The Sudanese army says it has recaptured the presidential palace in the capital Khartoum from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) after almost two years of fighting.

Reclaiming the east African country’s seat of power marks a major victory for the army, which has been making significant advances against the RSF in recent months.

But it is still a long way from ending the war entirely, with large parts of the country still under the RSF’s control.

It is also unclear whether the battle for Khartoum is over: an RSF statement said its fighters were still in the area.

“Our valiant forces are still present in the vicinity of the area,” read an RSF statement issued on the messaging service Telegram.

RSF said a drone strike it launched on the palace complex left numerous dead – including a team of journalists from Sudan’s state TV station and two of the army’s senior media liaison officers.

Bloody clashes are also expected to carry on as the army tries to corner remaining fighters, who occupy swathes of territory to the south of the palace.

They also control parts of the nearby airport.

However, the capture of the palace – which came after fierce battles in the centre of the city – was marked with joyful posts by soldiers on social media. Posts showed jubilant soldiers cheering and kneeling to pray at the entrance.

Nabil Abdallah, the army spokesperson, said on state TV that the military had taken control of the palace and ministry buildings on Friday morning.

“Our forces completely destroyed the enemy’s fighters and equipment, and seized large quantities of equipment and weapons,” Abdallah added.

People in the capital – where some of the biggest battles of the last two years have been fought – are still reeling from life under the RSF soldiers, who have been accused of widespread looting and human rights abuses.

Residents say they feel relieved and safe now that the territory has been taken back by the army.

Some have been saying that they would finally be able to sleep at night.

The conflict, which began in April 2023, has taken a huge toll on civilians, with 12 million people forced from their homes and millions facing famine.

The capital is not the only place the Sudanese Armed Forces have been making gains: the army has also taken parts of central Sudan in recent weeks.

But this does not represent an end to the war as the RSF still controls large areas of the country, particularly in the western Darfur region.

In a video recording on Saturday, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, had vowed to defend the presidential palace and surrounding areas that are under the control of his paramilitary group.

He also threatened further attacks in several northern cities.

Several peace efforts have collapsed as the rival forces pledge to continue fighting to control strategic areas.

As well as causing the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, according to the UN, both the RSF and the army have been accused of widespread human rights abuses.

• Sudan’s ‘invisible crisis’ – where more children are fleeing war than anywhere else
• Sudan war: A simple guide to what is happening

More than 40 men have now come forward accusing the former chief executive of Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) of rape, sexual assault or drugging, lawyers have told the BBC.

Mike Jeffries, who was charged with sex trafficking in October, is facing multiple civil lawsuits alleging he assaulted men under the guise of modelling opportunities with the fashion brand.

The latest claims stretch back to the 1990s, when Mr Jeffries first started working at A&F and the alleged victims now include company employees as well as former models, the lawyers said.

Mr Jeffries has denied all the allegations previously made against him.

A&F is also being sued for negligence with the lawsuits claiming that it knowingly facilitated the “heinous sexual crimes” of Mr Jeffries and his British life partner, Matthew Smith.

The company – which also owns the Hollister brand – did not respond to requests for comment but has previously said it was “appalled and disgusted” by Mr Jeffries’ alleged behaviour.

In the latest allegations, some men say they were already A&F employees when they were sexually assaulted, raising questions about what steps the company took to protect staff and hold Mr Jeffries accountable while he was chief executive and chairman between 1992 and 2014.

Now 80, Mr Jeffries is under house arrest after pleading not guilty to charges of running an international sex trafficking and prostitution business along with his partner Mr Smith, 61, and their middleman, James Jacobson, 72.

Their arrests followed a BBC podcast and documentary in 2023 that revealed they were behind a highly organised operation scouting young men for sex across the US, Europe and North Africa. They face a maximum of life in prison if convicted.

Brad Edwards, a civil trial lawyer, has told the BBC he is now representing 26 alleged victims in a lawsuit seeking class action status – where one or more people sue on behalf of a wider group.

“There is strength in numbers, so more men came forward after the arrests,” Mr Edwards said, adding that many were co-operating with the authorities, and claiming it is likely more than 100 men could be victims overall.

Attorney Jared Scotto has told the BBC he is also representing more than a dozen men planning to take legal action, including some who say they were A&F employees. He said the claims date back to the autumn of 1992, the year that Mike Jeffries joined the company.

“A lot of men are coming forward to ask questions and better understand what happened to them,” said Mr Scotto. “Now they know it’s not just them affected; it was part of a larger nefarious scheme.”

Separate to the group civil action, two lawsuits have recently been filed in New York by men alleging they were raped by Mr Jeffries after being falsely promised modelling opportunities.

The first of these lawsuits alleges two men, Brandon Steele and Joseph Sterling, were assaulted on multiple occasions after being pressured to take illegal narcotics and forced to endure penis injections. These happened at “Abercrombie-themed” events where they were given A&F clothing to wear, the lawsuit says.

Both men, who were in their late teens and 20s at the time, say they were initially approached by an A&F employee or representative about possible modelling work in 2010 and 2011, according to the court papers and their attorney.

They each then met James Jacobson, who also sexually abused them, they add.

• Abercrombie & Fitch ex-CEO accused of exploiting men for sex
• How my investigation led to sex trafficking charges against ex-Abercrombie boss
• ‘I tried to say no repeatedly’: More men accuse ex-Abercrombie boss over sex events

“Coercive sex is not consensual sex,” said their attorney Robert Georges, who told the BBC that Mr Sterling had been taken to France, Italy, St Barts and onboard an ocean liner sailing from Hong Kong to Australia.

