The Israeli military says it is carrying out “extensive strikes” in the Gaza Strip, with the Hamas-run health ministry reporting that at least 130 Palestinians have been killed.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was targeting what it called “terror targets” belonging to Hamas.

Mahmoud Abu Wafah, the deputy interior minister in Gaza and the highest-ranking Hamas security official in the territory, has reportedly been killed in a strike.

This is the largest wave of airstrikes in Gaza since the ceasefire began on 19 January. Talks to extend the Gaza ceasefire have failed to reach an agreement.

Many people were having their pre-dawn meal, due to it being the holy month of Ramadan, when explosions started in Gaza, witnesses say.

More than 20 Israeli war planes flew over, they said. The planes then began to hit targets in Gaza City, Rafah and Khan Younis.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered the strikes on Tuesday morning, according to a statement from the PM’s office.

“This follows Hamas’s repeated refusal to release our hostages, as well as its rejection of all of the proposals it has received from US Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff and from the mediators,” it said.

“Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength,” it added.

The plan for the strikes “was presented by the IDF over the weekend and approved by the political leadership”, it said.

Hamas has responded furiously, accusing Israel of treachery for overturning the ceasefire agreement. It also says Israel is exposing the remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza to “an unknown fate”.

But Hamas has not yet declared that it is resuming the war, instead calling on mediators and the United Nations to intervene.

US President Donald Trump’s administration was consulted by Israel prior to carrying out the strikes, a White House spokesperson told Fox News.

Negotiators have been trying to find a way forward after the first phase of the temporary truce ended on 1 March.

The US proposed extending the first phase until mid-April, including a further exchange of hostages held by Hamas and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

But a Palestinian official familiar with the talks told the BBC that Israel and Hamas disagreed over key aspects of the deal set out by Witkoff at the indirect talks.

The latest war between Israel and Hamas started on 7 October 2023, when Hamas killed more than 1,200 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, with 251 taken hostage.

The assault triggered an Israeli military offensive that has since killed more than 48,520 people, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run health ministry which are used by the UN and others.

Most of Gaza’s 2.1 million population has been displaced multiple times.

An estimated 70% of buildings have been damaged or destroyed, healthcare, water, and sanitation systems have collapsed and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.

US President Donald Trump says “many elements” of a peace agreement in Ukraine have been agreed with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, ahead of their much anticipated phone call.

Trump posted on Truth Social that he will speak with Putin on Tuesday morning.

He said that while there have been agreements, “much remains” to be worked upon.

“Each week brings 2,500 soldier deaths, from both sides, and it must end NOW. I look very much forward to the call with President Putin,” Trump wrote.

He earlier told reporters that “we’re going to see if we can work a peace agreement, a ceasefire and peace, and I think we’ll be able to do it”.

In his nightly address on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Putin of prolonging the war.

“This proposal could have been implemented long ago,” he said, adding that “every day in wartime means human lives”.

There have been inconsistencies from within the Trump administration over how advanced the ceasefire talks are.

Speaking after his meeting in Jeddah with Ukrainian officials, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the “bulk” of the conversation had been “what a negotiation process would look like” and not “the specific conditions”.

US envoy Steve Witkoff, who met with Putin on Thursday in Moscow, has also struck a more measured tone.

Meanwhile, the UK and France have urged Putin to prove he wants a peace deal with Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the “courage” of Zelenksy in agreeing to a ceasefire proposal, and challenged Russia to do the same.

“Enough deaths. Enough lives destroyed. Enough destruction. The guns must fall silent,” Macron said in a post on X.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Putin should agree to a “full and unconditional ceasefire now”, telling MPs he had seen “no sign” that Putin was serious about a peace deal.

He warned that the UK and its allies have “more cards that we can play” to help force Russia to negotiate “seriously”.

The White House sounded a more upbeat note on the eve of the Trump-Putin talks, which will take place by phone, saying peace in Ukraine has “never been closer”.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday that Trump was “determined” to secure the peace deal.

On what the talks might cover, she said: “There’s a power plant that is on the border of Russia and Ukraine that was up for discussion with the Ukrainians, and he will address it in his call with Putin tomorrow.”

The facility is likely to be the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe. It has been occupied by Russian forces since March 2022, and fears of a nuclear accident have persisted due to fighting in the area.

Asked on Sunday what concessions were being considered in the ceasefire negotiations, Trump said: “We’ll be talking about land. We’ll be talking about power plants […] We’re already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on what the leaders would discuss, responding, “we never do that”.

While Putin has previously said he supports a ceasefire, he also set out a list of conditions for achieving peace.

One of the areas of contention is Russia’s Western Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a military incursion last August and captured some territory.

Russia had pushed to recapture it in recent weeks, and Putin now claims it is fully back in control of Kursk.

He has also raised numerous questions about how a ceasefire could be monitored and policed along the frontline in the east, and has said he would not accept Nato troops on the territory.

The peace proposal on the table was discussed by Ukrainian and American delegates in Saudi Arabia last week.

After hours locked away in a room, they announced proposals for a 30-day ceasefire, which Ukraine said it was ready to accept.

France’s President Macron and newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who met on Tuesday, stressed their nations would continue their “unwavering” support of Ukraine and demand “clear commitments” from Russia.

King Charles gave a warm welcome to the new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney when he visited Buckingham Palace.

It was another symbolic gesture of support for Canada from a King, wearing a red tie, who has to send coded signals rather than spell things out in words, as Canada faces threats from US President Donald Trump.

But the King has sought to make clear his commitment to Canada – and if it had not been for his cancer diagnosis, the BBC understands he would have travelled there for an intended visit in 2024.

There are also suggestions that once Canada’s election is out the way, a visit to Canada will be a priority, where he can further demonstrate his support.

The new Canadian prime minister told the King that his Order of Canada pin had broken this morning. The King joked: “Do you want another one?”

“There’s much to catch up on,” said the King, ushering Carney to a seat, and perhaps hoping that the broken pin was not a symbol of a Commonwealth relationship under strain.

“These are important matters,” said the King, ahead of a 30-minute conversation with no one else in attendance.

Carney later went on to meet UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer at Downing Street.

Sir Keir hailed the relationship between the two countries and said they had “so much in common – shared history, shared values, shared King.”

Carney said he was “grateful for the welcomes and the constructive discussions” with Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron – whom he had met earlier in the day.

At a news conference, he was asked if he felt let down by the lack of public support for Canada from other allies, given Trump’s trade war with Canada, and his remarks about making Canada the 51st state of the US.

“We don’t need another country to validate our sovereignty, we are sovereign, we don’t need praise from another country, we are proud in and of ourselves,” he said, adding that Sir Keir had made a point of referring to Canada’s sovereignty and to “our shared sovereign in King Charles III.”

The meeting with Carney is the latest scene in an intricate diplomatic balancing act for a King who is head of state of both the UK and Canada.

King Charles has to show solidarity with Canada without disrupting the UK’s relationship with Trump.

The King also has to avoid getting directly involved in politics – and has to speak on advice of ministers. Whatever he might personally believe about Trump’s comments about taking over Canada, the King has to keep his thoughts to himself.

Adding to this complicated choreography is that the royals are one of the strongest cards the UK can play with President Trump. He seemed delighted by his second state visit invitation from the King.

So messages from the King are sent in symbolic displays. In case anyone missed the signs over Canada, there have been multiple moments. And then some more.

When the King visited aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales, he appeared wearing a set of Canadian medals.

The 60th anniversary of Canada’s maple leaf flag might usually have passed without any royal intervention, but there was a fulsome message sent by the King, praising the “proud, resilient and compassionate country”.

A ceremonial sword for Canada became an event at Buckingham Palace with a formal presentation by the King.

At a tree planting ceremony in Buckingham Palace, the tree chosen was a maple. And when the King sat down at the Commonwealth Service last week, it was on a Canadian chair.

If any of these moments were accidental, they were not being rejected by Buckingham Palace, with royal sources emphasising the King’s commitment to Canada.

But there is no avoiding the tensions and contradictions in this balancing act. Emails from Canadians to the BBC’s Royal Watch newsletter show that many want a much more robust defence from the King.

“What a cop out! Throw Canada to the wolves. Giving us back pats for our flag’s anniversary doesn’t quite cut it. Here sits a monarchist who is seriously rethinking his allegiance to the crown!” emailed Brian, a Canadian military veteran.

Carol in Vancouver was unhappy at the invitation from the UK for a second state visit by President Trump.

“I feel ashamed for the Brits feeling they have to follow through with inviting such a boor for dinner. For the life of me I do not understand why he has this power over you,” she wrote.

“As a Canadian, the invitation is a slap in the face to the people of Canada. If the King is our King (as we are a Commonwealth country), and Trump is basically at war with us, how dare King Charles give him any credence?” emailed Patricia.

“As a Canadian I am saddened, appalled, disgusted and angry that King Charles appears to be joining the conga line of supplicants,” said Jo-Ann in Ontario.

But King Charles will have to keep to the line set by ministers, and if that means maintaining good relations with Trump, he is unlikely to be saying anything more outspoken.

Sign up here to get the latest royal stories and analysis straight to your inbox every week with our Royal Watch newsletter. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

President Trump has said “many” pardons issued by Joe Biden are void because the former president signed them with “autopen” – a device which reproduces a person’s signature – rather than by hand.

Trump did not provide evidence for his claim – which was posted on Truth Social.

BBC Verify has found several instances of Biden signing pardons by hand rather than by autopen.

And a sample presidential signature is used on US government documents when they are stored in the Federal Register – a digital archive. This was the case under Trump as well as under Biden.

Legal experts also told us that there is nothing in US law which would invalidate pardons signed by autopen.

On Truth Social, Trump said that: “The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen. In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!”.

Trump didn’t specify which pardons he was referring to but he has previously referred to the house select committee investigating the 6 January riots as the “unselect committee”, and has criticised Biden for pardoning family members.

BBC Verify looked through official photographs of Biden in the White House and ones posted on the official White House X account and found a number of examples of him signing pardons by hand.

In October 2022, Biden was pictured signing an order pardoning those in jail for marijuana possession.

In the same year, he also signed a pardon for non-violent offenders.

It is not known whether Biden has signed any pardons only using autopen.

In May last year, CNN did report that he signed a bill for a one-week extension for federal aviation funding using autopen.

BBC Verify has asked Biden’s office for his record of using autopen and the White House for the evidence behind Trump’s claim.

Trump appears to have taken his cue from the Oversight Project – part of the Conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation – which has claimed that Biden’s 19 January pardons – of some family members and political figures including Anthony Fauci – all had the same autopen signature.

We have asked the Heritage Foundation for its workings. Previously, it has highlighted other Biden documents which it says had autopen signatures, along with screenshots taken from the Federal Register.

The register is the official, daily publication of various presidential and other government documents – which all have a standard signature created from a single sample.

A National Archives spokesperson told the fact-checking website Snopes that: “At the beginning of each administration, the White House sends a sample of the President’s signature to the Federal Register, which uses it to create the graphic image for all Presidential Documents published in the Federal Register,”

We looked through presidential documents archived by the Federal Register under both Trump administrations and found identical signatures on documents.

That includes Trump’s pardons for the 6 January rioters.

Trump had already signed these pardons by hand, as this video showed in January.

Presidential pardons are also published by the US Department of Justice. We have asked it how these documents are archived.

Legal experts who we spoke to told us that there is nothing in US law which says official documents signed by US presidents – including pardons – are not legally binding if they were signed with autopen.

Andrew Moran, a politics professor at London Metropolitan University, says that previous presidents have used autopen before.

“On lower-level importance documents, it’s not unusual for an autopen to be used.

“But I would have thought that with something as serious as a pardon Biden would have actually signed it [by hand]”, he said.

A 2005 memo from the Department of Justice during the Bush administration stated that the President does not have to physically sign a bill for it to become law.

“The President may sign a bill within the meaning of Article I, Section 7 by directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen”, the memo said.

Although George W. Bush did not use autopen himself, President Obama used it in 2011.

Autopen has also been used by earlier presidents including JFK and Harry Truman.

Professor Erin Delaney, director of the Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism at UCL, says that an attempt by Trump to rescind Biden’s pardons would be a “violation of unwritten constitutional norms”.

Critically, he would not be able to pursue this action without prosecuting, or re-prosecuting the individuals who were given immunity, she argues.

Legally challenging Biden’s pardons because of autopen would also call into question other aspects of US governance that use automatic signatures, such as bills passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, she added.

Professor Moran says that a president revoking his predecessor’s pardon is extremely rare.

“Historically, the only example I’m aware of is towards the end of Andrew Johnson’s presidency in the 1860s, when he issued some pardons which were revoked before they were accepted. But that’s a very small number.

“If he [Trump] decides that he wants to go after the people who were pardoned, that will end up in the courts and then that would become the point where the constitution is really tested”, he said.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

The Chinese government has promised new child care subsidies, increased wages and better paid leave to revive a slowing economy. That is on top of a $41bn discount programme for all sorts of things, from dishwashers and home decor to electric vehicles and smartwatches.

Beijing is going on a spending spree that will encourage Chinese people to crack open their wallets.

Simply put, they are not spending enough.

Monday brought some positive news. Official data said retail sales grew 4% in the first two months of 2025, a positive sign for consumption data. But, with a few exceptions like Shanghai aside, new and existing home prices continued to decline compared to last year.

While the US and other major powers have struggled with post-Covid inflation, China is experiencing the opposite: deflation – when the rate of inflation falls below zero, meaning that prices decrease. In China, prices fell for 18 months in a row in the past two years.

Prices dropping might sound like good news for consumers. But a persistent decline in consumption – a measure of what households buy – signals deeper economic trouble. When people stop spending, businesses cut prices to attract buyers. The more this happens, the less money they make, hiring slows, wages stagnate and economic momentum grinds to a halt.

That is a cycle China wants to avoid, given it’s already battling sluggish growth in the wake of a prolonged crisis in the property market, steep government debt and unemployment.

The cause of low consumption is straightforward: Chinese consumers either don’t have enough money or don’t feel confident enough about their future to spend it.

But their reluctance comes at a critical moment. With the economy aiming to grow at 5% this year, boosting consumption is a top priority for President Xi Jinping. He is hoping that rising domestic consumption will absorb the blow US tariffs will inflict on Chinese exports.

So, will Beijing’s plan work?

To tackle its ailing economy and weak domestic demand, Beijing wrapped up its annual National People’s Congress last week with increased investment in social welfare programmes as part of its grand economic plan for 2025.

Then came this week’s announcement with bigger promises, such as employment support plans, but scant details.

Some say it is a welcome move, with the caveat that China’s leaders need to do more to step up support. Still, it signals Beijing’s awareness of the changes needed for a stronger Chinese consumer market – higher wages, a stronger social safety net and policies that make people feel secure enough to spend rather than save.

A quarter of China’s labour force is made up of low-paid migrant workers, who lack full access to urban social benefits. This makes them particularly vulnerable during periods of economic uncertainty, such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

Rising wages during the 2010s masked some of these problems, with average incomes growing by around 10% annually. But as wage growth slowed in the 2020s, savings once again became a lifeline.

The Chinese government, however, has been slow to expand social benefits, focusing instead on boosting consumption through short-term measures, such as trade-in programmes for household appliances and electronics. But that has not addressed a root problem, says Gerard DiPippo, a senior researcher at the Rand think tank: “Household incomes are lower, and savings are higher”.

The near-collapse of the property market has also made Chinese consumers more risk-averse, leading them to cut back on spending.

