Only one US president has been at the Nato summit in Washington this week, but the shadow of another – his predecessor – has loomed over this meeting of the world’s most powerful military alliance.

While the host Joe Biden has presided over a message of unity from the group’s 32 members, the Nato-sceptic views of his rival for power, Donald Trump, have imbued conversations here with an urgency and an anxiety.

At times the smiles from world leaders in the conference hall have felt fragile. Trump “hangs over every conversation here”, said one Eastern European diplomat who asked to remain nameless.

The Republican’s election as president in November “could change everything”, the diplomat said. The fact that Mr Biden has been trying to fend off a political crisis over his frailty has only sharpened the sense that a second Trump term could bring far-reaching changes to an alliance forged in the ashes of the World War Two and still reliant on hard US military power to deter adversaries.

So does Nato need to “Trump-proof” itself – as some describe it – and if so, is it possible?

There is a lot of evidence of efforts by Nato allies to reach out already to those in Trump’s political orbit to try to manage relationships and limit what they would see as the potential damage of a second term. But others suggest something more unmanageable.

Camille Grand, a French former official who was one of Nato’s deputy leaders throughout the Trump administration, described himself as “much more worried” than colleagues who think a second term may be “Trump [term] one on steroids” but ultimately workable for the alliance.

“He doesn’t have the same sort of guardrails, he doesn’t have the same sort of adults in the room. And he has around him a team that is trying to turn his instinct into policy,” said Mr Grand, who is now a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Four members of visiting delegations, who asked to remain anonymous, told the BBC their concern was not necessarily that a Trump administration would withdraw entirely from Nato, as he has threatened before.

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Rather it is a fear that the US commitment to the alliance’s core principle of collective security – “all for one and one for all”, meaning any ally under attack can expect defence from the others – could wane.

Trump’s positions on Nato have veered erratically from outright hostility – portraying the alliance as a bunch of freeloading Europeans surviving off protection paid for by US taxpayers – to suggesting his outbursts are simply part of a cunning negotiating tactic to compel more of Nato’s members to meet its defence spending targets.

He has frequently tried to rally crowds of supporters with attacks on the organisation. As the summit began, he posted to his Truth Social network that when he started as president most Nato members were “delinquent” until they “paid up” due to his pressure.

By the end of Trump’s presidency, four more Nato countries had hit the alliance’s guidelines of spending at least 2% of national income on defence. So far during President Biden’s term, another 13 countries have reached the target.

That progress is frequently touted by the Biden administration and its backers, although in reality much of the increase was triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

At a February campaign rally in South Carolina, Trump said he would let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” to Nato countries that did not spend enough.

That sparked outrage from some quarters in Washington, but privately his threats are said to have gone further.

At a panel event in January, European Union commissioner Thierry Breton described a meeting he had attended in 2020 between Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

“Donald Trump said to Ursula: ‘You need to understand that if Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you. And by the way, Nato is dead. And we will leave, we will quit Nato.’

“It was the president of the United States of America,” recalled Mr Breton. “He may come back.”

Trump’s campaign has been approached by the BBC with a request to confirm whether the account was accurate. Evelyn Farkas, a former senior official at the Pentagon in the Obama administration, believes there remains a real concern even over Nato’s existence under Mr Trump.

“I think there is a danger with Trump that he tries to pull us out of Nato. I won’t sugarcoat that,” said Dr Farkas, now executive director at public policy think tank the McCain Institute.

“The reality is Trump is dangerous to the alliance in that America is still the strongest economic, political, military power and Nato is stronger if Nato has the United States inside the alliance.”

But one of those familiar with the thinking in Trump’s political orbit, Dan Caldwell from the right-wing think tank Defence Priorities, believes the former president’s priority it to push European nations to invest more in their own militaries.

“I don’t think he wants to withdraw from Nato, but he has said that the United States should re-evaluate its role and the purpose of Nato going forward,” he said.

“Not only the former president but more and more national security experts on the right believe the United States has really no choice but to do less in Europe. So I think that there’s some larger forces at play, that will eventually force the next president, regardless of who it is… to substantially pull back from Nato.”

The most detailed account of policy positions that might influence a second Trump term comes from an initiative being brought up by supporters and detractors of Trump alike. Overseen by the conservative Heritage Foundation, “Project 2025” is a 900-page detailed blueprint for a Republican president to usher in a sweeping overhaul of the executive branch.

The initiative says a future president should “transform Nato” so that America’s role is primarily for its nuclear deterrent, while other members should field “the great majority” of conventional forces required to deter Russia.

This is in keeping with the project’s foreign policy position, seeing the main threat to US primacy as China and therefore calling for the next president to “bring resolution to the foreign policy tensions” sparked by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Trump himself has equivocated over the war but has said he would end it in “24 hours”. He favours brokering a deal between Russia and Ukraine on terms that many Nato allies would see as surrender for Kyiv.

Trump has partially disavowed the initiative, saying he does not know who is behind it but many of his former officials had a hand in writing it, including a former defense secretary.

Since Trump left office, the increases in the number of Nato members spending at least 2% of income on defence better insulates the alliance for the future, said Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Asked about “Trump-proofing”, he said Congress had also better shielded America’s membership of Nato from the whims of the White House, in a law passed last year. “We clarified no president can unilaterally withdraw from Nato without a vote of approval from the Senate,” Mr Coons told the BBC.

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He also highlighted the $60bn military assistance package for Ukraine finally passed in April in a bipartisan effort following nine months of paralysis, after allies of Trump blocked passage of the bill through Congress.

“It is my hope that we will continue to be a counterweight and a counterbalance to the president should we, I think, make the tragic mistake of moving forward with a second Trump term.”

But Trump has repeatedly challenged current levels of US military provision for Ukraine, again arguing he could negotiate the war’s end with Russia.

Another possible attempt to future-proof US support for Ukraine is by moving more co-ordination for arms supply to Nato itself – taking it further out of reach of a future American president. Such a move has been pitched by Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg as a way to “shield” Ukraine’s supply of aid “against the winds of political change”, officials told The Financial Times.

At the summit the alliance agreed to launch a new program in which Nato will supplement, but not replace, a 50-nation “contact group” that co-ordinates delivery of weapons. Camille Grand, the former Nato official, thinks the summit may have “raised the cost” for a future President Trump to roll back the “messaging” from Nato, but in the end, he said, Trump-proofing was impossible.

“If the US, as the biggest shareholder in the alliance, decides to be tough on the alliance, on Ukraine, there is no nothing in the [summit agreement] and previous summits that prevent it from doing that.

“But I think it’s sending an important message to Trump and his team, which is that the Europeans have turned the corner when it comes to [increased] spending.”

Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský reiterated that, telling me that any future president of the US that wanted to change things on Nato had the power to do so.

The real work of “Trump-proofing” at this summit has instead felt like Nato supporters pitching the alliance to conservative Americans to try to change their view. This found its most striking moment when President Zelensky appeared at the Reagan Institute for an on-stage conversation with Fox News host Bret Baier.

Mr Zelensky repeatedly raised the memory of the late Republican President Ronald Reagan, quoting Cold War lines on deterring enemies through working with allies.

Reagan is a favoured reference for Democrats trying to expose Republican divisions and what they see as the maverick isolationism of Trump. The subtext is: Reagan would turn in his grave at Trump’s Nato-sceptic stance. But it’s a message that may fall flat with those who Zelensky thinks need to hear it.

German political figures have reacted angrily to a report that Russia had plotted to kill the head of Germany’s biggest arms company Rheinmetall, Armin Papperger.

The CNN report said US officials had told their counterparts in Berlin earlier this year and security around him was stepped up.

Germany’s interior ministry refused to comment but Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock appeared to confirm the details.

“In view of latest reports on Rheinmetall, this is what we have actually been communicating more and more clearly in recent months,” she told reporters at the Nato summit in Washington. “Russia is waging a hybrid war of aggression.”

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the allegations. “It’s all presented in the style of another fake story, so such reports cannot be taken seriously.”

Rheinmetall avoided commenting on issues of “corporate security”, but Mr Papperger is now being described as the most highly protected figure in Germany’s economy. He told the Financial Times that German authorities had imposed a “great deal of security around my person”.

The company is one of the world’s biggest producers of ammunition and has become key to supplying Ukraine with arms, armoured vehicles and other military equipment.

Rheinmetall recently opened a tank repair plant in western Ukraine. Last month, it signed an agreement with Ukraine to expand co-operation in the coming years, including a joint venture to produce artillery shells.

Mr Papperger said at the time his company wanted to hand over the first Lynx infantry fighting vehicles later this year and to start producing them in Ukraine soon.

Although Chancellor Olaf Scholz avoided commenting on the reported assassination plot directly, he said it was well known that Germany was exposed to a variety of Russian threats and was paying close attention to them.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said “we are taking very seriously the significantly heightened threat of Russian aggression”.

Earlier this week, a senior Nato official told the BBC that Russia was “engaging in aggressive covert operations across Europe – involving sabotage, arson and assassination plots – aimed at weakening public support for Ukraine”.

The German foreign minister said the Baltic states had already highlighted the various methods deployed by Russia’s Vladimir Putin in his war on Ukraine. As well as sabotage, she spoke of cyberattacks and disrupting GPS signals so that Baltic flights could no longer land in neighbouring countries.

“We have seen that there have been attacks on factories, and that again underlines that, together, we as Europeans must protect ourselves as best we can and not be naive,” Ms Baerbock told reporters.

In early May, a building complex owned by the Diehl Metall firm went up in flames in south-west Berlin. Although a technical fault was blamed for the fire, sabotage has not been ruled out. Suspicious fires have also been reported in Poland and Lithuania.

Last April, Mr Papperger’s garden house was set alight at Hermannsburg in northern Germany, although there has been no evidence of a Russian link.

The fire was quickly brought under control and a rambling, anonymous confession purportedly from leftist militants appeared on activist network Indymedia.

The reported plot against such a high-profile German CEO has prompted widespread alarm.

Leading conservative figure Roderich Kiesewetter said the chancellor should come clean with the German population about how great the threat from Russia really was. German intelligence needed to be boosted to the level of neighbouring countries, he said.

“We must take it very seriously and also prepare ourselves accordingly,” he told public broadcaster ZDF.

Michael Roth, who chairs Germany’s foreign affairs committee told Bild newspaper that Vladimir Putin was waging a “war of extermination not only against Ukraine, but against its supporters and our values”.

The head of the defence committee, Marcus Faber, added his condemnation, saying if information about Russian intelligence involvement came to light, then “the expulsion of diplomats must follow and, if necessary, international arrest warrants must be issued”.

Four migrants have died after a boat capsized during an attempt to cross the English Channel, according to the French coastguard.

Overnight, a navy patrol boat reported that migrants had fallen into the sea off the coast of Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France.

Four people found “unconscious” could not be saved, police added, while 63 were rescued.

UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper described the incident as “truly awful”.

The coastguard said several people fell into the sea after part of their boat “deflated”.

The initial alert was raised at 04:30 local time (03:30 BST), with a helicopter arriving about 30 minutes later. It found several people “drifting in the water while others were still clinging to the broken rubber dingy”.

Fourteen people were rescued by a fishing vessel and 49 others by the French navy ship, the coastguard said.

“All the shipwrecked individuals were then brought ashore in Boulogne and taken care of by the emergency services on land.”

Two boats, one from UK sea rescue charity RNLI and one from Border Force, were initially sent from Dover to provide support but were not required to attend the scene, the UK coastguard said.

Jacques Billant, prefect of the Pas-de-Calais region, told reporters nine people were in serious condition.

He said only one person on board was wearing a life jacket, while “a few others had bike tubes”.

“Week after week, we observe overloaded boats like this morning’s, boats of very poor quality: under inflated, without a floor, without life jackets,” he said.

“These are also underpowered boats, which obviously increase the risks of breakdown and sinking.”

UK Home Office figures show 484 migrants crossed the English Channel on Monday and Tuesday.

On 18 June, 882 people crossed the Channel on 15 small boats – a new record for the year so far.

According to Home Office data, those arrivals were the highest in a single day since October 2022.

Over 13,000 people have successfully reached the UK via the Channel so far this year.

According to the UN-affiliated International Organization for Migration (IOM) the most recent deaths mean more than 20 people are known to have died while trying to cross the Channel this year.

This includes a seven-year-old girl who died in March after a small boat attempting to reach the English Channel capsized a few kilometres from the coast of Dunkirk.

A month later five people, including another seven-year-old girl, died while a boat carrying 112 migrants ran aground on a sandbank after leaving Wimereux, near Boulogne, before continuing on.

Reacting to the latest deaths, Mrs Cooper, the UK home secretary, said: “Criminal gangs are making vast profit from putting lives at risk.

“We are accelerating action with international partners to pursue and bring down dangerous smuggler gangs.”

Earlier this week, the new Labour government set out plans to tackle the small boat crisis.

Ms Cooper said she would appoint a leader of the UK’s new Border Security Command within weeks.

The government hopes the new body will reduce small boat crossings in the English Channel.

Mr Billant, the Pas-de-Calais prefect, said over 1,000 police officers were currently deployed along the entire French northern coastline, “amid heightened aggression from smugglers and migrants alike”.

He said 344 crossing attempts had been foiled so far this year.

