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US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has criticised European nations for allowing what he described as an "invasion" of migrants on their shores, during a D-Day anniversary speech in France.

Hegseth was speaking in Normandy 82 years after allied forces stormed French beaches to liberate Nazi-occupied north-western Europe in 1944.

"Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies," Hegseth said. "Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion?"

Migration has become a major political issue across Europe, with parties supporting hardline immigration policies surging in the polls.

Sea arrivals into mainland Europe peaked in 2015, when the UN said more than a million people crossed the Mediterranean. Between April 2025 and March 2026, there were a combined 169,341 sea arrivals to the UK, Greece, Italy, Spain and Cyprus. Crossings to the UK accounted for about 23% of the total.

Hegseth said that in the years since D-Day some European capitals have grown too "comfortable" with their hard-fought freedoms, forgetting that "freedom is not free".

"The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe," Hegseth said. "That freedom must be maintained by this generation of leaders and war fighters or what they fought for was merely temporary."

D-Day was the largest seaborne military operation ever attempted and involved the simultaneous landing of tens of thousands of troops from the UK, US and Canada on five separate beaches in Normandy in northern France.

Between 1 January and 3 June 2026, a total of 9,142 people crossed the English Channel by small boat to the UK from France. This was down by 38% on the same period the previous year.

Hegseth's comments mark a further criticism of European migration policy by senior members of the Trump administration.

On Friday, US Vice-President JD Vance blamed the death of the 18-year-old British student Henry Nowak, who was fatally stabbed last year in Southampton by Vickrum Digwa, on the "mass invasion of migrants" and said the "only response" was "righteous anger".

Downing Street responded by criticising "people trying to interfere in our democracy".

After Vance's post on X, a Downing Street spokesman said the Nowak family had "said they do not want his death to be used to create further division".

US President Donald Trump has also criticised European immigration policy, telling the UN last year that European countries were "going to hell" due to "uncontrolled migration".

In response, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the president's remarks were "not right", while accepting the "challenge" of tackling illegal migration, particularly from people crossing the English Channel in small boats.

In December, the Trump administration unveiled its new National Security Strategy, which asserted that if current trends continue Europe would be "unrecognisable in 20 years or less" and its economic issues are "eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilisational erasure".

Within the US, the Trump administration has made anti-immigration policy a key tenet of its domestic agenda, with agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) making thousands of arrests since January 2025.

Armenia braces for election as Russia piles pressure on pro-West government

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3626n1epd5o, yesterday

Armenia votes on 7 June under mounting Russian economic pressure, as Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan seeks re-election on a promise of European integration.

The election has drawn significant international attention to the small South Caucasus nation of three million people, which has steadily grown closer to the West while still intertwined with Russia, its largest trading partner.

The rapprochement with the West is largely Pashinyan's doing.

Since coming to power in 2018, the prime minister has steered his country away from Moscow, passed a law to launch the process of joining the EU, and accelerated the peace process with neighbouring Azerbaijan via a US-brokered agreement. The latter has won him US President Donald Trump's endorsement.

Pashinyan also hosted a large summit of EU leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the capital, Yerevan, earlier this year.

Yet despite these successes, Pashinyan's domestic support has fallen from 54% in 2021 to around 30% today.

The main reason is Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave inside Azerbaijan that was home to 100,000 ethnic Armenians until Azerbaijan took it by force in 2023.

Pashinyan's critics have never forgiven him for making concessions in favour of peace with Azerbaijan, like refusing to campaign for the release of former leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh who are in jail in the neighbouring country.

The peace deal with Azerbaijan, too, remains deeply divisive, with one recent poll showing 44% of public opinion in support and 41% opposed.

Pashinyan's critics now form several opposition parties and alliances. One of the main ones is the Armenia Alliance, led by former president Robert Kocharyan. Former president Serzh Sargsyan's Republican Party is not fielding candidates but has urged its supporters to vote against the incumbent.

Both ex-leaders argue that restoring deep military and economic ties with Russia is Armenia's only path to national security.

And Pashinyan's main challenger is billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, who made his fortune in Russia. He is under house arrest - accused of plotting to overthrow the government - and is conducting the campaign through his nephew.

The latest International Republican Institute poll shows Pashinyan's Civil Contract leading with 32%, while around 40% of voters say they trust no political figure.

If the opposition candidates worked together, they could match Pashinyan's vote, but divided they cannot beat him.

Russia's economic weapon

Over the vote looms Moscow.

Last month, Vladimir Putin listed the economic benefits Armenia stood to lose if it pursued closer ties with the West, and pointedly noted that "the crisis in Ukraine began with efforts to move toward EU accession".

Tangible economic measures follow the rhetoric. In the two weeks preceding the election, Moscow banned the export of Armenian flowers, mineral water, cognac, fresh vegetables and fruit.

Russia is Armenia's leading trade partner and accounted for 36% of its foreign trade in 2025.

Moscow "is trying to somehow impact the final results of voting on June 7," said Haykaz Fanyan of the Armenian Centre for Socio-Economic Studies. "We in Armenia believe it is very highly correlated with current political processes."

He notes that Armenia's dependence on Russian military equipment has shrunk dramatically, with around 95% of Armenia's military imports now coming from India, France, China and other countries.

"The only way Russia can impact Armenia now is economic," Fanyan said.

But that is still a significant weapon for Moscow to wield. Russia supplies Armenia with gas at $177.50 (£87) per 1,000 cubic metres, while European market prices, as Putin pointed out to Pashinyan in April, exceed $600.

In late May, the Russian president also called on Armenia to hold a referendum "as soon as possible" on whether to join the EU or remain in the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), a customs bloc from which Armenia benefits.

Pashinyan swerved the challenge. Despite his developing, good-natured relationship with European leaders, Armenia doesn't even have EU candidate status yet, and membership of the bloc is still a long way off.

"We will continue to work within the EAEU until the choice between its current membership and the EU becomes unavoidable," he said. "Today this choice is theoretical in nature."

Still, the EU is not standing back idly. On Thursday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pledged €50m (£43m) for Armenia in the face of what she said was a case of "Moscow weaponising economic relations for political pressure", and added the EU would ease trade with Yerevan for goods targeted by Moscow.

A tense campaign

Pashinyan has been campaigning under the slogan 'Stand for Peace!".

But the campaign has not been without confrontation - notably between Pashinyan and displaced Karabakh Armenians. One incident ended with the prime minister using offensive language against civil activist Artur Osipyan, who was later arrested on charges of obstructing the election campaign and went on hunger strike in protest.

Such incidents have led opposition figures to accuse Pashinyan of growing authoritarianism and of using state resources - including pressure on civil servants to attend his rallies - to his advantage.

"Pashinyan and his regime are using all possible and impossible administrative levers. They are spreading the atmosphere of fear and blackmailing," said Artur Khachatryan, a member of parliament from the opposition Armenia Alliance.

"I cannot remember any campaign as tense as this one."

Pashinyan is running on his doctrine of "Real Armenia" - a country at peace with Azerbaijan and integrated into Europe, rather than one defined by territorial ambitions and dependence on Moscow.

His support may have collapsed – but for many voters he remains the only alternative to a return to a past tinged by corruption and authoritarianism.

For ordinary Armenians heading to the polls the question is harder than any geopolitical framing: are they willing to bear the economic costs of the direction Pashinyan has chosen – costs Russia is making sure they can feel – knowing that a European future is still a distant prospect?

On 7 June, that question gets an answer.

Iran says staff blocked from entering US after players given World Cup visas

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8286nqz87o, today

Iran has accused the US of denying visas to "integral" members of its national football team's backroom staff, hours after Washington confirmed Iranian players had been given permission to travel to the upcoming World Cup.

US officials said visas had been issued to all players and "necessary support staff" on Friday, 10 days before Iran's opening fixture in Los Angeles on 15 June.

They also said Iran would not be allowed to "abuse this system to sneak terrorists into the United States under false pretences".

Iran's embassy in Turkey accused the US of "politically biased interference in sport" by denying visas to a "large portion of the managerial and executive staff" and "technical advisers".

Iranian state-linked media said 15 administration officials, including the head of the football federation, his deputy, and a media director were among those who were denied entry to the US.

The team set off from their training base in Turkey on Saturday en route to Mexico, where they will be based for the tournament, and are expected to land in the early hours of Sunday after a 20-hour flight.

Under the conditions of their visas, the squad will have to enter and leave the US on the same day as their matches, Iran's ambassador to Mexico said on Saturday.

A statement described the US announcement as a "whitewash", adding: "You have now escalated the deliberate and discriminatory treatment against Iran's national football team to its highest level."

Iranian embassy officials called on Fifa, football's world governing body, to intervene.

The 2026 World Cup, which will be jointly hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico, begins on 11 June, with Iran securing their place by finishing top of their qualification group in March 2025, almost a year before war broke out.

It will be the first iteration of the competition to see a host nation receive the team of a country it is at war with.

In late May, Iran moved its training base to Mexico from Tucson, Arizona.

The US Department of Homeland Security did not say whether any restrictions would apply to members of the Iranian national team and official delegation while in the US during the tournament, but told the BBC in a statement that DHS is "steadfast in our commitment to the safety and security of the American people and attendees of the 2026 FIFA World Cup".

The agency also said they are "intricately involved in the whole of government approach securing the 11 host city sites across the nation, including Los Angeles".

Earlier this week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers Iran's football delegation would not be allowed to include individuals linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards - a powerful branch of the Iranian armed forces.

Several players in the Iranian squad have completed mandatory military service with the group.

Iran are also due to play Belgium in California and Egypt in Seattle in their other two group games.

Additional reporting from Bernd Debusmann Jr.

Insecurity and instability drive voters in Peru's tight presidential race

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9d21184e7yo, today

"If you don't meet our demands, we will kill your drivers."

This message, demanding about $15,000, was sent by a criminal gang to a bus company in a poor suburb of Peru's capital, Lima. It preceded an armed attack on bus driver, Toño.

"They shot me in the legs and abdomen. I was out of work for four months, now I work with fear. Although my wounds are dry, internally I feel pain," he says.

Toño's case was one of nearly 30,000 extortion incidents reported in Peru in 2025, many targeting small businesses or transport workers.

This issue, along with rising homicides, is why insecurity and crime have become top concerns for voters in Sunday's presidential election in Peru.

The right-wing Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the late former president, Alberto Fujimori, is running for a fourth time against left-wing Roberto Sánchez.

Fujimori has defined her campaign with an array of "tough-on-crime" policies, while Sánchez has promised sweeping changes to the state and higher public spending.

In Lima's suburb of San Juan de Lurigancho, dusty hilltop neighbourhoods sprawl precariously down the slopes. Armed police guard the gate to the bus depot where Toño works. They say this is Lima's worst district for extortion.

Toño, who now drives with plain-clothed armed police on board for his protection, wants whoever the next president is to have a "strong hand against crime".

According to an independent observatory of crime and violence, 239 drivers were killed last year.

"I've never been so afraid to leave my young children. If I had money, I'd leave the country," he says.

Eiffel Calla, head of security at the depot, says five drivers from their company have been attacked. One was killed, another was left in a vegetative state.

Fears of insecurity have driven other Latin American nations further right in recent elections, boosting leaders who promise a hardline approach to law and order.

At her final campaign rallies, Fujimori declared "war" on extortionists, promising to deploy the military against organised crime, control prisons, and work with financial institutions to block extorted money.

She's invoked the memory of her father, Alberto Fujimori - president from 1990-2000 - whose hardline approach resulted in him being jailed for human rights abuses. His supporters, though, remember him for bringing order to the country and stabilising the economy.

At a Fujimori rally, supporter Piero argues a heavy-handed approach to insecurity is "sorely lacking in these times" and describes Peru as "overflowing" with crime.

Another, Janeth, says "for economy stability, we choose Keiko Fujimori".

Despite having churned through eight presidents in the last 10 years, Peru's economy has remained relatively stable. It is a major exporter of critical minerals and metals such as copper.

Fujimori's supporters pit her free market approach to the economy and pledge to attract more US investment against Sánchez's proposals to review mining contracts, increase some corporate taxes, raise the minimum wage and give the state more control over natural resources – ideas that have unsettled financial markets.

He argues Peru's wealth originating from its natural resources doesn't reach ordinary people or the often rural communities where a lot of mining takes place.

His supporters, such as María Elena Linares, disagree that his policies will bring economic instability.

"We are going to nationalise, but we are also going to accept foreign countries that want to contribute to our country. Don't believe this negative idea that communism throws out foreign investors – they're grossly wrong," she insists.

"Our raw material, our gold, our copper, goes to other countries... we are experiencing misery."

Another supporter, Raúl, backs Sánchez's plans to expand the state and hopes it will bring more investment in health and education, as well as infrastructure outside of Peru's major cities.

Sánchez has also promised to free former left-wing president Pedro Castillo, who was imprisoned after trying to dissolve congress and rule by decree to avoid impeachment.

No party has a majority in Peru's congress, which has led to regular presidential impeachments, though Fujimori's party has the largest minority bloc.

Many Peruvians are fatigued by this instability. Last year, "Gen Z" protests erupted, with young people arguing the state was failing to tackle crime, corruption and inequality.

On Friday, a judge said Sanchez could stand trial over alleged undeclared campaign finances from regional elections from 2018-2020. He denies the accusations and is expected to appeal.

Fujimori spent years under investigation over campaign financing allegations too, which were dropped last year. But she spent nearly a year-and-a-half in jail in pre-trial detention from 2018-20.

Under-30s make up about a quarter of Peru's electorate, and many who protested feel neither candidate can deliver real change.

Consuelo, 21, vice-president of the student federation of Peru's Pontifical Catholic University, cites "political exhaustion" with the "political class".

She feels deciding between the final two options in Sunday's vote is like choosing the "lesser evil".

However, she is concerned about Fujimori's pledge to replicate some of her father's policies.

"To talk about Fujimorism is to talk about authoritarianism, and that is something that for many students represents an enormous fear."

Fellow student Cielo, 23, has taken part in "anti-Keiko" protests, despite crime being a top issue for her after her own family's small business was extorted.

Alvaro, 22, says his first choice of candidate failed to make it to the final round, but he would vote "critically" for Sánchez to keep Fujimori out.

"I'd like a more modern right with free-market values, but represented by someone who is not so vindictive and wants to work for Peru," he says.

What these students share with more passionate supporters on both sides is a desire for the instability to end so policies on crime, corruption and inequality can actually be implemented.

With no majority party in congress and two candidates at very different ends of the political spectrum, many analysts think this is still a long way off.

José Luis Pérez Guadalupe, interior minister from 2015-16 and professor at the Pacific University, says "great polarisation" means "whoever wins, it's going to be difficult for them to implement their plans".

"We've had eight presidents in 10 years, 24 justice ministers, 32 interior ministers. That's high volatility."

It's no surprise then that many Peruvians share Consuelo's frustrated verdict: "Whether Fujimori wins, or Sánchez wins, we know there will most likely be a lot of instability.

"In reality, it's a pretty hopeless choice."

Steve Rosenberg: Lasting image of Russia's economic forum is plume of smoke over St Petersburg

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9q2gp52rgro, today

An evil sorcerer is the last person you'd expect to see at an economic forum.

But there he stood working his wizardry.

With sleight of hand Russian folklore villain "Koshchei the Deathless" (or, rather, someone dressed as him) produced coins out of thin air, "broke" and reassembled someone's glasses and shocked passers-by with occasional puffs of smoke from his fingers.

"Russians are unpredictable people," he declared. "We do things no one expects."

Perhaps.

But in St Petersburg this week, the unexpected was delivered most dramatically by Ukraine.

Ukrainian drones attacked the St Petersburg area on the opening – and closing – days of the set-piece International Economic Forum (SPIEF).

The abiding image of SPIEF 2026 will be the huge plume of thick black smoke which dominated the St Petersburg skyline on Wednesday. Without specifying what was hit, local officials admitted that drones had damaged "infrastructure". All the delegates saw the smoke as they arrived at the expo centre on the edge of the city.

Few could have predicted what came next.

Volodymyr Zelensky published an open letter to Vladimir Putin. Ukraine's president taunted Russia's leader about his age and about Russian setbacks in the war but proposed the two leaders meet in a neutral country to talk peace.

President Putin's response?

Nothing unpredictable about that.

The Kremlin leader, who had rejected previous calls for direct talks with President Zelensky, criticised the letter's "rude" tone and dismissed the offer.

"It's not the author of the latter I need to respond to," President Putin said, "but our soldiers on the frontline…I say to them: keep at it, brothers!"

Vladimir Putin is not ready to end Russia's war on Ukraine.

Not unless it's on his terms.

I listened to what he said at the forum's plenary session. There were few surprises.

The Putin we saw is the Putin we expected to see - uncompromising, unrepentant, determined to project an image of strength and unwavering conviction. He tried to appear confident about the war, and about Russia's economy.

"There are wars and sanctions. But the economy is developing," Vladimir Putin claimed. "Everything is stable."

Applauded by entrepreneurs, friendly foreign dignitaries and officials, inside the congress hall the Russian president could style himself as a super strong leader.

His problem is what's happening outside.

The massive battlefield losses that Russia has suffered in its war on Ukraine.

The long-range Ukrainian drones now penetrating deep inside the country.

At the forum when I asked senior officials about the war, their responses had one thing in common: they quoted the Kremlin. A reminder, perhaps, of whose idea the so-called "special military operation" was in the first place.

"The war is in its fifth year," I pointed out to Alexander Zhukov, deputy speaker of the Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament. "Do you think it will it end soon?"

"I can only respond in the words of our president. He said this situation must be resolved soon," replied the MP.

"Drones targeted St Petersburg this week," I reminded Vasily Anokhin, the governor of Smolensk region. "And your region too has in the past come under drone attack."

"As our president says," the governor began, "our enemies, unfortunately, are trying to hurt us."

The Russian economy is hurting. There are no signs of imminent collapse, but war and sanctions are creating considerable pressure. Growth has stalled in most sectors. Russian economists speak of "stagnation" and, in some areas, "decline". The ongoing conflict is sucking massive resources, both human and financial.

On a recent trip to Lipetsk region, small business owners told me they were struggling to stay afloat.

With its shiny stands and big-budget presentation the St Petersburg forum presented a more rose-tinted view of Russia's economy.

"Interest rates are a bit too high," conceded Kirill Dmitriev, President Putin's special envoy on foreign investment when we spoke at the forum.

"We believe rates should be lower for more investments. But Russia's economy has proved resilient over the last five years: something that many Western analysts believed was impossible."

Even in a challenging economic environment some businesses here spy an opportunity.

"A few years ago, Russians flocked abroad on holiday," businessman German Galperin told me, "but the situation doesn't always allow that now due to sanctions and because attitudes to Russians abroad have changed.

"That's prompting the development of modern tourist centres in Russia."

Unlike sorcerer "Koshchei the Deathless", the Kremlin cannot abracadabra coins out of thin air. It would certainly ease the budget deficit if it could.

It did, though, magic up some attention-grabbing guests for the forum.

"I do give a good hello from your friend President Trump," Rodney Mims Cook Jr told President Putin in St Petersburg. As chair of the US Commission of Fine Arts, Mr Mims Cook Jr is overseeing the controversial White House ballroom project.

Russia trumpeted his presence and claimed he was heading the first official US delegation at the St Petersburg forum in a decade.

But there was no fanfare from the US State Department.

"I am not aware of the delegation that went," US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week. "I'm aware of the event. I know they were hosting one, but I don't think it would have been a high-level official."

Walking round the exhibition halls at this year's SPIEF I noticed an eclectic mix: everything from boxing robots to singing, dancing grannies.

One of the most eye-catching installations was a ginormous Russian 'nevalyashka', or tumbler doll. As generations of Russian children know, the roly-poly 'nevalyashka' wobbles a lot, but never falls down.

I often think that's how the Russian authorities want the world to view their country: as a giant tumbler doll that cannot be knocked down or defeated, no matter how hard you push it. Despite more than four years of war, and battered by sanctions, Russia is still standing.

A defiant image? Certainly.

But perhaps not the best advert for attracting long term foreign investment.

For that, the less wobbles the better.

Multiple people shot near festival in Ohio with suspect still at large, police say

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gyqzkgwn2o, today

Multiple people have been shot near a festival in Toledo, Ohio, local police say.

The Toledo police department says it responded to a report of a shooting near the Old West End Festival, and found "multiple shooting victims," with "many victims" taken for medical treatment.

It says it is actively searching for the "suspect or suspects involved".

The Old West End Festival describes itself as "a two-day event celebrating one of the largest historic districts in the country with live music, multiple food markets, a beer garden, house tours, shopping, and much more".

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

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Cosmeticorexia: How girls are falling down a skincare rabbit hole

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx212x41evwo, today

"Get ready with me to go to my best, best friend's house," Ellie-May says enthusiastically at the camera.

The then 10-year-old smiles and explains her multi-step skincare routine on TikTok.

"I love, love, love, love, love this toner," she says, as she rubs the translucent liquid into her skin. Next, it's a serum designed to make your skin glow, "Oh my god it's so glowy," she gushes.

She makes a "smoothie" out of her fluffy yellow cream, rubbing blobs on the back of her hand and mixing it with a tinted moisturiser.

As she talks, she carefully dabs concealer under her eyes and adds some pink blush and highlighter to her cheeks. Then she curls her lashes and applies mascara and lip gloss.

She's ready, she says, well, shortly after she's blow dried and straightened her hair.

Ellie-May is now 13. She's been using skincare and advertising it since she was eight years old. What began in lockdown as a bit of fun has become a main source of income for her family. They have social media accounts across Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat. Ellie-May's own TikTok account has more than 330,000 followers.

Her mum Sophie, who has five other children, says they make over £50,000 a year from posting content on their various platforms.

"Being content creators has transformed our lives," Sophie says as they sit on a video call with me outside their house in the south east of England. "So many other young kids just wanted to know about Ellie's skincare routine and, well, it just took off."

Type in the words "children and skincare" into various social media search engines and you won't struggle to find videos of hundreds of other young girls - some as young as three or four - enthusing over skincare products and make-up, or doing "get ready with me" or "after school" skincare videos where they talk about their plans for the day while using cosmetics.

Skincare products being marketed to girls is nothing new. While the scrubs and cleansers of past decades promised a spot-free complexion, girls today are using a wider variety of sophisticated products - many of which contain anti-ageing ingredients - in the hope of achieving flawless skin.

Some girl skincare influencers describe themselves as "brand ambassadors", showcasing products from the likes of Bubble, Drunk Elephant, and P. Louise. There are K-Pop Demon Hunters-themed skincare packs for a "glow-boosting routine" for "skin that looks luminous".

While there are products clearly targeted at children, there are also brands that are popular with young people, which say they do not want to be associated with this part of the market. A source close to Drunk Elephant, for example, says it is not a "youth-focused" brand, and that it is trying to educate its customers about how to use its products responsibly.

Bubble and P.Louise did not respond to requests for comment.

As well as young influencers like Ellie-May, there are many more young girls who have multi-step skincare routines embedded in their day. A snapshot by Pai, a skincare brand, of 1,500 nine-to-12-year-olds suggests that nearly half are using multiple skincare products weekly, with half of those saying that they use it to fix what they perceive to be problem skin.

It has become a multi-billion-pound industry. The market is rapidly growing and it is showing no signs of slowing down. But some - including regulators - are calling for caution.

"Women in their 30s and 40s have long been targeted by skincare companies, telling us that ageing is a problem and selling us a solution," Brooke Erin Duffy, associate professor and social media researcher at Cornell University, says.

"But this is a marked shift. Now young girls are being put under that same pressure."

As this industry continues to boom - encouraged by content on social media platforms - is it a bit of harmless fun or are girls being permanently conditioned to think there is something wrong with the way they look? And what does it tell us about how girls today think of themselves?

Skin deep

A new term has been coined by dermatologists and academics: cosmeticorexia, which they define as having an unhealthy obsession with achieving "flawless" skin from a young age, leading to an obsessive use of cosmetic products. Prof Giovanni Damiani, an Italian dermatologist from the University of Milan (IT), was so perturbed by what he saw as the compulsion of some of his younger clients he began to investigate what was happening.

He interviewed 55 of his patients, aged between 8 and 14 years old. Those who displayed signs of cosmeticorexia, he explains, were mobile-phone obsessed, and would spend hours watching skincare videos on social media. They would also use up to 10 different skincare products daily, and they would not socialise - even with family members - without wearing make-up.

The Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) has just launched two investigations into the beauty company, LVMH, which owns the Sephora and Benefit cosmetic brands. The AGCM is examining whether the brands failed to make it clear that their products are not intended for children and adolescents, and whether they are encouraging their purchase through "covert marketing strategies involving young micro-influencers".

A spokesperson for LVMH says it is cooperating with Italian authorities and it "reaffirms" its "strict compliance with applicable Italian regulations".

The spokesperson added that "as conversations around younger consumers and skincare continue to evolve", they are continually enhancing "the quality of advice provided by our beauty consultants to better support and guide all our consumers".

LVMH does not have any products or marketing campaigns "specifically targeting young people" and they only work with influencers over the age of 18, they said.

The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) in the UK says it is monitoring developments in Italy closely and it's confirmed that it is looking at whether there is evidence of similar issues occurring, although it says, "we're not taking any formal regulatory action at this stage".

These products are not cheap. One study examined 100 TikToks made by under 18s, and found that the average cost of the skincare routines they had posted was £125. Depending on use, they might need to be replenished every three or four months.

Cleanse, tone, prime, moisturise, serum, eye cream, face mist, and repeat, as children - some of them of primary-school age - seek the Korean "glass skin" look.

"The irony? They've already got it - when you're little, your skin is in perfect condition," says consultant dermatologist, Dr Jean Ayer, an NHS consultant and private dermatologist based in Stockport.

"Your skin barrier - which keeps toxins out and keeps moisture in - is beautifully preserved… That's youth, that's the beauty of skin."

Ayer, who has been practicing for nearly 20 years, says more children than ever are now using cosmetics. Her consultations vary massively, on one end of the spectrum she has parents asking her for the best skincare regime for their young child, to children as young as eight coming into her consultation room with severe reactions to the beauty products they've been using. She says parents are often horrified, but they can't convince their child to stop using so many different products.

"It is quite terrifying," Dr Ayer says, "This stuff is designed for the anti-ageing market. At best, they don't need these products. At worst, they contain harmful ingredients that can damage delicate young skin."

She says she's seeing an increase in younger clients with acne and contact dermatitis - a type of eczema triggered by contact with a certain substance - due to the various ingredients in these skincare products being used by children.

Many of them contain active ingredients which can have a biological effect on skin cells, therefore changing how the skin functions. One of the most powerful is retinol, which works by speeding up skin cell turnover, which can help reduce fine lines and wrinkles. In children, this process is already happening at a high rate, so retinol offers no real benefit and can overstimulate the skin.

This can lead to "retinol burn" where their protective skin barrier gets damaged. Children can end up with soreness, eczema‑like rashes or long‑term sensitivity.

There are many other ingredients in these products which can potentially harm young skin, Ayer warns, and that once a child develops a contact allergy, they may not be able to ever use a product containing that ingredient without a reaction.

She says dermatologists are also seeing an increase in young people with frontal fibrosing alopecia, where the front hairline starts to recede. She says there is a small but growing school of thought which suggests that this could be down to the surge we are seeing in the application of various face creams at such a young age.

The UK cosmetics industry says it recognises that advice and support is needed to make sure that young children are using age appropriate products. The Cosmetics Toiletry and Perfumery Association (CTPA), which represents many skincare companies, has recently released a guide for parents after carrying out a survey where 40% of parents asked - nearly 1,000 - admitted to knowing less about skincare than their child.

Dr Emma Meredith, director-general of the CTPA, says it does not support young people using anti-ageing products or complex and unnecessary routines.

"Our aim is to ensure that products are used appropriately for each age range, helping young people understand how to develop healthy and age-appropriate skin hygiene habits and supporting parents in discussions with their children," she says.

Ellie-May's mum, Sophie, says she checks the ingredients in her daughter's products. Some people have criticised her on social media for letting her daughter unbox creams that contain strong chemicals such as retinol, but, she says, she knows it's harmful and she won't "let it anywhere near" her daughter's skin. She is also careful not to reveal details such as where her daughter goes to school or where they live, and keeps a close eye on replies that are sent to their accounts.

Ellie-May attends brand launches with big beauty companies, where she tries different products and mixes with other content creators, which she says is fun. She and Sophie are preparing to launch their own vegan skincare brand, targeted at the younger end of the market.

Ellie-May seems both older and younger than 13. She is softly spoken, thoughtful and articulate, sometimes looking to her mum for answers. She has long, manicured nails and she's wearing make-up, but it's natural-looking. "Wearing make-up now makes me feel normal," she says.

Trick mirror

While Sophie says their success on social media has enriched their lives, there is concern from some psychologists that these self-aware, social-media-savvy, beauty-obsessed young people will grow up with a distorted view of how they should look and how they should be in life.

Alberto Stefana is an Italian psychologist who co-wrote a paper on cosmeticorexia with Damiani. He says children are "developing their self-identity" and they might struggle to "accept their true image" as they grow older.

"The children who become obsessed with skincare tend to be driven by what they see on social media.

"So their self-esteem becomes based on how many likes they get or what people have said in their comments."

As so-called cosmeticorexia is such a recent phenomenon, it is difficult to know the if there are any potential long-term psychological impacts, but Stefana says his latest research indicates there are crossovers with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), a mental health condition that causes persistent and intense shame and anxiety over perceived body defects.

And even now, at such a young age, he warns, he has seen signs of anxiety and embarrassment in children as young as seven or eight years old who are displaying symptoms of cosmeticorexia.

He says it can be so acute that "they do not want to go to school, because they feel so much shame. And that shame comes from comparing themselves to others on social media and not feeling beautiful enough."

Jessica Ringrose, a professor of sociology of gender and education at University College London, agrees. "Children are seeing this content and then thinking it represents the 'good life', the ideal way of being.

"And if they can't achieve this 'perfect look' or this 'perfect life' that's being sold to them then they think they are failing in some way."

TikTok says it has special safeguards to protect teenagers online and it does not allow targeted advertising to under 18s. It also says it gives support and information to parents to help keep their children safe and that it regularly hears from teenagers about how to improve its offer through the platform's youth council. It also says that young people also use TikTok as a way of educating themselves about skin health with dermatologist-backed advice.

Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook among other platforms, did not respond to a request for comment.

Ringrose and the other experts I have spoken to say this is not just an issue with social media companies, the responsibility also lies with the skincare brands selling the products and the parents themselves.

Ringrose adds: "When you have a child acting as a brand ambassador and promoting this world to other children it legitimises it."

But at the same time, we live alongside, and often inside an ever-expanding digital world. Isn't this just an added, but inevitable complexity of growing up? Children - and in this case, young girls - are just learning a way of surviving, maybe even thriving, online?

Stefana disagrees, he says children and young people are spending so much time and money striving towards a look, an aesthetic, that only exists in the digital world, not in reality.

"Even the idea of what is attractive and what is unattractive is becoming warped," he says.

"The filters and the use of AI on social media posts mean some of the images children are seeing are not even real, so they are aspiring to something that does not even exist."

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

Ragas and symphonies: Indian maestro Ilaiyaraaja is still reshaping music 50 years on

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2pldw8x9zo, today

His ardent fans call him "the Maestro". Five decades after his debut, Ilaiyaraaja's music still echoes through homes, concert halls and cinema screens across India.

The 83-year-old composer from Tamil Nadu has scored more than 1,000 films in nine languages, a record unmatched in Indian cinema.

He transformed the sound of Tamil film music with Annakili in 1976 and has gone on to become one of India's most influential composers.

"Ilaiyaraaja's arrival was a watershed moment. It was an intervention by a person from an entirely different social and aesthetic background who had imbued a distinct aural soundscape," says TM Krishna, a celebrated Carnatic musician.

In India, playback singing is central to popular cinema: singers record songs that actors lip-sync on screen, while the composers usually also create the film's background score.

Before Ilaiyaraaja, a lot of film music was rooted in Indian classical music. Western symphonic influences were rarely woven into the mainstream soundtrack.

But Ilaiyaraaja, Krishna says, drew on a wide range of musical traditions from around the world.

"What's unique is that he creates a cohesiveness to all the different forms he's taken from different genres of music. That is the genius of Ilaiyaraja," he said.

Following the success of Annakili, Ilaiyaraaja produced hits across languages, including Pathinaaru Vayathinile, Olangal, Sadma, Geetanjali, Chinna Gounder and Nayakan. He has composed more than 8,000 film songs, drawing heavily on Tamil Nadu's folk and rural ballad traditions.

Last year, he became the first Indian to compose and perform a Western classical symphony in London with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, which described it as a "milestone in global music history".

Born in June 1943 in Pannaipuram, Tamil Nadu, as R Gnanathesikan, Ilaiyaraaja was raised on the folk songs and ballads sung by his father, a cardamom estate supervisor. He was seven when his father died suddenly.

"My mother Chinnathayammal bore the entire burden of the household after that. We went through a difficult period," Gangai Amaran, Ilaiyaraaja's younger brother and a celebrated music director himself, told the BBC.

Born into a poor, socially marginalised family, Ilaiyaraaja had few opportunities to get ahead. But music was all around him. His eldest brother, singer-playwright Paavalar Varadharajan, performed at Communist Party events in the 1950s, when the party wielded significant influence in the region.

"We travelled from village to village with our elder brother. That's how we learnt folk and rural musical traditions," Amaran said.

When Varadharajan fell ill before a performance, their mother persuaded Ilaiyaraaja to take his place. It was his first public appearance.

Forced to leave school at 14, he moved to Madras (now Chennai) with his brothers in 1968 in search of a film career. He later recalled walking miles to save bus fares and often going to bed hungry.

Under Dhanraj Master, he studied Western music, mastering the guitar and piano while immersing himself in Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert.

"It's God's gift. Learning and mastering musical instruments came to him naturally," Amaran said.

In 1969, he began assisting popular film composer GK Venkatesh.

"GK Venkatesh was my teacher, guru and encouraged me to write orchestra scores," Ilaiyaraaja recalled in an interview later.

He became a guitarist and started writing his own film music compositions.

His early years in Madras followed a gruelling routine: music lessons at dawn, recording sessions through the day and home close to midnight.

He worked on more than 200 films with Venkatesh and others, honing his craft and building industry connections.

His breakthrough came when Panchu Arunachalam, the writer-lyricist of Annakili, invited him to demonstrate his talent to the film's team.

"There was no instrument in the room. He used a wooden table as a percussion instrument and sang. But the producer was impressed," says Amaran.

Arunachalam also renamed the young musician, who was now called Raaja, "Ilaiyaraaja" (young king).

Annakili's success brought fame and more movies to Ilaiyaraaja.

The late 1970s and 1980s reshaped music listening in India. Until then, songs were heard mainly on state-run radio or vinyl records in shops and community halls.

"The advent of cassettes and affordable music systems enabled people to listen to music whenever they wanted. Ilaiyaraaja entered the music scene at the right time as the technology was changing," says Shaji Chen, a music critic.

He soon became the most sought-after composer in south Indian cinema. Audiences showered confetti, clapped and whistled when his name appeared in the opening credits. Many watched films repeatedly for his songs, and at his peak he composed music for more than 50 films in a single year.

For many films, the music was the draw - helping them stay in cinemas for more than 100 days.

"He understands the emotional textures and themes of a film. He brings out those emotions. That's why his scores stand out," says Suanshu Khurana, a music critic.

Among his most celebrated compositions is Rakkamma Kaiya Thattu from Thalapathi (1991), a gangster drama inspired by the Mahabharata.

The song fuses Tamil folk music, Carnatic traditions, Western classical fugue and polka, with shifting tempos and finger snaps linking its contrasting sections.

It was voted the fourth most popular song in the world in a 2002 poll conducted by the BBC World Service.

A relentless experimenter, Ilaiyaraaja could blend Carnatic ragas, Indian folk melodies and the music of Schubert or Mozart into a single composition.

At a recent performance of his Valiant symphony in Chennai, he explained how he wove Schubert's Unfinished Symphony into Idhayam Pogudhey, a song from the 1979 Tamil film Puthiya Vaarpukkal.

"They [styles] were from two different cultures. But I wanted to prove that they were not different; it's the same thing", he said.

Ilaiyaraaja dominated Tamil film music until the rise of AR Rahman in the early 1990s. Before becoming a composer, Rahman spent several years as a keyboard player in Ilaiyaraaja's orchestra.

In 2019, Rahman said at an event working with him Ilaiyaraaja was like studying in a school.

"His life itself has been an inspiration to me," he said.

Ilaiyaraaja remained a major force, scoring hits for films such as Nizhalkuthu, Virumaandi and Cheeni Kum. He also composed albums based on ancient Tamil literature and devotional works, including Thiruvasagam. In 2018, he received the Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian honour.

At 83, Ilaiyaraaja still scores music for a handful of films each year. He recently performed his Valiant Symphony in Chennai and Bengaluru and continues to tour internationally with concert performances.

A new generation is discovering Ilaiyaraaja through streaming platforms and viral remixes. One example is Kiliye Kiliye, a 1983 Malayalam song that recently found new life in the film Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra.

In recent years, he has also made headlines for legal battles over royalties and the unauthorised use of his music.

His rise challenged long-standing social barriers in Carnatic music, a field historically dominated by upper-caste musicians and largely closed to performers from marginalised communities.

Ilaiyaraaja's mastery of the form helped disrupt those hierarchies.

"He transcended social and caste hierarchies through his music," says Krishna.

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Scores of Ukrainian drones target St Petersburg in attack Russia calls 'unprecedented'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg7498kz808o, today

Russian authorities say Ukraine has launched an "unprecedented attack" on and around St Petersburg, as the city hosts the final day of Russia's annual economic forum.

More than 140 drones were shot down over the surrounding Leningrad region, governor Aleksandr Drozdenko said, while the city's governor, Alexander Beglov, urged residents to remain indoors for the first time since the beginning of the war.

Ukraine's president said his forces hit Russia's arsenals and a naval base in what he called a just response to Russian attacks.

It comes just a day after Russia's president delivered a speech at the forum, in which he said there was no point in meeting Zelensky, who had called for direct talks on ending the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky posted on social media on Saturday to say it was "time to end this war", but accused Putin of wanting to "keep fighting".

He said his country's drones had covered a distance of 1,000km (620 miles) to the St Petersburg region, targeting "the enemy navy's arsenals and a base in Kronstadt".

An oil depot in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia - 500km (310 miles) away - had also been hit, he added.

This follows an open letter sent on Thursday by Zelensky calling for face-to-face negotiations with Vladimir Putin to end the war, which began with Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.

He wrote that it would be "wrong to simply wait" for the conflict to once again come to the attention of the US.

On Friday, Putin refused the request for a meeting, reiterating his position that peace talks should precede any ceasefire.

He said he would only end the war when Russia's goals had been met.

Russia's longstanding position is that Ukraine should withdraw from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, as well as abandon efforts to join Nato.

Meanwhile, in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, the Moscow-installed authorities have suspended coach services on two motorways following a campaign of Ukrainian drone strikes targeting Russian logistics.

They urged local residents not to use them "for security reasons".

The Russia-backed administration also banned commuter train services and transportation of groups of children within Luhansk.

Putin had said Russia was in full control of the so-called "Luhansk People's Republic".

In recent weeks, Ukraine's drone forces have been targeting Russian logistics in occupied parts of Ukraine.

An analyst told the BBC that more than 200 lorries and over 30 fuel trucks had been hit since the beginning of May.

Pope Leo begins Spain visit with praise for government

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8d2pgjy4qgo, today

Pope Leo XIV has started his official visit to Spain by praising its government's opposition to wars as well as its support for migrants.

Speaking at a reception with King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia at the royal palace in Madrid, Pope Leo spoke of Spain's "active commitment to peace and solidarity among peoples".

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has clashed with US President Donald Trump over Iran, and with Israel over the war in Gaza and the Pope hailed Spain's "faithful adherence to international law and multilateralism".

During his seven-day visit, Pope Leo will meet victims who experienced sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, as well as groups that look after the welfare of migrants.

Immigration is a divisive issue in Spain, and the Pope's focus on the issue during his tour could be seen as support for the socialist prime minister.

He will also deliver an unprecedented address before the Spanish parliament.

The Chicago-born pontiff has himself been harshly criticised by Trump for his anti-war views.

The message of peace, the Pope said in Madrid, "at present unfortunately strikes some as naive and others as confrontational" but should instead be "welcomed by those who do not shut themselves off in preconceived ideologies".

Speaking to reporters on the plane before landing, the Pope said sexual abuse remained "an open wound" for the Church.

Sanchez's government and the Catholic Church in Spain signed an agreement in March to compensate victims after years of complaints that religious leaders had failed to tackle the issue adequately.

A 2023 study by the Spanish ombudsman's office, which investigates public complaints, estimated that 1.1% of the population had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of members of the clergy or individuals linked to the Church - the equivalent of 440,000 people.

The Church has contested these findings.

On Saturday, King Felipe hailed Pope Leo's "clarity and firmness" on the issue, saying it was "essential in the process of healing and reparation of the damage inflicted".

In the Canary Islands later in the trip, the Pope will be joined by Sanchez to honour thousands of migrants who have died trying to reach Europe.

Nearly 47,000 people reached the Canary Islands in 2024 and the Spanish non-government organisation Caminando Fronteras estimates more than 9,000 migrants have died trying.

Spain's immigration policy under its left-wing government is in stark contrast to much of Europe, and includes plans to give legal status to some 500,000 undocumented migrants, which will allow them to be integrated formally into the workforce.

On a lighter note, when asked by a reporter on the flight to Spain whether he preferred Barcelona or Real Madrid, Leo replied with typical diplomatic tact that the Pope supported all teams.

"But Prevost is for Real Madrid," he added - using his birth name Robert Francis Prevost.

Funeral held for baby shot dead by Israeli troops in occupied West Bank

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly8lgn0x30o, today

The funeral has taken place of a seven-month-old Palestinian baby shot dead by an Israeli soldier while in a car with his family in Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

According to the Israeli military, a shot was fired when soldiers "perceived a threat" from the vehicle in the Tel Rumeida area on Friday evening.

The family say they obeyed soldiers' orders to stop and posed no danger.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has acknowledged the family were "uninvolved civilians" and has expressed "deep sorrow" over the incident. The boy's father has dismissed the IDF's expression of regret.

The body of Sam Fahd Abu Haikal was laid to rest in Hebron, the day after he suffered a fatal wound from the bullet of an Israeli soldier.

His father, Fahd, was joined by a group of mourners as he carried his small shrouded body wrapped in a Palestinian flag to the graveyard.

On Friday, Fahd was driving Sam and other members of his family home from a day out in Bethlehem. They had almost reached the Israeli checkpoint just before their home.

Local residents showed me exactly where their car was hit halfway up the hill to the checkpoint.

Fahd and Sam's grandmother, Firyal, who was also in the car, have given their accounts of what happened next.

Firyal said that the family stopped the car when they saw Israeli soldiers approaching from a side road to their left. Fahd says he raised his hands after bringing the vehicle to a halt.

Both say that gunshots followed.

"The bullets struck the car," Fahd said.

"The soldier that shot at us was 10m away. The bullet penetrated the front windshield, went through my arm, and then struck my son in the head and my wife in the face."

Sam died of his wound in hospital, his mother is still being treated.

At the spot where the shooting happened, local residents pointed out to me traces of what they said was blood on the road.

One local - who did not want to be named - said he heard just two shots fired, adding that there were around four soldiers at the scene.

In its statement on the shooting, the Israeli military said that a single shot was fired after the soldiers "perceived a vehicle accelerating towards them".

But the IDF has acknowledged that the family were what it called "uninvolved civilians" and that the incident is under review.

Dismissing the Israeli expression of regret, Fahd said: "When more than one bullet is fired, when there's no warning shot and no warning at all, it can't be a mistake!"

Tel Rumeida has long been a flashpoint. It is an area of Hebron where Israeli settlers live among Palestinian residents. There is a heavy Israeli military presence intended to provide protection for the settlers.

Local Palestinian residents pointed out that the home of Sam's family is just on the other side of an Israeli checkpoint. A group of young Palestinian children kicking a ball about near the checkpoint belied the tension and potential for violence in the area.

Across the occupied West Bank, there has been a severe escalation in deadly confrontations between Palestinians, Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers since the deadly Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on 7 October 2023.

More than 1,000 Palestinians - both militants and civilians - have been killed in the West Bank since then, according to figures from the Palestinian health ministry.

At least 44 Israelis, civilians and soldiers, have been killed during the same period in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations.

About 1,200 people were killed during the Hamas attacks in southern Israel in 2023 - and 251 abducted into Gaza.

Israel launched a massive retaliatory operation in the Gaza Strip, which has resulted in the death of more than 70,600 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

King's nephew Peter Phillips marries NHS nurse

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj9gl0x7lj9o, today

King Charles III and Queen Camilla were greeted by cheers from well-wishers as they arrived at the wedding of the Princess Royal's son.

Peter Phillips married NHS nurse Harriet Sperling during a private ceremony at All Saints Church in Kemble, Gloucestershire, on Saturday.

The King and Queen joined members of the royal family, including the Prince and Princess of Wales, Zara and Mike Tindall and the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh.

Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice were pictured arriving, alongside their husbands, Jack Brooksbank and Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi.

Members of the public from all over the world travelled to the event and cheered loudly as Prince William and Catherine arrived at All Saints Church.

Metal barriers, forming two pens for the media and public, were erected around the church and road closures were in place.

There were shouts of "hip hip hooray" as bride Sperling arrived along with her three bridesmaids, Phillips' children Savannah, 15, and Isla, 14, as well as Sperling's teenage daughter Georgina.

Phillips and Sperling began dating in 2024 after he split with his first wife, Autumn Kelly, in 2020.

The pair's engagement was announced in August last year.

The wedding falls on the same day as the Epsom Derby, with the King and Queen set to travel from the ceremony to the racecourse, ready to watch the highlight of the racing season and present the trophy to the winner.

Pemil, who came to see the wedding with her daughter Adrielle, said: "We're very excited to be here.

"We live in Malmesbury but are originally from the Philippines. I'd like to give these flowers to any members of the royals, but particularly Kate."

Zoe Fraser, another well-wisher, said: "It's very exciting having the royal family coming to your village.

"We've known about it for two or three months. We've had a special litter pick to clean the village up.

"There's been lots of bell-ringing practice, as they're using local bell ringers."

Son of Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips, the 48-year-old is 19th in the line of succession to the British throne.

All Saints Church, with its tall spire and quaint brickwork, sits in the heart of the rural village.

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A bluffer's guide to the 2026 World Cup

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czr251x5j3zo, today

With just days to go until the World Cup, you're probably hearing a lot more football chat than usual.

But if you're not a superfan, how can you keep up? Our nine easy conversation starters will make you sound like an expert.

It'll be bigger than ever

The 2026 edition takes place across the US, Canada and Mexico - marking the first time that the world's top football competition has been co-hosted by three nations.

There'll also be more matches than ever, as the tournament has been expanded from 32 to 48 teams. Critics accuse Fifa organisers of watering down the contest, but fans of Cape Verde, Curacao, Jordan and Uzbekistan are happy to see their countries making their debuts.

The final will be held in New Jersey and will include, for the first time, a glitzy half-time show, much like the Super Bowl - American football's biggest fixture. Madonna, Shakira and BTS are all set to perform.

Two icons are expected to bow out

Cristiano Ronaldo, 41, and Lionel Messi, who'll turn 39 during the tournament, have been selected to captain Portugal and Argentina respectively.

Ronaldo has confirmed that this will be his final outing on the global stage. Many think it could also be the last tournament for Messi, whose nation won the competition in 2022.

The two living legends could both make history as the first male players to appear at six World Cups. Mexico goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa, 40, has also been selected for a sixth tournament, though he hasn't had time on the pitch on each occasion.

There's pressure on the hosts

Hosting historically gives a nation an edge - and since the first World Cup in 1930, about one in four tournaments have been won by a country staging the competition.

But recent editions haven't been kind to host nations: South Africa (in 2010) and Qatar (in 2022) were eliminated early in the tournament, and Brazil (in 2014) suffered a humiliating 7-1 defeat to Germany in the semi-finals.

Mexico made the last eight both times they hosted, in 1970 and in 1986, and the USA made the last 16 in 1994. The Canadians are hosting for the first time.

Latin America will bring the vibes

The supporters of world champions Argentina are something special, says BBC Sport's chief football writer, Phil McNulty. One of his top sights at the Qatar tournament was thousands of their passionate fans snaking in long, noisy lines into and out of metro stations.

But, Phil adds, Brazil's fans bring a carnival atmosphere to every city they play in - literally. The samba bands and their rhythms follow them around, and the World Cup is a combination of the things they love most.

And Mexico's games at Mexico City's magnificent Estadio Azteca will revive memories of Brazil winning the 1970 World Cup final against Italy there - as well as Diego Maradona's infamous "Hand Of God" against England in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final, followed by his spectacular second goal.

If the cards fall right for England, and they end up playing there in the last 16, the atmosphere will be stunning.

Some countries treat matches like a national holiday...

The Brazilians also make a big deal of the World Cup back at home - and who can blame them, given that they've won the tournament more times (five) than any other nation.

Matches are treated as national events that reshape daily life, BBC Brasil reporter Iara Diniz explains. The country's National Congress, for example, adjusts its schedule around match times: sessions aren't held during games, and working hours are shortened so people can watch.

Across the country, streets are decorated with flags and public spaces are painted in national colours. This year, in Rio de Janeiro, the city government will even give out prizes for the best decorated streets.

In Scotland, some public-sector workers - including NHS employees and staff from five councils - will be able to take off 15 June, the day after the team's first fixture of the tournament, against Haiti.

... and some reward their players better than others

As if the incentive of winning football's top prize wasn't enough, players are also offered financial bonuses by their national associations. These vary significantly between countries - with some rewarding appearances, some rewarding progression through the tournament, and others using a combination of both, says Prof Rob Wilson of the University Campus of Football Business.

Some countries reportedly offer their players hundreds of thousands of pounds each if they win the famous golden trophy - though little information is made public.

Germany has one of the most transparent associations. The winning 2014 squad were each given 300,000 euros (£260,000; $350,000).

But not every association can offer bonuses on the same level. 2014 was also the year that players from three separate African nations - Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria - ended up in dispute with their national authorities over bonus payments, which were reported to have been relatively low five-figure sums.

Some managers have already been there, done that

France boss Didier Deschamps is part of an all-time elite group of just three men who've won the World Cup as both player and manager.

But he's not the only former star we'll see leading his country from the dugout. More than a dozen of the tournament's managers previously played at a World Cup.

And most of them will be in charge of the same nations that they represented - with some exceptions, like Mauricio Pochettino, who's heading up the USA but played for Argentina.

The tournament already has an unlikely social star

Ronaldo and Messi are the World Cup's most popular players on Instagram, with more than half a billion followers each.

By contrast, Tim Payne, a defender picked for New Zealand, was recently nicknamed the tournament's "least-known" footballer, with fewer than 5,000 followers.

That was until the intervention of Argentine influencer Valen Scarsini, also known as elscarso, who mounted a campaign to secure Payne more love online.

The result? Payne now has more than four million followers to his name.

And English and Scottish stars are packing home comforts... like Uno cards, slippers and Irn-Bru

Boots, sun cream, toothbrush: players on World Cup duty have plenty of essential items to remember.

Last time, England stars revealed they'd also made space for certain other luxuries: comfy slippers (Harry Kane), a deck of Uno cards (Jude Bellingham) and even an Xbox games console (Declan Rice). Rice said he also took an additional bag to bring home the trophy, but returned with his suitcase empty.

It's been 28 years since the Scotland team last packed their bags to go to a World Cup. But during another recent tournament, Euro 2020, squad members said captain Andy Robertson had surprised them by packing goodie-bags of Scottish treats - including cans of fizzy orange Irn-Bru.

Rumours and speculation as fans forecast date of Taylor Swift's wedding

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqjpj80qz1ro, yesterday

Nothing stirs up Taylor Swift's fervent fan base quite like new material.

But in lieu of an album drop, the mystery surrounding the Grammy-winning artist's upcoming nuptials is doing just as much to mobilise her fandom.

But the global superstar - known for long-game teases and hidden Easter eggs that fans love to decode - has been coy on details of her wedding to American football star, Travis Kelce.

Since Swift and Kelce announced their engagement in August with an Instagram post that was liked 37.5m times, Swifties worldwide have been digging for clues about when the wedding will be and what it will look like.

Swift hasn't released any specifics about the event, which has been dubbed America's "royal wedding". On the BBC's Graham Norton Show, Swift hinted that it could be a big event with a large guest list, but has kept a tight lid on specifics.

It's led the internet, pop-culture enthusiasts and Swifties alike working to fill the blank space, with speculation ranging from possible to far-fetched.

The BBC has reached out to Swift's team for comment.

For years, Swift has kept her fans curious, engaged and part of her narrative. The savvy storyteller is an expert at foreshadowing - dropping subtle hints about big releases in everything from her outfit choices to her website aesthetics. That has primed her devotees for this ultimate clue hunt.

But the 36-year-old bride-to-be has also made clear that Easter eggs will never apply to her personal life, leaving the world connecting dots that seemingly don't exist.

"She's got a very interesting and complicated relationship with her own fame and her own celebrity," says Joanna Weiss, a journalist and co-author of Taylor Swift: Album by Album, and a Swiftie since the 1989 album.

"The way she's able to build a fandom and a community and seed it with the clever things that she does on the internet made me really appreciate her, not just as an artist, but as a business person, cultural figure, and someone who understands how to navigate and manipulate the culture," Weiss says.

When could it be?

Most people speculate the ceremony will take place in the summer, before Kelce starts training for the next football season in mid-to-late July.

And with Swift's self-proclaimed penchant for numerology, she has long incorporated meaningful numbers into her albums, songs and social media posts, some believe the date could involve her favourite number: 13.

A nod to her 13 December birthday, the number is frequently featured in her work, including 13-second song introductions, writing the numeral on her hand during tours and reserving track 13 on albums for special songs (The Lucky One on Red, and Clean on 1989).

Fans online have hypothesised various dates - including some a bit far-reaching:

7 June - Numerically written as 07-06 in the US, it adds to 13.

13 June - Because June is a popular wedding month in the US due to the warm weather, and the 13th is a Saturday, a prime night for a wedding.

6 July - Numerally written as 06-07, it adds to 13.

3 or 4 July - Swift loves the US Independence Day holiday, and hosts large parties at her Rhode Island estate annually. If planned then, her nuptials would coincide with the US' 250th birthday.

But the guesses are just that. After all, if the world did know, it would likely cause a frenzy.

"For safety and security reasons, if there was to be a date leaked, it might be because it's a decoy date," says Caitlin Curley, a marketing management student and member of the Swiftie Society at the University of Galway. "It would drag people's attention elsewhere."

Curley has been a Swiftie since Swift's 2008 Fearless album.

What about the dress? Her cats?

Fans, like Curley, who spoke to the BBC, pondered whether the superstar will wear a romantic lace gown or if she'll opt for cowboy boots over heels for the festivities, as a nod to her country-music roots. Others wondered if Swift will sing at the reception, if Kelce would have a groom's cake, and whether the ceremony might incorporate her beloved cats.

"Obviously they're going to be involved, all three of them," says Ari Perez-Mejia, a professor, podcaster and Swiftie since 2008.

"Will Benjamin Button carry the rings, or will Olivia have them?" he wondered, of Swift's favourite felines.

Kristie Frederick Daugherty, a Swiftie, poet and author, says Swift-centric forums she's part of across Facebook, Instagram, Substack and Reddit feature fans showing "a ton of respect for the privacy that she's wanting".

They're not opining out of entitlement but out of excitement for a singer who has grown up alongside her fans, she says, noting that conjecture has been in the spirit of joy for a person they love finally getting her happy ending.

Meanwhile, online prediction markets have been less innocuous, launching bets about when and where the ceremony will take place.

Tabloids are running with anonymous - and sometimes conflicting - sources about possible invitation leaks and potential dates and locations.

Gossip about the celebrity guest list has run amok.

Where could it be?

Swift has ties to several US cities and guesswork about the locale has reached fever pitch.

She owns property in various US states and has sung about London, New York City and Nashville, throwing those cities in as contenders.

But Kansas City, Missouri - where she and Kelce met - is also thought to be in the running, as are her and Kelce's home states of Pennsylvania and Ohio, which could also be meaningful venues to host the festivities.

Earlier this week, a Rhode Island congressman said the singer "passed" on hosting the event in his state, following a viral rumour that a high-profile bride had paid another couple to switch their wedding date at a venue near Swift's coastal mansion in the state - something later debunked by the venue.

Who might attend?

Amelia Knox, a moderator for the private Facebook group The Swiftie's Society, is hoping for a reunion between Swift and guests of The Graham Norton Show who starred in her recent Opalite music video. But very few attendees have confirmed their participation in the nuptials.

"I would just be tickled to have all of them there engaging in some silly goosery," Knox, who has been a Swiftie since 2005, tells the BBC.

Podcasters and influencers have been dissecting the parade of celebrity friends likely to attend, from longtime friend Selena Gomez, to frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff - but none have confirmed.

Kelce's sister-in-law and Queer Eye star Antoni Porowski, a friend to the couple, have evaded questions, too. Even BBC Radio 1 host Greg James - who Swift invited personally while promoting her latest album - won't dish any details. Singer Benson Boone and actress Suki Waterhouse have become some of the few so far to confirm they'll be going - but haven't provided any details.

Some fans are curious to see whether her one-time bestie actress Blake Lively, who drew Swift into her legal saga with her It Ends With Us co-star Justin Baldoni, will attend.

It's also not yet clear if any lucky fans will get an invite, a theory perhaps wrapped in wishful thinking that cropped up due to Swift inviting devout fans to her home in the past.

Others are curious about the bridal party, wondering if Gomez and childhood friend Abigail Anderson Berard, who has been in multiple Swift music videos, will be part.

"We don't mind the gamification of Taylor Swift, as it were," says Dani Winchester, an event planner and co-host of the Taylearning podcast. "It can be fun to speculate - what will the dress look like, who might be a bridesmaid, how big will the wedding be?"

The problem is when people forget that Swift is a real person, and not a "video game character", she says.

As for invitations, some online believe they could go out last-minute, even potentially informing guests on the day of the event, showing the great lengths she might go to to maintain secrecy.

Wedding watchers remain sceptical of what little has surfaced so far but Swift fans, many of whom have developed a deep, one-sided relationship with the artist, plan to continue in vain to make guesses based on what they've learned about the singer.

But many told the BBC they are perfectly content to "be fed" after the happy day, when Swift decides to share their wedding with the world.

"We only enter her personal life in ways that she invites us to," says Victoria Morton, co-founder of TSwift Dance Party Canada, though she admits she and the rest of the collective world are "tremendously excited and waiting on every little detail".

Your middle-aged friend starts dating your daughter - drama explores what happens next

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy02r2863k4o, yesterday

For years, Nicola Walker has played detectives, lawyers and women holding complicated lives together. But her latest role in comedy-drama Alice and Steve may be the closest she's come to playing herself.

The six-part series, written by Sophie Goodhart and co-starring Jemaine Clement, begins with a friendship-shattering premise. Alice (Walker) discovers her best friend Steve (Clement) is dating her 26-year-old daughter, Izzy. What follows is part comedy and part emotional warfare as two middle-aged friends spiral into a battle of resentment, jealousy and revenge.

The show's central dilemma may be extreme, but when asked how she would react in Alice's shoes, Walker says the parenting emotions at its heart feel very familiar.

"My son is older and has had a few relationships and, as a mother, every one is unexpected," she tells BBC News.

"It's really hard going from having complete control of them as this small entity who believes everything you say and, in their eyes, you're great at everything.

"Then they become teenagers, they start bringing people home they desire and it's a massive parenting shift."

The challenge, she says, is learning when not to intervene.

"You have to just keep your mouth shut, which is the opposite of what Alice does.

"You have to become bovine, my friend told me. You have to just go 'mm-hmm, mm-hmm' and behave like a large cow around them, just pretending to agree," she laughs.

It's perhaps no surprise then that Walker feels a close connection to Alice.

Despite playing everything from detective Cassie Stuart in Unforgotten to divorce lawyer Hannah Stern in The Split, she says this is the character who feels most like her.

"I'm always playing Alice in every job I've ever done," she says. "I think Alice is nearer to me than anyone else I've ever played."

She explains that it's because she has the same "rage" as her and "being a parent drives you completely loopy - but you would do anything for your children, so I understand the basics of her personality".

That relatability is part of what makes Alice more than just an overbearing parent as, behind the chaos and comedy, she's a woman struggling to accept that her daughter is making choices she can no longer control.

Steve, too, is more complicated than the show's premise initially suggests.

While audiences may assume he's simply a middle-aged man dating a much younger woman, Clement says he was drawn to the character because of the conflict at the heart of him.

"What makes Steve human is conflict within yourself - he has something he really wants, which is something he shouldn't do, and that's a great conflict when you're acting."

The Kiwi actor adds that he suspects many viewers will make up their minds about Steve before they've even watched the series and "assume he's a sleazy guy".

But both actors argue the show is less interested in assigning blame than exploring an uncomfortable situation from multiple perspectives.

"The writer is careful to show you that if it wasn't Alice's daughter, these two people might have a good relationship," says Walker. "It's hard to point the finger at any one character and give them blame."

'A true hate story'

That refusal to cast anyone as a clear-cut villain is something critics have highlighted in their reviews.

In its four-star review, Radio Times described Alice and Steve as an "impressively wrong-footing drama about love and hate", praising its ability to balance sharp comedy with more poignant themes.

The review called it a "true hate story" and noted that "while the romantic relationship is the staging point for all the dramatic tension, the more interesting story is about the friendship it's destroying".

The Hollywood Reporter was similarly positive, calling the series "sharply funny and unexpectedly touching".

Rather than asking audiences to choose sides, Alice and Steve repeatedly challenges them to sympathise with people making decisions they might not agree with.

That's certainly what Walker and Clement are hoping for.

"People believe they know where it's going but we can promise them it doesn't go where you think. The writer is much better than that," says Walker.

Clement agrees: "Neither of us predicted what would happen at the end."

The series also taps into wider conversations about age-gap relationships and the way they are perceived.

Clement, best known for What We Do in the Shadows and Flight of the Conchords, says he thinks people "would be harsher if it was an older woman with a younger man".

Walker, meanwhile, says one of the things she loved most about the script, written by Sex Education and Rivals writer Sophie Goodhart, is its portrayal of ageing.

"There's no self-pity in Alice by the end and I don't think I've ever read that coming from an older woman before. It's always layered with, 'I've still got it'. But I love the honesty of a woman saying, 'I'm done and it's not my time, it's their time'."

As for what advice they would give modern daters, both admit they may be out of touch.

"We haven't dated for a while," Clement laughs, before eventually settling on one suggestion: "Go to the cinema."

Walker is even less convinced she should be offering guidance.

"My advice is pointless," she says. "I'm keeping my mouth shut."

Given everything she's just said about parenting, perhaps that's a lesson Alice could have benefited from too.

Alice and Steve is available to watch on Disney+ from 8 June.

Police officer turned Love Island US contestant faces hometown backlash

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpqprxlqe0po, today

For one Love Island USA contestant, the drama started before even entering the villa.

The decision by a police officer in the US state of Pennsylvania to leave the force and chase love on one of the country's most popular reality TV shows has ignited tempers and become the talk of the town in his home of Bethlehem.

After Sean Reifel was announced as a cast member of the dating show last week, the mayor of the city of 75,000 residents expressed frustration over his departure - less than a year after he'd joined the department.

"I never thought I'd see the day in America where reality show participation wins out over being a police officer," Mayor J. William Reynolds said.

"Our police department spent a lot of time training and we paid thousands of taxpayer dollars to send him to the police academy," the mayor said, according to Fox8.

The vacant position cannot be filled until next year, he added.

Reifel's former boss, Police Chief Michelle Kott, told the BBC that while the department respects his decision, "I would be less than candid if I didn't acknowledge my disappointment in losing another police officer".

Kott said that with Reifel's resignation, the department now has 16 officer vacancies. He has noted Reifel's decision was not a good look.

"Law enforcement agencies across the United States continue to face significant recruiting and retention challenges, and every vacancy affects our organization and the community we serve," the police chief added.

The drama caused a stir among residents in the area known for its lush greenery, colonial architecture and industrial history.

Kristine Ruff, a small business owner who lives in the area, was getting her hair done at a local salon.

Ruff recounted the salon owner saying, "Oh my God, did you hear? One of the contestants is from Bethlehem. He's a cop. I was like, 'Oh my God, that's crazy.'"

Ruff, whose kids go to school in Bethlehem, told the BBC she immediately texted her sister, who said: "Yeah, we were just talking about it.'"

Everyone in the area is "sending the show clips from Instagram to each other, saying, like, 'Can you believe that it's a local guy that's on the show?'" Ruff said.

But the controversy with local officials has seeped into the excitement. Ruff said she's watching the show this season as Bethlehem is thrust into the national spotlight.

"Listen, I wish there was a different reason why we're being put on the map," she quipped. But, "if it gets more people to learn about this pretty part of the country, then I'm OK with that."

Residents in one community Facebook group appeared divided over the evolving saga.

"This is such a great opportunity for him. I understand the older people think it's silly (and that's OK), but this little appearance could potentially set him up for life!" one community member wrote.

"Truthfully the mayor should be ashamed of himself. The fact that this man put his life on the line for HIS city and then be criticized... don't criticize a man who has kept us safe," the person continued.

Another resident wrote, "Good for him. You do you boo!!"

Others weren't so supportive, some arguing they had paid tax dollars to help train him.

One person said the content of this type of show was not "becoming of a police officer".

"It's all about the work ethic," another person remarked, noting this is a short-term opportunity that could impact his career. "I doubt any police department anywhere is gonna put any more energy into him after what he did to his previous department, which is let them hang low."

Reifel's family has taken to social media to defend him, arguing the claims that taxpayers wasted money on his training were overblown.

His sister, Brice Marie, said the city and police force could have used his appearance as an opportunity to "connect with the community, generate positive publicity for the town, and help improve perceptions of law enforcement".

"Instead, they chose a response that will likely reinforce the stereotypes they should be working to change."

Reifel's mother, Beth Reifel Bow, also chimed in on social media, explaining statements by city leaders that they had paid for his training in the police academy were inflated. She said he had already worked as an officer before moving to Bethlehem and had some training.

"I'm not saying they didn't do any training, but they also weren't fully honest about all the details," she said.

Bow said she is proud of her son. "It is a brave decision to put yourself out there to find love under the microscope of the world."

The BBC has contacted Reifel's mother and sister.

The Peacock reality series, a spinoff of the popular UK show, films in real time while episodes air almost daily. The season premier on Tuesday introduced viewers across the US - and globe - to Reifel.

In the first episode, he talked about his work on the force, telling viewers that working as an officer makes "you feel like you made a difference" each day.

He also shared a story about a woman in his community calling him "officer sexy pants", which he says was a "hit at work".

"I'm not a model, not an actor, I'm a police officer actually," Reifel said. "You could be having the worst day of your life, and I'll just help you sift through that."

On Love Island, the grand prize is $100,000, though the bigger prize is typically the fame and notoriety that comes with becoming an islander - including the lucrative brand deals and overnight influencer status on social media.

Reifel was sworn into the Bethlehem Police Department in August 2025, according to a post on the department's social media.

The starting salary for an officer in Bethlehem is just under $70,000 (£52,000), according to the department's website.

'It was either killed or be killed' - ongoing nightmares of an ex-child soldier in Somalia

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c98r7zxdxe7o, today

Shopkeeper Yusuf Ali still battles with memories of his time as a child soldier fighting on the streets of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu.

The 34-year-old became embroiled in the Islamist insurgency, which erupted nearly 20 years ago, and while city's urban landscape is healing, few resources are devoted to those still suffering with the psychological scars of the conflict.

Warning: This article contains details some readers may find upsetting.

When he was 14 years old, a coalition of Sharia courts seized power in Somalia and provided some sense of stability in a country that had been riven by devastating clan warfare since the regime of President Siad Barre collapsed in 1991.

But the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) marked the first instance of political Islam gaining a foothold in the African continent since al-Qaeda's 11 September 2001 attacks on the US.

Policymakers in Washington viewed the UIC with hostility, accusing it of having ties to al-Qaeda. Its military youth wing was known as al-Shabab, meaning "The Lads".

In December 2006, thousands of Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia under the cover of American drones with the aim of toppling the courts just six months after they had taken over.

Ethiopia's invasion was deeply unpopular in Somalia and was met with fierce opposition as al-Shabab and its allies, including a coalition of splinter groups known as the Muqawama, meaning "Resistance", clubbed together to fight it.

At the time Ali lived in Huriwaa, an impoverished district in the north of Mogadishu.

Aged one, he had lost his father - killed while taking part in what has been dubbed the "Battle of Mogadishu", when Somali fighters infamously clashed with US soldiers after the downing of two American Black Hawk helicopters.

It was hard growing up without his dad, but it was the guerrilla warfare that overtook Mogadishu during the Ethiopian invasion that changed him forever.

"At night, I'd often hear a buzzing sound. I was in secondary school and didn't realise it then, but these were planes surveilling our neighbourhood," Ali tells the BBC.

By the spring of 2007, fighting intensified with heavy shelling and bombardment of densely populated civilian neighbourhoods suspected of sheltering insurgents.

"On one of the nights, a large barrage of shells hit our area and some of them struck our neighbour's house. Our house shook and I felt like the soil under my feet had moved - then I started hearing screams," Ali recalls.

Frantic residents struggled to lift the rubble and that was when he saw a lifeless body.

"Someone aimed a torch and I saw blood stains and a body lying nearby. A young girl that looked around my age, but she wasn't moving. I've seen death, but nothing prepared me for that night."

The family fled to the Elasha Biyaha district north-west of Mogadishu, which had become a refuge for hundreds of thousands of people.

But many young people, including boys his age, were eager to return to the city and fight those referred to as "Gaalo" - a term in the Somali language meaning infidels, used to refer to non-Muslims.

"From the sermons at the mosque that called on people to defend their country from the Gaalo, everyone was fired up," he says.

This drew him to Muqawama, which included former army commanders.

"They trained us in small arms fire… We practised hit-and-run attacks," he says.

Ali, by now aged 16, then found himself in Mogadishu with other young combatants engaged in urban warfare. They were given guns - but not paid - and would eat together with the other fighters.

Some of those he was trained to kill were also young, including Somali soldiers allied to the transitional government who were fighting alongside Ethiopia troops.

"Street by street, from windows and doorways, we were firing on Ethiopian soldiers and the Somali soldiers with them," he says.

"At times I'd find myself shooting… and as we advanced and noticed a dead [Somali] soldier was around my age, I paused but then would keep moving because the fighting was so intense. It was either killed or be killed - and this was a cause we were willing to die for."

He says Somalis fighting on the side of the Ethiopians were viewed as traitors for "betraying their country". The transitional government was recognised by the United Nations, US and other Western countries as Somalia's legitimate authority.

From 2007 to 2009 Mogadishu was largely reduced to rubble. Ethiopia, backed by the US, found itself coming under growing international scrutiny over its intervention in Somalia, as accusations of war crimes committed by all warring parties intensified.

Its army eventually withdrew and the Islamist militants left behind splintered and turned against each other. One moderate faction joined the interim government against the hardliners.

Ali found himself at a crossroads, questioning if it was a war worth fighting: "Some of the men I fought alongside were now fighting their former comrades.

"My mother and siblings wanted better for me. And so did my uncle - and he urged my family to let me go to South Africa and live with him to start afresh."

In 2009, Ali was smuggled to Johannesburg by road where he remained for five years working in his uncle's shop.

But xenophobic attacks in South Africa - that often target outlets owned by foreigners - drove him home to Mogadishu.

He found a city rebuilding itself: a functioning airport, paved roads some lined with restaurants and street lighting keeping once-feared neighbourhoods alight after dark.

But politically it was a mess. Al-Shabab had morphed into a powerful, hardline militant group controlling large swathes of the country outside Mogadishu where it imposed a strict form of Islam, including restrictive dress codes and banning music.

It had a large network of spies inside the city - and organised frequent targeted assassinations against those working in the fledgling government, which was backed by the international community and an African Union force.

"No-one trusted each other. No-one dared to speak about politics publicly. Your own neighbours could be spying on you and you wouldn't even know it."

He felt partly to blame for how his community had been impacted: "We fought to defend our country, people and religion but only made things worse on them all these years later."

Even now - married and with a four-year-old son - Ali is constantly reminded of the battles.

"I still recognise some of the houses I had shot my gun from and wonder if the current family living there knows about the blood stains that once covered their home."

He has never had any counselling or other help to get over his experiences - nor have other ex-child soldiers he knows who have become drug addicts.

"In Somalia, we don't talk about our problems," he says.

"I try to find peace through prayer. We pray and keep things to ourselves. This is the culture here and is the reason why many people are hurting but most don't realise it."

Ilyas Adam, a human rights legal consultant with the Coalition of Somali Human Rights Defenders, says such mental anguish is widespread among young Somalis.

"The normalisation of violence in some areas means that trauma often goes unrecognised and untreated, making it a silent but pervasive crisis," he tells the BBC.

"When trauma is normalised, oftentimes individuals do not recognise their need for help. Complicating matters are the cultural barriers, where mental health is not openly discussed."

He feels post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be as debilitating as combat.

"The long-term effects include chronic mental health conditions, social exclusion and stigma or increased risk of re-recruitment or involvement in violence," Adam says.

A 2021 World Health Organization report said Somalia's mental health services were almost non-existent - with no community-based services. A WHO official quoted two years later said there were only 82 mental health professionals in the whole country.

Armed groups continue to recruit children in Somalia with more than 2,800 cases recorded by the UN between 2021 and 2024.

The use of children in combat - some as young as eight - was mainly by al-Shabab, still considered one of al-Qaeda's most successful affiliates, but the UN report did find 101 cases in the government forces.

Mursal Khalif, an MP and head of the Ministry of Defence's Child Protection Unit, says efforts to stop such recruitment can face resistance - "some even viewed it as a Western agenda".

But he says things are improving slowly with initiatives like vocational schools for former child soldiers.

Yet in Huriwaa, where Ali lives once more with his family, there are no state services - it is a neighbourhood still feared because it used to be an al-Shabab stronghold.

Government officials and employees of international organisations rarely venture into the area, and if they do, it is always under tight security.

At sunset, the call to prayer echoes as Ali heads to his local mosque - the site of a deadly raid in 2008 by Ethiopian forces who abducted 41 children suspected to be insurgent trainees.

After an outcry the children were all freed, but for Ali the mosque remains a reminder of the outrages of the past - and those the Somali people continue to suffer - and what appears to be the country's "never-ending cycle of violence".

The government is still battling al-Shabab, while this week government forces and opposition fighters exchanged gunfire in Mogadishu in a row over delayed elections.

"The fighting is still ongoing, people are suffering and two decades later, more countries than ever before have troops deployed in Somalia."

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

The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8e8e7g0r82o, today

Can a company take away something you've already paid for?

In the world of online video games, some already do. Publishers can decide to switch off a game's servers, often leaving it effectively unplayable.

Stop Killing Games, a growing consumer rights campaign started by American YouTuber Ross Scott in 2024, is challenging that practice.

In January, the group submitted a petition featuring nearly 1.3 million signatures to the European Commission, triggering a public hearing in the European Parliament in April. What began as an online campaign is now awaiting a decision from one of the EU's most powerful institutions.

Scott's campaign began following an announcement from the major studio Ubisoft, saying it would shut down the online-only racing game The Crew in 2024.

The French company said it was taking the game, which attracted more than 12 million players during its lifetime, offline, citing "upcoming server infrastructure and licensing constraints".

For players such as Chemicalflood, who told me he had been playing The Crew for nearly a decade, the move - which left the game unplayable - felt personal.

"I was around 18 at the time of the launch - it was a big part of my adult life growing up," he said. "It was a great escape from hardship at the time, so it has always been something special to me."

Over the years, he said, the game became something he shared with his children, who enjoyed exploring its virtual recreation of the United States.

"The shutdown itself wasn't upsetting," he explained. "But how they handled it was the kick in the teeth."

For Chemicalflood and many fans like him, the issue was not that Ubisoft ended support. It was that players lost access altogether.

The announcement from Ubisoft caught the attention of Scott, also known online as Accursed Farms, who had already been creating content around the issue of ownership around games for several years.

"I just hate seeing creative works effectively destroyed," he told me.

He quickly decided to start a campaign, naming it Stop Killing Games - the killing referring to when "every copy of that game that's ever been sold has been disabled, and no one on the planet can run it".

Whammy4, a gamer who founded the fan community The Crew Unlimited and helped lead efforts to preserve the game after its shutdown, likened it to "someone just breaking into your home and stealing your bike or your car".

"You buy a physical copy of a game, you bring it home and install the game, you play it for some amount of time. Then all of a sudden the publisher completely destroys all copies of the game worldwide, including yours."

"No refunds, no actual heads-up at the time of purchase, and nothing you can do to keep it at all," he said.

Industry response

Ubisoft has already defended its position in court. Responding to a proposed class-action lawsuit brought by two The Crew players in California, the studio argued that customers had purchased a licence to use the game, not unlimited ownership rights, and that players had been warned online services would not be available forever.

The lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice in June 2025, after the plaintiffs voluntarily withdrew the case.

The wider games industry has also pushed back against the campaign.

Video Games Europe, which represents many of the industry's largest publishers, said shutting down online services "must be an option" when games are no longer commercially viable.

It also warned that some of the campaign's proposals could make online-only games significantly more expensive to develop.

"In no way are we asking companies to keep servers running or services going, they can end it any time they want," said Scott.

Instead, he and his fellow campaigners argue that when a game is shut down it should be done "responsibly", with publishers considering "end-of-life plans" such as updating the game to work offline or releasing software that allows players to continue running it.

Live-service games

While The Crew may have lit the touchpaper for Stop Killing Games' launch, there have been many games before and since which have suddenly been shut down.

The issue has become more prominent as online-dependent "live-service" games have grown across the industry.

In May, Sony announced plans to discontinue support for the multiplayer title Destruction AllStars.

Meanwhile, Sony's live-service shooter Concord was taken offline less than two weeks after launch in 2024 after struggling to attract players, although customers were offered full refunds.

Joost van Dreunen, a professor of games business at NYU Stern, argues that unlike books, films or music, many games are built around communities and online interaction.

"Games, especially live-service games, are more like digital communities and much less so consumable experiences," he said.

But sustaining those communities has become increasingly difficult in a market dominated by long-running successes such as Fortnite and Call of Duty, he explained.

As audiences shrink, publishers often decide to shut down servers and move on.

"Every new live-service game invents its own demise," van Dreunen said.

The campaign reaches parliament

The campaign is now being fought on multiple fronts, and as such features a team of people, including organiser Moritz Katzner, advocating for it alongside Scott.

The European Commission must respond to the European Citizens' Initiative - the petition brought by the group - by 27 July.

In March, French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir launched legal action against Ubisoft over the shutdown of The Crew, arguing that players were misled about the permanence of their purchase and that some of the company's contract terms were unfair. The case remains ongoing - Ubisoft said it did not comment on ongoing litigation when asked for comment.

The UK government has so far resisted calls for new legislation.

Although a Stop Killing Games petition secured a parliamentary debate, with over 100,000 signatures, ministers said they had no plans to amend consumer law.

"Those selling games must comply with existing requirements in consumer law, and we will continue to monitor this issue," they added.

Meanwhile, in the United States, campaigners have backed California's proposed Protect Our Games Act, which would require publishers to either keep games playable after online support ends or offer refunds.

The bill has already passed the California State Assembly and is now being considered by the State Senate.

For Scott, the journey from campaign launch to parliamentary debate has been a long and exhausting one, although one he could also not imagine abandoning.

Both he and his team are aware there may still be many months, maybe years until they can potentially put the campaign to rest, but the debate it has sparked shows no sign of disappearing any time soon.

US and Iran exchange strikes in Gulf in latest test of ceasefire

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgzgyjk2weo, today

The shaky ceasefire between the US and Iran has been tested further, with American forces targeting Iranian drones and radar sites, and Iran firing missiles at US bases in the Gulf.

The US military said the attacks were in response to four Iranian "one-way attack drones" launched towards the Strait of Hormuz, which it said "posed an immediate threat to regional maritime traffic". The drones were shot down, US Central Command (Centcom) said.

Tehran called the US strikes a "flagrant" violation of the ceasefire agreement between the two countries.

Iran retaliated by firing ballistic missiles at two US air bases in Kuwait, and US Navy facilities in Bahrain, Iran's Irib news agency reported.

Bahrain and Kuwait both condemned the attacks, saying the drone and missile fire had been successfully repelled.

Centcom said initial assessments showed that of the seven Iranian missiles fired at the two Gulf states, six were intercepted and one did not reach its target.

The United Arab Emirates and Qatar also denounced the Iranian attacks on their Gulf neighbours.

The Iranian foreign ministry said in a statement that the US strikes on radar installations in Sirik and at Qeshm island were a "flagrant" violation of the ceasefire and "an attack on the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Islamic Republic of Iran", according to news agencies.

"The US attack demonstrates this country's complete disregard for the principles of international law and the United Nations Charter," the statement added.

Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) said it had hit "enemy bases" as retaliation to the American strikes.

There have been several such exchanges of fire, threatening the ceasefire that has been in place since April.

However, even with the conflict between the two nations continuing, the US has granted visas to Iran's World Cup football team, ahead of their first match in Los Angeles on 15 June.

It is the first time the competition will see a host nation receive the team of a country it is at war with.

The attacks occurred as ceasefire negotiations between the US and Iran stalled, with a deal to end the war failing to advance, and US media reporting that President Donald Trump had requested changes to the terms of an agreement.

On Monday, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said the US was "constantly changing its views and putting forward new or contradictory demands".

The US and Israel launched wide-ranging strikes on Iran on 28 February, sparking conflict across the Middle East.

Iran responded by attacking Israel and US-allied states in the Gulf, and effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which around 20% of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas travels.

That oil comes not only from Iran, but also Gulf states such as Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The closing of the strait sent oil prices soaring globally.

Shortly after a ceasefire was agreed in early April, the US established a blockade of Iranian ports, which Trump said would remain "in full force and effect until an agreement is reached, certified, and signed".

Father and daughter battle storms and health scare as they sail around the world

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c172k1p8kzxo, today

A father and daughter from Australia have been putting their relationship to the ultimate test - by sailing together around the world.

Rob Donald and his 19-year-old daughter Freya set sail from New South Wales, Australia in March 2025, heading for Norway.

The pair have been through storms, a serious health scare and a close encounter with a tiger shark in an adventure that Freya said had been weird and difficult at times but also one that she "wouldn't trade for the world".

The BBC caught up with the Donalds in Penzance, Cornwall, as they rested and prepared for the final leg of their epic voyage.

The all-wood yacht Misha was built in 1937 by a famous Dutch boat building company.

Rob bought the 9.8m (31ft) vessel in 1989 in France then sailed it to Australia and then did another trip to France and back.

He had a dream to take the boat back to the Netherlands and show them it was still going after all these years, and that is what inspired the present voyage.

Rob, 59, said his wife Hanne, did not want to go on the trip and his daughter Freya, who was 18 at the time, said she would go instead.

The experienced sailor who has captained big boats for 30 years said people thought Freya would not last a week, yet they have logged 18,000 nautical miles in 15 months.

Freya said she passed the time by crocheting and watching movies, but really enjoyed the sailing experience, adding: "It was really really weird for starters but I got used to it pretty quickly but there were definitely points when I was very sick of it, but looking back, I wouldn't trade it for the world.

"We did an Indian Ocean crossing and it was 24 days at sea in quite rough seas, and then we got to Madagascar after all those days and it was just the most beautiful country ever.

"Chilling with the lemurs was top of my bucket list so that was probably the best experience I've had."

Cancer treatment mid-voyage

It is a journey that has had its challenges.

Rob said: "We left Sydney via Darwin, to Bali, Indonesia and then across to Madagascar and then down to Mozambique and then into South Africa and down around the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Town.

"When we got there I found out I had prostate cancer," he said.

"It was a bit of a shock."

Rob said he flew back to Australia and was the first in the country to undergo robotic surgery in a single-port operation.

He added: "The surgeon said 'come back next month' and I said 'no, I can't. I've got to get back to my boat. I'm going sailing, I've got to finish my trip to Norway'."

Luckily, Rob said the surgeon gave him the all clear: "If I had left the boat in Cape Town any longer I would have missed the weather window, to get from Cape Town out to St Helena."

Rob said he and his daughter had been able to stay friends by respecting each other's space in the cabin.

"We have our boundaries," he said.

"She has her bunk and I have my bunk, she's got her headphone and downloads movies and things."

Tuna v shark

They were able to supplement their diet by towing a fishing lure behind the boat, another activity that was not without its dramas.

"We caught half a yellowfin tuna once because a tiger shark took the other half," laughed Rob.

"For the next week we just had tuna every day, it was a bit like Forrest Gump and the shrimp, we had curried tuna, fried tuna, battered tuna, beer-battered tuna, raw tuna."

Freya, who turned 19 on the trip, was quick to catch a train to London to meet up with her best friend after tying up in Penzance harbour.

"I love the city, it's probably the thing I miss most about being at sea, and hanging out with friends, it was really really tough like that, it got to me at some points," she said.

"Coming to London, one of the biggest cities ever, was just amazing, very happy."

Rob said: "The last passage to Penzance from the Azores was quite challenging.

"It was 50 knots, huge 6m (20ft) seas and then when we got in the Bay of Biscay it went calm."

While Freya is enjoying herself in London, her father has been meeting up with old friends in Penzance.

Freya will rejoin her father in Falmouth and they will be joined by Hanne, who is flying in to celebrate his 60th birthday.

The intrepid pair will then set sail for the Netherlands, then on to Norway.

Follow BBC Cornwall on X, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to spotlight@bbc.co.uk.

Lebanon says three soldiers killed in Israeli attack on car

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0g8jymg92o, today

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it has launched an investigation after confirming it attacked a vehicle carrying Lebanese soldiers in southern Lebanon on Saturday morning.

The Lebanese Army said two officers and a soldier were killed in the strike on a car, which it described as an "aggressive and barbaric raid". The IDF said the vehicle was "moving suspiciously towards forces" and gunfire had been reported in the area.

Israel has been fighting Lebanon-based Hezbollah since March, primarily in southern Lebanon, from where the armed group has launched rocket and drone attacks.

It is not in direct conflict with the Lebanese government, which is opposed to Hezbollah and has sought to mediate a ceasefire.

The strike happened on a road close to the village of Kfar Tebnit, around four miles north of the Litani River and close to the city of Nabatieh, an area which has seen intense fighting and displacement in recent months.

The Israeli military has previously issued sweeping evacuation orders for the region as its forces continue to push north, supported by regular air strikes against Hezbollah targets.

The IDF said the vehicle it struck on Saturday was travelling in an "active and evacuated combat zone" where it believes Hezbollah has operated from.

A statement said troop movements in the area require coordination with the IDF, and repeated that its forces "are operating against the Hezbollah terrorist organisation, not against the Lebanese Army".

It said its initial investigation confirmed three soldiers were believed to be in the vehicle.

The Lebanese Army has reacted furiously to the attack, accusing Israel of "brutal, deliberate and repeated aggression".

It shared images of the burnt out wreckage of a car on a road outside the village.

News of the attack comes after Hezbollah's leadership rejected efforts to revive a US-backed ceasefire agreed between Israel and Lebanon following talks which did not involve the Iran-backed group.

That agreement stipulated Israel would not attack Hezbollah positions in the capital Beirut if the group did not attack Israel, as well as making provisions for "pilot" security zones inside southern Lebanon from which the group would be banned from operating.

Hezbollah's leader Naim Qassem rejected the deal, calling talks between Lebanon and Israel "futile".

Lebanon's government is opposed to Hezbollah but wants to end the fighting on its territory, which has previously involved major air strikes on its capital city.

It has said a ceasefire is necessary in order for its forces to disarm Hezbollah themselves, but Israel has previously accused the government in Beirut of lacking the ability to do so.

US President Donald Trump has sought to defuse the conflict in Lebanon in order to reach an agreement with Iran, which has made any deal to end its war with the US and Israel contingent on the campaign against Hezbollah being halted.

Lebanon was drawn into the war between the US, Israel and Iran on 2 March, when Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel in retaliation for an Israeli strike that killed Iran's supreme leader.

Israel responded with an air campaign across Lebanon and a ground invasion in the south.

An initial ceasefire was agreed on 16 April but it failed to stop the fighting.

Israeli strikes had largely been confined to southern Lebanon in recent weeks, though the IDF has attacked in the east of the country since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced an intensification of the campaign on 26 May.

'My great-grandad saved your life' - Aberfan survivor left stunned on school visit

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyp3kmjy3no, today

Gareth Jones was speaking to children about how he survived the Aberfan disaster when a little boy raised his hand.

Noah, aged 10, held up a photograph and asked a simple question - did he recognise the man in the picture?

"The hairs were standing on the back of my neck," Gareth said.

He looked closely - it was of the little boy's great-grandfather, Stephen Andrew, who had pulled Gareth to safety on that fateful day.

On the morning of 21 October 1966, a colliery spoil tip collapsed on the hillside above Pantglas Junior School, sending tonnes of slurry crashing through the building and nearby houses.

It killed 116 children and 28 adults.

Recalling how he escaped, Gareth said: "There was a guy at the other side of the window.

"He actually grabbed me and told me to run."

He later learned it was Mr Andrew.

Gareth has always maintained the school caretaker saved his life, pulling him to safety through a shattered classroom window as the disaster unfolded.

But he had never actually seen a photograph of him.

This all changed when he met Noah on a recent visit to Troedyrhiw Primary.

It is near where Pantglas Primary once stood in Merthyr Tydfil county, and the visit came as schools in Wales and around the world prepare to mark 60 years since the Aberfan disaster on 21 October.

"I was absolutely gobsmacked... that bit of the jigsaw has come together," Gareth said.

Noah had grown up hearing about his great-grandfather's heroics.

But his family had also suffered tragic losses on that day.

On the morning of the disaster, Stephen Andrew started the heating system at the school before returning home to nearby Moy Road.

He had a quick cup of tea with his wife and newborn daughter, before setting off back to work.

But he watched in disbelief as tonnes of colliery waste poured down the hillside and buried part of the junior school.

Quickly rushing to help, Gareth Jones was among the first of the youngsters he pulled to safety.

But the caretaker's two sons in the school, Kelvin and Malcolm, were buried in the rubble and would be among the 116 children who died.

"I'm just happy to hear the story," Noah said, describing his pride in his great-grandfather's efforts.

Around him, his classmates listened intently as Gareth talked about how a seemingly normal school day turned into a catastrophe within seconds.

They asked about the noise, about the moment the walls began to crack, and about what happened afterwards.

"That was really scary," said Caelan, 10, when Gareth explained how his gang of close friends dwindled from 10 to three or four.

"Not having your friends to go out with… I was thinking, what would I do if it happened to me?" he said.

Others reflected on how different it felt to hear the story from someone who had been there, rather than reading about it in a book.

"It made me think how lucky we are that it's not going to happen again," said Aleyah, also 10.

Troedyrhiw is a short distance from Aberfan and teacher Hannah James believes this makes the history feel personal to local children.

"It's part of their identity… part of the community that they live in," she said.

"I think the questions they asked were so mature, and they were able to have real in-depth conversations and show their empathy skills and their understanding of the impact the disaster had for children who were their age.

"It [had been] really hard for them to relate, but I think having Gareth to share his experience has helped them to really understand the impact it had on the community, and their community that they live in."

That connection with younger generations is why Gareth continues to tell his story.

"I enjoy speaking about the disaster," he said.

"These children now will have their own children… and they can tell them the story."

While pupils across Wales learn about Aberfan, one school in the US has also been educating its students about it.

This has been with the help of Gaynor Madgwick, another survivor of the disaster.

On a video call from her home near Aberfan, Gaynor spoke to children at Hampstead Middle School in New Hampshire.

Almost 100 pupils, thousands of miles away, had already spent lessons learning about the disaster, and when Gaynor appeared on screen, they greeted her with applause.

She was visibly moved by the size of the audience and their knowledge of the disaster, and began by describing the morning of 21 October 1966.

Like Gareth, she had been in class when she heard a "tremendous" roar before a wave of debris crashed into the school.

She told the children how she awoke trapped beneath rubble, with injured legs and surrounded by classmates.

Some were alive, but others were not.

Later, in hospital, she learned her brother, sister and many friends had died.

"We were only eight or nine years of age," she said.

The pupils listened in silence before asking questions about the day itself, and about what came afterwards.

One asked whether she had experienced post-traumatic stress disorder.

"It wasn't until five years ago that I was actually diagnosed," Gaynor said, explaining how anxiety and trauma had stayed with her for decades.

Another asked how she had survived when others had not.

"I feel my life was spared to help others," she told them.

There were questions about the quietness of the village afterwards, and the guilt some children felt playing outside when so many families were grieving.

"We used to go away and hide… not to upset the parents," Gaynor told them.

Their teacher, Jenn Howard, drew parallels with their own community, helping pupils understand how the loss of 116 children in Aberfan would be like losing an entire year group in their school.

For Gaynor, the call was powerful and emotional, saying: "It blew me apart.

"The knowledge was amazing… they wanted to know about PTSD, about everything."

She said moments like this show why sharing survivors' stories matters beyond Wales.

"It's about telling as many people around the world what really happened," she said.

"If there's one thing they take away… it's for children not to suffer in silence.

"To talk, to share their feelings. Not to be afraid."

Singer Duffy to return for first live concert in more than 15 years

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8p8mzj4e8o, today

Warning: This story contains distressing content, including details of sexual assault, kidnapping and suicidal thoughts

Singer Duffy has announced her first concert in more than 15 years, after she revealed that a sexual assault and kidnapping had led her to step away from public life.

The Welsh singer said on social media that she would host a "secret intimate gig" and perform new songs for fans on 5 July in London.

Duffy rose to fame in 2008 with her debut album Rockferry, earning three BRIT Awards, a Grammy Award and an Ivor Novello Award.

In March, it was announced that she would give her first in-depth interview for a Disney+ documentary, speaking about the ordeal that led to her long absence from the music industry.

Aimée Anne Duffy grew up between Gwynedd and Pembrokeshire before becoming an overnight sensation with hit single Mercy and Rockferry, which became the UK's best selling album of 2008.

But after the release of her second album and the announcement of a third, Duffy disappeared, leaving fans and the music industry wondering why.

Almost a decade later in 2020, Duffy revealed in an Instagram post that she had been attacked and later published a personal essay on her website, describing how she was drugged and taken to a foreign country where she was raped.

She explained that the ordeal only ended when she managed to escape her perpetrator, who has not been identified.

The singer said "utterly no-one" knew about the assault and captivity, which she said had left her suicidal.

On Friday, Duffy told fans via a story on her Instagram account that she would be hosting a balloted gig.

"I'm doing a secret intimate gig in London on the 5th July, next month, and I would love nothing more than for some of you to attend," she wrote.

"It's only small capacity so we can only select a few, but really looking forward to it, I will sing some new songs."

Last month, also shared a black-and-white image from a recording studio on Instagram, writing: "If only I could find the right words to explain how much I've missed you all. Working on coming back to you."

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, a list of organisations that can provide help and support is available via the BBC Action Line.

Three Brits admit killing restaurant owner in Canada after 'unpaid bill' row

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78y5w6d15no, today

Three British men have admitted killing a restaurant owner in Canada.

Robert Evans Jr, 25, pleaded guilty on Friday to the manslaughter of Sharif Rahman, 44, after a row over an unpaid restaurant bill in the town of Owen Sound in August 2023.

His father Robert Busby Evans, 49, and uncle Barry Evans, 56, pleaded guilty to being accessories to the crime and have been sentenced to time already served.

The three are believed to be from Manchester, but were extradited to Canada from Scotland last year. Evans Jr will be sentenced next month.

Local police told the BBC the two older men have been taken into the custody of the Canadian Border Agency for repatriation.

Rahman, a father-of-one, reportedly died a week after a physical altercation with the Evans family in Owen Sound, about 118 miles (190km) from Toronto.

The incident allegedly took place in the street outside a curry house following an argument over an unpaid $150 (£79) bill.

Rahman was found in the street by a staff member and later died in hospital in London, Ontario.

At the time Canadian media outlets reported the three were in the country on holiday visas and left a short time after the altercation.

More than a year later, Evans Jr and his father were arrested by Police Scotland in Edinburgh while his uncle was arrested in Dalkeith.

CBC, a partner of the BBC, reports the men are all originally from Manchester.

All three men gave their consent to extradition at separate hearings last October before Sheriff Julius Komorowski at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.

Defence agent Sarah Loosemore said Robert Busby Evans had decided "it would be appropriate for these matters to be dealt with under the Canadian justice system".

Similar confirmations were made with the two other men, with Sheriff Komorowski reminding them there was "no appeal" against their decision.

At a previous hearing, lawyers for the two older Evans family members argued there was "no equivalent act" to being an accessory to the alleged offence in Scots Law, and that extradition should be refused.

The BBC has also contacted the Ontario Courts Service and Canadian Border Agency.

My husband has been missing on Ben Nevis since February

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9pln50krjo, 3 days ago

The wife of an American climber last seen on Ben Nevis almost four months ago said her grief is "on hold" while she waits for answers.

Kym McGillicuddy last told husband Brian "I love you" over text on 17 February - two days before he was reported missing on the UK's highest mountain.

The New Yorker flew to Scotland to join the initial search for Brian, 64, but he has yet to be located more than 100 days on.

Police Scotland said Brian was still being treated as a missing person and that any new information that came to light would be fully assessed.

"Brian had been planning the trip for months and he was super excited about going," Kym told BBC Scotland News.

It was the father-of-one's second hiking trip to Ben Nevis.

"He has been climbing for over 50 years, he started as a kid during summer camp and it just spiralled from there," she said.

"When he was an adult he got into rock climbing and ice climbing.

"He loved to go to Scotland and Italy but Yosemite was one of his favourite places to go."

She added: "Brian actually got me into rock climbing too and we used to travel all over together, when I could still take part.

"He also loved to go to climb in the Adirondack Mountains which are near where we live."

During his trip to Scotland the couple had been texting back and forth with day-long gaps due to the time difference.

It meant that, at first, Kym was not alarmed when she lost contact with her husband.

"Brian was there for two weeks, he spent the first week with one group of buddies and the second with another friend from America," she said.

"It was a Thursday in February, on his second week of the trip, that he was reported missing.

"His climbing partner from the second week of the trip was the one to report him missing, nobody knew my number to phone me.

"I found out from a mutual climbing friend who saw the appeal.

"She told me he was missing - straight away I knew it was serious because I hadn't heard from him in 30 hours."

It is believed the experienced ice climber may have been attempting the Orion Face Direct route, one of the mountain's most difficult ice climbing routes, when contact was lost.

Kym and sister-in-law Kirsten Swanson McGillicuddy, flew out to join the search but it was put on hold due to treacherous weather conditions.

Mountain rescue, coastguard, drone pilots, and search and rescue dog teams took part in the operation in challenging winter conditions.

Kym said: "There was a point the police told us that the search had changed from search and rescue to recovery.

"There were no results and the weather was getting worse so we had to return back to America.

"Police Scotland told us they would keep looking and be in touch

"This week police said the search will continue, primarily with drones but conditions remain difficult and they are waiting for more snow to recede so they can expand their search."

'It's a horrible reality to live in'

With no results the heartbreak continues for the family.

A celebration of life service was held on 14 March at a church in their hometown of Harrison.

The family said it would mean everything to finally get some answers.

"Now we are assuming the worst. Brian was a wonderful man and we all miss and love him so much," Kym said.

"Everything is hard enough since we are grieving but without a death certificate it is hard to take the next steps because there is so much red tape.

"It still feels like this is happening to somebody else. It's a horrible reality to live in.

"I find the morning's most difficult - when I first wake up that's when I realise he is gone all over again."

Brian is described as 6ft 1in (1.85m), of slim build, with short grey and white hair.

When last seen, he was wearing a white climbing helmet, a dark blue jacket, white jeans and blue and red gaiters.

Police previously appealed for information from anyone who could help establish Brian's intended route, and appealed to anyone who may have seen him in the area in February to come forward.

Volunteers from Lochaber, Glencoe, Oban, Police Scotland and RAF Lossiemouth mountain rescue teams and Search and Rescue Dog Association (Scotland) have all helped carry out searches.

A coastguard helicopter has also been involved in rescue efforts.

US stocks slump as fears over Big Tech shake Wall Street

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy2yq0dj58o, yesterday

Stock markets suffered a sharp drop on Friday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq index undergoing its biggest one-day drop since April 2025.

With fears mounting that gains so far this year may be unsustainable, a surprisingly strong US jobs report for April sparked a sell-off, with the major US markets ending the week in the red.

The data stoked fresh fears among investors that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates higher for longer, especially as inflation remains stubborn.

The Nasdaq index fell by more than 4%, the S&P 500 closed 2.6% lower and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.35%.

Digital assets also suffered a sharp sell-off on Friday. Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency, dropped sharply as investors rushed to offload riskier assets across the board.

The sudden drop showed how much investors fear high interest rates.

While a strong jobs market is usually good news for the economy, it means the Federal Reserve is less likely to cut borrowing costs anytime soon.

David Doyle, head of economics at Macquarie Group, said Friday's jobs report was potentially "too good", especially against a backdrop of high inflation.

He said the figures raised the likelihood the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates this year, contributing to the stock market sell-off.

It meant investors who had been holding out for rate cuts were forced to quickly change their plans.

However, Friday's sell-off did not mark a global market panic. Instead, it saw investors shifting away from tech stocks, which critics have warned are overvalued and could crash in the same way the dotcom bubble did in the early 2000s.

Major investment funds pulled money out of AI and microchip companies, share prices of which have soared in recent years.

Instead of leaving the market entirely, investors piled into traditionally safer investments. Sectors such as healthcare, utilities and consumer staples, including Kraft Heinz and Keurig Dr Pepper, saw a boost as traders looked for stability.

The sharp drop highlights how vulnerable big tech stocks have become.

With a handful of tech companies accounting for such a large chunk of the stock market, any shift in investor sentiment can easily drag the entire market down.

Reacting to the market's drop, US President Donald Trump criticised the negative reaction to Friday's jobs report. He said "too much emphasis is placed on inflation".

"I hope the market starts to learn that when you have good numbers the market should go up not down," Trump added.

Meanwhile, tech and politics will be the major focus next week. Trump has invited some of the top AI executives to the White House to discuss a new proposal: the US government acquiring public stakes in their firms.

Trump claimed the move would aim to shift how the public views the new technology, allowing everyday Americans to "benefit from the success of AI".

Mark Zuckerberg's longest-serving employee on AI, jobs - and her boss

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y71106g07o, 2 days ago

When Naomi Gleit joined Meta just over 20 years ago, she was the firm's 29th employee.

Today, she is its longest serving staff member - apart, that is, from founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Since joining him at the age of 21, Gleit has watched a start-up called Facebook transform into a tech giant called Meta, and weathered many storms and controversies along the way.

Now head of product, she told the BBC working at Meta was her "dream job" - even if, two decades ago, her family took some persuading that she'd made the right decision.

"My mom was very disappointed, she wanted me to work for Lehman Brothers," she laughs.

The investment bank collapsed in 2008, triggering a global financial crisis.

Meta, meanwhile, is still going strong but has experienced its own earthquakes: from privacy scandals and election rigging accusations to teen mental health crises and toxic online harms.

