Security forces of Syria’s new rulers have engaged in heavy fighting with fighters loyal to deposed President Bashar al-Assad in a coastal area of the country.

It is the worst violence in Syria since rebels toppled Assad in December and installed an Islamist transitional government.

A war monitoring group, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said more than 70 people have been killed.

A curfew has been imposed in the cities of Latakia and Tartous, where the fighting has broken out.

BBC Verify confirmed the location of two videos posted online that showed gunmen shooting repeatedly at a building, igniting a fire inside, in the city of Homs on Thursday evening.

Two other verified videos show a body being dragged behind a car in Latakia.

The coastal region is the heartland of the Alawite minority, and a stronghold of the Assad family, which belong to the Alawite sect.

Estimations of the number of people killed in the violence vary, and the BBC has been unable to independently verify them.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday that 71 people had been killed, including 35 members of government forces, 32 gunmen affiliated to the former regime’s army, and four civilians.

The clashes left tens of others injured, the human rights group said.

Gunmen, some from the former regime, had ambushed military forces, checkpoints and headquarters along the coastline, the organisation said.

One Sunni civilian witness called the attack “planned and prepared”, while another told BBC Arabic that the indiscriminate firing on everyone including paramedics, was like something from the previous Assad regime.

“They did not have any mercy, so we are against any violence against anyone in the Syrian coast who has not been involve in this unrest. All of them are civilians and they are all like our family,” they explained.

One Alawite said many Syrian people are “scared” regardless of if they were on the coast or in the capital.

Speaking to the BBC, she added that “everyone is terrified from the current incitement”, and fears they will become “scapegoats”.

Local gunmen took hold of military zones, where they holed up in areas in the Latakia mountains to launch attacks, while others holed up in Jableh city.

Members of the former regime army have been deployed in several coastal towns and villages, while military forces have been ambushed on highways.

Late on Thursday, Syrian-based Step news agency reported that government-aligned forces had killed “about 70” former regime fighters, while more than 25 others were captured in Jableh and the surrounding areas.

A spokesman for Syria’s defence ministry, Colonel Hassan Abdul Ghani, issued a warning to Assad loyalists fighting in Latakia via state media.

“Thousands have chosen to surrender their weapons and return to their families, while some insist on fleeing and dying in defence of murderers and criminals. The choice is clear: lay down your weapons or face your inevitable fate,” he said.

The region has become a major security challenge for interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Alawite activists said their community had been subjected to violence and attacks since Assad fell, particularly in rural Homs and Latakia.

He is also facing resistance in the south, where there have been clashes with Druze forces in recent days.

Earlier this week, Syria’s foreign minister told the global chemical weapons watchdog that the new government was committed to destroying any remaining stockpiles produced under-Assad.

Assad’s government denied ever using chemical weapons during the 14-year civil war, but activists accused it of carrying out of dozens of chemical attacks.

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated and more than 84,000 households left in the dark as a rare tropical cyclone approaches Australia’s eastern coast.

Cyclone Alfred is expected to make landfall on Saturday morning between the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast – known for beautiful beaches and top surf – as well as Brisbane, Australia’s third-biggest city.

The cyclone, the first to hit the area in 50 years, is now expected to land as a category one system with wind speeds of up to 120km/h.

It has already caused flooding which authorities fear could worsen over the weekend. New South Wales police said on Friday that one man was missing after his vehicle was swept into a fast-flowing river.

Four million people across Queensland and northern New South Wales are in the firing line of the storm.

But its slow progress, described by weather experts as “walking pace” and “erratic”, has raised concerns of flash and riverine flooding in low-lying areas.

It is expected to dump as much as 800mm of rain in the coming days.

Stephen Valentine and his wife, who live in Logan city south of Brisbane, have prepared some 30 litres of water, food for themselves and their pets, and set up “protected rooms” in their home situated away from windows.

“At the moment we are as prepared as we can be for something that none of us have been through… Nothing has come this far south across the south,” said Mr Valentine, who grew up in the city.

“We would get the edge of a cyclone ever so often, but not to this level,” he added.

While Queensland isn’t a stranger to cyclones – it’s the most disaster-prone state in Australia – it’s rare they come so far south.

“These are tough times, but Australians are tough people, and we are resilient people,” said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday, echoing the Gold Coast’s acting Mayor Donna Gates, who has said Cyclone Alfred is a “scary proposition” for the region.

Nearly 1,000 schools have closed, public transport has been suspended and airports are shut. Flights aren’t expected to resume until Sunday at the earliest. Elective surgeries have also been cancelled.

The last time a cyclone of Alfred’s magnitude hit was in 1974, when Wanda hit in January and then two months later, Zoe crossed the coast.

Flooding though, is more common. In February 2022, thousands of homes were damaged along much of Australia’s east after heavy rain.

Authorities have been keen to prepare communities ahead of Cyclone Alfred. The council opened sandbag depots across the region to help residents protect their homes.

“It’s surreal. We know it’s coming, but it’s very quiet,” said Anthony Singh, a resident of the Brisbane suburb of West End. He waited for four hours on Wednesday to pick up sandbags to protect his home.

Fellow resident Mark Clayton, helped to co-ordinate the sandbag collection, shovelling more than 140 tonnes of sand.

“I think people are a bit apprehensive,” he says. “Are the buildings going to stay up, are the roofs going to stay on? People expect a lot of trees to come down and to lose power for an extended period of time.”

With supermarkets now shut and people mostly sheltering at home, there’s a lot of uncertainty as Australians wait for the storm to hit.

But some die-hard surfers have thrown caution to the increasing wind.

“This is what we look forward to,” said surfer Jeff Weatherall as he waited for a jet ski to pick him up from Kirra beach and carry him into the big waves. “This is the fifth day straight – I’ve done nothing but eat, sleep, surf and do it again.”

Kirra beach is famous for its breakers and surfers have been busy this week seizing the strong winds.

“There are people that are going to lose their houses, but at the moment, you’re taking the good of it all. This is just crazy surf,” said surfer Donnie Neal.

Meanwhile Albanese have warned people to take the cyclone warnings seriously.

“This isn’t a time for sightseeing or for seeing what it’s like to experience these conditions firsthand,” he said.

“Please stay safe. Be sensible.”

After years of wrangling with authorities, students in Thailand can now let their hair down. Literally.

On Wednesday, Thailand’s Supreme Administrative Court annulled a 50-year-old directive by the education ministry, which had previously set out rules on hairstyles for school students: short hair for boys and ear-length bobs for girls.

In practice, hairstyle rules have been gradually relaxed across many schools. But some still used the 1975 junta-issued directive as a guideline, and would cut the hair of students who didn’t adhere.

The 1975 directive violated individual freedoms protected by the constitution and was out of touch with today’s society, the court said.

The court decision this week came in response to a petition, filed by 23 public school students in 2020, which argued that the 1975 directive was unconstitutional.

Student activists have long campaigned for hairstyle rules to be relaxed, saying it infringes on their human dignity and personal freedom over their bodies.

One of them is Panthin Adulthananusak, who recently graduated from university.

“In the eyes of kids like us back then… even though it seemed impossible, we wanted to do something,” he told the BBC. “If no student in Thai history rose up to challenge the power of the adults that suppressed us, it would be a lifelong embarrassment.”

In response to such campaigns, the education ministry in 2020 allowed students to have longer hairstyles – but there remained some restrictions. Boys’ hair could not cover the nape of their necks, while girls with long hair had to tie it up.

Those regulations were revoked in 2023, with then education minister Trinuch Thienthong announcing that students, parents and school authorities should negotiate their own common ground on what is acceptable for hairstyles in their schools.

But through all these changes, some schools continued to follow the standard laid out in the original 1975 directive.

Schools have traditionally associated short hair with discipline and tidiness – an argument that has been repeated by many social media users this week. But in recent years reports of schools banning bangs or dyed hair have sparked public outcry across Thailand.

In some parts of the country, teachers are known to shoddily cut students’ hair during morning assembly to punish them for flouting hairstyle rules. Such practices have continued even as education authorities warned teachers against it.

In January, the Ministry of Education reiterated that it had repealed restrictions on hair length for all students, saying it recognised the “importance of promoting diversity and fairness in all aspects of education”.

Wednesday’s court decision, which also says that schools’ hairstyle rules should consider the freedom and dignity of students, reaffirms the official push to leave hair choices up to students themselves.

But Panthin said the revoking of the decades-old directive “still leaves a hole for schools to set their own rules”. In cases where schools have more conservative management, he suggested, restrictions could remain in place.

Nonetheless, Panthin said he “felt glad that what I had seen and fought all along was acknowledged and there was a tangible progress”.

“I hope this court’s ruling will set a new standard for the understanding about basic human rights at the school.”

Work is under way to make all men in Poland undergo military training, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.

In a speech to the Polish parliament, Tusk said the government aimed to give full details in the coming months.

Efforts are being made to “prepare large-scale military training for every adult male in Poland,” he told the Sejm.

“We will try to have a model ready by the end of this year so that every adult male in Poland is trained in the event of war, so that this reserve is comparable and adequate to the potential threats.”

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Tusk said the Ukrainian army has 800,000 soldiers, whilst Russia has around 1.3 million and he wants to increase the size of the Polish army, including reservists, to 500,000 from around 200,000 now.

“We’re talking about the need to have an army of half a million in Poland, including the reservists,” he said.

“It seems if we organise things wisely, and I’m talking constantly with the Minister of Defence, we will have to use several courses of action. That means the reservists, but also intensive training to make those who do not go into the army fully-fledged and competent soldiers during a conflict,” he added.

Tusk said women may also undergo military training, but “war, is still to a greater extent the domain of men”.

The prime minister said his government was also “carefully examining” France’s proposal to include Europe under its nuclear umbrella.

“I would like to know first of all in detail what it means in terms of the authority over these weapons,” he said.

Tusk pointed out Ukraine was invaded after it got rid of its own nuclear arsenal, adding Warsaw would like to acquire its own nuclear weapons, however remote a possibility that may be.

“Today, it is clear that we would be safer if we had our own nuclear arsenal, that is beyond doubt. In any case the road to that would be very long and there would have to be a consensus too,” he said.

Poland is already planning to spend 4.7% of its economic output on defence this year, the highest proportion in the Nato alliance.

Tusk told parliament that spending should increase to 5% of GDP.

Earlier, President Duda proposed amending the constitution to make defence spending at a level of 4% of GDP compulsory

The prime minister also said he supports Poland withdrawing from the Ottawa convention that bans the use of antipersonnel landmines, and also possibly from the Dublin convention that bans the use of cluster munitions.

Poland has ramped up defence spending since Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in 2022.

It has signed arms contracts worth around $20bn (£15.5bn) with the United States to buy 250 M1A2 Abrams battle tanks, 32 F-35 jets, 96 Apache helicopters, Javelin missiles, and artillery rocket systems.

Warsaw has also signed contracts with South Korea to purchase K2 tanks and FA-50 light combat aircraft.

There is growing anxiety among Poles about their future security following US President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend military supplies to Ukraine. Most Poles believe supporting Ukraine is in their own security interests.

Mirosław Kaznowski, the deputy mayor of Milanówek, a small town outside Warsaw, told BBC News this week that a friend of his has decided to invest in a start-up to build low-cost underground bomb shelters for businesses and homes.

His friend said interest was high, he added.

Han Dong-Hoon was driving home from dinner in Seoul on December 3, scanning the radio, when he heard a breaking news update: President Yoon Suk-Yeol was preparing to deliver an emergency address.

Han, then the leader of Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP), was widely seen as one of the presiden’t closest allies. Yet that was Han’s first hint that Yoon was about to do something unprecedented.

By midnight, the president had plunged the country into a political maelstrom, declaring martial law as part of a self-proclaimed bid to eliminate “anti-state forces” and North Korea sympathisers.

“When I first heard the news of martial law, I thought, ‘We must stop it, because if it isn’t lifted that very night, a bloodbath might occur,'” Han tells BBC Korean.

“The fear and terror that South Korea’s decades-long, hard-won achievements might suddenly collapse were overwhelming.”

Soon after Yoon’s announcement, the opposition’s Democratic Party leader hosted a live stream urging people to assemble in protest outside the National Assembly building in central Seoul.

Thousands responded, clashing with police and blocking military units as opposition lawmakers rushed into the assembly building, clambering over fences and walls in a desperate attempt to block Yoon’s order.

Han was among them.

The late-night martial law edict seemed to have come from nowhere. It was, and remains, unclear who in Yoon’s party supported or even knew of the move before it was made. But in the hours that followed, Han would help lead a successful attempt to overturn Yoon’s order and have the declaration lifted.

Weeks later, he would also play a key role in impeaching the disgraced president – a move that would see him branded a “traitor” by mainstream members of the PPP, and ultimately lead to his resignation as party leader.

Han says he has “no regrets” about overturning Yoon’s martial law attempt, insisting that he’d “choose the same again”.

But in many people’s eyes, his subsequent decision to impeach the very president he’d helped get elected was a surprising heel turn for someone formerly viewed as Yoon’s right-hand man.

“We have experienced so much together over many years,” Han says of his relationship with Yoon.

“I find the current situation extremely painful and regretful. Both the president and I worked in good faith for the betterment of our country – yet I must say that I deeply regret how things have turned out.”

For years, Han and Yoon were inseparable allies. Having both attended Seoul National University, the two forged a close bond as prosecutors while jointly investigating corruption in the country’s halls of power.

Han gained political prominence when Yoon was narrowly elected president in May 2022, after beating his opponent by less than 1% of the vote.

Han was made Minister of Justice and later entrusted with the key role of Emergency Countermeasures Committee Chairman for the PPP, becoming the leader of the ruling party at the age of 50.

Yoon’s time in office was beleaguered by scandals and political failures – not least of all his landslide loss to the opposition Democratic Party last April.

The result of those parliamentary elections was widely seen as a vote of no confidence against Yoon, and rendered him a lame-duck president.

For most of Yoon’s administration, the PPP’s conservative base was enthusiastic about Han. The lawyer-turned-politician had quickly emerged as a likely party candidate for the next presidential election, originally scheduled for 2027.

Now, as the increasing likelihood of a 2025 election looms amid the fallout of Yoon’s ill-fated martial law attempt, Han’s reputation is largely defined by the way he acted during and after that fateful night.

While some still see him as a fresh and promising political figure, many view him as having betrayed the very president who had furthered his career.

In the weeks following Yoon’s abortive martial law order, the embattled president curried favour among PPP hardliners by refusing to cede political ground.

While he apologised for the events of December 3, he refused to resign, instead holing up in his official residence in defiance of calls for his impeachment.

He rallied his base and defended his decision by playing on unsubstantiated fears that the country was in danger.

It was these staunch Yoon loyalists who would come to turn against Han.

Despite having rejected Yoon’s martial law declaration on December 3, Han initially opposed the impeachment motion put forth against the president by South Korea’s political opposition – siding with almost every other PPP member in boycotting the first vote on December 7.

Days later, Han changed course. This was after allegations had emerged that during the martial law attempt Yoon had ordered key political figures – including Han – to be arrested. In allegiance with his close political aides, Han threw his full support behind a second and ultimately successful impeachment attempt, ousting Yoon as president.

