water in the landscape, keeping surrounding land damp.

At The Roaches, a dramatic rocky landscape area in the Peak District, fire broke out in June. Sphagnum moss plants had helped keep some of the ground wet and prevented severe damage.

Dr Kate Ashbrook, a conservation ecologist and senior lecturer at the University of Worcester, said the most important thing to do should be to "protect the unburnt habitat".

"Any areas that escape the fire will contain the surviving animals or life," she said.

Wild Ken Hill, a nature restoration project in Norfolk which was hit by a fire in 2022, provides some hope that scorched areas can recover.

Its founder, Dominic Buscall, said: "The wildfire at Wild Ken Hill in 2022 was devastating at the time, but one of the most striking lessons has been how resilient nature can be.

"Although some impacts take years to recover from, vegetation regenerated quickly and wildlife has steadily recolonised the affected areas. Given the opportunity, natural systems can be remarkably robust."

However, Ashbrook said true ecological recovery after fires depended on soil fungi returning, plants re-establishing and invertebrate populations recovering, while the loss of mature woodland could take decades to reverse.

What about our gardens?

For many people, the damage is closer to home. Weeks of hot weather have caused brown lawns, wilted plants and cracked soil.

But Josh Cushing, owner of Goldstone Hall Hotel & Gardens in Shropshire, said grass was "remarkably resilient and won't die because of a period of drought".

Darren Rudge, a BBC radio broadcaster known as the Laughing Gardener, said lawns were "asleep rather than dead".

"The roots are alive. It's totally OK and you do not need to worry about your lawn."

What could the future look like?

Climate change is creating hotter, drier conditions, more vulnerable to fires.

Ashbrook said the frequency of grassfires was of particular concern because "wildlife in the UK is already struggling".

"A lot of British wildlife is on its knees anyway, so anything that is going to make it more stressed, whether that's the loss of flowers or a nesting habitat, has a significant impact," she said.

Conservationists say by making the countryside more resilient, nature itself can become part of the defence.

However, "the biggest factor that will reduce wildfire risk is people's behaviour", according to Brown.

He urged people not to light disposable barbecues or campfires in green spaces, avoid dropping lit cigarettes and take litter home.

"Everyone has a role to play," said Buscall. "Most wildfires are caused by human activity, which means most are preventable."

The burnt landscapes may look damaged now, but with time and changes to how we protect our countryside, experts say recovery is possible.

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How has climate change reshaped drought?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gwvw7knn4o, 3 days ago

It's a little on the nose for nature to give us another drought 50 years after the one we had in 1976 but here we are.

It illustrates the impact of climate change, population growth and the way we use water today.

Half a century of climate change has given us the "flash drought", which although not a proper metereological term, nicely points out, as a description of the 2026 dry spell, how much the climate has changed.

In 1976 we had a dry winter, spring and then summer leading up to the drought itself. This year we have full reservoirs from a winter of endless rain but then sometime in the spring, that just stopped.

As if a switch is being flipped, there's no more rain and we enter a drought with a speed we've not really seen before, hence the term "flash".

I usually shorthand the impact of climate change in the West Midlands as "wetter winters and hotter, drier summers" and 2026 is the perfect illustration of this.

Walking round Draycote Water, a reservoir in Dunchurch, Warwickshire run by Severn Trent, you can see the changes.

The 240-hectare reservoir and country park draws its water from River Leam and supplies drinking water to Rugby and Coventry,

Fifty years ago in the drought of 1976, this reservoir was just 43% full after a very dry end to the previous year, followed by a dry spring.

Today in the drought of 2026, Draycote is 80% full but surrounded by parched, fried fields.

There I met Doug Clarke, the water resources planning lead for Severn Trent who kindly dipped into the archive to look up those 1976 water levels for me.

And not only is there more water in the reservoir today, there's going to be even more in the future.

"We're increasing the height of the reservoir" he said.

"By about 60cm and that will increase the amount of water we can store in here."

There was a hosepipe ban in 1976, but for the last 30 years Severn Trent hasn't had one.

They've got new water storage, better ability to move water around and they would say they've made good progress in reducing leaks, but Doug admits a drought was still a big deal.

"What we're seeing is about 400 million litres extra a day, a 25% uplift, on the amount that's going out on these really hot days," he explains.

One of the most compelling bits of evidence for climate change since 1975 is actually the Central England Temperature Record, taken in Pershore, Worcestershire, among other places.

On the graph below, you can see the red bar of the hot summer of 1976 and then, since about 1990, it's just a forest of red bars as climate change pushes up average temperatures in the Midlands.

There may not be a hosepipe ban but the advice is we still need to take care of our water, because half a century on from 1976, what was once extraordinary when it comes to hot weather, is now the new normal.

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Wildfire damage could take hundreds of years to recover from, experts say

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0qvp00x707o, 3 days ago

It could be hundreds of years before habitats destroyed by wildfires in Wales recover, an environment watchdog has said.

Nick Thomas, from Natural Resources Wales (NRW), said if soil had been incinerated in upland areas rich in peat, which grows at about a millimetre a year, it could take centuries for the vegetation to come back.

He expects 2026 to be the worst year Wales has ever experienced.

As well as damage to natural habitats and animal life, Thomas warned loss of soil could increase flood risks, because it no longer acted as a "sponge" holding water on high ground.

Wales has witnessed huge wildfires this summer, including one major incident and the evacuation of a village in Conwy county.

In the Rhinogydd mountain range in Gwynedd, which is home to a National Nature Reserve and a Special Area of Conservation, a blaze burned for nearly two weeks and affected over 2,000 acres.

Both fires were visible from space.

Meanwhile, a fire in Blaenavon, Torfaen, could be smelt as far away as Cardiff.

Although fewer wildfires were reported in the second half of July in England and Wales compared with 2025, Thomas said: "This year seems to have been worse, I would say, than any of the ones I can remember.

"I would expect this to probably be the worst year for wildfires perhaps we've ever had."

While some areas will recover quite quickly - potentially within a couple of years - he said: "It all depends on how deep the fire goes.

"If a fire burns into the soil and incinerates the soil... then you've lost hundreds of years worth of soil.

"So it's going to take hundreds of years really for that vegetation to come back in a similar way to what it was."

Thomas said a large wildfire on Mynydd Llantysilio near Llangollen, Denbighshire, in 2018 had incinerated about 10cm (4in) of peat in some areas.

Eight years on, there is still no heather in large patches.

The mountain also saw a "big upsurge" in heather beetles this year - possibly linked to milder winters. The beetles stripped plants of their leaves and left combustible woody stems, he said.

"It's kind of all part of the vicious circle which is associated with climate change."

While it may be months before the full scale of the devastation this year is known, Thomas said the situation was "very frightening".

"It is really worrying because there is so much moorland, heathland in Wales, and forest, which can easily be set on fire. So, we need to be doing more to address that," he said.

Management of moors and heaths to "reduce the fuel loads" could help, he said, as well as grazing, but: "The public can do so much because they're all started by people basically."

Bird protection charity RSPB Cymru said it was also devastated to see the impact of wildfires, which "can have significant impact on breeding birds and fragile habitats that can take years to fully recover".

Julian Thompson, who has been warden of Pensychnant Conservation Centre for 36 years, said the soil had turned to dust "right down to the rock" after the nature reserve had lost about one-third of its 150 acres during the wildfire in July.

While fires have been used for centuries as a way of managing the mountainside, Thompson said controlled burning was usually done in the winter.

"This fire, being in the summer in the middle of a drought, was so intense that it's burnt away the soil. There is no organic matter left."

Rare moths and snakes 'destroyed'

He added: "Things like the snakes, adders, reptiles, they can not escape, so they will be destroyed.

"All the invertebrates will be destroyed.

"There are a number of very rare moths which occur there, in particular two - the Ashworth's Rustic and the Weaver's Wave - which occur in the mountains of Snowdonia and Meirionyddshire and nowhere else.

"This is the best-known place for them. So on our land... they will have been destroyed."

The moths would survive in some surrounding areas, he said, but their habitat is "diminished".

"Nature is quite resilient, but it can't cope with catastrophes on this scale over and over again. It won't keep on coming back."

The Pensychnant reserve is supported by volunteers who help preserve and run the centre, including Gwyndaf Pritchard, from Dwygyfylchi.

He said it had been a special place for the community and that the loss of wildlife had been "tragic".

"We've talked about it for years and years, but now climate change is here and we have to start to respect the countryside and we have to be in a position to actually stop these fires happening again," he said.

Evie Roberts, a silversmith who teaches jewellery-making at the centre, said people needed to be educated about the dangers of discarding bottles or cigarettes, which could cause fires.

"Your actions can have devastating effects and I think that education for people is vital to stop this," she said.

"There's a new fire every week at the moment, and there's so much of our land damaged."

Erosion leaves family facing last summer in cliff-edge chalet

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq89d2nx2qvo, 3 days ago

The owner of a clifftop holiday home on the fast eroding East Yorkshire coast fears this could be the last summer she enjoys there.

Deborah Hawksley, 68, said the forces of coastal erosion have brought the cliff edge "perilously close" to her bungalow.

East Riding of Yorkshire Council (ERYC) said 127 other residential properties are expected to be lost to coastal erosion over the next 100 years.

The Hawksley family, who have owned the site since the 1940s, are now facing the prospect of moving out.

Hawksley said: "In reality I think this possibly is our last summer. I can't imagine life without it."

Erosion rates vary significantly on the East Yorkshire coast, but recent records suggest parts of the coastline are eroding at an average rate of up to 4.5 metres per year, according to the council.

Dr Anna Bird, a professor in geology at the University of Hull, said the rate of erosion is being "accelerated by our changing climate".

She said heavy rainfall was playing a significant part.

"The sediment [mud] just becomes very waterlogged and in between the individual grains ends up filling up with water and that increases the pressure that the sediment is under and we get landslides," she said.

ERYC said in certain, undefended locations, individual cliff losses of 20 metres or more a year can be seen.

A recent report from The University of Hull backed calls for better support for communities impacted by coastal erosion.

A Defra spokesperson said: "This government is determined to make a difference to coastal communities, and over £600m has been invested in protecting communities from sea and tidal flooding over the last two years, with a further £30m specifically for coastal communities facing eroding shores announced in January."

In July, ERYC announced that construction was under way on a housing project on the site of former agricultural buildings in Skipsea designed to accommodate residents affected by coastal erosion.

Councillor Paul West said it was hoped the new homes would be ready for people to move into by March.

"We are going to deliver nine socially affordable homes and the priority will be given to those people affected by coastal change," he said.

Hawksley said her clifftop chalet is living on "borrowed time" and it will be a "wrench" to leave it behind.

"We've agreed [with ERYC] not to stay here any more once the bungalow gets to within 9.3m (30.5ft) from the cliff edge and we are very close now," she said.

The 9.3 metre figure is based on the maximum land loss experienced due to erosion seen in any particular location, according to the council.

Hawksley's holiday home will eventually face demolition because she said there are "safety concerns" for people who may be walking on the beach below.

Richard Jackson, ERYC's coastal change manager told a parliamentary select committee last year that "over the past 10 years we have lost about 66 residential properties which have had to be demolished".

For Hawksley, the rapid erosion at Skipsea could soon bring to a close her family's long association with the area.

"My grandfather built the original bungalow here out of wood but we had to demolish that in the 1980's and build a new one further back as the clifftop got closer," she said.

"I have spent many a happy summer holiday here since childhood and I can't imagine life without it but, you know, everything comes to an end."

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Winemakers prosper but veg farms wilt in the drought

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c141vjlyjgko, 4 days ago

Until this year, Phil Collins, a Wiltshire vegetable farmer, had never had an overdraft. Six weeks without rain has scorched his cauliflowers, shrivelled his spuds, and shrunk his bank balance.

"Six thousand cauliflowers at £1.25 each," he said ruefully. "You do the maths."

Veg farmers across the country are warning of a shortage of produce after the driest July for 190 years. But there are winners, notably winemakers.

"The vines love the warm, dry days," said Somerset winemaker Sandy Luck.

So as the heatwaves and drought persist, who is thriving, who is struggling, and will farmers have to change what they grow in a warming climate?

Walking between the vines in Sandy Luck's Aldwick Estate vineyard, just south of Bristol, you could be in Southern France, not North Somerset. The sun is out, again, and the grapes are plump and plentiful.

"We're getting nice 'veraison' here, look at that," she says, showing me a bunch where some of the young green fruit of the red grape varieties are starting to turn purple.

"We're ahead of the game this year."

Winemakers love this summer. The long hot dry days have helped ripen the fruit and "keep disease at bay", as Luck puts it. There is a subtle shift too.

More sun means more sugar in the grapes, which will mean higher alcohol content.

This allows English winemakers to produce still red wines, where traditionally the cool climate had limited them to drier sparkling varieties.

A hot dry summer in 2025 meant Aldwick produced some "very good looking still reds" from the Pinot Noir grapes, instead of using them for fizz.

"It makes a more rounded wine," Luck explained. "The quality is higher, and we have more variety we can make," she explained.

Simply put, the South and South West of England are now frequently getting the kind of summers found in central France 20 years ago. So making a greater variety of wine styles is now possible, not only the traditional dry English whites and sparkling products.

Hot summers also mean more wine. In 2025, English wine production was 55% up on the previous year.

So could French weather mean French wine prices? English wine has always been more expensive than continental competition.

"Sadly not," Luck smiled. "We are a small team, our vineyard is just over 12 acres, and we are going for quality not quantity."

Just 50 miles from the thriving Somerset grapevines, in a field near Devizes, Phil Collins shows me a much sadder sight.

"Six and a half thousand cauliflowers here, which have just basically cooked," he explained.

The leaves are brown and crispy. Inside there are tiny cauliflowers, brown and dried up. We walk on, through a field of potatoes, the plants shrivelled to nothing and lying brown on the soil.

"This is Marfona, which is meant to be a drought resistant variety," Collins said.

"But this year has just been so dry, it couldn't cope with it. The plants should be two foot high and green - there's nothing left there."

He and his team sell veg through farmers' markets, but still compete with supermarket prices. If he was to irrigate all his crops to keep them alive, the costs would be so high his cauliflowers, spuds and carrots would be far pricier than supermarket alternatives.

He picks runner beans each morning, and is getting "about a third of the normal crop".

"I've never had an overdraft in thirty years," he said. "This year has been so bad, we've no choice. We will get over it, but it'll take a while."

Met Office climate scientists are clear: the heatwaves of 2026 are exacerbated by climate change, and the UK will see more hot dry summers more often.

"We are seeing the emergence of new warmer climates," explained Mike Kendon, climate scientist at the Met Office.

Farmers like Sandy Luck and Phil Collins know this, and are trying to plan.

For vineyards, it is mostly good news. Well-tended vines sink deep roots, and the heat stress "is actually good for them, making them go deeper, and put out more grapes," explained Luck.

But Phil Collins is wondering what plants to grow next year. "Pumpkins are a mediterranean crop, they should do OK, but even they have struggled this year with the dry," he said.

He looked out across his fields of brown, scorched plants.

"I really just don't know what to grow if it carries on like this."

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Working estate adapting to climate change

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ceqe1xe75gvo, 4 days ago

On a working estate like Dudmaston, near Bridgnorth, work to maintain the site is constantly happening.

From looking after the hall and the nearby Comer Woods, to the gardens, park and play areas, there is a lot of land to keep an eye on.

However, staff at the National Trust site are having to adapt to the recent and prolonged hot and dry weather, and longer-term climate change.

"For us as an estate, we need to consider how we move forwards with this warmer weather," said Abi Leyland-Richardson, senior visitor experience officer.

Like so many sites in the region, the concern about fires is high.

Because of this, she said rangers at the estate were working a lot on protecting the landscape in the dry weather.

"The wildfire risk here is really quite high," said Leyland-Richardson.

"When I was here on Sunday, I was keeping an eye on the fires burning in Enville because they were so close to our woodland, and that's quite a scary thing for us."

The fire, off Morfe Lane, about six miles away from Dudmaston, affected about 20 acres of land and started accidentally.

"We've got lots of species we need to protect," said Leyland-Richardson.

"We're really just asking people not to bring barbecues, and take their litter home because even a foil packet in the right conditions can spark a fire."

Outside of the fire risk, staff have to think about what the estate looks like - grass and flowers are being affected by the lack of rainfall.

"Our planting, a lot of it is herbaceous perennials which are suffering, so we might have to think about planting for dry conditions, something hardier like the lavender."

Not only that, the weather has meant changes to staff care.

"We had to make sure we put our volunteers and staff safety first, we've had to cancel walks, we've had to provide extra water and shade and breaks for everyone," she said.

"One day was 36 degrees and we were down in the meadow.

"Climate is something we do need to consider here at Dudmaston."

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Creative climate action projects get funding boost

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8xy495zrno, 5 days ago

Several community-led projects in Bradford tackling climate change have been awarded up to £1,500 each from council-funded grants to help their work.

Arts and culture programme The Leap chose 17 organisations to receive funding to support projects which address climate change while strengthening local communities.

Among them are a musical instrument recycling project in Shipley, a youth horticulture course in Undercliffe and creative events including "compost puppet theatre".

Shabz Musaji, from The Leap, said: "By putting resources directly into the hands of grassroots leaders, we're ensuring climate action is shaped by the people who understand their communities best."

"These projects show that meaningful environmental change starts at a local level, with solutions designed by the communities they serve," Musaji said.

He added that the "demand and quality" of applications for funding showed the extent of the "passion and ambition for change" across Bradford.

'Empower people'

One grant recipient was the Yorkshire Women's Forum, which supports upcycling and recycling of household and textile products.

Tanu Patel, the forum's director, said the money would help them "take things further and try something different" by introducing an educational programme.

"If we educate women, we educate families, and we now need to teach young people about environmental responsibilities," she said.

"We've already got a line of women joined up to join the separate programme. It's upwards and onwards."

The funding, distributed through the Creative Climate Action Awards, aimed to empower people whose voices had traditionally been underrepresented in conversations about climate, according to The Leap.

The awards are part of The Leap's wider £1.5m climate action fund, which the organisation said "puts people and places at the heart of addressing climate issues in local communities".

Musaji, The Leap's community development manager, said: "We're the facilitators, but the ideas and inspiration come from individuals and community groups we work with.

"It's to empower people and places, especially in underrepresented communities where arts and culture is very rarely thought of as being part of the fabric of every day."

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'Football didn't come home but climate change did'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3qkkzdd22o, 5 days ago

BBC Springwatch presenter Chris Packham said "football didn't come home, but climate breakdown has come home to the UK" this summer, following the devastating wildfire in Suffolk.

A major incident was declared at Dunwich Heath after 150 hectares (371 acres) of flora went up in flames on Wednesday.

The adjacent RSPB Minsmere site, where the fire began and which also got damaged, was chosen as the base for Springwatch to celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2014, and Packham called it an "extraordinary place".

He feared the UK would face similar fires in future due to climate change and called on politicians to take action. The government said it was investing nearly £100m into tackling wildfires.

Packham told BBC Radio Suffolk: "We have to act [on climate change], and that means acting at individual levels.

"That's you and I making choices about the way that we live our lives.

"But also our politicians now need to step up and be very brave and bold, and confront this issue in a way that they haven't done previously."

Climate declaration won't stop wildfires - council

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8e51zj4vjo, 5 days ago

A county council has defended its choice to axe its climate emergency declaration after a huge wildfire destroyed acres of heathland.

Suffolk County Council, led by Reform UK, announced last month it had reversed the declaration, which was previously made in 2019 when the council was being led by the Conservatives.

On Wednesday, a huge wildfire broke out, destroying Dunwich Heath, which prompted the local Green Party to call for the declaration to be reinstated as it was "abundantly clear" Suffolk, like the rest of the world, was experiencing climate change.

But Morgan Brobyn, the council's cabinet member for food, waste and rural affairs, said "declaring a climate emergency does not stop a wildfire from starting".

"At a time like this, Suffolk residents expect elected representatives to come together, support those on the front line and thank the many people working tirelessly to protect lives, property and our natural environment," he said.

He added: "The decision taken by the council at its recent meeting was not about whether we care about the environment. We do.

"It was about ensuring our approach is focused on practical action and real outcomes rather than symbolic declarations."

He added that the climate remains a priority and his thoughts were with those affected at Dunwich.

Annette Dunning, Green councillor for Halesworth and the group's spokesperson for communities, said the efforts from the fire service at Dunwich Heath had been "truly amazing".

"At our recent protest at Endeavour House regarding scrapping the Climate Emergency Declaration, firefighters from Suffolk and the Fire Brigades Union joined us to explain the impact of the changing climate on their work and the increasing danger of wildfires in Suffolk," she said.

"The wildfire at Dunwich Heath makes it abundantly clear that Suffolk, like the rest of the world, is indeed experiencing a climate emergency.

"The council has a responsibility to show Suffolk residents that it realises this."

Harry Richardson, Conservative spokesperson for public health and environment, said the wildfires being seen across the UK and worldwide were "very clearly an emergency".

"We were pleased to be able to push Reform UK to amend their recent motion to at least accept the reality of climate change and will continue to try to ensure they take these issues seriously because I fear some in their ranks do not," he said.

Martin Cook, Labour group leader, said the "most practical climate action" was to cut the carbon we are putting into the atmosphere and prepare for "dangerously dry summers like this one".

"That's what the declaration was for," he said.

"We said back in July that ditching it was the wrong call. After the week Suffolk's just had, we believe that more than ever."

Last month, a protest was held outside the council's offices at Endeavour House in Ipswich after it voted to axe the declaration, where more than 70 people were in attendance.

Richard Beeby, the secretary for Suffolk's Fire Brigades Union, told protesters the declaration was not just a "piece of paper", but represented the "stark reality" for firefighters, reports the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

According to the council, a total of £14.7m has been invested in about 150 decarbonisation programmes since the declaration in 2019.

Of this, the vast majority of the money has come from government grants and interest-free loans, with £3.8m coming from the authority's cash reserves.

The money has only ever been used on an "invest-to-save" basis, meaning projects were already expected to deliver savings.

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Cats, condoms and licence plates: The sharks that will eat anything

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260803-extreme-eaters-the-wild-diet-of-the-oceans-toughest-sharks, 5 days ago

From antelopes to TVs, tiger sharks are far from picky eaters and will even brave hurricanes for a feast. Luckily, their extreme diet has upsides for others too.

The size of a small bus yet streamlined like a torpedo, and with an immensely powerful bite force, tiger sharks are one of the world's largest predatory sharks.

They are the "tanks" of the sea, says Neil Hammerschlag, lead researcher at the Marine Biodiversity Observation Network. Plus, they boast the widest diet of all shark species, earning them the nickname the "garbage cans of the ocean".

They will chow down on molluscs, stingrays, sea snakes, seals, squids and whales. They gobble up seabirds and land animals. Mole-rats, antelopes, dogs, goats and cats have turned up in their stomachs. One poor shark regurgitated one of Australia's spikiest inhabitants, an echidna. Perhaps its spines were too tickly.

Human rubbish is also on the menu: crisp packets, condoms, cigarettes, licence plates, tyres, TVs – even, reportedly, a full suit of armour.

As are humans. Together with great whites and bull sharks, tiger sharks are known as one of the world's "Big Three" most dangerous shark species – although you are much more likely to be carried away by a rip tide or struck by lightning.

They will even swim into the eye of a hurricane if it means they'll get a good meal. But their stomachs of steel have an upside for others too.

By scavenging, tiger sharks clear away dead and dying creatures in the food chain. In doing so, they help maintain the health of the seas.

The hurricane clean-up crew

When a storm is approaching, many "sharks detect the change in barometric pressure and move to deeper, less affected waters", says Phil Doherty, a lecturer in marine conservation science at Exeter University.

Tiger sharks, though, seem to turn up in anticipation of a feast – and stick around to "scavenge on animals that have died".

This was something Hammerschlag was able to track in detail when, on 6 October 2016, Hurricane Matthew swept through The Bahamas.

Tiger Beach – a large sandbank off the coast of Grand Bahama – is a popular dive spot, famous for its tiger sharks. Sandy flats are dotted with patches of seagrass and coral, and the clear, warm water is full of tiger sharks that are "longer than the water is deep", Hammerschlag says.

When the hurricane struck, the tiger sharks remained in shallow inshore waters – even as the site received a direct hit from the category-5 hurricane. And, by the time the storm had passed, the number of tiger sharks in the area had doubled.

Tiger sharks are ectothermic, or cold-blooded, says Hammerschlag, meaning they can't create their own heat. Their movements, therefore, tend to follow a layer of water, called an isotherm, at 26C (78.8F) – the same temperature at which a tropical cyclone can begin to form.

When pregnant, some tiger sharks even take refuge in the balmy waters of Tiger Beach – relying on the environment around them to "warm the bun in the oven", says Hammershlag.

Hammerschlag and his team had previously attached acoustic tags to the Tiger Beach tiger sharks to study the impact of tourism on the animals. The tags keep transmitting for 10 years so, in 2016, Hammerschlag saw an opportunity to study the sharks' reaction to Hurricane Matthew.

"My prevailing thought was that they would all flee," says Hammerschlag. "In shallow water, you get boulders flying, the seabed all stirred up. You see sharks, manatees…thrown onto the beach. But deeper water is not disturbed. Deep water provides a refuge from the storm."

Previous studies back up this assumption, showing that many sharks tend to leave coastal areas when a storm is imminent, and some species leave more than a week before one arrives.

Yet when Hammerschlag and his team tracked the tiger sharks before, during and after the hurricane, "I was shocked", he says. "Not only did they not flee, but on the very same day more tiger sharks arrived.

"The storm killed a lot of things: turtles, fish, lobsters, crabs, birds. We think the tiger sharks saw the coming storm as a scavenging opportunity to feed on the dead and dying."

Hammerschlag believes the tiger sharks were able to remain in the area during the storm because, he says, "they are built like tanks".

A fearsome maintenance squad

Tiger sharks have also learnt to take advantage of seasonal events, when they know there will be an abundance of food.

Take green turtle breeding season at Raine Island, Australia, for instance, or the summer fledging of albatross chicks at French Frigate Shoals atoll, Hawaii. The sharks time their arrival to coincide with a glut of easy prey – sometimes turning up at the same spot on the same day in consecutive years.

More like this:

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They will often travel long distances to reach that prey, routinely travelling more than 4,600 miles (7,500km) on their annual round-trip journey from tropical coral reefs to the open waters of the mid-North Atlantic, and back again. One tiger shark even travelled an astonishing 27,340 miles (44,000km) as it completed a three-year circuit around the Atlantic.

When they reach a favourite feeding ground, tiger sharks save their energy wherever possible. At Raine Island, they prefer to scavenge on dead and dying turtles rather than actively hunt healthy individuals.

This might sound like the stuff of nightmares for weakened turtles but, in doing this, the sharks prevent disease from spreading. Plus, by keeping turtle numbers in check, they protect seagrass from overgrazing – a crucial habitat for many marine species.

Natasha Marosi, a researcher at the University of Exeter, UK, and founder of the Fiji Shark Lab, regularly spends time getting to know the tiger sharks that frequent the seas around Fiji. Despite their fearsome reputation, she says, these sharks have personality.

Of her many encounters with these hardy sharks, Marosi says they leave her with a variety of feelings – from unsettled to awe struck.

"The individuals I have encountered have been uniquely different and exhibited different behaviours." A young female named Tsunami, she says, "is all sass and fire", while another named Jawgina channels "vulnerability and a warrior spirit simultaneously".

Similar stories come from the Bahamas, too, with divers observing that some of the Tiger Beach tiger sharks appear bold, while some seem shy. "I love spending time in the water surrounded by these extremely large apex predators," says Hammerschlag, whose previous research shows these sharks have complex social lives, and even favourite friends.

So, perhaps there is a softer side to these tanks of the ocean. While their diet is virtually limitless, tiger sharks are no mindless eating machines. And what's more, says Marosi, they play a vital role as apex predators in marine ecosystems.

"From their top-down control vantage point, they can influence the distribution, behaviour and abundance of other species within the food web." Tiger sharks' extreme diet, she says, keeps life in the ocean in balance.

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Could heatwaves make your food shop more expensive?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp879d2n3yno, 6 days ago

While this summer's hot and dry weather might be enjoyed by sunbathers, it is less than ideal for farmers. Could it also have an effect on the prices we pay for food at the shops?

A chilled supermarket aisle might just be the most comfortable place to be as heatwaves continue to warm up the UK.

Fridges are working in overdrive to keep produce cool, shutters are being pulled down to keep the hot air at bay, and some goods are being taken off the shelves on the hottest days.

More than half of England has entered drought conditions, according to a declaration by the Environment Agency last week.

But as temperatures continue to soar, the chillers are not the only thing that retailers might be adjusting.

Extreme weather creates a knock-on effect on all parts of the supply chain, and the British Retail Consortium is warning that could force prices up.

What is a supply chain?

A supply chain involves a small number of stages, from a product being made until it gets to the shops for people to buy.

If you take a loaf of bread as an example, first the grain is grown, harvested, milled and stored until it is ready to be taken to a factory.

Those ingredients are used to bake and package the bread, which is taken to warehouses before eventually ending up on supermarket shelves.

Each stage of that process will incur expenses such as transport and storage, and rising costs at any step could end up in the product you buy being more expensive.

Last week, farmers and flour producers said they were adapting to the challenges of dealing with the earliest harvest for 50 years.

And the National Farmers' Union has warned there could be a shortage of certain food products if current drought conditions continue.

Blackberries 'panic' and ripen early in extreme heat

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgewr15x2y7o, 6 days ago

Blackberries that are usually associated with being picked in the late summer and early autumn are ripening earlier than expected this year due to high summer temperatures.

The Woodland Trust recorded the first ripened blackberry on 26 June, and some people in Suffolk have shared that they picked up to 2lb (0.9kg) of the fruit in early July.

Experts say the early yield is a result of the plants being "stressed by the lack of water".

Temperatures in Suffolk soared to 37.3C in June, and the region was declared as being in drought on 29 July.

Marlow Renton is one of the co-founders of Wild Food UK — a company that teaches people about foraging. They run courses in Thetford Forest and Thorpe Forest on the Norfolk/Suffolk border.

He said "this year and last year have been probably the earliest" he had seen blackberries ripe enough for picking.

And it's not just the blackberries being affected by the heat.

"The gooseberry bushes, which are actually a more common hedgerow plant than you might think, I'm seeing them already dried up and shrivelled up whereas normally they'd still be ripening and looking good on the bushes at the moment," said Renton.

Patrick Barker farms at Westhorpe, near Stowmarket in Suffolk, and his land has 48km (30 miles) of hedgerow.

"What we're seeing this year is haws on hawthorn, plums in some of the hedges, apples on apple trees and blackberries on brambles at the same time that they're in flower, which is a really curious kind of anomaly for nature," he said.

"In very dry conditions, hedgerow plants, and trees as well, get to a point where they start to panic that they are either going to run out of water or die.

"So what they do is they get as much fruit out as early as they can just to go through all their natural processes."

Barker said the effect of hot, dry weather on wild fruits such as blackberries will have a negative impact on animals.

"If there's a loss of fruit early, all those birds that come down from Scandinavia and northern Europe over the course of the autumn and the winter to feed won't find any food," he said.

"A lot of the birds that are here now that look to go back to sub–Saharan Africa over the course of autumn feed up on blackberries to put as much weight on as they possibly can before they migrate.

"So they're going to have to look for food a lot harder."

However, Renton has seen a positive side to plants producing fruit earlier in the past couple of years while foraging.

"The oak trees were dripping with acorns last year as well and the upshot of that this year is I've seen more baby oak trees than I've ever seen before."

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Uni records hottest, sunniest and driest month ever

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c07rmn9dkvmo, 6 days ago

A university has said July was the hottest, sunniest and driest month since records began 120 years ago, as the country remains gripped by a heatwave.

Experts at the University of Reading's Atmospheric Observatory described July as a "remarkable month" with 359 hours of sunshine and average daily temperatures of 21.2C (70.16F), exceeding the previous record set in July 2006.

The university said some locations around Reading also recorded no measurable rainfall at all, something not seen since local rainfall records began in 1858.

Prof Hannah Cloke, from the University of Reading said it is a sign that we are not doing enough when it comes to climate change.

The regius professor in meteorology and climate science, said : "We're in this for the long term and it is going to get worse and worse and we need to start adapting now and we need to stop burning fossil fuels."

Cloke said: "We've created this problem for ourselves and science has been telling us this for a while."

The university noted that only two days failed to reach 25C (77F) throughout July and temperatures exceeded 30C (86F) on eight days.

Sixteen days this year have been above 30C, surpassing the previous annual record of 14 set in 1976.

The prolonged high temperatures combined with low rainfall means water reserves have rapidly depleted, which sparked what the Environment Agency called a "flash drought," beginning suddenly rather than over many months or years.

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.

Multiple water companies have implemented temporary hosepipe bans across England, including Southern Water, South East Water, and Thames Water.

"We're under water use restrictions and we keep being told that these records are breaking and we should be paying attention," said Cloke.

US appeals court halts Trump ballroom project paving way for Supreme Court showdown

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyq80jqqleo, 2 days ago

The Trump administration has been ordered to stop construction on President Donald Trump's $400m (£297m) ballroom at the White House.

A federal appeals court dealt the latest setback to the controversial project on Friday, testing Trump's presidential authority. He has vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court.

"Whether or not a ⁠massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help," the panel's majority said.

The order upholds a preliminary injunction won by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which sued after the administration tore down the East Wing last year to begin the project without congressional approval.

"Congress has not ceded unfettered authority to the Executive Branch to dramatically redesign, reshape, and reconstruct the White House — the People's House — to fit a particular President's desires," the panel said.

The three-judge panel, in a 2-1 decision, said: "Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence."

"The President has no - and claims no - constitutionally assigned authority over that property, which is designed and maintained for the use of all Presidents, current and future, and for the American people," the opinion said.

The administration appealed to the court after a federal judge twice blocked above-ground construction on the ballroom, while still allowing underground work to proceed.

The ruling on Friday upholds the order blocking above-ground construction without congressional approval. The appeals court delayed implementation of its ruling for 14 days to allow the Trump administration to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The BBC has contacted the White House and Department of Justice for comment.

Trump railed against the "horrendous" and "politically motivated" decision on social media, highlighting the dissenting judge's opinion that the order is "a blatant abuse of discretion".

He said the military and Secret Service viewed the ruling as a national security threat.

"This unjust decision must be overturned by the Supreme Court in its entirety," he wrote.

He also repeated that the ballroom was being built ahead of schedule and under budget, as a gift to the American people funded by a coalition of private donors.

However, Republicans have sought to use a portion of $1bn (£740m) in taxpayer funds for Secret Service security upgrades - a plan that was brushed aside by a budget watchdog in May.

President Trump has asserted that the new ballroom is needed to "accommodate people for grand parties, State Visits", and has also said that it is "vital for National Security".

The ballroom building would consist of the large entertaining space above ground and also a security complex below ground. Trump doubled down on the need for the space after an assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in April.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation celebrated the ruling on Friday, noting that no above-ground construction can take place "unless and until" Congress takes action.

"The White House, a global landmark that symbolizes American identity and the ideals of democracy, belongs to the American people," said Brent Leggs, President and CEO of the National Trust.

"The National Trust for Historic Preservation and its partners are proud to defend this irreplaceable monument on behalf of all Americans."

Trump has touted the ballroom project repeatedly since he unveiled plans for it in July 2025. It would have been the most substantial structural change to the presidential residence in more than 70 years.

But the project has been mired in legal issues since October, when the Trump administration demolished the East Wing, which was built in 1902, to begin construction. Trump initially said the project would be "near" the East Wing, not that it would be demolished.

Government lawyers have argued the additional security complex and features included in the ballroom project are needed to protect the White House complex from drones, ballistic missiles, biohazards and other threats - changes essential to protecting the president, his family, and staff. Trump said on Friday that construction includes bomb shelters, hospital and medical facilities and top secret military facilities.

But the Trust said there was no basis to "disturb" the White House and argued that having a ballroom isn't a national security emergency.

The three-judge appeals court panel said on Friday that its ruling "has nothing at all to do with whether the proposed ballroom is desirable", nor does it weigh in on whether the administration may ultimately construct the ballroom.

"What it does mean is that the Defendants may not do so during the district court's expeditious litigation without securing Congress's authorization, as the Constitution and laws require," the order said.

Trump's ex-lawyer Todd Blanche narrowly confirmed as US attorney general

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cewr898jy8go, yesterday

US President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer Todd Blanche has been narrowly confirmed as attorney general - the nation's top law enforcement official.

The vote brings to an end a lengthy standoff between Senate Republicans and the Trump administration over Blanche, who has served as acting attorney general since April.

Blanche won confirmation in a 50-49 vote overnight, with two Republican senators, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, joining all Democrats to oppose his nomination.

Senator Bill Cassidy cast the deciding vote, a decision closely watched in Washington given the years of acrimony between the Louisiana Republican and Trump.

After the vote, Blanche said he was "deeply honoured by the trust and confidence President Trump has placed in me".

Some Republican senators had raised concerns about Blache's handling of the release of Jeffrey Epstein-related documents and his role in establishing Trump's $1.8bn (£1.3bn) "anti-weaponisation" fund.

The fund was planned to provide compensation to individuals who alleged government persecution but critics including Murkowski feared it would go to individuals who were prosecuted for participating in the 6 January attack on Congress in 2021.

Blanche eventually pledged to walk back the fund after blowback from Republican senators during his confirmation hearings.

It remains unclear whether the commitment is legally binding or whether Trump could later persuade Blanche, his former personal attorney, to revive a similar scheme under another name.

The issues surrounding Blanche meant Senators Collins and Murkowski held off from backing Blanche, with the latter citing her lack of confidence in Blanche to "check the worst impulses of this administration".

Murkowski announced on Friday she would oppose Blanche, citing concerns over the "politicisation" of the justice department.

Collins also raised concerns about Blanche's role in settling Trump's $10bn lawsuit with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), but said he ultimately trusted Blanche to give the president candid legal advice.

Before casting the deciding vote, Cassidy announced that he believed Blanche was the best option the president would put forward.

"This is not a referendum on President Trump, it is a decision regarding Mr Blanche, in very specific circumstances," said Cassidy on Friday. "All considered, I will vote for Mr Blanche."

Cassidy acknowledged Trump is the ultimate decider on the direction of the justice department, but that Senate confirmation would give Blanche "greater leverage to push for things that should be pushed for."

During Trump's second impeachment in 2021, Cassidy voted to convict Trump over the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot. The vote did not pass, and when Trump returned to office, he successfully forced Cassidy into retirement by backing a primary challenger for his Louisiana Senate seat earlier this year.

In a post on X, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer expressed concern that Blanche's appointment would be an "excuse on a silver platter to keep up his pervasive, breathtaking corruption".

"Todd Blanche has no intention of stopping Trump's corruption. He advanced his career enabling it," he wrote. "Every senator who voted to confirm him has now branded themselves as an enabler, too."

But most Republicans swiftly celebrated the victory.

Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley - chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee - wrote on X that Blanche had shown "extraordinary patience, compassion [and] tenacity" throughout the appointment process.

"There's no doubt he's qualified," Grassley wrote.

Blanche was already deputy attorney general when he took up the interim leadership role in April, after Pam Bondi was fired.

Hunter Biden tells BBC his pardon was 'not good' for US or his father's legacy

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8ey458pv5o, yesterday

Hunter Biden has told the BBC he was "the most privileged person there is" after receiving a presidential pardon from his father, former US President Joe Biden, acknowledging that it was not a good choice for America or his father's legacy.

In a wide-ranging interview with BBC Newsnight, Hunter Biden defended the controversial pardon, revealed his father's "painful" cancer has spread, ruled out seeking elected office and spoke about helping others recover from addiction.

Asked about the 2024 pardon, he said he understood the criticism but noted: "What would you have thought of my dad if he did not do that for me."

"It's something that is easily criticised and for good reason," he added.

"It's not fair… All I know is that I'm grateful that he did it for me," he said, acknowledging the pardon was "not good" for the American people, the constitution - or his father's legacy.

He argued to the BBC that his father ultimately acted out of concern that he would become a target under Donald Trump's incoming administration.

"I was the only one in the world that could have gotten what I got from the only person in the world who could give it, my father."

Hunter Biden also insisted he and his father had never discussed the possibility of a pardon before it was granted.

"There is no way that you can have those kinds of discussions that would not become public," he said.

President Biden granted his son a full and unconditional pardon in December 2024, despite repeatedly saying beforehand that he would not use the powers of the presidency to intervene in his son's legal cases. In announcing the decision, the former president said his son had been "selectively and unfairly prosecuted".

The pardon covered his son's federal gun conviction, a tax case he'd pleaded guilty to and any federal offences committed between 2014 and 2024.

Asked about the depths of his addiction, he described drinking almost a gallon of vodka a day while smoking crack cocaine almost every 15 minutes at its worst.

"It was hell on earth," he said. "There's nothing glamorous about it."

Reflecting on why he turned to drugs and alcohol, Hunter Biden rejected the suggestion that he felt untouchable because he was the son of a president.

"I wasn't reaching for anything except oblivion," he said. He noted that his addiction was a way to escape feelings of anxiety and isolation.

The drugs and alcohol initially felt like a solution before becoming "the thing that almost killed me", he noted.

Hunter Biden got emotional at times in the interview, notably when discussing his father's health.

"Cancer is really hard," he said, stopping to clear his throat. "It's really sad to watch."

He revealed that the "cancer has spread, metastasised into his bones and further. It's very painful" and "very debilitating".

"My dad is, to this day, the centre of our family," he said. "He's the best father, the best husband, the best grandfather."

"The only thing that I say about my dad, about his health right now, is I wish he would complain more."

Hunter Biden also reflected on the presidential debate in June 2024 that ultimately ended his father's re-election campaign. He said he had watched it from his home in California and immediately sensed something was wrong.

"I was shocked," he said. "I knew something was wrong."

Hunter Biden has previously argued that his father's poor debate performance reflected physical exhaustion after extensive travel. Following Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis, he has also questioned whether the illness may already have been affecting his father.

