Sir Keir Starmer has said he is “ready and willing” to put UK troops on the ground in Ukraine to help guarantee its security as part of a peace deal.

The UK prime minister said securing a lasting peace in Ukraine was “essential if we are to deter Putin from further aggression in the future”.

Before attending an emergency summit with European leaders in Paris on Monday, Sir Keir said the UK was prepared to contribute to security guarantees to Ukraine by “putting our own troops on the ground if necessary”.

“I do not say that lightly,” he wrote in the Daily Telegraph. “I feel very deeply the responsibility that comes with potentially putting British servicemen and women in harm’s way.”

The prime minister added: “But any role in helping to guarantee Ukraine’s security is helping to guarantee the security of our continent, and the security of this country.”

The end of Russia’s war with Ukraine “when it comes, cannot merely become a temporary pause before Putin attacks again”, Sir Keir said.

UK troops could be deployed alongside soldiers from other European nations alongside the border between Ukrainian-held and Russian-held territory.

Sir Keir’s announcement comes after the former head of the Army, Lord Dannatt, told the BBC the UK military was “so run down” it could not lead any future peacekeeping mission in Ukraine.

The PM has previously only hinted that British troops could be involved in safeguarding Ukraine after a ceasefire.

He is due to visit President Donald Trump in Washington later this month and said a “US security guarantee is essential for a lasting peace, because only the US can deter Putin from attacking again”.

Sir Keir is meeting with other European leaders in response to concerns the US is moving forward with Russia on peace talks that will lock out the continent.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to meet Russian officials in Saudi Arabia in the coming days, US officials say.

On Saturday the US special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said European leaders would be consulted only and not take part in any talks between the US and Russia.

A senior Ukrainian government source told the BBC on Sunday that Kyiv has not been invited to talks between the US and Russia.

Trump earlier this week announced he had had a lengthy conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that negotiations to stop the “ridiculous war” in Ukraine would begin “immediately”.

Trump then “informed” Zelensky of his plan.

On Sunday, Trump said that he expected Zelensky to be involved in the talks. He also said he would allow European nations to buy US weapons for Ukraine.

Asked by the BBC about his timetable for an end to fighting, Trump said only that “we’re working to get it done” and laid the blame for the war on the previous administration’s Ukraine policies.

Writing in the Telegraph, Sir Keir said “peace cannot come at any cost” and “Ukraine must be at the table in these negotiations, because anything less would accept Putin’s position that Ukraine is not a real nation”.

He added: “We cannot have another situation like Afghanistan, where the US negotiated directly with the Taliban and cut out the Afghan government” – in reference to a deal negotiated in Trump’s first administration, which was later enacted by the Biden administration.

“I feel sure that President Trump will want to avoid this too,” said Sir Keir

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Sir Keir said Ukraine’s path to Nato membership was “irreversible” and European nations “must increase our defence spending and take on a greater role” in the alliance.

The UK currently spends around 2.3% of GDP on defence and has committed to increase defence spending to a 2.5% share of the economy, without giving a timeframe for this.

Trump has called for Nato members to spend 5% of GDP on defence, while Nato secretary general Mark Rutte has suggested allies should spend more than 3%.

Lord Dannatt – who was head of the Army from 2006 to 2009 – told the BBC up to 40,000 UK troops would be needed on rotation for a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine and “we just haven’t got that number available”.

He said, in total, a force to keep the peace would require about 100,000 troops on the ground and the UK would have to supply “quite a proportion of that and we really couldn’t do it”.

The meeting in Paris called by French President Emmanuel Macron will see Sir Keir joined by leaders from Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark along with the presidents of the European Council and European Commission, and Rutte.

Europe’s leaders are scrambling. Their hastily convened security summit in Paris on Monday is proof of that.

They are still reeling from not being invited by the US to talks with Russia over the future of Ukraine. US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he could be meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin “very soon”.

Can Europe, under pressure, put political differences and domestic economic concerns aside, and come up with a united front on security spending and on Ukraine’s future, including potentially sending troops there – to force themselves a spot at the negotiating table?

They are going to try.

The Trump administration is clearly not 100% sure what it wants to do about Ukraine. There were a number of mixed messages over the weekend.

This allows Europe a tiny window of opportunity to try to persuade the American president it’s an invaluable partner.

It hopes to do that via this Paris meeting, getting the ball rolling on two major issues demanded by Donald Trump: That Europe spend and do more for its own defence, and that Europe send troops to Ukraine after a ceasefire.

Europe’s leaders insist Kyiv be directly involved in ceasefire talks too. They’ve long maintained the view that “there can be no decisions about Ukraine, without Ukraine”.

But it’s about even more than that for Europe.

It is the cold realisation – much dreaded, but not entirely unexpected – that the Trump administration does not prioritise relations either with European partners, or their defence.

Europe has relied on a security umbrella provided by the US since World War Two.

Depending on the parameters of the Russia-US talks over Ukraine, and how emboldened Putin feels by them, there is also a European fear this could end up changing their continent’s security architecture.

Putin historically resents the spread of Nato eastwards. Russian neighbours – the tiny, former Soviet Baltic States and also Poland – now feel particularly exposed.

Not all European countries will be at Monday’s summit. Just those with military heft: the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Denmark – which is expected to represent the Baltic and Nordic nations, plus the EU Council president and the secretary general of the defence alliance, Nato.

Other countries will reportedly have later, follow-up meetings.

Even at the small Paris gathering, it will be hard, if not impossible, to agree concrete defence spending increases. Poland plans to spend 4.47% of its GDP on defence in 2025. The UK is struggling towards, and hasn’t yet reached, 2.5% of its GDP.

But leaders can pledge to coordinate better, spend more inside Nato and shoulder most of Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction. The EU is expected to bolster its defence effort too.

A large part of the Paris meeting will also focus on the question of sending troops to Ukraine after a ceasefire.

The idea being discussed is not for peacekeeping troops but rather a “reassurance force”, stationed behind, rather than on, any eventual ceasefire line.

The aim of a European troop presence would be three-fold. To send a message to Ukrainians: that they are not alone. Another message to the US, to show that Europe is “doing its bit” for defence of its own continent, and the last message to Moscow, to warn that if it breaks the terms of an eventual ceasefire, it won’t be dealing with Kyiv alone.

But it’s a controversial concept and may not be popular with voters. In Italy for example, 50% of people asked don’t want to send any more weapons to Ukraine, never mind sending sons and daughters, sisters and brothers there.

There are so many as yet unanswered questions:

How many troops would each European country have to send, for how long, and under whose command? What would their mission statement be – for example if Russia broke the terms of an agreed ceasefire, would that mean European soldiers would be directly at war with Russia? Would the US have their back if so?

Europe would want a US security guarantee before deploying soldiers to Ukraine. It may not get one.

It’s far too much to be decided on Monday. And leaders, including UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, come to Paris with their own domestic concerns – can they afford extra defence spending, do they have the troops to send to Ukraine? Germany is nervous about making concrete commitments just before a heated general election.

But this summit is more broad brushstrokes than fine print. The conversation can at least get started publicly.

Will Donald Trump be paying attention?

Hard to know.

There’s talk of sending an envoy to Washington after the Paris meeting to make Europe’s case. Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, is close to the Trump administration, for example.

Sir Keir Starmer has a planned visit to Washington in a few days. This could be his chance to act as a bridge between Europe and the US.

The Paris meeting also offers an opportunity for the UK and other European leaders to further mend relations after the bitterness of Brexit.

Mark Leonard, head of the European Council on Foreign Relations, notes that Starmer could “demonstrate that Britain is a responsible stakeholder for European security … Something that will be noticed and translate into goodwill when it comes to negotiations on other issues”.

Issues like trade relations and law enforcement co-operation which the UK hopes to improve with the EU going forward.

Host nation France is feeling confident. President Macron has long advocated that Europe be less reliant on outside countries for supply chains, tech capabilities and very much so when it comes to defence. He made headlines a year ago by first mooting the idea of troops on the ground in Ukraine.

France is “fiercely proud” that its intelligence and security services are not intertwined with the US, unlike the UK, says Georgina Wright, deputy director for international studies at the Institut Montaigne. That makes it less complicated to untangle, now that Trump is in the White House, demanding that Europe take care of itself.

The US has sent a document to European allies consisting of six points and questions, such as which countries would be willing to deploy troops to Ukraine as part of a peace settlement, and which governments would be prepared to increase sanctions on Russia, including more strictly enforcing existing ones.

But Julianne Smith, until recently the US ambassador to Nato, says this kind of complicated diplomatic work normally takes weeks of meetings and can’t be organised by filled-in forms.

She adds that whatever Europe’s leaders achieve in Paris, if they use that to demand a seat at the negotiating table over Ukraine, their hand is weak.

“If Trump blinks and says no, does Europe refuse to help altogether? They can’t cut off their nose to spite their face.”

Essentially, if the US plans to turn away from Ukraine and from Europe more broadly in terms of security, they will have to significantly up their defence game anyway.

If Donald Trump isn’t watching, Vladimir Putin certainly is.

On Sunday morning, the New Delhi Railway Station in India’s capital looked much like it always does: bustling, with its many platforms full of eager, impatient passengers waiting to catch their trains.

But on Saturday night, a deadly crush – reportedly caused by overcrowding – killed at least 18 people and left several injured.

According to officials, two trains had been delayed at the station, while a third – heading to Prayagraj city where the massive Hindu religious festival, Kumbh Mela, is being held – was waiting to depart as people pushed against each other.

The crush occurred after “a passenger slipped and fell on the stairs”, a spokesperson for Indian Railways said.

Opposition leaders have criticised the government, alleging that Indian Railways did not make adequate arrangements to manage crowds at the station.

An investigation has been launched, and authorities have announced compensation for the victims.

When asked by the BBC about safety and security at the station, Pankaj Gangwar, Principal Chief Security Commissioner of Northern Railway, said “let the investigation be completed first”.

Crushes like these are not unheard of in India, where there is frequent overcrowding at religious events, festivals and public spaces. Last month, 30 people were killed and dozens injured in a crush at the Kumbh Mela.

Crowds at the railway station were also not unexpected – trains are by far the cheapest long-distance mode of transport in India and it is common for the number of passengers to far exceed the capacity of trains.

Eyewitnesses and the families of victims have been recounting their ordeal. Many of them were angry at authorities and police officials at the railway station, who they say did not act in time.

Some eyewitnesses said the crush was not limited to one place but took place on the overhead bridge, staircases and platforms.

Bipin Jha was at the station to meet his wife Mamta, who was arriving on a train. She died in the crush.

“I met her at the platform and we were walking on the footbridge overhead when she was trapped in the crush. She died in front of my eyes. I will live my life with the guilt of not saving her,” he says.

“We were on the stairs, suddenly we felt a push from behind. We fell, along with many others, and were trapped under bodies. I was barely breathing,” said Seema, whose sister-in law Pinky Devi died on the staircase.

Usha Devi, who was travelling to the eastern state of Bihar for her nephew’s wedding, said chaos erupted the moment she reached the platform.

“Many people fell. Everywhere, there were scattered belongings, food items and clothes. I was on the verge of fainting. So many people were collapsing. The crowd was so dense that we couldn’t board our train.”

Umesh Giri’s wife Shilam Devi was among the victims.

“The crowd became uncontrollable,” he told BBC Hindi while waiting outside the mortuary at Delhi’s Maulana Azad Medical College.

“I saw several bodies already lying there. People were colliding with each other, and others started falling over them,” said Mr Giri, who was also injured.

He added that help took time to arrive and that he pleaded with officers for help.

Senior police and railway officials at the scene did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

Most of the victims were taken to the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital in New Delhi, where police and paramilitary forces were deployed, and railway authorities had set up a help desk to assist families. Journalists were not allowed to enter the hospital on Saturday.

Relatives of victims shared their grief with reporters waiting outside, while also expressing anger at the facilities in the hospital.

“Multiple people were crammed onto a single bed,” alleged Shobha, the sister-in-law of Shilam Devi.

Others coming out of the hospital also confirmed this. Hospital authorities did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

At Lady Hardinge Hospital, the grieving family of Riya, 7, completed the paperwork so they could receive her body.

“No child deserves to die like this”, her uncle Vivek said, wiping away tears.

UK Special Forces command rejected resettlement applications from more than 2,000 Afghan commandos who had shown credible evidence of service in units that fought alongside the SAS and SBS, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed for the first time.

UK Special Forces officers appear to have rejected every application from a former Afghan commando referred to them for sponsorship, despite the Afghan units having fought with the British on life-threatening missions against the Taliban.

The MoD had previously denied there was a blanket policy to reject members of the units – known as the Triples – but the BBC has not been able to find any evidence that UK Special Forces (UKSF) supported any resettlement applications.

Asked if UKSF had supported any applications, the MoD declined to answer the question.

The Triples – so-called because their designations were CF 333 and ATF 444 – were set up, trained, and paid by UK Special Forces and supported the SAS and SBS on operations in Afghanistan. When the country fell to the Taliban in 2021, they were judged to be in grave danger of reprisal and were entitled to apply for resettlement to the UK.

The rejection of their applications was controversial because they came at a time when a public inquiry in the UK was investigating allegations that Special Forces had committed war crimes on operations in Afghanistan where the Triples were present.

The inquiry has the power to compel witnesses who are in the UK, but not non-UK nationals who are overseas. If resettled, former members of the Triples could be compelled by the inquiry to provide potentially significant evidence.

BBC Panorama revealed earlier this year that UK Special Forces command had been given veto power over their resettlement applications and denied them asylum in Britain. The revelation caused a wave of anger among some former members of the SAS and others who served with the Afghan units.

The MoD initially denied the existence of the veto, suggesting that the BBC’s reporting had been inaccurate, but then-Defence Minister Andrew Murrison was later forced to tell the House of Commons the government had misled parliament in its denials.

The confirmation of the more than 2,000 rejections emerged in court hearings earlier this month during a legal challenge brought by a former member of the Triples. Lawyers for the MoD applied for a restriction order which temporarily prevented the BBC from reporting on the relevant parts of the proceedings, before withdrawing their application last week under challenge.

Documents disclosed in court also showed that at the same time the MoD was denying the existence of the veto, it already knew that every rejection decision made by UK Special Forces was potentially unsound and would have to be independently reviewed.

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Mike Martin MP, a member of the defence select committee and former British Army officer who served in Afghanistan, told the BBC the rejections were “extremely concerning”.

“There is the appearance that UK Special Forces blocked the Afghan special forces applications because they were witnesses to the alleged UK war crimes currently being investigated in the Afghan inquiry,” Martin said.

“If the MoD is unable to offer any explanation, then the matter should be included in the inquiry,” he added.

Johnny Mercer, the former Conservative MP for Plymouth Moor View, who served alongside the SBS in Afghanistan, testified to the Afghan inquiry that he had spoken to former members of the Triples and heard “horrific” allegations of murder by UK Special Forces.

Mercer said it was “very clear to me that there is a pool of evidence that exists within the Afghan community that are now in the United Kingdom that should contribute to this Inquiry”.

The MoD began a review last year of all 2,022 resettlement applications referred to and rejected by UK Special Forces. All contained what MoD caseworkers on the resettlement scheme regarded as “credible” evidence of service with the Triples units.

The government said at the time that the review would take 12 weeks, but more than a year later it has yet to be completed. Some rejections have already been overturned, allowing former Triples to come to the UK. But the MoD has refused to inform the Afghan commandos whether they are in scope of the review or if their rejections were upheld, unless they write to the MoD.

Many are in hiding in Afghanistan, making it difficult to obtain legal representation or pro-actively contact the MoD. Dozens have reportedly been beaten, tortured, or killed by the Taliban since the group regained control of the country.

“Although decisions have been overturned, it’s too late for some people,” said a former Triples officer. “The delays have caused a lot of problems. People have been captured by the Taliban or lost their lives,” he said.

The officer said that the Afghan commandos worked alongside British Special Forces “like brothers” and felt “betrayed” by the widespread rejections.

“If Special Forces made these rejections they should say why. They should have to answer,” he said.

The MoD is now facing a legal challenge to aspects of the review, including the decision not to inform applicants whether their case is being reviewed or disclose the criteria used to select those in scope.

The legal challenge is being brought by a former senior member of the Triples who is now in the UK, on behalf of commandos still in Afghanistan.

“Our client’s focus is on his soldiers left behind in Afghanistan, some of whom have been killed while they wait for these heavily delayed protection decisions,” said Dan Carey, a partner at Deighton Pierce Glynn.

“As things stand they have a right to request a reassessment of a decision they haven’t even been told about. And there are others who think they are part of the Triples Review when the secret criteria would tell them that their cases aren’t even being looked at.”

Lawyers acting for the former member of the Triples also heavily criticised the level of disclosure in the case by the MoD, which has not handed over any documentation from within UK Special Forces or government records about the decision-making process that led to the rejections.

In court filings, they criticised the “total inadequacy” of the MoD’s disclosure, calling it an “an obvious failure to comply with the duty of candour and to provide necessary explanation” of the process.

New evidence that emerged last week in court also showed that the MoD appeared to have rejected out of hand some applicants who served with UK Special Forces in Afghanistan after 2014 – when Britain’s conventional armed forces left Helmand province – without even referring them to UK Special Forces headquarters for sponsorship.

The MoD has not explained the reasoning behind the policy, which was kept secret from applicants. A spokesperson for the MoD said that after 2014 the UK’s role “evolved from combat operations to primarily training, advising and assisting CF 333, who were under the command of the Afghan Ministry of Interior”.

But officers who served with UK Special Forces told the BBC that the Triples continued to support British-led operations after 2014.

“Saying the Triples didn’t support UK Special Forces operations after 2014 isn’t true at all,” said former officer who served with UKSF.

“We had a squadron of CF 333 with us. We worked closely together. These were NATO targets, UK planned operations,” he said.

Singapore’s opposition leader Pritam Singh has been found guilty of lying under oath to a parliamentary committee.

The charges against Singh relate to his handling of Raeesah Khan, a former lawmaker from his party, who lied to parliament in a separate case.

The verdict in this high-profile trial comes as Singapore is gearing up for its next general election, which must be held before November. Singh’s Workers’ Party holds nine out of 87 elected seats in parliament.

In Singapore, any MP can lose their seat or be barred from running for office for five years if they are fined at least S$10,000 ($7,440; £5,925) or jailed for more than a year.

District Judge Luke Tan, who delivered the verdict on Monday to a packed courtroom – live streamed to more members of the press – said several pieces of evidence showed that Singh “never wanted Ms Khan to clarify [her] lie”.