The previous Tory government had a flagship policy of countering illegal migration by sending some asylum seekers to Rwanda. But the controversial scheme was axed in the early days of the new Labour government without a single migrant ever having been deported to the east African country.

But despite recent elections in both countries there has been no change of policy in France since Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron signed a cooperation agreement in March last year.

It was the latest of many such deals under in which the UK supplies money and the French step up their policing of the coast, using more manpower and better equipment.

France will be keen to see how the Labour government might change things.

The scrapping of the Rwanda scheme came as no surprise, because the French never thought it was either right or effective.

The scheme had shown no clear sign of having a deterrent effect. Numbers kept going up.

The French view remains that the UK should address the pull factors that keep drawing so many migrants, such as the ease of entering the jobs market undetected and the lack of identity cards.

Governments of all stripes in Paris know the Calais problem is perennial, and the most to be hoped for is more effective operational cooperation with London.

After months of celebrations, the wedding ceremony of the son of Asia’s richest man is finally under way in the Indian city of Mumbai.

Anant Ambani, son of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, is tying the knot with Radhika Merchant, daughter of pharma tycoons Viren and Shaila Merchant.

The four-day wedding extravaganza is the final stop in a string of lavish parties the family has hosted since March.

Reality TV star Kim Kardashian and former UK PM Tony Blair are among the international guests attending the ceremony.

On Friday, the groom set off from his residence in a luxurious red car covered in strings of white flowers, as joyful guests danced around it.

A convoy of cars, also decorated with flowers and carrying family members, followed him amid music and cheers.

The grand procession, known as the baraat, culminated at the wedding venue – a convention centre owned by the family.

There, the family gathered for another round of singing and dancing along with several Bollywood celebrities.

Also spotted in the crowd was legendary wrestler John Cena, who was seen hugging and congratulating family members of the host.

Report say the bride and the groom will exchange garlands to kick off the wedding. The pheras – the main wedding ritual of the couple walking around the sacred fire seven times – is set for 21:30 (1600GMT).

Key roads in the city are sealed off for several hours a day until the festivities end on Monday.

Social media is awash with updates on the wedding, with people sharing minute-by-minute details of Bollywood stars and celebrities arriving to take part in the festivities.

A formal ceremony where the guests will bless the newly-weds will reportedly take place on Saturday, followed by a grand party where unconfirmed reports say pop stars Drake, Lana Del Ray and Adele are likely to perform.

The months of lavish celebrations have already featured performances by popstars like Rihanna and Justin Bieber.

But it has also led to backlash – city dwellers have complained of traffic snarls, while others have questioned the ostentatious display of wealth at the seemingly never-ending celebrations.

On Friday, the city witnessed heavy rains with waterlogging reported in some parts.

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Mukesh Ambani, 66, is at present the world’s 10th richest man with a net worth of $115bn, according to Forbes. Reliance Industries, founded by his father in 1966, is a massive conglomerate that operates in sectors ranging from petroleum and retail, to financial services and telecoms.

Anant Ambani is the youngest of his three children, all of whom are on the board of Reliance Industries. The 29-year-old is involved in Reliance’s energy businesses and is on the board of Reliance Foundation.

On Friday, the couple will get married in a traditional Hindu ceremony at the Jio World Convention Centre.

Reports say the family will host a grand reception at the weekend, before a final reception for their household staff on Monday.

Pictures and videos of Kim Kardashian, who is in the city with her sister Khloé Kardashian, are being widely shared online.

Reports say the sisters have brought a team of stylists, including celebrity hairstylist Chris Appleton, along with a group of producers to capture every detail of their trip.

Former Indian president Ram Nath Kovind, British High Commissioner to India Lindy Cameron and US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti are also in the city to attend the wedding.

Mumbai police have labelled the wedding a “public event” since it would be attended by several international and Indian VIPs, reports Reuters news agency.

The city police has also imposed traffic restrictions around the venue.

From Friday to Monday, roads around the convention centre will be open only for “event vehicles” between 13:00 India time (07:30 GMT) to midnight, it said.

Rajan Mehra, CEO of air charter company Club One Air, told Reuters that the family had rented three Falcon-2000 jets to ferry wedding guests to the event.

“The guests are coming from all over and each aircraft will make multiple trips across the country,” he said.

The restrictions have sparked anger among the city residents who say they are already struggling with traffic jams and monsoon flooding.

The wedding festivities began in March when the family held a three-day pre-wedding party in their home state of Gujarat.

Among the 1,200 guests to attend the celebration were international celebrities, politicians, and members of the business world – including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

• World’s rich in India for tycoon son’s pre-wedding gala

The party started with a performance by Rihanna on the first night. Diljit Dosanjh, the first Punjabi singer to perform at Coachella, took the stage on the second night, while rapper Akon closed the show on the final day of celebrations.

In June, the Ambanis organised another pre-wedding celebration, this time, a luxury cruise from Italy to France. The Backstreet Boys, Katy Perry and Pitbull performed for the 800 guests, which included Bollywood stars and cricketers.

Then came the final round of celebrations, which began earlier this week when Bieber landed in Mumbai.

Social media has been flooded with photos and videos of him singing in front of an ecstatic audience.

Money was also lavished on constructing 14 temples inside a sprawling complex in Jamnagar to showcase India’s cultural heritage and provide a backdrop for the wedding. As part of the celebrations, the Ambanis hosted a mass wedding for 50 underprivileged couples too.

On Wednesday, the family hosted a bhandara – a community feast for underprivileged people.

The Ambanis have not revealed how much this wedding is costing them but wedding planners estimate they’ve already spent anywhere between 11bn and 13bn rupees [$132m-$156m]. It was rumoured Rihanna had been paid $7m (£5.5m) for her performance, while the figure suggested for Bieber is $10m.

A Russian passenger plane with only crew on board has crashed near Moscow, the country’s emergencies ministry says.

The Sukhoi Superjet 100 went down in a forest and all three crew members are believed to have been killed, it said. There were no passengers on board.

Russia’s state-run media report that the plane went down during a test flight following repair works.

Russia’s has been developing the Sukhoi Superjet – a regional jet – for some time to replace Western-made aircraft.

Heavily sanctioned over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has struggled to replace its ageing aircraft fleet.

In a short statement on Friday, Russia’s emergencies ministry said the aircraft crashed in the forested area.

“There were no casualties among the population,” it said.

Transport prosecutors said the plane went down not far from the town of Kolomna.

The aircraft belonged to Gazprom Avia, the airline of the country’s energy giant, the prosecutors added.

A criminal investigation is now under way.

State-owned defence conglomerate Rostech said the aircraft went into service in 2014. It urged people not to “rush with conclusions” on what caused the crash.

It is the third air disaster involving a Sukhoi Superjet 100 since 2012.

Over the years, the Superjet project has been marred by engineering setbacks and delays in production as designers have struggled to replace key Western avionics components.

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi has hit back at Nato’s “groundless accusations” that Beijing is helping Russia in its war on Ukraine.

He has also warned the Western alliance against stirring up confrontation.

Mr Wang’s comments, made in a call with his Dutch counterpart, came hours after leaders of Nato member states gathered in Washington DC and issued a declaration that mentioned the war.

They accused China of being a “decisive enabler” of Russia through its “large-scale support for Russia’s defence industrial base”, in some of their harshest remarks yet about Beijing.

They called on China to stop “all material and political support” to Russia’s war effort such as the supply of dual-use materials, which are items that can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

Western states have previously accused Beijing of transferring drone and missile technology and satellite imagery to Moscow. The US estimates about 70% of the machine tools and 90% of the microelectronics Russia imports now come from China.

Beijing was also accused of conducting “malicious cyber and hybrid activities, including disinformation” on Nato states.

In a press conference on Thursday, US President Joe Biden said that he had discussions with other leaders about spelling out the consequences for China.

“China has to understand that if they are supplying Russia with information and capacity, working with North Korea and others to help Russia and [their] armament, that they’re not going to benefit economically as a consequence of that,” he said.

“I think you’ll see that some of our European friends are going to be curtailing their investment in China.”

Pointing out that Russia had been seeking weapons from China and North Korea, he added that Nato states were looking into a new policy to turn the West into an “industrial base” for munitions and to develop new weapons systems.

On Thursday, while speaking to the Netherlands’ new foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp, Mr Wang said “China absolutely does not accept” all these accusations and insisted that they have “always been a force for peace and force for stability”.

In comments carried by state media, he said that China’s different political system and values “should not be used as a reason for Nato to incite confrontation with China”, and called for Nato to “stay within its bounds”.

His remarks was the latest in a flurry of angry responses from Beijing.

Earlier on Thursday, a foreign ministry spokesperson said Nato was smearing China with “fabricated disinformation”, while Beijing’s mission to the EU told the alliance to “stop hyping up the so-called China threat”.

Beijing has long rebutted accusations that it has been aiding Russia in the war and insists that it remains a neutral party. It has called for an end to the conflict and proposed a peace plan, which Ukraine has rejected.

But, besides the growing accusations of military support, observers have also pointed out that Beijing’s purchases of vast amounts of oil and gas have helped prop up Russia’s economy crippled by sanctions and replenish coffers drained by war spending.

Beijing’s official rhetoric on the conflict often mirrors Moscow’s – like them, China still does not call it a war. Chinese President Xi Jinping has maintained a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with both of them famously declaring their partnership has “no limits”.

Beijing has accused the US and other Western states of pouring “fuel on the fire” by supplying lethal weapons and technology to Ukraine for its defence.

In recent weeks, several countries have gone a step further and allowed Ukraine to use their weapons to hit targets inside Russia.

During Nato’s three-day summit, which ended on Thursday, the alliance continued to underscore its commitment to Ukraine. Member states said they would support Ukraine on its “irreversible path” to future membership, adding that “Ukraine’s future in Nato”.

They also announced further integration with Ukraine’s military and support for its defence. The alliance has committed at least €40bn ($43.3bn, £33.7bn) in aid in the next year, including F-16 fighter jets and air defence support.

A security guard who plotted to abduct, rape and murder television presenter Holly Willoughby has been jailed for a minimum of 16 years.

Gavin Plumb said his “ultimate fantasy” was to use tools he had assembled to perpetrate highly sexualised violence against the former This Morning host.

The 37-year-old from Harlow, Essex, was caught after he unknowingly disclosed his plans to an undercover police officer operating in the online chatroom “Abduct Lovers”.

Imposing a life sentence at Chelmsford Crown Court, Mr Justice Murray described some of the plans Plumb discussed as “particularly sadistic, brutal and degrading”.

He added that the offences have had “life-changing consequences” on Ms Willoughby, both “privately and professionally”.

Plumb was handed a life sentence with a minimum tariff of 16 years before he becomes eligible for parole.

Plumb had denied soliciting murder and inciting kidnap and rape between 2021 and 2023, but was found guilty following an eight-day trial.

“I have no doubt this was all considerably more than a fantasy to you,” said the judge, who noted Plumb’s “gross obesity” which he had previously talked to the BBC about.

The judge added: “Your plan was hopelessly unrealistic for a number of reasons – including your physical health – but you clearly thought it was feasible.

“You always intended to carry out your plan to kidnap, rape and kill Ms Willoughby if you could find ‘the right crew’ to do it.”

The defendant, who had previous convictions for attempted kidnap, stood emotionless in the dock as he was sentenced.

He will serve at least 15 years and 85 days due a reduction for the time he spent on remand ahead of the trial.

Ms Willoughby ended her 14-year stint on This Morning after the offences came to light in October 2023.

“The extent of the shock and fear of this offending has been impossible to be conveyed,” prosecutor Alison Morgan KC said.

Plumb had developed an “obsession” with Ms Willoughby that spanned more than 10 years, she previously told the trial.

• Gavin Plumb could have been stopped sooner, says survivor

He had a “real intention” to raid the broadcaster’s home, “take her to a location where she would be raped repeatedly” and then murder her, Ms Morgan continued.

Plumb had initially outlined his plan to a man only known has Marc, telling him: “I’m going to be living out my ultimate fantasy.

“I’m now at the point that fantasy isn’t enough anymore. I want the real thing.”

In his sentencing remarks, Mr Justice Murray said the detail of many of the other messages Plumb sent were “so horrifying, shocking and graphic in detail they were not read out in open court”.

The trial heard he purchased 400 heavy-duty metal cable ties, as well as bottles purported to contain chloroform to knock Ms Willoughby and her husband out upon breaking in to their house.

Plumb told Marc in March 2023 in a voice note: “We’re then gonna force her [Ms Willoughby] to make a video saying she come with us under her own free will… and she’s fully consenting to everything we do to her – so that covers us.”

The jury was told he checked out an abandoned stud farm with cells to “keep” Ms Willoughby.

“He is no fantasist – he’s a calculated, violent, sexual predator who has spent his adult life inflicting or plotting to inflict harm on women,” said Det Ch Insp Greg Wood, of Essex Police.

Plumb went on to be active in a Kik group entitled “Abduct Lovers” where he unveiled his plot to David Nelson who, unbeknown to him, was an undercover police officer based in the US.

Mr Nelson, not his real name, notified the FBI about what Plumb was telling him and the information was relayed to Essex Police, who raided the defendant’s house.

It was later discovered that Plumb had “millions” of images of Ms Willoughby on a device found at his property, many of which were “deep fake” and sexual.

Giving evidence at his trial, Plumb admitted messages he sent online about the presenter were “dark” but claimed he had “no plan” to carry them out.