He said his father remains politically engaged and determined to continue speaking publicly.

When asked about rumours that he might enter politics - or even make a run for the presidency - Biden said he himself had "no interest in elected politics" and dismissed any suggestion that he would one day seek office.

Instead, Biden said he wanted to devote his time to speaking about addiction and recovery, which he described as a cause capable of bridging America's political divides.

"I believe that addiction and the hope of recovery are something that connect us all," he said.

Asked what made him proudest of his father, Hunter Biden pointed not to his years in public office but to his resilience.

"I'm most proud of his resilience," he said. "He's proven time and time again that when you get knocked down, you can get up.

"He's the toughest man I know."

Coroners try to identify dozens of bodies kept in 'deplorable conditions' at US funeral home

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c86nv0elnzlo, 2 days ago

This story contains details some might find distressing

Investigators are working to identify remains and notify families after nearly 60 improperly stored bodies were found at a Chicago funeral home.

The Cook County Medical Examiner's Office, which is leading the investigation, said the process could take days, as families wait to learn how their loved ones' remains were left "in various states of decomposition".

The medical examiner's office said it was alerted by state and federal authorities who made the discovery at South Chicago Chapel on Thursday.

US funeral home regulations are mostly set by states. Calls for stricter oversight have risen after a number of recent high-profile incidents.

South Chicago Chapel did not respond to multiple calls from the BBC for comment.

Authorities were said to have worked overnight taking bodies from the funeral home to start the identification process.

The funeral home's director, Johanna Morgan, had been "allowing multiple decedents to be kept in an unrefrigerated area with deplorable conditions including rodent infestation, causing decomposition and maggot infestation of the bodies", according to records seen by the BBC's media partner CBS News.

The state has suspended Morgan's license, according to a statement sent to the BBC by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR).

Images from the scene on Friday show Chicago officials going in and out of South Chicago Chapel loading body bags into vans.

One woman told CBS News Chicago that her deceased sister was supposed to be cremated at the funeral home, but now she is unsure if she was in fact given her sister's remains.

"We don't know if Melody is in there or not," Patrice Halliburton said. "So right now, we're more fearful... than we are angry. I'd rather save that anger for later when we know for sure what's going on."

According to the Illinois Secretary of State's website, the active business license of South Chicago Chapel lists Clark Morgan as president.

Clark Morgan - Johanna Morgan's husband - also had his funeral director's license revoked in 2024, IDFPR said.

'Extremely disturbing'

Clark Morgan also owned and operated Heights Crematory in Chicago, but it was shut down in 2025 after investigators found bodies there had been mishandled, county records show.

"It is extremely disturbing that the same individuals who appear to be involved with the events at South Side Chapel are the same persons," Michael Sharkey, general counsel at the Illinois Funeral Directors Association, said in a statement.

Sharkey told the BBC he was the one to initially report the incident at Heights Crematory last year that led the Morgans to close the facility and have their license suspended.

"Why wasn't the comptroller watching these people," Sharkey said about the latest incident, adding that in general he thinks the IDFPR has done a good job.

He explained that while funeral homes are subject to national regulations set by the Federal Trade Commission, those laws mostly have to do with pricing and contracts.

Each state has their own set of individual rules and regulations that focus more on the day-to-day operations.

In Illinois, this includes what Sharkey described as "quite strict regulations on how decedents are to be handled".

State law prohibits funeral homes from laying bodies on top of another, for example, he said.

"Every individual should have their own place in which they are stored," he continued.

Another state regulation is called "chain of custody", a required written log of every movement that the body makes from the time they enter the funeral home's care. The funeral home maintains the log which the state will occasionally audit.

When asked if there are laws in Illinois that require routine inspection of funeral homes and chain of custody records, he replied: "There are supposed to be."

Funeral directors are required to be licensed in Illinois.

Across the US, local and state authorities issue licences and conduct inspections, similarly to Illinois. Some states don't require licenses at all.

In Colorado, where nearly 200 bodies were found at the Return to Nature funeral home in 2023, the state did not require operators to be licensed. That will now be required beginning in January 2027.

In the UK, a funeral director was sentenced to prison for 20 years after police discovered dozens of bodies and a half tonne of ashes inside the funeral home.

The incident sparked calls for regulation while fuelling years of nightmares for loved ones.

Dan Ford, president of the National Funeral Directors Association in the US, told the BBC he was "absolutely heartbroken" over the incident in Chicago.

"I feel for everybody that's affected, all the families and loved ones," he said.

Mysterious orb seen racing over residential area in new UFO files

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8kr7p2pmdo, 2 days ago

The Pentagon has released a fresh batch of declassified UFO files, with never-before-seen footage, renderings, and documents chronicling the mysterious objects.

Videos show a mysterious orb whizzing over a residential area in the Middle East, and footage of a black sphere hovering over the Pacific Ocean, seemingly vanishing for a moment before resurfacing.

This latest release contains 41 files in total: over a dozen videos, three images, and a score of PDF documents. The oldest document is from 1953, and the most recent one is from this year.

The US defence department uploaded the first tranche of 161 files to their website on 8 May, with promises of more to come.

After President Trump called for the documents to be released in an executive order earlier this year, the Pentagon has declassified hundreds of files in a series of five drops.

Here's what's included in this latest tranche:

Video footage captured over the Gulf of Oman in 2021 appears to show a dark "cold orb" moving in irregular patterns. What at first glance resembles a housefly darting across the frame, is reportedly an Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) measuring around 4 feet (1.2 metres) in diameter.

Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena is the official term used by the US government and scientists to describe objects such as these. Distinct from Unidentified Flying Objects, UAP's can be found on land and underwater, as well as soaring in the air.

Another video, captured by a US military sensor camera at an undisclosed location in the Middle East in 2025, shows a round sphere travelling in a straight line over what looks like an urban residential area.

In one declassified FBI document, a former military pilot describes seeing lights in the sky in October 2023 on a flight between Boston and Dublin. He claimed that many other pilots have witnessed similar events between midnight and 3am.

The white lights would start out dim, getting progressively brighter before fizzling out. Some of the lights remained still, while others moved in straight lines, sometimes changing directions, the pilot said. He has seen variations of these lights at least ten times since spotting the lights for the first time in 2023.

In footage captured over the Pacific Ocean in 2019, a black sphere appears and then disappears from view. When it reappears, visibly quivering, it slowly drifts from left to right.

The video's description noted that although the imagery was captured by a sensor, the display itself was recorded using a handheld device, which may account for some of the flickering visible in the footage.

In a 1953 PDF document, the US Naval Photographic Interpretation Center outlines its conclusions about two videos captured in the western United States, in Montana and Utah in 1950 and 1952, respectively. In the memo, the centre describes objects that appear to increase in size as their "luminosity" increases. It concludes that the videos depict objects whose characteristics are "inconsistent with those of natural phenomena".

All of the images in this latest release are renderings, meaning they are artistic interpretations of first-hand descriptions of extra-terrestrial encounters.

One rendering portrays a vast dark triangle in the sky, with round lights marking each corner. This image is based on a first-hand encounter by two former US military service members from the summer of 2011, the description said.

Public interest in extraterrestrial life has resurged in the United States in recent years. In 2022, Congress held its first UFO hearings in five decades, while the military pledged to increase transparency surrounding the issue.

Announcing this fifth drop of files, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the department will release additional documents on a "rolling basis".

South Korea space agency shares Moon images after SpaceX rocket debris crash

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqjxgx5y51lo, 3 days ago

South Korea's space agency has released images that show the Moon after part of a SpaceX rocket crashed into its surface on Wednesday.

The Korean AeroSpace Administration (KASA) said lunar orbiter Danubri captured images after the impact, which it shared alongside photos of what the Moon's surface looked like before the crash.

Rocket debris struck the Moon at around 06:35 GMT on Wednesday, according to the South Korean space agency.

SpaceX has said the impact was not intentional.

Re-usable Falcon 9 rockets were designed to allow part of the rocket to return to Earth (the upper stage) and other sections to be shed in space. SpaceX has used this type of rocket on several missions.

The empty upper stage of this Falcon 9 rocket, which scientists predicted would hit the Moon at a speed of about 5,400mph (8,700km/h), is about the size of a five-storey building and weighs approximately 4,000kg (630st) on Earth.

The short, dramatic flash created when the rocket part hit the Moon would have been hard to catch by amateur astronomers even with high-end telescopes, but larger observatories - including Seoul's space agency - are analysing the information.

While the impact did not pose any danger to Earth, Matt Bothwell, astronomer at the University of Cambridge, raised concerns about space debris.

"Space is getting more and more crowded," he said, as each year "we launch more stuff into space".

"It could feasibly be within a few decades that it's actually quite hard to get past Earth's orbit because space is so crowded," Bothwell warned.

This Falcon 9 was in orbit since January last year, when it blasted off from Florida.

The same booster section from the January 2025 mission is due to set off on its 18th flight on 10 August. SpaceX says the mission hopes to launch 29 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit.

The rocket that blasted from Florida last January was carrying two lunar landers into space.

Its job was to fire the upper stage hard enough to send both of the landers out of Earth's orbit and onto a path towards the Moon.

The spent stage was left drifting in a long, looping orbit that swung out towards the Moon and back again.

Over the next 18 months, the gentle gravitational tug of the Earth, Moon and Sun, along with light from the Sun, gave it a faint push.

Astronomers tracking the rocket part eventually worked out that those small nudges had put it on a course towards the Moon, and it was picking up speed every day.

The impact on Wednesday happened in broad daylight for many parts of the world, but the tiny flash it produced would have been far too faint to see, even through a telescope.

El-Sayed's victory sends tremors through Democratic Party

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp309ng0xq1o, 4 days ago

The tremors from Abdul El-Sayed's victory in Michigan's Senate primary will have been felt hundreds of miles away by the Democratic Party leadership.

In a year in which Republicans appear to be facing significant electoral headwinds, Democratic primary voters have taken a chance on a left-wing insurgent, raising the stakes in a Senate race in November that could decide overall control of the upper chamber.

The question is whether the way El-Sayed has electrified the party base and tapped into their anger will work on general election voters. And whether an unabashedly left-wing Democrat can win in a swing state.

The party establishment, which had backed his opponent, will hope so.

Primary results across five states on Tuesday were a snapshot of the mood of the American electorate three months before the midterm elections.

Here are four key takeaways from the results.

1) A new left-wing warrior

Abdul El-Sayed's victory on Tuesday night in Michigan's contentious Democratic primary race for Senate was hardly a surprise. He had led by a comfortable margin over congresswoman Haley Stevens for weeks.

While the final projected result was much closer than those surveys had suggested, again raising questions about modern polling accuracy, it doesn't diminish the shockwaves the victory of the former Michigan health official is sending throughout the Democratic Party.

El-Sayed, the child of Egyptian immigrants, ran on a left-wing platform with the backing of such liberal stalwarts as Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Stevens had the backing of Democratic leadership in Washington, an established record as an elected official in Michigan and deep financial pockets, including $32m from Aipac - the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Outside groups favoured her over El-Sayed by a margin of nine-to-one.

None of it mattered.

In debates and on the stump, El-Sayed proved to be the more gifted candidate, and Democrats seemed open to his policies, including government-sponsored health insurance, efforts to lower drug costs, higher taxes on the wealthy and campaign finance reform.

His campaign refrain - "money out of politics, money in your pocket" - has been a common one among left-wing candidates this election cycle.

This sets up a general election contest against former Republican congressman Mike Rogers, who ran unopposed. It will provide perhaps the most dramatic, high-stakes test of whether a left-wing candidate can win a general election race in a true battleground state.

Given the narrowness of El-Sayed's primary victory, he has considerable work ahead if he wants to unite the party before November's vote.

While El-Sayed did well with higher-educated liberals, he'll need to win over the lower-income voters who backed Stevens in Detroit and in more rural areas. These are voters whose preferences the pre-election polling did not seem to adequately reflect.

If El-Sayed loses to Rogers, it would be a major blow to Democratic hopes of retaking control of the US Senate given a Republican hasn't won a Senate race in the state since 1994.

If he wins, however, it could provide left-wing Democrats with proof of concept for why a left-wing candidate for president in 2028 could be more successful than the kind of establishment centrists the party has nominated in recent contests.

And with Michigan's position as a key early state on the Democratic presidential primary calendar, the state will have an outsized say in who the party's nominee will be.

2) Some pro-Israel Democrats had a bad night

Stevens was the highest-profile Aipac-backed candidate to lose on Tuesday night. In lesser-watched races, the results were more mixed.

Elsewhere in Michigan, Democratic Socialist Donavan McKinney beat incumbent Shri Thanedar, who has been an outspoken supporter of continued US support for Israel. He became the latest party House incumbent to be ousted in the primaries.

William Lawrence, who has called for an immediate end to US arms sales to Israel, defeated two centrist Democrats in a House of Representatives district in Michigan that is likely to be a key electoral battleground in November.

If the mood of the Democratic voters has soured on pro-Israel politicians in Michigan, and in previous races in New York and Colorado, that was not the case in the Missouri and Washington results.

In Washington, congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who supports military aid for Israel, easily turned away a left-wing challenger. She is one of the few Democratic incumbents in districts Trump won in 2024 - and will be a prime target for Republicans in November.

Meanwhile, in a solidly liberal Missouri district, Wesley Bell denied a comeback bid from Cori Bush, a founding member of the "squad" of left-wing congresswomen. Two years ago, he unseated her in part because of her criticism of Israel.

3) Voters reject Republican measures in the Midwest

While most of the contests on Tuesday night were intraparty primary fights, there were a couple of notable votes that could provide evidence that the overall mood of the electoral continues to tilt toward the Democrats.

In Missouri, voters overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure that would have made citizen-backed amendments to the state constitution more difficult to enact.

In recent years, such citizen-driven efforts have been used to push Democratic initiatives that had no chance of passage in the Republican-controlled state legislature. They include protecting abortion rights and raising the minimum wage.

Meanwhile in Kansas, voters rejected a ballot measure that would have have required the state's supreme court justices to stand for election. At the moment, they are appointed by the governor and a commission of lawyers.

In 2024, the state high court had ruled that the right to abortion was protected by the Kansas constitution - a decision Republicans said was out-of-step with the will of state voters.

Both efforts were pushed by state Republicans and, in both cases, the proposals were easily defeated.

4) Trump's endorsement still (mostly) matters

It was largely a good night for Trump-backed Republicans, who earned a few victories in their primaries.

John James won Michigan's Republican nomination for governor despite being heavily outspent by his wealthy opponent. Trump not only endorsed James but appeared on stage with him last week.

In Kansas, Republicans opted for the Trump favourite for governor amidst a crowded field. And in the Washington state race to replace outgoing Republican congressman Dan Newhouse, Amanda McKinney, the president's pick, also finished first.

The 71-year-old Newhouse, who is retiring, was notable for being one of the last two remaining House Republicans to have voted to impeach Trump after the 6 January 2021 riot at the US Capitol.

Given that this is a reliably conservative district, McKinney is a favourite to defeat her Democratic opponent in November, which would likely move House Republicans further to the right. It's the latest bit of evidence that old-line establishment Republicans like Newhouse are a vanishing breed.

But Trump didn't get it all his own way.

In Michigan, Thomas Smith defeated Trump-endorsed Amir Hassan, a former law-enforcement officer who also appeared on stage with the president, despite Smith having dropped out of the race last month while remaining on the ballot.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump's second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher's weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

What can scientists learn from a stray SpaceX rocket hitting the Moon?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62q0xerzrno, 4 days ago

A stray SpaceX rocket is believed to have crashed into the Moon, forming a crater near a famous lunar landmark and giving scientists a unique research opportunity that could help future missions.

The empty upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket was due to strike the Moon near the Einstein crater at a speed of about 5,400mph (8,700km/h) on Wednesday.

The short, dramatic flash it created would have been hard to catch by amateur astronomers even with high-end telescopes, but larger observatories in the Americas are analysing the information.

It could be days or even weeks before the full picture of what happened and what we can learn from it is known - but for planetary geologists, this accidental collision is a scientific gift.

Space X's Falcon 9 rocket is a reusable model and has been sent into space on several missions. Its design allows part of the rocket to return to Earth, but other sections are shed in space.

The rocket blasted off from Florida in January last year, carrying two lunar landers into space.

Its job was to fire the upper stage hard enough to send both of the landers out of Earth's orbit and onto a path towards the Moon - mission accomplished.

The spent stage - which is about the size of a five-storey building and weighs at least 4,000kg - was left drifting in a long, looping orbit that swung out towards the Moon and back again.

Over the next 18 months, the gentle gravitational tug of the Earth, Moon and Sun, along with even light from the Sun, gave a faint push.

Astronomers tracking the rocket part eventually worked out that those small nudges had put it on a course towards the Moon and was picking up speed every day.

The impact at around 07:35 BST (06:35 GMT) on Wednesday happened in broad daylight for many parts of the world, but the tiny flash it produced would have been far too faint to see, even through a telescope.

Amateur astronomers observing in darkness would also have had little realistic chance of seeing the flash, given that it would have lasted a fraction of a second and occured on a part of the Moon bathed in daylight. And so it may also have been hard for them to see a plume of dust stretching as far as 100km (62 miles) that lasted for several minutes.

Even spacecraft orbiting the Moon were not in the right place at the right time to watch the impact happen live. South Korea's Danuri orbiter had the best chance, having passed near the crash site shortly beforehand. Its team has told Korean media that any footage will only be released once researchers have completed their analysis.

Over the next few days, Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will be in position to photograph the site, allowing images before and after the crash to be compared.

The science and probably the first images might come from powerful telescopes in the Americas where the sky was still dark. Even then, turning the detection of a 14m object hitting a daylight part of the lunar surface i385,000km away won't be easy but not impossible.

Image processing to clean up the picture can take hours, days or even weeks, as scientists check and process the data.

But the sight of the new crater from the orbiting spacecraft will be eagerly anticipated. Because researchers already know the rocket's exact size, speed and point of impact, this collision turns from being a random accident into a rare, controlled experiment.

It is a dream moment for planetary scientists because it lets them test their models of how impacts dig out craters, throw debris across the surface, and send tremors through the Moon's interior.

That has real practical value.

Understanding how much rock and dust an impact throws up will help engineers design safer landers and future Moon bases, working out how far flying debris can travel and how hard the ground might shake nearby.

Material thrown up from beneath the surface offers fresh clues about the Moon's geology, adding to what scientists already know about how the Earth-Moon system formed some 4.5 billion years ago.

This is not the first time a human-made object has struck the Moon. Since 1959, dozens of spacecraft have crashed into it, some by accident and many deliberately for science.

The Soviet probe Luna 2 was the first, followed over the decades by Nasa's Ranger probes in the 1960s, several Apollo-era rocket stages, and more recently the LCROSS mission in 2009, which was deliberately crashed to search for water ice.

The last confirmed accidental impact, in 2022, was thought to be the leftover booster from a Chinese lunar mission launched back in 2014 - a reminder that this sort of space debris has been quietly piling up above our heads for well over half a century.

Analysis: Trump challenged by cold reality from top allies

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgjed2q2l0xo, 6 days ago

It's been a humbling few days for Donald Trump, even if the American president is reluctant to acknowledge it.

In a series of setbacks, Trump has faced adversity in matters both large and small; two of which he cares about dearly and one that could determine his and his party's political fate for the remaining two years of his presidential term.

From a flawed attempt to renovate a Washington landmark to questions about his pick to head the justice department to increasingly complicated efforts to end his war in Iran, the president has been handling tricky issues - many of his own making.

Trump's response has been a familiar one. A first term refrain - that the president makes his own reality with "alternative facts" - is still the operative one. He sticks to beliefs even in the face of conflicting evidence.

Unlike his first term, however, when many of his most notable conflicts were with dissenters in his own administration, this time around he has butted heads even with those who have proven themselves the most loyal to him.

On Friday, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro, a former Fox News host and stalwart Trump ally, moved to drop felony destruction of property charges against former Olympian David Hearn, who federal prosecutors had accused of intentionally damaging the Reflecting Pool near the Washington Monument.

"The damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism," she wrote in a 20-page court filing announcing her department's decision. She attributed her decision to prosecute Hearn as the result of misleading information provided by the Department of Interior.

Trump may embrace alternative facts, but the evidence Pirro confronted - what she would have had to defend in court, before a judge and potentially sceptical jury - provided scarce support for her case. And so she abandoned it.

Trump had enthusiastically endorsed the vandalism explanation, however, and he stuck by it. In a Truth Social post on Saturday, he criticised Pirro's decision to drop the case and did so again in comments from the Oval Office on Monday.

"She folded like an umbrella," he griped.

If the Reflecting Pool case was an instance of Trump being forced to face legal reality, up on Capitol Hill it was an unpleasant political reality that confronted him.

One of Trump's closest allies – his former criminal defence attorney Todd Blanche – was hitting stiff headwinds in his bid to become attorney general on a permanent basis.

Two Republican senators, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, had joined Democrats to block Blanche's nomination. They were demanding Blanche provide a letter formally disavowing any attempts to revive the proposed $1.8bn (£1.34bn) fund to pay individuals who claimed to have been the targets of politicised government prosecution.

Tillis called it a "payout pot for punks" amid concerns it could be used to compensate people prosecuted over the US Capitol riot by Trump's supporters in 2021.

In another Saturday Truth Social post, Trump wrote that he would keep Blanche on as acting attorney general and "push hard" to get Congress to pass legislation authorising the fund.

"It will immediately be back on the table, and I will get it done," he wrote, suggesting that no matter what the ultimate outcome of Blanche's nomination, Trump is unlikely to ever let the issue go.

The political maths in the Senate, however, was undeniable. By the next day Blanche had acceded to the senators' request, releasing two letters that Tillis and Cornyn said satisfied their concerns.

In comments from the White House on Monday, Blanche escaped the scolding that Pirro the prosecutor received. Trump said he "didn't look at" Blanche's documents. "I understand there's been a sign-off, but I don't know what they agreed," he said.

While the Reflecting Pool prosecution and the so-called "anti-weaponisation fund" may be topics of intense presidential interest, they barely register as concerns for the larger American public.

That is decidedly not the case with the war with Iran, where Trump is once again accusing Iran of deceit amid another round of on-again, off-again negotiations and threats of overwhelming American military action.

On Monday, after asserting the previous day that he had called off "an attack that would have been the biggest attack since World War II" at the behest of Iranian officials and Arab intermediaries, Trump took to Truth Social to condemn what he said was Iranian duplicity after Iran denied any new direct negotiations.

"They ask for a meeting, some would say 'beg', talks begin, with more scheduled in the immediate future, and they say, openly and proudly, that they're not having any discussions," Trump wrote.

If Iranians are misrepresenting the status of talks it wouldn't be the first time - but it also wouldn't be the first time Trump has seemingly taken their assurances at face value and heralded a new diplomatic breakthrough.

US officials told the BBC's partner CBS News on Monday that no "new" or novel negotiations with Iran were planned. An Iranian official said the country's only current talks were with Oman, over the future of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

The latest twists in the war have become a familiar pattern with little progress, as polls continue to show American disapproval of the conflict and concern that Trump is not achieving his war goals.

Those recent public-opinion surveys suggest the war has become a growing drag on the president's overall popularity. A recent Associated Press poll puts Trump's approval at 33%, aligned with similar findings by CNN, Quinnipiac and YouGov. That matches or is below Trump's ratings after the Capitol riot and is above only Richard Nixon – who resigned from office in disgrace - among second-term US presidents in modern American history.

Trump, however, has repeatedly dismissed surveys suggesting his historic unpopularity.

"My REAL Polling Numbers, not those made up by the Fake News Media, are the best they have ever been," he posted to Truth Social on Monday.

In three months, voters will head to the polls for congressional midterm elections. And Trump has shown surprising strength at the ballot box in the past, even in the face of seemingly daunting poll numbers.

While Trump may be grappling with – and, at times denying - recent adversity, that will be the ultimate measure of his political fate. And if Republicans struggle, it may provide yet another reality that Trump, despite his best efforts, must eventually face.

Did Iran hack water systems in at least seven US states?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c934dq95zpgo, 4 days ago

Many were surprised in late July when the US state of Minnesota reported that more than 30 of its state water systems had faced a "co-ordinated cyber-attack".

Days later, the FBI warned cyber-attacks had been reported in at least seven states and "some of that activity degraded water operations".

Local authorities in the states of New Jersey, South Dakota and Georgia have since said they were similarly attacked. It is not clear if they are among the seven states.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) is reportedly probing a possible Iranian connection, according to US media. Cisa would not comment.

Although US President Donald Trump has not blamed Iran, cyber-experts have told the BBC it is likely the attack was directed by Tehran.

Morgan Wright, a former US state department anti-terror adviser, said he expects the number of states impacted to grow and that "no state is immune".

The US has 152,000 public drinking water systems and more than 16,000 wastewater treatment facilities.

Here is what you need to know.

Is Iran behind these attacks?

Wright told the BBC that the sort of cyber-attacks that have recently reported are usually attributed to North Korea or Iran.

"And who are we in conflict with right now? Well, it's Iran. So they become, they go to the top of the listed terms of nations capable, and also having a desire to do something like this," he said, referring to the ongoing war in the Middle East.

US investigators are also looking into whether the hackers could have posed as Iran-based as a ruse to sow further discord amid the US war with Iran, according to the BBC's US partner CBS.

Jake Braun, former acting White House Deputy National Cyber Director, told the BBC that the Trump administration is involved in its own information war and therefore it might be unlikely to admit that Iran did infiltrate US water infrastructure, even if it was confirmed.

At a cabinet meeting on 31 July, Trump, a Republican, blamed "grossly incompetent" Minnesota officials, including Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, for the water hack.

Walz responded: "Trump knows exactly who is responsible for this attack, and knows that other states were hit too."

Iran has yet to comment on these incidents, but Tehran has repeatedly denied involvement in other cyber-attacks over the years, which include water systems, presidential campaigns, hospitals and a casino company in Las Vegas in 2014.

After a 2016 accusation linked to the targeting of banks and a dam outside New York City, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said the US should prove such accusations.

Iran has "never had on its agenda any dangerous measures in cyberspace and does not support such moves", spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari said on state TV at the time.

Does this fit a pattern for Iran?

Iran has a documented history of this kind of activity, experts have told the BBC. They noted that groups supportive of Iran, but located outside the country could be responsible.

"It makes it harder to assign attribution because if all of your attacks and groups are coming out of Iran, you can pretty much link it to Iran," Wright said, noting that such a tactic offers bad actors plausible deniability.

"They do it so that their fingerprints aren't directly on it," he added.

Most of the Iranian cyber-attacks against the US and Israel this year have been carried out by a group called Handala, BBC Verify has found.

The US justice department has linked the group to Iran, saying they have been working on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).

Handala was previously accused of accessing some personal details and emails by FBI Director Kash Patel in the early days of the Iran war.

The last cyber-attack in the US claimed by Handala was in mid-June, BBC Verify found. The hackers claimed to have breached a water facility in California in response to a US attack on Iranian water infrastructure.

Here are some of the other notable hacking operations that have been linked to Iran:

* 2026: The justice department disrupted a hacking operation by Handala that targeted a medical technologies firm. The operation also released sensitive information about members of the Israeli government and military

* 2024: Iran was accused of hacking into US presidential campaigns to "stoke discord, erode confidence in the US electoral process, and unlawfully acquire information" about officials to help Iran.

* 2023: US water and wastewater systems were hacked by a group accused of being affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) both in 2023 and later in 2024, according to Cisa. Equipment regulating water pressure in two Pennsylvania towns was temporarily closed due to the incident

* 2020: Two Iranian nationals were indicted on charges of attempting to meddle in the presidential election by obtaining confidential US voter information and sending threatening messages for people to vote for Trump

* 2017: Iran-based hackers were also accused of a years-long ransomware effort targeting local governments, schools, healthcare and financial institutions, though Cisa noted the group's activities were "likely not sanctioned" by Iran's government

Could it endanger water supplies?

Experts told the BBC that the biggest threat of the hacks was not to the water supply itself, but in degrading public confidence in the security of their water.

"They're attacking our trust in our government to be able to deliver basic services in a time when, you know, you've got a deeply divided country over the war," Braun said.

It also cannot be ruled out that Iranian hackers might one day succeed in endangering US water supplies, experts added.

Malicious efforts could cause a harmful distribution of chemicals, shut off water, or damage equipment, according to Wright.

Cisa and the US Environmental Protection Agency have jointly said that cyber-attacks pose "a serious concern" for water utilities.

"Look, if you want to bring a nation to its knees, you go after two things, you go after power and water," Wright said.

How could this be prevented?

A lot of devices used in the water and wastewater processes are vulnerable to attack, because either there is old infrastructure or technology is older, Wright said.

Experts who spoke to the BBC warned that without upgrading the security of these systems, the US would continue to face this national security threat.

The vast majority of water utilities in the US are publicly run, unlike most other critical infrastructure.

So, it is up to the government to do something, experts said.

Cisa has recommended a variety of upgrades to governments across the US in hopes of minimising this threat.

To immediately stop hacking attempts, the agency recommended that water systems should be immediately removed from the internet as soon as possible and reset passwords.

Shayan Sardarizadeh with BBC Verify contributed to this report

Scale of devastation shocks US city's fire-seasoned residents

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

Last year, Chris Matthews was forced to flee with his family of five after a brushfire threatened their home in Spokane, Washington.

That evacuation lasted only a few hours. So when an ominous column of dark smoke raced towards him last Saturday, and he and his family were evacuated again, he expected he'd be back home soon.

Instead, he returned to find nothing but smouldering ruins.

"All of us thought we were going to be able to get back to our houses," he recalls. "And we didn't think it'd be a situation where we were going to lose our homes or anything like that."

Smoke and fires are a normal occurrence here in the US Pacific Northwest every summer, as residents wait for the autumn rains to arrive. Small evacuations are not unexpected. But the scale of this year's fires in Spokane is unprecedented.

Kira Townsend, 39, says she realised the immense danger when word came that the fire had jumped over the river, which normally acts as a barrier protecting the city from fires.

"It's never jumped the river like that, and just roared up the hill that fast," she says.

Nearly a quarter of the city population – 65,000 people – were forced to evacuate since the fires began. For those whose homes did not burn down, officials say it may be weeks before it is safe to return to their neighbourhoods.

Miraculously, there have been no deaths or major injuries reported from the fires.

Matthew Kincanon, 31, fled for his life as the fire entered his neighbourhood of Prosperity Lane on Saturday night. He returned 12 hours later to discover that there was nothing left.

"As soon as I stepped out of the car I threw up," he says. "I felt sick. I couldn't control it. I just lost it. It hit me all at once," he says.

While firefighters battle three large fires around the city that remain less than 40% contained, the recovery effort is beginning for people who have lost everything.

"We have two fronts going at the same time. We're actively fighting the fire and trying to put that out. But we're also starting recovering for folks that have lost their homes," City Councilman Zack Zappone, who grew up in the devastated Indian Trails neighbourhood, tells the BBC.

"There just a lot of uncertainty and frustrations and difficultness," he says at a city shelter, describing the tensions in the city.

Chrissy Goodrich's voice cracks in anger as she calls on people to do everything they can to prevent more wildfires. She echoes warnings from officials, who say that innocent activities like mowing your lawn could ignite a fire.

"People have got to use their brains," she says.

"Stop doing things that are gonna cause sparks. I can't believe someone was mowing."

"So many people have lost their houses, and people are just being so stupid," she adds.

She and her 73-year-old father, Scott Hansen still ride their mountain bikes through burned-out neighbourhoods to get groceries back to home, which is in the mandatory evacuation zone.

Like many Spokane residents, he expressed surprise at how easily the fire breached the river.

"The winds were too strong," he says. "It just blew over the river like it wasn't even there."

Anger has intensified since police charged a local man, who has allegedly confessed to sparking one of the fires.

"I was so happy they got him. It's just not right," says lifelong resident Susan Crouch, 70, who previously lost her home to wildfire.

The fires this summer, she adds, "are the worst Spokane has ever had".

Local media reported that he had previously been questioned for arson, and had a prior conviction for killing his own father in Arizona in 2010.

The suspect, Aaron Farinacci, 37, has not yet entered a plea, and a judge has ordered him to undergo a mental competency evaluation.

According to investigators, he specifically chose a dry, windy day, in the hopes of sparking a large fire. More dry windy days are in the forecast.

Matthews, who lost his house, is now urging his neighbours to prepare for the worst. In retrospect, he says he wishes he had a generator that he could have used to power a sprinkler system around the property after the electricity went out.

"For future reference, and for everyone else – take it seriously. Don't assume past historical times are what's going to happen in the future as well."

His wife, Melissa Matthews, says she feels a sense of "closure" to discover that the blaze that destroyed her home may have been set intentionally by a man who is now accused of arson.

"It brought a little bit of closure," she says, adding: "That sounds weird to say."

Chris adds: "Knowing that a person did this, as opposed to it being a natural thing that happened, it just does feel a little bit comforting for some reason."

What is birthright citizenship and how common is birth tourism in the US?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9nz5qwl8jo, 2 days ago

US President Donald Trump has announced new executive orders aimed at ending so-called birth tourism in the US and limiting birthright citizenship for certain groups.

It is part of a renewed effort by his administration to restrict access to US citizenship after the Supreme Court shot down Trump's first attempt in June.

Birthright citizenship refers to the practice of granting citizenship to those born on US soil, with some exceptions, while birth tourism is when foreign nationals come to the US specifically to give birth and get their child citizenship.

Here's what you need to know.

What are Trump's latest executive orders?

Trump signed two executive orders, a written order issued by a president to the federal government which does not require congressional approval, on Thursday.

One expands the existing definitions of non-citizens whose children are not eligible for birthright citizenship.

It prevents the automatic citizenship of babies born in the US to two non-citizen parents if one of the parents is a member of a foreign terrorist group, is a foreign government employee, has attempted to gain citizenship through fraudulent means, or is living in US territories where citizenship is not granted by US federal law.

A few of those categories were already excluded under current birthright citizenship rules, but the one relating to membership of a foreign terrorist group could raise issues, according to Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, an independent nonpartisan research group.

She said it is difficult to know how, when, and by whom membership would be determined, and it is also not clear "if the onus for proof falls on the government (to prove they are a member) or the individual (to prove they are not)".

The second order, meanwhile, seeks to end the practice of birth tourism by directing the departments of state and homeland security to enhance regulations and expand enforcement against the practice.

It is already illegal to travel to the US for the purpose of giving birth.

According to the executive order, operators in the birth tourism industry use deceptive advertising to entice foreign nationals to give birth in the US.

"They promise citizenship; access to public benefits; and short-term stays in specialised facilities, hotels, or rentals, but often fail to deliver on these promises," the order says.

How does birthright citizenship work?

The principle of birthright citizenship, known in legal terms as "jus soli" or "right of the soil", is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.

The law was originally meant to grant citizenship to American-born, formerly enslaved people following the American Civil War.

Currently, nearly everyone born in the US, regardless of their parents' citizenship status, is granted US citizenship - with a few exceptions.

These include children born in the US to foreign diplomats, those born to enemy soldiers during a hostile occupation of US territory, and those born in unincorporated US territories where a federal statute has not granted the right to citizenship.

People born in the US territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands, for example, get automatic citizenship, while those born in unincorporated American Samoa are not and are instead considered "non-citizen nationals".

How many birth tourists are there in the US?

Trump said on Thursday that "hundreds of thousands" of babies have been born through birth tourism in the US, without providing evidence or clarifying if that figure is annual or not.

There are no government figures specifically on women coming to the US on tourism visas to give birth, but there is data on foreign residents giving birth in the country.

These show that just over 9,500 babies were born to foreign women in the US in 2024, according to the most recent estimate from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). This is based on births registered to mothers with foreign addresses.

In comparison, there were 3.7 million US births in total that same year, CDC figures show, meaning babies born to foreign US residents amounted to roughly 0.25% of these.

However, the MPI says the government figures are likely an undercount and that foreigners could use a US address that is not their permanent home to register a birth.

The MPI estimates that between 20,000 to 26,000 babies were born in the US annually as a result of birth tourism, which is about 0.5 to 0.7% of total annual births.

This figure is based on a wider review of US census data, although their study notes that it is hard to know exact numbers for certain.

"Birth tourism inherently relies on the intent of an individual to come to the US to give birth and capturing that intent in data is difficult," said Putzel-Kavanaugh.

"For some women, they may be travelling and a medical emergency could necessitate birth in the US even if their intent was to give birth back in their home country."

What happened at the Supreme Court?

The Trump administration's argument against birthright citizenship when the case was before the Supreme Court in April relied heavily on the need to end birth tourism.

Solicitor General D John Sauer argued that granting everyone born on US soil citizenship has allowed the birth tourism industry to thrive and created a "whole generation of American citizens abroad with no meaningful ties to the United States".

At one point, Chief Justice John Roberts asked Sauer whether he agreed that birth tourism "has no impact on the legal analysis before us".

Sauer responded that the existence of birth tourism proves that the 14th amendment has unintended consequences that would never have been approved by its creators.

We live in a world now, Sauer said, "where eight billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who's a US citizen".

Roberts, and ultimately the high court's majority, rejected that interpretation, saying: "Well, it's a new world. It's the same Constitution."

Do other countries have birthright citizenship?

Trump has repeatedly said the US is one of the only major countries that grants birthright citizenship.

In fact, more than 30 countries practise automatic "jus soli" and without restriction in almost all cases. They include Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, as well as most other countries in Central and South America.

The US and Canada are the only two countries considered "developed" nations by the International Monetary Fund that grant mostly unrestricted birthright citizenship.

Other countries, like the UK and Australia, allow for a modified version where citizenship is automatically granted if one parent is a citizen or permanent resident.

DR Congo river boat under quarantine for Ebola after five deaths

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce971plr2nvo, 3 days ago

Congolese authorities are carrying out Ebola and cholera screening for all 255 passengers aboard a boat intercepted on the Congo River.

The Yingfeng 2 - operated by a Chinese company - was halted near Bende Bende port, some 65km (40 miles) upstream from the capital, Kinshasa.

Health Minister Roger Kamba said screening was being carried out as a precautionary measure after a passenger with fever and diarrhoea, who had left the boat in Mongala Province, died in hospital. A further two adults, a three-year-old child and a newborn have also died.

Teams from the health ministry and the World Health Organization (WHO) have boarded the boat and set up a mobile lab to conduct tests.

"For now, no-one has tested positive, and it is likely no one will be positive after 21 days of incubation has elapsed," Kamba told reporters.

He also said that the vessel had departed from Mongala in north-western DR Congo 22 days ago, where there have been no Ebola cases, contrary to earlier reports.

The passenger had already been travelling on the boat for some days before being taken to Pimu health zone for treatment, still in Mongala.

The boat travelled more than 1,700km downstream towards Kinshasa before being intercepted.

Security services have been instructed to quarantine the Yingfeng  2 offshore in line with WHO standards to prevent potential spread of the virus into the capital. Public health teams remain on standby to act once the boat is secured.

The country has been grappling with its 17th Ebola outbreak since 15 May. It has been caused by the rare Bundibugyo species of the virus, which had not been seen for more than a decade.

There are no drug treatments that specifically target Bundibugyo, nor does it have a vaccine, although the first human trials for one are currently under way in the UK.

Three months since the outbreak was declared, infections and deaths continue to rise.

Official figures show that there have been 3,973 confirmed cases and 1,801 deaths - the second deadliest Ebola outbreak.

There are currently more than 17,000 people under monitoring after coming into contact with Ebola cases, 674 patients in isolation or treatment across five provinces, and 776 recoveries, according to authorities.

In Kinshasa, preparations for a possible Bundibugyo response are intensifying, with surveillance and rapid-response capacity being reinforced at Maluku, the city's main entry point.

Officials have reiterated that the measures are precautionary, but they underline the gravity of the situation.

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

Editor of top Ethiopian independent news site seized by police, publisher says

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c934vygxxezo, 2 days ago

The editor-in-chief of a leading Ethiopian independent news site was abducted and assaulted by security forces, according to its owner.

The Addis Standard's Yonas Kedir was taken last Saturday, held for 24 hours and subjected to "prolonged interrogation", Jakken Publishing said in a statement on Thursday that also described a raid on the news site's offices.

Rights groups have described these latest incidents as part of a pattern of targeting independent news outlets.

The Ethiopian government has not responded to a BBC request for comment.

In February, the authorities revoked the Addis Standard's media registration saying it had violated media ethics and what it described as threats to "national interests", but did not specify which reports it was referring to.

The news site was able to continue working as it was challenging the move in court.

The alleged abduction of Yonas took place on the first of three days of action against the Addis Standard, Jakken Publishing said.

"Two individuals dressed in civilian clothes... violently seized me," the AFP news agency quotes Yonas as saying in a written statement.

"[They] struck me and forcibly loaded me into a double-cab pickup truck. They accused me of 'selling the country out'."

On the second day, Sunday 2 August, a security team raided the outlet's offices "without due process", Jakken Publishing said, confiscating equipment from its multimedia studio.

Then on 3 August, police issued an eviction order requiring the company to vacate its premises within three days, ending 16 years of operations at the site.

The Addis Standard's website is still available and is being updated with reports on the raid and its aftermath. The publisher is currently consulting on what to do next.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has described what happened as part of "an alarming escalation in Ethiopian authorities' campaign to dismantle one of the country's leading independent news organisations".

Human Rights Watch (HRW) also criticised the government's actions, saying the harassment of the Addis Standard reflects a broader effort to silence critical reporting.

HRW noted that in the past year, Ethiopian authorities have arbitrarily arrested scores of journalists, held some incommunicado, and revoked media licences.

The Ethiopian Media Authority recently issued "final written warnings" to independent broadcasters Arts TV and Ahadu FM, threatening suspension or revocation of their licences after alleging repeated violations of media laws.

Additional reporting by Damian Zane and BBC Monitoring

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

Sudan's invisible children - born in war with no legal identity

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr7kldz4djno, 3 days ago

Warning: This story contains details some may find distressing

A 17-year-old Sudanese girl holds a young child in her arms with a heavy calm that belies her age and the concerns she has for his future.