“The property market matters not only for real economic activity but also for household sentiment, since Chinese households have invested so much of their wealth in their homes,” Mr DiPippo says. “I don’t think China’s consumption will fully recover until it’s clear that the property sector has bottomed out and therefore many households’ primary assets are starting to recover.”

Some analysts are encouraged by Beijing’s seriousness in targeting longer-term challenges like falling birth rates as more young couples opt out of the costs of parenthood.

A 2024 study by Chinese think tank YuWa estimated that raising a child to adulthood in China costs 6.8 times the country’s GDP per capita – among the highest in the world, compared to the US (4.1), Japan (4.3) and Germany (3.6).

These financial pressures have only reinforced a deeply ingrained saving culture. Even in a struggling economy, Chinese households managed to save 32% of their disposable income in 2024.

That’s not too surprising in China, where consumption has never been particularly high. To put this in perspective, domestic consumption drives more than 80% of growth in the US and UK, and about 70% in India. China’s share has typically ranged between 50% to 55% over the past decade.

But this wasn’t really a problem – until now.

There was a time when Chinese shoppers joked about the irresistible allure of e-commerce deals, calling themselves “hand-choppers” – only chopping off their hands could stop them from hitting the checkout button.

As rising incomes fuelled their spending power, 11 November in China, or Double 11, came to be crowned as the world’s busiest shopping day. Explosive sales pulled in over 410 billion yuan ($57bn; £44bn) in just 24 hours in 2019.

But the last one “was a dud,” a Beijing-based coffee bean online seller told the BBC. “If anything, it caused more trouble than it was worth.”

Chinese consumers have grown frugal since the pandemic, and this caution has persisted even after restrictions were lifted in late 2022.

That’s the year Alibaba and JD.com stopped publishing their sales figures, a significant shift for companies that once headlined their record-breaking revenues. A source familiar with the matter told the BBC that Chinese authorities cautioned platforms against releasing numbers, fearing that underwhelming results could further dent consumer confidence.

The spending crunch has even hit high-end brands – last year, LVMH, Burberry and Richemont all reported sales declines in China, once a backbone of the global luxury market.

On RedNote, a Chinese social media app, posts tagged with “consumption downgrade” have racked up more than a billion views in recent months. Users are swapping tips on how to replace expensive purchases with budget-friendly alternatives. “Tiger Balm is the new coffee,” said one user, while another quipped, “I apply perfume between my nose and lips now – saving it just for myself.”

Even at its peak, China’s consumer boom was never a match for its exports. Trade was also the focus of generous state-backed investment in highways, ports and special economic zones. China relied on low-wage workers and high household savings, which fuelled growth but left consumers with limited disposable income.

But now, as geopolitical uncertainties grow, countries are diversifying supply chains away from China, reducing reliance on Chinese exports. Local governments are burdened by debt, after years of borrowing heavily to invest, particularly in infrastructure.

Xi Jinping has already vowed “to make domestic demand the main driving force and stabilising anchor of growth”. Caiyun Wang, a National People’s Congress representative, said, “With a population of 1.4 billion, even a 1% rise in demand creates a market of 14 million people.”

But there’s a catch in Beijing’s plan.

For consumption to drive growth, many analysts say, the Chinese Communist Party would have to restore the consumer confidence of a generation of Covid graduates that is struggling to own a home or find a job. It would also require triggering a cultural shift, from saving to spending.

“China’s extraordinarily low consumption level is not an accident,” according to Michael Pettis, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It is fundamental to the country’s economic growth model, around which three-four decades of political, financial, legal and business institutions in China have evolved. Changing this won’t be easy.”

The more households spend, the less there is in the pool of savings that China’s state-controlled banks rely on to fund key industries – currently that includes AI and innovative tech that would give Beijing an edge over Washington, both economically and strategically.

That is why some analysts doubt that China’s leaders want to create a consumer-driven economy.

“One way to think about this is that Beijing’s primary goal is not to enhance the welfare of Chinese households, but rather the welfare of the Chinese nation,” David Lubin, a research fellow at Chatham House wrote.

Shifting power from the state to the individual may not be what Beijing wants.

China’s leaders did do that in the past, when they began trading with the world, encouraging businesses and inviting foreign investment. And it transformed their economy. But the question is whether Xi Jinping wants to do that again.

A political storm is brewing in India, with the first waves already hitting the southern part of the country.

Leaders there are calling for mass mobilisation to protect the region’s political interests amid a heated controversy over the redrawing of electoral seats to reflect changes in population over time.

In a high-stakes push, they are urging citizens to “have more children”, using meetings and media campaigns to amplify their message: that the process of delimitation could shift the balance of power.

“Delimitation is a Damocles’ sword hanging over southern India,” says MK Stalin, chief minister of Tamil Nadu, one of India’s five southern states, and an arch rival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). (The other four are Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Telangana.)

These five states account for 20% of India’s 1.4 billion people. They also outperform the rest of the country in health, education and economic prospects. A child is less likely to be born here than in the north, due to lower population growth rates.

Their leaders are worried that the more prosperous south may lose parliamentary seats in the future, a “punishment” for having fewer children and generating more wealth. Wealthier southern states have always contributed more to federal revenue, with poorer, highly populated states in the north receiving larger shares based on need.

India’s Constitution mandates that seats be allocated to each state based on its population, with constituencies of roughly equal size. It also requires reallocation of seats after each census, reflecting updated population figures.

So India redrew parliamentary seats three times based on the decennial census in 1951, 1961 and 1971. Since then, governments of all stripes have paused the exercise, fearing an imbalance of representation due to varying fertility rates across states.

The next delimitation exercise is set for 2026, but uncertainty looms as India hasn’t conducted a census since 2011, with no clear timeline for when it will take place.

This has set the stage for a potential crisis. “Tamil Nadu is leading the charge and India is on the brink of a federal deadlock,” says Yamini Aiyar, a senior fellow at Brown University

The number of seats in the Lok Sabha – the lower house of parliament representing directly elected MPs – has risen from 494 to 543 and has remained constant since then. The freeze means that despite India’s growing population since 1971, the number of Lok Sabha seats per state has stayed the same, with no new seats added.

In 1951, each MP represented just over 700,000 people. Today, that number has surged to an average of 2.5 million per MP – more than three times the population represented by a member of the US House of Representatives. In comparison, a UK MP represents around 120,000 people.

Experts say all Indians are underrepresented – though not equally so – because constituencies are too large. (The original Constitution capped the ratio at one MP for 750,000 people)

That’s not all. Using census data and population projections, economist Shruti Rajagopalan of George Mason University has highlighted the “severe malapportionment” – unequal distribution of political representation – in India.

Consider this. In Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s most populous state with over 240 million people, each MP represents about three million citizens.

Meanwhile, in Kerala, where fertility rates are similar to many European countries, an MP represents roughly 1.75 million.

This means the average voter in Kerala in the south has 1.7 times more influence in choosing an MP than a voter in UP in the north.

Ms Rajagopalan also notes that Tamil Nadu and Kerala now have nine and six seats more than their population share, while populous, poorer states like Bihar and UP have nine and 12 seats fewer than their proportion. (Stalin warns that Tamil Nadu could lose eight seats if delimitation occurs in 2026, based on projected population figures.)

By 2031, the problem will intensify: UP and Bihar will fall a dozen seats short of their population proportion, while Tamil Nadu will likely have 11 seats more than its proportion, with other states falling “somewhere in between,” according to Ms Rajagopalan.

“Consequently,” she says, “India is no longer living up to its fundamental constitutional principle of ‘one-person, one vote’.” To make this principle meaningful, constituency sizes must be roughly equal.

Experts have proposed several solutions, many of which will require strong bipartisan consensus.

One option is to increase the number of seats in the lower house.

In other words, India should revert to the original constitutional ratio of one MP for every 750,000 people, which would expand the Lok Sabha to 1,872 seats. (The new parliament building has the capacity for 880 seats, so it would need a major upgrade.)

The other option is for the total number of seats in Lok Sabha to increase to the extent that no state loses its current number of electoral seats – to achieve this the number of seats in the Lok Sabha would need to be 848, by several estimations.

Accompanying this move, experts like Ms Rajagopalan advocate for a more decentralised fiscal system.

In this model, states would have greater revenue-raising powers and retain most or all of their revenue. Federal funds would then be allocated based on development needs. Currently, states receive less than 40% of the total revenue but spend about 60% of it, while the rest is raised and spent by the central government.

A third solution is to reform the composition of the upper house of the parliament. The Rajya Sabha represents states’ interests, with seats allocated proportionally to population and capped at 250.

Rajya Sabha members are elected by state legislatures, not directly by the public. Milan Vaishnav of Carnegie Endowment for Peace suggests a radical approach would be to fix the number of seats per state in the upper house, similar to the US Senate.

“Transforming the upper house into a real venue for debate of states’ interests could potentially soften the opposition to a reallocation of seats in the lower house,” he argues.

Then there are other proposals like splitting big states – India’s top five states have more than 45% share of total seats.

Miheer Karandikar of Takshashila Institution, a Bangalore-based think-tank, cites UP as an example of how big states skew things. UP’s share of total votes cast in India is around 14% currently. He estimates this would likely increase to 16% after delimitation, “which allows it to retain its status as the most significant state politically and in terms of legislative influence”. Splitting a state like UP could help matters.

For now, the anxious southern leaders – whose rhetoric is partly political with Tamil Nadu elections looming next summer – have been joined by counterparts in Punjab to urge the government to maintain current seats and freeze electoral boundaries for the next 30 years, beyond 2026. In other words, it’s a call for more of the same, preserving the status quo.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has made little significant statement so far. Home Minister Amit Shah claimed southern states would not lose “even a single seat” in the upcoming delimitation, though the meaning remains unclear. Meanwhile, the federal government’s decision to withhold education funds and label Tamil Nadu’s leadership as “undemocratic and uncivilised” over a contentious education policy has deepened divisions.

Political scientist Suhas Palshikar warns that the north-south divide threatens India’s federal structure. “The north-south prism is only likely to persuade people and parties of the north to push for a delimitation that would give them an advantage. Such a counter-mobilisation in the north can make it impossible to arrive at any negotiated settlement, Mr Palshikar noted.

He believes that expanding the size of the Lok Sabha and ensuring that no state loses its current strength is not only “politically prudent step”, but something which will “enrich the idea of democracy in the Indian context.” Balancing representation will be the key to preserving India’s strained federal spirit.

A jury in the trial of a former nurse accused of murdering a woman on a remote Australian beach has been discharged, after they could not reach a verdict.

Toyah Cordingley was stabbed at least 26 times while out walking her dog in October 2018.

The 24-year-old’s body was discovered by her father, half-buried in sand dunes on Wangetti beach between the popular tourist hotspots of Cairns and Port Douglas.

Rajwinder Singh, 40, who travelled to India the day after Ms Cordingley’s body was found, was charged with murder. He was arrested and then extradited to Australia in 2023.

But jurors at Cairns Supreme Court said they were deadlocked, and unable to reach a unanimous decision on his guilt after two-and-half days of deliberations. The judge thanked the jury for their “diligence”.

Under Queensland law, jury verdicts in murder cases must be unanimous. So Mr Singh will face another trial.

Originally from Buttar Kalan in the Indian state of Punjab, Mr Singh had been living in Innisfail at the time of the killing, a town about two hours south from the crime scene.

Prosecutors said they did not have a motive for the killing of Ms Cordingley – a health store worker and animal shelter volunteer – and there was no evidence of a sexual assault.

The trial at Cairns Supreme court heard that a DNA sample taken from the victim’s right fingernails matched the profile of Mr Singh, and that DNA highly likely to be his was also discovered on a stick on the grave.

Data from mobile phone towers also suggested Ms Cordingley’s phone had moved in a similar pattern to Mr Singh’s blue Alfa Romeo car on the day the victim went missing.

The prosecution also suggested the hurried way Mr Singh left Australia without saying goodbye to his family or colleagues pointed to his guilt.

Mr Singh had denied murder – and had told an undercover police officer he had seen the killing, then left the country, leaving behind his wife and children because he feared for his own life.

His defence lawyer said he was “a coward” but not a killer, and accused police of a “flawed” investigation that did not look sufficiently at other possible suspects.

They said DNA found at the scene, on the victim’s fingernails, and her discarded selfie stick did not match Mr Singh’s profile.

“There is an unknown person’s DNA at that grave site,” defence barrister Angus Edwards told the jury.

A group of scientists due to work together for months at a remote Antarctic research station has been rocked after a member of the team was accused of assault.

About 10 researchers typically stay at the South African-run base, which sits about 170km (about 105 miles) from the edge of the ice shelf and is difficult to reach.

But a spokesperson for the South African government told the BBC “there was an assault” at the station, following earlier allegations of inappropriate behaviour from inside the camp.

In a further message seen by the BBC, the South African environment ministry said it was responding to the concerns with “utmost urgency”.

South Africa’s Sunday Times, which was first to report the story, said members of the team had pleaded to be rescued.

The ministry also said that those in the team had been subject to “a number of evaluations that include background checks, reference checks, medical assessment as well as a psychometric evaluation by qualified professionals”, which all members had cleared.

The Sanae IV research base is located more than 4,000km from mainland South Africa and harsh weather conditions mean scientists can be cut off there for much of the year.

The current team were expected to be at the Sanae IV base until December.

South African research expeditions have been taking place since 1959. The team to the Sanae IV base typically comprises a doctor, two mechanics, three engineers, a meteorological technician and a couple of physicians.

These expeditions, with harsh weather conditions mandating a lot of time spent in a confined indoor space, normally run without incident, and team members have to undergo a range of psychological assessments before travelling.

But on Sunday, South Africa’s Sunday Times reported that one member of the team had sent an email warning of “deeply disturbing behaviour” by a colleague and an “environment of fear”.

A South African government spokesperson told the BBC that the alleged assault was triggered by “a dispute over a task the team leader wanted the team to do – a weather dependant task that required a schedule change”.

Incidents in Antarctica are rare, but not unprecedented. In 2018 there were reports of a stabbing at the Russian-operated Bellingshausen research station.

Psychologists point to the effect that isolation can have on human behaviour.

“One thing we know from these rare occurrences, when something bad happens in enforced isolation or capsule working, is that it’s often the small things, tiny things that can blow up into conflict,” said Craig Jackson, professor of workplace health psychology at Birmingham City University, and a chartered member of the British Psychological Society.

“So issues about hierarchy, about workload allocation, even small things about leisure time or rations or food portions can rapidly flare up to become something much larger than they typically are,” he told the BBC.

Gabrielle Walker, a scientist and author who has been on expeditions to Antarctica, said working in such close proximity to a small group of colleagues had risks.

“You know exactly how they put their coffee cup down and what direction the handle points in; you know that they scratch their nose three times before they sit down; you know everything about them.

“And in the bad circumstances, it can start to irritate you… because there’s nothing else – there’s no other stimulus and you’re with people 24/7,” she said.

Sources within the Antarctic research community have told the BBC that South Africa has access to an ice-capable ship and aircraft if needed.

But any rescue operation would have to contend with the harsh climate, with temperatures well below freezing and the possibility of strong winds.

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Thousands of people have protested in the North Macedonian town of Kocani, demanding justice and action against corruption after a nightclub fire killed 59 people, many of them teenagers.

“Nobody should die like that – nobody,” a teenage boy told the BBC. “Those kids, they had a future, they had talents.”