Zuckerberg's 'unfair' reputation

Gleit acknowledges there have been moments where the company "didn't meet our standards" or missed the mark.

But she says there is much she is proud of too - and Facebook's infamous "move fast and break things" motto was a "misunderstood value in isolation".

Similarly, she feels Mark Zuckerberg's tech bro bad guy reputation is "unfair".

To some, Zuckerberg is an archetypal big tech boss - worthy of scrutiny not just for his company's scandals but also for seeming cold, robotic and ruthless.

Actor Jesse Eisenberg, who played the Facebook founder in 2010 film The Social Network about the firm's origins, told the BBC last February he did not want to think of himself as associated with him and his "problematic" actions.

Succession star Jeremy Strong will soon portray Zuckerberg as the more steely, savvy boss behind a huge social media empire in follow-up, The Social Reckoning.

"I think that the difference between what people think of Mark and how Mark actually is, is huge," Gleit says.

"He's also a great husband and a great dad to three little kids, and it's been really incredible to watch just how he's become the leader that he is today," Gleit says.

There's a slightly pregnant pause when I ask Gleit what Zuckerberg is like as a boss, before she settles on "awesome".

One of her team jokes that this will come up in her appraisal.

AI transformation

Gleit came to the UK this week from Meta's US HQ to talk about the firm's latest big disruptor: AI agents.

Agents are like an advanced form of chatbot - capable not just of answering questions but able to fully carry out tasks.

Gleit says these agents can be "superpowers" for small firms, so Meta is incorporating them into WhatsApp, which counts hundreds of millions of business users among the 3.5 billion people worldwide who are on the platform.

The company plans to charge firms great and small to have AI agents running their WhatsApp chats with customers on their behalf, day and night, and providing business insights.

"We're really focused on what businesses need, and what they tell us is they're getting so many messages from people," Gleit says.

AI agents, she suggests, will be better at helping them cope and liaise with customers than with existing tools.

Questions abound, though, about the reliability of AI agents - and there are concerns they will use their autonomy to act erratically.

Earlier this week, Meta had to fix an issue which allowed hackers to trick an Instagram AI support tool into giving them access to other users' accounts.

The problem there, Gleit says, was unrelated to the agent itself - and she insists safety is the company's "priority and focus."

She says the tech is of particular value to small businesses who can get access to customer insights mostly available to large companies who can afford to hire loads of people to do the work for them.

But what happens to the people who might otherwise do those jobs?

Gleit says there is no doubt AI will "transform" the workforce, but she is optimistic about the creation of new, as yet unknown, jobs.

"When I was growing up my job as a product manager didn't exist because there was no internet," she says.

Meta is shedding staff though, having recently laid off 10% of its employees while investing more in AI.

Staff have also kicked back against the use of key stroke monitoring to track their work in order to train Meta's own AI tools.

The company has since reportedly scaled back its plans - allowing employees to opt-out, but only for 30 minutes at a time.

Gleit's advice to young people wrestling with how AI tools like those she is promoting will affect their careers is "be curious".

She says that thanks to AI, she is able to code for the first time in her life, and Zuckerberg, who was coding Facebook when she met him, is back coding again.

"Even at work we are all learning new skills," she says.

Trump to meet AI leaders to discuss US investment in their companies

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c98r8r7dz5no, yesterday

US President Donald Trump is planning to meet the bosses of some of the country's most notable artificial intelligence (AI) companies to discuss the government taking a financial stake in their future.

Speaking on Air Force One, Trump said the goal of the US government investing in AI companies was to "create almost a partnership with the American public".

He expects to meet leaders of major AI companies at the White House - likely next week.

Although the president did not name specific companies, the biggest companies in the US working on AI are Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, SpaceX and Anthropic - the latter two of which are expected to go public in the coming weeks.

A spokesman for Microsoft declined to comment. Representatives of the other four companies did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump compared the prospective investment in AI to the US government last year taking a 10% stake in Intel, a company that makes computer chips. He claimed the US has already made money on that investment.

Part of the US investing directing in AI companies, however, would be to improve Americans' views of the technology, which have grown increasingly negative.

"We're talking about it,"Trump said, referring to conversations with AI leaders "where the American people can benefit from the success of AI, the American people will like it better".

Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, this week travelled to Washington DC and met Senator Bernie Sanders.

Sanders recently said he intended to propose a sort of sovereign wealth fund in which the US would take a 50% stake in AI companies.

Asked about Sanders' plan, President Trump insisted he had been considering the US investing in AI companies for a year, but did not dismiss the senator's notion.

"Where economics are concerned, we have things that aren't that far apart," Trump said.

A representative for Sanders cdid not respond to a request for comment.

Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, met senior White House officials a few weeks ago.

Although Anthropic is currently embroiled in a lawsuit with the US Department of Defense over its refusal to accept broad new contract terms and subsequent excision from government operations, the White House meeting was a sign of easing tensions.

Anthropic this week publicly praised President Trump's Executive Order on AI.

And Jack Clark, a co-founder of the company, told BBC's Newsnight on Thursday that Anthropic was "in daily conversations with the US government and we're finding ways to be helpful to national security".

Hospitality jobs boom as US prepares for World Cup

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxpx4gel1yo, yesterday

The US economy created 172,000 jobs in May as pubs, bars and restaurants ramped up hiring ahead of the World Cup.

They were primarily created in leisure and hospitality, local government, and health care, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The figures cover the lead-up to this summer's tournament, being jointly hosted by the US, Mexico and Canada.

Employment in the financial sector dropped, while the overall unemployment rate held at 4.3%.

Rehan Alam, who owns The Red Lion pub and restaurant in downtown New York City, has hired seven extra bartenders to manage an expected surge in attendance when the World Cup begins next week.

He told the BBC the business was overwhelmed when the tournament was held in Qatar four years ago, and he expects an even bigger boost due to it being hosted in nearby New Jersey.

"Four years ago, when we had the World Cup, we didn't expect it to get that crazy, and it did. It brought a lot of attention to what we've always been trying to do with the soccer," he said.

Alam has installed seven new TVs, paid sound engineers to prepare the venue and "beefed up the staffing quite a bit".

Alam said the boost is "definitely needed" as firms grapple with rising costs amid the fallout from the US-Israel war with Iran. "Our costs have skyrocketed," he said, pointing to everything from direct energy costs to other charges being passed through in bills.

"A boost like this is definitely going to give us that uplift of spirits," he added.

The BLS said leisure and hospitality businesses created 70,000 jobs in May, a jump from the average monthly increase of 14,000 for the prior year.

Firms selling food and drink specifically were responsible for 48,000 of those, it added.

The boost helped continue a trend of the US economy creating significantly more jobs than expected despite the rising costs facing businesses as a result of the US-Israel war with Iran.

Economists had expected a 105,000 increase, less than the 172,000 seen.

The number of jobs created in March and April was also revised up by a combined 93,000, showing hiring was even more resilient than first thought.

There have been concerns raised that while hiring is up ahead of the World Cup, a subsequent economic boost will not follow due to sky-high prices facing fans.

Hotels have warned of slow bookings, while fans have complained at being priced out of the tournament, with US President Donald Trump declaring he "wouldn't pay it either" when asked about a $1,000 (£736) ticket price to watch his country play Paraguay in June.

Fifa is facing allegations of "artificially inflating prices" and "misleading fans", with the attorney generals of New York and New Jersey launching an investigation into the governing body's practices.

At the time, Fifa declined to comment on the investigation.

Strong jobs figures boost chance of rate rise

Economists said the strong jobs figures boost the chances of an interest rate hike by the end of 2026, while pointing to slowing wage growth as a sign household finances are increasingly under pressure.

The BLS said average hourly earnings had risen by 3.4% in the last year, while inflation in the US, the rate at which prices are increasing, is running at 3.8%.

The rise in inflation has been driven largely by soaring energy prices caused by the Iran war, which has led to the key Strait of Hormuz shipping lane being effectively closed for months.

ING's chief US economist James Knightley said: "The squeeze on household spending power is intensifying with real household disposable incomes having fallen for three consecutive months and consumer confidence remaining close to all-time lows.

"There is a long way to go before the end of the year, and we still lean in the direction of eventual rate cuts assuming a deal can be reached to reopen the Strait of Hormuz."

Employment in local government rose by 55,000 jobs across the month, while 35,000 jobs were created in the healthcare sector.

Elsewhere, gains were seen in social work as well as mining, quarrying and oil and gas extraction, the BLS said.

It pointed to a 22,000 fall in the number of financial services jobs, which have fallen by 105,000 overall from a peak last May.

From Bitcoin to blockchain: Key cryptocurrency terms and what they mean

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy5w2k5k5ylo, yesterday

Bitcoin's price sinking to a recent low, nearing $60,000 (£44,500) in value, has thrust the buzzy world of cryptocurrencies back into the spotlight.

The world's most valuable digital currency makes headlines when it soars to all time highs or plummets in value - seen several times in 2026 with dips in price to levels not witnessed since before US President Donald Trump took office.

But crypto market booms and crashes are often accompanied by confusing terms like ETFs, blockchains and stablecoins, making it all somewhat tricky to navigate.

Worry not.

If you're hearing these for the first time, or could do with a refresher, here are some key terms and what they mean.

Bitcoin

While many may struggle with the finer points of crypto, pretty much everyone has heard of its most famous product: Bitcoin. But what actually is it?

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, which is to say a type of digital currency. Unlike traditional currencies, Bitcoin is not controlled by centralised financial institutions.

This makes it popular for people who think decentralisation can bring financial freedom, but it also makes it extremely volatile with it rising and falling in value at the whim of Bitcoin buyers and sellers.

Donald Trump has pledged to make the US the "crypto capital of the world" - backtracking on his previous claim that Bitcoin was a "scam".

Its price topped a much-awaited threshold of $100,000 in December 2024, then rose to $120,000 in July 2025 as US politicians prepared to debate bills to regulate digital assets.

In October 2025, Bitcoin hit an all-time high of around $126,000, buoyed by a continued wave of institutional investment and positive market sentiment. But it has been known to plummet in value just as quickly as it spikes.

In early February 2026, its price dipped below $65,000 to effectively wipe out gains achieved under President Trump.

A similar dip has been seen again more recently, with Bitcoin sinking to less than $62,000 on 5 June - sparking fears for some it could shed even more than 50% of its highest value.

Against the backdrop of these frequent price fluctuations, speculation continues about the true identity of Bitcoin's mysterious inventor known only as Satoshi Nakamoto.

Blockchain

Blockchain is the technology underpinning all cryptocurrencies, and many related products like non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In essence, it is a virtual spreadsheet on which all the buying and selling of crypto is recorded. They are arranged in blocks linked together in a giant chain - hence the name.

Every cryptocurrency transaction is individually recorded onto the blockchain by a huge network of volunteers verifying its authenticity by using computer programmes.

The incentive to do this for Bitcoin's network is that the first person to validate transactions is rewarded in Bitcoin. This potentially lucrative process, known as mining, is also controversial because of the incredible amount of energy used as people the world over race to be the first to successfully update the blockchain.

Bitcoin 'halving'

The blockchain is sustained by rewarding so-called "miners" - whose job it is to validate transactions - by paying them with the cryptocurrency.

However, unlike some other digital currencies, there is not an infinite supply of Bitcoins. The amount that can be mined is capped at 21 million, and most are already in circulation.

So roughly every four years - or when the Bitcoin blockchain reaches a certain size - the number of bitcoins rewarded to those who successfully validate transactions is cut in half. The most recent Bitcoin "halving" (or "halvening") event took place on 20 April 2024, reducing the reward for miners from 6.25 bitcoins to 3.125.

This ensures Bitcoin's supply is drawn out for longer while demand, in theory, goes up over time. But with fewer rewards for miners, it can also lead some to consider whether it is financially worthwhile for them to continue the costly operation of running their powerful computers.

Crypto Exchange

A crypto exchange is the digital platform where investors can buy, sell and trade cryptocurrencies.

Similar to traditional investing, a crypto exchange acts as a brokerage where people can transfer traditional money, like pounds or dollars, in exchange for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum. Most transactions are accompanied by fees.

Crypto Wallet

A crypto wallet is a place where investors hold their cryptocurrency. There are two types, a hot wallet and a cold wallet.

Hot wallets are connected to the internet, and thus more accessible for quick transfers and easy access.

Cold wallets are physical devices like specially designed USB sticks that store crypto offline typically for safer and longer term storage.

Ethereum

Ethereum is used to describe both the second largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, represented by the Ether token, and the blockchain underpinning it. This supports an array of different applications and digital assets, such as non-fungible tokens.

It functions in a similar way to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but in 2022 switched to a greener operating system requiring less computers and energy.

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs)

ETFs are portfolios that let investors bet on multiple assets without having to buy any themselves. Traded on stock exchanges like shares, their value depends on how the overall portfolio performs in real time. They can comprise a combination of gold and silver bullion, for example, or a mix of shares in both technology and insurance companies.

A spot Bitcoin ETF buys the cryptocurrency directly, "on the spot", at its current price, throughout the day.

While some ETFs already contained Bitcoin indirectly, the US approved several spot Bitcoin ETFs in January 2024. This allowed new investors, such as investment management firms like Blackrock and Fidelity, to enter the speculative world of Bitcoin without having to worry about digital wallets or navigating crypto exchanges.

Meme coins

Meme coins are a form of cryptocurrency used for fun and speculation.

They are typically created to capitalise on social media trends or viral memes - such as for internet-famous pygmy hippo Moo Deng.

But meme coins are heavily criticised for their speculative nature and the risk involved for investors, as they often have little prospect of accumulating value over time.

They can also be susceptible to "rug pulls" - where promoters of a cryptocurrency draw in buyers to raise the price of their coin, only to stop trading activity and make off with the money raised from sales.

Some celebrities have faced backlash after launching meme coins.

Stablecoins

"Stable" is the key word here - this cryptocurrency differs from others as it is intends to be less volatile in value.

This typically works by the price being linked to an existing asset, for instance currencies like the US dollar or pound sterling, which in theory should make them more stable in price than cryptocurrencies that are not backed by assets.

Stablecoins themselves are usually controlled by companies that provide them, with transactions recorded on digital ledgers. While held up by some as the future of finance, high profile price collapses of stablecoins have alerted regulators to risks for investors and prompted scrutiny over their supposed stability.

XRP

XRP is a cryptocurrency used by a platform called the XRP Ledger. It was created by the co-founders of financial services company Ripple Labs in 2012 as a cheaper, faster alternative to Bitcoin.

The cryptocurrency has a fixed supply of 100 billion coins, which were created when it launched. Much of it is held by Ripple and periodically released into circulation.

Unlike cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, transactions made using XRP are verified through consensus - whereby the majority of validators on its peer-to-peer network must agree whether or not a transaction is valid before it is added to its blockchain.

This has been credited with allowing many transactions to take place simultaneously, at high speed and low cost - making it appealing to financial institutions or for processes like cross-border payments. But as with other cryptocurrencies, XRP has received regulatory scrutiny and seen sudden, sharp declines in value.

'By the grace of God': Miners dig on as lab-grown diamonds change market

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx2jqvwp7go, 3 days ago

The rising popularity of lab-grown diamonds has caused a big fall in the price of the mined gems. In the West African nation of Sierra Leone the country's biggest diamond mine has closed.

Stripped to the waist, men toil in the heat of the sun. The mud in the pit is sifted and shovelled.

Daniel, the foreman in this remote, informal, small-scale mine in Kono, the diamond region of Sierra Leone, shows me the gravel he's picking through with his fingers.

"We put it in water and we wash it," he says. "If there is anything like a diamond or any bright stone, we can see it."

Daniel and five others are searching for just tiny fragments, but pickings are thin. "I have not made a lot of money yet," he says. "Sometimes for the whole of the year you can't get anything.

"It is by the grace of God that you find a diamond. We are just dreaming, really. We still have that hope."

Such informal mining has increased in Kono following the closure last year of the country's biggest diamond mine Koidu Holdings. It shut with the loss of 1,000 jobs after a bitter industrial dispute over the miners' pay.

Officially the company says it closed due to the cost of the dispute and security concerns, but privately, insiders also acknowledge that the weakness of the global market also played a role.

In just the past four years, the retail price of polished natural diamonds has fallen some 40%. The main driver has been the rapid growth of the so-called lab-grown diamond industry.

These factory-made diamonds, produced from crystalised carbon, are chemically and physically identical to mined diamonds.

Manufactured mostly in India and China using two different technologies – HPHT (high pressure high temperature) and CVD (chemical vapour deposition) – they cost a fraction of the price, up to 70% less.

Kono's governor, Augustine Shekho, says the big fall in the global price of natural diamonds has hit the region hard over the past five years. "Lower diamond values have reduced earnings for miners, constrained investment, and weakened local economic activity."

Diamond mining has been the lifeblood of this part of West Africa since the 1930s. Thirty-five years ago it became the focus of a brutal, long-running civil war in Sierra Leone, immortalised by Leonardo Di Caprio in the 2006 Hollywood film Blood Diamonds.

Kono was a target because of its diamond wealth. Shekho described multiple atrocities committed in the region, including the killing of his own mother, as armed factions traded control.

"They shot at random, they killed people, burnt the entire town," he says. "All houses were mined.

"It was a war of terror... She, my mother, unfortunately, was the victim of that… It was a nightmare. I would really not want to think about it."

It's estimated that by the end of the 11-year conflict, more than 50,000 people had died, and hundreds of thousands more were maimed or displaced.

In 2003, a United Nations-backed international diamond certification scheme, the Kimberley Process, was launched in order to prevent conflict stones from entering the mainstream diamond market. But the industry has struggled to contain the reputational damage.

"To me the diamonds have failed us," says Abubakar Amara, a primary school teacher in Kono. "What have those diamonds done for our community, for Kono, for Sierra Leone? We are considered as poor in the world."

The British multinational, De Beers, which specialises in the mining and marketing of diamonds, is eager to change the narrative. In Sierra Leone, it's launched a project called Gemfair, where local artisanal miners are offered equipment, training, and more transparent pricing for their finds. You might call it a kind of fairtrade scheme for diamonds.

"The idea is to connect with markets so that they can be able to find a place to sell their diamonds, and also to empower them, give them training, we give them skills," says Raymond Alpha, Gemfair's local representative.

But for De Beers, perhaps its most important function is reputational, allowing retailers to tell the origin story of every diamond they sell.

"We are seeing a growing interest from consumers," says David Johnson, a De Beers representative. "With people increasingly wanting to know where their coffee, cotton or chocolate has come from, it's not surprising that people also want to know where their diamond – one of the most emotionally significant purchases – has come from."

While this increased traceability could win mined diamonds more customers, others say that the lab-grown alternatives are only going to continue to grow in popularity.

Rohit Mehta, chief executive of Forlink Ventures, a commodities house based in India's lab-grown diamond capital, Surat, says these diamonds are not just cheaper, but also more ethical and better for the environment.

"People are more conscious about climate change, about extracting too much from the earth," he says.

But the argument that lab-grown diamonds are "green" doesn't sit well with everyone. Unlike natural diamonds, the lab-grown variety are hugely energy-intensive, requiring vast amounts of electricity to produce a single rough carat.

"These reactors run at the temperature of the sun," says Stanley Mathuram, a US-based environmental consultant who's studied the growth of the lab-grown diamond industry. "They're like data centres. That's the kind of energy that they require."

However, that concern about energy consumption does not appear to be putting off buyers. The global lab-grown diamond market was valued at $29.5bn (£21.9bn) last year, and is tipped to grow to $91.9bn by 2034, according to one study.

The lab-grown figure for 2025 is already above the $20bn that De Beers estimates is the total, international annual value of natural, mined diamonds used in jewellery.

In the US, engagement rings with lab-grown stones now account for 61% of all sales, according to the 2026 Real Weddings Study by wedding planning website The Knot.

The report said this was a more than two-fold increase since 2022, with lab-grown diamonds by far the most popular choice. It said the shift was "driven by economic pragmatism and evolving values, with 40% of couples stating it is specifically important that their stone be lab grown".

Doug Meadows, co-founder of David Douglas Diamonds, a jewellery retailer in Atlanta, Georgia, says that people are going lab-grown as it means they can afford a bigger stone.

"It's all about the stone. They're going for the biggest bling that they can afford. Years ago, it used to be the diamond was the expensive part.

"With the advent of gold jumping up to $4,500, $5,000 an ounce, now the mounting is becoming a lot more expensive, and the diamond is becoming the cheap part."

Meadows adds that he is sympathetic to the idea of promoting natural diamonds, with a story rooted in the soil, and the experience of poor miners in West Africa. But it's a hard sell.

"To try to educate a consumer about the value in a natural diamond, it is a new challenge. I don't know how we do it yet, I'm hoping the industry can give us an idea."

Back in the diamond belt of Sierra Leone, Daniel discards another sieve-load of gravel.

"Unfortunately there is no diamond here," he says, head bowed, gazing into the blue-grey mud of the pit. "I will try my luck again," he adds as he resumes digging.

The ancient trick making food waste useful and tasty

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78kmj2kyklo, 2 days ago

Vayu Hill-Maini's lab has created a new cheese, or at least something that tastes like cheese, but is actually made from food waste.

The bioengineer, who runs a lab at Stanford University in California, is experimenting with fermentation using fungi.

"One of the most amazing things that we found recently is that we could take waste and add a few other ingredients in a fungal fermentation and create this delicious cheese that is like a Pecorino or Parmigiano," he says.

Fermentation is a biological process whereby organisms convert carbohydrates like starch or sugar into substances like alcohol, without using oxygen.

Perhaps the best-known examples of fermentation are in baking and brewing, where yeast breaks down sugar into ethanol and carbon dioxide.

But it's not just wheat flour, or barley that can fuel fermentation, all sorts of substances are suitable - in biology those fermentation hosts are known as substrates.

With the latest biotech tools, companies are taking by-products of the food industry, that are currently discarded or have little value, and using fermentation to turn them into something useful.

UK-based Fermtech is transforming cocoa shells, which are normally thrown away, into a cocoa powder substitute, using fermentation.

"If you were to sniff a bag of cocoa shells, you would be really struck by the intense chocolatey nature of it," says Andy Clayton, Fermtech's CEO.

He says it's a shame that by-products of the food industry are composted or burnt, rather than using microorganisms to break down the hard bits of the plant and make it bioavailable for humans, while retaining the flavours.

Utilising a broader palette of substrates can save money, help the environment, and expand flavour.

"We're kind of like flavour miners," says Clayton says.

Take peas. Protein makes up about a quarter of a pea, and pea protein has become an increasingly popular source of plant-based protein.

What then to do with the other three-quarters of the pea?

That makes "a perfect substrate for fermentation," according to Bosco Emparanza, the CEO of Spain's MOA Foodtech.

His company gathers data on environmental conditions and available substrates, and sequences the genomes of microorganisms appropriate for the food industry.

With that data, MOA has trained an AI to work out what combinations of substrates and microorganisms would achieve the best yields.

Emparanza marvels at the speed of such AI-driven fermentation design.

"When we started the company, we were able to develop one bioprocess in two weeks," he says, referring to the use of living cells to generate a product.

"Nowadays, the platform can develop 300 bioprocesses per hour."

Using that tech, MOA Foodtech discovered the best microorganisms to make use of the leftover starch and fibre in the pea protein industry.

Those byproducts would normally get sold at rock-bottom prices for animal feed, for instance, or possibly even discarded.

MOA Foodtech is working to put those byproducts back into the human food chain.

Germany's MicroHarvest has developed a confidential process which speeds up the fermentation process.

MicroHarvest uses byproducts of the sugar industry, such as molasses, which isn't typically eaten in Germany.

Rather than the sugar industry turning this over to farmers to feed cows, MicroHarvest is working with sugar makers and pet food producers to convert side streams into premium pet food.

Katelijne Bekers, the CEO and co-founder of MicroHarvest, describes the cat snack Vegcat as having an umami taste without the bitterness of some plant-based proteins.

Singapore's Mottainai Food Tech also has a mission to use unconventional and underappreciated ingredients, which can be nutritious and widely available throughout Asia.

The inspiration for the name comes from the Japanese term mottainai, which laments waste - think of the phrase "waste not, want not" and you have the sentiment.

The company has produced a meat substitute called Jiro Meat based on okara, a soy pulp typically discarded after making tofu and soymilk.

Mottainai also recently started a plant-based tuna project.

They've experimented with different microorganisms to minimise off-flavours and maximise desirable flavour compounds such as umami or sweetness.

Singapore has a supportive environment for these kinds of food experiments.

"In five years' time, we hope to be able to have a wide range of ingredients" drawing on the company's fermentation platform, says Daryl Pek, a cofounder of Mottainai Food Tech.

Back in Stanford, Hill-Maini's lab is working on precision fermentation.

This involves genetically engineering microorganisms, such as moulds, to produce a specific material in a fermentation process.

Precision fermentation can efficiently adjust the aesthetics, aroma or flavour of a food, but also its digestibility.

For instance, Hill-Maini says that some waste products are rich in cellulose, which humans can't digest. But as they grow, fungi can break down the cellulose and convert it into protein.

"They become kind of a bioconversion machine where they can remove some of those complicated molecules that the human gut cannot digest and convert them into more digestible substances."

Hill-Maini believes that his lab's work inspires others to think differently about food waste. But he doesn't want this work to stay in the lab.

They have a chef in residence and an R&D culinary innovation kitchen to ensure that their food experiments are as appealing to potential consumers as possible.

Of the recently developed Pecorino-like cheese, the lab used a Neurospora mould, but would not say what waste was used as a substrate. That's secret until they publish a paper about their work.

But he's excited about the new "cheese".

"You can grate it, it's salty, it has a nice texture, it can be added to pasta. And it's just really cool to see… the fermentation can help it become delicious."

China cracks down on soft porn, violence and materialism in viral micro dramas

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clypy34pj6yo, 2 days ago

China has ordered provincial authorities to crack down on materialistic, violent and sexualised content in locally produced micro dramas.

The campaign targets content that portrays soft pornography, "distorted views on marriage and relationships" and "ostentatious displays of wealth", said China's National Radio and Television Administration.

It comes as part of a larger effort by the Chinese government to guide social norms, including by promoting marriages and discouraging harmful ideologies from spreading online.

Micro dramas, which are serialised, made-for-mobile clips, have exploded in popularity globally in recent years, but have drawn criticism for their often sensationalist content.

Many shows feature wild, fast-moving plot lines, about topics ranging from secret billionaire husbands to forbidden romances, that are designed to keep viewers glued to their screens.

There has also been no shortage of shows portraying excessive violence or sexualised characters.

China's media administration said in a statement this week that the media campaign is one of "great significance for creating a healthy content ecosystem" for the micro drama industry.

The campaign will address key issues including soft pornography, "materialism and ostentatious displays of wealth" and "distorted views on marriage and relationships."

It will also target "feudalistic themes, violent revenge content, vulgar titles and copyright infringement", the statement read.

Local authorities are expected to conduct spot checks on the work of their jurisdiction's production firms, which will be required to promptly rectify any issues that surface, said the media regulator.

It added that the administration will carry out its own inspections and improve its regulations based on the findings from the campaign.

Micro dramas have grown into a multi-billion dollar industry for China, attracting large audiences worldwide, including in other parts of Asia and even Africa.

Producers in countries like South Korea and the United States have invested in creating their own micro drama studios to tap the booming sector.

Last year, the sector's growth prompted the Chinese government to order that high-profile and sensitive micro drama productions needed to be approved by authorities.

Major Chinese platforms like WeChat and Douyin - the country's version of TikTok - also led crackdowns to remove sexually suggestive material, and took aim at micro dramas that promoted harmful ideologies including the endorsement of youth misconduct, vigilantism or materialism.

Under President Xi Jinping, Beijing has taken steps to influence social attitudes in China, including by promoting healthy relationships while discouraging the flaunting of wealth as the country grapples with several economic challenges.

Xi has long advocated for a "common prosperity" policy, which aims to narrow China's widening wealth gap - a touchy political issue in the country.

In a separate crackdown, China's Cyberspace Administration launched a separate two-month campaign against online content that was deemed to take "pessimistic sentiments" too far.

That clampdown targeted narratives that promoted "world-weariness", or suggested that hard work was "useless", in a bid to create a more "civilised and rational online environment", according to the administration.

China has in recent years been dealing with economic challenges like unemployment and steep competition for jobs - all of which have given rise to anxiety among some of its youths.

British Heart Foundation plans to close 150 charity shops

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgzg48d9q0o, 2 days ago

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) says it is planning to close around 150 charity shops, citing an "exceptionally challenging trading environment".

The charity, which carried out a review of its retail arm, said rising operating costs and changing customer habits meant some stores were "no longer financially sustainable".

Its overall financial position "remains healthy", it said, adding it is continuing to see strong fundraising and legacy income.

The BHF currently has 640 shops and stores across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The proposed closures, within the next two years, make up just under a quarter of the total.

The charity plans to close around 90 stores by the end of March 2027, and the remaining affected stores by March 2028.

It said it would share the locations of the stores earmarked for closure on its website once affected colleagues had been informed.

The charity also plans to reduce the central teams that support its retail arm.

Chief Executive Charmaine Griffiths acknowledged this would be a difficult time for colleagues and volunteers, thanking them for their contributions.

"Like most retailers, we are facing an exceptionally challenging trading environment," she said.

"Cardiovascular disease remains one of the UK's biggest killers and our priority is funding research to save lives.

"We must take the difficult step to close some of our shops to sustain retail's important contribution to funding BHF's groundbreaking research."

The BHF said no single factor had led to its plans to close stores.

As well as its network of shops and donation points, the BHF has online retail channels including on its website and eBay.

It said it will continue to evolve its retail operations "to reflect changing customer shopping behaviours and donor habits".

Last year Cancer Research UK said it was planning to close around 90 High Street shops by May this year and up to 100 more by April 2027.

It also said it would open 12 out-of-town superstores over the next two years.

It said, like many High Street retailers, it was facing "rising costs, inflationary pressures, and changing consumer habits - including reduced footfall, higher national insurance contributions, and growing competition from online resale platforms".

Many retailers have argued they have been hit with a wave of extra costs since April last year, including increased employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) and higher minimum wages.

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SpaceX says it's worth $1.75tn as it targets largest stock market debut

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgz237n40jo, 3 days ago

Elon Musk's SpaceX has released a suggested share price ahead of its planned listing, which would make it the largest initial public sale in history.

In a filing setting out plans for its initial public offering (IPO), SpaceX said its shares should go for $135 (£100) each, ratcheting up its own valuation of the firm to roughly $1.75tn.

Setting an estimated price for its stock listing so far in advance is a rare move, and the amount represents a large increase in SpaceX's previous valuation of $1.25tn earlier this year.

The revelation does not mean its shares will sell for the proposed price, as this will ultimately be decided by buyers. The price could go up or down.

The move by SpaceX, which builds space exploration rockets and infrastructure but also owns xAI and Starlink, to reveal its estimated share price more than a week before its public debut is unusual.

Companies typically only reveal the price they want to sell their shares at the day before they begin trading on the open market.

SpaceX is expected to start trading on the Nasdaq stock index on 12 June, making its price estimate one of, if not the earliest price estimates, in stock market history.

The company is aiming to raise $75bn, which would be a record high for an IPO. The current record is held by oil giant Saudi Aramco, which raised $25.6bn in 2019.

Should the company's shares sell at or above the expected $135 price, it will immediately become one of the most valuable companies in the world.

And Musk, who controls more than 80% of SpaceX with his own stock holdings in the firm, could become a trillionaire.

However, such an outcome is not certain.

According to data from Dealogic, which conducts research on the capital markets, almost half of companies that have gone public in the last 30 years have seen their value decrease compared to when they listed.

"There is no doubt the valuation is incredibly rich," Samuel Kerr, head of equity capital markets research at Mergermarket, said.

He noted that SpaceX was pricing itself compared to its sales at a ratio that is higher than any other major company included in what investors refer to as the "Mag 7" - Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Nvidia, Microsoft and Tesla, another of Musk's companies.

"But SpaceX is being valued on future earnings and revenue rather than the here and now, so some investors might be willing to overlook that," Kerr added.

Last year, Space Exploration Technologies - as SpaceX is officially known - brought in $18.6bn (£13.8bn) in revenue but had a net loss of $4.9bn.

In the first three months of this year, it achieved $4.7bn in sales but made a net loss of $4.3bn. Its balance sheet shows it has $102bn in assets, such as rockets and other equipment, but also carries $60.5bn of debt.

Besides space exploration, the company is investing heavily in artificial intelligence (AI), social media, space-based internet services and data centres.

Earlier this year, SpaceX acquired xAI, another one of Musk's businesses which is known for its Grok chatbot.

xAI started as part of X, formerly known as Twitter, and used its access to live text and information on the platform for AI training data.

Musk has long believed that developing infrastructure in space is the best way to secure the resources needed to power AI, given that land on Earth is scarce.

He has outlined plans to launch AI satellites and eventually build data centres in orbit.

"SpaceX used to be a simple business, it was a launch company and then it was also a satellite broadband provider, and now it's a social media company and it's an AI lab," Laurence Pevsner, a partner at venture capital firm Lux Capital, told the BBC's Today programme.

"The AI lab is what's really spiking the valuation and I think it's a risky bet to put onto shareholders," he added.

SpaceX's listing comes as other tech giants are looking to raise more cash to fund their spending on AI.

Earlier this week, AI firm Anthropic revealed its plans for a public share sale later this year, while Google's owner Alphabet said it wanted to raise $80bn to spend on AI investment.

OpenAI is also reportedly considering going public this year.

Additional reporting by Osmond Chia

US announces new tariffs over forced labour concerns

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq6pe7nvldmo, 4 days ago

The US has announced new tariffs of 10-12.5% on dozens of countries accounting for almost all its imports over concerns they are not doing enough to tackle forced labour.

It is the second time President Donald Trump's administration has announced new import taxes since the US Supreme Court struck down many of his previous duties in February.

The US Trade Department said these countries will face the tariffs because of their failure to address the importing of goods made with forced labour.

The UK said it is tackling forced labour, China denied goods are made with forced labour, and the EU said the tariffs were unjustified.

Meanwhile, an India analyst said the move was a pressure tactic as trade negotiations between the countries continue.

Human rights groups say forced labour does exist in China and that the UK and other countries need to do more on making sure firms do not have forced labour in their supply chains.

However, they questioned the effectiveness of US tariffs as a way of dealing with the problem.

The 60 trading partners listed – including the UK, the EU, Canada, India and Japan – account for almost all of the goods sold to the US.

The US government's stance is that trading with countries which buy things made with forced labour is unfair on the US.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said it "creates a dynamic where American workers are forced to compete globally on an unlevel playing field".

The tariffs announced have not yet been enforced. The Trump administration will need to go through a process to do so.

The proposed tariffs come after an investigation launched in March by Greer into the 60 trading partners, and whether those countries had failed to act on prohibiting forced labour.

The report into the investigations concluded that 54 of the countries had "failed to impose a legal prohibition on the importation of goods produced wholly or in part with forced labour and to effectively enforce such a prohibition".

It said six other trading partners - Canada, the EU, Ecuador, Indonesia, Mexico and Pakistan - had "failed to effectively enforce a forced labour import prohibition".

The trade department said it would impose 10% tariffs on imports from Canada, the EU, Britain, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan.

The remaining 45 countries, which include China and India, would face 12.5% duties.

'Unjustified' move

A UK government spokesperson said: "We're tackling forced labour in the UK and in global supply chains to ensure UK businesses are not complicit in forced labour and human rights violations.

"We continue to engage regularly with the US administration as part of our negotiations, and have made clear the actions we're taking."

Amnesty International's business and human rights director Peter Frankental told the BBC that "trade measures can play a role in addressing forced labour risks, but they are not a substitute for effective enforcement, corporate accountability and mandatory human rights due diligence."

He added: "The UK government urgently needs to get its own house in order; on that front, there remains significant room for improvement."

The UK's Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner said "the UK law does not go far enough to tackle forced labour in supply chains".

It calculates the UK imports around £20bn of goods each year that may be linked to forced labour.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the new tariffs were "not a surprise" and would not impact the vast majority of Canadian exports to the US.

China said it opposed any form of unilateral tariff, and denied allegations of forced labour.

"There is no so-called forced labour in China, and we oppose using this as an excuse for political manipulation," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said.

But several international human rights have said forced labour does exist in China, particularly among Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

The European Commission said the EU remained committed to the trade deal agreed with the Trump administration last year.

"The EU considers tariffs imposed on these grounds to be unjustified," a spokesperson said.

Ajay Srivastava of the Delhi-based think tank Global Trade Research Initiative said India should challenge the legal basis of the proposed tariffs, arguing they stretch the scope of Section 301 - a US trade law that allows Washington to investigate and penalise foreign trade practices deemed unfair.

The move appeared to be part of "broader US pressure tactics", he said, and should be kept separate from ongoing trade negotiations.

"India should reassess its participation and consider stepping away from the bilateral trade agreement, as Malaysia has done," Srivastava said.

The Trump administration has not announced new tariffs since February when the Supreme Court ruled the so-called 'Liberation Day' tariffs imposed by Trump on a slew of countries around the world in April 2025 were unlawful.

Trump called the ruling "terrible" and said the justices who rejected his trade policy were "fools".

Immediately after the ruling, Trump announced a 10% temporary global tariff but later said it would be 15%.

However, the duty came in at 10%, and it has not yet been increased. The measure is due to expire in July, unless extended by Congress.

Additional reporting by Soutik Biswas, India Correspondent, in Delhi.

Radios offered to shop owners to deter shoplifting

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4pekj0qygo, 4 days ago

Radios are being offered to shop owners as part of a scheme to deter shoplifters.

Premises across Stamford, Bourne and Market Deeping town centres are being encouraged to join the Shopwatch scheme, which is already in place in Grantham.

The scheme involves supplying radios to allow businesses to communicate between each other and warn of suspicious activity.

Councillor Paul Stokes, deputy leader of South Kesteven District Council, said the scheme would "give retailers the chance to work together in a practical way by quickly passing on intelligence to each other."

The council said it was providing £25,000 from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund to expand the scheme.

The radios will be linked to the authority's CCTV control room, where cameras are monitored 24/7, along with being able to link directly to Lincolnshire Police.

Barbara Mooney, Pubwatch and Shopwatch co-ordinator for Grantham, Stamford, Bourne and Market Deeping, said the licence for the radios would be paid for in the first year.

She said businesses need to be a member of the Lincolnshire Chamber of Commerce Shopwatch scheme to benefit from the offer.

Listen to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North.

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Three-quarters of workers not on track for 'moderate' pension income, report suggests

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3928m30v89o, 4 days ago

Too many people face a "cliff-edge drop in income" when they retire, with more than three-quarters not on course to save enough for a "moderate" lifestyle, a pensions trade body has warned.

A new report by Pensions UK suggested what it termed a moderate lifestyle cost £32,700 a year for one person and £45,400 for two - but estimated just 23% of the working population would reach such a level.

Rising bills have pushed up the cost of retirement, it said, adding to calls for action to boost retirement savings.

According to the report, a minimum retirement lifestyle costs around £13,900 annually for a one-person household and £22,500 for two people.

Meanwhile, a comfortable lifestyle in retirement is estimated to cost £45,400 annually for a single person and £62,700 for a couple. Pensions UK said only 9% of workers were in line to get to that level.

The trade body estimates the level of income after tax needed to have a minimum, moderate or comfortable standard of living as a pensioner each year.

The calculations are developed and maintained independently by the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University. They are intended as a guide for those planning their retirement savings.

They set out what people are likely to spend in key areas such as food, transport, holidays and clothing when they retire, based on discussions with members of the public.

The minimum standard is calculated to include money for a couple's weekly groceries, a week's holiday in the UK, eating out about once a month and some affordable leisure activities about twice a week.

Some 82% of the working population would reach the minimum standard, the report said.

"Far fewer will go beyond that. That is out of step with what people expect for their future. Without action, too many risk facing a cliff-edge drop in income when they stop work," said Zoe Alexander, from Pensions UK.

The incomes needed had increased compared with a year ago, primarily as a result of the rising cost of food and socialising, the report said.

The increases were broadly in line with rising prices, as measured by inflation, though housing costs are excluded.

"This means it is important for individuals to use the standards as a guide and adjust them to reflect their own situation, particularly where additional housing costs are likely to be a key factor," Pensions UK said.

The trade body suggested that workers, employers and the government could step up to encourage and contribute to more saving for retirement.

Pension providers send annual statements that estimate the annual income someone's savings will provide in retirement.

Last year, the government said it was reviving the "landmark" Turner Pension Commission which reported in 2006, under the last Labour government, and led to the roll-out of automatic enrolment into pension saving.

Ministers, and the commission's interim report, suggested that people were not saving enough for retirement, with people drawing their pension 25 years from now set to be £800 or 8% worse off per year than their counterparts today, according to the government.

Women have about half the amount of money saved in pensions as men, tax authority figures suggest. And 28 is the age when women start to fall behind men in saving for retirement, investment platform AJ Bell has found.

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Single 20-somethings need AI to make first move on dating apps - Hinge boss

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c052397y6ygo, 2 days ago

Single 20-somethings need AI to start conversations on dating apps because they lack the confidence of older generations, says the boss of Hinge.

Jackie Jantos told the BBC Gen Z daters "absolutely want love" but were "struggling to have the confidence to put themselves out there" as they socialise less in person.

She defended Hinge's AI feature which creates prompts to start chatting with a match as "not about writing words for you" but "helping you express who you are".

Hinge has continued to grow its UK users despite some relationship experts warning of "dating app burnout" and a return to more organic in person meetings.

Founded in 2012 and owned by Match Group, which also owns Tinder and Match.com, Hinge has built its brand around the slogan "designed to be deleted".

Jantos dismisses accusations that this is "just a marketing line", saying it wants to help users find long-term relationships rather stay on the platform indefinitely.

Tinder is the most visited dating app, but over the past three years usage has been dropping and it's now only marginally ahead of nearest competitor Hinge. Bumble and Grindr follow Hinge in the most used dating services.

Some 1.5 million adults used Hinge in the year up to May 2025, up from 1.4 million a year earlier.

Over the same period, Tinder's audience fell from 1.9 million to 1.5 million, according to Ipsos iris data.

Speaking to the BBC's Big Boss interview podcast, Jantos says Gen Z - who account for more than half of Hinge's monthly active users - were spending around 1,000 fewer hours a year in person with other people than those of the same age group two decades ago.

Jantos says this equates to more than two hours per day "spent not in the company of another human, but most likely going deep in some sort of experience engaged in your phone".

She adds: "This prevents people from having the experience of being around others and that is quite a lonely experience."

The 47-year-old says almost half of Gen Z people in the UK now feel lonely "often or always".

She says the Covid pandemic meant many young adults missed out on formative years of social interaction.

"Those years when you're sort of experimenting with how you show up in person with another person, how you flirt, how you think about intimacy, that was interrupted for many people," she says.

Dating app burnout

Dr Carolina Bandinelli, an associate professor at the University of Warwick, who researches dating, relationships and communication agrees that the pandemic changed dating for Gen Z.

"There was the sense that dating apps are [now] the only way to meet people," she says. Now she thinks "we are past the hype" as "dating apps didn't work as they promised they would".

She says they were pitched as giving single people "access to a virtually infinite pool of strangers" and sparing them "from the possibility of rejection".

But "you're not really choosing, you're more guessing," she says. "The lack of social cues makes it very difficult."

Hinge has an AI tool which users can ask to review their profile and suggest ways to make it more engaging. Another feature offers AI-generated prompts to help users start conversations.

Jantos rejects suggestions that the tools are encouraging people to outsource dating to AI, arguing they are designed to boost confidence rather than replace authentic interactions.

Siobhan Copland is the founder of Cupid in the City, a matchmaking service for young professionals. She sees many single 20-somethings suffering from dating app burnout.

"We're just constantly bombarded with information...it's very much quality connections over quantity [now]."

She says the big difference between Gen Z and their predecessors, when it comes to dating, is that "they're not really into drinking culture".

"They'd be more likely at the gym on a Friday night than at the bar," she says.

Are you stuck in the dating app burnout cycle?

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260526-its-not-just-you-dating-apps-have-a-burnout-problem, 11 days ago

Download, burnout, delete, repeat. Science says dating app users follow a predictable and dangerous pattern. These are the signs you're falling for it – and how to escape.

Two years ago, Fernanda R deleted the dating apps and swore she was done. Then her friends started pairing off with partners they met online, everyone telling the same hopeful stories. So, a few weeks ago, the 29-year-old international affairs advisor – who asked to withhold her last name – decided to try again and re-downloaded a few dating apps. "I thought maybe things would be different this time," Fernanda says. She was wrong.

Soon she was juggling multiple conversations, obsessively checking her phone, buckling under the constant pressure to be witty and interesting. "It just feels overwhelming," says Fernanda. "There's this invisible pressure. It starts to take away from your real friendships, your work."

The algorithm flooded her with people, but nothing clicked. Fernanda couldn't stop wondering what that said about her. She felt lonelier than she had in two years of being single.

Fernanda's story is one I've heard hundreds of times, and there's a name for it: dating app burnout. Research suggests apps may produce a recognisable pattern in their users, one that looks less like dating and more like effects of an unmanageably stressful job – exhaustion, cynicism and a creeping sense that nothing you do is working, and maybe the problem is you. Left alone, it gets worse. Studies link dating apps to higher rates of depression, anxiety and loneliness, with heavier costs on people who were already struggling beforehand.

"It seems as if the goals of the apps are fundamentally incongruent with the goals of users," says Liesel Sharabi, director of the Relationships and Technology Lab at Arizona State University in the US. If people were getting great recommendations and going on incredible dates, they’d be getting off the apps for good. "But that's not what's happening. People are just constantly cycling on and off."

If summer has you back online looking for love, you might be in that loop right now. The good news is once you recognise it, there are concrete steps you can take to protect yourself.

Are you trapped in the burnout cycle?

A 2024 study followed hundreds of dating apps users over the course of three months. "We ended up finding over time, people using dating apps were experiencing burnout across the board," Sharabi says. Which makes sense. If you're stuck on the app, you haven't found what you're looking for (unless you just want hookups). But the experience was far more severe than frustration.

The word "burnout" gets thrown around so much it's started to lose its meaning, but it has a more formal, psychological definition. The classic inventory measures burnout in three categories: emotional exhaustion, cynicism (or depersonalisation) and inefficiency.

Academics first described this phenomenon in high-pressure work environments, but research has extended it to other parts of life. According to Sharabi, you can see it in online daters.

Emotional exhaustion is simple: if swiping leaves you feeling unmotivated, defeated and tired, that could be a sign of burnout. You're experiencing cynicism and depersonalisation when the profiles blend together, Sharabi says, and interactions stop feeling human. Inefficiency, in this context, is a creeping conviction that nothing you do on the app is going to work, either because you're bad at it or there's something wrong with you.

"I started on the app feeling like I want to be respectful because at the end of the day, we're all just human beings," says Madeleine D, who works in marketing for a tech company and also requested to keep her full name off the record. "But the more time I spent, the more blind I became about it, like I didn't really care about these people. I hated that about myself, because the one thing I promised myself was that I would at least show decency and respect."

It's easy to write this off as the predictable grumbling of singles in their late 20s. Dating is hard, and bars aren't so great either. But research suggests something more serious.

Sharabi led a recent meta-analysis which aggregated 17 years' worth of studies covering about 26,000 people. The study found dating app users reported significantly worse psychological health than non-users, including depression, anxiety, emotional dysregulation, loneliness and psychological distress.

Those problems fell harder on people who join dating apps in worse shape to begin with. In theory, Sharabi says the apps are a lifeline for people who find dating hardest: those whose mental health issues make meeting partners in person more difficult. But Sharabi has found those users were the most likely to burn out, and faster. "Those people tended to be especially susceptible," Sharabi says. "It basically exacerbated some of the pre-existing difficulties they had."

The blame game

The dating app industry doesn't want its users burning out. "As society and daters’ needs continue to evolve, we remain committed to helping people make meaningful connections and turn those connections into great dates," a Hinge spokesperson tells the BBC. Hinge says the app is designed to stay in the background of your life, and the company focused on using feedback from daters to improve the experience.

"Dating has always kind of sucked, and I think it's really easy to blame the technology," Sharabi says. At the same time, she thinks the apps amplify the misery in specific ways.

One is gamification. Dating apps are built around fast, frictionless gestures and inconsistent rewards. Many complain the structure is more like a slot machine than courtship, and users can get stuck pulling the lever long after the fun wears off. "The swiping gives you a high," says Karen Cornejo, an office administrator in Los Angeles. "And then everything else just doesn't." By the time a match actually wants to meet, the rush is gone. "I'm not even interested at that point anymore," Cornejo says, and the process leaves her feeling flat.

Dallas Koelling, a writer and comedian in Brooklyn who has gone on and off a couple of apps for years, puts it more bluntly: "Getting the notification that I've gotten a like on Hinge feels like being threatened with a gun."

Then there's the hidden labour. "If you lived in, like, Shakespeare's England, you might never even meet the amount of people who you see in one day swiping on Hinge," Koelling says. Dating apps dramatically expand the pool of potential partners. That's what makes them great, in fact, but the abundance can turn dating into work.

"It feels like a second full-time job that I have to do on my lunch break or after work," Madeleine says. "I don't want to be glued to my phone. And for social media, I've gotten a lot better at putting it down. But with dating, there's this feeling that the next person you swipe on could be the person you end up marrying. There's this endless hope that it feels like dating apps prey on."

The bottomless sea of faces also contributes to the feelings of burnout, Sharabi says, especially because a profile can only tell you so much. "You get trapped in an endless cycle of profile to dead-end conversation to dead-end date, and then you're right back where you started," she says.

On top of all that, the structural tension is hard to ignore. Dating apps really do want users to find matches. We'd all stop using them if that never happened. But they're also a business, one that makes almost all its money on subscriptions and paid features, which means they lose money if people quit. For years, dating app users have been telling me they feel manipulated, and that apps withhold the best matches and exploit their emotions to keep them tapping and swiping. (Dating app companies categorically deny this. But the algorithms that run them are a mystery.)

In 2024, a class-action lawsuit accused Match Group – the giant conglomerate that owns Tinder, Hinge and many other popular dating apps – of designing its apps to be addictive and profiting from compulsive use rather than from helping people find partners. Match Group dismissed the claims as "ridiculous". The case was later sent to arbitration. (Match Group did not respond to a request for comment).

"The vast majority of our work focuses on improving the free experience on Hinge, with less than 15% of our community using paid features," a Hinge spokesperson says. "Ultimately, our success depends on people having positive experiences on the app, meeting someone meaningful, and ultimately recommending Hinge to others.”

Four ways to break the burnout cycle

The apps are designed to keep users swiping, and when unchecked, swiping is what wears people down. But Sharabi says there are some simple steps you can follow to avoid the symptoms of burnout and keep your mental health in check.

1. First, don't make the apps your only outlet.

"I never discourage people from using them," Sharabi says. "But they shouldn't be the only way you're trying to meet people, and that takes some of the pressure off." Join a run club, ask a friend to set you up and put yourself in rooms where you might meet someone the old-fashioned way. That way a discouraging conversation on an app isn't the only thing your week is riding on.

2. Swipe with intention.

Mindless swiping can swallow hours and leave you with nothing to show for it. Sharabi recommends treating the apps the way some people now treat social media. "Say I'm going to look at the app for this amount of time, this many times a week, and I'm done," she says. Notice your mood and stop before the exhaustion sets in, so you end each session energised rather than hollowed out.

3. Lean on your friends.

Burnout thrives in isolation, and much of the swiping that produces it happens alone. Researchers who study burnout have long found that social support cushions the blow; talking through the ups and downs with people who know you can keep a bad week from becoming a bad spiral.

4. Know when to quit.

Dating can be discouraging, but if the apps are eroding your optimism, and you put down your phone feeling like you're never going to find someone, that's the signal to step away entirely. "All of those things could be a sign that maybe you should just take a total break," Sharabi says.

More like this:

• The spy in your driveway: How cars sell your data

• Your phone's blue light isn't ruining your sleep

• Google's AI is being manipulated. The search giant is fighting back

There are signs the dating app business is aware of these concerns. The industry could be in trouble. Paid subscribers are dropping like flies, and there's some indication that younger people are keen to find love offline. Battered by what executives call "swipe fatigue", dating apps are working to reinvent themselves.

Bumble is abandoning the swipe altogether, joining Hinge and Tinder in a new embrace of more AI-driven matchmaking. Tinder's CEO recently announced plans to embrace in-person events in an effort to reshape the app. A Hinge spokesperson says creating a "less lonely world" is the company's core mission, and it's working to create supportive communal spaces online and off. Whether any of it works, or whether it's just a fresh way to keep people tapping, remains to be seen.

For now, people caught in the cycle are left to manage it themselves. Madeleine is staying off the apps for now, though she doesn't expect it to last. In a world where so many relationships begin online, opting out can feel like opting out of romance entirely. "I doubt this will be more than a break," she says. "But dating can be fun, when you remove how seriously some people take it." Then, after a beat: "I just wish we had a better way to do this."

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Weekly round-up: Stories you may have missed

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1424v0ymkeo, yesterday

A wildlife trust has celebrated the birth of a rare animal, a grandad has set off on 5,000-mile (about 8,000km) coastal cycle, and a couple have spoken about what it is like to share their home with 17 other people.

Here are some stories from Devon and Cornwall that you may have missed during the past week.

Wall of Death rider still chasing thrill after 50 years

For Ken Fox, the Wall of Death is not just a crowd-puller, it is a way of life passed down through generations.

"I've been at it 50 years now," he said. "But before me, my parents were doing it and my grandparents. So we go back to 1931."

Based in Ely, in Cambridgeshire, Fox is still riding the vertical wooden wall at shows across the country, including the Royal Cornwall Show, which started at Wadebridge on Thursday, where his team has been a fixture for 27 years.

Trust celebrates birth of rare lemur quadruplets

A wildlife trust is is celebrating the rare birth of red-ruffed lemur quadruplets.

Shaldon Wildlife Trust in Devon said the lemurs were "just so, so cute but so, so special at the same time."

The trust said red ruffed lemurs were only found in a small area of the northeast of Madagascar and were "critically endangered". It said the birth of quadruplets was incredibly rare, occurring in fewer than 6% of births worldwide.

Show draws thousands despite rain on opening day

Thousands of people defied the wet weather for day one of the Royal Cornwall Show.

The event is huge for Cornwall's food, farming and business community and also an important event for local charities to attract volunteers and donations.

The show, which ran from Thursday to Saturday at the Royal Cornwall Showground near Wadebridge, was expected to draw tens of thousands of visitors for a celebration of farming, food and rural life.

Grandad, 76, sets off on 5,000-mile coastal cycle

A 76-year-old man has set off on a 5,000-mile (8,000km) bike ride around the coast of Great Britain to raise money for charity and inspire others to "stay fit and healthy".

Norman Brown, a grandad-of-four from Coventry, is bike-packing for the next two months, to raise money for charities Prostate Cancer UK and The Myton Hospices.

He aims to complete the coastal route, heading to Land's End before travelling up the west coast and finishing back at his starting point in Exmouth, in August.

Steam railway marks 40 years of operations

Railway enthusiasts marked 40 years of operating steam trains with a special celebration in Cornwall.

Bodmin Railway marked four decades since the first authorised train movements of the preservation era took place at its General Station in 1986.

The railway still operates on more than 6.5 miles (10.4km) of heritage track.

Celebrations included live music, heritage vehicles and a "timeless spectacle" of working steam - and Cornish pasties and cream teas.

'We moved in with 17 strangers so we wouldn't be lonely' - why co-housing is on the rise

A household of 19 people living together in Devon has shared the reasons behind the co-housing arrangement, which includes people aged four to more than 70.

When Nikki Little and John Porter retired, they considered buying a bungalow for just the two of them.

Instead, they invested in a £1m house tucked away on Devon's rugged and remote Hartland Peninsula - and looked for a community of like-minded people to join them.

Co-housing is gaining popularity in the UK, says the UK Cohousing Network - in a post-pandemic world where loneliness, the housing crisis and costly care are forcing a drive for new solutions.

Follow BBC Cornwall on X, Facebook and Instagram. Follow BBC Devon on X, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to spotlight@bbc.co.uk.

We should fight back against AI nudes, say MP's constituents

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c33232n0l8yo, yesterday

Women in Jess Asato's Suffolk constituency have said they need to "fight" back against social media users who generate sexualised imagery of people.

The Labour MP for Lowestoft has said she is taking legal action against Elon Musk's xAI through the High Court.

She claimed that the platform had been used to create "disgusting" images of her – including a fake picture of her in a bikini – by its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Grok.

Her constituents told the BBC they were horrified and that having their images manipulated in such a way would be degrading and a violation of their identity.

"To hear that somebody's been violated in this way just shocks me – I'm really shocked," artist Susanna Wallis said.

"Women seem to have to keep coming up with another fight and we have to keep going to the next frontier of the fight and through another."

Businesswoman Amanda Steel, who runs Sam's Cafe in Lowestoft, said the rise of nudification tools meant she did not want to promote herself on social media.

"You're watching what can be done to other women and you don't want to put anything out there that could be used," she said.

"There's so much negativity around women and women's images, but you can put your head above the parapet for what you're fighting for.

"We have to fight back."

Tracey McFee, who helps out at the cafe, described the issue as being a "real scary situation" and said she feared for the safety of her daughters and granddaughters.

"How am I going to be able to protect them? I'm horrified," she said.

"AI can be a great educational tool and used very positively to empower women in business.

"But I think this is a stark reminder that there is also a very, very dark side."

Erica Thompson is a beautician and aesthetics clinician who uses AI to show customers how certain treatments could help them or how a styling might look.

But for that, she first always has to gain their consent to use their images.

"This is the major thing that has happened with Jess, she hasn't yet given her consent, and so her power's been taken away," she told the BBC.

"And that stays with you, that's a violation of your identity which just destroys your confidence."

Caroline Parnis, from the Sensory Studio at Blade hairdressers, said she immediately thought of her teenage daughter when she heard what had happened to Asato.

"She is at a very vulnerable age, and this can happen to anyone, this doesn't just affect women and children, it can affect everybody in society," she said.

"Even when I went on holiday last year, I didn't put any pictures of myself in a bikini on social media."

Tanya Mayfield is an empowerment photographer who runs her own studio and strives to make women "feel good in their skin, whether it's with clothes on or off".

She said she was "absolutely worried" that images she took and shared on social media could then be used and manipulated.

"It's really scary because I'm putting ladies out there who have given me their consent, but now maybe people can take those images and tweak them," she said.

"Anyone who walks into my studio has full rights, but [if I were to] take away someone's privacy or edit them without consent that is my business over."

The MP, who filed her lawsuit on Wednesday, is seeking damages but also wants to set a precedent for companies to be liable for the design of AI systems.

Despite numerous approaches from the BBC for comment, xAI has not responded.

Since vowing to take action, Asato said she had had a "huge response" from people voicing their support but also from women who said they, too, had had their images nudified.

"How is it that tech companies can create products that can create this disgusting material? Where is the respect for women?" she said.

"You wouldn't walk up to someone in this street and just start taking their clothes off them. So you shouldn't be able to do that to a woman online."

The filing of the lawsuit came just hours before the conviction of Anwar Mohamed, of Anchor Street, in Lowestoft, who had previously contacted the politician.

The 59-year-old was found guilty of sending a communication or article of an indecent or grossly offensive nature, for which he will be sentenced on 3 July.

He had also been charged with sending communications that threaten death or serious harm – a charge which the court said would lie on file.

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How a virtual space battle lost gamers £400,000

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnvp7364q5no, yesterday

James Cunningham hadn't slept. He'd been up all night "fighting for his life".

The 27-year-old from Ware in Hertfordshire was trying to save a virtual empire from the brink of destruction - using a keyboard and mouse.

James says he "didn't expect everything to go wrong", recalling the explosive conflict that broke out in June 2025. "But it did."

He'd spent thousands of hours - up to 16 a day - and roughly £6,000 playing EVE Online, a game played by tens of thousands of people around the world.

Last year marked one of the most dramatic and expensive chapters in the game's history.

By the end of it, hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth of in-game assets had been lost.

One combatant contacted BBC Your Voice hoping to draw attention to this colossal war that offers a glimpse into EVE Online's immersive digital world.

It's a universe in which players craft stories of heroism, treachery and geopolitical turmoil - and suffer real-life economic consequences.

A distant universe

Launched in 2003, the game is set in a fictional corner of space which gamers are free to explore as pilots. There is no rigid storyline to follow.

They can band together to form corporations - which operate like private militaries or shipping companies.

These corporations can in turn work together in vast alliances, running increasingly complex military and industrial operations which go on for years.

Many gamers become soldiers or traders, but a select few find themselves in leadership positions - commanding thousands of gamers and having massive influence over the virtual world.

Because resources and territory are limited, conflict is a core driver of the game. Trade routes are raided, borders contested, and rival alliances wage months-long wars to control regions of space.

Battles can be intense, but some players call EVE Online the "spreadsheet simulator" as most of the gameplay is slow and strategic - clicking through maps and information panels to manage ships and monitor for threats.

Every item in the game - from ships and space stations to weaponry - is manufactured by players, who can sell them to one another for in-game currency. Building these assets can take hundreds of hours, but players can also spend real money to acquire them, generating revenue for Icelandic developers Fenris Creations.

For example, a Titan-class ship is worth about £741. James Cunningham estimates he has spent about £6,000 on the game since he started playing in 2017. A high-earning friend, he says, claims to have spent closer to £30,000.

While spending money on video games is not uncommon, EVE Online stands out because players' assets can be permanently destroyed; their real-world cash outlay gone in seconds.

The game's financial system is so complex that in 2025, a former economist from the Central Bank of Iceland was hired to oversee it.

Players can amass huge virtual fortunes by mining raw materials or fighting as mercenaries, but they aren't allowed to convert in-game wealth back into real-world cash.

Playing EVE Online can take hundreds of hours. Some see it as a second job, dedicating up to 35 hours per week to their virtual duties on top of their real-world nine-to-fives.

"It will absorb all the free time you're willing to give it," James says.

The long road to war

The player-on-player war of 2025 didn't come about overnight. Tensions in the game had been building for years.

In 2020, rival factions clashed after a ceasefire came to an abrupt end. Some believe this was a result of personal vendettas between the factions' leaders. Fenris Creations called it "cataclysmic".

At one point, players fought continuously for 14 hours in what became known as The Massacre at M2-XFE.

This was awarded a Guinness World Record for most costly video game battle, as more than £280,000 of assets were destroyed.

The conflict triggered a "cold war" as many of the game's major alliances began plotting each other's downfall.

The big ambush

During this time, James was rising through the ranks to become fleet commander of one of the game's largest alliances - Pandemic Horde - tasked with directing thousands of players in battle.

He found the role hugely enjoyable, but strategising and giving commands to subordinate players in real time could be "more stressful than real life".

Before long, he noticed The Imperium - Pandemic Horde's long-time enemy - rapidly advancing towards his alliance's home.

The Imperium had been badly weakened in 2020, but had spent years rebuilding its forces.

Now it was making a epic journey across space - transporting an estimated £5m ($6.7m) worth of assets to launch an attack on its historic foe. Developers called it "the most ambitious move in EVE Online's history".

Leaders made bold decisions. Multiple players say they told their real-life employers they were too sick to work. James adapted his sleep schedule as gaming shifts were established across multiple time zones.

The Imperium's armada confronted Pandemic Horde with full force in June 2025, aiming to seize its territory.

Military campaigns planned for months reached a crescendo in a symphony of mouse clicks as rockets were fired for hours at a time. The darkness of space became a tapestry of blue and orange as ships were shot down and space stations exploded.

The pressure weighed on James.

He worried that a wrong decision could result in the destruction of assets worth tens of thousands of pounds. "It hurts to think about it as £50,000 rather than trillions of in-game currency."

The War of Ruses, as it became known, ended with Pandemic Horde's retreat.

But that was the just the beginning.

Months later, the player who had led Pandemic Horde for more than 10 years announced a shock departure.

Not only was he leaving the game, but the alliance would also be making a dangerous journey to a new part of space, as its new leaders wanted a fresh start.

Rival groups pounced, bombarding Horde's members for up to 24 hours a day as they scrambled to protect themselves and their belongings.

Pandemic Horde suffered such a staggering defeat that the group ultimately disbanded.

Estimates of the cost of the assets destroyed during the battle vary.

The EVE Online super-fan who contacted the BBC about this war shared a complex spreadsheet and believes gamers' assets worth £700,000 were lost.

But developer Fenris Creations calculates losses to be more in the region of £400,000 - stressing this is not an "official figure".

James prioritised protecting his "big-ticket items" and managed to pull off a successful escape. He lost about £200 of assets. Others, he says, were not so fortunate and lost thousands.

The overall destruction, paired with the collapse of a major alliance, made 2025 a defining year for the game. Fenris Creations reports that November and December of that year were the two highest-revenue months in the game's 23-year history.

James says the fall of Pandemic Horde, which cost him his virtual job and home, still hurts.

"Building these assets and taking territory takes a lot of time… You'd log in and that's where you and your friends are. It's like our neighbourhood - and then one day it's gone.

Many players have lost contact with each other after scattering across space in search of new adventures.

A new era

Right now, the world of EVE Online is "brimming with excitement", says creative director Bergur Finnbogason.

"A leader steps down and all of a sudden, 40,000 people were without a home, without proper leadership," he continues.

Smaller groups are now flourishing in Pandemic Horde's former territory - something Finnbogason sees as a "reset".

James now spends less time on EVE Online. He sleeps properly and has returned to a normal routine.

Like many others, he has joined a smaller alliance as he finds his place in a changed universe.

He doesn't miss the lack of sleep, but does miss the "chef's-kiss moments" when he'd finally get to execute complex battle plans he'd spent weeks, or months, planning.

Finnbogason says he doesn't know how the next chapter of the EVE Online story will unfold.

"But it's a new era, and people are paying attention."

Raspberry Pi raises profit forecast as AI demand grows

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx2x3yl9rgo, yesterday

Raspberry Pi has increased its profit expectations due to strong demand for the small computers amid rapid growth in the AI sector.

The Cambridge-based firm said it expected to deliver adjusted earnings of at least $38m (£28.2m) for the first half of 2026.

The update sent shares in the company up by as much as 25% in early trading on Friday, lifting its market value to around £2bn.

The credit card-sized computers are increasingly being used to create AI-powered devices, offering a cheaper alternative to more specialised hardware.

The company said it has seen the value of its stock more than triple since the start of the year.

The group said recent strong performance reflected "robust demand for its products", with more than four million in unit sales expected for the half-year.

It said it is therefore on track for earnings to be "significantly ahead of current market expectations" for 2026 as a whole.

Raspberry Pi's devices are the most widely sold computers by a UK firm and are popular with people who programme as a hobby.

More recently, some enthusiasts have begun using the low-cost machines to host AI assistants such as OpenClaw.

The company has also raised prices several times for many of its products over the past few months after a global shortage of memory chips, driven in part by demand from AI data centres, pushed up component costs.

We need to stop AI developing without humans, says Anthropic co-founder

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2124z7g45o, 2 days ago

Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark has called for the ability to slow progression of artificial intelligence (AI), warning the technology is nearing a point where it could develop without human input.

"You want the option to be able to take your foot off the gas and put your foot on the brake", Clark told BBC Newsnight. "Right now, it's like the AI industry has a gas pedal, but it doesn't have a brake pedal."

He stressed people, through government policy, need to keep control of AI systems, which will only get more powerful and have broader impacts on society.

"The world needs to do some thinking and we need to eventually develop some new regulations that allow us to be confident in these systems," he said.

Already, Anthropic's popular chatbot Claude is operating on code of which 80% the system wrote itself. Getting to 100% is possible within two years, Clark said, and "would have huge implications".

Clark did not outline how a "brake pedal" for AI research and development could be created, but drew a parallel between AI and the oil boom and barons of the turn of the last century.

"Society's response was to come up with a sensible policy and regulatory framework that gave people confidence in oil and the benefits that oil could provide to the world, and meant that you didn't have to worry about the personalities of the people leading the companies", Clark said. "That's clearly where we end up here."

Yet, Anthropic this week welcomed an executive order on AI from US President Donald Trump that was relatively hands-off in its directives toward the companies.

It did not require AI companies to submit to safety testing by the government, something that remains a voluntary effort.

Major AI companies pursuing advances in the technology, including Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, have also not said they will pause their own research.

Anthropic has grown so quickly since its founding five years ago that it is preparing to debut on the public stock market.

It is poised to be one of the first public listings by a newer AI firm and one of the most valuable stock listings in history, as Anthropic's valuation is estimated by private investors to be nearly $1tn (£745bn).

Clark said Anthropic's motivation for publicly discussing the growing capability of AI technology is not to further burnish its reputation with paying customers.

He simply wants to "tell the world what we're seeing inside these companies with this unusual technology".

Since its founding by chief executive Dario Amodei, Clark and a handful of other executives, Anthropic has positioned itself as outspoken about potential risks stemming from AI.

It even engaged in a public dispute with the US Department of Defense over concerns that its AI tools would be used in mass surveillance of Americans and autonomous warfare.

"I am worried for my kids if we as a society don't have a serious conversation about what the implications of AI's continued advances mean," Clark told Newsnight. "There are potentially great benefits. There are also risks."

Clark added that one of the risks is a disruption to the economy, with fears that AI technology like "agents" - essentially individual AI bots that conduct routine tasks somewhat autonomously could take over certain jobs.

Major tech companies have conducted mass layoffs over the last year, often citing the growing ability of AI tools to do the work of hundreds or even thousands of software engineers.

Clark said people who are more creative and have more, better ideas may actually have an advantage over AI technology.

"There are open questions about whether AI systems can be truly creative… there is not really evidence for that yet", he added. "At Anthropic, we're now limited more by the ability to generate good ideas than the ability to do the engineering to turn those ideas into reality."

Nevertheless, Clark suggested a young person who may be feeling that an economy built on AI does not have a place for them should "develop a hobby" and pursue a liberal arts education.

"People that are creative and can think broadly, people that read a lot, people that have interests are the ones most benefited by this," Clark said. "Indulge in curiosity and it pays back in how you can use this technology."

What led one MP to go up against Elon Musk?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn8p0wdyelwo, 2 days ago

A Suffolk MP is taking on one of the richest men in the world - Elon Musk.

Jess Asato, the Labour MP for Lowestoft, announced on Wednesday she planned to take legal action over "disgusting" deepfake images of her, allegedly created by the chatbot Grok on Musk's X platform.

She said she felt she had been targeted after speaking out against the bot and sexualised deepfakes it had created of other women.

But how big of an issue are deepfakes? What do people think of Asato's stand? And what has Musk said?

What happened?

Back in January, Asato said she had been left violated when an image of her was manipulated using AI technology so that she appeared in a bikini.

She posted on X, and the BBC saw numerous examples of such images being posted in the comments.

However, it had not been clear if the image, and those posted in the reply, had been created using the AI chatbot Grok.

It came at a time when other women reported similar sexualised images of themselves on the social media platform, with some describing it as "dehumanising".

Then, on Wednesday, Asato revealed she had launched legal action against Musk's xAI company, which created Grok.

She said her claim was about seeking redress for "the harms that were created while Grok was creating harms".

The claim filed at the High Court is being brought under the Data Protection Act and for tortious misuse of private information.

What is Grok and deepfake content?

Grok is an AI chatbot developed by Musk's xAI firm, and was first released in 2023.

It can be used to generate text, images and video, and it has been integrated into the social media network X.

Grok has been heavily criticised in recent months as it was used in similar examples to Asato to undress women and put them in sexual positions without consent.

For example, explicit images of journalist and campaigner Jess Davis were created without her consent on the software and Dr Daisy Dixon, a lecturer in philosophy at Cardiff University, experienced the same.

These are known as deepfakes, which are videos, pictures and other content made using AI to make it look real.

It has since become illegal to create or request a non-consensual deepfake image of an adult in the UK.

What has the wider reaction been?

When Asato first raised the issue of the deepfakes made of her earlier in the year, it generated huge discussions on her social media pages.

On Wednesday, there was even more when she announced her legal action, both in support of her stand and otherwise.

It prompted Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to also put out his own statement, detailing that he was "100%" behind her and she was "absolutely right" in her action.

Rachel Kingsbrook, 47, lives over the border in Cantley in Norfolk, but has been following Asato, describing her as "extremely brave".

She believed people "failed to understand" that deepfakes had real consequences for victims, and for the perpetrators it was about power and control.

"It shows once again that when victims and survivors seek help, or support, or accountability, they are silenced, or ridiculed, or attacked," she added.

Jade, who did not want her surname published, is 36 and lives in Halesworth.

While she is also not one of Asato's constituents, she said it was "incredibly empowering" to see her making a stand and that deepfakes "deeply" concerned her.

"Whether an intimate image is a manipulated deepfake or a real photograph shared without consent, the real-world harm is identical," she said.

"It strips victims of their privacy, dignity, and baseline safety."

How big of an issue are deepfakes?

A report found that deepfakes had increased by 550% between 2019 and 2023.

According to the Fawcett Society, a charity that campaigns for women's rights and gender equality, more than 95% of deepfake content online is pornographic and "overwhelmingly" targeting women.

UN Women, the UN organisation that upholds women's human rights, has called it a "global crisis", where prosecutions against the issue are rare and survivors are often re-traumatised when they do attempt to seek help.

If you, or someone you know, has been affected by sexual abuse, organisations listed at BBC Action Line may be able to help.

Dr Tanya Horeck, a professor of film and feminist media studies at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, who specialises in AI deepfakes, said: "We're living in this moment where violence against girls and women is a crisis.

"It's a national emergency, as has been declared, and I think AI-facilitated sexual abuse is a huge part of this."

Horeck added that the term deepfake often led people to think the harm caused was not real, and the victims often did not know who was behind the image.

She believed thinking about the language around the issue, education in schools and tackling deep-rooted societal misogyny could start to address things.

Katherine Ahluwalia, of domestic abuse charity Restore Women's Aid in Bury St Edmunds, said deepfakes were part of a wider issue related to social media.

"What we've seen is a lot of stuff that people or young people are seeing on the internet, like things like the 'manosphere', pornography, social media included in that, is fuelling misogyny, which in turn will then fuel domestic abuse and other crimes as well," she explained.

"You'll see it nationally, there's stats on it, the number of sexual assaults in schools, like peer-on-peer sexual assaults, is increasing year on year.

"So all of this is linked. You can't separate it, and those sort of misogynistic beliefs do feed into domestic abuse and sexual assaults."

Maryam Yaqub is the AI lead at the Fawcett Society and said women and men had differing opinions on AI, with women expressing some "mistrust".

"One of the things that I think is important to note is that female politicians being silenced in this way, it's not something new - in the sense that sexualising a woman who has a voice and reducing that woman to just her sexuality has been a tool that has been used against women throughout history," she said.

"Now it's being done in a way that feels just like anyone can do it."

She believed that while the government had criminalised creating deepfakes without consent, a more "proactive" approach was needed rather than a "reactive" one.

Is it a wider issue across the world?

It is not just here in the UK where deepfakes are being discussed.

Over in the United States, where xAI's headquarters is based, the mother of one of Musk's children is also suing him over them.

Ashley St Clair filed a lawsuit back in January over sexualised deepfakes created on X, to which xAI countersued stating that she had violated their terms of service by filing her lawsuit.

President Donald Trump last year did sign the Take It Down Act that criminalises posting intimate images - real or AI-generated - online without an individual's consent, and it requires technology companies to remove the content within 48 hours.

What has xAI and Musk said?

Despite numerous approaches from the BBC for a request for comment in response to Asato's action, xAI has not responded.

Earlier in the year, however, action was taken by the company to stop Grok being able to edit photos of real people to show them in revealing clothing in jurisdictions where it is illegal, such as the UK.

Musk himself said: "Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content."

Asato's legal case at the High Court was filed on Wednesday.

A future hearing will be set - the details of which have not yet been shared.

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Robot begins tests to combat killer weeds

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cddpd0754r2o, 2 days ago

A smart robot developed to combat a plant that can kill horses and livestock is set to begin final tests on Dorset farmland.

The autonomous farm robot, which is developed to detect and remove ragwort while reducing chemical use is being put through its paces at Dorset Innovation Park at Wool near Wareham.

Ragwort is a poisonous weed that threatens livestock health and damages grazing land. It is usually pulled by hand, which is labour intensive, costly and can pose risks to people and the environment.

The electrically powered platform, named Raggy by its creators, will carry out field trials at a range of farms and land across Dorset throughout the summer.

The Royal Horticultural Society says while ragwort is rarely a problem in gardens, its poisonous nature makes it a "serious weed of paddocks and pastures".

It plays an important role in supporting wildlife, including pollinators such as bees and butterflies.

Control is therefore targeted, with plants removed in areas where there is a risk to grazing animals.

Raggy has been developed by Cornish firm Robotriks in partnership with Dorset Council and long-time collaborators Telint.

Jake Shaw-Sutton, director of Robotriks, said the Robotic Traction Unit (RTU) was "built for real-life farm conditions".

Nick Ireland, leader of Dorset Council, said: "We are delighted this autonomous and environmentally sensitive solution is being tested, evaluated and developed on our land here in Dorset."

Dave Happy, CEO of Telint said: "This is yet another practical example of Dorset embracing innovative tech solutions to improve the quality of life for livestock and humans alike.

"Dorset's unique advantages, in particular in relation to access to spectrum, make it the ideal place to test and develop this kind if innovative solution."

'World-first' vaccine designed by artificial intelligence

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crrpggegwe0o, 2 days ago

Artificial intelligence has been used to develop a "fundamentally new" type of vaccine that could protect against large swathes of viruses and prevent pandemics, say researchers.

The team at the University of Cambridge say it is the first time a vaccine's key component has been designed entirely by AI and then trialled in people.

The vaccine was engineered to work on all coronaviruses which would include all Covid variants as well as viruses that currently infect animals yet have the potential to start the next pandemic.

The work is still in the early stages, but the team is already developing separate vaccines that could tackle flu and Ebola.

Vaccines teach our bodies how to spot an infection to increase our chances of fighting it off.

But some viruses are adept at changing their appearance – or mutating – so vaccines can quickly go out of date. It's why Covid and winter flu vaccines need to be regularly updated.

"We're always behind," said Prof Jonathan Heeney, from the University of Cambridge, adding "what we're trying to do is get ahead of the curve" and so far ahead they could protect against new outbreaks or pandemics.

How does it work?

Normally vaccines are designed using a current strain of a virus.

The Cambridge researchers took known genetic codes – the instruction manuals of life – from a range of coronaviruses that had been recorded by surveillance programmes hunting for potential viral threats.

These genetic codes were analysed by an artificial intelligence. It then designed a "super-antigen" that could train the immune system in such a way it gave protection against the whole family of viruses – even if they mutated or a new infection jumped from animals to people.

Antigens are the critical components of vaccines as this is what the immune system learns to attack.

Heeney said this was the first time an antigen designed by AI had been trialled in people. He said the technology was "surprising all of us" and it was "amazing what we can do with it for the good of humanity".

Heeney told BBC News: "This is about making vaccines that protect us, not just from today's viruses, but protect us from what can cause the next outbreak or disease.

"This is a fundamental shift in how we prepare for pandemics."

The trials, in 39 people, were designed to assess if such vaccines were safe. A second study – involving around 200 people – will give a greater understanding of how well it is training the immune system.

The findings detailed in the Journal of Infection said the impact on the immune system was "modest", but they are still generating excitement.

Prof Saul Faust, who performed some of the trials at the University of Southampton, said the AI design "definitely has potential" and was "really exciting".

He told the BBC: "What's really interesting is the technology is an awful lot better at designing vaccines for potential pandemics when viruses are changing."

The Cambridge team are already performing animal research on universal seasonal flu vaccines that would not need to be adapted every year and an H5N1-bird flu vaccine, in case the virus that is currently devastating bird populations became a human pandemic.

They are also looking at a vaccine for viral haemorrhagic fevers, which would include Ebola species. The current outbreak in the Democratic Republic Congo is being caused by a species that does not have a vaccine developed for it yet.

Prof Andy Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, was not involved in the study, but said this approach was generating compelling evidence in animal research.

"It's fascinating data and people wouldn't have predicted they'd be able to generate these immune responses," he told BBC News.

The real test, he says, is what happens in the human trials as our immune systems are different to laboratory mice as ours have been shaped by years of infections.

More broadly he said artificial intelligence was going to be a "game changer" for vaccine research and that AI tools had the potential to predict how the immune system would respond to a vaccine making development much faster and would "save lives".

Prof Marian Knight, scientific director for National Institute for Health and Care Research, said: "The remarkable success of this AI-designed 'super-antigen' trial marks a pivotal leap forward in our ability to deliver broad, lasting viral protection."

Science Minister Lord Vallance said: "Another British science success story, this is a great example of how we can bring our research expertise together with AI to deliver new treatments.

"With the first human trials showing positive results, this work could help speed up the roll out vaccines to benefit people all over the world for the long-term."

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What to know about Canada's new AI strategy

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g7gv8l0xlo, 3 days ago

Canada's government has released a much-anticipated national artificial intelligence (AI) strategy, mapping out how the country plans to adopt the new technology over the next decade.

It comes amid broader public concerns over trust of AI and its impact on privacy, safety and future job security.

Announcing the strategy on Thursday, Prime Minister Mark Carney said the arrival of AI is inevitable. "It is already changing how we work, how we learn, and how we connect," he said.

It includes more than C$2bn ($1.4bn; £1bn) in spending for programmes to increase AI literacy and scale up its use by businesses and government.

It also puts emphasis on keeping AI talent in Canada, acknowledging an "uncomfortable reality" that the US has been a more attractive place to set up shop for Canadian AI pioneers.

Here are some key takeaways on what is included - and what isn't - in Canada's AI strategy.

Canadian sovereignty through AI

Sovereignty has been top of mind for Canada ever since US President Donald Trump began referring to it as the "51st state", and its AI strategy is no different.

It names protecting Canada's sovereignty as a key objective and underlines ways that the country can reduce its reliance on "foreign providers" for its AI needs.

The strategy notes that Canadian companies store sensitive data in foreign jurisdictions, and that, in some cases, Ottawa is relying on infrastructure that Canada does not own.

In announcing the strategy, Carney warned that "AI could be weaponised against us".

Ottawa is proposing building what it calls a "world-leading" public supercomputer that would be secure and accessible for Canadian researchers and businesses.

It also wants to support the building of "large-scale AI data centres" to serve Canadian clients, with a goal of significantly enhancing computing capacity by 2030.

Stopping the AI brain drain

Canada is known for its highly educated population, but its close proximity to the massive US economy has meant it has struggled to retain its talent, particular in the AI sector.

Geoffrey Hinton, the Canadian researcher and Nobel Prize winner nicknamed the "Godfather of AI", sold his company to US tech giant Google and had worked for the tech firm for years.

Another Canadian talent, Ilya Sutskever, co-founded OpenAI.

The AI strategy promises to fund research fellowships and increase the number of research chairs at Canadian universities focused on AI.

It also wants to attract highly skilled AI workers from elsewhere by offering them a path to accelerated entry and permanent residency to Canada.

The country is also pledging C$500m in investments to Canadian AI companies, which, according to the strategy, would give the government the chance to take equity stakes.

Notably, the strategy promises that 250,000 jobs will be created by scaling up AI across sectors. It does not quantify, however, the number of jobs that could be lost through rapid AI adoption.

Scaling up AI from business to healthcare

Only 12% of Canadian businesses used AI between mid-2024 and mid-2025, according to government data. Ottawa believes that number should be much higher, with a plan to hit 60% by 2034.

The strategy includes C$500m in financing for businesses to help them incorporate AI tools, and another C$50m for creators to encourage them using AI "on their own terms".

It also puts a big emphasis on using AI to support Canada's healthcare sector. Carney announced the strategy on Thursday with several healthcare workers from a Toronto hospital standing behind him.

A big issue in Canadian healthcare has been long emergency room wait times and lack of access to general practitioners.

The government wants to fix that with C$200m dedicated to improving health outcomes through AI, including by using the technology to "lighten the administrative burden on physicians".

Carney noted that nearly three-quarters of EU countries are "already using AI-assisted diagnostics to support medical imaging and to detect disease".

Training Canadians on AI

The public is split on how it feels about AI, with 34% believing it is good for society and 36% believing it is harmful, according to government polling.

Half of Canadians regard AI as a threat to humanity, the strategy said.

Canada also ranks low among other nations when it comes to AI training, literacy and trust, according to a KPMG University of Melbourne global study.

One reason for that, the government said, is lack of AI literacy among the public, writing in the strategy: "For Canadians to benefit from AI, they must first learn to use it."

It is promising to create what it calls a national AI literacy initiative that will offer "entry-level AI training" to all Canadians. It will do so partly by partnering up with public libraries, it said.

Sparse details on addressing AI safety

Ottawa has promised new AI laws to protect consumer privacy and children's safety, though it did not offer details on how it plans to do so, or when.

It also promised to modernise Canada's online safety laws to reflect the new reality of AI.

Safety and AI became the focus of headlines in Canada earlier this year, after it was revealed that the suspect of a February mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, had used ChatGPT to discuss gun violence months before the attack.

OpenAI has said it was aware of the suspect's activity but it did not alert law enforcement, prompting an apology from CEO Sam Altman.

OpenAI executives were summoned to Ottawa, and officials floated the possibility of introducing new laws if the company did not quickly implement changes to its safety protocols.

Carney said Canada has to be "honest about the risk that AI poses to Canadians", including "deepfakes, unsafe chat bots and AI-generated disinformation".

The lack of specifics was criticised by the Conservative opposition.

"The safety and security that was promised in this is nowhere to be found in the document, certainly no details," MP Melissa Lantsman told reporters.

Amazon distribution site to create 1,400 city jobs

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2pm21pp9do, 3 days ago

Online retailer Amazon has announced it is to open a new £107m distribution centre in Peterborough, set to create 1,400 jobs in the city.

The company said the facility would be the its first "One Distribution Centre" in the UK, storing products from suppliers and reducing "processing steps" - as well as speeding up deliveries.

The building, on Flaxley Road, is next to an existing site the company runs, which opened in 2010. It currently employs more than 1,000 members of staff.

Amazon said the new site would launch in late September, with recruitment ongoing for engineers, finance specialists and health and safety staff.

The site is part of Amazon's £40bn UK investment plan for 2025–2027.

Site leader Tomislav Batinic said opening the new site in Peterborough "strengthens" Amazon's network and will allow the retail giant to "get products to customers faster".

He added that he was excited about the 1,400 jobs it would create.

The announcement has also been welcomed by Numan Ali Iqbal, the Peterborough City Council cabinet member for growth and regeneration.

"Amazon have a long track record of success in Peterborough and are one of our biggest employers," he said.

"The building has previously been used to provide additional capacity during Amazon's busy peak season but is now being fitted out as a permanent facility."

He also praised Amazon's Career choice programme, where the company pays 100% of costs for their employees' skills development.

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PM backs female MP for suing xAI over bikini photo

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62xpv34d9do, 3 days ago

Sir Keir Starmer has said a Labour MP was "absolutely right" to take legal action against Elon Musk's xAI over "disgusting" images created of her by chatbot Grok.

Jess Asato, the MP for Lowestoft in Suffolk, previously said she felt violated after claiming artificial intelligence was used to produce a fake picture of her in a bikini.

She said a legal case was filed at the High Court on Wednesday. The MP is seeking damages but also wants to set a precedent for companies to be liable for the design of AI systems.

xAI has been contacted for comment.

It comes after a backlash earlier this year over how Grok was being used to create false sexualised images.

Asato was targeted in January after speaking up, she said, and spoke in the Commons at the time about how Grok had been used to create fake images of her.

Amid the backlash, xAI said users would no longer be able to use the tool to generate sexualised images of real people.

It has since become illegal to create or request a non-consensual deepfake image of an adult in the UK.

Prime Minister Sir Keir said: "I'm really pleased that we took Grok on a few months ago, because that's the fight we should be in.

"Taking on some of these platform providers, some of these disgusting images… we won that.

"But Jess is right, she's a parliamentarian, and I'm 100% behind the action that she has taken."

Asato said her claim was about seeking redress for "the harms that were created while Grok was creating harms".

She revealed she had received "many images once again of me in a bikini" since news of her legal action went public.

"There are no social rules about how people's images are used any more," she told BBC Breakfast.

"We need to be able to use the law to regain some sense of control."

Speaking to BBC Breakfast on Thursday, Asato said she was taking the legal action to "hold tech companies like Grok to account".

"I was by no means the worst victim affected but it made me feel dehumanised. It made me feel demeaned. My consent had not been gained and I had been stripped of my clothes without my consent," she added.

"I know, having spoken to many victims, they say they felt degraded, that this was some form of almost digital sexual assault."

She has called on others who have had their image manipulated by Grok in an "abusive or demeaning way" to come forward.

"We want to show that tech companies cannot act without impunity, they need to build safeguards into their products so that people's images cannot by used or manipulated by AI, to sexualise them without their consent."

"If you think about any other products, like a car, for example, that might have been manufactured with a fault, it doesn't matter if, you know, the cars get recalled and the faults are fixed and no more harm is done," said Asato.

"It matters that the car was produced with the fault in the first place, and that's the problem with Grok, is that it was created without the safeguards and without the guardrails to prevent this from happening in the first place.

"I guess that's the centre of my case, is to say that it doesn't matter how quickly things were then repaired. Once the damage is done, the damage is done."

The claim filed at the High Court is being brought under the Data Protection Act and for tortious misuse of private information.

Ravi Naik of law firm AWO, which is representing Asato, said: "Where there is a wrong, the law must provide a remedy, and that is as true of artificial intelligence as of anything else.

"No-one should be subjected to abuse like this, and no-one should have to instruct a lawyer to get images like these taken down.

"This content existed because of design choices made by engineers at xAI.

"This is one of the first claims to test liability for the design of an AI system, and we aim to make it clear that safety cannot be an afterthought."

Previously, social media site X, also owned by Musk, said action would be taken against illegal content on its platform.

Musk also said: "Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content."

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'She beat Disney by a decade': How a 26-year-old German woman made the world's oldest animated feature film

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260603-how-a-26-year-old-german-woman-made-the-worlds-oldest-surviving-animated-feature-film, 4 days ago

Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed was released a century ago in 1926. This stop-motion classic makes her "a key figure in the history of cinema".

Starting out in the film business isn't always glamorous. In the silent era, aspiring German actress Lotte Reiniger began her career on an adaptation of a folk tale, The Pied Piper of Hamelin. But she wasn't in front of the camera. Her job was to handle the rats.

Despite this inauspicious beginning, Reiniger would soon earn a place in cinema history. Just a few years after her rodent-wrangling experience, she was in the director's chair. That was extraordinary enough – in the 1920s, few women were given the opportunity to direct. But Reiniger's project was particularly innovative. Released a century ago in 1926, The Adventures of Prince Achmed is recognised as the world's oldest surviving animated feature film – despite what Walt Disney's publicists might prefer you to think. Disney's Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs is often considered to be the first ever animated feature. But Lotte beat Walt by more than a decade.

"You can't think of an equivalent to Lotte Reiniger," says Jez Stewart, Curator of Animation at the British Film Institute. "This young female artist had the vision and skills to create a timeless classic that still speaks to audiences across the world. Even 100 years on, we're still thinking, 'How did she do that?'"

Reiniger was born in Berlin in 1899. In her early years, she expressed her interest in acting through shadow puppets, cutting out silhouette figures to stage miniature Shakespeare shows. It was her skill with the scissors that got her on to the set of the Pied Piper film (she hand-cut the title cards). But it was the rats that proved most influential.

As she recalled in a 1970 book, Shadow Puppets, Shadow Theatres and Shadow Films, the animals were uncooperative: none of them would follow the Pied Piper. So, the film-makers switched to wooden rats. They shot one frame at a time, moving the models inch by inch, creating an illusion of motion when the film was played back. "This was my first encounter with animation," Reiniger said. It sparked an idea: she could bring her old-fashioned shadow puppets to life using this "stop-motion" technique.

Reiniger experimented with placing her articulated silhouette figures flat on a glass plate, lit from below. As she adjusted their movements frame by frame, a camera captured each shot from above. It was a painstaking process, requiring more than a thousand frames per minute of film. But by 1919, she had completed her first short film, The Ornament of the Loving Heart. Over the next few years, she made several more. "She was always interested in fairy tales," Stewart tells the BBC, noting her early adaptations of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. "She even made an advert for Nivea cream."

At that time, animation was in its infancy (Mickey Mouse wouldn't appear for another decade), so Reiniger's short films stood out. In 1923, they caught the attention of a Berlin banker, who offered to finance a longer production. "The opportunity to make a feature-length animated film at that time was an anomaly," Stewart explains. "But that anomaly was connected to the way Reiniger made films. It was an affordable, artisanal method using limited means."

The film's greatest technical achievement

Indeed, once Reiniger accepted the proposition, she took on just a handful of staff. This included a few animators, an assistant to track the frames shot, and Reiniger's husband, who controlled the camera. As well as directing, Reiniger constructed the silhouette puppets herself, cutting characters from cardboard and lead, before fixing their joints with wire hinges. She also devised the film's scenario, combining several Middle Eastern fairy tales into one story, The Adventures of Prince of Achmed.

Reiniger's yarn follows the titular prince as he battles a shape-shifting sorcerer across various adventures. A century later, many of the film's mystical sequences still dazzle. In one stand-out scene, the sorcerer fights a witch, with the duo transforming into lions, scorpions and dragons mid-combat. Focusing on myth and magic made perfect sense for animation. As Reiniger put it in one magazine article, animation enabled her to "show events which could not be performed by any other means".

But the film's greatest technical achievement was in its background imagery. "She introduced an early version of the multiplane camera," explains Cristina Formenti, President of the Society for Animation Studies. "She used it to create a sense of depth. If you watch the film, you can see that it's not just a flat image."

Reiniger's multiplane device was essentially a tall scaffold. The camera was mounted at the top, shooting down through multiple layers of glass. Reiniger placed her silhouette characters on one layer, while background imagery and effects were animated on different levels. She later explained the technique in her book, referencing a scene of Prince Achmed on his flying horse. "[T]he starry sky was worked out on three layers. All three were moved at a different speed… This arrangement of movement produced a feeling of space, giving to the shot a weird fantastic quality."

Although Reiniger pioneered this innovation, she didn't receive much credit for it. In 1940, Walt Disney was awarded a US patent for the multiplane camera. In 2000, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for inventing the device. "Obviously, Disney's version was more complex," Formenti says. "But Reiniger is the first one that's known to have used it."

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This wasn't the only way Disney's achievements overshadowed Reiniger's: the studio's DVD and video boxes have declared that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was "the first full-length animated feature ever made", a claim that echoes the cartoon's initial marketing in 1937. "Disney was a genius in many ways," Stewart says. "Self-marketing and promotion was definitely one of them." The film's original posters and trailer emphasised that Snow White was "Disney's first full-length feature production". As Disney's name was synonymous with animation, the idea that Snow White was the world's first animated film quickly took hold.

But even though Reiniger's film came a decade earlier, historians still hesitate to confirm it as "the oldest" animated feature. In 1917, Argentinian film-maker Quirino Cristiani used a cut-out technique similar to Reiniger's to create a film called El Apóstol. Some historians believe this could be the first-ever animated feature. But all copies have been lost, and its exact running time is undocumented. In the face of this uncertainty, Stewart prefers to describe The Adventures of Prince Achmed as "the earliest surviving animated feature" rather than the oldest.

Influential but unique

In any case, Reiniger's film was certainly the most ambitious animated production ever made up to that time. It received its premiere in May 1926, having taken three years to complete. Reiniger was just 26 years old. "To give somebody three years to make a film – that didn't happen at that time," says Stewart. "It's another way in which this film is a complete anomaly."

Over the following years, The Adventures of Prince Achmed was screened in France, the United Kingdom and the United States. It was well-received by critics and audiences. Film-maker Jean Renoir even compared Reiniger's genius to Mozart's. But it never achieved the widespread attention of later animated films like Disney's Snow White. "It ended up being distributed more as an experimental film rather than an entertainment film," Formenti explains. "That limited the scope of its success."

Despite its limited distribution, The Adventures of Prince Achmed has continued to amaze viewers for a century – and continued to evolve. "Some of the best screenings I've seen have been with different musical accompaniments," says Stewart. He recalls one musician in Beijing who mixed a live electronic soundtrack using a laptop. In August, he has a 100th anniversary screening planned at the British Film Institute which will feature new live music. Other centenary performances have already been held in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Reiniger's native Germany.

Stewart also hopes this milestone anniversary can bring attention to Reiniger's later works. "After Prince Achmed, she never got to make another feature film," he says. "But she had some prominence in the 1950s." She returned to her fairy-tale roots, creating a series of short films based on stories like Puss in Boots and Thumbelina, which were screened on the BBC and US television.

Reiniger's legacy also extends to subsequent generations. Director Nora Twomey described Reiniger as "a big influence" on her 2017 Oscar-nominated film The Breadwinner. But as influential as Reiniger has been, Stewart believes that she is still unique. "She was a young female artist making an unprecedented feature film in animation – and it's still in circulation 100 years later. It's just extraordinary."

Her place in the history books is certainly a long way from her unpromising start as a rat handler. But just like her fairy stories, there is a touch of magic about Lotte Reiniger's tale. It's as if she were imbued with the powers of those witches and sorcerers of her own imagination – breathing life into shadows to create a legacy that would last a century, and beyond.

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Tributes to Buffy and Ted Lasso star Anthony Head after death aged 72

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd0p0rz4n0mo, today

British actor Anthony Head, best known for his roles in TV shows including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Ted Lasso, Merlin and Little Britain, has died at the age of 72.

Head found international fame as Rupert Giles in hit supernatural teen show Buffy in the late 1990s.

"He passed away peacefully of complications due to pneumonia, surrounded by his family," his daughters Emily and Daisy said.

Sarah Michelle Gellar, who played the eponymous Buffy, led tributes to Head, writing: "Thank you to Daisy and Emily who not only shared their dad with me, but with the world."

His daughters' statement said "it is with heavy hearts that we announce the death of our extraordinary father".

"It has been, and forever will be, an honour and a privilege to be his daughters, and to have witnessed firsthand the impact both he and his work have had on so many."

They also said they knew "how dearly he will be missed by friends, colleagues and fans of the show he was in", adding that he "loved his job very much" and "always considered himself incredibly lucky".

His family acknowledged that "his legacy will live on" and said they considered themselves "lucky" to have watched him doing what he loved throughout his career.

Gellar posted a selection of pictures of her with Head on Instagram, including a scene from Buffy where her character asks Giles whether life gets any easier.

"'Tell Giles I figured it out and I'm ok'. Well, I don't have it figured out and I'm not ok. But I know I'm the lucky one because I knew you," she wrote.

"Thank you to Daisy and Emily who not only shared their dad with me, but with the world."

David Boreanaz, who also starred alongside Head in Buffy, said: "RIP. He was so kind and generous of a soul."

Fellow Buffy co-star James Marsters said: "He was an unflaggingly kind and steady presence on the set of Buffy, and the best actor in the cast... I was lucky to have known, and learned from him."

Following Buffy, Head went on to have a recurring role in sketch show Little Britain as the prime minister and king Uther Pendragon in the BBC's Merlin.

Little Britain creator and star Matt Lucas - in which Head played the prime minister - described Head as "unfailingly brilliant, and always so kind and warm".

"When we were casting Little Britain, we were looking for a 'Tony Head-type ', because we never imagined for a moment that the man himself would be interested, but he was. Lucky us," Lucas said.

Head's other credits included playing Geoffrey Howe in The Iron Lady and appearing in Doctor Who, Persuasion, The Inbetweeners and Manchild.

He also starred in Ted Lasso from 2020 as former Richmond FC owner Rupert Mannion, the ex-husband of Hannah Waddingham's character Rebecca Welton.

Brett Goldstein, their co-star and a writer on the show, said: "Anthony Head was a brilliant actor who played the worst person in the world, which was an incredible skill because he was the best person."

Head first found fame in the UK in the 1980s as the face of Nescafe coffee adverts on TV.

He was part of the Gold Blend couple alongside Sharon Maughan, with their coffee-themed romance ads becoming popular between 1987 and 1993.

Maughan told BBC News she was "broken-hearted" at the loss of Head.

"I guess they were iconic, I don't think that was the intention at the beginning," she said. "Tony and I were just two actors who got this job, and we had a really lovely friendship...

"I loved working with him. I thought he was a lovely man."

Head starred in numerous popular British shows during his career, also including Motherland, Silent Witness and Doctor Who.

The official Doctor Who account on X said it was "very sad to report the passing of Anthony Head, who appeared as Mr Finch in 'School Reunion' in 2006".

"He was also known by fans for his commentary in #DoctorWho Confidential and the voice of Baltazar in 'The Infinite Quest'."

And author Harlan Coben wrote on Instagram: "You'll be reading a lot of wonderful things about him in the coming days. Believe them.

"He was charming and erudite and funny and open and friendly and so damn talented. He brought joy and warmth and sparkle and wonder to every room he entered.

"Everyone in the cast and crew of The Stranger adored Tony. It was an honor to call you a friend. We are all heartbroken."

His last acting credits included Bridgerton in 2022, in which he starred in one episode in series two.

He joined the cast of BBC Radio 4's long-running drama The Archers in 2018, playing Robin Fairbrother.

The actor also enjoyed a long stage career, performing in several iterations of The Rocky Horror Show and musicals such as Godspell and Chess.

Born in Camden, London, in 1954, Head's mother was actress Helen Shingler, best known for BBC TV series Maigret, and his father Seafield Head, a documentary maker.

He trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA).

Head lost his long-term partner Sarah Fisher, who was an animal welfare campaigner, in December 2025 at the age of 61.

His daughters Emily, 37 and Daisy, 35, both work as actors - with Emily best known for playing Carli D'Amato in The Inbetweeners.

Daisy has appeared in TV shows including Harlots and Shadow and Bone.

His brother Murray is also an actor, who appeared in the Oscar-nominated 1971 film Sunday Bloody Sunday and the musical Chess.

Ex-Channel 4 News host Jon Snow reveals he has Alzheimer's

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3626ry101lo, yesterday

Jon Snow, the lead presenter of Channel 4 News for 32 years, has revealed he has Alzheimer's disease.

The 78-year-old journalist and his wife Precious Lunga will be seen navigating his diagnosis in a film that will receive its premiere next week.

"At the beginning I wanted to hide it, there's so much prejudice," he says in the film.

"Any sort of hint of mental decay, you're sort of dead. There are moments when it pops up but it's not an all day every day condition, and that's what I cling onto."

Snow was the lead presenter on Channel 4 News from 1989 to 2021, after serving as ITN's Washington correspondent and diplomatic editor in the 80s.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer described him as "a true giant in journalism" who is now "helping others feel less alone and raising awareness of a condition that affects so many families".

In an interview with the Daily Mail to support an Alzheimer's Society campaign, Snow said: "If I don't speak out, who will?"

Asked about the impact of the disease, he said: "I don't know really. I don't feel disabled in any way."

He said he still questions the diagnosis. "I mean sometimes I doubt whether I've really got it. I don't know if it's widespread knowledge," he told his friend, broadcaster Kirsty Lang.

Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia, and the Alzheimer's Society said it is a common misconception to question whether dementia is a normal part of ageing.

Snow's wife, an epidemiologist, told the Mail he was initially reluctant to see a doctor, but he saw a specialist in 2023.

"He was given what's called a mini-mental state exam and he aced it. He got 29 out of 30," she said.