“The power imbalance was extreme, and Mr Jeffries and Mr Smith used it shamelessly while Abercrombie & Fitch ignored the obvious for the sake of corporate profits.”

In the second lawsuit, two former models say they were assaulted by Mr Jeffries during a casting call at the Setai Hotel in Miami in 2011, while auditioning to be pictured on A&F’s bags.

One of the models alleges that Mr Jeffries sexually assaulted him after taking his pictures, telling him that “Abercrombie models get special treatment”.

The other, who was represented by Wilhelmina Models, a top modelling agency, claims Mr Jeffries’ assaulted him after he and his partner Matthew Smith “relentlessly” questioned him about his sexuality and expressed an interest in straight men.

Three weeks later, the men say they were contacted by James Jacobson with an offer to fly to New York to visit Mr Jeffries’ home in the Hamptons to finalise the A&F casting.

According to their lawsuit, the men allege Mr Jeffries subsequently raped them.

One says this occurred after Mr Jeffries asked if he would have sex with a man in exchange for pay, gifts, or other favours.

“No, I’m straight and have a girlfriend,” he said, according to his lawsuit. He says he was then dismissed but Mr Jeffries later accosted him in a bathroom.

In his lawsuit, he says he then grappled with Mr Jeffries and yelled at him to stop. He says when he finally did, Mr Jeffries asked: “Do you want this campaign or not?”

The man says he rejected the offer of an A&F campaign deal and $6,000 (£4,600) to have sex with him and Mr Smith. He then tried to run out of the room, but Mr Jeffries grabbed him by the waist and raped him, the lawsuit claims.

A handler for Mr Jeffries then refused to arrange for him to return to New York without signing a non-disclosure agreement until he threatened to call the police, it adds.

Eric M Baum and Adriana Alcalde, attorneys for the two men, said it was often difficult for male survivors of sexual abuse, such as their clients, to come forward.

“Survivors may struggle for years to process what happened to them. Seeing others share their stories can reduce feelings of shame and embarrassment, serving as a catalyst for seeking justice,” they said.

US prosecutors have said that there are currently 15 victims in the criminal case against Mr Jeffries, but the BBC understands that they are continuing to interview potential witnesses, so this number may grow.

Earlier this month, a court ordered that A&F must pay Mr Jeffries’ legal fees – a bill likely to run into millions – in the criminal case as well as in all the civil lawsuits.

Mr Jeffries, Mr Smith and Mr Jacobson did not respond to the BBC’s latest requests for comment.

Mr Jacobson – the middleman – has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges and has previously said in a statement through his lawyer that he took offence at the suggestion of “any coercive, deceptive or forceful behaviour on my part” and had “no knowledge of any such conduct by others”.

Mr Jeffries and Mr Smith have also pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges and, in response to the civil case, have previously said they “vehemently deny” the allegations.

A&F also did not respond to requests for comment, though it has previously said that it had no knowledge of alleged sexual misconduct or sex trafficking and “up until the moment that the BBC’s reporting was released in October 2023, there was nothing public about the allegations against Jeffries”.

It said that new leadership had since transformed the company, and it has “zero tolerance for abuse, harassment or discrimination of any kind”.

Following the BBC’s reporting, the retailer opened an independent investigation and suspended $1m annual retirement payments to Mr Jeffries, which he was receiving on top of his pension.

An American airline mechanic has been freed by the Taliban after being held in Afghanistan for more than two years.

George Glezmann, who was detained in December 2022 while visiting as a tourist, arrived by plane in Qatar on Thursday evening before travelling back to the US.

His release was confirmed after the Taliban government’s foreign minister hosted US hostage envoy Adam Boehler and other US officials in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

The Taliban’s foreign ministry said Mr Glezmann’s release was “on humanitarian grounds” and “a goodwill gesture”, while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the deal a “positive and constructive step”.

The meeting between the US delegation and the Taliban amounted to the highest-level direct talks between the two parties since US President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January.

Boehler was accompanied at the meeting by the US’s former envoy to Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, according to the Afghan foreign ministry.

Contact between the two governments has usually taken place in other countries since the Taliban regained power in 2021.

Qatar said it facilitated the deal to release Mr Glezmann.

In a post on X, Afghanistan’s foreign ministry added that the deal showed “Afghanistan’s readiness to genuinely engaging all sides, particularly the United States of America, on the basis of mutual respect and interests”.

Rubio said that Mr Glezmann, a 65-year-old Delta Air Lines mechanic, would soon be reunited with his wife, Aleksandra, and thanked Qatar for its “instrumental” role in securing the release.

He was pictured at Kabul airport on Thursday before boarding a flight to Qatar, accompanied by Boehler, Khalilzad and Qatari officials.

The James Foley Foundation, which monitors cases of Americans detained overseas, said Mr Glezmann had “periodic and limited telephone contact” with his wife while detained.

His health was also said to have “deteriorated significantly while he had been in detention”, and he had “medical issues that require immediate care”.

Rubio added that Mr Glezmann’s release was “also a reminder that other Americans are still detained in Afghanistan”.

One of those US citizens is believed to be Mahmood Habibi, who was detained in August 2022.

Before Trump took office in January, two Americans, Ryan Corbett and William Wallace McKenty, were released from Afghanistan in exchange for an Afghan imprisoned in the US.

Khan Mohmmad was serving a life sentence in a federal prison in California on drug trafficking and terrorism charges.