The Pulse nightclub was packed with fans watching DNK, a popular hip-hop band, when sparks from flares apparently set a patch of ceiling ablaze.

About 20 people have been detained for questioning over the disaster, including the nightclub owner and some former government ministers.

Many in Kocani believe that corruption had allowed the improvised venue to operate with inadequate safety measures.

Relatives of children who are still missing have been queueing outside a hospital to give DNA samples to help with identification.

Kocani, a town of about 25,000 people, lies some 100km (60 miles) east of the capital, Skopje.

More than 160 people were injured in the blaze, including 45 suffering very serious injuries. Many of them have been flown to hospitals in neighbouring Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Turkey for specialist treatment.

At the protest rally, the uncle of a 19-year-old man who died said “those scenes should never be repeated”.

“When there was a war here, it wasn’t as bad as that. So many young people have died.”

After a long time standing in silence the crowd started chanting “we are asking for justice!”

Mourners lit candles, hugged and cried, and wrote messages of condolence in the central square.

A group of teenagers targeted a bar, smashing windows and ransacking it, believing it to belong to the Pulse club owner.

The deadly fire began around 02:30 local time (01:30 GMT) on Sunday and spread rapidly as the ceiling was made of flammable material, Interior Minister Pance Toskovski said.

He said there are “grounds for suspicion that there is bribery and corruption” linked to the fire.

There were 500 people inside the venue at the time, well over capacity for the 250 tickets sold, he said.

Officials say the club’s licence had been obtained illegally and the venue was a converted carpet warehouse, whose single emergency exit was locked at the time.

There were just two fire extinguishers and no fire alarm or sprinkler system, state prosecutor Ljupco Kocevski said.

A civic group in North Macedonia has called for people across the country to gather in city centres on Tuesday.

The last surviving Battle of Britain pilot, John “Paddy” Hemingway, has died at the age of 105.

Mr Hemingway, who was originally from Dublin, joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a teenager before World War Two.

At 21, he was a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain, a three-month period when air force personnel defended the skies against a large-scale assault by the German air force, the Luftwaffe.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer paid tribute to Mr Hemingway, saying his courage and those of all RAF pilots had “helped end WWII and secure our freedom”.

Those who fought in the three-and-a-half-month battle came to be known as “The Few” after a speech by the then Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill.

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,” he said of their sacrifices in battle.

In a statement, the RAF said that Mr Hemingway had “passed away peacefully” on Monday.

The pilot’s squadron shot down 90 enemy aircraft during an 11-day period in May 1940, and provided fighter cover during the Battle of France.

During the war, Gp Capt Hemingway was shot down four times.

During dogfights – or one-on-one aerial combats – in August 1940, Mr Hemingway was forced to bail out of his Hurricane single-seat fighter on two occasions, landing in the sea off the coast of Essex and in marshland.

The wreckage of his Hurricane was recovered in 2019 with the control column and the gun-button still set to “fire”.

In July 1941, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross – awarded to RAF personnel for an act or acts of valour, courage or devotion to duty while flying on active operations.

On the way to receive his medal from the King, he was forced to escape from a Blenheim aircraft, which crashed during take-off.

While serving with the 85 Squadron in RAF Hunsdon near Hertfordshire, Mr Hemingway was forced to bail out of his Havoc night fighter at 600ft (183m) due to instrument failure in bad weather.

He broke his hand on the tail section and his parachute failed to open, with the chute catching on the branches of a tree.

He was forced to bail out a fourth time while fighting near Ravenna, Italy, when his Spitfire was hit multiple times. He landed in enemy territory, and made contact with Italian citizens, who helped him back to the Allies.

Speaking to BBC News NI in 2023, Gp Capt Hemingway said he had never looked for fame for being part of “The Few”.

“I don’t think we ever assumed greatness of any form,” he said.

“We were just fighting a war which we were trained to fight.”

Mr Hemingway said that his biggest regret was the loss of friends, in particular that of Richard “Dickie” Lee in August 1940.

The RAF said that Mr Hemingway’s passing marked “the end of an era and a poignant reminder of the sacrifices made by those who fought for freedom during World War II”.

“His courage in the face of overwhelming odds demonstrated his sense of duty and the importance of British resilience.”

Mr Hemingway “always had a twinkle in his eyes as he recalled the fun times with colleagues in France and London”, the statement said.

“This quiet, composed, thoughtful and mischievous individual may not have wanted to be the last of ‘The Few’, but he embodied the spirit of all those who flew sorties over this green and pleasant land,” it added.

Chief of RAF Air Staff Sir Rich Knighton said he had spent time with Mr Hemingway in Dublin earlier this year.

“Paddy was an amazing character whose life story embodies all that was and remains great about the Royal Air Force.”

What happens today, here in Berlin, will impact the entire future of Europe’s defence and its ongoing support for Ukraine.

Germany’s Parliament, the Bundestag, is voting on whether to take the brakes off defence spending. This could pave the way for a massive uplift in military investment just as Russia makes gains in Ukraine and Washington signals that Europe can no longer rely on US protection.

“This vote in the Bundestag is absolutely crucial,” says Prof Monika Schnitzer, who chairs Germany’s Council of Economic Experts.

“After the Munich Security Conference, then the Trump-Zelensky row, Europe got a wake-up call. For the first time Europeans may not be able to rely on Washington. A lot of people had sleepless nights after that.”

“The outlook for European defence spending hinges on developments in Germany, as the holder of the region’s largest defence budget,” agrees Dr Fenella McGerty, senior fellow for defence economics at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Defence spending in Germany rose by 23.2% last year, helping to drive a record 11.7% rise in European defence outlay.

“The remarkable initiatives announced in Germany are key to enabling further growth,” adds Dr McGerty.

“Without them, any progress made on strengthening Germany’s military capability may have stalled.”

Germany’s incoming new Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is in a race against time.

The new parliament convenes on 25 March and not everyone is in favour of all this money being spent, especially on defence.

Both the far-right AfD party and the far-left Linke have vowed to oppose it. The vote needs two-thirds in favour to go through, so Merz has a better chance of this happening today, under the existing (old) parliament. It then needs to be approved by Germany’s upper house.

Meanwhile Europe is still coming to terms with the shock of announcements coming from the Trump administration.

At last month’s Munich Security Conference I watched as delegates sat open-mouthed listening to US Vice-President JD Vance’s blistering attack on Europe’s policies on migration and free speech.

This was preceded days earlier by US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth telling Nato members that America’s 80-year-long defensive umbrella for Europe should no longer be taken for granted.

Defence strategists in Europe are already planning for the unthinkable: a semi-victorious Russia making gains in Ukraine, then rebuilding its army and threatening Nato’s eastern members, such as the Baltic states, within three years or less.

This, at a time when the US commitment to Europe’s defence is looking extremely shaky. President Trump is being urged by some in his circle to pull US troops out of Europe and even to withdraw from Nato altogether.

There is talk of France extending its national nuclear deterrent to cover other European nations.

Meanwhile, most European governments are under pressure to raise defence spending after years of cuts.

The British Army has now shrunk to its smallest size since the Napoleonic Wars, over 200 years ago, and experts predict it would run out of ammunition within two weeks of fighting a full-scale conventional war in Europe.

Germany has long been cautious about defence spending, not just for historical reasons dating back to 1945, but also due to the global debt crisis of 2009.

Which brings us back to today’s crucial vote in the Bundestag. It is not just about defence. One part is about freeing up €500bn (£420bn) for German infrastructure – fixing things like bridges and roads, but also to pay for climate change measures, something the Green Party insisted on.

The other part is about removing the restrictions in the constitution on borrowing that could, in theory, free up unlimited billions of euros for defence spending, both for Germany’s armed forces and for a pan-European defence fund. On 4 March European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen announced plans for an €800bn defence fund called The ReArm Europe Fund.

The proposal being voted on in Berlin is that any spending on defence that amounts to more than 1% of Germany’s GDP (national wealth) would no longer be subject to a limit on borrowing. Until now this debt ceiling has been fixed at 0.35 pct of GDP.

Other countries will be watching closely to see if this proposal passes. If it does not, then the EU Commission’s ‘ReArm Europe’ project could be off to a shaky start.

The challenge today for Europe’s security is a stark one. If the US no longer has its back, or at the very least cannot be relied upon to come to Europe’s defence, then what does the continent need to do to fill the gap?

Let’s start with the numbers. According to the Kiel Institute, which meticulously tracks these things, Europe spends just 0.1% of its wealth on helping to defend Ukraine, while the US has been spending 0.15%.

“That means,” says the Kiel Institute’s Giuseppe Irto, “that if Europe is to make up the shortfall then it needs to double its contribution to 0.21%.”

But regardless of what happens today in Berlin this is not just about money.

Many of the most sought-after weapons in Ukraine’s armoury have come from the US, like Patriot air defence and long-range artillery systems like Himars. The Kiel Institute puts the proportion of Ukraine’s rocket artillery at 86% coming from the US, with 82% of its howitzer ammunition also being US-sourced.

Then there is the whole question of US intelligence aid for Kyiv, much of it derived from satellites and geospatial imagery. If Washington were to permanently switch that off, then Ukrainian forces risk being partially blinded.

If America’s nuclear arsenal is taken out of the equation then there is a massive disparity between Russia’s 5,000-plus warheads and the combined total of Britain and France’s nukes which amount to less than a tenth of that. But that still theoretically leaves enough to act as a nuclear deterrent.

When it comes to “conventional”, ie. non-nuclear arms, Western defence chiefs are fond of saying that Nato’s combined forces are superior to Russia’s.

Maybe, but if there is one glaring lesson to come out of the Ukraine war it is that “mass” matters. Russia’s army may be of poor quality but President Putin has been able to throw such huge numbers of men, drones, shells and missiles at Ukraine’s front lines that the Russians are inexorably advancing, albeit slowly and at huge cost.

This should not come as a surprise. Moscow put its economy on to a war footing some time ago. It appointed an economist as its defence minister and retooled many of its factories to churn out vast quantities of munitions, especially explosive-tipped drones.

While many European nations have dragged their feet over raising defence spending much above the Nato-mandated 2% of GDP, Russia’s is closer to 7%. Around 40% of Russia’s national budget is spent on defence.

So Europe has a fair bit of catching up to do if it is to even come close to shoring up its defence and security.

“If the vote passes then it will be significant for Germany and for Europe,” says Ed Arnold, senior research fellow for European security at the Royal United Services Institute think tank.

“It will set a precedent and allow others to follow… However, three years on from the invasion of Ukraine the case of Germany is a reminder that more money for defence is necessary but not sufficient.

“Europe needs defence and security leaders who are able to navigate a rapidly deteriorating Euro-Atlantic security environment. Cultural, rather than financial reform, would be most valuable to Europe right now.”

A US federal court judge has questioned why the Trump administration failed to obey his order halting the deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members.

James Boasberg, the top federal judge in Washington DC, ordered deportation flights to be turned around on Saturday night.

White House officials argued in a court filing that it did not defy the ruling, arguing in part that because Boasberg’s order was made orally rather than in written form, it was not enforceable – and that the planes had already left the US by the time it was issued.

During a hearing Monday, Boasberg said he clearly ordered the government to turn the planes around.

“You’re saying that you felt you could disregard it because it wasn’t in a written order?” he asked Department of Justice lawyers.

Boasberg ordered the administration to provide further details about the timing of the order under which the deportations occurred, as well as details about the flights themselves, giving government lawyers a deadline of noon (16:00 GMT) on Tuesday.

The judge said he would not make another ruling in the case until a hearing scheduled for Friday.

In the meantime, government lawyers said that the deportations had been paused. The Trump administration also asked in a court motion that Boasberg be removed from the case.

The dispute began over the weekend when a group of 238 alleged Venezuelan gang members, plus 23 alleged members of the international MS-13 gang, were sent from the US to a prison in El Salvador.

Announcing the move on Saturday, Trump accused the gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) of “perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States”.

He cited the Alien Enemies Act – legislation dating to 1798 that allows non-citizens to be deported in wartime. The act was last used during World War Two, when it was invoked to arrest and deport citizens of Axis countries.

Campaign groups have questioned Trump’s justification.

The act was used as the basis to deport 137 of the total of 261 people who were deported, the White House said on Monday. The basis on which the other deportees were removed from the US is unclear.

On Saturday, during the hearing that took place as several of the deportation flights were in the air, Boasberg ordered a 14-day pause.

After lawyers told the judge that planes with deportees already had taken off, he reportedly gave a verbal order for the flights to turn back “immediately”, although that directive was not included in a written ruling published shortly thereafter.

Under the US system of checks and balances, government agencies are expected to comply with a federal judge’s ruling.

• US deports hundreds of Venezuelans despite court order
• What is Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang targeted by Trump?

But Trump’s Department of Justice argued, citing case law in a filing on Monday, that “an oral directive is not enforceable as an injunction”.

Administration officials also pointed out that the five named plaintiffs in the lawsuit that prompted the hearing were not among those deported, and also argued that once the flights left US airspace, the judge’s powers no longer applied.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “The administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order.”

Neither the US government nor El Salvador has named those who have been deported, or provided details of their alleged criminality or gang membership.

Several relatives of men believed to be among the group told the New York Times that their loved ones did not have gang ties.

The White House, for its part, has insisted that authorities are “sure” that the detainees were gang members, based on intelligence.

Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan, told reporters at the White House on Monday that Trump did “exactly the right thing”.

“The plane was already over international waters with a plane full of terrorists and significant public safety threats,” he said.

“We removed terrorists. That should be celebrated in this country.”

El Salvador has agreed to accept the deportees from the US.

The country’s president, Nayib Bukele, appeared to mock the judge’s ruling.

“Oopsie… Too late,” he posted on social media, along with a picture of a headline announcing the ruling and a ‘crying with laughter’ emoji.

His team also published footage of some of the detainees inside one of its mega-jails.

According to the White House, El Salvador’s government received $6m (£4.62m) to take the detainees, which Leavitt said “is pennies on the dollar” compared to the cost of holding inmates in US prisons.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which brought the lawsuit leading to the judge’s order, questioned Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, a sweeping wartime authority that allows fast-track deportations.

“I think we’re in very dangerous territory here in the United States with the invocation of this law,” said the ACLU’s Lee Gelernt.

The Alien Enemies Act only allowed deportations when the US was in a declared war with that foreign government, or was being invaded, Mr Gelernt said.

“A gang is not invading,” he told BBC News.

Making matters worse was the fact “the administration is saying nobody can review what they’re doing”, Mr Gelernt added.

Amnesty International USA said the deportations were “yet another example of the Trump administration’s racist targeting” of Venezuelans “based on sweeping claims of gang affiliation”.

Venezuela itself criticised Trump, saying he “unjustly criminalises Venezuelan migration”.

The latest deportations under Trump’s second term are part of the president’s long-running campaign against illegal immigration.

The two gangs targeted with the weekend deportations were declared “foreign terrorist organisations” by Trump after returning to the White House in January.

• 17:25 EDT: A first flight believed to be carrying deportees leaves Texas, according to data from tracking site Flightradar24. Take off happens while a hearing held by Judge Boasberg is paused. Earlier that afternoon, the White House said Trump was invoking the Alien Enemies Act
• 17:44 EDT: A second flight believed to be carrying deportees leaves Texas, according to Flightradar24
• 18:05 EDT: Boasberg’s hearing resumes
• 18:46 EDT: During the hearing, Boasberg verbally orders the government to turn around the two planes if they are carrying non-citizens, saying: “any plane containing these folks – because it’s going to take off or it’s in the air – needs to be returned to the United States… This is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.”
• 19:26 EDT: Boasberg issues his written ruling which includes a temporary restraining order on any further flights
• 19:36 EDT: A third flight believed to be carrying deportees leaves Texas, according to Flightradar24

Voting, enjoying Christmas dinner and keeping fit in zero gravity – that’s just some of what has kept Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams busy during their prolonged stay on the International Space Station (ISS).