"This son of mine has no father, no birth certificate and no national number," Amira, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, tells the BBC.

Looking down at him, she speaks slowly as if still trying to grasp the details of what has happened to her since the civil war erupted in Sudan.

She and her family used to live in the eastern neighbourhoods of el-Fasher, a city that came under siege from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been in a brutal power struggle with the military since April 2023.

El-Fasher was the army's last stronghold in the western region of Darfur until it fell to the RSF and allied Arab militias after 18 months last October.

For the tens of thousands of civilians trapped inside the city, it was a nightmare – with constant bombardment, clashes and suffering from a lack of food.

In the end Amira and her family decided to flee early in 2025, desperate to find a safer area.

But as they snuck out on a road south-west of the city, she says she was abducted by three armed men from the RSF and held captive.

"They blindfolded me and took me to the Tabit area south of el-Fasher. I was locked in a room for two months, and every day one of them raped me in turn," she recounts in a low voice

After weeks in captivity, she discovered she was pregnant and became very sick.

Amira says when the men wanted to get rid of her, they dropped her near the area she had been captured.

It was with the help of other people fleeing el-Fasher that she was taken to receive medical help.

Months later, at a humanitarian hub that was not under RSF control, she gave birth at a hospital run by the International Medical Corps.

There she received some support from a Sudanese aid organisation - the Nada Al-Azhar Foundation for Disaster Prevention and Sustainable Development (Nada).

The group was also able to find her family, who had made it to a camp where hundreds of thousands of people from el-Fasher have sought refuge.

It was a huge relief for them all to be reunited, but the family still face challenges - one being that eight months after giving birth, Amira has been unable to register her son's birth.

"Even getting a birth notification from the hospital requires information that doesn't exist," says Amira, explaining that she is unable to provide any details about the child's father.

Without this she cannot organise any official recognition of the baby's legal identity.

"I can't get him vaccinated, or enrol him in nursery or school," she says.

"I'm afraid for his future because he isn't registered at all. My economic situation is very difficult, and I can't afford his treatment or care. I can't even go to work for fear of being exposed to violence again."

According to Nada, Amira's story is not an isolated case, but part of a reality repeated in areas experiencing conflict across Sudan.

This is because many children are being born in complex circumstances, often without the knowledge of the father - meaning their births cannot be registered, explains Abu Bakr Yousif Yaqoub, Nada's director of protection programmes.

"Registering a child requires identity information, a national number and a birth certificate. But when the father is absent or unknown, it becomes extremely difficult," he tells the BBC from el-Fasher.

"The mother is often alone, and sometimes she herself is still a child who needs care, which limits her ability to care for her baby.

"There are also health challenges related to the lack of follow-up on essential vaccinations, which begin at birth and continue through the child's early years."

He warns that this situation does not just affect a child's early years but extends to their future education and as an adult being able to travel or obtain official documents.

It is not easy to obtain data about the number of children that have been born as a result of rape in Sudan.

According to Nada's director general, Shaza Ahmed, this comes down to social stigma as the true numbers are not recorded.

"Women who experience such assaults do not feel comfortable reporting them," she tells the BBC, speaking from Port Sudan, an army-held city in the east of Sudan.

"Unfortunately, most of the mothers of these children are themselves children - girls under the age of 18. Therefore, they cannot make the decision to go officially to court or the police, as they need a guardian to accompany them."

She notes that 90% of the cases recorded by her organisation involve families refusing to allow official reporting of the sexual assaults that led to pregnancy.

"As a Sudanese woman, my greatest fear and concern for children born as a result of rape is that we are facing a whole generation that will live under stigma, danger and fear," Ahmed says.

"These children will not receive respect from society, their well-being will not be truly protected, and above all, they will not have access to services or their rights."

For Ahmed they are not being treated as if they are "fully human", even though Sudanese law does grant all children the right to obtain an identity.

Sudanese lawyer Majida Idris explains that the Child Act of 2010 allows for the registration of children born outside marriage.

But it relies on the mother being willing to file a report that she has been assaulted - because this kick starts the registration process.

Once reported, the case is then referred to social services for documentation, before being sent to the civil registry, where the child is registered under the mother's name and given a full legal name according to procedures.

However, Idris says that the reality during war is completely different, especially in Darfur, where the ongoing conflict has led to the collapse of civil services and the shutdown of civil registry offices, leaving thousands of children unregistered.

"The absence of documents does not just mean the absence of a piece of paper - it means denying the child access to education, healthcare and legal recognition," she tells the BBC.

The lawyer says it is imperative to reactivate civil registry offices in accessible areas and intensify legal efforts to ensure children obtain their right to identity and legal recognition.

Amira and her child remain in Darfur - and therefore in administrative limbo.

Her mother admits that the lack of paperwork for her grandson is a worry.

Yet for the moment the family is overwhelmed with gratitude to have found one another again.

Amira has also been offered emotional and psychological support sessions and other advice by Nada - which is a comfort to the family.

"I was so extremely worried until I found her. I hadn't been eating or drinking," Amira's mother told the BBC.

"The reunion was like a miracle from God. To see our daughter back sitting among us is a gift and blessing that could not be thanked enough for."

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

Does Africa still back Infantino as Fifa president?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78g3glpl8wo, 3 days ago

For now, beleaguered Fifa president Gianni Infantino still has some allies in world football, particularly in parts of the world where less well-off football associations have benefited from his presidency.

Infantino's position has been under scrutiny since his controversial plan to sell stakes in Fifa's global competitions to private investors was scrapped having been opposed by some regional governing bodies.

Late on Thursday, the executive committee of the African confederation (Caf) unanimously confirmed its support for Infantino, after leading African football administrators sent messages backing him.

Five of the seven African countries on the Fifa Council - Egypt, Morocco, Niger, Mauritania and Comoros - have already supported him publicly.

Support from the continent largely stems from Fifa's Forward programme, a funding scheme Infantino introduced in 2016 that many African federations have become increasingly reliant on to fund football projects in areas where commercial and government investment in the sport is limited.

Our reporters and correspondents have explained below where some of Africa's key footballing nations stand.

Morocco

Morocco's rise as one of Africa's football success stories has largely been driven by government funding, but the country has also become a key partner for Fifa.

Morocco's capital, Rabat, is home to Fifa's Africa regional office, they have hosted Fifa Club World Cups, a women's U17 World Cup and will co-host the men's 2030 World Cup alongside Spain and Portugal.

Moroccan Football Federation (FRMF) president Fouzi Lekjaa reaffirmed his support for Infantino after he withdrew the controversial Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) proposal last week.

In a statement, Lekjaa described Infantino's decision to withdraw it as "wise", adding it put the unity of Fifa's 211 member associations first.

Infantino also received the backing of senior football executives at a meeting in Morocco on Wednesday, following a turbulent period after the proposal's collapse.

Reporting by Celestine Karoney

Egypt

Egypt is home to the Confederation of African Football headquarters and remains one of Infantino's strongest institutional allies in Africa.

The relationship is reinforced by the influence of Hany Abo Rida, a Fifa Council member and one of the continent's most prominent football administrators, who has maintained close ties with Infantino since his election in 2016.

During Infantino's presidency, Egypt has benefited from Fifa's Forward programme, which has funded infrastructure projects, youth development, coach education and women's football.

Like other African member associations, the Egyptian Football Association has also received increased development funding under Fifa's expanded investment strategy, while new and expanded football competitions have created additional commercial and sporting opportunities.

But support for Infantino in Egypt is accompanied by growing expectations. Officials and observers increasingly argue that Fifa's engagement with Africa should extend beyond financial assistance. Greater emphasis is being placed on good governance, transparency, sustainable football development and giving Cafmore room to shape the continent's own priorities.

Reporting by Mohamed Alkaaoud in Cairo

DR Congo

The Congolese Football Federation (Fecofa) has welcomed Infantino's decision to withdraw the controversial Forward Enterprise proposal, calling it "wise" in a statement earlier this month.

Pointing to a decade of work promoting football worldwide - and in particular his support of African nations - the federation stressed that the episode should not overshadow Infantino's wider record.

Fecofa stressed that the episode, born of good intentions, should not overshadow Infantino's wider record. It pointed to his decade of work promoting football worldwide, and particularly his support for African federations and those with fewer resources.

The federation said it had "greatly benefited" from Fifa's programmes, citing investment in development and infrastructure.

The declaration was signed by Véron Mosengo‑Omba, elected president of Fecofa in May 2026. His election ended a period of uncertainty following the resignation of Constant Omari Selemani in 2021 and the subsequent Fifa‑appointed Normalisation Committee established in April 2023.

Mosengo‑Omba assured Infantino of Fecofa's "full support" would continue beyond 2027, recalling mandates renewed in Paris in 2019 and Kigali in 2023. The statement underlines the Democratic Republic of Congo's alignment with Fifa leadership at a time when divisions remain sharp elsewhere in world football.

Reporting by Emery Makumeno

Nigeria

The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has largely aligned itself towards a supportive stance for Infantino's leadership, despite the wider backlash globally.

For a football federation facing chronic funding constraints and enormous infrastructure needs, Infantino's proposed plans would have been difficult to dismiss.

Former president of the NFF and deputy chairman of Fifa's Men's National Teams Competitions Committee, Amaju Pinnick, argued that Infantino's plan would deliver a much-needed financial boost to every member association without over-relying on local governments.

Nigeria is eligible for up to $8m (£5.95m), for the current Fifa Forward funding, despite failing to qualify for the last two men's World Cup tournaments.

The most prominent Forward project currently under way in Nigeria is the redevelopment of the NFF Technical Centre in the capital, Abuja. The project, funded with approximately $4.88m, includes the reconstruction of training pitches, and the construction of a modern accommodation complex for Nigeria's national teams.

Reporting by Emmanuel Akindubuwa

What others in Africa have said

The Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture of South Africa, Gayton McKenzie, posted on X saying that Infantino had been "very good to African football".

"Africa should be cautious in joining the public lynching of Infantino. He has been very good to African football.

"We can debate his ideas but let's not forget who has been a friend to us. Many of those calling for his head want the old status quo back too."

Speaking to the BBC after Infantino's proposal emerged, football officials from Malawi and Uganda said Fifa investment had transformed the game both on and off the pitch, arguing such funding is vital given the financial realities facing many African nations.

"Malawi needs money. Malawi needs stadiums, our government cannot manage to give us even $1m every year for football," Malawi FA president Fleetwood Haiya told BBC's Newsday programme.

"Our government is not able to make sure that they have medical supplies in hospitals [and] at the same time to look at football," he said.

President of the Gambia Football Federation, Lamin Kaba Bajo, told BBC Sport: "As far as I'm concerned, most of my colleagues are concerned, we'll encourage him [Infantino] to stay, and we'll do everything within our means to ensure that he is re-elected come next year, 2027.

"That's my personal opinion as president of the federation, and a good number of African memberships also stand on that line. He is here to stay."

But support for the project on the continent was not universal. Former Sierra Leone FA president and ex-Fifa Council member Isha Johansen was among African voices opposing it, warning it risked over-commercialising football asking, "What price does one have to pay in order to get to this elevated development for football in Africa?"

Johansen urged African football chiefs to think carefully about the game's future.

Last month, Caf president Patrice Motsepe lauded Infantino for his "excellent work" after this year's World Cup and hailed him as "a good friend".

"He is loyal to Africa," Motsepe said on 22 July. "When people have been loyal to you, you never stab them in the back."

Other nations are yet to comment publicly, including Senegal, whose men's team is the second-highest ranked African team behind Morocco.

South Africa plans new rules on ex-leaders' foreign trips after Zuma's visit to India

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1e14lj7vg7o, 4 days ago

South Africa's foreign minister wants new rules and "more transparency" to apply to former heads of state undertaking foreign trips.

The recommendation to parliament follows a controversial visit to India last month by ex-President Jacob Zuma where he met one of the businessmen allegedly at the heart of a huge corruption scandal that played a role in bringing down his government.

The uproar over his meeting with Ajay Gupta prompted one minister to say that Zuma was showing the "middle finger" to South Africa.

Around a decade ago, the Gupta brothers were accused of profiting from their close links to then-President Zuma and influencing South African policy. Both parties denied wrongdoing.

The Gupta family left South Africa in 2018 after a judicial commission began investigating allegations they were involved in massive fraud, known as "state capture".

In 2022, the commission concluded that Zuma had hired and fired ministers central to the running of the country's economy at the behest of the Gupta family.

The South African authorities ended up cancelling their arrest warrant for Ajay Gupta. The two younger Gupta brothers, Atul and Rajesh, went to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where a court in 2023 turned down a South African request to extradite them

Zuma has since been expelled from the African National Congress (ANC), the party he once led, and now heads the opposition uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK).

During Zuma's visit to India, a photograph of the 84-year-old South African politician and Ajay Gupta was taken at an Indian temple.

South Africa's high commissioner to India, Anil Sooklal, was also pictured with the duo and he has since been recalled. The diplomat has denied any wrongdoing.

Foreign Affairs Minister Ronald Lamola said that his department had submitted a recommendation to parliament and the president's office for new protocols for former heads of state during foreign trips.

They would have to "provide full details" on the upcoming trip for "an informed assessment of the appropriate level of support required and any associated reputational, political, diplomatic or security risks", he said at a briefing on Wednesday.

This is not the first time Zuma's foreign visits have caused controversy.

Last year, he visited Morocco and spoke in support of the North African nation's claim over the disputed territory of Western Sahara - something South Africa opposes.

Zuma undertook the trip as MK leader but was pictured in front of the South African flag when he met Morocco's foreign minister and brought up Western Sahara.

South Africa condemned the visit and raised a formal diplomatic protest about it with Morocco.

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

Mysterious elephant deaths in Kenya raise questions around pesticides

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx27p32jzj2o, 5 days ago

News that the recent deaths of 15 elephants may have been caused by pesticides sprayed on tomato crops surrounding Amboseli National Park has raised concerns and questions in Kenya.

Last week, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said that some of the elephants that had died between 24 June and 24 July had shown signs of "partial paralysis" that pointed to poisoning from cyanide used in pesticides.

But conservationists have told the BBC that, perhaps, is not the full story. Farmers we have spoken to in the area were also sceptical.

"We have stayed with this wildlife for decades and have never experienced this," Daniel Nina, who represents some of the landowners in the area, told the BBC.

"So that's why we are wondering why it is happening today."

The tomato farms are found in the Kimana area, which is part of a corridor between Amboseli National Park and the Tsavo National Park in the south of Kenya.

It is a vast area known as the Amboseli ecosystem, which straddles the border near Tanzania where more than 2,000 elephants move along in search of food and water.

These farms thrive thanks to the streams from nearby Mount Kilimanjaro and supply markets in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, and beyond.

The chief vet of Kenya's Wildlife Service, Dr Isaac Lekolool, told us that they had found traces of cyanide in samples taken from the elephants' stomachs.

He says that they are not ruling out deliberate poisoning but it's impossible at this stage to tell what could have killed the elephants.

"It's difficult to tell because we've not seen these kind of cases before. It is almost like a one-off, and it was within a period of about a month," Lekolool said.

Their working theory is that the elephants were exposed to the toxin through pesticides sprayed on nearby tomato farms.

"It could be unintentional. Maybe people are trying to do some controls of pests on their crops, and that could have been maybe a source."

A 2024 report by Kenyan food safety initiative Route to Food found a farmer in Kimana area using an insecticide that had an "active ingredient" that was "a chemical compound of cyanide".

Wangunyu Njuguna, the author of the report, said that despite being illegal in Kenya, some toxic agrochemicals were smuggled through the border with Tanzania.

"The biggest problem is we're not enforcing similar standards in the region," Njuguna said. "There is no-one checking what I go and buy across the border, so I can just go buy anything and walk through the border and no-one stops me."

Highly hazardous substances are common on Kenyan farms and some have been linked to serious diseases.

While regulations against illegal agrochemicals exist, there is weak enforcement and little attention paid to how they can affect animals.

'It's not adding up'

However, we have spoken to several wildlife conservationists who have questioned the initial findings of Kenya's Wildlife Service.

Paula Kahumbu is a world-renowned conservationist who has worked with elephants for nearly 30 years. "We haven't got enough detailed information to have confidence in this claim that it's due to pesticides in crops," Kahumbu said.

"Some information has been released to the public but it's not adding up. Those elephants have to eat a huge amount to kill them."

Other experts who did not want to be named said the pesticide theory was inconsistent with elephant behaviour.

They said that males are more likely to raid farms as they usually take more risks than females and calves. However, only one of the 15 elephants affected was an adult male.

Nina, the landowners' representative, added that unlike the latest incident, previous cases of poisoning in farms had affected zebras and antelopes, which raid the same areas.

"How does cyanide kill the elephants and leave behind the zebras, antelopes and wildebeests, which are eating the grass together?" Nina asked.

Human-wildlife conflict has persisted for decades in communities near conservation areas across Kenya.

Stephen Michael, a tomato farmer in Kimana, says elephants and giraffes occasionally raid farms in the area.

"Elephants come from time to time from Tsavo and Amboseli. They destroy many farms, not just mine," Michael said.

"The last time elephants came, they destroyed cabbages and tomatoes. I lost cabbages worth almost $1,535 [£1,140]. That doesn't include tomatoes. I might start crying if I count that."

Frank Pope, CEO of conservation organisation Save the Elephants, told the BBC the pressure on Amboseli's elephants was not ivory anymore.

"It's land use," he said.

Farms and lodges are increasingly taking up land around the park which was previously used by elephants. It is such activities that Pope says worsen the conflict with wildlife.

"People are moving into areas where there's enough water to grow crops, and fertile soils, and those are the very areas that the elephants tend to use as well."

Nobody knows for sure what's causing the elephant deaths now.

The fear is that the remaining elephants and the people who live near them could still be at risk.

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

I left my wife and twins behind - why this Nigerian man fled South Africa

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gx2y454w5o, 6 days ago

Nigerian Richard Itoro is not sure when he will see his twin children again.

Fearing for his safety as the anti-migrant protests cranked up in South Africa this year, the 47-year-old left his family and business behind in Johannesburg and boarded one of the voluntary repatriation flights to Nigeria in June.

His is just one of many experiences that is fuelling diplomatic tension and threatening to rupture relations between South Africa and other countries on the continent.

Tens of thousands of foreigners have left the country over the past two months.

"It was painful for me to leave [the] person who's my best friend," Itoro tells the BBC, with tears welling up, as he reflects on saying goodbye to his South African wife.

Over 15 years, he had built up a car-dealership business, bought a home and created a family. That is now all gone for him.

Itoro became the target of harassment but his wife was not spared the intimidation.

He says his neighbours told her: "You're married to a Nigerian. Those of you who are married to Nigerians we are supposed to arrest you people.

"You guys betrayed us. Go and leave the country with your husband and don't be here."

Itoro was baffled.

"My family was just a small family, which was beautiful and peaceful. I had no issues with anybody."

The pressure became too much.

"If I go home and start all over again, it's better than being here, being harassed, being scared for my life," Itoro says.

But, the businessman says, the Nigerian high commission would not let his wife and children travel with him.

He describes how leaving felt like a movie where someone boards the last helicopter flight out of a besieged city.

"I wish I could have just begged the people from the embassy and said: 'This is my wife, I can't leave her behind and my kids,' but I couldn't.

"So my car started departing and I wished I had told her not to cry."

The anti-migrant groups in South Africa said their protests were aimed at undocumented foreigners. The country's outspoken Culture Minister, Gayton McKenzie, who leads one of the parties in the coalition government, also emphasised this point.

"We say South Africa is open to our brothers on the continent but come here legitimately. Come with your papers," he told the BBC's Interview programme.

But Itoro says his legal status did not protect him from hostility as he shows the BBC a copy of the document that he says proves he had the right to stay in the country.

He was not alone, according to the Nigerian authorities.

"We have records of Nigerians who have legitimate papers to remain in South Africa, yet they have been attacked," Nigeria's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sola Enikanolaiye said during a recent meeting with South Africa's Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola.

The temperature was raised last week following the death of a Nigerian who was killed as police were arresting him over suspected drug offences. An independent body is now investigating.

Lamola maintained that South Africa deals with those who take the law into their own hands, but added that President Cyril Ramaphosa was also "very firm on South Africa's sovereign right to enforce its immigration laws".

Despite the diplomatic efforts, South Africa's reputation has been severely damaged.

Not least because of images and videos circulating on social media. Not all of them were what they were purported to be, but one, involving a Ghanaian, was genuine and it sparked huge concern once it started being shared in April.

When Emmanuel Asamoah left Ghana in 2023 for South Africa, he was chasing the kind of opportunity many migrants dream about.

The 37-year-old hairstylist settled in Soweto, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, found work, built a life and believed he had a future in one of Africa's biggest economies.

But three months ago that future suddenly felt uncertain when he was surrounded by a group of South Africans who demanded that he leave. The confrontation was captured on video.

"This thing of you guys moving from one country to another… is no longer working," one woman can be seen telling Asamoah.

"Now, we are making it very clear to you guys, we don't want you here. We want you to fix your countries."

Having returned to Ghana's capital, Accra, in May, Asamoah tells the BBC that the encounter left him terrified.

"They came to me and started pushing me... So, they started asking questions and harassing me… they said that I should go home, that we are spoiling their country, because of us, they don't eat, we are taking their girlfriends," he says.

South Africa's high jobless rate - standing at more than 30% - is seen as one of the factors fuelling the tension. It was a sentiment echoed by McKenzie.

"No man can feed another man's children while his children are starving. Our people are starving of jobs," he said backing calls for those who came to the country without papers to leave.

But Asamoah insists he had a stamp in his passport giving him permission to stay.

"I was not illegal. I was legal in South Africa. That's why I told them that, they can take me to the police station so that we can go to Home Affairs and verify," he says.

For Asamoah, returning home has brought an unexpected fresh start.

With support from a Ghanaian businessman, he has opened a cement business and is determined to build his future.

"My brothers and sisters in South Africa. I'm in Ghana now. I'm fixing my country," he says.

But Ghana's government remains angry at the way it sees its citizens are being viewed in South Africa.

In an interview with the BBC, Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa spoke about how he saw it as going against the spirit of continental solidarity and a failure to recognise how African countries helped in the struggle against apartheid, which ended in 1994.

South Africa "should be the epitome of Pan-Africanism. We talk about African integration. We talk about free movement… even if you have issues with high immigration, is this how you resolve it?", the minister asked.

In Lagos, Itoro is still pining for his family.

"It's not easy. But we talk every day, and I'm broken. There is hope, because... my wife is going to join me very soon, as soon as God lifts me up. But it was heartbreaking, and that's how I felt: like I lost everything," he says.

Additional reporting by Abayomi Adisa

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

Why Uganda is winning the battle against Ebola as virus spreads in DR Congo

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyemjn44qqo, 8 days ago

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.

Death row inmates desperate to escape execution in Saudi Arabia call the BBC

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c80nkgdnl4no, 9 days ago

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.

Uganda team manager has 'no idea' why boxers have disappeared

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yv2w14nk3o, 4 days ago

The team manager for the Ugandan Commonwealth Games team has told BBC Scotland News he has no idea why four boxers with the team have vanished.

Two men and two women who competed for Uganda at the Games failed to turn up for their scheduled flights home and have since turned off their mobile phones.

Media reports in Uganda suggested the four may be looking to seek asylum, but Uganda's chef de mission Godwin Kayangwe said he hoped the athletes would return home before their visas expire in October.

Police say inquiries are ongoing into a number of Commonwealth athletes who have failed to turn up for homeward flights, but it is understood little can be done until the existing visas expire.

The four boxers - Ibrahim Kemis, 20, Nuhu Batte, 22, Emily Nakalema, 32 and Angel Katushabe, 21 - were due to fly back to Uganda on Tuesday.

Kayangwe said he has no idea why they have disappeared but suspects they are "probably still in Glasgow or somewhere in Europe."

"I don't know anything about why they decided not to fly home but I know they communicated with their team manager and said they would be coming back.

"But after that their phones went off, so they have definitely broken the camp rules because no athlete is supposed to leave without permission.

"Their visas are still valid until October so hopefully, probably, they will come back to their country."

Asked why the athletes might be looking to seek asylum, the team manager said he didn't know.

"I have totally no idea, absolutely no idea what type of asylum they would be seeking. It's nothing political, it's nothing to do with gender or something [like that] - I have absolutely no idea why they would be doing that."

Sports media site NBS Sports said it had spoken to one of the four missing boxers, who claimed the athletes intended to seek asylum and continue their boxing careers in a country they believed offered better training facilities and opportunities than their homeland.

The boxer was also said to have appealed to Ugandans for understanding and asked not to be judged for the decision.

Kayangwe said the matter was now with the Ugandan high commission who will liaise with the authorities in Scotland.

He added that he had a simple message to the missing athletes.

"My message is pretty clear, observe the law and make sure the visa does not expire while you are still here. Come back to Uganda and and they can probably come back to Europe whenever they want."

He added he hoped the boxers would make the "right decision" and return to Uganda.

Pakistan Today also reported that the boxer Qudrat Ullah had not joined the rest of his team-mates in flying home to Pakistan, and that he was not found in his room when officials went to search for him.

Outrage as Ugandan football captain beaten to death in street gang attack

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2g0038yr8o, 4 days ago

Ugandans are mourning the death at 27 of one of the country's best-known footballers after he was beaten by suspected robbers near his home in the capital, Kampala.

Police said David Owori was fatally assaulted after resisting an attempt to steal his mobile phone and other belongings, prompting an outpouring of grief and renewed public anger over violent crime in Uganda.

Owori captained Sports Club (SC) Villa, the Uganda Premier League record champions, where he played both as a right-back and midfielder. He also represented the country's national team - the Cranes.

"We have lost more than a player - we have lost a leader, brother and friend," SC Villa said in a statement.

Witnesses said a group of attackers hit the footballer with paving stones on Tuesday night before robbing Owori of his belongings and fleeing, leaving him unconscious.

SC Villa spokesperson Asan Kasingye told journalists that Owori was targeted just outside his home in Makindye, a Kampala suburb.

"The player was ambushed by thugs as he approached his home, leaving him with life-threatening injuries before he was rushed to the medical facility," Kasingye said.

Owori was rushed to a nearby medical clinic and then transferred to a private facility in the city, but he died of his injuries on Wednesday.

Local police spokesperson Rachael Kawala said detectives were pursuing leads to identify those responsible.

"The scene of the incident has been documented and processed to ensure that all relevant evidence is collected and preserved," Kawala added.

Owori's murder has sent shockwaves across Uganda, with the football community, including fans and teammates, and politicians demanding justice.

Tributes are continuing to pour in for the defender, who was popularly known as Colgate.

The Federation of Uganda Football Associations (Fufa) described Owori as "a true leader on and off the pitch".

"David was not just a footballer. He was both a leader and an inspiration to a generation," it said in a statement.

The national side, the Cranes, said the team had lost a football star who "carried the hopes" of Uganda.

Parliament on Wednesday observed a minute's silence in honour of Owori and called for a quick investigation.

The versatile player, renowned for his tactical discipline and ability to feature across midfield, returned to SC Villa in 2023 - after two years in Europe - for a second spell. At the time of his death, he was among the longest-serving members of the current squad.

He helped lead the high-profile team to their first league title in 20 years securing a record 17th top-flight crown in 2024.

His influence on and off the pitch earned him a contract extension until January 2027 with the team.

Owori also featured in the national team during the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying campaign and was regarded as a strong contender for future call-ups to the Cranes.

His death has triggered anger on social media, with many Ugandans questioning the level of violent crime in Kampala and calling for tougher action against criminals.

The killing comes just weeks after the death of another Ugandan sports star - rugby international Sydney Gongodyo - who was also fatally attacked by a mob in Kampala

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

Nigerian security forces rescue more than 300 abductees

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4ndd8nr8lo, 4 days ago

More than 300 people abducted in separate attacks in Nigeria have been rescued, the country's presidency says, in what it describes as the largest single-day operation by joint security forces.

The victims were rescued from the Kainji Lake National Park in Niger state in an operation involving the military, police, intelligence unit and the National Counter-Terrorism Centre.

Those freed include 163 people abducted during a February attack on the Woro and Nuku communities in Kwara state, where scores were killed. At least 145 others had been taken in Niger state.

It is not clear whether any suspects were detained in the operation.

The victims were receiving medical care at a military site before being reunited with their families.

"President Bola Ahmed Tinubu warmly welcomes the successful rescue of 308 Nigerian citizens who were abducted in different attacks in Niger and Kwara states," presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga said.

It was "the largest rescue operation ever carried out" in a single day, Onanuga added.

Tinubu described the operation as a sign of improved co-ordination among Nigeria's security agencies.

The armed jihadists wanted residents of the village of Woro in Kwara State to renounce the Nigerian government and its constitution and instead follow their teachings, effectively attempting to impose a parallel system of rule and government in the area.

Amnesty International said many of the dead had been found with their hands and feet tied - some had had their throats slit, others had been shot dead.

The Nigerian government has blamed Boko Haram for the attack - the jihadist group has not issued any statement about it.

The rescue comes weeks after 44 pupils and teachers abducted during a school attack in Oyo state were freed after more than 50 days in captivity following a month-long security operation.

The series of abductions, including attacks in parts of north-central and southern Nigeria, has raised fresh concerns that insecurity is spreading beyond the country's traditional conflict zones.

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

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan sign defence pact

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c30418m4mj4o, 2 days ago

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan have signed a joint defence agreement, saying an attack on one of them would be seen as an attack on all three.

The pact was announced at a meeting between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in the Saudi city of Mecca.

After the US and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February, Tehran and its allies struck targets in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states and disrupted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil shipping channel, and the Red Sea.

The Mecca agreement has drawn a sharp reaction from Tehran, where an senior member of parliament said it would not help Saudi Arabia.

"The Saudis should know that a paper agreement with Turkey and Pakistan does not bring them security, just as years of unilateral milking of the Americans did not bring them security," Ebrahim Rezaei, a member of National Security commission, wrote on his X.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan had already announced a joint defence pact last year.

The new Mecca Joint Defence Agreement sees three of the world's most powerful Muslim nations come together to offer mutual defence guarantees.

It aims "to strengthen collective deterrence against any act of aggression, and stipulates that any armed attack against any one of the three States shall be regarded as an attack against them all", a joint statement reads.

"It further provides for the enhancement of all aspects of defence co-operation among the three States."

Although the pact pledges mutual support, it provides no specifics on the obligations of each party. A Turkish official quoted by Reuters news agency said the pact was "purely defensive in nature".

Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey each bring different qualities to the table, with each wanting something different out of it.

For the Saudis, this gives an extra level of security in a region whose security architecture has been upended by the US and Israel's war with Iran.

Last month, Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels – who control much of the north-west of the country - announced a "maritime embargo" against Saudi Arabia and targeted Saudi airports, oil facilities and tankers in the Red Sea.

Furthermore, the Saudis will be keenly aware of last year's Israeli strikes on Doha, targeting senior Hamas officials. According to a report last year by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, "across the Gulf, states recalibrated their defence strategies". This pact is one of Saudi Arabia's responses.

For Pakistan, the pact offers different but complementary benefits. In May 2025 its long-standing tensions with India boiled over into open conflict.

While an all-out war was avoided, having the economic muscle of Saudi Arabia and the military and industrial might of Turkey in their corner will be seen as increasingly valuable.

It also comes at a time when Pakistan has been taking on a far more significant role in global diplomacy.

It has acted as an intermediary between Iran and the US and hosted ceasefire negotiations, significantly increasing its status in the region - something this pact further cements.

As for Turkey, the benefits are different. According to Burcu Ozcelik from the London-based Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), the deal offers opportunities for the country's significant defence industries through "joint production, technology partnerships, procurement and greater military interoperability".

While, on the surface, the concept of a mutual defence agreement seems straightforward, in practice the circumstances in which they would come into play are both complex and uncertain.

Would, for example, Turkey be obliged to join in strikes on Yemen if Saudi Arabia's full-scale war with the Houthis were to restart?

Would Saudi Arabia have to declare war on India were there to be a re-emergence of conflict with Pakistan?

Each instance would require complex calculations and careful diplomacy, often in an attempt to avoid escalation. It is, in short, uncertain.

The one consequence of a mutual defence agreement that sides involved will be banking on, however, is deterrence.

The very fact that they each now have two other regional powers standing behind them may not make aggression impossible, but it will make its potential cost significantly higher.

He's been frozen on Everest for 30 years, now 'Green Boots' may finally be coming home

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz05xn35xj7o, yesterday

For 30 years, a dead body known as "Green Boots" has been lying in the snow, nestled under an overhanging rock, not far from Mount Everest's summit.

The lime mountaineering boots worn by an Indian climber who died in 1996 have been a grim trail marker for many climbers on their way up the world's highest peak ever since.

Now India is looking for a specialist high-altitude recovery team to undertake a complex and risky mission to retrieve what they say is Dorje Morup's body – arguably the most famous of the hundreds whose bodies have been left frozen on the mountain.

Warning: This story contains a picture of a dead body.

They hope they are on the cusp of returning his remains to friends and family who never gave up hope he'd come home.

"On some days, before I went to sleep, I would think that there'd be a knock on the door tonight and that when I opened, he would be there," Morup's wife told the BBC.

"When he comes home, I will ask him: 'Where were you all these years?'"

Disaster struck on descent

The night before he left to be part of a historic Indian expedition on Everest, Morup sat with his wife at his home in Ladakh, an Indian-administered territory in another part of the Himalayas.

He made her a promise: that he would come back a hero and make his country proud.

"He asked me to take care of the kids and come to the airport to greet him on his return," Konchak Yangskit told the BBC at her home.

A lance naik, or lance corporal, in the Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), the force guarding much of India's border with China, 48-year-old Morup was no stranger to Himalayan trekking.

But Yangskit says she had a strange sense of foreboding that night: "I wondered if I was ever going to see him again."

Morup was one of six climbers on the ITBP expedition attempting to reach the top of Everest – which lies on the border between Nepal and the Chinese-governed territory of Tibet.

Most climbers choose to ascend from the Nepalese side, but Morup's crew wanted to write their names into the history books as the first Indian expedition to do it from the treacherous Chinese side.

Three out of six members of the expedition turned back due to a snowstorm, but Morup and two others - Tsewang Smanla and Tsewang Paljor – kept struggling, all the way up to the 8,849m summit.

Disaster, a blizzard, struck as they descended and killed all three.

Like many of the more than 300 people who have died in the Everest region since records began a century ago, their bodies remain on the mountain.

Two have never been found, but the third body - that of "Green Boots" - has been lying frozen in the snow for three decades at an altitude of 8,500 metres.

For years, it was assumed that "Green Boots" was another member of the expedition, Tsewang Paljor.

But testimony from surviving members of the 1996 expedition and the location of the last radio contact with the climbers have now led authorities to believe the remains belong to Morup.

An ITBP official, speaking anonymously because he is not authorised to speak to the media, told BBC News Hindi that Morup's clothes and climbing gear helped officials identify the body in recent years.

Since then, they've been plotting how to get their comrade home so they can confirm his identity beyond doubt through DNA testing and offer his family a semblance of closure.

"We never forgot him. It was only a matter of time," the ITBP official said.

How difficult will it be to recover the body?

Retrieving those who have died on the mountain is a dangerous, gruelling task, and, up until the past decade, very rare.

Many of the bodies, like Morup's, are in what climbers call Everest's death zone – where temperatures can plunge to -40C and oxygen levels are about a third of those at sea level.

"The weather and snow conditions are going to be crucial," said Tshiring Jangbu Sherpa, a prominent Nepalese mountaineer who has taken part in other recovery missions.

"The north side has fewer crevasses, but it is riskier. If something bad happens from the Nepalese side, you get quickly evacuated by helicopter. But there is no such system from the Chinese side," he told BBC Hindi.

The Chinese side of the peak – where Green Boots' body is – is steeper and doesn't have the same support structures as the southern slope, which is another complicating factor, Sherpa sources have told BBC News Nepali.

"It's really tough to get that body down even in popular spring season, let alone the autumn [which has more unpredictable weather]. That's the simple reason it is still there for so many years," mountaineering guide Pemba Ongchu Sherpa said.

"There would need to be 10 to 12 climbers who are capable of making summits, just to fix [support] ropes to reach that point."

Green Boots will also have to be physically carried down to an altitude where it can be collected by a helicopter, or possibly yaks, and transported back to an airport – a job which also requires huge manpower.

Sherpas say bodies shrouded in iced-up climbing gear often weigh several times the average man and are frequently frozen into awkward positions, making bringing them down the challenging terrain even more treacherous. The remains may also begin defrosting and decomposing once they reach lower altitudes.

The start of the descent with the body would be the most difficult, Indian climber Kuntal Joisher told BBC Nepali.

"It's going to be very, very risky endeavour. It's extremely steep ground with lots of rock. Logistically, this [first] 1000m is going to be a humungous challenge."

"The main thing is to not put Sherpa lives at risk for a dead body."

All of this makes for a hugely expensive recovery mission – experts say even the most straightforward ones cost between $40,000 and $80,000, a sum beyond the means of most families.

It is more common for local teams to move people who have died out of view on the mountain: like explorer Francys Arsentiev, dubbed the Sleeping Beauty of Everest, who in 2007 was moved to a more private final resting place on Everest almost a decade after she died.

But the ITBP – which is funding the recovery operation – wants Morup's body to be returned by September, and is looking for mountain rescue Sherpa groups who could do the job.

Once returned to India, the body will undergo DNA testing and, if confirmed to be Morup, his remains will be given back to his family.

'My heart refused to believe he had died'

For years, Morup's family back in Ladakh have struggled to come to terms with his disappearance.

Now around 75, Yangskit struggles to recall even the day she was married. But the days after the tragedy remain etched in her mind.

"I only knew there was a storm on the mountain. Even though we organised cremation prayers at home, my heart refused to believe he had died," she says with tears rolling down her face.

"I didn't see his dead body, so it was difficult for me to believe it."

All that remains of Morup today are his medals and trophies, a couple of old photos from his mountain adventures – and, most importantly, a certificate from the Chinese government which states that at 17:30 on 10 May 1996, Morup reached the top of Everest.

If the recovery mission is successful, Morup's son Punchok Dorjai told the BBC that the family would hold a funeral for him near the Martyrs Park in Ladakh's capital Leh.

"My father gave his life for the country and he should be remembered as a martyr," Dorjai said, adding that his teammates who perished deserve the same title.

The family will also proudly save a symbol of Morup's legacy at their home, to go alongside his summit certification, he said: "We are planning to keep the Green Boots."

Additional reporting by Pradeep Bashyal, BBC News Nepali

Thai PM vows to introduce stricter gun laws after eight killed in shooting

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdewx6rew04o, 2 days ago

Thailand's prime minister has vowed to introduce new gun control laws following a shooting by a teenager on the outskirts of Bangkok that left eight people dead and 22 injured.

Fourteen people remain in hospital, seven of whom are in a critical condition.

The 14-year-old killed his grandparents at the home they shared before travelling to Debsirin School in Nonthaburi, where he had been a student. There, he killed five teachers before taking his own life. Later, Thai media reported that a student had also died from their injuries.

Speaking after the attack, Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said he planned to introduce laws that restrict the carrying of firearms in public.

The new legislation will only allow government officials on duty to carry guns.

Police Col Thadsakorn Konthong said that the gun and bullets used in the attack belonged to the teen's grandfather, with an initial inspection finding signs that the firearm had been searched for inside the grandfather's bedroom.

International and local media have reported that the gun was legally registered and had a permit.

Thailand has one of the highest rates of civilian gun ownership in South East Asia, with around 10.3 million firearms in civilian possession, around four million of which are believed to be owned illegally.

The country has strict gun laws, which punish the illegal possession of arms with up to 10 years in jail, but enforcement of these laws has been an issue.

During his time as interior minister, Anutin introduced a number of gun control laws, including a short-term ban on new gun licenses and import restrictions.

Speaking on Friday, the prime minister said the tragedy "shouldn't have happened".

"I don't just feel sorry for the victims but I feel sorry that this happened. How can this happen in our country," Anutin added.

The teenager is believed to have shot his 73-year-old grandfather and 74-year-old grandmother at their two-storey flat at around 05:00 local time on Friday (22:00 GMT on Thursday).

Each was killed by a single shot to the head, a Thai police official said.

After killing his grandparents, the teenager boarded a school bus carrying the firearm and dozens of bullets, Reuters news agency reported.

He then attended his first class at 08:30 and his second at 09:20.

Around half an hour into his second class of the day, he drew the gun and began shooting.

The teenager is believed to have first shot teachers on the school's sixth floor, killing three of them.

"He then walked down the stairs and encountered the school's deputy director and the director's secretary, who were going up the stairs to check on the situation," Police Major General Dejrapee Kongdee told Reuters.

"The attacker shot and killed both of them on the staircase."

Police were deployed to the scene while the shooting was ongoing. They found the attacker, who by then had shot himself, around 10:40, Dejrapee said.

Five people were immediately killed and at least 23 were wounded. Later, Thailand's public broadcaster and the Bangkok Post reported that an eighth victim had died.

National police chief Gen Kittiratt Phanphet told reporters that forensic officers had found the attacker's shots were quite accurate, with several hitting vital spots on the body.

The prime minister said the attack was "well prepared" with "clear steps and clear goals".

According to local media, police have searched devices belonging to the teenager and found several videos relating to school shootings in the US.

The teenager has been described as quiet and well behaved by family members in local media.

His uncle told Thai media the teen spent much of his time indoors playing violent video games and rarely went outside. He added there was no indication the teenager was planning the attack.

The attacker had lived with his grandparents, as his parents were divorced.

The Debsirin School, founded in Bangkok in 1885, is one of Thailand's top secondary schools with branches across the country. It counts many prominent Thai figures among its alumni, from diplomats and athletes to several prime ministers.

I was standing in front of my teacher when she was shot, Thai pupil says

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c07rxz03034o, 2 days ago

On Friday morning, as the final classes of the week were under way, panicked students began streaming out of a prestigious school just outside Bangkok.