"It was only later, when they did a brain scan, that we got a diagnosis."

Michelle Dyson, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Society, said Snow's decision to talk publicly was "a real act of courage and his story will resonate with so many".

"Alongside his wife Precious, Jon is shining a light on the need for faster, fairer access to diagnosis," she said.

'Dearly loved by viewers'

In his new documentary, Jon Snow: A Last Big Story, he is seen uncovering an environmental disaster in Zambia.

The film will have its premiere at Sheffield Documentary Festival next week and be shown on Channel 4 on 20 June.

Channel 4's head of news Louisa Compton said: "Jon Snow is not just one of Channel 4's most recognisable faces - he is part of our very fabric and is dearly loved by viewers around the UK.

"It is a profound privilege that we are able to document his last big investigation, in a sensitively made film that frames Jon's current affairs nous alongside a new life lived with Alzheimer's.

"We hope this film will go a long way to raise awareness of how to live whilst facing a life-changing diagnosis."

During his Channel 4 career, Snow was a fixture in the studio as well as travelling around to report on stories including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the release of Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama's inauguration.

He received Bafta's Richard Dimbleby Award for the best factual contribution to television in 2005, and the Bafta Fellowship - the organisation's highest accolade - in 2015.

His other honours include 10 Royal Television Society awards, including six for presenter of the year.

Stars pay tribute to 'visionary' Mobo Awards founder Kanya King

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy89qg3n7vvo, yesterday

Mobo Awards founder Kanya King has been remembered as a "visionary" who "changed the face of culture and music", following her death at the age of 57.

King worked tirelessly to champion black musicians' contribution to British culture, and funded the first Music of Black Origin awards in 1996 out of her own pocket.

She died on Wednesday after "a courageous and characteristically determined battle with colon cancer", the Mobo Organisation said in a statement.

Tributes have been paid by stars including TV host and Mis-Teeq singer Alesha Dixon, who called King an "incredible woman", adding: "You helped so many people, your impact is immeasurable!"

Stormzy posted heart and dove emojis, while Sir Idris Elba said she was gone "too soon".

The Luther actor posted: "You inspired me. Your dedication is unmatched. I will miss you @kanyakingcbe, we will all miss you."

JLS star Oritsé Williams said she was "a pioneer" who had "created a powerful platform that championed cultures, communities and talent that were often unseen and underrepresented, despite our cultural influence being felt across the world".

Williams added: "You didn't just create opportunities; you created belief. Belief in our culture, our creativity and our potential.

"You are an icon, a true visionary, I trust and believe that your impact will be felt for generations to come."

'A renegade'

Rapper Tinie Tempah told BBC Radio 5 Live she was "a national treasure" who "definitely took a huge risk" to set up the Mobos.

"She was an influential force within the UK music industry, a renegade to a certain extent, doing her own thing in the way she wanted to do it through all the adversity in the world," he said. "But that's why we have to celebrate her so much because it's by no means an easy feat at all."

London Mayor Sadiq Khan echoed his sentiments, calling King "a true pioneer" who "changed the face of culture and music".

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy added: "She was a real pioneer who changed British music for the better through the MOBO Awards."

King's family said they were "devastated" by her death.

"She faced every moment of her illness as she faced every moment of her life: with courage, with faith, with humour, and with an absolute refusal to be diminished," they said.

Through the Mobos, she gave "an entire generation of black British artists the right to be seen, to be celebrated, and to be heard on their own terms", they added.

"Kanya leaves behind 30 years of music of joy, of resistance, of proof – proof that one woman, with vision, nerve, and love, can move an entire culture.

"We are broken. We are grateful. We are so profoundly, endlessly proud to have been her family.

"Kanya King CBE. Gone too soon. Never, ever forgotten."

Defied expectations

Over three decades, the Mobos have become globally renowned for their recognition of black talent - platforming upcoming stars and pushing to break industry boundaries.

King defied expectations as a teenage mother who dropped out of school to gatecrash the predominantly white male music industry.

She studied English literature at London's Goldsmiths College and later, while working as a TV researcher, spotted a gap in the market for a black-focused awards show.

But success did not come easily.

"I remember being told, 'You've got a chip on your shoulder, why are you talking about race all the time?'" she told Music Week in 2021.

By 1999, King had been awarded an MBE for services to music as the Mobos grew from scrappy underdog to music industry fixture, holding its own against the long-established Brit Awards.

Its musical spectrum remains uniquely broad - giving early support to UK garage at the turn of the millennium, alongside R&B, soul, reggae, jazz, Afrobeat and broader African music, and championing grime before its mainstream explosion.

Growing up as the youngest of nine children in a cramped council flat in Kilburn, north London, King's upbringing inspired her forthright passion for change and her entrepreneurial spirit.

She told the Evening Standard she felt "written off" when she became a mother at 16, recalling a careers adviser suggesting her best prospect was managing a local Sainsbury's.

"That put a fire in my belly and gave me the motivation to say 'Why should I not have ambition'," she added.

Mobo magic

Her aim with the Mobos, she would later write for The Times, was to bridge the "real music divide" that existed at the time, with R&B and hip-hip "completely ignored" by award shows.

Getting it off the ground wasn't easy, especially as someone attempting to reshape the industry from the outside.

"Rejection became normalised," she told Music Week. "People didn't want to take my calls".

But she made it happen through persistence; eventually gaining support from the few black industry executives of the time, like Dej Mahoney and Stevie Wonder's former manager Keith Harris.

"My bedroom was my office," she explained to 1Xtra. "I was answering the phone saying 'Mobo Organisation'.

"People didn't need to know I had clothes everywhere and the room was in disarray!".

Her tenacity paid off. The first televised event, held at the Connaught Hotel in London, appeared to come out of nowhere - just seven weeks after her pitch was accepted.

But the ceremony made headlines when Labour's soon-to-be Prime Minister Tony Blair attended with his wife Cherie, walking the red carpet alongside King.

At the ceremony itself, Lionel Ritchie accepted the Mobo's first-ever lifetime achievement accolade on stage with Tina Turner.

King's mother, meanwhile, spent the evening asking Blair if he could find her daughter a job in the government. It wasn't until 1999, when King received her MBE, that her mother finally accepted the awards as more than a passion project.

Gatekeeping questions

Speaking to press at the inaugural ceremony Blair emphasised the Mobos' focus on music of black origin - recognising style and influence over skin colour.

For King, this was intentional. She told BBC News in 2001: "We've always said it's about the music... an event that celebrates music of black origin doesn't seek to separate artists according to skin colour".

The Mobos' televised ceremonies soon became star-studded occasions, where UK acts like Craig David, Kano, Amy Winehouse and Stormzy rubbed shoulders with international stars, from blues legend BB King to Destiny's Child, Usher, Janet Jackson and Rihanna.

But with this increasing mainstream appeal came complications. Negative media coverage nearly ended the event, particularly in 2002, when headlines falsely implicated violence at an unaffiliated after-show party.

As sponsors fled, King remortgaged her home for a second time to avoid the awards collapsing.

The ceremony has also drawn criticism for awarding prizes to popular white artists, including Jamiroquai and Simply Red's Mick Hucknall. The accusations persisted, especially when Sam Smith swept four awards in 2014.

In 2009, the Mobo awards moved out of London for the first time and since then has moved around the UK.

King announced the awards would take gap year in 2017, which extended to 2020.

BBC Newsbeat reporter Jimmy Blake described the absence as a "missed opportunity" at a breakthrough time from grime, with Stormzy headlining Glastonbury and Dave winning the Mercury Prize. The Brits had also diversified its voting structures and outlook to better reflect black music.

Legacy

King, who was awarded a CBE in 2018 for her contributions to music and culture, later told The Guardian that the hiatus was not down to funding but asking: "Is Mobo still needed?".

The answer, she decided, was a resounding yes. The Mobos returned with a revamp supporting emerging artists, not just in music but in film, television and other areas of the arts.

King's active defiance in defending black interests also extended beyond music. She launched Mobolise to tackle what she called the "scary underrepresentation of black talent" across influential industries.

It mirrored her own expanding influence in numerous committees and advisory groups, including the Creative Industries Council and UK Music Diversity Task Force.

At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 she penned an open letter titled "An inconvenient truth" to then-Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden reflecting on her experiences fighting systemic racism.

"I just want to see action. That's what I want to see. The question I asked myself is: 'What do I have to do? What do I have to prove to get a seat at that table?'" she concluded.

In December 2024, King announced her stage four bowel cancer diagnosis on Instagram, the same night as receiving a LIVE foundation lifetime achievement award for her work over almost three decades.

"While this journey will undoubtedly be challenging, I've always believed in finding meaning through adversity," she said.

"If my story can save just one life, then it's a story worth telling."

She was last seen on the red carpet at this year's Mobo Awards in Manchester.

On stage, Pharrell Williams, who received the global songwriter award, paid tribute to King's determination to keep working through her cancer treatment.

"When you love what you get to do, you're never working, you're just having the time of your life."

US actor James Handy stabbed to death, with girlfriend's son arrested

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czd2dj24jgdo, yesterday

US actor James Handy, known for his roles in films including Jumanji and Top Gun: Maverick, has been stabbed to death at his home in Los Angeles, police have said.

Handy, who was 81, was found unconscious in the front garden of his home in Tarzana, California, on Wednesday with several stab wounds to the chest.

Michael Gledhill, 44, the son of Handy's girlfriend, has been arrested on suspicion of murder, the Los Angeles Police Department said.

Officers responded to a report of "unknown trouble" after a caller dialled 911 and told police: "I am the son of man, I just killed the man of sin."

Handy was born in New York and appeared in a string of films and TV shows over six decades, often as a supporting character or for a small number of episodes.

Despite rarely being the leading star, Handy racked up a long string of credits, including NYPD Blue, K-9, Law & Order, CSI: NY, Logan, Alias, Castle, NCIS, The West Wing, Arachnophobia, The X Files and Murder, She Wrote.

His most recent film role was 2022's Top Gun: Maverick, in which he played Jimmy, a bartender who works with the character played by Jennifer Connelly, Tom Cruise's love interest.

'Superb character actor'

Paying tribute, entertainment writer Jay Bobbin said he was "heartbroken to learn about the passing of superb character actor".

Writer and producer Don Winslow, who created the 2001 procedural drama UC: Undercover, in which Handy appeared, described Handy as a "terrific actor".

"We were honoured to have him on UC: Undercover in a recurring role," Winslow said. "His performances were always special."

Following Handy's death, the LAPD said Gledhill "flagged down nearby responding officers, telling them he was the one they were looking for".

"The suspect resides at the location with his mother, who is the victim's girlfriend," a statement added.

"Detectives believe this is an isolated incident and there appears to be no danger to the public."

After his arrest, Gledhill was transported to Van Nuys Jail and booked for one count of murder, with his bail set at $2m (£1.5m).

Disclosure Day to Office Romance: 10 of the best films to watch this June

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260526-10-of-the-best-films-to-watch-this-june, 11 days ago

From Spielberg's epic alien drama to J-Lo in an office romcom and the return of Toy Story, these are the films to watch at the cinema and stream at home this month.

1. Masters of the Universe

"By the power of Grayskull! I – have – the power!" Readers of a certain age may remember that booming battle cry: it rang out every week in a 1980s cartoon series, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, when Prince Adam of Eternia transformed into a super-strong (and identical) warrior named He-Man. A live-action film followed in 1987, starring Dolph Lundgren and a pre-Friends Courteney Cox. Now the sci-fi / fantasy franchise returns, with Nicholas Galitzine (Red, White & Royal Blue) as He-Man, Idris Elba as his mentor, Man-At-Arms, and Jared Leto and Alison Brie as the villains, Skeletor and Evil-Lyn. "It's a peculiar thing, being in a miniskirt and harness while everyone's fully dressed in puffer jackets and whatnot," said Galitzine about the shoot in Entertainment Weekly. But as long as the resulting film is better than the Lundgren version, it might be worth it.

Released on 3, 4 and 5 June internationally

2. Scary Movie 6

The Scary Movie franchise got started in 2000, mainly as a way of spoofing Scream (1996) and its imitators. (Fun fact: the working title of Scream was Scary Movie). Now that the Scream series is up and running again, it makes sense that Scary Movie is back, too. In the franchise's sixth instalment, its original stars, Anna Faris and Regina Hall, are on duty again for the first time in 20 years, as are the Wayans brothers, who wrote and directed the first couple of Scary Movies. The good news is that horror films are a bigger deal than ever, and so the likes of Sinners, Weapons, Get Out and The Substance will all be parodied. The not-so-good news is that Marlon Wayans has said that he will be taking potshots at "woke" and "cancel culture", a comedy idea that seems outdated already. As Teresia Gray says in The Mary Sue, "Scary Movie 6 looks to add another entry of 'Oh, these progressive kids are annoying' to an already roaring fire."

Released on 4 and 5 June internationally

3. Office Romance

The reigning queen of the romantic comedy, Jennifer Lopez is back with a Netflix film that puts the premise right in the title. In Office Romance, Lopez plays the CEO of an airline who gets together with a corporate lawyer played by Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent from Ted Lasso). But if any of their colleagues find out, her job will be in jeopardy. The film is directed by Ol Parker, who made another starry rom-com, Ticket to Paradise, with Julia Roberts and George Clooney. And it's written by Joe Kelly and Goldstein himself. "It's easy to write a rom-com when you have JLo in mind," Goldstein said in People. "She's the best at this stuff. We just wanted to write something funny and smart enough to be worthy of her saying yes."

Released on 5 June on Netflix internationally

4. Disclosure Day

Steven Spielberg may be the master of every conceivable genre, but he is especially keen on films about alien visitors. They appeared in Firelight, the film he made as a teenager in 1964, and he has returned to the subject in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, War of the Worlds, and Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (What do you mean those were "interdimensional beings"? That still counts!) More than six decades on from Firelight, he has made Disclosure Day, an epic drama starring Josh O'Connor, Emily Blunt, Colin Firth and Colman Domingo. Along with screenwriter David Koepp, he imagines a scenario in which aliens have already made contact with humans, but the world's governments have kept that contact secret – until now. "The question has always remained for me: are we alone on our own planet?" Spielberg said in Empire. "That question has not only haunted me, but it has inspired me. But, I think, it has now resolved itself to my satisfaction in Disclosure Day."

Released on 10, 11 and 12 June internationally

5. Toy Story 5

The first Toy Story introduced the world to computer-animated feature films back in 1995, but, luckily, toys don't age, and neither do cartoon characters. And so it is that, seven years on from Toy Story 4, Pixar's signature franchise continues, featuring Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), and their plastic pals. The intriguing thing about this Toy Story is that it acknowledges that times have changed since the original film. The issue is no longer that one favourite toy might be superseded by another. The issue now is that all toys might be put aside by children: they've got electronic tablets to play with instead. "It's a very, very clever story," said Allen in Collider. "Had they not come up with a brilliant script, they wouldn't have done it and they wouldn't have called me and Tom."

Released on 17, 18 and 19 June internationally

6. The Death of Robin Hood

Hugh Jackman stars as Robin Hood – so expect lots of swashbuckling larks with the merry men of Sherwood Forest. Actually, don't expect that at all. Directed by Michael Sarnoski (A Quiet Place: Day One), The Death of Robin Hood is a dark and gritty revisionist take on the legend, with a shaggy-bearded guerrilla warrior looking back at his life of savage deeds. "He was this murderous outlaw who did a lot of terrible things, and was kind of monstrous," said Sarnoski in Entertainment Weekly. "But he's lived long enough to see this folklore get created about him. He's figuring out how he feels about that, about being portrayed as a hero when he knows what he really was." Jodie Comer and Bill Skarsgård also star.

Released on 19 June in the US and Canada

7. Maddie's Secret

Maddie Ralph makes the leap from kitchen assistant to social-media superstar when her charming chats about her favourite recipes go viral. Her husband (Eric Rahill) and best friend (Kate Berlant) are thrilled by Maddie's success – what they don't realise is that she is struggling with bulimia. Maddie's Secret, then, is a classic Hollywood melodrama, except with one small difference: its heroine is played by its male writer-director, John Early. His debut film is a delicious camp comedy. "But what is most immediately striking about the film is its straightforward sincerity," wrote Sam Bodrojan in IndieWire. "Early never makes fun of Maddie, never lets the audience snicker at the screen… It is a film of real kindness, an extremely accomplished debut and one of the boldest American movies I have seen in years."

Released on 19 June in the US

8. Supergirl

A year on from the release of Superman, the second film in James Gunn's new DC Universe is flying into cinemas. But Supergirl is going her own way. While Superman (David Corenswet) himself was proudly noble, his cousin Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock) is jaded and hedonistic, so it's promising that the film is directed by Craig Gillespie, the director of I, Tonya and Cruella. "This is really an anti-hero story," Gillespie said in Nerdist. "Supergirl's got a lot of baggage and a lot of demons coming into this, which is very different than where Superman is in his life." Speaking of anti-heroes, Jason Momoa plays a gleefully violent alien bounty hunter, Lobo – so try to forget that Momoa played another DC character, Aquaman, just three years ago.

Released on 24, 25 and 26 June internationally

9. Jackass: Best and Last

Most Hollywood stunt performers impress you with their athleticism and skill. In the case of Johnny Knoxville and the Jackass gang, what impresses you – and sometimes disgusts you – is their willingness to put themselves in horribly dangerous and painful situations, then laugh about them afterwards. After a series on MTV, they made a film in 2002, and ever since then they've let themselves be charged by bulls and flung into the air by catapults. It's probably for the best that their fifth film will be their final one, so that the 55-year-old Knoxville doesn't have to break any more bones. He said in Rolling Stone that Jackass: Best and Last "never was a good idea! It was just fun. You know how you have ideas that are terrible but are fun? This would be that."

Released on 25 and 26 June internationally

10. The Invite

Imagine if Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton lived upstairs from you, and they invited you to have sex with them. It's probably not very likely, but that's the premise of The Invite, which is directed by Olivia Wilde (Booksmart, Don't Worry Darling), scripted by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, and loosely based on a Spanish film, The People Upstairs (2022). Wilde stars alongside Seth Rogen as a married couple who are frustrated with their careers and each other. When their cool and confident neighbours (Cruz and Norton) come over for dinner, they offer to spice up the couple's lives in unexpected ways. Owen Gleiberman says in Variety that this "marvellously entertaining" comedy is "so original, so brimming with surprise, so fresh and up-to-the-minute in its perceptions of how relationships work (or don't), that you watch it in a state of rapt immersion and delight".

Released on 26 June in the US

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Cape Fear to House of the Dragon: 10 of the best TV shows to watch this June

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260522-10-of-the-best-tv-shows-to-watch-this-june, 12 days ago

From a starry new adaptation of the classic thriller to the return of the spectacular Game of Thrones prequel – and a sketch series about US history created by Larry David.

1. Not Suitable for Work

Mindy Kaling has been behind the scenes more than she has been on screen lately, as co-creator of the successful shows The Sex Lives of College Girls and Running Point. She is the sole creator of this new comedy – that sounds like Friends meets The Office (another show she worked on) – about five people in their 20s who live in the same Manhattan neighbourhood, with workaholic attitudes and professional dreams in common. They range from a financial analyst to a fashion stylist and a medical student who actually wants to be an actor, and of course their paths criss-cross in complicated ways. The actors playing the friends aren't well known, but they are surrounded by more familiar faces, including Jay Ellis, Constance Wu and Ego Nwodim as bosses, mentors or thorns in their sides. From The Mindy Project on, few creators have a better track record than Kaling.

Not Suitable for Work premieres 2 June on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK

2. The Witness

This fact-based drama looks back at the aftermath of a crime – the 1992 murder of Rachel Nickell, who was stabbed as she was walking in a London park with her two-year-old son, Alex. More than a murder mystery, it is a story about family and a botched police investigation. André Hanscombe (Jordan Bolger), Nickell's partner and Alex's father, is so determined to safeguard his son after the murder that they move away from the city. "If Alex was the only witness, he's in danger," André says in the trailer, convinced the police can't protect him. Sixteen years later the case is reopened, and the teenaged Alex (Max Fincham) has to grapple with the emotional fallout again. The real-life father and son cooperated with the project. And along with the dramatic series Netflix will premiere a companion documentary, The Murder of Rachel Nickell.

The Witness premieres 4 June on Netflix internationally

3. Cape Fear

If Javier Bardem doesn't terrify you in this thriller nothing will. He stars as the sinister Max Cady, a killer released after years in prison. Determined to get revenge on the lawyer couple he holds responsible for convicting him, he goes after them and their family. The series is based on a John D MacDonald novel, The Executioners, that has been adapted before, in a 1962 film with Robert Mitchum as Cady and a 1991 Martin Scorsese remake with Robert De Niro. Gregory Peck and Nick Nolte played Cady's targets in the films. This version centres on a married couple, played by Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson, and instead of a young daughter gives them two teenaged children. But the story is still an intense psychological thriller in which Cady keeps ramping up his threats, and which start out creepy and become lethal. All three screen versions have smartly changed the title of the novel to reflect the perfectly-named setting, the Cape Fear region of North Carolina.

Cape Fear premieres 5 June on Apple TV internationally

4. The Vampire Lestat

This is actually the third season of the drama Interview with the Vampire, based on Anne Rice's celebrated book series, but it has been renamed to reflect its new focus, which shifts from the vampire Louis (Jacob Anderson, still in the show) to his on-and-off lover, Lestat (Sam Reid), who is now 265 years old and a rock star on tour. "I am the Vampire Lestat. I am a God!" he proclaims, like any mortal rock star, in a trailer that has him singing a cover of Billy Idol's Dancing with Myself. Eric Bogosian returns as Daniel, the once-human interviewer who has since been turned into an immortal. "I was just ready to start biting people," Bogosian told EW. Jennifer Ehle plays the newly-arrived character of Lestat's mother. Reid-as-Lestat has already released several real-life singles written by the show's composer, Daniel Hart, so you can expect plenty of his Bowie-influenced music in the series.

The Vampire Lestat premieres 7 June on AMC and AMC+ in the US

5. Alice and Steve

You can see why Hulu and Disney+ are calling this a "wrong-com". Nicola Walker (The Split and Unforgotten) and Jemaine Clement (What We Do in the Shadows and Flight of the Conchords) play the title characters, best friends for 30 years until he starts dating her 26-year-old daughter, Izzy (Yali Topol Margalith). In a word, ick. A furious, comic all-out battle follows as Alice tries to thwart the new relationship, which Izzy, who actually made the first move on Steve, wants to keep. In another word, cringe, which is the point. "I love comedy that makes you squirm a little," the show's creator, Sophie Goodhart – a writer and director of the series Sex Education – told Variety. After the show won the best series award at the recent Cannes International Series Festival, Clement noted that audiences responded in different ways to the Steve-Izzy age gap. "Unlike sleeping with your best friend's daughter," he said. "That's controversial to everyone."

Alice and Steve premieres 8 June on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK

6. Every Year After

Carley Fortune's bestselling 2022 romance novel, Every Summer After, a BookTok hit that has sold more than a million copies, is the basis for this series set in the Canadian resort town of Barry's Bay. The story takes place over one week when Percy (Sadie Soverall) returns for a funeral, but the episodes also flash back over six years to the start and end of her relationship with Sam (Matt Cornett). It doesn't seem like they've grown up very much in the present, but then this is a story about first and enduring young love. Fortune, an executive producer of the series, told Elle she made sure it included "the kinds of things that fans want to see" including a favourite line from the book when Sam says to Percy, "You came home". Prime Video's similar young-adults-in-love shows like The Summer I Turned Pretty and Off Campus have been hugely popular.

Every Year After premieres 10 June on Prime Video internationally

7. I Will Find You

Sometimes it seems as if Harlan Coben, Ryan Murphy and Taylor Sheridan are in a race to see who can cram the most shows into a single season. This time it's Coben's turn, as co-creator of a series based on his 2023 novel of the same name. Sam Worthington (all the Avatar movies) stars as David, wrongfully convicted of killing his small son. Five years later, his former sister-in-law Rachel, a journalist played by Britt Lower of Severance, brings evidence the boy might be alive. David escapes from prison to try to find the child and the truth, tracked by the FBI. Milo Ventimiglia (This Is Us) plays Rachel's ex-boyfriend, who is still in her life. When the novel was published the Guardian called it "a fantastically breakneck prison break / fugitive adventure story," and the series looks similar.

I Will Find You premieres 18 June on Netflix internationally

8. House of the Dragon

In a welcome addition to this already spectacular Game of Thrones prequel, James Norton joins the cast as Ormund Hightower, cousin of Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and her ally, as the Hightowers try to depose Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) from the Iron Throne. "The Targaryens are a savage race," Ormund says. There is a lot of savagery going around, of course, not to mention political intrigue and incest. Matt Smith returns as the deliciously scheming Daemon Targaryen, Rhaenyra's uncle, husband and father of some of her children. In a behind-the-scenes featurette, Steve Toussaint, who plays Lord Corlys Velaryon, aka The Sea Snake, says: "This is a war of a family against itself". With all that in-breeding, it would pretty much have to be.

House of the Dragon premieres 21 June in the US and 22 June in the UK on HBO Max

9. Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness

In a droll and totally unexpected television promo, Barack Obama – the real one – is annoyed by Larry David in a scene that could be straight out of Curb Your Enthusiasm. David's new show, a series of comic sketches in his usual sardonic style, is keyed to US history and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and produced by Higher Ground, the former president and Michelle Obama's company. A clip released in advance plays off a famous photo of a sailor kissing a woman in New York's Times Square on the day victory against Japan was declared during World War Two, with David trying to get in on the kissing action. Other episodes will feature Bill Hader and Kathryn Hahn as Abe and Mary Lincoln, Susie Essman as Susan B Anthony, and Jon Hamm and Sean Hayes as the Wright Brothers. Given the producers, there must be an uplifting message in there somewhere, but all credit to the Obamas for realising that patriotism doesn't have to be sappy.

Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness premieres 26 June in the US and 27 June in the UK on HBO Max

10. The Bear

The fifth season of the show will be its last, and the story picks up the morning after it left off, when Chef Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) said he was walking away from the food world and giving his share of the restaurant to Chef Sydney (Ayo Edibiri), his sister Natalie (Abby Elliott) and Cousin Richie (Eben Moss-Bachrach). However thrown they are by the news, they still have to try to get a Michelin star to save The Bear from financial ruin. Lionel Boyce and Liza Colon-Zayas return as their restaurant colleagues, along with Oliver Platt as Uncle Jimmy and Jamie Lee Curtis as Carmy and Natalie's troubled, high-drama mother. The series recently dropped a standalone flashback episode, Gary, whose final scene cut to the present and set the internet spiralling with speculation like, "Did the Bear Just Kill Off Cousin Richie?" As in the last season of any series, nothing is out of the question – failure, death, food poisoning, who knows?

The Bear premieres 25 June on Hulu in the US and 26 June on Disney+ in the UK

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An Ancient Greek coin to a defaced penny: The groundbreaking audio series that explored world history through objects

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260604-the-groundbreaking-audio-series-that-explored-world-history-through-objects, yesterday

In 2010, a BBC radio show was launched called A History of the World in 100 Objects, which recounted two million years of humankind through artefacts. It was a huge hit – and has now inspired a new podcast that explores 250 years of US history in the same way.

What do a clay pot made in Japan 7,000 years ago, a 15th-Century brass statue of a royal figure from Nigeria, and a British coin defaced by a suffragette all have in common? They were among the "objects" selected for the seminal radio programme A History of the World in 100 Objects.

At 09:45 on January 18, 2010, the first episode of this ambitious series began on BBC Radio 4, presented by Neil MacGregor, an art historian who was then director of the British Museum. It began as an audio show, later leading to a worldwide touring exhibition, and it explored two million years of human history through items in the museum’s collection.

The show was a huge success, garnering critical acclaim and regularly winning audiences of up to four million. The novelist and critic Philip Hensher described it as "perfect radio". Historian Dominic Sandbrook said it was "joyously highbrow". Museums and heritage sites all over the country mounted linked events. A related book was a bestseller. So what was it about this radio show that made it so successful?

The idea was that MacGregor and various experts would pick 100 objects from the collection of the museum ranging in date from the beginning of human history, some two million years ago, up to the present. They had to come from all over the world, comprise all sorts of items, from humble, everyday tools to unique and priceless works of art, and be able to tell the story – or a story – of humankind. Each episode would focus on a single object.

"History used to mean written history," says MacGregor. "That limits you immediately to that small bit of humanity in history that wrote and it also limits you normally to the people that were in control. The main purpose of doing a history through objects was that we wanted to allow people who don't have a voice to be heard. Part of our project was to have a history told by the people who had never been able to tell their story through the things that they made. That, I think, is really important. How do you give a voice to the voiceless of the past?"

The introductory episode explained what the show was all about. The first episode proper was about one of the oldest surviving objects made by humans, a chopping tool from the Olduvai Gorge in Northern Tanzania which is about 1.8 to two million years old. It would have been used as a butchering tool on the beasts of the savannah, giving its owner access to the protein that helped fuel their increasingly big brains.

Then there was the Japanese pot made about 7,000 years ago in a tradition that even then was almost 10,000 years old. These pots, the first ever made, allowed for extended food preservation and different methods of cooking.

There was an episode about a beautiful brass head discovered in Ife, in Nigeria, one of 13 such heads that were testament to a sophisticated and complicated culture and had a profound impact on the European view of African civilisation.

A further episode discussed an Ancient Greek coin depicting the profile of Alexander the Great. Another featured the British penny from around 1913-1914, on which the words "Votes for women" had been stamped over the image of King Edward VII as a protest by the suffragettes. The discussion focussed on what it told us about mass political engagement and 20th-Century power shifts.

Some of the objects covered were mysterious and completely unique, such as the stunning gold cape, made around 1900-1600BC and found at a site in Wales known locally as Fairies' Hill. This ceremonial garment – suitable for a child or a slender woman, purpose unknown – had been painstakingly and with incredible skill beaten out of solid gold. Other objects were ostensibly mundane, such as an unremarkable Victorian tea set or a Korean roof tile. All were fascinating.

More like this:

• A new history of the US in 100 objects

• Eight of the best podcasts of the year so far

• Suffragettes speak about their brutal treatment

MacGregor was undoubtedly a key factor in the show's success. He was an exceptional guide: enthusiastic, knowledgeable and articulate. In addition, the bite-sized episodes were appealing – you could be entertained, moved and made to feel smarter in just 15 minutes. But perhaps most importantly of all, it was an optimistic series.

The big-picture story it told was one of interconnectedness and progress, rather than division and stasis. It seemed to suggest that, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice". It encouraged us to see the history of the world as an ongoing joint project.

A new version about the United States

And now A History of the United States in 100 Objects is hoping to emulate its success. It aims to tell the story of the US on its 250th birthday. It's a co-production between the BBC and the team behind 99% Invisible, an acclaimed podcast about design and architecture. Presented by 99% Invisible's host and producer, Roman Mars, the show avoids the more well-known and celebrated items in favour of ordinary objects.

"We're trying to get out of the museum and find things that are overlooked, that are thrown away, that are not as important," explains Mars. "We're asking, why is this an American object and what is it saying about us. It's about teasing those things apart and presenting them in cool ways."

For example, one of Mars's favourite episodes is about the book which, after the Bible, is the best-selling book in US history. It was known as "the blue-backed speller", because of its blue cover.

It was first published in 1783 by lexicographer Noah Webster, some years before he published his dictionary, and it presented a method of learning to read. Reprinted throughout the 18th and 19th century – there were 385 editions during Webster's lifetime – it has a very special significance in US history, becoming a tool of liberation.

To find out how, tune in.

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10 stunning summer homes that are in harmony with nature

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260603-10-stunning-summer-homes-in-harmony-with-nature, 3 days ago

From a sleek dream home in the Costa Rican rainforest to a stone, cliff-top retreat in the wilds of Scotland, here are 10 summer retreats that are immersed in their surroundings.

What makes the ultimate summer home? For some it may be a tiny wooden cabin deep in a verdant, shady forest, surrounded by a chorus of birds. For others it would open up from the bedroom directly onto a stretch of flaxen sand, with rippling ocean waves just metres away.

A new book, Summer Houses by Izabela Anna Moren, features beautiful holiday dwellings across the globe, from buildings on stilts in the Costa Rican jungle, to a stone cottage perched on a Scottish cliff. What unites them is not just a nod to their surroundings, but architecture shaped by the environment. Each design draws logic, materials and form directly from the landscape – sustainability crafted in response to nature.

Here’s our pick of 10 retreats that are architecturally designed in harmony with geography and offering the perfect escape from everyday life.

1. Sinfonia Verde, Costa Rica

Inspired by the Osa Peninsula – a heavily forested region in southwestern Costa Rica – this house was designed as "a platform for experiencing the rainforest from the inside," architect Benjamin Saxe of Studio Saxe tells the BBC. The homeowners are keen biologists who enjoy observing nature, and the home's circular shape creates a 360-degree relationship with the surroundings, and offers stunning views of the forest canopy. Due to the sloping terrain it was partly built into the hillside, while also floating above it.

The parabolic roof manages the heavy rainfall, and is designed, "to behave like part of the ecosystem," explains Saxe. "In the rainforest, everything is interconnected, and we wanted the architecture to work in a similar way. The house is elevated to allow water, air and wildlife to continue moving naturally beneath it, minimising disruption to the terrain."

2. Mesaria Canava, Greece

An idyllic square of aquamarine water is perfectly positioned on the roof terrace of this traditional whitewashed home. With views across the island of Santorini to the Aegean Sea, this former 200-year-old subterranean wine cellar in Greece, once built for rural production, has been transformed by Kapsimalis Architects into a contemporary summer home. Interior vaulted rooms, underground cisterns and a terrace – previously used for storing and drying produce – have been preserved and repurposed. It now provides cool, open-plan living with simple bleached walls, bridging history with modernity.

3. The House Under the Ground, Netherlands

If you were walking along the lane beside a nature reserve in rural Dutch Eindhoven, you would barely notice this building tucked inside the bucolic landscape. Previously a shelter for goats, the home was designed by architects WillemsenU, who sank two of its three floors into the ground. They then covered the exposed exterior in a wildflower hill, while on the other side the house is open, sheltered yet integral to the landscape beyond.

4. Canopy House, Brazil

A two-hour drive from São Paulo finds you in the municipality of Guarujá, the gateway to Brazil's vast Atlantic tropical rainforest, home to sloths, parrots and the Canopy House. A multi-generational family summer home created by Studio MK27, it is built on concrete columns. On the first floor, five bedrooms and a TV room open out to a balcony with hammocks, and at the top, the main living space is half open to the elements with an expansive terrace and pool. Gardens, an exterior circular staircase and the minimal palette of pine timber, basalt and concrete connect the house to its jungle surroundings.

5. Caochan na Creige, Scotland

Caochann na Creige is built on the island of Harris in the Outer Hebrides, a beautiful and remote archipelago off the northwest coast of Scotland. "I believe architecture should grow from its place," architect Eilidh Izat of Izat Arundell tells the BBC. "In the Hebrides, there's a tradition of buildings shaped by climate, materials and necessity. I wanted to explore that in a contemporary way." The new build is perched on the cliffs of the rugged Bays of Harris – a landscape, says Izat, that is dominated by some of the oldest rock in the world. The house is "embedded in the environment rather than imposed upon it". The building wraps around a natural rock outcrop, uses Lewisian Gneiss stone from a quarry three miles away, and has a flat roof so that it sits low in the wider landscape.

6. Copper Bottom, Oxford, England

Architect Adiran James tells the BBC that this Oxford house was designed to, "read as a sculptural object in the landscape, a model which acts as a focus in vistas like a pavilion in an 18th-Century garden." It is clad almost entirely in an "origami-esque copper carapace", topped with solar panels, triple-glazed and has a very low carbon footprint. James describes the views it offers "of Oxford with the spires rising above the mist in the water meadows – it's life on a different plane".

7. Summer House, Lake Balaton, Hungary

Located on the shores of Lake Balaton, the largest freshwater lake in Central Europe, this house in the village of Tihany is rooted in the landscape. Reed has been the defining material of the local architectural culture for centuries, and was the "sustainable and cultural material choice" for the house, architect Adam Reisz of RAPA tells the BBC. A hand-laid stone base, 13-metre cantilever and thatched roof made from reeds harvested from the lake "prove that traditional and contemporary can strengthen one another". Inside, a sauna, bathing pool and terrace sit in the middle, while the soaring, double-height living space on top offers an airy retreat.

8. Coral Pavillion, Nigeria

In West Africa the coastal plains are flat, and on the serene Ilashe Peninsula – which can only be accessed by boat from Lagos – a design emerged from a moment of clarity for architect Tosin Oshinowo. "I saw a herdsman calmly walking past with his cattle," he tells the BBC. "Behind, ships were waiting at the port in the distance, and it became clear the project should be framing views of the Atlantic."

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• 10 of the world's most spectacular treehouses

• Eight of the world's most stunning penthouses

• The historic home that embodied the super-rich

Named after the colour of the sand, the Coral Pavillion is defined by its simple lines, open-plan design and whitewashed wall. The strategic over-hanging ceilings, and openings, capture shade and ocean breeze, while the pink terrace contrasts with a turquoise pool.

9. Estancia San José, Spain

Rustic walls were deliberately kept inside this renovated holiday home on the Spanish island of Menorca, adapted by Atelier du Pont. Designed for a mother and daughter to spend more time together, the original textures of the previously dilapidated farm buildings were intwined into the modern design. Terracotta floors, handmade ceramic tiles and rope-woven furniture add to the pastoral elements. Outside, the pool terrace throngs with wild olive trees.

10. The Lake House, Germany

Just outside Berlin and evoking the silhouette of boathouses, the Lake House employs timber pitched roofs and large wood framed window facades to make the most of the panoramic lake and forest views of the Brandenburg region. A modern take on a treehouse, designed by Sigurd Larsen, its open-plan, vaulted design has a glass façade that reflects the lush forest around it.

Summer Houses is published by Phaidon.

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Close Encounters, UFOs and cover-ups: Why Spielberg's 1977 conspiracy theory classic is so relevant in 2026

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260602-why-close-encounters-has-never-been-more-relevant, 4 days ago

Steven Spielberg's 1977 classic tapped into anxieties about the US government hiding UFO information from the public. It holds the key to the director's highly anticipated new film, Disclosure Day.

When trailers for Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day confirmed that it deals with extraterrestrials, the internet exploded with speculation that it was a sequel to his 1977 classic, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The guesswork became so rampant that the press notes for the new film cheekily announce it is "not a sequel to Close Encounters (sorry, internet)".

But it does have very direct ties. Emily Blunt, one of Disclosure Day's stars, has described it as resembling "a third act" along with Close Encounters and ET The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Spielberg himself linked the films in one of the trailers, saying, "I'm even more inclined now than I was when I made Close Encounters to really believe that we're not the only intelligent civilisation in the Universe."

Some of the echoes are obvious, with friendly creatures from other planets arriving here. But there is a less obvious connection between Close Encounters and Disclosure Day, as both tap into conspiracy theories about the US government hiding evidence of UFOs – or, to use the updated term, UAPs, for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.

Those theories go back to the legendary supposed crash of a UFO in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, and over the years have only intensified, making their way into the mainstream. Today they resonate in light of the Pentagon's recent underwhelming release of information about reported UAP sightings. Timelier than ever, Close Encounters is a key to Disclosure Day, which is all about revealing the truth about UAPs.

With its bold, expansive visuals, themes of family distress and the awesome visit of beings from some other planet, Close Encounters holds up as one of Spielberg's most ambitious and dazzling films. Most viewers are likely to remember at least a few indelible images. Richard Dreyfuss as Roy Neary, an ordinary family man who sees a UFO, sits at the dinner table building mashed potatoes into the shape of a giant rock.

That rock is the site where the UFO will land, although he doesn't know it yet. One might recall the arrival of the glowing mothership, the spindly large-headed ghostly-white creatures walking out, and Roy happily joining them on board as he heads off into space. The five music notes scientists use to communicate with extraterrestrials are hard to forget.

'UFOs and Watergate'

But what jumps out watching Close Encounters today is how the government tries to prevent the public from knowing what we have seen to be true. At a community meeting, Roy and Jillian (Melinda Dillon), the mother of a three-year-old who has been taken by the aliens, join others who have seen the UFOs. A US Air Force officer says what they saw was definitely not from space. And the official deceptions go far beyond that lie. Throughout, Spielberg shows the audience evidence of a cover-up still unknown to the characters.

On television, the evening news reports that a train derailment has caused a chemical leak, requiring a 300-mile-(483km) wide evacuation near Devil's Tower, the monumental rock in Wyoming that is the very shape Roy was sculpting in potatoes. That report is just a cover story we've seen officials concoct. We have also seen a huge military operation heading toward Wyoming to prepare the evacuated area as a landing site for the spaceship, and equipment for the operation loaded onto trucks with signage for Baskin-Robbins ice cream and the Piggly Wiggly supermarket chain.

As Roy and Jillian head to Devil's Tower together, they see dead animals on the roadside – not dead, we find out, but tranquilised by the government to make the chemical spill story plausible. Close Encounters becomes an everyman's attempt to find the truth in the face of massive government secrecy and lies.

In fact, when Spielberg first conceived the film, he described it as "UFOs and Watergate". Through many iterations of the screenplay, it morphed into a family story: Roy leaves his wife and children for space, and Jillian tries to find her lost son. Yet the conspiracy-thriller plotline remains strong. If you can't trust a grocery truck to be heading to a store instead of an alien landing, what can you trust?

Even in ET, amidst all that film's heart-tugging, Spielberg emphatically depicts the government trying to keep its knowledge of extraterrestrials from the public. Nasa scientists and government agents swarm the house where little Elliott and his family have been protecting ET, in order to take and study him. And when ET heads home, with the iconic image of Elliott and his friends riding bikes across the sky to get him to safety, they are running from US government cars.

Art imitating life

As they often do, Spielberg's fantasy films mirror aspects of real life. Jon Towlson, in his 2016 book about Close Encounters, writes that after the film's release, there was "a dramatic increase in reported UFO sightings, although these were not new cases as one might expect, but older reports made by people who had previously been afraid to come forward".

We now know that US government investigations of UFOs go back to 1947 and Roswell, and that similar studies have followed on and off ever since. Some of the subterfuge around that was brought to light in 2017, when the New York Times published a story about "The Pentagon's Mysterious UFO Program," revealing that the US Defense Department had been secretly funding studies of declared sightings. The government really had been hiding something. Whether it was evidence of UFOs or simply the fact that it had been studying the possibilities would have been enough to fuel more conspiracy theories.

Interest has kept ramping up even while answers remain sparse. Nothing much came of Congressional hearings in 2023, which wondered whether UAPs posed a national security treat. More impressive information was revealed in a 2025 Wall Street Journal story about a report released by the Defense Department. The Journal wrote that the report omitted the fact that a disinformation program had spread rumours of UFOs, which was to disguise information Russia might have gleaned from a military facility.

None of this offered convincing evidence of UAPs or alien visitations. Neither did the report the Pentagon released last month, with many images easily explained as flashing lights. But that hasn't stopped true believers. "The stuff that they're releasing is stuff we've known for, like, forever," one of them told the BBC at the time, adding, "But I'm very hopeful that we're heading in the right direction."

More like this:

• Why ET feels so unusual today

• The UFO reports interesting Nasa

• 10 of the best films to watch this June

Disclosure Day lands in that real-life context, at a time of suspicions not only about the government's honesty but about truth and facts themselves. It is an action movie and a sci-fi story but above all a conspiracy thriller in the vein of post-Watergate films from the Close Encounters era.

Josh O'Connor's character, Daniel, is a whistleblower employed by the fictional but all too plausible Wardex, a clandestine agency working with the Defense Department, unofficial so it doesn't have to play by any rules. As the trailers have revealed, the government has been guarding decades' worth of evidence of extraterrestrial visitations. Daniel, the hero trying to release the truth, has to go on the run followed by Wardex killers intent on stopping him.

The echoes of 1970s thrillers are clear. In Three Days of the Condor (1975), for example, Robert Redford is a CIA researcher hunted by gunmen because of what he knows. "I just read books," he complains to his CIA bosses, just as Daniel protests, "I'm not a field guy, Hugo. I did the tech, that's all." Hugo (Colman Domingo) is another Wardex whistleblower who has what may be the film's most pertinent line, delivered vehemently: "This 79-year terror campaign of obfuscation, lies and cover-up has to end!"

Spielberg has emphasised as much in a teaser for the film. He says there is now a "critical mass" of people fascinated with the question of whether we are alone in the Universe. "And if someone knows we're not alone, why haven't we been told?"

Disclosure Day is released on 12 June.

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A lonely monkey to the dark side of the Moon: Nine of the most striking images of 2026 so far

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260601-the-most-striking-images-of-2026, 5 days ago

An expert's guide to the some of the most eye-catching photographs of the year – and how they echo masterpieces from art history.

1. President Maduro and Cilia Flores's capture

The photo of once-powerful figures, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores – hunched over in handcuffs and escorted by armed Federal agents in early January – was genuinely arresting. The drama of formidable leaders suddenly stripped of their authority, has long fascinated artists, from the Rococo master Tiepolo (who imagined the capture of Queen Zenobia), to the Victorian painter Charles Eastlake, who portrayed Napoleon as a prisoner on board the HMS Bellerophon in Plymouth Sound.

2. Bagarumba dancers

A stunning aerial image of Bagurumba dancers in traditional attire preparing for a Guinness World Record attempt for the largest-ever performance of the Bodo community's "Butterfly Dance" in January at Sarusajai Stadium in Guwahati, Assam, India, blurred the bodies of the the participants into an uninterruptible pattern of tessellating colour. The melting of rhythmic movement into engrossing geometry echoes the ambition of the pioneering abstract artist Piet Mondrian, who left unfinished on his easel when he died in 1944 an absorbing homage to the evaporative power of music, Victory Boogie Woogie.

3. Ukrainian drone

The photo of a Ukrainian serviceman snatching a plane-shaped reconnaissance drone from the sky above him near the front lines of the war with Russia in January relied for its power on the ingenious perspective of the photojournalist who took it. Snapped from below, with no other object in the image to provide a sense of relative scale, the serviceman appears to be a giant grabbing an aircraft in mid-flight. The seemingly towering figure recalls the terrifying titan in Goya's painting El Coloso (The Colossus), often interpreted as an allegory of the Spanish War of Independence (Peninsular War).

4. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's arrest

Phil Noble's photograph of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor being driven away from Aylsham police station in Norfolk after his arrest in February quickly seared itself into cultural consciousness. The shocked expression on the former prince's face – having been questioned about his time as the UK's trade representative between 2001 and 2011 – finds little compelling parallel in any poised portraiture in a museum. It does resemble a textbook illustration of sheer terror, as proposed by Sir Charles Bell in his influential 1806 treatise Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting.

5. Punch, the lonely monkey

A photo taken in February at the Ichikawa City Zoo, in Ichikawa, Japan, of Punch, a baby Japanese macaque, gazing affectionately into the oversized eyes of a stuffed orangutan sitting beside him, was among the more affecting images captured so far this year. The intensity of Punch's soulful, unrequited stare recalls a series of extraordinary paintings undertaken in the last decades of the 19th Century by German painter and primatologist Gabriel von Max, whose poignant portrait Monkey Before Skeleton, 1900, is invigorated by that same unfulfilled longing for a spark.

6. Cat in Syria

Staring through the rose-tinted window of a truck whose bed is piled high with cushions and mattresses, a taut cat appears transfixed by someone or something outside the frame of the photo. The frozen feline accompanies countless Kurdish people displaced during the Syrian civil war as they began to return to their hometowns, following an agreement between Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian government. A liminal presence, suspended between exile and home, the rigid cat is moving in its motionlessness. The image calls to mind the trompe l'oeil threshold intensity of the 17th-Century Dutch master Gerard Dou's portrait of his protective and ready-to-pounce pet, Cat on a Ledge, 1657.

7. Sydney sailing shot

In April, a yacht was captured drifting headlong into the vibrant veil of a rainbow as it illuminated Sydney Harbour in front of North Head. The near collision of sailors with the spectral splay of a plunging rainbow's anchor finds a parallel in a similarly close encounter with impalpable resplendence portrayed by the Realist painter Nikolay Nikanorovich Dubovskoy in 1892.

8. Earthset

The image of a vulnerable if vibrant Earth slowly sinking behind the ashen surface of a barren Moon (as captured by Nasa astronaut Christina Koch from Artemis II on 6 April), was as instantly iconic as it was disorientating. A lonely sphere suspended precariously in a dark and freezing void, the Earth hasn't seemed so fragile since Hieronymus Bosch imagined it in mid-creation – a fledgling monochrome sphere floating in a vacuum – on the exterior panels of his Garden of Earthly Delights.

9. Gaza City football pitch

An aerial photo of a vibrant green football pitch in Gaza City, set incongruously amidst the rubble of concrete buildings destroyed during the two-year conflict with Israel, was especially striking. The contrast between the ragged reality of war beyond the perimeter of the dazzlingly precise field echoed the contours of the ancient Persian Chahar Bagh tradition of constructing a geometric oasis of life and cosmic order within a harsh environment. It is seen in a miniature painting from the 16th-Century Baburnama – the memoirs of the first Mughal Emperor, Babur.

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'I believe Mr Nixon knew all along': The tragic story of Martha Mitchell - the Watergate whistleblower who was ridiculed

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260522-the-tragic-story-of-martha-mitchell, 13 days ago

Martha Mitchell was a flamboyant Washington DC socialite whose husband was embroiled in the Watergate scandal. Her shocking claims of a violent abduction and a "dirty business" were ridiculed as delusional – until they turned out to be true.

Martha Mitchell was a character; everyone agreed on that. Born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas in 1918, she emerged as a flamboyant, charismatic Washington socialite after the appointment of her second husband, John Mitchell, to the Nixon White House.

She liked a drink, and sometimes liked to follow those drinks with gossipy late-night phone calls to reporters. Her outsized personality and presence earned her the nickname "Washington's Other Martha". Her candidness saw her nicknamed "the Mouth of the South".

Warning: This article contains language that some may find offensive.

But in 1972, as her husband was embroiled in the Watergate scandal and she became, in the words of the reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, "the Greek chorus of the […] drama, sounding her warnings to all who would hear", Martha's eccentricities were turned against her.

She was dismissed as a drunk, a fantasist and a self-publicist, even as the broad truth of her claims of a "dirty business" became clear.

Her more specific and lurid accusations – of a violent abduction by Nixon associates, of being held hostage and drugged – only enhanced her status as a seemingly unreliable witness. "The whole thing is incredible," she acknowledged to David Frost in a September 1974 BBC TV interview. "It's like reading a James Bond novel. You can't believe it. I can't believe what's happened to me."

Years after her death, Harvard psychologist Brendan Maher used her name to describe a psychological phenomenon: the Martha Mitchell effect, wherein a patient's outlandish but real experiences are misdiagnosed as delusions. But it wasn't until recently that the significance of her Watergate interventions, erratic and self-interested though they sometimes were, started to be properly acknowledged.

In 1977, Richard Nixon had told David Frost that "if it hadn't been for Martha Mitchell, there'd have been no Watergate". He meant that her unpredictable behaviour had caused his close ally John Mitchell to take his eye off the ball. In reality, she came close to exposing the entire criminal enterprise before a cover up could even begin.

A dramatic phonecall

Martha Beall grew up in a small town, the only child of well-to-do parents. A one-time aspiring actress, she was known as talkative and headstrong. She studied at the University of Arkansas and later at the University of Miami. Upon graduation, after a short stint as a schoolteacher, she got a job as receptionist to the general of the Pine Bluff Arsenal, transferred with him to Washington DC, and there met and married an Army captain.

After Martha's husband's discharge, the couple moved to New York where they eventually divorced after 11 years of marriage. A few months later, Martha married again, this time to wealthy Manhattan lawyer John Mitchell. And 11 years after that she found herself back in DC, a resident of the exclusive Watergate apartment complex as the wife of the Attorney General of the United States.

In Washington, Martha established herself as a gregarious and enthusiastic partygoer with a distinctive sense of style, "the most colourful" of the Nixon cabinet wives, according to a contemporary New York Times report. She soon became known as the most outspoken and indiscreet, too, telling a TV reporter in November 1969 that anti-Vietnam war protests reminded her husband of the Russian Revolution and earning national notoriety in the process.

Around the same time, she caused a more localised kerfuffle by making a series of phone calls to Washington wives and senatorial staff, lobbying them hard (some said threatening them) to throw their influence behind one of her husband's favoured Supreme Court candidates, the pro-segregation, anti-labour judge Clement Haynsworth.

The telephone continued to be Martha's weapon of choice. In April 1970, she made a series of late-night calls to the Arkansas Gazette urging them to "crucify" local senator J William Fulbright for opposing another segregationist Supreme Court nominee, G Harrold Carswell. In 1971, she called Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward after he named her as one of the Watergate residents who had complained about pollution from a generating plant which, in turned out, directly supplied the White House. "Honey," he quotes her as saying. "[I don't] care if John and Mr President [have] to work by candlelight, [I] learned enough back in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, to know that human beings should not be subjected to direct hits from anybody's waste."

Martha's most dramatic and significant phone call was made on 22 June 1972. Earlier that year, John Mitchell had resigned as Attorney General to head up the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP, or, popularly, Creep). His role involved distributing a secret slush fund to support sabotage and intelligence-gathering against Nixon's political opponents. On 17 June, five men were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex, carrying electronic listening equipment.

John and Martha Mitchell were in California for fund-raising engagements at the time of the arrests. Realising she would easily connect the break-in to himself and the campaign (one of the arrested men, Creep staffer James McCord, had previously been assigned to her as a personal guard), John tried to keep the news from Martha. As he prepared to return to Washington to begin a cover-up operation, he suggested she remain at their hotel to rest, and told the Creep team, including security aide Steve King, to ensure she didn't see any newspapers. A few days later, however, Martha managed to find a copy of the Los Angeles Times, and phoned one of her reporter friends, United Press International's Helen Thomas, to discuss what she'd learned.

Martha got as far as telling Thomas she was "sick of the whole [Nixon] operation" before the call abruptly terminated. What had happened, Martha later explained to David Frost, was that Steve King had "jerked the telephone from the wall". She was then held captive in her hotel room for several days, "without food or anything else". At one point, she attempted to escape through a window and the ensuing struggle left her needing stitches from broken glass.

Later, she was held down and forcibly injected with a tranquiliser. When she was eventually allowed to leave the hotel, Martha called Thomas again, complaining of being left "black and blue" by her captors and announcing "I won't stand for this dirty business".

"When I got back to New York, I had both arms in bandages," she told Frost in 1974. "And that is my greatest mistake, because if I had gone in front of the press at that particular time, they would have known what had happened to me." As it was Martha's allegations (eventually corroborated by McCord in 1975 after his conviction for the Watergate break-in) were relegated to the inside pages of the national papers. Her first call to Helen Thomas made page 12 of the New York Times, her second was only noted on page 25.

'A complicated whistleblower'

Others, like the New York Daily News, treated the affair more as whimsical gossip-column fodder than a significant lead in a scandal that could ultimately bring down the government. Later press coverage quoted anonymous Republican sources worrying over Martha's alcohol consumption and apparently declining mental health. In September, Bob Woodward visited her in New York, where she and John had moved following his resignation from Creep. He found her chatty and charming as ever, but vague and evasive when talk turned to Watergate. He concluded it had been a wasted trip (though she did correctly predict Nixon would win "biggest landslide in the history of the country" in the upcoming election).

More like this:

• How the 1973 oil crisis made Nixon rethink time

• The US public's frenzy over Jackie O's possessions

• The fatal accident that haunted Ted Kennedy's life

Martha Mitchell was a complicated whistleblower in the Watergate affair. Washington Post writer Katherine Winton Evans summed up her conflicted legacy in 1979: "I've always had a hard time deciding whether Martha Mitchell was a spunky, savvy lady who divined the truth about Richard Nixon earlier than a lot of other people – or simply an impossible, unreliable, self-destructive pain in the kazoo."

Her initial motivation seemed to be to distance her husband from the conspiracy, even as she correctly alluded to its existence. Yet despite her insistence to David Frost that "I believe Mr Nixon knew all along. I would almost be willing to bet my life he planned it", it's not clear what, if any, inside knowledge she had of the break-in and its cover-up.

In All the President's Men, Woodward and Bernstein quote their most celebrated informant, Deep Throat, as saying that Martha "knows nothing, apparently, but that doesn't mean she won't talk". Fifty years later, Bob Woodward revealed that, as Martha's marriage began to break down in early 1974, she had given the reporters access to John Mitchell's personal papers, saying "I hope you get the bastard."

The contents of John's home office provided at least one front page instalment in the Washington Post's long-running Watergate investigation (a 1971 letter from Nixon's close friend Elmer Bobst, offering a $100,000 donation in exchange for favourable treatment from the Federal Trade Commission). Yet, whatever other insights she could have provided had she been taken more seriously, Martha's June 1972 imprisonment alone should have indicated that the people around Richard Nixon had something to hide, and were willing to go to extraordinary lengths to do so.

Nixon eventually resigned in August 1974. A few weeks later, Martha Mitchell told David Frost: "I've lost my trust in human nature… I have loved a man to the hilt, and then all of a sudden everything turns out to be lies." John Mitchell was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury in January 1975. That same year, Martha became sick with multiple myeloma. She died a year later. At her funeral in Pine Bluff, among the flowers sent by friends and supporters was a floral tribute that spelled out a 6in-high message in white chrysanthemums. It read: Martha was right.

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Only Fools fans can relive classic seaside trip

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9d37djzz2yo, today

Tours based on one of Only Fools and Horses' best-known episodes are being launched in Margate.

The "Jolly Boys' Outing", filmed in the seaside town in 1989, remains one of the sitcom's most popular instalments.

Fans can follow in the footsteps of the Trotters on a new coach tour hosted by the production manager behind the original episode.

Christmas Day 1989 saw more than 20m people tune in to watch the feature-length special. Behind-the-scenes images are now held by the Only Fools and Horses Appreciation Society.

The episode saw Del Boy, Rodney and Uncle Albert, played by actors Sir David Jason, Nicholas Lyndhurst and Buster Merryfield, embark on a chaotic, ill-fated coach trip, along with the Nag's Head pub regulars, down to the coast from their home in Peckham, south-east London.

Adrian Pegg, production manager on the episode, said keeping one of its biggest moments a secret during filming was a challenge.

"One of the trickiest things I think was trying to keep the big gag of the series, which was the coach exploding, secret," he said.

"We were convinced that when we were in the coach park setting up for this huge explosion, paparazzi would be looking with long lens cameras and trying to spoil it."

He said steps were taken to prevent images leaking ahead of its broadcast.

"I can remember moving all the prop coaches in a circle, like putting the wagons in a circle around our exploding coach, just to try to stop the cameras from spoiling Christmas Day."

Author Mike Jones, who has written about the series, said the episode got the characters out of the studio.

"Up to this point, the series had been on for nine years, and we'd seen all these wonderful characters in brilliant studio sets at Television Centre," he said.

"This was the only time really they all came out on location," he added.

"They're all running around the beach, going around the theme park, Dreamland, and it's just a delight to see them on that scale."

"I see David Jason fairly regularly," Pegg said.

"We still have Only Fools and Horses conventions and at the last one I spoke to him about this, and he recorded a nice little message that we play in the coach to the people who come on the tour."

As part of the tour, Sir David's recorded message is played to visitors.

"To all the plonkers sitting on the coach wanting to know what it was like when we were there, we had a really great time," he says. "It really was amazing.

"So I hope you enjoy it as much as we did when we were making Only Fools and Horses. You know it makes sense."

Tickets for tours are available in June and July.

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Love Island's cracking on! So what is it actually like in the villa?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74ryedxlgno, today

A number of singles made their way into the Love Island villa at the start of this week where they've already started cracking on with one another.

The reality TV show has just returned for a 13th series but don't worry, you can definitely catch up if you've missed anything so far.

Fans might remember the relatively small number of contestants from Northern Ireland who have appeared on the show.

So what's it like being on Love Island?

Matthew MacNabb

Downpatrick man Matthew MacNabb appeared on series seven.

Speaking to BBC News NI about his experience, the 31-year-old said it was fun and he "did enjoy it" but "it's otherworldly in a sense".

"It's just so mad seeing the inner workings of it," he said, adding: "It was really cool actually doing it."

He got married to professional dancer Laura Nolan last weekend.

And no, they didn't meet on the show. They met later on Dancing With The Stars.

MacNabb said he had just returned from San Diego when someone reached out to him on Instagram, urging him to apply for Love Island.

"I wasn't an influencer or anything. I only had 1,500 followers," he said.

He credits his friend, who is a photographer, for being the reason he was noticed and asked to go on the show.

MacNabb explained how the experience of being on the show was "definitely different".

"You're locked up in this place for a month or whatever and you're sleeping in a room with 15 other adults".

"And then you're getting told what to do over the speaker by the sound of God."

He explained that's what contestants used to call it when producers gave them instructions over a speaker in the villa.

He also said that "talking about relationship stuff" so publicly was strange because it's usually something you would do in private.

MacNabb laughed about his time on the show and joked that he still holds the record for the fastest ever break up with his iconic "we're done" line.

MacNabb said he watches Love Island "here and there", but "when you've been on the show, you look at it in a different way".

He said that there haven't been too many contestants from Northern Ireland and "it would be good to see more people from the north on it because we're actually very naturally funny in our own way".

Adam Maxted

Pro wrestler Adam Maxted from Belfast appeared on series two of Love Island.

He made his mark as a bombshell, otherwise known as a new arrival, on the show on day 11, and grafted his way to fourth place alongside fellow islander Katie Salmon.

He then returned to the villa in 2024 for series one of Love Island All Stars and was coupled up with Arabella Chi.

They came sixth and left the villa just one day before the show's final.

Maura Higgins

Maura Higgins is probably the most famous contestant from the Republic of Ireland.

And it's pretty undeniable the County Longford woman provided viewers with some pretty iconic lines. Let's take a minute for "why are you asking her that?".

She rose to fame in 2019, when she was a finalist on the fifth series of Love Island.

Now, she is a reality television personality, presenter and model who has appeared on Dancing on Ice, I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! and The Traitors US.

Other Irish contestants include:

* Rob Lipsett and Shannen McGrath, series three

* Greg O'Shea, series five winner

* Yewande Biala, series five

* Salma Naran and Kaila Troy, series seven

* Dami Hope, series eight

* Jack Keating, series eight and series three of Love Island All Stars (And yes, he's Ronan Keating's son)

* Catherine Agbaje, series 10

* Megan Forte Clarke and Conor Phillips, series 12

Seán Fitzgerald

Among the singles in this year's OG line up is Seán Fitzgerald, aka Fitzy, a GAA player from Galway.

The 25-year-old primary school teacher was part of Galway's All-Ireland squad who were defeated by Armagh in 2024.

His appearance comes after a tongue-in-cheek "audition tape" which he posted to his almost 100,000-strong following on Tiktok earlier this year.

Speaking ahead of the new series, he said if he sees someone he likes: "I'm going for it and nothing's going to stop me."

Love Island's starting line-up

If you've never seen it before, the premise of Love Island is to couple up and convince the public to keep you on the island in order to win £50,000 - all while trying to find your perfect match.

These are the first 12 singles who entered this year's villa:

* Robyn, 21, a quantity surveyor and DJ from Liverpool

* Lorenzo, 28, a business owner from Hertfordshire

* Mica, 21, a student from Barbados who lives in London

* Seán, 25, primary school teacher from Galway

* Ellie, 24, a real estate videographer from West Lothian

* Samraj, 25, a model from Birmingham

* Lola, 28, a detective from Kent

* Samuel, 25, an electrician from Dudley

* Angelista, 24, a nurse from Staffordshire

* Ope, 27, west-end performer from Lincolnshire

* Jasmine, 27, a fashion business owner from Dubai who lives in London

* Aidan, 23, a property broker from Kent

And not to spoil anything, but it is Love Island so obviously there's already been plot twists and bombshells!

Romantasy book club helping rural readers connect

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrprn63zpzo, today

Getting lost in the world of dragons, faeries and demons is not the only benefit to being part of a new romantasy book club, according to avid readers.

The genre - combining romance with fantasy - has boomed in popularity in recent years, largely thanks to the #BookTok trend on the social media platform TikTok.

While fans connected online over their love of authors like Sarah J Maas and Rebecca Yarros, some Suffolk readers have started to meet in person.

Lauren Emms, 27, from Bacton, set up The Bury Romance and Romantasy Book Club, and attendees said it had helped them meet new friends in rural areas.

She has always been into reading, and said she was "the kid that sat in the corner at parties and read their book".

Last September, she set up a book-themed Instagram account, known as a Bookstagram, which helped her meet people locally.

Inspired by this, she decided to launch her own book club specifically for romance and romantasy books.

"I thought, 'Why not do it?'," she told the BBC.

"So I spent about a month emailing loads of different venues like cafes and things like that."

She got talking to Whiting's Bar in Bury St Edmunds, who were more than willing to host the club once a month and even create bookish cocktails.

"I decided that would be a really good venue, and then created an Instagram page for the book club, and it just blew up," she continued.

"Within two days, it had over 150 people following."

The group meets once a month, and it is completely free.

Members pick a book to read for each session before discussing it. The most recent was Blood Bound, a romantasy involving witches and dragon riders.

The group's creator said in a rural county like Suffolk, the club has helped many attendees meet new people.

"I did notice on the first book club, one of the girls was really shy, very quiet," she said.

"She did text me beforehand and said she was a bit nervous because it's out of her comfort zone, but she still came. By the end of the night, she was really having a laugh with all of us and really talking.

"I thought that was really good, and I think the girls... they've all made friendships with each other already, and we've only been going for three months.

"To see how we were on the first night, being strangers to now being really good friends, I just think it's lovely."

Belinda Hart, 50, from Bury St Edmunds, is part of the club and got into reading as an adult.

She discovered the club on Instagram and attended the first meetup.

"I was quite nervous about going, especially going on my own... but I'm so glad I did it," she said.

"They're such a lovely bunch with such nice varied ages as well."

She added: "I probably am the oldest one, but I don't feel it. There doesn't feel like a huge divide in the ages, it's just a lovely balance and a lovely bunch of people."

She felt it was important for people to get out following the Covid-19 pandemic, which "really affected a lot of people's social anxiety".

"Being able to go somewhere and actually meet people, even if it is only once a month, I think that's something quite major, especially if you've got that common interest," she added.

Holly Spivey, 35, also from Bury St Edmunds, attends the group events.

"One day [Lauren] pitched me the idea of starting a book club specifically for romance/romantasy, and I thought it was a fantastic idea," she explained.

"Combining Lauren's creative flair and social media presence, I knew it would be a hit."

She said the club had become a "fantastic way to meet new people", especially for her as a single mother.

"I'm in a demographic that can find themselves in a monotonous, stressful and sometimes lonely situation, where mental health can really suffer," she continued.

"Clubs like this not only break up the day-to-day with relationships made in the club but connect you to like-minded people and help support our town's local businesses."

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Returned artefact unveiled by Australian sleuth

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c07275z2r8go, today

An Australian solicitor who helped recover a church artefact stolen in England has unveiled it in its rightful home.

Richard d'Apice, a Sydney-based heraldry expert, spotted the 17th Century painted wooden panel while browsing an English auction house catalogue online.

He identified the piece as a memorial board belonging to St Leonard's Church in Flamstead, near Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, which had been stolen in 1996.

On Thursday, he attended a ceremony where the item was returned to a wall hook that had remained empty for nearly three decades.

The item, which is worth about £3,000, honours George Cordell, who served three monarchs beginning with Queen Elizabeth I.

The Reverend Jo Burke said: "George was the gentleman who looked after the monarch's tablecloths... and he was buried somewhere in this church."

She admitted the memorial had been "entirely forgotten" by the local community over the years, and she had never heard of it in the four and a half years she had been at the church.

It was only when d'Apice saw it online and did some cross-referencing that it was identified and eventually returned to Flamstead.

The 80-year-old said: "They were pretty swiftly able to convince the police and the auctioneer that it belonged to the church and it had never left legally, and [they] were able to reclaim it, so here it is back in the church."

The vicar said: "I'm still astonished. I'm absolutely delighted. It fits neatly back into some of what we already knew about the families who are buried in this church and lived here back in the 17th Century.

"So it's a surprise, it's a delight, and we are immensely grateful."

Speaking at the unveiling ceremony, d'Apice described the reaction as "quite surprising".

"I didn't expect the level of interest that it seems to have generated," he said.

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Royal audience for radiographers' Spider-Man mask

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78yl7vl538o, today

Artwork by two radiographers at a Cambridgeshire hospital has received royal recognition after being featured in a display.

Abigail Williamson and Eve Tomlinson, who work at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH), started painting radiotherapy masks during their breaks at work to make treatment less daunting for their younger patients.

One of the masks resembles Spider-Man and was shown at a reception at St James's Palace in London this week, attended by King Charles III and Queen Camilla.

"We feel excited and proud to have had this work displayed at St James's Palace and to highlight this lifesaving treatment," said Williamson.

"As importantly, we are showcasing the bravery of our young patients, since they are the real superheroes in our books."

The event was held to mark 125 years of Cancer Research UK.

CUH said the Spider-Man mask had been worn by children who had undergone radiotherapy for neck and head tumours.

It is one of a series of masks suggested by hospital play specialists which has resulted in masks depicting unicorns, Charmander from Pokémon and Salacious B Crumb from Star Wars, the trust added.

Williamson said: "The artwork helps reduce the fear of wearing a standard mask and having radiotherapy over several weeks.

"Our play specialist colleagues often create matching sticker charts to help patients count down their daily treatments."

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The Script play surprise gig at Irish pub

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8e2r775n6no, today

Irish rock band The Script have given a surprise performance at a Coventry pub.

They are in the city to support Take That at the CBS Arena, and after the Friday night show they dropped into The Four Provinces, an Irish pub on Allesley Old Road.

The pub's general manager, Daniel Harkin, said the offer to play came out of the blue and it ended up being "probably one of the biggest nights we've had".

Speaking to the BBC ahead of the gig, Danny O'Donoghue, the band's lead singer, said: "Connecting with the audience is just something I just really love and have been dying [to do] for a long time."

The Script were due to perform at the CBS Arena on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, supporting Take That along with Belinda Carlisle.

Harkin said when they were contacted, they were told the band was "looking to get a bit of an intimate gig at an Irish pub" on the Friday.

He said they had a full house and the audience was a mixture of their usual customers and fans of the band who had followed them over from the show at the CBS Arena.

Harkin said he was "very, very glad" to have been approached and added: "Hopefully it has opened a few doors for us now."

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Giant Indian puppets to take over Kensington street

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0p6n93n9no, yesterday

Towering puppets, live percussion and moving sculpture will make their way along a west London street to celebrate South Asian artistic, musical, and craft traditions.

The Giants on the Move parade will be held at Exhibition Road, South Kensington, on Saturday and Sunday.

Organisers Serendipity Arts said the event drew on India's rich heritage of artisanal puppet-making and was "an immersive celebration of movement, participation and public art".

It forms part of the Great Exhibition Road Festival, a free annual celebration of science. This year's event marks 175 years since the Great Exhibition, which showcased the industrial and cultural achievements of the UK and other nations to the world.

The event is directed by Dadi Pudumjee, one of India's most influential puppeteers, who has spent more than five decades working across traditional Indian forms, object theatre, masks, projection and music.

He founded the Ishara Puppet Theatre in 1986 and the Ishara International Puppet Festival in 2001, and has presented work across Asia, Europe, the Americas and Australia.

Pudumjee has been recognised with the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1992 and the Padma Shri, one of India's highest civilian honours, in 2011. He has also been president of UNIMA International, the global puppetry organisation.

Serendipity Arts is a not-for-profit organisation supporting artists across visual art, music, theatre, dance and design in South Asia and beyond.

Its annual festival in Goa, which marked its 10th anniversary in December, has grown into South Asia's largest multidisciplinary arts event.

The Great Exhibition Road Festival runs from 12:00 to 18:00 BST on 6 and 7 June. The procession is at 12:45 and 15:15 each day. All events are free.

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

Young people team up with Lottery Winners to write hometown anthem

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx21vm14y3wo, yesterday

Young people in a Greater Manchester town have teamed up with chart-topping indie pop band the Lottery Winners to record to spread "joy and pride" about their hometown.

'Song for Leigh' was premiered before thousands of people at the bands homecoming show at Leigh Sports Village last Saturday.

Kerrick Mills, who was one of the performers who sang on the track, told BBC Radio Manchester watching the song played out in front of the crowd was "phenomenal".

Lottery Winners' frontman Thom Rylance said working class communities were "overflowing with brilliant songwriters, artists and dreamers, they just don't always get the same opportunities or encouragement."

He said working with the Lottery Winners alongside other people his age was "surreal".

"I haven't been in a proper recording studio before seeing how everything works behind the scenes, and making a full song was just a once in a lifetime opportunity for me."

Rylance said the band "know what it feels like to grow up thinking those worlds aren't built for people like us".

"So if we can help open a few doors, share what we've learned, or make someone believe they belong, then that matters just as much as any chart position ever will."

The song features pupils from Bedford High School, Lowton High School and the Spirix Youth Theatre, which is based in Wigan and Leigh.

Their involvement began as part of a project to get young people from Leigh involved in songwriting session to share their experience and hopes the future of their town.

Lyrics were written by the group, who were supported to rehearse and record by The Lottery Winners.

A 'Song for Leigh' music video has also been released to celebrate young people in Leigh involved in music, dance and the visual arts.

It has been led by Amy Hodgson, a producer from local dance collective Spirix, and funded by Down to Earth and Arts Council England.

All the proceeds from the song will go to local arts and education charity the Gill David Trust.

There are about 500 creative businesses in Wigan but only 1.5% of local jobs are in the creative sector, below the 4% Greater Manchester average, according to a study looking at creative industries in the borough by consultants WeMadeThat.

Marti Boardman, one of the young performers, said: "I don't think there are enough opportunities for young artists like us to help us carry on in the industry and help us with our dreams, and I think more needs to be done about it."

"The experience was amazing. To be working with some big names in the music industry is really a once in a lifetime opportunity and I've learnt so many things along the way that I can then use to help myself progress in the industry."

Listen to the best of BBC Radio Manchester on Sounds and follow BBC Manchester on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.

Weekly round-up: Stories you may have missed

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c98r8n8g3yno, yesterday

Some post boxes in Guernsey are being installed with special plates, a musician is attempting to play 34 gigs in two weeks and automated medication dispensers are being trialled in homes.

These are some of the stories in our selection from the Channel Islands that you may have missed from the past week.

Musician taking on 34 care home gigs in two weeks

A UK performer is taking on 34 gigs in care and community venues across Guernsey in two weeks to promote healing and wellbeing.

Bob Gessey is working in partnership with the Guernsey Healing Music Trust and the charity Music in Hospitals and Care. His first gig was at Guernsey Cheshire Home.

Gessey said his performances were beneficial for everyone and hoped those attending would "get a lot out of it".

Heritage plates aim to celebrate post box history

Heritage plates are being installed on closed post boxes across Guernsey in a bid to preserve their history.

Last year, the government-owned firm Guernsey Post announced the closure of more than half of its blue post boxes due to declining use.

Now, 27 of the 83 closed boxes are being fitted with brown plates telling their stories, which include human parcels, brevity from Les Misérables novelist Victor Hugo and a concrete surround damaged during a World War Two air raid.

Automated medication dispensers trialled in homes

New technology is being trialled in Jersey to help people take their medicines regularly.

Digital Jersey said the 10-month pilot scheme would trial automated medication dispensers in people's homes.

It said it was hoped the technology would help those who rely on regular medication to receive the right dosage at the right time and help to reduce missed or incorrect doses.

Exhibition marks 90 years of ambulance service

Guernsey's St John Ambulance & Rescue Service is celebrating 90 years of service with an outdoor exhibition.

It said it would be displaying its history "in words and images" at Guernsey Museum in Candie Gardens, which started on Tuesday - exactly nine decades on since it began.

Visitors will be able to "trace the service's journey from its humble origins" in 1936, beginning with a second-hand ambulance in a garage at a concrete works to where the service is today, it said.

Commonwealth Games baton begins island tour

A Commonwealth Games baton began its week-long tour of Jersey as part of the build-up to the event.

The traditional relay, which travels from Buckingham Palace around the world to the opening ceremony, has been given a revamp.

Instead of featuring a single baton, each of the 74 nations and territories taking part has personalised its own baton with a design that showcases its culture and values. They will all come together at the Glasgow opening ceremony on 23 July.

Follow BBC Guernsey on X and Facebook. Follow BBC Jersey on X and Facebook. Send your story ideas to channel.islands@bbc.co.uk.

Festival boss 'praying' for end to US-Iran war

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78k8184zryo, yesterday

The organiser of a music festival has said he is "praying" for an end to the US and Israel's war on Iran due to the impact on the price of diesel.

Lee Martin, who runs Lakefest in Herefordshire, said the event spent £24,000 on the fuel in 2025 and was expecting the figure to be a lot more this year because of the conflict.

According to the RAC, the average price of diesel in the UK surged as high as £1.86 per litre in May due to the war slowing production and transportation across the Middle East.

Martin told BBC Hereford and Worcester he was expecting there to be a "major, major increase" in expenditure when the festival took place at Eastnor Castle from 5 to 9 August.

"I'm praying that Iran and the US can sort out their differences prior to our event so the prices can come down," he said.

Due to a lot of festivals being held in rural areas away from electrical infrastructure, many organisers rely on diesel generators to provide enough power for the event.

Martin said there would also be a knock-on effect on transportation costs, due to most larger vehicles using diesel.

"The whole thing is one big cycle of expense and it's very difficult," he added.

The cost of booking bands had also increased "ridiculously", Martin said, with £700,000 spent on booking the "main chunk" of bands on the two biggest stages.

The four festival headliners include The Charlatans, Example, Madness and Bananarama.

In total, there would be more than 300 acts performing on 12 stages across the four days, Martin said.

'Double-edged sword'

He said ticket sales had been disappointing so far and he put it down to people continuing to struggle with the rising cost of living.

"It's a serious amount of money and a serious amount of risk," Martin said.

"It's a double-edged sword because people don't have money to buy tickets and I totally get that because they need to survive, live and feed their kids."

But he remained optimistic about the festival and convinced more people would purchase tickets closer to the event, but said it was not good for his blood pressure.

"We're in it for the fun and it adds to the excitement of the whole thing," he added.

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Daughter visits exhibition for her WW1 hero father

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c86d6l4w2vpo, yesterday

The daughter of a World War One pilot has visited her father's exhibition for the first time.

Flight Commander, Claude Ridley, took charge at Stow Maries Aerodrome in Essex - where the exhibition is being held - in 1916 at the age of just 20.

On display are various artefacts, such as a waxwork model of Claude and his sword, including information on his life.

Ninety-two year-old Eleanor Longmire said memories of her father were "relatively few" because he was at war for so long.

She added: "Much of the time he seemed rather a distant father – I didn't see a lot of my parents, most of my time was spent with my nanny.

"But I do remember when we lived in Lewes, a really happy memory of walking up the Downs with him, sitting on his shoulders as he told me a story about foxes."

Ridley's grandson Nick Kitto, who owns four original paintings of him painted by Howard Gerrard, also attended the exhibition.

It is expected the works, commemorating Ridley's wartime service, will go on display at the aerodrome at some point in the future.

Ridley is buried nearby the aerodrome and was awarded the Military Cross for his Zeppelin raids over Britain.

Stow Maries Aerodrome is widely recognised as the best-preserved World War One aerodrome in Europe.

Formerly the base for 37 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps, the site is now an accredited museum and was tasked with protecting the country from Zeppelins.

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I wanted to quit Eurovision twice - then won it, says Bangaranga singer Dara

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1k2dml10ezo, yesterday

Eurovision Song Contest winner Dara says she wanted to quit the competition twice before securing Bulgaria's first ever victory.

The Bangaranga singer has told BBC Newsbeat she considered dropping out to protect her mental health.

Dara says she was left "shaking in her bed" after being announced as her country's act, fearing her newly diagnosed ADHD would be exacerbated by participating in Vienna.

"That was how my body reacted," the 27-year-old says, "and I was trying to calm myself down for three hours."

Dara won Eurovision by a record-breaking points margin in May, despite initially being little more than an outside favourite.

As polished as it was quirky, the performance was packed with personality and one of the sharpest hooks to ever sink its claws into the contest.

But Bulgaria's historic win may never have happened had its star followed through with her plan to quit.

"The first time I said no because there were some things that I was not okay with in the contract," says Dara.

Already an established artist, problems started to stack up when she was announced as Bulgaria's first Eurovision entry since 2022.

"I immediately felt like I did something bad, that I'm not worthy," she says. "I didn't want to risk my mental health to such a degree that I couldn't heal it."

Eurovision is an infamously wild ride for performers, who are required to navigate an increasingly political narrative, a packed schedule and a vast audience.

When commentator Graham Norton asked Olly Alexander what advice he'd give acts based on his own experience in 2024, Alexander's reply was telling.

"Get yourself a really good therapist."

Dara says professional help she received after her ADHD diagnosis prepared her for the contest.

"I work with a therapist and she helped me with how to feel in a place full of people," she says. "I think she did a great job. I really felt in my zone wherever I went."

Dara says breathing exercises, drawing, journalling and meditation helped "keep her in the centre".

"Eurovision is so, so big - the biggest thing that artists can do," she says. "But I've never felt more calm on stage, more secure."

Vienna saved its biggest moment for Dara until last - one of the most emphatic wins in Eurovision history.

"I was just calm," Dara says, recalling how she felt as points flowed in from across the world.

"I opened my heart and just kept repeating, 'Thank you God for putting me on that stage and for these people around me.'"

The ticker tape had barely settled in Austria before Bulgaria's national broadcaster BNT confirmed Sofia as next year's host city.

Dara was met by huge crowds as she returned to the Bulgarian capital, where she will play a key role in whatever the country plans for 2027.

But after securing her place in Eurovision's hall of fame in Vienna, Dara's idea of future success is a little closer to home.

"I want to have kids some day," she says. "I want to be healthy and that is much more important than being successful in my career.

"Being successful as a human being is pretty big on my list."

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

Singer Fally Ipupa's pride at being given major DR Congo honour

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clypyd6gj72o, yesterday

One of Africa's biggest music stars says he feels "immense pride and deep emotion" after being given one of the Democratic Republic of Congo's most prestigious awards.

Fally Ipupa kick-started his career working with fellow Congolese heavyweight Koffi Olomidé three decades ago and today boasts millions of fans across the globe.

Known for his versatility, his output spans group hits as part of Talent Latent and Quartier Latin International, as well eight solo albums.

His highest honour yet came on Tuesday, when the 48-year-old became a knight of the National Order of the Leopard. This title is only awarded by the Congolese president to the most esteemed public figures.

While there was no televised ceremony, Fally Ipupa's new status was announced the following day on state TV by a presidential spokeswoman who called him a "worthy son of the nation".

The singer's unique style and artistry has "contributed to the promotion of Congolese rumba and the dissemination of Congolese culture to an international audience", she added.

"This path has never been mine alone. It belongs to an entire people," Fally Ipupa told fans afterwards on social media. "To the Congolese youth: Your starting point does not define your destiny. Work, believe, persevere. The world is ready to hear your voice."

His latest distinction comes amid a busy year for the star abroad.

He recently became the first African artist to go straight to number one in the French album charts with his latest record called XX, and reports last month lauded him as the first francophone African artist to sell out Paris's 80,000-capacity Stade de France two days in a row.

Later this year, the singer is set to give one of his biggest UK performances yet at London's O2 arena.

So gruelling is this promotional schedule across Europe and the US that Fally Ipupa recently told Le Monde newspaper that he had lost his voice.

"I sang a lot on TV and radio shows... So the doctor ordered me a week of silence."

An anxious wait for him no doubt, and his fans too.

In a career full of highs, Fally Ipupa has also known tragedy.

Four years ago, at least 11 people died in a crush at one of his concerts in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa, where stadium attendance was over capacity by a third.

His career has not been without political controversy either.

In an industry where music piracy and touring complications can see musicians miss out financially, many admit accepting money to praise politicians, corporations and influential figures in their songs - a practice known locally as libanga.

In Fally Ipupa's case, he told Kenya's Trace FM he could earn around €10,000 (£8,600; £11,000) per mention.

Such arrangements have long angered Congolese fans living abroad, who until recent years blocked concerts by Fally Ipupa and other homegrown musicians in outrage at a perceived closeness to the much-criticised government.

But Fally Ipupa, who has also worked as a Unicef ambassador and philanthropist, maintains that his number-one mission is to unite rather than divide.

On receiving his knighthood, he said: "This distinction is more than personal.

"Above all, it celebrates Congolese music, our culture, our identity, this force that unites us and elevates us beyond borders."

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

'It was poignant, knowing that these were the last images she did': The intimate final photos of Marilyn Monroe

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260529-the-story-of-marilyn-monroes-intimate-last-photos, 6 days ago

On the 100th anniversary of her birth, images from the Hollywood icon's final photoshoot reveal a carefree joyfulness that's far removed from the shocking tragedy of her death.

July, 1962. A woman poses on Santa Monica beach, her unmistakeable "blonde bombshell" features somehow softened, hair ruffled by the sea breeze. She appears radiant and playful, draping her body in a green towel or cosy knitwear. In the final photo of the shoot, she is snuggled on the sand, hands clasped, seeming to blow an affectionate kiss towards the camera.

These photographs, taken by George Barris, were the last portraits of legendary actress and model Marilyn Monroe in her lifetime. A few weeks later, in the early hours of 5 August, Monroe would be found dead at her LA home, aged 36.

Monroe embodied the Golden Age of Hollywood: her stunning looks and enchanting screen presence powered hits such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot. She also evoked something beyond cinema: the glimmer of deeper, even disquieting qualities within the glitzy artifice of the star system.

Across time, she has remained suspended in the spotlight; her beauty and style still inspire generations of pop performers and fashion designers; her likeness is still used in advertisements; her life and death are continually reconstructed on page, stage and screen.

The public's fascination has continued to Monroe's centenary; 1 June 2026 marks 100 years since her birth, and planned international events include a major new exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery (NPG), entitled Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait.

The NPG show, co-curated by Rosie Broadley and Georgia Atienza, is broadly chronological, encompassing famous images and fascinating contrasts (featuring photographers and artists such as Eve Arnold, Cecil Beaton and Andy Warhol), including six images from the Santa Monica shoot.

Broadley tells the BBC: "We thought about what seemed to be the most interesting and original approach to Marilyn Monroe, and one that maybe taught us more about Marilyn herself – and I say that with a lot of caution, because almost every time someone does something about Marilyn, they say that they're going to reveal 'the woman behind the image', or 'the truth behind the myth'. We approached her image-making by each of the most interesting collaborations; some went on for over a decade, like Philippe Halsman, some were just one shoot, but they became important to her."

"Through her journey with the different photographers she worked with, her image develops and evolves, and she became the person she was aiming to be, which is the big star, Marilyn Monroe. She uses these photographers in a really canny way."

Under scrutiny

By 1962, Monroe was a global superstar facing personal and professional fall-outs; her third marriage (to playwright Arthur Miller) had ended; her body image was endlessly scrutinised (her famous curves were now considerably less following gall bladder surgery); her reputation for being "difficult" on set plagued her (though failing to show up or forgetting lines was arguably linked to her ill health, chronic insomnia, and addiction to prescription medication).

In June that year, Monroe was fired from the production Something's Got to Give following repeated absences for sickness, and sued for damages by 20th Century Fox.

In response to the detractors and malicious rumour-mongers, Monroe undertook her own publicity campaign, including smart, stylish glossy magazine interviews in Vogue (featuring Bert Stern's captivating series of photographs, also known as "The Last Sitting") and Life (Allan Grant's photos accompany her soul-bearing interview feature, Last Talk With a Lonely Girl, which was eerily published a couple of days before her death). Barris's portraits had originally been intended for a Cosmopolitan article.

"She's trying to raise her profile in a way, and rehabilitate her image," says Atienza. "Often for her, the photo shoots were a way of dealing with a lot of the anxiety."

Monroe and Barris had first met in 1954, on the set of The Seven Year Itch, and they had discussed creating a book about her life. There is a sense of rapport in their summer 1962 photos (which also included an indoor shoot), and a particular ease with the seaside setting.

Atienza describes the "naturalistic aesthetic" and Monroe's "unburdened and spontaneous" demeanour in the Santa Monica photographs, and adds that the exhibition was curated through working closely with the photographers' estates – including Barris's daughter Caroline, who is the steward of his archive.

"Caroline Barris actually sent us loads of different 'outtakes' of that session, and you can really see [Monroe] having fun, just running, and almost dancing with the waves. That was quite poignant, knowing that these were the last images she did."

Broadley points out that the California coast location would also have evoked happy memories for Monroe. There is a rare photo of the infant Monroe barefoot on the sand with her mother Gladys (who would later suffer a mental breakdown, leaving Monroe to be raised in foster care and orphanages); there is also a mid-1940s seaside photoshoot depicting Monroe as youthful, aspiring star, taken by André de Dienes. "The beach photos kind of bookend her life in a way that is really moving," says Broadley.

Marilyn Monroe's death

When Monroe's untimely death was discovered, Cosmopolitan decided not to run Barris's photos – instead, the Santa Monica portraits were snapped up by an agent for the UK newspaper The Daily Mirror, and they additionally appeared in British men's lifestyle magazine Town in November 1962. The photos were also directly referenced in the Pop art of British painters Pauline Boty (Colour Her Gone, 1962) and Richard Hamilton (My Marilyn, 1965), both of which appear in the NPG collection.

"Many photographers focus on Monroe's sexiness, but with Barris, it doesn't feel like that," says Broadley. "It feels like he's just focusing on her playful spirit, and her. [Barris] was so convinced by that performance that he absolutely did not believe she killed herself."

Shaken in the wake of Monroe's death, Barris relocated to Paris for a couple of decades. When he eventually returned to the US, he published his portraits in a book collaboration with the feminist author and activist Gloria Steinem, entitled Marilyn (1986). Here, Steinem wrote: "in these [Santa Monica] photographs, the body emphasis seems more the habit of some former self. It's her face we look at. Now that we know the end of the story, it's the real woman we hope to find – looking out of the eyes of Marilyn."

Barris would also revisit his conversations with and images of Monroe in his book Marilyn: In Her Own Words (1995). "We were trying to re-create various stages of her life in those pictures," he wrote.

More like this:

• Why Marilyn Monroe is the most misunderstood icon

• Arthur Miller on his divorce from Marilyn Monroe

• The secret diary of Marilyn Monroe

Today, we view these portraits with the knowledge that Monroe was gone too soon – and yet she appears elevated, dreamy, closer than ever. Broadley explains that the photographs' hues have mellowed with age: "With some of Barris's photos, there's these tonalities which add to the beauty of the image. It's got this slightly orange tone, because the paper is yellowed, which kind of gives them a warmth," she says. "They're very timeless."

Barris gives us a romantic telling of Monroe's last shot, with her blown kiss ("This one's for you, George"), but Broadley also notes that Monroe had the final word on her publicity shots. "A really important aspect is that [Monroe] edited them herself," she says. "She crossed through them with a hairpin, and she wrote 'good' on the ones she did like. She had edited her own images with her photographers all the way through her career, and that was very important to her: it gave her an element of control that she didn't have with film directors.

"The ones that she edited were fascinating to people, particularly as they were published immediately after she died, because people saw them to be about self-hatred, when to us she looked great. But they really are graphically amazing for that reason. Richard Hamilton talks about it really interestingly – that the violence of the crossing through [Monroe's markings to indicate her rejected images] was so at odds with the joyfulness of the image, and that's one of the reasons that they do resonate so much."

Barris claimed that Monroe had never strictly vetoed any of the images he took. "The markings she made were meant to indicate that the pictures had no defects," he wrote. "She wanted me to make large prints of those photos for her. She said that those pictures were some of the best and most natural ever taken of her. 'That's me, freckles and all. The real me.'"

Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait is at the National Portrait Gallery London from 4 June to 6 September.

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Painting bought for $100 in US charity shop sells for £190,000

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7070ll021zo, yesterday

A painting bought for less than $100 (£75) in a US charity shop in the 1960s has sold for almost £190,000 at auction.

Art teacher Helene Plotkin bought the work by Scottish Colourist FCB Cadell in White Plans, New York in 1966, unaware of its true value.

The painting, Interior: The Lady in Black, hung in her living room for 60 years - but the artist's signature was illegible and was only recently identified.

It sold for £189,200, including buyer's premium, in Edinburgh as part of Lyon & Turnbull's Scottish painting and sculpture auction.

The background to the painting only became clear when Helene's son Barry began his own research into it and took it for a valuation last year.

The signature in the upper right of the picture was deciphered using AI and specialists at the auction house Lyon & Turnbull were able to confirm the artist as Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell.

FCB Cadell is one of the four artists known as the Scottish Colourists, who was active early in the 20th Century.

He is renowned for his stylish portrayals of Edinburgh New Town interiors and his vibrant, simplified still lifes.

Helene, who is now 88 and lives in Florida, said the painting stood out when she first spotted it.

"My background in art history and studio practice drew me to this piece instantly," she said.

"The painting had an undeniable, regal presence, but it was the colour theory at play that held my attention.

"The way the pastels were integrated into the composition was both interesting and bold – it was clearly the work of a significant hand with a deep understanding of light and form."

Barry said the family were amazed to find out who the artist was having grown up with picture on the wall.

He said: "We were, as you can imagine, delighted and astounded when we found out the identity of the artist and of the model.

"For mum, it was confirmation of her artistic eye and ability to recognise great talent."

Museum revamp sparks debate over art displays

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3w2w7205z3o, yesterday

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery's recent refurbishment has drawn criticism from an art historian who claims world famous artworks have been sidelined in favour of "gimmicky" modern displays.

Ruth Millington, a Birmingham-based art historian and author, said some of the gallery's most significant paintings had been removed from public view following the re-opening.

She said works by artists such as David Cox and Canaletto had been replaced by contemporary installations and displays focused on local culture - some presenting, she claimed, "stereotypical" views of the city.

Bosses said more people were coming since the re-opening and the venue was not just for "highly educated art historians".

The venue re-opened earlier this year following a major refurbishment programme aimed at modernising the visitor experience and attracting new audiences.

"Unfortunately," Millington told BBC Radio WM, "after this refurb, I feel like a lot of great masterpieces have been hidden away - we've got new displays which focus on stereotypical views of Birmingham, [like] the cob [a bread roll], baths [in Moseley] and the BT Tower, which I feel doesn't show the city in the best light.

"I just feel like if you ask Chat GPT, what would you write about Birmingham, that's what it would write, and I feel like the museum could do better. It's meant to be a place of inspiration and education, and it should be surprising visitors."

Millington said she was concerned that some of the gallery's artistic heritage was no longer being given the prominence it deserved.

"The round room, which is when you first come in, it's architecture is glorious and I feel like the current curation in there doesn't quite match the space.

"It used to be jam-packed with academic paintings, old masters, pictures of Greek gods being pulled along in their carriages, and it was a place of absolute wonder.

"The walls now are white, and the pictures have been hung in a color-coded arrangement, which just seems to be a bit gimmicky and lacking vision."

Sara Wajid, co chief executive of Birmingham Museums Trust said visitor numbers had increased since the re-opening and that the museum was working to make its collections accessible to a broader audience.

"The museum isn't only for highly educated art historians, and the truth is we have to do a lot of different things.

"By putting on the Ozzy Osborne working class hero show, we have attracted more visitors than ever, in particular people who've never been to the museum before.

"We should be cultural leaders who are working for the people of Birmingham to get them the best they deserve," she said.

Wajid said the refurbishment was only one stage of a wider transformation, with further fundraising under way to restore additional galleries and bring more works from the collection back on display.

"We got a lot of money back in 2020 to refurbish the museum, but that was to only refurbish and mend the roof.

"Some artworks haven't been able to [be displayed], because several of the galleries are still in disrepair, in need of refurbishment."

Visitors had also praised, she said, some of the museum's existing attractions, including its renowned Pre Raphaelite collection and the restored tearoom.

"Fine art is brilliant, and it tells you so much, and there is imagination and worlds to explore, but you have to put the people at the center of the vision, and the people of Birmingham's voice was missing," Wajid said.

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Dementia exhibition: 'I'm still the same person'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8xw05g92y9o, 2 days ago

A photo exhibition of people living with dementia and their families seeks to change perceptions of the disease.

The Reframing Dementia exhibition by Dementia Jersey and ArtHouse Jersey, captures the joyful moments families still experience, despite the challenges the progressive condition poses.

It is hoped it will lead to a more nuanced understanding of dementia in society.

Vasco Pinto, one of the exhibition's subjects, said the photos showes he was "still the same person".

The Madeiran national has lived in Jersey for 65 years with his wife and two daughters, and used to work in the hotel industry.

He said the diagnosis came as a shock.

"I'm fine, I'm still the same person. We didn't realise I had Alzheimer's. My friends who I see every day didn't see a difference.

"I was a bit surprised when I found out but we cope with that. I'm happy."

Pinto lives independently but is supported by Dementia Jersey's social groups.

"They all support me, and it's just a laugh," said Vasco.

"I'm looking forward for every meeting, to come in here to see the boys and everything.

"We've become a family, and it's helped me a bit."

Receiving a diagnosis of dementia was also a surprise to Mike Fearnley, who had a varied career in the boating industry.

"I think, at first, I was cross because I thought, you know, I'm in my 80's, I'm bound to be a bit dodgy, but then I realised it was worse than that," he explained.

Despite struggling with the disease at times, Fearnley is grateful for the life he has.

"My life is much better than it could have been... I feel really lucky to be still here. I'm looking to make 100 and get a card from the governor."

The exhibition shows nine islanders with dementia with their families, enjoying activities like walks with dogs, and playing with their children and grandchildren.

Hannah Gleave, Fearnley's daughter, said support from Dementia Jersey had been "amazing".

"I mean it was really challenging the first few weeks and months after Dad's diagnosis and we were all kind of wondering what that would mean, and what does the future hold, and then getting involved in the dementia community - it's amazing," she said.

"We've built some friendships and now we're welcoming people in as well who have just been diagnosed too.

"So it's really important to recognise that not everything changes and actually new things come along as well, and there's lots of moments still to enjoy."

Lady Karen Kyd, a GP and Patron of Dementia Jersey, said: "People think that a diagnosis means that that can actually mean life almost stopping but it's not.

"It's a different part of life... it does not define somebody. There's still a person there and a person who can live a joyful life.

"And I would challenge anyone to know that the people in these photographs have actually got dementia, and that's the point, isn't it?

"That is reframing dementia because if we think about it differently then actually we will help the people who do suffer from it. We will improve their lives."

The exhibition at ArtHouse Jersey's Capitol House, with a supplementary display in the Royal Square, runs until Sunday.

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Henry Moore works to be unveiled at botanic garden

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3pdd4qkdqo, 2 days ago

A wild botanic garden in West Sussex is due to display a series of sculptures by Henry Moore, one of Britain's most influential artists.

Wakehurst said the four pieces would be featured alongside newly commissioned works by other contemporary artists who are part of the Henry Moore Institute.

A spokesperson for the botanic garden said the displays aimed to "continue the conversation of art and nature".

Eva Owen, programme manager at Wakehurst, said they were "delighted" to host the pieces which "evoke the themes of care, protection and conservation".

"This in turn reflects the vital work which we do at Wakehurst, including managing and researching an array of landscapes and natural habitats, as well as our Millennium Seed Bank," she said.

Kew Gardens is also featuring a display of Moore's sculptures, which was unveiled on 9 May.

Moore created more than 1,100 sculptures in his lifetime. His famous works include the Reclining Figure series, Knife Edge Two Piece and Nuclear Energy.

Sebastiano Barassi, head of Henry Moore collections and programmes, said the artist's deep affinity with the natural world made Wakehurst and Kew "ideal settings" for his work.

"Throughout his career, he was inspired by organic forms such as bones, stones, trees, and landscape," he said.

Barassi said the sculptures at both Kew and Wakehurst aimed to offer a "fresh perspective" on Moore's legacy.

"It invites visitors to reflect on nature, humanity, and the environment at a time when those themes feel more urgent and relevant than ever," he added.

Wakehurst said the sculptures were due to be unveiled on Friday and remain in place until 27 September.

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Artist's gallery dream realised on eve of 96th birthday

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c707pk063j7o, 2 days ago

When artist Betsy Smith moved back to the UK from France, she set her sights on staging an art gallery exhibition.

And on the eve of her 96th birthday in August, her dream is about to become a reality.

Betsy Smith: Memory in Colour runs at Wolverhampton Art Gallery from Saturday 6 June to Monday 31 August.

Her lifelong passion for art saw her run art classes in Shropshire until she was 80, having retired at 60 to focus on painting full time.

The artist returned to live in Wolverhampton five years ago and produced a film of her life and work to help convince curators at the city's art gallery to stage an exhibition.

"It's a multicultural city that works and in this day and age this is wonderful," she said.

"The kindness I receive and the care that individuals feel for their city, their football team and the city's history is tremendous.

"The art scene here now is fantastic and the art gallery has evolved to encourage young people to appreciate and take part in the arts."

New sculpture celebrates city's porcelain heritage

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgpg2w2j8xo, 2 days ago

A new artwork has been unveiled to celebrate the history of porcelain manufacturing in Worcester.

Former staff at the Royal Worcester porcelain works in Diglis, now home to the Museum of Royal Worcester, were invited to the first public viewing of Marks of the Manufactory, 275 years to the day since the works was founded.

"It's a very, very special day," said museum trustee Paul Crane, whose eighth great-grandfather Dr John Wall co-founded Royal Worcester on 4 June 1751.

The firm entered administration in 2008, and the brand is now owned by Portmeirion Pottery in Stoke-on-Trent.

Crane said it was particularly special to be able to celebrate the anniversary with former workers.

"They hold unique stories, and we hold... audio memoirs here in the archive, and that's just as important as the [pottery]," he said.

The sculpture, cast in bronze and resembling a repaired vase, was inspired by a sketch found in the museum's archives.

It was created by artists Neil Musson and Jono Retallick, known as Musson+Retallick, who specialise in "site-specific art".

"The idea was that it was a broken vessel that had been reconstituted, bringing together fragments and elements of memory and people's stories," said Retallick.

"Of course it's about the porcelain, but it's actually about the people who made the porcelain in this amazing place where people lived their lives and shared time together."

The sculpture forms part of a trail of plaques around the site which play recordings of the memories of former workers.

Mike Braddock, who worked at the site for 40 years, first as an electrician, then maintenance manager and finally works engineer, said: "Whether it was the yard, the building, the kilns, the machinery, I was responsible for it.

"It was very, very interesting. I'm probably the only person who's been in every room."

It was at Royal Worcester that he met Anne, his wife of 68 years.

She said she was "heartbroken" when the works closed down.

"I think every family in Worcester had somebody working here - aunties, uncles, fathers, mothers," she explained. "Absolutely wonderful place to work."

Jordan Leaman attended on behalf of his late grandfather Brian, who worked as a ceramics painter in the 1960s and 1970s.

He said he wished he had asked his relative more about his time at Royal Worcester when he had the chance.

"It's quite emotional," he said. "I'd like to think he's watching over proudly right now, and that he's just glad to see he's still remembered."

As part of their history class at school, a group of 14-year-olds have been making podcasts based on archive recordings with former Royal Worcester workers.

"I think if I hadn't taken part in this project I wouldn't have learnt about any of this," said one. "So it was really an eye-opener."

"The most interesting thing was learning about their jobs, what they all had to go through, all the different sections and jobs and how hard it all was," another added.