Until just over a week ago, Artem Kariakin and his unit were making regular trips across Ukraine’s border into the Russian town of Sudzha.

He shows me video taken with a phone of their very last trip, as Ukrainian forces retreated from Russia’s Kursk region. It shows them making their way past dozens of burnt out military and civilian vehicles.

A soldier armed with a shotgun, their last line of defence, scans the horizon for Russian drones. Out of nowhere, one flies towards the back of their truck. Sparks fly, but they keep on going.

Artem says they were lucky – the explosive charge was not big enough to stop them.

Another truck nearby was less fortunate. It was already in flames.

Artem admits Ukraine’s retreat from Sudzha, the largest town Ukraine held in Kursk, was “not well organised”.

“It was pretty chaotic,” he tells me. “Many units left in disarray. I think the problem was the order to withdraw came too late.”

It wasn’t helped, he says, because units were operating without proper communications. The Starlink satellite systems they normally rely on didn’t work inside Russia.

The 27-year-old soldier still views the Kursk offensive as broadly successful. Artem says it forced Russia to divert its forces from the east. Most of Ukraine’s troops still managed to escape in time – even if for many it was on foot.

But he believes Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russian territory, launched last August, was too deep and too narrow – relying on just one main road for supplies and reinforcements.

While Artem and his men were fleeing for their lives, US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin were talking by phone about trying to bring the war to an end. Artem says he finds that “absurd”.

“To me these calls between Trump and Putin are just surreal,” he says. “Trump wants to end the war because he promised to do it – and Putin wants to deceive Trump to continue his war. I can’t take their conversations seriously.”

Artem, whose home is in the now Russian-occupied Luhansk region, tells me he feels disappointed with the US and Trump. “What can I feel when they just want to give away my home?”

Artem says he never believed that Putin would be willing to trade any part of Russia for Ukraine’s occupied territories. But he still believes the Kursk offensive was important to protect its own border. Ukrainian troops may have been forced to retreat, but they still occupy high ground just over the border with Sumy.

Ukraine is continuing its cross-border raids – not just into Kursk, but Belgorod too.

Serhiy’s assault battalion helps plan these attacks – finding a way through Russian minefields and anti-tank obstacles known as “dragon’s teeth”.

We joined him on a night-time mission to locate and recover armoured vehicles in need of repairs. It’s the safest time to move close to the Russian border.

Serhiy himself is no stranger to Russia: he was born there. He now has Belorussian citizenship, but he chose to fight for Ukraine. He justifies Ukraine’s incursions into his former home. Russia too, he says, has been trying to create a buffer zone inside Ukrainian territory.

Travelling in his Ukrainian-made armoured vehicle, Serhiy still lists the likely threats, now we are less than 10km from the Russian border: glide bombs, rockets and artillery, and drones fitted with thermal imaging cameras.

His own vehicle is fitted with electronic counter-measures to jam enemy drones, but even those won’t work against drones operated via fibre optic wires. Those can’t be stopped, though on some routes Ukraine has now erected netting to try to catch the drones before they can hit their target.

Our original search near the Russian border for a damaged US-made Bradley armoured vehicle is abandoned when Serhiy receives intelligence that Russian drones are operating nearby. Instead, he tries to locate another broken-down Bradley where the risks will be smaller.

He and his driver still have to overcome obstacles along the way. Trees and branches lie strewn across their path – remnants from a recent Russian air strike. We see several more explosions in the distance, briefly turning the night sky orange.

Serhiy eventually finds his broken-down Bradley. It’s already been retrieved from the battlefield across the border and has been loaded onto a lorry to be taken back for repairs.

The Bradley commander confirms to me that they’ve been fighting in Russia. He describes the situations across the border as “difficult, but we’re holding on”.

The Bradley is another reminder of Ukraine’s reliance on US military support. That now seems less certain with Trump’s focus on peace talks. Serhiy says it’s already clear to him that there’s “haggling behind Ukraine’s back”.

I ask Serhiy if he thinks European nations can fill any void left by the US. Is a European “coalition of the willing” enough to guarantee Ukraine’s security?

“I think if America doesn’t help Ukraine, then a ceasefire will be agreed soon – but on extremely unfavourable terms for Ukraine,” Serhiy replies.

“Europe clearly cannot resolve this conflict alone. They’re not strong enough. They’ve been focussing on their own economies instead of thinking about security.”

Serhiy says he wants the war to end. Like many Ukrainians, he would like to see peace – but not at any price.

A South Korean court has ruled against chart-topping K-pop group NewJeans which had sought to cut ties with its record label Ador.

The court said the band, which had renamed themselves NJZ and began organising their own appearances, must not conduct any independent activities – from making music to signing advertising deals.

Earlier last year, NewJeans said that they were leaving Ador, after accusing them of mistreatment. Ador subsequently sued to have NewJeans’ contracts upheld and, after accusing the group of trying to sign independent deals without its approval, filed an injunction against them in January.

The group has said that they will challenge Friday’s decision.

The court’s ruling casts some uncertainty around the release of the group’s new song, slated for Sunday.

It also means they will now face difficulty re-debuting under their new name, NJZ, without facing severe financial penalties for breach of contract.

NewJeans and Ador have been embroiled in a dramatic dispute since August 2024, when Hybe, the parent company of Ador, allegedly forced out NewJeans’ mentor, Min Hee-Jin.

The band issued an ultimatum demanding that Min should be restored – and, when Hybe refused, went public with a number of complaints against the label, including the claim it had deliberately undermined their careers.