He also said Singh had “direct and intimate involvement” in guiding Khan to continue her narrative.

Prosecutors are seeking a fine of S$7,000 ($5,200; £4,200) for each of Singh’s two charges.

Singh, 48, maintained his innocence throughout the trial, arguing that he had wanted to give Khan time to deal with what was a sensitive issue.

Donald Trump has made the mass deportation of undocumented foreign nationals a key policy, with the US said to have identified about 18,000 Indian nationals it believes entered illegally.

Last week Narendra Modi said India would take back its nationals who were in the US illegally, and also crack down on the “human trafficking ecosystem”.

“These are children of very ordinary families, and they are lured by big dreams and promises,” he said during his visit to Washington.

Now a new paper by Abby Budiman and Devesh Kapur from Johns Hopkins University has shed light on the numbers, demographics, entry methods, locations and trends relating to undocumented Indians over time.

Here are some of the more striking findings.

Unauthorised immigrants make up 3% of the US population and 22% of the foreign-born population.

The number of undocumented Indians among them is contested however, with estimates varying widely due to differing calculation methods.

Pew Research Center and Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) estimate some 700,000 people as of 2022, making them the third-largest group after Mexico and El Salvador.

In contrast, the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) puts the figure at 375,000, ranking India fifth among origin countries.

The official government data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) offers yet another picture, reporting 220,000 unauthorised Indians in 2022.

The vast differences in estimates highlight the uncertainty surrounding the true size of the undocumented Indian population, according to the study.

Indian migrants make up only a small share of the overall unauthorised migrant population in the US.

If Pew and CMS estimates are accurate, nearly one in four Indian immigrants in the US is undocumented – an unlikely scenario given migration patterns, the study says. (Indian immigrants are one of the fastest-growing groups in the US, surging from 600,000 in 1990 to 3.2 million in 2022.)

The DHS estimated in 2022 that the undocumented Indian population in the US dropped 60% from its 2016 peak, falling from 560,000 to 220,000.

How did the number of undocumented Indians drop so steeply from 2016 to 2022? Mr Kapur says the data doesn’t provide a clear answer, but plausible explanations could be that some obtained legal status while others returned, particularly due to COVID-related hardships.

However, this estimate doesn’t reflect a 2023 surge in Indians at US borders, meaning the actual number could now be higher.

Despite rising border encounters, US government estimates show no clear increase in the overall undocumented Indian population from the US financial year (FY) 2020 to 2022, according to the study.

Encounters refer to instances where non-citizens are stopped by US authorities while attempting to cross the country’s borders with Mexico or Canada.

Visa overstays by Indians have remained steady at 1.5% since 2016.

The number of Indian recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) has also declined from 2,600 in 2017 to 1,600 in 2024. The Daca programme protects migrants who came to the US as children.

To sum up: the undocumented Indian population grew both in numbers and as a share of all unauthorised migrants, rising from 0.8% in 1990 to 3.9% in 2015 before dropping to 2% in 2022.

The US has two main land borders.

The southern border along the states of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas bordering Mexico sees the most migrant crossings. Then there’s the US-Canada border spanning 11 states.

Before 2010, encounters involving Indians at the two borders were minimal, never exceeding 1,000.

Since 2010, nearly all encounters involving Indians occurred along the US-Mexico southern border.

In FY 2024, encounters of Indian nationals on the northern border surged to 36% of all Indian crossings, up from just 4% the previous year.

Canada had become a more accessible entry point for Indians, with a shorter visitor visa processing times than US.

Also, there was a surge in attempted border crossings from 2021 onwards, and the encounters at the Mexico border peaked in 2023.

“This is not specific to Indians. It is part of a larger surge of migrants trying to come into the US after Biden was elected. It is as if there was a high tide of migrants and Indians were a part of it,” Mr Kapur told me.

The study finds that the states with the largest Indian immigrant populations -California (112,000), Texas (61,000), New Jersey (55,000), New York (43,000) and Illinois (31,000) – also have the highest numbers of unauthorised Indian immigrants.

Indians make up a significant share of the total unauthorised population in Ohio (16%), Michigan (14%), New Jersey (12%) and Pennsylvania (11%).

Meanwhile, states where more than 20% of Indian immigrants are unauthorised include Tennessee, Indiana, Georgia, Wisconsin and California.

“We expect this because it’s easier to blend in and find work in an ethnic business – like a Gujarati working for a Gujarati-American or a Punjabi/Sikh in a similar setup,” Mr Kapur told me.

The US immigration system allows people who are detained at the border who fear persecution in their home countries to undergo credible “fear screenings”. Those who pass can seek asylum in court, leading to a rise in asylum applications alongside rising border apprehensions.

Administrative data doesn’t reveal the exact demographics of Indian asylum seekers, but court records on spoken languages provide some insight.

Punjabi-speakers from India have dominated Indian asylum claims since 2001. After Punjabi, Indian asylum seekers spoke Hindi (14%), English (8%) and Gujarati (7%).

They have filed 66% of asylum cases from FY 2001–2022, suggesting Punjab and the neighbouring state of Haryana as key migrant sources.

Punjabi speakers from India also had the highest asylum approval rate (63%), followed by Hindi speakers (58%). In contrast, only a quarter of Gujarati speakers’ cases were approved.

US data collected by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows Indian asylum requests in the US have skyrocketed.

The requests jumped tenfold in just two years, rising from about 5,000 in 2021 to over 51,000 in 2023.

While this spike is most dramatic in the US, similar trends are seen in Canada, the UK and Australia, where Indians are among the largest asylum-seeking groups, the study says.

Mr Kapur believes this is “largely a way to game the asylum system rather than an objective fear of persecution, as processing takes years”.

Given the large number of Punjabi-speakers who seek asylum, it’s unclear what has changed in the northern Indian state ruled by the Congress party (2017-22) and latterly the Aam Aadmi Party (2022–present) to drive this surge.

Under Trump’s second presidency, asylum requests are set to plummet.

Within his first week, a key app for migrants was shut down and removed from app stores, cancelling nearly 300,000 pending appointments, including asylum cases already in progress.

US data shows most Indian asylum seekers are Punjabi and Gujarati – groups from India’s wealthier states, better able to afford high migration costs.

In contrast, Indian Muslims and marginalised communities and people from conflict zones like the regions affected by Maoist violence and Kashmir, rarely seek asylum, the study says.

So most Indian asylum seekers are economic migrants, not from the country’s poorest or conflict-hit regions.

The arduous journey to the US – whether via Latin America or as “fake” students in Canada – costs 30-100 times India’s per capita income, making it accessible only to those with assets to sell or pledge, the study says.

Not surprisingly, Punjab and Gujarat – top origin states for unauthorised Indians – are among India’s wealthier regions, where land values far exceed returns from farming.

“Even illegality takes a lot of money to pursue,” the study says.

While rising asylum claims may seem linked to “democratic backsliding” in India, correlation isn’t causation, the authors say .

Punjab and Gujarat have long histories of emigration, with migrants heading not just to the US but also the UK, Canada and Australia.

Remittances – India received an estimated $120bn in 2023 – fuel aspirations for a better life, driven not by poverty but “relative deprivation”, as families seek to match the success of others abroad, the study says.

A parallel industry of agents and brokers in India has cashed in on this demand.

The Indian government, says the study, “has looked the other way, likely because the issue of illegal migration is much more a burden for receiving than sending countries”.

Between 2009 and 2024, around 16,000 Indians were deported, according to India’s ministry of external affairs.

These deportations averaged 750 per year under Obama, 1,550 under Trump’s first term, and 900 under Biden.

Indian migrant removals spiked between FY 2023 and 2024, but the peak was in 2020 with nearly 2,300 deportations.

Israel’s prime minister has said he is working to make US President Donald Trump’s plan to remove and resettle Gaza’s population “a reality”.

Benjamin Netanyahu said he was co-operating with the US on a “common strategy” for the Palestinian territory after a meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Jerusalem on Sunday.

The talks come after US President Donald Trump proposed a US takeover Gaza and removal of the two million Palestinians there to neighbouring countries.

The UN has warned that any forced displacement of civilians from occupied territory is strictly prohibited under international law and “tantamount to ethnic cleansing”.

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America’s top diplomat said President Trump’s plan may have “shocked and surprised” people, but it took “courage” to propose an alternative to “tired ideas” of the past.

Netanyahu said he and Rubio had discussed ways to implement Trump’s vision, adding that the US and Israel had a common position on Gaza.

The Israeli leader warned that the “gates of hell” would be opened if all Israeli hostages held by the armed group Hamas were not released.

“Hamas can not continue as a military or government force,” Rubio added. “And as long as it stands as a force that can govern or administer or a force that can threaten by use of violence, peace becomes impossible.”

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

The fighting has caused devastation in Gaza, where more than 48,200 people have been killed during the 16-month war, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Most of Gaza’s population has also been displaced multiple times, almost 70% of buildings are estimated to be damaged or destroyed, the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed, and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.

Palestinian and Arab leaders have widely rejected Trump’s Gaza takeover plan, with the Palestinian Authority and Hamas emphasising that Palestinian land is “not for sale”.

Unlike previous US peace efforts in the region, the US top diplomat did not meet any Palestinian leaders to discuss the future of Gaza.

Speaking at a joint news conference on Sunday, Rubio and Netanyahu outlined areas of agreement, including a desire to eradicate Hamas’s governing capacity in the enclave, prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon, and to monitor developments in post-Assad Syria.

Rubio went on to accuse Tehran of being “behind every act of violence, behind every destabilising activity, behind everything that threatens peace and stability” in the region.

Netanyahu also condemned what he called “lawfare” from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which he said “outrageously libelled” Israel.

He thanked the US administration for issuing sanctions against the ICC, which last year issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and his former defence minister over alleged war crimes in Gaza – which Israel denies – as well as a top Hamas commander.

Rubio is visiting Israel on his first tour of the Middle East as the US secretary of state. He is also due to meet Russian officials in Saudi Arabia in coming days for talks on the war in Ukraine – a meeting that neither Ukraine nor other European countries have been invited to.

His visit comes after a shipment of American-made heavy bombs arrived in Israel overnight.

Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz said his country had received a delivery of MK-84 bombs from the US late on Saturday, after Trump overturned a block on exporting the munitions placed by his predecessor, Joe Biden.

Biden initially shipped thousands of MK-84s to Israel after Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack, but later declined to clear the bombs for export out of concern for their impact on Gaza. The powerful 2,000-pound bombs have a wide blast radius and can rip through concrete and metal, destroying entire buildings.

Katz said the shipment represented a “significant asset” for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and served as evidence of the “strong alliance between Israel and the United States”.

Meanwhile, Hamas said an Israeli air strike had killed three police officers near Rafah in southern Gaza on Sunday, which it called a “serious violation” of the ceasefire.

Israel said it had struck “several armed individuals” in southern Gaza.

The ceasefire came into force on 19 January and requires a complete pause in fighting for the first 42-day phase.

Fears had been high this week that the fragile ceasefire agreement could collapse after a dispute over a planned hostage release, which was nearly aborted but ultimately went ahead on Saturday.

Netanyahu’s office confirmed on Sunday that an Israeli negotiating team would travel to Cairo on Monday to discuss the second phase of the ceasefire.

At least nine people have died over the weekend, as torrential downpours drenched parts of the south-eastern US, submerging roads and houses.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said eight people had died in his state and suggested at a news conference on Sunday that the total could go up.

Hundreds of people stranded in flood waters, many stuck in their cars, had been rescued, and Beshear warned residents to “stay off the roads right now and stay alive”.

In Georgia, the ninth death was recorded after a man lying in his bed was struck by an uprooted tree that crashed into his home.

Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina were under some type of storm-related alert this weekend. Almost all of those states suffered catastrophic damage in September from Hurricane Helene.

Between the eight states, more than half a million households were without power on Sunday night, according to poweroutage.us.

A bulk of the death and destruction appears to have occurred in Kentucky, where a mother and her seven-year-old child and a 73-year-old man were among the dead.

Some parts of Kentucky received up to 6in (15cm) of rain, National Weather Service (NWS) figures show, resulting in widespread flooding issues.

The rapid influx of rain caused river levels to rise quickly and trapped vehicles in feet of water, images posted online show.

Governor Beshear wrote on X that there were over 300 road closures.

He also said that he had written to the White House requesting an emergency disaster declaration and federal funds for affected areas, according to the BBC’s partner CBS News.

President Donald Trump approved the declaration on Sunday, authorising the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), which he has suggested abolishing, to co-ordinate disaster relief efforts.

Officials have cautioned that the worst of the flooding is not over yet.

“The rivers are still going to rise,” Eric Gibson, director of the Kentucky Division of Emergency Management, said on Sunday.

Bob Oravec, a senior forecaster with the NWS, said: “The effects will continue for a while, a lot of swollen streams and a lot of flooding going on.”

In Obion County, Tennessee, heavy rains there caused a levee to break, “resulting in rapid onset flooding”, a local NWS account said on X.

“If you are in the area, GET TO HIGH GROUND NOW! This is a LIFE THREATENING situation,” the post said.

The town of Rives along the Obion River was deluged from the breached flood barrier.

Footage shows brown water rushing over rocks and past trees, as rescue workers in red boats pass flooded homes.

Steve Carr, the Obion County mayor, declared a state of emergency on Facebook and said there would be mandatory evacuations in Rives because of “the rising water, no electricity, and freezing temperature creating a life-threatening situation”.

Located north-east of Memphis, Rives has a population of roughly 300.

West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey issued a state of emergency in 10 counties on Saturday and added another three counties to the list on Sunday.

“Please continue to be cautious,” Morrisey said on X.

Kristi Noem, head of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Fema, said she had been in contact with both Governors Beshear and Morrisey, and left voicemails with Governors Bill Lee of Tennessee and Kay Ivey of Alabama.

“While emergency management is best led by local authorities, we reinforced that DHS stands ready to take immediate action to offer resources and support,” Noem said.

Meteorologists have also warned that a polar vortex is making its way early this week towards the northern Rocky Mountains and northern Plains in the middle of the country.

In Colorado, temperatures could drop to as low as 14F (-10C), with the city of Denver reportedly opening shelters for its homeless population this weekend.

President Donald Trump’s attempts to shrink the federal bureaucracy are heading to the Supreme Court, according to US media.

He has filed an emergency appeal to the country’s highest court to rule on whether he can fire the leader of an independent whistleblowing agency.

Hampton Dellinger, head of the US Office of Special Counsel, sued the Trump administration after he was fired by email this month.

Trump has also sacked more than a dozen inspectors general at various federal agencies along with the jobs of thousands of employees across the US government.

Mr Dellinger, who was nominated by Joe Biden, the former president, argues that his removal broke a law that protects leaders of independent agencies from being fired by the president, “except in cases of neglect of duty, malfeasance or inefficiency”.

A federal judge in Washington DC issued a temporary order on Wednesday allowing Mr Dellinger to hold on to his position while the case is being considered.

On Saturday, a divided US Court of Appeals in the nation’s capital rejected the Trump administration’s request to overrule the lower court.

• What is Doge and why is Musk cutting so many jobs?
• Legal showdown looms as Trump tests limits of presidential power

That has led to the justice department filing an emergency appeal to the conservative-dominated Supreme Court. It is the first case the president has taken to the justices since he took office last month.

“This court should not allow lower courts to seize executive power by dictating to the president how long he must continue employing an agency head against his will,” Sarah M Harris, acting solicitor general, wrote in the filing provided by the Department of Justice to the Washington Post.

“Until now, as far as we are aware, no court in American history has wielded an injunction to force the president to retain an agency head,” the acting solicitor general wrote, according to the Associated Press news agency.

The Republican president’s orders on immigration, transgender issues and government spending have also become bogged down in dozens of lawsuits in the lower courts. Those cases may ultimately wind up at the Supreme Court, too.

Trump’s efforts to reduce and reshape the 2.3 million-strong civilian federal workforce continued over the weekend.

Workers in various health agencies who are still within their probation periods received letters on Saturday evening informing them they would be terminated, sources told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

“Unfortunately, the agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the agency’s current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment at the agency,” read the letters.

At least 9,500 workers at the departments of Health and Human Services, Energy, Veterans Affairs, Interior and Agriculture have been fired by Trump, according to a tally from Reuters news agency.

Another 75,000 workers have taken a buyout offered to get them to leave voluntarily, according to the White House.

The cost-cutting initiative has been led by department of government efficiency, or Doge, a task force led by Elon Musk.

Pope drama Conclave and immigration epic The Brutalist walked away with some of the biggest prizes at the Bafta film awards on Sunday.

Conclave, made by German director Edward Berger, picked up four awards in total including best film and best British film; the first time a movie has won both in the same year since the 2019 war drama, 1917. It also won best adapted screenplay and best editing.

US filmmaker Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist also won four – Corbet picked up best director while Adrien Brody won best actor for his portrayal of Hungarian architect and Holocaust survivor, László Tóth. The film also won best original score and cinematography.

Other winners included Mikey Madison (best actress, for Anora), Kieran Culkin (best supporting actor, for A Real Pain) and Zoe Saldaña (best supporting actress, for Emilia Pérez).

• Baftas winner 2025: The winners list in full

Anora, about a New York stripper who has a whirlwind romance with the son of a Russian oligarch, had been picking up best picture momentum ahead of the Oscars next month – but instead came away with best actress and best casting.

The best actress win for Madison was something of a surprise, despite her impressive performance in Sean Baker’s film. Madison herself, on accepting the prize, said: “Wow, I really wasn’t expecting this. I probably should have listened to my publicist and written a speech or something!”

The 25-year-old starred in US comedy series Better Things and also had roles in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and horror film Scream. But her leading role in Anora has catapulted her into the spotlight.

Madison added: “I want to take a moment to recognise the sex worker community. I see you, you deserve respect and human decency. I will always be an ally and a friend.”

Demi Moore, who stars in body horror The Substance, has been picking up best actress prizes in the last couple of months, including at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards.

Many thought she would win the Bafta, too. She will still be a favourite at the Oscars although Madison’s Bafta win does make things more interesting.

The Substance only picked up one win on Sunday for make-up and hair. The film sees a TV aerobics presenter in her 50s (Moore) who takes a black-market drug to create a younger, more beautiful version of herself. Full of gory effects, the film is the favourite to pick up the same prize at next month’s Oscars.

• Conclave – 4
• The Brutalist – 4
• Wicked – 2
• Emilia Pérez – 2
• Anora – 2
• Dune Part 2 – 2
• A Real Pain – 2
• Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl – 2

Conclave, about a a gossipy and scheming group of cardinals who gather in Rome to elect a new Pope, which stars Ralph Fiennes, had led the charge with 12 nominations.