The city's mayor Tor Pingree said: "To be here to unveil this wonderful sculpture, it feels like we're making history. So many people in Worcester can trace their roots back to people who worked here.

"When you go to other places and you talk about Worcester, you always bring up the sauce, Elgar, and porcelain.

"It will continue to be a huge part of our history, and it's really important that the next generation, the next, and the next, know about what happened here."

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Lennon drawings go on display at Beatles museum

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrp1r5m387o, 2 days ago

Drawings created by John Lennon for what some believe was the world's first rock music video have gone on display in a museum.

The pop art images, which Lennon worked on with artist Stephen Verona, were used in a promotional film to accompany The Beatles hit I Feel Fine in the 1960s.

The 240 drawings were sold by Christie's at auction for more than $58,000 in 2000 before being separated.

Ten of them have now gone on public display at Liverpool Beatles Museum after being spotted by collector Joseph O'Donnell, from Tynemouth, at an auction.

"I'm a big Beatles fan and I spotted these at an auction in London, where they weren't really made a big deal of," O'Donnell, 29, said.

"I thought I would have a go at bidding on them, although I thought it might go a bit crazy, and I managed to get them at a reasonable price.

"Each artwork features a different word from the song and I was able to piece them together to make a full sentence."

Lennon collaborated with American artist and filmmaker Verona, who died in 2019, after a chance meeting in a London nightclub.

In a later interview, Verona said the two of them sat at the kitchen table of his Manhattan apartment to colour in the images using felt tip markers, while smoking.

O'Donnell, who eventually plans to sell them on, wanted to loan them to the museum to allow other fans to see them together.

"I think interest in The Beatles will never go away," he said.

"Someone has to be the best, it's as simple as that. There has to be a greatest band in the world and it's The Beatles."

The drawings on display show the lines "baby says she's mine" and "in love with her" as well as two singular artworks for the words "and" and "I".

They were unveiled at the museum, on Mathew Street, on Thursday and will be on display for several months.

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ABBA themed venue planned next to football stadium

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpvp9v0ge2lo, 2 days ago

Plans for an ABBA themed party venue next to Manchester City's Etihad Stadium have been recommended for approval by council planners.

The entertainment company behind the "Mamma Mia! The Party" venue has already opened similar Greek restaurants with live music in Stockholm and London.

The venue would be built in Medlock Square, behind the club's new North Stand, and it would offer a theatrical dining experience for up to 600 guests per show.

Danny Wilson, managing director of Manchester City Operations, said: "We know there is ever increasing demand for more immersive, entertainment experiences in the north of England."

He said the club remained "focused on ensuring our local community benefit from any new facilities.

"Not only in terms of jobs and training during construction, but through our local supply chain enabling local people to build their careers with us."

Manchester City Football Club has been working with the entertainment firm Pophouse Entertainment on the venue, close to the Co-op Live arena.

According to council planning documents, the three-storey venue would be open throughout the year and it would create about 150 jobs.

Jessica Koravos, the Chief Executive of Pophouse, said: "Manchester is known for its innovation in music and entertainment and we cannot think of anywhere better to bring one of the world's most popular and ground breaking theatrical productions".

"Mamma Mia! The Party has been hugely successful in London and we are excited to be able to expand on that success," she added.

Listen to the best of BBC Radio Manchester on Sounds and follow BBC Manchester on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.

Weekly quiz: What did Rosamund Pike say to the person using their phone during her play?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd9p9njwpvyo, 3 days ago

This week, the US House of Representatives voted to end the war with Iran, social media star KSI quit YouTube collective The Sidemen, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's rocket blew up on the launch pad.

But how much attention did you pay to what else happened in the world over the past seven days?

Quiz collated by Ben Fell.

Fancy some more? Try last week's quiz, or have a go at something from the archives.

'Nothing left to chance' for Bayeux Tapestry's journey to London

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9d37dl139eo, 3 days ago

The 950-year-old Bayeux Tapestry will be as safe "as a baby" when it makes its unprecedented journey to London next month, according to French officials.

The tapestry will be leaving Bayeux for only the third time in its history before being put on display for nine months at the British Museum.

Serious reservations about the journey have been raised by many in France's art world, who say the tapestry is too fragile and too important to move.

But after two dry-runs with facsimiles, the culture ministry in Paris is confident the technical difficulties have been overcome.

"I am extremely serene," said Delphine Christophe, the ministry's head of heritage and architecture.

"Nothing has been left to chance."

To preserve it from possible damage, the 70m (230ft) tapestry will be placed in a kind of double crate – a case inside a shell.

Last September, 90 people were required to lift the artefact from its display in Bayeux and place it on a folding stand. This is currently at an undisclosed location somewhere in or near Bayeux.

For the journey to London, the stand – which concertinas down into a relatively small space – will be put into an aluminium crate that regulates temperature and humidity.

That crate will then be housed in an outer cage, with 12 metal springs acting as shock-absorbers above and below.

The ensemble will be placed on a lorry which then travels by road and the railway shuttle under the Channel for the 560km (348 mile) journey.

"The idea is that the vertical shocks which will occur are transformed into horizontal shocks, causing the inner crate to rock to and fro like a baby in a cradle," said Cecilia Gauvin, an expert in art conservation.

The two dummy-runs to London – in February and April – showed that shocks are absorbed to a measurement of 96% – reduced, in other words, to the level artworks regularly experience simply by being on display.

"Don't forget an artwork receives vibrations merely from the footsteps of all the visitors to a museum," said Kerstin Kracht, an expert in vibration reduction.

The team observed that English roads contain more bumps and potholes than their French equivalents – but not so many as to upset calculations.

The date of the transport is being kept secret for security reasons, but it will be sometime in July.

Once at the British Museum, the tapestry will be removed with the same care and manpower as was required for its storage, before being laid out – flat, not vertically – for display.

Some specialists – such as Didier Rykner, leading French arts writer – remain sceptical.

"What happens if there is a problem in the tunnel and the lorry gets stuck there? These technical reports they have produced are meaningless – they're just there to justify the political decision that's already been taken," he said.

But the reality is there is no longer any serious obstacle to one of the most important journeys of a work of art ever made.

The Bayeux Tapestry – which is actually an embroidery on linen – was created in the years following Duke William of Normandy's conquest of England in 1066, and recounts in picture form events leading up to the Battle of Hastings.

It was kept in Bayeux Cathedral for centuries, and not re-discovered until the 1700s. In 1803, Napoleon brought it to Paris as a propaganda tool for his planned invasion of England, and it was moved a second time to Paris in World War Two.

The loan of the tapestry – requested many times over the years by the UK government – was announced by French President Emmanuel Macron in 2025. The gesture has an explicit political aim of cementing Franco-British ties at a time of growing instability in world affairs.

As a quid pro quo, the UK is sending major artworks for display in Normandy museums, including the 12th century Lewis chess-set and the Anglo-Saxon treasures from the Sutton Hoo burial mound.

2027 is being celebrated in Normandy as the thousandth year since the birth of William the Conqueror.

Five new rules to travel smarter this summer

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260605-five-new-rules-of-summer-travel-in-2026, today

From locking in flights first to paying for expertise and flexibility, here’s what to consider before booking your summer holiday this year.

With rising fuel costs, geopolitical uncertainty and disruption across major travel corridors, summer travel in 2026 has even seasoned holidaymakers rethinking how and where they go.

But they're not staying home. Flight searches are up 4% this summer compared with last year, according to Kayak's Summer Travel Check-In, with US domestic interest up 7%. Instead, travellers are adjusting travel dates around airfare deals, shortening itineraries, swapping European holidays for Latin America and paying more for flexibility.

For travellers still weighing up where – and how – to travel this summer, the old assumptions may no longer apply. Here are five new rules to consider before booking.

Rule 1: Book the flight first

With airfares still highly sensitive to fuel costs, route changes and late-booking demand, it can pay to start with the flight. Travel advisors say more clients are locking in good-value fares when they appear, then planning hotels, tours and itineraries around those dates and routes.

"We see a trend of clients booking flights to avoid the rising prices, and then coming to us with flights already in place and asking us to design bespoke trips around their fixed flight date," said Graham Carter, CEO of Unforgettable Travel. "Travellers want to offset the higher airfares with cost savings in other parts of their trip, and want to make sure they are getting the best service for the price they are paying."

Uncertainty is also shortening booking windows. While last-minute travel was already gaining momentum in 2025, advisors say people are now waiting even longer before committing as they monitor global stability in real time. "We've adapted our internal operational processes to handle bespoke bookings seven days out," said Carter, noting that "last-minute" previously meant closer to two to three weeks out.

Rule 2: Stay closer to home

If long-haul prices feel punishing, look at shorter trips, regional escapes and destinations that reduce the cost of getting there. According to Cayce Callaway, travel advisor at Cruise Planners, "[American] clients are looking closer to home, like the Caribbean, and they're going for fewer days when they would have otherwise gone to Europe. They're also flying coach when they would have been flying at least comfort [premium economy] previously."

Callaway says she is also fielding more bookings for Alaska, a destination that was previously on the backburner for many Americans in favour of far-flung international trips.

Road trips also remain popular this year. A recent survey by rental car company Hertz found that 64% of Americans plan to take a road trip this summer; while industry advocacy group GO RVing has seen a 6% rise in interest in RVing compared to last summer, climbing to 15% around the 4 July holiday period.

"Americans are determined to get away. However, they are tightening their belts, with average trip budgets dropping to around $1,600 [£1,193]," said Monika Geraci of the RV Industry Association. "Instead of cancelling vacations due to high flight or hotel costs, travellers are choosing to adjust. They are driving shorter distances and choosing closer destinations, but they are still making memories."

The trend is also playing out in the UK; camping and outdoor accommodation platform Pitch Up reported domestic bookings for the 1 May bank holiday weekend were up 35% from last year. The company also saw a sharp rise (more than 180%) in travellers using its "pick up from public transportation" filter, suggesting people are also trying to reduce fuel costs.

Rule 3: Look beyond Europe

For travellers still eager to go long-haul, Latin America is emerging as one of the summer's biggest long-haul winners. Luxury operator Blue Parallel says its booking mix has flipped from a typical 50:50 split between Europe and Latin America to 70% Latin America. KAYAK data also shows UK flight searches to Central America up 34% year-on-year, while South America up 27%. Costa Rica and Guatemala are seeing particularly strong growth across multiple operators.

"Travellers are still eager to take long-haul trips, but many are gravitating toward destinations that feel… more predictable right now," said Emmanuel Burgio, CEO of Blue Parallel.

He added that travellers are trading "fly-and-flop" Brazilian beach holidays for itineraries that combine lesser-known beach spots like Fernando de Noronha with Amazonian rainforests and wildlife-rich areas like the Pantanal. "These journeys balance biodiversity, adrenaline and cultural depth in one single, cohesive itinerary."

Rule 4: Choose cooler, calmer places

If you are set on the Med, think carefully about extreme summer heat, overtourism and regional disruption. According to Carter, destinations geographically closer to the Middle East conflict – such as Greece and Turkey – have seen softer demand from some US travellers. Greek tourism research body INSETE reported a double-digit drop in demand across its key markets including the UK and US.

At the same time, Kayak data suggests travellers increasingly considering cooler European cities such as Reykjavik, Shannon, Dublin, Stockholm and Copenhagen, driven by lower average airfares and milder summer temperatures. Norway's fjord regions are seeing a reported 160% increase in summer bookings, according to HotelPlanner.com.

"Travellers are moving away from the idea that an island escape has to mean tropical beaches and extreme heat," said Jonny Cooper, founder of Off the Map Travel. "The Nordic islands are capturing people's imagination, as they offer the chance to slow down and reconnect with nature."

The broader "slow travel" trend is also continuing to grow. Carter said clients are increasingly requesting longer stays, and the agency is seeing a 46% year-over-year rise in spa and wellness bookings, especially those wanting to combine mindfulness with exploration.

Rule 5: Pay for flexibility and protection

While most travellers are watching costs carefully, this may be the year to spend strategically – on flexibility, protection, expert help and options that make it easier to change course if plans are disrupted.

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• The trade-offs Americans are making to afford summer travel

That means looking closely at cancellation policies before booking, choosing fares or hotels that allow changes where possible and considering travel insurance earlier. Destinations affected by softer demand – including Mediterranean cruises and the Seychelles – can offer better-than-usual deals as more cautious travellers bail out.

"The statistic that is most telling to me is that I'm up 28% year over year, but with 13% fewer bookings," said Callaway. "Each booking is a higher total, but I have fewer of them."

For newer travellers in particular, it may pay to hire expert help. Travel advisors say some clients are seeking reassurance as much as logistics – someone on call in case something goes wrong or just to offer a voice of comfort. "New clients, who are just starting to travel internationally, are the most nervous," said Callaway. "They hear in the media that there's no jet fuel and that everyone hates Americans, so I do a lot of hand holding for them before they depart. So far, they've all had a perfect experience, so they're less anxious."

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Inside the 'darecation': Why travellers are choosing holidays that hurt

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260604-why-travellers-are-choosing-holidays-that-hurt, yesterday

Forget relaxing on holiday; more travellers opting for physically punishing adventures in some of the world’s toughest places.

For Sara Storey, the World's Highest Marathon offered a chance to do something nobody had attempted before.

"I've done quite a few ultramarathons and multi-day races, some of them quite tough, but I'd never experienced an event where so much effort was required even to get to the start," she said.

She was one of 16 runners who signed up for the World's Highest Marathon in Chile earlier this year. The 26.2-mile (42.195km) race began on Ojos del Salado, the highest volcano in the world, at an elevation of 6,893m (22,615ft). In extremely low oxygen, temperatures of -30C and winds up to 100km/h (62mph), participants first had to climb for around 11 hours just to reach the start line. Only five made it there – and then came the small matter of completing a marathon at altitude.

"Altogether, I was moving for nearly 30 hours," she said. "It took so much out of me. I feel that in the battle between the volcano and me, it was a draw, because I've never been so close to my physical limits as I was then. Having said that, would I do it again? Absolutely. I want people to see what an ordinary 47-year-old woman can do when she puts her mind to it."

Storey is one of a growing number of people seeking not just thrills on holiday, but trips that test them. It's an increasingly visible theme in travel. Earlier this year, Pinterest identified "darecations" as one of their top trends for 2026, reporting a 75% increase in searches for adventure tourism and forecasting a boom in "full-throttle, adrenaline-inspired tourism" among Gen Z and Millennials. Sports insurance provider SportsCover Direct, meanwhile, has seen an 182% increase in travellers taking out sports travel insurance over the past two years, with particularly strong growth in trekking, mountaineering and marathon-related travel.

At UTMB World Series, one of the world's leading organisers of trail running and mountain races, business is booming. Since launching with a single race around the Mont Blanc Massif in 2003, it expanded to 25 ultramarathon events in 2022 and now hosts more than 60 races globally. Annual participation has risen from 50,000 in 2022 to 170,000, most of whom aren't elite athletes but highly committed amateurs.

"People become engineers of themselves for these races," said Florian Lamblin, executive director of UTMB International and an ultrarunner himself. "They are trying to achieve something complex and, at the end, deliver something extraordinary, which is running up to 30 hours in nature."

British mountaineer Gavin Bate, founder of specialist adventure travel firm Adventure Alternative, led the logistics for the World's Highest Marathon. He sees the rise of this kind of travel among non-professional athletes as partly a reflection of advances in training and sports nutrition. But he also believes something deeper is at work.

"It's about connection with nature – for a lot of people, the gym environment doesn't really cut it," he said. "We are living in a world… where we understand the benefit of a connectedness with nature. Many people working in the outdoor adventure sector are experiencing a tsunami of people coming to engage with these activities for mental health reasons."

He also points to Comic Relief's celebrity challenges as one reason why extreme adventures have become more visible. By bringing these feats into people's living rooms, he says, they are normalising the idea of enormous physical challenges.

"In 2009 when Chris Moyles summited Kilimanjaro for Comic Relief, you would not believe how many people were calling into our office wanting to do it," he said. "In his own words, he was overweight and a smoker. People felt that if he could do it, then they could too."

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Just as Comic Relief has shifted from classic epic treks like Kilimanjaro to Sara Cox's extreme ultramarathon and Greg James' 1,000km bike ride, extreme travel has evolved, too. Today, examples include ultramarathons, where the distance exceeds the typical marathon length, often by a significant margin, and trail running in punishing environments. Because of the distances involved, participants may need to carry their own equipment, camp enroute or cope with weather or altitude as part of the challenge.

Sports psychologist Dr Josephine Perry, who works with extreme endurance athletes, calls them "organised adventures". She sees them as a natural progression as runners move from marathons to triathlons, Hyrox competitions and then ultramarathons. The type of people attracted to them, she says, fall into two camps.

"There are those who love running and want to be outdoors doing it," she said. "Then there are those who are very good at running but find the focus on perfectionism in road running dull."

She said that the variable nature of ultramarathons and trail races mean that they cannot be reduced to times and splits in quite the same way as road races, making them more interesting for many participants.

"The ultimate gain at the end is not speed-related metrics: it's about how cool the course was, what you saw along the route and the stories and adventures you bring back," she said.

For anyone interested in taking an extreme adventure, there is no shortage of options. One of the oldest and best known is the Marathon des Sables, the iconic multi-day desert race in Morocco, which marked its 40th edition in 2026. The event covers 251km (156 miles) over roughly six days through the Sahara. It's not the only adventure race run by the organisation: there are now 10 further Marathon des Sables races in destinations including Namibia and Jordan, all featuring the signature multi-day extreme physical challenge adventure in wild scenery where limits are tested in a backdrop of shifting sand dunes and desert wildlife.

Then there's the extreme challenge of the Barkley Marathons in Tennessee, widely known as "The Race That Eats Its Young". One of the world's strangest and most brutal ultramarathons, the unmarked race sends runners through punishing terrain with only a map and compass, and it's common for nobody to finish. Shrouded in secrecy and myth, Barkley has become legendary in endurance sports culture.

In Europe, the annual Ultra Trail de Mont Blanc allows you to clock up three countries in a 171km (106 mile) race around the Alps. Others push the format into stranger terrain: The World's Deepest Marathon took runners through a zinc mine in Sweden in 2025, while The World's Highest Marathon will return in 2027, this time in Bolivia. You can even run a marathon on Everest, following a route that begins at Everest Base Camp and leads through the Sherpa trails of the Khumbu Valley. For those chasing something longer still, the Iditarod Invitational includes a 1,000-mile (621km) winter route across the Alaskan wilderness.

For marathon runners and super-fit adventurers, it seems that nowhere on the planet is too remote to have an extreme adventure. The only question is whether you're tough enough to take it on.

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The idyllic island you can drive around in a weekend

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260529-the-idyllic-island-you-can-drive-around-in-a-weekend, 7 days ago

More than a third of visitors to French Polynesia arrive by cruise, but Mo'orea rewards travellers who slow down and explore its coastal ring road at their own pace.

Mo'orea looks made for a road trip. A single 60km (37.3-mile) coastal road rings the mountainous French Polynesian island, slipping between reef-protected lagoons, coconut palms and jagged green peaks. There are no high rises, no traffic lights and no main town, just a string of small villages, roadside snack bars, green spaces and bays that can be explored in a day – or better, stretched into a slower weekend.

Just 30 minutes by ferry from Tahiti, the smaller, quieter island is often seen as a cruise stop or beach escape. But its compact scale makes it one of French Polynesia's easiest islands to independently explore. While e-biking around the 133 sq km isle is increasingly popular, my husband and I opt for a hybrid car, which lets us travel slowly, often in electric-only mode, while following the coast anticlockwise from the port of Vai'are.

"Remember not to park under any coconut trees," warns the hire-car agent as she hands us the keys.

Bays of plenty

We have barely left Vai'are when we reach our first wow moment. Elevated above the coast, the To'atea Lookout offers a sublime view of the electric turquoise lagoon fringing the island. Spindly palms lean over its coral-sand beach and the mountainous silhouette of Tahiti looms across the cobalt channel separating the sister islands.

It's only 15 minutes further to Cook's Bay (also known as Pao Pao Bay), the first of two long fjord-like bays that give Mo'orea's north coast its distinctive "W" shape. Pulling over to admire the view, I spot white terns – revered in Polynesian culture – fluttering high above the calm bay and Picasso triggerfish darting through the gin-clear water beside the road, their bright, brushstroke-like markings easily visible.

Like Tahiti, Mo'orea ("yellow lizard" in Tahitian) was created by the collapse of an ancient shield volcano some 1.5 million years ago. But Polynesian oral traditions attributing its striking topography to a sacred octopus somehow feel more fitting in this fantastical landscape.

As we continue around Cook's Bay, we stop at unassuming Snack Rotui, run by a third-generation Tahitian Chinese family, for dim sum with French mustard – one of many roadside "snacks" (quick service spots) here. Like much of French Polynesia, Mo'orea's underrated fusion cuisine blends Polynesian ingredients and traditions with strong French and Chinese influences, shaped in part by waves of Chinese migration to Tahiti from the 19th Century onwards. Nearby, at Manutea Tahiti – Rotui Juice Factory & Distillery, we sample locally made libations, including its signature Tahiti Drink, a ready-to-drink rum cocktail sold in recyclable cartons.

The cinematic scenery continues in 'Ōpūnohu Bay, where Captain James Cook anchored the Resolution in 1777 and violently clashed with local Polynesians following a dispute over a goat. At the head of the bay is Te Fare Natura eco-museum, a domed building powered largely by solar panels. Its main exhibit explores the marvels of – and threats to – the region's marine ecosystems, making it a worthwhile stop before heading into the lagoon or joining one of the island's popular whale swimming excursions (20 July-20 November). Regulations for whale tours were tightened in 2025, including capping boat numbers to better balance tourism and conservation.

Path of the ancestors

The eco-museum marks the gateway to the 'Ōpūnohu Valley, where pineapple plantations blanket hills once planted with taro introduced by Pacific voyagers around 1000 CE. We follow a side road that snakes up the verdant valley to a magnificent belvédère (lookout) towards Mount Rotui (899m), which rises between Cook's Bay and 'Ōpūnohu Bay.

Easily missed along the route is one of the largest archaeological sites in the Society Islands. Tucked into the rainforest just metres from the road lie some 500 structures dating primarily from the mid-15th to mid-17th Centuries, including partially restored, moss-encrusted marae – sacred ceremonial and social spaces linked by muddy forest trails.

Less than 200m uphill from the carpark, I find the well preserved Afare'aito marae flanked by archery platforms oriented towards Mount Tohiē'a (1,207m), the island's highest peak. With limited information available in English, I call on Mark Eddowes, a leading authority on Polynesian anthropology who lives nearby, to explain the significance of this important cultural site.

"Each lunar cycle, the sons of chiefs gathered here to 'start' the new cycle of abundance," Eddowes explains. "The chiefs are related to the gods in the heavens, so their sons' firing an arrow in the direction of the peak was believed to connect the living world (te feua) with that of the benevolence of the gods in the heavens (te reva) and start a new lunar cycle of fertility for the chief and his people."

I wonder how many more marae are hidden in Mo'orea's valleys, reclaimed by the rainforest after Christian missionaries banned Polynesians from practicing "pagan" traditions at their cultural sites from the late 18th Century onwards. Eddowes estimates there could be 100 sites yet to be surveyed.

Lagoon blues

While Mo'orea has two overwater bungalow resorts that offer a luxurious, Bora Bora-esque experience at a reduced price, the island can be explored more simply. In Tiahura on the north-west coast, we book a thatched-roof fare with an outdoor kitchen for less than US$140 (£105) per night and use its complimentary kayaks to paddle into the shimmering lagoon, gliding over lavender-hued coral clusters and majestic eagle rays.

We retrace part of the island's famous "W" northern coastline to hike lush trails, browse small art galleries and feast on local specialties including poisson cru (Polynesian ceviche, the national dish) and moreish homemade breadfruit crisps.

This stretch of the coast is also one of the easiest places to experience Mo'orea's marine life. On the advice of Certified Tahiti Specialist Carl Henderson, we head to Temae Beach where the reef begins about 150m (492ft) from shore. Finning out from the beach, we find ourselves in a natural aquarium surrounded by technicolour parrotfish and pairs of strictly monogamous butterflyfish. Violet-hued boxfish bob around awkwardly, rays glide across the sandy bottom and at one point a reef shark cruises by.

Yet the very accessibility that makes Mo'orea so appealing is also placing growing pressure on its coastline and lagoon access. Temae is one of only three public beaches left on the island, and is currently threatened by development that could further limit access for the 18,200 residents and visitors. It's one reason local-born conservationist Temoana Poole, son of renowned marine biologist Dr Micheal Poole, founded Keep Moorea Wild, an NGO inviting the public to "adopt" land by the square metre for conservation.

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"We meet with landowners looking to sell and promise them if they sell to us, we will protect it," Poole explains. Launched in December 2025, the initiative has already secured 515 sq m of land in Vai'are that will become a public sanctuary. "We already have landowners in other archipelagos asking us for help because they also want to protect their islands."

Deep south

The soft rumble of waves pounding the outer reef provides the soundtrack to our journey's final leg along the wild south coast. As we roll through the Ha'apiti district, the crimson bell turrets of the Eglise de la Sainte Famille (Church of the Holy Family), built in 1897 on the site of the island's first Catholic mission, catch my eye. In the church courtyard, a crucifix rises above a stone altar carved with the face of a Tiki. With Tikis representing the connection between the human and spirit worlds, it is a striking example of the blending of Christian and Polynesian spiritual traditions still visible across the region today.

The winding coast road continues past roadside stalls piled with bananas, papaya, passionfruit and supersized avocados, along with surfing-focused stays and the odd roulette (food truck), an evolution of food carts introduced by Chinese migrants. Before we know it, we're back in Vai'are. Even after driving the equivalent of several laps around the island, our hire car has only burned a few litres of fuel. An extraordinary journey with a minimal footprint; it's a road trip for our time.

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A 1,400km bike ride through Patagonia along the 'End of the World' trail

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260527-a-1400km-bike-ride-at-the-end-of-the-world-in-patagonia, 9 days ago

Wild, rugged and breathtakingly beautiful, Patagonia is one of the most stunning places on Earth – and the best way to appreciate this wild frontier is on a bike.

For most of the day, the pampas appeared raw and deserted. The paved highway and tour buses had long vanished from view, and I pedalled a lonely gravel road used by just a handful of Argentine cowboys and cyclists.

Then, without warning, the wind stilled and the landscape began to stir. A herd of young guanacos – llamas' wild ancestors – leapt over a cattle fence. To the west, the setting sun cast a deep honey hue over the wind-scoured steppe, while a crimson Moon rose behind the clouds to the east. In the day's final light, a flightless Darwin's rhea sprinted across the arid grassland; a burst of quivering tail feathers and gangly legs.

It was March, the end of the Patagonian summer, and my partner and I were at the southern tip of the Americas, cycling more than 1,400km (870 miles) on a variation of the aptly named Fin del Mundo (End of the World) cycling route. The journey, much of it unpaved, starts in the Argentine hamlet of El Chaltén and weaves across the border into Chile before finishing in the world's southernmost city, Ushuaia, Argentina.

Millions of tourists fly into Patagonia to trek its jagged granite peaks, marvel at its electric-blue glaciers and photograph its serrated pinnacles. From the comfort of a rental car or tour bus, you can cover Southern Patagonia in about a week. But cycling offers a different way to experience one of Earth's last vast wildernesses.

As we soon found, this slow, self-directed odyssey also brings you into a world of wildlife that is slowly returning to land where it had all but disappeared, and lets adventurous travellers immerse themselves in some of the world's most striking landscapes.

A fragile landscape

Wild, rugged and breathtakingly beautiful, Patagonia was once dominated by sprawling sheep farms, which degraded the land. When the wool industry collapsed at the end of the 20th Century, many ranchers sold their remote pastures and conservationists saw an opportunity to rewild it.

"Back then, Patagonia was seen as worthless," said Libertad Giliberto, a tour guide who works across Chile. Starting in the 1980s and '90s, environmental groups began purchasing the degraded land, restoring it, turning it into reserves and donating it to Chile and Argentina's governments on the condition that they also protected surrounding land.

Today, this vast expanse of temperate rainforests, towering glaciers and treeless steppes contains some of the largest protected areas on Earth. Chile alone has a 28-million-acre conservation network encompassing 17 national parks.

A week into our trip, we approached one of Patagonia's most iconic parks – Torres del Paine and wild-camped at a viewing platform overlooking the three granite spires that give the territory its name. As the late summer sunset threw golden shafts of light between its peaks, the last of the tourist buses pulled away and we now had the view to ourselves.

A day earlier, I had met Ciro and Carlos Barría, two retired park rangers who grew up nearby, back when large parts of the park were still ranchland. By the late 1980s, ranching had largely ceased and authorities began building tourism infrastructure.

For years, few people visited. "We were like a side-trip from Perito Moreno [one of Patagonia's most famous glaciers]," Carlos said. In 1986, the park received less than 8,000 visitors. In 2024, crowds surpassed 305,000.

But as the park drew bigger crowds, its infrastructure buckled – thousands of hikers jostled for the same viewpoints, eroding trails, trampling fragile plants and overwhelming campsite waste systems. Illegal wildfires by tourists have burned nearly 30,000 hectares of the park since 2005. To keep crowds moving within the park, Carlos said, authorities have recently scrapped the once-mandatory orientation videos, leaving visitors unclear on the rules and the park prone to further damage.

"It only takes one person to cause a catastrophe," Carlos said.

For the Barrías, the solution is to spread tourism beyond the hotspots. "There are so many other areas that are as interesting as [Torres del] Paine," Ciro said. "Why not go there?"

The road less travelled

Ciro's advice echoed through my mind when I woke up and peered out of my tent at a fresh wave of tourists heading into the park. Instead of following them, we turned and pedalled in the opposite direction.

Miles of dirt trails near Torres del Paine remain largely unexplored because they lie outside the park's official borders. Venturing along one such path, we were rewarded with views of the area's peaks, framed by an endless beach along a glacial lake, crystal-clear water lapping its shores.

Here too, guanacos, caracaras, armadillos and long-tailed meadowlarks abound, but we didn't see another human until late that afternoon. Following a dusty road, we stopped at the gates of a sprawling ranch. "Are you guys lost?" called a woman from her veranda.

The woman, Monica, the 74-year-old matriarch of a four-generation ranching family, insisted we come inside and pressed homemade pan amasado (Chilean kneaded bread) into my hands. Over tea, she told us about growing up on the plains, building community when the nearest neighbour is 32km away and the fragile truce between ranchers and the landscape's now-thriving pumas.

"They attack the livestock," she said. "Mother cats come down with their cubs to teach them to hunt. They can kill up to 15 sheep at a time."

In the late evening sun, we pedalled back into the wild with Monica's hound following, and sending flocks of startled kelp geese flapping into the sky.

Nature unscripted

After two weeks of cycling, we hopped a ferry from Punta Arenas across the Strait of Magellan to the town of Porvenir, Chile. We had arrived on the legendary island of Tierra del Fuego, the southern fringe of the Americas.

The main road out of Porvenir heads north to the paved highway that cuts through the island's centre. We turned south onto another lonely, washboard gravel track; rough enough to deter most buses and many cars, but ideal for bicycles. The horizon soon opened to Bahía Inútil, or Useless Bay; a dark, stormy sweep of sea. Early explorers dismissed it as a dead end, but its harsh conditions have created an unlikely refuge for penguins.

Penguins are one of the biggest draws for visitors to this part of Patagonia, but in order to protect colonies, most visitors may only see them on organised tours. We were nowhere near one of those when a local man ran towards us, waving both hands. "Come here," he urged. "I want to show you something."

He pointed to a bedraggled Magellanic penguin huddled on the pebble-strewn beach. Separated from its colony and chased from the water by sea lions, it sat frozen on the shore while the predators circled. The penguin craned his neck, looking towards the sea lions. It felt like we were watching a wildlife documentary unfold in front of us.

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As we stared, the man searched for phone service to call the coast guard. "They'll escort the penguin home," he said, assuring us he would keep watch until they did.

End of the world

A month after setting out and now in the first days of autumn, we approached the "end of the world" in Ushuaia. Plains swelled into towering mountains and ancient forests burned with vibrant oranges and reds. We spent our final night camping at a spot legendary among cyclists: Hosteria Petrel, an abandoned lakeside hotel at the end of a gravel road deep in the subantarctic Nothofagus forest.

Generations of cyclists have claimed one of the abandoned hotel's lakeside cabins for themselves. When we arrived, we found that someone had dragged in a scavenged wood stove and a broom. Inside, the cabin's bay windows frame Lago Escondido, (Hidden Lake), which is surrounded by towering beech trees and the rugged folds of the Fuegian Andes.

Some of the scribbled graffiti on the wall left by fellow cyclists is instructive: "Don't make the fire too big!" "Don't take the broom with you!" Other messages are more reflective: "To cycle is to embrace the uncertain, the simple, the real."

No cars come here, and no itinerary lists this place. You earn it mile by mile, joining those who travel slowly through Patagonia, and those who leave it better than they found it.

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'Ridiculous' parking at beauty spot could be tackled with free tourist buses

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1l200gz6epo, yesterday

A free shuttle bus around one of Wales' most popular beauty spots could stop the area being blighted by nightmare parking issues, according to a local councillor.

Almost four million people visit Eryri, or Snowdonia, each year and around 98% of those arrive by car.

Parking problems have seen vehicles towed away in peak seasons, and even in January, police warned visitors not to leave cars in "ridiculous" locations as they went on walks to take "Instagram photos".

But instead of clamping down with more double yellow lines and fines, Conwy councillor Paul Luckock believes the solution is a free shuttle bus, similar to those operated in Alpine areas of continental Europe.

A Bangor University economist said this could be funded through a tourism tax.

But a Gwynedd councillor is unsure if the idea could work, with people often visiting through the night to watch the sun rise.

He believes a better solution to traffic issues is allowing farmers to offer parking in their fields.

The Eryri National Park Authority said it encourages visitors to leave their vehicles in nearby towns and villages and to travel by public transport to beauty spots where possible.

But Mr Luckock wants this taken a step further, and said: "Visitor numbers are definitely rising and so far the answer seems to have been to clamp down, increase parking costs, more double yellow lines but this just causes frustration for both visitors and residents.

"What you find in places like the Dolomites in Italy is when you arrive at your hotel or campsite you're handed a little wodge of free bus tickets and then you can travel up and down the valley for free from early morning to late at night.

"It's a brilliant system and we should be seriously considering for Eryri."

The issue of parking at one of Wales' most popular beauty spots has proved a thorny one with residents and visitors.

Police regularly put out appeals over Easter and other holiday periods for motorists to park sensibly.

There have even been complaints of emergency vehicles being blocked due to people parking on the side of the road in some areas.

To try and tackle these issues, local councils have introduced stricter parking restrictions and digital parking systems.

The Snowdon Sherpa and T10 bus services also run and serve some of the most popular spots.

"I have noticed that there have been cars parked on the side of the road and it creates congestion which does seem a trifle bit weird and annoying," said visitor Philip Johnson.

He travelled to the area from the US with his mother Gloria, and described parking issues with their hire car as "kind of a pain".

Mr Johnson added: "If there was a free bus we definitely would use it, my mom prefers public transit and we were back and forth for a while on whether we should rent a car or not."

There is a free bus service taking people to historical sites in Gloria's hometown of Washington DC, and she said: "It's really popular where we are, and so I can definitely see it working here."

Not everyone agrees though.

One local who owns a holiday let said he doesn't think it would make a big difference, adding: "Not many people who stay with me complain about parking.

"And also, who's going to finance this plan?"

One suggestion offered to fund such a scheme is to use the money raised from a tourism levy.

Both Gwynedd and Conwy council are currently holding a public consultation on charging a local visitor levy, which would apply an additional fee to paid overnight stays in eligible accommodation types such as campsites and hotels.

"The parking problems are seriously bad - obviously around Pen y Pass, but throughout the national park," said Rhys ap Gwilym, an economist at Bangor University who has done research on the topic.

"We see the same kind of problems in destinations around the world - places like the Dolomites [where] there are dire problems with parking.

"One of the answers could be a bus service. We see in other areas that a tourism tax is used specifically to fund that."

Farmer John Pughe Roberts, a Gwynedd councillor and member of the Eryri National Park Authority, is not convinced free buses would work.

He said many people liked to visit the mountains at all times of day – including at night to watch the sun rise.

Mr Roberts also questioned whether people on buses would spend money locally.

He believes granting farmers temporary planning permission for a period of five years to allow parking in their fields would help solve the problem.

"People then could walk from the car, any time, up the mountain and come down," he said.

"They [farmers] could charge £10 a day, maybe £8 for themselves and £2 back to Parc Eryri… so that would bring income in, not just for farmers but also for Parc Eryri."

He added that if parking was provided, people might be more inclined to spend money with local businesses before returning home, so everyone "gets a bit of the cake".

He said he believed the national park has "the power, but I don't think they've got the will to do it".

In a statement, Gwynedd council and Eryri National Park Authority said they are working with partners to "develop a convenient, reliable and reasonably priced public transport network and that they encourage visitors to use public transport where possible".

Conwy council said it had nothing to add.

Tourist tax would 'transform resort into year-round offer'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgz2k9n5neo, yesterday

A tourism levy in a seaside resort would be an "opportunity to transform the destination into a real year-round offer", says a council's leisure chief.

Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council is urging the government to allow it to introduce a so-called tourist tax.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) said it has consulted on whether the levy will also be available for some areas without mayors, like BCP, and will publish a response in "due course".

The first coastal levy in the UK was set to be introduced in parts of Dorset in 2024 but was put on hold following opposition from hotels.

The new levy was announced in the November Budget by Chancellor Rachel Reeves, to enable Strategic Mayoral Authorities to charge visitors for overnight trips in hotels, holiday lets and B&Bs.

Some hoteliers in Bournemouth opposed the plans say tourists would "go elsewhere" if they were forced to pay more.

BCP Council leader Millie Earl previously told the BBC the resort was missing out on hundreds of thousands of pounds of income from visitors because it cannot introduce a levy.

Richard Herrett, BCP Council's cabinet member for destination, leisure and commercial operations, said a tourism levy would help the council deal with "the enormous pressure" on services such as the road and bus network, local hospitals, the police service, as well as waste along the seafront.

"We have close to half a million litres of waste capacity along the seafront and that still is an enormous challenge to deal with and our teams work enormously hard to get the beach back up and ready again by mid-morning the day after, but having some forms of income to help deal with that would be very useful," he said.

It also comes after police officers were assaulted at Bournemouth beach in half term during "disorder involving a large number of people", leading to several arrests.

Andy Lennox, chair of BCP's Destination Management Board, said a tourism levy "would benefit businesses if it is spent in the right way".

"If a tourism levy is introduced - and this is the key part, it's not something that we are pushing for, it's not something that we've asked for - however, if it is going to be automatically be levied, then it needs to be spent for tourism and for the benefit of local tourism and for inbound tourism."

Lennox added: "It's about making sure that that money is spent in the right and appropriate place and it's not just another tax that basically just goes into the wider pot."

Herrett said he would also like to see the money generated from a tourism levy be ring-fenced for the industry.

He said for those who live in the area, it was "very difficult" to get around on some of the really busy days, which illegal parking contributes to.

The council is also calling on the government to allow high fines to be issued in the area to tackle this.

Herrett added: "[A tourism levy] is an opportunity to really transform our destination into a real year-round offer."

An MHCLG spokesperson said: "The final design of the visitor levy has not been decided, and we will set out next steps in due course.

"The levy will be for Mayors to use, but we have consulted on whether it will also be available for some areas without mayors."

The outdoor music venue that 'saved a town'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8eje33j903o, 2 days ago

Scarborough is a town that was built for entertainment. In its well-heeled Georgian and Edwardian heyday, there were orchestras at the Spa, dances in the ballrooms of the grand hotels, and for the more adventurous, big game fishing for tuna.

After the war, when wealthier visitors began to holiday abroad, it became known for family-friendly amusements and "kiss me quick" ribaldry.

Yet ask many people in the seaside resort today to tell you what keeps Scarborough going as a destination, and they will say the Open Air Theatre - the venue that has brought the likes of Britney Spears, Sir Elton John and Will Smith to the Yorkshire coast.

The "OAT" actually dates back to the 1930s, when it was built on an island in the middle of a lake in Northstead Manor Gardens. It put on plays during the summer season, but its fortunes declined with the town's, and it closed in 1986.

It was renovated and reopened in 2010, but it was not until 2016, when a 10-year deal was signed with music promoters Cuffe & Taylor, that it really took off as a venue.

By 2024, more than 116,000 people attended 18 concerts, and those working in Scarborough's hospitality industry say they now depend on the crowds the OAT brings.

The council-run complex has seen performances by Busted, Tom Jones, Christina Aguilera and Kylie Minogue.

Karen and Steve Ritchie, who run The Headlands Hotel near the venue, said it would have been "catastrophic" if the theatre had not been brought back to life 16 years ago.

Ritchie, who has lived in the town his whole life, said their bookings for 2026 were much higher than in 2025, with 200 additional nights reserved.

He said that was "largely down to the Open Air Theatre" and that the impact it has had on the town was "almost immeasurable".

"The buzz when the gigs are on, the impact on local businesses, the bars, the cafes, the hotel rooms - it's huge.

"Has it saved the town? It's hard to argue that it hasn't. I think it's really put Scarborough on the map," he added.

More than a million tickets have now been sold for shows at the venue since it reopened to the public.

Last summer's run of 18 concerts - with headliners including Will Smith, Gary Barlow and The Smashing Pumpkins - boosted the local economy by £8.8m, according to North Yorkshire Council.

And with 10 extra shows at the venue in 2026 - and major international stars such as Alanis Morissette, Michael Bublé and Teddy Swims appearing on stage - the authority predicts this summer's series will bring a £15m uplift to the Yorkshire coast.

The season begins tonight with Rick Astley and Lottery Winners.

Peter Taylor, co-founder of Cuffe & Taylor, said this summer was going to be the "biggest and best-ever at Scarborough Open Air Theatre".

'Absolutely buzzing'

Lee and Cathy Davis, from Scarborough, are big fans of the venue. They have booked around 10 gigs there over the summer.

Over the past 16 years they have seen dozens of acts there including Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Gary Barlow, Sterephonics and Blossoms.

Cathy said: "It's literally a 20-minute walk from my house here and it's a great night out, it's absolutely buzzing. Quick to get home afterwards, no mad dash for the car park - it's just really convenient."

The price of tickets varies depending on the artist and demand - but usually cost between £45 and £60 each.

"You get what you pay for," Cathy said - adding the shows were "worth every penny."

Chris Marson owns The Hideout Cafe Kitchen and Bar in North Bay - not far from the Open Air Theatre.

He described working in hospitality at present as "challenging" and said the venue was a "lifeline" for businesses like his.

"Over the winter there's losses in the business - it's really difficult to make a profit," he explained.

"What the Open Air Theatre does in the summer is that it allows us to fill that gap.

He added: "I think it's really impressive that they've got an additional 10 gigs there this summer - it would be good to have assurances that level is going to stay there."

When asked whether he thought the Open Air Theatre had saved Scarborough as a tourist destination, Marson said "without a shadow of doubt" it had.

Rachael Cumming runs Doorstep Adventures - a shop on the seafront at North Bay which backs on to the Open Air Thetare.

They opened in 2010, so have been there for as long as the music venue.

She said it had been "an interesting 16 years" with "lots of ups and downs".

However, she added the Open Air Theatre had "definitely been a huge benefit to the town" - and said businesses "feel the impact when people come from far and wide."

She said she had been to several gigs there and lived nearby - so they often enjoyed a free concert from the comfort of their own home.

Stuart Clarke, head of venues and attractions at North Yorkshire Council, acknowledged the venue had its critics in the early days.

The then-Scarborough Council invested £3.5m in restoring the site, which some people thought was a waste of money - others were concerned about noise and traffic.

However, Clarke said that since then the venue had paid for itself "10 times over" and had a "fantastic" impact on the town.

"I think, for us we always knew it would be a journey, we always knew at the time we needed a partner that could help us grow - people can see it now, it explains itself really.

"When you've got the likes of Teddy Swims selling out two nights in a couple of hours, that sort of act coming to Scarborough would have been unimaginable 15 or 16 years ago," he added.

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

Jobs lost as freight firm enters administration

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0q2qzw8p7yo, 3 days ago

An air freight company has entered administration leading to the loss of 178 jobs.

European Cargo Limited launched six years ago and is known for converting former passenger aircraft into freight planes, which it later used to transport PPE from Malaysia to the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The company is headquartered at Bournemouth but began running flights from Teesside Airport in March.

It entered administration on Wednesday and blamed its closure on "reduced flying activity" and rising fuel prices.

A spokesperson for the company said: "The company has ceased trading and, regrettably, redundancies are being made.

"Affected employees are being contacted as a priority and the joint administrators are focused on supporting them through this process, while also engaging with customers, suppliers, creditors and other key stakeholders."

Multimillion-pound losses

European Cargo's last published financial accounts showed it made a pre-tax loss of $26m (£19.4m) in the year ending 31 December 2024, on top of a $30.6m (£22.8m) loss in the previous year.

Its 2024 accounts also showed it had net liabilities of $41.8m (£31.1m).

News of the administration comes three months after European Cargo announced it would create a new base at Teesside Airport Business Park.

The deal saw five flights leave the airport each week carrying a total 375 tonnes of freight.

At the time, the airport's managing director Phil Forster described the deal as "transformational" and "firmly positioning the airport as a strategic location for aviation, freight and future investment".

A spokesperson for Teesside International Airport said none of its employees would be affected by the collapse.

"We remain committed to supporting the aviation freight sector and are in active talks with other global operators."

Bournemouth Airport has been contacted for comment.

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Kushner-backed luxury resort plan sparks protests in Albania

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3r2rdjv2n1o, 3 days ago

Protests in the centre of Albania's capital, Tirana, are not exactly unusual. The opposition Democratic Party (PD) stage them so often that they could almost be classified as an offbeat tourist attraction.

But this week's nightly rallies in front of Prime Minister Edi Rama's office have been different - targeting US President's Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as well as the Socialist Party government.

The focus of the anger is a proposed tourism project on Albania's Adriatic coast.

Kushner's Affinity Partners would be one of the investors – and Rama has welcomed his interest with open arms.

The same cannot be said of the protesters, who outwardly appear to have nothing to do with the mainstream opposition. To make that clear, some participants have been carrying placards calling for the imprisonment of PD leader Sali Berisha – who is facing separate corruption charges – as well as Rama.

The protesters are using a pink flamingo as their emblem. It echoes the deployment of a yellow duck in a long-running civic protest movement in Serbia's capital, Belgrade. But in Albania's case, the bird reflects the protesters' very specific concerns.

They say plans for the development on Sazan island and a site at Zvernec, near the coastal city of Vlora, pose a threat to flamingos - which are a protected species - as well as other species in the protected wetlands area.

Kushner's business partner, Asher Abehsera, says the project is focused on "responsible stewardship" and enhancing the environment, as well as creating jobs and value for local communities.

The protesters are also angry about what they see as a lack of transparency over Affinity Partners' involvement, with negotiations between the company and the government dating back to 2024.

Some placards at the protests have highlighted the participants' unhappiness about the concession of land to foreign developers, declaring Albania is "not for sale".

The government insists it is privately-owned land acquired in a transparent manner.

But others say the process may not have been as straightforward. After all, Albania is known to suffer from the chaos of ownership claims stemming from a messy process of privatisation at the end of 45 years of blanket nationalisation imposed by the Communist regime.

However, environmental concerns appear to be the main motivation for the mostly young protesters.

"We want all construction to halt and heavy machines ‌out ⁠of the protected area," said Joni Vorpsi, an ecologist with the PPNEA-BirdLife Albania organisation.

He added that the proposed development "would be a new city with around 10,000 rooms" and said it would "completely destroy that wild region".

Rama has appeared exasperated in his response to the protests.

He described the participants as "well-meaning" but "misinformed" about the potential environmental impact.

He insisted the project would bring massive benefits to Albania, with a €4bn (£3.5bn) investment promising both jobs and improved infrastructure.

At the same time, Rama has also classified the protests as part of a "hybrid war" prompted by regional envy of Albania's rapidly-growing tourism sector, claiming that the country is "under attack from very strong competition in our part of the Mediterranean".

This is a reference to Greece, which is being accused of fomenting the trouble. Rama himself has published what appears to be a public rebuke to former Greek Prime Minister Aleksis Tsipras.

For Jared Kushner, this is a case of deja vu in the Balkans.

His plan to build a Trump International Hotel in Belgrade faced fierce local opposition. The arrest of a government minister for abuse of office in connection with the project eventually prompted Kushner to withdraw earlier this year.

In Albania, Asher Abehsera insists that everything is above board, including measures to preserve the environment.

"Our focus remains on responsible stewardship, environmental enhancement, job creation, and creating long-term value for local communities," he said.

If protesters remain unconvinced, the flamingo may remain a regular feature on Tirana's streets for some time to come.

10 winning photos from the World Food Photography Awards 2026

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260601-10-photos-of-food-culture-around-the-world, 4 days ago

From a Soviet-era sanatorium to a floating market in Bangladesh, this year's World Food Photography Awards capture the many ways food shapes daily life around the world.

The 2026 competition, sponsored by Tenderstem® Bimi® Broccolini, drew nearly 9,000 entries from more than 50 countries, immortalising harvests, markets, family kitchens, street food, celebrations and survival. With just one click, food photographers around the world created a global portrait of food culture, showing not just what people eat, but how food is woven into everyday life.

Here are some of this year's most striking winning images.

Overall winner: Jo Kearney, UK

British photographer Jo Kearney's winning shot captured a solitary moment in the canteen of a Soviet-era sanatorium in Tajikistan – a reminder that food photography can be as much about evoking memory and place as it is about whetting appetite. At Khoja Obi Garm in the mountains of Tajikistan, guests still gather for simple, hearty meals between prescribed treatments. Built on radon-rich hot springs, the vast concrete "health hotel" once offered workers two weeks of annual rest. Today, its low cost continues to draw local Tajiks, visitors from neighbouring Central Asian countries and the occasional backpacker.

Winner, Food for Celebration: Pingyao Song, China

At a hotpot festival in China, hundreds of diners gather around a vast communal banquet. The red broth, rich with chilli, Sichuan peppercorn, fermented bean paste, beef tallow and spices, becomes both meal and spectacle as guests eat, film and livestream the feast.

Winner, Cream of the Crop: Albert González, Spain

In Ine, a fishing village in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan, squid dries in the sun using the traditional technique of himono. The preservation method, used for fish and seafood, draws flavour from salt, air and time, linking the village's food traditions to the sea that sustains it.

Winner, Bring Home the Harvest: Marco Rutten, Netherlands

At sunrise beneath Kolkata's Howrah Bridge, a small crew hauls in nets from the Hooghly River. Their catch will be sold in nearby markets and cooked that same morning in Bengali homes. The image captures a quiet harvest taking place beneath one of the city's busiest crossings.

Winner, Street Food: Kara Baird, Australia

In Kyoto's Nishiki Market, a fleeting moment is captured through the crush of shoppers, steam, heat and movement. Known as "Kyoto's kitchen", the market has long been one of the city's great food thoroughfares, where street snacks, pickles, seafood and sweets are packed into narrow lanes. This image catches the intensity of the market at its busiest.

Winner, Louis Jadot Wine Photographer of the Year: Juan Miguel Ortuño Martinez, Spain

Inside an underground wine tank, a worker cleans away the traces of the previous vintage with pressurised water. After the walls and floor are washed, his partner lowers a small bucket with a sponge inside to collect what remains in the lowest corner. The image reveals the hidden labour behind winemaking that is far from the romance of the glass.

Winner, Food for the Family: Michela Balboni and Federico Borella, Italy

In Samarkand, Uzbekistan, a child reaches towards hot non bread fresh from the family tandoor. Dense and round with a thick chewy crust, always marked at the centre with black sesame seeds, Samarkand non is one of the city's defining foods.

Winner, Jamie Oliver Youth Prize 13-17: Indigo Larmour

During Chhath Puja in West Bengal, India, devotees stand in water holding food offerings to Surya, the Sun god. The festival, observed largely by women, is rooted in gratitude, purification and devotion.

Winner, Food for Sale: Kazi Mohammad Golam Quddus, Bangladesh

In Bogra, Bangladesh, a vegetable market comes to life in the early morning. Farmers bring their freshly harvested cabbages by rickshaw van before traders buy the produce and send it on to Dhaka and other major cities.

Winner, The Philip Harben Award for Food in Action: Lehóczki Balázs

Hungarian photographer Lehóczki Balázs had imagined this portrait of his grandparents for years but felt unworthy of capturing them. His grandmother went to the hairdresser and his grandfather shaved before he set up his studio equipment in their kitchen. When she saw the finished image, his grandmother called him an artist.

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The 14-course dinner redefining Zambian cuisine

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260522-the-14-course-dinner-redefining-zambian-cuisine, 6 days ago

Fine dining in Zambia has long meant replicating European techniques. But chef Sungani Phiri's new home restaurant is boldly elevating Zambia's ingredients – and its culinary profile.

I'm sitting at an outdoor verandah with my family in a suburb of Livingstone, Zambia, when chef Sungani Piri brings out our fourth course.

It's a black cone-shaped canape made of cassava, served on a bed of millet inside a black potjie – a three-legged cooking pot. Filled with avocado ice cream and topped with edible gold flecks, it's almost too pretty to eat. But I take a bite; it's simultaneously sweet and savoury. The gold, Phiri informs us, is an homage to the Copperbelt, Zambia's mining region.

These dishes are Zambia on a plate, yet unlike anything most travellers – or locals – will have encountered in the tourist capital, where restaurants usually cater to international tastes and fine dining has long referenced European techniques. Visitors hoping to try traditional Zambian cuisine typically encounter buffets of stews, boiled vegetables and nshima, the porridge-like cornmeal that is our staple food.

But Sungani Restaurant, whose fine dining tasting menu is entirely rooted in Zambia's indigenous ingredients and culinary memory, offers travellers a whole new way to experience Zambia's flavours – and a window into Zambian culture itself.

This is also Chef Phiri's home. And there are still 10 courses to go.

New frontiers

Visitor itineraries to Zambia usually focus on activities that celebrate its immense natural riches, like walking safaris through Mopane forests or hiking the magnificent Victoria Falls; the world's largest waterfall. Rarely do travellers venture to quiet city suburbs, let alone dine there. But just half an hour's drive north of the Falls, Phiri has been quietly developing the country's first molecular gastronomic experience, and making its cuisine a destination in itself.

Before launching Sungani last year, Phiri trained with two-Michelin-starred chef Sven Niebremer in South Africa, then served as head chef at Royal Chundu lodge in Livingstone and Botanica in Lusaka.

Phiri's groundbreaking "New Zambian cuisine" was born from an argument. After culinary school, he planned to embrace the European fine dining techniques he'd been taught. But his sister challenged the notion as "pretentious" if done without grounding them in Zambia itself. Inspired, Phiri decided that his own fine-dining restaurant would elevate Zambia's culinary tradition and began experimenting with ingredients he had grown up eating.

"When I place a chibwantu root in someone's hands before they eat, I'm not just showing them an ingredient – I'm taking them somewhere," he explained. "To the river, to the bush, to a Zambian childhood. For an international guest it opens a door they didn't know existed. For a Zambian guest, it's a moment of recognition and pride – seeing something deeply familiar treated with reverence and wonder."

His decision to host the experience inside his own residence was equally deliberate. "When you want to honour someone here, you don't take them to a restaurant – you bring them to your table," he said.

In April 2025, Phiri welcomed his first guests and launched a tasting menu called The Rebirth. "I’m trying to use food to show the standard of the finest things this country produces and then translate that onto a plate," he said.

Locally grown, locally loved

Upon arriving, my family and I are greeted by Alibesi Mwale Phiri, Phiri's wife and director of operations. "Twamilandilani," she said – "welcome" in Nyanja, one of Zambia's many local languages. "Please feel at home."

The restaurant seats just 22 people, with guests dining on a verandah beside the family's open-plan kitchen, divided by an island. A dining table functions both as the "chef's table" and family dining table. Phiri explained that all the restaurant's ingredients are sourced within a 100km radius, with his inspiration coming from farms and fish markets. "What's ready [in season], what's abundant, what's being overlooked. The menu follows that conversation," he said.

Depending on the season, the tasting menu spans 14 to 16 courses, many inspired by the Southern Province, where Livingstone is located. The project also doubles as a training ground for young Zambian chefs, three of whom were waiting on us that evening. "Groups of chefs come to learn here, and the first thing we focus on is indigenous ingredients," Phiri said. "Most young Zambian chefs have never cooked with them seriously."

Fourteen voyages into Zambia

Dinner begins with a welcome drink made from tart mundambi, Zambian hibiscus, topped with a square of hibiscus candy. The pink, frothy beverage transforms an ingredient more commonly associated with fruit jellies into something elegant and refreshing.

Several starters arrive in slow succession, beginning with a marshmallow made from pureed bondwe, a spinach-like vegetable usually served alongside nshima. The avocado and cassava cone comes next; cold, crunchy and creamy on our tongues. A savoury dumpling filled with free-range "village chicken" is served alongside an egg yolk, julienned carrots and bok choy. We are offered the "onion shot" – shot glasses of room-temperature onion soup – before receiving beef pâté with delele (okra) and crayfish pai tee: crispy pastry shells stuffed with crayfish from the Zambezi River.

Phiri returns with a sheaf of chibwantu reeds in hand for the ninth course, a palate-cleansing cocktail called "Where It All Began". The reeds are used as the raw ingredient in Zambia's traditional fermented beverage, but here it is transformed into a gin-based cocktail served inside a snail shell and garnished with green apple slices.

After a bread and jam platter – called, aptly, "The Journey To Home" – which includes freshly baked cassava wraps and a sweet, dense bread made from mabisi (sour milk), the tasting experience returns to the water. Zambezi bream, a species similar to tilapia, has fed communities along the river for generations and is typically served whole and grilled. Phiri's show-stopping version has thin slices layered into a mosaic and flavoured with lemon zest, ginger syrup and parsley powder. Okra caviar and edible gold flecks complete the dish.

The standout ingredient in the steak course is dried caterpillars (ifinkubala). In traditional Zambian cuisine, they are deep fried, but Phiri grinds them to powder to create the steak rub. "The ingredient is fully present, but the technique creates a bridge," he explained, acknowledging that some international diners may baulk at eating insects.

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• Chasing the rare lunar 'rainbow' at Victoria Falls

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After the steak, we are ready for something sweet – the final course. We are presented a frozen cube of vitumbuwa cheesecake inspired by the eponymous Zambian-style beignet that is usually eaten as a snack or on-the-go breakfast. Phiri's version is filled with coffee-flavoured cream, a nod to Zambia's northern coffee-producing region.

"Every region has something to say," said Phiri. "The tasting menu is my way of bringing Zambia to one table."

By the time we complete the culinary experience, both our bellies and brains are stuffed with Zambian culinary history. For me and my family, Phiri's dining experience has achieved something simple, yet precious: it showed us how our national cuisine can be elevated, giving us new respect for the beloved ingredients. But most of all, it's putting Zambia on the map, one delicious ingredient at a time.

"Zambian cuisine deserves to be told on the world stage, on its own terms," said Phiri.

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Free food and compassion: Inside the Sri Lankan tradition of dansal

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260526-dansal-sri-lankas-roadside-ritual-of-generosity, 11 days ago

Rooted in Buddhist teachings, Sri Lanka's roadside dansal offer free food and drinks to strangers – and this year, amid rising costs and extreme heat, the tradition feels especially relevant.

When I was a little girl growing up in Sri Lanka, I always looked forward to the month of May. That was when my father and I would decorate octagon bamboo lanterns to celebrate Vesak – the sacred day marking the birth, enlightenment and death of the Buddha – and when the first dansal of the season would appear on the streets.

Dansal are Sri Lanka's roadside generosity stalls: makeshift kiosks and improvised counters where people offer food, drinks and other essentials to passersby, free of charge. Rooted in the Buddhist practice of dana – giving without expecting anything in return – they pop up during poya, the island's monthly full-Moon holidays, most typically during the festival season from May to July.

The dansal of my childhood are etched in my memory: men and women dressed in white queuing for boiled cassava; children waving large flags to stop passing vehicles; and tiny cups of sweet passionfruit drinks being passed around when public buses crawled to a stop.

But this year, the tradition feels particularly resonant.

In recent months, temperatures across parts of Sri Lanka have climbed as high as 39C, while long dry spells have strained water supplies in some urban areas. At the same time, fuel, electricity and food costs have risen sharply following energy price hikes earlier this year, making daily life harder for many Sri Lankans.

Against that backdrop, even small acts of public generosity carry new weight. As more people have been forced to walk or rely on public transport just as Colombo's sweltering March temperatures arrived, businesses across the capital tapped into the spirit of dansal by setting up free drinking-water stalls for passersby. Just before the Sinhala and Tamil New Year in April – one of the country's biggest festivals where families gather for week-long celebrations – biscuit company Munchee distributed 25,000 train tickets at Colombo's railway station to ease the financial burden of holiday travel.

"You'll see more practical dansal [now], like handing out rice and vegetables," says Joanne Louise, a British traveller who spends several months of the year in Sri Lanka with her Sri Lankan husband. "Since the heat wave, people now feel it is more important to look after each other." During Vesak this year, local communities are also offering free notebooks for students and handing out dry rations for pregnant women.

For Dr Rita Langer, senior lecturer in Buddhist Studies at the University of Bristol, who has been visiting Sri Lanka for more than 35 years, that immediate responsiveness is of little surprise.

"Sri Lankans are very much aware of the people around them and what they need, more than [in the West] where we outsource that to charities," she says. "Sometimes you get an eye optician doing free eye tests all night, a hairdresser giving free haircuts or people giving sanitary pads to a nunnery."

During Sri Lanka's economic crisis in 2022, people handed out snacks and drinks to those waiting hours in fuel queues. And the selflessness doesn't only happen on home soil: earlier this year, Sri Lanka's consulate in Mumbai served chilled drinks to people struggling through the city's extreme summer heat.

"Dansal are a manifestation of the spirit of generosity that comes from a society like ours, which is about the wider community. It ties to our non-individualistic way of living," says social researcher Amalini De Sayrah.

Giving without expectations

According to Sri Lanka's historical chronicle Mahavamsa, the tradition goes back as far as the 1st Century BCE. It became more formalised during Sri Lanka's Buddhist reformist movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries, when wealthy Buddhist families and temple communities set up rest houses and food stalls for pilgrims travelling to holy shrines, offering meals, drinks and shelter as an act of dana. Over time, that ritualised giving shifted from pilgrimage routes into neighbourhoods, streets and train stations, becoming one of Sri Lanka's most recognisable forms of public generosity.

"In Buddhism, we learn that dana during difficult times is the most valued, because it means that your compassion is not confined to the abundance you have," says Neluwe Gnanawimala Thero at the Mahamevnawa Buddhist Monastery near Ella, which hosts a daily dansala with the help of young volunteers that's often visited by visitors who come for the temple's meditation sessions.

Today, that spirit cuts across ethnic and religious lines. Muslims and Christians also host stalls during Vesak, while similar traditions of communal giving appear during Hindu festivals. The offerings vary widely, from tea and biscuit stalls to full-blown bath (rice and curry) dansal, and many people go "dansal sightseeing", hopping from one stall to another with friends and family.

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During the holiday season, visitors will find dansal near temples, along pilgrimage sites and at railway stations, typically serving snacks and refreshments throughout the day and full meals during lunch and dinner. In Colombo, they may cluster around week-long Vesak zones and illuminated thorana (pandals that depict stories of Buddha's past lives); elsewhere, they can be as simple as a table outside someone's home or a little kiosk offering meticulously packed takeway lunch parcels.

During Poson full Moon holiday in June, there are similar festive zones in and around the sacred city Anuradhapura, nearly a four-hour train journey north of Colombo. Outside the Ruwanweli Maha Seya stupa, a dome-shaped monument where Buddha's relics are enshrined, the Isipathana bath dansala serves lunch every day. Devotees also turn up with fresh flowers and fragrant incense to share with others at holy shrines.

When I was stopped by a group of young children this past Labour Day (1 May) and handed a cup of sago porridge, I was reminded how even the smallest act of giving can bring strangers together.

"If you visit Sri Lanka about the time of dansal, you are part of it," says Langer. "It's the spirit that nobody should go hungry."

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How an enslaved, shipwrecked African became the US's first great explorer

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260527-estevanico-the-african-explorer-who-crossed-north-america, 10 days ago

Nearly 500 years ago, a Moroccan man travelled thousands of miles from Florida to the Pacific Coast, becoming the first known outsider to see the American West.

In 1528, a man from Morocco washed up on the coast of present-day Texas, more dead than alive. He had spent the previous month adrift in the Gulf of Mexico alongside a group of Spanish sailors on a flimsy lifeboat lashed together with tree trunks, horse hide and what was left of their tattered clothes. When a storm stranded the castaways on a barrier island near Galveston, they unwittingly became the first people from the Old World to enter the American West – and when they did, they were each starving, exhausted and naked.

In the weeks that followed, the shipwrecked survivors began dying, one by one. Many succumbed to hunger, others to the elements and some to attacks from Indigenous tribes. Of the roughly 600 men who had set sail from Spain a year earlier on this ill-fated expedition to conquer present-day Florida and the Gulf Coast for the Spanish Crown, only four survived: three Spanish captains and, somehow, the enslaved Moroccan.

During the next eight years, the man would become the party's de facto leader, and embark on one of the most remarkable survival journeys in exploration history. And yet, we don't even know his real name.

Known variously as Esteban de Dorantes, Esteban the Moor or – most commonly – Estevanico, this enigmatic individual was one of the first documented Africans, Arabic speakers and Muslims to step foot in what is now the United States, arriving nearly 40 years before the first European settlement. Between 1528 and 1536, he walked roughly 2,250 miles (3,620km) west from Florida to the Pacific Coast of Mexico, completing what is widely believed to be the first recorded crossing of North America in history and predating Lewis and Clark's overland expedition to the Oregon Coast by nearly 300 years.

Along the way, Estevanico was captured by Native Americans, learned their languages and became a healer before journeying an additional 1,300 miles (2,090km) south with the three other shipwreck survivors from the Gulf of California to Mexico City. He then embarked on a separate 1,500-mile (2,415km) odyssey north, and became the first known non-Native American to enter modern-day New Mexico and Arizona.

"Estevanico is one of the most extraordinary, yet overlooked, figures in the early history of what would become the American Southwest," said Dr Hsain Ilahiane, an anthropologist and professor at the University of Arizona, who has spent years studying the explorer. "He helped open routes, trails and geographic knowledge that later informed Spanish incursions into [the present-day American West]."

Still, most people have never heard of him – even in the US.

Now, as the US celebrates its 250th anniversary and looks back on its origins, a growing number of museums, tours and monuments around the country are highlighting his little-known legacy.

Estevanico's odyssey

Since Estevanico left no written records, historians have pieced together his life largely through the surviving accounts of the Spanish survivors who travelled beside him. He was born in the early 1500s in Azemmour and enslaved by Spanish nobleman Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, who brought him on Spain's Narváez expedition to the Americas. Since Muslims were forbidden from travelling to the New World on official Spanish expeditions, Dorantes baptised him, renaming him Estevanico.

The 600-person, five-ship voyage set sail in June 1527, and it was a disaster from the start. Some 140 men deserted the expedition during a stop in Santo Domingo, and while resupplying in Cuba, a hurricane sank two ships and killed 50 more sailors. The crew eventually tried to sail to Mexico, but storms blew them into modern-day St Petersburg, Florida, in April 1528.

The expedition's leader, Panfilo de Narváez, then ordered Estevanico and several hundred men to march north to explore Florida's interior. After slogging some 300 miles (480km) through mosquito-infested swamps to what is now Saint Marks, Florida, and getting ambushed by Apalachee Native Americans, Estevanico and the remaining Spaniards were so decimated and desperate that they slaughtered and ate their last horses, built five makeshift rafts and sailed along the coast in hopes of reaching present-day Mexico.

As the men drifted west, they became the first non-Indigenous travellers to see the mouth of the Mississippi River. But the same storms that eventually capsized their rafts near Galveston would kill two-thirds of the remaining Spaniards, including Narváez himself.

Like many of the shipwrecked castaways, Estevanico was soon captured by Native Americans. Somehow, the person with the lowest status in the Old World managed to survive in the New World.

"When the order of the Old World fell away, Estevanico had some advantages. Unlike [the Spanish], he had to speak other languages," said Laila Lalami, whose novel, The Moor's Account, is based on Estevanico and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. "Since Azemmour was an Amazigh [city] controlled by the Portuguese, we know that he likely spoke Tamazight, Arabic and Portuguese. And since he was enslaved to a Spaniard, he spoke Spanish."

During his roughly five years of hard labour under Karankawa Natives, Estevanico learned their spoken language and the sign language shared by other groups in the region. He then covertly coordinated with a rival tribe of the Karankawa to escape with Dorantes, and helped free the two remaining Spaniards.

In the next two years, the four survivors walked from the Gulf Coast to the Gulf of California, relying on Estevanico's linguistic skills and cultural adaptability to navigate them from one Native community to the next.

"He was the leader of the group – the translator, the mediator, the scout," Ilahiane said. "They were moving in a new world and didn't know where they were going and Estevanico had an advantage: information."

During their travels, Estevanico met an Indigenous trader and arranged for them to stay in his community. While there, a sick person approached the visitors and asked them to treat her. By blending Christian rituals from the Spanish and Native practices Estevanico had observed, the men somehow convinced the woman that she was cured.

As word of the men's alleged healing powers spread, Indigenous communities began seeking them out and even following them as they journeyed west. Estevanico travelled ahead of the Spaniards to announce their arrival, often adorned with seashell bracelets on his arms, jingling bells around his ankles and carrying a rattle made from a dried gourd.

"He reminds me of a rural Moroccan Sufi with medicinal knowledge travelling from village to village, but he also picks up these [cultural] aspects from Native Americans and uses them as an entry point into other tribes as he wanders," Ilahiane said. "In the end, that would be a bit tragic for him."

The Seven Cities of Gold

After conquering the Aztecs in 1521, Spain had established a colony in modern-day central and southern Mexico. As the four travellers approached Culiacán in what is now Sinaloa, they met a group of Spanish horsemen who led them 1,300 miles (2,090km) south to the capital of New Spain (today, Mexico City). There, the four shipwreck survivors told tales of gilded cities somewhere in the northern desert that Native tribes had recounted to Estevanico – likely to get the outsiders to keep moving away from their villages.

Determined to locate these so-called "Seven Cities of Gold", the Viceroy of New Spain dispatched Estevanico to guide a group of Spanish friars north into modern-day New Mexico and Arizona in 1539. With turquoise jewellery around his neck and feathers in his hair, Estevanico walked ahead of the party, serving as the lead scout to gain knowledge of these fabled cities from Native tribes. If what he learned was moderately important, he'd send a small cross back to the Spaniards via a messenger. If it was important, he'd send back a medium-sized cross. And if it was highly important, he'd send back a large cross.

One day, shortly after becoming the first known outsider from the Old World to enter the land of the Zuni Pueblo people, Estevanico reportedly sent back a cross said to be "the height of a man". Elated, the Spaniards raced ahead to join him, only to learn that when he'd attempted to enter the southernmost of the supposed Seven Cities of Gold, Hawikuh, he had been killed by Zuni Natives.

While the Spanish never found any gilded cities, Estevanico's final journey led them into what became known as the "Tierra Nueva" (New Land), that would later become central to Spanish expansion in the American Southwest.

"Estevanico helped shape the geographic imagination of the Spanish Empire in North America," said Ilahiane. "His travels spread knowledge about routes, peoples and possibilities for expansion into regions that would become Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and beyond. This final journey into Zuni territory in 1539 triggered the Coronado Expedition of 1540 [that paved the way for Spanish expeditions and settlements across the American Southwest]."

From introducing devastating diseases and displacing Native populations to establishing Catholicism, cultural and culinary practices, this Spanish expansion would profoundly shape the future of the nation to come.

'Something in between'

For centuries, Estevanico remained little more than a footnote in Spanish chronicles, and a forgotten figure among Americans.

"That's because his exploration isn't tied to the foundational myth of the United States," said Lalami. "It's one of those things that doesn't quite fit neatly into the history of the US's founding that's taught in schools about the 13 colonies and people escaping persecution in England."

But in the past decade, museums, monuments and tours around the US have increasingly begun recognising his role in the continent's early history.

"He had one of the most amazing journeys into the unknown in history. Someone should really make a movie about him already," said David Anderson, the owner of Discover Florida Tours, which has led historical guided walks in St Petersburg where Estevanico landed since 2017 and recounts his epic odyssey.

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In 2016, a 7ft (2.15m) bronze statue of Estevanico was erected at the Texas State Capitol in Austin, commemorating his role as the first African to step foot in Texas. Since 2022, the El Paso Museum of History in West Texas has recounted Estevanico's odyssey on its interactive digital wall, and the explorer is heavily featured throughout the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe and at the Coronado National Memorial in Arizona.

"This is someone who did something quite formidable," said Diana Abouali, the director of the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. "At the museum, we present him at the start of our 'Coming to America' exhibit to show that Arabic speakers are not new to this country. Arabic language and culture has been in what is now the United States for a long, long time."

For Lalami, what makes Estevanico so important isn't just what he did – it's what he represents.

"He was the first African to cross North America, but what makes him so fascinating is his position," she said. "He didn't come to the US as a conqueror, and he wasn't part of the people who were conquered. He was something in between."

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Eight summer film and TV releases that will inspire your next trip

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260522-eight-summer-film-and-tv-releases-that-will-inspire-your-next-trip, 14 days ago

Summer is all about escaping your daily routine, and this season's releases will have you ready to pack your bags.

If the arrival of longer, sunnier days doesn't inspire you to travel, leave it to this summer's upcoming crop of film and television series – where the settings become a silent character.

From friend retreats in a medieval Italian city to battles in the turquoise waters of the Peloponnese, here are eight new films and TV shows coming out this summer that will make you want to book your next holiday.

1. The Four Seasons (season two): Upstate New York, the Jersey Shore and Italy

Based on the 1981 film of the same name, Netflix's The Four Seasons features a cast of comedic powerhouses – Tina Fey, Will Forte, Colman Domingo, Marco Calvani and Kerri Kenney – playing a group of lifelong friends who holiday together each season of the year.

The show's first season took place in New York's foliage-studded Hudson Valley, as well as Puerto Rico's Palomino Island. In season two, which sees the group grieving the loss of their beloved friend (Steve Carrell), the crew returns to the Hudson Valley and also travels to the Jersey Shore and Italy. The trailer promises sandy Atlantic beaches, sweeping shots of historic squares, posing on Vespas and some of the worst-looking football ever shot for TV.

Season two of The Four Seasons premieres on Netflix on 28 May

2. Power Ballad: Dublin, Ireland

Power Ballad is the latest film from Irish writer and director John Carney to showcase both his home city of Dublin and the power of song.

Carney's newest musical drama stars Paul Rudd as Rick Power, an American wedding singer living in Dublin who befriends former boy band member Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas). When Danny steals one of Rick's songs and it becomes a hit, Rick sets out for revenge – and to attain the recognition he's always wanted.

Viewers will be whisked away to modern-day Dublin, with scenes taking place throughout the city's pastel-coloured city centre. It also features the city's surrounding areas, like its Crumlin suburb, dotted with period red-brick homes, and Wicklow County, with its rolling Wicklow Mountains and grandiose medieval estates. Scenes in moody Irish pubs might just inspire your next pint of Guinness.

Power Ballad is released in UK cinemas on 29 May

3. House of the Dragon (season three): Wales and southern England, UK

House of the Dragon, the prequel to the widely acclaimed series Game of Thrones, is back for a third season, which will follow dragonrider Rhaenyra Targaryen's attempt to take the Iron Throne. Once again, the drama's mythical scenes will be shot in ethereal corners of the United Kingdom, namely the lush forests of southern England and the rugged coastlines and endless greenery of rural Gwynedd in Wales.

Look for fantasy-stoking shots of Eryri National Park (Snowdonia), the Unesco-listed Dinorwig Quarry with its unique wall of slate, and the mystical "floating" St Michael's Mount in Cornwall, reimagined as House Velaryon's Driftmark Castle. The battles may be bloody, but the backdrops are sublime.

Season three of House of The Dragon begins on HBO Max on 21 June

4. The Bear (season five): Chicago, US

Sorry, cousin – the story of acclaimed chef Carmy "The Bear" Berzatto returning to Chicago to save his family's hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop comes to an end this summer.

Ever since The Bear's June 2022 premiere, it has showcased Chicago's culinary supremacy, shining a light on iconic Windy City dishes like deep-dish pizza and Italian beef sandwiches, as well as local institutions like Pequod's Pizza, Kasama and Firecakes Donuts, all against the city's steely skyline backdrops.

As Berzatto adjusts to life outside of the kitchen – and his staff struggle to save his restaurant and earn a Michelin star – viewers can expect to hear their stomachs growl yet again, with hunger pangs that only a culinary holiday to this Midwestern city can quell.

The Bear's fifth and final season will be available on Hulu on 25 June

5. The Five-Star Weekend: Nantucket, Massachusetts, US

Jennifer Garner portrays food blogger Hollis Shaw in this film based on Elin Hilderbrand's 2023 eponymous novel. After the death of her husband, Shaw invites four friends from different periods in her life to spend a weekend in her stunning beach house on the island of Nantucket as she tries to fight her grief through food and friendship.

Filming for The Five-Star Weekend took place on location and makes full use of this former whaling capital's cobblestoned 18th-Century town centre and wild beaches. Along the way, panoramas of windswept Atlantic heathlands and emotional moments in Hollis's coastal-chic kitchen. Prepare to crave a glass of wine overlooking the ocean.

The Five-Star Weekend is released on Peacock on 9 July

6. Moana: Hawaii, US

The much-anticipated live-action Moana is a musical adventure based on the 2016 animated film, where the titular Polynesian teen sets out to save her home island. Moana (Catherine Laga'aia) is joined on her nautical journey by the demigod Maui, played by Dwayne Johnson, who voiced the character in the animated version. The pair sail through blue seas and explore lush tropical landscapes on their quest to return a stolen relic to the goddess Te Fiti.

Much of the film was shot on location on the island of O'ahu (with a little oomph from CGI), so expect incredible shots of dramatic beaches, towering palm trees and volcanic cliffs that will make you want to set sail, too.

Moana is out in cinemas on 10 July

7. The Odyssey: Greece and Sicily, Italy

Academy Award-winning director Christopher Nolan's take on Homer's timeless epic sees Matt Damon as the Greek warrior struggling to return home after the Trojan War. The supporting cast, including Charlize Theron, Zendaya, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway and Robert Pattinson, is just as legendary.

The shooting schedule was an odyssey in itself. To minimise the use of CGI, much of the filming took place in stunning real-world locations across Scotland, Iceland, Morocco, Sicily and Greece – with a reported $250m (£186m) budget.

Some of the film's Greek and Italian shooting locations are believed to have inspired Homer himself, and though this (or whether the author even existed) has long been the subject of academic debate, the area's dramatic, volcanic coastlines do seem tailor-made for encounters with mythical creatures. Travel with Odysseus to the turquoise seas, white sands and ancient acropolises of Greece's Peloponnese region, where filming spots included Nestor's Cave, a seaside formation located above the horseshoe-shaped Voidokoilia Beach. In Sicily, shooting took place in the Aeolian and Aegadian Islands, particularly Favignana; known as "Goat Island" and, according to urban legend, the island of the Cyclopes.

The Odyssey premieres in cinemas 17 July

8. Ted Lasso (season four): Richmond, London

The Brits may have thought they'd got rid of Ted Lasso for good when he left London for Kansas City at the end of season three. But the world's most optimistic Yank football coach is returning to England this August. And this time, he'll be taking over AFC Richmond's new women's team.

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While the show's previous forays focused on Lasso's acclimation to his proper British surroundings, this season will find him navigating the leafy, well-heeled neighbourhoods of West London and revisiting old haunts, like the cosy "Crown & Anchor" (the real-life The Prince's Head Pub in Richmond) and his apartment at "9 1/2 Paved Court", found on the real, idyllic cobblestoned Paved Court just off Richmond Green. Will Ted have finally learnt not to embarrass himself down the pub?

Season four of Ted Lasso debuts on Apple TV+ on 5 August

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Mangrove forests are healing after decades of human destruction

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4pk07npvvo, 2 days ago

The world's coastal mangrove forests, which protect millions of people from storms - and soak up vast amounts of planet-warming gases - are staging an unexpected comeback, scientists find.

For decades these swampy trees had been declining rapidly as they were cleared for fish farms and housing.

But a new study shows that since 2010 the world has been gaining more mangroves than it has been losing - driven by stronger legal protections and increased public awareness of their importance, sparked by disasters such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The researchers say the key factor though is the remarkable capacity of these forests to regenerate naturally once humans stop chopping them down.

Mangroves are one of the world's unsung environmental heroes.

Not only do they store up to five times more carbon dioxide than land-based forests, but their tangled roots can also slow down waves and protect coastal communities from storm surges and tsunamis.

These same roots provide a perfect nursery for many species of fish and other marine life - protecting them from predators and providing ample food.

These benefits, though, have come under serious threat over the past century as the rise of fish farming, agriculture and the expansion of coastal cities and towns have seen mangroves chopped down and rapidly removed.

From the 1980s to 2010, over 12,000 sq km (4,600 sq miles) of mangroves were cleared or destroyed across Asia, Africa and the Americas - an area the size of Jamaica.

However, the new study shows a real reversal of that trend, particularly over the last decade. The total net losses - the forest lost and not replaced - since the 1980s have now been reduced to around 849 sq km (328 sq miles).

Restoration efforts over decades have helped degraded forests to recover, but the big change has come from the natural expansion of mangroves in many parts of the world following drops in deforestation.

This has enabled forest levels to stabilise in Indonesia and grow in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) - two of the most mangrove-dense countries.

In Indonesia, the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 seems to have played a role in changing people's minds about the importance of mangroves, and the removal of trees for fish farming has slowed.

"Some islands were covered by mangroves and after the tsunami those islands were [still] protected very well, so that increased public awareness about the importance of protecting mangroves," said lead author Dr Zhen Zhang from Tulane University in the US.

A similar change in public attitude occurred in Myanmar after Cyclone Nargis in 2008 and a national logging ban in 2016.

Technology is also part of the answer, say the authors. For this study, a different satellite imaging system was used to map the forests in more detail, showing far greater numbers of new trees compared to previous studies.

This imagery came from the Landsat satellite "which is highly sensitive to canopy changes, and provides globally consistent observations that previous assessments may have missed," said Prof Elizabeth Robinson, director of the Grantham Research Institute, who was not involved with the study.

"This is a considerable advance on earlier global assessments," she told BBC News.

Some of the expanding growth, though, is likely to be double edged - it may be at the expense of environmental damage in other locations.

In many countries, including Brazil, new mangrove forests have taken hold along rivers and coastlines with an abundant supply of nutrients in the sediments.

But it has been the destruction of forests and mining further upstream which may have flushed the nutrients, like nitrogen, from soils into waterways, benefitting the mangroves down the river.

"This is good news for mangroves - there are more of them than we thought, and they are showing their resilience," said Dr Pete Bunting from Aberystwyth University, another of the authors.

"But it is only really good news if it is not a complete mess upstream."

The research also shows that whilst a combination of restoration and a reduction in chopping down mangroves has been successful, it has not been a uniform success across the globe.

West and Central Africa have emerged as hotspots of destruction.

"The Niger Delta is the poster child for mangrove pollution impact," said Bunting.

"Oil pollution is having massive impacts - and if you look at Google Earth you can see straight lines through the mangroves where the pipelines are."

Tropical cyclones also remain a serious threat - with storms responsible for some of the most dramatic single year losses recorded in the study, from Australia to the Caribbean.

Despite this, the authors agree this is a good news story.

"We are moving in the right direction because you can see a very clear trend of decreased loss rate," Dr Zhen Zhang told BBC News.

The study also found that many existing forests were actually becoming healthier. Since the 1980s, the proportion of closed canopy mangroves, the richest and most carbon-dense, has grown by nearly 20%.

"So, I think we are going the right way," said Zhen.

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The world's most trafficked wild mammal

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260603-inside-a-trafficked-pangolins-return-to-the-wild, 3 days ago

Pangolins require huge amounts of care to rehabilitate, but even those caught up in the illegal trade can be saved. Here's how Stevie the pangolin was returned to the wild – and is now thriving.

It took a painstaking effort to save three-month-old pangolin pup Stevie.

Stevie was rescued from the illegal pangolin trade in the streets of Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2021. For the next six months, specialist veterinarian Kelsey Skinner meticulously carried out his medical care, fed him meals of cat milk formula and helped him learn to forage naturally.

A Temminck's pangolin, Stevie is named after Steven Koen, a South Africa Police Service (Saps) K9 officer who played a big role in arresting an "elusive" pangolin wildlife trafficker who was trying to sell the pup, says Skinner. It took several days and lot of intensive negotiations to catch the trafficker during a sting operation, she adds.

The pup should have still been with his mother, but she was nowhere to be seen, says Alexis Kriel, co-chair and executive director of the African Pangolin Working Group (APWG), a South Africa-based non-profit.

Sometimes known as scaly anteaters, since their diet mainly consists of ants and termites, pangolins are the world's only truly scaly mammal. They are often considered to be the most trafficked wild mammal in the world. Over a million pangolins are thought to have been illegally traded internationally from 2000 to 2016, while seizures of pangolin products from 2016 to 2024, which capture only a fraction of the overall trade, show at least half a million more being traded during this time.

Over the past few decades, law enforcement and non-profits in African countries have increased their efforts to rescue wild pangolins caught up in the black market. In South Africa, some 80% of the Temminck's pangolins retrieved are still alive.

Still, rescuing them is only the first step. Trafficked pangolins are often young or injured but also don't fare well in captivity, making them notoriously difficult to rehabilitate. That's where specialists like Skinner come in. After many months of her support, Stevie was successfully released to the wild in 2022.

His rehabilitation is part of a growing effort to return trafficked pangolins back into their natural habitat – a long, tricky process that may be essential to saving this bizarre, often overlooked mammal.

A persecuted animal

African pangolins are now at the very heart of illegal wildlife trafficking, one of the world's largest organised crime sectors. Demand for them comes largely from East Asia, where their scales are used in traditional medicine and their meat considered a delicacy, although the US is also a major market, driven by the fashion industry. Countries passed a total international trade ban on pangolins in 2016, but the illegal trade persists.

As trafficking has pushed Asian pangolins to the verge of extinction, Africa has now become the main source for this illicit global market. Together, trafficking, habitat loss and hunting by locals (for traditional medicine and bushmeat) mean all four African pangolin species are now threatened with extinction.

South Africa is among the countries that have become a source for illegal pangolin trading, as well as domestic consumption. Non-profits including the APWG support the country's law enforcement to conduct sting and anti-poaching operations, and in recent years the country has had a significant number of pangolin seizures.

Most of the pangolins in the APWG's care are rescued from traffickers in intelligence-led sting operations or stop-and-searches, where pangolins are recovered from vehicles, says Kriel. "We are able to save a small fraction of pangolins in the illegal trade but we don't know where the rest are going," she says.

Nicci Wright, co-chair and executive director of APWG, remembers being unable to do much to help the first pangolin that was brought into her care after being rescued from trafficker in 2008. "Having no experience with pangolins at that stage, the best thing I could do was release it back into a safe habitat and hope for the best," she says.

She has since grown a far deeper practical understanding on how to support pangolins seized from wildlife traffickers, which are usually physically and psychologically compromised.

"Some are concealed in bags and placed in car boots," says Wright. "They may be kept for weeks under these conditions that could lead to injuries, dehydration and compromised immunity."

Without medical attention, there is a high chance the pangolin could die soon after being returned to the wild, she says. "Hence the need to treat and rehabilitate the pangolin before its release."

Stevie's return to the wild

During the sting operation that led to his rescue, Stevie the pangolin was found in a cardboard box in a car boot, says Wright. "There was a cabbage leaf inside with him which may have been a food offering, but pangolins obviously do not eat cabbage."

Stevie was moved to the Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Hospital, where Skinner put him through the usual checks for rescued pangolins. She weighed him, examined him for possible injuries or infections, gave him fluid therapy to address his dehydration, and drew blood to check the health of his organs. He was also given immune boosters and a small supportive electrolyte tube feed.

Thankfully, unlike many rescued pangolins, Stevie was in a healthy condition – in fact, he was alert and could move around with ease. Still, the pup – whose scales were still too soft to defend him from predators – was nervous, curling into a ball whenever he was approached, Skinner says. She took plenty of quiet time with him alone to get him used to her.

Since he would still have been feeding from his mother, she bottle-fed him cat milk formula, although it took him 10 days to fully accept the artificial milk and bottle. "Initially, he disliked the artificial teat but with patience, he got used to it and fed well," says Skinner. She walked him out daily in natural habitat, where she would flip rocks and expose ants and their eggs for him to forage. "At his age he would have been out foraging with his mother in the wild," says Skinner.

Once weaned off the milk at six months, he began to grow stronger every day, and after reaching 6kg (13lb) at nine months was transferred to his release site, the Manyoni Private Game Reserve in Zululand. "At this weight, pangolins are strong enough to maintain their protective curl and their scales are hard enough to withstand predator attacks," says Skinner.

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For five more months, Stevie was cared for by the reserve's pangolin monitor Donald Davies and his team, who let him outside daily to forage in the reserve and monitored his adaptation. By the time he was 14 months old, he was ready to fend for himself. He was fitted with two telemetry trackers and released for good.

Trackers help experts observe the natural movements and behaviours of released pangolins, as well as threats. "Electric fences pose a threat to pangolins though there have been other natural incidents: one pangolin was trampled by an elephant while one was eaten by crocodile," says Wright. "This information would have been unknown if the pangolins did not have telemetry tags fitted."

They can also help reveal whether the final step of the rehabilitation process has occurred: reproduction. Stevie's tracker shows he has now begun regularly crossing paths with females, including visiting them in their burrows, says Wright. "It's pretty guaranteed that he is now a father to a few pangolin pups," adds Skinner.

'Pangalorium'

Lesser-known species like pangolins often struggle to secure the funding and policy protections that flow more readily to more familiar wildlife such as elephants and big cats, says Araluen Schunmann, director of the Pangolin Crisis Fund at the Wildlife Conservation Network, a US-based non-profit.

Rehabilitation plays "a crucial role not only for the individual pangolins saved from illegal trade and eventually released back into the wild, where some go on to breed successfully, but also for broader conservation landscape initiatives", says Schunmann. "Conservation requires public awareness and support," she adds, praising the APWG's efforts to keep pangolins in the public conversation as filling a critical role.

Since 2016, the APWG has facilitated the release of 85 pangolins into suitable pangolin habitats across South Africa, including areas where they were locally extinct such as the Manyoni Private Game Reserve. In February 2025 the APWG set up the Pangalorium, a purpose-built pangolin rehabilitation facility, in the Lapalala Wilderness Reserve in South Africa, with Skinner as its first resident vet. The centre gives specialist care to pangolins rescued from the illegal trade and serves as a base for research and education.

While the APWG was the first pangolin organisation in South Africa, in recent years a wide landscape of other bodies has developed, sharing the load of campaigning, retrieval, rehabilitation and release. The release of each pangolin involves a myriad of people, says Wright.

Action on every level is needed to dismantle the vast pangolin trade networks, adds Wright – everything from raising public awareness to building legal capacity and changing policies around pangolin-related crimes. "The key to saving pangolins species from extinction is collaboration and the sharing of knowledge with other pangolin range states across Africa," she says.

Still, rescuing and rehabilitating pangolins should always form part of pangolin conservation, Wright says. "You cannot conserve a species if there are no individuals left to conserve."

A pup for Ditsi

Ditsi, another pangolin pup, was rescued by South African law enforcement from a trafficker near Vryburg, a town in northwestern South Africa, in 2021. While Ditsi did not have injuries, says Wright, she was extremely traumatised and stressed.

Though Ditsi was shy and scared, she was able to forage when she was taken out for her daily walks, says Wright. Ditsi later joined Stevie at Manyoni Private Game Reserve where she went through the same soft release process of daily foraging walks followed by a safe location to sleep.

"It was a process that was repeated until we were satisfied that she was doing exceptionally well at foraging on her own and displaying natural behaviours," says Wright. "We also wanted to ensure that she had met the right target weight of 6-6.5kg [13-14lb] for release."

A telemetry tag was fitted on Ditsi and she was released in February 2023.

Several pups have now been born from APWG's released, tagged females, says Wright. They include Ditsi. "Two years [after her release], camera traps stationed outside her burrow caught footage of a pup coming out from the burrow with Ditsi. She was now a mum."

Seeing successes like these makes it worth all the work, Kriel says. "Rehabilitating pangolins is very challenging process with many ups and downs and losses. So those that make it back to the wild after all the efforts keep you motivated to continue saving as many of them as you can."

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This fish species survived 100,000 years without males. Scientists thought it should be long dead – but it's thriving

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260601-amazon-molly-the-fish-thats-lived-for-100000-years-without-males, 5 days ago

All-female species have been long thought to be evolutionary dead ends. So how has one remarkable fish survived for 100,000 years without males? The answer is revealing new insights into how nature keeps genomes healthy.

In the rivers of Mexico and southern Texas swims a fish that shouldn't exist. In the warm, slow-moving waters, she drifts among her all-female shoal, her silver scales brushing against males of closely related species. It's here that she selects a mate. But in an unusual evolutionary twist, his genes play no part in her offspring. This is a biological heist known as gynogenesis, in which she uses the male's sperm only to trigger egg development, but quickly discards his DNA. She produces only daughters, each a clone of herself.

This fish is the Amazon molly, named after the all-female warrior tribe in Greek mythology, and it has been puzzling scientists for nearly a century. Evolutionary theory suggests that asexual species should quickly die out, as without sex harmful mutations build up in their genomes over time. But this female-only species has persisted for around 100,000 years. By conventional thinking, it should have been a fleeting blip in the tree of life. Yet, this small, unassuming creature endures.

How has the Amazon molly survived when theory suggests it should be long extinct? As new research starts to unravel this mystery, scientists are finding that asexual species may be more resilient than once thought – challenging the long-held idea that life without sex is doomed to fail.

Why sex matters

To understand why the Amazon molly's survival without sex is so remarkable, it helps to know: why does sex exist at all?

"Sexual reproduction is a pretty weird and complicated way to reproduce, right?" says Edward Ricemeyer, computational biologist at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany, and co-author of the new study on the Amazon molly.

Sex is costly, Ricemeyer explains. Individuals must find and compete for a mate, and each parent contributes only half their DNA. Reproduction is often unequal, with females of many species investing far more energy than males in producing, birthing or incubating, and raising offspring.

Asexual reproduction, by contrast, sounds like a much better deal. No need to find (and deal with) a mate, and you can pass on 100% of your genes. Yet across the tree of life, sex – the mixing and recombination of genes from different individuals – is truly dominant.

"If you look at the overall picture, it's 99.9% sex," says Dave Speijer, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, specialising in the origins of sexual reproduction.

One such reason, Speijer argues, is that sex allows populations to explore the genetic "space of possibilities" more efficiently.

During sexual reproduction, the DNA of two parents is reshuffled through a process called recombination, giving each offspring a unique combination of genes. It's a little like shuffling and dealing out a deck of cards, each reshuffle creating a new hand for evolution to test out. This means there is usually more genetic variety within sexual species, as every individual has a different mix of genes – a unique hand of cards – which is typically beneficial to a species' survival.

Sex also offers protection. Without this genetic reshuffling, genomes face a slow, creeping threat called Muller's ratchet.

When DNA is copied, explains Speijer, "there are always errors". In sexual species, these mistakes can be shuffled out of the gene pool, but in clonal species, they are passed down over and over again. Over time, these harmful mutations are thought to build up like notches on a one-way ratchet – degrading the genome, click by click, until the species goes extinct.

According to this idea, asexual species should be short-lived, doomed to genetic decay. Yet some, like the Amazon molly, not only survive, but thrive.

Speijer thinks part of the confusion could stem from how the theory is interpreted. "Muller's ratchet doesn't say, 'Hey, if you don't have sex, then you'll get mutational meltdown.'" Instead, he argues, it is better understood as a broader constraint on all life. Any system must have a way of managing genetic "mistakes" and sex is just one such strategy.

Seen this way, long-lived asexual species are not necessarily defying evolutionary rules, but finding alternative ways around them. "There are always mechanisms that take care of the mutation rate," says Speijer, even if we do not fully understand them yet.

An 'evolutionary scandal'

The Amazon molly is not alone. Across the animal kingdom, there are several asexual creatures that appear to have persisted longer than theory would predict, from scrub-dwelling stick insects to blob-like "micro-animals".

These species differ from headline-grabbing cases of so-called "virgin births", or parthenogenesis, in which snakes or sharks in captivity reproduce without mates. These are not permanent alternatives to sexual reproduction. When conditions allow, these animals return to sex.

By contrast, the Amazon molly belongs to an exclusive female-only club of species committed to life without fathers, generation after generation. How these long-lived asexuals seem to evade the fate predicted by Muller's ratchet is still debated, but some species appear to have remained genetically healthy for millions of years with no obvious sign of sexual rescue.

Enter the bdelloid rotifer.

"They have been called an evolutionary scandal," says Chiara Boschetti, a leading rotifer expert and zoology lecturer at the University of Plymouth, in the UK.

These blob-like creatures are about the size of a grain of sand, yet are surprisingly complex, with a head, a digestive tract and two tiny toes. Widespread in freshwater environments across the globe, they are part of a small group known as the "ancient asexuals" – animals that have existed for millions of years without reproducing sexually. In the case of the bdelloid, tens of millions of years without males, making the Amazon molly's roughly 100,000-year history look short-lived.

"Frankly, we don't know how they've survived for so long," Boschetti says.

There are clues, though. One of the most unusual of these is their ability to acquire DNA from their environment – a process known as horizontal gene transfer. Unlike most animals, which inherit genes only from their parents, bdelloids "steal" genetic material from entirely unrelated organisms – something usually only seen in simpler forms of life, like bacteria.

But, for Boschetti, that's not the most surprising part. "These horizontally acquired genes are actually being used to survive," she says.

Some are linked to surviving dehydration, others to resisting pathogens. "You can dry them, you can cook them," she says, referring to their remarkable ability to endure extreme and novel conditions, from spaceflight to being frozen for 24,000 years in Siberian permafrost.

But whether this DNA theft is acting like an alternative to the genetic reshuffling of sex is less clear.

"It probably is creating diversity," Boschetti says, but "how much the horizontally transferred genes are helping with asexuality is not quite clear yet".

Horizontal gene transfer alone probably isn't the full story. Boschetti believes bdelloids may be relying on a "mosaic" of mechanisms to keep harmful mutations at bay. Still, after decades of study, they remain something of an evolutionary "black box", she says.

Until recently, the secret to the Amazon molly's longevity was similarly mysterious. Now, a new study has shed light on just how the molly does it.

A 'copy-and-paste' system

"The theory has been missing a piece," says Ricemeyer, who co-authored the study. "And this piece was gene conversion."

Gene conversion is a form of genetic repair, and it's not unique to Amazon mollies. It occurs in many organisms, including humans.

In sexual species like us, each individual usually carries two copies of most genes – one copy from our mother and one from our father. When DNA is damaged, for example by UV radiation, cells can sometimes use one copy of a gene as a template to repair the other. This process, known as gene conversion, is often described as a kind of "copy-and-paste" mechanism. Eventually, it can make two copies of a gene more similar to each other.

In humans and most animals, this mechanism largely acts as a background process quietly fixing DNA damage when it arises. But in the Amazon molly, it appears to play a far more front-and-centre role in maintaining its genome.

Ricemeyer and team used whole-genome sequencing to compare the DNA of Amazon mollies across generations. They observed that sections of the molly's DNA appeared to have been repeatedly "overwritten", not through the genetic reshuffling of sex, but rather by gene conversion acting more frequently in the molly than in most other animals. Here, it appears gene conversion is doing something similar for the molly's genome to what sex does for ours – helping to limit the accumulation of harmful mutations.

To understand how an asexual species could be capable of such extensive gene conversion, it helps to look back at the species' origin.

Like most asexual animals, the Amazon molly arose from a single, chance encounter. Research suggests this event occurred around 100,000 years ago when a female Atlantic molly mated with a male sailfin molly.

Unlike most hybrids, such as mules or ligers, this pairing did not result in infertile offspring. Instead, it produced a lineage capable of reproducing without sex. So now, every Amazon molly carries genetic material from two ancestral species – providing the species with high genetic variation from the outset, a biological headstart against Muller's ratchet.

This dual heritage is likely key to the molly's ability for such comprehensive gene conversion. Because her parent species are fairly closely related, their genes are similar enough to mostly perform the same functions, but different enough to offer a wide range of templates to work with.

What's equally surprising is that this copy-paste process appears to occur more often in some parts of the genome than others.

"The kinds of mutations that you expect to be the worst, the most dangerous, the most deleterious, those are the exact places in the genome where we see gene conversion happening the most often," says Ricemeyer. The result is a species that appears to be in remarkably good genetic health despite 100,000 years without sex.

The implications of this finding reach beyond the Amazon molly. Understanding these alternative strategies for dealing with genetic "mistakes" could have wider implications for human biology. Harmful mutations, after all, are not unique to asexual species.

"Cancer is a disease of mutations," says Ricemeyer. Though he is careful not to overstate the implications of their findings, he says that anything that can further our understanding of genetic mutation – and nature's strategies for dealing with them – will be helpful in the long run.

As for other long-lived all-female species, Ricemeyer believes that gene conversion is "very likely part of the story in other asexually reproducing organisms as well".

Whether the Amazon molly has developed a truly stable alternative to the reshuffling power of sex remains an open question. Scientists still don't know how long gene conversion can keep Muller's ratchet at bay.

But for a fish that evolutionary theory once suggested should not exist, the picture of her genetic health is unexpectedly strong.

"We thought sexual reproduction was the only proper way to keep a genome healthy… But now we found out that no, there's another way too," says Ricemeyer. "There's a different route to the same result."

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Ecologist calls for plastics ban in cemetery

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3r25edye9do, today

An ecologist is calling for a ban on plastic memorials in Kingston Cemetery.

Alison Fure, 68, is petitioning Kingston Council to begin phasing out plastic decorative items, including ornaments, flowers, and windmills, on graves.

Fure, who has lived within walking distance of the cemetery in south-west London for 35 years, said environmental degradation caused by plastics had left the burial ground's ecology "hanging by a thread", and said a change in policy would bring the site in line with other cemeteries in London.

Kingston Council said it would consider the petition once it had closed, and was committed to protecting the cemetery's "vital habitats".

Fure said she regularly went litter picking with her granddaughter in the cemetery, which is classified as a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC).

"The immediate concern is the plastics becoming microplastics. The mowers churn up plastic leaves and petals and it gets embedded over the years," she said.

Elsewhere in the UK, the removal of artificial flowers in graveyards has caused some upset, with families arguing that they relied on the faux blooms if they were unable to visit a relative's grave regularly.

Others have said that plastic flowers are a cheaper alternative that lasts longer, as rabbits and other animals do not eat them.

Fure said Kingston Cemetery, which "should be a place of natural peace, dignity, and reflection", was now home to cellophane wrappers, plastic plant pots, broken ornaments, artificial flowers, windmills and litter.

"You don't want people laying in a landfill site," she said.

"I think the council would be surprised that the situation has gotten so badly out of hand.