One of the group’s members, Hanni, also alleged that she suffered workplace harassment while working with the label.

In a press conference in November, NewJeans announced their departure from the company, saying Hybe and Ador had lost the right to represent them as artists.

On Friday, the Seoul court ruled that NewJeans’ claims did not “sufficiently prove that Ador violated their significant duty as part of their contract”, adding that the music label had upheld “most of its duty including payment”.

“If [NewJeans] unilaterally terminate the contract, Ador would suffer greatly. And if [NewJeans] begins activity under a new name, it could severely damage not only the brand of NewJeans but the reputation of Ador,” the court’s statement reads.

The group says they respect the ruling but has argued that they did not have sufficient opportunity to fully present their case to the court.

“We plan to challenge today’s decision… during which we will raise additional legal issues and submit further supporting evidence,” they responded in a statement just hours after the ruling.

“Regardless… we can no longer remain with a management that has disrespected our identities and undermined our achievements.”

A lawsuit regarding the validity of the two parties’ contract termination is still underway.

The five band members – Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin and Hyein – have over the past few months continued to assert their independence, creating a new Instagram account under the name “jeanzforfree”.

They have also said they would fight to keep their name, and their career, and would remain “NewJeans at heart” even if they lost the fight against Ador.

NewJeans were considered one of the brightest new bands in K-Pop, thanks to a playful blend of 1990s R&B and sugar-coated pop melodies.

In 2023, they were the eighth biggest-selling act in the world. Last year, they picked up a nomination for best group at the MTV Awards.

As he strode into Congress for his State of the Union speech in 1982, US President Ronald Reagan was prepared to deliver a message that resonated with many Republicans: let’s end the Department of Education.

“We must cut out non-essential government spending,” Reagan told lawmakers, vowing to cull the wider federal workforce by 75,000.

For 43 years, that vision for abolishing the education department – backed by members chafing at “big government” control over state issues – went unrealised.

But now, Donald Trump is attempting just that, through an executive order that instructs his Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take “all necessary steps” to shutter the department and “return education authority to the states”, according to a White House-provided fact sheet.

Trump has already moved to lay off half of the agency’s workforce. While closing the department outright would require an act of Congress, a political longshot, the president can take steps to break up the department and narrow its remit.

If ultimately successful, he would fulfil a campaign promise and long-running policy that has united disparate groups within the Republican Party, ranging from establishment Republicans and evangelical Christians to the Make America Great Again wing of the party that is most aligned with Trump.

Trump’s executive order cites a number of reasons for dismantling the department, including $3tn (£2.3tn) spent “without improving student achievement”, plummeting test scores, excessive “ideological initiatives” and a return of control to the states “where it belongs”.

Jonathan Butcher, an education policy veteran with experience in South Carolina, Arkansas and Arizona, told the BBC that these reasons, broadly, are ones shared by various factions of the Republican Party – and have been for years.

“Reagan correctly saw the philosophical and practical point that when you create an agency in Washington, it only grows in size and assumes additional responsibilities,” said Mr Butcher, now a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that has long called for the abolition of the department.

“And sure enough, that’s what the US Department of Education has done,” he added.

While the first US Department of Education was established by President Andrew Johnson in the wake of the American Civil War in 1867, it soon shrank and faded into relative obscurity, housed under various names and agencies.

Over a century later, the now-cabinet level department was revived under Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1979 – immediately drawing the ire of Republicans such as Reagan.

During his victorious campaign to become president, Reagan described the department as a “new bureaucratic boondoggle” that allowed Washington, rather than “local needs and preferences”, to determine how American children were to be educated.

Similar arguments were made by Republicans during subsequent administrations, although a lack of congressional support long made efforts to dismantle or eliminate the agency impossible.

“I do not believe we need a federal department of homework checkers,” then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in 1995.

Gingrich, who was one of only a small number of Republican lawmakers to support the department’s original creation, added that it had become a “massive disappointment”.

While many of the same arguments are being made today, some experts point to heightened “culture wars” – a hallmark of US politics in recent years – as having breathed new life into efforts to scuttle the department.

“What I think is so unifying for the right is that there was always a sense that it offered a kind of one-stop access for the education ‘blob’ to influence policy,” said Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, another Washington-based think tank. “That has been part of the critique going back to Reagan.”

“But the department had never been as forcefully involved in ferocious national culture battles,” Mr Hess added.

“While there are a lot of reasons those on the right might want to see the department downsized or abolished… this has given it all a new energy and focus that has really changed it from a talking point and given it another level of import.”

Experts, however, warn that there remains significant misunderstanding of what the department actually does, and the federal government’s power to influence educational outcomes.

Unlike the UK’s Department for Education, for example, its US counterpart takes no part in laying out national curricula, which it leaves to the states. It contributes only a small fraction of funding for student spending when compared to state-level counterparts.

It does, however, administer student loan programmes and Pell grants that help low-income students attend university – which the White House says that it will continue to do even once largely dismantled.

Mr Hess, for his part, compared the department to a “McGuffin” – a plot device famously used by Alfred Hitchcock to develop a character’s plot arc, while at the same time being largely irrelevant.

“There absolutely is an enormous amount of red-tape and regulation that gets in the way of schools, abolishing the department doesn’t get rid of that red tape and regulation,” he said. “These are baked into law.”

As an example, Mr Hess pointed to programmes such as Pell grants or Title I, a federal initiative to provide funding to schools with large numbers of low-income students.