“I wanted nothing more than for this government to succeed,” Han tells the BBC, reflecting on the storm of condemnation that then followed from within his own party ranks.

“I initially sought an orderly early resignation plan for the president – a plan I earnestly pursued, but which ultimately failed,” he adds.

“I am deeply pained by the outcome and empathise with those who remain unconvinced and heartbroken. Nonetheless, I believe it was a necessary decision for South Korea’s continued progress and development.”

Yoon has been suspended from his presidential duties and is currently under investigation on insurrection charges. Han, meanwhile, stepped down as PPP leader in mid-December, maintaining that although Yoon’s impeachment was painful, he did not regret his decision.

In the two months that followed, Han says he took some time to “quietly reflect” on whether he could have done more during such a turbulent period for South Korea.

“And I wrote a book,” he adds: a memoir, titled “The People Come First”, which chronicles the two weeks following Yoon’s martial law declaration.

It’s no surprise the book has become a bestseller: after all, it claims to be a first-hand account of events that have already gone down as some of the most dramatic in South Korea’s political history. It hit shelves on 26 February, one day after the Constitutional Court held its final hearing on Yoon’s impeachment trial.

It also hints at Han’s future ambitions. Publishing a memoir is seen as a common first step in launching a political campaign in South Korea, and some believe “The People Come First” underscores Han’s hopes to run as the PPP’s presidential candidate, if the court impeaches Yoon and triggers a snap election.

Within the book’s 384 pages, Han also discusses the need for constitutional reform and suggests that if he were to become president, he would change South Korea’s five-year presidential term to four years.

Should he choose to run, the memoir serves to remind South Koreans where he stands on crucial issues – and that he is no longer an ally of a disgraced president.

As it stands, the odds look stacked against him. A recent poll found that Han’s approval rating to become the next president sat at 6% – a fraction of the 22% rating he scored in January 2024. The decline of his political fortunes is compounded by the critics within the PPP, who accuse him of failing to protect both his former party and the president.

But Han plays down the suggestion that his memoir is intended as a political tool.

“I have published a book in which I truthfully express what I experienced and thought during these events,” he tells the BBC. “I am not returning with any specific political manoeuvre, but simply to share that message with you all.”

Another message Han seems eager to share is one of contrition towards the people of South Korea. He doesn’t regret voting to impeach his president and former ally, he insists, but he does regret this.

“Yoon did impose martial law, and I believe that was a wrong act – one that does not align with the principles of liberal democracy,” he says. “As the leader of the ruling party that put that president in office, I want to express my deepest apologies to the people.”

“I am truly sorry that our actions, and the reactions we displayed, hurt the people. I think we must overcome and resolve this crisis.”

No-one wants to be alone, and no job is more isolating than being a pop star.

Just ask Lady Gaga.

Her rise to fame in 2009-10 was unlike anything we’d seen before. One of the first pop stars to harness the power of the internet, she seemed to exist in a permanent onslaught of TMZ photos and gossip blogs.

Their appetite was voracious. She wore through so many looks and sounds in the space of three years that one critic wrote she was “speed-running Madonna’s entire career”.

And as her fame grew, the headlines became more unhinged. She staged a satanic ritual in a London hotel… She was secretly a hermaphrodite… She planned to saw her own leg off “for fashion”.

When she attended the 2010 MTV Awards in a dress made entirely of meat, nobody seemed to get the joke: Gaga was presenting herself as fodder for the tabloids, there to be consumed.

On stage, she was an object of worship for her fans, the Little Monsters. But anyone who isn’t a megalomaniac knows that that sort of adulation is a distant illusion.

“I’m alone, Brandon. Every night,” Gaga told her stylist in the 2017 documentary, Five Foot Two.

“I go from everyone touching me all day and talking at me all day to total silence.”

Now 38, and happily engaged to tech entrepreneur Michael Polansky, Gaga admits that those years of solitude scared her.

“I think my biggest fear was doing this by myself – doing life on my own,” she tells the BBC.

“And I think that the greatest gift has been meeting my partner, Michael, and being in the mayhem with him.”

The couple have been together since 2020, and revealed their engagement at the Venice Film Festival last September – where Gaga wore her million-dollar engagement ring in public for the first time.

In person, it’s dazzling, with a huge, oval-cut diamond set on a 18-karat white and rose gold diamond pavé band.

But on her other hand, Gaga sports a smaller, more understated ring, featuring a few blades of grass set in resin. It turns out that is the really special one.

“Michael actually proposed to me with these blades of grass,” she reveals.

“A long time ago, we were in the back yard, and he asked me, ‘If I ever proposed to you, like, how do I do that?’

“And I just said, ‘Just get a blade of grass from the back yard and wrap it around my finger and that will make me so happy’.”

It was a deeply romantic gesture that came tinged with sadness. Gaga’s back yard in Malibu had previously played host to the wedding of her close friend, Sonja Durham, shortly before she died of cancer in 2017.

“There was so much loss, but this happy thing was happening for me,” she recalls of Polansky’s proposal.

“To get engaged at 38… I was thinking about what it took to get to this moment.”

Those feelings ultimately informed a song on her new album, Mayhem.

Called (naturally) Blade of Grass, it finds the star singing about a ““, and the promise of love in a time of darkness.

She calls it a “thank you” to her partner. And fans might have a reason to thank him, too.

Mayhem marks Gaga’s full throttle return to pop, after a period where she’d been preoccupied with her film career, and spin-off albums that dabbled in jazz and the classic American songbook.

Speaking to Vogue last year, the singer revealed it was her fiancé who’d nudged her in that direction.

“He was like, ‘Babe. I love you. You need to make pop music’,” she said.

“On the Chromatica tour, I saw a fire in her,” Polansky added. “I wanted to help her keep that alive all the time and just start making music that made her happy.”

With that approach, the album goes right back to the sucker-punch sound of Gaga’s early hits like Poker Face, Just Dance and Born This Way.

On the latest single, Abracadabra, she even revisits the “” gibberish of Bad Romance – although this time there’s a reference to death, as she sings, ““.

In the album’s artwork, her face is reflected in a broken mirror. In the videos, she squares off against earlier versions of herself.

There’s an overwhelming sense that the artist Stefani Germanotta is reckoning with the stage persona she created.

It all comes to a head on a track called Perfect Celebrity where she sings, “” – a lyric that, like the meat dress before it, strips away her humanity.

“That’s probably the most angry song about fame I’ve ever written,” she says.

“I’d created this public persona that I was truly becoming in every way – and holding the duality of that, knowing where I begin and Lady Gaga ends, was really a challenge.

“It kind of took me down.”

How did she reconcile the public and private sides of her life?

“I think what I actually realised is that it’s healthier to have a dividing line and to integrate those two things into one whole human being,” she says.

“The healthiest thing for me was owning that I’m a female artist and that living an artistic life was my choice.

“I am a lover of songwriting. I’m a lover of making music, of rehearsing, choreography, stage production, costumes, lighting, putting on a show.

“That is what it means to be Lady Gaga. It’s the artist behind it all.”

In previous interviews, the musician has spoken of how she dissociated from Lady Gaga. For a time, she believed the character was responsible for all her success, and she had contributed nothing.

Mayhem marks the moment where she reclaims ownership of her music, not just from “Lady Gaga” but from other producers and writers in her orbit.

“When I was younger, people tried take credit for my sound, or my image [but] all of my references, all of my imagination of what pop music could be, came from me.

“So I really wanted to revisit my earlier inspirations and my career and own it as my invention, for once and for all.”

From the outset, it was obvious that Gaga was excited about this new phase.

Last summer, after performing at the Olympics opening ceremony, she took to the streets of Paris and played early demos of her new music to fans who’d gathered outside her hotel.

It was a spur of the moment decision, yet it marked another effort to restore the spontaneity of her early career.

“This has been something I’ve done for almost 20 years, where I played my fans my music way before it came out,” she says.

“I used to, after my shows, invite fans backstage, and we’d hang out and I’d play them demos and see what they thought of the music.

“I’m sure you can imagine that after 20 years, you don’t expect that people are still going to show up to hear your music and be excited to see you. So, I just wanted to share it with them, because I was excited that they were there.”

As an interviewer, this is a full-circle moment for me, too. I last interviewed Lady Gaga in 2009, as Just Dance hit number one in the UK.

Back then, she was giddy with excitement, chatting enthusiastically about her love of John Lennon, calling herself a “heroin addict” for English tea, and promising to email me an MP3 of Blueberry Kisses – an unreleased song that is, quite brilliantly, about performing a sex act while your breath smells of blueberry flavoured coffee.

Over the years, I’ve seen her interviews become more guarded. She’d wear outrageous costumes or jet-black sunglasses, deliberately putting a barrier between her and the journalist.

But the Gaga I meet in New York is the same one I spoke to 16 years ago: comfortable with herself, and brimming with enthusiasm.

She puts that ease down to “growing up and living a full life”.

“Being there for my friends, being there for my family, meeting my amazing fiancé – all of these things made me a whole person, instead of the most important thing being my stage persona.”

With an air of finality, she adds: “I wanted Mayhem to have an ending. I wanted the chaos to stop.

“I stepped away from the icon. It ends with love.”

Three London-based Bulgarian nationals have been found guilty of spying for Russia, in what has been described as “one of the largest and most complex” foreign intelligence operations on UK soil.

Katrin Ivanova, 33, Vanya Gaberova, 30, and Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, all from London, were part of a group of Bulgarians who spied between 2020 and 2023.

The cell undertook elaborate surveillance on people and places targeted by Russia, including investigative journalists and a US military base in Germany, with members crisscrossing Europe from their base in the UK.

Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism chief Cdr Dominic Murphy said devices they used were the sort of thing “you would really expect to see in a spy novel”.

Their plans were laid out in thousands of messages exchanged between the cell’s leaders and recovered by police.

The messages included plots to kidnap and kill some of the group’s targets as well as plans to ensnare them in so-called honeytraps.

The trio were convicted of conspiracy to spy, while Ivanova was also convicted of possessing multiple false identity documents.

Fellow Bulgarians Orlin Roussev, 47, from Great Yarmouth, and Biser Dzhambazov, 43, from London, had previously admitted conspiracy to spy, while a sixth defendant, Ivan Stoyanov, 34, also admitted spying before the trial and his conviction can now be reported for the first time.

Key targets were investigative journalists Christo Grozev and Roman Dobrokhotov, whose work includes exposing Russia’s role in the nerve agent attacks on Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020 and Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018.

During the trial, prosecutor Alison Morgan KC said the spy cell was “sophisticated in their methodology; carrying out surveillance activity of individuals and places; manufacturing and using false identities and deploying advanced technology to acquire information”.

Roussev’s espionage base was a seaside guesthouse in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, which police say contained a “treasure trove” of spying gadgets and equipment, including cameras hidden in ties, a camera hidden in a fake rock, and glasses containing recording equipment.

The police investigation received 221 mobile phones, 495 sim cards, 11 drones, and devices allowing data to be extracted from phones and eavesdropping on wi-fi activity.

Cdr Murphy said the case was an “extremely sophisticated” operation that “posed a threat to national security and individuals”.

The spy cell worked under the direction of Roussev, who in turn received instructions from Jan Marsalek.

The Austrian national, who is wanted in Germany for his alleged fraud linked to the financial services company Wirecard, was described by prosecutors as an “intermediary for the Russian intelligence services”.

Roussev and Marsalek met a decade ago, with Roussev subsequently recruited as a spy. He then recruited other Bulgarians to undertake espionage operations.

The spy cell had other jobs – Gaberova was a beautician, Ivanchev a painter and decorator, Roussev was at one stage the chief technology officer for a city of London financial firm.

Stoyanov worked as a medical courier, but also fought in mixed martial arts fights using the nickname “The Destroyer”.

Dzhambazov and Ivanova lived together as a couple and worked in healthcare jobs, but also ran a Bulgarian community organisation that provided courses on “British values”.

But Dzhambazov was also in a relationship with Gaberova – they were found in bed together when police made arrests – and Ivanchev had separately been in a relationship with her in the past.

During their trial, Ivanova and Gaberova admitted undertaking surveillance operations but denied knowing it was for the benefit of Russia.

Ivanchev did not give evidence during the trial but outlined a similar position during police interviews after being arrested. He was arrested a year after the other five defendants and told police he had several conversations with MI5.

The prosecution case focused on six operations carried out by the spies:

Operation 1

This targeted journalist Christo Grozev.

Jan Marsalek and Roussev exchanged messages discussing their options in relation to Mr Grozev, including the placing of team members in seats next to him on planes. He was followed throughout Europe and properties connected to him were watched in Austria and Bulgaria.

The spy cell also discussed potentially robbing him of his laptop and phone and taking it to the Russian Embassy, burning his property, kidnapping him and taking him to Moscow, or killing him.

Operation 2

This targeting journalist Roman Dobrokhotov.

The cell followed him in various countries, and discussed kidnapping him in the UK and smuggling him out of the country using a small boat.

At one stage, Katrin Ivanova was so close to him on a plane that she could see the PIN for his phone.

Operation 3

This targeted a man called Bergey Ryskaliyev in November 2021, the court heard.

Mr Ryskaliyev is a Kazakhstan national and former politician. He fled to the United Kingdom where he was later granted asylum.

There is and was a clear motive for Russia to develop relations with Kazakhstan, the court heard.

Prosecutors said that targeting a political dissident on behalf of Kazakhstan cultivates those relations by providing Kazakhstan with what it might consider to be assistance.

Operation 4

Allegedly planning disruptive activity at the Kazakh embassy in London in September 2022.

The court heard that the plan was to stage a demonstration outside the embassy – a “fake protest” – to create a pretence that they were in possession of genuine intelligence about those responsible, which they would then pass on to the Kazakhstan intelligence to try to gain favour with Kazakhstan on behalf of Russia.

Operation 5

Alleged surveillance at the Patch Barracks, a US Military Base in Stuttgart in late 2022.

This is a US military airbase, which jurors heard was believed by the defendants to be a location where Ukrainian forces were being trained in the use of surface to air weapons, at the very time of Russia’s invasion into Ukraine.

Prosecutors say the defendants’ plan was to target the airbase using a range of highly sophisticated technology designed to capture key intelligence about those present on the base.

Operation 6

Jurors were told this plan was targeting a man called Kirill Kachur.

He a Russian national who spent time in Montenegro who was employed by the Investigative Committee of Russia but left the country in 2021 and was designated as a “foreign agent” by Russia in November 2023.

A South Carolina prison inmate convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat will be the first person in the US to be executed by firing squad in 15 years.

If Brad Sigmon’s execution proceeds on Friday at 18:00 local time (23:00 GMT), three volunteers standing behind a curtain will simultaneously fire rifles at his chest with specially designed bullets.

The state’s procedure requires that those put to death by firing squad be strapped to a chair when they enter the execution chamber. The inmate then has a target placed on his heart and a bag put over his head.

Sigmon, 67, was convicted of murdering David and Gladys Larke in 2001 before kidnapping his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint. She later escaped as he shot at her.