"Everyone blames the crows, but after a windy day, the cemetery looks a state."

Fure said she was also concerned about plastics ending up in the Hogsmill River, which borders the southern edge of the site.

"Everything ends up blowing down the bank and into the river," she said.

The ecologist said any plan to remove plastics from the cemetery, including whether children's graves should be included in any ban, was a decision for the council.

A spokesperson for Kingston Council said current regulations restricted plastic fencing and visitors were asked to remove cellophane wrappers from flowers.

"[The council] remains committed to protecting the cemetery's vital habitats.

"At the same time, we remain mindful that visitors often act according to their individual emotional state when commemorating loved ones.

"Once the petition is closed, it will be considered in line with our petition scheme. As part of this process, we will look at strengthening our messaging both on our website and in direct correspondence."

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Mountain path repairs 'first big work' since 1980s

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g4ngxe51zo, yesterday

Repairs along one of England's highest mountains are under way with chiefs describing it as the "first significant work" there since the 1980s.

Swirls Path, at Helvellyn, in the Lake District, is used by large numbers of walkers drawn by its views over Thirlmere.

The Fix the Fells conservation group, which is carrying out the work, warns the area either side of the path is being eroded with vegetation damaged.

In the first stage of a three-year project, rangers are pulling out the old path and replacing sections with wider stone pitching.

Alongside materials recovered from the site that are to be reused, more than 100 tonnes of stone were delivered by helicopter earlier this year in preparation.

Landscaping will also be used as a way to encourage people not to stray from the path.

'Happy balance'

Fix the Fells' partnership manager Isabel Berry said the route's "sloping, slippery surface is currently difficult to walk on" leading people to use the areas at either side.

"There are wide erosion scars either side of the path and soil material is being lost at an alarming rate to surrounding watercourses.

"This work will restore vegetation alongside the path and improve resilience to intense rainfall by stemming the loss of soil into watercourses like Thirlmere."

The first year of work is expected to cost £220,000 and will be paid for through public fundraising.

Ranger Pete Entwistle is one of nine carrrying out the work.

He said the team would be aiming to strike a "happy balance between what is needed to protect the fellside environment and meeting the needs of path users".

Set up 25 years ago, Fix the Fells is a partnership between the National Trust, Lake District National Park, Natural England, Friends of the Lake District and the Lake District Foundation.

Its rangers and volunteers work to repair damage and create sustainable paths across the Lake District with the aim of balancing conservation and public access.

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Council defends delayed opening to splash park

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy429npn957o, yesterday

A splash park "cannot open and shut like a tap", a councillor said, after calls for it to welcome visitors earlier than planned following the warm weather.

The attraction in Verulamium Park, St Albans, is due to open from 8 July despite others already operating in Hertfordshire.

Children used to be able to enjoy themselves from May but Helen Campbell, lead councillor for sport and leisure, parks and parking on St Albans City and District Council, said the delay was down to "severe budget shortfalls".

The Green Party, who set up a petition criticising the decision, said "opening the splash park sooner would be a small investment that could make a big difference to local children."

It said Everyone Active, which runs the splash park on behalf of the council, "recently reported profits of £9m, up by around 50%".

However, Chris Traill, strategic director for community and place delivery, said: "Unfortunately, we cannot open and shut the facility like a tap when the weather perks up outside of the scheduled dates for both operational and financial reasons."

The BBC has approached Everyone Active for a response.

Long-range forecasts from the Met Office and MeteoGroup – the latter being providers of BBC Weather data - suggest the summer ahead will bring the risk of additional heatwaves.

A "few notable high temperature spikes" are also possible according to MeteoGroup.

The council said work to prepare the splash park in St Albans for visitors to cool off from the warm weather takes about a month.

"Before each opening, we are required to test the microbiological quality of the chlorinated water to ensure there are no health risks. This task is undertaken by experts from an external contractor and takes around two weeks," Traill added.

"There is a requirement for the system to be fully operational for a minimum of 14 days prior to opening."

In a social media post, Campbell said discussions have started about the possibility of setting an earlier date for the opening of the splash park next year.

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Residents to challenge solar farm approval in court

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1k2kpk1041o, yesterday

The overturned refusal of a solar farm will be challenged in the High Court, a community group has said.

Back in April, the Planning Inspectorate overruled Durham County Council's decision to turn down the proposal for land near Burnhope, despite hundreds of objections and an appeal.

Community group Keep it Green, which led the 2024 action, said it supported solar energy "in the right place", but could not accept a process which "overrides a community that has already been proved right once in the High Court".

The government has previously said its planning framework ensured renewable energy projects could be built without impacting the environment.

Lightsource bp's proposals will see up to 14 fields overlaid with panels, including areas near a nature reserve.

It has said the scheme had been "carefully" designed to minimise impacts and there were measures to "enhance" the environment.

But some residents said the village had been "betrayed" and warned the development would take away the only flat route out of the uphill village and affect curlew breeding sites.

'Nowhere else to go'

Keep it Green said the site was created 25 years ago by planning conditions, and was promised as "compensation" to the community after being surrounded for years by opencast mining.

"We were promised this landscape back after the opencast. Now we are being asked to give it up again," said Ian Galloway, who leads the community group.

"It is the one safe, level, accessible place left for people here to walk - and for many, with poor health and no car, there is nowhere else to go."

Plans were initially approved by the council in 2023 - a year before Reform took control - but the campaign group won a judicial review, which saw the decision quashed by a high court judge.

An application was resubmitted in 2024 and turned down by the council, but the decision was overturned by the Planning Inspectorate, which said the need to tackle climate change and achieve net zero targets outweighed the concerns.

The leader of the Reform-run local authority Andrew Husband has called on the government to review "overly permissive" planning policy wording after the decision.

Labour North Durham MP Luke Akehurst has also opposed the scheme, saying it was "incredibly unfair" the refusal had been overturned.

"While I recognise the need for solar energy, I do not believe Burnhope is the right location for this type of development, and I will not support it," he said.

"I have made representations to the Secretary of State and will work with Durham County Council and residents to challenge this decision."

Local Labour councillor Alison Gray added losing the only flat walking space for residents would impact negatively on the health and wellbeing of the village.

Keep it Green said the fresh challenge came as the government moves to fast-track major energy schemes and to restrict the grounds on which communities can seek judicial review of planning decisions.

It means solar farms above 100MW in England are now examined directly by the Planning Inspectorate with final decisions made by the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.

The number of attempts at legal challenge against government decisions on major infrastructure projects are also limited to one rather than three for cases deemed by the court as totally without merit.

Although it does not apply to the Burnhope solar farm - which will stand at 49.9MW - the campaigners warned under the reforms, a community like their's might never have had the chance to be heard.

"This is bigger than fourteen fields in County Durham. We exercised a basic democratic right - to ask a court whether a decision was lawful - and we won. If that right is closed off, it can happen anywhere, to anyone," said Kate Palmer from Keep it Green.

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Failing sea defences 'disaster' for nature reserve

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0q2kk4ek8qo, 3 days ago

An internationally-important nature reserve faces "disaster" after being flooded by seawater because of failing coastal defences, conservationists have said.

The 120-hectare (300-acre) Farlington Marshes Nature Reserve near Portsmouth is designated as a Special Protection Area (SPA), Special Area for Conservation (SAC) and Ramsar site.

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust has highlighted a failing tidal valve and crumbling sea wall which are letting salt water flood grazing marshland and wash away birds' nests and reed beds.

The Environment Agency (EA) said it was working to find a permanent fix but estimated it would cost about £90m to replace the entire 2-mile (3.5km) sea defence.

The site is home to bird species including bearded tit, avocet, redshank and lapwing.

Jamie Marsh, director of land management for Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, said: "This is a bit of a disaster", with eight hectares of reed bed already lost.

"We have a tidal flap that's not sealing off properly and we're seeing water flooding into the site.

"The elevated sea levels have flooded out a lot of these areas and consequently flooded out a lot of the nesting areas. So nests have been lost."

Birds have been forced to move to higher ground to renest and rebreed.

The tidal flap first broke in the spring of 2024. A temporary repair was put in place by the EA which is responsible for the sea defences.

Earlier this year, engineers installed a permanent replacement valve but that too has since failed.

Marsh said it had left the situation "back to square one".

"Habitats that were recovering are now back under threat and under pressure again."

Areas of salt marsh and marsh grazing like Farlington are incredibly important and rare habitat in the south of England.

Not only does it provide a unique home for wildlife but coastal fringes act as both a natural flood defence and a carbon sink.

But with rising sea levels due to climate change such sites are getting squeezed out.

Development and hard infrastructure - in Farlington's case, the A27 - means there is nowhere for the marshes to retreat inland. In the future, unless action is taken, there is a real risk they will be lost altogether.

But finding areas of land to recreate lost salt marsh on a large scale is a near impossible task on an already crowded coast line.

Dr Stefanie Carter, coastal eco systems scientist at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, described it as a "declining habitat".

"It is possible to create salt marshes and restore some of the marsh we've lost but it probably won't be possible to do this at the scale."

"It's similar to peatland where in the past they've been regarded as wastelands. In the past they were dried out for agriculture and now they're realising peatlands are really important."

"And it's the same for saltmarshes. We're realising how important they are so we're trying to prioritise restoring them."

Back at Farlington Marshes Nature Reserve, the EA has put in another temporary fix to stop sea water overwhelming the site.

More changes to the water control unit are due to be made later this month.

A statement said: "These sea wall assets are nearing the end of their operational life, and we have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds and officer time in recent years to keep them working until we can find a longer term solution.

"We fully recognise the importance of Farlington Marshes to the community in terms of flood protection, recreation and as a wildlife haven, and remain committed to resolve the issue as quickly as possible."

Costly fuel pushes more Indians to buy electric cars but challenges remain

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx21181yq4no, 3 days ago

Are electric vehicles finally going mainstream in India? A slew of indicators suggests the transition may finally be gathering momentum.

The market for electric cars expanded by a solid 25% in the year ending March 2026, while EVs crossed the important 5% threshold in India's passenger vehicle market earlier this year - a figure often seen as a tipping point for mass-market adoption.

"The transition is no longer directional but substantive," India's automobile dealers association said in a press note recently.

Adoption is accelerating particularly in larger cars priced above one million rupees ($10,481; £7,777), where one in every 10 vehicles sold is now electric. Electric three-wheelers and motorbikes already account for more than 30% and 15% of sales in their respective categories.

Interest in electric cars has spiked sharply in the last few months, particularly against the backdrop of the Middle East conflict.

India imports nearly 90% of its oil, and state-run fuel retailers have been forced to raise pump prices after keeping them relatively stable for four years, as crude prices jumped by 50%.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also urged Indians to car pool, use public transport and work from home to conserve fuel.

"This rising uncertainty, alongside elevated fuel prices, acts as an incremental driver strengthening the case for EVs," says Nomura, the Japanese brokerage.

But beyond these immediate triggers, several longer-term factors are also driving buyer interest, most notably upcoming regulatory norms, known as CAFE-3, which are scheduled to come into force from April next year and run until March 2032.

These "meaningfully tighten regulation and are likely to drive more visible acceleration in EV adoption", Venugopal Garre and Param Shah, analysts with Bernstein, said in a note.

India currently doesn't pair its EV incentives with stringent targets or penalties, something CAFE-3 will make binding, say Garre and Shah.

The draft rules seek to reduce carbon emissions in cars from 113 to 76g/km by 2032 - a 33% drop.

Moreover, unlike in the present scenario where "penalties of about a billion dollars in fines across eight OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) were never collected, CAFE-3 penalties might be", according to Bernstein, all of which will push the case for EVs.

Individual city-states like Delhi - one of the country's most polluted hotspots - have also recently released ambitious draft policies that propose to phase out conventional internal combustion engines and halt registrations of new ICE two and three wheelers by 2027.

Another tailwind will be a "healthy launch pipeline", says Nomura, which expects EV penetration in India's passenger vehicle market to reach 9% by 2030.

In the two-wheeler segment too, demand is expected to be driven by a wave of new affordable models, while EV three-wheelers are projected to outsell non-EV variants by 2030, accelerating the transition.

"India's transition is more concentrated in high-utilisation, cost-sensitive categories such as three-wheelers, suggesting that the adoption curve is likely to be non-linear, with PV and two-wheeler penetration accelerating over time as affordability improves, charging infrastructure expands, and policy support strengthens," Nomura says.

Yet, despite these encouraging signs, India lags behind major global economies in EV adoption.

According to Nomura data, China's EV adoption in passenger cars accelerated sharply from just 5.7% in 2020 to 53.3% last year. EU is at 20% and the US is at 8%.

One of the biggest challenges remains charging infrastructure.

Public charging stations have grown from 2,000 to over 10,000 in the last three years, yet infrastructure is uneven across regions with just four of India's 28 states accounting for over 50% of the chargers.

Moreover, the sheer gap between India and China on charging points is staggering: China has now scaled to 20 million public charging points vs. India's 10,000.

"Range anxiety" - or worries about whether a battery charge will be enough to complete a journey - as a result of charging limitations, remains a key deterrent for consumers, according to Nomura.

The gaps in India's local supply chain are another major point of concern for analysts.

India depends heavily on a global supply of rare earths that go into making batteries. And even though the government has announced a plan to ramp up local production, China controls some 70-80% of lithium and cobalt refining and nearly 90% of rare earth separation, according to KPMG.

These underscore the geopolitical risks to the transition and could both delay "India's EV rollout and affect cost competitiveness", the consultancy said in a recent report.

There are no immediate solutions to the challenge: building an integrated mining to battery pack or magnet manufacturing supply chain can take longer than a decade. India will need a mix of "short-term measures for supply security and long-term initiatives aimed at developing domestic capabilities", KPMG says.

More immediately, though, from a buyer's lens, the timely implementation of CAFE-3 regulations will be a key propellent, Amitabh Kant, former CEO of Niti Aayog, the government's think-tank, wrote recently in the Indian Express newspaper.

Despite being under discussion for three years, the standards still remain tentative, though a final draft is said to be imminent.

"In the absence of regulatory clarity, manufacturers defer investment decisions, supply chains evolve more slowly, and the broader ecosystem remains uncertain," Kant writes, adding that what will drive adoption is certainty of policy.

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Reform council vows to call off climate emergency

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgp77q3dg4o, 4 days ago

The Reform UK administration at Suffolk County Council has said it plans to axe the authority's climate emergency declaration and will review all environmental projects.

The council under Conservative rule declared the emergency in 2019, which meant it would look to reduce its carbon emissions to net zero by 2030.

Leader Michael Hadwen said Reform had "inherited a catalogue of expensive, headline-grabbing environmental schemes" after taking power last month.

Andrew Stringer, leader of the opposition for the Green Party, said the council's net zero policies had actually saved £4m over the last financial year.

In a statement, the council said it would look to formally reverse the declaration of a climate emergency at the next full council meeting on 16 July.

There would also be a council-wide audit of all environmental schemes across the authority to ensure they "demonstrate clear benefits, practical outcomes, or real savings in order to continue".

If they do not, the council says they will be stopped and money reinvested elsewhere.

"Our job is simple - spend Suffolk taxpayers' money wisely and deliver real results for our residents," said Hadwen.

"Suffolk has fantastic landscapes, strong farming roots and outstanding local food. That's our real environment and I want to make sure we look after it properly and improve it where we can."

Stringer said: "We are appalled at the news that Reform UK have decided to reverse the climate emergency and review the council's environmental policies."

He said that without schemes setting the council on a path to net zero, council taxes would have been increased more than they did.

Net zero refers to a state in which the greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere are balanced out by those also removed.

The Climate Change Committee, which advises the UK and devolved governments, says achieving net zero is more cost-effective for the economy than continued reliance on fossil fuels.

Reaching net zero CO2 emissions is also essential to limit global warming, according to the United Nation's climate body.

Richard Rout, leader of the Suffolk Conservative Group, said: "You don't have to call it an 'emergency' to take it seriously but you certainly shouldn't spend your first weeks in office pretending it's less serious than it is.

"By their own test, that a scheme must show clear benefits or real savings, the council's energy efficiency programme, which we refined in January of this year, passes comfortably.

"So what, precisely, are they cutting? The answer appears to be nothing."

The Reform-led councils in Essex and Norfolk have announced similar moves against net zero schemes.

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'Mornings and nights no longer exist' at 47C: A day in the hottest place in India

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmp0krp98ro, 5 days ago

By 6am, the sun over Banda had already forgotten it was morning.

The light had the hard glare of a summer afternoon. Shadows were shrinking before breakfast.

In May, this dusty district in India's Uttar Pradesh state spent days at the top of an unenviable national ranking: the hottest place in the country. Temperatures hovered at 47-48C (116-118F) for more than a week, an extraordinary run even by local standards.

Yet what was striking was the way in which people adapted. Banda's more than two million residents - many dependent on farming, construction, transport and other outdoor work - had little option but to endure the heat. They were rearranging their lives around it.

Thirty kilometres from the district headquarters, the vegetable market at Atarra was already winding down before most cities had properly woken up. Farmers arrived at dawn with tomatoes, gourds, chillies, lemons and melons. Everyone wanted to sell their wares quickly and get home before the heat intensified.

"Look at the sun," said Himanshu, a trader standing beside crates of tomatoes. "It's only 6.15am, but it feels like 8-9am."

The heat was shortening the life of his produce as surely as it was shortening the market day. "A box of tomatoes must be sold today or tomorrow. In this weather they won't last."

Where trading once bustled until late morning, activity now faded by 8am. By 10am, the market was almost deserted.

The same compressed timetable governs almost everything in Banda. Between the blazing sky and the scorched ground, people do what Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński once observed in another furnace-hot landscape in Africa: devote their energies to "the search for shade and a breeze".

Pappu Verma, a mason, now works from 7am until noon, then again from 4pm until 7pm. The four hours in between are spent waiting for the worst of the heat to pass.

"You still have to complete eight hours," he said. "Whether you work continuously in the sun or stop and start, the pay is the same." The break saves him from headaches and heat sickness, but stretches his day to 12 or 13 hours. "Otherwise," he shrugged, "whatever I earn would be spent on medicines."

Around 2pm one day last week, when Banda's temperature touched 46C, three women road workers crouched beneath a water tanker on a highway bridge over the Ken river, eating lunch in the sliver of shade cast by its chassis.

One of them, Shanti Devi, walked six kilometres to work every morning and six kilometres back. Her lunch was bread with onion, salt and pickle. "If we bring vegetables, they'll spoil by noon," she said.

Then she offered a sentence that could serve as the motto of Banda's heatwave. "Poor people don't have the luxury of worrying about the heat."

Their refuge above the Ken was fitting. The river lies at the heart of Banda's struggle with heat. Researchers say sand mining and groundwater depletion have weakened its ability to cool the surrounding landscape, creating a vicious cycle in which water scarcity and extreme temperatures reinforce one another.

The heat's economic effects are visible everywhere.

E-rickshaw drivers find afternoons barren of passengers. Shopkeepers open before sunrise and shut between noon and 4pm. Customers have halved. Entire towns retreat indoors during the fiercest hours, emerging again only in the evening.

Mobile phones buzz repeatedly with government alerts warning of severe heatwave conditions. Stay alert, stay cautious, the messages warn.

Local hospitals are seeing a steady stream of heatwave patients. "Since the heat intensified, we have been getting 15-20 cases a day, mostly children and the elderly," said K Kumar, chief medical superintendent of the Women's District Hospital. "The most common symptoms are diarrhoea, vomiting and fever."

Banda's ordeal is a local expression of a broader trend. Across India, heat is increasingly arriving not merely as high temperatures but as a combination of heat and humidity that places greater stress on the human body.

The Indo-Gangetic Plain, which stretches across much of northern India and includes Uttar Pradesh, is regarded by climate researchers as one of the world's emerging hotspots for dangerous humid heat.

A dense population, extensive irrigation, abundant moisture and large numbers of outdoor workers combine to create conditions in which even routine labour can become risky.

Uttar Pradesh is especially vulnerable because of its vast exposed population, dependence on outdoor work and limited access to cooling for millions of households, according to think-tank Climate Trends.

Scientists say the region's geography and development choices have combined to make matters worse.

Banda sits near the Tropic of Cancer, a latitude associated with some of the world's most intense summer heat. Rivers run low, exposing beds of sand, stone and gravel that absorb and radiate heat. Concrete has replaced vegetation.

Tree cover has fallen far below recommended levels. Research by Banda University of Agriculture and Technology found that nearly one-sixth of the district's dense forest cover disappeared between 1991 and 2022, largely due to mining and agricultural expansion.

Together, these factors have made Banda increasingly vulnerable to extreme heat.

According to Dinesh Sah, a meteorologist at the university, the district has seen temperatures of 48-49C before. In 2024, the mercury touched 49C on two consecutive days.

But what made this summer's episode unusual was its persistence. "For eight or nine days, temperatures of 47-48C continued without a break," he said. "That is what was new."

Prem Singh, a local farmer, says the annual spell of extreme heat in the region is nothing new and is essential for crops. What worries him is its growing intensity. He blames shrinking tree cover, extensive mining, rising fossil-fuel use and the spread of air-conditioning.

"This has made life harder for the poor while the well-off haven't been affected as much."

The heat lingers long after sunset.

"It feels as if mornings and nights no longer exist," said Sah.

By 7am or 8am in the morning it already feels like afternoon. Overnight temperatures remain around 30C. The result is a population that never fully cools down.

In Achharaund village, 20km from Banda town, the struggle is less about temperature than water.

A single well supplies much of the village's usable drinking water. Every day, women queue with buckets beneath a white-hot sky.

Kranti Vishwakarma, 18, spends four or five hours fetching water for her household. When there are power cuts in the afternoon, relief comes from the shade of a neem tree.

"We don't have coolers or air-conditioners," she said. "For us, the neem trees play that role."

Nearby, an 80-year-old woman named Chunubadi sat beside a repaired table fan held together with string and improvisation. The fan worked, but only just. It blew air that was dry and relentlessly hot.

"The sweat dries," she said, watching the blades turn, "but these gusts are hard for an old body to bear." Then came a darker reflection. "In my 80 years, I've never seen heat like this. Old people die in extreme cold or extreme heat. I don't know whether I'll be able to endure this one."

Across the village, animals were coping in their own way. Around noon, dozens of buffaloes stood in a pond. Some shepherds were waiting for them to come out.

There we met 60-year-old Rameshwar Yadav, a former private-school teacher who now reared buffaloes for a living. Curiously, he was dressed in heavy clothes more suited to winter than a 46C summer day, with a shawl wrapped around his head.

"We wear thick clothes because they slow the sun's heat from reaching the body," he said. "Heavy fabric protects us from the sun and the hot winds. Yes, it makes us sweat, but it also keeps us from falling ill."

Like everyone else in Banda, Yadav had adapted. But adaptation and relief are not the same thing.

On Friday, a western disturbance finally brought dust storms and rain. Temperatures dropped by 8-9 degrees. The district breathed again.

But the respite was temporary. The routines Banda's residents have developed - starting work before sunrise, retreating indoors at midday, seeking shade wherever they can find it - are increasingly becoming necessities rather than adaptations.

Research by Piyush Narang and Ashok Gadgil of the University of California, Berkeley, estimates that Uttar Pradesh could account for more than 8,000 excess deaths during a severe five-day heatwave, more than many other Indian states. The burden falls disproportionately on the elderly, outdoor workers and households without reliable access to cooling.

Yet Banda's residents sound less alarmed than many climate scientists.

They have lived with heat for generations. What worries researchers is not that the district is hot, but that it is becoming hotter, for longer, in a landscape losing the trees and water that once helped keep temperatures in check.

The road workers sheltering beneath a tanker had shrugged off the danger.

"You'll get heatstroke," they warned a visitor. "We're used to it."

The Amazon's 'lost city' has been widely misunderstood. This is its true story

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260529-the-real-story-of-the-amazons-lost-city, 7 days ago

This sprawling ancient metropolis in the jungle of Ecuador has revealed a unique form of urbanism found only in the Amazon. Sofia Quaglia visits the site for the story of this mysterious civilisation.

Archaeologist Alden Yépez hikes through a field of bright green grass, swinging his rusty machete left and right to carve a path in the shoulder-height tropical pasture. He's following his handheld GPS device with a certain haste: we must make it out of the grassland before sundown. At this pace, though, it takes just a swift 30 minutes to emerge from the body-slamming vegetation.

"We're here," he says, panting. He and I are now surrounded by small, steep hills forming something like a labyrinth around us. Once inside the system of formations, its man-made nature becomes clearer – amongst the tall grass there is a deep, long path and eight mounds organised in a geometrical pattern. One hill has a path sliced through it, and I see its interior of stratified mud with different shades of bright brown.

Yépez is an expert in ancient Amazonia from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Ecuador (Puce), and this is what is known as the Huapula Site. It is one of the densest networks of man-made mounds yet found inside Ecuador's so-called "lost city" of the Amazon – a sprawling system of dozens of such clusters.

Local archaeologists have known of some of these formations for 50 years, but the sheer scale of this 3,000-year-old urban landscape has only recently surfaced thanks to new mapping technology.

The discovery has helped upend the long-held idea that ancient Amazon-dwellers were only small groups of nomadic hunter-gatherers: instead reinforcing the theory that they were likely organised into sophisticated civilisations capable of creating complex urban networks.

However, as we learn more about these connected mounds, it's becoming clear they were not "cities" in the classical sense we understand them today, but rather a kind of urbanism unique to the Amazon jungle: low-density and multicentric, harnessing the strengths and weaknesses of the surrounding forest.

What is still unclear, though, is how and why this intricate world was made – and what will happen to it now that it's been discovered.

The urban Amazon

It was after a tip from a friend that Jesuit priest Pedro Porras started studying the first earthen platforms of Huapula in the valley of the Upano River of eastern Ecuador.

In 1978, under the shadow of the gurgling Sangay volcano, Porras spent more than 200 days digging up 15 different areas of the valley. One of his most famous excavation areas in the Huapula site is where he sliced open a large central mound to see the stratification of mud – the one Yépez and I walked through.

In the 1990s, archaeologists began to expand on his work with other small, scattered excavations and preliminary attempts at mapping. Then, in July 2015, the Ecuadorian National Institute for Cultural Heritage (INPC) decided to map a 600 sq km (230 sq mile) area using light detection and ranging (Lidar) technology.

Technicians working for INPC flew over the valley in an aeroplane, shooting millions of laser pulses to the ground. Lidar uses ultra-thin light beams that seep through tiny gaps in foliage, bounce off the soil, and return reams of data that can be used to make intricate 3D maps of the ground.

It is several recent analyses of this data, released around a decade after these scans were first made, which have revealed that Porras' preliminary discoveries were part of a much larger picture than was previously appreciated.

The site contains a massive, sprawling network of almost 7,500 man-made structures, according to one of these analyses, published in 2023 by experts commissioned by the INPC. These include over 5,000 earthen platforms, around 1,500 hills and hundreds of rounded mounds, plaza-like areas, terraces and paths, roads, ditches and drainages.

The platforms were connected by trenches and roads and their use may have changed throughout the seasons, according to another analysis of the same data by French researchers in 2024.

A further team of archaeologists in Ecuador, led by Yépez, has created a publicly-available 3D mapping of the sites and is working on further analyses.

The ancient Amazonian inhabitants, it seems, were making huge, sophisticated urban areas, shaping the forest floor's mud to make hills and mounds atop of which to live on and congregate, as well as roads and potentially rivers to connect them.

A sprawling network

"It's pure compacted earth that they shaped, oriented and positioned," says Rita Litben, an independent researcher based in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and part of the two-person team commissioned by INPC to first analyse its data. "We're talking about natural elements that they modified into massive earthworks."

For centuries, it was assumed that before the 15th-Century arrival of the Spanish in Latin America, the Amazon's geography and climate meant it could only host small, scattered populations of hunter-gatherers. This was crystalised in the now-discredited theory of environmental determinism, popularised in the 1950s and 1960s by American archaeologist Betty Meggers, which said that the harsh and hot tropical climate of the Amazon would naturally undermine human progress.

But the recent Upano Valley findings add to a growing body of research using Lidar – with studies conducted in Brazil, Colombia and more – suggesting that the Amazon has actually long been the home of budding sophisticated civilisations systematically changing their landscape to fit their social needs.

"In light of this new technology, we have to rethink Amazonian settlements, we need to reconsider our perspective on what Amazonian populations really were," says Litben.

The platforms throughout the networks are mostly organised in patterns of three to six units around a plaza-like space, often with another platform in the middle, the various analyses of the INPC data note.

Most of these mounds – tolitas or montículos, as they are called by locals – are about 2-3m (7-10ft) tall and rectangular shaped, with sides around 10m (33ft) by 20m (66ft). The Amazonian civilisations likely lived on top of these smaller mounds, researchers suggest, because that's where archaeologists have found small remnants of everyday life objects like jars, grinding stones and cooked seeds.

But some networks are made up of much larger platforms, taller than 4.5m (15ft), sometimes even reaching 8m (26ft) and measuring as much as 40m (130ft) by 140m (500ft). This is where the Amazonians likely performed some form of ceremonial functions, the researchers suggest, because archaeologists have not found much trace of human activity or food.

"Lots of people were needed to create those platforms, there were many people living there, many people working, and many people transforming the jungle," says Alejandra Sánchez Polo, an archaeologist at the Universidad de Valladolid in Spain and the other co-author of the INPC analyses.

Several of the experts are now trying estimate possible population sizes – working backwards from the mounds and calculating how much soil each person could have transported per day to make so many of them. Nobody feels comfortable putting a number on it yet though.

"It was a big surprise to see the extension of these cities," says Stéphen Rostain, a longtime Upano archaeologist and director of investigation at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. "Some say 10,000, 30,000, 100,000, but I cannot say anything without serious data that can prove it."

An 'almost perfect' checkerboard

Rostain's work suggests that the mound networks were interconnected by a sophisticated road system. The dug paths were anywhere between 2-15m (7-49ft) wide and 5m (16ft) deep. They could run as long as 25km (16 miles) and may have connected the networks to other communities in the valley, likely for trade.

The roads are also surprisingly straight, despite the natural irregularities of the terrain. "We never imagined before that it was possible to get such a large site organised in a checkerboard, it is almost perfect," says Rostain.

Rostain suggests there were also agricultural fields extending over hundreds of square metres in geometrical plot systems with intertwined small drainage canals and terraces.

In the highly fertile soil of the area, the Amazonians cultivated maize, beans, manioc and sweet potato, according to his examination of starch grains found in uncovered ancient potteries. They drank chicha, a fermented maize drink still popular today, and, given how many fragments of drinking bowls Rostain has uncovered in his years excavating the surrounding Upano areas, he speculates that collective drinking ceremonies were likely very common.

"The Amazon was not the end of the civilisation, it was the cradle of civilisation," says Rostain.

Don't call them 'cities'

Rostain's paper on the Upano Valley made a massive media splash when it was published in 2024. But it also received some criticism for possible inaccuracies, especially by Yépez's team, and for not adequately crediting the work of Litben and Sánchez-Polo, among other things.

Rostain fervently rebukes Yépez's teams' criticisms and says he didn't know about the INPC-commissioned analysis by Litben and Sánchez-Polo (which was published in Spanish) while writing his own.

The wide-spanning news coverage saw Upano Valley's earthen formations garner the nickname of the "lost cities of the Amazon" and the journal Science featured Rostain's paper on its front cover with the words "lost city". But the designation left some experts uneasy. In a 2025 paper, Kathryn Reese-Taylor, an anthropologist at University of Calgary in Canada, examined the way the media has overhyped several Lidar findings, including those in Upano Valley.

The word "lost", she notes, implies something is "no longer known" or "ruined or destroyed". But locals and local archaeologists knew and studied the mounds well before the new Lidar work, albeit not fully grasping the scale of their networks. Comparisons with Rome, reported in media including the BBC, she writes, impart a grandiosity on the findings, noting its size "hardly compares with Rome".

Rostain for his part insists his research never drew comparisons with Rome or described the discovery as a "lost city".

Some even argue calling the Upano Valley's network of mounds a "city" could be doing it a disservice.

"They're kind of like the alter ego of European city-based urbanism, in the sense they're multicentric, low density, and so… a form of urbanism without cities," says Michael Heckenberger, an anthropologist at the University of Florida. Heckenberger was not involved in the Upano Valley studies but researches Amazon urbanism in Brazil and has popularised the terms "garden cities" and "galactic urbanism".

"All of a sudden, the Amazon is showing us an alternative form of urbanism that isn't, you know, in an evolutionary sense beneath European cities, it's a different type of urbanism, equally complex," he says. Heckenberger notes, though, that Upano Valley lies very close to the Andes and has a unique topography, so shouldn't be touted as a model of all Amazonian urbanism.

And there is still plenty left to uncover about how this ancient urbanism may have worked.

An unfinished puzzle

In the car ride between visits to the mounds, Jonathan Panimboza Deleg, a geographical and environmental engineer analysing the data on Yépez's team at Puce, shows me a live 3D render of the Upano Valley on his computer. Pointing to a cluster of small pyramid shapes, he says they could be montículos, but the Lidar data isn't complete enough to tell just yet. He says as many as 90% of these data points are still unclassified and could reveal even more segments of the network.

The current results also represent only part of the full Upano system, with only half of the area scanned by the INPC studied so far. Rostain says the INPC has released the remaining data to him, which he'll use to expand his 2024 analysis over the larger territory.

Yépez and Panimboza Deleg have another theory about what the mounds and plazas of the Upano valley were additionally used for: water management.

On one of my days out with them looking for montículos hidden in the tall grasses, the rain drenched us non-stop for hours, with rivulets sweeping under our rubber boots and the mud coming up to my knees. This climate is why the two researchers theorise that the networks of mounds may have actually been designed as "osmotic cities". Rather than roads, many of the trenches could have been drainage canals that would fill up like rivers and channel the water according to the society's needs during the periods of heavy rain. The plazas may have been water reservoirs, Yépez adds.

This theory would be "even more of a testament to how skilled the Amazonian people were at adapting", says Yépez. His research team is now working to corroborate this hypothesis.

Rostain, however, calls this theory "ridiculous" and unfounded – while the climate was humid and wet, he says, this was not to a problematic extent, and there was no obvious need for massive water‑management systems.

Who built these cities?

It's still unclear when these mounds were first created. In interviews, the French team, the INPC-commissioned team and the Ecuadorian team led by Yépez all tentatively suggest around 3,000 to 2,500 years ago.

Crucially, it's also unknown whether the mounds were all built and inhabited at the same time. Lidar provides a flattened screenshot of what structures remain now; it doesn't tell us when they were made or how long they were used for. If they were all built and inhabited simultaneously, it would mean the civilisation was large, highly sophisticated and likely organised with some form of management structure. Building them slowly, a few at a time, would have required far less organisation and a smaller workforce.

It's also not known whether the settlements had a large permanent residential population or was more about large numbers of people coming and going for ceremonial activities, for instance, says Yépez.

He suggests the structures could have been made to mimic hummocks: small, natural deposits formed from the debris of the nearby Sangay volcano. He thinks the Amazonians likely first used the hummocks as platforms for their homes and then decided to try to replicate them as their populations grew. "They were looking for the most optimal in natural landforms," says Yépez.

Other researchers have examined the extent to which the ancient Amazonians cut down or built around the forest, and how much they farmed the land around them. "These forests can heal themselves remarkably quickly, which is why it's quite difficult to tell where people have been in the past," says Mark Bush, a palaeoecologist from Florida Institute of Technology. The Upano valley vegetation we see today, he says, comes from changes in the past 200 or 300 years, not ancient times.

Exactly what type of society lived on these mounds and what their culture was like also remains a mystery.

"Little has been done in terms of more anthropological questions," says Florencio Delgado, a professor of anthropology at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito who is among the Ecuadorian team now studying the montículos. It could be theorised that to move these massive amounts of soil, there must have been some top-down management, a plan and some form of chiefdom, he says.

"There are still a lot of things missing in the picture,” says Delgado. One glaring problem is that there are barely any traces of the humans who actually lived there. Excavations in the area are yet to find any burial grounds, or any skeletons at all. "One of the most important questions for me is, where are the people?" says Delgado.

Not so 'lost' after all

In the "lost city" rhetoric that has enveloped this Amazonian urbanism, the mound networks are often described as if they were hidden from the world, far away from civilisation, shrouded under the thick humid canopy of the jungle, where no one would have ever found them.

That’s not accurate, though. Like in ancient times, much of the Upano Valley is currently settled by humans.

While the montículo complexes are officially under the protection of the INPC, many are on people's private land. To access the mounds while on our archaeological explorations, we had to ask local farmers for permission to hike their grounds, dodge their cows and jump over their electrified fences.

Some farmers are upset that they cannot properly sow their land and routinely attempt to destroy the montículos on their soil, according to Carmen Quito, who manages the 1,450 hectares (3,580 acres) of farmland area which enclose the Huapula complex. But other locals, Quito included, are proud of the archaeological discoveries and work hard to protect them.

In Morona, a province with jurisdiction over more than 5,300 of the mounds catalogued so far, a group of seven local history buffs have started an independent, volunteer warden programme to safeguard the mounds. A motley crew – a data scientist, an architect, a tourism guide and a designer, among others – they call themselves the Guardians of Patrimonies. Since summer 2025, they have worked to systematically report any mound destruction to authorities, educate local landowners on the history of the mound network and organise tours for curious newcomers.

More like this:

• Why pink dolphins are the Amazon's 'great thieves'

• The 'dark earth' revealing the Amazon's secrets

• Meet the all-female patrol guarding Ecuador's Amazon Rainforest

In Pablo Sexto, a town in the province, a small archaeological park has been built to celebrate its mounds. Situated right by the town's central square, it contains three big ancient mounds beside large white plastic letters spelling the word tolitas and signposts with historical information.

Yajaira Ramón Rodas, the town's mayor, says she believes that in time the tolitas will bring benefits to the area's present-day residents. "[W]e always say to our citizens, 'Here you are going to have something of great value.'"

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When rockets go wrong – protecting the environment from catastrophe

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240627-the-environmental-cost-of-rocket-launches, 8 days ago

Space launches are increasing and the rockets are getting bigger. But there can be some major environmental costs when things don't go to plan.

When SpaceX's Starship slowly hauled itself off the launchpad and into the Texas skies on 20 April 2023, few people expected the maiden flight of the world's most powerful rocket to last as long as it did.

Applause broke out among the crowds lining nearby roads as Starship cleared the tower and its 33 engines blasted it into a cloudless sky. Then – three minutes and 57 seconds into its planned 90-minute flight – the spacecraft exploded, plunging back into the sea in a rain of debris. Engineers at SpaceX described the explosion as "a rapid unscheduled disassembly"; SpaceX owner Elon Musk said it was "exciting". The mission was declared a success.

It was certainly exciting and, from an engineering perspective, most definitely a success. Starship pushes the boundaries of rocket technology and, after its latest June 2024 flight, the spacecraft is considered by some to be well on its way to becoming a viable means of sending satellites, and one day people, into orbit and beyond to the Moon. But once the live coverage of the first flight had ended, engineers made a shocking discovery: the launch had not only destroyed the launcher but also the launchpad itself.

It also flung material far across the surrounding area. With the recent catastrophic explosion of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket during a routine test of its engines on 28 May 2026, new questions are being asked about the environmental impact of space rocket launches when they go horribly wrong.

SpaceX's launch site at Boca Chica is on the southern border of the United States, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. The company launches to the east to gain the benefit of the Earth's rotation, with the added advantage that any rocket debris falls into the ocean (though what effect these rocket crashes have on the marine environment are largely unknown). The area is surrounded by state parks and national wildlife refuge lands – an important area for protected plants and migratory birds.

When the engines on the launcher ignited in April 2023, the pad was enveloped in a cloud of dust and smoke. This concealed an explosive plume of debris – the rocket burned a crater in the structure and sent sand, soil, chunks of metal and concrete flying through the air to land up to 10km (6.2 miles) away.

Fortunately, no-one was injured but remote cameras captured some of the damage, local public radio reported "ash" falling on nearby communities and, later, that the surrounding conservation areas were strewn with wreckage. The fallout was officially documented by the government's US Fish and Wildlife Service and Starship was grounded.

Before the launch, SpaceX had agreed to adhere to tight environmental conditions and had tested the launch pad with the rocket bolted down and the engines fired, but not at full thrust. In a post on X after the launch, Musk admitted that a "massive water-cooled steel plate" intended to go under the rocket at lift-off was not ready in time.

The company has since rebuilt the launchpad to an improved design. But the explosion highlighted what appears to be a growing concern among environmental groups. With the number of objects launched into space growing every year – now reaching into the thousands – and with new launchers being developed, many environmental organisations are concerned about the unintended impact of rocket technology. Particularly when things go wrong.

"It's hard to watch these huge explosions," says Sarah Gaines Barmeyer, deputy vice president of conservation programmes at the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) in the US. "The amount of environmental destruction they cause with the debris, and the potential for fires, air and water pollution – we would like to see more security and testing before we're launching spaceships near protected areas."

In the aftermath of the explosion at Boca Chica, several conservation groups filed a legal claim against government regulators for allowing the launch. The NPCA, meanwhile, is warning of the wider risk to seashore areas. It is currently campaigning against the development of a commercial launch site on the coast in the state of Georgia near a protected wilderness. The group is also among those concerned about expansion plans at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Although the exact extent of the pollution thrown out at Cape Canaveral by Blue Origin's rocket explosion in May 2026 has still to be examined, initial reports indicated it had destroyed its launchpad and damaged several nearby buildings. Potentially hazardous debris from the rocket is thought to have been thrown into the ocean and is expected to wash ashore in the coming days, according to the company.

Famous as the base for Nasa launches, the US Department of the Air Force is currently assessing the environmental impact of building a new launchpad at Cape Canaveral for Starship, and has recently held a series of public meetings in the area to gauge local opinion. One of the proposed sites for the rocket would involve redeveloping an existing launchpad but the other – a potentially more controversial plan – would mean building an entirely new one nearer to the perimeter.

"These places are used to the impacts from the space industry," says Barmeyer. "But what we're seeing right now with new proposals is that they're starting to get closer and closer to protected areas, and that's what we have concerns about."

The cape is surrounded by internationally important plants and wildlife, including the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge – one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world.

"[The cape] has approximately 1,133 species of plants, 141 species of fish, 74 amphibians and reptiles, 318 birds and 29 different mammals within its boundaries," says Don Dankert, who heads the environmental management team at Nasa's Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. "Twenty-one of these species are federally protected, such as manatees, sea turtles and American bald eagles."

Nasa has been monitoring the impacts of launches from the area for more than 40 years, beginning with the early flights of the Space Shuttle. In a statement, Nasa told the BBC that after 135 launches over a 30-year period, the primary impacts were "the accumulation of aluminium particulates, damage to vegetation and temporarily reduced pH in adjacent waters".

Nasa attributes these effects to the propellant burned in the Shuttle's solid rocket boosters, and says similar results were recorded after the November 2022 launch of Artemis (which uses the same solid rocket technology). The agency says it also monitors water, air quality and that the "acute impacts of space shuttle launches to wildlife populations were minimal".

"All vehicles used in Nasa launches are tested extensively before they're allowed to depart," says Dankert. "Part of that process is ensuring that environmental impacts from these launches are minimal and will not cause long-term damage to the ecosystem."

The same cannot be said for the Russian equivalent – the world's first spaceport at Baikonur in Kazakhstan. A cautionary tale of unregulated space ambition, vast areas of the flat steppe have been poisoned by carcinogenic fuel that spilled out of discarded rockets (you can read more about it here).

It could, in fact, be argued that locating the Cape Canaveral launch complex where it is has actually helped to preserve the environment. Much of the nearby Florida coast has been overdeveloped with hotels, restaurants and apartments – the epitome of "paving paradise to put up a parking lot", as Joni Mitchell once sang – but because of security concerns and the risk of explosions, no-one can build too close to the launch site.

Meanwhile, at Kourou in French Guiana, the European Space Agency (Esa) is preparing for the maiden launch of its own giant rocket, Ariane-6 (I wrote about the project here when I visited in 2018). The 650 sq km (251 sq mile) European spaceport is located just north of the equator, and is bordered by mangrove swamps and surrounded by tropical rainforest, home to a rich biodiversity of plants and animals including jaguars – the world's third-largest species of cat and considered a "near threatened" species.

"It's very well preserved," says Luce Fabreguettes, head of infrastructure for Esa's space transport directorate. "[Within the spaceport perimeter] there is no farming, so no chemicals or pesticides, and hunting within the area is banned."

The spaceport is constantly monitored for air, soil and water quality with measures in place around buildings and infrastructure to protect wildlife. A recent solar farm, for instance, has been built with a fence that has holes for frogs to pass through. But, just as with Cape Canaveral, when it comes to the impact of launches, they have also recorded heightened levels of aluminium and acidity from the exhaust of solid rockets.

"There is very little impact, it's very transitory and only extends to around 500m (1,650ft) around the launch site," says Fabreguettes.

The final assembly of the first Ariane 6 is taking place at the launchpad in preparation for a July launch. As Musk will doubtless testify, when it comes to maiden flights, failure is always an option. And veterans of the Esa launch programme will certainly be nervous.

The first Ariane 5 rocket launched in June 1996 lasted just 39 seconds before exploding, the result of a software bug. While expectations remain high for the flight of its successor, mission planners have already worked through worst-cast scenarios. As well as only launching with a wind direction to carry debris out to sea, if the rocket disintegrates, it is designed to come apart in small pieces to minimise damage when they hit the ground.

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From the first images of our fragile blue green planet from space, to today's satellites that monitor our weather and changing climate, space has transformed our view of the Earth's environment. But unchecked development of spaceports or a rush to develop new launch systems without considering the impact of failure risk undermining that effort.

Barmeyer is, nevertheless, optimistic: "We do really believe that we can find a balance here and that the industry and conservation can exist side-by-side."

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Chile's Atacama Desert is one of the darkest places on Earth. But now the light is intruding

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260528-the-battle-for-darkness-in-chiles-atacama-desert, 9 days ago

This remote desert in South America is one of the best places in the world for astronomy, but the slow encroachment of artificial light threatens that. It is a sign of just how inescapable light pollution now is.

It's 2:00 in Chile's Atacama Desert, and I wake up in the dark. Inside my room, it's the kind of black where you don’t know if your eyes are open or shut. I reach for my phone, hoping for some light to orient myself. But then I remember where I am.

Instead, I edge towards my room's back door, which leads directly out onto the desert floor. My feet step from smooth tiles to the crunch of dry rock and sand. Outside the landscape is silent, but the stars above are incandescent – the sky is nothing short of complete.

Here, in this wilderness, keeping the lights off has spectacular rewards.

"There are very few places on Earth with these conditions," says Itziar de Gregorio-Monsalvo, a senior astrophysicist with the European Southern Observatory in Chile. Astronomers like her flock to this remote part of the Atacama Desert precisely for the view I'm enjoying.

But every year, artificial light from nearby cities, industrial complexes and mining operations are clouding the sky. Researchers are fighting to preserve the view, but unless something changes, one of the last places on Earth untainted by human light pollution may soon become too bright for new discoveries.

What's at stake is our understanding of the Universe itself.

When I look skywards where I live in London, the artificial glow of millions of lightbulbs hangs over the city, obscuring all but the brightest stars. But in the Atacama Desert, the night sky is more dense and vivid than I have ever seen.

I'm visiting Paranal, an astronomical base operated by the European Southern Observatory (Eso), which is home to some of the world's most advanced ground-based telescopes. With clear skies and minimal light, its position in the sparsely populated Atacama Desert provides the perfect setting for professional astronomy.

Looking up, I see the pale, white stripe of the Milky Way daubed on a canvas of dazzling points. Remarkably, I also spy two splodges of green that I assumed would be impossible to perceive with the naked eye: the Magellanic clouds – a pair of dwarf galaxies. They are so far away that some of their light has travelled across the cosmos for approximately 200,000 years.

While that light was still 200 years from reaching Earth, Lord Byron published his gloomy, apocalyptic poem Darkness, a nightmare vision of a world with no light at all. "The bright Sun was extinguished," he wrote, "and the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space". He feared a Universe of total darkness. Two centuries later, we've built the opposite problem.

Every year, artificial lighting from outside Paranal has been creeping ever-closer. Here, the dark is precious – and endangered.

The battle against encroaching artificial light in the Atacama is a microcosm of a global problem. As electric bulbs have proliferated, around 80% of Earth's population now lives under light-polluted skies. A recent study of star visibility found that, on average globally, the sky brightened due to light pollution by almost 10% a year between 2011-2022. If a person could see 250 stars at the start of the period, the researchers found, they would only spot 100 by the end.

Psychologists have suggested that disappearing stars could worsen mental wellbeing, by removing a long-term human connection to the natural world. And ecologists have shown that when artificial light tricks animals and plants into believing it is daytime, it can affect their behaviour and physiology, disrupting ecosystems. For these reasons, some researchers argue that excess light should now be classified as a "hard" pollutant alongside chemical pollution of air or water.

In short, a lighter world is not necessarily a brighter one.

The first warnings came from astronomers as far back as the 1970s when researchers in California in the US realised that San Francisco's lights would cloud their telescope observations. At the time, astronomers predicted that an increase in night-sky brightness of 10% above the natural level would severely impact ground-based astronomy.

By 2022, two-thirds of the world's major telescopes had surpassed this critical threshold.

"Astronomical observatories can be seen as the proverbial canary in a coal mine," the researchers behind this finding warned. "If we are not able even to keep the canary alive, then we can forget being able to solve the problem of light pollution as a global environmental issue."

Their study showed that one of those few astronomical sites still below the 10% limit was the Atacama Desert.

In the dark

Sited amidst the last refuge of darkness in a luminous world, Eso's Paranal observatory – operated by a consortium of European member states – hosts several world-class instruments for observing the cosmos. These include the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and its bigger brother the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), which is due to be fully constructed by 2029, with its dome and main structure completed by 2027.

Some of the most important astronomical discoveries of the 21st Century have been made here, from the first direct image of an exoplanet to the star trajectories confirming the presence of a supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

As soon as you arrive, you sense how precious the darkness is here. Blinds, shutters and awnings block all windows at night. The entire complex is designed to prevent light leakage. Scattered around the facilities, posters read "Dark is Beauty", encouraging people to close their shades or lower hand torches outside. After dusk, drivers are even instructed to use vehicles without main headlights.

Situated at an altitude of 2,600m (8,500ft), it takes up to two hours to reach Paranal from the nearest city of Antofagasta, 81 miles (130km) away. Apart from the roads, there are no visible signs of humanity in any direction; only the rolling desert and Pacific ocean.

The reason why this observatory and others in the Atacama have stayed dark is simple, says astronomer Eduardo Unda-Sanzana of the University of Antofagasta, who has been an important local Chilean voice in warning about light pollution. "It's not really the result of human protections. But basically the result of human absence: the distances in the Atacama desert are so large that they have been a lot more effective than any regulation. They have been the actual defences of these dark sites."

Recently though, the growing light of Antofagasta has begun to leak into the edges of astronomical observations. Satellites, too, have become more abundant: when I visited, I watched a train of more than 20-30 pass above, one after the after – all visible with the naked eye. For the astronomers, satellites are manageable for now but if companies like SpaceX get their way, there could soon be thousands more photobombing observations, or even as many as a million if plans proceed to use satellites as orbital data centres for AI.

The biggest imminent threat for Paranal and other observatories, though, is industry: mining and energy facilities are moving ever-closer. "We have been monitoring the advance of light pollution for many years," says de Gregorio-Monsalvo, Eso's representative in Chile. "Around four or five years ago, we saw an increment in light pollution that was very high, with more and more industries in the area approaching Paranal."

Recently, these concerns crystallised into a single threat: an industrial megaproject known as the Inna complex, operated by the company AES Andes, which was proposed for construction only a few kilometres away from Paranal. A 2025 analysis by Eso warned that Inna threatened to increase light pollution above some of the telescopes by as much as 50%, as well as increase air turbulence and vibrations that would further degrade observations.

In early 2026, AES Andes announced they had decided not to proceed, citing other business priorities, rather than scientists' objections. "While the Inna project is fully compatible with other activities in the region, AES Andes has chosen to focus its efforts on the development and construction of its renewable energy and energy storage portfolio," the company told the BBC.

For the astronomers, though, it is not the end of the story. With no changes to how light pollution is regulated in Chile, they fear more may come. "The legal frameworks are exactly the same as we had one year ago… nothing is really decreed yet," says Unda-Sanzana. "If we lose the sense of urgency, it could be very real that a follow-up project could be submitted during 2026 and we are going to be facing exactly the same crisis."

Part of the problem, according to Unda-Sanzana and De Gregorio-Monsalvo, is that environmental impact decisions for these industrial facilities are being made based on the "do not pass 10% extra" light pollution threshold, which dates to the 1970s. "If they do not pollute [the skies] more than 10%, basically they pass and they can build the project," explains De Gregorio-Monsalvo.

But for a site like Paranal, anything more than a 1% increase is bad news. "In the 1970s, they were not aware of sites like Paranal. If you allow for 10%, you basically destroy the site," explains Unda-Sanzana.

In 2025, the International Astronomical Union updated their guidelines, significantly lowering the 10% threshold, by calling for an upper limit for each site based on its situation. Since Paranal is one of only six professional observatories left globally with a light contamination level less than 1%, the guidelines recommend extra effort to preserve this darkness.

However, even if industry did keep to the revised thresholds, that still may not be enough, say astronomers, because enforcement is currently toothless. And under the current rules, two industrial sites could both win approval separately, but together be bright enough to exceed the limit. "The collective effect of the lights could still ruin the sky," explains Unda-Sanzana.

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Astronomers are now lobbying for a secondary norm that would allow Chilean authorities to intervene if light levels in the region pass a certain threshold. "The secondary norm would allow the government to react and say, 'OK, we need to decontaminate this place'... to dim the lights or change the technology or do something so that the environment is restored," says Unda-Sanzana.

What's happening in the Atacama may seem like a local problem, but in the long-term it could affect all of humanity's understanding of the cosmos. While it's possible to launch telescopes into space to escape light, these instruments perform different roles. The James Webb Space Telescope, for instance, may have made headlines with its discoveries, but astronomers also need the massive mirrors in ground-based facilities that provide finer detail. The upcoming Extremely Large Telescope – with a mirror 39m (128ft) wide – is far too big to put on a rocket.

If we let the glow of human light reach ever-further across the sky, it won't just be science that loses out – astronomers warn that we risk separating ourselves from the galaxy and Universe we live within.

After I woke up to see the dazzling sky at 2:00 in the Atacama, I reflected on how little time I spend looking at the stars nowadays, and how the artificial glow in my home city is so ubiquitous and normalised I fail to notice what it obscures.

True darkness is increasingly hard to find. "It's a problem of scarcity," says Unda-Sanzana. "Fifty years ago, there were abundant dark skies in the world. What was once abundant is now becoming extremely scarce. These are endangered environments and we're about to lose them, if we do not protect them. We will not have a replacement if we lose this battle."

* This article was updated on 29 May to clarify that the light from the Magellanic clouds takes 200,000 years to reach Earth rather than 200 years as previously stated.

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Farmers warn food security can't be taken for granted

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy024zvrdl1o, 9 days ago

Farmers at the annual Royal Bath and West Show have been sharing their concerns about the industry and its future.

The current price of milk, the rural housing crises and mental health have all been mentioned by farmers in what is being described as a "strange year".

But the themes causing farmers the most concern are the potentially seismic cost increases to fuel and energy linked to the war in the Middle East and climate change.

Richard Clothier, managing director of Wyke Farms in Somerset, said: "With climate change and the other geopolitical challenges around the world, food security can't be taken for granted any more."

"There's a lot of parallels between energy security and food security and we've seen quite blatantly how when things go wrong with energy how devastating it can be," he added.

About 30% of the world's fertiliser chemicals and 20% of the oil normally passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been closed by Iran since early March.

This has led to worldwide price increases that British farmers are now beginning to feel the effects of.

"Food security means different things to different people," said Jeremy Moody, secretarial adviser to the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers.

"We look at the amount of food we could produce in this country, for consumption in this country, and that has been falling from well over 70% to now below 60%.

"We're now in a much more unstable set of international conditions and that raises pre-wartime type questions about what we could actually produce."

Managing uncertainty

This year's Royal Bath and West show is coming straight after the hottest late May Bank Holiday on record and the issues arising from climate change are also causing farmers significant concern.

Last summer also saw long periods of consistently high temperatures that led to droughts in multiple parts of the country.

"Its been a strange year because we've had two dry months again this spring after a wet winter," said David Cotton, chairman of the Dairy Show and trustee for the Bath and West Society.

"A lot of farmers are feeling it's a repeat this year and everything is so early - we're making hay in May and you shouldn't make hay in May, it's not right.

"You never know whats coming and that's one of the things with farming is you don't know what's coming and you've got to be prepared for it.

"You start thinking what crops you should grow instead, and should I change my cropping management? Should I do more spring crops? Should I actually think about doing these environmental schemes and not do a crop at all but grow flowers and get the soil back in good heart because you can't risk growing a crop that might not germinate?"

Mental health

Maureen Trott is a farmer and chief livestock steward at the Bath and West Society and works on the helpline for the charity, Farming Community Network, which works to support farmers and their families.

"The topic at the moment is the milk price, but you've also got succession and people wanting to hand their farms on," she said.

Trott says that financial concerns form the biggest single reason why people call the FCN helpline but they are also receiving an increasing number of people calling about their mental health.

"Farmers with mental health like to talk to the FCN because we are farmers, so we understand the problems and most of us have probably been through them.

"They don't think the doctors understand and they don't think that they will understand if they go for counselling - but the farming charities do."

The Royal Bath and West Show runs until 30 May and is expected to welcome tens of thousands of people across the weekend.

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Portugal breaks hottest May day record as Europe swelters in heatwave

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3v2yv5207xo, 9 days ago

Portugal has recorded a new highest temperature for May of 40.3C as countries in Western Europe grapple with sweltering-hot weather.

The temperature recorded in the central town of Mora on Wednesday beats Portugal's previous record of 40C set in May 2001.

Ministers in France met to assess the country's preparedness for heatwaves, while tennis number one Jannik Sinner bowed out of the French Open after suffering from the heat. Meanwhile, Italian authorities issued a red heatwave alert for the capital, Rome, where it topped out at 32C on Thursday.

The heatwave is forecast to continue into the weekend, with Germany, Spain and Switzerland having also faced unusually hot conditions.

Parts of Portugal will peak above 35C on Friday before the heat begins to recede, according to the nation's meteorological office.

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu chaired a ministerial meeting on Thursday afternoon to develop a readiness plan for extreme heat events, including combating forest fires and ensuring adequate water supplies over the summer.

Baccalaureate exams - the French equivalent of A-levels - will continue during the heatwaves, despite some schools having to shut their doors due to inhospitable temperatures inside.

A primary school in Souston, in the Landes region, will remain shut on Friday after it reached 53C inside earlier in the week, a local official told French media.

Education Minister Édouard Geffray told BFMTV that exam centres would be able to choose rooms with the most shade, adding that exams would go ahead "simply because the students are prepared and... there is also a schedule according to which they expect their results".

The decision has attracted criticism from education unions and teachers, with one telling French radio of teachers "forced to bring in their own fans".

A survey by France's secondary school union found nearly 78% had recorded temperatures above 30C this week, and said it had received reports of teachers bringing in screwdrivers to prise windows open.

Seventeen departments of France - in the north-west, as well as Paris - are under an orange alert, indicating people should be "very vigilant" about the weather.

Temperatures reached 33C in Paris on Thursday, and are expected to top out at 34C on Saturday and Sunday.

Police have announced measures to ease traffic in the capital until Saturday, including only allowing lower-emission cars on roads and lowering speed limits. A single fare for the entire public transport network will be offered at the same time.

At the French Open in Paris, Sinner appeared to be cruising to a victory before suddenly taking a turn for the worse.

The Italian complained of dizziness and feeling lethargic before hitting a wall.

"It was a tough spot to be in," he commented afterwards, but added: "Really it was nothing against the heat, nothing against the weather. It was just me today, but it happens."

Meanwhile, Italy's red alert in Rome - as well as in Florence, Bologna, Brescia and Turin - is the first of the year, warning of "possible negative effects on the health of healthy, active people".

Temperatures will climb to 35C in Madrid over the weekend. Though the current spell does not officially qualify as a heatwave in Spain, the nation's meteorological office has said the heat is that usually seen in July and August.

The immediate cause of the heatwave is a "heat dome" - an area of high pressure that becomes "stuck", trapping warm air underneath it.

While it is difficult to link individual extreme weather events to climate change, scientists say climate change makes heatwaves more frequent and more intense.

Over the last 30 years, Europe has been warming by 0.56C per decade, according to the Copernicus climate service - enough to make heat extremes significantly more severe.

The UN warned on Thursday that global average temperatures were likely to continue at or near record levels this year and for the next four years.

The 11 hottest years ever recorded all happened from 2015 onwards, and the UN's weather and climate agency said this trend was predicted to continue, with a new hottest-ever year "likely" before 2031.

Drag queen Pattie Gonia fights trademark lawsuit by Patagonia

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx21427lvvvo, 10 days ago

A drag queen named Pattie Gonia has urged outdoor apparel company Patagonia to drop a lawsuit in which it alleges the performer is causing "irreparable" damage to its brand.

Wyn Wiley, who performs as Pattie Gonia, said the firm was threatening "the erasure of my name, my advocacy, my community" and the livelihoods of those employed by the drag queen and climate activist.

"If Patagonia wants to celebrate Pride Month this year by taking a queer climate activist to federal court, then I'm here to fight for myself," Wylie said.

Patagonia told the BBC "the last thing we wanted was a legal fight with someone who shares our values", but that it was acting to protect its business and employees.

Wylie has amassed millions of online followers performing as Pattie Gonia, including through charity fundraisers such as a 100-mile (160km) hike in drag.

In an open letter to Patagonia's leadership, Wylie said Pattie Gonia had raised $3.7m (£2.7m) for environmental causes altogether.

The performer said the Patagonia trademark lawsuit amounted to its CEO Ryan Gellert and other executives deciding that "I must cease to exist".

It was the artist's first time addressing the lawsuit, which Patagonia filed back in January in Los Angeles, California.

Patagonia's legal action alleges Pattie Gonia competes "directly with the products and advocacy" upon which the firm built its brand.

The company said in the filing that it was responding to Wylie's application to trademark Pattie Gonia as a brand, moving from simply using the persona to potentially selling products and organising events.

It accused the performer of breaking an agreement with the firm about how to use the Pattie Gonia name - including use of fonts and designs with similarities to Patagonia's logo.

The company said it would have filed a lawsuit regardless of whether the Oregon-based performer shared its values.

The firm is asking for a nominal $1 plus legal fees, to stop Pattie Gonia from being registered as a trademark.

The company, named after a remote region of South America spanning Argentina and Chile, was founded in 1973.

Council axes plans to reach net zero by 2030

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8pr0m8gnjo, 10 days ago

A council recently taken over by Reform UK has axed plans to reach net zero by 2030 and proposed to rescind its climate emergency declaration.

Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council's administration described the policies, which were initiated under previous leadership, as "political virtue signalling" and "the worst kind of groupthink".

The Net Zero Newcastle 2030 action plan committed the council to becoming carbon neutral across its buildings and services by the end of the decade, while the climate emergency declaration was made in 2019.

Council leader Jonathan Gullis said the people of Newcastle-under-Lyme "voted for change" and for an authority "that puts their priorities first".

He confirmed the net zero plan had been scrapped immediately and the proposal to revoke the climate emergency declaration would be put forward during July's full council meeting.

"This declaration was little more than political virtue signalling," the former deputy chair of the Conservative Party said.

"It has not cut council tax, improved a local service or made life easier for working people."

He said the authority should be focused instead on clean streets, safer communities, better services and value for money rather than "gimmicks".

The announcement came a few weeks after Reform wrested control of the council from the Conservatives with the former winning 27 seats and the latter 15, while Labour were left with two.

Gullis, who defected to Reform from the Tories last year, was chosen to lead the authority after he was elected as councillor for Kidsgrove and Ravenscliffe.

'Madness'

Sharon George, a consultant in clean technology from Penkhull who used to work at Keele University, said she travelled across the world during her career and had seen the impact of climate change "in a very real sense".

On the council's announcement, she told BBC Radio Stoke: "It's not a stretch to say I'm not just taken aback by this statement, it's actually quite upsetting."

She said it was upsetting for scientists and professionals who have presented the evidence proving climate change was "very real".

"Newcastle is suffering from climate change whether we like it or not," she added.

"Whether you see that damage or not visually, you feel it in your pocket every time there's a wildfire, because we've had hot, dry spells, which we shouldn't be having to this extent.

"The fire service is being called out more to deal with these and that has a cost with it."

She described Gullis' statement as "madness" and a "knee-jerk reaction", adding: "It just does not make any sense to me."

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UK's rudest chalk figure gets a glow-up to stop it fading in the rain

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpvppe84lnvo, 10 days ago

For centuries, the Cerne Abbas Giant has been hard to miss.

The 55-metre chalk figure, cut into a hillside near the village of Cerne Abbas in Dorset, shows a naked, club-wielding man whose outline has made him one of the UK's most instantly recognisable historic landmarks.

But the National Trust, which owns and manages the site, says changing weather patterns are making it harder to keep the Giant prominent on the hillside.

National Trust staff and volunteers will this week pack tonnes of new chalk onto the figure to restore the crisp whiteness of his outline.

Luke Dawson, a National Trust ranger who helps look after the site, says heavier winter rains are washing chalk from the slope more quickly, while mild, damp conditions give algae more chance to grow.

He says this wetter weather has been having "a dulling effect" on the Giant's outline, leaving it greener and less distinct between maintenance work.

The Trust is cautious about attributing the changes directly to climate change at a single site.

"It's one of these things we cannot really prove," says Dawson. "It is more just observation of what we are seeing up there."

The charity has cared for the Giant since 1920. Its rangers and volunteers keep the outline defined by rechalking the figure every decade or so to protect it from weeds and erosion. And between chalking it uses sheep to keep the grass short.

But the Trust says that coupled with heavier winter rains, the frequent dry spells in summer, mean the grass grows back more slowly and can leave the chalk edges more exposed and vulnerable to erosion.

The world is now about 1.4C warmer on average than in the late 19th Century, largely because of human activities such as burning fossil fuels.

The Met Office says the UK's climate is already notably different from even just a few decades ago and it expects the trend towards warmer wetter winters and hotter drier summers to continue.

On Thursday, it published a new report which warns there is an almost nine in ten chance the world will see a new record temperature within the next five years.

National Trust says these changes mean the Giant may need more frequent attention than every decade to ensure he does not lose his defining features.

His latest makeover has come after just seven years.

The chalking process

The rechalking could take up to 15 days to complete. Around 300 National Trust staff and volunteers will be involved, carrying about 17 tonnes of fresh chalk up the steep hillside, which in places has a gradient of roughly one in three.

The work is physically demanding, especially in the exceptional heat the UK has experienced in recent days. The old chalk is carefully dug out before fresh material is packed into the Giant's outline by hand - a process the Trust says has changed little for generations.

"It's how we have kept him visible for centuries," says National Trust ranger Luke Dawson.

Chloe Baugh and her boyfriend, Joe Ford, are working on the left shin of the Giant. They won the opportunity to help with the project in a National Trust lottery.

"We did not know it was going to be one of the hottest days of the year," laughs Baugh. "It has really made me think of all the people that have worked to do this over hundreds of years."

This work comes just months after public donations helped the National Trust raise £330,000 to acquire 138 hectares (341 acres) of additional land around the Giant. The newly protected area includes species-rich chalk grassland, important archaeological records and habitat for rare wildlife, including the endangered Duke of Burgundy butterfly.

The National Trust says the purchase will allow it to care not just for the figure itself, but for the wider landscape in which it sits - improving access, restoring habitats and supporting further research.

The mystery origins of the Giant

The Giant's naked, club-wielding form has fuelled centuries of speculation - "a real ding-dong" according to local historian Ian Denness. Some argued he was an ancient fertility figure, others a Roman Hercules, or even a later satire of Oliver Cromwell.

But scientific analysis of sediments published by the National Trust in 2021 suggested the figure was probably first cut in the late Saxon period, between around 700 and 1100AD - much later than the prehistoric or Roman origins once imagined.

However, this finding has not settled the question of his significance.

In 2024, research from the University of Oxford argued that although the Giant was not of Roman origin he was carved to represent Hercules, and speculated he may have been a meeting point for West Saxon armies fighting invaders.

The researchers suggested monks at nearby Cerne Abbey later co-opted him as Saint Eadwold, a local hermit-saint associated with the area.

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Why temperature records are being not only broken but smashed

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62rrj66p3eo, 11 days ago

If you take a look across western Europe at the moment, you'll struggle to find many places escaping the heat.

In the UK, temperatures passed 35C on Tuesday – more than 2C above the record for May before this year.

This heat would be exceptional even in the middle of summer, let alone spring, the Met Office says.

"Absolutely astonishing," says Friederike Otto, professor of climate science at Imperial College London.

"Mind-bogglingly crazy," adds Peter Thorne, director of the Icarus Climate Research Centre at Maynooth University in Ireland.

France is also in the midst of an unprecedented early-season heatwave, according to its weather service, Météo-France. Hundreds of heat records have been broken around the country.

The May temperature record for the island of Ireland has been surpassed by more than 2C, while Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland have all faced unusually hot conditions for spring too.

The immediate cause of the heatwave is a "heat dome" – where an area of high pressure gets "stuck" over Europe, trapping warm air underneath.

But scientists have little doubt that human-caused climate change - largely the result of the burning of coal, oil and gas - has supercharged the heat.

Over the last 30 years, Europe has been warming by 0.56C per decade – more than twice the global average, according to the Copernicus climate service.

That might not sound like much, but it is a seismic change in climate terms and enough to make heat extremes significantly more intense.

"When we have a heatwave it's happening more severely, because it's on top of a warming climate," Richard Betts, head of climate impacts research at the Met Office and a professor at the University of Exeter, told BBC News.

"I've been a climate scientist for 33 years and we're seeing exactly the kinds of things that we were warning back then... [although] these records are perhaps more extreme and coming sooner than we had expected," he added.

And the heat isn't limited to Europe, with temperatures reaching 45C in Delhi in India.

Records not just broken but smashed

As scientists collect year after year of temperature data, records should in fact become rarer over time – at least in a stable climate.

The simple logic is that you're much more likely to see a new record after 10 years of data than after 100 years.

"If someone beats a world record in high jump, you would expect them to beat it by one centimetre and not suddenly by 20, 30 centimetres and the same holds for the weather," Erich Fischer, professor at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, told BBC News.

"If the record is broken after 100 or 150 years of measurements, you would have probably expected it to be broken by a tenth of a degree and not suddenly by two degrees or three degrees," he added.

But when a relatively rare weather system such as this week's heat dome comes around in a warming climate, the margin of record can be huge.

"We're going through a period of very rapid warming, particularly western Europe… so if the same weather events we had in, say, the 1970s [happened again], it will not only be slightly warmer, but it will simply smash the record," said Prof Fischer.

Even in 2026, this week's European heatwave is not an isolated case.

Back in March, about 30% of active US weather stations set new temperature records for the time of year, according to Berkeley Earth, an independent US climate research group.

The margin of records across the western US was "utterly absurd", its chief scientist Robert Rohde said.

A sign of things to come

These record-smashing heatwaves have come in a world about 1.4C warmer on average than during the late 19th Century, because of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels.

But global warming could reach close to 3C by the end of the century, based on the current climate policies of governments around the globe.

This will inevitably mean further temperature records – posing particular challenges for countries such as the UK and Switzerland, which are not built for extreme heat.

"The climate we are living in today is simply not the one we grew up with, and our buildings and infrastructure are woefully unprepared for what's next," warned Prof Otto.

Until 1990, the UK's temperature record across all months stood at 36.7C, set in 1911.

It has since been broken several times and now stands at 40.3C, set in July 2022.

With further climate change, even higher temperatures will soon be a serious possibility, warned Prof Betts.

"Until we reduce global carbon emissions to net zero, we'll continue to heat the planet and temperature records will continue to be broken," he said.

Last week, the UK government's independent adviser, the Climate Change Committee, said that increasingly extreme heatwaves, droughts and floods were already threatening the British "way of life", from sports matches to music festivals.

By the middle of the century, more than 90% of existing homes could overheat during more extreme heatwaves, the committee warned.

And shortfalls in England's public water supply could surpass five billion litres per day, linked to hot, dry summers and a growing population.

The committee urged the government to make preparations for more extreme heat a much greater priority, including rolling out air conditioning and setting maximum temperature rules for workplaces to protect people's health.

And as the past few days have shown, this challenge of extreme heat is no longer confined to the summer months.

Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to keep up with the latest climate and environment stories with the BBC's Justin Rowlatt. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.

Pair fundraising for Pacific climate change statue

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cze29183ze3o, 11 days ago

Two women from Shropshire are looking to raise £10,000 to get a sculpture installed on the Solomon Islands, highlighting climate change and rising sea levels.

Jane Cullen from Ludlow and Lorna Taylor from Church Stretton were inspired after hearing a talk by activist Gladys Bartlett, who spoke about about an island that had already vanished under the sea.

The sculpture has already been created and shipped to the Pacific and they said the money would be used to fix it into position in the ocean.

The pair are both members of Shropshire Climate Action and Cullen said: "We wanted to support this sense that we're all in this together."

Taylor said that after hearing Bartlett speaking about the Solomon Islands they invited her to be a speaker at one of their events.

She said: "It was such a wake up call for us both."

They also saw a BBC interview by Ade Adepitan about the island of Kale, which has been lost to rising water levels, and wanted to do something to raise awareness.

The sea around the Solomon Islands is rising faster than the average for the rest of the world, due to global warming and regional changes.

A number of islands have already disappeared beneath the South Pacific.

Cullen said they heard Bartlett had approached a sculptor called Jason deCaires Taylor, who specialises in underwater art.

He created a 4m (13ft) tall sculpture of Bartlett leaning against a tree on a concrete base, which could be submerged in the water.

Taylor said the "Solomon Siren" would stand above the waves at first, but also record how sea levels were rising.

By 2046, she said they expected the figure of Bartlett to be lost beneath the waves.

Cullen said: "This is such a different approach from just telling us about the statistics and things, it's an artistic, creative approach."

She said it was important for them to act to "give that sense of something that's happening on the other side of the world, but is also happening here".

She pointed to extreme weather and flooding in Shropshire and said it was important to act on climate change.

The money raised will be used to pay for a barge to take the sculpture to the spot where it will be submerged and then assemble it in the water.

Follow BBC Shropshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.

Work to begin on £29m flood defence scheme

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyv22ly8qrro, 11 days ago

Work is set to begin on a £29.4m scheme to protect hundreds of homes in a coastal town from flooding.

The project will defend 570 properties in Poole between Poole Bridge and Hunger Hill - the last unprotected stretch of waterfront in the town centre.

Andy Hadley, cabinet member for environment at Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council, described the work as a "major milestone to improve flood resilience for the people who call Poole home now, and in the future".

The project, which is designed to adapt to rising sea levels, is set to begin on Monday 1 June, with the final stages of construction to take place in autumn 2027.

The council predicts the number of properties protected by the scheme will rise to more than 2,000 over the next century.

The defences will include artificial sea walls that can be raised at intervals to keep pace with climate change and rising sea levels.

The area covered comprises part of Holes Bay, an environment that is already protected due to migratory birds and breeding marine life.

The scheme was approved in July 2025 and due to take place in October but was postponed while planning conditions and a marine licence were finalised.

Residents have been told to expect some disruption while the work takes place.

Astronauts return to ISS after sheltering during air leak repair attempt

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y7yryg01mo, yesterday

Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) were ordered to shelter in an attached spacecraft after the structure suddenly started leaking more air.

Five of the seven crew were directed to go into the docked SpaceX shuttle Dragon "Freedom" on Friday afternoon and were braced for a potential evacuation.

Meanwhile, two remaining personnel - a pair of Russian cosmonauts - attempted to repair a part of the Russian segment of the ISS, where the leaks had started increasing on Monday.

The repairs were paused and the crew ordered back onto the ISS by Nasa on Friday afternoon.

Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, Sophie Adenot and Andrey Fedyaev, who arrived on the ISS in February, had been sheltering on the docked ship, along with another astronaut Chris Williams.

They had been told to put on their spacesuits so they were ready to undock and return to Earth at short notice.

The Dragon effectively functions as a lifeboat - attached to the station but ready to detach the moment the order is given.

The trigger for the order was a worsening air leak in the transfer tunnel, known as PrK, leading to a section of the Russian segment of the station called the Zvezda service module.

Russian cosmonauts, station commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and flight engineer Sergei Mikaev, attempted to fix the problem. Their escape route was the separately docked Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft.

Retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who was a commander of the ISS in 2012, said it had always leaked around half a pound of pressure a day.

"When you have an area that's leaking a little more, you get up to a pound a day, maybe a pound a half or even two, then we hit a threshold where, okay, we've got to do something about this," he told BBC Newshour.

"You're always one breath away from having to take shelter somewhere if the station has a problem. It's just a matter of fact of living on board a spaceship."

It is not the first time the station has had to deal with this latest leak - the cracks responsible have persisted on and off for around six years.

However, following the arrival of a Russian cargo ship last month, the Russian space agency Roscosmos noticed a fresh slow pressure drop in the tunnel, prompting the decision to move beyond patchwork fixes and attempt a more extensive repair operation on Friday.

But it was the method they were planning to use that prompted the order to take shelter, according to news agency Reuters.

Kud-Sverchkov and Mikayev were said to be using a saw to try and get into an area to access the crack that was leaking air.

Nasa disagreed with the method they were using and mission control in Houston ordered five crew to take "safe-haven" procedures on the Dragon ship.

When Roscosmos told their crew to pause repairs, Nasa instructed the astronauts to return to the station.

Nasa spokeswoman Bethany Stevens said on X: "Given this development, Nasa has instructed the crew members inside the Dragon spacecraft to end the safe haven procedures and return to planned operations aboard the International Space Station."

Russian news agency Tass, citing Roscosmos, reported that nothing had been threatening the safety of the crew or the ISS's onboard systems.

The ISS, which spans the length of a football field, is the largest human-made object in space.

It has been continuously operated by a US-Russian-led consortium that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries since 1998.

Canada bans Texas cattle over flesh-eating screwworm outbreak in US

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cevpv3r7jmpo, yesterday

Canada's food inspection agency has announced a temporary ban on livestock from the US state of Texas after flesh-eating screwworms were discovered in calves this week.

Cows and horses that were in Texas anytime within 21 days before crossing the border into Canada would not be accepted into the country, an agency news release said.

The announcement comes after the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said the parasite had been found in a second calf in Texas - the leading US beef and cattle producer. Texas Gov Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster on Friday over the "imminent threat" the outbreak posed.

"This is likely to spread over the course of the summer," Abbott told reporters on Friday.

The New World Screwworm is a parasitic fly whose females lay eggs in open wounds and mucous membranes of living warm-blooded animals and people. When the eggs hatch, hundreds of larvae burrow through living flesh with sharp mouths, eventually killing their host if left untreated.

On Wednesday, US officials announced that Texas had detected its first case in 60 years in a three-week-old calf, with the larvae found in its umbilical area. The discovery was made in the town of La Pryor about 30 miles (48km) from the Mexico border.

Then on Friday, a second case was detected in a one-month-old calf in Zavala County about 5.6 miles (9km) from the first case. The discovery was made as officials tested a "number of suspected cases," the USDA said.

It was found in a 20km-wide "control zone" established after the first case was discovered, the USDA said. The department said it had also enacted "quarantines, movement controls, and surveillance" in that area.

The cases marked the first as part of an outbreak that's been moving through Central America and Mexico, which has been under heavy monitoring by US agricultural and health officials.

Gov Abbott issued a proclamation declaring a state of disaster on Friday, which states the outbreak presents "an imminent threat or occurrence of widespread danger and injury to the Texas agricultural industry". It directs more resources to the affected areas in the hope of combating the spread.

Canadian officials note the parasite is unlikely to become a problem in the country because of the colder climate - the parasites historically have spread in warmer, humid areas - but nevertheless they are warning farmers to monitor livestock for wounds and any cut that is "accompanied by discharge or foul odour". They also urged residents to also check pets if they travel to Texas.

The US and Canada have a two-way cattle trade, with livestock moving across the border for slaughter, breeding and for dairy and wool purposes. The number of imports from the US has grown in recent years, with 550,000 cattle imported in 2025, according to Canada's agriculture department.

In the US, the parasite was considered eradicated in 1966 but there have been cases since, including an outbreak in the 1970s.

Screwworm larvae grow into flies which can travel short distances. The primary way that they have travelled long distances is by being brought by humans.

Officials in the US and in Latin America have been combating the problem of screwworms for much of the past six decades, with limited success.

With this most recent outbreak, US agriculture and health officials have outlined a plan to release hundreds of millions of genetically altered sterile flies to try to halt the population growth, along with using sniffer dogs to identify the parasite in cattle. Some experts questions whether these tactics will be enough to halt the spread, though.

Downing Street hits out after Vance post about Henry Nowak

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crlplwn1jkro, yesterday

Downing Street has hit out at "people trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division", after JD Vance's comments on the murder of Henry Nowak.

The US vice-president blamed the death of the 18-year-old British student, who was fatally stabbed last year in Southampton by Vickrum Digwa, on the "mass invasion of migrants" and said the "only response" was "righteous anger".

After the post on X, the Downing Street spokesman said the Nowak family had "said they do not want his death to be used to create further division".

"Our politics should bring people together even in the most terrible of circumstances. That is who we are as a country," the statement added.

Violent protests took place in Southampton on Tuesday following the release of bodycam footage which showed police handcuffing Nowak as he lay dying after Digwa falsely claimed to be the victim of a racist attack.

Digwa was jailed for life with a minimum of 21 years after he used a 21cm (8in) blade he said he carried as part of his Sikh faith to kill Nowak, who was walking home alone after a night out with friends on 3 December.

In his post, Vance said Nowak had died "the same way a civilisation dies: abandoned and handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him".

The killing had been as "tragic as it is enraging" and Nowak, he said, would still be alive today "if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants".

The Crown Prosecution Service has confirmed that Digwa was born British.

The Minister for Children and Families, Josh MacAlister, also appeared to criticise Vance when he appeared on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions programme.

"There are people who are trying to import that kind of toxic politics here into the UK and I don't want to have anything to do with it," he said.

"I don't think we need advice from American politicians... [on] how to have effective policing here in the UK," he added.

On Friday, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called for an "independent rapid review" into the circumstances surrounding Nowak's death.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, on Friday, she wrote: "The questions raised about what followed are of profound public importance.

"They concern not only what happened to Henry but overall public confidence in policing and the ability of our institutions to protect those they exist to serve."

The Independent Office for Police Conduct is already investigating police officers' behaviour, while an inquest jury is to consider next year whether "any act or omission by police officers" or delay in treatment caused or contributed to Nowak's death.

Earlier this week, Sir Keir accused tech billionaire Elon Musk of "trying to whip up division" over Nowak's murder.

Posting on X on Tuesday, Musk had written: "Send the video to everyone you know showing how heinously Nowak was treated by the police in his dying moments and how the police cravenly kowtowed to his murderer."

He had also accused the mainstream media who wrote about George Floyd "millions of times" of being "dead silent about Nowak".

Floyd died of a cardiac arrest in the US in May 2020 after a police officer handcuffed him before kneeling on his neck. His murder sparked global protests against racism and police brutality.

Vance's comments appear to be partly aimed at a US audience. During his second term, Donald Trump has carried out sweeping efforts to deport undocumented migrants - a key election promise that drew both mass support and criticism from detractors during the campaign.

The US president has also frequently tied the influx of migrants to the erosion of national identity.

Reacting to Vance's comments on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Republicans Overseas spokesperson Jennifer Ewing said they come "from a place of care and concern".

She explained: "All we want is for the people of the UK to be heard by politicians", and pointed out that Vance has previously expressed concerns about the UK's stance on "free speech" and "unfettered immigration".

Current and former Trump administration officials have repeatedly weighed in on British domestic issues.

This included the president's attacks on energy policy and immigration, and a formal warning to the UK about its handling of "rape gangs".

Most figures in UK politics had hoped the atmosphere would remain calmer after the violent protests in Southampton on Tuesday.

A reason the criticism from Downing St was so swift and pointed is in part to avert what could become another political storm.

Since the Iran war began, Downing St has been more content to talk openly about disagreements.

Nonetheless, the UK government has in parallel continued to stress there is continued and deep co-operation on security.

The comments by Vance follow a week in which there has been intense scrutiny of the police response.

Debate over the case escalated during PMQs on Wednesday, when Sir Keir accused Reform UK leader Nigel Farage of exploiting the death of Nowak to create "grievance and division".

Farage, who reposted Vance's remarks without comment, had argued the incident was the result of "two-tier policing", citing anti-racism guidance issued by police bosses.

"Two-tier policing" is the claim that minority communities are treated preferentially because officers are worried about being accused of racism.

The acting chief of West Midlands Police, Constable Scott Green, has rejected its existence.

Sir Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said "we all need to resist attempts like this to politicise Henry Nowak's death and divide our country - whether they come from MAGA politicians like Vance or their cronies here in the UK".

Meanwhile Labour peer Thangam Debbonaire called Vance's comments "unhelpful".

"When you make extremist statements without supporting them with evidence, you are stoking up the division that Henry Nowak's family explicitly said they did not want," she told the Today programme.

Additional reporting by Jamie Whitehead

US Senate approves $70bn for Trump immigration agencies

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g4g3zxp79o, yesterday

The US Senate has approved more than $70bn (£52bn) in funding for President Donald Trump's immigration agencies.

The package would fund bodies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol for the remaining three years of the Trump administration. It now heads to the House of Representatives for a vote, and then if approved will go to Trump to sign.

The 52-to-47 vote fell closely along party lines, with just one Republican joining the Democrats to reject the bill in a marathon overnight session.

Democrats brought up a series of unsuccessful amendments seeking to limit Trump's controversial $1.8bn "anti-weaponisation fund", pushing the final vote into the early morning.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had said on Tuesday that plans for the fund were being dropped - although Trump later suggested it was not entirely dead, telling reporters he would "have to ask the lawyers".

Much of the roughly $72bn spending package would go to ICE and Border Patrol, the agencies carrying out Trump's immigration crackdown.

Democrats had refused to support funding earlier this year for ICE or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) following two deadly shootings in Minnesota involving federal immigration officers, leading to the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Friday's vote used a procedure allowing lawmakers to pass spending-related matters with a simple majority. The one Republican to vote against the bill, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, criticised its use. One Democrat did not vote.

During the 18-hour-long process known as a "vote-a-rama", senators could propose changes to the bill - and Democrats sought to add provisions unrelated to immigration.

Many of the amendments focused on Trump's $1.8bn fund, which would compensate those allegedly harmed by government overreach but critics condemned as a slush fund for Trump's allies.

Earlier this week, senators had agreed to remove $1bn (£745m) in funding for Trump's new White House ballroom from the bill.

Marilyn Monroe auction features star's make-up and gowns on 100th birthday

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgzgd2xe2zo, 3 days ago

An auction with an array of memorabilia from Marilyn Monroe's estate and friends has already brought in thousands of dollars in bids on the 100th anniversary of her birth.

The sale, which began on Thursday, features 185 items from the model and actress's life, including a 1950s evening purse worth an estimated $100,000 (£74,000), an evening gown and even her lip pomade.

Julien's Auctions said the sale includes "countless never-before-seen photographs and slides of the star as well as rare and hard-to-find images hidden for decades".

The star - who rose to fame as a sex symbol in the 1950s and died aged 36 - has continued to captivate the attention of Americans long after her passing.

The Julien's auction is part of exhibitions and celebrations across the US this week honouring the blonde bombshell's birth on 1 June, 1926.

Earlier this week, more than a thousand fans dressed as Monroe in her famous white-pleated dress in Palm Springs, California, to pose next to an iconic statue of her wearing the same outfit.

A separate auction from the company Heritage included a Christian Dior skirt that Monroe wore on her honeymoon and a letter from her husband playwright Arthur Miller.

Born Norma Jeane Mortenson, Monroe grew up in foster homes and was discovered by an army photographer while working in an aircraft factory during World War Two. She starred in a number of hits, including Some Like It Hot and Niagara, before her death from an overdose in 1962.

The Julien's auction contains several items Monroe "personally owned, touched, and used, including pieces from her last residence in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California", the company said.

The most expensive item is Monroe's gold-toned 1950s cylindrical minaudiere purse carrying her tiny hair comb, a tube of lipstick, eight Philip Morris cigarettes and 1940s dimes. As of Thursday morning, the highest bid on the item was $70,000.

One of the most intimate items in the collection is Monroe's 1950s brassiere that the auction company said had "yellowed due to age" and was inherited by Monroe's acting coach Paula Strasberg. The undergarment, which was estimated to be worth $1,000, had 15 bids, with the highest at $7,000.

The auction also features several of Monroe's personal make-up products, including lipsticks, blush and eyeliner pencil, which the auction company noted has continued to captivate people on TikTok hoping to recreate Monroe's look.

There were dozens of bids on never-before-published images from Monroe's photoshoots over the years, signed by the famous photographers who took the pictures, including Allan Grant and Milton Greene.

The public had also bid $15,000 on the olive-green painted wood front gates to the only home Monroe ever owned in the ritzy Brentwood neighbourhood. Monroe paid around $100 for the gates in 1962, according to the auction company.

Why Canadians can now get cheaper generic Ozempic - and Americans can't

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c142y4p2eyxo, 3 days ago

Elizabeth Doran has been taking GLP-1 medications for nearly a year for weight loss to help reverse her prediabetes and high blood pressure. Because she had not yet developed diabetes, the retired 69-year-old was prescribed Wegovy for weight loss rather than its sister drug, Ozempic – both of which contain the active ingredient semaglutide.

"I was one decimal point away from being diabetic," Doran, who lives in Ottawa, Canada, told the BBC.

Her Wegovy prescription meant she was not eligible for insurance drug coverage offered to diabetic seniors in Ontario, forcing her to pay between C$350 ($250; £188) to C$500 out of pocket a month.

To afford the medication, Doran said she picked up substitute teaching shifts a few times a month. She also used discount cards offered by the drug's manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, and took advantage of a first-month free offer through her doctor.

But Doran may no longer have to pay such a steep price or hunt for a bargain.

In May, Canada became the first country in the G7 to approve a generic semaglutide injection, intended for type 2 diabetes patients but can be prescribed off-label for weight loss. The discounted medications are expected to be in pharmacies across the country as of the beginning of June, at less than a third of the cost.

The arrival of the generics has the potential to make GLP-1 drugs more accessible to the three million Canadians who take them, as well as to many others who have considered it but resisted because of the price. It has already forced Novo Nordisk to lower prices of their brand-name drugs.

Experts say the Canadian generics may also be eyed by patients in the US, where Ozempic costs upwards of US$1,000 per month for uninsured Americans, and where low-cost alternatives are not expected to arrive on the market for a few more years due to drug patent laws that allow companies to maintain a monopoly for longer. More than 15 million American adults are estimated to take GLP-1 medications.

Canada's approval of the generic GLP-1s comes after India this year approved dozens of low-cost versions, causing a price scramble that has prompted Novo Nordisk to cut the prices of Ozempic and Wegovy by nearly 50% in that country.

Generic Ozempic by two manufacturers has already been approved by Health Canada – one by India-based pharmaceutical company Dr Reddy's and another by Canadian company Apotex.

Erez Israeli, CEO of Dr Reddy's, told the BBC that his company had applied for approval in more than 80 countries, including the US. In addition to Canada, he expects Dr Reddy's generic GLP-1 will soon be available in South America, Africa and most of Asia – but not in the US, UK or Europe.

Meanwhile, Apotex has secured a tentative approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), though it is not able to sell its generic semaglutide drug there yet.

US and European countries allow for companies to extend their patents for several years as a way to compensate them for regulatory delays, explained Tahir Amin, CEO and founder of US-based group the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK), which advocates for drug patent reform.

Amin said Americans would not see a generic until 2032, when the main compound patent protecting semaglutide is expected to expire.

Novo Nordisk's patent on Ozempic could have been extended until 2028 in Canada but the company failed to renew it, Amin said. It is unclear why, he added, but "somebody dropped the ball … that's why you've got generics in Canada sooner".

Novo Nordisk said in a statement that the introduction generics in Canada was a "localized situation based on our specific patent timelines and regulatory environment and does not reflect the situation in the United States, where exclusivity remains intact".

Amin said there were likely conversations already swirling among Americans on how they could access low-cost generic Ozempic from Canada.

It wouldn't be the first time Americans sought access to lower cost drugs north of the border. In 2019, a self-described "caravan" of Americans bused to Canada to purchase cheaper insulin for type 1 diabetes - and to protest the costs in the US for the life-saving medication.

In 2023, the province of British Columbia put restrictions on Americans purchasing its Ozempic after it found that 15% of prescriptions for the drug came from the US, mostly through Canada-based online pharmacies.

The practice was condemned by the former provincial health minister at the time.

"The purpose of procuring Ozempic for British Columbia patients is not to turn around and export it right back to the United States," said then-health minister Adrian Dix.

For Canadians like Doran, the introduction of generics to Canada's market is "huge". It means being able to maintain the weight she has lost at a fraction of the cost, she said, while keeping diabetes and heart disease at bay.

"By taking this drug, I'm probably saving the healthcare system a lot of money," Doran said. She added she had already noticed the price of Wegovy drop since the generics were approved.

Esther Linetsky, another Canadian patient who was prescribed Ozempic for weight loss, said the high cost forced her to get off the drug temporarily and later ration free samples of both Wegovy and Ozempic that were provided to her by her doctor.

"My doctor wanted me to go up to the next dose, but going up to the next dose meant increasing my cost, and I couldn't afford to do it," she told the BBC.

With the generics, Linetsky said she hoped she can go back to using the drugs the way they were intended – and at a more affordable price tag.

In the US, the higher prices mean that GLP-1 drugs have mostly been accessed by those who are wealthier, leaving people who especially need it to manage their diabetes unable to secure it, said Amin from I-MAK.

He added that changing the patent system in the US was an uphill battle, calling it the "Golden Egg" of the pharmaceutical industry, which he said had aggressively lobbied and litigated for the status quo to remain.

Novo Nordisk most recently took American online pharmacy Hims and Hers to court for selling compounded versions of semaglutide at a lower cost. The legal battle was dropped in March after the pharmacy agreed to stop advertising the compounds and sell semaglutide under the Ozempic and Wegovy brand. It has also fought to have its patent extended in other countries, like China and Brazil.

Martin Arès, CEO of the Canadian pharmaceutical company Apotex, said he was exploring ways to bring his generic product to Americans now that it had been tentatively approved by the FDA.

He contends that it definitely will not be on the US market this year.

"But we remain committed to bringing this product as soon as possible," Arès said, adding that the company had experts working on identifying ways to make that happen.

Who can buy shares in Elon Musk's SpaceX?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx299wpp56o, yesterday

Next week shares go on sale in Musk's Texas-based SpaceX, a company that is planning to colonise Mars and put artificial intelligence (AI) data centres in space.

It is set to be the largest ever public sale of shares and will make SpaceX one of the US's top ten largest listed firms with a high proportion of those shares expected to be available to the wider public.

But for those who invest, what exactly will they be buying and what are the risks?

What is happening with SpaceX exactly?

SpaceX is currently owned by Musk and other private investors, but they are launching what is known as an Initial Public Offering, or IPO.

On 12 June millions of new shares in the company will start trading on the stock market for the first time.

The IPO aims to raise a vast amount of money - at least $75bn - and gives investors the chance to buy into a business whose activities range from space exploration and satellite communication to the social media site X and the controversial AI platform Grok.

SpaceX is separate from Musk's most well-known company, the electric car maker Tesla, although it is thought the two may end up merging next year.

Musk plans to use the extra money he is raising to expand SpaceX's current activities but also to fund new future ventures: mining asteroids, colonising Mars and putting AI data centres in space.

The sci-fi style sales prospectus says humans must avoid "the same fate as dinosaurs" and plan for an "age of abundance" based in space because the "light of consciousness" will not be tied to a single planet.

There is plenty of scepticism about the feasibility of some of these ambitions. But Musk's backers say he has beaten the doubters before.

And if the share sale goes ahead as outlined, it could make him a trillionaire.

Can anyone buy shares?

SpaceX shares will be traded on the New York technology-focused Nasdaq market, and some of the big global investment institutions are likely to buy shares. But individuals, including in the UK, will also get a chance to apply to buy shares via certain investment platforms and brokers. The shares are allocated according to demand before trading starts.

There are more than 550 million shares available, which SpaceX has announced it hopes to sell at $135 (£100) each. Investors must decide if they think the shares are worth that much. And once they start trading their value could quickly rise or fall depending on whether the wider market thinks that initial price was too low or too high.

Even if you do not invest in SpaceX shares directly you may find you have an indirect financial interest if your pension or savings fund manager buys shares as part of their investment strategy, or if you have an index-tracking fund that automatically buys into the biggest firms.

SpaceX is set to be valued at around $1.75tn which would make it larger than rivals Anthropic and OpenAI, but smaller than the big tech giants such as Alphabet (Google), Apple, Microsoft and Amazon.

Will SpaceX investors get rich?

Teams of analysts follow the performance of companies like SpaceX and even they do not know whether the price will rise or fall once the shares start trading.

In the past Musk has weathered setbacks such as failed rocket-launches, production bottlenecks and political controversy, but the AI race especially is hugely expensive and fraught with uncertainty, raising widespread concern that share prices are already inflated and that the bubble may burst.

Last year, Space Exploration Technologies - as SpaceX is officially known - brought in $18.6bn (£13.8bn) in revenue but had a net loss of $4.9bn.

And the IPO prospectus - the document that outlines the terms of the share sale - even says the company has "a history of net losses" and "may not achieve profitability in the future".

Ruth Foxe-Blader at US venture capital firm Citrine Venture Partners thinks the number and range of SpaceX's projects mean it has many selling points.

But Michael Hewson at iForex says the "numbers defy belief" and amount to a bet on Musk's "ability to deliver" on some very big ambitions.

The SpaceX share sale is the first of three AI-related mega-listings expected this year. When Anthropic and OpenAI sell their shares the same basic principle will apply: a lot of money is being invested with no guarantee of future profits to match.

Do shareholders get a say in how SpaceX is run?

When it comes to company decisions Musk will still hold more than 80% of the voting power after the share sale, only marginally less than he currently has. He will still determine who runs the company and its overall strategy.

That has raised some eyebrows, given Musk's erratic management style and his many enterprises. But paradoxically for some investors it may be his reputation that drives interest in this venture.

In fact, it has been pointed out more broadly that the IPO, especially the big push to involve the wider public more than is usual, is trading heavily on Musk's personal profile rather than the fundamentals of the business.

Can the US, Mexico and Canada set aside their differences as they co-host the World Cup?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgz2081y8ko, 3 days ago

Think of it as being like a dinner party where the hosts are in the midst of a tense argument when you arrive.

Football fans travelling to North America for the continent's first co-hosted World Cup will find three host countries who have endured a tense time.

The tournament, which will take place across a sprawling 16 host cities and three countries, comes after a period of fractious relations between its hosts: the US, Canada and Mexico.

The underlying issues seemed distant when the countries' leaders met for the draw in Washington DC in December and posed for a selfie with Fifa boss Gianni Infantino. But teaming up for a full 39-day tournament is likely to be a different ball game.

US President Donald Trump has been unashamedly open about the fact that the US is the dominant power on the continent. That means the very real tensions between the three nations on issues such as trade, immigration and drug-trafficking - which have all simmered since Trump returned to office - could spill back into view.

On the other hand, get it right and the World Cup could forge closer ties between the trio.

Tensions over trade, tourism - and Trump

Mexico and Canada, the top trading partners for the US, will not have forgotten that they were among the first countries to be targeted by Trump with tariffs.

Canada - which was also angered by Trump's repeated comments about making the country a "51st state" of the US - hit back with its own counter-measures. Provinces pulled US alcohol from shelves and Canadians significantly curbed travel south, which irritated the US in return.

The issues Canada and Mexico both have with the US have also impacted relationship between them, suggests Carlo Dade, director of international policy at the University of Calgary.

Canada had been accused of throwing Mexico under the bus ahead of Trump's second term, as Canadian and US officials argued that Mexico was serving as a back door in North America for Chinese investment.

"It was downright disrespectful," Dade comments.

That means Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has also found himself trying to patch things up with Mexico as he tries to diversify trade away from the US.

Three's a crowd

A World Cup has never before been hosted across three countries. And given that the 2026 tournament is spanning an entire continent, there is a wide array of different authorities involved.

With fans travelling between the three nations to watch matches, stepped-up US immigration enforcement efforts could create logistical headaches and inflame already frayed nerves.

And American security concerns – heightened because of the ongoing Iran war – could add new layers of frustration and the potential for seemingly innocuous incidents to escalate unexpectedly.

"Co-hosting these global sporting events is not necessarily a recipe for a lovey-dovey relationship between the co-hosts," says Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, an author and clinical assistant professor of global sport at New York University.

Krasnoff says that while the women's 2023 World Cup hosted by New Zealand and Australia was a net positive, the joint Japan-South Korea men's tournament in 2002 was a "mixed bag" for two nations with a long and uneven history. "It didn't negatively impact the bilateral relationship, but it's kind of viewed historically as kind of a draw," she adds.

Fifa itself has voiced great hopes for the model, saying: "It's a moment when three countries and an entire continent collectively say: 'We are united as one to welcome the world and deliver the biggest, best and most inclusive FIFA World Cup ever.'"

Papering over the cracks?

The leader of each nation may want to use the tournament not only to show they can get along with their neighbours, but to prove a point to those who criticise them on domestic issues.

That is certainly true of Mexico, where there has been a degree of doom and gloom around co-hosting. There have been persistent questions over the readiness of the capital's main airport, its saturated public transport system and the revamped Azteca stadium. Not to mention the appearance of cartel members on the streets a few months ago in a short-lived but widespread display of violence.

And now, the main teachers' union is holding a nationwide strike over pensions and conditions - and massive protests which threaten to close the main thoroughfares to the matches. Their slogan is "without a solution (to their demands), there will be no kick off".

But throughout all the challenges, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has remained resolutely upbeat.

"It's time to witness the best football in the world and to share with everyone who we are - not only a country of immense cultural heritage, but of an empowered people," she said last year.

It would be wrong to paper over the cracks or whitewash the issues Mexico has faced in the run-up to kick, argues Mexican football journalist, Rafael Puente.

"I really hope the fans show patience and good behaviour in the face of some of these problems which we can't hide," Puente adds. "The only thing we can hope for is the excitement, illusion and expectation which the Mexican people have shown in the past, particularly around the participation of the national team."

Trio eye goals beyond the tournament

Analysts have suggested that the three neighbours could manage some other breakthroughs if they can get the sport right over the next month or so.

The trio are in the middle of a challenging review of a landmark North American free trade agreement, known as the USMCA. The review has left uncertainty hanging over a trading partnership that has been in place in some form since 1994.

Mexico has launched formal talks with the US, something Canada has yet to do.

Canada, which is seeking closer trade ties with China, and Mexico, which has increased tariffs on the Asian country, are also moving in different direction with respect to the Trump administration's "elevation of the importance of China as a primary consideration", says Dade, of the University of Calgary.

But the the World Cup offers an opportunity for diplomacy - as we saw when the Trump, Carney and Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum were all smiles together at the tournament draw in December.

"Anytime you get leaders together, it's generally a good thing," Dade comments.