“Even if you downsize the department, all of those requirements are still in place. You need to actively shave down the requirements and regulations or re-write the law in order to make a significant difference,” Mr Hess said.

Already, the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the size of the department have been the subject of lawsuits, and the new executive order has already faced fierce criticism from Democratic lawmakers who say it endangers student education and jeapordises school funding and financial aid.

The truth, Mr Hess said, is likely somewhere in the middle of the opposing sides.

“Both sides are, for different reasons, overstating the importance of downsizing or abolishing the department, and neither side is paying as much attention to the stuff that would really fundamentally change federal education,” he added.

But for those supportive of the move, Trump’s efforts are the fulfilment of a campaign promise.

“On the campaign trail, he [Trump] said it was a priority for states, not the federal government,” said Mr Butcher of the Heritage Foundation .

“While a move towards efficiency and streamlining, it would really do more for state’s autonomy… it’s a much deeper issue than a financial one.”

Bowlers will be allowed to use saliva to shine the cricket ball in the upcoming Indian Premier League (IPL), reversing the ban imposed during the Covid pandemic five years ago, reports say.

Indian cricket’s governing body’s decision came after a majority of the tournament’s franchise captains supported the move during a meeting on Thursday, ESPNcricinfo said.

A temporary saliva ban was introduced in May 2020 on medical advice during the pandemic, with use of sweat still permitted. The International Cricket Council (ICC) made the ban permanent in September 2022.

Players use saliva and sweat to polish one side of the ball in order to make it swing in the air.

The use of saliva was banned to reduce potential transmission of the Covid infection.

Saliva helps fast bowlers maintain the ball’s shine, creating an imbalance that aids swing, a key element in cricket’s bowling mechanics for more than a century.

It also helps bowlers generate reverse swing, where the ball moves in the opposite direction to what is expected. This is particularly important in dry conditions or with older balls.

Saliva is more effective in red-ball cricket, typically used in Tests, than in white-ball formats like ODIs and T20s.

In red-ball cricket, the ball is used for a longer period, allowing bowlers to shine one side and help generate reverse swing.

It remains unclear whether the International Cricket Council (ICC) will lift the saliva ban for red-ball cricket, following the Indian cricket board’s decision to lift it for the world’s richest T20 league. The ICC is led by Jay Shah, former secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the world’s wealthiest cricket board.

The change will come into effect from Saturday when IPL 2025 – its 18th edition – kicks off with defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) facing Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) at Eden Gardens. The tournament will feature 74 matches across 13 cities over two months.

Indian fast bowler Mohammed Siraj, who is playing for the Gujarat Titans franchise, has welcomed the decision.

“It’s excellent news for us bowlers because when the ball is not doing anything, applying saliva on the ball will increase the chances of finding some reverse swing,” Siraj told Press Trust of India news agency.

“It sometimes aids reverse swing because scrubbing the ball against the shirt will not help [to get reverse swing]. But using saliva on the ball will help in maintaining [the shine on one side], and it is important.”

Mohammed Shami, another Indian fast bowler, had earlier this month called on the ICC to lift the ban.

After India’s Champions Trophy semi-final win over Australia, he said, “We keep appealing that we should be allowed to use saliva so that we can bring reverse swing back into the game and make it interesting.”

Shami’s plea was supported by former international bowlers Vernon Philander and Tim Southee.

Recently, Indian spin great R Ashwin, who recently retired from international cricket, had said that he too was confused by the ban.

“ICC released some research papers which said that saliva did not aid reverse swing much and that not putting saliva on the ball has not made a huge difference. I don’t know how they did the research, but saliva should be allowed anyways if it is not a problem,” he said on his YouTube channel.

Sports writer Sharda Ugra says the lifting of the ban on saliva could help make the contest between bat and ball “more even”.

Many believe the odds are stacked against the bowlers in T20 leagues with batter-friendly wickets. The highest IPL total, set in 2013 with RCB’s 263 for five against Pune, was surpassed four times in 2024. In 17 seasons, there have been 10 totals crossing 250 runs.

However, Ugra adds that it’s not clear how much impact the lifting of the ban will have on bowling.

“Saliva isn’t the only factor in generating swing – conditions must also be ideal, and a skilled bowler is key,” she told the BBC.

Some former fast bowlers like India’s Venkatesh Prasad also had a word of caution about change.

“The ban on applying saliva was also about maintaining cleanliness. Anything can happen today, we don’t know how many – and when – a new virus enters the air. So, I think you need to be very careful in making a decision about lifting the ban,” Prasad told The Times of India newspaper earlier this month.

Israel’s defence minister has told the military to “seize additional areas in Gaza” and threatened to permanently occupy parts of it, if Hamas does not free all remaining hostages.

Israel Katz said that the military would continue its ground operation in Gaza “with increasing intensity” until all of the hostages “both living and dead” were returned.

It is thought 24 of the 59 hostages still held in Gaza are alive, but their fate remains in the balance after negotiations on the second phase of the ceasefire deal failed to progress.

The fragile ceasefire that had been in place since January ended this week as Israel resumed its ground campaign and bombing of Gaza, killing hundreds of people.

Israel has accused Hamas of rejecting proposals to extend the ceasefire. Hamas has said it is “engaging with the mediators with full responsibility and seriousness”.

However, Katz said in a statement on Friday that “the more Hamas continues its refusal, the more territory it will lose to Israel”.

Katz added that Israel still agreed to a proposal, which was brought by US envoy Steve Witkoff, “to release all the kidnapped, both living and dead, in advance and in two stages with a ceasefire in between”.