He said, with hindsight, his words were “massively regrettable” and acting upon his fantasies was “something I knew that was never going to happen”.

The defendant said he had bought chloroform to clean a stain on his floor.

• An obsessive loner’s plot to kill Holly Willoughby

Sasha Wass KC, mitigating, told the court earlier that Plumb was “embarrassed and ashamed” that his online conversations had been made public.

“He was completely incapable of scaling any of the perimeter walls of [Ms Willoughby’s] house, as he fantasised about doing,” she said.

“There were features of the plan that were so unworkable that the plan could not take place.”

Plumb was also cross-examined about his two previous convictions for attempted kidnap in 2006 and another two offences of false imprisonment in 2008.

The security guard said he had a “stewardess fantasy” when he tried to force two separate air hostesses to get off a train during the space of three days in August 2006.

In 2008, he “terrified” two 16-year-old girls when he tied their wrists and forced them into the store room of a shop.

He was handed a sentence of 12 months, suspended for two years, for his first offences, before he was jailed for 32 months for the false imprisonments.

Plumb said both offences were a “cry for help” as he “needed to get out” of a toxic relationship.

A team of imaging experts, scientists and historians will set sail for the Titanic on Friday to gather the most detailed photographic record ever made of the wreck.

The BBC has had exclusive access to expedition members here in the US city of Providence, Rhode Island, as they make preparations to leave port.

They’ll be using state of the art technology to scan every nook and cranny of the famous liner to gain new insights into its sinking.

This will be the first commercial mission to Titanic since last year’s OceanGate tragedy. Five men died while trying to visit the lost ship in a novel submersible.

A joint memorial service will be held at sea in the coming days for them and the 1,500 passengers and crew who went down with Titanic in 1912.

The new expedition is being mounted by the US company that has sole salvage rights and which to date has brought up some 5,500 objects from the wreck.

But this latest visit is purely a reconnaissance mission, says RMS Titanic Inc, based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Two robotic vehicles will dive to the ocean bottom to capture millions of high-resolution photographs and to make a 3D model of all the debris.

“We want to see the wreck with a clarity and precision that’s never before been achieved,” explained co-expedition lead David Gallo.

The logistics ship Dino Chouest is going to be the base for operations out in the North Atlantic.

Weather permitting, it should spend 20 days above the wreck, which lies in 3,800m (12,500ft) of water.

It will be a poignant few weeks for all involved.

One of the five who died on the OceanGate sub was Frenchman Paul-Henri (“PH”) Nargeolet. He was the director of research at RMS Titanic Inc and was due to lead this expedition.

A plaque will be laid on the seabed in his honour.

“It’s tough but the thing about exploration is that there’s an urge and a drive to keep going. And we’re doing that because of that passion PH had for continuous exploration,” explained friend and historian Rory Golden, who will be “chief morale officer” on Dino Chouest.

There can be few people on Earth who don’t know the story of the supposedly unsinkable Titanic and how it was holed by an iceberg, east of Canada, on the night of 15 April 1912.

There are countless books, movies and documentaries about the event.

But although the wreck site has been the target of repeated study since its discovery in 1985, there still isn’t what could be described as a definitive map.

And while the bow and stern sections of the broken ship are reasonably well understood, there are extensive areas of the surrounding debris field that have received only cursory inspection.

Two six-tonne remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) intend to put that right. One will be fitted with an array of ultra-high-definition optical cameras and a special lighting system; the other will carry a sensor package that includes a lidar (laser) scanner.

Together, they’ll track back and forth across a 1.3km-by-0.97km section of seafloor.

Evan Kovacs, who’s in charge of the imaging programme, says his camera systems should produce millimetre resolution.

“If all of the weather gods, the computer gods, the ROV gods, the camera gods – if all those gods align, we should be able to capture Titanic and the wreck site in as close to digital perfection as you can get. You would be able to quite literally count grains of sand,” he told BBC News.

There’s huge anticipation for what the magnetometer aboard the sensor ROV might produce. This is a first for Titanic.

The instrument will detect all the metals at the wreck site, even material that is buried out of sight in the sediment.

“It would be an absolute dream to determine what has happened with Titanic’s bow below the seafloor,” explained geophysics engineer Alison Proctor.

“Hopefully, we’ll be able to deduce whether or not the bow was crushed when it hit the seabed, or if it might actually extend down well into the sediment intact.”

The team wants to review the state of some well known objects in the debris field, such as the boilers that spilled out as the opulent steamliner broke in half.

There’s the desire, too, to locate items thought to have been sighted on previous visits. These include an electric candelabra, which in its day would have been a fascinating curio, as well as the possibility of a second Steinway grand piano.

The musical instrument’s wooden surround would have long since decayed away, but the cast iron plate, or frame, that held the strings should still be there, perhaps even some of the keys.

“For me, it’s the passengers’ possessions, especially their bags, that are of greatest interest,” said Tomasina Ray, who curates the collection of Titanic artefacts held by the company.

“It’s their belongings – if we are able to retrieve more in the future – that help flesh out their stories. For so many passengers, they are just names on a list, and it’s a way to keep them meaningful.”

This will be RMS Titanic Inc’s ninth visit to the wreck site. The firm has attracted controversy in recent years with its stated desire to try to bring up part of the Marconi radio equipment that transmitted the distress calls on the night of the sinking.

It won’t happen on this expedition but if and when it does occur, it would mean extracting an object from inside the disintegrating ship.

For many, Titanic is the gravesite to the 1,500 who died that night in 1912 and should not be touched, its interior especially.

“We get that and understand it,” said company researcher James Penca.

“We dive to Titanic to learn as much as we can from her; and like you should with any archaeological site, we do it with the utmost respect. But to leave her alone, to just let her passengers and crew be lost to history – that would be the biggest tragedy of all.”

Guess who’s back, back again?

Eminem’s latest album, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce), has been released and is being met with mixed reviews by critics.

In the US rapper’s 12th album, his alter ego Slim Shady is killed off – the artwork shows Shady in a body bag, and in the music video for Tobey, Eminem takes a chainsaw to him.

Clash called the album “a mixed bag” and described it as “at once an effective piece of fan service, while also being a record that disappoints”.

“It doesn’t quite feel like an ending, but neither does it feel like a continuation,” Robin Murray wrote.

“A mixed, often muddled album, it features some of Eminem’s best rapping in a decade – those fast, skippy-yet-intricate flows will never fail to thrill – but his pen is often blunted.”

Ahead of the release, Eminem told fans this is a “conceptual album” and the songs should be listened to in order.

The 19 tracks include previously released singles Tobey and Houdini, as well as a sequel to his 1999 hit Guilty Conscience with Dr Dre.

Billboard ranked the latter song as one of the best on the new album and said “it’s not the original, but is a worthy second coming”.

“At one point, Slim Shady puts Marshall on blast for creating him as an alter-ego to stir up controversy and essentially be a shield to say jarring things that he didn’t really have the courage to stand on,” Michael Saponara wrote.

USA Today said the 51-year-old is a “lyrical pugilist throughout, except when he turns misty-eyed dad rapping about daughter Hailie Jade”.

His song Temporary starts with old recordings of the rapper and his daughter talking as a child.

Melissa Ruggieri said it was the most memorable song on the album “because it gives Eminem permission to drop the shtick and explore his vulnerability – which isn’t often apparent elsewhere on the album”.

Eminem calls on his 28-year-old daughter to “be strong” and that he will always be her rock.

On his track Fuel, Eminem references the multiple sexual assault allegations against fellow rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs.

“I’m like an R-A-P-E-R/I got so many S-As/S-As/Wait, he didn’t just spell the word rapper and leave out a ‘P’, did he?” the lyrics say.

Pitchfork said Eminem, real name Marshall Mathers III, “reckons with his controversies while taking pains to create new one”.

The track Antichrist “take pains to offend as crudely as possible” with references to pronouns, woke society and “the harrowing video of Diddy attacking his then-girlfriend Cassie in a hotel in 2016”.

Mr Combs, one of rap’s most successful moguls, apologised for his “inexcusable” actions shown in that video, and has denied all allegations of sexual assault.

A review by the Independent gave the album two stars and said the rapper was “punching downwards, joylessly and without inspiration”.

“Much of The Death Of Slim Shady resembles a Telegraph op-ed: the ham-fisted mashing of people’s buttons, the blethering about ‘the PC police’ and ‘Gen Z’ coming to get him. Anything to get a reaction,” Stevie Chick wrote.

Rescuers are searching for more than 60 missing people in Nepal after a massive landslide swept two buses into a river.

Some spoke of their terrifying ordeal, with one saying he was “thrown out of the window of the bus into the river”.

Only three people appeared to have survived the accident, which took place in the early hours of Friday.

Authorities said the landslide had been triggered by heavy rains.

Nepal, along with other parts of South Asia, is in the midst of the monsoon season and has seen heavy rainfall in recent weeks, triggering floods and landslides that have affected millions.

The accident took place at 03:30 local time (21:45 GMT Thursday) on Friday in Chitwan along the Narayanghat-Mugling highway, about 100km (60 miles) from the capital Kathmandu.

Survivor Nandan Das told the BBC’s Nepali Service that the bus had been on the road for about an hour and a half when it “started rolling down all of a sudden into the river… I felt like I was going to die”.

He said he managed to swim to safety even though it was “very dark at night… I found the river full of huge boulders and some foliage.

“We were chanting the name of God and swam and swam and swam. God saved us.

“I did not know if I was swimming out to the river or inward… but I came to the bank at last. Then I started climbing the slope.”

He said that he and another survivor reached the highway at the same time, and were shortly joined by a third person. They managed to get help from a driver, who called the police.

Another survivor, Jogishwar Raya, described the bus as “trembling and overturning four or five times before plunging into the river”.

He said he managed to swim out of the bus, but his family members were still missing.

“My son, daughter-in-law , grandson, and a granddaughter were on the same bus. Out of five family members, I was alone to survive; the rest vanished,” he said.

Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has called for all government agencies to join in the search and rescue operation.

Scores of people are estimated to have died this monsoon season, with key highways blocked and some bridges swept away by swollen rivers.

Authorities have urged residents in the south-east of the country to be on alert as the Koshi river, which courses through Nepal and India, is flowing above the danger level.

Nepal also often sees deadly crashes due to poorly maintained roads and reckless driving.

Joe Biden took to the stage at his Thursday night news conference with everything on the line – his presidency, his re-election hopes, his political life.

If those were the stakes, he barely acknowledged them at the hour-long session to mark the end of a Nato summit, having earlier introduced Ukraine’s President Zelensky as “President Putin” at a separate event.

The news conference was his first unscripted appearance after a disastrous debate with his rival Donald Trump, leading to calls from several Democratic politicians and donors for him to drop out of the race for president.

Mr Biden, 81, has faced continuous questions over his age and ability to serve another term, which intensified after the debate.

But at the highly anticipated news conference, he dismissed the concerns about his campaign that were posed again and again by a room full of reporters, and promised that he was fighting not for his legacy, but to finish the job he started when he took office in 2021.

“If I slow down and can’t get the job done, that’s a sign I shouldn’t be doing it,” he said. “But there’s no indication of that yet.”

Depending on perspective, it was either a sign of dogged determination or of a man in denial about how dire his situation has become.

Minutes after the news conference finished, several more Democratic members of Congress publicly called on Mr Biden to step down, joining at least a dozen other lawmakers in the president’s own party who have done so.

The question for Joe Biden’s campaign is whether the floodgates will now open, or if the tide will hold.

The situation will not be helped by two excruciating gaffes that will be remembered by anyone who watched.

In his very first answer, he called his own Vice-President Kamala Harris “Vice-President Trump” – a painful faceplant in front of a national television audience.

That came just an hour after another headline-grabbing mistake at a Nato event, when Mr Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin”, prompting loud gasps in the audience.

He corrected the first verbal misstep involving Ukraine’s leader quickly. The second one he didn’t catch, even as some reporters in the room murmured in surprise and several of his top Cabinet secretaries sat stone-faced in the front row of the audience.

Those moments – the only major stumbles in an otherwise steady if not vigorous, appearance – will surely prompt nervous Democrats to wonder if there are more gaffes to come if the president presses ahead with his campaign.

But for now at least, Mr Biden seemed the happy warrior, insisting he will push on. He laughed and smiled as he was peppered with questions, and said he could keep up with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, even if the hoarseness and cough that had been on display during his debate two weeks ago still appeared to linger.

He again insisted he didn’t need cognitive tests, telling reporters that if he even saw “two doctors or seven”, his critics wouldn’t be satisfied.

The election campaign, he said, had barely started, and he again repeated that he was confident he could beat Donald Trump in November’s election.

The Democratic delegates who will back him officially as the party’s nominee at next month’s convention were free to change their minds as they pleased, he said, before mock whispering: “It’s not going to happen.”

He said he would consider stepping aside if his staff gave him data that he couldn’t win, but that polls still show the race a dead heat.

In that regard, he is on firm ground. An Ipsos survey released earlier on Thursday, for instance, had Mr Biden only one point behind his opponent – well within the margin of error. If there’s one thing that has been clear since the start of the year, support for the two candidates has remained remarkably stable despite unprecedented drama surrounding both men.