So what has life been like for the Nasa astronauts orbiting 250 miles (400km) above us, and how have they passed the time?

Of course there was a lot of serious space stuff to keep them occupied.

Suni, 59, and Butch, 62, have been helping ongoing missions at the station with maintenance and experiments, and have conducted spacewalks.

Suni ventured outside in mid-January with fellow astronaut Nick Hague to perform repairs on the craft. She and Butch went out together later in the month.

Their tasks included repairing equipment that governs station orientation, adding light filters on the NICER X-ray telescope, and replacing a reflector device on an international docking adapter.

Butch and Suni have taken the situation in their stride, saying in a news conference in September that they have been trained to “expect the unexpected”.

They have definitely had opportunities for reflection about life back home – and for watching a lot of sunrises and sunsets.

As the space station makes 16 orbits of Earth every 24 hours, it travels through 16 sunrises and sunsets, treating those on board to a sunrise or sunset every 45 minutes.

Living with such a unique view of the Earth gives plenty of room for contemplating it, something Suni has acknowledged.

“It opens up the door to making you think a bit differently. It’s the one planet we have and we should be taking care of it,” she said.

“There are so many people on Earth sending us messages it makes you feel right at home with everybody.”

Butch and Suni and the two other Americans who were on board with them, Don Pettit and Nick Hague, each had the opportunity to vote in last year’s US election.

“It’s a very important duty that we have as citizens,” Suni said to reporters.

Butch said Nasa had made it “very easy” for them to be included in elections.

To facilitate their voting, the Mission Control Center in Houston sent ballot papers via encrypted email to the ISS.

The astronauts then filled them out and transmitted them to satellites which relayed them to a ground terminal in New Mexico.

From there, landlines transmitted the ballots to Mission Control, who then electronically sent them to the astronauts’ county clerks for filing.

For Butch, the day starts at 04:30, and as for Suni, she makes a slightly kinder 06:30 start.

Both have said they enjoy the two hours or more of exercise they must do daily to combat the loss of bone density from living in space.

“Your joints don’t hurt, which is quite nice,” Butch has said.

Three different machines help to counter the effect of living in zero gravity.

The Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) is used for squats, deadlifts, and rows that work all the muscle groups. For treadmills crews must strap in to stop themselves floating away, and there is also a cycle ergometer for endurance training.

At Christmas, astronauts on the International Space Station posted a festive message in which they wished their friends and family on Earth a merry Christmas.

The team dressed in Santa hats and reindeer antlers, throwing the slowly gyrating microphone to each other to speak while candy canes floated around their heads.

It was a chance for the crew to let their hair down, though in Suni’s case it was more a case of letting it ‘up’. Zero gravity has given her a style that would take a lot of product to achieve on Earth.

One of Butch and Suni’s final duties on board the ISS was to make their replacements feel welcome.

On 16 March a SpaceX capsule carrying a new crew arrived at the ISS. It was a deeply significant event for Butch and Suni, as it paved the way for them to come home.

Capturing the excitement, Don Pettit, who will remain on the ISS, posted this video shot through the window of it approaching and docking.

Butch rang a ceremonial bell as Suni handed over command to cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin.

Most of the villagers in Chorvila in north-west Georgia adore Bidzina Ivanishvili, their proudest son who’s widely seen as the country’s real man in power.

It’s a picture postcard settlement where the roads are good, the houses well-maintained and there are plenty of blue and yellow flags of the ruling Georgian Dream party.

“All this area where you can see new houses and roads was made by our man. There was nothing without him and he did everything for us,” says resident Mamia Machavariani, pointing at the village from a nearby forest.

Ivanishvili founded Georgian Dream (GD) and the party has been in power for 12 years.

For more than four months, Georgians have taken to the streets across the country to accuse Ivanishvili’s party of rigging elections last October and accusing GD of trying to move the country away from its path to the EU and back into Russia’s sphere of influence.

GD denies that and in Chorvila you will not find anyone with a bad word to say about its billionaire son.

Ivanishvili made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, first by selling computers before he acquired banks and metal assets. He returned to Georgia in 2003.

Every newlywed couple in Chorvila receives a cash gift of $3,000 (£2,300) from Ivanishvili, according to Temuri Kapanadze, who teaches history at the village school where Ivanishvili went as a boy.

Unlike most schools in rural Georgia, it has its own swimming pool and an indoor basketball court.

“He reconstructed the hospital, he built two churches, he fixed all the roads, he made all roofs across the region,” Temuri says.

“I personally received a refrigerator, TV, a gas stove and for five years Mr Bidzina has been helping us by paying 200 laris (£55) every month.”

Here they accuse the opposition of orchestrating the pro-EU anti-government protests and using young people as their “tools”.

“We also want Europe but with our traditions, and that’s what the government wants too,” says resident Giorgi Burjenidze. “We are a Christian country, and our traditions means that men must be men, and women must be women. President Trump thinks like us too.”

The view that Europe has been trying to impose values alien to Georgian traditions, such as gay rights, is often repeated by state ministers and pro-government media.

They have also been dismissive of the daily protests sparked by the Georgian Dream’s decision to suspend talks with the European Union on the country’s future membership.

“Fire to the oligarchy” has become one of the main slogans at the ongoing protests to address what people say is the overwhelming influence of Bidzina Ivanishvili on the country’s politics.

“Georgia currently is ruled by an oligarch who has a very Russian agenda,” says Tamara Arveladze, 26, who has joined the protests in the capital Tbilisi almost every day, to fight what she sees as Ivanishvili’s overwhelming influence.

“He owns everything, all the institutions and all the governmental forces and resources. He sees this country as his private property, and he is ruling this country as if it were his own business.”

Last month, Tamara and her boyfriend were caught up in an incident which was captured on mobile phones and went viral. They were driving towards the protest site, and shouted the words “fire to the oligarchy” when a number of masked policemen surrounded the car and tried to break in.

“It happened in seconds, but it felt like hours. I was shocked how aggressively they were trying to do this, if they’d happened to take us out of the car I don’t know what would have happened.”

Tamara’s boyfriend has had his driving license revoked for a year and could face a jail term for swearing at police. She has been fined $3,600, an enormous sum in Georgia, where the average monthly salary is closer to $500.

Since the disputed parliamentary election, criticised by international observers, the Georgian opposition has been boycotting the parliament, leaving the ruling Georgian Dream to rubber stamp any proposed changes to law.

“We are witnessing the abuse of the law-making,” says Tamar Oniani, human rights programme director at the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association.

“First it was banning the face masks, and then they deployed the face recognition cameras in Tbilisi. So it makes it easier for them to detect who is appearing at the rally and then order high fines.”

Last month fines went up ten-fold for blocking the road or disobeying the police and Tamar Oniani says in one day alone they received 150 calls from protesters who had been fined.

Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has recently denounced the protesters as an “amorphous mass” and sarcastically thanked them for “replenishing the state budget” with heavy fines.

Tamar Oniani says the “judiciary is fully captured” and acts as one of the instruments against the demonstrators, who she says have been beaten in custody.

“They were tortured just for being part of the protest and being a supporter of Georgia’s European future.”

The government denies these allegations.

Since the protests began last November, hundreds of civil servants have lost their jobs after they signed petitions criticising the government’s decision to suspend talks with the EU.

“The government decided to cleanse the public sector of employees who were not loyal to them,” says Nini Lezhava, who was among those to lose their jobs.

She was in a senior position in Georgia’s parliamentary research centre, which had been tasked with providing unbiased reports for members of parliament and has since been abolished.

“They don’t need it anymore. They have their own policy and they do not want anyone with independent analytical capacity,” she says.

Nini says a similar “cleansing” has been taking place at the defence and justice ministries, and other government institutions: “It is happening in the entire public sector of Georgia”.

“They are trying to create another Russian satellite in this region. And that goes beyond Georgia and beyond the Black Sea, beyond the South Caucasus, because we see what is happening in the world. And that is a bigger geopolitical shift.”

In Chorvila, history teacher Temuri Kapanadze sees the government’s approach towards Russia very differently: “There are no friends and enemies forever. Yesterday’s enemy can become today’s friend.”

More than 200 Venezuelans, who the White House alleges are gang members, have been deported from the US to a notorious mega-jail in El Salvador.

Out of the 261 people deported, 137 were removed under the Alien Enemies Act, a senior administration official told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

This broad, centuries-old law was invoked by President Donald Trump. He accused Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) of “perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion” on US territory.

The move has been criticised by rights groups, and came despite a temporary block issued by a judge. The White House said the judge’s order itself was not lawful and was issued after the group was deported.

• White House denies defying judge’s order over deportations
• What is Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang targeted by Trump?

The Alien Enemies Act grants the president of the United States sweeping powers to order the detention and deportation of natives or citizens of an “enemy” nation without following the usual processes.

It was passed as part of a series of laws in 1798 when the US believed it would enter a war with France.

The act states that “whenever there shall be a declared war […] or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened” against the US, all “subjects of the hostile nation or government” could be “apprehended, restrained, secured and removed, as alien enemies”.

The act has only been previously used three times – all during times of conflict involving the US.

It was last invoked in World War Two, when people of Japanese descent – reportedly numbering about 120,000 – were imprisoned without trial. Thousands were sent to internment camps.

People of German and Italian ancestry were also interned during that time.

Before that, the act was used during the War of 1812 and World War One.

Though this is the first time the act has been used by Trump, it is not the first time he has mentioned it.

At his inaugural address in January, he said he would invoke the act to “eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to US soil”.

In his proclamation on Saturday, Trump invoked the wording of the act by accusing TdA of threatening an “invasion” against the US. He declared its members “liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies”.

Trump’s decision has been criticised by rights groups. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued to stop the removals on the grounds that the US was not at war.

Speaking to BBC News on Sunday, Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the ACLU, said: “There’s no question in our mind that the law is being violated.”

A federal judge attempted to stop the use of the law to carry out the deportations, but the White House said this had had “no lawful basis”, and that the removals had already taken place.

Reacting to a news article covering the judge’s order, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele wrote on social media: “Oopsie… Too late.”

Venezuela criticised Trump’s use of the act, saying it “unjustly criminalises Venezuelan migration” and “evokes the darkest episodes in the history of humanity, from slavery to the horror of the Nazi concentration camps”.

Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, said in a statement that Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act was illegal.

“The only reason to invoke such a power is to try to enable sweeping detentions and deportations of Venezuelans based on their ancestry, not on any gang activity that could be proved in immigration proceedings”, she added.

A political storm is brewing in India, with the first waves already hitting the southern part of the country.

Leaders there are calling for mass mobilisation to protect the region’s political interests amid a heated controversy over the redrawing of electoral seats to reflect changes in population over time.

In a high-stakes push, they are urging citizens to “have more children”, using meetings and media campaigns to amplify their message: that the process of delimitation could shift the balance of power.

“Delimitation is a Damocles’ sword hanging over southern India,” says MK Stalin, chief minister of Tamil Nadu, one of India’s five southern states, and an arch rival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). (The other four are Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Telangana.)

These five states account for 20% of India’s 1.4 billion people. They also outperform the rest of the country in health, education and economic prospects. A child is less likely to be born here than in the north, due to lower population growth rates.

Their leaders are worried that the more prosperous south may lose parliamentary seats in the future, a “punishment” for having fewer children and generating more wealth. Wealthier southern states have always contributed more to federal revenue, with poorer, highly populated states in the north receiving larger shares based on need.

India’s Constitution mandates that seats be allocated to each state based on its population, with constituencies of roughly equal size. It also requires reallocation of seats after each census, reflecting updated population figures.

So India redrew parliamentary seats three times based on the decennial census in 1951, 1961 and 1971. Since then, governments of all stripes have paused the exercise, fearing an imbalance of representation due to varying fertility rates across states.

The next delimitation exercise is set for 2026, but uncertainty looms as India hasn’t conducted a census since 2011, with no clear timeline for when it will take place.

This has set the stage for a potential crisis. “Tamil Nadu is leading the charge and India is on the brink of a federal deadlock,” says Yamini Aiyar, a senior fellow at Brown University

The number of seats in the Lok Sabha – the lower house of parliament representing directly elected MPs – has risen from 494 to 543 and has remained constant since then. The freeze means that despite India’s growing population since 1971, the number of Lok Sabha seats per state has stayed the same, with no new seats added.

In 1951, each MP represented just over 700,000 people. Today, that number has surged to an average of 2.5 million per MP – more than three times the population represented by a member of the US House of Representatives. In comparison, a UK MP represents around 120,000 people.

Experts say all Indians are underrepresented – though not equally so – because constituencies are too large. (The original Constitution capped the ratio at one MP for 750,000 people)

That’s not all. Using census data and population projections, economist Shruti Rajagopalan of George Mason University has highlighted the “severe malapportionment” – unequal distribution of political representation – in India.

Consider this. In Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s most populous state with over 240 million people, each MP represents about three million citizens.

Meanwhile, in Kerala, where fertility rates are similar to many European countries, an MP represents roughly 1.75 million.

This means the average voter in Kerala in the south has 1.7 times more influence in choosing an MP than a voter in UP in the north.

Ms Rajagopalan also notes that Tamil Nadu and Kerala now have nine and six seats more than their population share, while populous, poorer states like Bihar and UP have nine and 12 seats fewer than their proportion. (Stalin warns that Tamil Nadu could lose eight seats if delimitation occurs in 2026, based on projected population figures.)

By 2031, the problem will intensify: UP and Bihar will fall a dozen seats short of their population proportion, while Tamil Nadu will likely have 11 seats more than its proportion, with other states falling “somewhere in between,” according to Ms Rajagopalan.

“Consequently,” she says, “India is no longer living up to its fundamental constitutional principle of ‘one-person, one vote’.” To make this principle meaningful, constituency sizes must be roughly equal.

Experts have proposed several solutions, many of which will require strong bipartisan consensus.

One option is to increase the number of seats in the lower house.

In other words, India should revert to the original constitutional ratio of one MP for every 750,000 people, which would expand the Lok Sabha to 1,872 seats. (The new parliament building has the capacity for 880 seats, so it would need a major upgrade.)

The other option is for the total number of seats in Lok Sabha to increase to the extent that no state loses its current number of electoral seats – to achieve this the number of seats in the Lok Sabha would need to be 848, by several estimations.

Accompanying this move, experts like Ms Rajagopalan advocate for a more decentralised fiscal system.

In this model, states would have greater revenue-raising powers and retain most or all of their revenue. Federal funds would then be allocated based on development needs. Currently, states receive less than 40% of the total revenue but spend about 60% of it, while the rest is raised and spent by the central government.

A third solution is to reform the composition of the upper house of the parliament. The Rajya Sabha represents states’ interests, with seats allocated proportionally to population and capped at 250.

Rajya Sabha members are elected by state legislatures, not directly by the public. Milan Vaishnav of Carnegie Endowment for Peace suggests a radical approach would be to fix the number of seats per state in the upper house, similar to the US Senate.

“Transforming the upper house into a real venue for debate of states’ interests could potentially soften the opposition to a reallocation of seats in the lower house,” he argues.