Berger said he was “deeply moved” to win best film, and that winning outstanding British film, was “a huge, huge honour”.

“Best British and I’m not even from here, so I feel so welcome in your midst,” he added.

Bafta rules state that films in this category “must have significant creative involvement by individuals who are British”.

Berger added that we “live in a time of a crisis of democracy”, and ended his speech by quoting Leonard Cohen, saying: “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

Brody, collecting his best actor win, told the audience The Brutalist “is really about the pursuit of leaving something meaningful”, while Corbet said he was “humbled and very grateful”.

The ceremony was hosted by David Tennant at London’s Royal Festival Hall. The actor wore a kilt and opened the ceremony by belting out The Proclaimers’ classic song, I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles), joined by other stars including James McAvoy and Colman Domingo.

In what has been an unpredictable awards season, the Baftas followed a similar pattern, with no single film sweeping the board, and several movies sharing the spoils.

This was the third year in a row that no British stars won any of the four acting prizes at the most prestigious night in the British film calendar.

Films that had multiple nominations but lost out on the night included A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet, Nosferatu, Blitz, Gladiator II and The Apprentice.

Emilia Pérez, the French-made film, about a dangerous Mexican drug lord who decides to leave the world of crime and live a new life as a woman, has been the subject of controversy in recent weeks. Offensive social media posts by its star, Karla Sofía Gascón, were unearthed.

Some wondered if the saga would affect its chances. With 11 nominations, it ended up winning best international film alongside Zoe Saldaña’s win. She is now a favourite to replicate her Bafta win at next month’s Oscars.

On accepting the international film prize, the film’s director, Jacques Audiard, thanked the cast, including Gascon, as did Saldaña.

Kieran Culkin’s win for a A Real Pain was widely expected. The award was collected by his co-star and the film’s writer and director, Jesse Eisenberg.

Eisenberg’s film, about two cousins who explore their Jewish grandmother’s roots in Poland, also picked up the award for best original screenplay.

Actor and TV presenter Warwick Davis was awarded the Bafta Fellowship, the highest honour bestowed by the British Academy. He thanked his mother – his “first agent” and his “wonderful wife Sammy who died almost a year ago”.

The In Memoriam segment, which honours those from the film community who we have lost in the past year, paid tribute to the likes of Dame Maggie Smith, James Earl Jones, David Lynch, Dame Joan Plowright and Donald Sutherland.

Other winners included Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Part 2, which won special effects and sound.

Blockbuster musical film Wicked won best production design for Brits Nathan Crowley and Lee Sandales. It was Crowley’s first Bafta and his sixth nonmination, although Sandales has won twice previously. It also picked up best costume design.

Aardman’s latest Wallace and Gromit film, Vengeance Most Fowl, won best animation – perhaps surprisingly, it’s the first time they have won this award. They also picked up the inaugural award for best children and family film.

West Belfast rap group Kneecap won the Bafta for outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer.

The Irish-language film is based on a semi-fictionalised account of how the band was formed.

The film’s English director, Rich Peppiatt, said on accepting the prize: “Kneecap is more than a film, it’s a movement,” adding that everyone should have their language and culture respected.

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve story, a film about the life of the Superman star who was paralysed in a horse riding accident 10 years before his death in 2004, won best documentary. His children took to the stage to honour their late father.

Read more about this year’s awards season films:

• A Complete Unknown: Critics praise Chalamet’s portrayal of Bob Dylan
• A Real Pain: Succession star praised for emotional film role
• All We Imagine As Light: An Indian tale of love and sisterhood unfolds
• Anora: Mikey Madison praised for breakout role as New York stripper
• The Apprentice: Sebastian Stan says Trump ‘should be grateful’ for controversial film
• Bird: Saltburn star plays chaotic young dad in Bafta-tipped film
• Blitz: Saoirse Ronan says WW2 film is ‘incredibly relevant’
• The Brutalist: Film honours my family’s hardships and loss, says actor Adrien Brody
• Conclave: Critics praise ‘skin-prickling suspense’
• Emilia Pérez: Selena Gomez ‘shines’ in Oscar-tipped musical
• Gladiator II: Mescal was cast in Gladiator II after ’30-minute Zoom call’
• Hard Truths: Marianne Jean-Baptiste on Oscars buzz for playing ‘difficult’ woman
• I’m Still Here: Film brings Brazil’s dictatorship past to the surface
• Lee: Kate Winslet says women should celebrate ‘being a real shape’
• Maria: Angelina Jolie ‘spellbinding’ as opera star Callas
• Nickel Boys: Film adaptation ‘breaks the rules of cinema’
• Nightbitch: Amy Adams turns into a dog in ‘bizarre and brilliant’ film
• Nosferatu: ‘We’re all considering death all the time’: Willem Dafoe on new vampire film
• The Piano Lesson: Denzel Washington’s children join forces in ‘fearless’ film
• Queer: Critics divided over Daniel Craig film
• The Room Next Door: Tilda Swinton film sparks euthanasia debate
• Sing Sing: Colman Domingo wins Gotham prize as Oscars race heats up
• The Substance: Demi Moore is over being perfect in new ‘risky and juicy’ horror role
• Wicked: Ariana Grande channelled her loss into Wicked role

With two major musicals in the awards race this year, it was only right that host David Tennant opened the Bafta Film Awards with a tune of his own.

The Scottish star kicked off proceedings with a storming rendition of The Proclaimers’ 500 Miles, featuring contributions from Selena Gomez, Colman Domingo, Anna Kendrick, Hugh Grant and Camila Cabello.

The energy remained high throughout the ceremony, which saw Conclave and The Brutalist take the most prizes with four each.

• The winners list in full
• Conclave and The Brutalist win big at the Baftas

Backstage, the stars were in equally good spirits, even if a few of them were jet-lagged, hungry, and remarking on how heavy the Bafta trophy is to carry around.

Here are eight highlights from the winners’ room:

When Anora star Mikey Madison collected the best actress award, she started by admitting to the audience that she hadn’t prepared a speech.

Backstage, she jokingly blamed this on Robert De Niro, whom she recently appeared with on The Graham Norton Show.

“I just wish that I’d had a better speech,” she said.

“I was on a talk show and Robert De Niro told me not to write a speech and I thought, I should probably listen to him. And I forgot to thank so many important people.”

Madison was overwhelmed but overjoyed with the recognition from Bafta.

“I think I’m a little disassociated right now,” she says, “I love making movies, and being an actress is my dream, and for my film to be recognised like this is incredibly special.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever fully grasp the magnitude of being in a room like that, full of my idols, incredible creatives who I admire so much.”

Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl won two prizes for its producer Richard Beek and directors Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham. The trio brought their famous characters along with them to the ceremony

Crossingham reflected on the fact that stories about a cheese enthusiast and his loyal but long-suffering dog always seem to go down so well in the US, despite the films firmly rooted in UK culture.

“It is remarkable that our very Britishness is embraced in America,” he told journalists.

He highlighted one particular reference in Vengeance Most Fowl: the TV presenter in the film is called Anton Deck, a reference to Geordie duo Ant & Dec.

“There are some jokes, like Anton Deck, which are very British. In the American screenings, there was complete silence apart from one Brit guffawing in the corner.

“But we’re very proud of that, we stick to our guns. Apart from one or two very specific gags like that, it seems to be embraced.

“And even if they’re laughing us, not with us, if they’re laughing, we’re still happy about that.”

Jesse Eisenberg, who won best original screenplay for A Real Pain, walked into the winners’ room carrying his Bafta and asking journalists: “Am I expected to hold this heavy thing the whole time?”

After being reassured he was allowed to put it down as he answered questions, he reflected on the fact that the screenwriting prizes he’s won for A Real Pain have both been in the UK.

“The other award I won for this was the London Film Critics prize, so I must be living the wrong country,” he joked.

“My background is playwright, and when one of my plays transferred to the West End it was far more popular. I don’t know what it is, maybe I’m a novelty here and in America I’m boring.”

Eisenberg was also asked about his relationship with co-star Kieran Culkin, who won best supporting actor. But, he said, it’s not as close as people might imagine.

“In terms of our dynamic, I’ll text him today and say, ‘hey you won the Bafta, I’m so proud of you’. And then three weeks later my phone will buzz and it’ll be [Culkin saying]: ‘Hey, I just got this, thanks’.”

“That’s the closeness with which you imagine we live.”

Zoe Saldaña continued her awards season sweep of the best supporting actress category with another win at Bafta, despite the recent controversies faced by her film Emilia Pérez.

Backstage, she reflected on her biggest number in the Spanish-language musical, El Mal, which is also up for best original song at the Oscars.

“Not getting in my own way was the challenge,” she said of shooting it. “Sometimes you can become very heady about something and you overthink it.

“What you have to do is trust the process… Rehearsing the dance was about reconnecting with a part of me I had missed so much but I had since let go of for more than 20 years.

“Reconnecting with that, dusting off all those cobwebs and jumping into the unknown was what needed to happen.”

Asked about the importance of performing the musical in Spanish, she replies: “It’s my first language, I was spoken to first, sung to first, in Spanish.

“We love we live, we fight, we work, in Spanish. And my art has [previously] only lived in a very English way. So that yearning to connect my culture with my art was meaningful to me.”

Warwick Davis was the recipient of this year’s Bafta Fellowship, the British Academy’s highest honour.

“It’s very overwhelming, this whole thing,” he said. “You win the award and then you have to talk to loads of people, feeling very shiny.”

(Everyone was feeling sweaty backstage by this point.)

Asked about the moment he heard he was this year’s winner, Davis said: “I was on the toilet when I found out!

“[Bafta] notified me by email, and I do most of my administration work on the toilet. I might call it paperwork but then you’d get the wrong idea,” he jokes.

“Then I got an email from Bafta saying I’d won the fellowship, and I got all excited, and then it suddenly dawned on me, is this a fake email? Some sort of scam?

“So I clicked on the email address, and it really was Bafta. Then I finished up at the loo, you probably didn’t need that detail, and then went and celebrated with the kids.”

Adrien Brody’s reaction to winning best actor might have been slightly hampered by how hungry he is.

“I haven’t eaten anything yet, so I’m not sure how I’m feeling, but I’m so happy to be here,” he says backstage.

Brody is asked about the surge his career has enjoyed in recent months thanks to The Brutalist, more than two decades after his last awards run for The Pianist.

“The beauty of being an actor is that any life experience, and there have been many since [The Pianist], anything you’ve experienced is so valuable in shaping a sense of understanding,” he reflects.

“So the moments of triumph, loss, complexity along your path, they give you an ability to represent those more truthfully and authentically in your work.

“I’m just so grateful to have had this meaningful opportunity come my way, I’ve been yearning for this for a long time.

“I’ve been working very hard. It’s not for a lack of hard work, but there are so many magical things that have to happen for a film to achieve greatness and I’m so happy that all of those things conspired on The Brutalist.”

And with that, he’s off to have some supper.

Conclave won best film and best British film, becoming the first movie to take the top two prizes since 1917 (the film, not the year).

“I am so humbled and so grateful to be welcomed here so openly with such warmth and open arms,” its German director Edward Berger says of the UK. “Basically, I just want to live here, I’m never going to leave.”

He likens the cast of Pope drama Conclave, which includes Stanley Tucci, Ralph Fiennes and Isabella Rossallini, to an orchestra.

“No-one really knows [why a cast works so well], but you have a hunch, so there’s a lot of discussion – we put pictures up on the wall and it just felt like a good combination,” he explained.

“They were all believable cardinals, all different nationalities and accents, it just felt they were all different instruments in a big musical piece.”

The Brutalist’s Brady Corbet might have won best director, but he said he was slightly too “jet-lagged and exhausted” to fully process it.

As much as he’s enjoying awards season, he notes: “It’ll be amazing when it’s done, I’m looking forward to getting back to work.”

Corbet is not shy of hard work – making the Brutalist was famously a labour of love which took several years. “We basically just didn’t sleep,” he says. “I haven’t had a day off in years.”

Now that awards campaigning is in its final phase however, with voting for the Oscars closing on Monday, he should finally get some down time. “The week leading up to the Oscars is actually pretty quiet, I’m looking forward to it.”

The Brutalist, a 3.5-hour film with an intermission, has been a relative box office success despite its intimidating duration.

“I’m not trying to teach anyone a lesson or anything,” he says, “but I do think it’s good for the ecosystem that a film like this which is completely uncompromised – I don’t like too many cooks in my kitchen – for that to have made $30m globally so far, that’s exciting.

“All the things you’re told not to do, when those films are proven to be commercially viable, and people want original, daring movies, it makes me feel more optimistic than usual.'”

Rwandan-backed M23 rebels have entered Bukavu, the second-largest city in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, seizing the regional governor’s office.

Some people lined the streets to clap and cheer the fighters as they marched and drove into the city centre without resistance. It is the second city after Goma to fall to the rebels in the mineral-rich region in the past few weeks.

The Congolese government has acknowledged its fall and urged residents to stay at home “to avoid being targeted by the occupying forces”.

The UN and European countries have warned that the latest offensive, which has seen hundreds of thousands of people forced from their homes, could spark a wider regional war.

• What’s the fighting in DR Congo all about?
• Who’s pulling the strings in the DR Congo crisis?
• The evidence that shows Rwanda is backing rebels in DR Congo

A resident in Bukavu, who asked to remain anonymous because of concerns for her safety, told the BBC on Sunday that most people were still afraid to leave their homes.

“Since yesterday the children and the youth took the weapons. They are shooting everywhere in all directions, they are looting,” she said.

“This morning the M23 entered and they were acclaimed by the people, very happy to see them. We don’t know if it’s because they are afraid or because they found that there were no authorities in the city.

“The place where I live the crackling [gunfire] can still be heard.”

On Friday, the M23 captured Bukavu’s main airport, which is about 30km (18 miles) north of the city – and then began advancing slowly towards the city, which is the capital of South-Kivu province.

The provincial governor, Jean-Jacques Purusi Sadiki, confirmed to the Reuters news agency the fighters were in Bukavu city centre by Sunday morning, adding that Congolese troops had withdrawn to avoid urban fighting.

This left a security vacuum in the city on Saturday with chaotic scenes playing out, including a reported prison break from the central prison.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said a warehouse with nearly 7,000 tonnes of food was looted.

The city of around two million people on the southern tip of Lake Kivu borders Rwanda and is an important transit point for the local mineral trade.

Its fall represents an unprecedented expansion of territory for the M23 since their latest insurgency started in late 2021 – and is a blow to the government of President Félix Tshisekedi.

Government spokesman Patrick Muyaya said Rwanda was violating DR Congo’s territorial integrity through expansionist ambitions and human rights abuses.

The Congolese government accuses Rwanda of sowing chaos in the region – as well as having troops on the ground – so it can benefit from its natural resources, something Kigali denies.

President Tshisekedi wants his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame to face sanctions over the latest unrest.

But President Kagame has dismissed such threats – and has repeatedly pointed out that Rwanda’s main priority is its security.

He has long been angered by what he sees as the failure of the Congolese authorities to deal with the DR Congo-based FLDR rebel group, which he sees as a danger to Rwanda.

The group is made up of some members of the ethnic Hutu militia accused of involvement in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda when over 100 days around 800,000 people, mainly from the Tutsi ethnic group, were killed.

Troops from the Tusti-led M23 gathered at the Place de l’Indépendance in central Bukavu on Sunday, where one of its commanders, Bernard Byamungu, was filmed chatting to locals and answering their questions in Swahili.

He urged government forces “hiding in houses” to surrender – and accused the withdrawing military of spreading terror by arming local youths who had gone on a looting rampage.

The African Union (AU) – which has been holding a heads of state summit in Ethiopia this weekend – again urged the M23 to disarm.

“We are all very, very concerned about an open regional war,” Reuters quotes the AU’s peace and security commissioner Bankole Adeo as saying.

• The DR Congo rebel leader whose fighters have created turmoil
• DR Congo’s failed gamble on Romanian mercenaries
• Your phone, a rare metal and the war in DR Congo

It has been dubbed one of the world’s rarest treasure troves of art but few people outside its host country know about it.

For decades, masterpieces by the likes of Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock have been kept in the basement of a museum in Iran’s capital Tehran, shrouded in mystery.

According to estimates in 2018, the collection is worth as much as $3bn.

Only a small portion of the work has been exhibited since the 1979 Iranian Revolution but in recent years, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art has been showcasing some of its most captivating pieces.

The Eye to Eye exhibition at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, which opened in October 2024, was extended twice due to overwhelming public demand, running until January 2025.

The display was widely regarded as one of the most significant exhibitions in the history of the museum, and it also became its most visited.

The showcase featured more than 15 works unveiled for the first time, including a sculpture by Jean Dubuffet – marking its first-ever appearance in an Iranian exhibition.

From abstract expressionism to pop art, the collection at the museum serves as a time capsule of pivotal artistic movements.

Among the artwork is Warhol’s portrait of Farah Pahlavi – Iran’s last queen – a rare piece blending his pop art flair with Iranian cultural history.

Elsewhere, Francis Bacon’s work called Two Figures Lying on a Bed with Attendants shows figures appearing to spy on two naked men lying on a bed.

On the opposite wall in the basement of the museum, a portrait of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is on display in juxtaposition.

The museum was built in 1977 under the patronage of Pahlavi, the exiled widow of the last Shah of Iran who was overthrown during the revolution.

Pahlavi was a passionate art advocate and her cousin, architect Kamran Diba, designed the museum.

It was established to introduce modern art to Iranians and to bridge Iran closer to the international art scene.

The museum soon became home to a stunning array of works by luminaries including Picasso, Warhol and Salvador Dali, alongside pieces by leading Iranian modernists, and quickly established itself as a beacon of cultural exchange and artistic ambition.

But then came the 1979 revolution. Iran became an Islamic republic as the monarchy was overthrown and clerics assumed political control under Ayatollah Khomeini.

Many artworks were deemed inappropriate for public display because of nudity, religious sensitivities or political implications.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Gabrielle with Open Blouse was deemed too scandalous. And Warhol’s portrait of the former queen of Iran was too political. In fact, Pahlavi’s portrait was vandalised and torn apart with a knife during the revolutionary turmoil.

After the revolution, many of the artworks were locked away, collecting dust in a basement that became the stuff of art world legend.

It was only in the late 1990s that the museum reclaimed its cultural significance during the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami.

Suddenly the world remembered what it had been missing. Art lovers could not believe their eyes. Van Gogh, Dali, even Monet – all in Tehran.