Offered the alternatives of death by electric chair or lethal injection, Sigmon’s lawyers said he chose the more violent process because of his concerns about the effectiveness of the other two methods.

He will be the first person to be executed by firing squad in the US since 2010, and only the fourth since the country reintroduced the death penalty in 1976.

Sigmon was charged with murder in 2001 after investigators said he killed his ex-girlfriend’s parents in their home in Greenville County by alternately beating them with a bat.

He also told detectives that he planned to harm his ex-girlfriend before she escaped.

“I couldn’t have her. I wasn’t going to let anybody else have her,” he told them.

The South Carolina Supreme Court this week rejected a request from Sigmon’s lawyers to intervene. They wanted more time to learn about the drug South Carolina uses in lethal injections and questioned whether his 2002 legal representation was adequate.

That is expected to be his final appeal ahead of Friday’s planned execution.

No South Carolina governor has granted clemency to an inmate facing execution since the US legalised the death penalty again in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Execution by firing squad is complex.

Sigmon will be strapped in a chair with a basin built below it to catch his blood. A target will be placed on his chest and a bag over his head.

Three volunteers hidden behind a curtain will then fire at him from 15ft (4.6m) away.

The bullets used are designed to break apart on impact and cause maximum damage. Medical experts have debated the amount of pain caused by their use.

After the shots are fired, a doctor will confirm Sigmon’s death.

The state allows witnesses to observe the death from behind bulletproof glass, but the executioners will be hidden from view to protect their identities.

South Carolina passed a law in 2023 requiring that the the identities of the execution team members remain secret. It also forbids the publication of information regarding the procurement of lethal injection drugs, as a growing number of pharmaceutical companies have declined to provide them for state executions.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit challenging the state law in January.

South Carolina spent $54,000 (£41,841) constructing its firing squad area in 2022 as suppliers refused to provide prison officials with the lethal chemicals required for death by injection.

The 2023 law now shields many details about the lethal injection procedure, as well, including the names of suppliers and the exact contents.

Most inmates sentenced to death in the state are electrocuted, but the three most recent executions were by injections that included pentobarbital. The three men were declared dead 20 minutes after being given the injection, though they appeared to stop breathing after a few minutes.

The lack of information about these executions has attracted criticism for its lack of transparency.

“This ban not only further departs from the state’s history of making execution-related information publicly available but criminalizes the disclosure of this information by anyone for any reason,” The ACLU argued in its legal complaint.

“It thus silences the scientists, doctors, journalists, former correctional officials, lawyers, and citizens who have scrutinized the safety, efficacy, morality, and legality of South Carolina’s use of lethal injection.”

Sigmon has expressed concern about the effectiveness of lethal injection.

South Carolina has released only one of two available autopsies from these deaths, which Sigmon’s lawyer say show unusual amounts of fluid in the person’s lungs.

Speaking about the decision not to die by injection, his attorney told AP: “He does not wish to inflict that pain on his family, the witnesses, or the execution team. But, given South Carolina’s unnecessary and unconscionable secrecy, Brad is choosing as best he can.”

Nationally, only three people have died by firing squad since 1976.

US President Donald Trump’s cuts to the government workforce have started to hit, but overall hiring last month remained stable as growth in other sectors offset those losses.

The Labor Department said federal employment dropped by 10,000 in February.

Across the economy, employers added 151,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.1%, from 4% in January.

The monthly report from the government is a closely-watched signal of economic health that was under particular scrutiny this month, amid rising concern about the economic disruption sparked by Trump administration policy changes.

Analysts had been forecasting about 170,000 new jobs. The monthly gain in February was similar to the average monthly rise of 168,000 over the past year, the Labor Department said.

Hiring was driven by health care and financial firms. The manufacturing sector also added about 10,000 jobs, gains that were highlighted by the Trump administration.

Government hiring slowed sharply, while analysts cautioned that the report did not yet reflect the full extent of the cuts that the White House has announced.

Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, said the report felt “reassuringly in line with expectations, showing payrolls growth only modestly weaker than in recent months”.

“Yet, while the worst fears were not met, the report does confirm that the labour market is cooling,” she warned.

“Furthermore, with no shortage of headwinds confronting the US economy, the softening trend is likely to persist and may potentially deepen given the toxic combination of federal government layoffs, public spending cuts, and tariff uncertainty related inertia.”

Even before Donald Trump took office as president, financial analysts had been surprised at the long-running streak of growth in the US labour market, which came despite pressure from price increases and high interest rates.

In his first weeks, Trump’s changes to US policy have added to pressures on the economy, generating widespread uncertainty.

His changes include tariffs on America’s top three trade partners, some of which have since been reversed, and cuts to federal jobs and spending, efforts that are facing challenges in the courts.

Polls indicate that the moves have the support of his base. But financial analysts have warned that they are contributing to worries in financial markets, hurting consumer sentiment and fuelling weakness across a range of other economic indicators.

A measure of manufacturing showed new orders dropping sharply last month. Retail sales posted their biggest drop in two years in January, while foot traffic at major chains such as Target, Walmart and McDonald’s fell last month, according to data from tracking firm Placer.ai.

Private firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that layoff announcements in February jumped to their highest level since July 2020, driven by government cuts.

But the number of companies warning of job cuts coming in the next few months also jumped, while starting to spread to new sectors, noted Andy Challenger, vice president of the firm.

The Labor Department report “falls squarely in line with big slow cooling of the labour market that we’ve seen for two years- that story of that nice soft landing,” he said.

“My expectation will be that as these get revised in the coming months, we’ll start to see this look worse than it does at first blush.”

No-one wants to be alone, and no job is more isolating than being a pop star.

Just ask Lady Gaga.

Her rise to fame in 2009-10 was unlike anything we’d seen before. One of the first pop stars to harness the power of the internet, she seemed to exist in a permanent onslaught of TMZ photos and gossip blogs.

Their appetite was voracious. She wore through so many looks and sounds in the space of three years that one critic wrote she was “speed-running Madonna’s entire career”.

And as her fame grew, the headlines became more unhinged. She staged a satanic ritual in a London hotel… She was secretly a hermaphrodite… She planned to saw her own leg off “for fashion”.

When she attended the 2010 MTV Awards in a dress made entirely of meat, nobody seemed to get the joke: Gaga was presenting herself as fodder for the tabloids, there to be consumed.

On stage, she was an object of worship for her fans, the Little Monsters. But anyone who isn’t a megalomaniac knows that that sort of adulation is a distant illusion.

“I’m alone, Brandon. Every night,” Gaga told her stylist in the 2017 documentary, Five Foot Two.

“I go from everyone touching me all day and talking at me all day to total silence.”

Now 38, and happily engaged to tech entrepreneur Michael Polansky, Gaga admits that those years of solitude scared her.

“I think my biggest fear was doing this by myself – doing life on my own,” she tells the BBC.

“And I think that the greatest gift has been meeting my partner, Michael, and being in the mayhem with him.”

The couple have been together since 2020, and revealed their engagement at the Venice Film Festival last September – where Gaga wore her million-dollar engagement ring in public for the first time.

In person, it’s dazzling, with a huge, oval-cut diamond set on a 18-karat white and rose gold diamond pavé band.

But on her other hand, Gaga sports a smaller, more understated ring, featuring a few blades of grass set in resin. It turns out that is the really special one.

“Michael actually proposed to me with these blades of grass,” she reveals.

“A long time ago, we were in the back yard, and he asked me, ‘If I ever proposed to you, like, how do I do that?’

“And I just said, ‘Just get a blade of grass from the back yard and wrap it around my finger and that will make me so happy’.”

It was a deeply romantic gesture that came tinged with sadness. Gaga’s back yard in Malibu had previously played host to the wedding of her close friend, Sonja Durham, shortly before she died of cancer in 2017.

“There was so much loss, but this happy thing was happening for me,” she recalls of Polansky’s proposal.

“To get engaged at 38… I was thinking about what it took to get to this moment.”

Those feelings ultimately informed a song on her new album, Mayhem.

Called (naturally) Blade of Grass, it finds the star singing about a ““, and the promise of love in a time of darkness.

She calls it a “thank you” to her partner. And fans might have a reason to thank him, too.

Mayhem marks Gaga’s full throttle return to pop, after a period where she’d been preoccupied with her film career, and spin-off albums that dabbled in jazz and the classic American songbook.

Speaking to Vogue last year, the singer revealed it was her fiancé who’d nudged her in that direction.

“He was like, ‘Babe. I love you. You need to make pop music’,” she said.

“On the Chromatica tour, I saw a fire in her,” Polansky added. “I wanted to help her keep that alive all the time and just start making music that made her happy.”

With that approach, the album goes right back to the sucker-punch sound of Gaga’s early hits like Poker Face, Just Dance and Born This Way.

On the latest single, Abracadabra, she even revisits the “” gibberish of Bad Romance – although this time there’s a reference to death, as she sings, ““.

In the album’s artwork, her face is reflected in a broken mirror. In the videos, she squares off against earlier versions of herself.

There’s an overwhelming sense that the artist Stefani Germanotta is reckoning with the stage persona she created.

It all comes to a head on a track called Perfect Celebrity where she sings, “” – a lyric that, like the meat dress before it, strips away her humanity.

“That’s probably the most angry song about fame I’ve ever written,” she says.

“I’d created this public persona that I was truly becoming in every way – and holding the duality of that, knowing where I begin and Lady Gaga ends, was really a challenge.

“It kind of took me down.”

How did she reconcile the public and private sides of her life?

“I think what I actually realised is that it’s healthier to have a dividing line and to integrate those two things into one whole human being,” she says.

“The healthiest thing for me was owning that I’m a female artist and that living an artistic life was my choice.

“I am a lover of songwriting. I’m a lover of making music, of rehearsing, choreography, stage production, costumes, lighting, putting on a show.

“That is what it means to be Lady Gaga. It’s the artist behind it all.”

In previous interviews, the musician has spoken of how she dissociated from Lady Gaga. For a time, she believed the character was responsible for all her success, and she had contributed nothing.

Mayhem marks the moment where she reclaims ownership of her music, not just from “Lady Gaga” but from other producers and writers in her orbit.

“When I was younger, people tried take credit for my sound, or my image [but] all of my references, all of my imagination of what pop music could be, came from me.

“So I really wanted to revisit my earlier inspirations and my career and own it as my invention, for once and for all.”

From the outset, it was obvious that Gaga was excited about this new phase.

Last summer, after performing at the Olympics opening ceremony, she took to the streets of Paris and played early demos of her new music to fans who’d gathered outside her hotel.

It was a spur of the moment decision, yet it marked another effort to restore the spontaneity of her early career.

“This has been something I’ve done for almost 20 years, where I played my fans my music way before it came out,” she says.

“I used to, after my shows, invite fans backstage, and we’d hang out and I’d play them demos and see what they thought of the music.

“I’m sure you can imagine that after 20 years, you don’t expect that people are still going to show up to hear your music and be excited to see you. So, I just wanted to share it with them, because I was excited that they were there.”

As an interviewer, this is a full-circle moment for me, too. I last interviewed Lady Gaga in 2009, as Just Dance hit number one in the UK.

Back then, she was giddy with excitement, chatting enthusiastically about her love of John Lennon, calling herself a “heroin addict” for English tea, and promising to email me an MP3 of Blueberry Kisses – an unreleased song that is, quite brilliantly, about performing a sex act while your breath smells of blueberry flavoured coffee.

Over the years, I’ve seen her interviews become more guarded. She’d wear outrageous costumes or jet-black sunglasses, deliberately putting a barrier between her and the journalist.

But the Gaga I meet in New York is the same one I spoke to 16 years ago: comfortable with herself, and brimming with enthusiasm.

She puts that ease down to “growing up and living a full life”.

“Being there for my friends, being there for my family, meeting my amazing fiancé – all of these things made me a whole person, instead of the most important thing being my stage persona.”

With an air of finality, she adds: “I wanted Mayhem to have an ending. I wanted the chaos to stop.

“I stepped away from the icon. It ends with love.”

It is often said that marriages are made in heaven.

But in India, where a majority of marriages are arranged, the process of match-making can feel like a passage through hell for a woman and her family.

That’s the premise of Sthal: A Match, the 2023 gritty Marathi-language film that has won several prestigious awards at festivals in India and abroad. It is releasing for the first time in theatres in India on Friday.

Set in rural Maharashtra state, the film centres around Savita, a young woman striving for an education and a career in a patriarchal society, and the attempts by her father Daulatrao Wandhare – a poor cotton farmer – to find a good husband for his daughter.

“He wants a good price for his crop and a good match for his daughter,” says director Jayant Digambar Somalkar.

The film is notable for the unflinching way it portrays what its lead actress calls the “very humiliating” experience of many young women, unlike other Indian movies about arranged marriage.

Sthal has also grabbed attention as its entire cast is made up of first-time actors chosen from the village where it is shot. Nandini Chikte, who plays Savita, has already won two awards for her brilliant performance.

The film opens with a sequence where Savita is interviewing a prospective groom.

Along with her female relatives and friends, she watches as the young man serves them drinks from a tray. They laugh when he, visibly nervous, fumbles during questioning.

Rudely awakened from what turned out to be a dream, Savita is told to get ready as a group of men are coming to see her.

In reality, the gender roles are completely reversed, and in a scene that’s replayed several times in the nearly two-hour film, Savita’s humiliation comes into sharp focus.

The prospective groom and other men from his family are welcomed by Savita’s father and male relatives. Guests are fed tea and snacks and once the introductions are done, Savita is called in.

Dressed in a sari, with eyes downcast, she sits down on a wooden stool facing her interrogators.

Questions come, thick and fast. What’s your name? Full name? Mother’s clan? Date of birth? Height? Education? Subject? Hobbies? Are you willing to work on the farm?

The men step out, to hold a discussion. “She’s a bit dark. She had makeup on her face, but did you not see her elbow? That is her real colour,” says one. “She’s also short,” he goes on to add. Others nod in agreement.

They leave, telling Daulatrao that they will respond in a few days to let him know their decision.

According to her parents, “this is the fourth or fifth time someone has come to see Savita” – all the earlier meetings have ended in rejection, leading to heartbreak and despair.

The scene rings true. In India, men often have a laundry list of attributes they want in their brides – a glance at the matrimonial columns in newspapers and match-making websites shows everyone wants tall, fair, beautiful brides.

Savita’s protestations – “I don’t want to get married, I first want to finish college and then take civil services exams and build a career” – carry no weight in her rural community, where marriage is presented as the only goal worth having for a young woman.

“Marriage is given far too much importance in our society,” Chikte told the BBC. “Parents believe that once the daughter is married, they will become free of their responsibility. It’s time to change that narrative.”

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She says she found it “very humiliating” that Savita was made to sit on a stool to be judged by all those men who discussed her skin colour, while there was no discussion about the prospective groom.

“I was only acting, but as the film progressed, I lived Savita’s journey and I felt angry on her behalf. I felt insulted and disrespected.”

The film also tackles the social evil that is dowry – the practice of the bride’s family gifting cash, clothes and jewellery to the groom’s family.