For his part, Trump, who regularly boasts of his nation being the "hottest" in the world, clearly views the World Cup as a chance for the US to bask in the global limelight.

His desire to dominate the proceedings, whether by attending events or firing off Truth Social posts, might foster resentment among America's two neighbours and, ultimately, cause damage to North American relations in the longer term.

On the other hand, he is heavily invested in the tournament's success – and may take special efforts to avoid the kind of diplomatic incidents that could mar proceedings.

Football is a funny old game, as the cliche goes. Just as the sport itself is unpredictable, there is no telling which way this new experiment in three-way hosting will go.

"It was always going to be very complicated and very complex from the get go," Krasnoff observes, "even when the bid was first awarded."

Trump cancels concerts for America's 250th birthday - but how else is it celebrating?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y8nnj33e1o, 2 days ago

US President Donald Trump has told musical acts as part of a planned concert series for America's 250th birthday celebration to "stay at home" - and instead announced what he called a "Rally to end all Rallies" to replace the event after artists pulled out.

A range of events have been planned to celebrate America's birthday, including the rally, a massive fireworks display and an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fight on the White House lawn.

Organisers say the events will celebrate the anniversary, but certain events, including those funded by a body that supports Trump, are leading to questions around whether the celebrations could become politicised.

America250, one of the groups planning celebrations, was established by Congress ten years ago to plan nonpartisan events. Freedom 250, another organisation also planning events, was created by Trump and is a public-private partnership.

Congress has reportedly allocated $150m (£112m) in federal funds for the birthday celebration. Millions more appear to be spent by Freedom 250.

Both America250 and Freedom 250 are expected to host large events as part of the celebration - here is what you need to know.

American state fair

A massive 16-day State Fair is among the biggest attractions of the 250th celebration.

It will run from 25 June to 10 July across the National Mall from the US Capitol to the Washington Monument.

The president will headline the fair's opening ceremony, Freedom 250 announced.

All 56 US states and territories will be showcased in the exposition, according to Freedom 250, which is organising the event.

Among the features of the celebration was a now cancelled concert series entitled the Great American State Fair concert series, which has made headlines recently after a number of the performers scheduled to take the stage, backed out.

Several artists, including Martina McBride, The Commodores, Young MC and Bret Michaels, dropped out, citing the event's affiliation with the White House.

Some said they did not realise the event was affiliated with Freedom 250.

In turn, Trump axed the planned musical acts and instead said in a social media post that he would host "the Greatest Rally, EVER!" He billed it as the "Rally to end all Rallies" and said some artists would still be at the event.

He noted Lee Greenwood, whose song God Bless the USA is used at Trump rallies, would introduce him and tenor Christopher Macchio would also sing at the event.

"We don't want singers with no talent, but big fees to put you to sleep, we've told them all to stay home," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "All we want is you, me, a few speakers, and the Greatest Music ever played, the same Music you have listened to for years!"

UFC Freedom 250

In anticipation of UFC fights that could see thousands of people descend on White House grounds, construction crews are hard at work building a fight cage on the South Lawn.

The arena will hold about 5,000 spectators and another 75,000-100,000 fans will be able to watch on screens in an area not far from the White House.

The 14 June fight, which coincides with Trump's 80th birthday, is another feature of the celebration that is being planned by Freedom 250.

Trump first announced he wanted to bring a UFC fight to the White House last year, though many doubted it would come to fruition.

The White House has said that despite Freedom 250 planning the event, UFC is paying for it.

Dana White, the president of UFC, echoed that sentiment telling the Sports Business Journal in January: "We're eating the whole thing."

The event is free and ticketed.

4 July fireworks display

Across America on 4 July fireworks fill the skies. In Washington, every year, there is a massive display that is run by the National Park Service.

This year, the 40-minute show will be run by Freedom 250, the Trump-created public-private partnership that is hosting a number of events.

It reportedly will include more than 860,000 fireworks in a show that will last some 40 minutes. A typical display will include some 10,000 fireworks and last less than 20 minutes.

The only request from Freedom 250 to Pyrotecnico, the company tasked with creating the show, was for it to beat the Philippines' 2016 record for the largest fireworks display in history, according to USA Today.

Outside Washington

It is not just the nation's capital that is hosting events to celebrate America's semiquincentennial, there will be celebrations across the country.

A ball will drop in Times Square on 4 July, similar to the New Years Eve drop.

But unlike on New Year's Eve, the ball will drop eight times to mark midnight in each of the American time zones, and each time with its own special design, according to America250.

In Philadelphia, a time capsule will be buried and remain sealed until 2276, according to America250.

"When it is opened in 2276, we want future generations to have a clear, authentic window into who we were at 250 – what we valued, what we built, and how we saw ourselves as a nation," Rosie Rios, Chair of America250, said.

Across the country, in Los Angeles, America250 will host a concert at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum with musical artists and a crowd of up to 50,000.

And block parties are planned in cities such as Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Reflecting Pool renovations

In an effort to prepare Washington DC, the nation's capital, for the anniversary, Trump began a number of beautification projects across the city.

Some projects have been viewed as gaudy and unnecessary while others have been applauded by local residents.

Among the targets has been the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Last month, workers began painting the historic pool, which stretches 2,030ft (620m) between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, blue.

Trump has said his project to restore and paint the monument would solve a leaking problem, the paint would last for 40 or 50 years and "there'll be no leaks, there'll be no anything".

But the painting is facing a legal challenge from a non-profit group that is asking for the work to be halted. It argues Trump ignored laws that limit changes to historical landmarks.

Before a court order was issued in the case, Trump said in a Truth Social post on 3 June that a final coat of protection on the pool was to be completed that day, writing that "the water will start flowing, shortly thereafter".

Flesh-eating screwworm arrives in US with case detected in Texas cattle

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c936r25grrlo, yesterday

A flesh-eating parasite that feeds on warm-blooded animals has been detected in the US.

New World Screwworm (NWS) has been advancing across Mexico for the past year and has now been found in a calf in Texas, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said on Wednesday evening.

Efforts to delay the arrival of screwworm in the US have been under way since cases began increasing in Central America and Mexico over several years.

The case was confirmed in the town of La Pryor, Texas, approximately 30 miles (48km) from the southern US-Mexico border. Cattle ranchers in the US have been fearing an outbreak could shrink herds, reduce beef production and drive prices higher for consumers.

Screwworms are parasitic flies whose females lay eggs in open wounds and mucous membranes on animals. When the eggs hatch, hundreds of larvae burrow through living flesh with sharp mouths, eventually killing their host if left untreated.

NWS can infest people and pets as well, but the risk to humans is low, and human cases of screwworm are rare. The fly poses no food safety issues.

This case was detected in a three-week-old calf, with the larvae found in its umbilical area.

The movement of infested animals is the most common way they spread, so the USDA and Texas authorities are establishing a 20km (12.4 miles) detection and quarantine zone.

Plans are also in motion to release millions of sterile screwworm flies, as the females only mate once in their lifetime, and any eggs they lay will be unfertilised and will not hatch.

The USDA has been preparing for a possible outbreak for some time, and they say efforts have delayed the parasite's arrival by a year.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins assured ranchers that USDA personnel have already arrived in South Texas to support operations. She called on livestock producers to be vigilant.

However, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller has been critical of the federal response.

"Instead of using every available tool, USDA moved too slowly and relied solely on a partial solution that takes years to fully implement," he told Reuters, referring to the release of sterile flies.

Correction 5 June: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said the New World Screwworm had been detected in the US for the first time since 1966. It was officially eradicated in the US in 1966 but the US has seen cases since then. The story has been changed to reflect this.

US plans to fight flesh-eating screwworm outbreak with flies and dogs

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7v9vz1gd76o, yesterday

US agriculture and health officials have outlined a plan to combat a flesh-eating parasite that was officially eradicated in the country in 1966, but was just found in Texas.

The plan to prevent a US outbreak of the New World Screwworm focuses on deploying hundreds of millions of genetically-altered sterile flies. Experts, though, say the supply of sterile flies won't be enough to halt the screwworm population.

Other measures include establishing a containment zone around the site of the first US infection along the southern US border, and using sniffer dogs to detect the insects.

The threat to humans is low, but cattle ranchers fear an outbreak could have a large impact on beef markets.

Screwworms are parasitic flies whose females lay eggs in open wounds and mucous membranes of living warm-blooded animals and people. When the eggs hatch, hundreds of larvae burrow through living flesh with sharp mouths, eventually killing their host if left untreated.

Officials have set up a 20km-wide "control zone", and are "implementing quarantines, movement controls, and surveillance in this area," according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Screwworm larvae grow into flies which can travel short distances. The primary way that they have travelled long distances is by being brought by humans.

There have been a handful of US cases since an outbreak in the 1970s, including when travellers brought the pest back, but no larger outbreaks among livestock or humans.

Officials in the US and in Latin America have been combating the problem of screwworms for much of the past six decades, with limited success.

One way to fight back is by releasing hundreds of millions of sterile screwworm flies, as the females only mate once in their lifetime, and any eggs they lay will be unfertilised and will not hatch.

This method, known as the Sterile Insect Technique, has been in use for many years to control a variety of insect populations, including fruit flies and mosquitos. It works by hatching flies in an enclosed space, and then exposing them to radiation to make them sterile before releasing them into the wild.

However, officials say that they will need to breed up to 600 million sterile screwworms flies each week in order to fight back the outbreak.

Currently, facilities in the US and Mexico are only capable of producing about 100 million sterile flies per week.

US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins told reporters on Thursday that since the discovery of the infected calf, officials have released four million sterile flies by ground, in addition to another four million that they have been releasing by plane on a weekly basis since February.

"There is no reason to believe that this incursion will result in any sort of establishment of the pests," said Rollins.

But critics, including cattle farmers in Texas, are worried it's not enough and some have accused the Trump administration of not taking the problem seriously.

The use of sterile flies pushed the screwworms south below the Darien Gap, Panama's heavily-forested border region with Colombia. At the time, officials were deploying around 500 to 700 million sterile flies across Central America per week, according to Sonja Swiger, an entomologist for Texas A&M University.

But in recent years, the screwworms have rampaged back north. In 2022, Panama reported a large increase in cases, followed by countries across Central America. By 2024, they had been reported in Mexico, and were creeping north towards the US.

This latest outbreak has so far resulted in 2,070 cases of screwworms in humans in Mexico and Central America, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Democrats have criticised the response so far as slow and delayed. They have pointed to Trump's decision to eliminate the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which maintained a programme to track screwworms in Central America.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller denounced the federal government for "a slow, bureaucratic, and incomplete response that allowed the pest to advance unchecked through Mexico and reach American soil".

Miller called for federal officials to use insecticide traps, a method which they dismissed in a news conference on Thursday, saying they were ineffective at stopping screwworms, and used chemicals believed to cause cancer to humans and wildlife.

Secretary Brooke, speaking to reporters on Thursday, blamed the screwworms' northward advance on "open border" policies, and cartel smugglers carrying livestock and pets.

She also criticised the government of Mexico, saying its response left "a lot to be desired".

As part of the response, the US is stationing dogs capable of sniffing out screwworms at the borders. These specialised dogs, which are employed by Customs and Border Protection and the USDA, are known as the "Beagle Brigade".

Officials say that to combat the spread, ranchers must be diligent about covering wounds on their livestock, to prevent screwworms from taking hold.

People should also check themselves and their pets, and immediately report any detections to officials.

The screwworms are typically found in warmer climates, but may now be moving further north due to climate change. They are native to tropical regions of the Americas, and are not considered an invasive species, according to Swiger.

Correction 5 June: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the New World Screwworm had been detected in the US for the first time since 1966. It was officially eradicated in the US in 1966 but the US has seen cases since then. This story has been changed to reflect this. We have also updated it to add further context on the number of humans affected in the latest outbreak.

'Traitor' - Elmo in hot water with New Yorkers over Knicks NBA finals

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0p0nzej66o, yesterday

New York City has been lit up with excitement as its beloved New York Knicks compete in the National Basketball League (NBA) finals.

But one New Yorker's failure to endorse his home team has landed him in hot water with Knicks fans.

Elmo, the famous red puppet from Sesame Street, posted on X about the finals earlier this week. "Elmo hopes both teams have fun!," said Elmo, whose fictional Sesame Street is located in Manhattan.

Some fans are incensed at what they call "fence-sitting". "Traitor," one wrote online. The Knicks are currently winning a best-of-seven game series against the San Antonio Spurs for the championship. It is the first time the team has made it to the finals since 1999.

New Yorkers have been celebrating in the streets and at raucous bar watch parties, especially after the Knicks beat the Spurs in the first game of the series on Wednesday.

Support for the team in the most populous US city is widespread - and fans won't let Elmo forget it. Dozens of viral tweets hurling expletives at Elmo popped up after the children's character made the post.

"Elmo don't forget the streets that raised you," a Knicks fan said in one of the milder responses.

"Elmo, you can't both sides this one," another said.

Even New York City government agencies are hopping on the hate train. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) took a shot at the red puppet, comparing him to the Elmo impersonators who greet tourists in costumes in Times Square.

"Just like in Times Square, we think this Elmo is an imposter," the official NYPD account wrote.

The city's transportation department threatened to take down the official Sesame Street sign installed in Upper Manhattan under former Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Elmo followed up with a tongue-in-cheek message on Thursday addressing the vitriol.

"KNICKS that last message! Elmo didn't mean to SPUR you on!"

Elmo first appeared on Sesame Street in 1980 and is known for promoting kindness and unity. But he has had his fair share tussles on social media as well.

In 2022, Elmo's long-running feud with Sesame Street pet rock, Rocco, became the source of a wave of memes, most notably Elmo's frustration that his friend believes the rock could carry out human activities, like eating a cookie or going to the toilet.

Elmo also fielded a slew of sarcastic and jaded responses when he tweeted in 2024: "How is everybody doing?"

Last year, the official Elmo account was hacked, posting antisemitic messages which the makers of Sesame Street called "disgusting". Other messages posted by the hackers attacked US President Donald Trump and called for files relating to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to be released.

"Elmo's X account was compromised by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages, including antisemitic and racist posts," a spokesperson said.

Now that he has found himself in a controversy of a different kind, Knicks fans are warning Elmo that he better be on his best behaviour - and that means, backing the team as their finals run continues.

"This is how serious NY is taking this Finals," one fan wrote online. "Elmo had to retract his statement cause the city was like you a New Yorker."

The cash-in-the-sofa saga that just won't go away for South Africa's president

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy429dv9kk0o, yesterday

Just like Watergate in the US, South Africa's "Farmgate" scandal started with a break-in but has since spiralled into something that could threaten the future of the sitting president.

Cyril Ramaphosa now faces the possibility of being removed from office as MPs have taken the unprecedented step of setting up a committee that will recommend whether or not he should be impeached.

This issue first came up in parliament in 2022, but last month, the county's highest court ruled that MPs had violated the constitution by blocking moves to impeach Ramaphosa.

At that time, the president's African National Congress (ANC) controlled more than half the seats in parliament, but after the 2024 election, he no longer has that majority to rely on.

What is Ramaphosa actually accused of doing?

It all started back in 2020 with a robbery at the president's private farm in Phala Phala, Limpopo province. Thieves broke in and allegedly stole $580,000 (£430,000) in US dollar bills that had been stuffed into a sofa.

But details only came out two years later when the country's former spy chief, Arthur Fraser, highlighted the alleged theft in an explosive dossier that he sent to the police.

Fraser, a close ally of former President Jacob Zuma, who Ramaphosa replaced, accused the head of state of hiding the theft from the police and tax authorities.

At the time Ramaphosa said there was "no basis for the claims of criminal conduct".

As the stolen cash was in foreign currency, it meant that exchange control laws could also have been contravened.

The reserve bank looked into the issue and found that there were no violations of the exchange control act and the public protector, who investigates allegations of abuse of power, found no wrongdoing on the president's part.

But parliament also began an impeachment process and established an independent panel to investigate the allegations.

It came to some damning findings, including saying there was "substantial doubt about the legitimacy of the source of the currency that was stolen" and concluding that Ramaphosa "has a case to answer".

What did the president say?

Ramaphosa has always been clear that he did not do anything wrong and resisted calls to resign.

In 2022, he confirmed that a robbery had taken place and that the money - he gave a figure of $580,000, though Fraser had mentioned $4m - had been from the legitimate sale of buffalo from his livestock business.

In response to the independent panel's report, he filed a legal application to have the report set aside.

That was dropped once parliament had voted against accepting the report but the president has since revived it, arguing that the independent panel had "misconceived its mandate, misjudged the information placed before it and misinterpreted the four charges advanced against me".

How does the impeachment process work?

According to South African law, the president can be removed for:

* violating the constitution or law

* serious misconduct or

* an inability to perform the functions of the job.

Ramaphosa is accused of violating the first two.

Parliamentary rules spell out the process followed for impeachment.

The independent panel's report is part of that process, but now a committee of MPs has been established to examine the charges against the president and make a recommendation.

If it recommends impeachment, the matter is put to a vote.

But according to the constitution, at least two-thirds of MPs must vote to remove the president.

Is Ramaphosa likely to be impeached?

The two-thirds rule may be what saves the president.

Ramaphosa needs at least 133 MPs to reject an impeachment motion and the ANC currently has 159 seats in the National Assembly.

Political analyst Sandile Swana told the BBC it was unlikely that the ANC MPs would turn on Ramaphosa if it came down to a vote.

"The ANC has made it clear that it is not in the business of impeaching its own president, regardless of the facts," he said.

What is less clear is which way the MPs from the other parties in the 10-party governing coalition will vote.

Ramaphosa has not always enjoyed smooth relations with the second-largest party in government - the Democratic Alliance (DA).

"The work of the committee must continue [and] … should not be unnecessarily delayed," DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis was quoted as saying by local publication IOL News.

Makashule Gana, a member of another coalition partner Rise Mzansi, has been elected as chairperson of the impeachment committee. He said Ramaphosa's legal challenge to the report would "not stop the work of the committee".

Smaller parties in the coalition, like the Patriotic Alliance, have thrown their weight behind Ramaphosa and vowed to vote against impeachment.

Of course, the president's legal challenge to the 2022 report, which is due to be heard in September, may stop all this in its tracks.

Richard Calland, public law professor at the University of Cape Town, argued that there was a "good chance" the president would be successful. He believes the panel's report was "flawed" and riddled with "errors in law".

"It would make no sense to continue with the impeachment committee while that application is being dealt with," he said.

Ramaphosa has said he will not seek to prevent the committee from operating while it carries out preparatory work but will do so if it gets under way while legal proceedings are in place.

Has this ever happened before?

Ramaphosa is the first president to face impeachment proceedings under new rules introduced in 2018.

These introduced the creation of an independent panel and an impeachment committee.

In 2016, Zuma faced and survived an impeachment vote in parliament thanks to the ANC's large parliamentary majority.

He faced the vote after the Constitutional Court said he had breached the constitution by failing to repay public money used to upgrade his private home in KwaZulu-Natal.

What does this mean for Ramaphosa's political future, and the ANC?

According to Calland, if it gets to a vote in parliament, opposition parties most likely know the impeachment vote will fail because of the numbers, but "they want to harm the president and… the ANC through this process".

Ramaphosa's credibility and authority could well take a knock but as, under the two-term rule, he is unable to become president again after the 2029 election, he himself will not suffer at the ballot box.

The ANC, though, has removed two previous presidents as party leader - Zuma and Thabo Mbeki - once it felt they may be a liability and it could do that again in 2027 if it feels its electoral chances are taking a hit with Ramaphosa in charge.

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Heavy gunfire in Somali capital as row over election delay escalates

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpdpwgxl1qzo, 3 days ago

Government forces and opposition fighters have exchanged heavy gunfire in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, as a row over delays to elections has escalated.

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's term in office ended on 15 May but was extended by a year. The opposition said this was unconstitutional and called for protests on Thursday.

Gunfire was reported in several neighbourhoods of the capital and persisted throughout the night, according to accounts by residents.

Police said they were conducting a "large-scale security operation" against "heavily armed militias who launched mortar attacks" in some areas.

Somalia last held a one-person, one-vote election in 1969 and has been ravaged by civil war for more than 30 years.

Former Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire said he had been attacked by government forces while he and other leaders were preparing for Thursday's "peaceful" demonstrations.

"The responsibility for any casualties or damage resulting from this incident lies with the president whose term has expired," he said on X.

"This attack is a grave assault on the constitutional rights of Somali citizens and a deliberate attempt to suppress peaceful assembly," he added.

A resident told the Reuters news agency that a mortar shell had landed on his neighbour's house and injured a mother.

"A big house near us is also ablaze, mortars and other weapons landed on it," Ahmed Ismail told the agency on Thursday morning.

The number of casualties is not yet known and the president has not commented.

In statement on X, former President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, an ally of Khaire, said the opposition would not be intimidated.

"If the President and his soldiers think that we are afraid or that we will flee, we are not going to run away," he said.

The protests have not taken place amid the fighting. The capital is now largely calm, although sporadic gunfire can still be heard in some districts.

Somalia's Civil Aviation Authority denied reports that the violence had disrupted flights, assuring passengers that operations at the city's airport remained normal.

"All scheduled flights today at Aden Adde Airport are operating as planned, with no cancellations," the authority said in a statement.

The US embassy in Mogadishu has described the violence as "reckless", adding that leaders on all sides "have a responsibility to preserve stability and resolve differences through peaceful means".

Regional bloc Igad condemned all acts of violence and urged parties to exercise restraint and pursue dialogue to resolve their differences, while the European Union Delegation in Somalia urged leaders to prioritise national interests and find a "consensus on an election roadmap in the interest of the Somali people".

Mohamud was elected by parliament in 2022, defeating then President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, better known by his nickname Farmajo.

He had served a previous term as president in 2012-2017, which was dominated by the struggle against al-Shabab jihadists, who still control many parts of the country.

Following the expiry of the president's term, the federal government and the opposition started talks but did not reach an agreement.

Mohamud has been attempting to move Somalia towards democratic elections, replacing a system in which clan elders choose MPs, who in turn select a president.

The opposition disagrees on how direct elections should be conducted and rejects the constitutional amendment in March extending the presidency by a year.

They also argue that new laws on political parties and the appointment of electoral commissioners were not inclusive and would therefore undermine fair elections.

Additional reporting by Ibrahim Adan in Mogadishu

More about Somalia from the BBC:

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Nearly 50 people die of thirst in Sahara desert after lorry breaks down

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62r2ldyejro, yesterday

At least 49 people have died of thirst in a remote part of the Sahara desert in northern Niger after the truck carrying them broke down, the authorities say.

The group were returning from Mali, where they had attended celebrations for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, when they ran out of water, stranded more than 80km (50 miles) west of Assamaka, a major border crossing point between Niger and Algeria.

"The travellers found themselves trapped in the heart of a hostile environment where extreme temperatures and lack of supply points make survival extremely difficult," said the governor of Agadez.

Only two survived, trekking across the desert to Assamaka, where they alerted the authorities.

"This is something we have been working against, for years," Chehuo Azizou, the head of a local NGO, told the BBC.

"We have been sensitising drivers, travellers and any person involved immigration activities about the risk of crossing the desert. This recent incident is not unusual. Generally, we witness such cases on the route heading to Libya or Algeria."

In this latest case, the lorry had departed from the Malian town of Telhandek but veered away from its intended route, the Agadez governor's statement said.

The driver and passengers made repeated attempts to repair the vehicle over several days, but their efforts ultimately proved unsuccessful.

"Deprived of water and unable to repair the vehicle" most were unable to survive, the statement added.

"Dozens of lifeless bodies were found under the immobile truck and in its surroundings," it said.

The victims, all nationals of Niger, were buried in mass graves by the rescue team dispatched to the area by local authorities.

While returning from the scene, the rescue team said it came across another broken-down lorry carrying more than 60 people, who had been stranded for three days after a battery failure.

The lorry had set off from the Malian town of Harouba, more than 300km from the Niger border, the governor said in a follow-up statement.

The rescue team, which included Nigerien troops, distributed water to the "exhausted and distressed travellers" and helped repair the vehicle, allowing them to safely resume their journey.

The Niger desert remains a major transit corridor for migrants from across West Africa trying to reach Europe, repeatedly defying the risks associated with the perilous journey.

The governor of the nearest city, Agadez, said the tragedy underscored the "vulnerability of young people engaged in migratory and cross-border economic activities, often forced to pass through unstable areas in order to survive or seek better living conditions".

Additional reporting by Chris Ewokor

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Fall in official Ebola numbers appears to be good news but it's not that simple

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0q2q4y09elo, yesterday

The latest Ebola figures from the Democratic Republic of Congo appear to offer some hope after the number of cases was dramatically scaled back.

At one point the authorities were talking of more than 1,000 suspected cases and nearly 250 suspected deaths.

They are now reporting around 380 confirmed cases in DR Congo, including 60 deaths, plus another 15 confirmed cases and one death in neighbouring Uganda.

However, the key difference is that the authorities are now talking about confirmed, rather than suspected, cases as before.

So it would be a mistake to assume that the fall in numbers means the outbreak is suddenly less dangerous.

The decline reflects better data, as laboratories were able to rule out many patients who had fever but were suffering from other conditions such as malaria which is common in DR Congo.

The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said the outbreak had a "big head start" but response teams are now "catching up".

However, one of the biggest concerns remains contact tracing. Only about 45% of people in direct contact with an Ebola patient are currently being followed up, partly because the epicentre of the latest outbreak is in an area hit by conflict.

The WHO says at least 90% of contacts must be traced to bring an outbreak under control.

Another challenge is mistrust among some communities. An Ebola burial team was reportedly attacked this week in South Kivu province, forcing responders to abandon a coffin and raising fears of further transmission.

Traditional burial practices often involve washing and touching the body, and funerals typically draw large crowds - all high risk for Ebola, which is spread from one person to another by contact with infected bodily fluids.

Tedros said building trust with communities was critical to bringing the outbreak under control.

The Ebola outbreak is concentrated in three provinces of eastern DR Congo, an area roughly the size of the United Kingdom, much of it rural, remote and difficult to reach.

It is also unfolding in one of the most volatile regions in Africa, with many armed groups operating.

The latest outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo species of Ebola, which has only occurred twice before. Because it is much rarer than other types of Ebola, there is no vaccine or proven treatment, although various teams are trying to develop them.

Speaking on the BBC's Today programme, Tedros said that earlier this year he had urged foreign ministers planning to increase defence spending not to forget about the "invisible enemy".

He said the Covid pandemic had resulted in around 20 million deaths - far more than any recent conflict.

However, he stressed that he did not expect Ebola to spread worldwide because the virus is not airborne, unlike coronavirus.

The WHO assesses the risk from Ebola as very high within DR Congo - this is the 17th outbreak in the country where it was first discovered 50 years ago - high in the region, but low globally.

On Friday, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said its model scenarios showed that without strong public health intervention the current outbreak could become as large - or even larger - than the outbreak in West Africa in 2014-16.

Separately, the US said it would provide an additional $38m (£28m) for Ebola "response efforts", bringing the total direct funding to more than $200m.

Earlier this week British government officials said they had ruled out introducing temperature checks at UK airports for flights arriving from affected regions because of their limited effectiveness.

More than 12,000 passengers were screened at five UK airports during the 2014 outbreak in West Africa, but these failed to pick up the only case, that of nurse Pauline Cafferkey.

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

What is Ebola and why is stopping the latest outbreak so difficult?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz72p75zg4qo, yesterday

An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been declared a public health emergency of international concern, by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The latest outbreak is challenging because it involves a rare species of Ebola for which there is no vaccine, and the epicentre is in an area affected by conflict.

What is Ebola and what are the symptoms?

Ebola is a rare but deadly disease caused by a virus.

Ebola viruses normally infect animals, typically fruit bats, but outbreaks among humans can sometimes start when people eat or handle infected animals.

It takes two to 21 days for symptoms to appear. They come on suddenly and start like the flu or malaria, with fever, headache and tiredness.

As the disease progresses, vomiting and diarrhoea develop and it can lead to organ failure. Some, but not all, patients develop internal and external bleeding.

The virus spreads from one person to another by contact with infected bodily fluids such as blood or vomit.

Ebola outbreaks used to be small and contained to remote rural areas. However, urbanisation is pushing larger populations closer to these natural reservoirs of Ebola and increasing the risk of transmission.

Why is this Ebola outbreak different and is there a vaccine?

This outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo species of Ebola, which had not been seen for over a decade.

Named after a district in Uganda where it was first detected, Bundibugyo has only caused two previous outbreaks - in 2007 and 2012.

One study showed that it killed about a third of those infected, far less than the more common Zaire (66.6%) and Sudan (48.5%) species.

Initial blood tests for Ebola in the affected areas were negative as they were designed to identify the more common species of the disease.

There is no approved vaccine for Bundibugyo, but experimental ones are in development. It is possible that a vaccine for the Zaire species may offer some protection.

There are also no drugs that target Bundibugyo, making it harder to treat. The WHO has recommended the evaluation - under strict protocols - of the experimental anti-viral drug obeldesivir, developed during Covid, to see if it is effective in stopping those who have been in contact with Ebola patients from getting sick.

A further complication is that the outbreak is taking place in a conflict zone, with a quarter of million people displaced from their homes and people moving across porous borders into neighbouring countries.

Trish Newport, from medical charity Doctors Without Borders, who is heavily involved in efforts to tackle the outbreak, told the BBC World Service that territory constantly changed hands between different armed groups, making it difficult for emergency response teams to simply drive to Ebola hot-spots.

She pointed out that a further problem was bad roads, with a 90km (56-mile) journey from Bunia city to Mongbwalu, one of two gold-mining towns where the majority of cases have been reported, taking more than three hours.

However, the WHO's declaration of a public health emergency of international concern does not mean we are in the early stages of a Covid-style pandemic. The risk Ebola poses outside Central and East Africa is minimal.

How did the current Ebola outbreak start?

The first known case was a nurse who developed symptoms on 24 April, which means the virus had been spreading undetected for weeks.

The nurse died in Bunia, the capital of eastern DR Congo's Ituri province, according to Congolese Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba.

The victim's body was repatriated to Mongbwalu.

Kamba said one of the reasons the virus spread so quickly was the number of people exposed to the body during the funeral ceremony.

Africa's public health agency, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), told the BBC World Service that funerals were a particular concern, as they also helped spread the disease during previous outbreaks.

Africa CDC director Dr Jean Kaseya said public health information campaigns were "providing information on how to handle funerals" and the importance of basic hygiene and sanitation, as well as providing protection measures for health workers.

Kamba said there had been delays in reporting Ebola cases because infected communities believed the disease to be "witchcraft" or a "mystical illness", resulting in people seeking treatment from prayer centres and witchdoctors rather than hospitals.

How many Ebola cases have been reported and where are they?

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was "deeply concerned about the scale and speed of the epidemic".

On 4 June, Africa CDC said there had been 381 confirmed cases and 62 confirmed deaths from the virus in DR Congo. These figures are lower than those mentioned in earlier reports as they had reflected suspected cases, many of whom later tested negative. The death toll includes five health workers who the Congolese health ministry has described as "courageous".

Six people have also recovered from Ebola so far, including four nurses whose discharge from hospital was celebrated at a special ceremony.

Ituri province is the epicentre of this outbreak.

Officials in neighbouring Uganda have so far confirmed one death from Ebola - an individual who travelled to the capital city, Kampala, from DR Congo. The authorities there have also confirmed 16 cases with two people discharged from hospital.

American doctor Peter Stafford tested positive after treating patients at Nyankunde Hospital in Bunia, where he has worked since 2023.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said he had been evacuated to Germany for treatment.

Cases have also been confirmed in North Kivu (19) and South Kivu (3), provinces partly controlled by the rebel AFC-M23 alliance. These discoveries signalled the outbreak's spread from its epicentre in Ituri.

What is being done in DR Congo to tackle the current Ebola outbreak?

The Congolese government has established a laboratory in Mongbwalu, one of the centres of the outbreak in Ituri, which can test blood samples for the Bundibugyo species of Ebola. Results can now be delivered within 24 hours, removing earlier delays.

Surveillance systems, contact tracing and the treatment infrastructure, with dedicated centres in several affected towns, have also been expanded, according to the health minister.

The WHO has dedicated $3.9m (£2.9m) to tackling the outbreak, while Africa CDC has announced a $319m budget. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has pledged an initial $5m to support the agency's plan.

A toll-free number, 151, has been provided for reporting symptoms and people are being reminded to:

* avoid contact with bodies of people who died with symptoms, or with dead animals

* not eat raw meat, as undercooked food may transmit the virus

* practise social distancing.

How have the rebels responded to the latest Ebola outbreak?

The AFC-M23 group says it is creating an Ebola response team to prevent the spread of the disease in the areas it controls.

On 17 May, spokesman Lawrence Kanyuka said the group had "immediately activated" response mechanisms in conjunction with health services and local medical facilities.

Neither the government nor the rebels have explicitly said whether they are prepared to work together to tackle the outbreak.

However, a case in Goma, North Kivu's provincial capital, was confirmed by a state-run body, the INRB.

Caitlin Brady, the country director for the Danish Refugee Council, was in Goma to prepare her organisation's response. She said she had been informed by the rebels that they were using contact tracing and all appropriate measures to contain the virus.

She told the BBC World Service's Newsday programme that "a lot of the health officials and healthcare workers stayed and continued working" after rebels seized the city, meaning "the capacity to respond has remained".

What are Rwanda and other neighbouring countries doing about the Ebola outbreak?

Rwanda has closed its borders with DR Congo, while Uganda has temporarily suspended flights, buses and all other public transport crossing the border with DR Congo.

Authorities in Uganda have told people to avoid hugging and shaking hands.

President Yoweri Museveni also postponed the Martyrs' Day pilgrimage, a Christian holiday held on 3 June each year, which usually draws thousands of Congolese nationals to join festivities.

Several other African countries are tightening border screenings and bolstering health facilities.

Africa CDC has warned that other countries on the continent - namely Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia - are at risk from an outbreak.

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Two people shot dead amid Kenya protests against US Ebola quarantine centre plan

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgz7zny3pzo, 4 days ago

Two people have been shot dead in the central Kenyan town of Nanyuki amid protests against US plans to establish an Ebola isolation centre at a military base nearby, the BBC has learnt.

One of the victims was shot in an area close to the Laikipia Airbase where a demonstration was taking place. He died after being brought to the town's hospital by friends.

The other victim was already dead when he was taken to the hospital by soldiers.

The circumstances of their deaths are not clear, and officials have not commented on the matter. A police spokesman told the Reuters news agency he was not aware of any deaths.

On Monday, hundreds of demonstrators marched through the streets of the town, which is about 140km (87 miles) north of the capital, Nairobi, blocking roads and burning tyres, with police firing tear gas to disperse them.

One of those killed has been identified by his family as Charles Mang'aro Mwangi. They say the 27-year-old was not involved in the protests and was going about his daily life when he was shot.

"He was going to see a friend briefly" at around 18:00 (16:00 GMT) after returning from work, his mother Joyce Wangari said.

"He was not part of the protests. He did not carry stones and was not throwing anything at the police. He was just on the road, minding his own business when he was shot," she said.

Mwangi's family say they have not received any communication from the police regarding the circumstances of his death.

The BBC has been unable to confirm the circumstances in which the second man died. Both bodies, which are in the hospital morgue, appear to have gunshot wounds - one in the chest and the other on the shoulder.

The town was calm on Tuesday morning and there was a heavy security presence on the streets.

The US plan to establish an Ebola treatment facility in Kenya has sparked public concern about cross-border infection risks.

The 50-bed isolation centre is to be staffed by US medics and is intended to treat US citizens affected by the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A US official told the BBC that Kenya was selected due to "proximity, airports in the region having limited capability, and to ensure Americans can be treated in a timely manner".

The official said in a statement that the State Department was planning to transport Americans to the Kenyan facility "as needed, including by plane".

"At this moment in time, we are not aware of any Americans who are set to be transferred to the bio isolation facility," the statement added.

Kenya has not recorded any Ebola cases so far.

Last Friday, the High Court said the opening of the centre should be halted after a rights group opened a case alleging the facility posed "grave and imminent risks" to public health.

The US official told the BBC they were aware of the court case, in contact with Kenyan authorities and "optimistic we can resolve objections".

Speaking for the first time about the issue on Monday evening, President William Ruto defended the plan saying that Kenya had "deployed every arsenal" to protect the country.

He told journalists that the US government had requested Kenyan support in dealing with the virus, which he had promptly accepted, describing it as a "mutual agreement".

"When President [Donald] Trump asked Kenya to support them by having a centre in Laikipia Airbase I gave the ok because it was an agreement with friends who have walked with Kenya for 30, 40 years," he said.

He called on Kenyans not to politicise a matter "so serious" as Ebola, asking politicians to avoid "reckless" talk about it.

"We are a responsible government. We know what we are doing," he added.

The High Court on Tuesday extended the suspension, ordering the government to disclose the details of the proposed Ebola facility.

Military aircraft have been seen flying in and out of the airbase in what experts say is ongoing preparation despite the court order.

Kenya's doctors' union and government watchdogs have opposed the plan saying it risks exposing local populations.

Additional reporting by Akisa Wandera

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How health workers in DR Congo are treating Ebola and staying safe

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgepl7ler5eo, 5 days ago

Health workers in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo are racing against the clock to help Ebola patients manage their symptoms, as well as keep themselves safe and prevent the risk of spreading the virus, while the number of cases continues to rise.

All patients - suspected and confirmed - are isolated and all those who come into contact with them are supposed to wear full personal protective equipment (PPE), and use other equipment to minimise transmission.

One such device is the Cube, a transparent "self-contained treatment unit for highly infectious diseases" that allows a patient to receive medical treatment without direct contact from medical staff.

Created in the aftermath of the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the Alliance for International Medical Action (Alima) designed them to allow medical staff to treat patients from outside, with the use of attached tunnel-like gloves.

"You don't need to have full PPE to be in contact with patients, so it's a very, very important device in this kind of outbreak," says Dr Papys Lame, Alima's Ebola response coordinator.

He tells the BBC it ensures the "necessary standard of care, a positive patient experience and the protection of healthcare workers".

But while these are useful, there are not enough in DR Congo compared to the number of suspected cases of Ebola.

According to Alima, two Cubes arrived in Bunia, the provincial capital of Ituri, the epicentre of the outbreak, over the weekend and are expected to be in use soon. Another two Cubes are on their way to the city.

Supplies of PPE are also limited. On Friday, the International Council of Nurses (ICN) warned of shortages, saying nurses in DR Congo are "scared for their safety because they do not have the equipment to protect themselves".

The Ebola virus spreads from one person to another by contact with infected bodily fluids.

The delay in confirming cases in the early days of the outbreak has seen the virus spread from Ituri to the provinces of North and South Kivu, as well as neighbouring Uganda.

"Unfortunately, Ebola starts very vaguely with a headache, fever and feeling weak," explains Dr Armand Sprecher, an emergency physician and epidemiologist specialising in Ebola for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

"People get what we call malaise - achy in the muscles and the joints, and eventually developing some vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhoea," which he tells the BBC is "true for a lot of illnesses".

Infectious diseases common in the region such as malaria and typhoid share early symptoms with Ebola.

One less common symptom of Ebola - which can occur later - is bleeding, including from the nose, gums and vagina, and blood in vomit and faeces.

All people showing signs of the virus are initially classified as suspected cases and admitted to treatment centres.

Lame says people with suspected Ebola have samples taken to determine whether or not they have the virus, and another one 48 hours later if the first comes back negative.

If the second test is negative, they are considered a non-case, and either referred to a hospital or health centre for further care or discharged home if they no longer have symptoms.

For those who test positive, the Alima coordinator says their symptoms are treated until they are no longer symptomatic and "must have two negative laboratory results before being discharged".

Although Ebola patients have to be isolated to avoid transmission, Lame emphasised the importance of individuals' psychological wellbeing, which the Cube helps with.

The Cube's design allows people to visit their loved ones, he says, explaining that during previous outbreaks "patients were separated from their families and communities and were often reluctant to seek treatment".

But while medical teams work around the clock to treat the symptoms of people with Ebola, the testing and confirmation of cases has been slow.

The ICN also said there was a shortage of testing kits.

The authorities say there have been more than 282 confirmed cases of Ebola including 42 deaths, and more than 1,000 suspected cases, more than 220 of whom have died.

There are currently no approved drugs that target Bundibugyo - the species of Ebola responsible for this outbreak - so patients are mainly receiving supportive care and treatment for their symptoms.

This includes oxygen and ventilation to help with breathing, and intravenous fluids to stop dehydration and provide electrolytes lost in vomiting and diarrhoea.

There is no approved vaccine but experimental ones are in development.

Because of the delays in confirming cases, Sprecher says health workers don't have the "usual mapping of transmission" they did with Ebola outbreaks in the past, most of which were caused by the more common species known as Zaire.

"Previously, we would know if the disease was passing through a village, through a family, or through people who went to a funeral, so when the patient came to us, we could ask questions like: 'Were you at that funeral, or do you live in this village?'

"We don't have that sort of knowledge backing us up," he explains.

Health workers are often the most at risk, and have a lot of factors to consider, including their own health and wellbeing.

Sixteen health workers are confirmed to have contracted Ebola during this outbreak.

Last week, five people were discharged after recovering from Ebola. Four were nurses, while one was a laboratory worker.

"We lose patients, which is psychologically difficult," Lame says, adding: "We are human, so naturally we are afraid of being at constant risk from a disease for which there is no treatment."

The job is also "physically demanding", especially given the equatorial climate they are in.

Sprecher says even if they have the PPE, wearing it is "a problem, because once you put that stuff on, you start getting very, very hot", and so cannot work for long.

"You've got about an hour before you have to take it off again, because people get overheated and sweat a lot. That sweat does not evaporate to cool them off, it just becomes a puddle inside their boots, and they're still hot, and they start getting light-headed and dizzy."

"If medical staff are no longer safe, then it's no longer safe for them to be working there," he explains.

Both Lame and Sprecher say there are safe work practices to protect healthcare workers, including working in pairs.

"You have a buddy system," Sprecher explains, "so that when you're doing something, you have an external observer watching and reminding you, if for example, your hands unconsciously go to your face, they'll say: 'Don't touch your face, watch it.'"

During a visit to Ituri over the weekend, World Health Organization (WHO) chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged communities to work with health authorities after some local people attacked health centres angered by strict burial rules.

The bodies of those suspected of having died with Ebola are not allowed to be handled by relatives to prevent the risk of spread.

Another issue hampering the Ebola outbreak response is the ongoing conflict in DR Congo.

Ahead of his visit, Tedros called the province the centre of a "catastrophic collision of disease and conflict", warning they could not "build community trust or isolate the sick while bombs are falling".

Ituri has been under military rule since 2021, when the civilian authority was replaced by a military general in an attempt to neutralise dozens of armed groups that operate there.

Large parts of North and South Kivu provinces, where Ebola has been reported are under the control of the M23 rebel group.

"Frontline workers are risking everything, while attacks on health facilities make tracking cases and their contacts nearly impossible," Tedros wrote on X, as he called for all warring parties to agree to a ceasefire to allow medical teams safe access.

However, some aid agencies have been able to get into rebel-held areas.

Alima told the BBC it has health workers in areas under rebel control, including Goma, the largest city in eastern DR Congo.

Similarly, MSF says it has rehabilitated and opened an Ebola treatment centre in Goma, as well as supported the training of medical staff in the city.

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

Three Ebola vaccines in development amid growing outbreak fears

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn8pw93929wo, 6 days ago

Three new vaccines are being developed to tackle the rare species of Ebola that has already killed nearly 250 people.

The International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), which is working on one vaccine, said the outbreak was threatening to be the worst ever.

The University of Oxford and the pharma company Moderna are also researching vaccines against the Bundibugyo species.

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi), which is providing funding to each group, said "every day counts".

There are now more than 1,000 suspected cases in the DR Congo with nine confirmed cases in neighbouring Uganda.

There is growing concern this outbreak – which was detected only after it had spread in a conflict zone with limited healthcare resources – could reach the size of the largest ever Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014-16. Then, nearly 29,000 people were infected and more than 11,000 died.

Dr Mark Feinberg, head of IAVI, said: "I think this is clearly threatening to be as severe an outbreak as that, if not even worse, and development of a vaccine, and other countermeasures, is clearly a priority."

It echoes concerns from the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) which said the situation was "deeply alarming" and never before had "so many cases" been recorded so soon.

Vaccines must be developed for each individual species of Ebola – there are six, but only three are known to cause outbreaks.

There is a vaccine for the most common Zaire species, but this outbreak is being caused by another species, called Bundibugyo. It has only been seen twice before and there is no approved vaccine.

IAVI is working on a modified version of the Zaire Ebola vaccine to fight Bundibugyo. The experimental jab has been tested in monkeys where it rapidly trained the immune system and gave close to 100% protection.

Feinberg said their evidence so far meant he was "optimistic about the potential", but currently it would take seven to nine months to get the vaccine ready for clinical trials - although they are trying to "accelerate those timelines".

Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical company Moderna has announced it is using its mRNA technology – which was deployed to rapidly develop vaccines in the Covid pandemic – to work on Bundibugyo.

"We will move with urgency and scientific rigor to support the response and help bring a potential vaccine closer to the communities that need it most," said Stéphane Bancel, chief executive officer of Moderna.

And the University of Oxford has already said it is working on its own vaccine technology, which also saved lives in Covid, to develop a fresh Ebola vaccine.

This should be ready for clinical trials in two to three months.

Each vaccine aims to train the body to spot the same structure on the surface of the virus – known as the Bundibugyo glycoprotein. However, each uses a different technology to get there.

IAVI uses a live, but harmless virus that has been engineered so it also has the Ebola glycoprotein. The immune system fights off the harmless virus and learns to fight Ebola in the process.

The mRNA vaccine and the Oxford vaccine both deliver a snippet of genetic code into the body. Once inside it orders the construction of the Bundibugyo glycoprotein, which the body recognises as foreign and starts to attack.

All would mean that the immune system has a head start when it comes to fighting a real Ebola infection.

However, differences in the technologies and the way they train the immune system could affect levels of protection or the number of doses needed. All this needs to be tested in clinical trials.

Cepi is funding the early stages of research.

"With Bundibugyo virus spreading rapidly and no licensed vaccines, every day counts in the race against this deadly disease," said Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, said: "A Bundibugyo vaccine could help to control this epidemic and strengthen preparedness for future outbreaks."

I moved from Ethiopia to Shetland - and I've brought the coffee with me

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgz46znz0vo, 7 days ago

Shetland has plenty of honesty boxes - filled with fresh eggs, home baking and even pies.

However, the 1,000 or so residents on the island of Whalsay have recently got one offering something a little more unusual - hand-roasted Ethiopian coffee.

It has been provided by Netsanet Sori, also known as Netsi, who moved to the island in October 2025 after spending nine years in Orkney.

Raised on the family coffee farm in rural Ethiopia, she has brought a flavour of her native culture to her new home about 4,000 miles (6,400km) away.

Netsi's mother died when she was young, and she was raised by her grandmother and great-grandmother on the farm where she had to "grow up fast".

"How I was raised there, compared to here, it's completely different," she said.

Since moving to Scotland, she has used coffee to stay connected to home, importing beans from the farm where she grew up.

"It's very important to me and I will teach my children about it as well," she added.

Preparing and drinking coffee is an important daily ritual in Ethiopia with members of the community, mainly women, coming together to take part in a traditional ceremony.

"Neighbours and villagers gather once or twice in a day to share information, good news or bad news, and love," Netsi said.

"It's also about community belonging. If you make a coffee, you can't drink it alone.

"You have to share what you have and help others."

Hand roasting coffee beans is a slow, careful process.

When the beans arrive in Whalsay, they are a light green colour with a subtle, earthy aroma.

They are then cleaned and roasted in the same pot and to ensure the roast is as even as possible, the beans must be constantly shaken as they heat.

As they cook, the beans darken to a rich brown and begin to release an oil, something Netsi says is a sign of good quality coffee.

Traditionally, the beans are ground with a tool resembling a mortar and pestle but, for the sake of speed, Netsi now uses a small electric grinder.

While living and working in Orkney, Netsi said she roasted coffee only for herself, as well as for friends and charity events.

But after moving to Whalsay, she decided to turn her passion into a business.

"After a little research, I realised that nobody else is roasting coffee like this in Shetland," she said.

"So, I thought I can do it, and it's worked brilliantly. People seem to really like it."

Ingrid Sutherland, who lives on the island, has been buying the coffee since she first discovered it at a Christmas fair.

"I'm a bit of a coffee drinker, I love a good cup of coffee in the morning," she said.

"Real coffee, not instant, so I was just blown away with how cool it is.

"It's local as well, so I can just nip along the road and get a bag, rather than going out of the isle.

"We have plenty of egg boxes and cake fridges here in Shetland, but we didn't have a coffee box.

"It's fantastic to have a coffee box here."

Shell pumped oil through Nigeria pipeline for years despite pollution evidence, documents show

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrp8v7407ro, 4 days ago

British multinational Shell continued operating a major oil pipeline in Nigeria for years even though it knew it was causing widespread pollution - despite a warning from its own staff that it was outside its own technical standards, internal documents obtained by the BBC show.

The files, including emails and presentations, reveal that a senior Shell executive cautioned as early as 2008 about the risks of continuing to pump millions of barrels of unrefined fuel through one of the company's main pipelines in Africa's biggest oil producer while it was subject to massive and destructive uncontrolled theft and infrastructure failures.

Across Nigeria's oil-rich southern Niger Delta, decades of oil spills have left a landscape deeply scarred, with wetlands increasingly coated in crude and contaminated sediment.

The BBC obtained the internal documents after Shell disclosed them as part of ongoing legal proceedings in the UK brought by communities living around the creeks and mangroves of the Niger Delta, who want Shell to be liable for the pollution caused by more than 100 leaks stemming from theft and illegal refining of oil between 2011 and 2013 that have damaged their health, environment and livelihoods.

The 60-mile (96.5km) Nembe Creek Trunk Line runs near the riverine community of Bille, which is made up of 45 islands, from inland oilfields to a coastal processing site for exporting.

The pipeline, which Shell sold last year, was one of its biggest, most expensive and ultimately most problematic bits of infrastructure in Nigeria. It was capable of carrying up to 150,000 barrels of oil a day, but was repeatedly hit by spills and targeted by illegal oil thieves.

In court papers the oil firm argues that most of the pollution has been caused by "large-scale oil theft, sabotage" and dozens of illegal refineries, and that its Nigerian subsidiary invested heavily over many years to reduce the risk of and response to spills.

In places like Bille, which the BBC visited last week, residents describe once-rich fishing grounds turning toxic and unusable.

"Before 2011, here was a beautiful area. People play here and go into the river," 64-year-old fisherman Balafama Augustus Bruce told the BBC.

Bruce, a claimant in the case against Shell, said before all the spills he was able to catch a variety of fish including sardines, catfish, tilapia and even oysters - but most are now hard to find or, if caught, appear deformed.

"We used to fish around here. But because of the damage [the spills] have caused, nobody is fishing here again.

"Because of that I've become poor. I eat from hand to mouth."

The communities via the ongoing international lawsuit against Shell are seeking $1bn (£742m), including:

* $250m in compensation

* And $750m to clean up the environmental damage.

According to the UN, since 1958 when Shell sent its first shipment of oil from Nigeria, at least 13 million barrels - or 1.5 million tonnes - of crude oil have been spilled in at least 7,000 incidents.

Campaigners have long tried to hold multinational oil firms accountable for environmental damage there - a vocal critic of Shell was Ken Saro-Wiwa, one of Nigeria's leading writers, who was notoriously executed by the then-military government in 1995 after leading demonstrations against the pollution in his Ogoniland region of the Niger Delta.

Oil theft has also long been a problem in the Niger Delta - known as "bunkering" it usually involves criminal gangs tapping into pipelines and siphoning off crude into boats or storage tanks. Some of the stolen oil is refined in makeshift camps hidden in the creeks, while the rest is sold off illegally.

In the mid-2000s oil militancy was also a major security issue as heavily armed militants on speedboats attacked installations and kidnapped foreign workers for ransom, including a series of incidents in 2007 and 2008, as part of their demands that the impoverished region receive more benefits from oil revenues.

2008 - the first warning

An internal Shell email exchange from October 2008 reveals a disagreement between senior executives over the risks of continuing operations.

Markus Droll, the firm's then technical vice-president, raised concerns about a decision to keep operating the Nembe Creek Trunk Line outside of its usual guidelines.

"If there is another massive explosive attack tomorrow… then we could well find ourselves in the situation of simply having to close the production down," he wrote.

Droll also questioned whether enough safeguards were in place and flagged that other sections of the pipeline could be in a poor condition: "I don't agree that funding can be an issue.

"Sorry if I sound like a broken record on this - but the approach makes me - as your Technical VP - pretty uncomfortable."

In response, Ann Pickard, Shell's regional executive vice-president at the time, criticised him for failing to mark the email as "legally privileged" - protecting their words from being used against them in court.

"You have just exposed us significantly in your official disagreement as technical manager without legal privilege," she said.

Pickard acknowledged it "was not an easy decision" but argued continuing operations represented the "lower risk to both people and environment".

"You are right, we may have to deal with it in the future," she added.

2012 - oil thefts flagged 'red'

One of the internal documents obtained by the BBC is a previously confidential form from 2012 - at the height of the alleged Bille oil spills.

It reveals that Shell bosses recognised its pipeline was not operating within its usual technical standards, with sections classified as "red" because of extensive illegal oil-theft connections - which is when thieves drill a hole to siphon off oil.

According to the company's own definitions, that status required either an immediate shutdown or "immediate corrective action".

But the document shows how despite raising the concerns, executives argued shutting the system down would simply lead to "a significant number of new illegal connections" being installed elsewhere.

Instead, senior officials gave the Nigerian subsidiary permission to continue pumping.

Shell told the BBC that decisions were based on a number of complex factors, including large-scale oil theft, illegal refining and militancy in the area at that time, and that it worked with the Nigerian authorities and also local communities to address them and to clean up spills regardless of cause.

Local leaders in Bille accept that widespread oil theft happened in the region but believe Shell should still be held responsible for pollution from its infrastructure.

"They are not concerned about what happens to you. Their concern is [to] continue to make profit," said Chief Boma Renner Dappa, the spokesperson for the Bille local leaders' council, explaining how people's livelihoods had been wiped out and unknown health consequences.

"All that has happened in this environment is as a result of negligence," he told the BBC.

Other files obtained by the BBC reveal concerns that some inside Shell had at the time about scrutiny of its operations in Nigeria.

2013 - audit caution

An email chain from February 2013 shows how executives suggested conducting an audit into how the company managed oil theft and pipeline integrity between 2009 and 2012.

Vincent Holtam, who was then general manager for onshore assets for Shell's Nigerian subsidiary, replied to warn colleagues that doing so could "do more harm than good".

"I have no doubt that this [audit] will come out as UNACCEPTABLE, in which case we may be very exposed in disputing any oil loss claims from the Government or compensation claims from the community," he wrote.

The documents obtained by the BBC do not indicate whether the audit ultimately went ahead.

2013 - oil spill clean-up options

The following month, the documents show how Shell launched a "most confidential" operation, codenamed Project Madrid, to assess how to handle the spills in Nigeria.

A 36-page internal presentation prepared for executives estimated there were 100 illegal refineries operating around the pipeline, causing pollution to around 9,000 hectares (22,000 acres) of water and 9,000 hectares of land.

It also reported its teams were cleaning up 18 reported spills from an estimated 60 bunkering points.

Executives were presented with a menu of options ranging from temporary shutdowns for repairs while essentially tolerating ongoing oil theft, to halting production for years to fully tackle the problem.

The documents do not reveal which option Shell executives decided to take. But the pipeline resumed operations after a series of temporary shutdowns for repairs in 2013.

"The documents selected are presented without the critical context of the operating environment in the Niger Delta at the time," a Shell spokesperson has told the BBC.

"In isolation, they do not reflect the challenges of working against the backdrop of widespread organised criminality."

The company argues that it took significant steps to tackle illegal theft but that Nigeria's poor security environment made it impossible to prevent gangs from targeting its infrastructure.

Key decisions 'taken in London'

Law firm Leigh Day says the communities it is representing in the UK case "have always argued that Shell plc in London was ultimately making the key decisions in relation to its Nigerian subsidiary which led to the destruction of their environment and are determined to hold the company responsible for the oil pollution which still blights their lives today".

Shell told the BBC it had spoken to the three former executives named in the documents and that none wanted to respond directly. The company says members of the Bille community were among those who took part in theft of oil.

The BBC asked the Nigerian government to respond to Shell's claim that the authorities were unable to deal with the organised criminality, but has not received an answer.

A Shell spokesperson said, "We strongly believe in the merits of our case and will vigorously defend the claims at trial next year."

But Bille residents like Taminoibitein Philip say Shell - despite recently selling on the pipeline to Renaissance Africa Energy - still has a responsibility having benefited from collecting the oil for years.

Philip is a harvester of periwinkles, but says the sea snails - a delicacy in the Niger Delta - are hard to come by these days in the mangroves and swamps.

"When you go to the bush, you won't see periwinkle [any more]," the 49-year-old said.

"And the odour [is] killing us... some places - crude [oil], some place - gas.

"We don't benefit. We are suffering."

She feels the community's only hope is that the court case forces Shell to clean up the waterways: "Let them come and flush the river for us."

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

Grammy-winning director explores his Nigerian grandfather's role in the Biafran war

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8r826465dko, 6 days ago

Meji Alabi has directed some of the biggest selling music artists on the planet: Beyoncé, Burna Boy, Davido and Stormzy. But nothing prepared the Grammy Award-winning director for his new documentary on Nigeria's civil war.

Warning: This article contains details some readers may find disturbing.

Surviving Biafra: Voices from the Nigerian Civil War, produced by BBC Africa Eye, includes previously unseen footage taken on the front line of the devastating war that lasted from 1967 until 1970 when ethnic tensions threatened to tear apart the young West African nation.

"It was very much an eye opener for me. I just grew up not knowing much about the war at all, or who was fighting who," said the 37-year-old, who was born in London to Nigerian parents before moving to Texas in the US to go to school.

A highpoint in his career came five years ago when he won a Grammy for co-directing the music video for Beyoncé's hit Brown Skin Girl.

It was not until he teamed up with his uncle Leke Alabi-Isama, who is also a filmmaker and co-founder of their Lagos-based production company PriorGold Pictures, for the history documentary project that they both began to realise the depth of Nigeria's traumatic past.

The little they did know was learnt from Leke's father and Meji's grandfather, Godwin Alabi-Isama, a former army commando who fought on the side of the federal army against ethnic Igbo separatists fighting in the south-east of the country for a breakaway state called Biafra.

"I only just saw it from a Nigerian [federal army] perspective," said Leke. "I never knew of the horrors. I never knew of the suffering and the pain of the other side."

Throughout the Africa Eye documentary, survivors, now in their 70s and 80s, recount their experiences of living and fighting during a period that shaped the lives of millions and still has relevance today.

After dozens of northern Nigerian politicians were assassinated in the January 1966 coup, led by a general from the Igbo ethnic group, reprisal attacks against Igbos occurred in a series of devastating waves of communal violence

Around a million Igbos then returned to their traditional home region in the south-east of the country, where three states broke away to form the independent Republic of Biafra.

The Nigerian government declared war - one of the bloodiest and most divisive conflicts ever fought on the continent.

It is estimated that between 500,000 and three million people died, many of them children, and it became the world's first televised humanitarian disaster.

Graphic footage of starving children was broadcast into living rooms for the very first time. After 30 months of fighting Biafra surrendered.

Most Nigerians learn about this chapter of their history through stories handed down through generations. For more than a decade before September 2025, history was not formally part of Nigeria's national school curriculum.

For 44-year-old Leke, who was born and grew up in Abeokuta, Ogun state in south-western Nigeria, it was "a line or two lines in a book".

"It's still not fully covered, you know, the extent of the suffering. And I think, for me, Nigeria is just scared to confront its own truth," he said.

Leke and his 23 siblings grew up hearing war stories from their dad, Godwin Alabi-Isama, who served as chief of staff to Brigadier Benjamin Adekunle of the 3 Marine Commando during the conflict.

"It just felt like my dad was known for helping liberate this town and these villages. I saw him as a war hero," he said.

It was not until his early 30s when Leke started to research what happened during the war that he learnt of the mass starvation in Biafra, of his father's controversial role in the conflict and the true extent of the suffering.

The federal army, including 3 Marine Commando, have faced allegations of war crimes for their conduct in Biafra, including executing civilians.

"The first time I saw those clips of people, children starved… it was horrific. And I think that was a moment of truth for me," Leke said.

"That was the moment for me where the horrors of the war then became facts. Like, OK, something really terrible happened and my dad was on the other side of it.

"When you find out that, you know, your truth is not the only truth, it was a humbling moment."

Leke and Meji said they could not understand why there were not many films about the civil war made by Nigerians, describing how difficult it was to find a truthful account of what happened.

This is one of the many reasons the duo, who usually work with international music stars, wanted to make this documentary.

"It's a topic that, you know, is whispered," said Meji, whose music video productions have played a significant role in bringing Nigeria's music scene to the world's attention, with their characteristically complex choreography and colour attracting tens of millions of online views.

"It hasn't been attacked head on and, you know, presented from an inquisitive younger generation like this before," he said.

The documentary pulls together talent from across the region - with Meji convincing Ghanaian composer Ray Michael Djan Jr, who worked on the soundtrack for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, to do the music.

It also relied on the expertise of the BBC's Igbo service, Igbo historians and features first-hand accounts from survivors, some of whom have never spoken publicly about their trauma before.

"This generation is slowly fading, and if we do not preserve their testimonies now, we risk losing not only their memories, but the chance to fully document this history in a way that can contribute to understanding and healing," said Leke.

Two of the central characters are former female soldiers, who fought on opposite sides. There are also interviews with an aid worker and former BBC correspondent Martin Bell, who both voice criticism about the international response to the crisis.

While Leke and Meji had heard many war stories from Godwin Alabi-Isama before, they had never been in a position to ask the tough questions.

The BBC editorial team led the interview to ensure the former commander was pushed on the war crime allegations made against 3 Marine Commando.

During the conflict, the Nigerian government also blocked food from entering Biafra - cutting the region's access to seaports, airfields and foreign supplies.

The blockade led to famine and it is thought starvation is how hundreds of thousands of people died.

Leke described the moment where he showed his dad the black-and-white footage of emaciated children and said until then in his "43 years of existence" he had never heard his father's voice shake.

"Even every time I watch it back, when it gets to that point, I get, goosebumps," he said.

During the interview his father also described how, unbeknown to him at the time of the conflict, he ate human flesh. The moment of cannibalism happened when his unit was served food by villagers in occupied Biafran territory.

In response to the forthcoming documentary, Nigeria's government said it hoped it would serve as a reminder of how far the country had come in the last 59 years "and of the enduring importance of dialogue, reconciliation and shared purpose in building a stronger nation for generations to come".

Both Leke and Meji would like that - and more.

"My hope is that this film encourages Nigerians to confront the darker parts of our shared history with honesty, reflection, and empathy," said Leke.

Meji agrees: "We really hope this documentary encourages more survivors to tell their stories and document our history further. It's up to us to do it."

Additional reporting by Charlie Northcott, Izzy Fleming and Adline Okere

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

Four sentenced to death for killing worshippers at Catholic church in Nigeria

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0p57q1m36o, 4 days ago

A court in Nigeria has sentenced four men to death for attacking a church in the south-western Ondo state in 2022 in a case which sent shockwaves across the nation.

Forty-one worshippers were killed and more than 100 others injured when they opened fire at the St Francis Catholic church in the town of Owo during a Pentecost service.

The court in the capital Abuja also sentenced the men - Idris Abdulmalik Omeiza, Al Qasim Idris, Jamiu Abdulmalik and Abdulhaleem Idris - to 20 years in prison for belonging to a terrorist group.

Presidential assent is required before any death sentence is carried out in Nigeria. There have not been any executions in the country for several years.

Judge Emeka Nwite, who presided over the case, said the evidence presented against them was "neither shaken nor contradicted during cross examination".

He had ordered an accelerated hearing after the high-profile trial commenced in August 2025.

In his judgement, Justice Nwite said that the prosecution had proved their case beyond reasonable doubt as they had brought before the court witnesses who saw the attack, including one who testified to recognising two of the defendants as attackers.

"Hence this court finds the first to fourth defendants guilty of all nine counts," he added.

One of the witnesses the court heard from was a woman who had her legs amputated from the knees, and had lost her left eye as a result of a dynamite explosion which the attackers had detonated.

The nine counts included joining a terror group, and planning and carrying out killings.

Prosecutor Ayodeji Adedipe said: "Justice has been served, justice has been done to the deceased who were murdered in cold blood."

The men's defence lawyer said they would appeal against the sentence.

During the trial, the defendants said they had been tortured, including being hung from the ceiling, beaten countless times, and using electric shocks on their genitals.

A fifth defendant, Momoh Otuho Abubakar, was discharged and acquitted by the court due to insufficient evidence against him.

He was accused of having financed the attack, by allegedly receiving 800,000 naira (£440; $590) twice from another suspect - who is still at large - and then disbursing the funds to the attackers.

During cross examination, however, Abubakar said the money in his account was the proceeds of his farming business, as well as activities from his cooperative society. He denied that the four other defendants were beneficiaries of the money.

Since the Owo attack, Nigeria has witnessed many more attacks on churches across the country as it continues to grapple with rising insecurity.

US President Donald Trump has accused Nigeria of failing to protect its Christian population from jihadist attacks.

On Christmas Day, the US hit two camps run by a jihadist group in north-western Nigeria, and threatened more if attacks continued.

Claims of a genocide against Nigeria's Christians have been circulating for some time in right-wing US circles, but organisations monitoring political violence in Nigeria say most victims of the jihadist groups are Muslims.

The Nigerian government also denies that Christians are being persecuted in the country.

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

Everest guide survived six-day ordeal by eating chocolate and 'chewing ice'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9p91295q8o, yesterday

The Nepali guide discovered crawling down Everest six days after he was last seen alive has told the BBC he survived by "chewing ice" and eating a few chocolates he found in his pocket.

Dawa Sherpa was adamant he did not "go missing" on the descent down, but instead was forced to "stay behind" after his oxygen ran out.

It had been assumed Dawa Sherpa had perished on the mountain, with his family back in Nepal's capital Kathmandu starting to perform last rites before he was spotted by a clean up team "sliding" down the mountain towards Base Camp.

He was airlifted to hospital in Kathmandu, where he spoke to the BBC while receiving treatment for dehydration, frostbite and a fractured bone.

"I didn't think I would be alive," he told BBC Nepali on Friday. "I thought I would perish this way."

Climber Chris Thrall was the last person known to have seen Dawa Sherpa alive before he was rescued near the Khumbu Icefall on Thursday.

The former British soldier said the 57-year-old was sitting on his backpack just above Camp 3 - around 7,500m (24,600ft) - "as he had done hundreds of times before to take a short rest".

Thrall continued to descend alone for what he estimated to be about 50-100m before he came across another member of their group, a "Polish climber with no oxygen, battling fairly severe frostbite".

"So immediately my attention turned to the weakest member of the trio. And that was that," he told the BBC's Newshour programme.

"As I look back up the mountain, as I helped this guy descend, Hillary Dawa didn't appear to have moved, and certainly wasn't descending, because we would have seen his head torch."

Trapped in a crevasse

Up above, Dawa Sherpa told the BBC he had found himself in trouble.

"As the oxygen ran out, I couldn't walk," he explained.

"I didn't eat anything for the first two days. Then I began chewing ice. It hurt my teeth. I chewed the ice hard."

Then he discovered chocolates in his pocket, and managed to get some melted ice to drink.

He made his way down slowly - only to fall into a crevasse, according to two different people who spoke to Dawa Sherpa about his ordeal.

For two-and-a-half days he was trapped, they said, unable to find a way out.

Then an avalanche sent snow tumbling into the crevasse, and gave him the first hope he had had in days.

"Stepping on the snow, I stood up and looked above... It felt I could get out from there," he told the BBC.

Once he had scrambled out, he found ropes nearby which helped his manoeuvre further down the world's tallest mountain.

Another avalanche threatened his progress, but he was determined to keep going.

"I got through the snow and moved downwards. I walked throughout that night.

"Then, I came close to the base camp."

It was there he saw the first people he had seen in almost a week.

"Boys were going up to collect the waste. I met them. They carried me down."

'Beyond words'

News of his survival was met with shock and delight by the wider sherpa community, the climbers he had been with, and his own family.

Five people have died during this year's climbing season, with more than 300 dying since records began in the 1920s.

Pemba Sherpa, executive director of 8K Expeditions which was overseeing search efforts, called it a "true self-rescue".

"Dawa managed to survive against all odds for days. It's nothing short of a miracle," he said.

When Thrall first saw comments on social media saying Dawa Sherpa, also known as Hillary Dawa Sherpa after famed mountaineer Edmund Hillary, had been found alive, he said he thought it was "spam".

"It's kind of crazy one minute to be fighting back tears with his daughter, and then the next minute to see him crawling into town," Thrall told BBC's Newshour. "It's absolutely amazing, beyond words."

His wife, Damu Sherpa, told the BBC that she had given up hope when told by the expedition company a rescue operation was not possible. The family had begun his last rites.

"When I saw him for the first time, I was so surprised. I was in huge tension after we were told that he would never return home. I can't believe how he came back alive. I couldn't believe my eyes about how he returned safely," she said.

"I wonder about how long he remained alive without food and supplies... I can't understand how my husband ate and drank in such a height. I hope no-one will have to face this fate."

She said the Nepalese government should make sure such similar incidents do not happen again.

"He recognised me … is good and speaks," his daughter Mhendo Lhamo Sherpa told Reuters news agency later, after visiting him. "We are happy."

Doctors at Kathmandu's HAMS Hospital say Dawa Sherpa has been "receiving comprehensive medical care in the intensive care unit", but is stable and his "dehydration is showing significant improvement".

More than 1,000 people have summited Everest this season, making it the busiest on record.

Xi Jinping to meet Kim Jong Un in rare visit to North Korea

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clypym3q7p1o, 2 days ago

China's president Xi Jinping will meet Kim Jong Un next week in a trip to North Korea, in his first visit in nearly seven years, according to both countries' state media.

Xi will be in North Korea from 8 to 9 June at Kim's invitation. Xi last visited Pyongyang in 2019.

The visit comes weeks after Xi received US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing - two countries that loom large over Pyongyang's foreign policy.

China is a key economic and political partner of North Korea, which faces sweeping international sanctions as a result of its nuclear weapons programme and alleged human rights violations.

China and North Korea share a 1,400km-long border and are bound by a defence pact - the only one China has with any country. It guarantees mutual support if either is attacked.

This year marks the 65th anniversary of that treaty.

For Kim, the propaganda value of Xi's visit is self-evident. North Korea had improved its standing on the world stage after withstanding the pandemic and entering the war in Ukraine on the side of Russia.

Despite Beijing's close ties with both Pyongyang and Moscow, Xi is wary of the burgeoning alliance between Kim and Putin.

But Beijing, Pyongyang's largest trading partner, remains the main lifeline for Kim.

It is widely expected that Kim will seek more trade over the land border and more Chinese tourists to fill its newly built beach and ski resorts.

Kim has been proudly displaying his nuclear and missile arsenal. He has also been showing off the capital Pyongyang to visiting dignitaries. And he wants the world to know that it was all achieved without bending his knee to the US or engaging with the South.

Since Kim declared the end to reunification efforts with the South in December 2024, he had called South Koreans a sworn enemy and had cut all levels of communication with Seoul.

Seoul's attempts at rapprochement appears to have not resonated with Pyongyang.

When the North Korean women's professional football team visited South Korea last month to face a South Korean football team, the freeze-out was in full display.

The North Koreans barely acknowledged the South Korean public who showed up to welcomed them at the airport and the stadium. They coldly shook hands with the South Korean players before the match then followed with rough and aggressive play.

Seoul is hoping Xi will play a mediator in this trip, nudging Pyongyang to resume dialogue with both Seoul and Washington.

South Korea's minister of unification Chung Dong-young said he believes that during Xi's meeting with Kim he will discuss resuming the US-North Korea talks.

North Korea's sanctioned nuclear weapons programme may also be on the table.

While Beijing is a long-standing promoter of denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, it has significantly toned down this position in recent years.

During the Trump-Xi meeting last month, the two leaders reaffirmed the shared goal of denuclearising North Korea, according to a White House fact sheet of the meeting.

But when asked about this at a press briefing, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson did not directly confirm the agreement, instead saying China's position on the issue has maintained "continuity and consistency".

Pyongyang, for its part, has made it clear that it will not steer away from its nuclear ambitions.

Just this week, Kim said North Korea's "weapons-grade nuclear materials production capacity more than doubled" in the past five years, as he toured a new nuclear facility, state media reported.

Bear opens window in factory escape, Japanese police say

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgzgq2rzqro, 2 days ago

A bear that was holed up inside an electronics factory in north-east Japan after attacking four people has eluded capture, apparently by opening a window by itself and fleeing under the cover of night, authorities said.

The bear's trail suggests it released the window latch and pushed it open, according to city officials. Before Wednesday's escape, the bear was seen opening a faucet to drink using its front paws.

"We believe it to be extremely intelligent," Fukushima Mayor Yuki Baba said, according to Kyodo news agency.

The bear entered a steel factory in Fukushima late on Tuesday and attacked four people before moving to the nearby electronics facility, where authorities had hoped to catch it.

But an attempt to immobilise it with a tranquiliser dart failed. Food traps also proved ineffective, as the bear was able to eat the fruit and honey baits without getting caught, Japanese media report.

Authorities said they tried turning off the lights to lure the bear into the traps on Wednesday night, but it escaped through a window which it is thought to have unlatched.

Shooting measures had been authorised, but police refrained as there were flammable materials inside the factory.

Japan has been battling rising bear attacks, with a record number of 13 people killed in such incidents between April 2025 and March this year.

Attacks have historically tended to increase in the autumn, just before bears go into hibernation.

On Thursday, Fukushima authorities launched a drone search for the bear. Schools also switched to online classes for the day.

"It's not that we neglected our response efforts, but we are left with regret," Mayor Baba said of the bear's escape.

Tough cookies: How pop group Le Sserafim overcame band tensions and internet trolls

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7752znyle6o, 2 days ago

The pop graveyard is full of bands who fell out, melted down and broke up.

British boyband Five split after their backstage arguments escalated into fist fights. A row about a jacket sparked All Saints deciding to part ways. Oasis took a 16-year hiatus after Liam Gallagher threw a plum at his brother Noel.

But it's rare to hear a group talk about resolving their problems. So I've a huge amount of admiration for the latest album by Korean girl group Le Sserafim.

Sitting in the middle of the tracklist is a song called Need Your Company, which details the history of friction between New York-raised member Huh Yunjin, and her bandmate Kim Chaewon.

"Is friendship all just for show?" they sing over a melancholy guitar line. "I really wanna trust you... no matter how you hurt me."

"I wanted to talk about that weird, complicated mix of emotions where you want to be close to someone but it's physically hard for you to admit it," says Yunjin, on a call from Le Sserafim's record label offices in Seoul.

"There are times when you doubt your own emotions, like, 'Oh, am I the only one who wants to be this intimate? Are they not committed to this relationship?'"

Chaewon – who is absent from our interview as she recovers from a neck injury – has attributed the song's angst to communication problems, rather than personal animosity.

"If you look at the lyrics, you might think it's a conflict, but people are just different, you know?" she told the Korean talk show Lee Mu-jin Service. "There was a time spent adjusting to those differences."

"Sometimes saying, 'you hurt me', can sound harsh," Yunjin explained in the album's liner notes, "but it can also mean I care enough about us that I want things to get better."

"The things that were hard for each other... There was a time we talked openly and worked through it," Chaewon explained. "And we actually got closer, to be honest."

So close, in fact, that the singers ultimately chose to pair up for a terrifying, 233-metre tandem bungee jump from China's Macau tower.

Maybe Noel and Liam should have tried that.

The maturity it takes to confront big interpersonal problems is rare - but it's also a hallmark of Le Sserafim's take on K-pop, which mixes serious self-awareness with playful absurdity.

The band, completed by Miyawaki Sakura, Nakamura Kazuha and Hong Eunchae, debuted in 2022, with sophisticated, bass-heavy dance tracks like Antifragile and Unforgiven.

Their name is an anagram of the phrase "I'm Fearless", and those early songs channelled the girl group trope of combative, bulletproof confidence.

But their resolve was tested by a particularly nasty online hate campaign that targeted everything from their live vocals, to their appearance and even their families.

A 2024 documentary showed the impact on the quintet.

"I don't understand why I'm doing this, suffering and crying," sobbed Sakura – a pop veteran, who'd never encountered such vitriol in her previous bands, HKT48 and Iz*One.

Against that background, however, Le Sserafim became one of the world's biggest pop acts, with five Top 10 albums in the US, and more than 33,000 appearances on Spotify's global charts.

Mentors to Katseye

As they've matured, their music's become more quirky and adventurous.

The house beats of 2024's Crazy channelled New York ballroom culture (this award show performance is eye-poppingly brilliant) while 2025's Come Over was produced by British dance act Jungle.

PinkPantheress is a fan, collaborating on a remix of Crazy, and calling the band’s music “way ahead of its time”.

Katseye, who share a label with Le Sserafim, say the senior band helped when they encountered their own internet trolls.

"Yunjin, I talk to her almost every single day," says Katseye's Sophia Laforteza.

"I feel like, if there is anyone that would understand us, it's them," adds her bandmate Lara Raj.

And if you ever need a masterclass in handling criticism, you don't have to look further than Spaghetti.

A one-off single, released last October, it's a delicious takedown of Le Sserafim's haters, that asks the question: "If we're really that terrible, how come you're so obsessed?"

Dripping with sarcastic self-confidence, it has hooks within hooks, not to mention a guest verse from BTS star J-Hope.

A massive viral hit, Spaghetti was also "a turning point", says Yunjin.

"We realised how positive and energetic we are, especially on tour.

"It turns out that having fun looks really good on us.

"That helped us narrow down what we want to do for our new music, and that's how Spaghetti came along."

The song renewed Le Sserafim's spirit.

They've always been funny off-stage - witness their futile attempts to escape rehearsals, the relentless teasing of "baby" Eunchae, or the time Kazuha infiltrated a concert queue dressed as a horse - but now they're stirring their humour into the music.

Take the album track Saki. A raucous posse rap, it uses Sakura's alter-ego as a vehicle for scurrilous rumours about the band.

"It's kind of satire," says Yunjin. "Everybody's like, 'Who the heck is Saki?' Why is everybody so obsessed with her? Is she a nepo-baby? I heard she's the rudest person. No, I've heard she stays sober and drives everyone home from parties."

So what's the truth?

"She's actually someone who never goes to parties," laughs Sakura. "She's very introverted. She likes to stay home and do little hobbies. She knits and crochets."

"I'm kind of afraid to just be 'Sakura from Le Sserafim'," says the singer.

"That's why I try to take on a lot of different hobbies, because even if you're going through hard times, when you go into the world of crochet, all those fears are brushed away."

When it comes to the crunch, however, the band are as tight-knit as Sakura's head scarves and the story of their album is one of solidarity.

Before they recorded a note, Yunjin (who co-wrote most of the songs) interviewed her bandmates about their feelings.

"She's one of our closest friends," says Kazuha. "We've been through the same things and shared a lot of different emotions. The fact that she can make that into a song for us, so we can speak through the lyrics, means a lot."

"Overall, we had the same sentiment," Yunjin recalls. "We wanted to talk about how this sisterhood helped us become resilient, so that we're able to dream and to run again."

The lead single, Celebration, takes that energy to the dancefloor while redefining the group's definition of fearlessness.

"During our early days, fearless meant that we're free of fear, and that's why we're strong," says Sakura.

"In the era of 'Fearless 2.0', we don't deny fear but we embrace it. We use fear as fuel to go forward."

But maybe Le Sserafim's most fearless move is sampling 1990s novelty song The Macarena for their current single, Boompala.

It shouldn't work. I didn't want it to work. But, damn it, it works… Harnessing that chirrupy chorus to a thumping Latin House beat and the zen-like lyric: "You can't hold on to the clouds in the air".

It's become another viral hit. The intro choreography – where Chaewon interrupts her meditation for a sneaky dance – is trending on TikTok. As a result, their album sold more than 500,000 physical copies worldwide last week.

For fans who've stuck with Le Sserafim through thick and thin, it's heartwarming to see them enter a new and happier phase.

Repaying that support, the band launch their second world tour this July, including their first UK show in London on 16 October.

Eunchae says it'll build on the party atmosphere of last year's EasyCrazyHot dates.

"On tour, we kept thinking, 'Maybe we can try this kind of performance or that kind of stage direction next time'. So we've added lots of those ideas. I think it's going to be a visual and aural feast."

And Yunjin hints we might even get more new music before the shows wrap up in December.

"The album's called Part 1... So you know there's going to be more coming later."

Can't wait.

With thanks to the band’s translator, Minji Son.

Tickets for Le Sserafim’s show at the O2 Arena are on sale now.

Bondi Beach shooting hero charged with assault

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd7p11010g5o, 3 days ago

The man who disarmed one of the alleged perpetrators of the deadly Bondi Beach shooting has been charged with assault.

Ahmed al Ahmed was hailed as a hero after intervening in the attack at a Jewish event in December, in which 15 people were killed and dozens injured.

The 44-year-old is accused of having assaulted his father in March, Australian media report. He has been charged with domestic violence common assault as well as stalking and intimidation.

He has denied the allegations, telling broadcaster ABC they were "not true at all".

Footage from the mass shooting at an event to mark Hanukkah showed Ahmed wrestling a gun from one of the alleged attackers.

He was shot several times in the process and subsequently visited by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in hospital, who called him the "best of our country".

A fundraiser to support him raised more than A$2.5m (£1.24m; $1.7m).

Ahmed is due to appear in Sydney's Bankstown Local Court on 29 June.

The Bondi attack was Australia's deadliest mass shooting since 1996. Police declared it a terrorist incident targeting the Jewish community.

Giant hissing cockroaches among $200,000 worth of illegal insects seized in Australia

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjwpwv18910o, 2 days ago

More than 100,000 illegal exotic cockroaches - some as big as the palm of a hand - have been seized by Australian authorities from a commercial breeder in New South Wales.

The seizure, worth $AU200,000 ($143,000; £106,000), included Madagascar hissing cockroaches and dubia cockroaches from a breeder in Bathurst, 200km west of Sydney. Both species cannot be legally imported into Australia or kept, bred or sold.

It is the largest seizure of illegal exotic invertebrates, authorities said. The illegal insects can spread disease and harm native wildlife and agriculture, they added.

The illegal cockroaches, often fed to pet reptiles, will be killed and disposed of by authorities.

"We're seeing illegal breeding and trading of exotic cockroaches and we're putting pet businesses and pet owners on notice," a spokesperson for the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water (DCCEEW) said.

"If you are found to possess, breed or trade exotic cockroaches such as dubia cockroaches and Madagascar hissing cockroaches they will be seized and you could face penalties under federal law."

The spokesperson urged reptile owners who have been using dubia roaches as feeders to seek legal alternatives such as crickets and wood roaches.

Madagascar hissing cockroaches, one of the largest species in the world, are so called because they can produce a hissing sound loud enough to be heard.

Bathurst snake catcher Stefanie Lesser said she had seen the illegal invertebrates being sold online as reptile food, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

"People do have them because they are big, they're sort of like the size of your palm of your hand," she told the ABC.

"They probably are cost-effective, rather than feeding each lizard three or four woodies, which are quite small, you could only give them one."

Miracle on Everest: Guide believed dead spotted crawling down ice

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgz2yjl4y3o, 3 days ago

A Nepali climbing guide thought to have died on Mount Everest has been found crawling down to Base Camp, six days after he was last seen alive.

Dawa Sherpa was last seen above Camp 3, at around 7,500m (24,600ft), while coming down the mountain after summiting.

Hopes for his survival were slim as the air at that altitude is thin - but on Thursday, a cleaning crew spotted the experienced climber, who had frostbite on his hands but appeared to be in good health, sliding slowly down.

"Dawa managed to survive against all odds for days. It's nothing short of a miracle," said Pemba Sherpa, executive director of 8K Expeditions which was overseeing search efforts. "This is a true self-rescue."

Five people have died so far in this year's climbing, three of them Nepalis who were involved in the Everest preparations, according to news agency AFP.

More than 1,000 reached the Everest summit this season, making it the busiest on record.

Dawa Sherpa - also known as Hillary Dawa Sherpa after famed mountaineer Edmund Hillary - was "slowly sliding through" the Khumbu Icefall toward Base Camp when he was found, Pemba Sherpa said.

"As far as I know, no one has survived alone at that altitude on Everest so far. This is a miracle to have survived for six days alone and descended safe. I think he must have lived inside the tents to keep himself safe," said Pemba Sherpa.

Dawa Sherpa is "awake and undergoing treatment", according to Nishant Dhakal, a doctor in the intensive care unit of Kathmandu's HAMS Hospital.

"He recognised me … is good and speaks," his daughter Mhendo Lhamo Sherpa told Reuters news agency after visiting him. "We are happy."

Before he was found, the 52-year-old's wife told AFP that she had offered last rite prayers for his soul.

On Wednesday, Chris Thrall, a climber and former British Royal Marine, posted a tribute on Instagram for Dawa Sherpa, thinking he had died on the mountain.In the video, Thrall recalled that Dawa Sherpa had "sat down for a rest with his backpack" as they descended from Camp 4, the highest campsite before the summit.

"And I turned and I said, 'Hillary, are you okay, brother?' He said, 'Yes, yes, fine Chris, please go, go!'" Thrall said. "This is nothing new, you know, I'd go ahead, he'd go ahead."

As Thrall went down he found a struggling Polish climber who was part of their group, and they continued descending together. But Dawa Sherpa never caught up with them.

"It had been a long summit push. What should have been five days to the summit and back took us 11 days, that's how challenging the conditions were," Thrall said.

"So, do I go back for Sherpa, who's probably going to rock up and be fine, as he has done hundreds of times before?" he added.

One relative, Kung Sherpa, had expressed dissatisfaction over the pace of the search in an interview with Outside, an adventure sport publication.

The search, when it did commence, was launched by a company called 8K Expeditions, which eventually was able to airlift him to safety.

Foreign nationals among at least 21 killed in Delhi fire

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czd29327qzvo, 4 days ago

At least 21 people have been killed and dozens injured after a fire tore through a multi-storey building in south Delhi, police in India's capital say.

Many of the victims were foreigners - including people from South Asian and African countries - who had travelled to India for medical treatment or to accompany relatives undergoing care, local media reported.

The building in the Malviya Nagar area allegedly operated as a bed-and-breakfast catering to patients and relatives of those receiving treatment at a nearby private hospital.

More than 40 people were rescued and taken to hospital. It remains unclear how many were inside the building when fire broke out. Its cause is not yet known.

The blaze at the Flourish Stay B&B is one of the deadliest in recent years in the Indian capital.

"The fire was brought under control quite early on - it was contained very quickly. We have now cleared the building and opened it up for the police," fire officer AK Malik said.

Delhi minister Ashish Sood said authorities were investigating whether the building had the necessary permissions to operate as a bed-and-breakfast facility, adding that those found responsible for any violations would face criminal action.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences and announced compensation of 200,000 rupees ($2,088; £1,552) for the families of those killed and 50,000 rupees for those injured.

Videos on social media showed flames shooting from the building as people gathered nearby. Footage broadcast by Indian news channels showed its exterior badly charred as emergency workers searched the site.

Eyewitnesses and locals at the scene told BBC Hindi that, upon entering the building, they found many people unconscious - some lying beneath beds in hotel rooms and others collapsed in washrooms.

Wasim, who lives nearby and was among the first responders at the scene, recounted a particularly shocking incident. He said he found bodies of a couple in a washroom, holding each other in an embrace.

Another witness said they performed CPR on several unconscious victims and managed to revive some of them.

A shopkeeper who runs a quilt store opposite the building said he spread quilts on the ground below to cushion people attempting to jump to safety.

Several people jumped from the upper floors and some survived, he said.

Authorities have not yet released a full list of those killed or formally identified the victims. Local media reports, citing officials and other sources, said some of the victims were foreign nationals, including people from neighbouring South Asian countries as well as countries in Africa and Central Asia.

Several people in the building were from Bangladesh and other parts of South Asia and had travelled to Delhi for medical treatment, local lawmaker Satish Upadhyay said.

By early evening, the search and rescue operation was nearly complete but ambulances were still on standby as officials continued clearing debris from the site.

Fires are common in India, where building safety laws are often poorly enforced.

From factories and coaching centres to hospitals and entertainment venues, many of Delhi's deadliest blazes have exposed a persistent gap between safety rules on paper and their implementation on the ground.

Investigations have repeatedly pointed to lax inspections, faulty electrical systems and buildings operating beyond their approved use.

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A sari for Mars: Outfit worn by Indian 'rocket woman' at US museum

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5ppzdq0l2o, yesterday

On a day that Nandini Harinath describes as the most important of her life, the Indian space scientist turned up to the office in a vibrant red and blue silk sari.

That sari is now in pride of place in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

Nandini, who was the deputy operations director for Mangalyaan, India's maiden Mars Orbiter Mission, wore the outfit on 1 December 2013.

For Nandini, saris - especially those gifted by her father – have been a go-to outfit for big days at work or whenever she represents India's space agency.

So it was an obvious choice for what she says was the "single most critical day" for the project. Nandini and other scientists from the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) were in the control room to push the spacecraft out of Earth's orbit and send it on its 300-day journey towards Martian orbit.

"It was a do-or-die moment, the most critical operation in the mission," Nandini told me when I interviewed her in 2016. "We had to decide where the spacecraft goes, how it goes and when it goes. The success of the mission depended on what we did that day."

Mangalyaan was successfully placed in the Martian orbit on 24 September 2014, making India only the fourth country or geo-bloc to do so.

Nandini and other female space scientists burst into the global spotlight on that day after a photograph of sari-clad women celebrating at Isro went viral on social media, challenging the stereotype that rocket science in India was a male preserve.

Isro later clarified that the celebrating women were administrative staff - but added that several female scientists had worked on the mission and they were in the control room at the time.

Matt Shindell, space history curator at Smithsonian museum, told the BBC on the phone from the US that he found that image "very compelling".

"I felt it would be a great story to tell, the story of these 'Rocket Women' who were at the front and centre of this important mission."

Shindell reached out to Nandini in 2020 over email and the two began discussing what object could best represent India's Mars mission and her role in it.

"I asked her what object she'd be willing to part with. We agreed on the sari that she was wearing on the day Mangalyaan left Earth's orbit," Shindell said.

Once the sari and the matching blue blouse reached the museum, textiles conservator Beth Knight watched YouTube videos to learn how to drape it on the mannequin.

Shindell says the sari has "a family resemblance" to a lot of clothing in their collection that was worn during an important mission at ground control, such as Gene Kranz's vest the Nasa Flight Control Chief wore in 1970 to steer Apollo 13's crew back to safety.

Smithsonian, which is visited by tens of thousands of people every week, also has several objects from India in their collections - but most are from the Air Force and airline companies.

It also has a commemorative silver tray Isro presented to the science fiction author Arthur C Clarke in 2007 on his 90th birthday.

"But Nandini's sari is the first object I have collected from India for our interplanetary science collection and it's our very first sari," Shindell says.

The garment is on display in the Air and Space Museum's "Futures in Space" gallery, alongside different objects, including toys, games and movie posters. It's placed right next to the iconic blue t-shirt worn by Sally Ride on the 1983 Shuttle mission when she became the first American woman in space.

The idea behind this display, Shindell says, "is to engage visitors to recent things that happened in space and what could happen next".

"We have lots of questions when it comes to space and the installation invites visitors to consider some of today's biggest questions: Who decides who goes to space? Why do we go? And what will we do when we get there?"

This exhibition, he says, deals with the question of why and the display of objects speaks to the motivations behind going to space.

Nandini's sari speaks to two motivations, he adds. "One, it's a symbol of India's national pride in its first Mars mission and the country's successful space programme. The second is her personal story which is inspiring as her success could encourage more women to pursue careers in science."

The sari, he says, was chosen also because it has cultural value and that it's visibly easy to identify. The display invites museum visitors to use the touchscreen to find out more about the exhibits.

"I'm overjoyed that visitors are watching the sari and wanting to find out more about it. It's a fantastic addition to our collection," Shindell says.

Grab what you can while you can: The new reality in the South China Sea

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy823n3ln29o, 3 days ago

Antelope Reef is a small, teardrop-shaped island in the north-western corner of the South China Sea and, until recently, almost entirely underwater.

But this year it has undergone a dramatic transformation.

Millions of tonnes of sand have been dredged from the sea bed to create solid land. From being only a turquoise speck on the map, Antelope Reef now appears as a 6-sq-km (2.3-sq-mile) crescent of gleaming white sand, with a scattering of buildings in one corner. All in just six months.

In the lagoon formed by the crescent dozens of ships can be seen. These are almost certainly cutter suction dredgers, of which China has the world's largest fleet: some of them can scoop up 6,000 cubic metres an hour, enough to fill two Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The extraordinary speed of this dredging operation is probably some kind of world record.

But China is not the only one doing this.

After years of watching China creating land to back its expansive territorial claims Vietnam too is now building up some of the reefs it holds in the South China Sea. To a lesser extent other claimants, like the Philippines, are doing the same.

A dredging war

Antelope Reef is in the Paracel Islands, which, together with the Spratlys, are disputed territory, claimed by China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.

Most of the islands are, as Antelope was until this year, submerged reefs which in the past had no human settlements. China took control of the Paracels back in 1974, after a fierce battle with what were then South Vietnamese forces.

More recently it dredged three reefs in the Spratlys - Mischief, Fiery Cross and Subi - turning them into islands big enough to construct airports and military bases, and claiming almost the entire South China Sea as its sovereign territory within the infamous nine-dash line it has drawn on the map.

Swarms of Chinese coastguard and maritime militia ships now patrol inside the nine-dash line, overwhelming attempts by other claimants to challenge Chinese supremacy. In recent years there have been several clashes with the much smaller Philippines coastguard in areas they both claim.

The straight-line edge on one of the newly-made beaches on Antelope Reef suggests China may be building another military-grade runway there, similar to those on Mischief, Fiery Cross and Subi reefs.

But they already have a well-established airstrip nearby on Woody Island. Building another in an area close to the big Chinese military bases on Hainan seems superfluous.

Instead, China may be sending a message to Vietnam.

Vietnam and China have a history of sparring over the South China Sea, or the East Sea as Vietnam calls it.

In recent years though, the communist authorities in Vietnam have dialled down the anti-Chinese rhetoric, and worked hard to build closer relations with Beijing.

Recently-elected president and party general secretary To Lam made his first state visit this year to China, where both countries referred to their differences over the Paracels and Spratlys in unusually conciliatory language.

Vietnam has formally protested against China's construction on Antelope Reef, but only in restrained, diplomatic terms.

However, out on the disputed reefs, Vietnam has gone on a dredging spree, using the same powerful cutter suction ships as China.

'If you can't beat them, join them'

Over the past three years it has been pumping sand around at least 20 reefs and, according to the Washington-based Asian Maritime Transparency Initiative, it has created 11 new harbours.

It now controls more than 11 sq km of reclaimed land, about half the area that China controls.

It is now starting to build military-grade infrastructure like navigation beacons. Vietnam's approach appears to be that if you can't beat China, then join it.

"The Vietnamese have been less willing to be at the forefront of the public relations battle over their disagreements with China," says Greg Poling, who runs the AMTI.

"They're much more comfortable letting the Filipinos do that. But on the water we have seen the Vietnamese being far more willing to stand up to Beijing. As a result, the Chinese have mostly backed off from, for example, trying to prevent Vietnamese drilling for oil and gas."

This is why China is building out Antelope Reef at such a rapid pace, says Ray Powell, the director of Sealight, which is based in Stanford University and monitors the South China Sea.

"Vietnam has been taking advantage of China's focus on the Philippines... The reclamation at Antelope Reef could be considered as China's answer, reminding Vietnam who the big dog on the porch is."

So where does this leave the rest of the claimants to the Spratlys?

For the past 30 years the Association of South East Asian Nations, or Asean, has tried to negotiate a code of conduct between China and its four member states who are also claimants.

In 2002 they did agree on a much weaker declaration but this was not binding, and China has largely ignored it.

Every year at the annual Asean summit leaders promise to push for an enforceable code of conduct, but at the end of every year they seem no closer to getting it.

In frustration over this lack of progress, the Philippines took China's actions to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2013.

The court ruled decisively in favour of the Philippines, concluding that China's claims to sovereignty within the nine-dash line had no historical validity, and that its actions such as turning reefs into islands violated international law and infringed on the rights of the Philippines to an exclusive economic zone off its west coast.

China has simply ignored that ruling, prompting the Philippines to switch to trying to shame Beijing by sending its own hugely outnumbered coastguard ships to challenge the Chinese flotilla. This results in multiple clashes, but little change in the unequal balance of power.

The Philippines has also expanded its military co-operation with the United States, and sought new alliances with countries like Japan and Australia. The US has given firm diplomatic support, $500m in military aid and supplied some new equipment.

Together with other allies it periodically sends the US navy through the South China Sea on Freedom of Navigation Operations as a reminder that these are still legally international sea lanes, despite China's claims. But these missions only make a point. They make little real difference.

Now the Philippines too is building up the toeholds it has in the South China Sea.

It is expanding the runway at Pagasa Island, also known as Thitu, putting a coastguard base there, and reinforcing the rusting landing craft BRP Sierra Madre which it grounded on the Second Thomas Shoal in 1999. It keeps a detachment of soldiers on board despite frequent harassment by Chinese ships.

"Most of the claimants have recognised that they're never going to get to the legally binding document that the code of conduct was always meant to be," Poling says.

"China just continues to do whatever it wants on the water, eating away at their sovereignty. So what I think you are eventually going to see is a non-binding agreement. But perhaps that will open up diplomatic space for Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia and the others to pursue more effective negotiations among themselves without having to go through Asean."

This now appears to be the new reality in the South China Sea.

It is every country for itself, making the most of what they already control, accepting that China will always be the biggest and most assertive player.

Graphics by Arvin Supriyadi, Aghnia Adzkia

Indian film union drops boycott call against Bollywood star Ranveer Singh

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3r2g0013xpo, 3 days ago

A major Indian film workers' union has withdrawn its appeal asking members not to work with Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh after his alleged abrupt exit from an upcoming film.

The Federation of Western India Cine Employees (FWICE) issued the informal ban last month after the producers of Don 3 complained that Singh had quit the film just weeks before filming was set to begin.

The boycott withdrawal comes after Singh reportedly sent a legal notice to the federation. The BBC has not seen the notice.

Announced in 2023, Farhan Akhtar's Don 3 was billed as the next chapter in one of Bollywood's most successful and enduring action franchises.

The franchise was launched by superstar Amitabh Bachchan in 1978 and rebooted by Akhtar with Shah Rukh Khan in the lead role. Singh had been chosen to carry it into its next chapter.

On Wednesday, FWICE president BN Tiwari backed Singh, saying the industry stood behind him and that the federation's legal team would respond to the notice.

FWICE chief adviser Ashoke Pandit said the decision followed requests from several industry organisations and urged Singh to meet the union to resolve the dispute.

"We celebrate his stardom... We don't have any authority to ban anyone. We are hopeful that there will be a positive reaction from Ranveer," he told NDTV news channel.

Singh has not commented publicly, though his spokesperson earlier said he held the film industry and the Don franchise in the "highest regard" and had chosen to stay silent.

Singh is one of India's biggest film stars, known for hits including Padmaavat and Gully Boy, and his flamboyant, larger-than-life personality.

Most recently, he starred in Dhurandhar, a two-part spy thriller which was one of the country's biggest box-office successes in recent years.

The dispute began after Akhtar complained that Singh had quit Don 3 just weeks before overseas shooting was due to begin, after producers had already spent about 450 million rupees ($4.7m; £3.4m) on pre-production.

Following the complaint, the union on 25 May asked its members not to work with Singh until he explained his position.

Such action against major stars is rare, though FWICE has previously urged Indian artists not to work with Pakistani performers during periods of tension between the two countries.

In 2025, it issued a similar directive against actor-singer Diljit Dosanjh over his appearance alongside Pakistani actor Hania Aamir in a Punjabi film.

It is also not the first controversy involving Singh.

In 2025, he apologised after facing backlash for mimicking a ritual sequence from the hit Kannada film Kantara at a film festival event, with critics accusing him of disrespecting its cultural significance. He later issued an apology.

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Man dies after bitten by shark in Western Australia, police say

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74yl98kv37o, today

A male diver has died after being bitten by a suspected 4.5m (14.8ft) shark in Western Australia, according to local authorities.

The 35-year-old, who has not been named, was spearfishing with family off Michaelmas Island, south-east of Perth, when he was attacked at 11:25 local time (03:25 GMT) on Saturday, police said.

He was taken by boat to shore where he was met by paramedics, who were unable to revive him.

Police said they would prepare a report for the coroner, in a statement shared by local media.

The BBC has contacted officials to confirm the reports.

The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) said it was assisting police and local authorities with the incident.

It has also urged residents to report any shark sightings, local media report.

It comes less than a month after a father-of-two died after a separate shark attack in Western Australia.

Steven Mattaboni, 38, was attacked by a 4m (13ft) shark at Horseshoe Reef, north-west of the popular Rottnest Island near Perth.

Shark attacks around Australia are more common than in many other parts of the world, though they are often not fatal.

Popular swimming and surfing spots tend to have measures to protect against attacks.

Australian ex-minister launches crowd-funded inquiry into Aukus submarine deal

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn7p3ky2yl1o, 5 days ago

A former environment minister will head up a crowd-funded review of the multi-billion-dollar Aukus submarine deal, Australia's biggest ever defence project.

Peter Garrett, who served as environment minister between 2007 and 2010, said an independent inquiry into the A$368bn ($239bn; £176bn) deal - where Australia will buy second-hand US submarines to replace its ageing fleet - was "long overdue".

Garrett, the frontman of rock band Midnight Oil, said Aukus was the "most expensive" defence deal ever in Australia but the chance to "question, debate and decide has been taken out of the hands of the parliament and the people".

The review will hold public hearings with a report due in October.

Garrett will lead the inquiry with four other commissioners including Admiral Chris Barrie, the former chief of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and Carmen Lawrence, a former premier of Western Australia.

Karen Lester, the daughter of an Aboriginal man who went blind due to British nuclear tests in South Australia in the 1950s, will also be one of the inquiry's commissioners.

Independent MPs David Pocock and Andrew Wilkie have thrown their support behind the review, which is being organised by not-for-profit group Australian Peace and Security Forum.

Other supporters include former MPs, retired military and naval officers, human rights lawyers and union leaders.

A spokesperson for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the government welcomed "appropriate oversight and transparency" of the submarine deal.

One of the issues the five-month inquiry will look at is whether acquiring the nuclear-powered attack submarines will make Australia safer and what impact it will have on the country's standing in terms of regional peace and security.

Key questions the inquiry wants to answer include whether Australia will receive the submarines it will pay for, where and how the nuclear waste will be stored, and if the deal undermines the country's sovereignty.

The inquiry will also ask how the deal will affect Australia's relationship with China, its largest trading partner.

The Aukus deal was first announced in September 2021 and while it is not explicitly stated, it is believed to be about countering China's growing presence in the Indo-Pacific region, and its role in rising tensions in disputed territories such as the South China Sea.