Inside, police say, a 14-year-old boy had opened fire.

"I was standing in front of the teacher when she was shot," a shaken seventh grader tells the BBC, near the gates of Debsirin School in Nonthaburi. "She was talking to me when [the gunman] showed up."

Still in her uniform, with her mother by her side, she explains how the shooter stalked from room to room.

Authorities say he killed five teachers and injured 23 people - including fellow pupils - before turning the weapon on himself. Earlier, he had gunned down his grandparents.

"I had to climb over the school fence to escape with other friends," the girl, who the BBC is not naming, continues.

Her mother says the girl thought she might die. "[She said] 'I thought I'd never see you again'."

One 18-year-old student told Reuters he initially thought firecrackers were going off.

"I didn't think it was a gun at first," he said. "There were many shots: bang bang bang. Then it went quiet. Then it started again."

Metres from the school gates, paramedics loaded the wounded into ambulances and rushed them to hospital, as milling crowds hugged and cried.

Rescue worker Kiatikhun Verapongpradith rushed to the scene after hearing children as young as 12 had been hurt.

"I saw students who had been shot, some in the arm, some in the back, some in the chest. So I rushed to help get them to the hospital first," the 47-year-old rescue worker told Reuters news agency.

One grieving teacher told the BBC his friend was among the dead.

"She was my age. We went to this school together as students. Then we both became teachers at this school," the 31-year-old, who declined to give his name, said.

It is early days in the investigation and police haven't said anything about a motive.

They believe the 9mm handgun the shooter used belonged to his grandfather. Forensic officers found the gunman's shots to be "quite accurate", with several hitting "vital spots" on victims' bodies.

Others are filling some of the gaps. A teacher at the school has said the shooter was a good student - not aggressive and with good grades - and education authorities have described him as an avid gamer.

Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said study pressures may have played a role.

"We learned that his grandmother was a teacher and she might have been strict with him. From what the police gathered from his close friend, they knew he was quite stressed about it."

It is clear authorities will have many questions to answer in the coming days - many of them about what change this crime must trigger.

Renewed calls for gun control reform

This is Thailand's deadliest mass shooting in years - and the second at a school this year.

In February, a head teacher and a female student were shot by an 18-year-old gunman during a school siege in southern Thailand.

Four years ago, a 34-year-old in the eastern Nong Bua Lamphu province killed 37 people, most of them preschoolers, in a shooting and stabbing at a nursery.

These crimes have resurfaced questions about gun control in the country.

"This shouldn't have happened," the boyfriend of one of the killed teachers told reporters, clearly distressed and trying to hold back tears.

More than seven million people are believed to own guns in the country, one of the highest rates of ownership in the world. Of those, more than one million are unlicensed owners.

While there are restrictions on gun licences in Thailand, people can still acquire the weapons - legally or illegally - with relative ease.

There is a thriving black market, aided by Thailand's porous land borders with four other nations. Problems with corruption and loose regulation in the police and military have seen weapons end up in the wrong hands.

Prime Minister Anutin said he had tightened regulations when he was interior minister three years ago - suspending new gun permits.

But gun crime remains rife, with deaths from gunshots among the highest in the region. And some in the community are calling for greater action.

"An act of violence in an educational institution, which should be one of the safest places in our society, serves as a stark reminder for Thai society to seriously and systematically review gun control measures," Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut, leader of the People's Party - an opposition party - wrote in a Facebook post.

A new youth agitation grips an Indian state after 'cockroach' protests

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ywv6egvx8o, 3 days ago

Weeks after thousands of young Indians poured onto the streets of Delhi in a major 'cockroach' protest over examination paper leaks, another group of frustrated job seekers is making headlines - this time hundreds of miles away, in the eastern state of Jharkhand.

Protesters have gathered at a stadium in the state capital Ranchi, since 25 July, demanding an overhaul of the state's government examination system. Some have been sleeping in the open and several have gone on hunger strike.

Umme Habiba is one of them.

The 27-year-old, from a farming family from Bokaro, has spent years preparing for Jharkhand's civil service examination, hoping it would get her the security of a government job. She has already sat the exam three times and hoped to get a good score this time.

"We want justice. We will not leave until we get it, even if it costs us our lives," she said.

The immediate cause of the anger is a preliminary civil service examination held in April.

After the results were announced in July, candidates alleged that leaked answer sheets shared on social media showed some successful applicants had answered far fewer questions than expected.

This fuelled suspicions that the results had been manipulated. The protesters want the exam scrapped and held again. They also want the case investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India's premier federal investigative agency.

The allegations are being investigated by Jharkhand's Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the Jharkhand Public Service Commission has since postponed the next stage of the examination. Its chairman, L Khiangte, resigned on 22 July and has been questioned as part of the investigation.

Investigators are also examining the role of a private company that conducted parts of the examination process, after candidates raised questions about how it was selected.

Deepika Pandey Singh, a minister in the Jharkhand government, told the BBC that the state had begun investigating the allegations even before the current protest.

She urged protesters to let the CID complete its investigation instead of handing the case to the CBI. "We want a fair investigation," she said, adding that anyone responsible - "whether a bureaucrat, employee, middleman or a big politician" - would face action. She also said the government would discuss the protesters' demand to cancel the April exam with them directly.

But protesters say their fight goes beyond one exam. They want a wider probe into alleged recruitment irregularities, action against those responsible and long-delayed hiring completed on time. Above all, they want regular, transparent exams so candidates are no longer left waiting indefinitely.

The stakes are especially high in India, where a government job offers a steady salary, social status and a route into the middle class. Competition is fierce, and many candidates spend years chasing one.

In Jharkhand, protesters say the uncertainty only prolongs the wait. As friends find jobs, marry and move on, many remain dependent on their parents. With every delayed exam, stalled recruitment and fresh controversy, the future they have worked towards slips further away.

For Savita Kumari, the wait began in 2019. Now 28, she has taken the state civil service exam twice. Confident she had cleared this year's preliminary stage, she stayed up for the results, released around midnight. Her name was missing. "We cried the whole night," she said.

Savita believes the exam was manipulated, alleging some candidates left answers blank so they could be filled in later. The CID has since sought answer sheets from successful candidates and raided the offices of the Jharkhand Public Service Commission and other locations.

That loss of faith is not confined to Jharkhand. Last month, the much larger protests in Delhi became one of the sharpest expressions of youth anger over examinations and jobs in recent years. The Cockroach Janta Party, or CJP, the independent youth movement behind those demonstrations, has since announced its support for the protests in Jharkhand.

There are other echoes of Delhi in Ranchi, too.

Nearly two weeks into the protest, the camp has settled into a routine. Supporters bring food, water and supplies, some through CJP networks. During the day, hunger strikers lie on mattresses under tarpaulins, with portraits of BR Ambedkar and freedom fighters behind them. Even monsoon rain does little to empty the camp.

By evening, the mood shifts. Crowds swell, speeches begin and slogans echo across the stadium. For a few hours, the encampment comes alive again.

There is one key difference. Unlike the CJP protests, which emerged outside party politics, the Ranchi agitation has drawn strong political backing.

The BJP, which is in opposition in Jharkhand, has backed the protesters, staged demonstrations, raised the issue in the state assembly and demanded a federal investigation. Congress, a partner in the state government but the BJP's national rival, has also expressed support for the students.

One of the protest's most visible faces is Devendra Nath Mahto, who is also on hunger strike. A former state election candidate, he says he began campaigning over recruitment issues while still a student. In 2023, he joined protests over another state examination despite not having taken the test himself.

"Even if I didn't take the exam today," he said, "I will have to take it tomorrow."

Many protesters are wary of being claimed by any political party and insist that the movement remains theirs.

"Students will lead this movement," said Vikram Kumar. "They will be on the stage and in front." Politicians are welcome to support them, he said, but should "leave their party's flag and agenda at home".

Kumar has been waiting since 2019 for the state to recruit assistant engineers. He said the examination has been advertised only three times since Jharkhand state was created in 2000, even as hundreds of posts remain vacant.

"All we get is assurances," he said.

The government has offered talks, and the protesters have formed an 11-member delegation, though the two sides were yet to meet formally by Friday.

Habiba remains wary.

She says the protesters have heard promises before; what they want now is an investigation they trust and examinations they believe are fair.

For now, they are still waiting.

Australian aviation crew carries out daring midwinter Antarctica rescue

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89nqlz5p4qo, 3 days ago

An Australian aviation crew has carried out a daring midwinter mission to rescue a US expedition member from a station in Antarctica in freezing temperatures and total darkness.

Skytraders said the "extraordinary" mission took place last Friday after a request for urgent help with a medical evacuation from McMurdo Station.

After an initial delay due to the weather, the aviation company said it was able to land its Airbus A319 in "extremely challenging conditions" including temperatures of -43C (-45.4F).

The patient was then safely transferred onto the plane, known as Snowbird 1, which carried on to Christchurch in New Zealand, where the patient was treated. He is now recovering well.

Captain Louise Robertson, one of four pilots on the flight which took off from the Tasmanian city of Hobart, told the BBC it was the first ever to have taken place in July and to be completed in total darkness.

"We completed it on the 31 July, and the first day of any sort of sunlight, which was very minimal, would be on the 1 August," she said.

Her husband of 18 years, Rod Robertson, was the pilot who landed the plane at the US research station on Ross Island.

"He was in the left seat and I was in the right seat," she said, adding that it was the most complex operation she had ever been involved in during her seven years at Skytraders and 25 as a pilot.

Skytraders had received the evacuation request from the US Antarctic Program via the Australian Antarctic Division on Wednesday afternoon, Robertson said.

It was a "major operation" for the plane to be correctly configured in time by engineers and a design team, who fitted a stretcher in the back.

The configuration took 24 hours, Robertson said, but takeoff was then delayed for another 12 hours while the crew waited for a suitable window in the weather.

"We had quite a narrow time frame that we could actually fly down to Antarctica because there was a snowstorm on the first day that we were intending to go down which stopped the operation."

The storm prevented crew at the station from getting to the runway, made of compacted snow, which had to be graded and groomed to make it smooth - a six-hour job.

The plane eventually took off from Hobart in the early hours of Friday morning.

The ground crew "did a phenomenal job to make a 3-km-long runway available for us given the conditions they were also facing, -45C and strong wind," Robertson said.

The flight crew spent exactly one hour on the ground at Phoenix Airfield before taking off again for Christchurch.

Another pilot on the mission, Captain Al Wallach, said the success reflected the specialist expertise of the team, which included the flight crews, meteorologists, operational planners, runway teams and medical personnel.

"Every Antarctic mission demands absolute precision, but winter operations raise the complexity significantly," he said. "The conditions we encountered were right on the edge of even the most specialised aircraft capability."

Emma Campbell, head of the Australian Antarctic Division, said the operation "highlights both the capability of our people and the strong partnerships that underpin Antarctic programmes around the world".

Skytraders carried out a similar mission in March 2020, when the US requested help evacuating a member of the US Antarctic Program also based in McMurdo, although temperatures were slightly warmer at -30°C.

Drone warnings and sheltering in airports as South Korea battles historic heatwave

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr597m1vm96o, 3 days ago

South Korean authorities are deploying drones to issue heat warnings to farmers while residents are taking shelter in airports, as the country battles an unprecedented heatwave.

President Lee Jae Myung has ordered public agencies to mobilise all available resources to deal with the extreme heat, which he has called a "national disaster".

Temperatures in the south soared to a record 42.5C (108.5F) earlier this week.

At least 23 people have died from heat-related illnesses in the country so far this year, while nearly 2,500 have visited emergency rooms for heat-related conditions since mid-May, authorities say.

"Heatwave conditions once seen only in foreign news reports have now become our reality," Lee said on Thursday.

Some local governments have deployed trucks to parks, markets and bus stops to distribute chilled bottled waters for free.

In the southern city of Yangsan, where the mercury hit a historic high of 42.5C on Sunday, fleets of sprinkler trucks have been roaming the streets, spraying water onto sun-baked roads.

Meanwhile in rural areas such as North Gyeongsang province, local authorities are deploying drones attached with loudspeakers and thermal imaging cameras to protect its farmers, many of whom are also elderly.

The drones hover over the farmers, broadcasting warnings such as "it's hot, you need to go inside" to remind them to take breaks and cool down.

Most outdoor activities have been cancelled on the advice of the national weather agency. These include the daily changing-of-the-guard ceremony at Seoul's Gyeongbokgung Palace.

The national baseball organisation has also called off all scheduled games for the week.

These cancellations come after a 23-year-old spectator collapsed at a game in Incheon on Tuesday, reportedly due to dehydration and low blood pressure brought on by the heat.

Amid the scorching temperatures, South Korea's air-conditioned airports – including its largest in Incheon – have become a refuge for some vulnerable communities, including the homeless and the elderly.

Photographs on local media show people lying on benches and platforms, using towels as makeshift blankets.

One visitor sheltering in Seoul's Gimpo airport told The Korea Times it is a "perfect place to rest without spending any money".

"I come here from time to time with my friends whenever the weather gets too hot," he said.

Meanwhile a mobile app developed by an undergraduate to direct people to the shadiest walking paths has gained traction online, particularly among students.

Geuneulro, named after the Korean term for "shaded road", takes into account the positions of the sun and shadows cast by buildings and trees to recommend the most shaded routes through the city.

"This summer has become so hot that I feel like meat on the grill," the app's developer Yoo Min-jun told BBC Korean.

Yoo said he came up with the app after struggling with commuting in the heat. "The fact that it has resonated with so many people shows that many are struggling.

"That makes me worry because they say it will only get hotter in the future. I hope this prompts more to pay attention to climate change," the 23-year-old said.

Climate experts have said the extreme heat could ease starting this weekend, with daytime highs falling to around 36C, but the hot weather could continue.

Earlier this week, Seoul's meteorological administration forecast a 50% probability that temperatures in September and October could continue trending higher than average.

With reporting by Emily Choi and Kim Hyojung in Seoul

'Put your phone down': K-pop band weighs in on concert etiquette

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39ep3p0ld1o, 3 days ago

Kicking off their global tour in the South Korean city of Incheon, the five members of K-pop boy band Cortis saunter onto stage in casual, streetwear-inspired outfits, exuding an effortlessly cool vibe.

"Put your phone down," one of the members bellows. Piercing screams erupt. A sea of illuminated screens flickers back.

"I told you, put your phone down," he repeats, louder this time.

Some fans do just that, but the packed stadium vibrates harder with cheers as thousands of phones stay in the air.

It's hard to say how serious this theatrical command is.

"Put your phone down" is also the name of Cortis's ongoing concert tour, which started in Incheon on 18 July and will head to cities like New York and Los Angeles before returning to Seoul later this month.

The refrain reflects a message the band has long pushed: that fans should stop watching concerts through six-inch screens and engage with their performances in real life.

It's drawn mixed reactions from their fandom: fan-filmed content is a valuable social currency in K-pop.

Park Ji-yeon, for one, could not bring herself to stop recording Cortis's performances. The 22-year-old had specially rented a new, top-tier smartphone for both days of the Cortis concert just so she could film in the highest quality.

"I was standing right at the front, and I couldn't bring myself to put my phone down because I don't know if I'll ever get this opportunity again," she tells the BBC.

"I usually film concerts because I know a lot of those memories will fade as soon as I leave the venue."

While fans like Park continued to film, some heeded the band's call. Kim Ga-eun, 25, who was seated in the amphitheatre-style venue, saw it all.

"People in the back of the standing section were having a great time dancing together. I thought that really reflected the intention behind the concert," she says.

Cortis has had a whirlwind year since debuting last year under record label BigHit Music - part of the company that created pop sensation BTS. Most of its members are teenagers. The oldest of the group, James, is just 20 years old.

Their music videos have each amassed millions of views. Over the weekend they performed at Lollapalooza, the famed music festival in Chicago.

The band's name, Cortis, is derived from the phrase "colour outside the lines", which according to their record label is meant to encapsulate the band's free spirit and refusal to conform to societal rules - which, in this case, appears to include telling fans to resist the temptation of the phone camera.

They join a prominent wave of artists around the world who have been advocating the same.

Singers like Phoebe Bridgers and Alicia Keys have required their concert attendees to use lock pouches - sealed bags that allow people to hold on to their phones without being able to access them.

Few have gone as far as British rock group Suede, whose frontman Brett Anderson leapt over a barricade during a 2023 performance in Singapore to grab at fans' phones.

Billie Eilish, who has defended filming as a way for fans to relive precious memories after a show, gently cooed to her front row audience during a performance in Amsterdam: "Put your phone down, I'm right here."

Even BTS, K-pop's golden boys, have made similar requests. "Stop looking at your phone screen. Just look at me," BTS member Jungkook teased the audience at one concert.

"From the artists' perspective, interacting with fans is a really important part of performing, so I think they want people to focus more on that than on their phones," Park says of Cortis's anti-mobile rallying cry.

After all, fancams - zoomed-in videos focusing on a single celebrity - are a prized currency in K-pop communities. Once shared online, people meticulously study the choreography in them and delight in catching subtle movements and expressions by their favourite band members. These clips live on as fodder for collective swooning and fan-made montages.

And this is why Cortis's incessant calls to for people to put their phones down have rubbed some the wrong way - in a fan culture that's obsessed with capturing every moment. After the first day of their concert, disgruntled comments emerged online among fans.

"I spent over one million won ($700; £520) attending both days," Park says, referring to the sum of not just concert tickets but also additional expenses like transport and accommodation.

"I think a lot of fans spent similar amounts of money, so constantly hearing them asking us to put our phones down made some fans even more frustrated."

These murmurs appear to have reached Cortis, who fans say dialled down their message on the second day of the concert.

"On the first day, the message felt more like, 'Let's put our phones down and have fun together.' On the second day, it changed slightly to, 'We understand why you want to film, so let's just make sure we enjoy ourselves together,'" Kim recalls.

"They said filming was okay, but they wanted us to enjoy the concert together, and that 'Put Your Phone Down' was more of a mindset."

India is a nation of walkers - but its cities forgot them

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3e4enkrqro, 3 days ago

For much of my life, walking in Indian cities has felt less like exercising a right than negotiating an obstacle course.

I grew up in Kolkata, where wide pavements disappeared beneath rows of hawkers. I moved to Delhi, where roads seemed designed almost exclusively for cars. Now I live in Gurugram, where footpaths vanish into rubble and garbage, are abruptly blocked by parked vehicles or construction, or sit uncomfortably high above the road.

So when India's Supreme Court declared in June that the right to walk safely on designated footpaths was a fundamental right, it felt less like judicial activism than common sense arriving decades late.

Walking is the most democratic form of transport. Yet it is also the one India's cities have neglected most consistently.

It's remarkable because India remains, above all, a nation of walkers. Around 45 million people walk to work every day, according to census-based estimates, compared with only about 5.4 million who commute in private cars, jeeps or vans.

Nearly a third of urban workers walk to work, while virtually every bus or metro journey begins and ends on foot. Add school runs, shopping trips and other everyday journeys, and walking dominates urban mobility. A 2019 survey of selected cities found that 63% of all journeys were made on foot, making pedestrians the single largest group of road users.

Many are what researchers call "captive pedestrians" - people who walk not by choice but because they cannot afford another option. Women are especially dependent on walking. Yet the people who contribute least to congestion and pollution often face the greatest risks.

The evidence is harrowing. Even where pavements exist, they are often broken, narrow or inaccessible to older people, children and those with disabilities.

They are also blocked by motorcycles, swallowed by parked cars, encroachments or excavated for utility works. Faded zebra crossings are treated as little more than road markings no-one respects. Flyovers speed traffic while forcing pedestrians into hazardous detours below.

A landmark 2011 study of six Indian cities found that India's streets routinely fail pedestrians because of "poor and unsafe" infrastructure.

The Walkability in Indian Cities report by the Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities (CAI-Asia) gave the surveyed cities a median walkability score of just 47 out of 100, with the worst conditions around public transport terminals - ironically the places where most journeys begin and end on foot

As Geetam Tiwari, a transport scholar at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi puts it, pedestrians have been "pushed to the margins of the road networks" forcing them to "jostle for space with motor vehicles".

The price is paid in lives.

Officially pedestrians account for roughly a fifth of road deaths, but independent studies cited by Tiwari estimate the share is closer to 30-40%.

Pedestrians are also the second-largest group of road accident victims after two-wheeler riders. In Delhi and Mumbai, they account for more than half of all road deaths. According to a World Bank study, crashes already cost India an estimated 3-5% of its GDP each year through lost productivity, healthcare costs and disability.

The Supreme Court case arose from one such tragedy: a five-year-old boy crushed by a truck while walking to school with his father.

The judges responded with unusual eloquence. Walking, Justice PS Narasimha wrote, is "the simplest of the simple human activity, inextricably connected to life". Roads therefore impose a corresponding duty on the state to provide safe footpaths. "The fundamental right to walk on demarcated footpaths shall override the privilege of a motorised vehicle," he declared.

The judgment challenges decades of Indian urban planning, where progress has often been measured in kilometres of expressways, flyovers and elevated corridors. Streets were engineered to move vehicles as quickly as possible, while the one road user every citizen inevitably becomes - the pedestrian - largely disappeared from planners' imagination.

"People know about the latest cars, but walking has become invisible," says Rishi Aggarwal, who has spent more than a decade trying to change that mindset in Mumbai.

Through city walks and public talks, his advocacy group, Walking Project, encourages residents to notice what they have stopped seeing: broken pavements, blocked crossings and unsafe junctions - and compare them with the standards pedestrians are entitled to expect. "When people become apathetic, they stop observing the street," he says.

In a city where an estimated 15 million walking trips are made every day, Aggarwal argues, it is not just footpaths that have disappeared from view, but also the millions of people who depend on them.

For Rahul Goel, a transportation researcher at Delhi's Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), the problem begins with governance.

"Are footpaths maintained and cleaned? Does the city ensure they aren't encroached upon?" he says. "In Delhi, many roads do have footpaths, but they're often unusable because of poor governance."

Poor design makes matters worse. Cars parked perpendicular to the kerb often conceal footpaths or block them altogether, while vehicles parked directly on pavements are a common sight.

Footpaths are often too narrow for the number of pedestrians. Many are so high above the road that older people, wheelchair users and others with limited mobility struggle to use them. Others end abruptly, forcing people back onto the carriageway.

"If the footpath is discontinuous, it's simply more convenient to keep walking on the road," says Goel.

He believes the deeper problem is one of priorities. "Urban transport governance is still centred on moving vehicles. Reducing congestion and maximising road space for motor traffic take precedence over pedestrians," he says.

Civic agencies are often reluctant to widen footpaths because they view carriageway space as sacrosanct. That mindset, Goel argues, is reinforced by public pressure.

Traffic jams dominate headlines and social media, pushing authorities to keep vehicles moving. In Delhi, many mid-block crossings have been replaced by U-turns to reduce stoppages, forcing pedestrians onto foot overbridges.

"People don't just need to walk along a road," says Goel. "They need to be able to cross it safely too."

The result is a stark urban inequality.

In Gurugram, a high-speed arterial road cuts through busy neighbourhoods with few safe crossings. Domestic workers, labourers and other pedestrians routinely dodge speeding traffic, and many are killed trying to cross. Only after the death toll mounted did authorities begin building footbridges.

Across India's cities, those who cannot afford cars or motorcycles are left to risk their lives on roads that barely accommodate pedestrians.

Those who can drive claim an ever-larger share of public space, while walking becomes a leisure activity confined to gated communities, parks or gym treadmills. In a country grappling with rising obesity and lifestyle diseases, cities have turned the most basic form of exercise into something not just inconvenient, but too often dangerous.

Clearly, making people walk will require far more than a court order.

"Walking as a fundamental right should lead to pedestrian-friendly cities, not just pedestrian-friendly streets," says Tiwari.

That means rethinking how cities are designed. Some countries have adopted default urban speed limits of 30km/h or 20mph to protect pedestrians, regardless of the type of road. Achieving that, Tiwari says, requires redesigning streets by narrowing traffic lanes, altering road surfaces and introducing other traffic-calming measures.

The judges also reflected on walking as something far greater than a way of getting from one place to another. It can be "necessity for the poor, meditation for some, an act of resistance for others and a path to discovery. Walking, they noted, also helped shape India's freedom struggle".

As writer Sumana Roy notes, India's political history has often unfolded on foot -from Gandhi's "salt march" to Dandi to Subhas Chandra Bose's "Delhi Chalo" (March to Delhi) and the many protest marches that followed.

For Tiwari, that broader understanding of walking should also shape how cities are built. "Walking is more than a travel option," she says.

"Therefore a safe walking infrastructure requires more than creating footpaths and safe crossing. Walking spaces have to integrate activities like spaces of street vendors, shaded paths, areas for resting for old people and sometimes space where children can play."

For decades, Indian cities have asked how to move more vehicles. The top court has reminded them to ask a simpler one: how do people walk?

I'd settle for something wonderfully unremarkable: a footpath that simply carries me from one end of the street to the other.

Banned from football at home, Afghan women's team reunite 8,000 miles away

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8dnrpmgv4yo, 4 days ago

The changing room is busy with footballers going through their pre-match routines. Some stretch and tighten their boots, others embrace.

"Be strong as always because we are representing Afghan women," says midfielder Fatima Haidari to fellow members of Afghan Women United.

Applause erupts in the room where an Afghan flag hangs and a patriotic song is played. As the women sing along some struggle to hold back tears.

There's a final team huddle with words of encouragement from their coach before they head out to the pitch – a place that for years they had been told they did not belong.

The 23-player squad, selected from Afghan players now living abroad, has travelled to New Zealand for a training camp and to play two unofficial friendly games against the Cook Islands.

This is the first time they have been together since football governing body Fifa ruled in April that they could represent their country in official matches in the future.

Previously, they would have needed the approval of the Afghanistan Football Federation. This was not possible under the Taliban, who returned to power in August 2021, imposing wide-ranging restrictions on women and girls, including barring them from secondary school and university, most professions and organised sport.

The country's national women's team, formed in 2007, could no longer play and its members were among those evacuated and resettled in countries including Australia, the UK and Portugal.

Years of campaigning led to the creation of a refugee team, which became Afghan Women United. Thanks to Fifa's ruling, it can now try to qualify for international competitions such as the Olympics and World Cup.

Gathered in New Zealand, the squad is excited to be playing together - as asylum seekers living in various countries it has been hard for them to get the travel documents in order to train as a team over the past five years.

Sitting in the hotel in Auckland the day before the match, Manozh Noori, who has short hair, wears a T-shirt and knee-length shorts - a look that she says has often drawn criticism from relatives for looking too masculine.

As the 23-year-old speaks to BBC Global Women about her family, her voice begins to falter. She pauses, takes a deep breath and looks away for a moment before continuing. There are no tears, but the emotion is clear.

Noori now lives in Australia but she grew up playing football with boys in the streets of Kabul.

After seeing women's football on television, she secretly joined local clubs and gradually rose through the ranks in Afghanistan.

She knew her older brother would disapprove so she tried to reduce the risk of being recognised by wearing a face covering.

Over six years, she won league titles, national championships and individual awards.

Eventually her success became impossible to hide. In about 2018 her fellow players persuaded her to remove her face covering for a TV interview, which was shown on the news along with highlights of their match.

Then she had to face the reality that her brother might see it. "I was so scared," she recalls. "I kept thinking, 'He's going to see me. He's going to know.'"

In desperation, she tried to stop the family from watching the news by turning off the electricity, but word soon reached her brother and he was furious, she says.

"He was screaming," Noori says. "'You told us you were studying. You said you wanted to become a teacher or a doctor. What is this?'"

He threatened to cut his ties with the family if she didn't stop, she adds. "My mother was crying. She told me, 'He's the person who supports us financially. How are we going to survive?'"

Noori did stop playing for a while, but eventually started again. She says her other brother, who lives in Germany, sent money to help finance her dream.

When the Taliban took over in 2021, Noori decided to flee, but first she buried her football medals and trophies in the garden of her family home.

More than four years later, they remain there.

"One day I will go back and dig them out," she says, briefly smiling at the thought.

"Football helped me get my mum and sister out of Afghanistan," she says. Two years after she moved to Australia and established herself as a football player, she was able to bring them over as well.

This meant her sister was able to study again - even though her brother didn't want them playing sports, he always supported their education. "I hope my brother now realises I am not a bad person," says Noori.

As she and the team prepare for the matches in Auckland, many of them describe football as the reason they survived one of the most turbulent periods in their country's recent history.

"If I wasn't a footballer, I would still be in Afghanistan, one of millions of girls who are not allowed to study, speak up or choose their own future," says Mursal Sadat, who also lives in Australia.

Now 24, she works as a football coach, youth facilitator and advocate for refugees, women's rights and human rights.

In Afghanistan, she says she was often judged, harassed and told that no-one would want to marry a woman who played sport.

Today she is engaged to a man who is still in Afghanistan, and says he and his family are supportive of her work and place on the national team. "They tell me, 'You are the pride of our family. We are so lucky to have you.'"

As the players step out into the driving Auckland rain to face the Cook Islands, they channel their energy and determination, unfazed by the weather. They have faced much tougher conditions back home.

As a teenager, defender Najma Arefi trained in temperatures above 45C (113F) because girls were often given the least desirable training slots.

Still, she persisted.

The 22-year-old's efforts eventually helped a Herat-based team win a national championship.

The victory, she says, changed attitudes towards women's sport in the city.

"There were billboards of us across Herat," she recalls. "People were proud. More families started letting their daughters play football."

She now lives in Doncaster in northern England. She arrived in the UK after the Taliban takeover.

She describes herself as an extrovert and says she now has opportunities she never imagined growing up in Afghanistan.

She studies criminal justice at college, plays football and makes decisions independently. "Having that freedom is incredible," she says.

Yet she admits she often feels guilty and desperately sad about the freedoms denied to women back home.

"Millions of girls don't have the chance to study or follow their dreams. I feel I have to make the most of every opportunity.

"Sometimes I put too much pressure on myself," she says, tears rolling down her face.

She thanks Khalida Popal, who founded the original Afghan women's team, for pushing Fifa to recognise them now they are in exile. "To receive Fifa's recognition without the approval of the Taliban" has made history, she says.

This official status is "something I'll always be proud of", she says.

When the BBC asked the Taliban's director for sports, Ahmadullah Wasiq, about Fifa backing the women's team, he declined to comment. But he said he would like Fifa to visit the country and resume its support for football there in general - the organisation largely withdrew after the Taliban came to power. Fifa has previously said any resumption of support would depend on women being allowed to play.

The game in Auckland turns out to be unforgiving. A single goal in the first match hands the Cook Islands a 1-0 victory. Three days later, despite the Afghan team's best efforts, the Cook Islands win again, this time 3-0.

Yet for the players, these matches represent something far more significant than two defeats.

A return to the pitch and proof that despite exile, separation from their families and years of uncertainty, Afghanistan's women footballers refused to disappear.

* This is part of the Global Women series from the BBC World Service, sharing untold and important stories from around the globe

Youth protests have weakened Modi, Indian activist who went on hunger strike tells BBC

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn7nkyr1j7ro, 4 days ago

The recent youth-led protests have weakened Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi "terribly", says leading activist Sonam Wangchuk whose hunger strike galvanised the movement.

Wangchuk told the BBC that the atmosphere in the country had changed following mass demonstrations which triggered the resignation of the education minister on 25 July.

Young people now have more confidence they can "change things if they want to" and feel they don't have to "take everything lying down", the 59-year-old said.

The "cockroach" movement mounted one of the biggest public displays of dissent against Modi's government, which has been in power since 2014.

The movement takes its name from a remark by India's chief justice, who drew criticism after comparing sections of unemployed young people to "cockroaches" during a court hearing.

Wangchuk fasted in scorching heat in the capital, Delhi, for 26 days in June and July, consuming only salt and water. He says he has now regained six of the 11kg he lost.

The activist was forcibly taken to hospitals which he says were "more like prisons" for the final six days of his fast.

By then, the protests had escalated from public anger about the leak of exam papers into some of the biggest anti-government demonstrations India had seen in years.

Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned the day after Wangchuk ended his hunger strike.

Since then, Modi has announced fast-track courts to try those accused in the leaks and appointed a tech billionaire to lead efforts to reform the examination system.

The government also said it would offer compensation to families of students who took their own lives after exam questions were leaked.

But India's problems are deeper - with graduate unemployment hovering around 35-40% for the past 25 years.

Wangchuk argues fundamental reform to education is needed.

The engineer and education specialist says exams currently have little relevance to the job market.

Often based on multiple-choice questions, they are designed to assess millions of students efficiently, with no consideration of how effectively they measure skills and understanding, he says. This, in turn, shapes how schools teach.

If exams placed greater emphasis on hands-on experience and aptitude, he suggests, schools might adapt their methods and help address India's jobs crisis.

"There needs to be some planning of what the world and the country are likely to look like in 15 years," Wangchuk says.

Changing the way children are taught might help ensure they are "not left unemployed and sectors that need people are not left underemployed".

India's government has previously defended itself against criticism of its handling of the economy. It argues that claims of an unemployment crisis are overstated and that its macroeconomic policy remains fundamentally robust.

Meanwhile, reports say many Cockroach Janta Party protesters are still facing repercussions including court cases, police harassment and social media abuse.

This is happening despite the Supreme Court directing authorities not to take coercive action against those protesters who are facing charges but have no prior criminal record.

But regardless of that, Wangchuk says that, "in the last few days, I think there has been good progress".

Wangchuk insists change is in the air in India.

He believes the government has been hugely damaged by how long it took before Pradhan stepped down.

"This gave young people a chance to gain confidence and unity in their actions."

Wangchuk says that, if the government doesn't listen to the people, they may return to protests that go beyond education.

He suggests the damage is already being felt by the governing BJP, pointing to the party losing two of three by-elections this week - including a seat in Bihar state it had held for more than 30 years.

However, he maintains that India's leaders could still change their approach.

"I always believe in people realising their mistakes and amending their ways. So I would give them that chance."

Twelve days have now passed since Wangchuk said he broke his fast. He is back in Leh, his hometown in the Himalayan region of Ladakh.

He has a renewed faith in the power of hunger strikes - taking inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of non-violent resistance.

In previous years he's held hunger strikes for more self-rule in Ladakh and against a "very powerful government" seeking to "bulldoze ecologically sensitive places".

Though he has not achieved his goals there, he says "inflicting pain on ourselves makes the government feel differently, compared to us using sticks and stones".

Asked if he has any plans to run for office, he says no - he would rather enable others to do so.

Ex-leader Hasina gambles on return to Bangladesh despite death penalty

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg9j8820v6o, 4 days ago

Former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina has vowed to return to her country in December, despite facing the death penalty there for crimes against humanity.

Hasina, who denies the charges, was tried in absentia after fleeing to India during an anti-government uprising in 2024.

On the second anniversary of being ousted, Hasina said in an audio broadcast to a crowded press club in Delhi that she "had to go back", but wouldn't announce her exact plans or dates yet.

Her Awami League party has been falling apart and Indian officials have been facing pressure to extradite her after a special tribunal in Dhaka sentenced her to death last year for ordering lethal force to be used on protesters.

Hasina's virtual meeting with reporters at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Delhi was her first meeting with the media since she was toppled after 15 years in power.

She delivered a speech over an audio link and then took a handful of questions.

"I know that they may put me in jail or they may kill me, anything may happen, but still I have to go back," she said.

In the address she alleged that several organisations had turned the 2024 student protests into a "violent movement", without providing any evidence.

She has always rejected the charges on which she was convicted as politically motivated. But UN investigators found evidence that she and her government tried to cling to power using systematic, deadly violence.

In audio of one phone call verified by BBC Eye, Hasina was heard authorising the deadly crackdown on demonstrators. Prosecutors used the recording as crucial evidence in convicting her.

The UN estimates up to 1,400 people were killed, most by gunfire from security forces, during the protests, which started as a student-led movement against quotas in government jobs and turned into a mass uprising.

The 78-year-old fled Dhaka as tens of thousands of demonstrators held protests and stormed government buildings, including her official residence, plunging the country of more than 170 million into crisis.

Soon after she was toppled, an interim government took charge. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party came to power after elections in February this year, with its leader Tarique Rahman now prime minister.

His government had already warned local media not to publish or broadcast Hasina's comments. After her address, it said it was "outraged" India had allowed her to take part in a public meeting with the media.

"Our people have firmly resolved that our nation will never again go back to the dark days of fascism and that Bangladesh will never be a client state," a foreign ministry statement said.

Hasina's presence in Delhi has strained relations with Bangladesh, which wants her extradited, a request India says it's examining.

A return by Hasina to Dhaka, if it happens, is likely to have repercussions, including political unrest.

"It's a huge risk for her personally. If she does go back to Bangladesh, she will immediately be arrested," says David Bergman, an analyst based in Dhaka.

It's likely that supporters of the ruling BNP, as well as the party of the students, the National Citizens Party, Islamists and others could hold rallies demanding that her sentence be carried out.

But the stakes are also high for the Awami League, if she does not return.

The activities of the party were banned soon after she fled the country and it was not allowed to contest the February general election.

Awami League leaders allege that hundreds of supporters have been killed in mob violence and dozens have died in the custody of security forces. Dhaka officials reject accusations that Awami League supporters are being systematically targeted.

"If Ms Hasina doesn't go back, the violence will continue and they will exterminate the Awami League," Mohammad Ali Arafat, a former minister in Ms Hasina's cabinet, who is also overseas, told the BBC.

There has been growing discontent among a section of her party that many top leaders had fled the country while leaving mid-level leaders and supporters vulnerable to attacks.

"It must be to do with the recognition that if Ms Hasina is going to have any relevance to Bangladesh politics in the future, she's got to go back to Bangladesh and face it," David Bergman says.

The avalanche that killed a climbing legend - and a generation of record-setting guides

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2ge4dnj80o, 5 days ago

Altogether, they summited Mount Everest dozens of times and achieved numerous feats previously thought impossible - like climbing 8,000m peaks without supplemental oxygen and scaling K2, one of the world's most lethal mountains, in the dead of winter.

But beyond these accomplishments, the six Nepalis who died in an avalanche on Pakistan's Broad Peak last week also elevated the world's recognition of Nepali mountain guides, or Sherpas, who had previously been seen as mere aides.

Among those killed was the decorated British-Nepali climber Nirmal Purja, best known for climbing the world's 14 highest peaks, rising above 8,000m (26,246 ft), in just over six months.

Their fellow guides say their deaths deal a devastating blow to Nepal's mountaineering community.

'Best of his generation'

Purja, 43, also known as Nims, was the leading figure of the 10-member international team up Broad Peak, the world's 12th highest mountain, when the avalanche struck.

"Nims of course was iconic and undisputedly amongst the best of his generation," says Ben Ayers, a longtime Everest reporter for Outside Magazine.

Kili Pemba Sherpa and Pur Bahadur Gurung, who were also guiding the Broad Peak expedition, were "strong climbers with a solid resume", Ayers said.

Kili Pemba, 46, had just earned the coveted mountaineering Grand Slam after completing his last of the 14 highest peaks, also known as eight-thousanders, in early July.

Even before this crowning achievement, he was already among the best in the industry having been part of the Nepali team, led again by Purja, that completed the first winter ascent of K2 in January 2021.

At the time, K2, the world's second highest peak, was the only one of the eight-thousanders not yet climbed in winter. But at 8,611m, K2 is known to be steeper, more unpredictable and deadlier than Everest (8,849m).

Many have described Kili Pemba as humble and deeply committed in serving his clients. He'd led two double-leg amputees, on separate occasions, to the summits of Everest and Manaslu, the eighth-highest mountain.

"That was the toughest task for any guide, [Kili Pemba] did that with a lot of care," says Gyanendra Shrestha, a government official who was at Everest Base Camp during one of these climbs.

Pur Bahadur Gurung, 37, scaled 12 of the 14 highest peaks and was one of only 100 Nepali guides certified by the International Federation of Mountain Guides Association (IFMGA).

"It takes a lot of money, passion and dedication to become an IFMGA guide. This tells us a lot about Pur Bahadur's zeal for mountaineering," says Himal Gautam, a spokesman for Nepal's tourism department.

"It also speaks to the unprecedented loss we have suffered on Broad Peak," he adds.

In 2024, Pur Bahadur was part of the team that discovered a century-old boot on Everest, believed to be that of British climber Andrew Irvine, who vanished on the mountain in 1924.

The other three Nepali guides who perished on Broad Peak last week include Gyaljen Sherpa, best known for scaling the third-highest mountain Kanchenjunga three times in one season – a feat that some colleagues say deserves a Guinness World Record.

Then there's Nima Sherpa, 36, who scaled four eight-thousanders in 2026 alone, and Nawang Thindu Sherpa, who in his 20s was among Nepal's rising generation of mountain guides.

Placing Pakistan on the climbing radar

Nepal's mountain guides spend each spring leading international clients up Nepal's highest mountains as guides or porters.

When the monsoon comes around from June to September, some of them head towards Pakistan's far north, home to some of the world's highest peaks, including five eight-thousanders.

International visitors to this rugged region are relatively few, but demand is growing. While over a million adventure travellers go to the Himalayas each year, the Karakoram mountains in Pakistan attract only about 15,000 hikers annually.

Some credit Purja for bringing Pakistan onto the radar of mountaineers through his feat of scaling the 14 peaks in just over six months, which was documented in a Netflix film.

"Nims' success gave many [guides] and foreigners the courage to believe that this mountaineering crown was truly possible," says Iswari Paudel, acting president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.

"This has made Pakistan a major overseas base for Nepali Sherpas. And while helping foreign climbers fulfil their dreams, many guides have themselves completed the 14 peaks," Iswari says.

Ayers, the Everest reporter, says Purja helped "publicise a new era of mountaineering" which in many ways helped "democratise mountain-climbing", but also "fuelled commercialisation and risk".

Because of how remote Pakistan's mountains are, it is far more challenging to organise expeditions there – a feat that only the best guides undertake, Sherpas tell the BBC.

"We have to fix our own ropes, cut our steps into the ice, and set up camps as we go along," says Nima Rinji Sherpa. The 20-year-old set a new record in 2024 as the youngest mountaineer to summit the world's 14 highest peaks.