Some pieces were loaned to major exhibitions in Europe and the United States, briefly reconnecting the collection with the global art world.

Hamid Keshmirshekan, an art historian based in London, has studied the collection and calls it “one of the rarest treasure troves of modern art outside the West”.

The collection includes Henry’s Moore’s Reclining Figure series – an iconic piece by one of Britain’s most celebrated sculptors – and Jackson Pollock’s Mural on Indian Red Ground, a vibrant example of the American’s painting technique pulsing with energy and emotion.

Picasso’s The Painter and His Model – his largest canvas from 1927 – also features, a strong example of his abstract works from the post-cubism period.

And there is Van Gogh’s At Eternity’s Gate – one of the very rare survivals of his first printmaking campaign during which he produced six lithographs in November 1882.

But for art lovers in Britain, the collection is out of reach. The UK Foreign Office advises against all travel to Iran and says British and British-Iranian dual nationals are at significant risk of arrest, questioning or detention.

Having a British passport or connections to the UK can be reason enough for detention by the Iranian authorities, it says.

Challenges remain for the museum which operates under a tight budget. Shifting political priorities mean that it often functions more as a cultural hub than a traditional museum.

Yet it continues to be a remarkable institution – an unlikely guardian of modern art masterpieces in the heart of Tehran.

Donald Trump has made the mass deportation of undocumented foreign nationals a key policy, with the US said to have identified about 18,000 Indian nationals it believes entered illegally.

Last week Narendra Modi said India would take back its nationals who were in the US illegally, and also crack down on the “human trafficking ecosystem”.

“These are children of very ordinary families, and they are lured by big dreams and promises,” he said during his visit to Washington.

Now a new paper by Abby Budiman and Devesh Kapur from Johns Hopkins University has shed light on the numbers, demographics, entry methods, locations and trends relating to undocumented Indians over time.

Here are some of the more striking findings.

Unauthorised immigrants make up 3% of the US population and 22% of the foreign-born population.

The number of undocumented Indians among them is contested however, with estimates varying widely due to differing calculation methods.

Pew Research Center and Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) estimate some 700,000 people as of 2022, making them the third-largest group after Mexico and El Salvador.

In contrast, the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) puts the figure at 375,000, ranking India fifth among origin countries.

The official government data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) offers yet another picture, reporting 220,000 unauthorised Indians in 2022.

The vast differences in estimates highlight the uncertainty surrounding the true size of the undocumented Indian population, according to the study.

Indian migrants make up only a small share of the overall unauthorised migrant population in the US.

If Pew and CMS estimates are accurate, nearly one in four Indian immigrants in the US is undocumented – an unlikely scenario given migration patterns, the study says. (Indian immigrants are one of the fastest-growing groups in the US, surging from 600,000 in 1990 to 3.2 million in 2022.)

The DHS estimated in 2022 that the undocumented Indian population in the US dropped 60% from its 2016 peak, falling from 560,000 to 220,000.

How did the number of undocumented Indians drop so steeply from 2016 to 2022? Mr Kapur says the data doesn’t provide a clear answer, but plausible explanations could be that some obtained legal status while others returned, particularly due to COVID-related hardships.

However, this estimate doesn’t reflect a 2023 surge in Indians at US borders, meaning the actual number could now be higher.

Despite rising border encounters, US government estimates show no clear increase in the overall undocumented Indian population from the US financial year (FY) 2020 to 2022, according to the study.

Encounters refer to instances where non-citizens are stopped by US authorities while attempting to cross the country’s borders with Mexico or Canada.

Visa overstays by Indians have remained steady at 1.5% since 2016.

The number of Indian recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) has also declined from 2,600 in 2017 to 1,600 in 2024. The Daca programme protects migrants who came to the US as children.

To sum up: the undocumented Indian population grew both in numbers and as a share of all unauthorised migrants, rising from 0.8% in 1990 to 3.9% in 2015 before dropping to 2% in 2022.

The US has two main land borders.

The southern border along the states of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas bordering Mexico sees the most migrant crossings. Then there’s the US-Canada border spanning 11 states.

Before 2010, encounters involving Indians at the two borders were minimal, never exceeding 1,000.

Since 2010, nearly all encounters involving Indians occurred along the US-Mexico southern border.

In FY 2024, encounters of Indian nationals on the northern border surged to 36% of all Indian crossings, up from just 4% the previous year.

Canada had become a more accessible entry point for Indians, with a shorter visitor visa processing times than US.

Also, there was a surge in attempted border crossings from 2021 onwards, and the encounters at the Mexico border peaked in 2023.

“This is not specific to Indians. It is part of a larger surge of migrants trying to come into the US after Biden was elected. It is as if there was a high tide of migrants and Indians were a part of it,” Mr Kapur told me.

The study finds that the states with the largest Indian immigrant populations -California (112,000), Texas (61,000), New Jersey (55,000), New York (43,000) and Illinois (31,000) – also have the highest numbers of unauthorised Indian immigrants.

Indians make up a significant share of the total unauthorised population in Ohio (16%), Michigan (14%), New Jersey (12%) and Pennsylvania (11%).

Meanwhile, states where more than 20% of Indian immigrants are unauthorised include Tennessee, Indiana, Georgia, Wisconsin and California.

“We expect this because it’s easier to blend in and find work in an ethnic business – like a Gujarati working for a Gujarati-American or a Punjabi/Sikh in a similar setup,” Mr Kapur told me.

The US immigration system allows people who are detained at the border who fear persecution in their home countries to undergo credible “fear screenings”. Those who pass can seek asylum in court, leading to a rise in asylum applications alongside rising border apprehensions.

Administrative data doesn’t reveal the exact demographics of Indian asylum seekers, but court records on spoken languages provide some insight.

Punjabi-speakers from India have dominated Indian asylum claims since 2001. After Punjabi, Indian asylum seekers spoke Hindi (14%), English (8%) and Gujarati (7%).

They have filed 66% of asylum cases from FY 2001–2022, suggesting Punjab and the neighbouring state of Haryana as key migrant sources.

Punjabi speakers from India also had the highest asylum approval rate (63%), followed by Hindi speakers (58%). In contrast, only a quarter of Gujarati speakers’ cases were approved.

US data collected by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows Indian asylum requests in the US have skyrocketed.

The requests jumped tenfold in just two years, rising from about 5,000 in 2021 to over 51,000 in 2023.

While this spike is most dramatic in the US, similar trends are seen in Canada, the UK and Australia, where Indians are among the largest asylum-seeking groups, the study says.

Mr Kapur believes this is “largely a way to game the asylum system rather than an objective fear of persecution, as processing takes years”.

Given the large number of Punjabi-speakers who seek asylum, it’s unclear what has changed in the northern Indian state ruled by the Congress party (2017-22) and latterly the Aam Aadmi Party (2022–present) to drive this surge.

Under Trump’s second presidency, asylum requests are set to plummet.

Within his first week, a key app for migrants was shut down and removed from app stores, cancelling nearly 300,000 pending appointments, including asylum cases already in progress.

US data shows most Indian asylum seekers are Punjabi and Gujarati – groups from India’s wealthier states, better able to afford high migration costs.

In contrast, Indian Muslims and marginalised communities and people from conflict zones like the regions affected by Maoist violence and Kashmir, rarely seek asylum, the study says.

So most Indian asylum seekers are economic migrants, not from the country’s poorest or conflict-hit regions.

The arduous journey to the US – whether via Latin America or as “fake” students in Canada – costs 30-100 times India’s per capita income, making it accessible only to those with assets to sell or pledge, the study says.

Not surprisingly, Punjab and Gujarat – top origin states for unauthorised Indians – are among India’s wealthier regions, where land values far exceed returns from farming.

“Even illegality takes a lot of money to pursue,” the study says.

While rising asylum claims may seem linked to “democratic backsliding” in India, correlation isn’t causation, the authors say .

Punjab and Gujarat have long histories of emigration, with migrants heading not just to the US but also the UK, Canada and Australia.

Remittances – India received an estimated $120bn in 2023 – fuel aspirations for a better life, driven not by poverty but “relative deprivation”, as families seek to match the success of others abroad, the study says.

A parallel industry of agents and brokers in India has cashed in on this demand.

The Indian government, says the study, “has looked the other way, likely because the issue of illegal migration is much more a burden for receiving than sending countries”.

Between 2009 and 2024, around 16,000 Indians were deported, according to India’s ministry of external affairs.

These deportations averaged 750 per year under Obama, 1,550 under Trump’s first term, and 900 under Biden.

Indian migrant removals spiked between FY 2023 and 2024, but the peak was in 2020 with nearly 2,300 deportations.

Reality TV gold has a new three-word definition: “Montoya, por favor!”

If you’ve been anywhere near social media over the past fortnight, you’ll know the raw drama setting the internet ablaze this award season hasn’t come from Hollywood, but the love tragedy played out in clips posted from Spanish reality TV show Temptation Island.

Contestant Jose Carlos Montoya’s spiralling meltdown at watching his girlfriend Anita cheat with another man is like an uncensored Love Island on steroids.

In Temptation Island, couples are taken to a tropical island, separated and sent to separate villas filled with attractive singles ready to test their loyalty. In a final twist, every move made is recorded for the other half to see.

Forced to watch a graphic real-time stream of the betrayal, Montoya’s emotions swell until he snaps, breaking all the show’s rules.

Blind to the now infamous pleas of host Sandra Barneda (“Montoya, por favor!”), he rampages down the beach to confront the pair, tugging at his shorts in anguish as lightning streaks across the sky.

A second clip shows the resulting confrontation: Anita flips the script, calling out Montoya’s own indiscretions before collapsing in tears, begging for forgiveness.

“This is cinema,” wrote one X user, posting a clip that has now been watched on the platform a staggering 224 million times since 4 February.

“Montoya. The tension… you don’t need to speak Spanish to understand, this is insane.”

Yet those behind Spain’s Temptation Island see its success as more than just shock value. Executive producer Juanra Gonzalo tells me they are overjoyed by the “completely unexpected” global reaction, and he believes the show’s appeal lies in its relatability.

“In Love Island, all the people are single. In Temptation Island, there are real couples, and they are putting their love at risk,” he says. “I think [audiences] know it too. These emotions and reactions cannot be faked.

“Everyone wants to know what their boyfriend or girlfriend is doing when they are not with them. We can imagine, but we don’t know. Temptation Island lets the audience ask, what would I do in that situation?”

The magic ingredient to making this work is careful casting. “Montoya and Anita were perfect – they are very emotive and expressive,” he says.

Gonzalo calls Montoya, a singer by trade with previous TV experience, a “special man”. At 31, he told casters he’d “never experienced love like this before”, having been with Anita “every day for a year”.

“She’s a strong woman with a lot of character,” Gonzalo adds.

The Sun’s senior showbiz reporter Lottie Hulme says the programme’s “authentic emotion” sets it apart from competitors like Love Island, Love Is Blind, Married At First Sight and Dating Naked.

Seeing such unfettered and raw emotion may stand out to British and American viewers, who have become used to glossy and well-worn competitive reality formats like Love Island and semi-scripted reality shows like Made in Chelsea.

“It was refreshing and almost shocking to see something so raw, because it’s something that we just don’t see on the reality TV shows in Britain nowadays,” Hulme says.

“We’re at a point with reality TV culture where we’re wondering ‘what if’ – are contestants really being their authentic self… or are they after followings and a brand deal?”

Alongside constructed storylines, the commercialised reality TV-to-influencer pipeline has made existing formats feel “predictable” adds Hulme.

A curious quirk of the Montoya phenomenon is that the Spanish show isn’t available to watch in the UK – an irony that has only fuelled its illicit appeal on social media.

A previous British version failed to take off, and production company Banijay says it does not presently plan to broadcast the Spanish version in the UK.

After Montoya’s meltdown caught the eye of Love Island host Maya Jama, she posted: “They would never allow this on UK TV. For so many reasons. But it’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen”.

When asked why, she simply replied: “people would complain”.

Like Big Brother before it, Love Island has been the subject of complaints to Ofcom.

A heated confrontation between 2021 Love Islanders Faye and Teddy over Teddy’s behaviour in Casa Amor (a segment similar to Temptation Island’s premise) sparked 25,000 Ofcom complaints.

Despite the shocked reactions Gonzalo’s show has provoked, he says it operates within strict boundaries, suitable for its primetime slot.

“Not everything we record is aired,” he says. “We are very careful – we only show a few seconds of sexual content.”

Temptation Island is just the latest in a string of particularly high-octane Spanish dating shows.

Take Falso Amor (or Deep Fake Love) is another. Currently streaming on Netflix, it intensifies the premise of Temptation Island by asking couples to decide whether videos of each other are real or highly convincing AI deepfakes.

So is content which British audiences find shocking viewed differently in Spain?

When I raise Love Island’s Zara Holland being stripped of her Miss Great Britain title after having sex on the show in 2016, Gonzalo is shocked and welcomes the internet’s more light-hearted reaction to Anita’s sexual scenes.

“As in other countries, things in Spain are progressing from the past – this is positive for our view of women and sexuality,” he says, adding that no gender should face double standards.

In the UK, there has been heightened scrutiny and awareness of the impact reality TV can have on cast members’ mental health, following the deaths of several former contestants.

When I press Gonzalo on this, given the intensity of Montoya and Anita’s experience, he says a team of psychologists monitor contestants before, during and after filming.

Montoya received particular support after his beach escapade.

“We made sure he was not alone, that he had a safe space to process everything. It was important for us to provide him with the right help,” he says.

Looking ahead, Netflix is to relaunch a US version of the show next month.

Gonzalo is up for the fight. He laughs at the internet’s playful suggestion that the beach scene should win an Oscar, then adds: “My team deserve all the awards!”

​​President Donald Trump has always understood the power of branding. As a celebrity businessman, he affixed his name to the facades of his skyscrapers and licensed his name to an array of products, from hotels to wines.

Now, he is attempting his boldest branding campaign yet: America itself.

On his first day back in office, he signed an order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Denali, the indigenous name for the famed Alaskan peak, will revert back to Mount McKinley, a reference to the assassinated 19th century president.

Fort Bragg, which was named for a Confederate general until the military changed it to Fort Liberty, will again bear its original name – but this time attributed to a far less controversial soldier from World War Two.

Trump is not the first US president to rename a monument. It was Barack Obama, a Democrat, who renamed Mount McKinley to its Native American name, Denali, after years of lobbying from Alaskans.

George W Bush, a Republican, renamed the Caribbean National Forest in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to the El Yunque National Forest in 2007, to reflect the US territory’s heritage.

And after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 sparked a national reckoning on race, Congress initiated a process to rename US military bases named after Confederate figures. In 2023, during Joe Biden’s presidency, the Department of Defense renamed nine US military bases, including Fort Bragg.

At the heart of these decisions is a desire to portray America, and its values, in a particular light.

“The act of naming is a way that presidents can reshape their vision of the nation,” said Allison Prasch, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies political rhetoric.

Trump’s choices in his second term send a clear message about his priorities too, she said.

“It is elevating a very nationalist, imperialist vision of the United States,” Ms Prasch said.

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Some of Trump’s name choices are callbacks to America’s expansionist age, when the prevailing ideology said that America had a God-given mission to expand from shore to shore.

Part of President William McKinley’s legacy was his role in annexing Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines and Hawaii. In changing Denali’s name, Trump said he wanted to honour McKinley because he “made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent”.

It’s an ideology that seems to inform Trump today too, as he has also floated the idea of retaking the Panama Canal, which had once been under US control, buying Greenland and annexing Canada to become the “51st state”.

Meanwhile, renaming Fort Bragg is the latest in an ongoing debate over the legacy of the Confederacy – the coalition of southern states that seceded from the US over the issue of slavery and triggered the Civil War.

During Trump’s first administration, amid a national reckoning over racial injustice, Congress required the Pentagon to rename facilities named after Confederates and banned future military installations from being named after them.

The move rankled Trump then, who tried to veto the measure and declared that “our history as the Greatest Nation in the World will not be tampered with!” Congress overrode him with bipartisan support.

But historian Connor Williams, who served on the renaming committee that had recommended the name Bragg be removed in 2021, said that honouring the Confederacy is misguided.

“What makes Confederates such bad topics for commemoration is that they have very little to redeem them,” Williams said. “They committed treason against the United States.”

“What we commemorate, what we celebrate, what public displays we make, where we place wreathes – the president does have that ability to signal what he thinks is important,” he added.

In 2023, the Biden administration changed Fort Bragg, named after Confederate general Braxton Bragg, to Fort Liberty.

“We seized this opportunity to make ourselves better and to seek excellence,” Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue said at the renaming ceremony. “That is what we always have done and always will do.”

However, the name change prompted mixed feelings among lawmakers, former military personnel who spent time there, and the local community.

“I understand the reasoning behind the change, and I have to accept it because it’s what the elected leadership has determined is in the best interest,” Cumberland County Commissioner Jimmy Keefe said at the time according to local media. “But I hate that so many people who have had positive experiences at Fort Bragg, who have had children born there, weddings there, that they will no longer have that tether of Fort Bragg in the name.”

This week, Trump’s new Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, restored the base’s name to Fort Bragg. But this time, he said the base will be named after Private First Class Roland Bragg, who fought in World War II, rather than a Confederate general.

“That’s right,” Hegseth said. “Bragg is back.”

Republican lawmakers representing the base expressed enthusiasm about the change.

“Renaming Fort Bragg for Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, who earned the Silver Star and Purple Heart in WWII, was always the right decision,” North Carolina Senator Ted Budd wrote on Facebook.

But nationally, many of Trump’s name changes have proved controversial. A Marquette University poll suggested that 71% of US adults did not support changing the Gulf of Mexico’s name, and just 29% supported it.

Some of the changes have sparked debates about whose vision of American history should officially stand.

A poll by Alaska Survey Research suggested 47% of Alaska’s Trump’s voters favoured the name change. But overall, Alaskans opposed the name change by a two-to-one margin, the Juneau Express reported.

Democrats and Republicans in Alaska’s legislature banded together to pass a resolution urging Trump not to change Denali’s name.

“To officially change the name would not only dishonor those who have fought to protect Denali’s legacy but also dismiss the voices of the Native communities whose roots are intertwined with this land,” said Alaska Representative Maxine Dibert, a Democrat and a member of the indigenous Koyukon Athabascan community.

Time will tell whether Trump’s symbolic name changes endure. But the arguments about them shows no signs of abating.

This week, the White House blocked an Associated Press reporter from the Oval Office this week because the wire service kept Gulf of Mexico in its popular style guide. AP executive editor Julie Pace called the decision “alarming” and said it violated the constitution’s free speech rights.