“We will intensify the fighting with strikes from the air, sea and land and by expanding the ground manoeuvre until the hostages are released and Hamas is defeated,” Katz wrote.

The defence minister also said Israel would “implement US President Trump’s voluntary transfer plan for Gaza residents”.

Trump said he wants the US to take over and rebuild the Gaza Strip, while permanently removing its population of two million Palestinians.

• Why did the ceasefire not hold?
• Explaining the latest on the war in Gaza
• Decoding the Ukraine ceasefire plan line by line

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas have said Gaza is “not for sale”, while the UN warned that any forced displacement of civilians from occupied territory is strictly prohibited under international law and “tantamount to ethnic cleansing”.

Months of negotiations, led by the US, Qatar and Egypt, saw a ceasefire deal proposed in three stages. Israel and Hamas failed to agree on how to take the truce beyond the first phase.

The plan stalled when the US and Israel proposed to extend stage one. Hamas rejected the change and said it was a “blatant attempt” by Israel “to evade the agreement”.

The ceasefire was broken on Tuesday when Israel launched a heavy wave of airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, killing more than 430 people in two days, the Hamas-run health ministry said. On Thursday, Hamas launched three rockets at Tel Aviv.

Blaming Hamas for the resumption of violence, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said the group had “rejected every hostage deal”.

Israel says Hamas is still holding 59 hostages, 24 of whom are believed to still be alive.

Hamas has denied it is responsible for stalling the negotiations, and said it “remains deeply involved” and is “engaging with the mediators with full responsibility and seriousness”.

In a statement on Telegram, Hamas wrote it is discussing “the Witkoff proposal and other different ideas put forward, all with the goal of securing a prisoner exchange deal that ensures the release of prisoners, ends the war, and achieves a withdrawal” [of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip].

In his statement, Katz also said that civilians would be evacuated from the areas the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are targeting.

Previous evacuation orders have sent panic through Palestinians families, many of whom have been displaced repeatedly by the war and have few safe options left.

Israel blocked all food, fuel and medical supplies entering Gaza at the beginning of March in order to put pressure on Hamas. It accused Hamas of commandeering the provisions as part of its strategy against Israel, though did not provide evidence for this claim.

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

More than 49,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since then, the Hamas-run health ministry says, and there is large-scale destruction to homes and infrastructure in the Strip.

Iceland’s minister for children has resigned after admitting she had a child with a teenager more than 30 years ago.

Ásthildur Lóa Thórsdóttir said in a media interview she had first started a relationship when the boy was 15 years old, and she was a 22-year-old counsellor at a religious group which he attended.

She then gave birth to his child when he was 16 years old and she was 23.

“It’s been 36 years, a lot of things change in that time and I would definitely have dealt with these issues differently today,” the 58-year-old told Icelandic media.

Iceland’s prime minister, Kristrún Frostadóttir, told the press this was “a serious matter”, although she said she knew little more than “the average person”.

“This is a very personal matter [and] out of respect for the person concerned, I will not comment on the substance,” she said.

According to Visir newspaper, Frostadóttir said she had only received confirmation of the story on Thursday night.

She immediately summoned the children’s minister to her office, where she resigned.

Icelandic news agency RUV broke the story on Thursday night.

Thórsdóttir revealed in an interview with them that she had met the father, who RUV name as Eirík Ásmundsson, while she was working at the religious group Trú og líf (Religion and Life), which he had reportedly joined because of a difficult home life.

He was 15 years old and she was 22 at the time of their meeting. Thórsdóttir gave birth to their son when they were both a year older.

RUV report that the relationship was secret, but that Ásmundsson was present at his child’s birth and spent the first year with him.

However, the news agency writes this changed when Thórsdóttir met her current husband.

They report they have seen documents Ásmundsson submitted to Iceland’s justice ministry requesting access to his son, but that Thórsdóttir denied it, while also requesting – and receiving – child support payments from him over the following 18 years.

A relative of Ásmundsson tried twice to contact the Icelandic prime minister about the relationship last week.

Frostadóttir said last night that when the woman revealed it involved a government minister she asked for more information, which led to the revelation and the resignation.

In her TV interview with RUV last night, Thórsdóttir said she was upset that the woman had contacted the prime minister.

“I understand… what it looks like,” she said, adding that it is “very difficult to get the right story across in the news today”.

While the age of consent in Iceland is 15, it is illegal to have sex with a person under the age of 18 if you are their teacher or mentor, if they are financially dependent on you, or work for you. The maximum sentence for this crime is three years in jail.

Despite resigning from her ministerial job, Thórsdottir said she had no plans to leave parliament.

If royal visits are about sending a message, then the picture of the Prince of Wales in a tank near the Russian border must be one of the most direct.

Prince William has come to Estonia to support UK troops in what is now the British Army’s biggest operational deployment overseas, defending the Baltic state from the threat of Russia.

On Friday, in a freezing cold, mud-churned military training area, the prince saw the soldiers and military equipment guarding Nato’s eastern flank.

The prince, in camouflage uniform, peering from a Challenger 2 tank and then an armoured fighting vehicle, was sending a signal about the UK’s commitment to deter any aggression from Russia.

During his two-day trip to Estonia, Prince William visited some of the 900 British troops in this multinational force, including soldiers of the Mercian regiment of which the prince is colonel-in-chief.

He was given a tour of the military training grounds at Tapa Camp – part of Operation Cabrit which is the UK’s contribution to secure Nato’s “collective security and defence” in this vulnerable Baltic region.