Though it has been illegal for more than 60 years, dowries are still omnipresent in Indian weddings.

Parents of girls are known to take out huge loans or even sell their land and house to meet dowry demands. Even that doesn’t necessarily ensure a happy life for a bride as tens of thousands are killed every year by the groom or his family for bringing in insufficient dowries.

In the film too, Daulatrao puts up a “for sale” sign on his land, even though farming is his only source of livelihood.

Director Somalkar says the idea for his debut feature film is rooted in his own experience.

Growing up with two sisters and five female cousins, he had witnessed the ritual far too many times when prospective grooms visited his home.

“As a child you don’t question tradition,” he says, adding that the turning point came in 2016 when he accompanied a male cousin to see a prospective bride.

“This was the first time I was on the other side. I felt a bit uncomfortable when the woman came out and sat on a stool and was asked questions. When we stepped out for a discussion, I felt the conversation about her height and skin colour was objectifying her.”

When he discussed the issue with his fiancée at the time – who is now his wife – she encouraged him to explore it in his work.

In a country where 90% of all marriages are still arranged by families, Sthal is not the first to tackle the subject on screen. IMDB has a list of nearly 30 films about arranged marriage made by Bollywood and regional film industries just in the past two decades.

More recently, the wildly popular Netflix show Indian Matchmaking focused entirely on the process of finding the perfect partner.

But, as Somalkar points out, “weddings are hugely glamourised” on screen.

“When we think of weddings in India, we think of the big fat wedding full of fun and glamour. We think of Hum Aapke Hain Koun,” he says, referring to the 1990s Bollywood blockbuster that celebrates Indian wedding traditions.

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“And the Netflix show only dealt with a certain class of people, the ones who are wealthy and educated and the women are able to exercise their choice.

“But the reality for a majority of Indians is very different and parents often have to go through hell to get their daughters married,” he adds.

His reason for making Sthal, he says, is to “jolt society and audiences out of complacency.

“I want to start a debate and encourage people to think about a process that objectifies women who have very little freedom to choose between marriage and career,” he says.

“I know one book or one film doesn’t change society overnight, but it can be a start.”

US President Donald Trump has hit China with a second tariff in as many months, which means imports from there now face a levy of at least 20%.

This is his latest salvo against Beijing, which already faces steep US tariffs, from 100% on Chinese-made electric vehicles to 15% on clothes and shoes.

Trump’s tariffs strike at the heart of China’s manufacturing juggernaut – a web of factories, assembly lines and supply chains that manufacture and ship just about everything, from fast fashion and toys to solar panels and electric cars.

China’s trade surplus with the world rose to a record $1tn (£788bn) in 2024, on the back of strong exports ($3.5tn), which surpassed its import bill ($2.5tn).

It has long been the world’s factory – it has thrived because of cheap labour and state investment in infrastructure ever since it opened its economy to global business in the late 1970s.

So how badly could Trump’s trade war hurt China’s manufacturing success?

Tariffs are taxes charged on goods imported from other countries.

Most tariffs are set as a percentage of the value of the goods, and it’s generally the importer who pays them.

So, a 10% tariff means a product imported to the US from China worth $4 would face an additional $0.40 charge applied to it.

Increasing the price of imported goods is meant to encourage consumers to buy cheaper domestic products instead, thus helping to boost their own economy’s growth.

Trump sees them as a way of growing the US economy, protecting jobs and raising tax revenue. But economic studies of the impact of tariffs which Trump imposed during his first term in office, suggest the measures ultimately raised prices for US consumers.

Trump has said his most recent tariffs are aimed at pressuring China to do more to stop the flow of the opioid fentanyl to the US.

He also imposed 25% tariffs on America’s neighbours Mexico and Canada, saying its leaders were not doing enough to crack down on the cross-border illegal drug trade.

Yes, analysts say.

Exports have been the “saving grace” of China’s economy and if the taxes linger, exports to the US could drop by a quarter to a third, Harry Murphy Cruise, an economist at Moody’s analytics, told the BBC.

The sheer value of China’s exports – which account for a fifth of the country’s earnings – means that a 20% tariff could weaken demand from overseas and shrink the trade surplus.

“The tariffs will hurt China,” Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for Asia-Pacific at Natixis in Hong Kong, told the BBC. “They really need to do much more. They need to do what Xi Jinping has already said – boost domestic demand.”

That is a tall task in an economy where the property market is slumping and disillusioned youth are struggling to find high-paying jobs.

Chinese people have not been spending enough to recharge the economy – and Beijing has just announced a slew of stimulus measures to boost consumption.

While tariffs can slow Chinese manufacturing, they cannot stop or replace it that easily, analysts say.

“Not only is China the big exporter, it is sometimes the only exporter like for solar panels. If you want solar panels you can only go to China,” Ms Garcia-Herrero said.

China had begun pivoting from making garments and shoes to advanced tech such as robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) long before Trump became president. And that has given China an “early mover” advantage, not to mention the scale of production in the world’s second-largest economy.

Chinese factories can produce high-end tech in large quantities at a low cost, said Shuang Ding, chief China economist at Standard Chartered.

“It’s really difficult to find a replacement… China’s status as a market leader is very difficult to topple.”

China has responded with counter tariffs of 10-15% on US agricultural goods, coal, liquefied natural gas, pick-up trucks, and some sports cars.

And it has targeted US firms in aviation, defence and tech with export restrictions and announced an anti-monopoly investigation against Google.

China has also spent years adapting to tariffs from Trump’s first term. Some Chinese manufacturers have moved factories out of the country, for instance. And supply chains have come to rely more on Vietnam and Mexico by exporting from there to bypass the tariffs.

And yet, Trump’s recent tariffs on Mexico would not hurt China too much because Vietnam is a bigger backdoor for Chinese goods, Ms Garcia-Herrero said.

“Vietnam is the key here. If tariffs are imposed on Vietnam, I think it will be very tough,” she said.

What concerns China more than tariffs, analysts says, is US restrictions on advanced chips.

These restrictions have been a major sticking point between the two countries but they have also fuelled China’s determination to invest in homegrown tech that is independent of the West.

It’s why Chinese AI firm DeepSeek shocked Silicon Valley and unnerved Washington when it released a chatbot that rivals OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The firm had reportedly stockpiled Nvidia chips before the US began cutting off China’s access to the most advanced ones.

Although this could “impact China’s competitiveness, I don’t think that would affect China’s status as a manufacturing power,” Mr Ding of Standard Chartered said.

On the other hand, any ground China gains in advanced tech manufacturing will boost its high-value exports.

It happened because of state support, an unrivalled supply chain and cheap labour, analysts say.

“The combination of globalisation, as well as China’s pro-business policies and market potential, helped to attract the initial wave of foreign investors,” Chim Lee, an analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit, told the BBC.

The government then doubled down, investing heavily in building a sprawling network of roads and ports to bring in raw materials and take Chinese-made goods to the world. What also helped was a stable exchange rate between the Chinese yuan and the US dollar.

A shift in recent years towards advanced tech has made sure that it will continue to be relevant and ahead of its competitors, analysts say.

China already has plenty of economic clout from being a manufacturing powerhouse. But there is also a political opportunity as Trump’s tariffs upend America’s relationship with the world.

“The door is ajar for China to position itself as an advocate of free trade and a stable global force,” said Mr Cruise of Moody’s.

But that is not easy, given Beijing has been accused of flouting international trade norms, such as imposing a tariff of more than 200% on imports of Australian wine in 2020.

Analysts say China must also look beyond the US, which is still the top destination for its exports. China is the third-biggest market for US exports, after Canada and Mexico.

Chinese trade with Europe, South East Asia and Latin America has been growing, but it’s hard to imagine that the world’s two biggest economies can stop relying on each other.

Two years ago, on his bank adviser’s suggestion, Rajesh Kumar pulled out his savings – fixed deposits included – and shifted to mutual funds, stocks and bonds.

With India’s stock market booming, Mr Kumar, a Bihar-based engineer, joined millions investing in publicly traded companies. Six years ago, only one in 14 Indian households channelled their savings into the stock market – now, it’s one in five.

But the tide has turned.

For six months, India’s markets have slid as foreign investors pulled out, valuations remained high, earnings weakened and global capital shifted to China – wiping out $900bn in investor value since their September peak. While the decline began before US President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements, they have now become a bigger drag as more details emerge.

India’s benchmark Nifty 50 share index, which tracks the country’s top 50 publicly traded companies, is on its longest losing streak in 29 years, declining for five straight months. This is a significant slump in one of the world’s fastest-growing markets. Stock brokers are reporting that their activity has dropped by a third.

“For more than six months now, my investments have been in the red. This is the worst experience in the last decade that I have been invested in stock market,” Mr Kumar says.

Mr Kumar, 55, now keeps little money in the bank, having shifted most of his savings to the stock market. With his son’s 1.8 million-rupee ($20,650; £16,150) private medical college fee due in July, he worries about selling investments at a loss to cover it. “Once the market recovers, I’m thinking of moving some money back to the bank,” he says.

His anxieties reflect those of millions of middle-class Indians who have poured into the stock market from cities big and small – part of a financial revolution.

The go-to investment route is Systematic Investment Plans (SIPs), where funds collect fixed monthly contributions. The number of Indians investing through SIPs has soared past 100 million, nearly trebling from 34 million five years ago. Many first-time investors, lured by the promise of high returns, enter with limited risk awareness – often influenced by a wave of social media “finfluencers” on platforms like Instagram and YouTube, a mixed bag of experts and amateurs alike.

Meet Tarun Sircar, a retired marketing manager, and you get a glimpse of India’s new investor.

When his public provident fund – a government-backed tax-free investment – matured last year, he sought a way to secure his retirement. Burnt by past stock market losses, he turned to mutual funds – this time with an adviser’s help and a buoyant market.

“I’ve put 80% of my savings into mutual funds, keeping just 20% in the bank. Now my adviser warns me – Don’t check your investments for six months, unless you want a heart attack!”

For now, Mr Sircar isn’t entirely sure if moving his retirement fund into the stock market was the right decision. “I’m both ignorant and confident,” he says with wry candour. “Ignorant about what’s happening and why the market is reacting this way, yet confident because Instagram ‘experts’ make investing sound like a fast track to millions. At the same time, I know I might be caught in a web of deception and hype.”

Mr Sircar says he was drawn to the markets by TV shows hyping stocks and excited chatter in WhatsApp groups. “The TV anchors talk up the market and people in my WhatsApp group boast about their stock market gains,” he says.

In his sprawling apartment complex, even teenagers discuss investments – in fact, during a badminton game, a teenager gave him a hot tip on a telecom stock. “When you hear all this around you, you start thinking – why not give it a shot? So I did, and then the markets crashed.”

Mr Sircar lives in hope. “My fingers are crossed. I am sure the markets will recover, and my fund will be back in green.”

There are others who have taken more risks and already lost money. Lured by get-rich-quick videos, Ramesh (name changed), an accounting clerk from a small industrial town in western India, borrowed money to invest in stocks during the pandemic.

Hooked to YouTube influencers, he dived into risky penny stocks and trading in derivatives. This month, after losing over $1,800 – more than his annual salary – he shut his brokerage account and swore off the market.

“I borrowed this money, and now creditors are after me,” he says.

Ramesh is one of 11 million Indians who lost a combined $20bn in futures and options trades before regulators stepped in.

“This crash is unlike the one during the Covid pandemic,” says financial adviser Samir Doshi. “Back then, we had a clear path to recovery with vaccines on the horizon. But with the Trump factor in play, uncertainty looms – we simply don’t know what’s next.”

Fuelled by digital platforms, low-cost brokerages and government-driven financial inclusion, investing has become more accessible – smartphones and user-friendly apps have simplified market participation, drawing a broader, younger audience seeking alternatives to traditional assets.

On the flip side, many new Indian investors need a reality check. “The stock market isn’t a gambling den – you must manage expectations,” says Monika Halan, author and financial educator. “Invest in equity only what you won’t need for at least seven years. If you’re taking on risk, understand the downside: How much could I lose? Can I afford that loss?”

This market crash couldn’t have hit India’s middle class at a worse time. Economic growth is slowing, wages remain stagnant, private investment has been sluggish for years and job creation isn’t keeping pace. Amid these challenges, many new investors, lured by rising markets, are now grappling with unexpected losses.

“In normal times, savers can take short-term setbacks, because they have steady incomes, which keep adding to their savings,” noted Aunindyo Chakravarty, a financial analyst.

“Now, we are in the midst of a massive economic crisis for the middle-class. On the one side, white-collar job opportunities are reducing, and raises are low. On the other, the real inflation faced by middle-class households – as opposed to the average retail inflation that the government compiles – is at its highest in recent memory. A stock market correction at such a time is disastrous for middle-class household finances.”

Financial advisers like Jaideep Marathe believe that some people will start taking money out of the market and move them to safer bank deposits if the volatility continues for another six to eight months. “We are spending a lot of time telling clients not to liquidate their portfolios and to treat this as a cyclical event.”

But clearly, all hope is not lost – most believe that the market is correcting itself from previous highs.

Foreign investor selling has eased since February, suggesting the market downturn may be nearing its end, says veteran market expert Ajay Bagga. Following the correction, valuations for many stock market indices have dipped below their 10-year average, providing some respite.

Mr Bagga expects GDP and corporate earnings to improve, aided by a $12bn income-tax giveaway in the federal budget and falling interest rates. However, geopolitical risks – Middle East and Ukraine conflicts, and Trump’s tariff plans – will keep investors cautious.

In the end, the market meltdown might serve as a hard lesson for new investors.

“This correction is a much-needed wake-up call for those who entered the market just three years ago, enjoying 25% returns – that’s not normal,” says Ms Halan. “If you don’t understand markets, stick to bank deposits and gold. At least you have control.”

King Charles III is launching a personal playlist of music that lifts his spirits and brings back important memories, including Bob Marley, Kylie Minogue and Grace Jones.

He was photographed at Buckingham Palace for the music project, named the King’s Music Room, with an “on air” sign on the desk of the royal DJ.

A video trailer shows the band for the changing of the guard outside the palace playing Bob Marley’s Could You Be Loved, in a project to celebrate music from Commonwealth countries.

“So this is what I particularly wanted to share – songs which have brought me joy,” the King said.

“Throughout my life, music has meant a great deal to me,” the King says in the video launching the project, which is a partnership with Apple Music.

“I know that is also the case for so many others.

“It has that remarkable ability to bring happy memories flooding back from the deepest recesses of our memory, to comfort us in times of sadness, and to take us to distant places.

“But perhaps, above all, it can lift our spirits to such a degree, and all the more so when it brings us together in celebration.

“In other words, it brings us joy.”

The full choice of tracks, with more royal commentary, will be published on Monday, for Commonwealth Day.

As well as as reggae from Marley and dance music from Minogue, there are expected to be contributions from Nigerian-American singer-songwriter Davido and British singer-songwriter Raye.

The King saw Raye at a concert at a Christmas market at the former Battersea Power Station, where Apple has its London headquarters.

The project is intended to be a different approach to Commonwealth Day, which sees the Royal Family gathering for a service in Westminster Abbey.