Meanwhile, Google – which now uses the name Gulf of America on its maps for US users – has begun deleting negative reviews of the name change.

Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America might be a land (or water) grab on paper only, but its symbolism is undeniable, said Ms Prasch, the professor of political rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin.

And it goes beyond geography to strike a chord about how the country views itself – and its history.

“I actually think that this is much more than renaming a body of water on a map,” she said. “It is a fundamentally rhetorical decision about how we think about the story of the nation.”

The UN climate summit in the United Arab Emirates in 2023 ended with a call to “transition away from fossil fuels”. It was applauded as a historic milestone in global climate action.

Barely a year later, however, there are fears that the global commitment may be losing momentum as the growth of clean energy transition is slowing down while burning of fossil fuels continues to rise.

And now there is US President Donald Trump’s “national energy emergency”, embracing fossil fuels and ditching clean energy policies – that has also begun to influence some countries and energy companies already.

In response to Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” slogan aimed at ramping up fossil fuel extraction and the US notifying the UN of its withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, Indonesia, for instance, has hinted that it may follow suit.

“If the United States does not want to comply with the international agreement, why should a country like Indonesia comply with it?” asked Hashim Djojohadikusumo, special envoy for climate change and energy of Indonesia, as reported by the country’s government-run news agency Antara.

Indonesia has remained in the list of top 10 carbon-emitting countries for years now.

“Indonesia produces three tons of carbon [per person a year] while the US produces 13 tons,” he asked at the ESG Sustainable Forum 2025 in Jakarta on 31 January.

“Yet we are the ones being told to close our power plants… So, where is the sense of justice here?”

Nithi Nesadurai, director with Climate Action Network Southeast Asia, said the signals from her region were concerning.

She said the richest “richest country and the largest oil producer in the world” increasing its production gives other states “an easy excuse to increase their own – which they are already doing”.

In South Africa, Africa’s biggest economy and a major carbon emitter, a $8.5bn foreign-aided transition project from the coal-sector was already moving at a snail’s pace, and now there are fears that it may get derailed further.

Wikus Kruger, director of Power Futures Lab at the University of Cape Town, said there was a “possibility” that decommissioning of old coal-fired power stations would be “further delayed”.

However he said that while there was some “walk back” from transition to renewables, there was still growth in the clean energy sector that was expected to continue.

Argentina withdrew its negotiators from the COP29 climate meeting in Baku last November, days after Trump won the US presidency. It has since followed Trump’s lead in signalling it will withdraw from the Paris Agreement of 2015 – which underpins global efforts to combat climate change.

“We now expect our oil and gas production to go up,” Enrique Viale, president of Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers told the BBC.

“President Milei has hinted that he intends to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and has said the environmentalism is part of the woke agenda.”

Meanwhile, energy giant Equinor has just announced it is halving investment in renewable energy over the next two years while increasing oil and gas production and another oil major BP is expected to make similar announcement soon.

Trump has not just said “drill, baby, drill” but he has also said: “We will export American energy all over the world.”

Potential foreign buyers are already lining up.

India and the US have agreed to significantly increase the supply of American oil and gas to the Indian market.

At the end of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s US visit on 14 February, the two countries issued a joint statement that “reaffirmed” the US would be “a leading supplier of crude oil and petroleum products and liquified natural gas to India”.

A few days after Trump’s inauguration, South Korea, the world’s third largest liquified natural gas importer, has hinted its intention to buy more American oil and gas aimed at reducing trade surplus with the US and improving energy security, international media have reported from Seoul.

Officials with Japan’s largest power generator, JERA, have told Reuters they too want to increase purchase of liquefied natural gas from the US to diversify supply as it currently imports half of it from the Asia Pacific region.

“There is certainly a threat that if the U.S. seeks to either flood markets with cheap fossil fuels, or bully countries into buying more of its fossil fuels, or both, the global energy transition might be slowed,” said Lorne Stockman, research director with Oil Change International, a research and advocacy organisation for transition to clean energy.

Scientists have said there can be no new fossil fuel extraction and there needs to be a rapid reduction of carbon emissions (around 45% by 2030 from 2019 level) if the world is to limit warming to 1.5 Celsius compared to pre-industrial period.

“The economics of energy supply are a key driver of decarbonization,” said David Brown, director of energy transition practice at Wood Mackenzie, a global energy think-tank.

“The resource base of US energy supports the role of natural gas and liquids production. By contrast, import-dependent economies such as China, India, and those in Southeast Asia have a dramatic economic incentive to decarbonise sources of energy.”

Global energy transition investment has surpassed $2tn for the first time last year but studies have also shown that the growth of clean energy transition has markedly slowed in recent years while many major banks continue to finance fossil fuels.

A year after Alexei Navalny’s suspicious death in a Russian prison, his supporters have been helping choose a headstone for his grave in Moscow.

“It will be a place of hope and strength for all those who dream of the wonderful Russia of the future,” says the opposition politician’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, quoting one of his best-known phrases.

Revealing her shortlist of designs in a video last week, she hoped the grave would become somewhere that those who oppose Vladimir Putin go “to remember they are not alone”.

Navalnaya now lives abroad, facing arrest if she were to return to Russia.

Her words capture just how far ambitions have shrunk.

For years, Alexei Navalny was Vladimir Putin’s biggest political rival: charismatic and courageous. Today, even his lawyers have been jailed as “extremists” and a huge number of supporters have fled Russia for safety. Those who’ve stayed are mostly scared into silence.

Now Vladimir Putin, far from being defeated by a ruinous war on Ukraine, looks like dictating the terms of a peace deal there alongside Donald Trump.

So did Russia’s democratic opposition and its dream of change die in an Arctic prison yard with Alexei Navalny?

Ksenia Fadeeva was serving a nine-year sentence when the TV in her cell announced that Navalny was dead. He had collapsed in prison on his daily walk.

“I was in a stupor; I couldn’t even speak,” the activist remembers. “It was a nightmare.”

Ksenia was a political prisoner herself, labelled an “extremist” for her previous links to Navalny. She managed his HQ in her Siberian hometown, Tomsk, when Navalny tried to run against Putin in the 2018 presidential elections. He was blocked.

Back then, Ksenia showed me how her car had been coated in paint and had its tyres slashed. On another day the door of her flat was sealed shut with foam glue, trapping her inside.

The young activist shrugged all this off. It came with the territory.

At that point, Putin had been squeezing the democratic life out of Russia for close to two decades. He’d moved from controlling the media to rigging elections and punishing protest. Then came poisoning and political assassination.

This month also marks 10 years since Boris Nemtsov, another powerful voice of opposition, was killed. He was shot in the back close to the red walls of the Kremlin.

Russia had annexed Crimea illegally the previous year and Putin’s approval rating was still riding a wave of toxic nationalism. Critics like Nemtsov were publicly slurred as traitors.

The politician’s lifeless body, sprawled beneath fairy lights in the colours of the Russian flag, marked the start of a dark new era.

Navalny did his best to breathe new life into Russia’s beleaguered opposition.

A master of social media and of the anti-corruption agenda, he had real appeal, especially to a younger crowd.

But in 2020 he was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent and almost died.

“I knew they could put you in prison, break up protests with batons, invent criminal charges. But poisoning with a chemical weapon?” Ksenia Fadeeva remembers her shock at the attack. “I thought there were some brakes on the system, but I was wrong.”

When Navalny returned from treatment abroad, he was arrested at the airport.

He would never walk free.

In that environment, the lack of overt opposition within Russia is hardly surprising.

“I don’t think there is any country in the world where many would risk years in prison for speaking out,” Vladimir Kara-Murza, a prominent activist, wrote to me once from his own jail cell.

Sentenced to 25 years for condemning Russian war crimes in Ukraine, Kara-Murza smarted at criticism of Russians for failing to stand up to Putin more firmly and failing to stop the full-scale invasion.

Navalny was already in jail. A spattering of anti-war protests was quickly stamped out.

“Inside Russia, it’s not a matter of there being no one with the charisma of Navalny,” Tatiana Stanovaya, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia-Eurasia Centre says, explaining the lack of any new leader since his death.

“We’re talking about the complete criminalisation of opposition.”

Last August, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ksenia Fadeeva were taken from their cells and forcibly deported as part of a giant exchange of prisoners.

The Kremlin was exporting dissent.

By then, Navalny was dead.

Ksenia believes that had he lived, even from abroad Navalny could have made a difference. “Things would have been different if they’d let Navalny out in a swap. His voice would have been loud, the opposition would have had more influence”, she says.

“In today’s tough conditions, I don’t know where you find another leader like Navalny.”

His team haven’t stopped working in exile. One half lobbies Western governments for more effective sanctions, the others try to smash through the wall of Russian propaganda with exposés of Putin’s entourage.

Their latest film targets a powerful ally of Putin, Igor Sechin, arguing that Putin is only pretending to “make Russia great” while he and his cronies plunder the country’s wealth.

Such investigations used to spark real-life protests. Now those viewers still inside Russia can only watch via VPN and most dare not post comments.

“You can get a criminal charge now, just for lifting a finger,” Ksenia Fadeeva points out, although the latest film was seen almost two million times in 10 days.

Ksenia is sure most of that audience is in Russia.

“People haven’t changed their views, they’re still there. They definitely read and follow and watch,” she says. “But they can’t protest. They’re just surviving.”

That’s a word I hear often from activists: they describe Russian opposition forces in a kind of holding pattern.

“We can stick to our basic pro-democracy values and try to keep people safe for the future Russia,” Anastasia Burakova argues, and her own “Ark” project tries to do just that.

“But nobody knows how to successfully finish this dictatorship.”

But is there actually demand for that?

“Imagine asking: ‘Do you support Vladimir Putin or do you want to go to jail for 15 years,'” says Ksenia Fadeeva, mocking the value of conducting polling in an authoritarian regime.

Others believe researchers do still have ways to take the social pulse, and they confirm that it’s not set racing by Yulia Navalnaya and co.

Navalny’s widow has moral authority but nowhere near his political skills.

“All these… liberal figures have extremely low approval ratings,” says academic Tatiana Stanovaya. Instead, she detects a consolidation of support for the Kremlin which she links to a surge in Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia.

“People see that we are very vulnerable and they have to choose the strongest player to rely on,” the analyst explains. “It’s not because they like Putin or consider him a positive hero. It’s because he can protect Russia in a very hostile environment.”

No matter that Putin created that environment himself by going to war.

It helps that Donald Trump now appears to be siding with Moscow: the US president once said he “understood” Russia’s veto on Ukraine joining Nato. He now seems to have conceded that major condition, even before any peace talks.

“I think the war has further entrenched anti-Western sentiment,” Dr Jade McGlynn of King’s College suggests. “I also don’t really see evidence there’s even a strong minority of Russians who are desirous of a liberal, Western-allied type of democracy.”

“I think the liberals… ultimately failed to convince.”

There’s a whole lot wrapped up in that line, including the economic pain and massive corruption Russians experienced as the USSR fell apart. It all helped make democracy a dirty word.

For years, state TV has also been shouting into every living room that critics of Russia are its enemies, and Western agents.

“The Kremlin plays on a real fear, ingrained in Russian minds, that the West has been trying to ruin Russia, weaken and divide it,” Tatiana Stanovaya argues.

“There is good soil for the Kremlin to work on.”

Opposition forces are also deeply divided.

Fierce rivalries and personality clashes that go back many years have intensified in exile and now frequently erupt into vicious and very public fights.

“We can debate after democracy in Russia begins, but for now we have the same goal and the same enemy: he’s in the Kremlin,” Anastasia Burakova voices the frustration of many that such scrapping is a dangerous distraction.

That division is part of why Jade McGlynn thinks Russia’s exiled activists might better be called “dissidents” than a political opposition.

“Politics is about practicality, otherwise you are a philosopher,” she argues – and challenging those in power is impossible in Russia right now.

Anastasia Shevchenko agrees. But just surviving Putinism isn’t good enough for her. “I hate when people still talk about the ‘beautiful Russia of the future’,” the Russian activist quoted Alexei Navalny, when we met in a Kyiv coffee shop last month.

“You can’t be happy next to destroyed cities where so many people were killed.”

Other opposition figures insist on referring to “Putin’s war”, to suggest that most Russians are against the invasion – which infuriates Ukrainians.

“I think to claim that it’s one man’s war when you have 600,000 troops there and over three million in the defence industry, not including all the propagandists, is not convincing,” Jade McGlynn is firm.

But Anastasia Shevchenko struggles to focus on anything else. Whilst change within Russia remains “very far away”, she sees Ukraine is in trouble now and she can help.

She’s become a one-woman telephone exchange for Ukrainian soldiers held captive in Russia: prisoners of war, who can’t call Ukrainian numbers from Russian jails, dial Anastasia’s Russian mobile. She gets their mother or wife on another line and places the phones together so they can talk.

“If you can help Ukraine, you should do that,” she believes. “But we Russians are focused only on Russia and I don’t understand it.”

Still readjusting to life out of prison, and out of her country, Ksenia Fadeeva has shifted her own focus from politics to human rights for now, helping political prisoners.

“I still believe Russia has every chance of becoming a normal, free, peaceful European country,” Ksenia Fadeeva insists. “But the regime is far harsher now, more authoritarian.”

Anastasia Shevchenko agrees, though she remembers the collapse of the USSR and concedes that history is unpredictable.

“You never know what happens. Things can change quickly. So you have to be ready.”

But ready for what?

The idea of Russia leaping from Putinism to liberal democracy looks less likely than ever.

Jade McGlynn sees no prospect at all, unless the vision that led to the invasion of Ukraine – “this imperial, chauvinist vision of Russia” – is defeated.

“I think that’s where we will see real opposition,” she thinks. “From disgruntled nationalists,” especially in a country with tens of thousands of war veterans and all their trauma.

“What will the authorities ‘sell’ to the people then? What idea?,” Ksenia Fadeeva wonders, when the war is finally over.

All agree the political repression will remain intense. As the analyst Tatiana Stanovaya puts it: “The state, especially the repressive apparatus, do not have the skills to retreat.”

On Sunday, Navalny’s supporters plan memorials from Argentina to Australia to mark the anniversary of his death. In Moscow, some will visit his graveside. A few may dare to chant for change. But most of all, those who still cling to the dream of a democratic Russia will be checking who else is still out there. Still waiting.

Mouldy half-finished food on bunk beds, discarded military uniforms and abandoned weapons – these are the remnants of an abrupt retreat from this base that once belonged to Iran and its affiliated groups in Syria.

The scene tells a story of panic. The forces stationed here fled with little warning, leaving behind a decade-long presence that unravelled in mere weeks.

Iran was Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s most critical ally for more than 10 years. It deployed military advisers, mobilised foreign militias, and invested heavily in Syria’s war.

Its elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) built deep networks of underground bases, supplying arms and training to thousands of fighters. For Iran, this was also part of its “security belt” against Israel.

We are near Khan Shaykhun town in Idlib province. Before Assad’s regime fell on 8 December, it was one of the key strategic locations for the IRGC and its allied groups.

From the main road, the entrance is barely visible, hidden behind piles of sand and rocks. A watchtower on a hilltop, still painted in the colours of the Iranian flag, overlooks the base.

A receipt notebook confirms the base’s name: The Position of Martyr Zahedi – named after Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a top IRGC commander who was assassinated in an alleged Israeli airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Syria on 1 April, 2024.

The supplies recently ordered – we found receipts for chocolates, rice, cooking oil – suggest daily life continued here until the last moments. But now the base has new occupants – two armed Uyghur fighters from Hayaat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist militant group whose leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has become the new interim president of Syria.

The Uyghurs arrived suddenly in a military vehicle, asking for our media accreditation.

“Iranians were here. They all fled,” one of them says, speaking in his mother tongue, a dialect of Turkish. “Whatever you see here is from them. Even these onions and the leftover foods.”

Boxes full of fresh onions in the courtyard have now germinated.

The base is a labyrinth of tunnels dug deep into white rocky hills. There are bunk beds in some rooms with no windows. The roof of one of the corridors is draped in fabric in the colours of the Iranian flag and there are a few Persian books on a rocky shelf.

They left behind documents containing sensitive information. All in Persian, they have details of fighters’ personal information, military personnel codes, home addresses, spouses’ names and mobile phone numbers in Iran. From the names, it’s clear that several fighters in this base were from the Afghan brigade that was formed by Iran to fight in Syria.

Sources linked to Iran-backed groups told BBC Persian that the base houses mainly Afghan forces accompanied by Iranian “military advisers” and their Iranian commanders.

Tehran’s main justification for its military involvement in Syria was “to fight against jihadi groups” and to protect “Shia holy shrines” against radical Sunni militants.

It created paramilitary groups of mainly Afghan, Pakistani and Iraqi fighters.

Yet, when the final moment came, Iran was unprepared. Orders for retreat reached some bases at the very last moment. “Developments happened so fast,” a senior member of an Iran-backed Iraqi paramilitary group tells me. “The order was to just take your backpack and leave.”

Multiple sources close to the IRGC told the BBC that most of the forces had to flee to Iraq, and some were ordered to go to Lebanon or Russian bases to be evacuated from Syria by the Russians.

An HTS fighter, Mohammad al Rabbat, had witnessed the group’s advance from Idlib to Aleppo and Syria’s capital Damascus.

He says they thought their operation would take “about a year” and best, they’d “capture Aleppo in three to six months”. But to their surprise, they entered Aleppo in a matter of days.

The regime’s rapid downfall was brought about by a chain of events after Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.

That attack led to an escalation of Israeli air strikes against the IRGC and Iran-backed groups in Syria and a war against another key Iranian ally – the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, whose leader was killed in an air strike.

This “situation of psychological collapse” for Iran and Hezbollah was central to their downfall, says 35-year-old fighter Rabbat.

But the most crucial blow came from within: there was a rift between Assad and his Iran-linked allies, he says.

“There was a complete breakdown of trust and military co-operation between them. IRGC-linked groups were blaming Assad of betrayal and believing that he is giving up their locations to Israel.”

As we pass through Khan Shaykhun, we come across a street painted in the colours of the Iranian flag. It leads to a school building that was being used as an Iranian headquarters.

On the wall at the entrance of the toilets, slogans read: “Down with Israel” and “Down with the USA”.

It was evident that these headquarters were also evacuated at short notice. We found documents classified as “highly sensitive”.

Abdullah, 65, and his family are among the very few locals who stayed and lived here alongside the IRGC-led groups. He says this life was hard.

His house is only a few metres away from the headquarters and in between, there are deep trenches with barbed wire.

“Movement at night was prohibited,” he says.