"Even in an era of commercial mountaineering, we experience real, old-fashioned mountaineering [in Pakistan]," he says.

But because the region is hard to access, climbers usually attempt two to three mountains per trip, which makes the itinerary very tight, Nima Rinji adds.

In Nepal, by contrast, mountaineering infrastructure is well-developed. The main trekking routes towards Everest are lined with family-run lodges that offer beds, hot meals and other facilities.

Emergency evacuations are also generally easier in the Himalayas, where there is an integrated network of rescue helicopters and aid outposts at high altitude, whereas the Karakoram range, being more isolated, features fewer accessible landing zones.

"In the Pakistan mountains, getting the helicopters to base camp already takes a lot more effort, let alone flying them above high camps.

"Therefore, the Sherpas who are capable of working in high-pressure situations, and who have diverse experiences and multiple skills are the ones who will operate in Pakistan," Nima Rinji says.

The risks are part of the appeal

While the Broad Peak disaster may spur calls to tighten safety standards, many believe it will do little to change high-altitude tourism.

"Generally, these tragedies cause a moment of concern... but then things go back to how they were. It's difficult to say with any conviction that any accident in the mountains is 'preventable' as the inherent danger is so high... and that's part of the appeal," Ayers says.

The mountaineering community is drawn to high-risk pursuits, says Medhavi Gulati, a researcher specialising in high-altitude mountaineering.

"Often, it's the dangers and risk of death that attracts people," she says.

The existing generation of mountain guides will continue to crave the global fame and world records that their predecessors have attained, she says.

"I don't think that appeal will ever go away," she says.

"We've seen disasters like this one before, and nothing changed," says expert mountaineer and writer Alan Arnette, who pointed to how an ice avalanche on Everest killed 16 Sherpas in April 2014, and the 11 climbers who died on K2 in 2008 after a massive chunk of ice broke off.

"I doubt the Broad Peak incident will have a significant impact, given history. I hope I'm wrong," he says.

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Seven killed after Thai student opens fire at home and school

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c980j3j578do, 2 days ago

At least seven people have been killed and 23 injured after a 14-year-old boy opened fire at his home and school on the outskirts of Thailand's capital, Bangkok.

The gunman - a student at the Debsirin School in Nonthaburi - killed his grandparents and five teachers before taking his own life, Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters. The attacker still had "more than 30 bullets left" when he turned the gun on himself, Anutin added.

Nine of the injured people remain in a critical condition, authorities say.

The shooting - the second at a school in Thailand this year - has renewed pressure on the government for greater action on gun control.

Police were deployed to the scene during the active shooting, which began just after 10:00 local time (03:00 GMT).

National police chief police Gen Kittiratt Phanphet told reporters that forensic officers had found the gunman's shots were quite accurate, with several hitting vital spots on the body.

The prime minister said the attack was "well prepared" with "clear steps and clear goals".

A female seventh grader, still in school uniform, told the BBC she was standing in front of her teacher when the woman was shot.

"She was talking to me when [the gunman] showed up and shot her," she said.

"I couldn't see anything but a [cloud] of dust."

Still in her uniform, with her mother by her side, she explained how the shooter stalked from room to room.

"I had to climb over the school fence to escape with other friends."

Her mother says the girl thought she might die. "[She said] 'I thought I'd never see you again'."

Another student told Reuters news agency that he had thought the sound of gunshots were firecrackers going off.

"There were many shots: bang bang bang. Then it went quiet. Then it started again."

Students and school staff were seen fleeing from the scene, and those waiting outside the Debsirin School looked visibly distraught.

Authorities warned people to stay away from the area and for those trapped in the building to hide and wait for rescuers.

In a post on social media, the school later shared a call for blood donations.

Other schools in the vicinity suspended classes so students could return home early.

The attacker has not been publicly named, and police have not disclosed a motive.

Investigations are continuing, with officers seen carrying away computer equipment and boxes from the home the shooter shared with his grandparents, who he shot dead before the school rampage.

The attacker had lived with his grandparents as his parents were divorced.

Both the father and the mother were called in for questioning at a local police station later on Friday.

The Debsirin School, founded in Bangkok in 1885, is one of Thailand's top secondary schools with branches across the country. It counts many prominent Thai figures as its alumni, from diplomats and athletes to several prime ministers.

The prime minister said the tragedy "shouldn't have happened", adding "this is why the government do not allow [citizens] to possess firearms".

"I don't just feel sorry for the victims but I feel sorry that this happened. How can this happen in our country," Anutin said.

Thailand has strict gun laws, which punishes the illegal possession of arms with up to 10 years in jail. Enforcement of these laws has been an issue - though police have made no suggestion the weapon used in this case, owned by the shooter's grandfather, was illegally obtained.

The country has one of the highest rates of civilian gun ownership in South East Asia. It is estimated that about 40% of these guns are illegal.

Friday's shooting immediately triggered calls from politicians for a review of the current gun laws.

Anutin responded by pledging to introduce a new firearms control law.

Under the proposed new legislation, there will be restrictions on members of the public carrying such weapons.

"The new law will only allow government officials on duty to carry guns," Anutin said.

He did not provide any specifics for the proposed legislation, including whether it would tighten gun ownership requirements.

Book hidden in fireplace returned to Australian library 150 years overdue

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39eprxln0go, 2 days ago

A book borrowed 150 years ago has finally been returned to an Australian library, with the culprit linked to the Houses of Parliament in London.

Antiquities of Athens was borrowed from a local library in Kiama, a seaside town about 120km (75 miles) south of Sydney, some time in the mid-1870s.

The book on classic Greek architecture was stored in a tea chest hidden behind a boarded-up fireplace for decades before it was recently discovered by a family member.

Ross Simmons, 77, thinks his great-grandfather, John Simmons, might have borrowed the book to help with his career, having worked as an apprentice stonemason in Westminster in the mid-1800s before becoming an architect in Australia.

Simmons, a self-confessed family history buff, said his great-grandfather studied in London between 1839 to 1844.

"After his studies in London, he was apprenticed to other stonemasons to help in the construction of the Houses of Parliament," Simmons said.

In 1857, aged 27, John Simmons emigrated from the UK to Australia, first living in the Sydney suburb of Newtown before relocating to Kiama after leading the construction of a sandstone church in the coastal town.

"He had quite an interest in architecture, construction and building," Simmons said, adding that the overdue book "probably sat on a shelf at his house" and was used as a reference.

The book somehow ended up in a tea chest - along with other family records - which was placed in a fireplace that was covered up.

About 30 years ago, the tea chest was uncovered during renovations and the books - including the overdue one - were given to Simmons for safekeeping.

But it wasn't until about a fortnight ago that he went through some of the books in greater detail.

"I looked inside the front cover and, lo and behold, on the second page there was a Kiama Library stamp," Simmons said, with the library's borrowing conditions also detailed on the inside cover.

For instance, library members could only borrow one book at a time, unless it could be proved that six people in the same household could read, in which case, three books could be lent out.

Anyone intoxicated was barred from borrowing and members returning books past their due date would be fined three pence for every week it was late.

Kiama Library staff worked out that the fine would be £97 - or in today's currency AU$28,000 ($20,000; £15,000), allowing for inflation. But luckily for the Simmons family, the fine has been waived.

Kiama Council libraries manager Michelle Hudson said the unusual find had attracted a lot of attention.

"People have travelled 40 minutes away to come and actually hold the book... it's a beautiful little book and it's got an amazing story to tell," she said.

The cloth-bound volume has some water damage but otherwise, is in good condition, Hudson said.

"It does have beautiful illustrations in it and some pages that fold out to show you they were using exact measurements of some of the monuments in Greece."

She said in 1872, the council got a £200 grant to establish the town's library and and it had fewer than 1,000 books in its collection, with the overdue book marked as number 506.

There's no way to know exactly who borrowed the book or when, Hudson said, as the library's borrowing records from that period have since been lost.

However, the book is no longer available to borrow, having been added to the library's collection of special items, which can be viewed on request.

"It won't be able to go out again... we don't want to wait another 150 years for it to come back," Hudson joked.

As for the book's much-delayed return, Simmons said he believes his great-grandfather would be pleased with the final chapter of its journey.

"I think he'd be happy to see the book returned and he'd probably have a bit of a laugh about it."

Jetstar introduces fees for carry-on luggage in overhead lockers

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gdkn2d0vjo, 5 days ago

Australians have responded with a mixture of outrage and support after budget airline Jetstar announced it would start charging for the use of overhead lockers.

From February the airline is scrapping its 7kg (15.4lb) limit on hand luggage. Instead all passengers will be allowed a smaller bag that can fit under the seat in front and the option to pay for space for a larger bag in the overhead locker and priority boarding.

The move comes after "extensive research and feedback" and is similar to the policies of other low cost airlines, Jetstar said.

It was met with a mixed response by social media users, with some asking whether the airline would also start charging customers to use the toilet.

In a statement Jetstar said prices for overhead luggage would start at A$25 ($18; £13) for shorter flights such as Launceston to Sydney, but could vary. A flight from Cairns to Tokyo for example would cost A$52.

A spokesperson for Jetstar told the BBC that the prices quoted were a "fair example" of what customers would have to pay for the hand luggage but that prices could rise "based on demand" and so could not be guaranteed.

When the BBC looked at flights from Sydney to Osaka the price quoted for carry-on was $60 each way.

The airline would no longer routinely weigh passengers' bags before boarding but asked that customers' keep their bags to 10kg in weight so they could lift it themselves, Jetstar said.

"The change follows extensive research and feedback from customers and crew who consistently identified having bags weighed at the gate and struggling to find room in overhead lockers as the more stressful parts of the airport experience," Jetstar said.

Jetstar CEO Stephanie Tully said the changes would "make better use of overhead locker space, streamline boarding and help more flights depart on time."

Other low cost airlines such as Britain's EasyJet and Ireland's RyanAir have similar policies.

But the move was met with anger from some on social media.

"Minimum of $25 to use an overhead locker in the plane. What next? A fee to use the toilet?" one user posted.

"We pay for food and drink, the seat and checked baggage already... what's next... $10 for the use of soap and toilet paper in the bathroom?" another asked, while one wrote: "I don't get it. Airlines encourage you to take less stuff, hand luggage only to save costs, then they turn around and slug you for it."

Nevertheless, some users were supportive of the changes saying they were "about time" as too many large suitcases in overhead lockers routinely left "No room for a jacket or hand bag ".

"Sick of people with several bags taking all the space. This is what happens when you are selfish and inconsiderate. We all get punished," another person posted.

Iranian footballers who defied Tehran become Australian citizens

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5nlgxv6vdo, 4 days ago

Two Iranian female footballers who publicly defied their government have become Australian citizens.

Atefeh Ramezanisadeh, 34, and Fatemeh Pasandideh, 22, were naturalised in Brisbane, Queensland, on Wednesday.

Ramezanisadeh said it was a "truly special and unforgettable day", while her teammate said "this moment means more than words can express".

They were among seven members of Iran's national team to be granted humanitarian visas while in Australia for the Women's Asian Cup in March - but the other five changed their minds and returned home.

It was feared the team would face repercussions for refusing to sing the Iranian anthem at their opening match, just days after the US-Israeli war against Iran began.

Under pressure from the Iranian community in Australia, authorities initially gave the players a chance to seek asylum – in the end though, only Ramezanisadeh and Pasandideh took up the offer.

There was never any question about whether both would become citizens, but the decision comes as the Australian government prepares to introduce tougher visa rules aimed at cutting migration.

The new rules are expected to include restricting the work and appeal rights of asylum seekers and a ban on visitors applying for family visas.

The Australian government has come under increasing pressure from political opponents that promise stricter migration policy, while refugee groups have criticised Australia's current measures, saying they put the safety of asylum seekers at risk.

Ramezanisadeh and Pasandideh were given their citizenship certificates at a ceremony attended by Australian Interior Minister Tony Burke.

"It's a new beginning and a place I'm proud to call home," Pasandideh said.

Ramezanisadeh recalled "all the challenges we faced" and added that she felt "proud and deeply grateful to become an Australian citizen."

The two players have since been training with A-League Women's team Brisbane Roar, planning to continue their elite sporting careers in Australia.

The drama around the Iranian team unfolded against the background of the war back in their home country which began on 28 February, when Israel and the US launched joint air strikes.

Concerns grew about the team's safety after footage emerged of a host on state TV calling them "traitors" who ought to be punished for their silence during the Iranian anthem on 2 March.

Human rights activists have said the women who returned to Iran may have been pressured to reverse their decisions through threats against their families.

Iran's sports ministry said at the time that the returnees had "defeated the enemy's plans" against them through their "national spirit and patriotism".

Man extradited from Australia charged with historical sexual offences

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9715385xpo, 3 days ago

A 75-year-old man extradited from Australia has appeared at Belfast Magistrates' Court charged with historical sexual offences.

The defendant, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is accused of 14 counts of indecently assaulting a female and three counts of committing an act of gross indecency with a child.

The offences allegedly occurred on dates between January 1969 and March 1983.

The defendant appeared in court via video-link from police custody and did not speak during the short hearing.

A defence barrister raised no objections to the execution of an international arrest warrant and confirmed no bail application was being made.

The accused was remanded into custody and the case was adjourned until 20 August to fix a date for a preliminary inquiry.

How Australia combines modern tech and Indigenous knowledge to fight wildfires

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czdmvr984yyo, 8 days ago

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".

Australian teen who killed UK woman has reduced sentence overturned

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0n9lwgreqo, 5 days ago

An Australian teenager who murdered a British woman after breaking into her Queensland home has had his reduced sentence overturned in court.

Emma Lovell, 41, was stabbed to death in Brisbane when she confronted two intruders on Boxing Day in 2022. Originally from Suffolk, Lovell moved to Australia in 2011 where she lived with her two daughters and husband.

In 2024, the man - who was 17 at the time of the murder and cannot be legally named - was jailed for 14 years, with 70% of the sentence to be served. On appeal, it was cut to 60%.

On Wednesday, the High Court of Australia quashed the reduced sentence, ruling it was "not open" to the Court of Appeal to "interfere" with the original decision.

The case sparked community outrage and was among several cases which prompted the state of Queensland to controversially introduce stricter youth crime laws.

The second teenager involved in the attack was cleared of murder and later sentenced to 18 months detention for burglary and assault.

Speaking shortly after the court ruling was announced on Wednesday, Emma Lovell's husband Lee said it was "some validation that Emma's life did matter," adding that his eldest daughter was "pretty pleased" with the result.

He said Boxing Day - which will mark four years since his wife's death - is "still going to be a challenging day for us" as "it feels like a few months ago that it happened".

After years of court dates, he said he hoped that the family can return to "some sort of normality" and that his parents, who had flown in from the UK recently, would be heading home on Thursday.

During the murder trial in 2024, the court heard that on the evening of 26 December 2022, Lovell and her husband Lee had confronted the two intruders - both teens at the time - in the hallway of their home before forcing them out onto the front garden.

A struggle broke out and the mother-of-two was stabbed in the heart with a knife. Emergency services performed open heart surgery on her while her two teenage daughters watched on. She later died in hospital.

The judge found that the teen's crime was "particularly heinous" and while he took into account the boy's troubled upbringing and other "special circumstances", they did not outweigh the "seriousness" of the offence.

The judge sentenced the man to 14 years with a minimum of nine years and nine months to be served.

Last May, the man appealed his sentence, arguing it was "manifestly excessive".

The Court of Appeal agreed, saying that the man's early guilty plea, genuine remorse and chances of rehabilitation meant he could get a 17-month reduction in his sentence.

That decision triggered a High Court challenge from Queensland's Attorney-General Deb Frecklington in April this year.

She welcomed Wednesday's ruling, saying she had "pursued all available legal avenues" so as to "preserve the small amount of justice afforded to the Lovell family".

Queensland's Premier David Crisafulli described the decision as a "big win" for the Lovell family, but that "it will never be enough".

Charity cyclist, 82, dies a day after 3,300 mile ride across Australia

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gkpwj2je9o, 6 days ago

An 82-year-old bike rider who cycled 3,300 miles (5,300km) across Australia to raise money for charity has died a day after completing the challenge.

Bob Montgomery's death was "unexpected" but "peaceful", his family said in a statement on social media, just a day after he had finished what he had dubbed "One Last Ride" from Broome in Western Australia to Bowral, south-west of Sydney.

He and his 18-year-old grandson had raised about A$105,000 ($74,000; £55,000) for a motor neurone disease (MND) charity with the six-week ride.

It was his sixth fundraising ride in support of MND NSW, the statement said, adding that it was "a cause that was deeply personal to him".

His wife of 59 years, Jenny was by his side during his "peaceful passing", his family said, adding that he was "still passionately sharing his message only hours before his passing."

Montgomery and his grandson Tom Malcolm had arrived in Bowral on Sunday to "roaring applause" from his local community, the national broadcaster ABC reported.

He told ABC he had been motivated by meeting people along the way and enjoying a "beer or two" at each stopover.

"There's so many stories and so many people we met along the way who put their hands into their pockets to throw some cash in, which is fantastic," Montgomery was quoted as saying.

He had been inspired to take on the challenge after losing a cousin to MND and had raised almost A$300,000 on his previous rides. "I have seen family and friends suffer. It's heart breaking," he wrote on his fundraising page.

Malcolm had continued onto Sydney on Monday where the family had gathered once again to celebrate.

But shortly after the party, Montgomery suffered a medical episode, MND NSW chief executive Liam O'Meara said.

O'Meara said he was "deeply saddened" by Montgomery's death, calling him a "cherished friend and tireless supporter of MND NSW".

Top Australian radio host Alan Jones allegedly groped men as they drove, court hears

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8xwpwx1z5o, 7 days ago

Veteran broadcaster Alan Jones groped the genitals of two men while they were driving and tried to kiss several others without their consent, a Sydney court has heard on the first day of a high-profile trial.

The influential media figure and former coach of Australia's national rugby team is facing 20 charges of indecent assault and two of sexual touching against six men.

Jones, 85, denies all the charges, which allegedly took place between 2003 and 2020, either at public events or at Jones's homes or workplace.

On Monday, his lawyers questioned the credibility of the victims, saying the case was motivated by "rivalry, treachery, double-dealing, money, hatred, desperation, opportunism and more".

In opening statements, prosecutors detailed the claims of the alleged victims.

One man, known as complainant J, was a teenager when he first met Jones during an on-air interview about his recent sporting achievements.

Jones later gifted the teen a mobile phone, a car and also paid him AU$400 every week, with the payment later increasing to $600, prosecutors alleged.

On one occasion, when the pair were driving to Jones's property in Fitzroy Falls about two hours south of Sydney, Jones allegedly touched the victim's penis and later tried to kiss him, without consent.

Another time when the complainant alleges Jones kissed him - again without his consent - he didn't tell anyone as he was worried that "if I told someone then I lose everything".

"I was getting everything handed to me, it was a wonderful life," complainant J said, referring to the car and weekly payments.

He was also embarrassed: "I'd have to tell my friends and family... I'm not inclined in that way to other men, so I didn't want anyone to know".

Nine of the charges relate to complainant J, who was 17 years old when the alleged offending began.

The packed court room also heard that another alleged victim, complainant C, worked as Jones's driver and is expected to give evidence that Jones touched his penis on several occasions as he drove the radio host home from work.

Jones also tried to kiss him, often in the lift at the radio studios, prosecutors said, with the groping and kisses done without the victim's consent.

Jones also sent explicit messages to complainant C, prosecutors said, alleging that the victim felt he had to respond or risk his career.

Another victim was a 17-year-old high school student who was invited to Jones's Fitzroy Falls property where the radio star tried to kiss him.

During the defence's opening statements, Jones's lawyers said the he had been put through a "trial by media" and that his rivals had encouraged the victims to make their complaints.

Jones's lawyers said some of the victims had "concocted" their allegations and that in a court, the claims must be proved beyond reasonable doubt.

The judge-only trial is expected to hear from more than 70 witnesses.

Jones was first arrested in November 2024, after police launched an investigation into sex abuse claims that were initially reported by the Sydney Morning Herald.

For decades, Jones dominated Sydney's airwaves with his talkback radio show on 2GB. He retired in 2020, citing health problems.

Before broadcasting, Jones was a teacher and during the mid-80s, he coached the Wallabies - Australia's national rugby team - for four years.

Greyhounds bound for Australia as New Zealand racing ban takes effect

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y62pe9g3no, 9 days ago

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; $1.4bn) 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.

Spanish police arrest 78 people in bust of 'one of largest' smuggling networks

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clylejzkkx4o, 2 days ago

One of the largest criminal networks smuggling drugs and people in the western Mediterranean has been dismantled, authorities have said.

Europol said 78 people were arrested in Spain and Algeria in a bust of the network, that is also linked to other criminal activities including "violent robberies, extortion, illegal detentions, and money laundering".

The group moved synthetic drugs from Spain and Portugal to Algeria, then used the return journey to smuggle migrants and weapons to the Spanish mainland and island of Ibiza on "ghost speedboats".

Some of the items seized included 18 high-speed vessels valued at €5m (£4.2m), guns, more than €25,000 (£21,400) in cash and 15,000 MDMA pills.

The sting, led by Spanish police, involved searches in 17 locations in Spain, including Alicante, Almería, Cartagena and Murcia.

Europol said the group had "evolved from drug trafficking into a duel-flow criminal enterprise designed to maximise profits" with outbound routes from Spain and Portugal to Algeria.

"The smuggling focused on synthetic drugs (such as MDMA), firearms, and explosives. Along routine routes from Algeria to Spain, the group smuggled migrants, charging up to €12,000 (£10,200) per person," Europol's statement said.

"In just one trip, over 50 migrants could be smuggled. All in all, profits from migrant smuggling alone are estimated to be more than €24m (£20m)."

The network also provided services to other organised crime groups, "facilitating the movement of illicit goods and people across the Western Mediterranean".

"Investigators believe the network coordinated multiple trafficking flows. Synthetic drugs, and sometimes people, were moved from France and Spain to Algeria, while cannabis resin, weapons, and migrants were transported from Algeria to Spain."

Often, the group used a fleet of high-powered speedboats to conduct rapid maritime operations. This included "ghost speedboats" which are designed to avoid registration and detection, which are prohibited in Spain.

"The group used these boats to organise transfers in international waters near the Spanish coastline," Europol said. "Once the cargo or migrants were handed over at sea, other network members arranged onward transport by land.

"Migrants were often carried in overcrowded boats without lighting or life jackets, frequently under extreme weather conditions.

"Investigators believe suspects perpetrated sexual assaults, physical abuse, and placed migrants in inhuman conditions in makeshift housing."

The suspects were primarily of Algerian origin and had connections to criminal groups in France, Belgium, Portugal, Italy and Poland.

Other objects seized in the police sting included satellite phones, GPS devices, encrypted communication tools and satellite dishes.

The announcement comes a week after roughly 78,000 migrants fled into the Spanish North African territory of Ceuta that was blamed on online rumours about an open border.

Most of the migrants returned to Morocco but between 3,000 and 5,000 remain in the territory, the exclave's leader Juan Jesús Vivas said.

Kidnapped rare Serbian eagle freed into wild after rescue

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdewxgw69exo, 2 days ago

A rare eastern imperial eagle has been rescued from animal traffickers and released back into the wild in Serbia after months in captivity.

After leaving the nest last year, Feliks was caught in Syria by poachers who eventually demanded a ransom - which was refused.

After protracted talks the bird was taken to a wildlife centre in Beirut, Lebanon, where he recuperated for more than half a year before his repatriation on a Serbian military plane.

The protected species is critically endangered, but conservation work since 2017 has brought the population in Serbia from one pair up to 29 pairs this year, according to the Bird Protection and Study Society of Serbia (BPSSS).

In July 2025, just as the young raptor first flew the nest, experts tracked him for conservation purposes as he flew towards the Middle East.

"At that point, we started to worry because we could see that he was heading towards an extremely unsafe region," Uros Stojiljkovic of the BPSSS told the AFP news agency.

When the bird's tracking signal was lost in October, initially it was thought the tracker was faulty.

But it soon became clear Feliks had been abducted and eventually was put up for sale by poachers.

Weeks passed before a partner organisation in Lebanon contacted the Serbian conservationist and said Feliks' unnamed captors had demanded a ransom.

"We categorically refused. By doing so, you are effectively supporting that smuggling chain," Stojiljkovic told AFP.

Lengthy negotiations secured the bird's release, but not before refugees carried Feliks in a potato sack over the Nahr al-Kabir river on the northern border between Syria and Lebanon, the Associated Press reported.

In June this year, Serbian peacekeepers returning from Lebanon escorted the bird to Palic Zoo.

Feliks arrived at the zoo's shelter "exhausted, after a long and demanding transport by military plane", zoo director Sonja Mandić said in a statement, and his health was monitored daily.

After more than a month of careful recovery, Feliks was released into the wild on Thursday.

"We wish Feliks to get stronger as soon as possible, survive all the adversities, conquer his territory and leave descendants," said Milan Ružić, executive director of the BPSSS.

Spain imposes border controls against Italy as row over Ceuta migrant influx intensifies

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yv5l6yr5ko, yesterday

Spain has imposed border controls on all air and sea travel from Italy as a row between the two EU countries intensifies.

The measures - which started at midnight (22:00 GMT) and will last for a month - come a week after Italy introduced similar restrictions following an influx of about 78,000 migrants from Morocco into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta.

Spanish officials said the documents of 5%-10% of passengers were being checked before they were allowed to disembark planes. Italy has also said its border controls are random.

The crisis has pitted Spain's socialist leader Pedro Sanchez against Italy's conservative leader Giorgia Meloni - who has long called for stricter EU migration rules.

Italy does not share a land border with Spain. Its government said last week that decision to temporarily suspend the border-free Schengen arrangement was to prevent any of the migrants who had entered Ceuta from travelling on to Italy.

Madrid dismissed this position, saying it was based on "spurious arguments" that lacked any basis in fact because the migrants who entered Ceuta had no way of entering the Schengen area.

On Friday, Spain demanded Italy reverse its checks by Sunday. Rome said they would stay until at least 15 August - when, it said, Spain "expects a new wave of migration" to hit Ceuta.

Italy has said that Spanish and EU citizens are exempt from additional checks when arriving in Italy, with these extra steps only for non-EU residents.

However, it is not clear how border officials were meant to distinguish between EU and non-EU travellers and El Pais has reported that several Italian airport terminals have seen long queues and waiting times in recent days, with passengers arriving from Spain directed to a specific line for checks.

As for Spanish controls, the authorities insists the immigration checks are random. However, a passenger arriving in Madrid on Saturday told national broadcaster RTVE that all passengers on her flight had had to show their passports.

"They told us we couldn't get off the plane without showing our documents," Elisa said.

Another passenger said "we were stopped and asked for identification, which the police seemed to approve of".

Spain says its checks will stay in place until 7 September "unless a change in the circumstances that led to its adoption warrants modifying that period".

Temporary suspensions of the Schengen agreement are not unprecedented. Italy also maintains controls on its border with Slovenia.

Italy's decision to suspend Schengen for a month was backed by Finland and Denmark, while the Czech Republic called for Spain's membership to be temporarily suspended.

Most of the migrants who arrived in Ceuta last week were returned within days. One hundred are believed to have died during the crossing.

Nearly 1,400 minors, some of them "very young boys and girls", still remain there.

Spain has not announced an anticipated second wave of crossings from Morocco.

But BBC Arabic has found dozens of Facebook posts calling for a second crossing in mid-August, including some that advertised swimming equipment for sale. Six of these groups had more than 100,000 followers. Meta says it has removed posts that violate its policy.

The Spanish prime minister's office told El Pais they were monitoring the situation but did not expect a repeat of scenes from last week.

It remains unclear exactly why tens of thousands of migrants attempted to cross into Ceuta, but the EU's Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner has suggested criminal networks spreading disinformation were to blame - an assertion the Spanish government has agreed with.

The crossings came after Spain's Supreme Court ruled that migrants stopped at sea while trying to reach Ceuta or Melilla cannot be summarily returned to Morocco.

Morocco, for its part, has laid blame for the crisis on the court, with an unnamed government source briefing local outlets that "the deterrent element of the system collapsed and the dam gave way, not under the weight of the criminals, but of a judge's decision".

The number of people swimming to Ceuta at once has raised questions about why Morocco's border guards did not attempt to stop them.

The two exclaves have long been a bone of diplomatic contention between Spain and Morocco, which does not recognise Spanish sovereignty over them.

Have you experienced travel disruption between Spain and Italy? Get in touch here.

Ukraine hits two oil refineries deep in Russian territory

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwymv212xrxo, 3 days ago

Ukraine said it has hit two oil refineries in multiple strikes deep inside Russia with patrol boats and other vessels in the Black Sea also hit.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Bashneft-Novoil and Slavneft-Yanos refineries were struck in the attacks aimed at limiting oil revenues Moscow "uses to finance" its war.

Yaroslavl regional governor Mikhail Evraev said Slavneft-Yanos was on fire after what he called the "largest enemy drone attack". He said four people were injured.

Meanwhile, Ukraine said at least 11 people were killed in Russian attacks, and the southern city of Kherson reported a total blackout. Russia said it targeted fuel, energy and transport facilities.

Both Russia and Ukraine have in recent weeks intensified attacks on major cities, energy facilities and warehouses, as the vast front line remains virtually static and all mediation efforts to end the war have brought no breakthrough.

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

Zelensky said on Thursday that the struck Bashneft-Novoil refinery in Russia's Bashkortostan republic was about 1,300km (808 miles) from the Ukrainian border, whereas Slavneft-Yanos was almost 700km (435 miles) away.

The Ukrainian president also said that "two military patrol boats and shadow fleet vessels were hit" in the Black Sea, referring to tankers used by Russia to illegally export sanctioned oil.

"Russia must choose peace," Zelensky said, adding that Ukrainian attacks were "strengthening chances for diplomacy".

Evraev said 93 drones were shot down over Yaroslavl region overnight.

"Falling debris hit the oil refinery's storage tanks. Emergency services are working to extinguish the fire," he said.

BBC Verify confirmed multiple videos and images shared on social media showing huge smoke plumes rising from the refinery.

In one of the verified images there appear to be at least four fires at the site.

Energy-generating infrastructure in Yaroslavl has been targeted a number of times by Ukraine.

The authorities in Bashkortostan have not publicly commented on the reported Ukrainian attack on the Bashneft-Novoil refinery on 5 August.

In Ukraine, three people were killed in the town of Balakliya, Kharkiv region, in an overnight Russian drone attack, the country's state emergencies service DSNS said.

It said private residential houses were targeted, with fires reported in two buildings.

Kharkiv regional head Oleh Synehubov later said that another two people were killed when drones attacked the train station in Lozova. Another eight people were injured.

Later on Thursday, five people were killed in Russian strikes on the central Dnipropetrovsk region, local officials said.

In the south, the entire city of Kherson lost electricity after a "critical infrastructure facility" was hit overnight, regional head Oleksandr Prokudin said.

Internet monitoring group NetBlocks told BBC Verify it had observed "deep disruption" to connectivity in the Kherson region. According to telemetry data, internet connectivity fell to about 31% at its lowest overnight. The situation was ongoing and connectivity was about 69% as of 12:00 GMT.

NetBlocks' head of research Isik Mater said connectivity did not fall to zero in part due to the use of "generators and backup supplies" in Kherson.

Last year, it was reported that 66,000 people live in Kherson - about 25% of its pre-war population.

In Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odesa, one person was killed when Russia hit two dry cargo ships.

Meanwhile, the Russian military said its forces intercepted or shot down 605 Ukrainian drones overnight over a number of regions.

In its latest operational update, the military said it struck Ukraine's fuel, energy and transport facilities, as well as drone storage sites.

Additional reporting by Peter Mwai, Richard Irvine-Brown, and Adam Durbin, BBC Verify

Man behind deadly Munich car ramming handed life sentence

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czxqp5yy15lo, 3 days ago

A man has been sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of driving his car into a crowd of people in Munich last year, killing two people.

The 25-year-old man, named only as Farhad N in line with German privacy laws, is an Afghan national, who prosecutors say deliberately drove his Mini into a trade union rally of around 1,400 people in the centre of the city on the morning of 13 February 2025.

He hit a 37-year-old woman and her two-year-old daughter, who both died in hospital shortly afterwards. More than 40 other people were injured, a number of them critically.

It was one of a number of attacks in Germany that have fuelled far-right rhetoric around migration.

The Munich Higher Regional Court ruled that the offence was of a particularly serious nature, which makes it considerably more difficult for Farhad N to be released on parole once he has served 15 years in prison.

He was convicted of two counts of murder, 23 counts of attempted murder and a number of other charges including grievous bodily harm.

The judge said Farhad N intended to attack and kill people in Germany arbitrarily in response to the situation in Islamic countries.

"In doing so, the defendant sought to commit an act pleasing to God and to prove himself to be a good Muslim in the eyes of Allah, himself and his family," the judge said.

The prosecution said the defendant believed the attack was a necessary response to the actions of the US and other Western states in Gaza and Afghanistan. They argued that anger, disappointment and bitterness had also played a part.

The defence had called for a 15-year prison sentence and for Farhad N to be placed in a psychiatric hospital. They argued that their client had shown signs of a form of schizophrenia.

Farhad N has the right to appeal against the verdict.

Officials say Farhad N arrived in Germany in 2016 as a teenager at the height of the migrant crisis in Europe. He came alone, without his family.

His asylum request was rejected but he was not deported.

German authorities said he was legally resident in Germany and had a work permit, working as a shop detective and for security companies.

He had no prior convictions. He was active on Instagram, where he posted about bodybuilding and religious themes.

Germany took in more than a million asylum seekers in 2015-2016 at the height of Europe's migrant crisis - an influx that has proved deeply divisive and fuelled the rise of the far-right party AfD.

German airport drone-bomb: Could Russia be involved?

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

As Germany investigates how a drone loaded with explosives reached a runway at Leipzig airport, there is renewed talk in Europe of hybrid war.

The interior minister is warning of a "new level of danger" from an attack that "may involve foreign powers".

There is no proof at this stage to link the flying bomb directly to Russia, which denies any role. But as well as the means and the motive, Moscow does have form.

The BBC has seen details of the investigation into a plot in 2024 in which Russian-linked proxies in Poland and Lithuania not only handled drones and explosives but also delivered them to Germany.

The flying bomb

The quadcopter was discovered at Leipzig airport late on Tuesday night, forcing one runway into lockdown as a bomb disposal robot rolled into action.

On the tarmac close by were several Ukrainian Antonov cargo planes, stripes along their enormous bodies in the blue and yellow of the country's flag. One reads, "Be Brave Like Kherson", the southern city now on the frontline of Russia's invasion.

Pictures published by German media suggest the drone was a relatively small device which airport staff spotted "floating" between the Ukrainian planes.

Around the same time, a DHL cargo plane collided with an "unidentified object" as it pulled up into the sky, unable to land in Leipzig.

Teams are still working to establish whether that was a second drone.

They are also trying to trace who launched the devices and why.

A previous plot

A previous Russian-backed plot involving Leipzig airport could provide clues.

In 2024, a parcel containing a sophisticated incendiary device caught fire at the airport's DHL hub shortly before it was loaded onto a plane. Similar packages then ignited in the UK and Poland, causing extensive damage.

A group of men are currently on trial in both Lithuania and Poland, where prosecutors believe they were part of a substantial network of proxies recruited by Russian military intelligence.

But there was a subplot that has been little discussed before.

Last September, Lithuanian prosecutors said that investigators had also seized RDX explosives meant for "other terrorist attacks". The amount was significant: equivalent to 6kg of TNT.

"Some of the devices were manufactured to intensify the blast," the prosecutor added.

The BBC has since had access to case documents that describe how several of the men on trial were paid to transport those explosives around Europe, concealed in cans of sweetcorn and chopped tomatoes. The detonators were hidden inside headphone sets.

The suspects also handled drone parts and the case talks specifically of attachments, suitable for holding a bomb.

Prosecutors allege that some of the items were brought into the EU from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

Almost two dozen suspects have been charged with terror offences, but with the men's handlers still at large, believed to be in Russia, it is not clear whether the entire network was disbanded or all the hidden material found.

While there is no evidence of a link to the Leipzig drone bomb, the 2024 plot certainly highlights the potential.

Vladyslav's story

One of the suspects charged in Poland, a Ukrainian called Vladyslav D., described in detail to investigators how he made multiple long car trips in July 2024 following instructions from someone he knew as "Warrior".

He has since pleaded not guilty in court.

One message sent him to the edge of a Lithuanian forest where he found a carrier bag containing "three or four packs of headphones", soggy with rain.

He had already collected two cans of corn "lightly covered with soil" from another location, telling investigators he had no idea what was inside.

He was ordered to leave the headphones many hours' drive away in Poland where he noticed "a guy on a bicycle" collect them from beside the road.

For another assignment he received a pin for a location inside a Lithuanian cemetery and was told to dig beneath some plastic flowers. He quickly uncovered a bin bag wrapped in brown tape.

"Inside were drone components: small plastic propellers, I think four pieces," Vladyslav told investigators.

These items were to be left by a road in central Poland for pick-up.

Finally there was a trip to Germany where he was given the code to access a hostel room in Dusseldorf. He was instructed to leave the drones and other items inside.

The intended targets were never revealed.

Moscow's motive?

In statements to investigators, Vladyslav D. said he was paid more than $2,000 (£1,487) in cryptocurrency for his efforts. His motive was clear.

And what about the Leipzig case?

Few details about the drone bomb are yet public.

Some German sources report that the explosive was Semtex, which contains RDX - the explosive found in the food cans in a Lithuanian cemetery.

We do not know how much the drone found at the airport was carrying and the physical damage may have been limited.

"The drone casing, if it was metal, might have put a hole in the plane but just a blast wave probably would just have dented it unless they put some fragmentation inside," explosives expert Professor Jackie Akhavan of Cranfield University explained.

But if Russia was behind this, its aim was more likely to sow fear.

Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russia's intelligence agencies, said it "makes sense" to suspect Moscow, pointing to a clear pattern of sabotage and hostile activity, from arson attacks on facilities supporting Ukraine to drones over sensitive sites in Europe.

Germany is one of Kyiv's biggest suppliers of military aid.

"It's a message. You get something like that [bomb] into one of the biggest European airports and you send the message that, 'Guys, we can do that. Remember'," Soldatov explained.

"You hint to the adversary that you might cause a really big problem: that tomorrow might be more serious."

And the potential motive? Moscow is under intense pressure from Ukraine's long-scale drone attacks, he said, and the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin "has been humiliated, repeatedly".

International response

"We are aware of the incident, which the German authorities continue to investigate," a Nato official told the BBC.

Antonov Airlines has also been cautious so far in its response.

The firm supplies planes for certain Nato operations but declined to say whether that includes military support for Ukraine.

Asked whether the Ukrainian planes might have been targeted, a spokeswoman in Kyiv told the BBC: "We are not making any such assumptions…We don't know what this drone was or why it was there."

But Russia watchers are clear.

"This is Russian interference," said John Lough of the New Eurasian Strategies (NEST) Centre. "It's all part of undermining support for Ukraine by pointing to the dangers of escalation and, frankly, scaring the German authorities."

He sees high potential for a surge in such hybrid attacks now because Ukraine has "changed the balance" of the war.

"My expectation is that such activity will increase quite sharply over the coming months. I think it's a dangerous moment."

In Odesa, no-one is safe from Russia's new Black Sea strikes

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8ev4y172yo, 4 days ago

"My crane operator, my partner, died five metres from me… The driver remained in the cabin. He also died."

Svitlana Halchenko winces as she remembers the Russian ballistic missile which exploded at work in Odesa, killing her colleagues.

Svitlana works as a warehouse shift manager at the city's main port.

Despite her injuries – she walks with a limp, pieces of shrapnel still embedded in her leg and back – Svitlana is determined to keep working.

But her normally bustling workplace is largely silent.

Russia is ramping up its efforts to strangle Ukraine's commercial links to the outside world, launching attacks all along the country's Black Sea coastline.

From damaged port infrastructure to listing ships with bridges blackened and containers still smouldering, the evidence is everywhere. Nowhere more so than out towards the horizon, where the approaches to Ukraine's once bustling ports – Odesa, Chornomorsk, Pivdennyi – are almost devoid of ships.

Svitlana maintains a brave smile throughout our conversation, but her distress is painfully obvious. Her fingers constantly twist a tissue as she tries to maintain her composure and she gazes into the distance as tears well up behind her glasses.

The last few weeks have been worse than ever.

"It's been very difficult for morale," she says with a deep sigh. "A lot of sirens, a lot of shaheds [drones], a lot of hits. People are very tense."

According to Ukraine's port administration, July saw 57 Russian attacks on civilian vessels, 22 of them at sea, and a further 67 hits on port infrastructure.

While there have been Russian attacks on international vessels before, they've never been so numerous or so deadly.

On July 19, a Turkish-owned cargo vessel, Golden Leo, was struck by three Russian missiles, killing nine Indian and Syrian crew members and a Ukrainian pilot.

The ship, carrying Ukrainian corn, sank off Odesa a week later.

According to the global shipping journal Lloyd's List, the Black Sea may now be the most dangerous place for shipping in the world - with July the deadliest month for merchant seamen since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.

At his union's offices in the port city, Oleg Grygoriuk, Chairman of the Marine Transport Workers Union of Ukraine, says his members are suffering.

"There are a lot of veterans who already served their country," he says, "and they literally say that being in the port is more scary than being on the front line."

Odesa's proximity to Russian-occupied territory means that workers often have little time to react.

"A missile flies from Crimea within a minute," he says. "If you are sitting in a crane, you need three and a half minutes to get down and go to the shelter. There's literally no time to do that."

On a rare visit to one of the area's main ports, we saw almost no sign of movement. Hundreds of metres of berths sat empty and towering gantry cranes stood idle as a skeleton crew conducted maintenance.

The military authorities allowed the visit on strict condition that we neither name the facility nor film anything. Ukraine doesn't want Russia to know what has and hasn't been damaged or reveal details that might aid Moscow in further targeting.