It will reflect the King’s musical interests through his life, ranging from 1930s crooners to Afrobeat stars.

He is also expected to share anecdotes about some of the artists and reveals why the songs help form the soundtrack to his life.

“This seemed such an interesting and innovative way to celebrate this year’s Commonwealth Day,” the King said.

He has a longstanding interest in Marley and has visited the singer’s former home in Jamaica, which has been turned into a museum.

And outside the palace windows, the band played Marley’s message: “Don’t let them change ya, oh! Or even rearrange ya! Oh, no!”

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Han Dong-Hoon was driving home from dinner in Seoul on December 3, scanning the radio, when he heard a breaking news update: President Yoon Suk-Yeol was preparing to deliver an emergency address.

Han, then the leader of Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP), was widely seen as one of the presiden’t closest allies. Yet that was Han’s first hint that Yoon was about to do something unprecedented.

By midnight, the president had plunged the country into a political maelstrom, declaring martial law as part of a self-proclaimed bid to eliminate “anti-state forces” and North Korea sympathisers.

“When I first heard the news of martial law, I thought, ‘We must stop it, because if it isn’t lifted that very night, a bloodbath might occur,'” Han tells BBC Korean.

“The fear and terror that South Korea’s decades-long, hard-won achievements might suddenly collapse were overwhelming.”

Soon after Yoon’s announcement, the opposition’s Democratic Party leader hosted a live stream urging people to assemble in protest outside the National Assembly building in central Seoul.

Thousands responded, clashing with police and blocking military units as opposition lawmakers rushed into the assembly building, clambering over fences and walls in a desperate attempt to block Yoon’s order.

Han was among them.

The late-night martial law edict seemed to have come from nowhere. It was, and remains, unclear who in Yoon’s party supported or even knew of the move before it was made. But in the hours that followed, Han would help lead a successful attempt to overturn Yoon’s order and have the declaration lifted.

Weeks later, he would also play a key role in impeaching the disgraced president – a move that would see him branded a “traitor” by mainstream members of the PPP, and ultimately lead to his resignation as party leader.

Han says he has “no regrets” about overturning Yoon’s martial law attempt, insisting that he’d “choose the same again”.

But in many people’s eyes, his subsequent decision to impeach the very president he’d helped get elected was a surprising heel turn for someone formerly viewed as Yoon’s right-hand man.

“We have experienced so much together over many years,” Han says of his relationship with Yoon.

“I find the current situation extremely painful and regretful. Both the president and I worked in good faith for the betterment of our country – yet I must say that I deeply regret how things have turned out.”

For years, Han and Yoon were inseparable allies. Having both attended Seoul National University, the two forged a close bond as prosecutors while jointly investigating corruption in the country’s halls of power.

Han gained political prominence when Yoon was narrowly elected president in May 2022, after beating his opponent by less than 1% of the vote.

Han was made Minister of Justice and later entrusted with the key role of Emergency Countermeasures Committee Chairman for the PPP, becoming the leader of the ruling party at the age of 50.

Yoon’s time in office was beleaguered by scandals and political failures – not least of all his landslide loss to the opposition Democratic Party last April.

The result of those parliamentary elections was widely seen as a vote of no confidence against Yoon, and rendered him a lame-duck president.

For most of Yoon’s administration, the PPP’s conservative base was enthusiastic about Han. The lawyer-turned-politician had quickly emerged as a likely party candidate for the next presidential election, originally scheduled for 2027.

Now, as the increasing likelihood of a 2025 election looms amid the fallout of Yoon’s ill-fated martial law attempt, Han’s reputation is largely defined by the way he acted during and after that fateful night.

While some still see him as a fresh and promising political figure, many view him as having betrayed the very president who had furthered his career.

In the weeks following Yoon’s abortive martial law order, the embattled president curried favour among PPP hardliners by refusing to cede political ground.

While he apologised for the events of December 3, he refused to resign, instead holing up in his official residence in defiance of calls for his impeachment.

He rallied his base and defended his decision by playing on unsubstantiated fears that the country was in danger.

It was these staunch Yoon loyalists who would come to turn against Han.

Despite having rejected Yoon’s martial law declaration on December 3, Han initially opposed the impeachment motion put forth against the president by South Korea’s political opposition – siding with almost every other PPP member in boycotting the first vote on December 7.

Days later, Han changed course. This was after allegations had emerged that during the martial law attempt Yoon had ordered key political figures – including Han – to be arrested. In allegiance with his close political aides, Han threw his full support behind a second and ultimately successful impeachment attempt, ousting Yoon as president.

“I wanted nothing more than for this government to succeed,” Han tells the BBC, reflecting on the storm of condemnation that then followed from within his own party ranks.

“I initially sought an orderly early resignation plan for the president – a plan I earnestly pursued, but which ultimately failed,” he adds.

“I am deeply pained by the outcome and empathise with those who remain unconvinced and heartbroken. Nonetheless, I believe it was a necessary decision for South Korea’s continued progress and development.”

Yoon has been suspended from his presidential duties and is currently under investigation on insurrection charges. Han, meanwhile, stepped down as PPP leader in mid-December, maintaining that although Yoon’s impeachment was painful, he did not regret his decision.

In the two months that followed, Han says he took some time to “quietly reflect” on whether he could have done more during such a turbulent period for South Korea.

“And I wrote a book,” he adds: a memoir, titled “The People Come First”, which chronicles the two weeks following Yoon’s martial law declaration.

It’s no surprise the book has become a bestseller: after all, it claims to be a first-hand account of events that have already gone down as some of the most dramatic in South Korea’s political history. It hit shelves on 26 February, one day after the Constitutional Court held its final hearing on Yoon’s impeachment trial.

It also hints at Han’s future ambitions. Publishing a memoir is seen as a common first step in launching a political campaign in South Korea, and some believe “The People Come First” underscores Han’s hopes to run as the PPP’s presidential candidate, if the court impeaches Yoon and triggers a snap election.

Within the book’s 384 pages, Han also discusses the need for constitutional reform and suggests that if he were to become president, he would change South Korea’s five-year presidential term to four years.

Should he choose to run, the memoir serves to remind South Koreans where he stands on crucial issues – and that he is no longer an ally of a disgraced president.

As it stands, the odds look stacked against him. A recent poll found that Han’s approval rating to become the next president sat at 6% – a fraction of the 22% rating he scored in January 2024. The decline of his political fortunes is compounded by the critics within the PPP, who accuse him of failing to protect both his former party and the president.

But Han plays down the suggestion that his memoir is intended as a political tool.

“I have published a book in which I truthfully express what I experienced and thought during these events,” he tells the BBC. “I am not returning with any specific political manoeuvre, but simply to share that message with you all.”

Another message Han seems eager to share is one of contrition towards the people of South Korea. He doesn’t regret voting to impeach his president and former ally, he insists, but he does regret this.

“Yoon did impose martial law, and I believe that was a wrong act – one that does not align with the principles of liberal democracy,” he says. “As the leader of the ruling party that put that president in office, I want to express my deepest apologies to the people.”

“I am truly sorry that our actions, and the reactions we displayed, hurt the people. I think we must overcome and resolve this crisis.”

Police in Kenya have named three men wanted in connection with the murder of a Scottish businessman whose body was found in a sack of pineapples.

Campbell Scott was found dead in a forest 60 miles (96.5km) from Nairobi after he went missing from his hotel on 16 February.

The country’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) has released images of the men, who they believe are linked to the “brutal murder” of the 58-year-old.

They have been named as Benard Mbunga Mbusu, Samuel Musembi Kamitu and Alphonse Munyao Kilewa, also known as “Edu”.

The DCI posted a statement on X asking for anyone with information on their whereabouts to contact them.

Two other men appeared in court accused of using Mr Scott’s bank cards to withdraw money on Saturday.

Mr Scott, from Dunfermline in Fife, was a senior director at the credit scoring firm Fico and had been attending a conference at the JW Marriott Hotel in Nairobi.

He went missing after failing to meet colleagues to deliver a presentation having visited a nightclub.

His body was found in Makongo Forest with his hands bound.

A number of arrests have been made in connection with the investigation.

Police initially arrested two men – a taxi driver and a nightclub waiter – who are believed to have been among the last to see him alive.

Then on Saturday two other men were arrested in Mombasa, 301 miles (485km) from Nairobi on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast.

Officers believe Mr Scott visited a house belonging to one of the men, where he was killed.

They allege that the same man withdrew money from Mr Scott’s account at three different locations, working with the second suspect.

A court in Nairobi agreed that police could hold the men for 21 days while the investigation into his death continues.

A post-mortem examination into his death proved “inconclusive”.

Pathologists said samples would be submitted for toxicology testing after it was determined the injuries sustained by Mr Scott were “too minor” to have caused his death.

The DCI has asked Interpol to help track Mr Scott’s mobile phone and debit and credit card transactions.

After years of wrangling with authorities, students in Thailand can now let their hair down. Literally.

On Wednesday, Thailand’s Supreme Administrative Court annulled a 50-year-old directive by the education ministry, which had previously set out rules on hairstyles for school students: short hair for boys and ear-length bobs for girls.

In practice, hairstyle rules have been gradually relaxed across many schools. But some still used the 1975 junta-issued directive as a guideline, and would cut the hair of students who didn’t adhere.

The 1975 directive violated individual freedoms protected by the constitution and was out of touch with today’s society, the court said.

The court decision this week came in response to a petition, filed by 23 public school students in 2020, which argued that the 1975 directive was unconstitutional.

Student activists have long campaigned for hairstyle rules to be relaxed, saying it infringes on their human dignity and personal freedom over their bodies.

One of them is Panthin Adulthananusak, who recently graduated from university.

“In the eyes of kids like us back then… even though it seemed impossible, we wanted to do something,” he told the BBC. “If no student in Thai history rose up to challenge the power of the adults that suppressed us, it would be a lifelong embarrassment.”

In response to such campaigns, the education ministry in 2020 allowed students to have longer hairstyles – but there remained some restrictions. Boys’ hair could not cover the nape of their necks, while girls with long hair had to tie it up.

Those regulations were revoked in 2023, with then education minister Trinuch Thienthong announcing that students, parents and school authorities should negotiate their own common ground on what is acceptable for hairstyles in their schools.

But through all these changes, some schools continued to follow the standard laid out in the original 1975 directive.

Schools have traditionally associated short hair with discipline and tidiness – an argument that has been repeated by many social media users this week. But in recent years reports of schools banning bangs or dyed hair have sparked public outcry across Thailand.

In some parts of the country, teachers are known to shoddily cut students’ hair during morning assembly to punish them for flouting hairstyle rules. Such practices have continued even as education authorities warned teachers against it.

In January, the Ministry of Education reiterated that it had repealed restrictions on hair length for all students, saying it recognised the “importance of promoting diversity and fairness in all aspects of education”.

Wednesday’s court decision, which also says that schools’ hairstyle rules should consider the freedom and dignity of students, reaffirms the official push to leave hair choices up to students themselves.

But Panthin said the revoking of the decades-old directive “still leaves a hole for schools to set their own rules”. In cases where schools have more conservative management, he suggested, restrictions could remain in place.

Nonetheless, Panthin said he “felt glad that what I had seen and fought all along was acknowledged and there was a tangible progress”.

“I hope this court’s ruling will set a new standard for the understanding about basic human rights at the school.”

Police in Australia have charged a 17-year-old who got on a plane with a shotgun and ammunition.

He was filmed being wrestled to the ground by passengers and crew as the aircraft prepared to take off from Avalon Airport, near Melbourne, carrying 160 people bound for Sydney on Thursday afternoon.

Police believe the teenager got onto the airport tarmac by breaching a security fence, before climbing the front steps to the plane, where he was tackled to the ground near the front door.

The 17-year-old – who has not been identified – was taken into custody and will appear in youth court to face eight charges.

Among them are unlawfully taking control of an aircraft, endangering the flight’s safety and creating a bomb hoax.

Victoria Police said a bomb specialist had to be brought in to search a car and two bags which were located nearby.

Footage published by Australian outlet 7News showed the suspect being restrained by a passenger, while a member of ground crew and a pilot removed a utility belt containing tools that the suspect was carrying.

The pilot can also be seen kicking the shotgun away from the teen, who is wearing a fluorescent jacket.

“How is this possible?” someone onboard can be heard saying in the footage.

Victoria Police said the 17-year-old, who is from the nearby Ballarat area, was being held in custody.

Superintendent Michael Reid told reporters that passengers had noticed the teen was carrying a gun as he climbed the steps up to the plane.

“The male was overpowered by three of the passengers, at least,” he said.

Supt Reid said the local force was in contact with counterterrorism police but that it was too early to establish a motive.

“No doubt this would have been a very terrifying incident for the passengers,” he said, while commending the “bravery” of those who had overpowered the suspect.

Barry Clark, one of the passengers, told Australian public broadcaster ABC that the teen appeared to be dressed like an airport worker and was “agitated”.

He said: “All I could do was get the gun out of the way… and then put him in a hold and throw him to the ground until the police came.”

No one was injured during the incident, police said. Investigators located a car and two bags belonging to the suspect nearby.

Avalon Airport is exclusively served by Jetstar, a budget airline operated by Qantas.

In a statement to the BBC’s US partner CBS News, the company said it was working with authorities to investigate the incident.

“We know this would have been a very distressing situation,” a statement read. “We are sincerely grateful to the customers who assisted our crew to safely manage the situation.”

Avalon Airport CEO Ari Suss said the airport had reopened.

Hunter Biden has told a federal judge he is facing severe financial difficulties and cannot afford to move forward with his lawsuit against a former aide to President Donald Trump.

The son of former President Joe Biden sued Garrett Ziegler in 2023, accusing him and his non-profit Marco Polo of breaking the law by publishing an online database containing 128,000 emails taken from a laptop attributed to Mr Biden.

Mr Ziegler has previously dismissed the lawsuit as “completely frivolous”.

In a court filing on Wednesday, Mr Biden’s attorneys asked US District Judge Hernan D Vera to end the lawsuit, stating that he “has suffered a significant downturn in his income and has significant debt in the millions of dollars range”.

Mr Biden has also faced a series of financial setbacks, with January’s wildfire in the Pacific Palisades – where he was staying – making his rental home “unliveable” for an extended period, according to the court papers.

Along with struggling to find stable housing and deal with fire damage, Mr Biden is having difficulties earning a steady income, according to the filing, and major sources of money have dried up.

Mr Biden is unable to borrow and sales of both his art and his memoir – his two major income streams – have fallen off over the last 18 months, according to the filing.

He had sold 27 pieces of art for an average price of $54,500 in the years leading up to the lawsuit. He has sold only one piece for $36,000 since.

Book sales for his memoir, Beautiful Things, dropped from more than 3,100 copies between April and September 2023 to roughly 1,100 in the following six months.

Mr Biden also has other lawsuits currently working through the court system and is assessing which ones he believes are worthwhile to continue, according to the filing.

Mr Biden and Mr Ziegler’s legal teams have not returned the BBC’s request for comment.

The judge had previously denied a motion to dismiss from Mr Ziegler and ordered him to pay roughly $18,000 in Mr Biden’s legal fees.