Polling alone won’t calm the panic that has set in among many Democratic officials, however, and the storm clouds that linger around Biden’s campaign won’t be so easily dispelled.

More Democratic politicians are waiting in the wings, according to reports, poised to announce their own break with the president, having waited until the conclusion of this Nato summit to voice their concerns.

And that’s just the first round of tests for the embattled president. He has another high-profile sit-down interview, with NBC’s Lester Holt, on Monday. Donors are anxious, and earlier on Thursday several reports suggested that even figures in the president’s own campaign were plotting ways to usher their candidate toward the exit.

Despite all of this, Mr Biden made clear that it will be a challenging task to pry the nomination away from him. The 81-year-old man who at times gripped the lectern with two hands and insisted he was the “best-qualified person” to run the country is not going to exit the stage quietly.

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• GLOBAL: What Moscow and Beijing think of rematch
• ANALYSIS: Could US economy be doing too well?
• EXPLAINER: RFK Jr and others running for president
• VOTERS: US workers in debt to buy groceries

Celebrities from across the globe are arriving in Mumbai for the wedding of the youngest son of Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani.

Anant Ambani is expected to tie the knot with Radhika Merchant, daughter of Indian pharma tycoons Viren and Shaila Merchant, in a traditional Hindu ceremony in Mumbai city on Friday.

The wedding events began with parties and celebrations in March.

The months-long festivities have been attended by top Bollywood stars, musicians and business tycoons like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

On Friday, reality TV star Kim Kardashian, former UK PM Tony Blair and Nigerian rapper Rema were among those who landed in India’s financial capital to attend the festivities.

The couple’s wedding celebrations are likely to continue over several days. Parties have been reportedly planned for Saturday and Sunday and a grand reception is scheduled for Monday.

A politician in South Korea is being criticised for making dangerous and unsubstantiated comments after linking a rise in male suicides to the increasingly “dominant” role of women in society.

In a report, Seoul City councillor Kim Ki-duck argued women’s increased participation in the workforce over the years had made it harder for men to get jobs and to find women who wanted to marry them.

He said the country had recently “begun to change into a female-dominant society” and that this might “partly be responsible for an increase in male suicide attempts”.

South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates among the world’s rich countries but also has one of the worst records on gender equality.

Councillor Kim’s comments have been criticised as the latest in a series of out-of-touch remarks made by male politicians.

Councillor Kim, from the Democratic Party, arrived at his assessment when analysing data on the number of suicide attempts made at bridges along Seoul’s Han river.

The report, published on the city council’s official website, showed that the number of suicide attempts along the river had risen from 430 in 2018 to 1,035 in 2023, and of those trying to take their lives the proportion who were men had climbed from 67% to 77%.

Suicide prevention experts have expressed concern over Mr Kim’s report.

“It is dangerous and unwise to make claims like this without sufficient evidence,” Song In Han, a mental health professor at Seoul’s Yonsei University, told the BBC.

He pointed out that globally more men took their lives than women. In many countries, including the UK, suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50.

Even so, Prof Song said the reasons behind the sharp rise in men attempting suicide in Seoul needed to be scientifically studied, adding it was “very regrettable” that the councillor had made it about gender conflict.

In South Korea there is a substantial gulf between the number of men and women in full-time employment, with women disproportionately working temporary or part-time jobs. The gender pay gap is slowly narrowing, but still women are paid on average 29% less than men.

In recent years an anti-feminist movement has surged, led by disillusioned young men, who argue they have been disadvantaged by attempts to improve women’s lives.

Appearing to echo such views, Councillor Kim’s report concluded that the way to overcome “the female-domination phenomenon” was to improve people’s awareness of gender equality so that “men and women can enjoy equal opportunities”.

Koreans took to the social media platform X to denounce the councillor’s remarks as “unsubstantiated” and “misogynistic”, with one user questioning whether they were living in a parallel universe.

The Justice Party accused the councillor of “easily shifting the blame to women in Korean society who are struggling to escape gender discrimination”. It has called on him to retract his remarks and instead “properly analyse” the causes of the problem.

When approached for comment by the BBC, Councillor Kim said he had “not intended to be critical of the female-dominated society”, and was merely giving his personal view about some of its consequences.

However, his comments follow a number of unscientific and sometimes bizarre political proposals aimed at tackling some of South Korea’s most pressing social issues, including mental illness, gender violence and the lowest birth rate in the world.

Last month, another Seoul councillor in his 60s published a series of articles on the authority’s website encouraging young women to take up gymnastics and practise pelvic floor exercises in order to raise the birth rate.

At the same time, a government think tank recommended that girls start school earlier than boys, so that classmates would be more attracted to each other by the time they were ready to marry.

“Such comments encapsulate just how pervasive misogyny is in South Korea,” said Yuri Kim, director of the Korean Women’s Trade Union. She accused politicians and policymakers of not even trying to understand the challenges women faced, preferring to scapegoat them instead.

“Blaming women for entering the workforce will only prolong the imbalances in our society,” she told the BBC.

Currently women account for 20% of South Korea’s members of parliament, and 29% of all local councillors.

Seoul City Council told the BBC there was no process in place to vet what politicians published on its official website unless the content was illegal. It said individuals were solely responsible for their content and would face any consequences at the next election.

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Nigerian graduate Olotu Olanrewaju is facing a choice between remaining in the country he loves and the possibility of a better life elsewhere.

He adores the culture, food, music and family mentality at home, especially how people look out for each other and share common goals.

But the 24-year-old electrical engineer feels he is being held back professionally.

“I’m looking for greener pastures and better opportunities, rather than getting stuck here in Nigeria,” he tells the BBC’s What in the World podcast, adding that he thinks his degree would be “more appreciated” abroad.

There is also the feeling that the lack of reliable basic infrastructure – causing things like power cuts – as well as security concerns, corruption and poor governance, all create unnecessary barriers to getting on with life.

Mr Olanrewaju is one of tens of thousands of young, disenchanted Nigerians contemplating the move to join many others overseas. It’s a trend known by the Yoruba word “japa” meaning “to escape”.

The BBC contacted several government officials for a response to what he and other young Nigerians told us but has not received a reply.

• LISTEN: What in the World japa episode
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The idea of emigrating from Nigeria is not new.

Since the 1980s, many middle-class Nigerians have sought economic opportunities abroad, but the scale and urgency now feels different and japa is becoming increasingly popular with Gen Z and millennials.

An African Polling Institute survey from 2022 found that 69% of Nigerians aged 18-35 would relocate given the opportunity – despite a slight fall from 2021. In 2019 the figure was just 39%.

On social media, young Nigerians have taken to posting about their japa experiences.

While some describe how they miss home, others show off the appeal of relocating, and encourage their peers to do the same.

But leaving is a pricey venture.

The rising cost of living, and the depreciation of the currency, the naira, has made an expensive process even harder – but also pushed more people to try to leave.

It is far easier for professionals and university graduates who have the skills and qualifications needed to secure well-paying jobs and visas in the West, as well as the finances to start a new life in a country where the cost of living is far higher than at home.

As well as those seeking legal routes, many Nigerians try to move abroad without visas, by crossing the Sahara Desert or the Mediterranean Sea. Thousands of people die each year on the journey and those who make it often struggle to find work or somewhere decent to live.

For years, Mr Olanrewaju and his parents have been saving up. He hopes to move to Germany or Spain and has signed up to German classes to improve his chances.

He is not the first in his family to tread this path.

Two years ago, his brother Daniel, now 27, managed to swap Nigeria’s sticky heat for the cooler shores of the Scottish city of Aberdeen.

He works there as a photographer and social worker, and although he finds it a bit expensive, he tells his brother about the benefits of Scotland’s infrastructure – including the fact that people can rely on the electricity, water and transport systems working.

Social worker Oluwatobi Abodunrin, 29, moved to London last year and also feels positive about her move. She says Nigeria is filled with “passionate, active youths” who want something more from their careers.

“I decided to leave Nigeria because I wasn’t getting what I want,” she says.

“We are highly talented, we want to be recognised, we want our voice to be heard and we want to be respected.”

She also acknowledges the difficulty of leaving friends and family behind.

“It was a tough decision to leave home. To leave people who are sweet, kind, generous and passionate. But I’m happy I made the decision and it’s going well.”

There are more than 270,000 Nigerians like Ms Abodunrin living in the UK, according to government statistics.

It is one of the most popular destinations for japa, with the number of Nigerians granted UK work visas quadrupling since 2019 as a result of post-Brexit immigration rule changes.

However, the UK has responded to this increase by tightening the rules for those seeking work visas.

The US and Canada are also highly desirable.

Canada has seen a surge in migration, with the number of Nigerians seeking residency there tripling since 2015, a phenomenon known as the “Canada Rush”.

Back in Nigeria, zoology student Elizabeth Ademuyi Anuoluwapo recognises the difficulties in leaving, but feels it is the only way to get the financial stability she needs.

“I’d miss my people, my food, my friends, my family. The vibe here is very cosy,” she says. “Maybe I’d go for a few years and then come back.”

Japa has hit the medical profession especially hard.

The Nigerian Medical Association said, in 2022, at least 50 doctors were leaving the country every single week.

This has left an already overloaded healthcare system struggling.

The government has said it will train more people to fill these gaps and backed a new bill that would require medical graduates to work in Nigeria for a minimum of five years after completing their training. It was fiercely opposed by doctors’ unions.

A similar directive has also been issued for nurses, to get them to work in the country for at least two years before trying to leave.

Some like Dr Vongdip Nankpah, from the University of Abuja teaching hospital, think it is important to stay.

He believes that career goals are about more than an individual’s interest – they should involve the community and the value that a person can contribute to society.

“If I’m going to maximise my medical practice, I’d rather remain in Nigeria to see if we can better the country and the region,” he says.

“These are the things that are still driving my reasons for remaining in the country.”

But despite the emotional attachment, Mr Olanrewaju does not feel he owes anything to Nigeria and would not feel guilty for leaving.

“Most of my personal growth and gains, I worked for them myself,” he says.

Instead, he would see himself as a representative of Nigerians abroad, standing for those who might not have the same opportunities to move overseas.

For those who can afford it, japa is the ultimate choice.

It promises a future of adventure, ambition and wealth, but also risks breaking ties with the past.

Like many Nigerian students, Mr Olanrewaju is now measuring those benefits against the cost of what he is leaving behind.

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Every day, for the last seven years, Arun Kumar has set up his fruit stall on a busy Mumbai street.

It’s not an easy way to make a living.

“Being a street vendor is a challenge. There’s the fear of being robbed or, as I am not a licensed vendor, the local body can come and dismantle my store anytime,” he says.

But over the past four years at least one aspect of his work has become easier.

“Prior to Covid everything was in cash. But now everyone pays with UPI. Scan the code and the payment is done within seconds.

“No issues of handling cash, giving change to customers. It has made my life and business smooth,” he says.

UPI, or to give it its full name the Unified Payments Interface, was launched in 2016 in a collaboration between India’s central bank and the nation’s banking industry.

It’s an app-based instant payment system, which allows users to send and receive money, pay bills and authorise payments in a single step – no need to enter bank details or any other personal information. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s free.

It has become so popular that India is now the biggest real-time payments market.

In May, UPI recorded 14 billion transactions, up from nine billion the year before.

But the popularity and ease of use has made it a rich feeding ground for scammers.

“While digital payments are convenient, they do come with vulnerabilities,” says Shashank Shekhar, founder of the Delhi-based Future Crime Research Foundation.

Mr Shekhar says that scammers use a variety of ways to trick people, including persuading them to share their UPI pin number, which is needed to authorise payments.

Some scammers have also created fake UPI apps, that are clones of legitimate banking apps, and then steal login details or other valuable information.

“The pace at which digital transformation took place in the country means unfortunately digital literacy and safe internet practice could not catch up,” says Mr Shekhar.

He says that between January 2020 and June 2023 almost half of all financial fraud involved the use of the UPI system.

According to government figures there were more than 95,000 cases of fraud involving UPI in the financial year ending April 2023, up from 77,000 in the previous year.

Shivkali was one such victim. She had always wanted to own a scooter, but they were beyond her budget.

However, earlier in the year the 22-year-old, who lives in Bihar state in northeastern India, spotted one for sale on Facebook that looked like a great deal.

“I grabbed the opportunity without thinking,” she says.

A couple of clicks later and she was talking to the owner, who said that for $23 he would send over the vehicle papers.

That went smoothly, so Shivkali continued to send the owner money, via instant transfers. She eventually ended up paying $200, but the scooter (also commonly called a Scooty in India), was never delivered.

Shivkali realised she had been scammed.

“I did not think I could be cheated, as I have some education background and know what is happing in the world. But scammers are smart. They have an art of speaking to convince the opposite person,” she says.

The government and the central bank are looking at ways to protect UPI users from scammers.

But at the moment, if a victim wants compensation, they have to approach their bank.

“The problem is deep rooted,” says Dr Durgesh Pandey, an expert in financial crime.

“Most of the onus lies with banks and telecom companies. They are lax in making identity checks, that’s why the fraudster can’t be traced.

“But the challenge for banks particularly is that they have to balance between inclusivity, ease of business and enforcement of identity checks. If they are too rigid, the vulnerable section of society will remain without banking facilities.”

But Dr Pandey argues that in most cases of fraud, the bank is not totally to blame.