China condemned the agreement as "extremely irresponsible" when it was first announced.

Earlier this week, the government detailed changes to the deal, with Australia to buy three second-hand submarines from the US, replacing a former agreement that Australia would get at least one new vessel.

From 2027, the pact will allow both the US and UK to base a small number of nuclear submarines in Perth, Western Australia.

The UK reviewed the pact in 2024 after Keir Starmer's Labour government won power and the US launched a review into the deal last June.

Judge urges Melbourne orchestra and pianist to resolve case over Gaza comments without him

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

A judge has urged the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) and an acclaimed pianist to resolve a court case over Gaza comments between themselves.

Jayson Gillham is suing the MSO for workplace discrimination after it cancelled his next performance citing a statement he made during a 2024 concert, where he said Israel had killed more than 100 Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

Justice Graeme Hill adjourned the case on Friday after a three-week trial, saying the two sides should resolve the matter "without me having to say the things I need to say in a judgement".

The court has heard evidence from almost two dozen witnesses including Gillham and former senior executives of the MSO.

"I know there's been two attempts to resolve it already which were unsuccessful," he said, adding that while he usually makes judgements "pretty quickly", this was "not that sort of case".

"I'm afraid it might take me some time to go through everything and work out the right answer," but this gave both sides "more time to think about" reaching a "negotiated settlement rather than a judgement from me".

The case centres around a short introduction that British-Australian pianist Gillham read out during a performance in Melbourne on 11 August 2024. He said more than 100 Palestinian journalists had been killed by Israel since October 2023 when the war in Gaza began.

Gillham said Israel was carrying out "targeted assassinations of prominent journalists as they were travelling in marked press vehicles or wearing their press jackets".

"The killing of journalists is a war crime in international law, and it is done in an effort to prevent the documentation and broadcasting of war crimes to the world," he told the audience of about 150 people during the Sunday morning concert.

In its most recent update, the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent organisation that promotes press freedom, reports that 206 journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 2023.

Gillham's comments attracted three complaints and prompted the MSO to cancel an upcoming performance by him on 15 August 2024.

That decision prompted almost 500 complaints, with the MSO cancelling the entire concert due to safety concerns.

The MSO said it had made an "error" in cancelling the show and said it was trying to reschedule the performance but Gilham sued the organisation in late 2024, saying it had rejected "reasonable requests to remedy the situation".

In an email to patrons at the time, the MSO had said they were blindsided by Gillham's comments and he had put them in a "difficult situation".

"The MSO does not condone the use of our stage as a platform for expressing personal views", it added.

Gillham's lawyers argue that it was his workplace right to express his political belief, which is a protected right in the state of Victoria, and that an employer cannot mistreat an employee because of that belief.

On the first day of the trial, Gillham said that following the public backlash after his performance was cancelled, the MSO had asked if he would come back for the second show but only on the condition that he would not say anything on stage.

In her closing statements on Friday, Gillham's barrister Sheryn Omeri said the MSO's decision to cancel Gillham's show and then ask him to come back was "insulting".

In response, MSO's barrister Justin Bourke KC said the matter was a "highly pressured situation".

"You can't ignore that it was a highly controversial statement made in a setting where this was the biggest issue in the world," Bourke said.

'It's like a decaying body': Australian farmers battle mouse plague

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c794g80lw74o, 7 days ago

A mouse plague is terrorising farmers across large swathes of Australia, with the rodents running rampant around homes and ravaging fields of grain.

It comes as farmers are already under pressure from unpredictable fuel and fertiliser supplies due to the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran.

This new battle has seen farmers pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into either re-planting crops that have been devoured by the mice or spending precious farming hours laying down bait – sterile seeds laced with mouse poison.

"It's a big cost and it's not just the price of the bait," says Geoff Cosgrove, 43, who runs a 14,000-hectare farm in Mingenew, Western Australia (WA), growing wheat, canola, lupin and barley.

"They do play with your mind - running around at night, in the ceiling, the air conditioning units. You can hear them and you can smell them - it's like a decaying body."

Cosgrove has been farming for 25 years and in that time, he's only ever had to bait twice. This year's mouse plague is "way worse than the one in 2021", he says.

That year a mouse plague swept through many parts of Australia, with large areas of New South Wales (NSW) and parts of Queensland suffering their worst plague in memory.

The situation was so dire in NSW that hundreds of prisoners were forced to relocate after mice caused extensive damage at their jail.

This time, farmers in WA first began reporting plague-like numbers of mice in March, with their neighbours in South Australia following suit shortly after.

Bumper harvest boosts mice numbers

About two hours north of Cosgrove's farm, agronomist and farmer Belinda Eastough, 59, recalls the mouse plague that hit WA about five years ago.

"The last time [in 2021], they were in my handbag," she says from her 5,500-hectare farm in Nolba, 80km (50 miles) northeast of Geraldton, one of the hardest hit areas.

"They were everywhere - in the floors, the walls, in the pantry. But I haven't had them in the pantry this year."

That's because "they're staying where the food is," she says, out in the paddocks.

"Last year, we had a record-breaking harvest so that gives the mice a lot of food."

A big harvest means large amounts of grain spilt in the paddocks during the processing of crops, leading to an easily accessible and much-loved food source for mice.

"Then we got some summer rain," Eastough says, which spurred the growth of young green shoots.

"So instead of just steak, they got steak and salad. Basically, the mice were in absolute mouse heaven."

Eastough, who's been farming for almost 40 years, grows wheat, canola and lupin with the wheat either exported to South-East Asia for udon noodles or used domestically in biscuits, bread and pasta.

In her canola paddocks, she estimates there are about 8,000 to 10,000 mice per hectare - about the size of a rugby field.

"Sometimes we've had mouse plagues, and the numbers will crash once they run out of food but this year, they haven't.

"I'm living the nightmare."

'Another headache'

The autumn months are some of the most crucial for grain growers as that's when they plant their crops.

As an agronomist, Eastough advises farmers on their crops and this year, she's urging them to bait as soon as possible after planting the seeds.

"If the baiter hasn't followed quickly enough behind the seeder, the mice are coming along at night and eating the seed out of the furrows," she says.

"If you finish seeding at 8pm at night and you come in the next day, you'll have rows of crop missing."

Eastough says farmers are very resilient but rising diesel and fertiliser costs have hit them hard since the Iran war broke out in February.

"We're paying twice for fuel now than we were paying two, three months ago," she says.

"The mouse thing is another thing thrown on top, another headache."

'Monumental problem'

Steve Henry, a research officer from Australia's national science agency CSIRO, specialises in mice and how to eradicate them.

Generally, a plague is defined as 800 mice per hectare, he says.

"But in Western Australia, they're talking about thousands and thousands of mice per hectare," says Henry, mainly through the northern and southern cropping zones.

On a recent visit to WA, he counted 30 to 40 active mice burrows when he walked a 100m distance of a one-metre wide strip.

Multiplying that figure by 100 is how farmers estimate mice populations, which means there were at least 3,000 to 4,000 burrows per hectare. In South Australia, the situation was similar.

"That's a monumental problem as this is a really important time for farmers," he says.

Mice can start breeding at just six weeks old, he says, and they can have six to 10 babies every 19 to 21 days.

"The kicker is within two or three days of giving birth, they fall pregnant again so while they're rearing the first litter, they're gestating the second," Henry says.

He also points out the psychological impact of the plague alongside its economic cost, as farmers can't switch off when they finish work for the day.

"If you're dealing with a drought, you can go inside and close the door and turn on the air conditioner and get some level of respite," he says.

"But if you're dealing with mice, you go inside, close the door, go to your cupboard, and the mice are in the cupboard ...

"You go to sleep at night, and the mice are running across your bed."

Winter, rain and stronger bait may quell plague

For months, farmers have been desperate to get access to a stronger bait but they had to wait for permission from the national regulator.

In recent days, that approval was granted and the higher strength bait is now available to farmers.

Retired farmer Damian Ryan, 67, has welcomed the move after spending weeks catching mice in his home and his shed at his farm in Morawa, about 370km north of Perth.

He says he's been catching 20 to 30 mice in his house and about 150 in his shed each day.

In his 50 years of toiling the land, dealing with the odd mouse is normal, but "I've never seen it this bad, ever".

"These things were like plague proportions. You drive around at night and you just see mice running everywhere."

With cooler temperatures, rain forecast and the stronger bait, farmers have reported a drop in mouse numbers in recent days.

Cosgrove is hopeful that with winter around the corner, relief is on the way: "Eventually they do stop 'cause it gets too cold and wet."

Australia sues US giant 3M over 'forever chemicals' in firefighting foam

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3w2yl3p97qo, 10 days ago

The Australian government is suing US manufacturing giant 3M for AU$2bn in damages (US$1.4bn; £1.1bn) over its alleged use of toxic "forever chemicals" in firefighting foam that contaminated dozens of defence bases across the country.

It is the largest legal claim ever brought by the government, Attorney-General Michelle Rowland said, as it seeks to recoup the "substantial costs" in dealing with the chemicals - known as PFAS - at 28 locations.

It claims 3M withheld and misrepresented details about the foam and its environmental impact, assuring them it was safe, despite knowing otherwise.

In response, 3M said it has never made PFAS in Australia and stopped selling the foam there 20 years ago.

In announcing the legal action on Thursday, Rowland said the government was committed to holding 3M and 3M Australia to account "for the economic and environmental harms associated with PFAS contamination".

"This misconduct has contributed to substantial costs for defence and the Australian taxpayer, including over $1bn to date to investigate, remediate and mitigate PFAS contamination at defence estate sites," she said.

"Make no mistake, this legal action against 3M is significant."

PFAS - also known as per- and poly-fluoroaklyl substances - are known for their water-resistant and non-stick properties and can be found in firefighting foams, mobile phones, clothing and non-stick cooking pans.

The chemicals do not break down under normal environmental conditions and research has shown the toxins are in dangerous concentrations in water, soil and food and can also linger in the body.

In 2022, 3M said it would stop making and using PFAS amid concerns the substances were linked to a range of health problems including cancer.

Australia's case alleges 3M withheld information and misrepresented the effects of 3M's aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) including the environmental risks of the foam.

3M also failed to fully disclose what it knew about the environmental risks of the foam and gave assurances about disposal and environmental safety that were inconsistent with what the company knew at the time, the government alleged.

A spokesperson for 3M said it would "defend ourselves against these claims through the legal process".

The company said the Department of Defence kept using the PFAS-containing firefighting foams for two decades after it stopped selling the product in Australia.

Australia confirms first diphtheria death amid worst outbreak in decades

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c759q6y26w3o, 12 days ago

Australia has recorded its first diphtheria death in almost a decade as the country grapples with the worst outbreak of the vaccine-preventable disease in decades.

In March, the Northern Territory (NT) declared an outbreak of diphtheria with cases also in Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland. Cases started rising in late-2025 with a sharp increase in February.

This year, there have been 245 cases, marking the largest outbreak in Australia since 1991, mainly in remote Indigenous communities.

On Tuesday, NT's health minister said autopsy results from an overseas lab found diphtheria was the cause of a man's death in April at Royal Darwin Hospital, the first such case since 2018.

In recent weeks, the government has ramped up vaccination efforts in areas most at risk and the number of new cases was now falling, health officials said on Tuesday.

"Our government has taken this situation very seriously, and we are working hard to understand the causes and working to contain the situation," NT Health Minister Steve Edgington said.

Since 30 March, there have been 10,407 vaccinations, he said.

Between January last year and May this year, the NT reported 163 diphtheria cases with 48 respiratory cases and 115 cutaneous cases, which is spread via skin contact.

In March, health officials in Western Australia (WA) confirmed two cases of respiratory diphtheria, the first time in more than 50 years that WA had recorded such cases.

Sixty per cent of the cases this year are in the Northern Territory, followed by Western Australia with about 36%, with a few cases in South Australia and even fewer in Queensland.

Authorities are urging affected communities to update their vaccinations, especially teenagers and adults who need to get booster shots.

Health officials in the NT have set up pop-up clinics in Darwin, Katherine and Alice Springs to raise awareness of the vaccination campaign, as vaccines are the "most important measure for preventing, protecting and reducing transmission," NT Health said.

Both strains of diphtheria - respiratory and cutaneous - are preventable via a vaccine, which is usually given to children - five doses between two months and four years old - with a booster between 12 and 13 years.

Respiratory diphtheria often starts with fever or chills, a sore throat that can lead to breathing and swallowing difficulties, and be life-threatening.

Cutaneous diphtheria usually causes infected sores or ulcers on exposed parts of the body which are slow to heal but rarely lead to severe illness.

It is understood that the last reported diphtheria death was in 2018, according to the national broadcaster ABC.

Last week, Australia's Chief Medical Officer Prof Michael Kidd declared diphtheria a communicable disease incident of national significance.

The government also announced a AU$7.2m package to boost vaccinations and resources in affected areas.

Giant banquets rile radical left in France

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78q215vyd7o, today

Three-and-a-half-thousand hungry Alsatians wolf down platters of charcuterie and periodically burst into noisy chorus.

No, it is not the police dogs' annual convention, but the latest iteration of a feasting phenomenon that is sweeping provincial France.

The Alsace town of Colmar – famous for its half-timbered medieval centre – was the scene last weekend of one of the banquets géants – huge banquets whose popularity in the country has suddenly become a hot political issue.

Run by a company called Le Canon Français (The French Cannon), the banquets are massively attended – €81 (£70) buying you four courses of local gastronomy, all the wine you can drink, and several hours of sing-along camaraderie.

But not everyone is cheering. For the radical left party La France Insoumise (LFI - France Unbowed), the banquets have a dark side.

LFI says it has evidence of racist chanting, and of immigrant staff being insulted. With pork regularly on the menu, they say the feasts are purposely designed to exclude Muslims and vegetarians.

And they point to the financial involvement of an ultra-conservative entrepreneur called Pierre-Edouard Stérin as evidence of a masked ulterior motivation - to promote the agenda of the hard right.

Stérin, a billionaire who made his money in the experience gift-voucher sector, set up a think tank pushing right-wing ideas such as rolling back immigration, stopping abortion and promoting France's Christian heritage, which many in France would perceive as nationalist and exclusionary.

"If they were in good faith, Le Canon Français would never have accepted Stérin as an investor. But they did - they took his money," says Emma Fourreau, an LFI member of the European Parliament.

"And that is because they share the same political ecosystem, whose aim is to bring the far right to power."

At the Colmar banquet, held in a vast hangar-like space on the edge of town, such accusations are dismissed as out of hand.

In a festive atmosphere, the punters are seated on long tables with 50 down each side. Many men are in what has become a kind of Canon Français uniform of berets and braces. A few women are in traditional Alsace dress.

There is a brief address from management reminding diners of the "charter" committing them to behave with respect and decorum, and then the fun begins. An army of servers brings out platters with choucroute, then Alsace cheeses and the traditional kougelhopf pudding. Wine flows.

Periodically the revellers down forks and join in song. Old standards by performers like Michel Delpech and Joe Dassin are the favourites. These are songs from an earlier generation, but the participants - who look like they are mainly in their 20s and 30s - know them by heart.

"We come for four things: atmosphere, friends, alcohol and food," says one young man in a response which is echoed over and again. No-one wants to talk politics, except to say that they think the whole controversy has been blown out of proportion.

"None of this was an issue, but then Stérin became a shareholder and that gave the LFI an excuse to attack. Don't forget there are elections next year," says Quentin from Besançon.

The crowd in Colmar was predominantly – but not exclusively – white, and many said they were happy to be able to celebrate in a traditional way among friends. But the BBC saw no behaviour and heard no language that could be construed as offensive.

Le Canon Français is the brainchild of two entrepreneurs – Pierre-Alexandre de Boisse and Géraud de la Tour – who began selling wine over the internet to help a beleaguered winegrower friend during the Covid-19 pandemic. From there they started staging events to raise money for heritage projects – and success in that led to the banquets.

De Boisse says they are merely reviving an old French tradition of dining en masse with good local fare that goes back into the depths of medieval history. After the French Revolution, which led to the abolition of the monarchy, there were banquets républicains - marking the arrival of the new system - and, until recently, every village used to have its annual banquet populaire - a kind of people's feast.

"Nowadays people waste so much of their time alone, in their homes, on social media. They've lost the habit of being together and talking. What gives us the most pleasure is when we see the lawyer sitting next to the baker, chatting away," says de Boisse.

The accusations from the hard left have clearly nettled de Boisse, who insists they are unfounded.

"Of course we cannot police the minds of all the people who come. And occasionally maybe someone drunk says something stupid. But our rules are quite clear and set out in the charter, to which everyone signs up when they buy a ticket," he says.

He says the LFI is wrong to say they only serve pork. It happens regularly – because charcuterie is part of the French country tradition – but not exclusively. And he is angry at allegations that a Nazi salute was seen at one banquet. "I spoke to the guy and he said the accusation was total nonsense," he says.

Describing himself as a Catholic from the impoverished aristocracy and an entrepreneur, he says it would offend against both his ethics and his business sense to exclude people from the banquets. As for Stérin, he says he has never met the investor, who "bought a 30% stake purely because he could see we were very profitable".

For the LFI's Fourreau, the banquets are "backward-looking – a caricature".

"They don't represent modern France, which is a place rich in its diversity."

Her party is trying to get local authorities to stop the banquets, and has had an initial success in the Brittany town of Quimper.

In Caen, where a banquet was held in April, a preliminary investigation is being held by police into allegations of racial provocation by people attending.

De Boisse does not deny that many – maybe most – of his punters are probably from the right, or hard right. "But look at the elections. That is how more and more people in the countryside are voting," he says.

"Look, I create jobs, I create happiness for the people who come to the banquets. OK, these politicians don't like the shareholder, they don't like the people who come to the banquets, they don't like my name – but why do they have to go on the attack?

"Why can't they just leave us alone?"

Fury in France after child murder suspect's criminal record released

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1424v7mk8go, yesterday

There is fury in France over the murder of an 11-year-old girl after it emerged the principal suspect had been identified several times in the past as a potential child molester.

Lyhanna disappeared after school a week ago in the Gers area of south-west France. Her body was found on farmland near the town of Fleurance on Thursday.

A 41-year-old man named as Jérome B has been in custody since Monday. He is the father of a friend of Lyhanna, and two witnesses said they saw the girl in his car on the afternoon of her disappearance.

Amid the shock and grief, the affair took a political turn as details of Jérome B's police record were released by officials.

He had been named in four separate cases involving young girls in recent years. Two were closed for lack of evidence, and in a third he was dismissed from his job as a maintenance worker at a secondary school for "inappropriate behaviour" towards a teenager.

But the fourth affair has lit a fuse leading to the highest reaches of the justice system.

Jérome B was the object of a complaint last August from the mother of 10-year-old Rosa, who said she had been raped by him on several occasions, according to the state prosecutor in the town of Auch.

But shockingly, even though medical examination substantiated Rosa's claims, not once in the nine months since her family went to police had Jérome B been questioned by investigators.

The slowness of the French justice system is legendary. In this case, the delays were aggravated by the case having to be transferred from one jurisdiction to another.

But the French are appalled that none of the several alarm signals about Jérome B were heeded by the authorities, who seemed more concerned about following procedure than putting him out of capacity to do harm.

With presidential elections less than a year away, the affair has been seized on by likely candidates as evidence of laxity, incompetence and under-investment.

"The French people demand a reckoning," the president of the hard-right National Rally Jordan Bardella said on X. "This terrible tragedy could have been avoided if the justice system were not so dysfunctional."

"Our justice system is a failure, it should be totally reformed," said Bruno Retailleau of the conservative Les Républicains. "A society that is incapable of protecting its own children is a society which will one day start turning against itself."

On the left, Marine Tondelier of the Ecologists said the affair was a "symbol of a politico-judicial system incapable of handling the issue of sexist and sexual violence".

President Emmanuel Macron said it was "clear" that there had been failings. "It is unacceptable. We cannot look Lyhanna's family in the face and say this was properly handled."

Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said he was "terrified" by what had happened.

"It is fair to ask why [a man] who was so obviously the object of suspicions was not kept away from youngsters... Why did no-one act, even though for months there had been complaints against him?"

The prime minister has demanded a report on what went wrong within 15 days.

Ukraine strikes cargo ships and admits Romania drone blast

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c707098wkzpo, yesterday

Ukraine says it has struck five ships carrying illegal cargo in the Sea of Azov and in coastal waters of Russian-occupied territories.

The Ukrainian drone forces commander said the vessels were involved in "stealing" Ukrainian grain, as well as transferring military cargo and fuel.

The strikes come a day after Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky offered face-to-face talks with Vladimir Putin on ending the war, an offer the Russian leader rejected while visiting St Petersburg for an economic forum.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has confirmed one of its naval drones exploded off Romania's coast on Friday. No injuries were reported in the blast.

Zelensky wrote alongside his latest offer of peace talks that Russians had become tired of Ukrainian drone and missile attacks, petrol shortages and rising prices that the war, now in its fifth year, had brought.

Ukraine has repeatedly targeted military and energy infrastructure within Russia in a bid to limit its war-fighting capability.

Putin's appearance in St Petersburg comes a day after Kyiv had launched a drone attack on the outskirts of the city.

Azerbaijan's foreign ministry confirmed five of its citizens had been killed in attacks on two of the vessels in the Sea of Azov.

It did not specify who had been behind the attacks and noted that the ships did not belong to Azerbaijan.

Earlier, Robert Brovdi, Ukraine's drone commander, announced that five "illegally loitering vessels" had been struck overnight in the ports of Mariupol, Berdyansk and in the coastal waters of what Ukraine calls the "temporarily occupied territories" - parts of the country that Russia currently controls.

He said the names of the five ships, which included cargo vessels and tankers, were painted over and their radars were turned off "with the aim of quietly stealing Ukrainian grain", as well as "transferring military cargo and fuel". The Azeri foreign ministry named two of the ships as the Nastra and the Circon.

Brovdi did not mention any deaths.

In Ukraine, at least 13 people have been killed and more than 70 others have been injured in the past day, according to local officials.

Among them are four people who died after Russian drones struck a dairy factory outside the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, according to the regional head, and a 35-year-old woman in a drone attack on a petrol station in Kherson, local officials said.

Meanwhile, a naval drone exploded in the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta on Friday.

The country's defence ministry said the drone had self-detonated near an oil terminal without causing any casualties, although authorities have said it caused considerable damage to a ship and warehouses.

Adrian Teodor Picoiu, Constanta's top official, told G4Media that "information from the Ukrainian side" was that the drone was part of a group of five, with a second one exploding in Ukraine.

Ukraine later confirmed one of its naval drones had been involved, saying it had been knocked off course by Russian electronic interference. Moscow has yet to comment.

The remaining three drones were unaccounted for but officials said there was no further risk. No reason has yet been offered for why the drones would be in Romanian waters.

Romanian President Nicusor Dan wrote on X that it was the second "significant security incident this week", after a stray mine was discovered on a beach near the village of Vama Veche, more than 50km (31 miles) north of Constanta.

It also comes a week after two people were injured when a drone hit a Romanian apartment block in the eastern city of Galati - close to the border with Ukraine.

Romanian officials said they had confirmed it was a Russian drone but Moscow said "accusations" of its involvement were "unsubstantiated".

Zelensky told Putin in an open letter that it would be "wrong to simply wait" until the war in Europe became the focus of US attention once more, adding peace could only come "through direct engagement".

He also called for a full ceasefire for the duration of proposed negotiations - something Putin ruled out earlier on Thursday.

The Kremlin confirmed it had received the letter. Putin said on Friday that he currently saw no reason to meet Zelensky.

The Russian president has previously said compromises would be needed for peace to be achieved.

His longstanding position has been that Ukraine should withdraw from four regions largely occupied by Russia - Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia - and give up its efforts to join Nato.

Ukraine has ruled out ceding territory, saying it would embolden Russia to invade again, as it had in 2022 when it launched its full-scale war eight years after illegally annexing Crimea.

The EU, France and the US are among those that have backed Zelensky's calls for a meeting.

Norway's crown princess on lung transplant waiting list, palace says

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wewqxpq2eo, yesterday

Norway's Crown Princess Mette-Marit has been placed on a waiting list for a lung transplant, the country's royal household has said.

Mette-Marit, who suffers from an incurable lung disease, has suspended official duties and will have the operation as soon as a donor becomes available, it said.

The princess, who married Crown Prince Haakon in 2001, has been battling the illness while facing revelations about her association with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the rape trial of her son from a previous relationship, Marius Borg Høiby.

Høiby, who denies the charges, has requested release from custody because his mother is seriously ill, Norwegian media report.

Mette-Marit, 52, was diagnosed in 2018 with a rare form of pulmonary fibrosis that causes breathing difficulties and creates scar tissue that stiffens the lungs making it difficult to breathe and for oxygen to enter the bloodstream. It has repeatedly forced her to take sick leave or scale back official duties.

In December, Mette-Marit told public broadcaster NRK that her illness had developed "faster than I'd hoped" and that activities she enjoyed with her husband - like hiking and skiing - were no longer possible.

Over the past six months, her condition has deteriorated significantly, Prof Are Holm, a lung specialist at Oslo University Hospital, was quoted by the royal household as saying.

"We can see that there has been a significant increase in scar tissue in her lungs over the past year - and lung function tests show that her lung function has declined considerably in the last three months alone," Holm told reporters at a news conference on Friday.

He said the deterioration was "dangerous", which was why she has been placed on the transplant list.

A successful transplant hinges on several factors, including finding the right match and ensuring the body does not reject the new organ once implanted.

Holm explained that the process was viewed as a last resort, and that individuals must be considered significantly ill and have a limited life expectancy before a lung transplant could be deemed appropriate.

But patients must be still in sufficiently good condition to be able to handle such a major procedure.

Meanwhile, her son Høiby, 29, remains in custody while awaiting a verdict in his trial, which is due to be delivered in the next few weeks.

He has denied the most serious charges against him - four counts of rape as well as serious assault - but pleaded guilty to some lesser offences. As the stepson of the heir to the Norwegian throne, he does not have any royal title or official duties.

The start of his trial came just days after documents were released in the US revealing exchanges Mette-Marit had with the disgraced financier Epstein.

The princess told national TV in March that she wished she had never met Epstein.

She had previously apologised and admitted to "poor judgement", after the extent and frequency of her contact with him emerged when millions of documents relating to the investigation into the late sex offender were released by the US justice department in January.

Dutch police investigate suspected drugging and sexual assault of multiple women

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8p8e1gnx7o, 3 days ago

Warning: This story contains details some may find distressing

A major investigation has been launched by police in the Netherlands into the suspected drugging and sexual assaults of a number of women, prompting the arrests of four men.

Dutch police said they had received information suggesting multiple women may have been drugged "by someone in their immediate circle" and sexually assaulted on camera, following tip-offs from agencies in England and Germany.

The suspects allegedly frequented private social media groups in which tips were shared on how best to drug victims and images of the abuse were circulated.

The number of victims is not yet clear and more arrests could follow, the national police force said.

Dutch media likened the alleged events to the case of Gisèle Pelicot, whose husband repeatedly drugged her and invited dozens of men to rape her in France.

Police in the Netherlands said on Thursday the arrests were made after they raided the homes of eight suspects - men aged between 21 and 51 identified through the online groups - in late May.

Detectives are now studying computers, USB sticks, SD cards and phones seized during the raids.

Drugs and weapons were also found at some of the locations.

The charges against the suspects vary. They include alleged participation in the online groups, creation or distribution of sexual imagery, and "endangering victims by drugging them, up to and including (attempted) rape".

Milou van der Kolk of the Rotterdam sexual crimes team said it was not yet clear how many victims may have been targeted.

"This is a case with an enormous impact," she said.

"As a victim, you may not know what happened to you, because you may have been drugged and were unconscious.

"The news that your partner or an acquaintance may have drugged you and perhaps even raped you or attempted to do so can turn your life completely upside down."

Details of help and support with sexual abuse or violence are available at BBC Action Line.

Putin remains uncompromising on Ukraine, but is public discourse on war changing in Russia?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy82339793go, 4 days ago

If Vladimir Putin's Russia had an official slogan, what would it be?

"Russia is what it is, and we're not ashamed of showing it," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov once told me in an interview.

That fits.

But I recently heard an updated version from veteran pop and folk singer Nadezhda Babkina.

After receiving an award from President Putin, Babkina told an audience in the Kremlin: "Russia will never surrender thanks to our remarkable, multi-ethnic genetic code... that holds us all together.

"Anyone who doesn't like that," she added, "can go and poison themselves."

In many ways, the line "they can go and poison themselves" encapsulates Russia in 2026 - unapologetic, unrepentant and uncompromising.

Like Vladimir Putin himself.

Since ordering the mass invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin leader has displayed no regret, no remorse over his decision to attack Russia's neighbour - and no intention of ceasing hostilities.

This week Russia launched another massive missile and drone strike across Ukraine.

The attack came on the eve of the annual St Petersburg International Economic Forum, an event designed to showcase Russia to the world.

High-profile Western investors and politicians have long stopped coming. But the organisers say that delegations from more than 130 countries and territories will attend.

For a country seeking foreign investment, more than four years of war with its neighbour doesn't seem the best advertisement.

But, as we have established, "Russia is what it is". Forum or no forum, the attacks on Ukraine continue.

President Putin's public position on the war is unwavering. He continues to demand that Ukraine cede control to Russia of the entire Donbas region.

Vladimir Putin has not changed. But one thing in the Kremlin has.

And that is to do with Donald Trump.

Last year Russian officials appeared confident that the US president would help deliver a Ukraine peace deal on Moscow's terms. In other words, that President Trump would pressure Kyiv into accepting Moscow's maximalist demands.

Following last summer's US-Russia summit in Anchorage, Alaska, for months afterwards senior Russian officials waxed lyrical about the "spirit of Anchorage" - as if Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin had reached a mutual understanding on Ukraine to Moscow's benefit.

But no peace deal materialised.

"I don't know about the spirit of Anchorage," President Putin's foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told Russian state TV recently. "I have never used that phrase."

It was a sign that the "spirit of Anchorage" has, if not disappeared, then at least started evaporating.

This may well be one of the factors fuelling Vladimir Putin's obvious frustration.

There are many others.

What the Kremlin leader had conceived as a short-term "special military operation" has turned into a bloody war of attrition which is now in its fifth year. Since February 2022, Russia has suffered huge battlefield losses, significant damage to its economy and technological decline.

What's more, the war has moved closer to home. Today Ukrainian drones reach deep inside Russia. Oil refineries and other energy infrastructure are regularly targeted. Last month, a large-scale Ukrainian drone attack on the Moscow region highlighted that air defences around the Russian capital could be penetrated.

Amid fears of an attack, the annual Victory Day parade on Red Square on 9 May was scaled back.

More than four years of war - and thousands of international sanctions - have put enormous strains on Russia's economy. The budget deficit has been growing, the economy stagnating.

And how has the Kremlin responded to these challenges?

Not by scaling back the "special military operation".

Far from it.

Judging by recent large-scale Russian air raids on Ukrainian cities, the response is escalation.

Not that the Kremlin accepts responsibility for this. It blames Kyiv, claiming that Russia is reacting to a recent Ukrainian strike on a college dormitory in Starobilsk, Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine. According to official figures, 21 students there were killed.

Ukraine's military has said it hit the headquarters of Russia's elite Rubicon drone military unit in Starobilsk. It has not said whether it was the same building as the one identified by Russia.

An end to the fighting looks as distant as ever.

In previous years President Putin has used appearances at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum to transmit his current worldview and to repeat his criticisms of the West. In St Petersburg, he is expected to meet chief editors of international news agencies and deliver a keynote address.

Will he use this year's forum to signal a change of position on Ukraine? So far there is nothing to suggest that.

Yet, inside Russia, there are signs of a growing public discourse on whether it is time to end the war.

I see evidence of it even in the country's highly controlled media landscape.

Writing in the journal Russia In Global Affairs, which has close links to the country's foreign policy establishment, political scientist Vasily Kashin recently concluded: "The goal of eliminating the anti-Russian regime in Ukraine at the current stage is fundamentally unachievable without the complete military occupation of the entire country, including the western part, for a long period. For Russia this is technically impossible."

A few days later, pro-Kremlin tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets quoted political commentator Alexander Nosovich: "The expert community is split between those in favour of continuing the special military operation until the goals are achieved, and those who believe it's time to end it, since the worst-case scenario is not even defeat, it's an endless special operation."

In the same paper, lawyer Dmitry Krasnov argued that, throughout Russian history, "it was lost wars and humiliating truces that regularly led to new breakthroughs, reforms and surprisingly to new victories... major geopolitical losses were sometimes more useful than brilliant victories".

In a country whose national idea has been shaped around the concept of Russia as a nation of victors and victories, it was astonishing to see such an article in print.

Was it hinting that Russia should end its war on Ukraine without achieving its goals?

A few days later, I tried to read the article again online.

"Error 404. Page not found" flashed on to my screen. Access denied.

There may be a discourse. But it clearly has limits.

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'They'll fix the building, but not our souls': Sleepy Kyiv neighbourhood hit in Russian strike

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y9nyvg9z2o, 5 days ago

Ukrainians knew a huge strike was coming. Since Russia threatened to step up attacks on the capital, Kyiv, about a week ago, many spent nights in underground shelters.

We were two floors underground, and yet we could feel and hear the massive explosions above. Then came the Russian drones, possibly carrying more explosives or scouting out the damage done by the missiles. Then more missiles.

More than 41,000 people - including almost 4,500 children - sheltered underground in the Kyiv metro overnight, a record number in recent years, the metro company said.

Even though Moscow had said its attacks would get much worse, this one was not much different from what Kyiv had seen already, many times. Yet again, Russia said it would strike military targets, but civilians suffered.

As they emerged from shelters after the attack, many were shocked to see their neighbourhoods completely transformed, for the worse. Windows smashed, cars turned into unrecognisable heaps of burnt, twisted metal.

In Kyiv, at least six people died that night, and there was death and destruction elsewhere in Ukraine. In Dnipro, at least 16 people were killed as two residential buildings were hit.

More than 90 people were injured across both cities, while Kharkiv in the north-east - which also saw its energy facilities and civilian infrastructure hit - reported 10 injured, including a child. Other regions across the country were targeted.

In Vynohradar, normally a sleepy neighbourhood of Kyiv, we saw a scene of utter devastation. High-rise apartment blocks with windows smashed, shells of burnt-out cars on the pavements, dust and smoke in the air. Locals told us they had heard at least three massive explosions. Several of their neighbours were taken to hospital with severe injuries.

Anna lives in a nine-storey apartment block right next to the epicentre of one of the explosions. Tearfully, she told me that one of the cars completely destroyed by the blast was hers. But it is not just her car or her house that she is worried about.

"They'll fix the building, but not our souls," she said. "The whole of the building, the whole of Ukraine is in grief. What have we done to deserve this?"

The attack was followed by a massive effort to clean up the damage and help the survivors.

Outside Anna's house, rescuers were making sure everyone was physically OK, while government psychologists were talking to shell-shocked and sometimes tearful locals, and volunteers handing out free food and drink.

Police were shooing everyone away from the high-rises as shards of glass were still falling out of broken windows.

Nearby, neighbourhood boys joined municipal workers in clearing rubble from a children's activity centre, with painted purple butterflies still visible on what is left of its windows.

But step away from the epicentre of the blast, and a sense of normality begins to return. Around the corner from Anna's house, a couple of children were playing on a swing, looking in disbelief at all the bustle in their neighbourhood.

Even further away, road workers were laying new tarmac and buses were running as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening just a short distance away.

This is Kyiv's way of dealing with the war: no matter how hard it gets hit, the city still goes back to its daily routines.

The drivers risking death on Ukraine's most dangerous bus routes

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c87q2eq8r1yo, 6 days ago

Warning, some of the details of this story are disturbing

Anatoly Dmytrov was driving his bus on Route 14 in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson earlier this month.

The bus was full and people were standing in the aisle, when it reached an intersection and it was hit by a Russian drone.

"All the windows got smashed. I barely made it to the next stop, where there was a shelter. I looked in the mirror and saw blood. I thought - oh, I need to get to the shelter quickly because sometimes they send a second drone immediately," Anatoly said.

He was in shock after the attack, and at least eight of his passengers were injured, he added.

"It's no fun working here," Anatoly said. "This happens almost every day, they've started hunting buses down. You go to work and you have no idea if you are going to come home."

Kherson's municipal transport company, where Anatoly works, says the attacks started last year and are getting worse. Public transport has become a priority target for Russian drone operators, the company said in a statement shared with the BBC.

This year alone, three of its workers have been killed, eight wounded, and 21 of its trolleybuses and eight buses damaged. Local authorities say six privately operated buses have been hit in 2026, too.

About 65,000 people are still thought to be in Kherson, a city of some 300,000 residents before the war.

The city is firmly under Ukrainian control and yet it is the administrative centre of one of the five Ukrainian regions which Russia claims as its own.

It was occupied by the Russians in the first few days of the full-scale invasion of 2022, then retaken by the Ukrainians in autumn of the same year, and since then has been relentlessly attacked by Russian forces from across the Dnipro river.

Rita Dobrinova, a manager at the Kherson municipal transport company, believes the threat from Russian drones is getting worse, particularly since they started using optic fibre cables, which are immune to jamming.

"Some are just hovering, waiting. Others are scout drones. They look the driver right in the eye through the windscreen," she said.

"There is a bus driver who had a bomb dropped literally on to his head on 11 April. It went through the cabin's roof and fell on his head," she recalled of one fatal attack.

Authorities in Kherson have taken steps to protect bus drivers and their passengers. Some of the busiest streets are covered with anti-drone nets protecting pedestrians and traffic underneath, and authorities say drivers are given helmets and bullet-proof vests.

They were also issued with drone detectors, called chuyka, but they are of limited use.

They only detect approaching drones which use known frequencies for navigation, but machines relying on fibre optic cables or new frequencies are invisible to them.

The municipal transport company currently has about 30 buses. "I can't say each one of them will meet a drone every day," said Ms Dobrinova. "But the drone detector will beep once in an hour or an hour and a half. All it tells you is that there's a drone around. It will show your distance to it in metres or kilometres."

If the chuyka goes off, bus drivers are supposed to stop, let their passengers out and direct them to the nearest shelter.

Even getting to work can be lethal. Another bus driver, Eduard Zadorozhny, was being taken to work together with colleagues in a company van on 3 May when it was targeted.

"They hit us, we got out, and when an ambulance arrived to help us, they hit the ambulance."

Deliberately targeting medical workers is a war crime under international law.

"What they do is hit you, and then they hit you again. They've turned people's lives into a horror show," Eduard told the BBC.

Eduard was concussed but one of his colleagues, an engineer, was killed.

But why do bus drivers in Kherson keep going back to work, despite the severe danger?

"We need to get people to their pharmacies and hospitals: children and the elderly, everyone who has stayed here, everyone who still lives here," said municipal driver Maksym Dyak. "No-one apart from us will do this. We realise that if we abandon these people, no one else will drive them."

Like his colleagues Anatoly and Eduard, Maksym has also been targeted by Russian drones. He was hospitalised with a broken rib and shrapnel embedded in his chest earlier this year.

"We work like rats in a cage. We get attacked from every side, but we keep driving," Maksym added.

Towards the end of my conversation with Maksym, I asked him whether he ever considered leaving Kherson.

"I never thought of leaving. This is where I was born, this is where I live and this is where I'll live until the very end. I'm not going anywhere."

Spain's Sánchez digs in after eight years as PM as wave of scandals threatens survival

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1w21gn340xo, 8 days ago

1 June marks exactly eight years since Pedro Sánchez became prime minister of Spain, but with his government and Socialist Party besieged by corruption investigations he is more likely to be plotting his political survival than celebrating.

His musician brother, David, has just gone on trial accused of influence peddling.

Former Socialist prime minister and close Sánchez ally José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has been named in an investigation into alleged money laundering.

And police have raided the Socialist headquarters in Madrid as part of a probe into allegations of a dirty tricks campaign that the opposition has dubbed "the Socialists' Watergate".

These probes and others have generated a growing clamour by the opposition for Sánchez's resignation and speculation that his government might soon collapse.

"The accumulation of cases makes clear that these are not isolated episodes or the fruit of dark conspiracies," warned centre-left newspaper El País, traditionally sympathetic to the Socialist Party. "The investigations are linked to the nucleus of power which has governed for the past eight years."

The Socialist Party has been under scrutiny since 2023, when José Luis Ábalos, a former transport minister and deputy party leader, was implicated in an investigation into a network that allegedly received kickbacks from the sale of €50m (£43m) worth of facemasks during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ábalos, who denies involvement but was expelled from the party, recently went on trial and is awaiting the verdict.

Last year, he was also implicated in a broader kickbacks-for-contracts case, along with Socialist Party number three Santos Cerdán.

That case came as a huge blow to Sánchez, who had vigorously defended Cerdán from allegations in the media until evidence from the probe was made public. "The Socialist Party and I should not have trusted him," the prime minister said.

Both Cerdán and Ábalos deny wrongdoing.

The case against Zapatero, in which he is accused of using his influence to secure a €53m government bailout of Plus Ultra airline in 2021 and receiving a commission in return, is also extremely damaging for the Socialist Party.

That is in great part because Zapatero is a close Sánchez ally who has commanded enormous respect on the left for reforms he introduced during his 2004-2011 administration, including in areas such as same-sex marriage, historical memory and gender violence.

The separatist group Eta ended its four-decades-long campaign of violence during his tenure.

"Symbolically speaking, this is very significant," said Paco Camas, head of public opinion in Spain for polling firm Ipsos. "The fact that this is the first former prime minister [to be investigated] makes it extremely serious. But also because he has been a moral reference for the party."

Zapatero, who is due to be questioned in court on 17 June, has insisted he has done nothing illegal and for now, at least, he has Sánchez's "full support".

The investigation that led to a 12-hour police raid on Socialist Party HQ in Madrid this week adds an extra dimension to Sánchez's woes.

The allegation is that the party paid member Leire Díez to carry out a campaign to discredit police, judges and prosecutors who were investigating existing cases, such as that affecting Cerdán, who has been named as a suspect in this probe. Díez has denied that she performed this role.

While Sánchez himself has not been directly implicated in any of the investigations, family members have.

The allegations against his brother, David, who went on trial on Thursday, are that he was appointed to a musical post in Badajoz in south-west Spain without undergoing a selection process, and that once in the role he did not carry out his duties.

Also, a judge has been investigating the business affairs of the prime minister's wife, Begoña Gómez, since 2024, and has proposed she go on trial for misuse of funds and influence peddling.

She has been summoned for a preliminary hearing on 9 June.

Pedro Sánchez has criticised the cases against his brother and wife, pointing to the fact that they originated in accusations made by far-right organisations.

So far, at least, Sánchez has not cast in doubt the cases against Zapatero or Leire Díez.

However, his combative transport minister, Óscar Puente, appeared to make a broader point about the investigations cornering the Socialists when he said "there is a government that some want to bring down, not through the ballot box, but with other dark arts, with undemocratic methods".

The leader of the conservative People's Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, described the litany of scandals as "a criminal carousel". He called for Sánchez to resign and bring forward next year's general election.

But Sánchez, who has become renowned or infamous for his resilience, has insisted he will see out the parliament's full legislative term.

His minority coalition government has struggled to manage its parliamentary partners – an array of regional nationalist and left-wing parties – preventing it from approving a single new budget this legislature.

The question now is whether the remaining allies will continue to support him.

One of them, the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), hinted that its patience is wearing thin, suggesting that waiting until 2027 for the next election would be an "irresponsibility".

However, loss of parliamentary support does not necessarily mark the end of the road for Sánchez.

There does not seem to be enough support for the opposition to win a no-confidence vote – which was how Sánchez himself came into power in 2018.

That is partly because parties that want more autonomy for their regions, such as the PNV, fear the centralising intentions of a PP government, possibly in coalition with the far-right Vox.

"I don't see an incentive for the government to call elections, however blocked the situation may be and however much it is affected by scandal," said Paco Camas. "It can dig in."

He believes that, like last year in the wake of the Ábalos-Cerdán kickback scandal, the summer break could provide the government with a badly needed respite, allowing it to recover some political initiative in September.

Another question is whether ill-feeling within Socialist ranks at so much scandal could spread.

The president of the Castilla-La Mancha region, Emiliano García-Page, and former Prime Minister Felipe González, both regular Sánchez critics, have called for early elections.

"There would have to be an internal rebellion of mayors and regional leaders who are concerned that the contagion effect of the reputation of this government could have an impact on the May [2027 local] elections," said Lluís Orriols, a political scientist at Carlos III University.

"But right now we're not seeing that kind of revolt," he said.

Sánchez's future is likely to depend to a great extent on how the investigations develop.

Further explosive cases, or evidence of illegal financing in the Socialist Party, could trigger an exodus of parliamentary partners and make the pressure unbearable, even for the great survivor Sánchez.

"This is a government which has been in a very delicate situation for some time now," said Orriols. "Don't rule out the possibility of it running out of air soon."

Putin says there is 'no point' meeting Zelensky over ending Ukraine war

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpqpqx5qe40o, yesterday

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he does not see any point in meeting Volodymyr Zelensky after the Ukrainian leader requested face-to-face talks over ending the war between the two nations.

Zelensky sent an open letter on Thursday calling for direct negotiations with Putin, writing that it was "wrong to simply wait" for the war, which began with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, to become the focus of US attention once more.

The Ukrainian president also requested a ceasefire, while striking a defiant, at-times mocking tone.

Putin called the note "rude" and refused the request for a meeting, reiterating his position that peace talks should precede any ceasefire.

"I don't see any point for now," he said when asked whether he would take up Zelensky's offer while speaking at Russia's annual economic forum in St Petersburg on Friday.

"Was it a way to create the conditions for a face-to-face meeting or a way not to set up a face-to-face meeting? I think it was the second."

After hearing Putin's response Zelensky said Russia "was choosing war again" .

"He just doesn't want to end the war. I think that many in the world were disappointed by this answer," he wrote on Telegram.

During his remarks addressing Zelensky's letter, Putin restated his position that a ceasefire would only allow Ukraine to regroup, while concessions Moscow is seeking from Kyiv remain unmet.

"The only point is for the Ukrainian side to halt the advance of our armed forces. But we need agreements - not for six months, not for three months, but for the long term," he said.

"Let the experts get to work and come up with some solutions. After that, we can meet."

Putin said he would only end the war when Russia's goals had been met.

"Military actions will end some day, we assume. Without a doubt, they will end once we have achieved the goals we have set for ourselves."

Russia's longstanding position is that Ukraine should withdraw from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, as well as abandon efforts to join Nato.

But Kyiv has refused to give up any territory, arguing that any concessions to Moscow would embolden it to invade again in the future, noting its full-scale invasion came eight years after it annexed the Crimean peninsula.

Zelensky had stated in his letter that "after 26 years in power, age is beginning to take its toll" on Putin, while drawing attention to a recent Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory - including one on St Petersburg on Thursday he described as "paying a visit".

Putin said the letter contained "some rather rude remarks".

The content of Zelensky's letter had raised hopes of peace in some quarters, including the White House.

US President Donald Trump said "it would be great" if the two leaders did meet.

Ukraine said on Friday that it had struck five ships with illegal cargo in the Sea of Azov and in coastal waters of territories occupied by Russia.

Robert Brovdi, Ukraine's drone commander, said they had been involved in "stealing" Ukrainian grain, and transferring fuel and military supplies.

Azerbaijan's foreign ministry said five people had been killed in attacks on two of the ships in the sea of Azov. It did not indicate who it thought had carried out the attack and said the boats did not belong to Azerbaijan.

One drone operated by Ukraine exploded in the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta. Ukrainian operators said it was knocked off course by Russian electronic interference.

At least 13 people have been killed and 70 others injured in a series of Russian attacks on Ukraine in the past day, officials have said.

Four died after a dairy factory was hit outside Kyiv, while a drone strike on a petrol station in Kherson killed a 35-year-old woman.

Colombia presidential runoff pits leftist senator against pro-Trump rival

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1w2xvwq8g9o, 6 days ago

Colombia's presidential election will go to a runoff on 21 June between a leftist and right-wing candidate on opposite ends of the political spectrum, after Sunday's vote produced no overall winner.

The right-wing Abelardo de la Espriella, an admirer of Donald Trump, came top in the vote, followed closely by the left-wing senator Iván Cepeda, an ally of the current president Gustavo Petro.

The campaign was plagued with violence, including drone strikes, kidnappings, homicides and the assassination of a presidential candidate at a rally last year.

Both men offer differing visions for how to solve Colombia's violent internal armed conflict that has lasted for decades but has resurged in recent years.

On Sunday, neither candidate achieved more than 50% of the vote to win outright.

While polls tipped Cepeda to finish ahead of his right-wing challenger, official results showed that he trailed, with 41% of votes compared to De La Espriella's 43.7%, with almost all ballots counted.

After topping the vote, De La Espriella said in the runoff he would "defeat tyranny, absolutism", calling the result a "triumph for those of us who have never experienced living off the state's teat".

Meanwhile, Cepeda said that he would not comment until the count was verified by judges.

Paloma Valencia, the moderate conservative who finished in third place on less than 7%, has since endorsed De La Espriella.

President Petro, who endorsed Cepeda, said he did not "accept the preliminary count results" and that he would wait for final results reviewed by judges. He alleged irregularities in the vote, including claiming that "hundreds of thousands of votes were added" - without providing any evidence.

Electoral authorities said the voting day had proceeded "normally and safely".

Cepeda was actively involved in the peace talks that led to a historic deal in 2016 between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla group, which led to the disarmament of thousands of rebel fighters.

He is often described as an architect of the "total peace" strategy of President Petro, Colombia first left-wing president, which prioritises dialogue and negotiations with armed groups during ceasefires, over military intervention.

Under President Petro's presidency, cocaine production hit a record high, membership of armed groups grew, and violence on the border surged to its worst level in years, displacing tens of thousands of people. This has led his critics and many security analysts to denounce "total peace" as a failed strategy, though Petro has argued his government has seized the largest amount of drugs in history.

The economy has grown, and Petro increased the minimum wage significantly, though about one in three Colombians still live in poverty.

Cepeda has pledged economic reforms if elected, including expanding welfare benefits and handing land to victims of internal conflict.

De La Espriella is a lawyer and businessman who dubs himself "El Tigre", the tiger. He has heavily criticised Petro's negotiations with armed groups and advocated a tough military crackdown on crime, including closer co-operation with the United States, bombing cartels with US support, more powers for the military and possible mass trials.

He has pledged to build 10 mega-prisons in the jungle in the style of El Salvador's hardline right-wing President Nayib Bukele who, many commentators have observed, De La Espriella has modelled his beard as well as some of his policies on. He has also said he would drastically shrink the state.

De La Espriella has attracted controversy over some of his past clients: he was the lawyer to Alex Saab, a close ally of the US-ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro who was recently charged with money-laundering. He also defended the Colombian fraudster David Murcia Guzmán, who led a multibillion-dollar pyramid scheme. He has argued this is just part of his work as a defence lawyer, while critics have accused him of enriching himself by defending powerful criminals.

Relations with neighbours and US

The runoff on 21 June will have implications for Colombia's relationship with the US, and some of Colombia's neighbours.

Trump has adopted a muscular foreign policy approach to Latin America: seizing Venezuela's former leader Nicolás Maduro in a military raid, striking alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, imposing an oil blockade on Cuba and creating a "Shield of the Americas" security alliance with right-leaning leaders in the region earlier this year to tackle cartels.

Many countries in the region have shifted to the right in recent elections, including Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras and El Salvador.

Petro and Trump have clashed and regularly publicly insulted each other over issues including drug-trafficking and US intervention in the region, though relations improved after a meeting at the White House in February. However, anti-narcotics co-operation largely continued during these periods.

Cepeda, like Petro, has insisted that Colombia should not be a "vassal state" to the US, whereas De La Espriella has expressed a desire to strengthen the security alliance with the US and ideologically aligns himself as closer to Trump.

Trump has not openly endorsed a candidate in this election, unlike some other votes in the region.

The runoff could also impact relations with Colombia's neighbour Ecuador. Colombia is the world's biggest producer of cocaine, but the majority of the world's cocaine now transits through Ecuador, which has led to a surge in violence there too in recent years.

Ecuador's conservative president Daniel Noboa had imposed tariffs on Colombia, accusing the government of not doing enough to secure the nations' shared border. Ecuador has carried out joint military operations on cartels with the US.

Noboa said he had reached an agreement with De La Espriella in a meeting to drop tariffs on 1 June, as the two had agreed on the "handover of Ecuadorean criminals who are in Colombian territory" and a "joint fight against narcoterrorism".

Colombia's foreign ministry accused him in response of "deliberate interference" in its election. Noboa's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Canada formally requests 16-year renewal of North American free trade pact

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9prr3w9nlo, 4 days ago

Canada has formally requested a renewal of the North American free trade agreement with the US and Mexico, called the USMCA, as the July deadline to renegotiate the pact looms.

In Tuesday's notice, Canada-US trade minister Dominic LeBlanc requested the deal be renewed for another 16 years, calling the agreement "highly beneficial" to all three countries.

It comes as LeBlanc is in Washington to meet US trade representative Jamieson Greer.

Greer concluded the latest round of formal bilateral talks with Mexico this week, but the on-again-off-again negotiations with Canada have lagged behind.

In the notice letter, LeBlanc argued that the USMCA - known as CUSMA in Canada - gives North American countries a competitive global advantage.

He added that Canada recognises there are areas the pact can be improved, adding that the country is "willing to consider any proposal that can be beneficial to all three nations' long-term prosperity".

He also said that: "In parallel, discussions with the United States on addressing sectoral tariffs will be essential."

Prime Minister Mark Carney has said that he wants sector-specific tariffs imposed on Canadian steel, aluminium, automobiles and lumber by the Trump administration removed or lowered, while Greer has indicated that Canada may have to accept some form of US levies.

Separately, Mexico also announced its call for a renewal of the multilateral trade pact.

"Mexico's intention and position is that the treaty should be extended," Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard said according to the Reuters news agency. "Keep in mind that the treaty will remain in ‌effect ⁠for many more years, but we would like it to be extended to 16 years."

The US, meanwhile, has cited multiple trade irritants with Canada, including the decision by most provinces to remove American alcohol from shelves due to tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump.

It also wants greater access to Canadian markets for American businesses, specifically dairy, where Canada has strict control over production quotas and imports to support local farmers.

Last week, Greer said that he will also be discussing increasing the percentage of US content in North American-made cars, as well as co-ordinating external tariffs on other countries with Canada and Mexico.

In its talks with Mexico, the US has asked that vehicles made in North America contain at least 50% American-made content, according to Reuters.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Carney said that cars made in Canada already contain around that amount of US content, on average.

In a speech in New York last week, he said a stronger Canadian economy would support growth in US.

"Canada Strong will help make America great again," he said.

Domestic pressure has been building on the prime minister to reach a deal with the US, with the Conservative opposition MPs citing Canada's lagging economic growth and high youth unemployment rate.

"What is the plan?" asked Jasraj Singh Hallan, a Conservative MP at a news conference on Tuesday morning, calling Carney a "grand illusionist" who has failed to deliver on his promise of growing Canada's economy.

Greer has blamed the slower pace of Canada-US negotiations on Canada's decision to retaliate against the US for its tariffs, compared to Mexico.

"Two countries in the world retaliated against us: The People's Republic of China and Canada," he told reporters last week. "So they're just in a different spot, and it's hard to see necessarily where that ends."

President Trump has not commented recently on US-Canada trade talks. But on Monday, he revived his "51st state" rhetoric against Canada in a Truth Social post, where he shared link to a news article about its lagging economy.

Carney acknowledged to reporters on Tuesday that the economy is experiencing "some weakness".

Asked if the country is in a recession, the prime minister said his government is working on building "a stronger, more resilient, and more independent Canadian economy".

If Canada, the US and Mexico do not agree to extend the USMCA by 1 July, the pact would have to be renewed annually, until 2036.

Delcy Rodríguez visits India: Will oil talks lead to an energy deal?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx29k97kzlo, 3 days ago

Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela's acting president, is in India and will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday for talks on trade, investment, healthcare and renewable energy.

But the relationship between the two countries still revolves around a single commodity: oil.

India, the world's third-largest importer of oil, has sharply increased purchases of Venezuelan crude in recent months, turning the South American producer into an increasingly useful supplier just as the Iran war has choked energy flows from the Gulf.

India imports about 90% of its oil. Roughly half its crude imports - around 2.5-2.7 million barrels a day - pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow Gulf chokepoint now effectively closed by the conflict.

That gives Venezuela an importance that far exceeds its place in India's trade statistics.

Bilateral trade was worth just $679m in 2024-25 - a tiny fraction of India's global commerce. Yet whenever Delhi seeks to diversify its oil suppliers, Caracas becomes hard to ignore.

Venezuela was India's fifth-largest source of crude oil imports in May, supplying about 266,000 barrels a day, or roughly 5.3% of India's total crude imports, according to maritime analytics firm Kpler. Only Russia, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Brazil supplied more.

After a year-long interruption triggered by US measures against buyers of Venezuelan crude, Indian refiners resumed imports in February following a sanctions-easing agreement between Washington and Caracas.

Whenever Delhi seeks to diversify crude supplies away from the Middle East now, the world's largest proven oil reserves become hard to ignore.

That is the backdrop to Rodríguez's sixth visit to India, where she is due to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday.

Michael Kugelman, a senior fellow for South Asia at the Atlantic Council, said Venezuela offers India an opportunity to diversify its energy supplies beyond the Middle East, while potentially aligning with Washington's preference that India reduce its reliance on Russian oil.

"Ramping up imports from Venezuela could also give a boost to India's ties with Washington," Kugelman told the BBC.

However, he cautioned that Venezuela's political volatility could complicate any new energy partnership and that Delhi "will also need to be careful not to appear to be seeking energy alternatives to Russia at the behest of Washington".

According to Kpler, India imported around 280,000 barrels a day of Venezuelan crude in April and May, the first cargoes after a nine-month hiatus, with June arrivals expected to rise to above 300,000 barrels a day.

Venezuelan crude's return coincides with growing concerns about supply disruptions in the Middle East and uncertainty around the Strait of Hormuz.

"However, the timing of the initial cargoes suggests they were likely secured well before the recent disruptions, highlighting a longer-term sourcing strategy rather than a purely reactive response," Sumit Ritolia, lead research analyst at Kpler, said.

For Indian refiners, however, the attraction is not merely geopolitical.

Relatively cheaper to buy but challenging to refine, Venezuelan crude is a heavy, sulphur-rich oil. India's sophisticated refineries are among the few that can process it efficiently into fuels such as diesel and jet fuel.

The renewed interest marks a partial return to an earlier relationship.

Before US sanctions halted imports in 2019, Venezuela had become one of India's most important oil suppliers, rising to third place in 2012 and remaining among the top five thereafter. By 2019, it was shipping nearly 16 million tonnes of crude a year, helping push bilateral trade to $6.4bn, overwhelmingly driven by oil.

Yet Venezuela is unlikely to transform India's energy mix, experts say.

Output has risen by roughly 400–500 kbd (thousand barrels per day) this year, but remains far below historic levels, limiting its ability to replace major suppliers.

"Instead, Venezuelan barrels are best viewed as an attractive diversification option - providing Indian refiners with access to economical heavy crude while reducing reliance on any single supply region," said Ritola.

Whether Venezuela can become a bigger supplier will depend on production, sanctions and geopolitics.

But Delhi sees scope for a deeper energy relationship.

As the Indian government puts it in a statement, Venezuela has been "an important partner" in energy and investment, with Indian state-owned firms already holding significant stakes in the country's oil sector and "keen to explore opportunities for further enhancing their presence".

But while both sides are signalling a desire to deepen cooperation, expectations of any major breakthrough may need to be tempered.

"Delhi will tread carefully during this visit and not be willing to commit to much on the energy front just yet. We'll likely see a big push for deeper cooperation, but not necessarily with the announcement of a new energy deal," said Kugelman.

How my brother went from liberal Hollywood actor to manosphere 'messiah'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjwppxwxpg1o, 10 days ago

Warning: This story contains offensive language

Ten years ago Luis Castilleja was a free-wheeling creative, seeking his fortune as an actor in Hollywood, and enjoying the liberal Los Angeles lifestyle. Now he is better known as El Temach, Latin America's biggest manosphere influencer, whose misogynistic and hyper-masculine content has gained him more than 11 million social media followers.

His sister Alex says his transformation is shocking and they no longer speak.

"I don't like saying El Temach because for me he's a completely different person. So I'm sister with the human that he was," she says.

Alex, a design engineer from Mexico, says her brother's metamorphosis shows how even the most unlikely people can be tempted into making manosphere content, once they realise the money and fame to be made.

The impact of Western influencers such as Andrew Tate has been well documented. But a BBC World Service investigation has scrutinised the content and followings of 15 other influencers - based in South and East Asia, Latin America and Africa - and found that, on average, their followings have tripled in the past three years. These regions have seen relatively recent gains in gender equality, and experts say this environment is fuelling men's hunger for manosphere content.

As well as El Temach, our investigation also focused on Andrew Kibe - a household name in Kenya who promotes male self-empowerment and misogyny on social media. Both have repeatedly attacked single mothers, and regularly accuse women of being "gold diggers" who manipulate men.

Both influencers, we found, are earning large sums of money from their platforms.

El Temach and Kibe both strongly deny their content is misogynistic, with Kibe - in an interview with the BBC - even disputing the existence of the concept.

We wanted to see the impact this content has on consumers. Two Gen Z followers - one in Kenya and one in Mexico - gave the BBC uncensored access to several years of their social media activity, allowing us to see thousands of their posts, views, likes, comments and shares.

The data reveals their personal journeys into the manosphere.

Mexican Julián first started using Instagram aged 16, liking and commenting on content about cars, fitness and self-development. His history shows that he first liked a video from El Temach a few months later, after it appeared in his recommended feeds.

Now 19, he has so far liked more than 3,000 videos from dozens of manosphere creators. Julián told the BBC he felt "feminism has made men's problems invisible".

Listen to the podcast here, and outside the UK, you can watch the film on YouTube

That sentiment is a key tenet of El Temach's messaging - but he did not always hold these views, according to his sister Alex.

He grew up wanting to be a performer, she says, and after studying theatre in Mexico City, moved to LA to pursue his dream of becoming an actor.

But he returned home a couple of years later, she says, after a break-up and failure to book regular work. These setbacks motivated him to help other young men navigate difficult experiences, she says, and he began in 2020 to post content focused on male self-development.

"I think at the beginning it was very noble how he wanted to help other men to feel worthy and valuable, and that's how he started," Alex says.

But this quickly "twisted" into something else. "He got this Messiah complex, like he's the one that has to fix [men's issues]," she tells us.

And she says he soon began to blame women for the difficulties his male followers were navigating. She is not sure how far her brother actually believes the misogyny he espouses - and how much is just for social media likes and views.

"He believes some things - and others, he's just experimenting what works best with the algorithm."

Her brother admitted he was simply copying Andrew Tate, says Alex. "Tate was super big at that time, [and] since he saw it worked he just started pushing [his argument] further and further."

She says her brother's content soon became mirrored in his behaviour towards her.

"Anything I would express… was taken like a feminist belief… an affront to his persona."

The BBC asked El Temach to take part in our documentary. He initially agreed to speak to us, inviting us to film his world tour which began in the US, but just days before we were due to fly out, he went live on YouTube telling his followers he had no intention of participating.

"BBC and Miss Jacqui from the BBC, we don't need your permission to be men. Make your documentary, don't involve me or my bros. [Expletive] the BBC."

We nevertheless went to his show in Las Vegas, which was a mixture of self-improvement advice and sexist rhetoric, including advising his fans to avoid "sluts" because they will never change, and that single mothers are "not a good catch" because their status reflects poor life decisions and character flaws.

Afterwards, we tried to confront him about these statements, but his security blocked our way.

El Temach's earnings from content, including these shows, is sizeable. According to our analysis, from April 2025-26 El Temach made an estimated $1.5m (£1.1m) from social media views alone. He also made $200,000-300,000 (£149,000-£223,211) from YouTube "Super Chats" - in which fans pay to boost the prominence of their comments during livestreams, often asking for relationship advice - as well as $800 (£595) per person for small-group workshops. This is in addition to the money he made from merchandise and his regular stage shows.

His team told us they consider it "highly irresponsible to publish the estimated income of El Temach".

Kibe also monetises his popularity, selling merchandise and even a crypto coin. He told the BBC: "If anybody is really my fan, the only thing I tell them is make sure you send me M-Pesa [money via a Kenyan app]."

One group of men we spoke to outside El Temach's Las Vegas show told us what they liked about his content - that he encourages discipline, inspires them to find self-confidence, and acknowledges their problems.

"He focuses a lot on men as having been dismissed by society, and [the narrative that] women have, you know, been the stars of the show," says Dr Ali Siles, gender and masculinities researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

"He has this message of: 'You do matter, believe in yourself.'"

And this is what fan Julián says he likes about the influencer too. "The teaching that impacted me the most was about feeling confident."

Kenyan university student Ryan, who follows the videos of Andrew Kibe, says as a young man raised by a single mother, he views the influencer as a surrogate father figure.

Using analytical tools developed by the University of Queensland, we found Ryan had watched videos on TikTok from Kibe - whose hashtag has attracted more than 500 million views - after searching for terms such as "success", "self-improvement" and "masculinity tips with no father".

But Siles says manosphere content tends to come "at the expense of" women and other gender identities.

"It's very harmful to women's rights and development, because it's also trying to put them back in places a lot of them have been trying to get out of, with limited choices, with very stereotypical roles."

Julián's social media history shows how such messaging, in his case from El Temach, soon becomes mirrored by followers.

When Julián broke up with a girlfriend in late 2023, his interactions with manosphere content spiked and he began referring to women as "sluts" in his online comments, and praising subservience. "If you're a feminine and submissive woman, then perfect," he wrote in one post.

Julián says he regrets the tone of his past Instagram comments, but stands by their content.

Many of Julián's generation believe that feminism has come at the cost of men's rights, according to a recent global survey of 23,000 men and women by King's College London. More than half of Gen Z men - some 57% - agreed with the statement: "We have gone so far in promoting women's equality that we are discriminating against men."

It's a belief that manosphere influencers are tapping into. According to these influencers, "women are the problem," says Awino Okech, at The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London.

Their belief, says the professor of feminist and security studies, is "it's this gender equality thing that is leading to boys underperforming… It's gender equality that is leading to mental problems for men and boys."

These misleading narratives can have a real-world impact, we found.

Fernanda, a doctor from Mexico City, says her ex-partner, also a doctor, used El Temach's messaging to justify his controlling behaviour.

On what was to become the day they split up, she says he locked her in a room and forced her to watch videos made by El Temach for four hours.

"He kept saying: 'See? I'm not doing anything wrong… You're the one who's wrong.'"

She told us the situation that day escalated to the point where he threatened to kill her.

"His eyes were empty, he was acting purely on impulse. In that moment, I was really very afraid of what might happen to me."

Though she does not blame El Temach directly for her experience, Fernanda does believe this type of content has an effect on relationships in the real world.

"I think [my former partner] was already a sexist who was hiding it. But El Temach influenced him to no longer feel bad about it."

Alex, El Temach's sister, thinks her brother is in denial about the negative impact of his content.

"I think he knows what he's doing on some level. I think that he sees and realises that if he ever owns up to what he did, it'll destroy him."

She feels he has drifted from the path he was destined to follow, "into this weird dystopic hell and he's just this... violence robot".

"It's very sad."

The BBC asked El Temach to respond to our allegations that he promotes misogynistic content. His team responded to say they "categorically rejected the allegations and that they were unfounded and taken out of context".

Kibe, when challenged on his misogynistic content, denied this term applied to him and said: "No man hates a woman. We love you - we are like gods to you, worship us."

Two possible Ebola cases in Brazil ruled out as patients test negative

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c99lzgxzx2do, 5 days ago

Two suspected cases of Ebola in Brazil have been cleared after both patients tested negative for the virus, local health authorities have said.

The individuals were monitored in Brazil's two biggest cities after returning from African countries, with both showing related symptoms.

São Paulo health authorities said in a statement that Ebola had been ruled out for a 37-year-old man who had travelled to the DR Congo, which is at the centre of the outbreak. He had already tested positive for meningitis.

Another patient in Rio de Janeiro, who had recently travelled to Uganda, also tested negative for Ebola after testing positive for malaria.

Local authorities said the man in São Paulo had "exhibited symptoms such as fever", while the man in Rio de Janeiro, from Belgium, had shown "viral symptoms such as cough, chills and diarrhoea".

If the cases had been positive, they would have been the first infection cases outside Africa since the outbreak began in DR Congo.

There are now more than 1,000 suspected Ebola cases in DR Congo, with at least 246 deaths. Cases are concentrated in the country's Ituri, North and South Kivu provinces.

Uganda has reported nine confirmed cases and one death.

The current outbreak has been caused by a rare strain of Ebola known as Bundibugyo, which has no proven vaccine and kills about a third of those infected.

Three new vaccines are being developed to tackle the Bundibugyo strain, including by the International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), the University of Oxford and the pharma company Moderna.

Ebola viruses normally infect animals, typically fruit bats, but outbreaks among humans can sometimes start when people eat or handle infected animals.

It spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, including sweat, saliva, blood, semen, excrement, urine and vomit.

Caribbean hot sauce producers warn of shortages and higher prices

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq8p1jy3vxlo, 6 days ago

Hot pepper sauce in Caribbean cuisine is as pervasive as ketchup in the US.

The fiery flavouring is a staple of dining tables regionwide, the obligatory accompaniment for everything from rice and peas, to curries and stews.

And as international palates continue to heat up to the potent taste, a growing number of brands are exported to North America, Europe and Australia, appearing on the shelves of major supermarket chains, from the US's Walmart, to the UK's Tesco, and Woolworths in Australia.

But a shortage of the particular chilli pepper used to create the quintessential Caribbean condiment is threatening to stifle supply, while sending costs for the region's producers soaring.

A confluence of extreme weather, disease and pests is making core ingredient Scotch bonnet peppers particularly hard to source, manufacturers tell the BBC.

The temperamental little, yellow fruit with its susceptibility to heavy rain and viruses can be tough to grow, while devastating hurricanes in Jamaica, a prime producer of Scotch bonnets, delivered a further blow.

Last October's Hurricane Melissa – the strongest in Jamaica's history – walloped the island's agricultural sector, while it was still recovering from Hurricane Beryl the year before.

"We were hugely limited, and we did have to cancel orders," says Sean Garbutt, of Associated Manufacturers, which makes Jamaica's popular Walkerswood sauces and seasonings.

Walkerswood exports more than 95% of its products – two-thirds of it to the US. Last year alone, the company sent overseas the equivalent of 500 20ft (6m) long cargo containers.

The primary factor hindering expansion "is always produce", Garbutt continues. "After Beryl, many farmers switched to sweet potato because it's much hardier and the price per pound is better.

"Our number one pepper sauce, which unfortunately is the hardest for us to maintain and control, is our Scotch Bonnet Pepper Sauce, made from our Jamaican yellow peppers.

"It requires fresh peppers as we don't add colouring. We crush them and within a week we need to cook them to get that vibrant colour that people like. The weather is always a challenge," Garbutt says.

Heavy rains can also impact the taste. Walkerswood is known for producing some of the fieriest sauces.

"We might get a call from someone who says they really enjoyed our pepper sauce, but it wasn't as hot as it normally is. We have to explain it's due to too much rain," Garbutt says.

Many Jamaicans are fiercely proud of the island's Scotch bonnets, which are something of a cultural cornerstone and a central feature in its cuisine.

"We joke that other countries don't know how to season their food," smiles Drew Gray, whose grandfather founded Gray's Pepper more than 50 years ago.

"Hot sauce is on the table of every cook shop and every restaurant. It's almost an affront if it's not there," he says. "We definitely have a high heat tolerance, which I think makes our cuisine unique. We have a heavy hand when it comes to seasonings, especially Scotch bonnets, which we add to everything."

As one of Jamaica's largest buyers of the fruit, for Gray's Pepper the shortages have been onerous.

"Climate change is affecting the Caribbean the hardest," says Gray. "Back-to-back hurricanes wiped off most of the crop so product has been scarce, and farmers are increasingly hesitant to replant.

"Needless to say, prices rose. Right after Melissa, Scotch bonnets went up maybe 10-fold, which was crazy. Over the last two years, there's been an overall increase of about 40-50%."

One way to navigate the impact is by keeping stocks high year-round, Gray says.

"Going into Beryl we had around six months of inventory, and about the same for Melissa. It's a strain on cashflow, but it allows us to weather the storms. If it's not hurricanes, it's adverse weather patterns. Scotch bonnets are very sensitive to overly wet weather as they get funguses."

Around two-thirds of the family-owned company's business is exports.

"Our premises were also damaged by Melissa because we were where the eye passed over. But we were able to get back up and running with orders going out within two weeks," Gray says.

"My motto is, we need to produce no matter what. Because we are able to carry inventory, our exports haven't been affected. At the end of the day, the big chain stores don't care if you have a hurricane, they just want the product."

The Jamaican government has been working to help farmers get back on their feet. That included supplying Scotch bonnet seeds to 650 growers.

"Peppers, particularly Scotch bonnets, are facing myriad challenges right across the Caribbean," says Dwight Forrester, of Jamaica's Rural Agricultural Development Authority.

"They're highly susceptible to viruses and pests like gall midges. But they are one of our flagship products and are a household name in Caribbean stores and Caribbean restaurants worldwide. We export 40% of what we produce," Forrester explains.

Many of Jamaica's peppers are sold to neighbouring Caribbean islands. In Antigua, the shortage of Scotch bonnets has been felt by manufacturers including Homebrew Hot Sauce.

"Sometimes we have to defer or reduce orders," explains company owner Ensly Smith. "We might tell a supplier we can only give them two of the four cases they ordered, for example.

"When peppers are in abundance we stock up. When Hurricane Melissa hit, we had close to 600lbs [272kg] in storage so we were able to stay afloat."

The six-year-old company, which Smith describes as a "pandemic experiment that blew up into something profitable", occasionally sees its hot sauce bought by the caseload by visiting tourists.

"People are definitely warming up to it. Caribbean sauce tends to be a little thicker and I think has more flavour than those from North America. We take a lot of pride in our spices and local seasoning," he adds.

Another Antiguan producer, Novella Payne, who cooks up a range of sauces, syrups and jams under her Granma Aki label, agrees. To avoid the high prices of Scotch bonnets, she also uses locally grown Moruga scorpion peppers, which are native to Trinidad. "They give it a nice flavour," she says.

As the warmer months are now arriving - peak season for both Scotch bonnets and storms - hot sauce manufacturers are keeping their eyes on the weather as well as their profit margins.

Some have seen success by using high-yielding, hybrid red chilli peppers which have shown resilience to disease.

Walkerswood, which has created its own farm through a partnership with the Jamaican government to grow a variety of crops for its products, is also funding genetics research to create a resilient strain of classic yellow Scotch bonnets.

"Lots of countries grow red chillis, but our yellow peppers are special," Garbutt adds. "I'm a purist at heart and I think our Scotch bonnets need to be properly protected."

Nicaraguan indigenous leader dies after three years in prison

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgzyyrzj1jo, 6 days ago

A leading Nicaraguan indigenous leader has died after being detained by the ruling authoritarian regime for nearly three years.

Brooklyn Rivera, who founded the central American nation's indigenous movement Yatama, died due to "physical and neurological deterioration" linked to a Covid-19 infection, the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health stated on Sunday.

The government, headed by President Daniel Ortega, took 15 hours to confirm the death and are refusing to release the 73-year-old's body to his family, opposition media report.

The Nicaraguan government is routinely accused of political oppression, and Rivera is one of a growing number of dissidents to die in custody.

Rivera had been arbitrarily detained when he returned to his home in Nicaragua in September 2023.

He had long fought for indigenous autonomy in Nicaragua, and had opposed Ortega's Sandinista revolutionary government in the 1980s as part of an indigenous militia that fought alongside the Contras.

Rivera's detainment was only recognised by the regime more than a year after it began, following pressure from other nations.

Little was heard of his condition until Wednesday, when the government acknowledged he had been in hospital in the capital, Managua, since early March.

It said he had been suffering from a range of conditions including "cerebral edema associated with severe neurological injury", a respiratory infection and renal failure.

Nicaragua's Ministry of Health released an image of an emaciated Rivera lying in a hospital bed being ventilated via a tube through his neck.

News of his ill health sparked renewed calls for his release.

The US State Department said Rivera had been "unjustly imprisoned", and the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health's statement was "an attempt to conceal its central role in the cruel treatment and Rivera's current conditions".

"This repression, violence and lack of humanity is abominable," it added.

Meanwhile, César Marín, Amnesty International spokesperson for the region, said: "Brooklyn Rivera must be released immediately and unconditionally.

"His critical health condition while in the custody of the Nicaraguan state confirms the extreme risk to which he has been exposed."

The Nicaraguan Ministry of Health said on Sunday that Rivera had been surrounded by several members of his family when he died.

It had earlier said he could not be transferred elsewhere due to his degenerating condition.

News of Rivera's death was met by condemnation.

Bianca Jagger, a Nicaraguan human rights activist and former wife of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, told the BBC World Service's Newshour programme that she held the Ortega regime responsible for Rivera's death.

"We're talking about a dictatorial regime," she said. "There have been many other political prisoners who have died while in the custody of the regime."

The Indigenous Youth Association of Moskitia - the ancestral region Rivera hailed from - expressed its "profound indignation at the inhuman, cruel and unjust treatment he endured in his final years".

"Keeping an elderly person deprived of their liberty for years, without sufficient guarantees of due process, and in conditions that deteriorate their physical and emotional health, is a grave concern for any society that aspires to respect human rights," it said.

"His passing occurs in circumstances that should never have happened and that will continue to generate questions, pain, and legitimate demands for truth, justice and reparations."

The Argentina-based Inter-American Legal Assistance Center for Human Rights, which supports victims of repression in Nicaragua, strongly condemned Rivera's death and said those responsible "must be held criminally accountable".

Rivera served in Nicaragua's National Assembly four times, and as a minister for autonomous development in the 1990s, according to news site Confidencial.

His political party, Yatama, later aligned itself to Ortega when he returned to power in 2007. It said a month after Rivera's detention that it had been banned from running in elections.

Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo now hold absolute power over the country. Since returning to power, their rule has been marked by authoritarian tactics, violent repression of dissent and control of the media.

Polls close in Colombia presidential election that may reshape relations with US

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2027g423glo, 6 days ago

Polls have closed in Colombia's presidential election.

The vote is being held after months of public recrimination between current left-wing President Gustavo Petro and his US counterpart Donald Trump over a number of issues including drug trafficking and American intervention in the region.

Colombia's constitution prohibits Petro seeking re-election and he has thrown his support behind Iván Cepeda. Challenging him are right-wing political outsider Abelardo de la Espriella and conservative Paloma Valencia.

The outcome of the election could redefine which countries the Latin American nation aligns itself with and how the government intends to tackle drug gangs amid spiralling violence.

As polls opened, Petro told a crowd in the capital, Bogotá, that Sunday's vote would "determine where Colombia is headed" and would "define the [country's] destiny".

Voting began at 08:00 local time (13:00 GMT) and closed at 16:00 on Sunday.

None of the candidates appear likely to win an outright majority, with a run-off vote expected on 21 June.

Polling suggests Cepeda has the greatest support, with de la Espriella his next-closest rival.

Cepeda has promised to continue with the Petro administration's policy of "total peace", which sought negotiated settlements with armed insurgent groups that engage in drug trafficking - though talks have stalled or fallen apart and there has been renewed violence.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a recent report that armed conflict in Colombia last year had affected civilians the most in a decade.

Just hours before voting began, authorities in the northern Cesar region relocated a polling station following a drone attack on security forces that left a soldier injured, local media report.

Colombia's defence ministry has deployed 408,000 soldiers and police to secure the election.

Election monitors say that more than a quarter of Colombia's municipalities face some risk of violence as the country's 41 million voters head to the polls.

De la Espriella and Valencia have vowed to launch a military crackdown if elected.

Colombia's presidential hopefuls have campaigned amid persistent political violence, with one candidate, Miguel Uribe, fatally shot last summer.

Valencia subsequently stepped into his shoes as the established conservative party's candidate, and has sought electoral success by courting centrist voters to turn away from Cepeda and de la Espriella.

As well as taking a tough stance on security and speaking out against Petro's "total peace" strategy, Valencia has been characterised as having a strong belief in individual freedoms.

She has touted policies such as reducing the size of the state, eliminating wealth taxes and offering government loans to entrepeneurs.

While Valencia has frequently appeared alongside Colombia's former right-wing President Álvaro Uribe at campaign rallies, de la Espriella - a lawyer and businessman by trade - has cast himself as maverick newcomer.

He has refused to govern "with the same old crowd", a reference to the pre-Petro political elite, and expressed his admiration for Trump, libertarian Argentine President Javier Milei and El Salvador's hardline leader Nayib Bukele.

De la Espriella has characterised himself as "the tiger", vowed to combat crime with an "iron fist", and could be seen during the campaign chanting patriotic slogans at rallies while wearing a bulletproof vest or behind bulletproof glass.

Both de la Espriella and Valencia have expressed a desire to restore Colombia's close security alliance with the US.

Cepeda has insisted, just as Petro did, that Colombia should not be a "vassal state" to the US - though observers have noted that the two nations' historic anti-drugs co-operation has continued during even the most heated disputes.

The capture by US forces of Venezuela's former President Nicolás Maduro in January has left Petro one of the region's few remaining left-wing leaders not ideologically aligned with the Trump administration.

Trump has accused Petro of not doing enough to prevent cocaine from his country winding up on US streets.

At one point, Trump even called him "a sick man who likes selling cocaine to the United States" and said "he could be next" for US military intervention.

Petro has argued his government has seized the largest amount of drugs in history. But on his watch cocaine production has also soared to record highs, according to the United Nations' World Drug Report 2025. Petro disputes the UN's method of counting.

The two presidents, however, appeared to have mended their relations at a White House meeting in February - after which Trump called his guest "terrific".

Brazil monitors two patients for possible Ebola infection

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy72z48zd7po, 7 days ago

Health authorities in Brazil are monitoring two patients for possible Ebola infection in the country's two biggest cities, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

A man, 37, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) "exhibited symptoms such as fever", São Paulo's state government said.

In Rio state, the health department said it had activated safety protocols after a Belgian man who arrived from Uganda showed "viral symptoms such as cough, chills and diarrhoea".

The test results for both patients should become available next week.

If confirmed, they would be the first infection cases outside Africa since the outbreak began in DR Congo.

There are now more than 1,000 suspected Ebola cases in DR Congo, with at least 246 deaths. Uganda has reported nine confirmed cases and one death.

The current outbreak has been caused by a rare strain of Ebola known as Bundibugyo, which has no proven vaccine and kills about a third of those infected.

While the two patients in Brazil are still being monitored for Ebola, they have already both been diagnosed with other conditions: in São Paulo, the man from DR Congo tested positive for meningitis and is in a serious condition, while in Rio, the Belgian patient tested positive for malaria.

The respective diagnoses do not rule out the possibility of also having Ebola, officials say.

Ebola viruses normally infect animals, typically fruit bats, but outbreaks among humans can sometimes start when people eat or handle infected animals.

Ebola spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, including sweat, saliva, blood, semen, excrement, urine and vomit.

On Saturday the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned that the rapid spread of the virus had caused an "alarming situation", with an unprecedented number of cases recorded so soon into the outbreak.

WHO head Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is continuing a visit to DR Congo's Ituri province, the worst-hit area, where he is overseeing containment efforts.

Despite the possible cases of the virus outside Africa, the WHO has stressed repeatedly that its global spread is highly unlikely.

Oscar-nominated Persepolis author Marjane Satrapi dies aged 56

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g0nnj51jyo, 3 days ago

French-Iranian author, illustrator, director and activist Marjane Satrapi, best known for her graphic novel series and film Persepolis, has died aged 56, the Élysée Palace in Paris has confirmed.

She "captivated a global audience with Persepolis", the palace said, calling her "a leading figure in French culture and an artist devoted to freedom, whose work carried a universal message and earned her immense international renown".

Persepolis, first published in 2000, follows the story of young Marjane growing up amid the Iranian Revolution, also known as the Islamic Revolution. Eight years later, the film adaptation was nominated for best animated feature at the Oscars, having been co-directed by Satrapi.

News agency AFP quoted a "member of her close circle" as saying she had "died of sadness a little over a year after the death of Mattias Ripa, her husband and the love of her life".

France President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to "a great artist who transformed an Iranian childhood into a universal fable".

The palace added: "With her childlike perspective, her irony, her tenderness, and her inner demons, the author created a deeply moving world with which readers identified."

Satrapi was an outspoken critic of Iran's government, and Persepolis - her graphic novel memoir-turned bestseller - depicts her childhood in the Iranian capital of Tehran, struggling under the rules imposed by Iran's Islamic leadership following the 1979 revolution.

It then goes on to follow her as she is sent to Europe by her parents to begin a life in exile.

Satrapi told the Guardian in 2024 that Persepolis was about making western readers reflect on the humanity of Iranian people, and to realise: "Oh, they're actually human beings like us".

The film version stars Chiara Mastroianni as the voice of young Marjane and Catherine Deneuve as her mother.

President of the French National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, posted on X that France had lost "an immense artist".

She said: "Marjane Satrapi had turned her work into an act of freedom. With Persepolis, she had given a face and a voice to the Iranian revolution, proudly carrying the fight for women's freedom and dignity."

Satrapi studied in Austria for four years as a teenager at the prestigious Lycée Français de Vienne.

She returned home for a period, after a serious bout of bronchitis, to find a much changed Tehran - as depicted in the second book in the Persepolis series.

She gained a master's degree in visual communication from the Islamic Azad University in Tehran, and also married but then divorced.

Her parents urged her to leave Iran and return to Europe, which she did, moving to France to further her education at the Haute School Arts Du Rhin in Strasbourg.

After more than a decade in the country, she gained French nationality in 2006, but last year refused the French legion d'honneur - the French equivalent of an OBE - over what she called her beloved adopted country's "hypocrisy" in its dealings with her home nation.

Women's rights

The artist supported protests for freedom and rights against the regime in Iran.

And she created Woman, Life, Freedom, a collection of graphic stories about the protests in 2022, following the death of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the morality police for not wearing her hijab properly.

Satrapi told Deadline at the time how her parents had previously taken to the streets to protest the regime's imposition of the hijab for women in 1983.

"He was one of the very few men; they didn't understand at the time that women's rights are society's rights," she said of her father.

She also revealed she had received threats and slurs from the regime regarding Persepolis and her activism.

"I've been called a liar and a spy. I've learned in life not to be scared," she said. "It's not that you don't feel fear; you feel the fear, but then you decide whether you care about it or not.

"It's not that I'm fearless or careless but there are kids in my country who are being shot and they are 17 years old, while I have lived for more than half a century."

In 2023, she led a protest outside the Iranian embassy in Paris in solidarity with five Tehran teenagers who were arrested for posting a TikTok video dancing to the Rema and Selena Gomez song Calm Down.

"We artists must be humble but doing nothing is worse, being indifferent is worse," she said. "I don't think what I'm doing is huge or immense but I have a voice, I have a face and I'm known in France, I'm just doing what I have to do."

Satrapi told the BBC in 2024: "If you take the art and culture out from any society, this society falls down."

Her other film credits included 2014 horror comedy The Voices, starring Ryan Reynolds as a factory worker with schizophrenia, whose hallucinations drive him to commit murder.

She also directed Radioactive (2019), a biopic of the pioneering Polish-French physicist and chemist Marie Curie, starring Rosamund Pike; as well as Poulet aux Prunes (2011) and La Bande des Jotas (2012). Her other novels include Embroiderie and Woman, Life, Freedom.

Satrapi's husband, a Swedish producer, actor and screenwriter, died last year and she recently published a series of heartfelt Instagram posts saying: "For I Lost the love of my life".

Israel and Lebanon agree to implement ceasefire if Hezbollah stops attacks

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y01pdqvkgo, 3 days ago

Israel and Lebanon have agreed to renew their fragile ceasefire and create a number of "pilot" security zones inside Lebanon in which Hezbollah operatives would be banned, the US state department has announced.

A joint statement said the agreement was "contingent on a complete cessation" of attacks by the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah, among other conditions.

The three countries also "rejected any attempt, by any state or non-state actor, to hold Lebanon's future hostage".

The agreement was announced in Washington on Wednesday, after Israeli strikes killed at least nine people in southern Lebanon and Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel.

Lebanese state media reported that Israeli strikes continued in the south of Lebanon on Thursday, with at least one strike causing casualties.

Hezbollah, a Shia Muslim militia, political party and social movement, is Lebanon's most powerful group. With support from Iran, it has built an armed force more formidable than the Lebanese army and has fought a series of conflicts with Israel. It is designated as a terrorist organisation by Israel and many other countries, including the UK and US.

The agreement between Israel and Lebanon, reached after a fourth round of US-mediated talks, is contingent on the "evacuation of all [Hezbollah] operatives" from an area between the Israeli border and the Litani river, about 30km (19 miles) to the north, which is currently occupied by Israeli ground forces.

It said the US would help guide the creation of "pilot zones in which the Lebanese Armed Forces will take exclusive control of the territory to the exclusion of all non-state actors".

It did not include any maps to indicate where the pilot zones would be located, or any explanation of how they might work in practice.

The agreement followed a partial ceasefire announced on Monday, which Lebanon said would see Israel refrain from bombing the Lebanese capital, Beirut, in exchange for Hezbollah not attacking Israel.

The two countries' representatives will meet again on 22 June to hold further talks "with a view toward reaching a comprehensive agreement".

Hezbollah told the BBC that it would comment officially in due course.

Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir branded the agreement a "serious mistake", claiming it would allow Hezbollah to "grow stronger".

Lebanon was drawn into the war between the US, Israel and Iran on 2 March, when Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel in retaliation for an Israeli strike that killed Iran's supreme leader. Israel responded with an air campaign across Lebanon and a ground invasion in the south.

A US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon on 16 April failed to stop the fighting, and last week Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to intensify its strikes on Hezbollah and advance deeper into Lebanon in response to drone and rocket attacks on communities in northern Israel.

At least 3,516 people have been killed in Lebanon since the start of the war, according to the country's health ministry. Its figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The UN says more than one million people have also registered themselves as displaced in Lebanon, where Israeli evacuation orders cover more than an eighth of the country.

Israel says 26 of its soldiers and four Israeli civilians have been killed on both sides of the border during the war.

Lebanese media reported Israeli strikes across the south of the country on Wednesday.

The health ministry said four Syrians and two Palestinians were killed in a strike in the al-Housh area, which is just south of the coastal city of Tyre.

The ministry also said that two paramedics were killed and a third was seriously wounded when Israeli forces "directly targeted an ambulance" in the Chehour area, which is about 14km (9 miles) to the east. The ambulance belonged to the Risala Scouts Association, which is affiliated with the Amal movement, an ally of Hezbollah.

The ministry accused the Israeli military of "demonstrating contempt for international humanitarian law", which specifically protects medical personnel.

At least 128 paramedics and healthcare workers have been killed in Israeli attacks on ambulances and medical facilities over the past three months, according to the ministry.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. In the past, it has claimed that ambulances are being used for military purposes, without providing any evidence.

The Lebanese army, meanwhile, said that one of its soldiers was killed in an Israeli air strike on the road between Nabatieh and Kfar Tebnit, about 27km north-east of Tyre. Lebanon's state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported that his motorbike was targeted by a drone.

The army said another two Lebanese soldiers were injured in a separate Israeli strike on their vehicle on the road between Deir Zahrani and Nabatieh.

It denounced what it called "a pattern of deliberate strikes targeting army personnel, vehicles and positions" by Israeli forces.

NNA also reported an Israeli strike on a car on the busy coastal highway in the Khaldeh area, just south of Beirut. It did not mention any casualties, but security sources told Reuters news agency that two people were injured.

It was the closest strike to the capital since the partial ceasefire was announced.

Also on Wednesday, the Israeli military said it intercepted a "hostile aircraft" that crossed the border near the Manara and Kiryat Shmona areas, about 15km south of Nabatieh, as well as two projectiles that crossed in the nearby Misgav Am area.

The military did not immediately blame Hezbollah, but the group later said that "in response to the Israeli enemy army's violation of the ceasefire" its fighters targeted "a gathering of Israeli enemy army soldiers" in northern Israel with a rocket barrage.

Israel's leaders have warned that its military would resume strikes on the Hezbollah stronghold of Beirut's southern suburbs, known as Dahieh, if the group launched cross-border attacks on northern Israeli communities.

According to the Lebanese government, the partial ceasefire agreed on Monday states that "Israel will not launch a broad offensive on Beirut in exchange for Hezbollah refraining from launching attacks against Israel".

The government said Hezbollah had confirmed its acceptance, but a member of the group's political council, Mahmoud Qamati, told the BBC on Tuesday: "There was no ceasefire agreement, just the protection of Dahieh."

Qamati also insisted that Hezbollah would not abide by any commitments made at the Lebanese-Israeli talks in Washington.

"We think these negotiations do not concern us, nor do we recognise their findings or decisions, because we have rejected them on principle," he said.

The partial truce was announced by US President Donald Trump, who on Wednesday appeared to confirm a report that it was brokered after he had called Netanyahu "crazy" in an expletive-laden call prompted by the prime minister's order to bomb the Lebanese capital.

Trump is said to be concerned that further escalation in Lebanon could jeopardise a wider deal to end the war between the US, Israel and Iran.

Iran has warned the US that any regional ceasefire must include Lebanon.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned on Wednesday that if Israeli aggression against Beirut continued, its armed forces were "fully prepared" to resume the war, Iran's Tasnim news agency reported.

Ex-wife of Dubai ruler's nephew in custody, prosecutors say

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2124zylxno, 2 days ago

The ex-wife of a nephew of the ruler of Dubai has been taken into custody, authorities have said, as a custody battle over their three young daughters deepens.

Dubai Public Prosecution told the BBC that Zenab Javadli was detained following a complaint made by the father of her three children - her former husband, Sheikh Saeed bin Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Javadli's family and friends had lost contact with her since Tuesday night and had raised the alarm over her whereabouts.

For almost two days, no news was received as to where Javadli or her children had gone.

For months, she had barely left the house as she believed security officers were waiting to take her children from her and put her under arrest.

According to Dubai Public Prosecution, her ex-husband has alleged she abducted the children during a court-approved visitation session.

Last year, he lodged a complaint with the police accusing her of kidnapping their daughters.

That was after the children changed hands between their parents several times, with each accusing the other of kidnap.

Javadli - a former international gymnast - has also been facing potential arrest for e-crimes - online offences - in the UAE after she livestreamed one of the showdowns last year.

At the time she explained her actions in a video message to the British human rights lawyer David Haigh, who has been advocating for her: "I knew that it was the last chance to be with my children as they would never let me see them again. I genuinely believed that it was my last chance, so I just opened a livestream and called for help."

Lawyers acting for Sheikh Saeed bin Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum have claimed in court hearings in the custody case over their children that she was an unfit mother who had failed to send her daughters to school, was living in a place unsuitable for the children when she was in a hotel, and that she had put the health of the youngest girl at risk.

In a statement on Thursday evening, Dubai Public Prosecution said the matter remained under investigation and was subject to ongoing legal proceedings.

"[We] will continue to take the necessary legal measures in accordance with applicable laws, while safeguarding the children's wellbeing and best interests," it added.

In response, Haigh called on the UAE to immediately grant Javadli access to her lawyer, her consulate and her family and be released back to her home in Dubai.

Hezbollah rejects renewed ceasefire agreed by Israel and Lebanon

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c052343r812o, 2 days ago

The Lebanese armed group Hezbollah has emphatically rejected the terms of a US-backed ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.

In a strongly worded statement, the Iran-backed group's leader Naim Qassem said negotiations had been "futile" and "humiliating" for Lebanon, and rejected categorically by "broad segments of the Lebanese people".

It comes after Israel and Lebanon announced a renewal of their fragile ceasefire with the creation of "pilot" security zones inside Lebanon in which Hezbollah operatives would be banned. It also required Hezbollah to stop attacking Israel.

Donald Trump later said he had spoken to Hezbollah and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and progress was being made.

Trump added "I think you're going to see things happen over there".

"It would be really nice if Lebanon could have some peace. Lebanon's been under attack for so many years and always like an underdog, and it would be really nice if it could end," he said.

Before Trump's comments, the leader of Hezbollah - which was not part of the talks - said the "supposed ceasefire", interpreted as Hezbollah halting fire and withdrawing fighters from the southern front with Israel, amounted to surrender and would fulfil Israel's objectives.

The mood was similar on the streets of Beirut's southern suburbs - a stronghold of Hezbollah, also known as Dahieh - with a storekeeper expressing doubts about the agreement.

Sami, who has run his business there for 25 years, told the BBC: "You cannot have a ceasefire from one side, it's going to be an all side or no ceasefire."

There had been strikes in Lebanon on Thursday, he said. If this was supposed to be a truce, what did that make it?

"This is surrender. This is not a peace agreement. This is a surrender agreement," he added.

Across the road, Hadi, whose family store has been around for 35 years, said he saw no hope - and that this was not a new feeling.

"My generation, my dad's generation, my grandpa's generation, they didn't see anything of hope from these people - not necessarily the Israeli people. You can say the Israeli government," he said.

The agreement between Israel and Lebanon, reached after a fourth round of US-mediated talks in Washington, is contingent on the "evacuation of all [Hezbollah] operatives" from an area between the Israeli border and the Litani river, about 30km (19 miles) to the north, which is currently occupied by Israeli ground forces.

According to the deal, the US would help guide the creation of "pilot zones in which the Lebanese Armed Forces will take exclusive control of the territory to the exclusion of all non-state actors".

It did not include any maps to indicate where the pilot zones would be located, or any explanation of how they might work in practice.

The agreement followed a partial ceasefire announced on Monday, which Lebanon said would see Israel refrain from bombing the Lebanese capital, Beirut, in exchange for Hezbollah not attacking Israel.

The two countries' representatives will meet again on 22 June to hold further talks "with a view toward reaching a comprehensive agreement".

By sitting down to rare talks with Israel, Lebanon's government may have hoped Hezbollah would simply be swept along, and find it hard to be the ones saying no to peace.

The US - which was brokering the talks - will have hoped for a boost to its efforts to strike a peace deal with Iran, which insists any agreement must include peace in Lebanon too.

But while a majority of Lebanon's population do not support Hezbollah, there is not great enthusiasm for Israel's invasion either. And in rejecting the deal outright, the militant group clearly sees political advantage in portraying itself as the only force capable of resisting Israel and fighting on.

Hezbollah, a Shia Muslim militia, political party and social movement, is Lebanon's most powerful group and, with support from Iran, has built an armed force more formidable than the Lebanese army and has fought a series of conflicts with Israel. It is designated as a terrorist organisation by Israel and many other countries, including the UK and US.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said the ceasefire "could be implemented within 24 hours of its final approval" by all concerned parties.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said the Israeli military would "for the time being, continue its fire and operations on the ground" in order to "dismantle terrorist infrastructure in the area".

Lebanese media reported multiple Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon on Thursday.

The state-run National News Agency (NNA) said five people were killed in air strikes on the Bekaa Valley town of Sohmor on Thursday, and that another person was killed when a motorcycle was targeted by an Israeli aircraft in the town of Maaroub, near the city of Tyre.

Later the Lebanese health ministry said at least eight people were killed and 15 others injured on Thursday in a series of strikes targeting the towns of Sohmor, Masaken and Arab Al-Jalil in southern Lebanon.

The United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon (Unifil) meanwhile said one of its peacekeepers had died of wounds he sustained when mortar shells struck his position near Marjayoun late on Wednesday.

The Israeli military accused Hezbollah of firing the mortars that landed inside the UN position overnight, killing the personnel member. The group has not yet commented on the incident.

Serbia's defence ministry identified the peacekeeper as Senior Sergeant Milovan Jovanovic, one of around 170 Serbians in the 7,500-strong UN force.

Separately, the Israeli military announced on Thursday that one of its soldiers, Capt Eitan Shmuel Lemberg, had been killed in southern Lebanon.

It also said it had identified impacts of several "suspicious aerial targets" in an area of southern Lebanon where Israeli troops were operating on Thursday afternoon. No injuries were reported, it added.

Hezbollah said earlier that it had targeted Israeli troops and military vehicles in the Lebanese town of Qantara and the area of Beaufort Castle with attack drones and rockets on Thursday.

At least 3,526 people have been killed in Lebanon since the start of the war, according to the country's health ministry. Its figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The UN says more than one million people have also registered themselves as displaced in Lebanon, where Israeli evacuation orders cover more than an eighth of the country.

Israel says 26 of its soldiers and four Israeli civilians have been killed on both sides of the border during the war.

'Crazy' phone call between Trump and Netanyahu complicates Iran talks

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgz21pq3g6o, 3 days ago

Donald Trump has become the latest US president to find himself at odds with Benjamin Netanyahu, after reportedly clashing with the Israeli prime minister over military action in Lebanon that has thrown Washington's Iran diplomacy into crisis.

Tehran responded to Israel's strikes on Lebanon by threatening to suspend talks with the US - a potential setback to Trump's efforts to extricate himself from an unpopular war with Iran.

Trump was asked by a journalist about an Axios report that he had called Netanyahu "effing crazy" and accused him of ingratitude during a phone call on Monday.

"I did," Trump told the Pod Force One podcast in an interview broadcast on Wednesday. "I wouldn't say angry. I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon, you know."

Trump added: "I like Bibi a lot. And I work very well with him."

He would be far from the only US president to tangle with the Israeli PM. The prime minister has a long history of testing the White House's patience - and of politically surviving any fallout.

The latest reported clash came as Trump mulls a deal that would extend the US-Iran ceasefire and open the door to talks on the future of Tehran's nuclear programme.

The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz - a vital global shipping lane - is also at stake.

Netanyahu laughed off any suggestion of tensions with his American ally.

"Sometimes we have, as in the best of families, you have these tactical disagreements," he told CNBC in an interview on Wednesday. "We always find a way to work them out, and we do so as great friends."

He added that the two can "disagree in the morning" and be in agreement by afternoon.

Experts, however, cautioned that the call could point to frustration in the White House over the alignment of US and Israeli military and political goals nearly 100 days after they launched strikes on targets in Iran on 28 February.

"Netanyahu has a long history of doing his own dance, irrespective of what he has heard from Washington," Brett Bruen, a former diplomat and president of crisis communications agency the Global Situation Room, told the BBC.

"Trump… decided to take the plunge with him, and is now learning a really hard lesson about what happens when you get into war with a pretty mercurial leader that has an agenda which doesn't always align with your own priorities," he added.

Broadly, Netanyahu and Trump agree on the key US objective of preventing Iran from manufacturing or having a nuclear weapon.

In Lebanon, however, those interests slightly diverge, with Israel vowing to target the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia even as US-Iran talks continue. Iran has insisted that any ceasefire must also include Lebanon.

It comes as a growing percentage of the American public has grown critical of longstanding US support for Israel.

One Pew Research Poll released in April found that 60% of Americans now hold a negative view of Israel. Before the start of the war with Hamas in 2023, 42% held a negative view.

Several prominent conservative figures have also publicly spoken out against what they perceive as an Israeli role in convincing Trump to go to war in Iran, which the White House and Netanyahu deny.

Among the prominent critics of the war is Joe Kent, who led the National Counterterrorism Center before resigning in March, citing a belief that "we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby".

The pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, responded to Kent's exit by reposting a statement accusing him of trafficking in "old-age antisemitic tropes".