A laptop abandoned by Mr Biden at a Delaware repair shop, and the seedy contents of its hard drive, featured prominently in the 2020 presidential campaign, and became a frequent focus for Republican lawmakers while his father was in the White House.

The Biden team argued at the time the laptop was part of a “smear campaign” engineered by Russian disinformation, but the hard drive has been authenticated by US media and is in the possession of the FBI.

Last year, Mr Biden was convicted of federal gun charges and pleaded guilty in a federal tax case.

President Biden pardoned him in December before his sentencing in the gun case.

Dogs that are constantly hungry and prone to being overweight share a common bit of biology with some obesity-prone humans.

This is what UK scientists have discovered – identifying a genetic source of many labradors’ – and some people’s – tendency to overeat.

Researchers found that changes in a particular gene, one of the building blocks of biological code that produces the blueprint for how our bodies work, alters the chemical signals that tell our brains we’ve had enough to eat.

The scientists say their findings, published in the journal Science, reveal something “powerful” about the biology of obesity risk.

“By studying dogs, we’ve honed in on some interesting new biology here,” explained lead researcher Dr Eleanor Raffan from the University of Cambridge’s department of physiology, development and neuroscience.

She added that the discovery showed that “owners of slim dogs are not morally superior – and the same is true of slim people”.

“If you have a high genetic risk of obesity, you’re prone to gaining weight unless you put a huge effort into not doing so. And those with low genetic risk just don’t have to work so hard.”

This canine-human biological link came from the researchers’ examination of the genetics of 250 labradors. The team looked for pieces of genetic code that were common in overweight dogs.

They picked out one gene in particular – called DENND1B – that was associated with a higher body mass in the labradors. And when they searched through a library of genetic information from thousands of humans, they discovered that the same gene was associated with a higher body mass in people, too.

Before this study of labrador genetics, Dr Raffan said, “no one suspected that gene had anything to do with obesity”.

The gene interferes with a brain signalling pathway that helps regulate our appetite.

Dr Raffan explained: “It alters the predisposition to weight gain because it’s tweaking a system that is involved in regulating how hungry we feel and how much energy we burn off.”

The findings could help in the future development of new drugs to tackle obesity. But the scientists say they reveal how much harder people – and owners of dogs – with this genetic predisposition have to work to offset its effects.

Another member of the research team, Alyce McClellan, from Cambridge University added that the results emphasised “the importance of fundamental brain pathways in controlling appetite and body weight”.

• Weight loss drugs may boost health in many ways
• Why fat labradors can blame their genes

The discovery adds to a developing picture of those pathways and the biological driving forces behind overeating.

A group of weight loss drugs, that includes Ozempic, target some of this biology, and have exploded in popularity in recent years.

What we’ve identified here is a different pathway [from the one targeted by those drugs],” explained Dr Raffan.

“But it all speaks to the same important bit of biology, which is that obesity is not about having low willpower.

“It’s about the fact that some people are prone to weight gain because they have a genetic risk which increases their responsiveness to food and their appetite.

“This goes for dogs and humans alike – they have a genetic drive to overeat.”

Pamela Bach, the former Baywatch actress and ex-wife of David Hasselhoff, has died aged 62.

Bach was found at home in the Hollywood Hills on 5 March after she died by suicide, said the Los Angeles Medical Examiner’s office.

She met Hasselhoff while acting with him on the set of TV series Knight Rider, and the two married in 1989. She went on to star alongside him on lifeguard TV drama Baywatch before their divorce in 2006.

“Our family is deeply saddened by the recent passing of Pamela Hasselhoff,” Hasselhoff said in a statement.

“We are grateful for the outpouring of love and support during this difficult time but we kindly request privacy as we grieve and navigate through this challenging time.”

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Bach began acting in the 1970s. She and Hasselhoff have two daughters together.

Her acting credits included soap opera The Young and the Restless, Cheers, The Fall Guy, T.J. Hooker, Superboy and Viper.

Her daughter, Hayley Amber Hasselhoff, posted a photo of her parents on Instagram, with a white star, in apparent tribute to her mother.

In Bach’s last Instagram post, published on New Year’s Eve, she wrote about being excited to welcome 2025.

She said she was also excited to watch her granddaughter, London, “grow and seeing her smile light up my world is truly the greatest blessing”.

“May 2025 be filled with beautiful moments, laughter, and all the blessings your hearts can hold,” she continued.

“Here’s to a year of making cherished memories, spreading joy, and embracing every precious moment!”

Bach’s representative, Sharon Kelly, told TMZ she was shocked by her death.

“My heart goes out to her family, her beautiful daughters and granddaughter who Pamela constantly gushes about and loves so dearly,” she said.

A South Carolina prison inmate convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat will be the first person in the US to be executed by firing squad in 15 years.

If Brad Sigmon’s execution proceeds on Friday at 18:00 local time (23:00 GMT), three volunteers standing behind a curtain will simultaneously fire rifles at his chest with specially designed bullets.

The state’s procedure requires that those put to death by firing squad be strapped to a chair when they enter the execution chamber. The inmate then has a target placed on his heart and a bag put over his head.

Sigmon, 67, was convicted of murdering David and Gladys Larke in 2001 before kidnapping his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint. She later escaped as he shot at her.

Offered the alternatives of death by electric chair or lethal injection, Sigmon’s lawyers said he chose the more violent process because of his concerns about the effectiveness of the other two methods.

He will be the first person to be executed by firing squad in the US since 2010, and only the fourth since the country reintroduced the death penalty in 1976.

Sigmon was charged with murder in 2001 after investigators said he killed his ex-girlfriend’s parents in their home in Greenville County by alternately beating them with a bat.

He also told detectives that he planned to harm his ex-girlfriend before she escaped.

“I couldn’t have her. I wasn’t going to let anybody else have her,” he told them.

The South Carolina Supreme Court this week rejected a request from Sigmon’s lawyers to intervene. They wanted more time to learn about the drug South Carolina uses in lethal injections and questioned whether his 2002 legal representation was adequate.

That is expected to be his final appeal ahead of Friday’s planned execution.

No South Carolina governor has granted clemency to an inmate facing execution since the US legalised the death penalty again in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Execution by firing squad is complex.

Sigmon will be strapped in a chair with a basin built below it to catch his blood. A target will be placed on his chest and a bag over his head.

Three volunteers hidden behind a curtain will then fire at him from 15ft (4.6m) away.

The bullets used are designed to break apart on impact and cause maximum damage. Medical experts have debated the amount of pain caused by their use.

After the shots are fired, a doctor will confirm Sigmon’s death.

The state allows witnesses to observe the death from behind bulletproof glass, but the executioners will be hidden from view to protect their identities.

South Carolina passed a law in 2023 requiring that the the identities of the execution team members remain secret. It also forbids the publication of information regarding the procurement of lethal injection drugs, as a growing number of pharmaceutical companies have declined to provide them for state executions.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit challenging the state law in January.

South Carolina spent $54,000 (£41,841) constructing its firing squad area in 2022 as suppliers refused to provide prison officials with the lethal chemicals required for death by injection.

The 2023 law now shields many details about the lethal injection procedure, as well, including the names of suppliers and the exact contents.

Most inmates sentenced to death in the state are electrocuted, but the three most recent executions were by injections that included pentobarbital. The three men were declared dead 20 minutes after being given the injection, though they appeared to stop breathing after a few minutes.

The lack of information about these executions has attracted criticism for its lack of transparency.

“This ban not only further departs from the state’s history of making execution-related information publicly available but criminalizes the disclosure of this information by anyone for any reason,” The ACLU argued in its legal complaint.

“It thus silences the scientists, doctors, journalists, former correctional officials, lawyers, and citizens who have scrutinized the safety, efficacy, morality, and legality of South Carolina’s use of lethal injection.”

Sigmon has expressed concern about the effectiveness of lethal injection.

South Carolina has released only one of two available autopsies from these deaths, which Sigmon’s lawyer say show unusual amounts of fluid in the person’s lungs.

Speaking about the decision not to die by injection, his attorney told AP: “He does not wish to inflict that pain on his family, the witnesses, or the execution team. But, given South Carolina’s unnecessary and unconscionable secrecy, Brad is choosing as best he can.”

Nationally, only three people have died by firing squad since 1976.

Security forces of Syria’s new rulers have engaged in heavy fighting with fighters loyal to deposed President Bashar al-Assad in a coastal area of the country.

It is the worst violence in Syria since rebels toppled Assad in December and installed an Islamist transitional government.

A war monitoring group, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said more than 70 people have been killed.

A curfew has been imposed in the cities of Latakia and Tartous, where the fighting has broken out.

BBC Verify confirmed the location of two videos posted online that showed gunmen shooting repeatedly at a building, igniting a fire inside, in the city of Homs on Thursday evening.

Two other verified videos show a body being dragged behind a car in Latakia.

The coastal region is the heartland of the Alawite minority, and a stronghold of the Assad family, which belong to the Alawite sect.

Estimations of the number of people killed in the violence vary, and the BBC has been unable to independently verify them.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday that 71 people had been killed, including 35 members of government forces, 32 gunmen affiliated to the former regime’s army, and four civilians.

The clashes left tens of others injured, the human rights group said.

Gunmen, some from the former regime, had ambushed military forces, checkpoints and headquarters along the coastline, the organisation said.

One Sunni civilian witness called the attack “planned and prepared”, while another told BBC Arabic that the indiscriminate firing on everyone including paramedics, was like something from the previous Assad regime.

“They did not have any mercy, so we are against any violence against anyone in the Syrian coast who has not been involve in this unrest. All of them are civilians and they are all like our family,” they explained.

One Alawite said many Syrian people are “scared” regardless of if they were on the coast or in the capital.

Speaking to the BBC, she added that “everyone is terrified from the current incitement”, and fears they will become “scapegoats”.

Local gunmen took hold of military zones, where they holed up in areas in the Latakia mountains to launch attacks, while others holed up in Jableh city.

Members of the former regime army have been deployed in several coastal towns and villages, while military forces have been ambushed on highways.

Late on Thursday, Syrian-based Step news agency reported that government-aligned forces had killed “about 70” former regime fighters, while more than 25 others were captured in Jableh and the surrounding areas.

A spokesman for Syria’s defence ministry, Colonel Hassan Abdul Ghani, issued a warning to Assad loyalists fighting in Latakia via state media.

“Thousands have chosen to surrender their weapons and return to their families, while some insist on fleeing and dying in defence of murderers and criminals. The choice is clear: lay down your weapons or face your inevitable fate,” he said.

The region has become a major security challenge for interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Alawite activists said their community had been subjected to violence and attacks since Assad fell, particularly in rural Homs and Latakia.

He is also facing resistance in the south, where there have been clashes with Druze forces in recent days.

Earlier this week, Syria’s foreign minister told the global chemical weapons watchdog that the new government was committed to destroying any remaining stockpiles produced under-Assad.

Assad’s government denied ever using chemical weapons during the 14-year civil war, but activists accused it of carrying out of dozens of chemical attacks.

US President Donald Trump has signed orders significantly expanding the goods exempted from his new tariffs on Canada and Mexico that were imposed this week.

It is the second time in two days that Trump has rolled back his taxes on imports from the US’s two biggest trade partners, measures that have raised uncertainty for businesses and worried financial markets.

On Wednesday, he said he would temporarily spare carmakers from 25% import levies just a day after they came into effect.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum thanked Trump for the move, while Canada’s finance minister said the country would in turn hold off on its threatened second round of retaliatory tariffs on US products.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday morning he had had a “colourful” conversation about tariffs in a phone call with Trump.

The US president used profane language more than once during Wednesday’s heated exchange, according to US and Canadian media reports.

Trudeau told reporters that a trade war between the two allies was likely for the foreseeable future, despite some targeted relief.

“Our goal remains to get these tariffs, all tariffs removed,” he said.

Sheinbaum said she had had an “excellent and respectful” call with Trump, adding that the two countries would work together to stem the flow of the opioid fentanyl from Mexico into the US and curb the trafficking of guns going the other way.

The carveout from the duties applies to goods shipped under North America’s free trade pact, the US-Mexico-Canada agreement (USMCA) , which Trump signed during his first term.

Items that currently come into the US under the pact’s rules include televisions, air conditioners, avocados and beef, according to analysis by the firm Trade Partnership Worldwide.

The measures also reduced tariffs on potash – a key ingredient for fertiliser needed by US farmers – from 25% to 10%.

A White House official said about 50% of US imports from Mexico and 62% from Canada may still face tariffs. Those proportions could change as firms change their practices in response to the order.

The White House has also continued to promote its plans for other tariffs, promising action on 2 April, when officials have said they will unveil recommendations for tailored “reciprocal” trade duties on countries around the world.

The trade war tensions have rattled markets and raised fears of economic turbulence.

The S&P 500 share index, which tracks the biggest listed American companies, ended down nearly 1.8% on Thursday.

George Godber, fund manager at Polar Capital, said the “hokey cokey” with Trump’s tariffs has it made it “nigh on impossible” for firms to manage their production lines and is “putting pressure on the US economy”.

Meanwhile, he said it is “galvanising a response from Europe, especially Germany, so we’ve seen a more positive reaction to European markets”.

In signing the orders, Trump dismissed the suggestion that he was walking back the measures because of concerns about the stock market.

“Nothing to do with the market,” Trump said. “I’m not even looking at the market, because long term, the United States will be very strong with what’s happening.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who leads Canada’s most populous province, said afterwards that “a pause on some tariffs means nothing”.

Earlier, as relief looked likely but before it was announced, he told CNN that the province still planned to go ahead with a 25% tariff on the electricity it provides to 1.5 million homes and businesses in New York, Michigan and Minnesota from Monday.

“Honestly, it really bothers me. We have to do this, but I don’t want to do this,” he said.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday dismissed retaliation as counter-productive for trade negotiations.

“If you want to be a numbskull like Justin Trudeau and say, ‘Oh we’re going to do this’, then tariffs are probably going to go up,” he said during a question-and-answer session after a speech at the Economic Club of New York on Thursday.

Goods worth billions cross the borders of the US, Canada and Mexico each day and the economies of the three countries are deeply integrated after decades of free trade.

Trump has argued introducing tariffs will protect American industry and boost manufacturing. However, many economists say tariffs could lead to prices rising for consumers in the US, while warning they could trigger severe economic downturns in Mexico and Canada.

About $1bn in trade enters the US from Mexico and Canada each day that does not claim duty-free exemptions under USMCA, since it has historically enjoyed low or no tariffs, said Daniel Anthony, president of Trade Partnership Worldwide.

“Whether importers can or will start claiming USMCA remains to be seen, but it’s a huge amount of money at stake,” he said.

In the US, the economy is already starting to show the effects of the disruption from Trump’s policies.

Imports spiked in January on the back of tariff fears, with America’s trade deficit increasing 34% to more than $130bn (£100bn), the Commerce Department reported.

Gregory Brown, who leads BenLee, a company that makes big trailers, said he had had to adjust prices multiple times over the last five weeks as a result of Trump’s policies, which have included an order, set to go into effect later this month, expanding tariffs on steel and aluminium.