“It’s a complex question because the problem lies with banks, but it’s the victim who is giving his credentials in most case. I would say both victim and bank should bear the loss.”

Despite those problems, UPI is being promoted in rural areas where access to banking services can be difficult.

Poonam Untwal from Rajasthan runs a guidance centre which helps people use the internet and digital banking.

“Most of us are not that educated, nor know the proper use of smartphones. I teach them that phones are no longer a device just to talk to people but banks at their fingertips,” she says.

She believes that UPI will help develop the local economy.

“Many women like me have a small business that we run from our home. Now we can receive and send money with UPI. People who don’t have smart phones come to my centre to get their transactions done,” she says.

As well as making inroads into rural areas, UPI is spreading overseas.

Retailers in Bhutan, Mauritius, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka and UAE will take UPI payments.

And this year, France become the first European country to accept UPI payments, starting with tickets to the Eiffel Tower.

Back in Mumbai, Mr Kumar is happy that he no longer has to use cash, but remains wary.

If he can’t get a good internet connection then customers can, by accident or design, make off without paying.

“For a small vendor like me it [UPI] made receiving money very easy. But I am always scared of fraud. I keep hearing in the news how the UPI frauds are increasing. Hopefully some mechanisms are invented so a small vendor like me doesn’t face losses.”

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton has gone from rough sleeping as a teenager to visiting the Prince of Wales in Windsor Castle to give him advice on tackling homelessness.

She was able to give her own story to Prince William as proof that homeless people should not be “written off”.

“I sit in front of you now with a job, a home, a family and a PhD,” said Sabrina, who works as a fire service chief.

Prince William marked the first year of his Homewards project with a visit to Lambeth in south London where he pleged: “It is possible to end homelessness.”

The prince delivered the message that there is nothing inevitable about homelessness and that it shouldn’t be normalised.

Meeting Homewards representatives in Brixton he said: “Homelessness is a complex societal issue, and one that touches the lives of far too many people in our society. However, I truly believe that it can be ended.”

He spoke of the importance of “shifting perspectives” about homeless people and the need to “focus on prevention, rather than simply managing the crisis”.

Homewards is a five-year project based around six areas around the UK.

That includes Newport in South Wales – and as a 15- and 16-year-old that was where Sabrina was sleeping rough, after the death of a parent and problems at home.

Her way out was selling the Big Issue – “I credit them with saving my life” – and once she had secure accommodation she was able to get a job in the fire service, which became her career.

She used this “lived experience” to tell Prince William and the Homewards project about what was needed.

“There were lots of closed doors in my face,” she said. Even when support was meant to be available, she said in practice it could be hard for homeless people to have the confidence to access it.

Or there can be practical barriers. She said she relied on her dog, called Menace, but many hostels wouldn’t let people stay with pets.

Sabrina also warned of how homelessness was linked to the “pernicious” long-term impact of poverty.

She went on to become chief fire officer of West Sussex and has spoken widely about her own journey, including this latest role as an advocate for Homewards.

Sabrina said Prince William showed a lot of “empathy” towards the issue of homelessness, which she suggested reflected some of the “trauma” in his early life.

At the event in Brixton, Sabrina spoke alongside Chris Lynam, who recalled the intense “loneliness” that accompanied his own homelessness and drug addiction.

“It’s a very isolating experience… society is quite hostile to homeless people,” said Chris, who is now supporting Homewards’ work in Sheffield.

Prince William described it as an “honour” to hear Chris talk about his experiences.

The homelessness project, operating in Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Lambeth, Newport, Sheffield and Northern Ireland, wants to find successful approaches that can be replicated elsewhere.

There are links with employers about helping people into work. A partnership with Homebase provides starter packs of furniture to help those moving from homelessness into accommodation.

There are efforts to identify sofa-surfing and addressing links between relationship breakdown and homelessness.

Putting housing officers in schools has been tried to identify young people who might be at risk.

Through the Duchy of Cornwall there are 24 homes being built with “wrap-around support” for people leaving homelessness – and Prince William is now involved in developing further plans.

There is a push to change attitudes towards homelessness – and Sabrina talked about the need to get rid of the stigma. She said that for 20 years she hadn’t told anyone about her own experiences, before becoming such a public speaker about homelessness.

Matt Downie, chief executive of Crisis, says the Homewards project can challenge the “cynicism and fatalism” that says homelessness is inevitable.

He says that even though the big picture has seen homelessness getting worse, the evidence exists to prevent it.

Finland is given as an example of a sustained drive to end homelessness, with the claim that there are now only about 150 homeless families. In contrast in the UK, there are more than 100,000 households categorised as homeless.

There have also been questions about whether a wealthy royal should be pronouncing on homelessness.

The anti-monarchy group Republic has previously described it as “crass and hypocritical”.

But George Anderson, a Big Issue seller and medical researcher in London, welcomes that Prince William has used his high public profile to talk about homelessness.

“He encourages people who are distant from homelessness to feel empathy and care,” says George.

“Given the pomp and ceremony around his official role, it is easy for people to question as to what he really knows about homelessness,” says George.

“I am sure that he is aware of that whilst also knowing he is in a position, like his mother, to highlight the plight of homelessness to the media.

“His mother would have experienced similar, being photographed in a tiara at a ball one day, whilst serving soup in a homeless kitchen the next,” says George, who sees the prince’s interest as being linked to Princess Diana bringing her sons to homelessness charities when they were children.

An Australian soldier and her husband have been arrested and each charged with spying for Russia.

Investigators say the couple – both Russian-born Australian citizens – obtained Australian Defence Force (ADF) material to share with Moscow.

However, Australian police say “no significant compromise” of military secrets has been identified.

It is the first time stricter foreign interference laws – introduced by Australia in 2018 – have been used to lay espionage charges.

Kira Korolev, a 40-year-old army private, and her 62-year-old husband Igor Korolev faced court in Brisbane on Friday, each on one count of preparing for an espionage offence – which carries a maximum 15-year jail sentence.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had been “briefed extensively” by the nation’s security agencies but would not comment on the case directly as it is now before the courts.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Reece Kershaw said the couple had been in Australia for more than a decade before the alleged offending and had both become citizens several years ago.

Igor worked as a self-employed labourer, and Kira was an information systems technician in the army, a role for which she had obtained a security clearance, police say.

Mr Kershaw alleged she secretly travelled to Russia while on leave from the ADF, then instructed Igor to access her work account and send sensitive material so that she could forward it on to Russian authorities.

An investigation in to whether any of the material was ever delivered to them is still underway, Mr Kershaw said, adding that the charges could be upgraded.

Both Mr Kershaw and Australia’s spy agency boss Mike Burgess – who addressed media together on Friday – declined to answer questions about the nature of the documents or how authorities were tipped off about the alleged crimes.

But Mr Burgess said that the ongoing threat of espionage is “real”.

“Multiple countries are seeking to steal Australia’s secrets. We cannot be naive, and we cannot be complacent.”

“If you are spying in this country, we are looking for you. If you are being spied on in this country, we are looking out for you,” he added.

Mr Kershaw stressed that Australia’s allies could be “confident” that the country would “continue to identify and disrupt espionage and foreign interference activity”.

In a statement, the ADF said it was aware one of its members had been arrested and that it “takes all breaches of security seriously”.

A pod of 77 pilot whales has died after washing ashore on a beach in Orkney in what could be the biggest mass stranding for decades.

The British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) had established 12 of the animals at Tresness Beach on the island of Sanday were still alive when they came out of the water.

However the decision was taken to euthanise them after refloating efforts failed.

The pod included male whales up to seven metres (22ft) long as well as females, calves and juveniles.

Experts say it is too early to know what has caused the stranding, but it is likely one of the whales got into trouble and the rest of the pod tried to help.

Members of the public are being asked to stay away from the area while post mortem examinations are carried out.

It is thought to be the largest stranding event in Scotland since at least 1995, when the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (SMASS) was founded – though strandings of a similar scale have been seen in recent years.

Last year an entire pod of 55 pilot whales died following a stranding on Lewis.

Only 15 of the whales were alive when they were washed ashore. One was successfully re-floated while the rest had to be euthanised.

Between 60-70 of the animals came into shallow waters in Sutherland in 2011.

According to the Natural History Museum, the largest UK stranding took place in 1927 when 126 out of more than 130 false killer whales died in the Dornoch Firth in the Highlands.

Experts from the BDMLR, the Scottish SPCA and marine vets from the Scottish mainland travelled to Sanday to assess whether any of the whales could be saved.

The area was cut off by the high tide and the sand on the beach where they were stranded proved too soft to allow the mammals to be righted.

The whales needed to be moved back into an upright position as quickly as possible if there is to be any chance of saving them.

But the soft sand meant the whales fell back over when the rescuers attempted to right them.

Emma Neave-Webb from the BDMLR said early on that while these experiences are difficult, the thinking had to be “realistic”.

BDMLR medics were brought in from mainland Orkney and Inverness to help with the rescue attempt, but Ms Neave-Webb said it appeared the whales had been stranded for “quite some time”.

She described the scene as “really quite horrible” and “hugely emotional”.

Rescuers attempted to keep the whales alive by pouring sea water over them, but the decision was later taken to euthanise them.

A spokesperson for Orkney Islands Council said discussions were taking place with community representatives on how best to dispose of the bodies.

They said: “In previous circumstances where whales have beached on our shores and subsequently died, the approach from our Environmental Health team around disposing of the body has been to allow nature to take its course – with the public advised to stay away from the area.

“Our assessment in this case, given the scale and the likely public health implications, is that more definite action will need to be taken, for example burying them where they are or removing the bodies to a large grave site elsewhere.”

Andrew Brownlow of the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme said mass strandings of this scale are becoming more common in Scotland.

He told BBC News: “It used to be quite unusual to have a mass stranding event, certainly of this size.

“But over the last ten years or so we have seen an increase both in the number of mass stranding events around Scotland and also the size of the mass and the number of animals that it involves.

“So that is slightly concerning and that might be because there are just more animals out there, or it could be that there are more hazards that these animals are exposed to.”

A selection of the week’s best photos from across the African continent:

Kenya’s police chief Japhet Koome has resigned, following weeks of violent protests against proposed tax hikes in which more than 40 people died.

Human rights groups have accused police of shooting dozens of protestors, some of them fatally, and abducting or arbitrarily arresting hundreds more.

The resignation comes a day after President William Ruto sacked most of his cabinet, following pressure from the protest movement which is largely coordinated online by young Kenyans.

Two weeks ago protesters stormed parliament, shortly after legislators passed the controversial finance bill. Police responded by opening fire on demonstrators in the streets.

President Ruto later withdrew the bill but that has failed to satisfy the demonstrators, who want him to step down and are planning more protests to demand further reforms.

Deputy police chief Douglas Kanja takes over running the force with immediate effect, the Kenyan presidency has said.

In the midst of the biggest crisis of his two-year presidency, Mr Ruto earlier this week met opposition leader Raila Odinga and announced plans to form a 150-member dialogue panel to help find a solution to the country’s problems.

After sacking key cabinet members on Thursday including the attorney-general, the president said he would now consult widely in order to set up a broad-based government.

The proposed tax measures were intended to help ease the country’s debt burden of over $80bn (£63bn). About 60% of Kenya’s collected revenues goes to servicing debt.

But protesters have insisted the government should first cut spending, saying there was too much waste and corruption. In response to this demand, the presidency last week announced a number of austerity measures.

• Kenyan president sacks cabinet after anti-tax protests
• Kenyan president’s humbling shows power of African youth
• Historic first as president takes on Kenya’s online army
• Pay-rise freeze for Kenyan MPs after public anger

US actress Shelley Duvall, known for films like The Shining, Annie Hall and Nashville, has died at the age of 75.

Her partner Dan Gilroy confirmed the news to The Hollywood Reporter.

“My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend left us. Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley,” he said, according to the outlet.

She died in her sleep of complications from diabetes at her home in Texas, Gilroy said.

Duvall’s other credits included 1977 drama 3 Women, directed by Robert Altman, for which she won the Cannes Film Festival’s best actress award and was nominated for a Bafta.

Three years later, she starred as Olive Oyl opposite Robin Williams in Altman’s musical version of Popeye.

But Duvall fell out of favour in Hollywood and was off screens for two decades, before making her comeback in 2023’s The Forest Hills.

With her large brown eyes and offbeat charisma, Duvall was a distinctive and compelling presence.

She began her career, and her association with Altman, in 1970 dark comedy Brewster McCloud, and the pair reunited for McCabe and Mrs Miller in 1971.

After filming her performance as a woman who falls for a 1930s bank robber in their next movie, Thieves Like Us, Altman told her: “I knew you were good, but I didn’t know you were great.”

She said that remark was “the reason I stuck with it and became an actress”.

The director stuck with her, once saying she “was able to swing all sides of the pendulum: charming, silly, sophisticated, pathetic, even beautiful”.

Altman cast her again in 1975’s Nashville, his satire of US society, politics and country music.

Their next collaboration, 3 Women, saw Duvall play a talkative, trend-following health spa attendant. The Guardian’s Anne Billson ranked it as her best role, and “quite simply one of the greatest performances of the 1970s”.

Meanwhile, also in 1977, Duvall memorably played Pam, a Rolling Stone reporter who went on a date with Woody Allen’s Alvy in Annie Hall.