Then there are other proposals like splitting big states – India’s top five states have more than 45% share of total seats.

Miheer Karandikar of Takshashila Institution, a Bangalore-based think-tank, cites UP as an example of how big states skew things. UP’s share of total votes cast in India is around 14% currently. He estimates this would likely increase to 16% after delimitation, “which allows it to retain its status as the most significant state politically and in terms of legislative influence”. Splitting a state like UP could help matters.

For now, the anxious southern leaders – whose rhetoric is partly political with Tamil Nadu elections looming next summer – have been joined by counterparts in Punjab to urge the government to maintain current seats and freeze electoral boundaries for the next 30 years, beyond 2026. In other words, it’s a call for more of the same, preserving the status quo.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has made little significant statement so far. Home Minister Amit Shah claimed southern states would not lose “even a single seat” in the upcoming delimitation, though the meaning remains unclear. Meanwhile, the federal government’s decision to withhold education funds and label Tamil Nadu’s leadership as “undemocratic and uncivilised” over a contentious education policy has deepened divisions.

Political scientist Suhas Palshikar warns that the north-south divide threatens India’s federal structure. “The north-south prism is only likely to persuade people and parties of the north to push for a delimitation that would give them an advantage. Such a counter-mobilisation in the north can make it impossible to arrive at any negotiated settlement, Mr Palshikar noted.

He believes that expanding the size of the Lok Sabha and ensuring that no state loses its current strength is not only “politically prudent step”, but something which will “enrich the idea of democracy in the Indian context.” Balancing representation will be the key to preserving India’s strained federal spirit.

Viewers and critics have heaped praise on Netflix’s hard-hitting drama Adolescence, with many hailing it as a landmark TV show.

The four-part British series was released last week and is the most-watched show on the platform around the world over the weekend.

The Times’ Tom Peck described it as “complete perfection”, a view echoed by the Guardian’s Lucy Mangan, who said it was “the closest thing to TV perfection in decades”.

Fans on social media ranged from US director Paul Feig, who called the first episode “one of the best hours of television I’ve ever seen”, to Jeremy Clarkson, who called it “masterful”.

Adolescence shows the aftermath of the stabbing of a teenage girl, with a 13-year-old boy from her school arrested for her murder.

Jamie, the young suspect, is played by newcomer Owen Cooper, with Stephen Graham as his dad.

Its story shines a light on the corrosive impact of social media and misogynist influencers on some teenage boys.

Graham said he was inspired to make the show after seeing two separate reports of boys stabbing girls to death.

“I just thought, what’s going on in society where this kind of thing is becoming a regular occurrence?” he told BBC’s The One Show.

“I just couldn’t fathom it. So I wanted to really have a look and try and shine a light on this particular thing.”

Writer Jack Thorne said they wanted to “look in the eye of male rage”.

The central character had been “indoctrinated by voices” like Andrew Tate’s and “voices a lot more dangerous than Andrew Tate’s”, Thorne told Radio 4’s Front Row.

Erin Doherty, who plays a child psychologist, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “This show has the bravery to just peel back the layers and go, let’s talk about this thing, because we’re still dealing with it today. There are still issues cropping up in the news today.

“So all we can hold ourselves accountable for is having the discussion, and hopefully that’s what it does. It just allows parents, aunties, uncles, even just friends, to engage in the conversation.”

Each episode was filmed in a single, uninterrupted take.

In the Guardian, Mangan said its technical accomplishments “are matched by an array of award-worthy performances and a script that manages to be intensely naturalistic and hugely evocative at the same time”.

She added: “Adolescence is a deeply moving, deeply harrowing experience.”

Peck’s review in the Times began: “Wow. Just wow. I’m tempted to type out the word ‘wow’ a further 700 times or so, followed by, ‘Don’t miss Adolescence on Netflix,’ and then be done with it.”

The Telegraph’s TV critic Anita Singh said it was “a devastating watch”, adding: “It is a drama so quietly devastating that I won’t forget it for a very long time.”

Singh said the single-shot technique “can feel like a gimmick” but that the acting is “phenomenal”.

Graham is “the best actor working today”, but “the truly remarkable performance” is by Cooper, she wrote.

“He moves between vulnerability, anger, bravado and fear. What he does here is astonishing.”

Elsewhere, Deadline’s Jake Kanter wrote: “Adolescence is as flawless a four hours of TV drama I have ever seen. It lingers in the mind long after the credits have rolled. Astonishing telly.”

Rolling Stone’s Alan Sepinwall said it was “among the very best things – and an early contender for the best thing – you will see on the small screen this year”.

The New York Times’ Margaret Lyons called it “a rich work of social critique”, describing the standout episode, the third, as “one of the more fascinating hours of TV I’ve seen in a long time”.

On BBC Radio 5 Live’s Must Watch, Hayley Campbell said the drama doesn’t attempt to solve the problems it raises.

“It’s bringing it up, it’s looking at it. It’s about the rise of misogyny, especially in young boys, brought about by people like Andrew Tate, who’s namechecked in this, but only once. It’s not about him.

“The drama is more about the horror of how little control you have over your kid and what they’re doing on their phone.”

Fellow critic Scott Bryan added: “The performances are absolutely fantastic. I would say this is flawless. The person, though, I think who deserves the most recognition is 15-year-old Owen Cooper.”

As a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle and himself a victim of the inequities of that racist system of government, Ebrahim Rasool was always unlikely to mince his words when it came to assessing the new US administration.

But in a message to family and friends, South Africa’s top envoy in Washington sounded almost relaxed about the diplomatic ructions that he had caused.

Soon after it was announced at the weekend that he was going to be expelled from the US, Ambassador Rasool wrote that he and his family were “all packed up and looking forward to returning to South Africa” and said he was leaving the US with “no regrets”.

On Friday, his prepared remarks on the new government in the US were delivered in a thoughtful, measured manner – with no hint of the trouble that they would trigger.

In a webinar organised by a South African think-tank, the 62-year-old veteran of the struggle against apartheid was speaking about the policies of President Donald Trump and the implications for Africa.

The talk was coming after weeks of pressure on South Africa from Washington over a controversial land law that resulted in the US cutting off funding to the country.

The US government alleged that South Africa’s white minority was being unfairly targeted. An allegation robustly refuted by the government in Pretoria.

In Rasool’s view he thought that President Trump was “mobilising a supremacism” and trying to “project white victimhood as a dog whistle” as the white population faced becoming a minority in the US.

The comments resulted in sharply divided opinions locally and internationally over whether he was walking a “fine line” as a diplomat in giving an “honest assessment” or “crossed a line” that no ambassador should cross.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was unequivocal in his response, saying that Rasool was “no longer welcome” in the US because he was a “race-baiting politician who hates America” and Trump.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office said the US decision to expel Rasool was “regrettable” as the president himself defended the “great deal of progress” the ambassador had been making prior to his expulsion.

“So this is actually a hiccup… that we are working on straightening out,” Ramaphosa told reporters on Monday repeating a stance aimed at cooling temperatures.

Officials in his government however, were more scathing in their assessment of the diplomat’s actions, telling South Africa’s Sunday Times newspaper, in an anonymous briefing, that Rasool’s actions were an “isolated incident of somebody who crossed a line that diplomats know they shouldn’t cross”.

In the US, the chairperson of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jim Risch, lauded Rubio for calling out Rasool’s “disgraceful” remarks.

But to those in South Africa who know Rasool, his views on the White House’s policies and the way he expressed them came as no surprise.

Growing up in Cape Town and classified as “coloured” by the apartheid system, Rasool, as a young boy, along with his family, was forced to leave his home in the centre of the city.

The racial zoning imposed by the government meant that people who were not classified as “white” had to live in poorly provisioned areas a long way from the heart of Cape Town.

Rasool’s activism began in the 1970s during his school years.

“I really had no idea where I was going until after I tasted my first tear gas, saw my first rubber bullet and fled my first whop from the police when I entered high school in 1976,” Georgetown University quoted him as saying for a profile piece in 2015.

“That experience was life-altering. It gave me a crash course in politics.”

This activism would later result in his imprisonment near Cape Town, where he crossed paths with Nelson Mandela, who would go on to be South Africa’s first democratically elected president.

Rasool served in various leadership positions within the governing African National Congress and South Africa before being appointed to his first stint as US ambassador from 2010 to 2015, when Barack Obama was president.

He was named as ambassador again in 2024, because of his previous experience and extensive network of Washington contacts.

Faiez Jacobs, who has known Rasool for over 30 years, first as fellow activists fighting against apartheid and then within the ANC, came to his defence over his recent comments.

He was one of the attendees at the virtual event.

According to Mr Jacobs, Rasool was asked to provide an analysis on the current situation in the US and did so in a “very objective, academic” way. He added that though the envoy was explaining his honestly held views and was not trying to stir up trouble, he detected another motive for the reaction.

“The fact that he [is] a Muslim, the fact that he represented our country’s views on Palestine… Those are all the real reasons why he’s been he’s been targeted,” Mr Jacobs told the BBC.

Last year, South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice alleging that Israel was engaging in “genocidal acts” in Gaza, which it denied.

University of Johannesburg international relations expert Oscar van Heerden said that on his appointment Rasool was “dealt a bad hand” and “knew and understood” what he was getting himself into this time around.

“Knives were already out for Rasool before he even arrived in Washington… [and] by the time he arrived it was a mere formality to find a reason to be able to get rid of him,” Dr Van Heerden said.

The academic first crossed paths with Rasool in 1985 while he was a student and the diplomat was a high school teacher who was “guiding youngsters” like himself and giving them the “necessary political education”.

He described Rasool as a “devout Muslim” who “stands for the Palestinian cause of self-determination”.

On Rasool’s view of the Trump government, Dr Van Heerden said the diplomat was caught in a “difficult position” because he had to deal with an “openly antagonistic” host nation that in his opinion had weaponised diplomacy and foreign policy.

And while plans are reportedly under way to find a replacement for Rasool, Dr Van Heerden argued that no amount of experience or seniority would be enough to appease the Trump administration and that only someone they “completely agree with” may succeed.

A US court has ordered that Prince Harry’s immigration files must be made public by the end of Tuesday.

District Judge Carl Nichols ordered the release of the documents based on a freedom of information (FOI) request by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative US think tank in Washington DC.

The foundation alleges that the prince concealed his past use of drugs, which should have disqualified him from obtaining a US visa.

The allegations centre around the Duke of Sussex’s claims in his memoir Spare, where he referred to taking cocaine, marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms.

In the book, published in January 2023, Prince Harry wrote that he first tried cocaine at the age of 17.

“It wasn’t much fun, and it didn’t make me particularly happy, as it seemed to make everyone around me, but it did make me feel different, and that was the main goal,” he added.

He also wrote about using marijuana, saying “cocaine didn’t do anything for me”, but “marijuana is different, that actually really did help me”.

Application forms for US visas specifically ask about current and past drug use.

Admissions of drug use can lead to non-immigrant and immigrant visa applications being rejected, although immigration officers have discretion to make a final decision based on different factors.

The Heritage Foundation alleges that Prince Harry lied about his use of drugs to US immigration authorities, which can lead to a lifetime ban from the United States.

According to court records, the Department of Homeland Security has until the end of Tuesday to comply with the order and release the immigration records.

The BBC has contacted the White House and the duke’s office for comment.

The court’s ruling comes after a 2024 ruling by the same judge which said that there was not enough public interest in disclosing Prince Harry’s immigration records.

The Heritage Foundation contested that ruling and pushed for the judgement to be changed.

Prince Harry moved to the US with his wife Meghan in 2020 after stepping down as a working royal. It is not clear what visa he entered the country on, while the duchess is a US citizen.

President Donald Trump previously ruled out deporting Prince Harry in February, telling the New York Post “I’ll leave him alone… He’s got enough problems with his wife. She’s terrible.”

Meghan has been a vocal critic of Trump in the past, labelling him a “misogynist”.

Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of social messaging app Telegram, has been allowed to fly home to Dubai as French authorities continue their unprecedented case against him.

The tech billionaire was arrested in August after being accused of failing to properly moderate his app to reduce criminality.

Mr Durov denies failing to cooperate with law enforcement over drug trafficking, child sexual abuse content and fraud. Telegram has previously denied having insufficient moderation.

It is the first time a tech leader has been arrested for criminality taking place on their platform.

Mr Durov said in a post on his Telegram channel: “The process is ongoing but it feels great to be home.”

The 40-year-old was arrested in August 2024 as he arrived in Paris on his private jet, and French judges initially did not allow him to leave France.

But the office of the Paris prosecutor told the BBC on Monday that “the obligations of judicial supervision” had been suspended between 15 March and 7 April.

No further details were given about the conditions of his release from France.

Mr Durov lives in Dubai and was born in Russia, where he has citizenship, as well as in France, the United Arab Emirates and the Caribbean island nation of St Kitts and Nevis.

Telegram is particularly popular in Russia, Ukraine and former Soviet Union states as well as Iran.

Telegram is used by around 950 million people worldwide and has previously positioned itself as an app focussed on its users’ privacy, rather than the normal policies prioritised by other global social media companies.

But reporting from the BBC and other news organisations highlighted criminals using the app to advertise drugs as well as offer cybercrime and fraud services and, most recently, child sexual abuse material.

It led one expert to brand it “the dark web in your pocket“.

The firm has previously said his arrest is unfair, and he should not be held liable for what users do on the platform.

From his home in Dubai, Mr Durov thanked the French judges for letting him go home.

He also thanked his lawyers for their “relentless efforts in demonstrating that, when it comes to moderation, cooperation, and fighting crime, for years Telegram not only met but exceeded its legal obligations”.

However, since the arrest, Telegram has made a series of changes to the way it operates.

It has joined the Internet Watch Foundation programme, which aims to help find, remove and report child sexual abuse material being shared online.

It has also announced IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate its rules will be handed over to police in response to valid legal requests.

And it has published transparency reports about how much content is taken down – a standard industry practice it had previously refused to comply with.

India and New Zealand have restarted free trade talks a decade after negotiations fell apart, as Prime Minister Christopher Luxon began his five-day tour of Delhi where he held bilateral talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The two sides have agreed to begin the first round of negotiations next month.

The announcement is a “major breakthrough” in the economic relationship between the two countries, Luxon said.

“India holds significant potential for New Zealand and will play a pivotal role in doubling New Zealand’s exports by value over the next 10 years,” Luxon said.

Bilateral trade between the two countries is valued at under $2bn (£1.55bn) currently.

Luxon is a keynote speaker at an ongoing geopolitical conference in Delhi, which will also be attended by the US Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.

Besides trade, New Zealand said it was deepening its engagement with India across areas such as defence, security, sports and environment, adding that economic ties with Delhi were a “key priority”.

The two leaders signed a defence cooperation pact for enhanced maritime security and said they would be exploring greater collaboration in the digital payments sector.

On 16 March, representatives of the Five Eyes – an intelligence-sharing alliance comprising New Zealand along with Australia, Canada, the UK and the US – attended a conference of intelligence and security chiefs hosted by India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval in Delhi.

Proximity to New Zealand is crucial to Delhi’s interests, as India aims to counter China in the Indian Ocean region.

Luxon is reportedly being accompanied by one of the largest delegations a prime minister has ever travelled with, underscoring the importance of the visit.

Trade negotiations between the two countries had initially begun in 2010 but stalled after several rounds over issues such as market access.