In this political climate, some observers believe that Trump has an incentive to disagree with Netanyahu to placate critics at home in the US.

"I think there is a political necessity now to create daylight between Israel and the US," Bruen added.

"Whether it's in Lebanon or in Gaza, there are things that Netanyahu has chosen to do which are politically problematic even for Trump or the Republicans."

Other US presidents have found themselves frustrated by Netanyahu.

The Israeli prime minister famously clashed with Bill Clinton over the implementation of the Oslo peace accords.

He had an even more difficult relationship with President Barack Obama, particularly after a March 2015 speech to Congress - focused on Iran policy - that was scheduled without the White House's knowledge.

Netanyahu's relationship with Biden also seemed to sour after he accused the US of withholding weapons and ammunition - comments that White House officials described as "vexing" and "deeply disappointing".

"He's had extremely fraught relationships with US presidents," said Natan Sachs, an expert on US-Israeli relations at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

"He is a very difficult negotiator, not just in terms of being tough, but in terms of being very suspicious," Sachs added.

Trump has previously expressed frustration with Netanyahu, and used an expletive on camera in front of reporters last year after Israeli strikes on Iran threatened a shaky ceasefire at the end of the so-called 12-day war with Tehran.

But overall, their relationship has been largely positive, and Netanyahu has repeatedly described Trump as the "greatest friend to Israel" in US history.

"With Trump, he [Netanyahu] found someone who is willing to break the mould for how Middle East affairs are conducted," Sachs said.

"That's something Netanyahu related to very easily. He wanted to change the rules of the game and the willingness of the US and Israel to militarily confront the Iran axis."

Whether their recent apparent disagreement will change that warm relationship in the long term, however, is unclear.

"It's potentially significant. We don't know if it was a one-time event or a harbinger of broader things," Sachs said.

"I would not rule that out. The president has changed his mind about many people in the past."

Israeli strikes kill 11 people in Gaza City, medics say

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg5prr9gr1ro, 3 days ago

At least 11 Palestinians have been killed, including women and children, and dozens wounded in Israeli air strikes across Gaza City, according to medical sources and eyewitnesses.

Simultaneous strikes were launched by at least three Israeli helicopters against four residential buildings in the Sheikh Radwan and Tel al-Hawa areas, and the Shati refugee camp early on Thursday, causing powerful explosions, the BBC was told.

Videos posted on social media, said to show the aftermath of the attacks, showed distressing images of people trying to leave a building engulfed in fire in Shati camp.

The Israeli military said the strikes killed four senior members of Hamas's General Security Apparatus.

It identified them as Hassan Labad, the deputy head of the apparatus, along with three subordinates, Asim Shubair, Abdullah Abu Kaloub, and Mohammed Abu Marq.

Local sources said earlier that one of the strikes had targeted Labad, and that he was killed along with his wife and three of their children.

A spokesman for the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency also said the dead included two children with disabilities from the Labad family and three women.

Israel has carried out repeated air strikes in Gaza despite the US-brokered ceasefire deal, accusing Hamas of rearming and rebuilding its forces.

More than 940 people have been killed since the ceasefire took effect last October, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

And with the world's attention focused on conflicts elsewhere in the Middle East, the situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate, with a worsening humanitarian crisis and reported plans by Israel to increase the area of land under its control to 70%.

The Gaza war was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, when about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Israel responded by launching a military campaign in Gaza, during which more than 72,950 people have been killed, according to the territory's health ministry.

One killed and dozens injured in Iranian drone strikes on Kuwait airport

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yx135yg53o, 3 days ago

One person has been killed and more than 60 injured in Iranian drone strikes on Kuwait's international airport, local officials have said.

Kuwait's defence ministry spokesman called Wednesday's attack "criminal Iranian aggression", while the foreign ministry said diplomatic missions had been damaged.

Later on Wednesday, Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) denied responsibility for the airport strike, claiming the damage was caused by an error from a US missile interceptor.

US Central Command (Centcom) said this was false and claimed Iran struck the airport in a "deliberate, calculated and unjustified attack".

The IRGC had earlier said it targeted US bases in the Gulf in retaliation for US strikes on an Iranian oil tanker and Qeshm Island.

The US said it had launched "self-defence" strikes on Iran, and shot down or intercepted Iranian missiles fired at Kuwait and Bahrain.

Iran also claimed on Wednesday it targeted a US navy ship in the Gulf of Oman, which was also denied by Centcom.

The latest escalation threatens a shaky US-Iran ceasefire.

The person who was killed in the Iranian attack on Kuwait's airport was later identified as an Indian citizen.

In a statement, the Indian foreign ministry condemned the attack, saying that several other Indian nationals were injured.

"We again call upon parties to cease such attacks," the statement added.

Following the strikes, Kuwait's foreign ministry ordered two Iranian diplomats to leave the country within 24 hours, and summoned Iran's charge d'affaires.

Earlier, Centcom said that its overnight strikes on Qeshm Island, in the Strait of Hormuz, were "in response to attempted attacks by Iran across the Middle East" and targeted an Iranian military ground control station.

It also said that the US shot down three attack drones that had been launched by Iran toward "civilian mariners that were rightfully transiting regional waters".

Centcom added that Iran had fired two missiles at Kuwait and three at Bahrain, all of which broke apart or were intercepted.

Iran said it had attacked US bases and helicopters in a "regional country" using missiles and drones in retaliation.

Centcom earlier said it had struck and "disabled" an unladen oil tanker that was sailing towards Iran, as part of the US naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, which began on 13 April.

A US aircraft fired a Hellfire missile into the engine room of the Botswana-flagged M/T vessel, after its crew "ignored repeated warnings", it said.

The IRGC immediately vowed retaliation, saying that "disrupting the security of the Strait of Hormuz will carry a heavy price for the aggressive US military".

In Tehran, the foreign ministry said in a statement that the leaders of Kuwait and Bahrain had "direct and unmistakable responsibility" for "last night's acts of aggression", according to AFP news agency.

Iran has repeatedly attacked targets in Bahrain and Kuwait, where US military bases are located.

The attacks happened as ceasefire negotiations between the US and Iran stalled, with a deal to end the war failing to advance over the weekend.

US President Donald Trump this week told his critics to "sit back and relax", saying that Iran "really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the USA".

US media earlier reported that Trump had requested edits to the terms of a potential peace deal, after meeting with senior aides to discuss extending the framework of a ceasefire.

The changes related to the Strait of Hormuz and the removal of highly enriched uranium from Iran, the BBC's US news partner CBS News reported - as well as a framework to reopen negotiations on Iran's nuclear programme.

On Monday, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei denied this had been on the table, adding that Washington was "constantly changing its views and putting forward new or contradictory demands".

In an interview aired on Wednesday, Trump said Iran had "already agreed" to not have a nuclear weapon.

Trump said Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, was "involved" in the talks.

"We seem to be getting along quite well," Trump told the Pod Force One podcast.

Asked if he would like to meet him, he said: "I'd like to meet him. We probably will meet at some point, depending on how it all works out."

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Congress on Tuesday that negotiators had not offered Iran sanctions relief in exchange for reopening the strait.

"Right now, everything that's been discussed with them is that … any sanctions relief is condition-based, which means it has to be in return for the reason why those sanctions were put in place in the first place, which is their nuclear programme," he said.

"The war is over," he said in another tense exchange with a senator, as lawmakers on the committee questioned the US strategy for ending the conflict.

Sailors stressed and exhausted after months trapped by Strait of Hormuz blockade

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy02rz27l32o, 4 days ago

The sea is sometimes so tranquil that Captain Hassan Khan forgets his ship has been stuck in the middle of a war zone for three months.

"It is really strange that everything looks normal outside, but people inside are not calm," says the Pakistani sailor, who doesn't want to use his real name.

Things may look normal in this part of the Gulf, but they are certainly not. Khan and 20,000 other sailors have been trapped in or near the Strait of Hormuz by the US-Israeli war with Iran since late February. What was once one of the world's busiest waterways, used to transport a fifth of the globe's oil and gas, has ground to a halt as missiles fly overhead and mines are laid beneath the waves.

Despite this, the crew on Capt Khan's ship has been trying to follow the usual work routine - although no one wants to leave the ship for rarely-allowed shore breaks, while cheerful banter has given way to anxious silence punctuated by the buzzing of phones. People jump at the smallest sound, even in their sleep.

"The stress stays in our mind all the time," Khan says. "Everyone is just exhausted – both physically and mentally."

Crossings and supplies

Even without the danger posed by the missiles and mines, the 1,600 ships that the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) estimates to be stuck on the wrong side of the Strait of Hormuz are unable to leave. Days after the war began, Iran shut the narrow waterway - the only way out of the Gulf - and refused to let anyone through without its express permission.

"It is as if we are trapped in a pond. There's only one way out, and that's Hormuz," explains the captain of another vessel, Shafiqul Islam.

Islam, whose Bangladesh-owned ship the Banglar Joyjatra is carrying about 37,000 tonnes of fertiliser bound for South Africa, has twice tried to leave in the months since.

Both attempts have ended in failure.

After the announcement of a ceasefire on 8 April, Islam caught wind that another ship had been given permission by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to cross. He then steered his ship towards the critical waterway along with four other vessels. Shortly after, they were warned not to proceed.

Nine days later, Islam tried again as Iran said the strait would be "completely open" for all commercial vessels in line with the ceasefire. But Iran quickly reversed the decision after the US kept the blockade of its ports in place.

By then, Islam's ship had already come within 30 nautical miles of the strait. He had no choice but to turn it away as warnings of attacks continued to crackle over the radio.

Ships have moved to different ports or anchored offshore within the Gulf for safety. But now, getting supplies of food and water has become increasingly pressing.

Doing so is still possible without necessarily entering ports, as the Gulf region - especially around Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait - has well-established supply services. But deliveries are now unpredictable.

Among all essential items, the price of water has increased the most, says Banglar Joyyatra's chief engineer Rashedul Hasan. "We purchased about 180 tonnes of water for the ship two days ago. Earlier, it would cost between $1,500 and $2,000. Now, it costs us $11,000."

"It also feels like some food and water suppliers are trying to take advantage of the situation and make excessive profits," says a Korean sailor who doesn't want to be named. He is on a different ship.

The stranded ships will need even more water as summer is coming. The air temperature has already exceeded 30C in May – and it can go as high as 45C.

On Khan's ship, they "still have food and water, but things are simpler now". While he can still get beef and chicken, vegetables and lentils are hard to come by.

Death and diplomacy

But then, Islam still considers himself lucky. On the second day of the conflict, his ship was only 200m (656ft) – barely the length of a medium-sized tanker – from Dubai's Jebel Ali port, which was targeted by an Iranian strike.

Since then, Islam and his 30 crew members have lost count of the attacks they have witnessed. "Sometimes missiles fly over one ship, and sometimes debris falls on the next," the captain says.

"Whenever attacks continued throughout the night, none of us could sleep," says Hasan, the engineer. "We have witnessed horror and devastation with our eyes."

They are scared for good reason. At least 11 sailors have been killed and another is unaccounted for in 39 verified incidents, the IMO says.

Tension eased somewhat after the ceasefire, but the ongoing military activities in the strait are reminders of its fragility.

Some sailors continue to see drones and fighter jets, while others spot naval ships and submarines regularly.

"These ships use bright lights. We also hear announcements over the loudspeakers. The captain says the Iranians are doing this to stop anyone from passing through," says Sajid Masood, a Pakistani who works as a cook on an oil tanker. His name has been changed to protect his identity.

So is there any way out for the trapped sailors?

Shipping companies, which are facing huge losses, are hoping they may be able to cut staffing costs.

Many sailors' contracts are expiring and large-scale crew rotations are overdue. Given the circumstances, it will be difficult to find enough hands to man these ships – even after the war is over.

"This crisis has shown how dangerous the job can become," says Pakistani sailor Kamil, who spoke to the BBC using an alias. "Many sailors may think differently about this profession."

He is worried that access to international waterways will become weaponised in future conflicts.

Masood, the cook, is also having second thoughts about his seafaring career – he has only one month left on his contract.

But before making the big decision, he is just looking forward to returning to Pakistan and bringing gifts from Dubai for his family: Barbie dolls for his daughters and a toy airplane for his son.

"I thought I would be home soon, but we are still stuck," he says.

"Every day my family asks when I will come back, but I have no answers for them."

There are some ships - an estimated 750 since 28 February, according to maritime data firm Kpler - which have managed to get through the Strait of Hormuz.

Their owners appear to have relied on international direct diplomacy with Iran, with most coming from China, India and Pakistan, says Dr Jonathan Schroden of CNA, a Washington DC-based non-profit research organisation.

It appears they have also "paid a fee of some millions of dollars per ship", he adds.

Diplomacy is now the Banglar Joyjatra's best hope – and the Bangladeshi government has been working with its owner Bangladesh Shipping Corporation (BSC) to secure its exit.

But that has proved difficult as well.

BSC managing director Commodore Mahmudul Malek said initially Bangladesh agreed to pay the toll Iran demanded. But the plan was dropped after the US threatened sanctions against any country for doing so.

"We are in a double crisis now," he says.

Additional reporting by Hyojung Kim of BBC News Korean

Iran attacks damage 20 US military sites since start of war, satellite images show

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2l2yl7r8r2o, 6 days ago

Iran has damaged 20 US military sites since the start of the war, satellite images and videos analysed by BBC Verify show, suggesting the attacks are more extensive than publicly acknowledged.

Iran has targeted key facilities across eight countries in the Middle East since the end of February, causing millions of dollars of damage to state-of the-art air defence systems, refuelling aircraft and radars.

Tehran has targeted both US bases and shared military facilities in retaliation to the US-Israeli strikes across Iran and Lebanon over the past three months. The Pentagon says it has hit more than 13,000 targets in Iran since the start of Operation Epic Fury.

Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, has sought to highlight his military's success in striking US facilities. In a statement on Tuesday he claimed the Middle East was no longer a "safe place" for American bases.

While the White House has repeatedly claimed that Iran's military has been almost wiped out, analysts said that the damage seen at US facilities suggests that Tehran's counter-attacks have been more precise and extensive than American officials have previously acknowledged.

A US defence official declined to comment on BBC Verify's findings, citing "operational security reasons".

The US has sought to limit satellite analysis of the conflict by requesting Planet, a major provider, to impose an "indefinite" restriction on new images of Iran and most of the Middle East. The company justified the move, saying that it wanted to ensure its images were not used "by adversarial actors to target allied and Nato-partner personnel and civilians".

BBC Verify has used satellite imagery from other international providers combined with older images from Planet to track the damage caused by Iranian attacks. The facilities are in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Bahrain and Oman. The actual figure could be higher, with some analysts placing the number of bases hit as high as 28.

Among the valuable hardware damaged were three state-of-the-art anti-ballistic missile batteries systems at the Al Ruwais and Al Sader airbases in the UAE and Muwaffaq Salti Airbase in Jordan.

The US is only known to operate eight of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries, which are deployed at bases around the globe and cost around $1bn (£766m) to manufacture. Each battery needs a crew of about 100 troops to operate it while the interceptors it fires cost around $12.7m per round.

Vice-Admiral Mark Mellett, the ex-head of the Irish Defence Forces, told BBC Verify that the batteries are at the core of a "highly complex" regional defence network that cannot be "quickly or easily replaced".

Iranian strikes have also heavily hit US refuelling and surveillance aircraft at Prince Sultan Airbase in Saudi Arabia, expert analysis of satellite images show, with damaged aircraft and smoking craters clearly visible.

One aircraft was identified by a MAIAR analyst as an E-3 Sentry surveillance plane. US media reported that it could cost up to $700m to replace.

Elsewhere, Iranian attacks have also targeted Ali Al Salem Airbase and Camp Arifjan in Kuwait. Analysts at MAIAR identified destroyed fuel storage bunkers, aircraft hangars and troop accommodation in satellite images of the base, which was hit multiple times over the course of the conflict.

And at Camp Arifjan the defence intelligence company Janes identified extensive damage to satellite communications hardware.

The extent of damage caused to US facilities is difficult to quantify, but a May estimate by the Pentagon put the total cost of Operation Epic Fury at $29bn - with much of that likely to be spent on "repair or replacement costs for equipment" destroyed in the conflict. Democrats say this is likely an underestimate.

The report also found that at least 42 aircraft - including F-15 and F-35 fighter jets, 24 MQ-9 Reaper drones and an A-10 attack plane - have been destroyed or damaged since February.

By comparison to the expensive hardware used by the US military, Iran has reportedly made use of cheap, easily replaceable drones in its attacks on targets across the Middle East.

Experts who spoke to BBC Verify said that Iranian tactics had evolved over the course of the war, moving from sprawling barrages of missiles which targeted cities and bases across the Middle East, to more precise, directed attacks.

"[Iran's] opening salvos were optimised for volume—mass waves designed to overwhelm air and missile defences through sheer numbers," said Dr Kelly Grieco, an analyst with the US-based Stimson Centre think tank.

"Within days, however, Iran had shifted to smaller, more precisely targeted salvos, conserving remaining missiles and drones for specific high-value targets and concentrating fire where even near-misses cause significant damage."

An analyst at MAIAR told BBC Verify that the US military "appears to have been guilty of a degree of early-war complacency" in failing to move aircraft out of the range of Iranian drones and missiles as Tehran's tactics evolved.

They said that in the case of Prince Sultan airbase the facility had previously come under fire before the aircraft were destroyed.

Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei vowed that "the nations and lands of the region will no longer serve as shields for American bases," adding: "America will no longer have a safe place in the region for mischief and the establishment of military bases, and day by day it will drift further from its former position."

His comments came just days before the ceasefire between the US and Iran came under strain again. On Thursday Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has said it targeted an American base in the region, after fresh US strikes on southern Iran.

Dr Grieco warned that should the fragile US-Iranian ceasefire breakdown and fighting resume, the existing damage to US bases suggests that facilities across the Gulf could be vulnerable.

"The current conflict has consumed US and partner air defence stocks at a significant rate," she said.

"There is no rapid path to replenishment, meaning any renewed Iranian assault would be met a fraction of the interceptors available when the conflict stated."

Additional reporting by Barbara Metzler and Tom Gould.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Learning from Ukraine war, Hezbollah is now using fibre-optic drones to hit Israel

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0r2ydlvk41o, 10 days ago

Fibre-optic drones have become Hezbollah's primary weapon against Israeli soldiers and civilians, along both sides of the Lebanese border, and are now seen as the biggest threat there, as fighting continues six weeks into a supposed ceasefire.

One Israeli soldier was killed and two others injured in a drone attack near the Israeli border community of Shomera on Wednesday.

Of the 11 Israeli soldiers and one civilian defence contractor killed since the ceasefire came into force, eight have been killed by fibre-optic drones.

Most of the attacks have targeted Israeli forces, which are currently occupying a large area of southern Lebanon, but Hezbollah is also increasingly attacking Israeli communities across the border, according to the Alma Research Center, an Israeli think tank which monitors the conflict.

It has recorded more than 100 drone attacks against communities inside Israel since the ceasefire began in April.

In Shomera, a leafy town at the western end of the border, drone attacks have left trails of fibre-optic wires along the roads – and a new sense of fear in this battle-hardened community.

"The problem is you don't feel them coming. You're sitting there, and suddenly it arrives," said Shomera's council chief, Sami Zanetti. "And if you run away, it follows you."

He showed me a bus-stop, scarred by a recent drone attack this week that struck minutes after a school bus had left.

The fibre-optic drones used by Hezbollah – also known as First-Person View or FPVs – are much harder to detect than the rockets and mortars this town is used to. The drones are loaded with explosives and fly low, without a radio signal that can be jammed by Israel's military. They are connected to their operators by a thin optical wire, which allow them to see and chase targets on the ground. It's a tactic learned from the war in Ukraine.

Several times a day, sirens sound in these frontier communities, warning of a drone crossing the border from Lebanon. Here, the warnings and the weapons come seconds apart; sometimes there's no warning at all.

"With rockets, I've got 15 seconds to go into a bomb shelter. With drones, you have no way of knowing when it will fall," Sami Zanetti said.

As we were talking, sirens erupted.

The alerts on our phones said a drone had been spotted, heading straight for Shomera.

From inside the public bomb shelter, we scan the sky.

Israel's army sometimes intercepts drones that cross the border, but also often loses contact with the small, low-flying devices.

This time in Shomera, the attack never arrives.

But the road we're standing in is strewn with the fine silvery filaments left from previous drone strikes.

Just the day before, members of the community's security team were filmed chasing and firing at a drone flying along this street, right next to the house of Amichai Ben David, a peach and nectarine farmer with seven children.

"[The drone] came and we rushed into the house," he told me. "The soldiers outside shot at it, and managed to knock it out of the air. They saved us, thank god."

Amichai has lived here all his life. His home has a large hole in the roof where a rocket hit the family home last year. But the drones are a new and different threat, he says.

"The missiles stopped because of the ceasefire – and the drones started coming instead. They have cameras attached – if there's a soldier in uniform, or they don't like the look of someone, it simply drops and explodes."

The Alma Research Center says Israel's military assessment is that Hezbollah has dozens of trained drone operators and that it has accumulated a significant stockpile of the small, cheaply-made drones, which cost around $300-$400 each.

"They intensified the amount of attacks across the border inside Israel," said Sarit Zehavi, who heads the center. "And I think that's a direct order from Iran, against the background of what is happening with the [US] deal. Iran wants to see a situation where Israel is attacking Hezbollah, and everything explodes, and goes back to the beginning."

"[Hezbollah's] goal is to harm as many lives as possible, and when they see that Israeli soldiers are finding more ways to protect themselves physically, then they try to harm civilians in civilian communities," said Capt Adi Stoler, a spokesperson for Israel's military. "They go outside more, they live their life, take their children to school, and if [Hezbollah] can harm them while they're doing that, that's what they'll do."

Israel's military chief of staff has reportedly called for attacks on "buildings in Beirut", in response to Hezbollah's growing use of explosive drones.

"For every drone that harms one of our soldiers," the far-right Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich said, Israeli forces should "bring down 100 buildings" in Hezbollah's southern Beirut stronghold.

Earlier this week, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to deal Hezbollah "a crushing blow".

"It is true they are launching drones at us," he said. "We have a special team working on this, and we will solve this."

Israeli forces have been criticized for being slow to learn from the experience of troops in Ukraine, who have battled the threat of fibre-optic drones launched by Russia for the past two years.

Sarit Zehavi said Alma's researchers had warned in 2024 about fibre-optic drones becoming the next threat from Hezbollah.

"We knew this was coming because it was obvious Hezbollah would adopt the methods from Ukraine and that as we had success at intercepting rockets and became better in intercepting UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles], that FPVs were next."

"It's a tactical problem that Israel is dealing with, it's not something we see as an existential threat," said the IDF's Adi Stoler. "But yes, these type of drones are a challenge for us. It is something we're trying to solve as soon as possible."

An Israeli military official admitted that the primary bottleneck in combatting the threat came from "gaps in weapons development".

"The response is not hermetic, and capabilities for detection and interception must continue to be developed," the official said, adding that countering drones was now a "central mission" for the Israel Defense Forces' Northern Command, with significant resources being invested.

Learning from troops in Ukraine, Israeli forces have begun covering their positions with netting to entrap and tangle the tiny drones.

And several Israeli defence companies are working on new ways to defeat Hezbollah's drone warfare.

According to the Alma Research Center, they include an advanced interceptor drone, specialist fragmenting anti-drone ammunition, and automatic firing systems with electro-optical sensors.

In one project being developed by the Israeli company, Smart Shooter, a sensor continuously scans the environment, sending information to a computer mounted on a soldier's personal weapon, which can then analyse the threat, lock onto a target, and give the soldier a firing window.

But Israel's widely-read daily newspaper, Israel Hayom, says the defensive systems developed so far are falling short, and that Israel's preferred military option for now, the paper says, is to destroy the drones in warehouses or eliminate operators before launch.

Earlier this week, the IDF put out a video showing what it says is a strike on an operator retrieving a drone in southern Lebanon.

The race to adapt on the battlefield has been sharpened by a parallel public relations war.

Hezbollah regularly releases edited footage of what it says are drone attacks on Israeli targets, underlaid with doom-laden music.

One video released this week was apparently filmed from a Hezbollah drone as it flew towards a military vehicle full of Israeli troops in the Lebanese village of Bint Jbeil. It ends with two soldiers leaping from the truck as the drone flies straight into it.

On Wednesday, the IDF issued more evacuation notices for villages, towns and cities in southern Lebanon, culminating in a sweeping evacuation order for the whole of the country below the Zahrani river, which runs around 40km from the border.

Israel has also continued bombing targets across Lebanon, and clearing areas it says are being used by Hezbollah fighters in the south.

In Shomera, there are calls to go further, despite the political restrictions supposedly imposed by Israel's ceasefire agreement with the Lebanese government, and the constraints of current efforts of US president Donald Trump, to reach a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah's backer, Iran.

"How do we stop this? Go deeper into Lebanon, with a very strong attack," the peach farmer Amichai Ben David told me.

Sami Zanetti, the council chief, said he wanted either a "real peace" with Hezbollah or all-out war.

"I would like the country to take a brave decision, and clear out the terrorists once and for all. Finish off Hezbollah," he told me. "Today, our hands are tied by US President Trump."

Are US and Iran close to peace or sliding back to war?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cze29764067o, 10 days ago

A ceasefire "hanging by a thread". A diplomatic process "making progress". A president "not satisfied". And explosions echoing around the Gulf.

What to make of the current, confusing state of relations between the US and Iran - are we close to peace or sliding back to war?

The latest word from the White House is that negotiators from both sides have agreed a framework for a 60-day extension of the ceasefire, to allow room for further talks - but that this still needs US President Donald Trump's approval. This has not been confirmed by Iran.

It comes towards the end of a week that has tested the ceasefire, which came into effect on 8 April and has now lasted considerably longer than the active phase of fighting which preceded it.

Iran responded to the latest US strikes - which included what US Central Command (Centcom) described as a "ground control site" in the southern Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas - with a warning that "aggression will not go unanswered".

Its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) then said it had attacked an American air base. It did not say which, but Centcom later said a ballistic missile had been intercepted over Kuwait, where the US has several bases.

Echoing Tehran's language, Centcom called the attack "an egregious ceasefire violation".

It all sounds ominous, but this is still a far cry from the furious exchanges that characterised the first five-and-a-half weeks of this conflict. In that time, the US and Israel launched thousands of sorties against targets all across Iran, and Tehran responded with volleys of drones and ballistic missiles against US bases, Gulf countries and Israel.

The US said on Thursday it had shot down five Iranian drones which "posed a threat around the Strait of Hormuz", suggesting shipping - commercial or military - was once again the focus of concern.

But neither side seems to regard the sort of tit for tat exchanges we have seen this week as marking a return to all-out war.

All the while, a tortured diplomatic process, involving multiple actors, is playing out in the background.

We get glimpses of that process from time to time, but they are partial and fleeting.

On Wednesday, Iranian state media reported elements of what they described as an unofficial draft of a 14-point memorandum of understanding.

The report included everything Tehran would like to see: the lifting of Washington's naval blockade of Iranian ports, the withdrawal of US forces from the "vicinity of Iran", and the restoration of non-military traffic through the Strait of Hormuz with Iran and Oman in control of the management and routing of vessels.

Notably absent from the report was any talk of Iranian concessions, especially on the all-important nuclear issue.

The White House issued a terse statement, calling the purported draft a "complete fabrication". Later, during the latest televised cabinet meeting at the White House, Trump said he was not yet satisfied with proposals for a deal.

Trump said Iran was "starting to give us the things that they have to give us". He did not elaborate and repeated his warning that Tehran's failure to comply would trigger a return to war.

"If they won't, then the man on my left is going to finish them off," he said, turning to US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.

There were characteristic signs of impatience too. Asked about reports that Iran and Oman might seek to control the movement of ships through the strait, Trump issued a stark warning to a traditional US ally.

"Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we'll have to blow them up," he said.

Meanwhile, the US Treasury on Wednesday sanctioned Iran's newly formed "Persian Gulf Strait Authority", set up by Tehran to oversee traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) called the scheme "a new attempt by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to monetise its campaign of state-sponsored terror".

As always, Trump was doing his best to sound as if the war were going to plan, brushing aside any suggestion that he needed to strike a deal quickly to avoid further spikes in the oil market - or political blowback at November's midterm elections.

But there is no denying that he is in a bind.

A satisfactory deal remains tantalisingly out of reach, and there are some in his own party - to say nothing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - who would like him to go back to war to finish the job.

Similar pressures are at play in Tehran too, where some of the country's most hardline voices are insisting on maximalist goals, arguing that Iran has shown that it cannot be subjugated.

The diplomatic effort, spearheaded by Pakistan, is immensely complex.

The issues which divide the two sides are profound: Iran's nuclear programme, the future management of the Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of sanctions and unfreezing of assets.

The immediate objective - a memorandum which would end the war and set out a road map for the complex diplomatic negotiations that would follow - has proved elusive.

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the coming hours or days would show whether progress was possible.

For all the domestic pressures at play on both sides and the febrile atmosphere in and around the Gulf, neither Iran nor the US seems interested in a return to war.

Despite appearances, the ceasefire - now more than seven weeks old - is still holding.

'Like a prisoner being released' - Relief for Iranians as internet shutdown ends

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx21x812w1lo, 11 days ago

"After 88 days, it felt exactly like a prisoner being released after three months of imprisonment and seeing the sky for the first time."

That is how an Iranian said it felt to be reconnected to the internet, after their government ended what a monitoring group called the longest nationwide shutdown in modern history.

"You wouldn't believe it, but when I clicked on a website and watched it open, I felt as though I could fly with joy," he told the BBC's Middle East Daily programme. "And when I realised I could once again send messages through Telegram, WhatsApp, and other platforms, the feeling was indescribable.

"Even now, as I speak, I'm on the verge of tears from happiness."

He added that his first notification on his phone had told him to update a long list of apps, which left him "overwhelmed with emotion".

While there is relief at the partial restoration of connectivity in Iran, there are also concerns about increased censorship in a country where internet access was already heavily restricted and monitored.

The Iranian government cut internet access after the US and Israel launched a war against Iran on 28 February. Officials suggested the aim was to prevent surveillance, espionage and cyber-attacks.

First Vice-President Mohammad Reza Aref wrote on X on Tuesday that the government had taken a "first step" towards "free and regulated" internet access following a directive from President Masoud Pezeshkian.

He linked the reopening of the internet to restoring smart services and meeting demands of citizens who had "stood by the system and Iran", while portraying it as necessary for scientific and knowledge-based development.

Another Iranian told Middle East Daily that although some users still lacked access and some platforms were still blocked, the "mere fact that the internet is back is cause for celebration".

"The three months during which the internet was down were incredibly difficult," he said. "It was painful not being able to contact our families and friends outside Iran.

"We knew, especially during the war, how worried they were, but we couldn't even reassure them that we were safe."

For those who make their living online, reconnecting to sites and apps on which they depended before the war comes as relief.

"I'm very happy the internet is going to be restored because businesses can get back to normal," computer science student Pantea told Associated Press.

"I had an online shop for a while and sold products. Definitely it will benefit us.

"But the only problem is the censorship. If they come up a good solution and correct solution to this, many problems would be solved."

Rastin, who also studies computer science, told AP the end of the outage was "100% a positive thing".

"The online market is thirsty to go back to its previous state," he said. "But this social prosecution that keeps happening significantly harms online businesses.

"The businesses highly depend on the internet and every time, these restrictions make life more difficult for them."

This was not the first internet blackout in Iran, with access also cut off during a deadly crackdown on nationwide anti-government protests by security forces in January.

Some Iranians had sought to get around the restrictions using methods like expensive virtual private networks (VPNs) and smuggling satellite internet systems into the country.

Internet monitor Netblocks noted that, as connectivity was restored, there were signs of "more extensive filtering" than it had observed during January's crackdown.

"Service remains heavily filtered, with new restrictions on messaging and app stores compared to pre-January. Calls for a free and open internet transcend political divisions and should be heard," the group said on Wednesday.

Since connection began to be restored, Proton VPN said it had seen a 6,000% rise in sign ups.

A number of people who have contacted BBC Persian have said their home internet is connected but their SIM card internet is not working on their phone, while others have said they have no service at all and are connecting using the same methods they used before Tuesday.

One 17-year-old in Tehran wrote: "We're really tired. Of the high prices, of the sanctions, of the weak internet. Things have also gone to hell. I can't live anymore."

While the relief of reconnection will be felt greatest in Iran, it will also be welcomed by those living elsewhere, who are once again able to contact family members.

The Iranian-born British comedian and author Shaparak Khorsandi told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that it was "painful and very joyful" to hear of others speaking to their loved ones, as she had not yet been able to reach her aunt in Iran.

"It feels such a familiar thing for Iranians to just be disconnected and worried and frantic and feeling helpless. So, it's a tricky time, but we keep trying," she said.

"What it feels like when you are out of the country is... a strangely isolating experience, because your life is suspended, you can't really move forward but you get on."

She said one message from an uncle that had come out of Iran during the blackout had been him wishing himself happy birthday on her behalf.

"One of my uncles wrote to us to say, 'It's my birthday today, and I know that you can't contact me to wish me a happy birthday, so I am sending you this message to wish myself a happy birthday on your behalf,'" she said.

Khorsandi said his humour had been "so kind" because he was doing what he could to stop the family worrying.

She was emotional as she said the first thing she would like to say to her family in Iran was that "we love them and hope no amount of silence lets them stop feeling that".

Palestinian baby killed by Israeli gunfire in West Bank, health ministry says

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy828e64vp8o, yesterday

A seven-month-old baby boy has been killed by Israeli gunfire in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry has said.

The ministry identified the infant as Sam Fahd Abu Haikal, adding that his parents were also injured in the shooting in the Tel Rumeida area, south of the city of Hebron.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its troops on Friday "perceived a vehicle accelerating toward them" and one of the soldiers "responded with single shots toward the vehicle".

"As a result, three Palestinians were injured and evacuated for medical treatment," the IDF said, adding that "the incident is under review". It also expressed "deep sorrow for any harm caused to uninvolved individuals".

The baby's grandmother said the family were driving in the area and stopped their car when they saw Israeli military vehicles and soldiers in the distance, Reuters reported.

She said shots were then fired toward them, which they initially believed were warning shots.

"One bullet struck my grandson, traversed his face and crossed his head, striking his mother's cheek where it lodged," the grandmother said.

She added that the bullet had also grazed the father's finger, and that the mother was in hospital.

More than 1,000 Palestinians have been reported killed in the West Bank since the war in Gaza broke out following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

In the Hamas-led attack, about 1,200 people were killed and 251 abducted into Gaza.

More than 70,600 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Ex-wife of Dubai ruler's nephew missing, says lawyer

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c362618d9e8o, 3 days ago

A British human rights lawyer says the former wife of a nephew of the ruler of Dubai has gone missing.

Contact with Zeynab Javadli was lost on Tuesday and the BBC has been told her home in Dubai is locked and empty.

Javadli has repeatedly expressed concern for her safety. She's been embroiled for years in a bitter custody battle with her ex-husband, Sheikh Saeed bin Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

The BBC has contacted a number of officials in the UAE for comment but has received no response as of yet.

Friends of Javadli raised the alarm when their phone calls and messages received no reply on Tuesday.

The British lawyer and activist, David Haigh, said he last spoke to Javadli on Tuesday night. Since that moment, he said, she has "vanished".

Neither she nor her three young daughters have been seen or heard from since.

He told the BBC no-one in authority has given a "single answer" as to what might have happened to her.

Javadli's mother - who had just arrived in Dubai for a visit - has since gone to her house and found it empty, with the locks changed.

She is understood to have been in touch with police in Dubai and the consulate of Azerbaijan - the country Javadli is from.

For months, Javadli had barely left the house as she believed security officers were waiting to take her children from her and possibly put her under arrest.

Last year, her ex-husband lodged a complaint with the police accusing her of kidnapping their daughters, in the latest development of their bitter custody dispute.

That was after the children changed hands between their parents several times, with each accusing the other of kidnap.

Javadli - who is a former international gymnast - has also been facing potential arrest for e-crimes - online offences - in the UAE after she livestreamed one of the showdowns last year.

At the time she explained her actions in a video message to Haigh, who's been advocating for her: "I knew that it was the last chance to be with my children as they would never let me see them again. I genuinely believed that it was my last chance, so I just opened a livestream and called for help."

Lawyers acting for Javadli's former husband, Sheikh Saeed bin Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum, have claimed in court hearings in the custody case over their children that she was an unfit mother who had failed to send her daughters to school, was living in a place unsuitable for the children when she was in a hotel, and that she had put the health of the youngest girl at risk.

Javadli rejected the accusations and her Emirati legal team submitted evidence to the contrary in court.

Haigh says the current situation bears a "deeply troubling resemblance" to five years ago, when his communications were cut off with Princess Latifa, one of the daughters of the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Princess Latifa mounted a bid for freedom in 2018 from what at the time she claimed was her family's coercive control.

The boat on which she was making her escape was intercepted in the Indian Ocean and she was forcibly returned to Dubai. She then claimed she was being held captive in secret videos.

She has since re-emerged to a limited extent in public, saying she was well and living as she wished.

Haigh, who campaigned at the time for Princess Latifa, said he has issued an urgent call for the international community to demand confirmation of Javadli's whereabouts and welfare.

The deeply contentious debate around what it means to be English

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3626n0lgj3o, yesterday

A friendly dragon is waddling along the sun-drenched centre of Swindon, smiling at passers-by. It's St George's Day and the blow-up dragon is on hand, along with Swindon's town crier, to do a bit of PR on behalf of England.

Mid-morning shoppers give the dragon, who was, of course, slain in the legend by England's patron saint, sympathetic looks.

Fay Howard, the then mayor of Swindon, arranged the April parade because she felt the English could do more to celebrate their national day.

The mayor posed for pictures with shoppers in a mock picture frame decorated in the English national colours of red and white. But, ahead of the May elections, there was no sign of the Cross of St George flag.

"I've been careful about using the flag this year because it is an election time and because I represent everybody in Swindon and I want to be fair to everybody in Swindon."

There, in a nutshell, is the dilemma around English identity: a mayor seeking to bring her community together but nervous that the nation's flag could be seen as divisive.

And that sensitivity comes as the perennial debate about English identity has taken on a harder edge since February last year. Influential figures on the right have provoked a highly contentious debate by saying that English identity cannot be acquired. It is, to them, related to ancestry, potentially dating back centuries.

The striking moment last year came when the Russian-born podcaster Konstantin Kisin suggested that Rishi Sunak could be considered British but not English because he is a "brown Hindu". Kisin made his remarks after the political journalist Fraser Nelson told him on the "Triggernometry" podcast that the Southampton-born former Conservative prime minister is as English as "Tizer and Y-Fronts".

A short while after that podcast, the former Conservative home secretary, Suella Braverman, described herself as 'British Asian' but not English. Braverman, who was born in England of Indian heritage, questioned in a Daily Telegraph column how many generations it could take to become English, raising the prospect that it could be as many as five or six.

Englishness can evoke two broad emotions: a benign feeling or divisiveness.

English warmth is epitomised in the lines of its unofficial anthem of Jerusalem: "And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon England's mountains green".

Flags can appear in the spirit of those balmy emotions – cue the World Cup. But sometimes English flags are associated with different emotions. Some took exception to the Raising the Colours campaign last summer when English and Union flags appeared on motorway bridges.

But the debate has been taken to a whole new level with the controversial suggestion that to be considered truly English you need to trace your lineage back multiple generations or even centuries.

Sunder Katwala, who runs the British Future think tank, says he respects Braverman's belief that she is not English. But he takes issue with her suggestion that it could take five or six generations to acquire an English identity.

Katwala, who is of mixed Indian and Irish heritage, sets out what he sees as the flaw in her suggestion: "I think maybe the Huguenots didn't think they were English, but their grandchildren certainly did." Around 50,000 French Protestant Huguenots settled in England in the 17th century to escape persecution.

Katwala says that around 90% of people believe that if you are born in England, identify as English and are brought up in England then you are seen as English.

In the wake of the row over English identity, the group More in Common polled people in March 2025 on attitudes to this subject. The poll suggested that 74% of English people believe that someone can be English regardless of their skin colour or ethnic background.

The value of Englishness

High above the Thames Estuary in Essex, the ruins of Hadleigh Castle have a commanding view over the waterway heading to England's capital city. Work started on the castle in 1215, the same year as Magna Carta, the foundational declaration of English liberty, was signed.

Hadleigh Castle now lies in the Castle Point area of Essex, which recorded the highest number of people within England citing English as their national identity in the last census.

A short walk up from the castle lies the quintessentially English town of Hadleigh. Harriet, who was having a coffee with her daughter Hermione, is clear about two things: she is English and she doesn't like to be made to feel guilty about that. "I am English. Always put it down, even on a job application form, even though you shouldn't, but I do. That's why I probably don't get a job. Because it's not ethically correct, is it? I'm British, but no I'm not, I'm actually English.

"Everyone nowadays gets offended by everything, don't they? And so you want to hold onto something that you're entitled to hold on to despite offending everyone."

England is - of course - the largest nation in what Boris Johnson described as the "awesome foursome" of the UK. And in Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) there is a curiosity. In England there is a perennial debate around English identity but a consensus around the constitutional membership of the UK. In Wales and Scotland it is the other way round — consensus around national identity but divisions around the constitutional question.

The feeling that Englishness is not valued is echoed by Matt Goodwin, the author and GB News presenter who came second for Reform UK in the Gorton and Denton by-election in February.

Goodwin cites the Raising the Colours flag campaign last summer when flags flew from motorway bridges. "Many people in England who put the St George's flag up felt that the establishment were now saying they no longer exist."

Goodwin agrees with Konstantin Kisin that Englishness is related to ancestry. "I think of Englishness as being mainly an ethnicity…with a sort of defined ethnic group and ancestry that is quite different from Britishness which of course can encompass different parts of the island. So Englishness…has always been a much more specific, distinctive identity that actually cannot just be transferred from one group to another.

"You cannot just simply walk into England and say I'm English in the same way that I couldn't walk into Japan and say I'm Japanese because the Japanese would say, well, clearly that's not the case. So I view Britishness as a nationality and Englishness as an ethnicity."

Goodwin suggested that being white can be considered an important part of the overall British national identity. "In Britain one of the symbols of who we are is the white British people. Part of the makeup, it's part of our composition as a nation. There's nothing inherently bad about saying that, it's simply the reality of who we are."

Although Goodwin also said earlier in the interview: "Yes, it is possible to be black and be English. It is not as likely as it is to be white British and English, but it's possible."

The Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, takes a different view to Goodwin. He says he does not want to draw 'ethnic lines' on what being English is.

But Joe Mulhall, the research director of Hope not Hate, a campaign group focused on combating extremism on what they describe as the far right, has stronger words. "I think the moment we inject any form of ethnic segregation into identity, it becomes a problem.

"Is it about colour? How white do you have to be? How British do you have to be? How many grandparents and all of a sudden you end up in some pretty nasty and pretty dangerous sorts of graphs of histories and bloodlines and all these sorts of things that we thought we had confined to history."

Ancestral importance

The leader of His Majesty's Opposition is in an apologetic mood. Kemi Badenoch is running late for her interview with Radio 4 because she wanted to prepare carefully for an area close to her heart: national identity. The interview took place on 20 May, before political debate erupted over policing, following the release of bodycam footage showing the handcuffing of murdered teenager Henry Nowak as he lay dying.

Badenoch took issue with Matt Goodwin's stress on ethnicity as the key factor in defining Englishness. The Conservative leader, who was born in England to Nigerian parents, said: "How we define Englishness, in my view, is very complicated. There are two sides to it. There is a side that is down to ancestry, ethnicity, your parents being from here perhaps for hundreds, if not thousands of years. And there's another side of it, which is civic, which is about the culture, which is about the values, the behaviours, the norms, the commitments to place. And I think those two things go side by side."

A leader with a reputation for speaking her mind in plain terms, Badenoch questioned the way some podcasters have, as she put it, taken to policing identity. "I think that we need to be worried," she told me.

But elements of the left do not escape censure. She describes ethno-nationalism – the belief that national identity is linked to ancestry – as a backlash against those who attack English identity by using phrases like "white privilege".

Badenoch raises concerns about political parties using what she calls a political conflict to target voters from one community. No party was mentioned in her Radio 4 interview. But in the wake of the Gorton and Denton by-election in February she said it was "appalling that separatist campaigning was carried out in Urdu by the Green Party".

The Conservative leader then issues a stark warning: "Parties which do that, politicians who do that, they may get to benefit in the short term, but in the long term, that's how you end up with civil war."

The Green Party were approached for comment.

Across the political spectrum and another politician unafraid to take aim at the left and the right is adjusting her Zoom link to speak to me on Radio 4. Lisa Nandy, the Labour culture secretary, is speaking from her Wigan constituency which was proudly festooned with bunting during the late Queen's Platinum Jubilee in 2022.

Nandy was dismayed by some Labour colleagues in Westminster who raised eyebrows at the celebrations. "I can't understand it really because this is about celebrating, being proud of who you are, where you're from, coming together and being, making common cause with people. I'm just not sure what could be more left-wing than that really."

The culture secretary, who is of mixed Indian and British heritage, has no truck with the idea that nationality has to be related to ancestry. "I do think it is a bit offensive to be honest. But I also think if it's designed to sort of appeal to working class communities like mine in Wigan, I don't think it has that effect at all. I think people just think it's weird."

Back at the St George's Day celebrations in Swindon, opinions are divided. Jo is thinking warm, bucolic thoughts as she observes the ragtag procession. "Leather on willow, country pubs and just the loveliness of England," she muses wistfully.

But across the street Ethan was not impressed although his two-year-old did enjoy the free chocolate. "It could be a bit more extravagant," he said of the parade. "Everything else can be celebrated but us.

Swindon, for so long a political bellwether, is perhaps providing a parable of Englishness. The town's civic leaders have been working hard to encourage a benign identity. But England is a nation divided over its identity and even over how to celebrate its patron saint.

England's Identity Crisis, 1.30pm on Sunday 7 June on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds

Lead image: Getty

What a hair loss breakthrough could mean for women like me

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg7p8n9g2klo, 3 days ago

Listen to Victoria read this article

I vividly remember the moment my hair began to fall out.

I was kneeling over a bath, washing it in a hotel room one Saturday evening, getting ready for my friend's 40th birthday celebration. Seventeen days earlier, I'd had the first of six chemotherapy sessions to treat my breast cancer, but days had gone by with no hair loss.

I'd convinced myself I might be one of the lucky ones.

But as I held the shower over my head, suddenly the stream of water turned dark, as long strands of brown hair began coalescing around the plug hole in front of my eyes. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.

"Oh wow," I said to myself, because I honestly hadn't expected it.

During chemotherapy, I had been wearing a cold cap – the freezing helmet designed to help preserve hair during treatment. I was told it didn't work for everyone.

It may sound dramatic, but for me, losing my hair was worse even than losing a breast through a mastectomy. Why? Because without my hair, I wasn't me. I had no idea until I started losing it that my hair was part of my identity.

Now, scientists in Japan believe they may be a step closer to changing the reality of hair loss for millions of people.

In what researchers are calling a "major breakthrough", a team, led by Prof Takashi Tsuji, say they have managed to recreate the full cycle of hair growth in mice - meaning hair could grow, fall out and grow back again naturally. While transplanted hair can already grow, recreating follicles that can behave like the natural hair inside the body - repeatedly growing, shedding and regrowing over time - has proved far more difficult.

For women living with hair loss - whether through cancer treatment, alopecia or ageing - breakthroughs like this hint at something once thought impossible: that hair loss can be reversed.

It affects millions of people worldwide, with studies suggesting around one-third of women will experience hair loss at some point in their life. So why is the emotional impact of hair loss still often underestimated and what does our reaction to losing it reveal about our identity, sense of control, and the way we see ourselves?

Hair across history

Across history, hair has rarely just been hair.

In Ancient Egypt, pharaohs and noblewomen wore embellished braided wigs to show power, and in the Middle Ages, women's long hair became associated with femininity and virtue. Men in the 17th century wore the "periwig" - long, voluminous artificial curls - to denote wealth and high social status. And by the 1920s, women with bobbed hair came to represent female independence and rebellion.

"Hair shapes our identity," says psychiatrist Sylvia Karasu. "It is a biological, physiological and social marker of stages of our life."

And of course it can be the first thing we notice about other people. "It's a way you can often tell gender, race and religion. It's so much tied with identity that it ends up being quite significant in terms of how we categorise people," she says.

Hair is also linked to our dignity. The forcible removal of hair has often been used to strip away identity and humanity. In German concentration camps, Jewish people had their heads shaved and their clothes replaced with prison uniforms. After France's liberation in 1944, thousands of women accused of collaborating with German occupiers had their heads shaved publicly as a form of punishment and humiliation. One of the most famous images, Robert Capa's The Shaved Woman of Chartres, shows a young mother walking through a jeering crowd with a swastika painted on her forehead.

If hair can hold so much social and emotional meaning, it seems no surprise scientists have spent years trying to understand why losing it can feel so devastating, and whether it may one day become reversible.

'It's not a vanity thing'

I've interviewed women about their relationship with their hair for my podcast with the Future Dreams charity, And Then Came Breast Cancer. Again and again, women told me the same thing: it was nothing to do with being vain.

Nicky Elkington, a hairdresser, told me she was determined not to lose her hair when going through chemotherapy. "It's not a vanity thing… and I think people think that, but it's your identity and I didn't want to look like I had cancer," she says.

For her, the worst thing anyone could say to her was, "It's only hair, don't worry about it".

School nurse and mother of two, Natasha Anderson, said she loved messing about with her hair while growing up - "one week having a big afro, then having hair extensions," she remembers.

"It wasn't just hair, it was my culture."

Faced with the prospect of losing it through chemotherapy, she asked her brother to shave it off for her.

"I felt liberated when it was being shaved," she says. "I had taken control of the situation… it was more painful and upsetting seeing it just falling out."

One of the hardest parts of cancer is how little control you have over any of it - the diagnosis, treatment, or the side effects. For some women, choosing to shave their hair before it falls out becomes a way of taking back a semblance of control in their life.

What surprised me during my treatment was how often concern about hair loss was dismissed as superficial.

"Why are you worried about your hair? You're alive." It's a legitimate question. And yes, I was lucky to survive. But surviving illness and grieving the loss of part of your identity are not mutually exclusive things.

As Sylvia Karasu told me, losing your hair for a lot of us is a "marker of being a sick person".

The wig

Between 50% to 75% of my hair fell out during chemotherapy.

It was unbelievably dispiriting. I remember sitting in a wig salon in Richmond as the owner, Amy Holt, gently brushed though my tangled hair as it was falling out in large lumps. I just cried.

According to Diane Trusson, a medical researcher at the University of Nottingham, hair loss on top of a diagnosis is "a double whammy".

"You've been told you've got cancer and then you start the treatment and then you've got this brutal thing to happen and it changes the way people see you. It's just that extra thing to deal with on top of having surgery and quite horrible treatments."

For me, getting a wig was important. I could carry on presenting a daily TV news programme. I didn't want viewers to be distracted from the stories we were covering by me either having a bald head, or wearing a scarf. A wig was the best option.

Amy made one for me with real hair sourced from women who donated or sold it. Seeing the wig for the first time felt surreal.

It looked so much like my own hair: the colour, cut, length. In my head there was disbelief, and my emotions were volatile – one moment in tears, the next elated because it was going to allow me to go about my daily routine.

Why science still struggles

Yet still, scientists don't fully understand the biology of hair loss.

According to Claire Higgins, a professor of tissue engineering at Imperial College London, studies into hair loss have struggled for many years to get funding and attention, particularly when it comes to women.

"The women side is definitely under researched", she says.

She says much of the work has focused on male hair loss, partly because men are more likely to get hair transplant surgery, which has made scalp samples easier to access for scientists.

"Men and women are often tackled the same because people assume it is the same, but I don't think it should be," she says.

She points to large genetic studies into male pattern hair loss - typically characterised by a receding hairline and thinning at the crown - known as genome-wide association studies, which identified several genes linked to the condition. But all were done on men.

More recently, researchers in Germany have investigated the genetics of female pattern hair loss, which typically involves hair loss at the top of the head. Scientists expected to find at least some overlap in the genes involved.

"But there wasn't," Higgins says. The findings showed that male and female hair loss may be caused by different things (though scientists still aren't totally sure what those causes are).

"We know cells are lost in the follicles but we don't know if they die or just migrate away. We know very little about the mechanism of why [hair loss] occurs."

A new hope for hair loss

That's why the work of Prof Tsuji in Japan is important. He and his team think they have found a missing piece of the puzzle.

For a long time, scientists believed there were two key types of cells responsible for growing hair: epithelial stem cells, which create the hair follicle in the first place, and dermal papilla cells, which tell the hair when to grow.

Those cells cannot grow hair in a lab, only when they are transplanted into skin and connected with underlying tissue.

But Tsuji says his study identified a "novel third cell type", called a hair follicle regenerative-supporting cell.

And crucially, the new cell could bring scientists a step closer to the possibility of growing hair in a lab.

"In simple terms," Tsuji says, "our study identified a [cell] which supports the development, growth and regeneration of hair follicles."

Tsuji says the findings are "a major breakthrough", a potential game-changer in treating alopecia.

Claire Higgins, who was not involved with the study, agrees it is significant. She says previous research has only managed to create partial hair follicles in the lab.

"No-one had managed to get fully cycling hair follicles like this before," she says. "That's a really big step." In other words, the follicles were able to repeatedly grow, shed and regrow hair in the way natural hair does.

The study was only carried out on mice, mostly via cells taken from their whiskers. Translating the findings so they can be used on people remains difficult because human hair growth is far more complex.

Still, Tsuji is hopeful. "We believe we are now much closer than before."

Last year, I saw a post from someone on social media which featured a close-up photo of Catherine, Princess of Wales at an event. The words simply read, "that's a bad wig". I found it particularly cruel and upsetting.

None of us knows what cancer treatment she underwent, whether she lost her hair, or whether she wore a wig at all. If someone had said that about me during chemotherapy, I would probably have wanted to hide indoors.

Indeed, hair loss through illness is not something anyone would choose. It's imposed upon us and that's why it was so hard, for me at least, to come to terms with.

And that matters, because hair is never really just hair.

For many of us, it is our identity, our privacy, our way of feeling in control and feeling confident. So forgive me when I say that's why hair matters so much.

Top image credit: Getty Images

Additional reporting: Florence Freeman

How Saudi Arabia's spending spree reached the end of the line

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx21g0828reo, 13 days ago

Autocratic monarchs once left an echo of their glory in the ruins of the megaprojects they commanded at the peak of their unchallenged power. Those monumental physical traces are to be found in the fertile plains, mountainsides and deserts of the Middle East. But one of their most prominent modern counterparts may only have a digital footprint to leave behind for some of his most ambitious concepts.

A decade ago, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman – or MBS as he is widely known – decreed a revisioning of his country that leapt from the realm of science fiction. It was called Vision 2030. Extraordinary monolithic structures were to help bring forth new technological marvels not just for the Kingdom but for the world.

Those ideas were made manifest in lavish PR material conjuring up fantastical landscapes that attracted reams of coverage that mingled awe and derision. It was made possible by the near $1trn (£744bn) sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF) whose riches, so dependent on oil, were to be used to create the foundation for a future without oil.

Four years from 2030, there has now been, perhaps predictably, a retrenchment. Part of that is down to financial imperatives, as a big fall in oil prices before the current war in the Middle East meant that even Saudi Arabia's extraordinary wealth took a hit.

Even though those prices have now shot up because of the war, the uncertainty created by the conflict will continue to put constraints on Saudi revenue and spending. And the influx of foreign investment in these hyper-expensive visionary projects has never materialised to the degree on which the Saudis had been banking.

But is it a recalibration or a retreat?

From fantasy to realism

Some of the most striking projects are now being watered down, put on hold or even abandoned. Several come under the once all-embracing umbrella of the $500bn Neom mega-project.

It looks like The Line, which was meant to redefine the concept of a city as it stretched ramrod straight across more than 100 miles (161km) of untapped land in the north west of Saudi Arabia, looming taller than The Shard, is being turned into something considerably more prosaic.

The winter resort of Trojena in the mountains of the north west has also been reined in. There is snow up there, belying the image of Saudi Arabia as an unyielding desert, but it doesn't last very long. The concept of a year-round mountain resort took the area into a realm of artificiality that is no longer seen as viable. There were to have been miles of ski slopes and a full-on ski village with a man-made lake and luxury hotels and shops – a mini St Moritz in the mountains of Arabia. It was meant to have been ready in time to host the Asian Winter Games in 2029, but that has now been cancelled, with the Games to be held in Kazakhstan instead.

The Cube – a massive structure of flats and offices that could have contained the Empire State Building 20 times over – has been jettisoned entirely. It was set to cost an estimated $50bn.

Most recently, one of the apparent crown jewels of the Kingdom's vaulting ambition to become a world powerhouse of sport from a standing start, the LIV Golf tour, has been reassessed as a hugely expensive dud that's cost some $5bn to date and brought neither a financial nor a reputational return.

Some longtime observers of Saudi Arabia, such as Ellen R Wald, the author of Saudi, Inc., feel like they've seen it all before.

"This is the same playbook, the same thing again with The Line. You know, 'We're going to build this huge thing. Oh wait, well now we're going to significantly downscale it.' And it's the same thing over and over again, and it's been that way even since before Mohammed bin Salman. They make these big announcements, they're very splashy, and then it either doesn't get built or it gets built in a significantly scaled down or [in a] 'not what it was' way."

Wald recalls the new cities that were to be built in the 2000s under a previous monarch, King Abdullah.

The "Economic Cities" programme was also aimed at diversifying the Saudi economy away from oil, which has been a perennial imperative in the Kingdom for decades. Relying almost entirely on one natural resource that will not last for ever has long been seen as an obstacle to the development of a much more well-rounded and resilient economy.

The results were largely underwhelming even as billions of dollars were expended. Several of the proposed cities never got off the ground, others were recast as more modest enterprises. The biggest, the $100bn King Abdullah Economic City on the Red Sea coast north of Jeddah, did come to fruition, but the goal of it becoming a business and tourism hub hasn't materialised.

The hope had been to bring in major new foreign investment and create jobs – real ones, away from the calcified state sector – for Saudi Arabia's large and ever-growing young population. But by 2016, the rate of unemployment still stood at around 12%.

Wald thinks there is a fundamental failure to take a realistic view of the potential of such projects by the officials behind them. "Where did they think the market was? Who told them that this was a possibility? There's a big 'yes man' mentality. You get people telling the king what he wants to hear. And that goes for consultants too, because they want the big contracts. So, they'll say what they think their Saudi clients want to hear – and then these things fall short."

That pattern goes back decades, with foreign companies often not wishing to risk the highly lucrative contracts they've secured by asking questions.

Sweeping change

Some believe that when MBS became de facto ruler of the Kingdom in 2017, he inherited a system that badly needed overhauling.

Ghanem Nuseibeh, an economic analyst who's followed the shifts in Saudi Arabia for years, says MBS inherited "a social economic system that was very much out of touch with the modern world" that was "heading towards total stagnation."

Vision 2030 was designed to change Saudi Arabia in three ways: economically, politically, but also socially. "The very, very tricky thing for them was that they needed to implement those in concert."

The social control exerted by the powerful and very conservative Islamic leadership of the country was seen by MBS and his advisors as a major obstacle in the ability of Saudi Arabia to achieve its full economic potential. Political change under MBS was presented as the handing over for the first time of the reins of power to a more dynamic, younger generation. But this did not mean that any new space for political discourse was allowed.

Indeed – as Nuseibeh acknowledges – MBS himself was responsible for some of the issues that have impeded the scope and rate of change - as well as casting a long shadow over his rule.

Just as he became de facto ruler in 2017, he ordered the mass detention of Saudi Arabia's elite officials and businessmen in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh, which the Saudi government portrayed as a crackdown on corruption, but others saw as a shakedown. And the savage killing of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the country's consulate in Istanbul in 2018 left a stain on the Crown Prince's reputation, which may have faded but remains indelible.

One Saudi who has direct experience of how the authorities there deal with dissent is Abdullah al-Ouda, an academic and human rights activist based in the US. His father, Salman al-Ouda, a prominent Saudi Islamic scholar, has been detained in prison since 2017 on charges including "stirring up unrest".

Abdullah believes that episodes like the Ritz-Carlton purge have been counterproductive to the aim of funding Vision 2030, even if those held in that gilded cage did cough up an estimated $100bn.

"Long term, it's actually scared away investors, he said. "And all the oppression also affected how investors see Saudi Arabia as a government, as a country, that lacks what investors want, which is predictability. When you have no predictability, you can simply be an investor one day and the next an arbitrary detainee - and nobody wants that."

Vision 2030 helped shift the conversation, as did the parade of major sports and entertainment events that started coming to Saudi Arabia from 2016, hugely transforming both its internal reality and its outside image. It wasn't all surface; headline-grabbing moves such as finally giving women the right to drive did shift Saudi Arabian society. To such an extent that a prominent US-based Saudi fashion influencer told me that her Saudi friends teased her for being behind the times in her attitude each time she visited.

But human rights issues still overshadowed these changes. As MBS and the Saudi sovereign fund moved into one new sphere after another, accusations of sportswashing, artwashing, greenwashing and so on have multiplied. Many prominent figures from the world of sport and entertainment have been happy to appear in Saudi Arabia, but others have refused, citing its human rights record. Thousands of fans have flocked to Riyadh for events such as motor racing and boxing, but other potential tourists have been put off by negative views of the Kingdom.

That doesn't, however, negate the fact that for many young Saudis, the ambitions of MBS have been inspiring and popular.

Saving Vision 2030

The big cutback in spending on some of the flashiest projects – which looks to the outside world like at least a partial admission of failure – is being cast in as positive a light as the Saudi authorities can manage.

"The thinking now is to basically get small wins, small successes here and there, instead of these mega projects," says Abdullah. "Like, for example, the Red Sea island resort of Sindalah could be one small win that they can promote, which is basically a very traditional style of resort, which can still be presented as part of the vision, instead of the likes of The Line and The Cube. And so they can say, 'these represent the basis of Neom, and we didn't have to have the whole thing'."

This tracks with what the authorities have started saying. The governor of the PIF, Yasir al-Rumayyan, has recently said that under a new five-year plan, the fund would "focus, through its strategy, on improving the efficiency of its spending and disbursements, along with a sustainable evaluation of the performance of its businesses, to achieve a balance and ensure the sustainability of its financial resources".

For some analysts, this re-focusing is essentially the best option for the Saudi authorities and a way for them to save Vision 2030 itself.

Thamer Shaker, a prominent Saudi businessman and management consultant, frames it differently: "What we are seeing is the natural evolution from an ambition-led phase into an execution-led phase. Every major national transformation reaches a point where prioritisation, sequencing, and resource allocation become more important than the scale of announcements themselves."

Some of the headline projects – which are less sci-fi in concept – will continue to be developed. That includes the remodelling and revival of the old capital, Diriyah, in Riyadh and the massive state-of-the-art theme park Six Flags Qiddiya City, also near the Saudi capital. The successful development of the ancient site of AlUla in the north, famed for Nabataean monuments that rival Petra, is a template for how such projects can be accomplished.

The project to transform a once-forgotten corner of the Kingdom into the flagship project of Saudi Arabia's revamped national and cultural identity has cost several billion dollars already, with billons more earmarked to try to further develop it into a global tourism hub. A more achievable objective than, for example, The Line.

And of course in sport, the Saudis managed to secure one of the biggest of all prizes, the football World Cup in 2034. There's no doubt that MBS will try to ensure that there will be a visionary element to the designs, although some of the more ambitious concepts appear to have been reined in to try to keep the cost under some measure of control.

Saudi officials are clearly trying to portray the relative openness about changing course over Vision 2030 as a break with the past of concealment and obfuscation. The sense given is that they have owned up to mistakes and corrected their course.

A specialist in the political and economic dynamics of the Gulf, Mate Szalai, says this is helpful up to a point for foreign politicians and diplomats.

"For them, the fact that the Saudis at least partly admit their mistakes and talk about them, that's definitely a positive sign. But I don't think that this goes as far as most investors and most stakeholders want it to."

The Saudi businessman Thamer Shaker is more sanguine: "In many cases, disciplined prioritisation can actually increase investor confidence… The conversation internationally is increasingly shifting from 'how big are the announcements?' to 'how credible is the execution model?'"

Turning off the tap

The reassessment of Vision 2030 was already under way before the war between the US, Israel and Iran. The conflict has sent a shockwave through the status quo across the Gulf region and raised doubts about the strategy the UAE spearheaded of becoming a commercial and tourist hub for the world, which Saudi Arabia had clearly wanted not just to emulate but to outdo.

Szalai says just months into its recalibration, the war has caused further confusion over the future direction of Vision 2030.

"Before the war, the key areas where the Saudis wanted to have more investment were AI and various other, substantive projects – tourism, manufacturing and mining, and some local industries. But all of these have been severely affected by the war, except for mining.

"Before the war, the main message was that now Neom is going to be redefined as a hub for industries focusing on AI. Which makes sense in the context of the war, of course, but it shows that the main message is changing on a monthly basis. And that indicates some strategic confusion. But it's also a positive sign in the sense that Saudi officials know that they have to come up with a new plan."

Vision 2030 has helped the emergence of a different Saudi Arabia, to the celebration of some and condemnation of others.

But if there were three pillars to the transformation, there is still a long way to go.

Politically, dissent has been punished as severely as ever.

Socially, there have been big changes so that the very feel of living in a city like Riyadh has been transformed. That's increased the amount of money that Saudis themselves spend inside the country on a huge range of entertainment that simply didn't exist 20 years ago.

Economically, the mega projects of Vision 2030 were intended to drive the country forward finally into a future in which private and foreign investment became a match for the immense oil wealth of the state. That has only partly materialised.

For the Saudi leadership, it has of course been presented as a success story, even if not on the scale once envisaged. However much of a visionary MBS would like to be seen as, it seems clear that he and those around him also want to be seem as practical and pragmatic when necessary.

They are not answerable to the Saudi people for the many billions of dollars that have been spent on projects that may now only ever exist on the internet. As far as can be gauged, the Crown Prince's popularity remains high among young Saudis. That makes it possible to throw mega-projects like The Cube away into the bin as if they were waste paper – which in the case of The Cube may not be far from the truth.

Big players in the worlds of sport, entertainment, art and beyond that have grown to depend on Saudi cash now face a new reality in which the tap is only dripping or has been turned off.

Some of those projects like the LIV Golf Tour never seemed to add up in the first place, according to Ellen R Wald. "The question is what was their strategy originally?… I mean presumably they didn't spend all that huge amount of money, just for PR. That would be crazy."

Top image credit: AFP/Getty

How pupils with special educational needs are more likely to see their schools close

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0q25zzdwdpo, 5 days ago

Nine-year-old Blake is trying to climb over the locked gates of his former primary school, St Dominic's in Hackney, when we meet him. It closed last year due to falling pupil numbers. The playground is overgrown, and the modular buildings stand quiet and empty.

When the school closed, Blake found the loss of his community particularly difficult. He is autistic and has ADHD. This means he can find a change in routine and managing his emotions more challenging.

His mum Christina says he's still struggling with the closure.

"When he started his new school he started getting up four to seven times a night because of the anxiety of being in a new school with new people he doesn't know," she says. "He was just like a little nervous wreck."

Now, she says his emotions are "playing up more", and he sees his new school as "not my school". Though he has made some new friends, "he's scared to open up again in case that friend gets taken away".

More than 100 state-funded schools in England have closed over the past five years, which many analysts suggest is largely driven by declining birth rates.

A recent National Audit Office (NAO) report says pupil numbers have fallen by 3% since 2018-19, and are projected to fall a further 7% in the next five years. It's a similar picture in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where education is devolved.

Analysis by the BBC's data journalism team suggests pupils requiring special educational needs (SEN) provision - the official term in school census reporting - have been disproportionately affected by these school closures.

In the schools that closed between 2020 and 2025, nearly 30% of children had special educational needs, compared with a rate of approximately 20% in the wider school population.

Even excluding special schools, pupil referral units, alternative provisions and studio schools (small vocational schools), there is still a higher rate of SEN pupils at the closed schools.

We raised these figures with the Department for Education (DfE). In response, the DfE says it is helping schools across England to repurpose space for school-based nurseries and children with SEND - a broader definition covering all special educational needs and disabilities. It will introduce new guidelines for local leaders to respond to the changing demand in the autumn.

The government set out major reforms to the SEND system in England in February, including plans for better inclusion in mainstream schools, earlier support, and taking away the fight for support many families go through.

But many parents are anxious about what these reforms will mean. Though everyone involved agrees the system isn't working, parents worry about the consequences of changing it.

So, why might there be higher proportions of children with SEN in the schools that are closing? And what will that mean for SEND provision going forward?

What the fall in pupil numbers means

A rapid drop in pupil numbers is having a direct impact on the financial sustainability of schools, according to Luke Sibieta of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank.

The number of primary pupils in England has fallen by 150,000 since 2019, a decline soon expected to be seen in secondary schools too. Sibieta says this has been driven by fewer children being born. In total the DfE projects there will be 400,000 fewer pupils by 2030.

"That has led to fewer pupils in primary schools, and that's making it harder for primary schools to fill the quota of the number of pupils they need to be financially sustainable," Sibieta explains.

Nationally, unfilled school places rose from 10% to 14% in the last five years, according to the NAO.

Sibieta notes that school funding is mainly per-pupil, meaning when there are fewer pupils, a school gets less money. This means that if a school's roll drops low enough, it will no longer be financially sustainable.

And when schools close, the data suggests children with SEN are disproportionately affected.

Our analysis of DfE data suggests that around 120 state-funded primary and secondary schools in England permanently closed their doors between 2020 and 2025. About 29% of those attending the schools had an education health and care plan or other SEN support, compared with the current national average of 20%.

In total, across the period between 2020 and 2025, we found more than 2,000 children with special educational needs were in schools that went on to close.

Our data doesn't show why schools with more pupils with SEND are closing. But Jon Andrews, head of analysis at the Education Policy Institute think tank, says that the most popular schools are usually the ones with the best exam and Ofsted results.

Andrews thinks it's "reasonable to assume" that schools facing closure will have high numbers of SEND pupils and those from disadvantaged backgrounds - as these pupils typically perform less well on attainment measures, the most popular schools tend to have fewer of them.

So, Andrews thinks it is plausible that when the birth rate falls, it is likely to be the less popular schools with higher SEND and disadvantaged pupil numbers who will find it hardest to fill their places, and end up closing.

The National Foundation For Educational Research (NFER) charity suggests that parents of children with SEND are often attracted to schools with strong reputations for inclusion.

A survey by the Sutton Trust published in March found 41% of primary and secondary school leaders believe some schools actively discourage applications from pupils with SEND.

Andrews has a further concern. With pupil numbers declining and budgets tightening, schools may be forced to cut staff. That may first include teaching assistants and other support staff - the kind of staff that are disproportionately helping SEND pupils.

"So the school may still be there, but they won't necessarily get the support that they once had."

This is something former headteacher Jo Riley had to deal with, before her school Randal Cremer Primary School in Hackney closed. Falling pupil numbers meant that "when people left - we didn't replace them".

The drop in funding at a school with falling pupil numbers makes it "more difficult to put the intervention and support in place that you would like to" for SEND pupils, she says.

Sibieta says falling overall pupil numbers could mean less pressure on the national education budget if there are fewer pupils to pay for, and this may open an opportunity to spend more on SEND.

"But, at an individual school level, it might work a bit differently," he says. "If schools are losing money from falling pupil numbers, they might have less money to spend on other services they provide, such as teaching assistants that can help children with special educational needs."

The impact

When another school in Hackney, Baden Powell school, closed, the pupils moved to Nightingale school around the corner.

Headteacher Abigail Hopper prides herself on Nightingale's inclusion, but providing for lots of SEND children - 42% of her pupils - means it can be "really hard" to also balance attainment performance pressures, she says, when the school's overall results take a hit.

Some may argue that transitioning to a new school could give children better opportunities.

When the children moved from Baden Powell to Nightingale, they joined their new classmates in their very modern primary school building, which has a climbing wall, cookery and art rooms, and a rooftop sensory garden.

Hopper says her team, and the Baden Powell staff worked hard to ensure the children's transition to Nightingale school was smooth.

Welcoming them meant inviting them to the summer fayre before they joined, lots of discussions, a special scrapbook - and "one of the biggest things that they were excited about was our school guinea pigs. So we got a couple of extra guinea pigs and said, well, these are your ones."

But NFER research suggests that increasing proportions of pupils with SEND are becoming concentrated in a small number of mainstream schools in England, which it says places growing pressure on those schools and raises questions about fairness.

Despite taking in the pupils of Baden Powell, Nightingale school is still just over 80% full. Per-pupil funding makes this a challenge, Hopper argues.

She says this is particularly the case when it comes to children with SEND and those who receive the Pupil Premium grant, which provides funding to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils.

"I was talking to another head just this morning about her budgets and falling roll, and she was saying that the kind of things that have to go are residentials, trips, additional supporting adults, music lessons, which are the kind of things that disadvantaged kids won't get elsewhere."

As we were shown around an empty Baden Powell school, Jason Marantz, director of education and inclusion at Hackney Council, described feeling a "mixture of emotions" about closing schools.

The empty school is currently being renovated to become a second site for oversubscribed Ickburgh, a council-maintained specialist school in Hackney.

Looking at goodbye messages from the children on the wall is "really sad to see", he says.

But, he feels comforted knowing that the building will be used to cater for children with some of the most complex needs in the borough.

Headteacher Joe Sieber says he's currently turning two to three families away due to being oversubscribed, so these additional 50 places will make a difference.

Fighting for support

Overall SEND numbers in England have risen from around 1.2 million a decade ago to 1.7 million today.

Across the SEND system, families often say they have to fight for support.

Data from the Local Government Ombudsman seen exclusively by BBC News shows large rises in both the number of complaints about SEN provision and in the number of them they upheld. More than 1,000 complaints in England were upheld in 2024-25, up from about 50 in 2014-15.

A recent analysis of these complaints by academics at Manchester University found common themes - families navigating delays, uncertainty, and gaps in support. But it also found hard-pressed councils trying to do the right thing in difficult circumstances - often as a result of issues such as budget cuts and specialist skill shortages.

It's in this climate, that Monkseaton Middle School near Whitley Bay, North Tyneside, was earmarked for closure. The council proposed shutting the school late last year - a mainstream setting for nine-to-13‑year‑olds where nearly half of pupils have SEND.

Parents, governors and staff campaigned to keep the school open and came up with a fully costed plan to extend the age range from a middle school (finishing in Year 8) until the end of Year 11.

But while individual schools like Monkseaton have managed to resist closure, the broader challenge persists. So, what changes are needed across the system to ensure that children with SEND aren't the ones who bear the brunt, and could shrinking rolls also present an opportunity?

Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), argues that falling pupil numbers are an opportunity for the government.

"We have a unique opportunity now to bring our class sizes down," he says. At the moment, he adds, these are some of the highest of the member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

"If we brought those class sizes down to a European average, class sizes of around 20, you could cater for more children with additional needs in a mainstream setting."

He wants education spending to return to at least 5% of GDP. It is currently 4.1%.

So looking ahead, this could leave the government with a potential choice, Luke Sibieta of the IFS says.

"Do you want to make savings from falling pupil numbers, or do you want to maintain spending the way it is, and have lower class sizes?"

For Iain Mansfield, at Policy Exchange think tank, there's also a third option.

He does not agree that smaller class sizes is a good response to falling pupil numbers - arguing that research suggests this only has an impact if numbers drop below 20 per class.

Instead, he thinks more money should be invested in early years and further education - to reduce the nearly a million young people not in education, employment or training.

On the falling roll, Mansfield says the DfE should be doing "more thinking", though you "can't hold back the tide" when a school's numbers have reduced too dramatically to keep it open.

"But given that kids with SEND are typically more vulnerable and find adjustment less easy than other children, they are particularly at risk from the challenges this poses."

In the meantime, many parents worry about the government's SEND reforms and the implications of fewer pupils qualifying for EHCPs - the route to legally enforceable help.

The DfE says it is proud of its "once-in-a-generation SEND reforms backed by £4bn", which it says will raise the number of specialists on the ground and roll out training for all teachers so that every child gets the right support, in their local school. It also says parents will never be left without a route to challenging decisions about their child's legal support.

For Blake and his mum, the closure of St Dominic's still hurts.

Blake says he misses his best friend and the teachers, and how the staff would let him draw when he needed to calm down.

Most of all, he misses his happy place, and how well everyone there understood him.

Additional reporting by Nicola Dowling

Top picture credit: Getty Images

How Putin became master of the image

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cddpl33v247o, 7 days ago

Throughout his time as Russian President, Vladimir Putin has been alert to the power of visual imagery.

The first time I interviewed him in 2001, an aide swooped in just before the cameras went live and snatched away the small water glasses on the table in front of us.

"Why did you do that?" I asked.

"We wouldn't want anyone to think they were for vodka," came the reply. "And anyway, we can't risk a glass spilling live on TV. Television is a nuclear bomb when it comes to publicity."

"Everybody in Russia, but especially Putin, realised that TV was the key to the consolidation of power," says the author and political analyst Peter Pomerantsev.

Over the years, Putin has transformed Russia from a fragile emerging democracy into a largely authoritarian state revolving around himself as president. He has also dramatically transformed himself.

Early photos show him as a slight, reticent figure who seemed wary of the camera. So how did this seemingly quiet, retiring child and self-effacing bureaucrat turn into a president who so avidly embraced the limelight?

Created by TV

His keen interest in the power of image far predated his rise to power. Like most youngsters growing up in the 1960s and 70s, Putin was a child of the television age. His role models were the spy heroes of popular Soviet TV series and movies. By his own admission, these strong, silent double agents battling against enemies of the Soviet state were what inspired him to seek a career in the KGB, the Soviet Union's intelligence agency.

As a KGB operative and then an assiduous apparatchik, he avoided attention. But when in 1999 he was catapulted into the role of acting president and a few months later elected president, he and his PR advisers showed themselves acutely aware of the importance of visual imagery in shaping his presidential persona.

Part of the image-making process was to edit out what was unhelpful. So Putin came across as a virtual teetotaller. At annual meetings with foreign policy experts at the Valdai Discussion Club, he would stick to a cup of tea with honey while they were served fine wines.

On occasions when he did have a drink, his minders tried to keep it under wraps. I once met the custodian of a local museum who told me how he had sat down with the president to enjoy some Russian pancakes smeared with vodka to give them an extra kick. "But don't tell anyone," he implored me. "They were very strict about it. I might get into terrible trouble."

Another part of the plan was to drum home the message that he was nothing like his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, whose public displays of inebriation had dismayed and embarrassed many Russians.

Putin donned a pilot's helmet to fly a fighter jet. His prowess at judo was displayed. All to communicate that this was a vigorous, healthy man of action, not an ailing drunkard.

Most notorious of all, perhaps, were the series of photos starting in 2007 showing him bare-chested, riding a horse like a Russian Marlboro Man, or fly fishing in a river, or flexing his muscles in a vigorous butterfly stroke.

Was this for real? Or was there a kind of knowing humour to the images? Pomerantsev thinks the people in charge of his PR knew exactly what they were doing.

"For one audience, this is very crass, but we're going to do it in an ironic way, so that it's kind of cool. For another audience, it was that Russia should be led by a traditional hardman hero."

He adds: "Putin was playing this sort of very, very, I suppose, traditional Soviet leadership role, but he was doing it in an era of the reality show, MTV and sugar daddies."

"Putin is the trendsetter," says Fiona Hill, a Russia specialist and adviser to US presidents. "He has shaped the image of the first populist president, the first acclaimed strongman of the 21st Century."

Certainly, Putin was sending different messages to different audiences. To the outside world, it was to signal that Russia was no longer weak but a power to be reckoned with. A bear with teeth and claws, as he once put it.

Other extravagant displays were even more incongruous, perhaps reflecting something of the Leningrad schoolboy who was at last able to live out childhood fantasies: scuba diving to "discover" carefully placed relics at the bottom of the Black Sea; being harnessed into a motorised hang glider to soar high in the sky flanked by endangered cranes; and petting a Siberian tiger cub.

Putin himself claimed that the point of all this was to raise environmental and scientific awareness. But did he realise that these stunts verged on self-parody? Or did none of his aides by now dare tell him so? Or did he simply not care anymore what others thought?

Repeated reinvention

Early photos of Putin, like the one in his ID card from 1985 for the Stasi (the East German secret police), suggest a steely resolve behind the mask – a deliberate reticence no doubt well suited for a KGB role and further honed by KGB training.

After the USSR collapsed at the end of 1991, he recast himself as a government official with a reputation for loyalty and efficiency, initially serving the mayor of St Petersburg, then – after a move to Moscow – Yeltsin's presidential administration. In photos of that period, he is usually at the back or side of the picture, never looking into the camera, never centre stage.

Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, said she was told in the 1990s that in KGB circles, he was known as "the moth", a man who could hide anywhere he wanted, a man in the shadows.

But when he became president, it was a different story. He seemed to welcome the opportunity to don different roles.

A few years later, when he was photographed for Time magazine's Person of the Year award in 2007, he instinctively settled back in his chair and looked down the lens of the camera, like a tsar on a throne or a menacing mafia boss.

"He was performing power for me," says Platon, the Time photographer who took the picture. "As far as I know, Putin loves these images. Many of his supporters love the pictures. They show him as a tough nationalist."

It was what Pomerantsev calls "a postmodern version of authoritarian propaganda," with Putin playing out all the roles like a performance artist.

And the various guises of a strongman which he adopted were reflected in his policies. To make Russia strong again, Putin argued there needed to be more order, more oversight from above. So, step by step he tightened control over Russian society, reducing the space for free expression and criticism, turning the Duma into a rubber-stamp parliament, marginalising or eliminating political opponents and lashing out at Western powers for failing to show Russia enough respect.

The man behind the mask

His hyper-macho topless photoshoots have been picked over endlessly as a reflection of his confidence. But maybe these images also tell us something about his insecurities: his desire to reassure everyone, including himself, that he was still the main man, as fit as he'd ever been.

After 2008 when he stepped back from the presidency to become prime minister for four years, attention-grabbing photos such as these also signalled that he, rather than President Dmitry Medvedev, was the real power in the land.

In 2011 came a dramatic visual change that also marked a pivotal point on his political journey. He suddenly appeared in public with a new fuller, puffier face, more immobile and inexpressive. It was mystifying. Was this a sign of steroid treatment for some illness? Or had he resorted to Botox in his quest to stave off signs of decline and old age?

A few months later he ran for the presidency again. The outcome was never in doubt, but at the open-air rally to declare his victory, his new face could be seen streaked with tears.

I concluded the weeping was genuine. His voice was also hoarse with emotion. It looked like relief that all had gone according to plan, despite widespread protests ahead of the election, when – astonishingly – some protestors had dared raise slogans calling for him to go. But some analysts have wondered whether it was yet another contrived performance, designed to evoke the religious imagery of a weeping icon, to suggest he was now Russia's holy saviour.

Whichever it was, it marked a defining moment. His grip on the country had been tightening for years. From this era on, any form of public dissent was not just discouraged but downright illegal. Putin was becoming increasingly authoritarian and Russia less tolerant of opposition voices.

Nadya Tolokonnikova, one of the Pussy Riot feminists who was jailed and declared a foreign agent for her protests, put it this way: "Putin got obsessed with placing himself in history as the saviour, not just of Russia, but of the entire world. And this… is the turning point of him stepping into the Putin we know today."

Now aged 73, Putin is no closer to giving up the reins of power than he was back in 1999, but he is seen less frequently.

Many speculate that in recent years he has become more paranoid, especially since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the outbreak of the Covid pandemic. Now, when he does appear in front of the camera, the occasions are highly orchestrated, as though he is intent on keeping a distance from the outside world.

"He obviously wants to be careful that people can't necessarily track him down. It shows someone who's paranoid about his personal safety – from germs or assassination attempts," says Fiona Hill.

The war in Ukraine is now central to his image. Mikhail Fishman, a veteran Russian journalist, says: "If we look back at what Putin was after he came back to the Kremlin in 2012, he still did not know what he was, what he's about. But he believes he finally found his mission, what his role is, and it is war."

Yet, more than four years since it started, the full-scale war with Ukraine is also a burden. To continue it looks increasingly challenging, but to end it is also fraught with danger. Putin has created an economic war machine and a system of internal repression which he cannot easily put into reverse without huge risk to himself.

A quarter of a century after assuming power, he comes across as remote and inflexible, as though immobilised in a trap of his own making. It's a far cry from the image of a dynamic sportsman and action hero which he once hoped would define him.

Putin: In Ten Pictures is available to watch on iPlayer

Lead image credit: Reuters / Stasi Records Agency Dresden (Public Domain) / Getty Images

The £5 coffee that tells a story of global economic turmoil

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr5pp1m6z06o, 10 days ago

Listen to Faisal read this story.

It's 9am at Kew Bridge in west London, and tourists, runners and dog walkers are queuing up at the Dear Coco vintage Italian coffee cart.

It is high-grade coffee made from the arabica bean, brewed in an expensive La Marzocco machine - and the price shows that, at £4.50 for an iced latte, £4.10 for a 10 oz latte, and £3.90 for a 6 oz flat white.

It's a price tag that would have once looked strikingly high, but across much of the UK the £4 threshold is well broken, including in chains that do not use the highest-grade beans. A large coffee in central London, served with an alternative milk like soy or almond, is now closer to the £5 mark.

Earlier this month in the US, Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol came under fire for suggesting a "$9 [£6.68] experience" at one of his outlets was a "really affordable premium experience".

The man working at the cart in Kew doesn't agree. He is relatively lucky; carts pay street trading fees rather than soaring rents and business rates. But still, he is squeezed. "We feel super strongly about keeping the price of a flat white under £4 for as long as possible," Anthony Duckworth tells me, as rowing boats glide past. "But it's becoming increasingly difficult, because every part of the supply chain has become more expensive. We think there's a really important psychological threshold around that four pound mark."

Coffee is not just a morning ritual, repeated worldwide: in fact, it's an insight into the modern global economy. The latte sheds light on everything from commodity inflation to trade chaos; from geopolitical strife and climate change to Gen Z cultural tastes. It teaches us about rampant new demand from the Chinese middle class, and the long-hanging economic effects of the Vietnam War.

It's all there, in every frothy cuppa.

Industry hiccups

The modern coffee journey started in Turin, northern Italy, at a train station in 1895. Steam-powered coffee machines were developed to cater to time-poor travellers, often on the Milan express - one theory for the name "espresso". It was the start of mass consumption of what had originally been a luxury drink.

Near the Turin ring road, at a glass and steel structure, I speak to Giuseppe Lavazza, whose great-grandfather launched the Lavazza coffee brand 131 years ago. "The secret of surviving is having a company ready to modify," he tells me while holding what he hopes is his next great innovation: a cookie of coffee, called a tabli, that he hopes will serve the growing at-home coffee market, without the need for environmentally questionable metal pods.

In recent years his industry has encountered serious hiccups - affecting both of the world's most important coffee beans.

At one end of the market, arabica beans, known for their sweetness and aroma, are hand-picked at cool altitudes in Brazil, Ethiopia, and Kenya; it's a careful process, even more intricate than the harvesting of grapes for the finest champagne. At the other end, robusta beans, known for their high levels of caffeine, are mass harvested by machines. Vietnam has cornered the market on robusta since emerging from its war in the 1970s.

The climate squeeze

Two years ago, a convergence of climatic events pushed the price of both beans to multi-decade highs.

In early 2024, Vietnam suffered its worst drought in decades (rainfall collapsed by 30%); then, late last year, a typhoon during harvest hit production too. And in Brazil, farmers are still struggling to recover from a severe frost in 2021 that damaged the arabica crop.

As a result, arabica prices peaked last year above $4 (£2.97) per pound of green beans, up from about $1.20 historically. It has now settled at $3.08. Robusta beans increased even more, reaching $2.59 (£1.92) before settling at about $1.56. Both beans now cost significantly more than they did before 2020.

Lavazza calls the last few years an "unprecedented time in terms of complexity and troubles". And he says prices are unlikely to drop any time soon. "Unfortunately, we have to wait for at least a couple of years, because we need two big crops from Brazil, Vietnam, arriving on the market that could create a different market condition."

Lavazza also points to speculation in the financial markets.

Every morning at 4.30am, thousands of Vietnamese coffee farmers check their smartphones to see the prices (and predicted future prices) of robusta beans. It's become a daily ritual. And the Hanoi office of the US government's Foreign Agricultural Service says that with price information so easily available online, many farmers are choosing to store - rather than sell - their coffee beans after harvest, in the hope prices will rise further. Essentially, they're playing the markets.

All eyes are now on July's crop in Brazil. Some analysts expect a bumper harvest of the arabica bean, which should drive down prices. On the other hand, the prospect of a "super" El Niño predicted this autumn - a warming of the Pacific Ocean that occurs every few years - could lead to more turmoil.

And of course, there's another, more familiar source of disruption in coffee markets.

Trade wars

A curiosity of Donald Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariffs, announced last year, was that coffee producing nations were sharply hit. Vietnam faced a 46% tariff, Indonesia 32%, and Brazil 50% (after an escalation from 10%). The coffee belt also happened to be the tariff belt.

It caused chaos on world coffee markets. Brazilian exports to the US fell off a cliff, more than halving last summer. And the prices of beans from lower-tariffed countries (like Colombia) also went up, because American suppliers raced to import them.

And American coffee-drinkers have noticed. US roasted coffee prices surged by 17% in the year to March, whilst instant coffee rose a near-record 25% - faster than gasoline prices (in fact, they were the single fastest-rising item in the entire inflation basket, apart from fuel oil). A bag of ground roast coffee that cost $4.30 in 2020 was already $6.32 in 2024, and is now $9.61 and heading for $10. The cheapest forms of coffee have been hit hardest, hurting poorer Americans.

Brazil's exports were diverted to Europe, with Germany overtaking the US as the biggest importer of Brazilian beans over the course of 2025, cushioning Europe's coffee drinkers to a degree.

With angry American voters facing higher prices in supermarkets, in November last year Trump signed an executive order allowing coffee beans (along with other foods like bananas and beef) to escape his sweeping tariffs.

To many, coffee seemed to expose a flaw in the White House's tariff policy. Trump said he imposed tariffs against countries that were "cheating America" - but arguably Vietnam's dominance over coffee production is simply a result of what economists call its "comparative advantage" (mostly its climate and low labour costs), rather than the result of cheating.

Trump also said tariffs would help to reshore industry - but that's largely irrelevant in the case of coffee, which requires a subtropical climate.

It took an import collapse and a price spike for a rather predictable lesson to land.

The chaos in global shipping is also playing its part. Ships transporting those Vietnamese beans to Europe now have to loop around the southern tip of Africa, to avoid the threat of Houthi militants at the Bab al-Mandab Strait, at the southern end of the Red Sea, between Yemen and the Horn of Africa. That journey is about 4,000 miles longer than it was before 2024.

And new EU anti-deforestation rules, due to come into effect across 2026 and 2027, are having an effect too. In order to ship coffee to Europe, Vietnamese and Brazilian suppliers will soon have to supply the GPS coordinates of their plantations. EU officials will then use satellite images to check the beans are not coming from land that was a forest in the past five years. The policy has repeatedly been delayed, but the cost for farmers is already adding up.

Coffee premiumisation

But here's the really interesting thing about the current coffee shock. So far, consumers are still paying up. Demand is what economists call inelastic, meaning it doesn't respond to price signals.

"We saw that despite the high prices, people love having coffee," says Lavazza, in Turin. "We don't see any significant decrease in terms of volumes in the most important countries."

In an age of higher prices, he says, it's important to recognise there are "different ways of approaching coffee" - like boosting production of the increasingly fashionable cold brews.

In general, the growing popularity of cold brews among young people could be seen as an example of so-called 'premiumisation', where businesses make their products look fancier to justify higher prices.

Another example is the chain that used to be known as Blank Street Coffee, founded in New York and developed by former venture capitalists. The baristas, who sell elaborate fruit and cake-themed concoctions, are supposed to connect with customers as "brand ambassadors". It uses this curated experience to justify higher prices.

And some coffee shops have become so fancy that they have lost the coffee entirely. Instead, 'matcha' has been on the march among younger customers. The drink's bright emerald colour has attracted the TikTok generation, and the milder caffeine hit from its green tea powder is suited to health-conscious drinkers who want good sleep. Blank Street rebranded last year, losing the word 'coffee' from its title and adopting a green hue.

And China shows a version of where this all may be heading. Luckin Coffee, founded in Beijing, is chasing Starbucks for the title of world's biggest coffee chain. Luckin developed as a tech company with astonishingly detailed data about how customers' preferences change by day, and by different weather.

They also know exactly when their customers' phones are within range of a kiosk. Their coffee is served up personalised, allowing customers to pick sugar levels and coffee-to-milk ratios, with different recommendations triggered by sun or rain. Their cafes are not designed for seating, but for the rapid delivery of caffeine, ordered by apps. Luckin is expanding into the US.

And on the other end of the market, the British chain Greggs has managed to keep prices low via automation. The bakery uses bean-to-cup Swiss machines to make some of its coffee. A regular latte is about £2.40, much lower than in other UK coffee cafes. It is now Britain's largest coffee provider, with more outlets than Costa.

In essence, it's a story of two halves.

On the one hand, there's a supply chain tsunami - involving climate problems and geopolitical tensions - pushing up prices.

But on the other hand, there's a coffee-loving public who are happy to pay the extra costs.

The commodity price surge matters significantly in supermarkets, but less so in cafes, which are now in the business of selling experiences, rather than drinks.

And prices will stay sticky, even if the harvests in Brazil and in Vietnam normalise and the price of raw coffee retreats a little.

That £5 large latte could be here to stay.

Top image credit: Getty Images

How Trump's White House ballroom plan has doubled in size and cost over a year

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnvpvd52j95o, 2 days ago

In the year since US President Donald Trump announced plans to build a new ballroom at the White House, the proposals have grown to include a rooftop "drone port", an underground hospital and "top secret" military facilities - and the estimated price has doubled to $400m (£300m).

Despite promises from Trump that the project wouldn't cost US taxpayers any money, Republicans have requested additional funds from Congress for security around the complex - at a time when Americans are struggling with rising living costs linked to the Iran war.

The president indicated from the outset that the new ballroom is needed to "accommodate people for grand parties, State Visits", and more recently said it is "vital for National Security".

BBC Verify has examined how the biggest change to the White House in decades has transformed over the past year.

How did we get here?

On 6 June last year, Trump announced on his social media platform Truth Social that he had inspected the site where a new ballroom would be built, promising it would "go up quickly" and would be "very much in keeping with the magnificent White House itself".

"These are the 'fun' projects I do while thinking about the World Economy, the United States, China, Russia, and lots of other Countries, places, and events," he added.

The following month his administration revealed plans for a new "White House State Ballroom" to be built where the "small, heavily changed, and reconstructed East Wing currently sits", adding that its "theme and architectural heritage will be almost identical" to the historic main building.

The statement said the ballroom promised to be a "much-needed and exquisite addition of approximately 90,000 total square feet of ornately designed and carefully crafted space". It added that the structure would be able to seat 650 people, a "significant increase" on the 200-seated capacity of the East Room in the main residence.

The East Room is the primary space in the White House for official ceremonies and events and was used to host King Charles' state banquet in April. But larger events in recent years, such as French President Emmanuel Macron's state dinner in 2022 that had more than 300 guests, have been hosted in temporary tent structures built on the White House's south lawn.

The administration said the ballroom's construction would start later that year and be completed "long before" the end of Trump's second term in January 2029.

Trump later told reporters the ballroom "won't interfere with the current building… It'll be near it but not touching it and pays total respect to the existing building".

But when Trump posted on Truth Social in October that "ground has been broken" at the White House, he said the East Wing, which had housed dozens of rooms including the First Lady's office, was "being fully modernized" as part of the building process.

After the diggers moved in, the entire East Wing - which had stood for more than 120 years - and the hallway connecting it to the main White House building were flattened within a couple of days.

How have the plans changed?

The public plans for the building have changed dramatically since then. The latest iteration, revealed by Trump on Truth Social in April, suggests the site could now feature bomb shelters, an underground state-of-the-art hospital and medical facilities, "top secret" military facilities, and a rooftop drone landing space.

A recent satellite image shows the extent of the excavations for the underground section, which the president has said will be three-storeys deep.

Trump has increasingly mentioned the security features of the ballroom - with at least 10 posts on Truth Social mentioning it so far this year, as opposed to zero last year.

His emphasis on the issue ramped up after the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in April.

"It's much more secure... It's drone proof, it's [got] bulletproof glass. We need the ballroom. That's why Secret Service, that's why the military are demanding it," he said in a press conference at the White House immediately after the shooting.

Trump says the roof of the new ballroom will be missile-proof, and recently shared an AI-generated image of a "DronePort" that he claims will "safe-guard Washington DC long into the future".

BBC Verify asked the White House how the plans and purpose of the ballroom had changed since it was first announced - it said they hadn't.

How has the cost of the ballroom changed?

Trump has repeatedly claimed the ballroom, which was originally expected to cost $200m (£150m), will be built at "zero cost" to taxpayers because it will be funded by himself and through private donations.

But in May, Republicans requested funding for a $1bn (£745m) security package which reportedly included $220m (£165m) tied to the new ballroom specifically.

It was rejected by Congress and eventually dropped, but a separate $400m Republican-backed security bill linked to the ballroom is ongoing. Senator Lindsey Graham, the bill's co-sponsor, has said this would be paid for by charges on goods and travellers entering the US.

The White House initially said that the Secret Service "will provide the necessary security enhancements and modifications" but it did not share further details.

The direct construction cost estimates have also doubled over the last year.

BBC Verify has identified and analysed 35 Truth Social posts by Trump about the ballroom since June 2025, some of which mention costs varying from $200m, to $300, and most recently $400m.

Speaking to reporters outside the construction site in May, Trump said: "We're right on budget, we're right on plan, the only budget change would be that we doubled the size at the request of the military."

BBC Verify asked the US Department of Defense about what exactly it has requested but has not received a response.

Trump was also asked about the request for taxpayer funding linked to ballroom in May, and said that the funds are "for projects having to do with safety in a certain section of the White House grounds. That's not all for the ballroom".

When the project began in October, the Trump administration released a list of donors which included dozens of companies such as Amazon, Google and Meta, and several billionaire investors - although no further details have been provided.

BBC Verify asked the White House for an updated breakdown of how much will be paid for by the president, by donors, and by taxpayers - but it said it had no further details to add.

Questions have also been raised about whether the administration is legally allowed to complete the construction.

The US National Trust for Historic Preservation filed a lawsuit to stop the construction, saying "no president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoever".

The Trump administration has pushed back against the concerns by highlighting White House construction projects undertaken by previous administrations.

Some significant renovations have been carried out by previous presidents, but the ballroom proposal is the most extensive change in more than 70 years.

"Harry Truman oversaw a massive White House renovation in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but this happened because the White House was structurally unsound and falling apart, so there was little opposition to the project," says Dr Matthew Dallek, a political historian and professor at George Washington University.

A federal judge did temporarily block construction following the National Trust for Historic Preservation's challenge - but this ruling was appealed by the Trump administration and building work was allowed to resume until a hearing in June.

Graphics by Mesut Ersoz.

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Ukraine using AI drones to strike vital convoys supplying Russian troops

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdjp0n7rn41o, 8 days ago

The Ukrainian military is stepping up its campaign to destroy vehicles supplying Russian forces along crucial roads in occupied Ukraine using new AI drone technology, experts say.

BBC Verify has confirmed footage of at least 14 incidents published in the past week of vehicles carrying food, fuel and ammunition being targeted along critical routes connecting Russia to Crimea and other occupied territories in southern Ukraine.

Ukraine is starting to regain more ground than it is losing for the first time since 2023, analysis from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) indicates. After more than four years of war and increased Russian occupation of eastern and southern Ukraine, neither side has gained any significant ground in recent months.

Experts say recent drone technology advancements, including the AI-enabled Hornet system, have allowed Ukraine to attack Russian targets travelling to the front lines at greater distances and with increased accuracy.

Ukraine's defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, said on Wednesday its "logistics lockdown" strategy aims to "increase pressure on the Russian military in the rear and deny the enemy the ability to conduct sustained offensive operations".

Footage analysed by BBC Verify and online by GeoConfirmed open source analysts shows burned-out shells of container lorries and other military vehicles at multiple locations along a key route through southern Ukraine.

At least 10 incidents were recorded between Russia's border and the occupied city of Mariupol, with one strike recorded south-west of the city of Melitopol. The critical route is used by the Russian military to supply their forces on the front line and in Crimea.

Clément Molin, an analyst at think tank Atum Mundi, told BBC Verify he had confirmed the destruction of 150 vehicles more than 20km (12 miles) from the front line, although he said this likely accounted for about half of all incidents.

The strikes mean Russia has been forced to shorten convoys on supply routes as a "quick coping mechanism to reduce potential damage", Cristian Vlas at conflict monitoring group Acled told BBC Verify.

He suggested Ukraine's main objective was not only to strike the assets "important to Russia's image of grand power", but to disrupt key logistical convoys, command posts, and communication towers. These "feed, fuel, and inform Russian units at the front line and form the basis for capacity to fight in the battlefield and launch long-range drone and missile strikes from occupied territories".

Robert Tollast, land warfare expert at the Royal United Service Institute, told BBC Verify that some brigades were estimated to need several hundred tonnes of fuel, food, ammunition and other key supplies every day. He said Ukraine had previously used a long-range strike campaign against Russian air defence units, but the new drone strike ranges "are something else".

"If you are cutting resupply, for example ammunition trucks 100km or more from the front using small drones, and then longer-range drones are going after larger logistical sites, this is a very serious problem for the Russians," he said.

Ukraine's Hornet drones are equipped with an AI-targeting system which has been trained on thousands of hours of videos of Russian military targets gathered over the last four years, Nick Brown, a weapons expert from defence intelligence company Janes, told BBC Verify. They can also access the Starlink satellite network to connect to operators over longer distances, a system that is also more resistant to jamming by Russian forces.

"Ukraine can launch hundreds of these loitering munitions towards a rough target area over 100 miles away and then use AI to detail them on to Russian military targets as they find them," he said.

Ukraine's innovative use of technology means the war is not a stalemate, according to George Barros from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), and Kyiv is using mechanised equipment in tactical manoeuvres that were impossible 12 months ago.

"Russia's ability to conduct infiltration missions will likely continue to degrade as Ukraine's intermediate-range strike campaign pushes Russia's logistics and forward operating bases further away from the front lines, reducing resourcing to sustain infantry tasked with infiltration missions," he said.

One of Ukraine's specialist drone units, the 412th Nemesis Brigade, said this week that Russian commanders had limited the movement of heavy equipment in southern Ukraine and were attempting to evade drones by using fields and dirt roads.

The Russian-appointed leader of the occupied areas in Ukraine's Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, has also ordered restrictions on civilian traffic along the route.

Barros said Ukraine's "drone superiority" had even neutralised Russia's attempts to gain an advantage by moving "overwhelming numbers" of troops to the front line, but added that the advantage may be shortlived.

"Russia will very likely eventually develop countermeasures so Ukraine's international partners have a rare and temporary opportunity to exploit favourable battlefield dynamics while Ukraine has the upper hand."

Additional reporting by Kayleen Devlin, Joshua Cheetham and Sherie Ryder, graphics by Tom Shiel.

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