Her best-known role was perhaps Wendy, the wife of Jack Nicholson’s terrifying hotel caretaker in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic The Shining.

Filming was an ordeal. “I had to cry 12 hours a day, all day long, the last nine months straight, five or six days a week,” she once recalled.

After that, Duvall’s film roles included Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits and Roxanne with Steve Martin.

She also set up her own production companies, and made and hosted beloved 1980s children’s TV show Faerie Tale Theatre.

Her acting roles diminished in the 1990s, with Jane Campion’s The Portrait of a Lady the pick of the crop, and she dropped off the radar in 2002.

The New York Times attributed her apparent disappearance to the impact of a 1994 earthquake that damaged her Los Angeles home, and the stress of her brother having cancer.

Discussing her prolonged absence from the screen, she told the paper in May she had been the victim of a fickle film industry. “I was a star. I had leading roles. People think it’s just ageing, but it’s not. It’s violence,” she said.

Asked to explain, she said: “How would you feel if people were really nice, and then, suddenly, on a dime they turn on you?

“You would never believe it unless it happens to you. That’s why you get hurt, because you can’t really believe it’s true.”

Concerns about her health were raised when she appeared on the TV talk show Dr Phil in 2016 and told him: “I’m very sick. I need help.”

She also talked about receiving messages from a “shapeshifting” Robin Williams following his death, and talked about malevolent forces who were out to do her harm, the paper said.

Speaking about that period, Gilroy told the New York Times she had become “paranoid and just kind of delusional”.

Asked by the paper why she had agreed to return to the screen in The Forest Hills, she replied: “I wanted to act again. And then this guy kept calling, and so I wound up doing it.”

Novelist Nicole Flattery wrote in the Financial Times in 2023 that her return showed her magic had remained intact.

In an article dubbing her the “ultimate film star”, Flattery summed up her talent, writing: “She’s a master at playing characters who act happy when they’re sad, their daffiness masking depth.”

After months of celebrations, the wedding ceremony of the son of Asia’s richest man is finally under way in the Indian city of Mumbai.

Anant Ambani, son of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, is tying the knot with Radhika Merchant, daughter of pharma tycoons Viren and Shaila Merchant.

The four-day wedding extravaganza is the final stop in a string of lavish parties the family has hosted since March.

Reality TV star Kim Kardashian and former UK PM Tony Blair are among the international guests attending the ceremony.

On Friday, the groom set off from his residence in a luxurious red car covered in strings of white flowers, as joyful guests danced around it.

A convoy of cars, also decorated with flowers and carrying family members, followed him amid music and cheers.

The grand procession, known as the baraat, culminated at the wedding venue – a convention centre owned by the family.

There, the family gathered for another round of singing and dancing along with several Bollywood celebrities.

Also spotted in the crowd was legendary wrestler John Cena, who was seen hugging and congratulating family members of the host.

Report say the bride and the groom will exchange garlands to kick off the wedding. The pheras – the main wedding ritual of the couple walking around the sacred fire seven times – is set for 21:30 (1600GMT).

Key roads in the city are sealed off for several hours a day until the festivities end on Monday.

Social media is awash with updates on the wedding, with people sharing minute-by-minute details of Bollywood stars and celebrities arriving to take part in the festivities.

A formal ceremony where the guests will bless the newly-weds will reportedly take place on Saturday, followed by a grand party where unconfirmed reports say pop stars Drake, Lana Del Ray and Adele are likely to perform.

The months of lavish celebrations have already featured performances by popstars like Rihanna and Justin Bieber.

But it has also led to backlash – city dwellers have complained of traffic snarls, while others have questioned the ostentatious display of wealth at the seemingly never-ending celebrations.

On Friday, the city witnessed heavy rains with waterlogging reported in some parts.

• In photos: Kim Kardashian, Bieber and Rihanna at grand India wedding
• The marathon Indian wedding turning heads around the world

Mukesh Ambani, 66, is at present the world’s 10th richest man with a net worth of $115bn, according to Forbes. Reliance Industries, founded by his father in 1966, is a massive conglomerate that operates in sectors ranging from petroleum and retail, to financial services and telecoms.

Anant Ambani is the youngest of his three children, all of whom are on the board of Reliance Industries. The 29-year-old is involved in Reliance’s energy businesses and is on the board of Reliance Foundation.

On Friday, the couple will get married in a traditional Hindu ceremony at the Jio World Convention Centre.

Reports say the family will host a grand reception at the weekend, before a final reception for their household staff on Monday.

Pictures and videos of Kim Kardashian, who is in the city with her sister Khloé Kardashian, are being widely shared online.

Reports say the sisters have brought a team of stylists, including celebrity hairstylist Chris Appleton, along with a group of producers to capture every detail of their trip.

Former Indian president Ram Nath Kovind, British High Commissioner to India Lindy Cameron and US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti are also in the city to attend the wedding.

Mumbai police have labelled the wedding a “public event” since it would be attended by several international and Indian VIPs, reports Reuters news agency.

The city police has also imposed traffic restrictions around the venue.

From Friday to Monday, roads around the convention centre will be open only for “event vehicles” between 13:00 India time (07:30 GMT) to midnight, it said.

Rajan Mehra, CEO of air charter company Club One Air, told Reuters that the family had rented three Falcon-2000 jets to ferry wedding guests to the event.

“The guests are coming from all over and each aircraft will make multiple trips across the country,” he said.

The restrictions have sparked anger among the city residents who say they are already struggling with traffic jams and monsoon flooding.

The wedding festivities began in March when the family held a three-day pre-wedding party in their home state of Gujarat.

Among the 1,200 guests to attend the celebration were international celebrities, politicians, and members of the business world – including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

• World’s rich in India for tycoon son’s pre-wedding gala

The party started with a performance by Rihanna on the first night. Diljit Dosanjh, the first Punjabi singer to perform at Coachella, took the stage on the second night, while rapper Akon closed the show on the final day of celebrations.

In June, the Ambanis organised another pre-wedding celebration, this time, a luxury cruise from Italy to France. The Backstreet Boys, Katy Perry and Pitbull performed for the 800 guests, which included Bollywood stars and cricketers.

Then came the final round of celebrations, which began earlier this week when Bieber landed in Mumbai.

Social media has been flooded with photos and videos of him singing in front of an ecstatic audience.

Money was also lavished on constructing 14 temples inside a sprawling complex in Jamnagar to showcase India’s cultural heritage and provide a backdrop for the wedding. As part of the celebrations, the Ambanis hosted a mass wedding for 50 underprivileged couples too.

On Wednesday, the family hosted a bhandara – a community feast for underprivileged people.

The Ambanis have not revealed how much this wedding is costing them but wedding planners estimate they’ve already spent anywhere between 11bn and 13bn rupees [$132m-$156m]. It was rumoured Rihanna had been paid $7m (£5.5m) for her performance, while the figure suggested for Bieber is $10m.

Western leaders have rallied round Joe Biden at the Nato summit, amid concerns about the US president’s age and ability to serve another term.

Calls are growing for Mr Biden to drop out of the presidential race this November, and his attempts to diminish fears about his re-election bid at the summit were marred by two serious gaffes.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Mr Biden was “in charge” and “clear on the issues he knows well”, while UK PM Sir Keir Starmer said he was “on good form”.

But Mr Biden’s first gaffe, in which he introduced Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky as President Putin, was ridiculed in the Russian media.

And later in a news conference – Mr Biden’s first unscripted public appearance since the debate – he referred to his “Vice-President Trump” when meaning to say Kamala Harris.

The US president has been under pressure to quit since a disastrous performance two weeks ago in a debate with his Republican rival in the upcoming elections, Donald Trump.

But throughout the summit, other Nato leaders have defended him and his ability to lead.

Mr Macron, speaking after Thursday’s White House dinner, said he had had a long discussion with Mr Biden during the meal, and appealed for understanding of his flaws.

“I saw him as always a president who is in charge, clear on the issues he knows well,” he said.

“We all make slips of the tongue sometimes. It has happened to me before, it will probably happen to me tomorrow.

“I would ask you to show the same leniency that should be shown between caring people.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also addressed the gaffes.

“Slips of the tongue happen, and if you always monitor everyone, you will find enough of them,” he said.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir said repeatedly during the summit that the US president had achieved much to be proud of there, and was “across all the detail”.

On Friday he added: “We’ve been through two days of this council and come to a very good outcome… And I think he should be given credit for that.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it was a privilege and a pleasure to work with Mr Biden.

“[Biden’s] depth of experience, his thoughtfulness, his steadfastness on the greatest issues and challenges of our time is a credit to the work that we’re all doing together,” he said.

Polish President Andrzej Duda, seen as being close to former President Trump, said, quoted by AFP: “I talked with President Biden, and there is no doubt that everything is ok.”

Meanwhile Finnish President Alexander Stubb combined a defence of Mr Biden with fears about the atmosphere in the US elections.

“I have absolutely no concern about the capacity of the current president of the United States to lead his country and to lead our fight for Ukraine and to lead Nato,” he said, quoted by AFP.

“The only thing I’m worried about is that the political climate in the United States right now is too toxic, is very polarised, and that doesn’t leave enough room for a civilised and constructive debate.”

Not all Nato leaders were prepared to weigh in on behalf of Mr Biden, though.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán reportedly made almost no comments to the media in Washington.

Instead he left immediately after the end of the summit for Mar-a-Lago, Mr Trump’s Florida residence, where the two men talked about the war in Ukraine.

“We discussed ways to make peace,” Mr Orbán said on social media. “The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”

But if leaders of allied countries have been unwilling to criticise the US president for his frailties, Moscow has been similarly restrained.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the gaffes were clearly slips of the tongue and “not our business, an internal matter for the USA”.

Not so the Russian media, which have been all over Mr Biden’s confusion of Mr Putin with Mr Zelensky.

Official Rossiya TV showed it at the top of its 9pm bulletin, saying that “America’s vassals pretended that they’d not noticed anything”.

NTV said Biden had never been so close to a fiasco and that his “latest slip of the tongue is worthy of an Oscar”.

And popular daily Moskovsky Komsomolets ran an article headlined “Senile Leaders”, comparing Joe Biden to the elderly Communist leaders of the USSR.

“What’s more dangerous, a monkey with a grenade or a shaking hand on the nuclear button?” it asked.

German political figures have reacted angrily to a report that Russia had plotted to kill the head of Germany’s biggest arms company Rheinmetall, Armin Papperger.

The CNN report said US officials had told their counterparts in Berlin earlier this year and security around him was stepped up.

Germany’s interior ministry refused to comment but Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock appeared to confirm the details.

“In view of latest reports on Rheinmetall, this is what we have actually been communicating more and more clearly in recent months,” she told reporters at the Nato summit in Washington. “Russia is waging a hybrid war of aggression.”

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the allegations. “It’s all presented in the style of another fake story, so such reports cannot be taken seriously.”

Rheinmetall avoided commenting on issues of “corporate security”, but Mr Papperger is now being described as the most highly protected figure in Germany’s economy. He told the Financial Times that German authorities had imposed a “great deal of security around my person”.

The company is one of the world’s biggest producers of ammunition and has become key to supplying Ukraine with arms, armoured vehicles and other military equipment.

Rheinmetall recently opened a tank repair plant in western Ukraine. Last month, it signed an agreement with Ukraine to expand co-operation in the coming years, including a joint venture to produce artillery shells.

Mr Papperger said at the time his company wanted to hand over the first Lynx infantry fighting vehicles later this year and to start producing them in Ukraine soon.

Although Chancellor Olaf Scholz avoided commenting on the reported assassination plot directly, he said it was well known that Germany was exposed to a variety of Russian threats and was paying close attention to them.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said “we are taking very seriously the significantly heightened threat of Russian aggression”.

Earlier this week, a senior Nato official told the BBC that Russia was “engaging in aggressive covert operations across Europe – involving sabotage, arson and assassination plots – aimed at weakening public support for Ukraine”.

The German foreign minister said the Baltic states had already highlighted the various methods deployed by Russia’s Vladimir Putin in his war on Ukraine. As well as sabotage, she spoke of cyberattacks and disrupting GPS signals so that Baltic flights could no longer land in neighbouring countries.

“We have seen that there have been attacks on factories, and that again underlines that, together, we as Europeans must protect ourselves as best we can and not be naive,” Ms Baerbock told reporters.

In early May, a building complex owned by the Diehl Metall firm went up in flames in south-west Berlin. Although a technical fault was blamed for the fire, sabotage has not been ruled out. Suspicious fires have also been reported in Poland and Lithuania.

Last April, Mr Papperger’s garden house was set alight at Hermannsburg in northern Germany, although there has been no evidence of a Russian link.

The fire was quickly brought under control and a rambling, anonymous confession purportedly from leftist militants appeared on activist network Indymedia.

The reported plot against such a high-profile German CEO has prompted widespread alarm.

Leading conservative figure Roderich Kiesewetter said the chancellor should come clean with the German population about how great the threat from Russia really was. German intelligence needed to be boosted to the level of neighbouring countries, he said.

“We must take it very seriously and also prepare ourselves accordingly,” he told public broadcaster ZDF.

Michael Roth, who chairs Germany’s foreign affairs committee told Bild newspaper that Vladimir Putin was waging a “war of extermination not only against Ukraine, but against its supporters and our values”.