New Zealand has sought greater access to India’s dairy market, which India has traditionally protected to support its farmers.

After years of scepticism over free trade, India has recently become more open to negotiating bilateral deals with other countries.

The announcement to restart trade talks with New Zealand comes close on the heels of Delhi relaunching free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations with the European Union and the United Kingdom.

Last year, Delhi signed a $100bn free trade agreement with the European Free Trade Association – a group of four European countries that are not members of the European Union – after almost 16 years of negotiations.

India and Australia also signed a major trade cooperation deal two years ago.

Last week India’s trade minister Piyush Goyal had “cautioned” an Indian exports organisation “to come out of their protectionist mindset” as the country tried to negotiate trade agreements.

For Delhi, these trade talks have assumed renewed significance on the back of US President Donald Trump’s decision to impose tit-for-tat tariffs on imported goods from countries, including India. These are due to come into effect on 2 April.

Rwanda has cut diplomatic ties with Belgium, saying it has been “consistently undermined” by the European nation during the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Brussels has been leading calls for European nations to sanction Rwanda over its support for the M23, a rebel group at the centre of DR Congo’s crisis.

The authorities in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, have given Belgian diplomats 48 hours to leave the country.

Belgium, which is the former colonial power, has said it will respond to these measures and labelled Rwanda’s decision “disproportionate”.

Despite assertions from the UN and US, Rwanda has denied backing the M23.

In its statement on Monday, Kigali accused Brussels of attempting to “sustain its neo-colonial delusions”.

“Belgium has clearly taken sides in a regional conflict and continues to systematically mobilise against Rwanda in different forums, using lies and manipulation to secure an unjustified hostile opinion of Rwanda, in an attempt to destabilise both Rwanda and the region,” the statement said.

Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot responded to Rwanda’s measures on social media, saying: “This is disproportionate and shows that when we disagree with Rwanda they prefer not to engage in dialogue.”

• The evidence that shows Rwanda is backing rebels in DR Congo
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Prevot said Rwandan diplomats in Belgium will be declared “persona non grata”.

This declaration can lead to the removal of diplomatic status and often results in the expulsion or the withdrawal of recognition of envoys.

Before Kigali cut ties with Brussels, Rwandan President Paul Kagame vowed that his country would “stand up” to Belgium.

“We would ask [Belgium]: ‘Who are you by the way? Who put you in charge of us?’ Rwandans believe in God, but did God really put these people in charge of Rwanda?” Kagame asked in an address on Sunday.

Since the beginning of the year, around 7,000 people have been killed in fighting between the M23 and DR Congo’s armed forces in the east of the country, the Congolese authorities have said.

More than 850,000 people have been forced to flee their homes since the conflict increased in intensity in January, the UN children’s agency, Unicef, said.

The M23 has taken control of two key cities – Goma and Bukavu – in the past two months.

On Monday, the EU sanctioned three of Rwanda’s military commanders, citing connections to the M23.

The sanctions, which include the freezing of assets, were also applied to the head of Rwanda’s state mining agency. The EU has accused the agency of exploiting DR Congo’s conflict in order to extract valuable resources from the mineral-rich east.

Britain and Germany have also taken measures against Rwanda – over the past month both countries cut some of their aid to Kigali.

And in February, the UN Security Council demanded that the M23 end hostilities and that Rwanda should pull its troops out of DR Congo.

Rwanda’s diplomatic spat with Belgium came a day before the Congolese government and M23 rebels were set to meet for peace talks.

But the rebels announced on Monday afternoon that they would no longer participate accusing unspecified international institutions of undermining the peace efforts.

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Lithuanian prosecutors say Russia’s military intelligence service GRU was behind an arson attack on an Ikea furniture store in the Baltic state’s capital Vilnius last year.

Two Ukrainian suspects have been arrested – one in Lithuania, the other in Poland – over the attack, which prosecutor Arturas Urbelis called “an act of terrorism”.

He said investigation of intermediaries had established that “this is connected with the military intelligence, with the security services”.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Lithuania had “confirmed our suspicions that responsible for setting fires to shopping centres in Vilnius and Warsaw are the Russian secret services.”

“Good to know before negotiations. Such is the nature of this state,” he wrote in a post on X.

Russia has denied repeated allegations by Nato countries that its secret services are engaged in sabotage operations across Europe.

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Russia was blamed for a series of parcel fires that targeted courier companies in Europe last July.

Security experts see it as a systematic campaign of “hybrid warfare” to undermine European support for Ukraine’s defence against the Russian invasion that began in February 2022.

The arson attack in Vilnius last May did not cause casualties, but that month a similar attack destroyed a huge shopping mall in the Polish capital Warsaw.

Prosecutor Urbelis said the two suspects – both teenagers – had held a secret meeting in Warsaw and agreed to set fire to shops in Lithuania and Latvia for a reward of €10,000 ($11,000; £8,400) and a BMW.

Ukrainian soldiers fighting in Russia’s Kursk region have described scenes “like a horror movie” as they retreated from the front lines.

The BBC has received extensive accounts from Ukrainian troops, who recount a “catastrophic” withdrawal in the face of heavy fire, and columns of military equipment destroyed and constant attacks from swarms of Russian drones.

The soldiers, who spoke over social media, were given aliases to protect their identity. Some gave accounts of a “collapse” as Ukraine lost Sudzha, the largest town it held.

Ukrainian restrictions on travel to the front have meant it is not possible to get a full picture of the situation. But this is how five Ukrainian soldiers described to us what had happened.

On 9 March, “Volodymyr” sent a Telegram post to the BBC saying he was still in Sudzha, where there was “panic and collapse of the front”.

Ukrainian troops “are trying to leave – columns of troops and equipment. Some of them are burned by Russian drones on the road. It is impossible to leave during the day.”

Movement of men, logistics and equipment had been reliant on one major route between Sudzha and Ukraine’s Sumy region.

Volodymyr said it was possible to travel on that road relatively safely a month ago. By 9 March it was “all under the fire control of the enemy – drones around the clock. In one minute you can see two to three drones. That’s a lot,” he said.

“We have all the logistics here on one Sudzha-Sumy highway. And everyone knew that the [Russians] would try to cut it. But this again came as a surprise to our command.”

At the time of writing, just before Russia retook Sudzha, Volodymyr said Ukrainian forces were being pressed from three sides.

By 11 March, Ukrainian forces were battling to prevent the road being cut, according to Telegram messages from “Maksym”.

“A few days ago, we received an order to leave the defence lines in an organised retreat,” he said, adding that Russia had amassed a significant force to retake the town, “including large numbers of North Korean soldiers”.

Military experts estimate Russia had amassed a force of up to 70,000 troops to retake Kursk – including about 12,000 North Koreans.

Russia had also sent its best drone units to the front and was using kamikaze and first-person-view (FPV) variants to “take fire control of the main logistics routes”.

They included drones linked to operators by fibre-optic wires – which are impossible to jam with electronic counter-measures.

Maksym said as a result “the enemy managed to destroy dozens of units of equipment”, and that wrecks had “created congestion on supply routes”.

The situation on that day, 11 March, was described as “catastrophic” by “Anton”.

The third soldier spoken to by the BBC was serving in the headquarters for the Kursk front.

He too highlighted the damage caused by Russian FPV drones. “We used to have an advantage in drones, now we do not,” he said. He added that Russia had an advantage with more accurate air strikes and a greater number of troops.

Anton said supply routes had been cut. “Logistics no longer work – organised deliveries of weapons, ammunition, food and water are no longer possible.”

Anton said he managed to leave Sudzha by foot, at night – “We almost died several times. Drones are in the sky all the time.”

The soldier predicted Ukraine’s entire foothold in Kursk would be lost but that “from a military point of view, the Kursk direction has exhausted itself. There is no point in keeping it any more”.

Western officials estimate that Ukraine’s Kursk offensive involved about 12,000 troops. They were some of their best-trained soldiers, equipped with Western-supplied weapons including tanks and armoured vehicles.

Russian bloggers published videos showing some of that equipment being destroyed or captured. On 13 March, Russia said the situation in Kursk was “fully under our control” and that Ukraine had “abandoned” much of its material.

In social media posts on 11-12 March, a fourth soldier, “Dmytro” likened the retreat from the front to “a scene from a horror movie”.

“The roads are littered with hundreds of destroyed cars, armoured vehicles and ATVs (All Terrain Vehicles). There are a lot of wounded and dead.”

Vehicles were often hunted by multiple drones, he said.

He described his own narrow escape when the car he was travelling in got bogged down. He and his fellow soldiers were trying to push the vehicle free when they were targeted by another FPV drone.

It missed the vehicle, but injured one of his comrades. He said they had to hide in a forest for two hours before they were rescued.

Dmytro said many Ukrainians retreated on foot with “guys walking 15km to 20km”. The situation, he said, had turned from “difficult and critical to catastrophic”.

In a message on 14 March, Dmytro added: “Everything is finished in the Kursk region… the operation was not successful.”

He estimated that thousands of Ukrainian soldiers had died since the first crossing into Russia in August.

A fifth soldier sounded less gloomy about the situation. On 13 March, “Artem” sent a Telegram message from a military hospital, where he was being treated for shrapnel wounds suffered in a drone attack.

Artem said he had been fighting further west – near the village of Loknya, where Ukrainian forces were putting up a stiff resistance and “fighting like lions”.

He believed the operation had achieved some success.

“It’s important that so far the Armed Forces of Ukraine have created this buffer zone, thanks to which the Russians cannot enter Sumy,” he said.

Ukraine’s top general, Oleksandr Syrskyi, insists that Ukrainian forces have pulled back to “more favourable positions”, remain in Kursk, and would do so “for as long as it is expedient and necessary”.

He said Russia had suffered more than 50,000 losses during the operation – including those killed, injured or captured.

However, the situation now is very different to last August. Military analysts estimate two-thirds of the 1,000 sq km gained at the outset have since been lost.

Any hopes that Ukraine would be able to trade Kursk territory for some of its own have significantly diminished.

Last week, President Volodymyr Zelensky said he believed the Kursk operation had “accomplished its task” by forcing Russia to pull troops from the east and relieve pressure on Pokrovsk.

But it is not yet clear at what cost.

The Israeli military says it is carrying out “extensive strikes” in the Gaza Strip, with the Hamas-run health ministry reporting that at least 130 Palestinians have been killed.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was targeting what it called “terror targets” belonging to Hamas.

Mahmoud Abu Wafah, the deputy interior minister in Gaza and the highest-ranking Hamas security official in the territory, has reportedly been killed in a strike.

This is the largest wave of airstrikes in Gaza since the ceasefire began on 19 January. Talks to extend the Gaza ceasefire have failed to reach an agreement.

Many people were having their pre-dawn meal, due to it being the holy month of Ramadan, when explosions started in Gaza, witnesses say.

More than 20 Israeli war planes flew over, they said. The planes then began to hit targets in Gaza City, Rafah and Khan Younis.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered the strikes on Tuesday morning, according to a statement from the PM’s office.

“This follows Hamas’s repeated refusal to release our hostages, as well as its rejection of all of the proposals it has received from US Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff and from the mediators,” it said.

“Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength,” it added.

The plan for the strikes “was presented by the IDF over the weekend and approved by the political leadership”, it said.

Hamas has responded furiously, accusing Israel of treachery for overturning the ceasefire agreement. It also says Israel is exposing the remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza to “an unknown fate”.

But Hamas has not yet declared that it is resuming the war, instead calling on mediators and the United Nations to intervene.

US President Donald Trump’s administration was consulted by Israel prior to carrying out the strikes, a White House spokesperson told Fox News.

Negotiators have been trying to find a way forward after the first phase of the temporary truce ended on 1 March.

The US proposed extending the first phase until mid-April, including a further exchange of hostages held by Hamas and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

But a Palestinian official familiar with the talks told the BBC that Israel and Hamas disagreed over key aspects of the deal set out by Witkoff at the indirect talks.

The latest war between Israel and Hamas started on 7 October 2023, when Hamas killed more than 1,200 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, with 251 taken hostage.

The assault triggered an Israeli military offensive that has since killed more than 48,520 people, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run health ministry which are used by the UN and others.

Most of Gaza’s 2.1 million population has been displaced multiple times.

An estimated 70% of buildings have been damaged or destroyed, healthcare, water, and sanitation systems have collapsed and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.

US President Donald Trump says “many elements” of a peace agreement in Ukraine have been agreed with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, ahead of their much anticipated phone call.

Trump posted on Truth Social that he will speak with Putin on Tuesday morning.

He said that while there have been agreements, “much remains” to be worked upon.

“Each week brings 2,500 soldier deaths, from both sides, and it must end NOW. I look very much forward to the call with President Putin,” Trump wrote.

He earlier told reporters that “we’re going to see if we can work a peace agreement, a ceasefire and peace, and I think we’ll be able to do it”.

In his nightly address on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Putin of prolonging the war.

“This proposal could have been implemented long ago,” he said, adding that “every day in wartime means human lives”.

There have been inconsistencies from within the Trump administration over how advanced the ceasefire talks are.

Speaking after his meeting in Jeddah with Ukrainian officials, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the “bulk” of the conversation had been “what a negotiation process would look like” and not “the specific conditions”.

US envoy Steve Witkoff, who met with Putin on Thursday in Moscow, has also struck a more measured tone.

Meanwhile, the UK and France have urged Putin to prove he wants a peace deal with Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the “courage” of Zelenksy in agreeing to a ceasefire proposal, and challenged Russia to do the same.

“Enough deaths. Enough lives destroyed. Enough destruction. The guns must fall silent,” Macron said in a post on X.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Putin should agree to a “full and unconditional ceasefire now”, telling MPs he had seen “no sign” that Putin was serious about a peace deal.

He warned that the UK and its allies have “more cards that we can play” to help force Russia to negotiate “seriously”.

The White House sounded a more upbeat note on the eve of the Trump-Putin talks, which will take place by phone, saying peace in Ukraine has “never been closer”.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday that Trump was “determined” to secure the peace deal.

On what the talks might cover, she said: “There’s a power plant that is on the border of Russia and Ukraine that was up for discussion with the Ukrainians, and he will address it in his call with Putin tomorrow.”

The facility is likely to be the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe. It has been occupied by Russian forces since March 2022, and fears of a nuclear accident have persisted due to fighting in the area.

Asked on Sunday what concessions were being considered in the ceasefire negotiations, Trump said: “We’ll be talking about land. We’ll be talking about power plants […] We’re already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on what the leaders would discuss, responding, “we never do that”.

While Putin has previously said he supports a ceasefire, he also set out a list of conditions for achieving peace.

One of the areas of contention is Russia’s Western Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a military incursion last August and captured some territory.

Russia had pushed to recapture it in recent weeks, and Putin now claims it is fully back in control of Kursk.

He has also raised numerous questions about how a ceasefire could be monitored and policed along the frontline in the east, and has said he would not accept Nato troops on the territory.

The peace proposal on the table was discussed by Ukrainian and American delegates in Saudi Arabia last week.

After hours locked away in a room, they announced proposals for a 30-day ceasefire, which Ukraine said it was ready to accept.

France’s President Macron and newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who met on Tuesday, stressed their nations would continue their “unwavering” support of Ukraine and demand “clear commitments” from Russia.

The Chinese government has promised new child care subsidies, increased wages and better paid leave to revive a slowing economy. That is on top of a $41bn discount programme for all sorts of things, from dishwashers and home decor to electric vehicles and smartwatches.