His neighbour’s home was turned into a military post. “They sat there with their guns pointing at the road, treating us all as suspects,” he recalls.

Most of the fighters didn’t even speak Arabic, he says. “They were Afghans, Iranians, Hezbollah. But we referred to them all as Iranians because Iran was controlling them.”

Abdullah’s wife Jourieh says she is happy that the “Iranian militias” have left, but still remembers the “stressful” moment before their withdrawal. She had thought they would be trapped in crossfire as Iran-backed groups were fortifying their positions and getting ready to fight, but then “they just vanished in a few hours”.

“This was an occupation. Iranian occupation,” says Abdo who, like others, has just returned here with his family after 10 years. His house had also become a military base.

I observed this anger towards Iran and a softer attitude towards Russia in many conversations with Syrians.

I asked Rabbat, the HTS fighter, why this was.

“Russians were dropping bombs from the sky and other than that, they were in their bases while Iranians and their militias were on the ground interacting. People were feeling their presence, and many weren’t happy with it,” he explained.

This feeling is reflected in Syria’s new rulers’ policy towards Iran.

The new authorities have put a ban on Iranian nationals, alongside Israelis, entering Syria. But there is no such ban against Russians.

Iran’s embassy, which was stormed by angry protesters after the fall of the regime, remains closed.

The reaction of Iranian officials towards developments in Syria has been contradictory.

While supreme leader Ali Khamenei called on “Syrian youths” to “resist” those who “have brought instability” to Syria, Iran’s foreign ministry has taken a more balanced view.

It says the country “backs any government supported by the Syrian people”.

In one of his first interviews, Syria’s new leader Sharaa described their victory over Assad as an “end of the Iranian project”. But he hasn’t ruled out having a “balanced” relationship with Tehran.

For the moment, though, Iran is not welcome in Syria. After years of expanding its military presence, everything Tehran built is now in ruins, both on the battlefield and, it seems, in the eyes of a large part of Syria’s public.

Back at the abandoned base, Iran’s military expansion was still under way even in the last days. Next to the camp were more tunnels under construction, apparently the beginnings of a field hospital. The cement on the walls was still wet and the paint fresh.

But left behind now is evidence of a brief fight – a few bullet shells and a military uniform covered with blood.

Sir Keir Starmer has said he is “ready and willing” to put UK troops on the ground in Ukraine to help guarantee its security as part of a peace deal.

The UK prime minister said securing a lasting peace in Ukraine was “essential if we are to deter Putin from further aggression in the future”.

Before attending an emergency summit with European leaders in Paris on Monday, Sir Keir said the UK was prepared to contribute to security guarantees to Ukraine by “putting our own troops on the ground if necessary”.

“I do not say that lightly,” he wrote in the Daily Telegraph. “I feel very deeply the responsibility that comes with potentially putting British servicemen and women in harm’s way.”

The prime minister added: “But any role in helping to guarantee Ukraine’s security is helping to guarantee the security of our continent, and the security of this country.”

The end of Russia’s war with Ukraine “when it comes, cannot merely become a temporary pause before Putin attacks again”, Sir Keir said.

UK troops could be deployed alongside soldiers from other European nations alongside the border between Ukrainian-held and Russian-held territory.

Sir Keir’s announcement comes after the former head of the Army, Lord Dannatt, told the BBC the UK military was “so run down” it could not lead any future peacekeeping mission in Ukraine.

The PM has previously only hinted that British troops could be involved in safeguarding Ukraine after a ceasefire.

He is due to visit President Donald Trump in Washington later this month and said a “US security guarantee is essential for a lasting peace, because only the US can deter Putin from attacking again”.

Sir Keir is meeting with other European leaders in response to concerns the US is moving forward with Russia on peace talks that will lock out the continent.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to meet Russian officials in Saudi Arabia in the coming days, US officials say.

On Saturday the US special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said European leaders would be consulted only and not take part in any talks between the US and Russia.

A senior Ukrainian government source told the BBC on Sunday that Kyiv has not been invited to talks between the US and Russia.

Trump earlier this week announced he had had a lengthy conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that negotiations to stop the “ridiculous war” in Ukraine would begin “immediately”.

Trump then “informed” Zelensky of his plan.

On Sunday, Trump said that he expected Zelensky to be involved in the talks. He also said he would allow European nations to buy US weapons for Ukraine.

Asked by the BBC about his timetable for an end to fighting, Trump said only that “we’re working to get it done” and laid the blame for the war on the previous administration’s Ukraine policies.

Writing in the Telegraph, Sir Keir said “peace cannot come at any cost” and “Ukraine must be at the table in these negotiations, because anything less would accept Putin’s position that Ukraine is not a real nation”.

He added: “We cannot have another situation like Afghanistan, where the US negotiated directly with the Taliban and cut out the Afghan government” – in reference to a deal negotiated in Trump’s first administration, which was later enacted by the Biden administration.

“I feel sure that President Trump will want to avoid this too,” said Sir Keir

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Sir Keir said Ukraine’s path to Nato membership was “irreversible” and European nations “must increase our defence spending and take on a greater role” in the alliance.

The UK currently spends around 2.3% of GDP on defence and has committed to increase defence spending to a 2.5% share of the economy, without giving a timeframe for this.

Trump has called for Nato members to spend 5% of GDP on defence, while Nato secretary general Mark Rutte has suggested allies should spend more than 3%.

Lord Dannatt – who was head of the Army from 2006 to 2009 – told the BBC up to 40,000 UK troops would be needed on rotation for a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine and “we just haven’t got that number available”.

He said, in total, a force to keep the peace would require about 100,000 troops on the ground and the UK would have to supply “quite a proportion of that and we really couldn’t do it”.

The meeting in Paris called by French President Emmanuel Macron will see Sir Keir joined by leaders from Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark along with the presidents of the European Council and European Commission, and Rutte.

UK Special Forces command rejected resettlement applications from more than 2,000 Afghan commandos who had shown credible evidence of service in units that fought alongside the SAS and SBS, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed for the first time.

UK Special Forces officers appear to have rejected every application from a former Afghan commando referred to them for sponsorship, despite the Afghan units having fought with the British on life-threatening missions against the Taliban.

The MoD had previously denied there was a blanket policy to reject members of the units – known as the Triples – but the BBC has not been able to find any evidence that UK Special Forces (UKSF) supported any resettlement applications.

Asked if UKSF had supported any applications, the MoD declined to answer the question.

The Triples – so-called because their designations were CF 333 and ATF 444 – were set up, trained, and paid by UK Special Forces and supported the SAS and SBS on operations in Afghanistan. When the country fell to the Taliban in 2021, they were judged to be in grave danger of reprisal and were entitled to apply for resettlement to the UK.

The rejection of their applications was controversial because they came at a time when a public inquiry in the UK was investigating allegations that Special Forces had committed war crimes on operations in Afghanistan where the Triples were present.

The inquiry has the power to compel witnesses who are in the UK, but not non-UK nationals who are overseas. If resettled, former members of the Triples could be compelled by the inquiry to provide potentially significant evidence.

BBC Panorama revealed earlier this year that UK Special Forces command had been given veto power over their resettlement applications and denied them asylum in Britain. The revelation caused a wave of anger among some former members of the SAS and others who served with the Afghan units.

The MoD initially denied the existence of the veto, suggesting that the BBC’s reporting had been inaccurate, but then-Defence Minister Andrew Murrison was later forced to tell the House of Commons the government had misled parliament in its denials.

The confirmation of the more than 2,000 rejections emerged in court hearings earlier this month during a legal challenge brought by a former member of the Triples. Lawyers for the MoD applied for a restriction order which temporarily prevented the BBC from reporting on the relevant parts of the proceedings, before withdrawing their application last week under challenge.

Documents disclosed in court also showed that at the same time the MoD was denying the existence of the veto, it already knew that every rejection decision made by UK Special Forces was potentially unsound and would have to be independently reviewed.

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Mike Martin MP, a member of the defence select committee and former British Army officer who served in Afghanistan, told the BBC the rejections were “extremely concerning”.

“There is the appearance that UK Special Forces blocked the Afghan special forces applications because they were witnesses to the alleged UK war crimes currently being investigated in the Afghan inquiry,” Martin said.

“If the MoD is unable to offer any explanation, then the matter should be included in the inquiry,” he added.

Johnny Mercer, the former Conservative MP for Plymouth Moor View, who served alongside the SBS in Afghanistan, testified to the Afghan inquiry that he had spoken to former members of the Triples and heard “horrific” allegations of murder by UK Special Forces.

Mercer said it was “very clear to me that there is a pool of evidence that exists within the Afghan community that are now in the United Kingdom that should contribute to this Inquiry”.

The MoD began a review last year of all 2,022 resettlement applications referred to and rejected by UK Special Forces. All contained what MoD caseworkers on the resettlement scheme regarded as “credible” evidence of service with the Triples units.

The government said at the time that the review would take 12 weeks, but more than a year later it has yet to be completed. Some rejections have already been overturned, allowing former Triples to come to the UK. But the MoD has refused to inform the Afghan commandos whether they are in scope of the review or if their rejections were upheld, unless they write to the MoD.

Many are in hiding in Afghanistan, making it difficult to obtain legal representation or pro-actively contact the MoD. Dozens have reportedly been beaten, tortured, or killed by the Taliban since the group regained control of the country.

“Although decisions have been overturned, it’s too late for some people,” said a former Triples officer. “The delays have caused a lot of problems. People have been captured by the Taliban or lost their lives,” he said.

The officer said that the Afghan commandos worked alongside British Special Forces “like brothers” and felt “betrayed” by the widespread rejections.

“If Special Forces made these rejections they should say why. They should have to answer,” he said.

The MoD is now facing a legal challenge to aspects of the review, including the decision not to inform applicants whether their case is being reviewed or disclose the criteria used to select those in scope.

The legal challenge is being brought by a former senior member of the Triples who is now in the UK, on behalf of commandos still in Afghanistan.

“Our client’s focus is on his soldiers left behind in Afghanistan, some of whom have been killed while they wait for these heavily delayed protection decisions,” said Dan Carey, a partner at Deighton Pierce Glynn.

“As things stand they have a right to request a reassessment of a decision they haven’t even been told about. And there are others who think they are part of the Triples Review when the secret criteria would tell them that their cases aren’t even being looked at.”

Lawyers acting for the former member of the Triples also heavily criticised the level of disclosure in the case by the MoD, which has not handed over any documentation from within UK Special Forces or government records about the decision-making process that led to the rejections.

In court filings, they criticised the “total inadequacy” of the MoD’s disclosure, calling it an “an obvious failure to comply with the duty of candour and to provide necessary explanation” of the process.

New evidence that emerged last week in court also showed that the MoD appeared to have rejected out of hand some applicants who served with UK Special Forces in Afghanistan after 2014 – when Britain’s conventional armed forces left Helmand province – without even referring them to UK Special Forces headquarters for sponsorship.

The MoD has not explained the reasoning behind the policy, which was kept secret from applicants. A spokesperson for the MoD said that after 2014 the UK’s role “evolved from combat operations to primarily training, advising and assisting CF 333, who were under the command of the Afghan Ministry of Interior”.

But officers who served with UK Special Forces told the BBC that the Triples continued to support British-led operations after 2014.

“Saying the Triples didn’t support UK Special Forces operations after 2014 isn’t true at all,” said former officer who served with UKSF.

“We had a squadron of CF 333 with us. We worked closely together. These were NATO targets, UK planned operations,” he said.

Donald Trump has made the mass deportation of undocumented foreign nationals a key policy, with the US said to have identified about 18,000 Indian nationals it believes entered illegally.

Last week Narendra Modi said India would take back its nationals who were in the US illegally, and also crack down on the “human trafficking ecosystem”.

“These are children of very ordinary families, and they are lured by big dreams and promises,” he said during his visit to Washington.

Now a new paper by Abby Budiman and Devesh Kapur from Johns Hopkins University has shed light on the numbers, demographics, entry methods, locations and trends relating to undocumented Indians over time.

Here are some of the more striking findings.

Unauthorised immigrants make up 3% of the US population and 22% of the foreign-born population.

The number of undocumented Indians among them is contested however, with estimates varying widely due to differing calculation methods.

Pew Research Center and Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) estimate some 700,000 people as of 2022, making them the third-largest group after Mexico and El Salvador.

In contrast, the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) puts the figure at 375,000, ranking India fifth among origin countries.

The official government data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) offers yet another picture, reporting 220,000 unauthorised Indians in 2022.

The vast differences in estimates highlight the uncertainty surrounding the true size of the undocumented Indian population, according to the study.

Indian migrants make up only a small share of the overall unauthorised migrant population in the US.

If Pew and CMS estimates are accurate, nearly one in four Indian immigrants in the US is undocumented – an unlikely scenario given migration patterns, the study says. (Indian immigrants are one of the fastest-growing groups in the US, surging from 600,000 in 1990 to 3.2 million in 2022.)

The DHS estimated in 2022 that the undocumented Indian population in the US dropped 60% from its 2016 peak, falling from 560,000 to 220,000.

How did the number of undocumented Indians drop so steeply from 2016 to 2022? Mr Kapur says the data doesn’t provide a clear answer, but plausible explanations could be that some obtained legal status while others returned, particularly due to COVID-related hardships.

However, this estimate doesn’t reflect a 2023 surge in Indians at US borders, meaning the actual number could now be higher.

Despite rising border encounters, US government estimates show no clear increase in the overall undocumented Indian population from the US financial year (FY) 2020 to 2022, according to the study.

Encounters refer to instances where non-citizens are stopped by US authorities while attempting to cross the country’s borders with Mexico or Canada.

Visa overstays by Indians have remained steady at 1.5% since 2016.

The number of Indian recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) has also declined from 2,600 in 2017 to 1,600 in 2024. The Daca programme protects migrants who came to the US as children.

To sum up: the undocumented Indian population grew both in numbers and as a share of all unauthorised migrants, rising from 0.8% in 1990 to 3.9% in 2015 before dropping to 2% in 2022.

The US has two main land borders.

The southern border along the states of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas bordering Mexico sees the most migrant crossings. Then there’s the US-Canada border spanning 11 states.

Before 2010, encounters involving Indians at the two borders were minimal, never exceeding 1,000.

Since 2010, nearly all encounters involving Indians occurred along the US-Mexico southern border.

In FY 2024, encounters of Indian nationals on the northern border surged to 36% of all Indian crossings, up from just 4% the previous year.

Canada had become a more accessible entry point for Indians, with a shorter visitor visa processing times than US.

Also, there was a surge in attempted border crossings from 2021 onwards, and the encounters at the Mexico border peaked in 2023.

“This is not specific to Indians. It is part of a larger surge of migrants trying to come into the US after Biden was elected. It is as if there was a high tide of migrants and Indians were a part of it,” Mr Kapur told me.

The study finds that the states with the largest Indian immigrant populations -California (112,000), Texas (61,000), New Jersey (55,000), New York (43,000) and Illinois (31,000) – also have the highest numbers of unauthorised Indian immigrants.

Indians make up a significant share of the total unauthorised population in Ohio (16%), Michigan (14%), New Jersey (12%) and Pennsylvania (11%).

Meanwhile, states where more than 20% of Indian immigrants are unauthorised include Tennessee, Indiana, Georgia, Wisconsin and California.

“We expect this because it’s easier to blend in and find work in an ethnic business – like a Gujarati working for a Gujarati-American or a Punjabi/Sikh in a similar setup,” Mr Kapur told me.

The US immigration system allows people who are detained at the border who fear persecution in their home countries to undergo credible “fear screenings”. Those who pass can seek asylum in court, leading to a rise in asylum applications alongside rising border apprehensions.

Administrative data doesn’t reveal the exact demographics of Indian asylum seekers, but court records on spoken languages provide some insight.

Punjabi-speakers from India have dominated Indian asylum claims since 2001. After Punjabi, Indian asylum seekers spoke Hindi (14%), English (8%) and Gujarati (7%).

They have filed 66% of asylum cases from FY 2001–2022, suggesting Punjab and the neighbouring state of Haryana as key migrant sources.

Punjabi speakers from India also had the highest asylum approval rate (63%), followed by Hindi speakers (58%). In contrast, only a quarter of Gujarati speakers’ cases were approved.

US data collected by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows Indian asylum requests in the US have skyrocketed.

The requests jumped tenfold in just two years, rising from about 5,000 in 2021 to over 51,000 in 2023.

While this spike is most dramatic in the US, similar trends are seen in Canada, the UK and Australia, where Indians are among the largest asylum-seeking groups, the study says.

Mr Kapur believes this is “largely a way to game the asylum system rather than an objective fear of persecution, as processing takes years”.

Given the large number of Punjabi-speakers who seek asylum, it’s unclear what has changed in the northern Indian state ruled by the Congress party (2017-22) and latterly the Aam Aadmi Party (2022–present) to drive this surge.

Under Trump’s second presidency, asylum requests are set to plummet.

Within his first week, a key app for migrants was shut down and removed from app stores, cancelling nearly 300,000 pending appointments, including asylum cases already in progress.

US data shows most Indian asylum seekers are Punjabi and Gujarati – groups from India’s wealthier states, better able to afford high migration costs.

In contrast, Indian Muslims and marginalised communities and people from conflict zones like the regions affected by Maoist violence and Kashmir, rarely seek asylum, the study says.

So most Indian asylum seekers are economic migrants, not from the country’s poorest or conflict-hit regions.

The arduous journey to the US – whether via Latin America or as “fake” students in Canada – costs 30-100 times India’s per capita income, making it accessible only to those with assets to sell or pledge, the study says.

Not surprisingly, Punjab and Gujarat – top origin states for unauthorised Indians – are among India’s wealthier regions, where land values far exceed returns from farming.

“Even illegality takes a lot of money to pursue,” the study says.

While rising asylum claims may seem linked to “democratic backsliding” in India, correlation isn’t causation, the authors say .

Punjab and Gujarat have long histories of emigration, with migrants heading not just to the US but also the UK, Canada and Australia.

Remittances – India received an estimated $120bn in 2023 – fuel aspirations for a better life, driven not by poverty but “relative deprivation”, as families seek to match the success of others abroad, the study says.

A parallel industry of agents and brokers in India has cashed in on this demand.

The Indian government, says the study, “has looked the other way, likely because the issue of illegal migration is much more a burden for receiving than sending countries”.

Between 2009 and 2024, around 16,000 Indians were deported, according to India’s ministry of external affairs.

These deportations averaged 750 per year under Obama, 1,550 under Trump’s first term, and 900 under Biden.