The head of the defence committee, Marcus Faber, added his condemnation, saying if information about Russian intelligence involvement came to light, then “the expulsion of diplomats must follow and, if necessary, international arrest warrants must be issued”.

A Russian passenger plane with only crew on board has crashed near Moscow, the country’s emergencies ministry says.

The Sukhoi Superjet 100 went down in a forest and all three crew members are believed to have been killed, it said. There were no passengers on board.

Russia’s state-run media report that the plane went down during a test flight following repair works.

Russia’s has been developing the Sukhoi Superjet – a regional jet – for some time to replace Western-made aircraft.

Heavily sanctioned over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has struggled to replace its ageing aircraft fleet.

In a short statement on Friday, Russia’s emergencies ministry said the aircraft crashed in the forested area.

“There were no casualties among the population,” it said.

Transport prosecutors said the plane went down not far from the town of Kolomna.

The aircraft belonged to Gazprom Avia, the airline of the country’s energy giant, the prosecutors added.

A criminal investigation is now under way.

State-owned defence conglomerate Rostech said the aircraft went into service in 2014. It urged people not to “rush with conclusions” on what caused the crash.

It is the third air disaster involving a Sukhoi Superjet 100 since 2012.

Over the years, the Superjet project has been marred by engineering setbacks and delays in production as designers have struggled to replace key Western avionics components.

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi has hit back at Nato’s “groundless accusations” that Beijing is helping Russia in its war on Ukraine.

He has also warned the Western alliance against stirring up confrontation.

Mr Wang’s comments, made in a call with his Dutch counterpart, came hours after leaders of Nato member states gathered in Washington DC and issued a declaration that mentioned the war.

They accused China of being a “decisive enabler” of Russia through its “large-scale support for Russia’s defence industrial base”, in some of their harshest remarks yet about Beijing.

They called on China to stop “all material and political support” to Russia’s war effort such as the supply of dual-use materials, which are items that can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

Western states have previously accused Beijing of transferring drone and missile technology and satellite imagery to Moscow. The US estimates about 70% of the machine tools and 90% of the microelectronics Russia imports now come from China.

Beijing was also accused of conducting “malicious cyber and hybrid activities, including disinformation” on Nato states.

In a press conference on Thursday, US President Joe Biden said that he had discussions with other leaders about spelling out the consequences for China.

“China has to understand that if they are supplying Russia with information and capacity, working with North Korea and others to help Russia and [their] armament, that they’re not going to benefit economically as a consequence of that,” he said.

“I think you’ll see that some of our European friends are going to be curtailing their investment in China.”

Pointing out that Russia had been seeking weapons from China and North Korea, he added that Nato states were looking into a new policy to turn the West into an “industrial base” for munitions and to develop new weapons systems.

On Thursday, while speaking to the Netherlands’ new foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp, Mr Wang said “China absolutely does not accept” all these accusations and insisted that they have “always been a force for peace and force for stability”.

In comments carried by state media, he said that China’s different political system and values “should not be used as a reason for Nato to incite confrontation with China”, and called for Nato to “stay within its bounds”.

His remarks was the latest in a flurry of angry responses from Beijing.

Earlier on Thursday, a foreign ministry spokesperson said Nato was smearing China with “fabricated disinformation”, while Beijing’s mission to the EU told the alliance to “stop hyping up the so-called China threat”.

Beijing has long rebutted accusations that it has been aiding Russia in the war and insists that it remains a neutral party. It has called for an end to the conflict and proposed a peace plan, which Ukraine has rejected.

But, besides the growing accusations of military support, observers have also pointed out that Beijing’s purchases of vast amounts of oil and gas have helped prop up Russia’s economy crippled by sanctions and replenish coffers drained by war spending.

Beijing’s official rhetoric on the conflict often mirrors Moscow’s – like them, China still does not call it a war. Chinese President Xi Jinping has maintained a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with both of them famously declaring their partnership has “no limits”.

Beijing has accused the US and other Western states of pouring “fuel on the fire” by supplying lethal weapons and technology to Ukraine for its defence.

In recent weeks, several countries have gone a step further and allowed Ukraine to use their weapons to hit targets inside Russia.

During Nato’s three-day summit, which ended on Thursday, the alliance continued to underscore its commitment to Ukraine. Member states said they would support Ukraine on its “irreversible path” to future membership, adding that “Ukraine’s future in Nato”.

They also announced further integration with Ukraine’s military and support for its defence. The alliance has committed at least €40bn ($43.3bn, £33.7bn) in aid in the next year, including F-16 fighter jets and air defence support.

Every day, for the last seven years, Arun Kumar has set up his fruit stall on a busy Mumbai street.

It’s not an easy way to make a living.

“Being a street vendor is a challenge. There’s the fear of being robbed or, as I am not a licensed vendor, the local body can come and dismantle my store anytime,” he says.

But over the past four years at least one aspect of his work has become easier.

“Prior to Covid everything was in cash. But now everyone pays with UPI. Scan the code and the payment is done within seconds.

“No issues of handling cash, giving change to customers. It has made my life and business smooth,” he says.

UPI, or to give it its full name the Unified Payments Interface, was launched in 2016 in a collaboration between India’s central bank and the nation’s banking industry.

It’s an app-based instant payment system, which allows users to send and receive money, pay bills and authorise payments in a single step – no need to enter bank details or any other personal information. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s free.

It has become so popular that India is now the biggest real-time payments market.

In May, UPI recorded 14 billion transactions, up from nine billion the year before.

But the popularity and ease of use has made it a rich feeding ground for scammers.

“While digital payments are convenient, they do come with vulnerabilities,” says Shashank Shekhar, founder of the Delhi-based Future Crime Research Foundation.

Mr Shekhar says that scammers use a variety of ways to trick people, including persuading them to share their UPI pin number, which is needed to authorise payments.

Some scammers have also created fake UPI apps, that are clones of legitimate banking apps, and then steal login details or other valuable information.

“The pace at which digital transformation took place in the country means unfortunately digital literacy and safe internet practice could not catch up,” says Mr Shekhar.

He says that between January 2020 and June 2023 almost half of all financial fraud involved the use of the UPI system.

According to government figures there were more than 95,000 cases of fraud involving UPI in the financial year ending April 2023, up from 77,000 in the previous year.

Shivkali was one such victim. She had always wanted to own a scooter, but they were beyond her budget.

However, earlier in the year the 22-year-old, who lives in Bihar state in northeastern India, spotted one for sale on Facebook that looked like a great deal.

“I grabbed the opportunity without thinking,” she says.

A couple of clicks later and she was talking to the owner, who said that for $23 he would send over the vehicle papers.

That went smoothly, so Shivkali continued to send the owner money, via instant transfers. She eventually ended up paying $200, but the scooter (also commonly called a Scooty in India), was never delivered.

Shivkali realised she had been scammed.

“I did not think I could be cheated, as I have some education background and know what is happing in the world. But scammers are smart. They have an art of speaking to convince the opposite person,” she says.

The government and the central bank are looking at ways to protect UPI users from scammers.

But at the moment, if a victim wants compensation, they have to approach their bank.

“The problem is deep rooted,” says Dr Durgesh Pandey, an expert in financial crime.

“Most of the onus lies with banks and telecom companies. They are lax in making identity checks, that’s why the fraudster can’t be traced.

“But the challenge for banks particularly is that they have to balance between inclusivity, ease of business and enforcement of identity checks. If they are too rigid, the vulnerable section of society will remain without banking facilities.”

But Dr Pandey argues that in most cases of fraud, the bank is not totally to blame.

“It’s a complex question because the problem lies with banks, but it’s the victim who is giving his credentials in most case. I would say both victim and bank should bear the loss.”

Despite those problems, UPI is being promoted in rural areas where access to banking services can be difficult.

Poonam Untwal from Rajasthan runs a guidance centre which helps people use the internet and digital banking.

“Most of us are not that educated, nor know the proper use of smartphones. I teach them that phones are no longer a device just to talk to people but banks at their fingertips,” she says.

She believes that UPI will help develop the local economy.

“Many women like me have a small business that we run from our home. Now we can receive and send money with UPI. People who don’t have smart phones come to my centre to get their transactions done,” she says.

As well as making inroads into rural areas, UPI is spreading overseas.

Retailers in Bhutan, Mauritius, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka and UAE will take UPI payments.

And this year, France become the first European country to accept UPI payments, starting with tickets to the Eiffel Tower.

Back in Mumbai, Mr Kumar is happy that he no longer has to use cash, but remains wary.

If he can’t get a good internet connection then customers can, by accident or design, make off without paying.

“For a small vendor like me it [UPI] made receiving money very easy. But I am always scared of fraud. I keep hearing in the news how the UPI frauds are increasing. Hopefully some mechanisms are invented so a small vendor like me doesn’t face losses.”

Joe Biden’s press conference in which he insisted he was still fit to run for US president has failed to silence critics from his own party.

Three Democratic politicians joined the growing list calling on Mr Biden to drop out of the US presidential race.

Calls for the 81-year-old to step aside have escalated since he stumbled through a TV debate with Republican Donald Trump last month.

At an hour-long briefing taking reporters’ questions on Thursday night he was more steady and fluent but there were also gaffes.

He mistakenly referred to his deputy, Kamala Harris, as “Vice President Trump” when answering the first question.

Two hours earlier at a Nato event he introduced Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin” before correcting himself.

It means Mr Biden’s candidacy still remains in peril, with the possibility of more defections over the next few days.

Some donors including Hollywood actor George Clooney have pulled their financial support, saying he is not competent to carry out another four-year term.

One Democratic fundraiser who wants Mr Biden to step down told the BBC that like-minded Biden sceptics felt the president had done OK at the news conference, but not well enough to change minds.

A problem for Mr Biden going forward is that he will be under constant and intense scrutiny at every event.

Any slip or mistake will be seized on as evidence that he is neither fit nor capable enough to be running for a second term.

Shortly after he finished his press conference, Connecticut congressman Jim Himes posted on X praising Mr Biden’s record in public service, but calling on him to step away from the campaign.

The strongest candidate to confront the “threat” posed by Trump, he wrote, was no longer Joe Biden.

Illinois congressman Eric Sorensen also posted on social media that Mr Biden ran in 2020 “with the purpose of putting country over party. Today I am asking him to do that again”.

• Biden defiant but gaffes undermine fightback

California congressman Scott Peters was the third to speak out, saying the “stakes are high, and we are losing course”.

They bring the tally of Democratic politicians calling on Mr Biden to end his candidacy to 19.

During the briefing, Biden insisted to reporters that he’s in the race to “complete the job”.

“If I slow down and can’t get the job done, that’s a sign I shouldn’t be doing it,” he said. “But there’s no indication of that yet.”

Many of his supporters in Congress came out immediately after the news conference to echo his belief that he is the best candidate.

“We’ve got to stop the nitpicking and then focus on the work ahead. This guy has done it, he’s done it in the past,” said Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison.

US allies also weighed in on Mr Biden’s side, with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying he had been in “very good form” when they met face-to-face at the summit.

French president Emmanuel Macron called the mistakes just a slip of the tongue, saying that Mr Biden was on top of matters.

But Trump was quick to mock Mr Biden for his Kamala Harris mistake. “Great job, Joe!” he wrote on Truth Social.

• POLICIES: Where Biden and Trump stand on key issues
• GLOBAL: What Moscow and Beijing think of rematch
• ANALYSIS: Could US economy be doing too well?
• EXPLAINER: RFK Jr and others running for president
• VOTERS: US workers in debt to buy groceries

A security guard who plotted to abduct, rape and murder television presenter Holly Willoughby has been jailed for a minimum of 16 years.

Gavin Plumb said his “ultimate fantasy” was to use tools he had assembled to perpetrate highly sexualised violence against the former This Morning host.

The 37-year-old from Harlow, Essex, was caught after he unknowingly disclosed his plans to an undercover police officer operating in the online chatroom “Abduct Lovers”.

Imposing a life sentence at Chelmsford Crown Court, Mr Justice Murray described some of the plans Plumb discussed as “particularly sadistic, brutal and degrading”.

He added that the offences have had “life-changing consequences” on Ms Willoughby, both “privately and professionally”.

Plumb was handed a life sentence with a minimum tariff of 16 years before he becomes eligible for parole.

Plumb had denied soliciting murder and inciting kidnap and rape between 2021 and 2023, but was found guilty following an eight-day trial.

“I have no doubt this was all considerably more than a fantasy to you,” said the judge, who noted Plumb’s “gross obesity” which he had previously talked to the BBC about.

The judge added: “Your plan was hopelessly unrealistic for a number of reasons – including your physical health – but you clearly thought it was feasible.

“You always intended to carry out your plan to kidnap, rape and kill Ms Willoughby if you could find ‘the right crew’ to do it.”

The defendant, who had previous convictions for attempted kidnap, stood emotionless in the dock as he was sentenced.

He will serve at least 15 years and 85 days due a reduction for the time he spent on remand ahead of the trial.

Ms Willoughby ended her 14-year stint on This Morning after the offences came to light in October 2023.

“The extent of the shock and fear of this offending has been impossible to be conveyed,” prosecutor Alison Morgan KC said.

Plumb had developed an “obsession” with Ms Willoughby that spanned more than 10 years, she previously told the trial.

• Gavin Plumb could have been stopped sooner, says survivor

He had a “real intention” to raid the broadcaster’s home, “take her to a location where she would be raped repeatedly” and then murder her, Ms Morgan continued.