But Mr Brown, who attended Mr Bessent’s speech, said that for now, his customers are agreeing to pay the higher prices – a sign that the economy is holding up.

“It’s a great growth economy,” he said, noting that the economy had been strong under Biden too. He said he saw Trump’s decision to quickly offer relief from his new tariffs as a sign of a business-friendly president adjusting to the “business reality”.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second presidential term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Work is under way to make all men in Poland undergo military training, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.

In a speech to the Polish parliament, Tusk said the government aimed to give full details in the coming months.

Efforts are being made to “prepare large-scale military training for every adult male in Poland,” he told the Sejm.

“We will try to have a model ready by the end of this year so that every adult male in Poland is trained in the event of war, so that this reserve is comparable and adequate to the potential threats.”

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Tusk said the Ukrainian army has 800,000 soldiers, whilst Russia has around 1.3 million and he wants to increase the size of the Polish army, including reservists, to 500,000 from around 200,000 now.

“We’re talking about the need to have an army of half a million in Poland, including the reservists,” he said.

“It seems if we organise things wisely, and I’m talking constantly with the Minister of Defence, we will have to use several courses of action. That means the reservists, but also intensive training to make those who do not go into the army fully-fledged and competent soldiers during a conflict,” he added.

Tusk said women may also undergo military training, but “war, is still to a greater extent the domain of men”.

The prime minister said his government was also “carefully examining” France’s proposal to include Europe under its nuclear umbrella.

“I would like to know first of all in detail what it means in terms of the authority over these weapons,” he said.

Tusk pointed out Ukraine was invaded after it got rid of its own nuclear arsenal, adding Warsaw would like to acquire its own nuclear weapons, however remote a possibility that may be.

“Today, it is clear that we would be safer if we had our own nuclear arsenal, that is beyond doubt. In any case the road to that would be very long and there would have to be a consensus too,” he said.

Poland is already planning to spend 4.7% of its economic output on defence this year, the highest proportion in the Nato alliance.

Tusk told parliament that spending should increase to 5% of GDP.

Earlier, President Duda proposed amending the constitution to make defence spending at a level of 4% of GDP compulsory

The prime minister also said he supports Poland withdrawing from the Ottawa convention that bans the use of antipersonnel landmines, and also possibly from the Dublin convention that bans the use of cluster munitions.

Poland has ramped up defence spending since Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in 2022.

It has signed arms contracts worth around $20bn (£15.5bn) with the United States to buy 250 M1A2 Abrams battle tanks, 32 F-35 jets, 96 Apache helicopters, Javelin missiles, and artillery rocket systems.

Warsaw has also signed contracts with South Korea to purchase K2 tanks and FA-50 light combat aircraft.

There is growing anxiety among Poles about their future security following US President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend military supplies to Ukraine. Most Poles believe supporting Ukraine is in their own security interests.

Mirosław Kaznowski, the deputy mayor of Milanówek, a small town outside Warsaw, told BBC News this week that a friend of his has decided to invest in a start-up to build low-cost underground bomb shelters for businesses and homes.

His friend said interest was high, he added.

President Donald Trump’s decision to establish official government cryptocurrency reserves in the US has drawn criticism from industry watchers.

He has signed an executive order creating what he calls a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve as well as a Digital Asset Stockpile, which will consist of other forms of digital currency.

The funds will be stocked with coins forfeited to the federal government as part of criminal or civil proceedings.

White House AI and crypto tsar David Sacks likened them to a “a digital Fort Knox for the cryptocurrency”, drawing comparison to the Kentucky military base that stores a significant portion of US gold assets.

However, some crypto enthusiasts have criticised the government for not being bolder, while others have raised question marks about the lack of transparency over the process.

Sacks has ordered a full accounting of the federal government’s existing crypto reserves, which he estimated at 200,000 Bitcoin alone. That’s worth $17.5bn (£13.6bn) at today’s prices.

Nonetheless, Charles Edwards of the Capriole Fund, a Bitcoin and digital assets hedge fund, called Thursday’s announcement “a pig in lipstick” in response to Sacks’ post on X.

“No active buying means this is just a fancy title for Bitcoin holdings that already existed with the government,” he said.

Trump’s executive order says that the Treasury and Commerce secretary will come up with strategies for acquiring more government Bitcoin, provided these are “budget neutral and do not impose incremental costs on United States taxpayers”.

Jason Yanowitz, Co-Founder of crypto firm Blockworks, said the decision set a “horrible precedent” and “made no sense.”

“Without a clear framework, we risk arbitrary asset selections, which would distort the markets and drive a loss of public trust,” he suggested.

Other analysts though have been more positive.

“This approach makes much more sense than buying the assets,” said Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.

“It would surely be bizarre for the US to sell dollars to buy crypto, when the dollar is the globe’s reserve currency and therefore a source of enormous influence.”

Further details are expected when the president is due to host the first crypto summit at the White House on Friday.

It is unclear whether the planned reserve could face legal hurdles, or if it might require an act of Congress.

The US will not sell any Bitcoin deposited in the reserve, said Sacks, and will instead keep it as an asset.

It was unclear how the new stockpile would benefit Americans, but Sacks said it “will not cost taxpayers a dime”.

His implication that the US government would not buy Bitcoin led prices of the world’s largest cryptocurrency to fall by more than 5%.

Some countries maintain strategic reserves of national assets to diversify government holdings and hedge against financial risk.

The US also keeps a petroleum reserve. Canada has a maple syrup reserve.

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Earlier this week, Trump revealed the names of five cryptocurrencies that he said he would like included in the strategic reserve.

The market prices of the five coins he named – Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana and Cardano – swiftly jumped after that announcement.

Mr Yanowitz said the US government needed to be wary of being seen to pick winners.

“Ensuring transparency through independent audits and public reporting is crucial for fostering innovation instead of favouritism,” he said.

The order Trump signed states that the Treasury and Commerce secretary will come up with strategies for acquiring more government Bitcoin, provided these are “budget neutral and do not impose incremental costs on United States taxpayers.”

Trump aggressively courted the crypto community during his presidential campaign. Former US President Joe Biden led a crackdown on crypto, citing concerns about fraud.

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated and more than 84,000 households left in the dark as a rare tropical cyclone approaches Australia’s eastern coast.

Cyclone Alfred is expected to make landfall on Saturday morning between the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast – known for beautiful beaches and top surf – as well as Brisbane, Australia’s third-biggest city.

The cyclone, the first to hit the area in 50 years, is now expected to land as a category one system with wind speeds of up to 120km/h.

It has already caused flooding which authorities fear could worsen over the weekend. New South Wales police said on Friday that one man was missing after his vehicle was swept into a fast-flowing river.

Four million people across Queensland and northern New South Wales are in the firing line of the storm.

But its slow progress, described by weather experts as “walking pace” and “erratic”, has raised concerns of flash and riverine flooding in low-lying areas.

It is expected to dump as much as 800mm of rain in the coming days.

Stephen Valentine and his wife, who live in Logan city south of Brisbane, have prepared some 30 litres of water, food for themselves and their pets, and set up “protected rooms” in their home situated away from windows.

“At the moment we are as prepared as we can be for something that none of us have been through… Nothing has come this far south across the south,” said Mr Valentine, who grew up in the city.

“We would get the edge of a cyclone ever so often, but not to this level,” he added.

While Queensland isn’t a stranger to cyclones – it’s the most disaster-prone state in Australia – it’s rare they come so far south.

“These are tough times, but Australians are tough people, and we are resilient people,” said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday, echoing the Gold Coast’s acting Mayor Donna Gates, who has said Cyclone Alfred is a “scary proposition” for the region.

Nearly 1,000 schools have closed, public transport has been suspended and airports are shut. Flights aren’t expected to resume until Sunday at the earliest. Elective surgeries have also been cancelled.

The last time a cyclone of Alfred’s magnitude hit was in 1974, when Wanda hit in January and then two months later, Zoe crossed the coast.

Flooding though, is more common. In February 2022, thousands of homes were damaged along much of Australia’s east after heavy rain.

Authorities have been keen to prepare communities ahead of Cyclone Alfred. The council opened sandbag depots across the region to help residents protect their homes.

“It’s surreal. We know it’s coming, but it’s very quiet,” said Anthony Singh, a resident of the Brisbane suburb of West End. He waited for four hours on Wednesday to pick up sandbags to protect his home.

Fellow resident Mark Clayton, helped to co-ordinate the sandbag collection, shovelling more than 140 tonnes of sand.

“I think people are a bit apprehensive,” he says. “Are the buildings going to stay up, are the roofs going to stay on? People expect a lot of trees to come down and to lose power for an extended period of time.”

With supermarkets now shut and people mostly sheltering at home, there’s a lot of uncertainty as Australians wait for the storm to hit.

But some die-hard surfers have thrown caution to the increasing wind.

“This is what we look forward to,” said surfer Jeff Weatherall as he waited for a jet ski to pick him up from Kirra beach and carry him into the big waves. “This is the fifth day straight – I’ve done nothing but eat, sleep, surf and do it again.”

Kirra beach is famous for its breakers and surfers have been busy this week seizing the strong winds.

“There are people that are going to lose their houses, but at the moment, you’re taking the good of it all. This is just crazy surf,” said surfer Donnie Neal.

Meanwhile Albanese have warned people to take the cyclone warnings seriously.

“This isn’t a time for sightseeing or for seeing what it’s like to experience these conditions firsthand,” he said.

“Please stay safe. Be sensible.”

No-one wants to be alone, and no job is more isolating than being a pop star.

Just ask Lady Gaga.

Her rise to fame in 2009-10 was unlike anything we’d seen before. One of the first pop stars to harness the power of the internet, she seemed to exist in a permanent onslaught of TMZ photos and gossip blogs.

Their appetite was voracious. She wore through so many looks and sounds in the space of three years that one critic wrote she was “speed-running Madonna’s entire career”.

And as her fame grew, the headlines became more unhinged. She staged a satanic ritual in a London hotel… She was secretly a hermaphrodite… She planned to saw her own leg off “for fashion”.

When she attended the 2010 MTV Awards in a dress made entirely of meat, nobody seemed to get the joke: Gaga was presenting herself as fodder for the tabloids, there to be consumed.

On stage, she was an object of worship for her fans, the Little Monsters. But anyone who isn’t a megalomaniac knows that that sort of adulation is a distant illusion.

“I’m alone, Brandon. Every night,” Gaga told her stylist in the 2017 documentary, Five Foot Two.

“I go from everyone touching me all day and talking at me all day to total silence.”

Now 38, and happily engaged to tech entrepreneur Michael Polansky, Gaga admits that those years of solitude scared her.

“I think my biggest fear was doing this by myself – doing life on my own,” she tells the BBC.

“And I think that the greatest gift has been meeting my partner, Michael, and being in the mayhem with him.”

The couple have been together since 2020, and revealed their engagement at the Venice Film Festival last September – where Gaga wore her million-dollar engagement ring in public for the first time.

In person, it’s dazzling, with a huge, oval-cut diamond set on a 18-karat white and rose gold diamond pavé band.

But on her other hand, Gaga sports a smaller, more understated ring, featuring a few blades of grass set in resin. It turns out that is the really special one.

“Michael actually proposed to me with these blades of grass,” she reveals.

“A long time ago, we were in the back yard, and he asked me, ‘If I ever proposed to you, like, how do I do that?’

“And I just said, ‘Just get a blade of grass from the back yard and wrap it around my finger and that will make me so happy’.”

It was a deeply romantic gesture that came tinged with sadness. Gaga’s back yard in Malibu had previously played host to the wedding of her close friend, Sonja Durham, shortly before she died of cancer in 2017.

“There was so much loss, but this happy thing was happening for me,” she recalls of Polansky’s proposal.

“To get engaged at 38… I was thinking about what it took to get to this moment.”

Those feelings ultimately informed a song on her new album, Mayhem.

Called (naturally) Blade of Grass, it finds the star singing about a ““, and the promise of love in a time of darkness.

She calls it a “thank you” to her partner. And fans might have a reason to thank him, too.

Mayhem marks Gaga’s full throttle return to pop, after a period where she’d been preoccupied with her film career, and spin-off albums that dabbled in jazz and the classic American songbook.

Speaking to Vogue last year, the singer revealed it was her fiancé who’d nudged her in that direction.

“He was like, ‘Babe. I love you. You need to make pop music’,” she said.

“On the Chromatica tour, I saw a fire in her,” Polansky added. “I wanted to help her keep that alive all the time and just start making music that made her happy.”

With that approach, the album goes right back to the sucker-punch sound of Gaga’s early hits like Poker Face, Just Dance and Born This Way.

On the latest single, Abracadabra, she even revisits the “” gibberish of Bad Romance – although this time there’s a reference to death, as she sings, ““.

In the album’s artwork, her face is reflected in a broken mirror. In the videos, she squares off against earlier versions of herself.

There’s an overwhelming sense that the artist Stefani Germanotta is reckoning with the stage persona she created.

It all comes to a head on a track called Perfect Celebrity where she sings, “” – a lyric that, like the meat dress before it, strips away her humanity.

“That’s probably the most angry song about fame I’ve ever written,” she says.

“I’d created this public persona that I was truly becoming in every way – and holding the duality of that, knowing where I begin and Lady Gaga ends, was really a challenge.

“It kind of took me down.”

How did she reconcile the public and private sides of her life?

“I think what I actually realised is that it’s healthier to have a dividing line and to integrate those two things into one whole human being,” she says.

“The healthiest thing for me was owning that I’m a female artist and that living an artistic life was my choice.

“I am a lover of songwriting. I’m a lover of making music, of rehearsing, choreography, stage production, costumes, lighting, putting on a show.

“That is what it means to be Lady Gaga. It’s the artist behind it all.”

In previous interviews, the musician has spoken of how she dissociated from Lady Gaga. For a time, she believed the character was responsible for all her success, and she had contributed nothing.

Mayhem marks the moment where she reclaims ownership of her music, not just from “Lady Gaga” but from other producers and writers in her orbit.

“When I was younger, people tried take credit for my sound, or my image [but] all of my references, all of my imagination of what pop music could be, came from me.

“So I really wanted to revisit my earlier inspirations and my career and own it as my invention, for once and for all.”

From the outset, it was obvious that Gaga was excited about this new phase.

Last summer, after performing at the Olympics opening ceremony, she took to the streets of Paris and played early demos of her new music to fans who’d gathered outside her hotel.

It was a spur of the moment decision, yet it marked another effort to restore the spontaneity of her early career.

“This has been something I’ve done for almost 20 years, where I played my fans my music way before it came out,” she says.

“I used to, after my shows, invite fans backstage, and we’d hang out and I’d play them demos and see what they thought of the music.

“I’m sure you can imagine that after 20 years, you don’t expect that people are still going to show up to hear your music and be excited to see you. So, I just wanted to share it with them, because I was excited that they were there.”

As an interviewer, this is a full-circle moment for me, too. I last interviewed Lady Gaga in 2009, as Just Dance hit number one in the UK.