Indian migrant removals spiked between FY 2023 and 2024, but the peak was in 2020 with nearly 2,300 deportations.

Europe’s leaders are scrambling. Their hastily convened security summit in Paris on Monday is proof of that.

They are still reeling from not being invited by the US to talks with Russia over the future of Ukraine. US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he could be meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin “very soon”.

Can Europe, under pressure, put political differences and domestic economic concerns aside, and come up with a united front on security spending and on Ukraine’s future, including potentially sending troops there – to force themselves a spot at the negotiating table?

They are going to try.

The Trump administration is clearly not 100% sure what it wants to do about Ukraine. There were a number of mixed messages over the weekend.

This allows Europe a tiny window of opportunity to try to persuade the American president it’s an invaluable partner.

It hopes to do that via this Paris meeting, getting the ball rolling on two major issues demanded by Donald Trump: That Europe spend and do more for its own defence, and that Europe send troops to Ukraine after a ceasefire.

Europe’s leaders insist Kyiv be directly involved in ceasefire talks too. They’ve long maintained the view that “there can be no decisions about Ukraine, without Ukraine”.

But it’s about even more than that for Europe.

It is the cold realisation – much dreaded, but not entirely unexpected – that the Trump administration does not prioritise relations either with European partners, or their defence.

Europe has relied on a security umbrella provided by the US since World War Two.

Depending on the parameters of the Russia-US talks over Ukraine, and how emboldened Putin feels by them, there is also a European fear this could end up changing their continent’s security architecture.

Putin historically resents the spread of Nato eastwards. Russian neighbours – the tiny, former Soviet Baltic States and also Poland – now feel particularly exposed.

Not all European countries will be at Monday’s summit. Just those with military heft: the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Denmark – which is expected to represent the Baltic and Nordic nations, plus the EU Council president and the secretary general of the defence alliance, Nato.

Other countries will reportedly have later, follow-up meetings.

Even at the small Paris gathering, it will be hard, if not impossible, to agree concrete defence spending increases. Poland plans to spend 4.47% of its GDP on defence in 2025. The UK is struggling towards, and hasn’t yet reached, 2.5% of its GDP.

But leaders can pledge to coordinate better, spend more inside Nato and shoulder most of Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction. The EU is expected to bolster its defence effort too.

A large part of the Paris meeting will also focus on the question of sending troops to Ukraine after a ceasefire.

The idea being discussed is not for peacekeeping troops but rather a “reassurance force”, stationed behind, rather than on, any eventual ceasefire line.

The aim of a European troop presence would be three-fold. To send a message to Ukrainians: that they are not alone. Another message to the US, to show that Europe is “doing its bit” for defence of its own continent, and the last message to Moscow, to warn that if it breaks the terms of an eventual ceasefire, it won’t be dealing with Kyiv alone.

But it’s a controversial concept and may not be popular with voters. In Italy for example, 50% of people asked don’t want to send any more weapons to Ukraine, never mind sending sons and daughters, sisters and brothers there.

There are so many as yet unanswered questions:

How many troops would each European country have to send, for how long, and under whose command? What would their mission statement be – for example if Russia broke the terms of an agreed ceasefire, would that mean European soldiers would be directly at war with Russia? Would the US have their back if so?

Europe would want a US security guarantee before deploying soldiers to Ukraine. It may not get one.

It’s far too much to be decided on Monday. And leaders, including UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, come to Paris with their own domestic concerns – can they afford extra defence spending, do they have the troops to send to Ukraine? Germany is nervous about making concrete commitments just before a heated general election.

But this summit is more broad brushstrokes than fine print. The conversation can at least get started publicly.

Will Donald Trump be paying attention?

Hard to know.

There’s talk of sending an envoy to Washington after the Paris meeting to make Europe’s case. Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, is close to the Trump administration, for example.

Sir Keir Starmer has a planned visit to Washington in a few days. This could be his chance to act as a bridge between Europe and the US.

The Paris meeting also offers an opportunity for the UK and other European leaders to further mend relations after the bitterness of Brexit.

Mark Leonard, head of the European Council on Foreign Relations, notes that Starmer could “demonstrate that Britain is a responsible stakeholder for European security … Something that will be noticed and translate into goodwill when it comes to negotiations on other issues”.

Issues like trade relations and law enforcement co-operation which the UK hopes to improve with the EU going forward.

Host nation France is feeling confident. President Macron has long advocated that Europe be less reliant on outside countries for supply chains, tech capabilities and very much so when it comes to defence. He made headlines a year ago by first mooting the idea of troops on the ground in Ukraine.

France is “fiercely proud” that its intelligence and security services are not intertwined with the US, unlike the UK, says Georgina Wright, deputy director for international studies at the Institut Montaigne. That makes it less complicated to untangle, now that Trump is in the White House, demanding that Europe take care of itself.

The US has sent a document to European allies consisting of six points and questions, such as which countries would be willing to deploy troops to Ukraine as part of a peace settlement, and which governments would be prepared to increase sanctions on Russia, including more strictly enforcing existing ones.

But Julianne Smith, until recently the US ambassador to Nato, says this kind of complicated diplomatic work normally takes weeks of meetings and can’t be organised by filled-in forms.

She adds that whatever Europe’s leaders achieve in Paris, if they use that to demand a seat at the negotiating table over Ukraine, their hand is weak.

“If Trump blinks and says no, does Europe refuse to help altogether? They can’t cut off their nose to spite their face.”

Essentially, if the US plans to turn away from Ukraine and from Europe more broadly in terms of security, they will have to significantly up their defence game anyway.

If Donald Trump isn’t watching, Vladimir Putin certainly is.

South Korean actress Kim Sae-ron has been found dead in Seoul, police have said.

The 24-year-old was found in her home in the city’s Seongsu-dong district by a friend at around 16:55 (07:55 GMT) on Sunday.

Officers said no signs of foul play had been found and they were investigating the cause of death.

Kim began her career as a child actor and was seen as one of South Korea’s most promising young actresses.

Born in Seoul in 2000, she rose to prominence with her role in 2009 film A Brand New Life – which saw her appear at the Cannes Film Festival.

She went on to star in South Korea’s highest grossing film of 2010 The Man from Nowhere and 2012 thriller The Neighbour, for which she received award recognition.

Other notable roles include the 2014 film A Girl at My Door and television roles such as Mirror of the Witch in 2016.

The actress largely withdrew from the public eye in 2022 due to a drink driving incident, for which she was fined 20 million won (£11,000) in April 2023.

Kim’s last role was in Netflix’s 2023 Korean drama Bloodhounds. Variety reported that most of her role was edited out due to the driving incident.

Muhsin Hendricks, a pioneering figure dubbed the world’s first openly gay imam, has been shot dead in South Africa.

The 57-year-old cleric ran a mosque in Cape Town intended as a safe haven for gay and other marginalised Muslims. He was killed on Saturday morning after the car in which he was travelling near the southern city of Gqeberha was ambushed.

“Two unknown suspects with covered faces got out of the vehicle and started firing multiple shots at the vehicle,” police said in a statement.

News of Hendricks’ death has sent shockwaves through the LGBTQ+ community and beyond, prompting an outpouring of tributes from across the globe.

Julia Ehrt, executive director at the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (Ilga), called on the authorities to thoroughly investigate “what we fear may be a hate crime”.

“He supported and mentored so many people in South Africa and around the world in their journey to reconcile with their faith, and his life has been a testament to the healing that solidarity across communities can bring in everyone’s lives,” she said.

• Born free, killed by hate – the price of being gay in South Africa
• The volunteers taking on South African crime

Hendricks was killed after he had reportedly officiated at a lesbian wedding, though this has not been officially confirmed.

The details of the attack emerged through security footage that was shared on social media.

It shows a car pulling up and blocking the vehicle in which Hendricks was travelling as it was pulling away from the curb. According to police, the imam was in the back seat.

The angle of CCTV footage reveals what happened from one side of the road – an assailant jumps out of a car, runs to the ambushed vehicle and shoots repeatedly through the back passenger window.

Hendricks’ Al-Ghurbaah Foundation, which runs the Masjidul Ghurbaah mosque in the Wynberg suburb of Cape Town, confirmed he had died in a targeted attack on Saturday morning.

But Abdulmugheeth Petersen, chair of the foundation’s board, appealed via a WhatsApp group for their followers to be patient, stressing the importance of protecting Hendricks’ family.

Hendricks’ work challenged traditional interpretations of Islam and championed a compassionate, inclusive faith.

South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution was the first in the world to protect people from discrimination because of their sexual orientation and in 2006, became the first country in Africa to legalise same-sex marriage.

But despite a thriving LGBT community, gay people still face discrimination and violence. The country also has one of the highest murder rates in the world.

Hendricks came out as gay in 1996, which shocked the wider Muslim community in Cape Town and elsewhere.

That same year, he founded The Inner Circle, an organisation providing support and a safe space for queer Muslims seeking to reconcile their faith and sexuality before going on to establish the inclusive Masjidul Ghurbaah mosque.

He was the subject of a documentary in 2022 called The Radical, in which he said about the threats he faced: “The need to be authentic was greater than the fear to die.”

Hendricks often spoke about the importance of interfaith dialogue and the need to address the mental health issues and trauma faced by LGBTQ+ individuals within religious communities.

He told the Ilga World Conference in Cape Town last year: “It is important that we stop to look at religion as the enemy.”

Reverend Jide Macaulay, an openly gay Anglican minister, described Hendricks’ death as “truly heartbreaking”.

The British-Nigerian LGBTQ rights activist runs House of Rainbow, an organisation that provides support for gay people in Nigeria where same-sex relationships or public displays of affection are illegal, and paid tribute to Hendricks’ bravery.

“Your leadership, courage, and unwavering dedication to inclusive faith communities have left an indelible mark,” he said.

Sadiq Lawal, a gay Muslim man living in Nigeria, told the BBC that Hendricks, had made such an impact as he had made “the impossible possible” by saying the words: “I’m a queer imam.”

“He’s a mentor to many queer Muslims in Africa, especially in Nigeria, because of religious extremism,” he said.

“I’m still in shock and devastated.”

• Homosexuality: The countries where it is illegal to be gay
• The Cape Town schools learning from transgender students
• ‘Being openly gay has held my career back’ – SA footballer
• South Africa’s gay radio station makes waves
• How South Africa’s oldest Quran was saved by Cape Town Muslims

President Donald Trump’s attempts to shrink the federal bureaucracy are heading to the Supreme Court, according to US media.

He has filed an emergency appeal to the country’s highest court to rule on whether he can fire the leader of an independent whistleblowing agency.

Hampton Dellinger, head of the US Office of Special Counsel, sued the Trump administration after he was fired by email this month.

Trump has also sacked more than a dozen inspectors general at various federal agencies along with the jobs of thousands of employees across the US government.

Mr Dellinger, who was nominated by Joe Biden, the former president, argues that his removal broke a law that protects leaders of independent agencies from being fired by the president, “except in cases of neglect of duty, malfeasance or inefficiency”.

A federal judge in Washington DC issued a temporary order on Wednesday allowing Mr Dellinger to hold on to his position while the case is being considered.

On Saturday, a divided US Court of Appeals in the nation’s capital rejected the Trump administration’s request to overrule the lower court.

• What is Doge and why is Musk cutting so many jobs?
• Legal showdown looms as Trump tests limits of presidential power

That has led to the justice department filing an emergency appeal to the conservative-dominated Supreme Court. It is the first case the president has taken to the justices since he took office last month.

“This court should not allow lower courts to seize executive power by dictating to the president how long he must continue employing an agency head against his will,” Sarah M Harris, acting solicitor general, wrote in the filing provided by the Department of Justice to the Washington Post.

“Until now, as far as we are aware, no court in American history has wielded an injunction to force the president to retain an agency head,” the acting solicitor general wrote, according to the Associated Press news agency.

The Republican president’s orders on immigration, transgender issues and government spending have also become bogged down in dozens of lawsuits in the lower courts. Those cases may ultimately wind up at the Supreme Court, too.

Trump’s efforts to reduce and reshape the 2.3 million-strong civilian federal workforce continued over the weekend.

Workers in various health agencies who are still within their probation periods received letters on Saturday evening informing them they would be terminated, sources told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

“Unfortunately, the agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the agency’s current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment at the agency,” read the letters.

At least 9,500 workers at the departments of Health and Human Services, Energy, Veterans Affairs, Interior and Agriculture have been fired by Trump, according to a tally from Reuters news agency.

Another 75,000 workers have taken a buyout offered to get them to leave voluntarily, according to the White House.

The cost-cutting initiative has been led by department of government efficiency, or Doge, a task force led by Elon Musk.

Just over a year ago, Chloe Cheung was sitting her A-levels. Now she’s on a Chinese government list of wanted dissidents.

The choir girl-turned-democracy activist woke up to news in December that police in Hong Kong had issued a $HK1 million ($100,000; £105,000) reward for information leading to her capture abroad.

“I actually just wanted to take a gap year after school,” Chloe, 19, who lives in London, told the BBC. “But I’ve ended up with a bounty!”

Chloe is the youngest of 19 activists accused of breaching a national security law introduced by Beijing in response to huge pro-democracy protests in the former British colony five years ago.

In 2021, she and her family moved to the UK under a special visa scheme for Hong Kongers. She can probably never return to her home city and says she has to be careful about where she travels.

Her protest work has made her a fugitive of the Chinese state, a detail not lost on me as we meet one icy morning in the café in the crypt of Westminster Abbey. In medieval England, churches provided sanctuary from arrest.

Hong Kong police issued the arrest warrant on Christmas Eve, using the only photo they appear to have on file for her – in which she is aged 11.

“It freaked me out at first,” she says, but then she fired back a public response.

“I didn’t want the government to think I was scared. Because if Hong Kongers in Hong Kong can’t speak out for themselves any more, then we outside of the city – who can speak freely without fear- we have to speak up for them.”

Chloe attended her first protests with her school friends, in the early days of Hong Kong’s 2019 demonstrations. Protesters turned out in huge numbers against a bill seen as extending China’s control over the territory, which had enjoyed semi-autonomy since Britain handed it back in 1997.

“Politics were never in my life before… so I went to the first protest with curiosity,” she said.

She saw police tear-gassing demonstrators and an officer stepping on a protester’s neck.

“I was so shocked,” she says. “That moment actually changed how I looked at the world.”

Growing up in a city that was part of China but that had retained many of its freedoms – she had thought Hong Kongers could talk about “what we like and don’t like” and “could decide what Hong Kong’s future looked like”.

But the violent crackdown by authorities made her realise that wasn’t the case. She began joining protests, at first without her parents’ knowledge.

“I didn’t tell them at the time because they didn’t care [about politics],” she says. But when things started to get “really crazy”, she browbeat her parents into coming with her.

At the march, police fired tear gas at them and they had to run away into the subway. Her parents got the “raw experience”, she says, not the version they’d seen blaming protesters on TV.

After months of demonstrations, Beijing passed the National Security Law in 2020. Suddenly, most of the freedoms that had set Hong Kong apart from mainland China – freedom of expression, the right to political assemblies – were gone.

Symbols of democracy in the city, including statues and independent newspapers, were torn down, shut or erased. Those publicly critical of the government – from teachers to millionaire moguls like British citizen Jimmy Lai – faced trials and eventually, jail.

In response to the crackdown, the UK opened its doors to Hong Kongers under a new scheme, the British National Overseas (BNO) visa. Chloe’s family were some of the first to take up the offer, settling in Leeds, which offered the cheapest Airbnb they could find. Chloe had to do her GCSEs halfway through the school term, and during a pandemic lockdown.

At first, she felt isolated. It was hard to make friends and she had trouble speaking English, she says. There were few other Hong Kongers around.

Unable to afford international student fees of more than £20,000 a year, she took a job with the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, a pro-democracy NGO.

When China started putting bounties on dissidents’ heads in 2023, they targeted prominent protest leaders and opposition politicians. Chloe, still finishing her A-levels at the time, thought was she too small-fry to ever be a target.

Her inclusion underlines Beijing’s determination to pursue activists overseas.

The bounty puts a target on her back and encourages third parties to report on her actions in the UK, she says.

China has been the leading country over the past decade trying to silence exiled dissidents around the world, according to a report this week.

Another Hong Kong dissident who reported being assaulted in London blamed the attacks on Chinese government-linked actors.

And last May, British police charged three men with gathering intelligence for Hong Kong and breaking into a home. One of the men was soon after found dead in unclear circumstances.

“They’re only interested in Hong Kongers because they want to scare off others,” Chloe says.

She says many of those who’ve moved over in recent years stay quiet, partly because they still have family in Hong Kong.

“Most of the BNO visa holders told me this because they don’t want to take risks,” she says. “It’s sad but we can’t blame them.”

On the day her arrest warrant was announced, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the UK would not tolerate “any attempts by foreign governments to coerce, intimidate, harass or harm their critics overseas”. He added the government was committed to supporting Hong Kongers in the UK.

But more needs to be done, says Chloe, who’s spent the first weeks of this year lobbying Westminster.

In the past fortnight she has met Prime Minister Keir Starmer at a Lunar New Year event at Downing Street, and shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel, who later tweeted: “We must not give an inch to any transnational repression in the UK.”

But she worries whether the UK’s recent overtures to China could mean fewer protections for Hong Kongers.

“We just don’t know what will happen to us, and whether the British government will protect us if they really want to protect their trade relationship with China.”

Does she feel scared on the streets in London? It’s not as bad as what activists back home face, she says.

“When I think of what [they] face… it’s actually not that big a deal that I got a bounty overseas.”

Bounty targets

• July 2023: Eight high profile activists are named including: Nathan Law, Anna Kwok and Finn Lau, former politicians Dennis Kwok and Ted Hui, lawyer and legal scholar Kevin Yam, unionist Mung Siu-tat, and online commentator Yuan Gong-yi.
• December 2023: Simon Cheng, Frances Hui, Joey Siu, Johnny Fok and Tony Choi
• December 2024: Tony Chung, Carmen Lau, Chung Kim-wah, Chloe Cheung, Victor Ho Leung-mau

Israel’s prime minister has said he is working to make US President Donald Trump’s plan to remove and resettle Gaza’s population “a reality”.

Benjamin Netanyahu said he was co-operating with the US on a “common strategy” for the Palestinian territory after a meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Jerusalem on Sunday.

The talks come after US President Donald Trump proposed a US takeover Gaza and removal of the two million Palestinians there to neighbouring countries.

The UN has warned that any forced displacement of civilians from occupied territory is strictly prohibited under international law and “tantamount to ethnic cleansing”.