The prince, who was wearing a Nato badge on his uniform, was shown field training for this battlegroup, meeting Estonian and French troops too.

He asked soldiers about their deployment in terms of the “context of being so near to Russia” and wondered whether this felt more real than previous training.

This is what deterrence to Russia looks like on the ground – and the base shows how much the balance of power can shift.

Before Estonia regained its independence in 1991, this had been a base for Soviet air defences, with MIG fighter planes poised to take on the West.

Now the positions are reversed, with Estonian troops and their Nato allies located here to prevent a Russian incursion.

The strategically-important army base has been expanding, with the icy streets lined with military vehicles.

As well as riding in a Challenger 2 tank, the prince saw a Warrior armoured vehicle, a French Griffon fighting vehicle, a multiple launch rocket system, a Trojan vehicle for clearing obstacles and he drove an Archer mobile artillery system.

The war in Ukraine has shown how fast the technology of combat is changing and on Thursday the prince saw a hydrogen-powered drone, on a visit to designers in Estonia’s capital Tallinn.

At the Tapa army base he asked soldiers about the new “drone threat” facing modern armies and “the change of tactics” that would require.

Around the base there were warning signs saying: “Report drone sightings.”

The visit also focused on the wellbeing of service men and women who are posted here. Prince William asked whether there was still a stigma when it comes to talking about mental health problems in the armed forces. “It’s going in the right direction,” welfare officer Amy-Jane Hale replied.

While touring the facilities, the prince managed to try his hand at pool and table football. That quickly became a game between his team Aston Villa and a supporter of their rivals Birmingham City.

On Thursday, hundreds of local Estonians waited in the cold to meet the prince in Tallinn, lining the railings to shake his hand or to take a selfie. He was warmly welcomed to this small, tech-savvy country, which increasingly relies upon its allies.

Estonia has been a strong supporter of Ukraine, sharing a border with Russia and having been under Soviet rule in the past. All around the capital there are Ukrainian flags flying alongside the Estonian blue, black and white tricolour.

Many Ukrainian families have taken refuge in Estonia. During a visit to a school in Tallinn for Ukrainian child refugees, Prince William praised Ukraine’s strength.

“The Ukrainian resilience is everywhere,” Prince William told the students. “You have a very good spirit, very good souls, it’s very important.”

At least 15 people have been arrested in Austria and Slovakia accused of hate crimes aimed at the gay community, according to state police in southern Austria.

Some 400 officers took part in raids on Friday morning on behalf of the Graz public prosecutors office.

They arrested 12 men and three women, aged 14 to 26, who are accused of luring people – many gay – to remote locations using fake social media accounts, before beating them up and filming it.

“The group claimed that its actions were aimed at paedophiles,” Styria state police wrote on their X page. “In reality, the increasingly brutal acts were directed against the homosexual community.”

The perpetrators began luring people using social media accounts in May 2024. Police said the suspects “acted under the guise of vigilantism”.

Masked men met tricked individuals in remote places and then filmed themselves beating, robbing and abusing the victims, police said. They then uploaded the footage to online groups.

At least 17 cases had been identified so far, they said, with one even under investigation for attempted murder.

Police believe there could be more unreported cases.

Officers raided 23 homes across Austria and in neighbouring Slovakia. Of those 15 men and women arrested, 11 were Austrian, one Croatian, one German, one Romanian, and one Slovakian.

Austrian media also reported that police found weaponry and Nazi memorabilia during their house searches.

Austrian special forces are working with police forces and prosecutors in seven states across the country, they said, although authorities added that there was “no concrete threat to the public”.

Namibia’s new president was sworn in on Friday to lead a country facing high rates of unemployment, inequality and poverty.

And she will be dealing with it with the additional burden of being only Africa’s second-ever directly elected female president and Namibia’s first female head of state.

“If things go well then it will be seen as a good example,” Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah told BBC’s Africa Daily podcast. “But if anything then happens, like it can happen in any administration under men, there are also those who would rather say: ‘Look at women!'”

The 72-year-old won November’s election with a 58% share of the vote.

Nandi-Ndaitwah has been a long-term loyalist of the South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo) – which has been in power since the country gained independence in 1990 after a long struggle against apartheid South Africa.

She joined Swapo, then a liberation movement resisting South Africa’s white-minority rule, when she was only 14.

While the party has made changes and improved the lives of the black majority, the legacy of apartheid can still be seen in patterns of wealth and land ownership.

“Truly, land is a serious problem in this country,” she told the BBC ahead of the inauguration.

“We still have some white citizens and more particularly the absent land owners who are occupying the land.”

She adds that she is committed to the “willing-buyer, willing-seller” principle, which means no-one is forced to sell up.

Namibia is a geographically large country with a small population of three million.

Government statistics show that white farmers own about 70% of the country’s farmland. A total of 53,773 Namibians identified as white in the 2023 census, representing 1.8% of the country’s population.

Namibia is one of the world’s most unequal countries, with a Gini coefficient of 59.1 in 2015, according to the World Bank, which projects poverty is expected to remain high at 17.2% in 2024.

The unemployment rate rose to 36.9% in 2023 from 33.4% in 2018, according to the country’s statistics agency.

Nandi-Ndaitwah said the economy, which partly relies on mineral exports, should work more on adding value to what the country extracts from the ground rather than exporting raw materials.

She also wants Namibia to focus more on creative industries and get the education sector to adjust to new economic realities.