Back then, she was giddy with excitement, chatting enthusiastically about her love of John Lennon, calling herself a “heroin addict” for English tea, and promising to email me an MP3 of Blueberry Kisses – an unreleased song that is, quite brilliantly, about performing a sex act while your breath smells of blueberry flavoured coffee.

Over the years, I’ve seen her interviews become more guarded. She’d wear outrageous costumes or jet-black sunglasses, deliberately putting a barrier between her and the journalist.

But the Gaga I meet in New York is the same one I spoke to 16 years ago: comfortable with herself, and brimming with enthusiasm.

She puts that ease down to “growing up and living a full life”.

“Being there for my friends, being there for my family, meeting my amazing fiancé – all of these things made me a whole person, instead of the most important thing being my stage persona.”

With an air of finality, she adds: “I wanted Mayhem to have an ending. I wanted the chaos to stop.

“I stepped away from the icon. It ends with love.”

It is often said that marriages are made in heaven.

But in India, where a majority of marriages are arranged, the process of match-making can feel like a passage through hell for a woman and her family.

That’s the premise of Sthal: A Match, the 2023 gritty Marathi-language film that has won several prestigious awards at festivals in India and abroad. It is releasing for the first time in theatres in India on Friday.

Set in rural Maharashtra state, the film centres around Savita, a young woman striving for an education and a career in a patriarchal society, and the attempts by her father Daulatrao Wandhare – a poor cotton farmer – to find a good husband for his daughter.

“He wants a good price for his crop and a good match for his daughter,” says director Jayant Digambar Somalkar.

The film is notable for the unflinching way it portrays what its lead actress calls the “very humiliating” experience of many young women, unlike other Indian movies about arranged marriage.

Sthal has also grabbed attention as its entire cast is made up of first-time actors chosen from the village where it is shot. Nandini Chikte, who plays Savita, has already won two awards for her brilliant performance.

The film opens with a sequence where Savita is interviewing a prospective groom.

Along with her female relatives and friends, she watches as the young man serves them drinks from a tray. They laugh when he, visibly nervous, fumbles during questioning.

Rudely awakened from what turned out to be a dream, Savita is told to get ready as a group of men are coming to see her.

In reality, the gender roles are completely reversed, and in a scene that’s replayed several times in the nearly two-hour film, Savita’s humiliation comes into sharp focus.

The prospective groom and other men from his family are welcomed by Savita’s father and male relatives. Guests are fed tea and snacks and once the introductions are done, Savita is called in.

Dressed in a sari, with eyes downcast, she sits down on a wooden stool facing her interrogators.

Questions come, thick and fast. What’s your name? Full name? Mother’s clan? Date of birth? Height? Education? Subject? Hobbies? Are you willing to work on the farm?

The men step out, to hold a discussion. “She’s a bit dark. She had makeup on her face, but did you not see her elbow? That is her real colour,” says one. “She’s also short,” he goes on to add. Others nod in agreement.

They leave, telling Daulatrao that they will respond in a few days to let him know their decision.

According to her parents, “this is the fourth or fifth time someone has come to see Savita” – all the earlier meetings have ended in rejection, leading to heartbreak and despair.

The scene rings true. In India, men often have a laundry list of attributes they want in their brides – a glance at the matrimonial columns in newspapers and match-making websites shows everyone wants tall, fair, beautiful brides.

Savita’s protestations – “I don’t want to get married, I first want to finish college and then take civil services exams and build a career” – carry no weight in her rural community, where marriage is presented as the only goal worth having for a young woman.

“Marriage is given far too much importance in our society,” Chikte told the BBC. “Parents believe that once the daughter is married, they will become free of their responsibility. It’s time to change that narrative.”

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She says she found it “very humiliating” that Savita was made to sit on a stool to be judged by all those men who discussed her skin colour, while there was no discussion about the prospective groom.

“I was only acting, but as the film progressed, I lived Savita’s journey and I felt angry on her behalf. I felt insulted and disrespected.”

The film also tackles the social evil that is dowry – the practice of the bride’s family gifting cash, clothes and jewellery to the groom’s family.

Though it has been illegal for more than 60 years, dowries are still omnipresent in Indian weddings.

Parents of girls are known to take out huge loans or even sell their land and house to meet dowry demands. Even that doesn’t necessarily ensure a happy life for a bride as tens of thousands are killed every year by the groom or his family for bringing in insufficient dowries.

In the film too, Daulatrao puts up a “for sale” sign on his land, even though farming is his only source of livelihood.

Director Somalkar says the idea for his debut feature film is rooted in his own experience.

Growing up with two sisters and five female cousins, he had witnessed the ritual far too many times when prospective grooms visited his home.

“As a child you don’t question tradition,” he says, adding that the turning point came in 2016 when he accompanied a male cousin to see a prospective bride.

“This was the first time I was on the other side. I felt a bit uncomfortable when the woman came out and sat on a stool and was asked questions. When we stepped out for a discussion, I felt the conversation about her height and skin colour was objectifying her.”

When he discussed the issue with his fiancée at the time – who is now his wife – she encouraged him to explore it in his work.

In a country where 90% of all marriages are still arranged by families, Sthal is not the first to tackle the subject on screen. IMDB has a list of nearly 30 films about arranged marriage made by Bollywood and regional film industries just in the past two decades.

More recently, the wildly popular Netflix show Indian Matchmaking focused entirely on the process of finding the perfect partner.

But, as Somalkar points out, “weddings are hugely glamourised” on screen.

“When we think of weddings in India, we think of the big fat wedding full of fun and glamour. We think of Hum Aapke Hain Koun,” he says, referring to the 1990s Bollywood blockbuster that celebrates Indian wedding traditions.

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“And the Netflix show only dealt with a certain class of people, the ones who are wealthy and educated and the women are able to exercise their choice.

“But the reality for a majority of Indians is very different and parents often have to go through hell to get their daughters married,” he adds.

His reason for making Sthal, he says, is to “jolt society and audiences out of complacency.

“I want to start a debate and encourage people to think about a process that objectifies women who have very little freedom to choose between marriage and career,” he says.

“I know one book or one film doesn’t change society overnight, but it can be a start.”

Three London-based Bulgarian nationals have been found guilty of spying for Russia, in what has been described as “one of the largest and most complex” foreign intelligence operations on UK soil.

Katrin Ivanova, 33, Vanya Gaberova, 30, and Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, all from London, were part of a group of Bulgarians who spied between 2020 and 2023.

The cell undertook elaborate surveillance on people and places targeted by Russia, including investigative journalists and a US military base in Germany, with members crisscrossing Europe from their base in the UK.

Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism chief Cdr Dominic Murphy said devices they used were the sort of thing “you would really expect to see in a spy novel”.

Their plans were laid out in thousands of messages exchanged between the cell’s leaders and recovered by police.

The messages included plots to kidnap and kill some of the group’s targets as well as plans to ensnare them in so-called honeytraps.

The trio were convicted of conspiracy to spy, while Ivanova was also convicted of possessing multiple false identity documents.

Fellow Bulgarians Orlin Roussev, 47, from Great Yarmouth, and Biser Dzhambazov, 43, from London, had previously admitted conspiracy to spy, while a sixth defendant, Ivan Stoyanov, 34, also admitted spying before the trial and his conviction can now be reported for the first time.

Key targets were investigative journalists Christo Grozev and Roman Dobrokhotov, whose work includes exposing Russia’s role in the nerve agent attacks on Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020 and Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018.

During the trial, prosecutor Alison Morgan KC said the spy cell was “sophisticated in their methodology; carrying out surveillance activity of individuals and places; manufacturing and using false identities and deploying advanced technology to acquire information”.

Roussev’s espionage base was a seaside guesthouse in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, which police say contained a “treasure trove” of spying gadgets and equipment, including cameras hidden in ties, a camera hidden in a fake rock, and glasses containing recording equipment.

The police investigation received 221 mobile phones, 495 sim cards, 11 drones, and devices allowing data to be extracted from phones and eavesdropping on wi-fi activity.

Cdr Murphy said the case was an “extremely sophisticated” operation that “posed a threat to national security and individuals”.

The spy cell worked under the direction of Roussev, who in turn received instructions from Jan Marsalek.

The Austrian national, who is wanted in Germany for his alleged fraud linked to the financial services company Wirecard, was described by prosecutors as an “intermediary for the Russian intelligence services”.

Roussev and Marsalek met a decade ago, with Roussev subsequently recruited as a spy. He then recruited other Bulgarians to undertake espionage operations.

The spy cell had other jobs – Gaberova was a beautician, Ivanchev a painter and decorator, Roussev was at one stage the chief technology officer for a city of London financial firm.

Stoyanov worked as a medical courier, but also fought in mixed martial arts fights using the nickname “The Destroyer”.

Dzhambazov and Ivanova lived together as a couple and worked in healthcare jobs, but also ran a Bulgarian community organisation that provided courses on “British values”.

But Dzhambazov was also in a relationship with Gaberova – they were found in bed together when police made arrests – and Ivanchev had separately been in a relationship with her in the past.

During their trial, Ivanova and Gaberova admitted undertaking surveillance operations but denied knowing it was for the benefit of Russia.

Ivanchev did not give evidence during the trial but outlined a similar position during police interviews after being arrested. He was arrested a year after the other five defendants and told police he had several conversations with MI5.

The prosecution case focused on six operations carried out by the spies:

Operation 1

This targeted journalist Christo Grozev.

Jan Marsalek and Roussev exchanged messages discussing their options in relation to Mr Grozev, including the placing of team members in seats next to him on planes. He was followed throughout Europe and properties connected to him were watched in Austria and Bulgaria.

The spy cell also discussed potentially robbing him of his laptop and phone and taking it to the Russian Embassy, burning his property, kidnapping him and taking him to Moscow, or killing him.

Operation 2

This targeting journalist Roman Dobrokhotov.

The cell followed him in various countries, and discussed kidnapping him in the UK and smuggling him out of the country using a small boat.

At one stage, Katrin Ivanova was so close to him on a plane that she could see the PIN for his phone.

Operation 3

This targeted a man called Bergey Ryskaliyev in November 2021, the court heard.

Mr Ryskaliyev is a Kazakhstan national and former politician. He fled to the United Kingdom where he was later granted asylum.

There is and was a clear motive for Russia to develop relations with Kazakhstan, the court heard.

Prosecutors said that targeting a political dissident on behalf of Kazakhstan cultivates those relations by providing Kazakhstan with what it might consider to be assistance.

Operation 4

Allegedly planning disruptive activity at the Kazakh embassy in London in September 2022.

The court heard that the plan was to stage a demonstration outside the embassy – a “fake protest” – to create a pretence that they were in possession of genuine intelligence about those responsible, which they would then pass on to the Kazakhstan intelligence to try to gain favour with Kazakhstan on behalf of Russia.

Operation 5

Alleged surveillance at the Patch Barracks, a US Military Base in Stuttgart in late 2022.

This is a US military airbase, which jurors heard was believed by the defendants to be a location where Ukrainian forces were being trained in the use of surface to air weapons, at the very time of Russia’s invasion into Ukraine.

Prosecutors say the defendants’ plan was to target the airbase using a range of highly sophisticated technology designed to capture key intelligence about those present on the base.

Operation 6

Jurors were told this plan was targeting a man called Kirill Kachur.

He a Russian national who spent time in Montenegro who was employed by the Investigative Committee of Russia but left the country in 2021 and was designated as a “foreign agent” by Russia in November 2023.

The family of an Indian man who was shot dead while illegally crossing into Israel say he was a victim of a job scam.

Thomas Gabriel Perera was killed by Jordanian security forces by the border with Israel on 10 February.

He was lured to Jordan by the promise of a lucrative job, and when it did not materialise he tried to enter Israel as he was told he could find work there, his family told the BBC.

Reports of Indians falling for employment scams and illegally entering other countries to look for work have become increasingly common.

Perera, 47, had been accompanied by his brother-in-law Edison Charlas, who was injured in the shootout. Mr Charlas was treated in hospital and spent a fortnight in prison before he was repatriated to India.

The two men were from the southern Indian state of Kerala where they worked as auto-rickshaw drivers.

An agent had promised them they could get blue-collar jobs in Jordan earning 350,000 rupees ($4,000; £3,110) a month.

Mr Charlas told the BBC he paid 210,000 rupees to an agent before they left India, and paid an additional $600 after reaching Jordan on a tourist visa.

But when the two men arrived in Jordan’s capital city Amman in early February, they were told by the agent that there were no jobs available.

The agent then suggested they should try illegally crossing into Israel, claiming there were plenty of opportunities there.

On 10 February, Mr Charlas and Perera joined a group that drove for hours to Jordan’s border with Israel.

“We were taken in a car. It was a long distance. We got into the car at 2pm and reached the location only around midnight. Then we were made to walk several kilometres along a coastline. It was while walking in the dark that we were shot,” said Mr Charlas.

The BBC has seen a letter sent to Perera’s family by the Indian embassy in Jordan. It states that “security forces tried to stop them but they did not listen to the warning, the guards opened fire on them”.

“One bullet hit Mr Thomas [Perera] in his head and he passed away on the spot.”

Mr Charlas, however, disputed this account and said there was “no such warning (from the guards). They just shot.”

“I was walking slowly behind the others in the dark… That was when the bullet hit me and I lost consciousness. I had no clue what happened to Thomas,” he said.

The BBC has asked India’s foreign ministry and Jordanian authorities for comment on Mr Charlas’ allegation.

Mr Charlas said he was later taken to a hospital for treatment and then moved between several Jordanian government offices before being transferred to prison, where he was kept for 18 days.

While in prison, he managed to contact his wife and told her what had happened, and his wife contacted Indian embassy officials.

Mr Charlas was deported to India on 28 February.

Perera’s body is still in Jordan. In response to BBC queries, India’s foreign ministry said they were working to bring the body back to India as soon as possible.

“I am told that it will take one or two days for the process of documentation and other things to be completed,” said Randhir Jaiswal, spokesperson for the foreign ministry.

On Monday, Shashi Tharoor, the member of parliament representing Perera’s constituency Thiruvananthapuram, said that members of the Indian embassy in Jordan had verified the victim’s identity and that the process of transportation of the body had begun.

Despite numerous government warnings, many Indians are still falling prey to job scams and taking the risk of entering countries illegally to find work, say observers.

“The modus operandi is to get a tourist visa for one country and then enter the neighbouring country,” said Ajith Kolassery, the CEO of Norka, the Kerala government’s department overseeing migration.

“No country will accept illegal entry. We have been consistently issuing advisories to people to be wary of job rackets, but they are still going.”

In recent years hundreds of Indians have been rescued from scam centres in Cambodia and other parts of South East Asia. They were trafficked to the centres after they were lured overseas by promises of good jobs.

Scores of Indian nationals were also tricked into fighting for Russia in the war with Ukraine after they were offered fake jobs and opportunities to study abroad.

The 100 Indians who were deported from the US last month after being accused of entering the country illegally had also been lured by the hope of a better life, pointed out Irudaya Rajan, who chairs the International Institute of Migration and Development in Thiruvananthapuram.

“They also paid money to agents and were cheated. It’s the struggle to get better wages [that is driving this],” he said.