Beijing is going on a spending spree that will encourage Chinese people to crack open their wallets.

Simply put, they are not spending enough.

Monday brought some positive news. Official data said retail sales grew 4% in the first two months of 2025, a positive sign for consumption data. But, with a few exceptions like Shanghai aside, new and existing home prices continued to decline compared to last year.

While the US and other major powers have struggled with post-Covid inflation, China is experiencing the opposite: deflation – when the rate of inflation falls below zero, meaning that prices decrease. In China, prices fell for 18 months in a row in the past two years.

Prices dropping might sound like good news for consumers. But a persistent decline in consumption – a measure of what households buy – signals deeper economic trouble. When people stop spending, businesses cut prices to attract buyers. The more this happens, the less money they make, hiring slows, wages stagnate and economic momentum grinds to a halt.

That is a cycle China wants to avoid, given it’s already battling sluggish growth in the wake of a prolonged crisis in the property market, steep government debt and unemployment.

The cause of low consumption is straightforward: Chinese consumers either don’t have enough money or don’t feel confident enough about their future to spend it.

But their reluctance comes at a critical moment. With the economy aiming to grow at 5% this year, boosting consumption is a top priority for President Xi Jinping. He is hoping that rising domestic consumption will absorb the blow US tariffs will inflict on Chinese exports.

So, will Beijing’s plan work?

To tackle its ailing economy and weak domestic demand, Beijing wrapped up its annual National People’s Congress last week with increased investment in social welfare programmes as part of its grand economic plan for 2025.

Then came this week’s announcement with bigger promises, such as employment support plans, but scant details.

Some say it is a welcome move, with the caveat that China’s leaders need to do more to step up support. Still, it signals Beijing’s awareness of the changes needed for a stronger Chinese consumer market – higher wages, a stronger social safety net and policies that make people feel secure enough to spend rather than save.

A quarter of China’s labour force is made up of low-paid migrant workers, who lack full access to urban social benefits. This makes them particularly vulnerable during periods of economic uncertainty, such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

Rising wages during the 2010s masked some of these problems, with average incomes growing by around 10% annually. But as wage growth slowed in the 2020s, savings once again became a lifeline.

The Chinese government, however, has been slow to expand social benefits, focusing instead on boosting consumption through short-term measures, such as trade-in programmes for household appliances and electronics. But that has not addressed a root problem, says Gerard DiPippo, a senior researcher at the Rand think tank: “Household incomes are lower, and savings are higher”.

The near-collapse of the property market has also made Chinese consumers more risk-averse, leading them to cut back on spending.

“The property market matters not only for real economic activity but also for household sentiment, since Chinese households have invested so much of their wealth in their homes,” Mr DiPippo says. “I don’t think China’s consumption will fully recover until it’s clear that the property sector has bottomed out and therefore many households’ primary assets are starting to recover.”

Some analysts are encouraged by Beijing’s seriousness in targeting longer-term challenges like falling birth rates as more young couples opt out of the costs of parenthood.

A 2024 study by Chinese think tank YuWa estimated that raising a child to adulthood in China costs 6.8 times the country’s GDP per capita – among the highest in the world, compared to the US (4.1), Japan (4.3) and Germany (3.6).

These financial pressures have only reinforced a deeply ingrained saving culture. Even in a struggling economy, Chinese households managed to save 32% of their disposable income in 2024.

That’s not too surprising in China, where consumption has never been particularly high. To put this in perspective, domestic consumption drives more than 80% of growth in the US and UK, and about 70% in India. China’s share has typically ranged between 50% to 55% over the past decade.

But this wasn’t really a problem – until now.

There was a time when Chinese shoppers joked about the irresistible allure of e-commerce deals, calling themselves “hand-choppers” – only chopping off their hands could stop them from hitting the checkout button.

As rising incomes fuelled their spending power, 11 November in China, or Double 11, came to be crowned as the world’s busiest shopping day. Explosive sales pulled in over 410 billion yuan ($57bn; £44bn) in just 24 hours in 2019.

But the last one “was a dud,” a Beijing-based coffee bean online seller told the BBC. “If anything, it caused more trouble than it was worth.”

Chinese consumers have grown frugal since the pandemic, and this caution has persisted even after restrictions were lifted in late 2022.

That’s the year Alibaba and JD.com stopped publishing their sales figures, a significant shift for companies that once headlined their record-breaking revenues. A source familiar with the matter told the BBC that Chinese authorities cautioned platforms against releasing numbers, fearing that underwhelming results could further dent consumer confidence.

The spending crunch has even hit high-end brands – last year, LVMH, Burberry and Richemont all reported sales declines in China, once a backbone of the global luxury market.

On RedNote, a Chinese social media app, posts tagged with “consumption downgrade” have racked up more than a billion views in recent months. Users are swapping tips on how to replace expensive purchases with budget-friendly alternatives. “Tiger Balm is the new coffee,” said one user, while another quipped, “I apply perfume between my nose and lips now – saving it just for myself.”

Even at its peak, China’s consumer boom was never a match for its exports. Trade was also the focus of generous state-backed investment in highways, ports and special economic zones. China relied on low-wage workers and high household savings, which fuelled growth but left consumers with limited disposable income.

But now, as geopolitical uncertainties grow, countries are diversifying supply chains away from China, reducing reliance on Chinese exports. Local governments are burdened by debt, after years of borrowing heavily to invest, particularly in infrastructure.

Xi Jinping has already vowed “to make domestic demand the main driving force and stabilising anchor of growth”. Caiyun Wang, a National People’s Congress representative, said, “With a population of 1.4 billion, even a 1% rise in demand creates a market of 14 million people.”

But there’s a catch in Beijing’s plan.

For consumption to drive growth, many analysts say, the Chinese Communist Party would have to restore the consumer confidence of a generation of Covid graduates that is struggling to own a home or find a job. It would also require triggering a cultural shift, from saving to spending.

“China’s extraordinarily low consumption level is not an accident,” according to Michael Pettis, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It is fundamental to the country’s economic growth model, around which three-four decades of political, financial, legal and business institutions in China have evolved. Changing this won’t be easy.”

The more households spend, the less there is in the pool of savings that China’s state-controlled banks rely on to fund key industries – currently that includes AI and innovative tech that would give Beijing an edge over Washington, both economically and strategically.

That is why some analysts doubt that China’s leaders want to create a consumer-driven economy.

“One way to think about this is that Beijing’s primary goal is not to enhance the welfare of Chinese households, but rather the welfare of the Chinese nation,” David Lubin, a research fellow at Chatham House wrote.

Shifting power from the state to the individual may not be what Beijing wants.

China’s leaders did do that in the past, when they began trading with the world, encouraging businesses and inviting foreign investment. And it transformed their economy. But the question is whether Xi Jinping wants to do that again.

On Saturday, the US government put hundreds of Venezuelans on planes which swiftly took off for the accused gang members’ ultimate destination: an El Salvadorean mega-prison.

A judge then ordered the planes back, telling the government’s lawyers verbally that they should do so “however that’s accomplished — whether turning around the plane or not.”

But the court order was never heeded, the planes stayed the course.

“Oopsie…too late,” El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, posted on X after the deportees landed in his country. He included an emoji crying with laughter. The post was reshared by the White House’s director of communications, Steven Cheung.

Little information has been provided about the identities of those detained, but a large number were Venezuelan and the Trump administration alleges the deportees – apparently rounded up at the weekend – are all members of Tren de Aragua, a notorious transnational criminal gang. Attorneys for some of the deportees refute that claim and human rights groups have raised concerns about the lack of due process.

This incident has ignited fears that the White House is willing to openly defy a federal court order, setting it on a potential collision course with America’s judicial branch.

In America’s system of government checks and balances, federal courts in the judicial branch have the responsibility of reviewing actions by the president and the government agencies in the executive branch tasked with enacting laws passed by Congress. An order issued by a judge is binding – and noncompliance can result in civil and criminal sanctions.

It very rarely gets that far, however, as involved parties traditionally defer to a judge’s ruling.

White House officials said it did not purposely ignore a court ruling. They argued, in part, that because Judge James Boasberg’s order was made orally rather than in written form, it was not enforceable – and that the planes had already left the US by the time it was issued.

Legal scholars have kept a close eye on the White House’s reaction to judges across the country who have paused or blocked its actions, including the mass firings of federal employees and broad freezing of federal funds. Several of Donald Trump’s early moves in his second term indicate a willingness to test the limits of presidential power, and constitutional scholars have watched for signs the president will openly defy the nation’s courts.

“The Trump administration is pushing the bounds of executive authority, especially on immigration issues,” said Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School.

“When the executive branch wilfully disregards clear and specific court orders, as the administration did with the [Venezuelan] deportation flights, the checks-and-balances system established by the U.S. Constitution is at risk, and our constitutional democracy is threatened,” she said.

The federal judge involved in Saturday’s ruling – Judge Boasberg – made his order after five Venezuelans in federal custody filed a lawsuit challenging their removal under an 18th century law that has not been used since World War Two. The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 allows the president sweeping powers to order the detention and deportation of natives or citizens of an “enemy” nation without following the usual processes.

According to US officials, more than 130 of those on the Venezuelan deportation flights were also expelled under that law, a move seemingly crafted to move quickly and evade immediate judicial review.

Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrant’s Rights Project, told the BBC this weekend that he believed the Trump administration had improperly invoked the 1798 act.

“The other dangerous part of this is that the government is saying the federal courts have no role in this, that the federal courts in the United States can’t review what President Trump has done,” he added. “That’s a very, very dangerous argument.”

At a Monday hearing, Judge Boasberg demanded answers about the timing of the flights in relation to his order that the planes return to the US. Trump administration officials asserted that they respected court orders and followed the law, arguing that “an oral directive is not enforceable as an injunction”. The judge ordered further details about the flights by noon Tuesday and another hearing Friday.

There is also growing frustration within the White House, and among conservatives in general, over what they view as lower-level judges overstepping their authority in delaying or suspending the implementation of the president’s executive orders. A ruling by a federal judge in one state can put an immediate hold on a policy being implemented across the country.

“It’s a judge that’s putting himself in the position of the president of the United States, who was elected by close to 80 million votes,” Trump said on Sunday in response to a federal judge’s order to suspend his firing of thousands of federal workers. “That’s a very dangerous thing for our country. And I would suspect that we’re going to have to get a decision from the Supreme Court.”

The nine-member US Supreme Court, with its conservative majority, including three justices appointed by Trump in his first term, could be poised as the ultimate arbiter of this growing number of legal battles.

Last week, the Trump administration asked the high court to step in and overturn a lower court’s suspension of an order revoking automatic citizenship for the children of undocumented migrants born on US soil. That request is still pending.

Trump’s efforts to downsize the federal workforce, shutter federal agencies, suspend refugee admissions and asylum claims, and freeze government loans and grants are all working their way through the US court system at varying speed. Each has its own distinct legal issues, but all also involve the ability of judges to delay, and scrutinise, presidential action.

With the Venezuelan deportees already in El Salvador, Judge Boasberg may have limited ability to address their fate – but he could attempt to sanction Trump administration officials if he determines they defied his order.

That may be a legal fight Trump is happy to wage, confident that the political benefit of being seen removing what he argues are dangerous criminal gang members will outweigh any legal setbacks along the way.

“A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrying foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil”, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday in response to the furore.

Previous presidents, both Democratic and Republican, have frequently complained of being hampered by low-level judges that issue sweeping rulings undermining their policy-making efforts. Some have questioned their authority to do so. In the months ahead, Trump may be the one who pushes this conflict to a more definitive resolution.

A group of scientists due to work together for months at a remote Antarctic research station has been rocked after a member of the team was accused of assault.

About 10 researchers typically stay at the South African-run base, which sits about 170km (about 105 miles) from the edge of the ice shelf and is difficult to reach.

But a spokesperson for the South African government told the BBC “there was an assault” at the station, following earlier allegations of inappropriate behaviour from inside the camp.

In a further message seen by the BBC, the South African environment ministry said it was responding to the concerns with “utmost urgency”.

South Africa’s Sunday Times, which was first to report the story, said members of the team had pleaded to be rescued.

The ministry also said that those in the team had been subject to “a number of evaluations that include background checks, reference checks, medical assessment as well as a psychometric evaluation by qualified professionals”, which all members had cleared.

The Sanae IV research base is located more than 4,000km from mainland South Africa and harsh weather conditions mean scientists can be cut off there for much of the year.

The current team were expected to be at the Sanae IV base until December.

South African research expeditions have been taking place since 1959. The team to the Sanae IV base typically comprises a doctor, two mechanics, three engineers, a meteorological technician and a couple of physicians.

These expeditions, with harsh weather conditions mandating a lot of time spent in a confined indoor space, normally run without incident, and team members have to undergo a range of psychological assessments before travelling.

But on Sunday, South Africa’s Sunday Times reported that one member of the team had sent an email warning of “deeply disturbing behaviour” by a colleague and an “environment of fear”.

A South African government spokesperson told the BBC that the alleged assault was triggered by “a dispute over a task the team leader wanted the team to do – a weather dependant task that required a schedule change”.

Incidents in Antarctica are rare, but not unprecedented. In 2018 there were reports of a stabbing at the Russian-operated Bellingshausen research station.

Psychologists point to the effect that isolation can have on human behaviour.

“One thing we know from these rare occurrences, when something bad happens in enforced isolation or capsule working, is that it’s often the small things, tiny things that can blow up into conflict,” said Craig Jackson, professor of workplace health psychology at Birmingham City University, and a chartered member of the British Psychological Society.

“So issues about hierarchy, about workload allocation, even small things about leisure time or rations or food portions can rapidly flare up to become something much larger than they typically are,” he told the BBC.

Gabrielle Walker, a scientist and author who has been on expeditions to Antarctica, said working in such close proximity to a small group of colleagues had risks.

“You know exactly how they put their coffee cup down and what direction the handle points in; you know that they scratch their nose three times before they sit down; you know everything about them.

“And in the bad circumstances, it can start to irritate you… because there’s nothing else – there’s no other stimulus and you’re with people 24/7,” she said.

Sources within the Antarctic research community have told the BBC that South Africa has access to an ice-capable ship and aircraft if needed.

But any rescue operation would have to contend with the harsh climate, with temperatures well below freezing and the possibility of strong winds.

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A political storm is brewing in India, with the first waves already hitting the southern part of the country.

Leaders there are calling for mass mobilisation to protect the region’s political interests amid a heated controversy over the redrawing of electoral seats to reflect changes in population over time.

In a high-stakes push, they are urging citizens to “have more children”, using meetings and media campaigns to amplify their message: that the process of delimitation could shift the balance of power.

“Delimitation is a Damocles’ sword hanging over southern India,” says MK Stalin, chief minister of Tamil Nadu, one of India’s five southern states, and an arch rival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). (The other four are Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Telangana.)

These five states account for 20% of India’s 1.4 billion people. They also outperform the rest of the country in health, education and economic prospects. A child is less likely to be born here than in the north, due to lower population growth rates.

Their leaders are worried that the more prosperous south may lose parliamentary seats in the future, a “punishment” for having fewer children and generating more wealth. Wealthier southern states have always contributed more to federal revenue, with poorer, highly populated states in the north receiving larger shares based on need.

India’s Constitution mandates that seats be allocated to each state based on its population, with constituencies of roughly equal size. It also requires reallocation of seats after each census, reflecting updated population figures.