Two damaged cargo vessels were moored nearby. Both had suffered severe damage to the superstructure, where the bridge and crew quarters are located.

Just one lone freighter was seen moving towards the port.

"My heart is broken," a senior manager told us on condition we didn't name him.

"Normally there's a queue, even out at sea, waiting for a berth."

"There was a deal," he said, referring to the UN-brokered 2022 Black Sea Grain Initiative, under which Russia agreed to lift its blockade on Ukraine's agricultural exports. The agreement established safe maritime corridors to Odesa's main ports.

"They stopped the deal in the middle of 2023, but they didn't start attacking it until recently," the manager said.

"Today they do it systematically."

Halfway through our tour, sirens sounded, forcing us to seek shelter for several minutes as a Russian jet-powered drone flew overhead.

Weary dock workers scanned their phones for updates until the all-clear sounded.

The manager said recent alerts have forced the port to shut down for 15 out of 24 hours.

Technically, the port is open, as are all the others in the area. There is no prohibition on commercial ships attempting to use them. But the risks are clearly too great for most shipowners.

"There is barely anybody who wants to call because there is a huge problem with people getting killed," says Andrey Stavnitser, co-owner and CEO of one of the largest ports in the area.

"We can see that the whole supply chain is on hold."

Stavnitser says Russia is almost certainly retaliating for Ukraine's recent, highly successful attacks on Russian shipping, including sanctioned vessels carrying oil, as well as other ships involved in ferrying supplies to Russian-occupied Crimea.

Using its own drones, Ukraine's Operation MoLoChKa (which roughly translates as "Moscow will fall through Crimea") has struck around 200 Russian vessels, bringing traffic in the strategic Sea of Azov to a virtual standstill.

Ukrainians bristle at the suggestion that Russia and Ukraine are playing the same game. Kyiv is attempting to loosen Moscow's grip on occupied territory, they point out, while Russia is preventing Ukraine from exporting badly needed grain to the international market.

With Ukraine's summer grain harvest well under way, this is all happening at the worst possible time.

"It's the most sensitive period," says Volodymyr Slavinskyi, trading director for Nibulon, one of the country's leading grain exporters.

"Farmers need to quickly harvest grains from the fields, not to lose the crop. They need to be able to sell the crop they harvested and reinvest money in the next production cycle."

The impact of a prolonged shutdown of Ukraine's ports are likely to be severe. Ukraine is one of the world's largest producers of grain and oilseeds, supplying around 6% of global wheat exports before Russia's full-scale invasion and 10% of corn exports.

But reports suggest its export capacity has dropped by at least a third since Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

The Black Sea remains a vital export route for the country. Last year, the Greater Odesa ports accounted for more than 73 million tonnes of Ukraine's maritime exports, with grain accounting for 38 million tonnes.

With almost no vessels currently moving on Ukraine's Black Sea shipping corridor, traders are already counting the cost of this summer's closure.

"I would say we've already lost the ability to deliver to global customers around half a million or 700,000 metric tons of Ukrainian grains and oilseeds," Slavinskyi says.

Away from the port, Odesa is determined to show off a very different side. The summer season is in full swing. The beaches are packed as visitors descend on the Black Sea from all over Ukraine.

Buskers perform on the city's famous Potemkin Stairs, while sunbathers barely flinch as the sirens sound and explosions rumble in the distance.

In a video published on Monday, swimmers were seen removing a Russian drone from the water as holidaymakers look on.

They know the risks. In late June, 26-year-old Daria Kravchenko was killed when shrapnel from an intercepted Russian drone landed on the beach.

This week, holidaymakers on Russia's equally Black Sea coast suffered a similar fate when an intercepted Ukrainian drone crashed onto a busy beach.

Local authorities said seven people were killed, including three children.

It's not clear what Ukraine was targeting, but this war on ships and ports has many casual victims. Sailors, dockworkers or people simply unlucky enough to live or work nearby.

Outside Odesa, after a recent drone explosion, we found 83-year-old Andrii Dudik, surveying the mangled wreckage of his house and garden.

He was physically unscathed and remarkably sanguine about the drone that had shattered his routine afternoon nap just hours earlier.

"I was lying there, wondering what I was going to do this afternoon. Now I know," he joked.

Did he feel like an accidental victim of Russia's attacks on the nearby ports, I asked him.

"Absolutely," he replied. "And I won't forget it."

Additional reporting by Kristina Volk, Anastasiia Levchenko, Volodymyr Lozhko and Joshua Cheetham

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

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62vl925dqdo, 7 days ago

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 72 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.

Are you in Ceuta? Have you been affected? Get in touch here.

Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist.

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

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czrjyevmv61o, 8 days ago

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.

Car carrying eight teenagers crashes on wrong side of motorway

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c80nj1n22g1o, today

Nine people have been injured after a collision involving a vehicle that was heading in the wrong direction on the M50 in Dublin.

The incident happened southbound at Junction 12, Firhouse, at 05:30 local time on Sunday.

Eight male juveniles were in one vehicle, which was driving down the up ramp when it collided head-on with a car.

The eight youths have been taken to a number of different hospitals for treatment. One of them remains in a critical condition.

The driver of the second car, a man in his 20s, was also injured. He was taken to hospital with serious injuries.

The section of the M50 from Junction 12 to Junction 11 southbound remains closed with local diversions in place, gardaí (Irish police) said.

A forensic collision examination is taking place.

Anyone with information or anyone travelling in the area between 05:00 and 05:30, or who may have dashcam footage of the incident or surrounding areas is asked to contact gardaí.

What it's like to chase solar eclipses around the world

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd69wn5ny3eo, today

On Wednesday, parts of Europe will be plunged into daytime darkness as the moon passes in front of the sun, temporarily blocking its light and casting a shadow across the continent.

For many of us, it will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But for some, following eclipses has become something of an addiction.

Armed with two high-spec cameras, a specialist telescope and a drone, Mark Griffiths has spent two days driving from Cheshire to Galicia - one of the best places to view the eclipse - to record the event.

It's a hobby that started six years ago, when he went to Shetland to see the northern lights - though the weather was so dreary he "didn't see anything".

But it didn't put him off and he soon found he couldn't stop. He loved the thrill of witnessing and capturing the sky's most spectacular events.

He's since filmed the northern lights numerous times - he goes to Iceland once a month and leads tour groups there - and has photographed various auroras, eclipses and bioluminescence.

But this is his first total solar eclipse.

"I kept wanting more," he says, and Europe's first total solar eclipse for more than 25 years is "like what the World Cup is to football" for enthusiasts like him.

"I'll be honest, it's like an addiction now," he tells me.

I'm speaking to him the day after he's finished his marathon drive from England, across France and into Spain. He only paused to take photos of the night sky and rest for a few hours in Bordeaux. "I'm quite sleep deprived."

The path of total eclipse begins at the tip of Siberia before curving round the Arctic Ocean and crossing parts of Greenland and Iceland.

It then proceeds across a stretch of the northern Atlantic Ocean before reaching northern Spain and finishing in the Mediterranean. Other parts of Europe will see a partial eclipse.

The total eclipse is only expected to last a couple of minutes for people who watch it, but that doesn't deter eclipse hunters from crossing continents to witness it.

Samantha Phillips-Brown and her husband Gregory have flown to Iceland and hired a camper van so they can drive to a remote area to see it.

This will be the second solar eclipse they've witnessed.

It was the awe-inspiring power of the first one they saw, near their home in upstate New York in 2023, that convinced them to travel for this one. They booked their flights and van more than a year ago.

"It was such a phenomenal experience to see the Sun start going dark and hear, suddenly, the birds stop chirping," recalls Samantha. "It's just a very strange experience."

Gregory thinks of how Iceland's first settlers must have felt witnessing such a phenomena more than a millennium ago, a time of mythological rather than scientific explanation.

"They really didn't know what was happening, didn't know how long it was going to last... it must have been quite terrifying for them, in a way."

They are spending the days before the eclipse driving round eastern parts of Iceland to go hiking and camping.

The path of totality crosses the western part of Iceland and they hope to find a spot in the Westfjords peninsula to witness it.

Although they've heard rumours of roads being closed to stop too many people overwhelming the area, so are keen to get there a couple of days before the spectacle.

Samantha, who her husband describes as an "obsessive travel planner", is all over the Facebook groups and social media pages being used by eclipse hunters to share information and advice.

She's expecting a good turnout given the number of eclipse glasses she's seen people with in Iceland. "They're really trying to prepare everybody," she says.

"What I expect, as we start inching westward, is we're going to see more and more of them."

Andrew Wills is also going to an island to see the eclipse, albeit a much warmer one: Majorca.

He's travelling with his wife and his dad, who is 90. Father and son witnessed Europe's last total solar eclipse together in 1999 while stood atop St Agnes Beacon in Cornwall.

The landmark, believed by some to be a Bronze Age bowl barrow, offers panoramic views across the Cornish countryside and out to the Atlantic. It was a cloudy day, remembers Andrew.

"We didn't see the shadow rushing across the sea towards us, though we did see the dawn appearing and it getting closer very quickly," he says. "It was awe-inspiring."

He has high hopes for a clearer day in Majorca where he has booked a villa near the town of Andraitx, located in the west of the island.

Andrew has earmarked a spot nearby he hopes will give a good view across the sea. Their location in the path of totality means the eclipse will likely happen low on the horizon.

"We're going to take a couple of camping chairs with us, so Dad can sit if we can get there an hour or so before."

The islands of Majorca and Menorca will be the last places on land to view the eclipse before the Sun sets and the shadow disappears.

Eclipses have fascinated Andrew ever since he saw his first in St Agnes all those years ago.

"We live on a planet where we have this amazing coincidence. Where the Sun is 400 times bigger than the moon but the moon is 400 times closer.

"And so when the moon passes in front of the Sun and between Earth, it casts this perfect shadow."

It made him appreciate the delicacy of life on our planet in the way astronomer Carl Sagan once did when speaking of the Pale Blue Dot photograph.

"We are tiny little specks in a huge vast area of nothingness," says Andrew. "We're amazingly lucky to be alive."

Paris tells e-scooter riders to wear safety gear or face fines

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89nkln7w7ko, yesterday

Electric scooter riders in Paris face being fined if they fail to comply with new safety rules, as police try to curb the number of accidents in the French capital.

Some 79 people were killed in e-scooter accidents last year, a sharp rise from the 45 who died the year prior, police said on Saturday, citing figures from France's road safety watchdog.

In a bid to address "the concerning rise in serious and fatal accidents" involving the motorised vehicles, it is now mandatory for riders to wear a helmet and high-vis vest on public roads.

Those who don't face fines of €135 (£129) for failing to wear an approved helmet, and smaller fines of €35 (£30) for not wearing a vest or retro-reflectors.

The regulations also cover other electric transportation devices, such as electric unicycles and hoverboards.

Official figures show that around 1,100 people were injured in e-scooter accidents in Paris last year, a rise of 33% on the year before.

This is despite Paris banning rental e-scooters in 2023 over safety concerns, while allowing privately owned ones to continue being ridden.

E-scooters remain popular with the commuters in the city, where narrow roads can become congested.

Private e-scooter ownership in France is the highest in Europe, according to the EU.

Some 2.5 million people owned e-scooters there as of 2023, with hundreds of thousands more purchased since. Many of these are thought to be in the capital, though exact figures are not kept.

Existing rules in Paris ban e-scooter riding for under-14s, prohibit carrying passengers and set a maximum speed limits of 25km/h (16mph).

Helmets and high-visibility vests are already mandatory in several French regions, including Seine-et-Marne, Alpes-Maritimes and Vaucluse.

Paris was one of the first cities to adopt e-scooters, but growing concern about dangerous driving and obstructing pavements led to for-hire e-scooters being outlawed.

Their fate was decided in a city-wide referendum, which saw 90% voters back a rental ban even though only 8% of eligible voters turned out.

Other European cities have moved to ban rental e-scooters in recent years, with Madrid outlawing them in 2024 and Brussels announcing it will follow suit in June.

Child among three killed in Russian missile attacks near Kyiv

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7dy8gq99eo, yesterday

At least three people, including a child, have been killed in overnight Russian attacks near the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, a local official said.

Another three people were injured as ballistic missiles hit east of Kyiv, head of the regional military administration Timur

The new attack comes just days after 21 people were killed as Russia intensifies its strikes, aware that Ukraine has been running out of Western-donated interceptor missiles used to defend its skies.

On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a fresh call for more US-made Patriot interceptor missiles, saying what his country was receiving was not enough.

Zelensky's plea comes days after US President Donald Trump appeared to go back on a promise to grant Ukraine a licence to manufacture the defensive systems. On Saturday, Ukraine's president still referred to an agreement with the US on a licence.

Since coming to office, Trump has scaled back direct military aid for Ukraine. Instead, Ukraine's European allies have been buying expensive US supplies - such as Patriot missiles - which are then donated to Ukraine.

"Ukraine does not have, nor will it ever have, the sort of funds that Russia has, which it is using to finance the war," Zelensky said on Saturday.

"We have what we need, thanks to European aid and support from other countries. But additional funding specifically for Ukrainian production is what is needed."

Earlier in the week, Zelensky said the supply of interceptors from allies had been "significantly reduced" this year.

The Ukrainian leader was speaking during his first trip to Serbia.

He met President Aleksandar Vučić to discuss economic ties, security issues and relations with the European Union.

Zelensky is trying to build wider support for Ukraine, but Vučić, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has refused to impose sanctions on Russia.

Serbia is trying to join the EU and has provided aid to Ukraine and promised to help it rebuild after the war.

At the joint news conference with Zelensky in the capital, Belgrade, Vučić focused on Ukraine's European accession and pledged to support it.

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

Since then, Russia has seized parts of Ukraine in the east, but the front lines have remained unchanged for a long time.

Trump's efforts to mediate an end to the conflict have faltered recently, leading to an escalation of attacks between the two warring sides.

Ukraine has developed advanced drones able to hit deep into Russian territory in an effort to take the war to Russia.

In the latest such attack, the Ukrainian military hit Russia's Ilsky and Syzran oil refineries during overnight attacks, causing fires at both, the Ukrainian general staff said on Saturday.

Moscow-linked vessels in the Black Sea were also hit - according to Zelensky the intention is to limit oil revenues used by Russia to "finance" its war.

The Russia-Ukraine war has threatened to spill over into neighbouring countries. There have been several instances of drones or missiles flying into their territories. On most occasions, Russia has been blamed, but denied any involvement.

On Saturday, a drone entered Bulgarian airspace and exploded near an international gas pipeline, its prime minister said, after crossing from Romania.

Rumen Radev said it had been carrying a "significant" amount of explosives but there had been no casualties or reports of damage.

Bulgaria's defence ministry said it appeared to be a Maya decoy drone, which is known to be used by Ukraine.

"At the moment, there is no reason to believe that the incident was intentional," the ministry said.

Later, Heorhii Tykhyi, spokesman for Ukraine's foreign ministry, was quoted as saying that "we can say with certainty that the Ukrainian Armed Forces did not intentionally direct any assets toward Bulgaria", but stopped short of admitting the drone was Ukrainian.

US offers $1bn to Colombia on new right-wing president's first day of office

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy9wy3y0e5wo, yesterday

The US has pledged $1bn (£740m) to Colombia hours after the country's new right-wing populist president was sworn in.

Abelardo de la Espriella, an admirer of Donald Trump who echoed many of the US president's policies on the campaign trail, used his maiden speech to promise an "all-out war" on drug cartels.

The US state department said the "security package" would help him achieve "our shared goals", which include fighting organised crime and illegal immigration. Trump repeatedly criticised de la Espriella's left-wing predecessor over his approach to both.

The inauguration is the latest in a wider trend of Latin American nations shifting rightwards on a backdrop of economic hardship and concerns about gang violence.

Trump has taken a greater interest in Latin America during his second term, courting politically aligned leaders and spurning those with whom he disagrees.

Before the election, Trump said de la Espriella had the "total support and strength of the United States behind him", predicting a "much better relationship" with Colombia after he was elected in June.

A lawyer and businessman by trade, de la Espriella has cast himself as maverick outsider, vowing to combat crime with an "iron fist".

In a fiery first official speech - addressing troops at a nearby military base - de la Espriella pledged to crush armed insurgents, rebuild Colombia and defend democracy "by reason or by force".

He said in "the age of the Tiger" - a reference to his self-styled nickname - the state would be forceful and decisive against crime, adding: "There will not be a single place in our territory where criminals can feel safe."

Comparisons have been drawn between de la Espriella's plans and similar crackdowns by similar right-wing populists Nayib Bukele and Daniel Noboa in El Salvador and Ecuador, respectively.

This is in stark contrast to his predecessor, Gustavo Petro, who pursued what he called a "total peace" strategy to the country's internal armed conflict between guerrilla groups, the state and cartels, which prioritised negotiation and incentivising farmers to stop planting coca.

Critics say the method failed. Membership of armed groups has expanded in recent years, and a brutal conflict between rival rebel groups along the Colombia-Venezuela border displaced tens of thousands of people last year.

Colombia - and Petro's policies - have been among targets Trump has repeatedly blamed for the flow of drugs and illegal migrants into the US.

Petro, for his part, was highly critical of Trump's influence on the region, as well as his administration's seizure of Venezuela's socialist President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, to stand trial on drug charges in the US, clearing the way for US firms to tap Venezuela's oil reserves.

Petro, who could not stand for another term, and Iván Cepeda, the left-wing candidate he backed, had insisted Colombia should not become another "vassal" of the US.

In one of his first acts as president, de la Espriella said Colombia would join the "Shield of the Americas" security partnership founded by Trump.

The US state department welcomed the move, saying de la Espriella's "pro-growth agenda" had created an opportunity to "increase trade and deepen economic ties between our countries".

It also brings Colombia into league with other right-wing governments that have sought closer ties to the Trump administration, such as Argentina, whose libertarian President Javier Milei de le Espriella has said he admired.

Argentina was the recipient of a $20bn US Treasury bailout, while Trump has said he would feel "a lot differently" about supporting the country if Milei was replaced by a left-wing president.

In contrast, Trump has repeatedly threatened to give Cuba's Communist government similar treatment to Maduro's in Venezuela.

De la Espriella's ascension - along with that of Keiko Fujimori in Peru - means that Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva now has fewer political allies in the region as the number of left-wing leaders dwindles.

However, he will face Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of jailed former President Jair Bolsonaro - a far-right populist friendly with the US president - in October.

De la Espriella has also promised a strong military alliance with the US and Israel, in stark contrast to Petro, who cut ties with the Israeli government over its offensive in Gaza and was a vocal advocate for the Palestinian cause.

Who is Abelardo de la Espriella?

He calls himself "El Tigre" - the tiger.

A media-savvy lawyer and millionaire businessman, he cast himself as an "outsider" who refused to govern with "the usual suspects" - a reference to Colombia's pre-Petro political elite.

The hardliner chose to take the oath of office not in Colombia's capital, Bogotá, but in the western city of Cali - signalling his desire to cast himself as apart from the centralised politics of the past.

Before entering politics, he had a successful career as a defence lawyer representing drug-trafficking paramilitaries - the kinds of criminals he now intends to lock up.

De la Espriella announced his candidacy a month after another conservative candidate was shot and killed, and regularly appeared at rallies behind bulletproof glass wearing a bulletproof vest - if not a Colombian football jersey.

He has been a US citizen since 2023 after living and working in Miami for many years.

Among attendees of his inauguration was US Attorney General Todd Blanche and Fifa president Gianni Infantino, who was accompanied by the head of South America's football governing body Conmebol as questions linger over his leadership.

US revokes Brazil ambassador's visa as diplomatic tensions escalate

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy9wpww7dyro, 5 days ago

The US has revoked the visa of Brazil's ambassador to Washington, according to a state department official, marking another escalation in diplomatic tensions between the two countries ahead of Brazil's elections.

Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti's visa cancellation comes after the Brazilian government denied visas to two US state department officials who wanted to visit Brazil last month.

Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva accused the officials of wanting to "meddle" in Brazil's elections, an allegation the US called "baseless".

The US official said the decision did not mean Brazil's ambassador was being expelled from the US. A state department spokesperson called it a "reciprocal action".

"We communicated continually with the Brazilian government for weeks and have given the Brazilian government every opportunity to do the right thing, yet they have continually delayed and obfuscated," the state department spokesperson said.

The department said while this action didn't mean Viotti was banned from the US, "additional diplomatic options remain on the table".

It is the latest in a series of disputes between the US and Brazilian government, which have flared up in recent months after the US reimposed tariffs on Brazil and designated Brazilian gangs as terrorist organisations.

In a statement to the BBC, the Presidency of the Republic of Brazil said that US justifications for cancelling the envoy's visa were "false".

Two state department officials were due in Brazil in late July for what they said was a visit about freedom of expression and religion and election integrity.

They were also expected to meet the right-wing candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro.

The elder Bolsonaro is serving a 27-year prison sentence for plotting a coup after losing the last election.

A few weeks ago, Flávio Bolsonaro, who has received endorsements from Argentina's President Javier Milei and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told a roomful of diplomats that Brazil's machines had 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 electoral 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 labour, and Samuel Samson, a deputy assistant secretary in the same section.

The Brazilian presidency told the BBC the US officials' planned visit was "an unacceptable attempt to interfere in the country's domestic political process".

Flávio Bolsonaro's claims about the country's electronic voting machines have been rejected by Brazil's Superior Electoral Court. Brazil's election system has been praised by experts as one of the most secure in the world.

The Brazilian government has also withheld approval for US President Donald Trump's pick to be the next US ambassador to Brazil.

Trump nominated Daniel Perez, a state representative from Florida, who is a close ally of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on 1 June without seeking Brazil's approval beforehand - a common diplomatic step.

The Brazilian government told the BBC that it was abiding by international law and that the Perez request remained under review.

President Lula has been critical publicly of the state department under Rubio and its increasing intervention in Latin American politics, including endorsing conservative candidates in some elections.

Guatemala volcano eruption sends lava spewing into the air

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2lqpvv1wlxo, 5 days ago

The eruption of the Fuego volcano in Guatemala has triggered the evacuation of at least two villages on its slopes.

Fuego, one of the most active volcanoes in the Western Hemisphere, started spewing lava and ash on Monday.

Pyroclastic currents - rivers of gas, volcanic ash and rock fragments - continued to flow down Fuego's south-eastern slope early on Tuesday, the government agency which monitors its activity said.

Disaster management agency Conred issued a nationwide orange alert, the second highest, and warned locals to be prepared as the eruptions could create further pyroclastic flows and billowing ash clouds.

Conred urged people to keep their windows and doors closed and lessons have been cancelled in schools close to the volcano.

Fuego is located just 16km (10 miles) west of Antigua, a city popular with tourists, who travel to the Unesco World Heritage Site to admire its colonial-era architecture.

The active stratovolcano has also become popular with hikers.

Conred warned visitors and locals alike to refrain from approaching or remaining in areas at risk, in particular on the volcano's slopes.

More than 200 people were killed when Fuego erupted in 2018, many of them caught in the fast-flowing pyroclastic flows which raced down the Las Lajas ravine.

Mexico and Peru restore diplomatic relations after asylum row

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7dy1l3e77o, 2 days ago

Mexico and Peru have agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations following a row over the granting of asylum to a former Peruvian prime minister who was charged for a 2022 coup attempt.

In a joint statement released on 7 August, Lima and Mexico City said "historic ties of brotherhood, friendship and cooperation" prompted the reconciliation.

The two countries also reaffirmed "their respect for international law and the principles of the Charter of the United Nations".

Relations broke down after former Peruvian Prime Minister Betssy Chávez sought asylum in the Mexican embassy in November 2025.

Peruvian Foreign Minister Carlos Espá told local media outlet RPP that Chávez had been granted safe passage and had "already left Peru".

While allowed to travel to Mexico, Peru maintains the right "to request the eventual extradition" of Chávez, the Peruvian Foreign Ministry added in a statement.

Speaking at her daily media briefing, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum welcomed Chávez to Mexico as she reiterated her government's support for ousted Peruvian President Pedro Castillo.

Castillo was arrested in December 2022 on charges of rebellion, after he attempted to dismiss Peruvian congress members and install an emergency government. Hours after the attempt, Castillo was impeached.

Chávez had been imprisoned in June 2023 over her alleged role in Castillo's plan to dissolve congress. She had been released by a judge on bail in September 2025 and had denied the charges against her.

She and Castillo were both sentenced to more than 11 years in prison last November.

The restoration of diplomatic relations between Mexico and Peru comes after a new Peruvian president, Keiko Fujimori, took office last week.

Livestreamer's murder raises questions over relations between Mexico's creators and cartels

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg9dwz8p30o, 3 days ago

The killing of a young influencer, caught on camera as he was livestreaming in Mexico's Sinaloa state, has raised questions about possible links between content creators and criminal cartels in this violence-wracked part of the country.

On the stream, two men on a motorbike can be seen riding up to César Gastélum, who is chatting to two friends outside a fast food restaurant in the city of Culiacán.

The murder happens within seconds: the driver of the bike shoots him in the head at close range before fleeing.

While the Sinaloa state prosecutor's office provided little detail about the incident, it did say that its lines of investigations included a number of posts Gastélum had published, "some of which refer to a criminal group".

Gastélum is not the first influencer to be murdered in Sinaloa.

At least 10 content creators have been killed in the state since a deadly war broke out between two rival factions of the Sinaloa criminal cartel two years ago.

Officials say Gastélum had not received any threats from criminal groups, nor was he under investigation by police for any alleged criminal links, as had been the case with some of the influencers targeted in the past.

But according to Claudia Arruñada, a communications expert at Mexico's Iberoamerican University, the worlds of social media and the criminal underworld can sometimes become intertwined - with at times deadly consequences.

"The [social media] algorithm and the narcos promote the same thing: consumption and luxury as ultimate values, to be achieved in the quickest way possible."

"The model for success is no longer based on methodically working on your career, but rather on having a meteoric rise," she adds.

Arruñada argues that in some cases influencers have promoted narcoculture, by showing luxurious lifestyles to their followers and linking these riches to the exploits of narcos.

Gastélum often shared pictures of himself posing with expensive cars, enjoying the nightlife and going on luxury trips, as well as comedy clips and challenges.

In one photo he posted, he could be seen at the grave of Leobardo Aispuro, better known as "El Gordo Peruci", an influencer who was murdered in 2024.

Content creators like him have vehemently rejected being labelled as "narco-influencers", arguing that the sheer fact of being a young public figure showing off a luxury lifestyle can make you a target in Culiacán.

Some studies suggest that the cartels - which function very much like multinational companies with various business interests - do use content creators as community managers, to promote their "brand".

When rival factions turn on each other, those seen as spreading propaganda for one group can quickly become targets for its sworn enemies.

This is what appears to have happened in January 2025, when leaflets were dropped from an aircraft onto the streets of Culiacán.

The pamphlets accused 25 influencers and musicians of having links to "La Mayiza", a faction of the Sinaloa cartel involved in a deadly confrontation with rivals "Los Chapitos".

Four of those named had already been killed and were marked on the leaflet as "eliminated". Two more have been murdered since.

Gastélum's name was not on that list but his killing is nevertheless seen as the latest in a trend seeing influencers being targeted.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Wednesday that local and national authorities would go after those who had murdered him - and those who had ordered it.

Her government is trying to sever the link between popular culture and the criminal underworld, denouncing narcocorridos, songs which glorify criminals, as well as tackling crime head on.

Official figures suggest the number of murders fell by 48% in 2025.

But there is little doubt that killings like that of Gastélum - witnessed by his followers who were online at the time as it unfolded - strengthen the impression that narcos continue to wield power - and death - not just on the streets of Culiacán but also on digital platforms.

Update: The original image on this story was an agency photo which purported to show César Gastélum the influencer. However, it showed a musician of the same name which was wrongly labelled. We have replaced the photo.

Mexican influencer shot dead during livestream

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2kg709qd9o, 4 days ago

A Mexican influencer, César Gastélum, has been shot dead while livestreaming on social media.

Gastélum was filming with two friends outside a fast food restaurant in Tres Ríos, in the northern city of Culiacán, on Tuesday evening when when two men on a motorbike drove up to him and one shot him at close range.

He had more than half a million followers on TikTok and mainly uploaded comedy videos.

It is not the first time a social media influencer has been killed in Mexico. Last year, 23-year-old Valeria Márquez was shot dead at a beauty salon while she was livestreaming on TikTok.

On the livestream, Gastélum and his friends were wearing bright orange coats and bags typically used by delivery drivers.

Local media reported that their outfits originally led police to believe that the victim was a delivery driver, but officials were later alerted to his identity.

Police and forensic experts cordoned off the area and are examining the cartridge casings and CCTV footage for any clues.

No arrests have so far been made and the two people on the motorbike fled the scene.

It is not yet clear whether Gastélum had received any threats.

On his Instagram account he often shared pictures of his travels and nights out, or posing in front of luxury cars.

In one of his posts, he could be seen at the grave of Leobardo Aispuro, an influencer known as "El Gordo Peruci".

Aispuro was shot dead in December 2024, in a killing which police said may have been linked to the rivalry between two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel.

Violence in the state of Sinaloa, of which Culiacán is the capital, has spiralled since the two factions - Los Chapitos and La Mayiza - fell out in September 2024.

Correction 05 August: This article has been amended to make clear that César Gastélum was livestreaming on an unspecified social media platform when he was shot, and not TikTok as originally reported.

'My grandmother subjected my baby to female genital mutilation behind my back'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3r0vp7n0pro, 5 days ago

Warning: This story contains descriptions of the practices involved in female genital mutilation

In what activists are calling a milestone, Colombia last week became the first country in Latin America where female genital mutilation (FGM) is now illegal.

As José Carlos Cueto reports, while the bill was passed unanimously in Colombia's Congress, it follows a long battle to eradicate the dangerous and often secretive procedure.

Carla Quiñonez's daughter was just six months old when the baby's great-grandmother subjected her to female genital mutilation (FGM).

Quiñonez (not her real name) says when her grandmother returned the baby to her, she had a fever and was swollen and bleeding. She cried constantly.

"I confronted my grandmother, but she said it was normal and that I could not tell anyone."

The nearest health centre was a long journey away, so Quiñonez's mother, a midwife, tried to ease the baby's pain with medicinal plants. She also challenged Quiñonez's grandmother. But the older woman would not listen.

"She said that men make fun of women who have a clitoris."

FGM in Colombia

FGM involves the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, as well as other injuries inflicted on those organs for non-medical reasons.

It can cause medical complications, including haemorrhaging and infection, as well as complications later in life with periods and during childbirth. It can also make it difficult for a woman to experience sexual pleasure.

The World Health Organization says that around the world more than 230 million girls and women alive today have been cut, predominantly in Africa.

Quiñonez, 30, has been campaigning to eradicate the practice in Colombia - where it is still practised by members of her Emberá Indigenous community.

Along with fellow activists and members of Colombia's Congress, she played a key role in the campaign which led to the ban.

She says it was only as she grew up that she realised what was secretly happening within her community.

"I always wondered why more girls than boys seemed to die shortly after birth.

"I remember a young cousin of mine whose birth was attended by my mother. She was born healthy, but died three days later.

"I asked my mother about it, and she told me the baby had died from 'jai', an ancestral illness."

Quiñonez now believes that girls who supposedly died from "jai" actually died from complications related to FGM.

A paediatrician's perspective

Between 2020 and June 2026, 240 cases of FGM were recorded in Colombia. In the vast majority of instances, the girls were younger than six years old. But paediatrician Diana Ramos Mosquera says she believes this is just "the tip of the iceberg".

Working at San Jorge University Hospital in Pereira, a city in Colombia's north-west coffee-growing region, she says she's seen signs of scarring, burning and mutilation when examining girls who have come in with other medical conditions.

She recalls one girl who arrived with her vaginal opening sealed shut, meaning she probably would not have been able to menstruate or have sexual intercourse when she reached adulthood.

"She had to undergo reconstructive surgery," Dr Ramos says.

She regards FGM as a form of sexual and gender-based violence with lifelong consequences, but says this must be addressed through education, and not just punishment.

"Some members of these communities genuinely believe they are doing no harm," she says.

'Culture does not kill'

With around 300,000 members, the Great Emberá Nation is one of Colombia's largest Indigenous communities, with populations also living in Ecuador and Panama.

One theory about why members of the community practise FGM, when it's rarely seen elsewhere in Latin America, is that the practice arrived with enslaved people from African countries.

This could help explain its prevalence in Risaralda, Chocó and Valle del Cauca, neighbouring departments that either are home to, or border, large Afro-Colombian populations.

Another theory is that the birth of an intersex child, hundreds of years ago, left the community with a fear of the clitoris - with many older women believing that it will grow into a penis if not cut.

Others think that it stems from the patriarchal belief that a woman with an organ associated with sexual pleasure is more likely to be promiscuous.

Whatever its origin, Juliana Domico, the legal representative and chief Indigenous councillor to the National Confederation of the Peoples of the Great Emberá Nation of Colombia, rejects the idea that the practice is cultural.

"Our culture is our clothing, our crafts, our dances and our language, not a practice that kills. Culture does not kill."

She says the new law follows years of advocacy work within the community: "We hope the law is translated into public policy, with sufficient resources to implement it."

Threats and hostility

Quiñonez is one of those who have advocated for change, but says she has received threats because of this - especially from men.

While, traditionally, men are not meant to know about the ritual, conversations about abolishing the practice often only take place with male leaders because many Emberá women speak an indigenous language - also called Emberá - and have not necessarily learned Spanish.

This can also prevent women from accessing help from doctors for their babies, a problem which Quiñonez says is compounded when they're faced by sometimes ill-informed and judgmental health staff.

She says when she took her daughter to hospital with a fever caused by a urinary tract infection, the nurse berated her for "being a savage" and told her that she had got what she deserved.

"I was even threatened with having my daughter taken away and placed in the care of the child welfare authorities.

"Since then, I prefer not to take my daughter to hospital. I treat her with medicinal plants and medication. I never leave her side."

'Conversation cannot be avoided'

Quiñonez says that there is change under way within the Emberá community, with women now discussing among themselves whether FGM should happen.

She says she was moved when one grandmother reflected on carrying out FGM on her granddaughters. "She said she had never acted out of malice and had only wanted to prevent men from criticising her granddaughters."

Having conversations about a different way of life can be painful, she says. "Women who have grown up without a clitoris cannot imagine a different body."

It will also be difficult to speak to her own daughter about it, one day in the future, "but it is a conversation that cannot be avoided," she says.

"All of us deserve to understand our bodies and to talk about them without shame."

Illustrations by Daniel Arce, from BBC Mundo's Visual Journalism Team.

If you've been affected by issues raised in this story, sources of support are available via the BBC Action Line

How Mexican drug cartels have outsourced meth labs to Nigeria

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmrnxp4nllo, 12 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.

On the front line of Ecuador's drugs war, police fight gangs, guns and corruption

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdx7n1r54nno, 13 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.

Jamaicans on 'resilience' of country as it marks first Independence Day since Hurricane Melissa

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9v4j9rr28xo, 3 days ago

"Jamaica is a country that has a very strong sense of community," says British Jamaican Tamani Clayton.

"The community you live in is really just like a massive family."

It is this ethos which has helped the island in the months since it was pummelled by the strongest storm to hit the Caribbean nation in modern history.

Hurricane Melissa left dozens of people dead, tore roofs off hospitals, destroyed homes and left big parts of Jamaica without power.

The country is marking its first Independence Day since the tropical cyclone hit, a day which BBC Radio 1Xtra presenter Seani B says is a chance for it to celebrate the culture, music and contributions Jamaica has made to the world.

He tells BBC Newsbeat that how people across the world have banded together to support Jamaica during these challenging past months is also something to celebrate this time round.

"Hurricane Melissa really brought that sense of community back to Jamaica, where communities were helping communities," he says.

"Places like London, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Toronto, New York, Miami, Africa, Europe - all of these people that benefit from Jamaica.

"From the music of Jamaica, from the food, the sports - we all gang together to be able to help Jamaica."

Clayton, who lives in London but has family in Jamaica, says he will always be there to support them.

"In terms of being a part of diaspora and helping back home, for me personally, it comes in the sense of, if family out there need anything, you try and help, you try and send food over," the 19-year-old says.

"If they need money for certain things, you try and send money over."

Supporting family is not a new concept to those part of the Jamaican diaspora, though.

He says even before the hurricane, they would fill barrels with food, goods and clothes to send across.

"It was something we were doing before the hurricane, after the hurricane and we're going to continue to do for years to come, it's just a tradition," he explains.

And one which fellow British Jamaican Shaniyaa Holness-Mckenzie can relate to.

"You appreciate that maybe there's things that are here that you can't get over there and there's opportunities that are here that you might not be able to get over there," she says.

Holness-Mckenzie, 29, says she now regularly donates to a charity that helps people in Jamaica in temporary accommodation following the hurricane.

"As someone in the diaspora, I think the best thing that I can do is making sure that people are still aware that the problem isn't over," she says.

"It isn't completely fixed. There are people who still need support."

In the months since Hurricane Melissa, 1Xtra presenter Seani B visited Jamaica including Montego Bay, a tourist area hit particularly hard by the storm, to see the rebuilding efforts.

"[Montego Bay] is a massive tourist area with hotels, with nightclubs, with the beaches, with all of that Jamaican culture there," Seani B says.

"And it got hit very, very hard."

He says that returning to some of these areas "broke my heart" as he could still see some of the destruction nearly nine months on.

But the "resilience" of the people was what shined through to him, and it is what inspired the name of their dedicated 1Xtra programme on Thursday.

"You go to a place like there and you see Jamaican people with that smile on their face, but you still see the hardship that they are suffering after Hurricane Melissa," he says.

With employment being heavily reliant on tourism and footfall, Seani B says local people are struggling to get work.

"It's so hard for people because there is no system that's in place like in England where you may be able to get some financial help or support," he says.

"So you just have to be so inventive to make it happen for yourself."

And while Independence Day is a celebration, Holness-Mckenzie says there are still further improvements that need to be made.

"I think Jamaicans as a people, they're just so full of life. They're so strong," she says.

"And I know that as much as we're enjoying here, I know people are enjoying there.

"And you don't have to choose one or the other, we can celebrate and we can recognise that there's still things that need fixing."

Additional reporting by Lizzy Bella.

- You can listen to Resilient - A Jamaican Independence Special on BBC Sounds from 21:00 BST.

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

Tourist plane crashes in Peru, killing 13

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70g132erlko, 8 days ago

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, a Cessna Caravan C-208, had been flying over Nazca Lines archaeological site when it went down on Saturday. Eleven passengers and two pilots were on board.

The passengers included two German, two Spanish and seven Italian tourists, Peru's state news agency reported. The cause of the crash is not yet clear.

The Nazca Lines is a popular tourist attraction and Unesco World Heritage site in southern Peru that features ancient drawings of animals in desert sand. Tourists often fly in small planes to see the extent of the drawings.

"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.

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.

Video from Reuters news agency shows firefighters spraying water at the scene as smoke rises from the wreckage.

In a statement in Spanish posted online by the Municipalidad Provincial de Nasca, officials expressed "deep sorrow" for the accident and extended "heartfelt condolences to the families of the deceased".

The statement said the plane belonged to local Peruvian airline Aerodiana.

In a statement, the airline said it would "assess its flight schedule in accordance with the directives of the relevant authorities", according to Reuters.

The BBC has contacted the airline for comment.

This isn't the first plane to crash over the famed site in the past 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.

Rights groups say Israeli attack that killed Lebanese journalist an apparent war crime

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2md67y3nlo, 3 days ago

Two human rights groups have said an Israeli attack in southern Lebanon that killed al-Akhbar newspaper reporter Amal Khalil and seriously wounded freelance camera operator Zeinab Faraj was an apparent war crime.

Separate reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International concluded that the journalists were targeted while reporting in the town of al-Tiri on 22 April.

They called for an independent investigation and for Lebanon to accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

The Israeli military denied targeting the journalists, telling the BBC that the three strikes carried out by its forces were aimed at two operatives of the armed group Hezbollah.

"The Israeli military says it does not target journalists, but the facts and evidence show that it has repeatedly done so. Amal Khalil and Zeinab Faraj are the latest victims in a long series of such attacks," said Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The two rights groups said they had reviewed photo and video evidence of the events in al-Tiri, as well as witness testimony from Faraj and first responders, media reports, and a message from the Lebanese Red Cross to the Israeli military.

According to HRW's reconstruction of the events, the first Israeli strike hit a car driving in front of the two female journalists at about 14:30 local time, killing two men they knew, Ali Bazzi and Mohammed al-Hourani.

HRW said the strike forced Khalil and Faraj to abandon their vehicle and seek refuge near a neighbouring building. They called the Lebanese Red Cross for help, and at 15:00 the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon (Unifil) sent the Israeli military a request from the Lebanese Red Cross to access the site and rescue them.

A second strike, between 15:21 and 15:42, hit the journalists' parked car, injuring Khalil, HRW added. She and Faraj then sheltered inside the building, which was destroyed by a third strike at about 16:25.

Israeli quadcopter drones appeared to monitor Faraj and Khalil throughout the attack.

"The drones got extremely close, coming through the broken roof. Less than a meter away. I was covering my face, thinking of a video I had seen where a drone killed someone like that. I thought it would explode in my face. The drones didn't carry visible explosives, but they were hovering and provoking fear constantly," Faraj told Amnesty.

Phone records showed Khalil remained in contact with first responders and family members as the attacks unfolded, according to the rights group.

A Lebanese Red Cross team was able to enter the town after 17:00.

But when the paramedics began rescue efforts, they came under fire from a drone-delivered stun grenade and were forced to retreat without recovering Khalil, witnesses told HRW.

Photographs reviewed by the group also showed damage to the Lebanese Red Cross ambulance that it said was consistent with small-arms fire.

HRW said a report from Tebnin Governmental Hospital indicated that Khalil was most likely still alive when the paramedics were forced to withdraw from the site at around 17:53.

The report stated that Khalil died around 19:00 as a result of cardiac arrest. It also said she had a head injury that caused severe bleeding. Her body was eventually recovered by rescue workers at around 23:00.