• Trump’s mixed messaging on foreign policy leaves world guessing
• ‘We are tired of war’: Israelis and Gazans fear ceasefire collapse
• How 15 months of war has devastated Gaza

America’s top diplomat said President Trump’s plan may have “shocked and surprised” people, but it took “courage” to propose an alternative to “tired ideas” of the past.

Netanyahu said he and Rubio had discussed ways to implement Trump’s vision, adding that the US and Israel had a common position on Gaza.

The Israeli leader warned that the “gates of hell” would be opened if all Israeli hostages held by the armed group Hamas were not released.

“Hamas can not continue as a military or government force,” Rubio added. “And as long as it stands as a force that can govern or administer or a force that can threaten by use of violence, peace becomes impossible.”

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

The fighting has caused devastation in Gaza, where more than 48,200 people have been killed during the 16-month war, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Most of Gaza’s population has also been displaced multiple times, almost 70% of buildings are estimated to be damaged or destroyed, the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed, and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.

Palestinian and Arab leaders have widely rejected Trump’s Gaza takeover plan, with the Palestinian Authority and Hamas emphasising that Palestinian land is “not for sale”.

Unlike previous US peace efforts in the region, the US top diplomat did not meet any Palestinian leaders to discuss the future of Gaza.

Speaking at a joint news conference on Sunday, Rubio and Netanyahu outlined areas of agreement, including a desire to eradicate Hamas’s governing capacity in the enclave, prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon, and to monitor developments in post-Assad Syria.

Rubio went on to accuse Tehran of being “behind every act of violence, behind every destabilising activity, behind everything that threatens peace and stability” in the region.

Netanyahu also condemned what he called “lawfare” from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which he said “outrageously libelled” Israel.

He thanked the US administration for issuing sanctions against the ICC, which last year issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and his former defence minister over alleged war crimes in Gaza – which Israel denies – as well as a top Hamas commander.

Rubio is visiting Israel on his first tour of the Middle East as the US secretary of state. He is also due to meet Russian officials in Saudi Arabia in coming days for talks on the war in Ukraine – a meeting that neither Ukraine nor other European countries have been invited to.

His visit comes after a shipment of American-made heavy bombs arrived in Israel overnight.

Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz said his country had received a delivery of MK-84 bombs from the US late on Saturday, after Trump overturned a block on exporting the munitions placed by his predecessor, Joe Biden.

Biden initially shipped thousands of MK-84s to Israel after Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack, but later declined to clear the bombs for export out of concern for their impact on Gaza. The powerful 2,000-pound bombs have a wide blast radius and can rip through concrete and metal, destroying entire buildings.

Katz said the shipment represented a “significant asset” for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and served as evidence of the “strong alliance between Israel and the United States”.

Meanwhile, Hamas said an Israeli air strike had killed three police officers near Rafah in southern Gaza on Sunday, which it called a “serious violation” of the ceasefire.

Israel said it had struck “several armed individuals” in southern Gaza.

The ceasefire came into force on 19 January and requires a complete pause in fighting for the first 42-day phase.

Fears had been high this week that the fragile ceasefire agreement could collapse after a dispute over a planned hostage release, which was nearly aborted but ultimately went ahead on Saturday.

Netanyahu’s office confirmed on Sunday that an Israeli negotiating team would travel to Cairo on Monday to discuss the second phase of the ceasefire.

The US government is trying to rehire nuclear safety employees it had fired on Thursday, after concerns grew that their dismissal could jeopardise national security, US media reported.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) workers were among hundreds of employees in the energy department who received termination letters.

The department is responsible for with designing, building and overseeing the US nuclear weapons stockpile.

The terminations are part of a massive effort by President Donald Trump to slash the ranks of the federal workforce, a project he began on his first day in office, less than a month ago.

US media reported that more than 300 NNSA staff were let go, citing sources with knowledge of the matter.

That number was disputed by a spokesperson for the Department of Energy, who told CNN that “less than 50 people” were dismissed from NNSA.

The Thursday layoffs included staff stationed at facilities where weapons are built, according to CNN.

The Trump administration has since tried to reverse their terminations, according to media outlets, but has reportedly struggled to reach the people that were fired after they were locked out of their federal email accounts.

A memo sent to NNSA employees on Friday and obtained by NBC News read: “The termination letters for some NNSA probationary employees are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel.”

“Please work with your supervisors to send this information (once you get it) to people’s personal contact emails,” the memo added.

Last week, nearly 10,000 federal workers were let go across several agencies, according to multiple US outlets.

That figure was in addition to the estimated 75,000 workers who have accepted an offer from the White House to leave voluntarily in the autumn.

Trump is working to slash spending across the board, abroad and at home, and going so far as to call for eliminating the education department.

He is getting help from the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who, through an effort called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), has sent workers to comb through data at federal agencies and helped implement the “buyout” offer.

Last week, the Trump administration ordered agencies to fire nearly all probationary employees, those who had generally been in their positions for less than a year and not yet earned job protection. That included the NNSA staff members.

Altogether, the move could potentially affect hundreds of thousands of people.

Several of the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the government’s size and spending have been met with legal challenges.

More than 60 lawsuits have been filed against the Trump administration since the president was inaugurated on 20 January.

Stars were all smiles despite the chilly weather as they walked the red carpet at London’s Royal Festival Hall, for this year’s Bafta Film Awards.

Nominees and guests posed for photos as they gathered for the UK film calendar’s biggest night.

OpenAI’s board of directors has officially rejected Elon Musk’s nearly $100bn offer for the maker of what is the world’s best-known artificial intelligence (AI) tool, ChatGPT.

But the unsolicited bid might not be a failure – at least as far as Musk is concerned, experts say.

That’s because the offer could still complicate CEO Sam Altman’s plans to transform OpenAI from a non-profit controlled entity to a for-profit company.

Musk is “basically trying to stymie OpenAI’s growth trajectory,” said University of Cambridge associate teaching professor Johnnie Penn in an interview with the BBC.

Last week, Musk and a consortium of investors including Hollywood superagent Ari Emanuel tabled a $97.4bn (£78.4bn) offer for all of OpenAI’s assets.

It was a huge sum – but less than the $157bn the firm was valued at in a funding round just four months ago, and much lower than the $300bn that some think it is worth now.

Complicating all of this is OpenAI’s unusual structure which involves a partnership between non-profit and for-profit arms.

Mr Altman is understood to want to change that, stripping it of its non-profit board.

That involves costs which Mr Musk is seemingly trying to inflate.

“What Musk is trying to do here is raise the perceived value of the non-profit arm of OpenAI, so that OpenAI has to pay more to get out of the obligations it has to its own non-profit,” said Dr Penn.

The value of its non-profit assets isn’t clear. With his bid, Musk was floating a price, according to Cornell University senior lecturer Lutz Finger, who is also the founder and CEO of AI startup R2Decide.

“By Musk putting a price tag on the non-profit part, he makes the split way more expensive for Altman to do,” Mr Finger told the BBC. “It’s very simple.”

Mr Musk justified his actions by saying he wants to return OpenAI – which he co-founded – to its non-profit roots and original mission of developing AI for the benefit of humanity.

Others, though, suggest he has somewhat less noble motives linked to his own AI company xAI and chatbot Grok, which have received a lacklustre response from the public.

“Musk has missed the AI train, somewhat. He’s behind, and he has made several attempts to catch up,” Mr Finger said.

Now, Mr Finger says, Mr Musk is trying to kneecap his most formidable competitor.

An already-tense relationship appeared to worsen further last week with Mr Altman taunting Mr Musk’s offer on X, and Mr Musk retorting by calling his onetime partner a “swindler”.

Mr Altman then hit back in an interview with Bloomberg, opining that Mr Musk is not “a happy person” and saying his decisions are made from a “position of insecurity”.

The tit-for-tat is also playing out in court, where US district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is considering Mr Musk’s request for an injunction that would block OpenAI from its planned conversion.

He claims that he will be irreparably harmed without her intervention.

“It is plausible that what Mr Musk is saying is true. We’ll find out. He’ll sit on the stand,” Gonzalez Rogers said during a hearing in earlier this month in Oakland, California.

According to OpenAI’s lawyers, Mr Musk’s recent bid contradicts his earlier claims that OpenAI’s assets cannot be transferred away for “private gain.”

“[O]ut of court, those constraints evidently do not apply, so long as Musk and his allies are the buyers,” their reply brief states.

Some observers say making a deal never appeared to be his goal.

“I think he’s just trying to create noise and news and consternation,” says Karl Freund, founder and principal analyst at Cambrian-AI.

But in addition to causing problems for his old rival, that strategy could inflict lasting damage on Mr Musk’s own reputation.

“He’s brilliant. He creates incredible companies that are doing incredible things. But his personal agenda is causing people to question his motives,” Mr Freund said.

A couple who “risked it all” by quitting their jobs and selling their home to travel the world with their three children said the adventure had saved them as a family.

Chris and Tamira Hutchinson were “living from pay cheque to pay cheque” and barely spent any time together at home in Corby, Northamptonshire.

They sold their three-bedroom house almost two years ago and drove straight to the airport to start their new life with their three daughters, Olivia, 10, Scarlett, eight, and Bella, four.

“As a family, we were pretty much broken. But now we are living our dream,” Chris says.

Despite working “every hour under the sun” – Chris as a personal trainer and Tamira as a swimming teacher – they could not keep up with the cost of living in the UK.

“We went down to one car, we got rid of Sky TV, we didn’t go on holiday but the bills kept going up and up,” says Tamira.

“We only ate together as a family once a month because we didn’t get time. We were just working to make ends meet.”

It was during Covid that they first talked about selling up and travelling the world.

“We had a chance to breathe and we realised we didn’t want to go back to the life we were living,” Chris says.

The couple put their house up for sale in 2022 but it took longer to sell than they anticipated and they nearly backed out of the plan. When it finally sold in May 2023, they drove straight to Heathrow.

“Our last night in the house, we were all on the floor because we had sold all our furniture,” says Chris.

“We didn’t have the money to book our flights until we got the cash from the house, so we went to a hotel near Heathrow and booked flights to Kuala Lumpur [Malaysia].

“It was a huge risk. We thought it might not work and we might want to go home, but we’ve never looked back.”

Chris taught himself videography before they left so he could document their travels on social media, which has turned into their biggest source of income.

“We were already making videos about family life, but we didn’t have a huge amount of followers,” the 36-year-old explains. “We had 7,000 subscribers on YouTube but now we have 100,000, and we had about 12,000 on TikTok where as now we have 250,000.”

After exploring Malaysia, they went to Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia and Qatar.

It was during their trip to China that their social media “blew up” and the family “accidentally became famous” in the country.

One video they made about their drinks being dropped off by a drone received eight million views on TikTok.

They also saw a huge growth on Chinese social media platforms, where they have over one million followers and their videos reach tens of millions of views.

The couple say the trip has been “incredible”, but there have inevitably been tough times.

Tamira got dengue fever in Thailand, their family credit card got swallowed by a machine in Vietnam and all five of them got a sickness bug while staying in a hostel in the Philippines.

“Another difficult time was when we got lost in China. We were walking round with all our possessions in the early hours of the morning and our phone maps didn’t work. But we eventually found our hotel and we can laugh about it now,” Tamira says.

They have based themselves on the Malaysian island of Penang for the last few months, where their daughters, who are home schooled by Tamira, are “thriving”.

“They are learning about different cultures, currencies, languages and how to get around,” Chris says.

“All three of them have always been 110% on board with this idea, but if they ever changed their minds and wanted to go home, we would listen to them.

“They have grown in confidence so much and they make friends wherever they go. There are a lot of digital nomad families travelling round, who are working remotely.”

The Hutchinsons say they have got the next five years planned out, with trips to Dubai, Australia, India, Sri Lanka and Cambodia on the cards this year.

They might also go back to the UK briefly, but they have no plans at the moment to return permanently, because their “quality of life is so much better now”.

The couple receive lots of messages asking for advice and say they hope to inspire other parents.

“It’s not flowers all the time but if you’re a person who enjoys a challenge and enjoys spending time with your family, go for it. You will never know until you try,” Tamira says.

“It was a dream and we made it happen,” Chris adds. “As a family we have loved every moment and we have risen to the challenges.”

South Korean actress Kim Sae-ron has been found dead in Seoul, police have said.

The 24-year-old was found in her home in the city’s Seongsu-dong district by a friend at around 16:55 (07:55 GMT) on Sunday.

Officers said no signs of foul play had been found and they were investigating the cause of death.

Kim began her career as a child actor and was seen as one of South Korea’s most promising young actresses.

Born in Seoul in 2000, she rose to prominence with her role in 2009 film A Brand New Life – which saw her appear at the Cannes Film Festival.

She went on to star in South Korea’s highest grossing film of 2010 The Man from Nowhere and 2012 thriller The Neighbour, for which she received award recognition.

Other notable roles include the 2014 film A Girl at My Door and television roles such as Mirror of the Witch in 2016.

The actress largely withdrew from the public eye in 2022 due to a drink driving incident, for which she was fined 20 million won (£11,000) in April 2023.

Kim’s last role was in Netflix’s 2023 Korean drama Bloodhounds. Variety reported that most of her role was edited out due to the driving incident.

Just over a year ago, Chloe Cheung was sitting her A-levels. Now she’s on a Chinese government list of wanted dissidents.

The choir girl-turned-democracy activist woke up to news in December that police in Hong Kong had issued a $HK1 million ($100,000; £105,000) reward for information leading to her capture abroad.

“I actually just wanted to take a gap year after school,” Chloe, 19, who lives in London, told the BBC. “But I’ve ended up with a bounty!”

Chloe is the youngest of 19 activists accused of breaching a national security law introduced by Beijing in response to huge pro-democracy protests in the former British colony five years ago.

In 2021, she and her family moved to the UK under a special visa scheme for Hong Kongers. She can probably never return to her home city and says she has to be careful about where she travels.

Her protest work has made her a fugitive of the Chinese state, a detail not lost on me as we meet one icy morning in the café in the crypt of Westminster Abbey. In medieval England, churches provided sanctuary from arrest.

Hong Kong police issued the arrest warrant on Christmas Eve, using the only photo they appear to have on file for her – in which she is aged 11.

“It freaked me out at first,” she says, but then she fired back a public response.

“I didn’t want the government to think I was scared. Because if Hong Kongers in Hong Kong can’t speak out for themselves any more, then we outside of the city – who can speak freely without fear- we have to speak up for them.”

Chloe attended her first protests with her school friends, in the early days of Hong Kong’s 2019 demonstrations. Protesters turned out in huge numbers against a bill seen as extending China’s control over the territory, which had enjoyed semi-autonomy since Britain handed it back in 1997.

“Politics were never in my life before… so I went to the first protest with curiosity,” she said.

She saw police tear-gassing demonstrators and an officer stepping on a protester’s neck.

“I was so shocked,” she says. “That moment actually changed how I looked at the world.”

Growing up in a city that was part of China but that had retained many of its freedoms – she had thought Hong Kongers could talk about “what we like and don’t like” and “could decide what Hong Kong’s future looked like”.

But the violent crackdown by authorities made her realise that wasn’t the case. She began joining protests, at first without her parents’ knowledge.

“I didn’t tell them at the time because they didn’t care [about politics],” she says. But when things started to get “really crazy”, she browbeat her parents into coming with her.

At the march, police fired tear gas at them and they had to run away into the subway. Her parents got the “raw experience”, she says, not the version they’d seen blaming protesters on TV.

After months of demonstrations, Beijing passed the National Security Law in 2020. Suddenly, most of the freedoms that had set Hong Kong apart from mainland China – freedom of expression, the right to political assemblies – were gone.

Symbols of democracy in the city, including statues and independent newspapers, were torn down, shut or erased. Those publicly critical of the government – from teachers to millionaire moguls like British citizen Jimmy Lai – faced trials and eventually, jail.

In response to the crackdown, the UK opened its doors to Hong Kongers under a new scheme, the British National Overseas (BNO) visa. Chloe’s family were some of the first to take up the offer, settling in Leeds, which offered the cheapest Airbnb they could find. Chloe had to do her GCSEs halfway through the school term, and during a pandemic lockdown.

At first, she felt isolated. It was hard to make friends and she had trouble speaking English, she says. There were few other Hong Kongers around.

Unable to afford international student fees of more than £20,000 a year, she took a job with the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, a pro-democracy NGO.

When China started putting bounties on dissidents’ heads in 2023, they targeted prominent protest leaders and opposition politicians. Chloe, still finishing her A-levels at the time, thought was she too small-fry to ever be a target.

Her inclusion underlines Beijing’s determination to pursue activists overseas.

The bounty puts a target on her back and encourages third parties to report on her actions in the UK, she says.

China has been the leading country over the past decade trying to silence exiled dissidents around the world, according to a report this week.

Another Hong Kong dissident who reported being assaulted in London blamed the attacks on Chinese government-linked actors.

And last May, British police charged three men with gathering intelligence for Hong Kong and breaking into a home. One of the men was soon after found dead in unclear circumstances.

“They’re only interested in Hong Kongers because they want to scare off others,” Chloe says.

She says many of those who’ve moved over in recent years stay quiet, partly because they still have family in Hong Kong.

“Most of the BNO visa holders told me this because they don’t want to take risks,” she says. “It’s sad but we can’t blame them.”

On the day her arrest warrant was announced, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the UK would not tolerate “any attempts by foreign governments to coerce, intimidate, harass or harm their critics overseas”. He added the government was committed to supporting Hong Kongers in the UK.

But more needs to be done, says Chloe, who’s spent the first weeks of this year lobbying Westminster.

In the past fortnight she has met Prime Minister Keir Starmer at a Lunar New Year event at Downing Street, and shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel, who later tweeted: “We must not give an inch to any transnational repression in the UK.”

But she worries whether the UK’s recent overtures to China could mean fewer protections for Hong Kongers.

“We just don’t know what will happen to us, and whether the British government will protect us if they really want to protect their trade relationship with China.”

Does she feel scared on the streets in London? It’s not as bad as what activists back home face, she says.

“When I think of what [they] face… it’s actually not that big a deal that I got a bounty overseas.”

Bounty targets

• July 2023: Eight high profile activists are named including: Nathan Law, Anna Kwok and Finn Lau, former politicians Dennis Kwok and Ted Hui, lawyer and legal scholar Kevin Yam, unionist Mung Siu-tat, and online commentator Yuan Gong-yi.
• December 2023: Simon Cheng, Frances Hui, Joey Siu, Johnny Fok and Tony Choi
• December 2024: Tony Chung, Carmen Lau, Chung Kim-wah, Chloe Cheung, Victor Ho Leung-mau