Plumb had initially outlined his plan to a man only known has Marc, telling him: “I’m going to be living out my ultimate fantasy.

“I’m now at the point that fantasy isn’t enough anymore. I want the real thing.”

In his sentencing remarks, Mr Justice Murray said the detail of many of the other messages Plumb sent were “so horrifying, shocking and graphic in detail they were not read out in open court”.

The trial heard he purchased 400 heavy-duty metal cable ties, as well as bottles purported to contain chloroform to knock Ms Willoughby and her husband out upon breaking in to their house.

Plumb told Marc in March 2023 in a voice note: “We’re then gonna force her [Ms Willoughby] to make a video saying she come with us under her own free will… and she’s fully consenting to everything we do to her – so that covers us.”

The jury was told he checked out an abandoned stud farm with cells to “keep” Ms Willoughby.

“He is no fantasist – he’s a calculated, violent, sexual predator who has spent his adult life inflicting or plotting to inflict harm on women,” said Det Ch Insp Greg Wood, of Essex Police.

Plumb went on to be active in a Kik group entitled “Abduct Lovers” where he unveiled his plot to David Nelson who, unbeknown to him, was an undercover police officer based in the US.

Mr Nelson, not his real name, notified the FBI about what Plumb was telling him and the information was relayed to Essex Police, who raided the defendant’s house.

It was later discovered that Plumb had “millions” of images of Ms Willoughby on a device found at his property, many of which were “deep fake” and sexual.

Giving evidence at his trial, Plumb admitted messages he sent online about the presenter were “dark” but claimed he had “no plan” to carry them out.

He said, with hindsight, his words were “massively regrettable” and acting upon his fantasies was “something I knew that was never going to happen”.

The defendant said he had bought chloroform to clean a stain on his floor.

• An obsessive loner’s plot to kill Holly Willoughby

Sasha Wass KC, mitigating, told the court earlier that Plumb was “embarrassed and ashamed” that his online conversations had been made public.

“He was completely incapable of scaling any of the perimeter walls of [Ms Willoughby’s] house, as he fantasised about doing,” she said.

“There were features of the plan that were so unworkable that the plan could not take place.”

Plumb was also cross-examined about his two previous convictions for attempted kidnap in 2006 and another two offences of false imprisonment in 2008.

The security guard said he had a “stewardess fantasy” when he tried to force two separate air hostesses to get off a train during the space of three days in August 2006.

In 2008, he “terrified” two 16-year-old girls when he tied their wrists and forced them into the store room of a shop.

He was handed a sentence of 12 months, suspended for two years, for his first offences, before he was jailed for 32 months for the false imprisonments.

Plumb said both offences were a “cry for help” as he “needed to get out” of a toxic relationship.

How much is too much?

That’s the question many in India are asking as the months-long wedding festivities for the youngest son of Asia’s richest man enter their final phase.

The celebrations are expected to culminate this weekend when Anant Ambani, the youngest son of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, ties the knot with Radhika Merchant, daughter of pharma tycoons Viren and Shaila Merchant.

There have been four months of lavish events leading up to the wedding itself. All the glamourous outfits, stunning jewellery, fairytale-like decor and rare performances by Indian and global stars have been the focus of much public attention.

“It is nothing short of a royal wedding,” says writer and columnist Shobhaa De. “Our billionaires are the new Indian maharajahs. Their shareholders expect nothing less than a mega extravaganza.”

Indians “have always loved pomp and pageantry – just like the British”, she says, adding that “the scale [of the wedding] is in keeping with the Ambani wealth”.

But the hullabaloo around the wedding has drawn as much ire as public fascination. Many have criticised the opulence and the sheer magnitude of wealth on display in a country where tens of millions live below the poverty line and where income inequality is extreme.

“[The wedding] can easily be seen as a kind of a mockery, a sort of blindness to the reality of the country at one level. At another level, however ridiculous this might be, it is still in keeping with the grossly distorted, almost grotesque bloating of Indian weddings in the last decade or so,” writer and commentator Santosh Desai tells the BBC.

“It is part of a larger shift that is taking place. A generation or two ago, wealth was spoken of in whispers. Today, wealth must speak as loudly as possible. Even then, the scale of this wedding makes it an outlier.”

With a sprawling business empire – ranging from oil, telecoms, chemicals, technology and fashion to food – the Ambanis are a ubiquitous presence in India and their lives are the subject of intense public fascination.

Mr Ambani’s personal fortune is estimated at a staggering $115bn (£90bn). Anant, 29, holds a position on the Reliance Industries board of directors.

Ambani senior, along with fellow Indian business tycoon Gautam Adani, is reported to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, with opposition parties accusing the authorities of unduly favouring the two business houses – accusations both the government and the businessmen deny.

While the Ambani family’s enormous wealth and clout are well known in India, many outside the country may not have realised the extent of their riches until now.

That changed in March, when Mr Ambani hosted a three-day pre-wedding party for his son.

The festivities were held in the family’s hometown Jamnagar in the western state of Gujarat, which is also the location of Mr Ambani’s oil refinery – the largest in the world. Some 1,200 guests attended, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

The party began with a dinner held inside a glasshouse especially built for the occasion. The stunning structure reportedly resembles Palm House, a crystalline Victorian-style building located in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which was a favourite of Ms Merchant when she was a college student in New York City.

The feast was followed by a performance by Rihanna and viral videos showed the Ambani family grooving with the popstar on stage. If people hadn’t been paying attention, they definitely were now.

Through it all, dozens of speciality chefs served some 2,000 dishes, carefully curated from around the world, to guests lodged in luxury tents, with personal makeup artists and stylists at their service.

There was also a 10-page manual on the dress code for the events, which included a “jungle fever” theme for a visit to a family-owned animal sanctuary, followed by a Moulin Rouge-themed “house party” held at the sprawling grounds of their palatial residence.

The bride-to-be wore a number of specially crafted outfits, including two lehngas (long bridal silk skirts) – one studded with 20,000 Swarovski crystals and another that reportedly took 5,700 hours to make – and a pink version of a Versace dress that actor Blake Lively wore to the 2022 Met Gala.

The groom mostly wore Dolce & Gabbana outfits and flaunted a Richard Mille wristwatch, worth an estimated $1.5m. A viral video of Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan gawking at the watch went viral in India.

Newspapers and websites perfectly captured the opulence of these dazzling events, attended by the glitterati from around the world. “It was almost like the time of maharajahs 100 years down the line,” the New York Times reported.

There was also backlash after India’s government overnight designated the city’s small airport into an international airport, expanded its staff and deployed military and air force personnel in service of the family.

The final night of the three-day jamboree, which ended with a shower of confetti, fireworks and a lightshow, set the tone for what was to come next.

In June, the couple and their guests took their pre-wedding celebrations overseas, literally. The party, which included top Bollywood stars, embarked on a luxury cruise along the stunning azure coastline of the Tyrrhenian Sea in Italy, to the French Mediterranean.

They stopped in Rome, Portofino, Genoa and Cannes for late-night revelry that reportedly brought complaints from local people.

This time, the celebrations had performances by 90s teen heartthrobs The Backstreet Boys, singer Katy Perry and Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.

This week, yet set of wedding celebrations kicked off on the family’s home turf, Mumbai, with a performance by Justin Bieber.

A video of him singing at the edge of the stage as the bride and her friends sing along has been viewed 38 million times. It shows ecstatic women in sequined gowns and saris as they punch their fists skyward in glee. The crowd doesn’t miss a beat to Bieber’s verse: You should go and love yourself.

The scale of the celebrations show that nothing is out of reach for the family. And there is speculation that Adele could be performing at the actual wedding this weekend – the family, however, are tight-lipped.

Of course, India isn’t a stranger to the concept of big fat weddings – the country is the largest spender on marriage ceremonies after the US.

Tina Tharwani, co-founder of the Shaadi Squad, says in recent years, there’s been a noticeable trend where weddings have become larger-than-life events that veer towards excessiveness, driven by societal expectations, competitive displays of status, and a desire to create memorable moments.

So, we’ve seen expensive weddings routinely make headlines in recent years, such as this $74m wedding in 2016.

Other Ambani children have also had lavish pre-wedding festivities. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry were among attendees at Isha Ambani’s pre-wedding bash in 2018, which featured a performance by Beyoncé. A year later, Akash Ambani’s pre-wedding bash featured a performance by Coldplay.

When it comes to scale, though, this is the mother of all weddings, says Ashwini Arya, owner of an event management company that has managed weddings in 14 countries.

“It’s like the bible for the industry with the best of logistics, tech, design and grandeur.

“You’re talking about preparations of a minimum of two years, multiple recce trips, approvals and permissions from several countries, along with the logistics of arranging security and transport for some of the biggest personalities of the world,” he says.

The Ambanis have not revealed how much this wedding is costing them but Mr Arya estimates that they “have already spent anywhere between 11bn and 13bn rupees [$132m-$156m]”. It was rumoured Rihanna had been paid $7m (£5.5m) for her performance, while the figure suggested for Bieber is $10m.

Money was also lavished on constructing 14 temples inside a sprawling complex in Jamnagar to showcase India’s cultural heritage and provide a backdrop for the wedding. As part of the celebrations, the Ambanis hosted a mass wedding for 50 underprivileged couples too.

It’s being said the family pulled out all the stops because with all the Ambani children married, this would be their last wedding for the foreseeable future.

But with each event, public criticism of the celebration in India has grown – from people aghast at the massive jewels worn by Nita Ambani to exasperation and anger among Mumbai residents over traffic restrictions in a city already struggling with traffic jams and monsoon flooding.

For India’s wedding industry though, it’s still an exciting marketing opportunity.

This is an excellent chance for designers to showcase the more refined side of India’s couture, artistry and craftsmanship, says Anand Bhushan, a fashion designer. That said, the frequency, with celebrities changing five-six outfits per event can sometimes feel a “little saturating”, he admits.

Ms Tharwani says the wedding serves as “an exemplary case” of orchestrating a multi-event, multi-location celebration “that combines tradition, modernity, and unmatched hospitality standards”.

Meanwhile, in Mumbai, Varindar Chawla, one of Bollywood’s best-known paparazzi, is sifting through the photographs of the celebrations.

There are a few of celebrities posing at the entrance as they arrive to attend the various events.

Each one of these pictures – even the unflattering ones, such as of a star looking stunned as the glare of a camera-flash hits them in the face – has been fetching millions of views and shares.

“Usually it’s hard to penetrate events of this scale. But this family has gone out of the way to ensure we are there to cover every little detail,” he says.

“It’s a royal wedding and we are getting a royal treatment.”

Guess who’s back, back again?

Eminem’s latest album, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce), has been released and is being met with mixed reviews by critics.

In the US rapper’s 12th album, his alter ego Slim Shady is killed off – the artwork shows Shady in a body bag, and in the music video for Tobey, Eminem takes a chainsaw to him.

Clash called the album “a mixed bag” and described it as “at once an effective piece of fan service, while also being a record that disappoints”.

“It doesn’t quite feel like an ending, but neither does it feel like a continuation,” Robin Murray wrote.

“A mixed, often muddled album, it features some of Eminem’s best rapping in a decade – those fast, skippy-yet-intricate flows will never fail to thrill – but his pen is often blunted.”

Ahead of the release, Eminem told fans this is a “conceptual album” and the songs should be listened to in order.

The 19 tracks include previously released singles Tobey and Houdini, as well as a sequel to his 1999 hit Guilty Conscience with Dr Dre.

Billboard ranked the latter song as one of the best on the new album and said “it’s not the original, but is a worthy second coming”.

“At one point, Slim Shady puts Marshall on blast for creating him as an alter-ego to stir up controversy and essentially be a shield to say jarring things that he didn’t really have the courage to stand on,” Michael Saponara wrote.

USA Today said the 51-year-old is a “lyrical pugilist throughout, except when he turns misty-eyed dad rapping about daughter Hailie Jade”.

His song Temporary starts with old recordings of the rapper and his daughter talking as a child.

Melissa Ruggieri said it was the most memorable song on the album “because it gives Eminem permission to drop the shtick and explore his vulnerability – which isn’t often apparent elsewhere on the album”.

Eminem calls on his 28-year-old daughter to “be strong” and that he will always be her rock.

On his track Fuel, Eminem references the multiple sexual assault allegations against fellow rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs.

“I’m like an R-A-P-E-R/I got so many S-As/S-As/Wait, he didn’t just spell the word rapper and leave out a ‘P’, did he?” the lyrics say.

Pitchfork said Eminem, real name Marshall Mathers III, “reckons with his controversies while taking pains to create new one”.

The track Antichrist “take pains to offend as crudely as possible” with references to pronouns, woke society and “the harrowing video of Diddy attacking his then-girlfriend Cassie in a hotel in 2016”.

Mr Combs, one of rap’s most successful moguls, apologised for his “inexcusable” actions shown in that video, and has denied all allegations of sexual assault.

A review by the Independent gave the album two stars and said the rapper was “punching downwards, joylessly and without inspiration”.

“Much of The Death Of Slim Shady resembles a Telegraph op-ed: the ham-fisted mashing of people’s buttons, the blethering about ‘the PC police’ and ‘Gen Z’ coming to get him. Anything to get a reaction,” Stevie Chick wrote.