The Israeli military said the strikes that killed Khalil and wounded Faraj formed "part of a series of events" in which two Hezbollah operatives were killed, and that it "regrets any harm caused to journalists".

It said the incident was under internal review, but did not answer follow-up questions from the BBC about the purpose of the second and third strikes.

Both HRW and Amnesty said the evidence showed that Israeli forces "knew or should have known" that the women were civilians.

Deliberate attacks on civilians are prohibited under international humanitarian law.

"There can be no justification for targeting civilians who sought shelter in search of safety," said Heba Morayef, Amnesty's Middle East director.

Kaiss said: "Israeli forces' continued killing of journalists shows a brazen willingness to commit atrocities without any fear of consequences."

The Committee to Protect Journalists says 27 journalists and media workers have been killed this year, including nine in Lebanon and seven in Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Israel strikes south Lebanon after two soldiers killed by explosion

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c998711dyjvo, 3 days ago

The Israeli military has announced that two of its soldiers have been killed in combat in southern Lebanon, after it launched retaliatory strikes that killed at least one person.

The soldiers died and four others were seriously injured when an explosive device blew up in an area where they had been operating on Wednesday, according to Israeli media.

Later in the day, the military said it had begun conducting strikes in Lebanon in response to what it called a "blatant violation" of the ceasefire by Hezbollah. The Iran-backed armed group has not commented.

The Lebanese health ministry said one man was killed and 12 other people were injured in an Israeli strike in the southern town of Tibnin.

Strikes were also reported in several towns to the west including Mansouri, where the Israeli military issued its first evacuation order for more than a month.

It came as Israeli and Lebanese officials attended another round of US-sponsored talks in Rome aimed at maintaining the ceasefire that ended a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

In late June, the three countries agreed a trilateral framework that should see the Israeli military gradually withdraw from territory it is occupying in southern Lebanon in exchange for the disarmament of Hezbollah.

Two weeks ago, the Lebanese army was allowed to deploy to one of the first "pilot zones", after Israeli troops pulled out of the village of Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh.

Hezbollah has rejected the agreement, saying the provisions linking Israel's withdrawal to the group's disarmament cross "all red lines".

The two soldiers killed on Wednesday were the first Israeli military fatalities in Lebanon since 28 June.

Israeli media cited an initial military investigation as saying that an improvised explosive device (IED) blew up around noon as troops entered a building in the southern town of Majdal Zoun, in Tyre district, during an operation to demolish Hezbollah infrastructure.

It was not clear when the IED was planted and how it was detonated, according to the reports.

Later on Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had begun carrying out "precise strikes" in southern Lebanon and ordered residents of Mansouri to evacuate ahead of "forceful action" there. Both statements accused Hezbollah of violating the ceasefire but gave no details.

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported that the deadly strike in Tibnin, 18km (11 miles) east of Majdal Zoun, hit the prayer hall at the town's cemetery.

On Wednesday night, NNA reported a "violent" escalation in Tyre district, with air and artillery strikes hitting Mansouri, Majdal Zoun and Burj al-Shamali, where the health ministry said eight people were injured.

An Israeli military source told Israeli media that it had issued the evacuation order for Mansouri because displaced residents had returned to their town "under the auspices of the Lebanese army, which established a checkpoint in the area in violation of the agreements".

The source said the town was inside the Israeli-declared "security zone" - a 10km (six-mile) deep strip of occupied Lebanese territory running along the border - and "military activity that endangers the lives of Lebanese civilians" was taking place there.

The evacuation order was the first issued in southern Lebanon since 14 June, when residents of 29 towns and villages were told to flee their homes.

On Wednesday morning, the mayor of Mansouri, Haidar Madihli, told local media that Israeli warplanes had carried out four strikes on buildings and villas in the Ghazaleh neighbourhood on the outskirts of the town, causing extensive damage to the targeted structures.

The strikes triggered a wave of displacement, with families filling cars with their belongings and heading towards Tyre, the largest city in the south, he said.

Madihli added that around 120 families had returned to Mansouri after the 19 June ceasefire, but that the number had steadily fallen as Israeli strikes intensified. In recent days, only 40 to 50 families remained in the town.

The UN's humanitarian office said late on Tuesday that more than 820,000 people displaced in Lebanon by the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah had begun returning to their home areas following a reduction in hostilities.

However, the UN said about 360,000 other people remained displaced across Lebanon, including 26,000 living in government shelters.

Lebanon was drawn into the war between Israel, the US and Iran on 2 March, when Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel in retaliation for a strike that killed Iran's supreme leader.

Israel responded by launching a bombing campaign across Lebanon and invading a significant part of the country's south.

At least 4,333 people have been killed during the conflict, including 392 women and 253 children, according to the Lebanese health ministry. Since the ceasefire was announced, the ministry has recorded the killing of 353 people.

Israeli authorities say 40 Israeli soldiers and four civilians have been killed on both sides of the border during the conflict.

Houthi attacks reportedly kill at least 30 Yemeni government forces

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgdmdr0lmgo, 3 days ago

At least 30 Yemeni government troops have reportedly been killed in Houthi rebel attacks on military camps in central Yemen.

The defence ministry said ballistic missiles and drones struck several camps in the provinces of Marib and Hadramawt, resulting in the death and injury of a number of Yemeni personnel. It did not give an exact toll.

The ministry denounced the attacks as "treacherous" and vowed to "respond to this aggression at an appropriate time and place".

The Houthis, who control much of north-western Yemen and are backed by Iran, said they had targeted "large Saudi military build-ups" preparing for an offensive. A Saudi-led coalition has supported the government during the civil war.

In a separate attack, the coalition's spokesperson said that 11 civilians had been wounded in the Saudi Arabian border region of Najran, in what they described as a Houthi strike.

In their statement, shared to X, they said the wounded included seven Saudi nationals, including a woman and a four-year-old child who both suffered second-degree burns.

The other four civilians were from Yemen, Pakistan and Egypt.

The Houthi attacks in central Yemen happened at 10:40 local time (07:40 GMT) on Thursday, according to Yemen's defence ministry.

A military official told AFP news agency that missiles and drones hit a camp in the al-Ruwaik area of Marib province, as well as camps in the al-Abr and al-Wadiah areas of Hadramawt, near the border with Saudi Arabia.

At least 30 have died but the exact death toll was has not been verified. AFP cited a military source as saying at least 58 Yemeni troops had been killed, an increase from the 38 dead it had previously reported.

Military sources have told the pro-government newspaper Aden al-Ghad and the anti-Houthi Belqees TV website that more than 40 troops were killed.

Houthi military spokesman Yahia Sarea claimed the attacks caused the death and injury of "hundreds of Saudi enemy mercenaries", and destroyed a large number of buildings, weapons and military vehicles at camps in the al-Ruwaik, al-Abr and al-Thaniyah areas.

He said the camps belonged to the Saudi-backed Yemeni Emergency Forces and that the Houthis had observed "large Saudi military build-ups in their final stages, aimed at escalating the aggression against the liberated provinces and the Yemeni people".

Deputy UN spokesperson Farhan Haq called on all parties to "exercise restraint and refrain from actions that could lead to further military escalation".

"Renewed fighting risks reversing the hard-won gains made towards reducing violence in the past years," he told reporters.

The US mission to Yemen said the Houthis' attacks were "cowardly" and another example of what it called "their terrorism against the Yemeni people".

Yemen has been devastated by a civil war that began in 2014, when the Houthis ousted the government from Sanaa, the capital. The conflict escalated in 2015, after the Saudi-led coalition of Arab states intervened in an attempt to restore the government's rule.

The fighting has reportedly left more than 150,000 people dead and triggered one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, with more than 22 million people in need of some form of aid, according to the UN.

A UN-brokered ceasefire has largely held since 2022, but there has been a significant escalation in recent weeks.

The Houthis announced a "maritime embargo" against Saudi Arabia on 20 July and began launching missile and drone attacks on Saudi airports, oil facilities and tankers in the Red Sea.

The group said it was retaliating for a Saudi blockade of ports and airports in the territory they control, as well as an air strike on Sanaa airport that they blamed on the kingdom despite a claim from the Yemeni government.

Saudi Arabia has responded with strikes targeting Houthi positions and by forming a new naval coalition to protect shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

On Thursday, representatives of 43 countries attended the coalition's founding meeting, where the new commander stressed it was "purely defensive in nature and does not target any country, organisation or coalition", Saudi state media reported.

Israel charges settler over killing of Palestinian involved in Oscar-winning West Bank film

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4n1e8159yo, 3 days ago

Israeli prosecutors have charged a settler over the killing of a Palestinian activist in the occupied West Bank who helped film Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land.

Yinon Levy was charged with reckless manslaughter over the July 2025 shooting of Odeh Hathaleen, according to Israel's Southern District Prosecutor's Office.

Israeli rights group B'Tselem said it was the first time an Israeli had been indicted for killing a Palestinian in the West Bank for nearly three years.

A lawyer for Hathaleen's family said they hoped the charges marked a "turning point" in the consequences settlers face for violence against Palestinians.

In a letter seen by The Associated Press, Levy said he would fight for his innocence in court.

He wrote that prosecutors should not penalise acts of self-defence and accused them of providing "de facto support for terrorism", the news agency reported.

A lawyer for Levy, Avichai Hajbi, told the AP the prosecution had made a "mistaken decision".

The charges against Levy also include armed trespassing and malicious property damage during the incident in which settlers operated an excavator in the Palestinian village of Umm al-Khair, leading to a confrontation with residents.

According to the indictment, at some point during the confrontation Levy cocked his gun and fired in the direction of residents, hitting Hathaleen. He then fired another shot into the air, prosecutors said.

Footage of the incident was shared widely online. Levy has previously denied firing the shot that killed Hathaleen.

The indictment is the first since the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel which triggered the Gaza war and led to a rise in settler violence in the West Bank, B'Tselem said.

At least 1,110 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank since then, according to the UN. At least 41 Israelis have been killed either by a Palestinian armed group or civilian in the West Bank during the same period, the UN said.

B'Tselem described the decision to indict Levy as the "exception that proves the rule".

"The impunity Israel grants to soldiers and settlers who harm Palestinians is not a failure of the system - it is a central component of a policy designed to allow the violence to continue and escalate," it said.

Mattan Berner-Kadish, an Israeli-American activist who was at the scene, told the BBC: "I think the general reaction is happiness that anything is happening while also feeling that it should be a murder charge and a longer maximum sentence.

"Mixed feelings but also certainly pleasantly surprised and happy there might be consequences," he added.

Hathaleen, a teacher and father-of-three, was a prominent voice against settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

He featured in the 2025 Oscar-winning film No Other Land, that follows the legal fight between the Israeli government and Palestinians over Masafer Yatta, a West Bank community of about 20 villages.

Israel's Supreme Court ruled to allow the demolition of homes and expulsion of more than 1,000 villagers in 2022.

Levy, a leader of an outpost farm, was sanctioned by the UK in 2024 because he "used physical aggression, threatened families at gunpoint, and destroyed property as part of a targeted and calculated effort to displace Palestinian communities", the UK government said at the time.

He denied the allegations to the BBC in 2024.

He was also sanctioned by the US under the Biden administration but those sanctions were subsequently lifted under President Donald Trump.

Additional reporting by Mallory Moench

Iran says deal with Oman on Strait of Hormuz is in final stages

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg9d3eyeggo, 4 days ago

Iran says it has reached an agreement with Oman on a route for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei did not give any further details on the agreement, which he said was "in the final stages".

Baqaei warned, however, that a deal with Oman would not guarantee safe navigation through the strait, arguing security remained impacted by the US blockade of Iran's ports. The US and Oman have not commented on the proposal.

Since the US and Israel attacked Iran in February, Tehran has largely blocked the Strait of Hormuz through which about a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas usually passes.

On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump warned that Iran would be "hit very hard" if the strait did not open "very soon".

His comments came after senior US officials said talks had progressed to allow shipments to potentially resume later this week, though Iran has maintained that it is not negotiating with the US and has no plans to do so.

Reopening the strait has been a key point in discussions between the two countries and mediators.

In his statement, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said the "geographical coordinates of the route" had been agreed with Oman.

"The factors making the Strait of Hormuz insecure still exist on the part of the United States, particularly the naval blockade and other aggressive and threatening actions against Iran and its interests," he said, according to Iran's official Irna news agency.

Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi later told Irna the new route would be temporary and could stay open from two to four months. He did not give further details.

Oil prices edged lower on Thursday, with global benchmark Brent crude down by 0.3% at $79.24 (£58.84) in morning Asian trade.

Energy prices have fluctuated wildly during the conflict as shipments through the key route for around 20% of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) have been severely disrupted.

Since the beginning of the war, traffic through the strait has dwindled. Iran has said all passage needs to be cleared beforehand - and it has attacked vessels which have ignored the order.

One of the main points of disagreement between Tehran and Washington has been Iran's threat to impose a fee on vessels wishing to cross the strait.

Iran is seeking fees of between 5% and 7% of the price of cargoes from ships using the strait, according to a senior Iranian official cited by Reuters. Oman is discussing fees of around 3%, while Washington wants no fees at all.

The proposed deal would also give Tehran control over ships entering the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz, Reuters reported.

The BBC has contacted the White House for comment.

In June, Iran and the US signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), aiming to stop fighting, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and reach agreement to end the war within 60 days.

The deal quickly fell through, as did diplomatic talks, with tit-for-tat attacks resuming just days after the MoU was signed.

The US has maintained a naval blockade of Iranian ports in the region, while another blockade is in place on Saudi Arabia's ports in the Red Sea, imposed by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis since 20 July.

The US and Israel launched wide-ranging strikes on Iran on 28 February, with Iran responding by attacking Israel and US-allied states in the Gulf, and effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran's then Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in that first attack, after which he was succeeded by his son Mojtaba Khamenei.

The younger Khamenei was wounded in the same strikes that launched the war and has not appeared in public since.

Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Wednesday that communication with Khamenei was "difficult at the moment".

"In any case, his presence is a very great source of strength for us so that we can continue," Pezeshkian said, according to state media.

The younger Khamenei, who did not appear at his father's funeral ceremonies last month, has communicated through written statements but his low profile has led to speculation about his relations with other top officials.

Pezeshkian insisted he had been able to hold productive meetings with him and been met with "kindness and very sound logic".

"Unfortunately, the current situation allows some malicious people to describe him differently and to present a different image of him," he said.

UN rights chief alarmed by rise in Iran executions since March

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c75gvzxrz49o, 4 days ago

The UN human rights chief has said he is alarmed by the rise in executions in Iran, with capital punishment continuing to be used "to instil fear among the population and suppress dissent".

Volker Türk said at least 56 people had been executed on national security-related charges since 19 March, including 27 in cases linked to January's nationwide anti-government protests.

More than 100 others were at risk of execution on similar charges, while executions for drug-related offences were also continuing at an alarming rate, he added.

Iran is thought to be the world's second-most prolific executioner after China. Last year, it put to death at least 2,159 people, according to Amnesty International.

The human rights group said that was the highest figure on record since 1981 and included 45 executions of suspected dissidents on national security-related charges.

Activists have warned that Iranian authorities might make greater use of executions against their opponents following January's protests, during which thousands of demonstrators were killed and tens of thousands were detained, and the US-Israeli war with Iran on 28 February.

In a statement, Türk urged Iranian authorities to halt all executions and move toward the abolition of the death penalty, saying that "such punishment has no place in our world".

As well as expressing alarm at the rise in executions, he said the persistent lack of fair trial and due process guarantees was "deeply troubling", with confessions allegedly obtained under torture and other ill-treatment.

"Several executions have reportedly been carried out in public. Some have reportedly been carried out only weeks after arrest," he added.

"Twelve defendants were reportedly sentenced to death following a single three-hour closed-door hearing."

There was no immediate comment from the Iranian government. But it has previously defended the use of the death penalty, saying it is limited to only "the most severe crimes".

On Monday, Iran's judiciary said it executed two men convicted of spying for Israel.

Omid Behzad and Pouria Safvat were accused of sending coordinates, images and other information on sensitive military, law enforcement and security sites to Israel's Mossad foreign intelligence service during the current war and the 12-day conflict in June 2025, according to the judiciary's Mizan news agency.

Last week, 19-year-old Arvin Kheirkhahan was executed after being convicted of the security-related charge of "enmity against God" over his alleged role in January's unrest, Iran's Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported, citing a source close to his family.

Another two men arrested during the protests, Abolfazl Sepahi Badjani and Amirhossein Safari Hosseinabadi, were executed in public in a square in Isfahan, according to HRANA.

They were among 12 people convicted of several charges, including "enmity against God" and "corruption on Earth", in connection with the killing of four law enforcement officers on 8 January.

Two of their fellow defendants, Erfan Esfandiari and Gol Mohammad Mohammadi, were executed on 19 July.

UN human rights experts said the 12 were sentenced to death "in one hearing, in a closed courtroom and without clarity as to each defendant's individual responsibility", which violated established fair trial standards.

Projectile sinks Indian-flagged ship off Yemen coast

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly84we1y37o, 5 days ago

An Indian-flagged vessel capsized and sank after it was hit by a projectile off the coast of Yemen, officials say.

All 14 people on board the MSV Faize Noore Oliya - 13 of which were Indian nationals - were safely rescued, India's Shipping Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said.

Sonowal condemned the "unprovoked attack" and said steps would be taken to ensure the safety of seafarers in the region. It is not clear who struck the ship.

It is the latest in a spate of attacks on vessels in the Red Sea, an alternative waterway that some tankers had been using since Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz in February.

India's ministry of external affairs later released a statement calling attacks on commercial shipping in the region "deeply worrisome".

"The targeting of commercial shipping in the region must end, and free and unimpeded navigation and commerce through the international waterways in the region, in keeping with international law, must be restored at the earliest," the ministry said.

Much of the region's shipping routes have been disrupted since the US and Israeli strikes on Iran in late February.

Since then, Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's busiest oil shipping channels, hugely impacting global oil prices.

Some ships carrying oil from Saudi Arabia had instead passed through an alternative shipping lane in the Red Sea, but a recent spate of attacks by Yemen's Houthi fighters on Saudi tankers has further heightened risks in the region.

Yemen's transportation ministry, part of the Saudi-backed, internationally recognised government, accused the Iran-backed Houthis of carrying out the attack by using a boat laden with explosives, Reuters news agency reported.

The group have not commented on the incident.

The Houthis announced what it called a blockade on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea ports on 20 July.

The UK Maritime Trade Operations ⁠agency has reported several attacks on ships in the region over the past week.

Despite this, oil prices fell to a three-week low on Tuesday as senior US officials raised hopes of a deal with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

In June, the US and Iran agreed on a 14-point Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to halt military operations and reopen the Strait, as well as to reach an agreement to end the war over the following 60 days.

But three weeks after it was signed, US President Donald Trump declared the ceasefire "over" after Iranian attacks on ships in the strait, and US strikes in response.

US officials said on Tuesday that talks have been progressing, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggesting a deal to reopen the Strait could be agreed as soon as Tuesday or Wednesday.

Iran has said it is not negotiating with the US - and has no plans to do so - and is instead talking to Oman.

Mass funeral in Gaza for 112 Palestinians killed in 2023 Israeli strike

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0n99npjejo, 5 days ago

Large crowds turned out in Gaza City for a mass funeral for 112 people, mostly women and children, who were killed in an Israeli strike on a residential block in late 2023, early in the Gaza war.

The bodies - belonging to members of two extended families - have only recently been recovered from under the rubble in a two-week-long operation.

Dramatic footage showed the remains lined up in rows, each victim covered with a Palestinian flag and some with a photo of the dead, before relatives carried them away.

The funeral is said to be the biggest of its kind to have taken place in Gaza.

"I think this is a feeling that was supposed [to be felt], a feeling of pain, grief and loss," said one mourner, Ali Abu Sharia. "After we managed to retrieve them and bury them, perhaps we can be partially relieved despite the pain of loss and all we're still living through."

Forty-four children, 38 women and seven people with disabilities were listed among the dead from the Abu Sharia and Hassayna families, who are one clan.

They were killed when a residential block in the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City was attacked by Israel on 22 November 2023.

It was a day of heavy bombardment, six weeks after the 7 October Hamas-led assault on southern Israel, which led to 1,200 people being killed and 251 being taken hostage.

The BBC has asked the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for information on what was targeted but has not yet received a response.

Since the start of the war, at least 73,377 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.

In Gaza, the recovery work was carried out by the Civil Defence, which operates under the Hamas-run interior ministry. Its efforts have been supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

"We provide material support - literally the gloves, shovels, protective equipment and body bags they use," said Patrick Griffiths, spokesperson for the ICRC.

"We provide training, supporting them to do their work safely, in line with professional practice ensuring the deceased are treated with dignity. And we've supported them by renting - for hundreds of hours - two of the only excavators available for this work in Gaza."

"It's not an answer any family wants to receive - confirmation that your loved one has been killed," Griffiths added. "But it's essential towards them receiving closure and being able to mourn their loss in their own way."

Last month, the BBC filmed the start of the operation to uncover bodies in Sabra. A single bulldozer picked through the rubble and then more delicate work was done by hand.

"This multi-storey building has been levelled. There were maybe more than 180 civilians inside. Most of them, around 90%, were killed," Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal said at the time.

"On that day [of the strikes], the Civil Defence crews couldn't get to the site because it needed co-ordination [with Israel via a third party such as the ICRC] and there was great danger in reaching the area."

Relatives of the dead were at the scene to guide the recovery crews during the recovery work. They said they had retrieved as many bodies as they could immediately after the attack and were relieved to be able to give others a proper burial.

"It's a devastating and sad feeling that resonates with everyone who was here," said Nahed al-Hassayna, as he showed the BBC the rubble of his family's living room.

"The kids – what did they do?" he asked, holding up the possessions of two of his young relatives. "This was a school backpack for Omar, and this was Ibrahim's shoe. Why? Why were they killed?"

"I'm the sole survivor of my family," said Yousef Abu Sharia, standing nearby. "Today, I'm talking to you [as] the one who lost my mother, my father, my uncle and my cousins and all my family. I lost them under this rubble."

It is believed that dozens more bodies are yet to be recovered at the site.

Across the Gaza Strip, thousands more people are unaccounted for. The remains of many are thought to be under the rubble left by intense Israeli air strikes during the war.

The phone book that led us to Assad's spy chief in hiding

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gyrzn8p94o, yesterday

In an abandoned luxury apartment in the Syrian capital Damascus, armed men dressed in military fatigues sifted through designer clothes and documents.

Scattered across the living room floor, under a sparkling crystal chandelier, were dozens of photos of the same slender man in different settings - sitting at his desk, even playing in the snow. And multiple prints of the same image, showing him smiling warmly as he shook the hand of ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad.

The man was not instantly recognisable, but gold medals and gilded certificates piled nearby were inscribed with the name Hussam Luka.

Known as "The Spider", Luka was one of Assad's top henchmen, accused of orchestrating atrocities and systematic torture, and sanctioned by the UK, US and European Union.

As head of Syria's most powerful civilian intelligence agency, Luka was among the most feared men in the country. But much of his work was conducted from the shadows.

Like others in the regime, Luka seemingly vanished overnight in December 2024 when Assad was toppled, leaving a trail of unanswered questions and demands for justice that many fear will never be realised.

In his apartment, days after Assad's fall, we watched the rebels looking for clues as to where he might have gone.

In the corner of the living room, on a console table, was an unremarkable-looking notebook.

Inside, in scribbled blue handwriting, we found dozens of names - from shopkeepers and doctors, to military officials and people with the Luka family name.

Could these contacts help us learn more about The Spider and his crimes, or even help us to track him down?

At one time, Luka's own phone number was hard to avoid - in the early days of the Syrian civil war, it had been spray-painted on walls around the central city of Homs.

The conflict was sparked by Assad's brutal crushing of a pro-democracy uprising in 2011 - a war in which hundreds of thousands of people would go on to be killed.

Luka was a local head of the Political Security Directorate, one of Assad's main intelligence agencies, and had been given the task of wresting the city from the rebels.

At the time, rebel-held areas in Homs were under siege by the government, and residents were struggling to access food and medicine. Several people, including former rebel fighter Motaz al-Zaydi, told us they had resorted to eating rats.

Al-Zaydi remembers Luka's name and phone number appearing on a wall in his neighbourhood, and said the message began to spread that those wanting to flee the fighting could phone the number for safe passage.

Some are believed to have been granted safe transit out of the city by Luka, but others who called the number were never seen or heard from again, according to several people we spoke to, including al-Zaydi.

Many told us they referred to Luka as "The Spider" because of his vast web of allies and informants, including some embedded in rebel groups. "He was everywhere," Homs residents told us. Al-Zaydi described Luka as an "evil genius" and "a fox of a man".

But his most egregious action in the city, many argue, was his alleged involvement in the so-called Eid Massacre, known by some as the Children's Massacre, which the US noted when sanctioning him.

It was the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha in September 2015, and Mohammed Towakatli's seven-year-old, Wael, was gardening in the playground he had set up in the al-Waer neighbourhood.

At 17:10, just after the power ration had kicked in, Mohammed remembers the strike hitting.

As Mohammed walked around the park earlier this year, now planted with rows of saplings, he recalled the names of the children killed and the games they had been playing at the time, gesturing to the places where he had found their bodies, including that of Wael.

"They were tiny children," he said with tears in his eyes. "The ground here was painted red with blood."

Twenty-eight people were killed, including 17 children and four women, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights.

Luka, according to a Syrian activist group, and a pro-opposition newspaper at the time, was responsible for the regime's selection of targets in the area that day.

His actions in Homs earned him a promotion, and by the time of the regime's collapse he ran the General Security Directorate (GSD) intelligence agency, making him one of the most powerful people in the country.

The government security services could target anyone - from opposition fighters, journalists, doctors, or rights activists, to people believed to be opposed in any form to the Assad government.

Those arrested were detained in Syria's political prisons, including Sednaya in Damascus - a facility so notorious it was dubbed the "human slaughterhouse". Many imprisoned there were never seen again.

As head of the GSD, Luka had strategic control over Syria's detention policies, and his personnel would monitor communications to and from Sednaya.

There are widespread calls across Syrian society on social media for former senior officials to be held accountable. Some also say the new Syrian government is not doing enough to bring these people to justice.

Syria's Attorney General, Hassan al-Turba, told the BBC the government had launched a lawsuit against Luka, accusing him of "premeditated murder, torture, and death resulting from torture".

"A warrant has been circulated domestically and we are working on circulating it internationally as well," he said, adding the administration was working to track the location and seek the extradition of Luka and other missing senior regime officials.

As he continues to grieve for his son, Mohammed told the BBC he wanted Luka, alongside other senior regime officials, to be returned to Syria and executed.

"They look like humans but have no humanity in them at all," he said.

We had taken photos of every page of the book we discovered in Luka's apartment and, back in London, began testing every one of its 155 numbers - aware that many people close to the regime would have fled or gone to ground. Fifty-one numbers appeared to be operational.

We then called these again in order of their apparent importance to Luka, starting with military commanders and relatives.

Every call was unsuccessful. Anyone who answered simply hung up when we explained who we were and what we wanted - or denied knowing Luka or his family, or even being the people listed in the book.

So a BBC reporter, whose own name was once on a GSD wanted list while Luka ran the agency, headed to Syria to try in person.

Many of those listed in the phone book were doctors, so our reporter began booking medical appointments with some of them as a way to meet them.

A doctor in Aleppo reluctantly acknowledged he had treated Luka, but then ordered our journalist to leave and returned his consultation fee.

Our reporter then booked an appointment with another doctor in the phone book, this time based in Damascus. This doctor revealed he had once accompanied Luka's mother on a medical trip to Russia, but was reluctant to give us any more information, other than to vaguely direct us to a pharmacy belonging to one of Luka's daughters.

Locals said she, too, had not been seen since December 2024.

For months we drew a blank in our hunt for Luka.

And then we had our first breakthrough.

One of those listed in the book, who we tried calling again, finally answered the phone.

He had been the guard for Luka's apartment block, he told us, and eventually agreed to give us the number for someone he said had been Luka's personal bodyguard - a man we are calling Mahmoud.

It took weeks to secure an interview with Mahmoud. Meetings would be scheduled but he would not show up, or he would request a meeting in a private space such as a car or apartment, which our reporter judged too much of a risk.

They eventually met at a hotel one night, just before midnight. Broad-shouldered and physically imposing, Mahmoud seemed to be considering every answer carefully before he spoke.

He told us he was angry with Luka for leaving him behind when the regime fell. As word had spread in December 2024 that Assad's rule was on the brink of collapse - with rebels advancing on the capital - Luka had said he would stay and defend Damascus, Mahmoud told us. But by the early hours of the next morning, Luka had disappeared, taking a large sum of money with him from the office safe, Mahmoud said.

Mahmoud refused to share any contact details for Luka or his family, but did give us a number for Luka's driver, who he believed had driven the former spy chief out of the capital that night.

This man proved even harder to reach.

When he answered the phone, his voice was nervous and unsteady. He repeatedly insisted he was just a driver, and knew nothing of Luka's activities. Multiple meetings with us were never kept, and eventually he stopped replying.

We turned our attention to Luka's possible escape routes, including neighbouring Lebanon - where the Iran-backed group Hezbollah had close links with the Assad regime.

One senior source in the Lebanese government told us he understood Luka had passed through Lebanon on a "good Russian passport but with a different name", before flying out to Russia.

We managed to find a man, now based in Lebanon, whose name was listed in Luka's contacts book, but under a number that no longer worked. He is one of many wanted by the new Syrian government, because of his close association with the Assad regime.

This man, who we cannot identify, said he had a number for Luka.

We saw it, and realised it had a Russian country code.

Russia was a key backer of the Assad regime, and in the days after his fall, Assad released a statement confirming that he had fled there. Many of his inner circle were believed to have followed him.

Back in Luka's apartment in Damascus, we had found clues that Luka also had strong links to Moscow - awards from Russia's foreign spy service, and even a New Year's card addressed to him from a senior Russian official.

Now, the Russian telephone number for him suggested we finally had proof that he was - as we had predicted - in Russia.

We wanted to verify that this number really was Luka's.

So a few days later, with us present, the man agreed to put the person he said was Hussam Luka on speakerphone, and ask him questions which we believed only Luka would know the answer to, based on information we had gathered during our investigation.

The voice on the other end of the phone sounded confused, but answered the questions instantly and correctly.

He refused, however, to speak to us directly.

But our contact later agreed to call Luka again and allow us to try to interview him.

The same voice answered, and we introduced ourselves, explaining that we had questions about serious allegations relating to massacres and torture committed by the former regime official.

"I can't take any risk talking on the phone in the position I'm in," Luka said, his tone anxious.

Asked if Russia was blocking him from talking, Luka said: "I cannot talk. I can't explain. You have to understand."

When asked if he would meet us outside Russia, he said: "It's difficult."

He then hung up the phone.

We later obtained a second number which we were told was also for Luka - this time registered in Syria and linked to social media and messaging apps which he appeared to be still using.

Over a period of a day, the BBC was able to locate him in two suburban areas on the outskirts of the Russian capital, Moscow.

The locations seemed far removed from the luxurious lifestyle Assad is reported to be leading in exile in Russia, and to the life Luka himself once led in Syria.

We knew we could not approach him in person in Russia, where Assad's henchmen are shielded from international journalists and police, so we decided to try putting our allegations to him over the phone once again.

We rang the number and the same voice as before answered, the line crackly.

He asked who was calling, and when told it was the BBC, he immediately hung up.

We sent a message over WhatsApp, asking for his response to the many allegations against him, but he did not reply.

Confirmation that Luka is in Moscow is difficult news for those in Syria seeking justice. Russia is highly unlikely to extradite officials from the regime that it long supported.

The Russian government did not respond to BBC requests for comment about Luka's presence there, or whether it would ever consider an extradition request.

Back in Homs, Mohammed says he will never let go of the hope that Luka, and other senior members of the Assad regime, will one day face justice.

"[I am] angry at all those who were with the regime and its security apparatus… They were all against us," he says.

"Wael was just a seven-year-old child… All he cared about was playing and having fun."

Additional reporting by Riam Dalati, Ghaith Solh and Abigail Akerman

What is Iran's Pickaxe Mountain and why does Trump say he wants to bomb it?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9w0ygrwrn5o, 9 days ago

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to bomb a suspected underground nuclear site in Iran known as Pickaxe Mountain, where recent satellite images appear to show construction work taking place.

Pickaxe Mountain is one of the few Iranian sites linked to the country's nuclear programme that has not been the target of US and Israeli strikes. There have been unproven claims that some of Iran's stock of highly enriched uranium may be kept there, which could be further enriched for use in nuclear weapons.

"We'll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily," Trump told reporters on 21 July. And on 28 July he said: "I know exactly what's going on at Pickaxe. It's not a big problem - we took out their nuclear sites, and we'll have to take out Pickaxe if we don't make a deal."

Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said on 22 July that "no nuclear activity is taking place" at Pickaxe Mountain, and described US threats as "a fabricated pretext for aggression, destruction, and sabotage".

BBC Verify and BBC Persian have spoken to experts and analysed satellite imagery to piece together what we know about the site, and the potential impact of any strike.

What do we know about Pickaxe Mountain?

Kuh-e Kolang, which translates as Pickaxe Mountain, is located immediately south of the Natanz nuclear complex, Iran's largest uranium enrichment facility which has been bombed by both the US and Israel in 2025 and 2026.

The site is believed to be buried deep inside the mountain and its exact purpose is shrouded in mystery and speculation.

Tehran has previously indicated that it may be a replacement for a building within the Natanz complex used for the assembly of advanced centrifuges that was damaged after a suspected sabotage operation in July 2020.

Former head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, said in September 2020 that "a more modern, spacious, and comprehensive facility" would be built in the mountains "near Natanz", without naming Pickaxe Mountain.

Centrifuges are needed to produce enriched uranium, which can be used to make reactor fuel for civilian use but also for nuclear weapons if enriched to around 90% purity or higher.

The facility appears to have four tunnel entrances, two on the eastern side and two on the western end. Satellite images show that - over time - what appears to be a large perimeter fence has been built around the site, following the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June 2025.

Images captured on 30 June 2026 show several construction vehicles near one of the western entrances. And in recent months, satellite imagery indicate continued work on access roads and tunnel entrances around Pickaxe Mountain.

According to analysis by the US-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), Iran has partially filled the two eastern tunnels to block ground access.

"In the last year, we have observed fairly steady construction activity at the site," says Spencer Faragasso of the ISIS. "Iran's work there has likely centred around continued internal excavation and hardening of the facility that would provide further protection against aerial attacks."

Could US bombing destroy Pickaxe Mountain?

The site at Pickaxe Mountain may have been chosen to protect it from air strikes with some analysts estimating the core of the facility could be roughly 100m (328ft) underground.

This would also mean it's buried deeper than Iran's two nuclear enrichment complexes at Fordo and Natanz which the US bombed last year using what are known as bunker buster bombs - the only known weapon that could conceivably reach such concealed sites.

The US GBU-57 bomb weighs about 13,000kg (30,000lb) and is reported to be able to penetrate 18m (60ft) of concrete or 61m (200ft) of earth before exploding.

But even using these munitions, experts say the US would be unlikely to completely destroy Pickaxe Mountain.

"Obliterating every underground chamber would be extremely difficult because of the facility's depth and uncertain layout," says Arman Mahmoudian, a research fellow specialising in Iran at the University of South Florida.

However, the US could target tunnel entrances, communications systems, access roads, and other supporting infrastructure, Mahmoudian adds, which "could paralyse the facility's operations even if some of its deepest underground sections survived".

Meanwhile, Faragasso says the site may be potentially vulnerable and that "targeting the ventilation shafts would enable the weapons to reach deeper into the facility, and the tunnel portals can be collapsed using bunker buster weapons".

What do we know about what's underground at Pickaxe Mountain?

Information about exactly what is underground is not publicly known, and it is unclear whether the facility is operational.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - the global nuclear watchdog - has so far not been given access to Pickaxe Mountain by Tehran. Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the IAEA, said in March that Iran had "announced their intention to have nuclear activity there".

"This was part of their quite systematic intention to put their most sensitive facilities underground," Grossi added.

The IAEA estimated in 2025 that Iran holds roughly 440kg (970lbs) of 60% enriched uranium,

There have been unproven claims that part or all this stockpile may be kept at Pickaxe Mountain, or that some of the undamaged centrifuges at Natanz or Fordo may have been transferred there after the bombings of both facilities.

"It is plausible that high value items, such as uranium gas centrifuges, were brought into and stored within the tunnels," says Faragasso. "We have seen lots of continuous and steady truck movement throughout the site, entering and exiting the tunnel portals, meaning it is possible that some of those vehicles had moved items inside."

David Albright, the founder and President of the ISIS, says that the "concern is Pickaxe Mountain could be a location where Iran puts an enrichment plant that could produce weapon-grade uranium for nuclear weapons".

"None of this is happening as far as we know, but the fear is that it could turn into a place to make weapon grade uranium metal," Albright adds.

Tehran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful civilian use and denies any intention to develop nuclear weapons.

Graphics by Tom Shiel.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Israeli West Bank settler tells BBC attacks on Palestinians are justified as revenge

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g4djgdyk2o, 9 days ago

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

Bowen: Plan for Hamas to disarm faces big obstacles, yet it offers rare hope for Gaza

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2dkje4p4klo, 9 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, 9 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.

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.

'Digital lifeline' - Gaza tech workers give glimpse of possible future

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1m1xm8ykk2o, 6 days ago

"I was just in a trough, drowning in uncertainty," says Walaa Volidis, a Palestinian software engineer. "But deep inside, I made a decision: it will not be the end, no matter how hard it gets. I'll keep fighting for my dreams."

Wearing a headset and glued to her laptop, Walaa discusses AI on a video call with her mentor in California's Silicon Valley. The 24-year-old wants to keep her skills up to date.

But that is the least of her daily challenges as she lives in a tent in central Gaza supporting her displaced parents and four younger siblings.

"When the war started, I lost everything: my job, my university, even some of my family members. My sisters were injured," Walaa tells me from a co-working space in Deir al-Balah. She says her mental health was "totally destroyed", but she prioritised finding work.

Walaa is one of thousands of young Gazans now pursuing roles in the digital economy. "It's a kind of momentum," she says. "I have my main goal every single day to go to work, to finish my tasks. If you stop or cry about your situation, you will not do anything."

Amid the rubble of Gaza, the majority of the two million population is reliant on humanitarian aid to survive and there are few ways for people to earn a decent salary. The UN says the unemployment rate has passed 80%, compared to 22% before the war. Humanitarian groups see online work - particularly freelancing for clients abroad - as offering some of the best opportunities.

"We talk about it now as a sort of digital lifeline, this idea that if you have a laptop, if you have a working internet connection, you can work and have an income," says Nicole Hark, from the US humanitarian organisation, Mercy Corps. "It's really critical to help people go back to work. They don't want to be dependent on aid."

Before the latest devastating war, triggered by the deadly Hamas-led attacks on Israel in October 2023, Gaza had a burgeoning tech sector. Israel and Egypt kept the Hamas-run territory under blockade, citing security reasons. Coding, designing and programming remotely were a way for young graduates to overcome tight border restrictions.

Gaza Sky Geeks was founded in 2012 by Google and Mercy Corps. The initial idea was to promote tech start-ups, but its three bustling hubs also ran coding courses and gave advice on accessing international markets. Two were destroyed during the war.

Mercy Corps now supports some of the new co-working spaces which have popped up across Gaza using generators and solar panels to offer better internet connections and a more stable power supply. Gaza's power system has suffered near-total collapse and approximately 75% of its telecommunications networks have been damaged or destroyed.

"I am starting from scratch, from zero, to start a new career," says Tarik Zaeem, speaking to me from a co-working space in Gaza City. Before the war, the 44-year old was the chief technology officer for a local firm. Now, he is a freelance programmer.

"When I work on my laptop, I forget everything. I forget what's happened," Tarik says. He has recently developed a mobile app to make bookings for a barber's shop and a valet parking app for a Saudi client.

Most of Tarik's income goes to support his wife and three children, who are now living in neighbouring Egypt - as he used his savings to buy their exit early in the war.

But getting paid remains a challenge. Few bank branches have reopened in Gaza and there are severe shortages of cash. Palestinians face many international banking restrictions and those in Gaza cannot register with most digital payment platforms.

Some manage to route their money through relatives abroad. But others rely on brokers in Gaza who charge high fees to convert electronic transfers into cash. Tarik says these have often left him with only half his original payment. "It's not enough for a good living," he adds. "[Just] the basics."

Despite last year's US-brokered ceasefire, and the recent deal between President Donald Trump's Board of Peace and Hamas to advance his peace plan, Israeli bombardments in Gaza have continued on a near-daily basis. Israel says it is targeting Palestinian armed groups.

At least 1,250 people have been killed, including 265 children, since October's truce, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are seen as reliable by the UN.

Tarik describes an air strike outside his co-working space in Gaza City in June. On that occasion, a Palestinian student sitting her exams online was killed in the street. Israel said it was targeting a Hamas operative and that it tried to prevent harm to civilians.

Given the risks, another Gazan tech worker tells me that he feels obliged to reassure prospective clients about his team's ability to deliver on projects creating mobile apps, websites and advertisements.

"Once we get a job for IT that needs like three to four months, we are trying to say to this customer: 'Please know that everything will be online, if we get killed, you will have your work,'" says Mahran Bayed.

Mahran lives in a tent with his wife and three young children close to his destroyed home near the ruins of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. The medical complex was repeatedly targeted during the war by Israel, which accused Hamas of using it as a command and control centre - something the armed group denied.

"I lost all my equipment, I lost my house, I lost my office," Mahran remembers. "I was thinking that this was the end of the world here in Gaza."

Now Mahran finds an escape and purpose freelancing to create mobile apps, websites and advertisements. "From Gaza, I can collaborate with teams in completely different [parts] of the world and contribute with people I've never met," he says. "That's one of the things I enjoy most about technology."