So India redrew parliamentary seats three times based on the decennial census in 1951, 1961 and 1971. Since then, governments of all stripes have paused the exercise, fearing an imbalance of representation due to varying fertility rates across states.

The next delimitation exercise is set for 2026, but uncertainty looms as India hasn’t conducted a census since 2011, with no clear timeline for when it will take place.

This has set the stage for a potential crisis. “Tamil Nadu is leading the charge and India is on the brink of a federal deadlock,” says Yamini Aiyar, a senior fellow at Brown University

The number of seats in the Lok Sabha – the lower house of parliament representing directly elected MPs – has risen from 494 to 543 and has remained constant since then. The freeze means that despite India’s growing population since 1971, the number of Lok Sabha seats per state has stayed the same, with no new seats added.

In 1951, each MP represented just over 700,000 people. Today, that number has surged to an average of 2.5 million per MP – more than three times the population represented by a member of the US House of Representatives. In comparison, a UK MP represents around 120,000 people.

Experts say all Indians are underrepresented – though not equally so – because constituencies are too large. (The original Constitution capped the ratio at one MP for 750,000 people)

That’s not all. Using census data and population projections, economist Shruti Rajagopalan of George Mason University has highlighted the “severe malapportionment” – unequal distribution of political representation – in India.

Consider this. In Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s most populous state with over 240 million people, each MP represents about three million citizens.

Meanwhile, in Kerala, where fertility rates are similar to many European countries, an MP represents roughly 1.75 million.

This means the average voter in Kerala in the south has 1.7 times more influence in choosing an MP than a voter in UP in the north.

Ms Rajagopalan also notes that Tamil Nadu and Kerala now have nine and six seats more than their population share, while populous, poorer states like Bihar and UP have nine and 12 seats fewer than their proportion. (Stalin warns that Tamil Nadu could lose eight seats if delimitation occurs in 2026, based on projected population figures.)

By 2031, the problem will intensify: UP and Bihar will fall a dozen seats short of their population proportion, while Tamil Nadu will likely have 11 seats more than its proportion, with other states falling “somewhere in between,” according to Ms Rajagopalan.

“Consequently,” she says, “India is no longer living up to its fundamental constitutional principle of ‘one-person, one vote’.” To make this principle meaningful, constituency sizes must be roughly equal.

Experts have proposed several solutions, many of which will require strong bipartisan consensus.

One option is to increase the number of seats in the lower house.

In other words, India should revert to the original constitutional ratio of one MP for every 750,000 people, which would expand the Lok Sabha to 1,872 seats. (The new parliament building has the capacity for 880 seats, so it would need a major upgrade.)

The other option is for the total number of seats in Lok Sabha to increase to the extent that no state loses its current number of electoral seats – to achieve this the number of seats in the Lok Sabha would need to be 848, by several estimations.

Accompanying this move, experts like Ms Rajagopalan advocate for a more decentralised fiscal system.

In this model, states would have greater revenue-raising powers and retain most or all of their revenue. Federal funds would then be allocated based on development needs. Currently, states receive less than 40% of the total revenue but spend about 60% of it, while the rest is raised and spent by the central government.

A third solution is to reform the composition of the upper house of the parliament. The Rajya Sabha represents states’ interests, with seats allocated proportionally to population and capped at 250.

Rajya Sabha members are elected by state legislatures, not directly by the public. Milan Vaishnav of Carnegie Endowment for Peace suggests a radical approach would be to fix the number of seats per state in the upper house, similar to the US Senate.

“Transforming the upper house into a real venue for debate of states’ interests could potentially soften the opposition to a reallocation of seats in the lower house,” he argues.

Then there are other proposals like splitting big states – India’s top five states have more than 45% share of total seats.

Miheer Karandikar of Takshashila Institution, a Bangalore-based think-tank, cites UP as an example of how big states skew things. UP’s share of total votes cast in India is around 14% currently. He estimates this would likely increase to 16% after delimitation, “which allows it to retain its status as the most significant state politically and in terms of legislative influence”. Splitting a state like UP could help matters.

For now, the anxious southern leaders – whose rhetoric is partly political with Tamil Nadu elections looming next summer – have been joined by counterparts in Punjab to urge the government to maintain current seats and freeze electoral boundaries for the next 30 years, beyond 2026. In other words, it’s a call for more of the same, preserving the status quo.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has made little significant statement so far. Home Minister Amit Shah claimed southern states would not lose “even a single seat” in the upcoming delimitation, though the meaning remains unclear. Meanwhile, the federal government’s decision to withhold education funds and label Tamil Nadu’s leadership as “undemocratic and uncivilised” over a contentious education policy has deepened divisions.

Political scientist Suhas Palshikar warns that the north-south divide threatens India’s federal structure. “The north-south prism is only likely to persuade people and parties of the north to push for a delimitation that would give them an advantage. Such a counter-mobilisation in the north can make it impossible to arrive at any negotiated settlement, Mr Palshikar noted.

He believes that expanding the size of the Lok Sabha and ensuring that no state loses its current strength is not only “politically prudent step”, but something which will “enrich the idea of democracy in the Indian context.” Balancing representation will be the key to preserving India’s strained federal spirit.

King Charles gave a warm welcome to the new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney when he visited Buckingham Palace.

It was another symbolic gesture of support for Canada from a King, wearing a red tie, who has to send coded signals rather than spell things out in words, as Canada faces threats from US President Donald Trump.

But the King has sought to make clear his commitment to Canada – and if it had not been for his cancer diagnosis, the BBC understands he would have travelled there for an intended visit in 2024.

There are also suggestions that once Canada’s election is out the way, a visit to Canada will be a priority, where he can further demonstrate his support.

The new Canadian prime minister told the King that his Order of Canada pin had broken this morning. The King joked: “Do you want another one?”

“There’s much to catch up on,” said the King, ushering Carney to a seat, and perhaps hoping that the broken pin was not a symbol of a Commonwealth relationship under strain.

“These are important matters,” said the King, ahead of a 30-minute conversation with no one else in attendance.

Carney later went on to meet UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer at Downing Street.

Sir Keir hailed the relationship between the two countries and said they had “so much in common – shared history, shared values, shared King.”

Carney said he was “grateful for the welcomes and the constructive discussions” with Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron – whom he had met earlier in the day.

At a news conference, he was asked if he felt let down by the lack of public support for Canada from other allies, given Trump’s trade war with Canada, and his remarks about making Canada the 51st state of the US.

“We don’t need another country to validate our sovereignty, we are sovereign, we don’t need praise from another country, we are proud in and of ourselves,” he said, adding that Sir Keir had made a point of referring to Canada’s sovereignty and to “our shared sovereign in King Charles III.”

The meeting with Carney is the latest scene in an intricate diplomatic balancing act for a King who is head of state of both the UK and Canada.

King Charles has to show solidarity with Canada without disrupting the UK’s relationship with Trump.

The King also has to avoid getting directly involved in politics – and has to speak on advice of ministers. Whatever he might personally believe about Trump’s comments about taking over Canada, the King has to keep his thoughts to himself.

Adding to this complicated choreography is that the royals are one of the strongest cards the UK can play with President Trump. He seemed delighted by his second state visit invitation from the King.

So messages from the King are sent in symbolic displays. In case anyone missed the signs over Canada, there have been multiple moments. And then some more.

When the King visited aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales, he appeared wearing a set of Canadian medals.

The 60th anniversary of Canada’s maple leaf flag might usually have passed without any royal intervention, but there was a fulsome message sent by the King, praising the “proud, resilient and compassionate country”.

A ceremonial sword for Canada became an event at Buckingham Palace with a formal presentation by the King.

At a tree planting ceremony in Buckingham Palace, the tree chosen was a maple. And when the King sat down at the Commonwealth Service last week, it was on a Canadian chair.

If any of these moments were accidental, they were not being rejected by Buckingham Palace, with royal sources emphasising the King’s commitment to Canada.

But there is no avoiding the tensions and contradictions in this balancing act. Emails from Canadians to the BBC’s Royal Watch newsletter show that many want a much more robust defence from the King.

“What a cop out! Throw Canada to the wolves. Giving us back pats for our flag’s anniversary doesn’t quite cut it. Here sits a monarchist who is seriously rethinking his allegiance to the crown!” emailed Brian, a Canadian military veteran.

Carol in Vancouver was unhappy at the invitation from the UK for a second state visit by President Trump.

“I feel ashamed for the Brits feeling they have to follow through with inviting such a boor for dinner. For the life of me I do not understand why he has this power over you,” she wrote.

“As a Canadian, the invitation is a slap in the face to the people of Canada. If the King is our King (as we are a Commonwealth country), and Trump is basically at war with us, how dare King Charles give him any credence?” emailed Patricia.

“As a Canadian I am saddened, appalled, disgusted and angry that King Charles appears to be joining the conga line of supplicants,” said Jo-Ann in Ontario.

But King Charles will have to keep to the line set by ministers, and if that means maintaining good relations with Trump, he is unlikely to be saying anything more outspoken.

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The last surviving Battle of Britain pilot, John “Paddy” Hemingway, has died at the age of 105.

Mr Hemingway, who was originally from Dublin, joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a teenager before World War Two.

At 21, he was a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain, a three-month period when air force personnel defended the skies against a large-scale assault by the German air force, the Luftwaffe.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer paid tribute to Mr Hemingway, saying his courage and those of all RAF pilots had “helped end WWII and secure our freedom”.

Those who fought in the three-and-a-half-month battle came to be known as “The Few” after a speech by the then Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill.

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,” he said of their sacrifices in battle.

In a statement, the RAF said that Mr Hemingway had “passed away peacefully” on Monday.

The pilot’s squadron shot down 90 enemy aircraft during an 11-day period in May 1940, and provided fighter cover during the Battle of France.

During the war, Gp Capt Hemingway was shot down four times.

During dogfights – or one-on-one aerial combats – in August 1940, Mr Hemingway was forced to bail out of his Hurricane single-seat fighter on two occasions, landing in the sea off the coast of Essex and in marshland.

The wreckage of his Hurricane was recovered in 2019 with the control column and the gun-button still set to “fire”.

In July 1941, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross – awarded to RAF personnel for an act or acts of valour, courage or devotion to duty while flying on active operations.

On the way to receive his medal from the King, he was forced to escape from a Blenheim aircraft, which crashed during take-off.

While serving with the 85 Squadron in RAF Hunsdon near Hertfordshire, Mr Hemingway was forced to bail out of his Havoc night fighter at 600ft (183m) due to instrument failure in bad weather.

He broke his hand on the tail section and his parachute failed to open, with the chute catching on the branches of a tree.

He was forced to bail out a fourth time while fighting near Ravenna, Italy, when his Spitfire was hit multiple times. He landed in enemy territory, and made contact with Italian citizens, who helped him back to the Allies.

Speaking to BBC News NI in 2023, Gp Capt Hemingway said he had never looked for fame for being part of “The Few”.

“I don’t think we ever assumed greatness of any form,” he said.

“We were just fighting a war which we were trained to fight.”

Mr Hemingway said that his biggest regret was the loss of friends, in particular that of Richard “Dickie” Lee in August 1940.

The RAF said that Mr Hemingway’s passing marked “the end of an era and a poignant reminder of the sacrifices made by those who fought for freedom during World War II”.

“His courage in the face of overwhelming odds demonstrated his sense of duty and the importance of British resilience.”

Mr Hemingway “always had a twinkle in his eyes as he recalled the fun times with colleagues in France and London”, the statement said.

“This quiet, composed, thoughtful and mischievous individual may not have wanted to be the last of ‘The Few’, but he embodied the spirit of all those who flew sorties over this green and pleasant land,” it added.

Chief of RAF Air Staff Sir Rich Knighton said he had spent time with Mr Hemingway in Dublin earlier this year.

“Paddy was an amazing character whose life story embodies all that was and remains great about the Royal Air Force.”

President Trump has said “many” pardons issued by Joe Biden are void because the former president signed them with “autopen” – a device which reproduces a person’s signature – rather than by hand.

Trump did not provide evidence for his claim – which was posted on Truth Social.

BBC Verify has found several instances of Biden signing pardons by hand rather than by autopen.

And a sample presidential signature is used on US government documents when they are stored in the Federal Register – a digital archive. This was the case under Trump as well as under Biden.

Legal experts also told us that there is nothing in US law which would invalidate pardons signed by autopen.

On Truth Social, Trump said that: “The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen. In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!”.

Trump didn’t specify which pardons he was referring to but he has previously referred to the house select committee investigating the 6 January riots as the “unselect committee”, and has criticised Biden for pardoning family members.

BBC Verify looked through official photographs of Biden in the White House and ones posted on the official White House X account and found a number of examples of him signing pardons by hand.

In October 2022, Biden was pictured signing an order pardoning those in jail for marijuana possession.

In the same year, he also signed a pardon for non-violent offenders.

It is not known whether Biden has signed any pardons only using autopen.

In May last year, CNN did report that he signed a bill for a one-week extension for federal aviation funding using autopen.

BBC Verify has asked Biden’s office for his record of using autopen and the White House for the evidence behind Trump’s claim.

Trump appears to have taken his cue from the Oversight Project – part of the Conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation – which has claimed that Biden’s 19 January pardons – of some family members and political figures including Anthony Fauci – all had the same autopen signature.

We have asked the Heritage Foundation for its workings. Previously, it has highlighted other Biden documents which it says had autopen signatures, along with screenshots taken from the Federal Register.

The register is the official, daily publication of various presidential and other government documents – which all have a standard signature created from a single sample.

A National Archives spokesperson told the fact-checking website Snopes that: “At the beginning of each administration, the White House sends a sample of the President’s signature to the Federal Register, which uses it to create the graphic image for all Presidential Documents published in the Federal Register,”

We looked through presidential documents archived by the Federal Register under both Trump administrations and found identical signatures on documents.

That includes Trump’s pardons for the 6 January rioters.

Trump had already signed these pardons by hand, as this video showed in January.

Presidential pardons are also published by the US Department of Justice. We have asked it how these documents are archived.

Legal experts who we spoke to told us that there is nothing in US law which says official documents signed by US presidents – including pardons – are not legally binding if they were signed with autopen.

Andrew Moran, a politics professor at London Metropolitan University, says that previous presidents have used autopen before.

“On lower-level importance documents, it’s not unusual for an autopen to be used.

“But I would have thought that with something as serious as a pardon Biden would have actually signed it [by hand]”, he said.

A 2005 memo from the Department of Justice during the Bush administration stated that the President does not have to physically sign a bill for it to become law.

“The President may sign a bill within the meaning of Article I, Section 7 by directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen”, the memo said.

Although George W. Bush did not use autopen himself, President Obama used it in 2011.

Autopen has also been used by earlier presidents including JFK and Harry Truman.

Professor Erin Delaney, director of the Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism at UCL, says that an attempt by Trump to rescind Biden’s pardons would be a “violation of unwritten constitutional norms”.

Critically, he would not be able to pursue this action without prosecuting, or re-prosecuting the individuals who were given immunity, she argues.

Legally challenging Biden’s pardons because of autopen would also call into question other aspects of US governance that use automatic signatures, such as bills passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, she added.

Professor Moran says that a president revoking his predecessor’s pardon is extremely rare.

“Historically, the only example I’m aware of is towards the end of Andrew Johnson’s presidency in the 1860s, when he issued some pardons which were revoked before they were accepted. But that’s a very small number.

“If he [Trump] decides that he wants to go after the people who were pardoned, that will end up in the courts and then that would become the point where the constitution is really tested”, he said.

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