An extra problem for Mahran is that his laptop screen was damaged during Israel's attacks. This forces him to carry around an external display.

While Gazan workshops do their best to repair computers, using spare parts from other damaged devices, there is a limit to what they can do.

The Israeli defence authority Cogat, which controls Gaza's border crossings, classifies computers and computer parts as "dual use" items - able to be used for civilian or military purposes - and bans imports.

Despite the hardships, many Gazans working in IT stress their relatively good fortune.

Back in Deir al-Balah, Walaa has been helped by the Palestinian-Dutch social impact startup, TAP, to connect to mentors, career coaches and possible employers. She recently landed a full-time job with a Dubai-based firm.

She now aims to improve everyday life for her siblings and find a way for her sister, who is nearly 13, to get a medical evacuation from Gaza. Trauma injuries left her with lymphoedema, a chronic condition that causes severe swelling in her leg.

"My first hope, to help my family to get a good life, to help my sister to get out from Gaza to find a treatment," Walaa tells me. "Also, I'm working for myself to get a scholarship to travel."

While Gaza's wider recovery remains at a standstill, its tech workers give a glimpse of a brighter, possible future.

Additional reporting by Malak Hassouneh and John Murphy

To hear Yolande's documentary about getting Gaza back online, listen to Crossing Continents on BBC Sounds

Why phones on loudspeaker may become just another noise

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3d3nlmeee0o, 4 days ago

Listen to Angus read the story here

Most days on my commute, I am treated to the contents of strangers' phones.

It could be a teenage boy slouching on a seat on the top deck of the number 29, holding his device inches from his face, either unaware or indifferent that everyone else can hear what he's watching too.

Or a woman taking a phone call on loudspeaker before scrolling at volume through her social feed.

Surveys suggest that many do find this modern phenomenon - known as loudcasting, sodcasting, or headphone dodging - similarly frustrating.

In recent years, Ofcom, YouGov and Transport for London (TfL) have all published polls showing the vast majority of people dislike it. TfL has just relaunched its Travel Kind campaign across the London transport network this summer, reminding people to use headphones.

The phenomenon has grown as we become ever more connected. Figures published in July by Ofcom show that mobile data use has increased by 13% year-on-year in the UK. 5G is being rolled out across the country, meaning that more people can get faster connectivity while travelling. And research has found that many data packages have become cheaper, meaning customers are less likely to have to ration their data use when out and about.

So as we become ever more online in public, will we see increasing attempts to clamp down on loudcasting? Or will it end up becoming as normal a part of our soundscape as the hum of passing traffic or the roar of a plane's engine thousands of feet above us?

Am I out of touch?

This phenomenon isn't entirely new and neither are our reactions. Boomboxes in the 1980s and 1990s, for example, caused a stir. Bath University professor David Ellis points out that each new technological trend - including the very use of mobile phones - has often prompted odd looks when deployed in public.

"I remember when my mother was mortified that I was walking down the street with a phone to my ear," he says.

Loudcasting has piqued the interest of experts who study how technology shapes our behaviours, and they agree there's a strong generational factor. In an Ofcom survey of 1,010 people in August 2022, of the 13-to-17-year-olds questioned, 69% said it was acceptable to make video calls, 73% to listen to music and 83% to watch videos without headphones.

University of Sussex physiology professor Harry Witchel, who has a long-running interest in soundscapes, argues that it makes sense in the context of young people's brain development. He notes that adolescence is when young people move from their parents to their peers, and loudcasting is a way of expressing this. "That's what they're doing, they're saying 'I'm here'," he says.

So it's mostly young people? "I would say it is," says Dr Rachael Kent, a senior lecturer in digital economy and society at King's College, London. She adds that it's not wholly borne out of a lack of consideration for others - loudcasting can be a tool for connection.

"Travelling to and from school on public transport with friends, they're experiencing their devices together."

She also argues it's "performative… a way to rebel. 'I'm going to play music, watch stuff', that's a way to express who you are, what your tastes are."

Witchel says he began observing loudcasting around 2011, a few years after the release of the iPhone.

That year he spoke to the BBC about young people playing music aloud from their phones in public, in what he described as a "fascinating human phenomenon of marking social territory".

Fast-forward to 2026, and - alongside tech advances such as improved audio quality - he posits the idea that loudcasting is thriving with the help of a decline in social policing of public spaces and a loss of etiquette in the wake of Covid-19 lockdowns.

"People were just used to walking around their homes in their bunny slippers, and when they came back into the commons and the social space they forgot there were rules they had to follow," he says.

But what is it about the sound of someone scrolling on loud that I find so abrasive when any city or bus is already a cacophony of competing sounds?

"Noise is like weeds," Witchel says. "Noise is a sound out of place. If we think that the railway sounds are supposed to be on the railway, then we don't think of it as inappropriate.

"The issue isn't so much just pure decibels… the issue is actually attention and how we deal with certain soundscapes, and how that sound environment relates to us. It has a contextual meaning."

Witchel says we can "habituate" to a train noise, which becomes "much easier to put up with than if someone has a loud conversation".

Enforcement problems

Transport for London (TfL), which operates the capital's trains and buses, last year launched a public awareness campaign calling for passengers to be considerate after the results of a survey of 1,000 people said 70% of respondents found loud music and phone calls without headphones a nuisance.

The Liberal Democrats say such behaviour should be punishable with fines of up to £1,000.

The party's transport spokesman Olly Glover puts the trend down to a growing lack of social awareness. "Since the pandemic a lot of people live in their own head more than ever before," he says, adding, "they don't necessarily think about their impact on other people".

Glover says technology companies should bear some responsibility, suggesting they should provide headphones at railway stations or return to automatically selling them with phones.

The BBC contacted tech companies including Apple, Samsung, Meta, and TikTok about their awareness of loudcasting and whether they were responding to it in any way. None of the companies commented.

The Lib Dems' push has also garnered some Tory support. Rebecca Smith, Conservative MP for South West Devon, says "things have moved on a bit since a few people carried around a Discman", adding it wouldn't hurt to have the rules "beefed up" to allow passengers to tell others what they're doing is against the law.

Smith says she doesn't notice it in her Devon community, but it's something she's observed on the commute between Plymouth and London.

The government has previously said that under existing railway by-laws, disruptive passengers are already liable for £1,000 fines.

TfL says when its officers encounter someone playing their device out loud, they will typically ask them to stop, with most people complying. If they don't stop, then further enforcement action can be taken, such as referring them for prosecution.

In February, transport under-secretary Keir Mather told a committee hearing he would "engage with officials about how we can more robustly enforce the by-laws". Asked about the result of those discussions, the Department for Transport told the BBC it expected rail operators to use existing powers.

The department said the government was also "cracking down on nuisance passengers" with the Bus Services Act, passed in October, which empowers local authorities to create by-laws to prevent nuisance passengers.

However, the Liberal Democrats say existing by-laws aren't explicit enough, and want the law to specifically ban playing music and videos played out loud. They are currently trying to insert an amendment into the Railways Bill.

A key barrier to enforcement is resourcing.

In an exhaustive list of enforcement activities carried out between 2020/21 and 2024/25, TfL says no one has been fined but identifies prosecutions in which no further action was taken due to lack of evidence or discretion being exercised, including due to a passenger's age.

In one 2022/23 matter, a case was withdrawn from court because the defendant was not from the UK and had returned to their own country.

Despite the evidence that so many of us find it annoying, we also appear hugely reluctant to actually do anything about it. Few official complaints are made. Even though I find loudcasting intensely grating, I have never registered an official complaint and have only occasionally asked other passengers to turn the volume down on their device.

"In train carriages, if there are no conductors, it becomes more difficult in practice to make a public nuisance complaint," says Lisa Lavia, managing director of the Noise Abatement Society, a charity which addresses noise from neighbours, as well as from aircraft and trains.

TfL says it monitors enforcement activity around headphone use, but that complaints where headphones and music are cited are decreasing. It also says that there are only a "small number" of complaints that relate to people streaming content out loud in the context of the billions of journeys each year.

Similarly, Great Western Railways says it has received just 10 complaints of this nature since January 2025.

London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan said during Mayor's Question Time in June that "a lot of people are concerned" about this behaviour and acknowledged the number of prosecutions was low, adding he was happy to look at what else could be done to educate Londoners, including looking at what other cities and countries were doing.

"Sometimes people are not aware of the impact they are having on others, of their antisocial behaviour," he said.

Lavia says loudcasting is now something the organisation is asked about "quite regularly", including whether it is reasonable to be put off by it, and what can be done.

She says that while the proportion of inquiries the charity receives is small, "it's representative of something much wider", believing the organisation's relative obscurity means people are at their wits' end before they come to them.

The cultural gap

While many dislike loudcasting, do some people find it more acceptable than others to play their phone out loud in public depending on their background?

The 2022 Ofcom survey recorded statistics of people who loudcast by ethnicity, and it found higher proportions of people from non-white backgrounds said they watched videos in public without headphones. It found 43% of white respondents, 58% of people with an Asian background, 58% of black people, and 60% identifying as being from a minority ethnic group saying they did this.

Though when it came to being annoyed by loudcasting, people of all backgrounds had strongly negative reactions, including 76% from Asian backgrounds, 73% of black respondents, 72% from a minority ethnic background, and 82% of white people.

Though it's not just the UK where this behaviour is met with eyerolls. In February last year, a man in France made news for being fined €200 (£171) for making a call on loudspeaker. Portuguese authorities are also fining commuters for phone noise.

Loudcasting is a global phenomenon, but where you are in the world can make it more or less socially acceptable, says Rich Ling, a retired professor of communications at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. He cites Japan as a classic example of a place where "you're breaking a lot more norms by doing something like that in public", adding that Scandinavia is similar. By contrast, he uses the US as an example of a more individualistic society where outlandish behaviour is more tolerated.

Furthermore, Professor Orla Muldoon, the head of the School of Psychology at Queen's University Belfast, says people aren't necessarily being antisocial by sharing their music or conversations with strangers nearby - in fact, it could be the opposite.

"It is quintessentially social to play music and hope your peers appreciate that music," she says.

Whatever your view on it, experts generally agree that loudcasting has already become ingrained.

In an effort to inject some perspective, Ling shares a paper he wrote in 1997 – nearly 30 years ago – about the appropriateness of mobile telephone calls in public spaces, including restaurants.

"You were seen as being vulgar and gauche to the highest degree," he says. "Now if you get a call in a restaurant it's no big deal."

He suggests of loudcasting that "in two years' time we're not going to worry about it", and that those ruffled by it will be more tolerant while offenders modify their behaviour somewhat.

The next time I sit through another auditory gauntlet on the number 29, I will keep that in mind.

Lead image: Getty

BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. Emma Barnett and John Simpson bring their pick of the most thought-provoking deep reads and analysis, every Saturday. Sign up for the newsletter here

There's a reason child vaccination rates are falling - and it's not social media

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0qvlw2dd0no, 6 days ago

Twenty-week-old Grayson easily could have become one of the tens of thousands of British babies left unvaccinated against polio.

His mother, Lily, agrees with the principle of immunisation. But overwhelmed by the early weeks of motherhood, and suffering from post-partum depression after a traumatic birth, she was daunted by the prospect of a long journey to a doctor's surgery. "I've been through the trenches, awake all night. You don't want to leave the house, or go to a different town."

Weeks ticked by, and eventually Grayson missed the polio and diphtheria jabs he was supposed to get at eight weeks old. By that point he was officially classed by the NHS as "overdue" for vaccination; effectively, he was on his GP's naughty list.

Then Lily realised there was a clinic practically on her doorstep - at a location she hadn't expected.

That clinic - in Keighley, West Yorkshire - runs from a vacant retail unit at the Airedale shopping centre, a 1960s-era precinct that locals say has fallen on hard times in recent years, with plenty of empty, boarded-up units. The staff who created the clinic thought: why not use one of those vacant units to administer vaccines?

"This was an empty shop; there was nothing here, the windows were all blacked out," Flora Jennings, a local charity coordinator, tells me over the sound of a baby's laughter, on the morning I visit the clinic.

It's an imaginative solution to a national problem. Over the last 15 years, childhood vaccination rates have fallen across Britain. The share of five-year-olds in England who have received a four-in-one jab (which protects against viruses like polio and tetanus) is now 81%, down from 89% in 2014. About 84% have received both of their recommended MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) jabs, down from 88% a decade ago.

"If you just look at the generalised population, the decline doesn't look horrific," says Prof Dan Hungerford, an epidemiologist at the University of Liverpool who gave evidence to Parliament on this topic. "But if you compare us to other nations, particularly our European neighbours, we are one of the worst-performing countries in terms of getting early-life vaccinations to children."

Politicians are now asking how Britain - the country of Edward Jenner, the "father of immunology" - could have allowed its immunisation rates to drop so low, and what could fix it.

One Labour MP on the Health Committee has gone further, telling the BBC that it's time to consider a policy that's commonplace in some countries, but still something of a taboo in Britain: mandatory childhood immunisations.

Anti-vaxxers versus 'casual refuseniks'

Before the 1800s, between 40% and 50% of children in Europe died before their 15th birthday. Now, in Britain that number is well below 1%, according to the UN.

Scientists broadly agree that vaccines were key to this improvement.

"Along with clean water and sanitation, immunisations have had a profound impact on keeping children alive," says Ben Kasstan-Dabush, a lecturer in global health policy at the University of Edinburgh.

And that's why some find it so worrying that Britain's rates have slipped. Last year alone saw measles outbreaks in parts of Birmingham, Bristol, and north London; so far this year, two children in England have died of the disease.

In January, MPs on the Health Committee described the backslide as "national disgrace".

Some blame the rise of misinformation on social media. Last year, a group of American scientists found that reading just one anti-vax Facebook comment about the HPV jab - given to teenagers - was enough to make some parents hesitate.

But all of the public health experts who spoke to the BBC said that whilst anti-vax social media sentiment plays its part, they don't think it's the main reason immunisation rates have slipped.

Instead, they point to something more mundane: they think that parents of young children simply have fewer face-to-face contacts with medical professionals than they did 10 or 15 years ago.

Beccy Baird, a senior fellow at the King's Fund think tank, says that despite colourful media reporting around "anti-vaxxers", most parents who turn down vaccination are not ideologically opposed to it. Convenience plays a big role, she says; vaccination rates are highest when parents regularly interact with medics, who can remind them to get their children jabbed and tell them exactly where to do it.

And those interactions have become rarer. England has seen a 45% decline over the last decade in the number of health visitors (nurses and midwives who treat young children at their home), according to BBC analysis. It's part of a health visitor's job to remind parents about vaccines and, in some cases, administer jabs directly.

And over roughly the same period, the number of fully trained GPs in England struggled to keep up with rising patient demand, according to British Medical Association data; while the Nuffield Trust think tank suggests that patients have become less likely to see the same GP on repeated visits - meaning families don't build trusted relationships with doctors they recognise.

"Those touch points have become fewer," says Kasstan-Dabush.

'Bucking the national trend'

At Keighley's shopping centre, inside the vaccination clinic, nurses are passing around biscuits.

"The kitchen's there, the playpen's there," says Jennings as she points to a soft-play where parents can leave children while their siblings are vaccinated. "I wanted it to be really inviting, almost like you're walking into someone's home."

The idea of opening a vaccination clinic inside a town centre shopping arcade seemed odd to some of the staff when it was first suggested.

Now, they say it's key to the clinic's success. "We need to make it simple, we need to put services where people come," says Jennings. It means they can catch casual shoppers who "pop their head around the door" and decide on a whim to get their child vaccinated.

"We're right in the centre. And down here it's flat, so you don't have to push a pram up a hill." She says some parents simply won't attend a clinic if it involves more than one bus.

And in the families come. Over the morning, the clinic vaccinates 10 infants, some of whom are classed by the NHS as "overdue". In many cases, the parents actually turn up to use a different service, like baby weighing, but once they are inside, lead GP Dr Zoyah Hussain gently suggests an immunisation - and most parents say yes.

"I do get a lot of questions… 'why do we need to give them jabs?', 'why don't we just let nature manage itself?'," Hussain says.

There's Lily, the 18-year-old who finally gets her son Grayson his polio and diphtheria jabs. And there's Keeley, an assistant in a ceramics shop, who arrives with her baby Luca, and is impressed by the clinic's convenience, with no need for an 08:00 phone call or complicated online form. "It's easy-peasy," she says.

Most of the young mothers have come across online anti-vax posts. "I see these things on Facebook where it's like, don't give your child vaccines because it's got ADHD in them," says Lily. Indeed, Hussain says she still hears parents asking if the MMR jab causes autism, a full 28 years after a link was suggested in a now-discredited paper by the former doctor Andrew Wakefield.

The clinic - which serves a relatively poor community - has vaccinated hundreds of infants since 2023, helping to boost coverage in an area that's historically had a low rate of immunisations. As of March this year, 88% of the children registered with Modality AWC (the GP practice that runs the clinic) now receive their first MMR dose by the age of 18 months, up from 78% three years ago.

"We are bucking that national trend," says Bill Graham, a senior administrator at the practice.

Jabs in 'Tesco car park'

So what can be done about falling vaccination rates across the rest of the country?

One option is to emulate the Keighley model, and open walk-in clinics in vacant retail units. Jennings argues there are crumbling shopping centres all over the country, hit by online shopping, that could do the job.

Baird, from the King's Fund, agrees that vaccination works best when it's carried out in small, easy-to-access local venues - like shopping centres - rather than large, intimidating vaccine hubs that might involve a long journey. In a paper, she studied the roll-out of Covid vaccines in Gloucestershire - and found that "vaccines delivered locally through… familiar community venues - instead of mass-vaccination centres - made access easier, more trusted".

She says: "If you put it in Tesco car park, people will get it."

But some experts are sceptical. Whilst schemes like Keighley's can help on the margins, they say, at the national level a much bigger answer is needed. Hungerford says that child poverty is a key driver of vaccine refusal; parents who have to worry about bills often don't have the brain space to think about immunisations, he says.

'Opt out' vaccines

And some are pushing for more radical solutions.

Labour MP Paulette Hamilton, a former nurse who was recently interim chair of Parliament's Health Committee, tells the BBC it's time for a "national conversation" on whether child vaccinations should be "opt out" rather than "opt in" (though she stresses she is not speaking on behalf of the committee).

"We were a country that was free of some of these childhood illnesses, and now it's just getting really bad," she says. "The conversation should be about, do you get a small payment [for getting your child vaccinated]? Do you make it mandatory, so you opt out rather than opt in? Is it that we need more education?."

She didn't specify what an "opt out" policy would look like, but various US states already do it. In Texas, a child needs certain vaccinations to attend school, unless their parent fills out a government-issued form explaining a moral, religious, or medical exemption. Supporters say these policies capture the "casual refuseniks" - people who aren't particularly opposed to vaccination, but simply don't make the effort to get their child jabbed.

Other places go further. In Germany, parents can be fined if their children aren't jabbed against measles. Under Australia's "no jab, no pay" policy, parents who refuse immunisations are denied certain benefits.

But those tough, coercive policies leave some uncomfortable. "Mandatory vaccination has been steered away from in the UK for good reason," says Hungerford. For one thing, he thinks, "you risk excluding vulnerable people from things like childcare."

Others say that barring unvaccinated children from school is only likely to alienate their parents further from healthcare, amplifying their mistrust of authority.

At the Keighley shopping centre, Bill Graham says he doesn't think a mandatory approach would work in his corner of Yorkshire. "I think it destroys trust. Healthcare in Britain is based on trust. Maybe the trust isn't quite where it was again 10, 15 years ago, but we're not going to build that up by mandating healthcare."

Ongoing mysteries

All that said, experts stress that there's still a degree of mystery about Britain's vaccination problem.

Some parents who refuse jabs simply won't say why - and they're the same groups (poor, lower levels of educational attainment) who are hard to reach via surveys.

This becomes apparent towards the end of my morning at the clinic, when a couple in their thirties arrive to have their baby weighed. Hussain quickly notices that their 23-week-old hasn't had any of his recommended jabs - and asks if they might consider it. The couple glance at each other and quietly shake their heads.

They don't give a reason, and they turn down my request for an interview (the only parents who do so).

Still, Hussain hopes their conversation might have planted a seed. "I've sent her some information. Giving them a platform to speak about their concerns can help.

"It's not us forcing it on anyone. This is a choice."

Top image credit: Getty Images.

Our exclusive behind-the-scenes access at No 10 as Andy Burnham became PM

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79gdjlv78wo, 14 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

Sir John Curtice: The 'Burnham bounce' is real but it's not massive

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g4djygr73o, 9 days ago

The consistent message of the opinion polls since the new prime minister walked into Downing Street almost a fortnight ago is that Labour is enjoying a "Burnham bounce". And this has now been confirmed by the party's convincing victory in Thursday's Greater Manchester mayoral by-election.

Polls conducted in the last week put Labour on average in the mid 20s. It is the party's highest standing since the beginning of last year and compares to their rating of 19% in late June when Sir Keir Starmer announced he was standing down.

But with Reform polling only narrowly behind Labour, Burnham's party still has a long way to go before it can face the prospect of fighting a general election with confidence.

The new PM effect

The Burnham boost is far from unprecedented.

All but one of the recent mid-term changes of prime minister have been followed by an increase in the popularity of the incumbent government. Support for Labour rose by seven points after Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair in 2007, while the Conservatives enjoyed a six-point bounce when Boris Johnson took over from Theresa May in 2019. Only Liz Truss' arrival in Downing Street in 2022 – which was overshadowed by the death shortly thereafter of Queen Elizabeth II – failed to give her party a boost.

We should also bear in mind the depth of the electoral hole that Burnham has inherited as Labour leader. The 19% at which Labour stood when Sir Keir resigned was the lowest poll rating passed on by any prime minister departing mid-term – even lower than the 23% bequeathed by Liz Truss when she resigned after just 45 days in office.

Against that backdrop, it would have been very surprising indeed if the replacement of the deeply unpopular Sir Keir by the relatively popular Burnham had not given Labour a short-term boost. However, even after Burnham's bounce, his party's poll average is still the lowest for any newly minted mid-term PM, while the party is still well adrift in the polls of the (relatively low) 35% it won at the 2024 general election.

That said, Labour's victory in Thursday's Manchester mayoral by-election was convincing. True, Labour's 47% share of the first preference vote was well down on the 63% that Burnham secured in the last mayoral contest shortly before the 2024 general election. However, not only did it represent a near doubling of the 24% that Labour registered across the region in May's local elections, but also it was even four points up on Labour's tally locally in the 2024 general election – and thus a much better performance than would have been anticipated from even the latest national polling.

Reform's difficulties

But with still no more than a narrow lead over Reform, it is unsurprising Burnham has ruled out an early election. In any event, Reform's displacement from first place in the polls for the first time in over a year appears to owe more to its own difficulties than it does to Labour's new-found popularity.

Reform has been dogged in recent weeks by questions about the legality of the source of some of its funding and about whether Farage should have declared to the Commons authorities some of the funding he received before being elected an MP. Following these allegations, Farage announced on 7 July that he was standing down and putting himself again before the voters of his Clacton constituency in a by-election now scheduled for 13 August.

This move appears to have backfired. Immediately before Farage's announcement, Reform's average poll rating stood at 27%. In the polls conducted immediately after Farage's announcement, it fell by three points to 24%, the level at which it still stands now, and the lowest it has been for 15 months. At the same time, Farage's personal poll ratings are now the worst they have been since he returned as Reform's leader during the 2024 election campaign.

In the Manchester by-election, Reform's share of the first preference vote was nine point down on its tally across the region in May's local elections. As in the Makerfield by-election, the party seemingly suffered from the advance made by Rupert Lowe's breakaway from Reform, Restore Britain, which won nearly 9% of the Manchester vote, outpolling the Conservatives in the process.

But for Reform's difficulties, the "Burnham bounce" would probably have been insufficient to put Labour in the lead in the national polls.

Greens suffering

The principal source of that bounce has been clawing voters back from the Greens and the Liberal Democrats, both of whom have suffered a two-point drop since Burnham's uncontested victory in the Labour leadership contest. For the Greens – much of whose increased support in recent months came from disappointed 2024 Labour voters – the change of prime minister has proven particularly damaging. The Greens' current 11% tally is as much as four points adrift of where it was when Sir Keir announced he was leaving.

When he resigned, 14% of Labour's 2024 election voters said they would now back the Greens. That figure is now 9%.

Winning back former Labour voters has generally been a key component of the Burnham bounce. Overall, 67% of those who voted Labour in 2024 now say they would vote for the party, compared to 57% when Sir Keir indicated he was leaving Downing Street.

Following Farage's difficulties, Labour is also now losing fewer of its 2024 voters to Reform. But the same is true of the Conservatives, whose loss of support to Reform in the polls during this Parliament has always been much greater than that suffered by Labour. Far from suffering from a Burnham bounce, Kemi Badenoch's party has edged up to 20% in the polls for the first time since last spring.

Burnham's arrival has given Labour new hope. But despite having overtaken Reform in the polls, the new Labour leader still has to prove he can win back the working class pro-Brexit voters that Labour once regarded as its core vote but who now form the heart of support for Reform.

To do this – and put Labour on course for victory in 2029 - Burnham needs to deliver on the policy challenges facing his government, which remain as formidable as those that beset Sir Keir. Labour's prospects at the next election will ultimately depend on whether voters have come to believe that what he has said he will do is actually happening.

John Curtice is a professor of politics at Strathclyde University and senior fellow at the National Centre for Social Research and The UK in a Changing Europe

Top picture credit: Reuters

How the UK's extreme heat is shifting the conversation about air-con

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy5dw4plzvlo, 11 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

As the US pauses the war with Iran, is Trump really running out of weapons?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0qvnk2ezp7o, 13 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

Car washes and vape shops can still sponsor skilled foreign workers despite visa changes

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj639rx147eo, 3 days ago

More than 1,900 small high street businesses including mini-marts, vape shops and car washes are licensed to sponsor foreign workers under a specialist scheme intended for high-earning individuals despite visa rules being tightened, BBC Verify has found.

The Home Office scheme allows registered employers to recruit workers from overseas who meet a certain skill level. The rules were tightened in July 2025 to restrict the scheme mostly to graduate-level employees who would be earning at least £41,700.

But a year on from the rule change, BBC Verify has found more than 1,500 grocery and convenience stores, 150 taxi operators, 100 barber shops, and dozens of car washes and vape shops are still on the register and able to sponsor people to apply for visas.

More than 100 of those businesses were added to the skilled worker sponsorship list after the rules were tightened. Being on the register does not mean applications for individual visas would be approved.

Health Secretary Yvette Cooper said on Thursday the government will "make sure that the rules are being properly enforced because we cannot have employers getting round the rules or finding different ways to deviate".

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood ordered an urgent review into the presence of vape shops, barbers and car washes on the skilled worker sponsor register two months ago, following concerns over the "potential misuse of the system". The Home Office said at the time that any businesses seeking to abuse the system would have their licences revoked.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "We have raised the skilled worker threshold and over 100 occupations are now ineligible for new skilled worker visas."

It is understood some of the companies that joined the register after the rules changed may have applied before they took effect. Some companies may have also remained on the register because they were approved before July 2025 or are sponsoring workers who were already in the UK.

There are more than 120,000 businesses with licences to sponsor skilled workers. The skilled worker scheme was introduced after Brexit for employers to recruit workers after EU free movement ended. Smaller firms must pay a £611 fee to apply to join the register while larger businesses, such as those with more than 50 staff, pay a fee of £1,682. Anyone can be visited by the UK Visas and Immigration service during the application process.

Until July last year, someone being hired from abroad could qualify for sponsorship if their qualifications met an A-Level or equivalent standard, as long as they were paid at least £38,700 in most cases. Since the rule change, non-graduate professions, such as shop managers, are no longer eligible to apply. There are also higher English-language skill requirements that were introduced in January this year.

The Home Office said there were 68,067 skilled worker visas granted in the 12 months to March this year - 29,745 to main applicants and 38,322 to their dependants - which is 30% lower than the year before. IT professionals were the most common type of people to be granted the visas, followed by those people working in finance, while the fall in approvals was mostly attributed to those in food preparation and hospitality trades no longer qualifying for the scheme.

Jobs including sales and retail assistants, taxi drivers and chauffeurs are currently listed by the government as ineligible for skilled worker visas, but there are some exemptions, such as bricklayers, carpenters or nursing assistants and other occupations where there is a shortage in the UK.

The Home Office revoked 3,299 licences in 2025 compared with 347 in 2023. Its register does not state how many certificates of sponsorship or visas have been issued for each business or what type of role it has hired for, but Home Office guidance states firms must offer genuine jobs that meet skill and salary rules, and only sponsor workers for eligible roles.

As businesses are only listed by name, it is not always clear what industry a company operates within. BBC Verify identified the more than 1,900 small high-street businesses that had retained a sponsorship licence by matching their names and locations to Companies House records and Google business listings to identify whether the mini marts, car washes and other small operations were on the list, and by analysing company names.

Around 1,700 of those were in England, more than 140 were in Scotland, over 80 were in Wales and just two were in Northern Ireland.

Separately, BBC Verify found 60 businesses on the register that had been fined for employing illegal workers between April 2024 and December 2025. They had been fined a combined £2.5m.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "Illegal working will not be accepted, and businesses who face two or more illegal working penalties of up to £60,000, or fail to pay a penalty the first time, will have their license to hire workers revoked."

Speaking about the visa rule change, Dr Madeleine Sumption, director of the University of Oxford's Migration Observatory, said that if businesses were on the register before the rules changed, they can continue to employ people they had already sponsored. "But they can't now bring in a new person to do those jobs."

Toby Way, a lawyer at WestBridge Business Immigration which helps businesses apply to be sponsors, told BBC Verify that while most sponsorship approvals are legitimate, "We come across a lot of exaggeration and some downright lying about sponsored roles".

"Hotels and restaurants have been hit massively by the rule changes. They're now unable to sponsor a chef or a manager, but they might claim they need someone for marketing or book-keeping, because those roles are on the temporary shortage list," he said.

"We know the Home Office looks at the finances of the businesses now and whether their revenue or profit means they can pay the required salary."

Immigration lawyer Joanna Hunt of DAC Beachcroft said that it would be difficult for a high street shop to justify sponsorship at the degree level.

"Subject to a few exceptions, a job needs to be skilled to 'degree level' to allow a business to sponsor a worker to fill it and the Home Office will consider if the role fits with the type of business the sponsor operates. A high street shop may find this requirement difficult to demonstrate."

Additional reporting by Rob England and Libby Rogers

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Russian ship defies sanctions to send military vehicles to Mali

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgk4rdley0ko, 8 days ago

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."

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Google withdraws new Earth AI tool after warnings over misinformation risks

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9349yx2ydvo, 9 days ago

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."

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Satellite images show impact of heatwaves and drought on UK landscape

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgv657e1yko, 10 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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The serial candidates standing against Farage in the Clacton by-election

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd69q4yg0ggo, 3 days ago

A record number of candidates are standing in next week's Clacton by-election, but some names on the ballot will be more familiar than others.

As the main parties are not standing against Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, the 33 other candidates on the ballot are either from smaller political parties or are standing as independents.

Nine of these names have already appeared on multiple ballot papers elsewhere in the UK, including Reclaim Party leader Laurence Fox and satirical candidates Count Binface and Howling Laud Hope.

BBC Verify has taken a look at the serial candidates who have decided to stand in Clacton, how they have fared in previous elections, and whether they have ever won enough votes to save their £500 parliamentary - or £10,000 London mayor - deposits.

Who are the serial candidates?

The Clacton by-election takes place on 13 August, and because there are a total of 34 people contesting the seat it means people in the constituency will be casting their votes on what is understood to be the longest ballot paper in British electoral history.

Using confirmed parliamentary records, we found nine candidates standing against Farage who have stood at least twice before in Westminster parliamentary or London mayoral elections.

They are: Rejoin EU candidate John Stevens, Social Democratic Party leader William Clouston, Reclaim leader Laurence Fox, independent Joseph 77, Count Binface, independent Andy Erlam, and three candidates from the Monster Raving Loony Party - leader Howling Laud Hope, Nick the Incredible Flying Brick and Baron Von Thunderclap.

Who can stand in a by-election?

UK electoral law does not prevent a registered political party from fielding more than one candidate in a parliamentary by-election. Each candidate must have a valid nomination and be authorised by the party's nominating officer.

Nigel Farage has previously stood in seven parliamentary contests since 1994, and successfully became an MP for Clacton in the 2024 general election.

Parliamentary candidates do not have to be from the area they want to stand in to appear on the ballot, but they do have to be nominated by 10 people who live in the constituency.

A £500 deposit is also required to validate their candidacy, which they only get back if they achieve more than 5% of the vote share.

Mayoral elections have stricter eligibility rules. For example, in London candidates must either live, work or be registered to vote in the capital, or rent or own a property in the city. They must also get at least 10 nominations from each London borough and at least 10 from the City of London, and win more than 5% of the vote share to have their £10,000 deposit returned.

Howling Laud Hope

Howling Laud Hope, the leader of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, has previously stood in 37 parliamentary elections since 1983.

Real name Alan Hope, the party leader challenged David Cameron's seat when he was elected prime minister in 2010, and stood against former prime minister Theresa May in the 2017 general election.

He gained his highest share of the vote in the 2011 Leicester South by-election, which was held by Labour. Hope finished last of five candidates, with 553 votes, or 1.6%.

He has never won enough votes to get back a £500 parliamentary deposit.

Previous attempts: 37

Deposits lost: 37

Nick the Incredible Flying Brick

Nick the Incredible Flying Brick, whose real name is Nick Delves, has previously stood for the Official Monster Raving Loony Party in 13 parliamentary contests.

He stood against former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer in the 2024 general election, but his highest share of the vote came in West Derbyshire at the 2001 general election, when the Conservatives held the seat. He finished fifth of six candidates with 472 votes, or 0.9% of all votes.

Like Hope, he has never won enough votes to get back a £500 parliamentary deposit.

Previous attempts: 13

Deposits lost: 13

Joseph 77

Tom Darwood, who stands under the name Joseph 77, has previously contested eight parliamentary elections.

The strongest of those runs came in Southend West in Essex at the 2019 general election. He received 574 votes, or 1.2%, in a seat held by the Conservatives.

Darwood has never won enough votes to get back a £500 parliamentary deposit.

Previous attempts: 8

Deposits lost: 8

Count Binface

Count Binface is the satirical alter ego of comedian Jon Harvey, who has previously stood in four parliamentary elections and two London mayoral elections.

As Count Binface, Harvey has been on the same ballot as two sitting prime ministers during a general election - Boris Johnson in 2019 and Rishi Sunak in 2024 - and separately stood as a different character, Lord Buckethead, against Theresa May in Maidenhead in 2017.

In 2023 Count Binface stood in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election after Johnson resigned as an MP, and in June this year he stood against now prime minister Andy Burnham in the Makerfield by-election.

His best parliamentary result came in the Richmond and Northallerton vote against Sunak in the 2024 general election. He gained 308 votes - 0.6% of the total share - and finished sixth out of 13 candidates.

He has not previously won enough votes to get back any of his deposits.

Previous attempts: 6

Deposits lost: 6

Baron Von Thunderclap

Baron Von Thunderclap - real name Peter Berry - is the third Official Monster Raving Loony Party candidate on the ballot. He previously stood in six parliamentary elections.

The Clacton contest is his first parliamentary by-election however, and his first parliamentary race outside Mid Sussex. His strongest turnout was during the 2001 general election, when he received 601 votes, or 1.3% of the vote share. He finished fifth out of five candidates and the Conservatives held the seat.

He has never won enough votes to get back a £500 parliamentary deposit.

Previous attempts: 6

Deposits lost: 6

John Stevens

Former Conservative MEP John Stevens, who is standing for the Rejoin EU Party, has previously appeared on the ballot in four parliamentary elections.

His best result came as an independent in Buckingham in the 2010 general election, when he challenged then speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow. The main parties do not usually stand against the Speaker in a general election, and Stevens finished second of 11 candidates with 10,331 votes, a 21.4% vote share. Farage also challenged Bercow for the seat that year and came third.

It means Stevens is the only Clacton candidate to have stood against and won more votes than Farage in a parliamentary contest. Stevens also gained enough votes to qualify to have his deposit returned.

Previous attempts: 4

Deposits lost: 3

William Clouston

William Clouston, the leader of the Social Democratic Party, previously stood in three parliamentary elections.

His best result came in Durham North West, in the 2001 general election, when Labour held the seat. Clouston, standing as a Conservative, finished second of four candidates with 8,193 votes, or 20.9% of the vote share.

This was enough votes to retain his £500 parliamentary deposit.

Previous attempts: 3

Deposits lost: 2

Andy Erlam

Andy Erlam has previously contested three parliamentary elections.

His best run was in Bexleyheath in London at the 1983 general election. He received 7,560 votes, or 17.1%, in a seat held by the Conservatives.

Erlam won enough votes to get back two of his parliamentary deposits.

Previous attempts: 3

Deposits lost: 1

Laurence Fox

Actor turned right-wing commentator Laurence Fox, of the Reclaim Party, has previously stood in one parliamentary by-election and one London mayoral election.

His only parliamentary contest before Clacton was the 2023 Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election. Fox finished fourth out of 17 candidates. The Conservatives held the seat, while Fox received 714 votes, or a 2.3% share of the vote.

He did not win enough votes to get back either of his deposits.

Previous attempts: 2

Deposits lost: 2

Which records did we look at?

For this analysis, the BBC counted previous UK House of Commons elections dating back to 1955, by-elections to 1983 and Mayor of London records to 2000. Results prior to this are not included in the analysis.

The current Clacton contest counts towards the three-contest threshold to be included in the analysis.

Local council elections, local and combined-authority mayoral elections, devolved legislatures, European Parliament elections and London Assembly elections were excluded.

Official records do not track individual candidates over time and there can be discrepancies where individuals are recorded under different variations on their name, aliases, or for different parties across their careers.

Correction 6 August 2026: This article has been amended to include details found through historical data where candidate names and political parties were recorded inconsistently. We have updated the text and graphics relating to William Clouston and Joseph 77 to add one more election each to their totals, and added an additional candidate to our analysis, Andy Erlam, who met the threshold for inclusion.

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Large rise in offenders sent back to prison, figures reveal

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6298ljegkgo, 10 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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What's behind having to release some prisoners early?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3rxlyz6w3o, 5 days ago

The government has changed its plan to release thousands of offenders in England and Wales well before the end of their sentences in an attempt to make space in prisons.

People sentenced for rape, serious child sex and grooming offences will now not be eligible for early release from October.

But some prisoners who are not excluded could be freed after serving a third of their total custodial sentence rather than after 40% or 50% of their term.

This is not the first time a government - Conservative or Labour - has had to release prisoners early to make space in England and Wales' overcrowded prisons.

BBC Verify has looked at the reasons why ministers feel the need to resort to these measures.

More prisoners than prison space

The prison population in England and Wales on 3 August was 86,495, which was 97% of useable capacity.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has warned the prison population will overtake capacity as soon as this November.

In the long-term the MoJ has projected that the capacity of all prisons will rise to around 99,000 by 2032 as a result of more prisons being built by this government.

But it also projected that the prisoner population would rise to about 104,000 by 2032 if the Sentencing Act 2026 - which provides for earlier release - did not come into force.

That is why new Justice Secretary Alex Norris says there is a "prison capacity crisis" which means the government has to implement the latest early release scheme.

Norris has said that 5,000 prisoners are now due to be released from October - down from 6,000 due to the new exclusions.

The MoJ has projected that the Sentencing Act will mean the prisoner population remains below the capacity of the prison system, rising only to around 96,000 by 2032.

More people are being sent to prison for longer

The England and Wales prison population has risen significantly in recent decades with a significant uptick starting in the 1990s before reaching a record high in 2024.

The Institute for Government (IFG) think tank says this is partly the result of longer sentences.

In 2023, the average prison sentence at Crown Courts in England and Wales - which deal with more serious offences - was more than 25% longer than those handed down in 2012.

For some crimes, the increase was greater. Sentences for robbery in 2023 were 13 months longer on average than in 2012 - an increase of 36%.

Longer sentences mean more people being held in prison at any one time.

Former Conservative Justice Secretary David Gauke, who led an independent sentencing review for Sir Keir Starmer's government, argues this is the result of a "bidding war" by political parties since the 1990s over who can imprison people for longer.

Gauke also points out that the prison population has been rising at a time when overall crime in England and Wales has been falling, according to the official Crime Survey.

So despite the fall in crime more people are being sent to prison - and for longer.

Another reason for upward pressure on the prison population is that more people than before are being returned to prison for breaching the conditions of their release.

There were 51,419 licence recalls in England and Wales in the year ending March 2026, up from 40,259 in the previous year - a 28% increase.

Cassia Rowland from the IFG 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.

Slow pace of prison building

Successive governments have pledged to increase the number of prison places - but delivery has often fallen short of those promises.

Between 2010 and 2024, when the Conservatives were in power, around 13,000 new prison places were created.

But around 12,500 places - notably those built during the Victorian era - were closed after falling into disrepair.

That means an estimated net total of only around 500 new prison places were added over 14 years.

In a 2024 report, the National Audit Office (NAO) cited the MOJ's "unrealistic timelines", and government bodies not working together to prioritise delivery, as reasons for the slow pace of prison building.

Although three new prisons have opened in the past four years - adding approximately 5,000 more places - further expansion to existing prisons has been delayed by a major supplier going into administration, according to the Prison Reform Trust.

Pia Sinha of the Prison Reform Trust told BBC Verify: "Successive governments have found it difficult to increase prison capacity because new prisons take years to plan and build, often facing planning hurdles and local opposition."

The Labour government has pledged to build 14,000 new prison places by 2031. The MoJ told BBC Verify that it had delivered about 3,200 places as of July.

However, it has not said how many prison cells have been taken out of use so we cannot say whether there has been a net gain or loss of spaces.

Analysts argue that without a major change in thinking about the appropriateness of prison as punishment, or a significant long-term increase in prison building, the system in England and Wales will remain close to capacity.

And that means governments will continue to be under pressure to implement early release schemes to avert a capacity crisis.