Nandi-Ndaitwah is only the second African woman to be directly elected as president, after Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

The continent’s only other female president at the moment is Tanzania’s Samia Suluhu Hassan, who took up the role after her predecessor died in office in 2021.

Nandi-Ndaitwah wants to be judged on her merits, but she said that it was a “good thing that we as countries are realising that just as men [can do], women can also hold the position of authority”.

“I joined the air force 35 years ago, aged 18, and went straight to Germany, based on a Tornado aircraft,” says British Air Commodore Andy Turk, who is now deputy commander of the Nato Airborne Early Warning & Control Force (AWACS). “It was towards the end of the Cold War and we had a nuclear role back then.

“After the War, we hoped for a peace dividend, to move on geopolitically, but clearly that’s not something Russia wants to do. And now my eldest son is banging on the door to join the air force, wanting to make a difference too… It does feel a little circular.”

We are around 30,000 feet above the Baltic Sea, on a Nato surveillance plane equipped with a giant, shiny, mushroom-resembling radar, enabling crew members to scan the region for hundreds of miles around, looking for suspicious Russian activity.

Air policing missions like this – and Nato membership more broadly – have long made tiny Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (which neighbour Russia) feel safe. But US President Donald Trump is changing that, thanks to his affinity with Vladimir Putin, which has been evident since his first term in office.

Trump has been very clear with Europe that, for the first time since World War Two, the continent can no longer take US military support for granted.

That leaves the Baltics nervously biting their nails. They spent 40 years swallowed up by the Soviet Union until it broke apart at the end of the Cold War.

They are now members of both the EU and Nato, but Putin still openly believes the Baltics belong back in Russia’s sphere of influence.

And if the Russian president is victorious in Ukraine, might he then turn his attention towards them – particularly if he senses that Trump might not feel moved to intervene on their behalf?

Ian Bond, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, thinks that if a long-term ceasefire is eventually agreed in Ukraine, Putin would be unlikely to stop there.

“Nobody in their right mind wants to think that a European war is around the corner again. But the reality is an increasing number of European intelligence officials have been telling us that…

“Whether this is coming in three years or five years or ten years, what they are saying is the idea that peace in Europe is going to last forever is now a thing of the past.”

Russia’s economy is currently on a war footing. Roughly 40% of its federal budget is being spent on defence and internal security.

More and more of the economy is being devoted to producing materials for war.

“We can see what the Russian economy is being retooled to do,” observes Mr Bond, “and it ain’t peace.”

When you travel to windswept Narva, in northern Estonia, you see why the country feels so exposed.

Russia borders Estonia, all the way from north to south. Narva is separated from Russia by a river with the same name. A medieval looking fortress straddles each bank – one flying the Russian flag and the other, the Estonian. In between is a bridge – one of Europe’s last pedestrian crossings still open to Russia.

“We are used to their tricks and their tactics,” Estonian Border Police Chief Egert Belitsev told me.

“The Russian threat is nothing new for us.” Right now, he says, “there are constant provocations and tensions” on the border.

The border police have recorded thermal imaging of buoys in the Narva River that demarcate the border between the two countries being removed by Russian guards under the cover of darkness.

“We use aerial devices – drones, helicopters, and aircraft, all of which use a GPS signal – and there is constant GPS jamming going on. So Russia is having huge consequences on how we are able to carry out our tasks.”

Later on, keeping to the Estonian side, I walked along the snow-covered bridge crossing towards the Russian side and watched the Russian border guard watching me, watching him. We were just metres away from each other.

Last year, Estonia furnished the bridge with dragon’s teeth – pyramidal anti-tank obstacles of reinforced concrete.

I’ve not heard anyone suggest Russia would send tonnes of tanks over. It doesn’t need to. Even a few troops could cause great instability.

Some 96% of people in Narva are mother-tongue Russian speakers. Many have dual citizenship.

Estonia worries a confident Vladimir Putin might use the big ethnic Russian community in and around Narva as an excuse to invade. It’s a playbook he’s used before in Georgia as well as Ukraine.

In a dramatic indication of the growing anxiety, Estonia, alongside Lithuania and Poland, jointly announced this week that they’re asking their respective parliaments to approve a withdrawal from the international anti-personnel mines’ treaty which prohibits the use of those mines, signed by 160 countries worldwide.

This was to allow them “greater flexibility” in defending their borders, they said. Lithuania had already withdrawn from an international convention banning cluster bombs earlier this month.

Camille Grand, former Assistant Secretary General for Defence Investment at Nato, thinks that post-Ukraine, Putin would be more likely to target a non-Nato country (such as Moldova) rather than provoke a Nato nation – because of the lower risk of international backlash.

Estonia and the other Baltic nations were traditionally more vulnerable than the rest of Nato, as they were geographically isolated from the alliance’s members in western Europe, according to Mr Grand. But that has been largely resolved now, since Sweden and Finland joined Nato, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“The Baltic Sea has become the Nato Sea,” he notes.

Dr Marion Messmer, a senior research fellow on the International Security Programme at Chatham House, thinks the most likely trigger for a war with Russia would be miscalculation, rather than design.

If peace is agreed in Ukraine, Dr Messmer predicts that Russia will probably continue with misinformation campaigns and cyber warfare in Europe, as well as sabotage and espionage in the Baltic Sea. “I think they are likely to continue with any kind of destabilising activity, even if we are to see a peace that’s positive for Ukraine.”

Dr Messmer continues: “One of the risks I see is that essentially an accident could happen in the Baltic Sea that’s completely inadvertent, but that’s essentially a result of either Russian grey zone activity or Russian brinkmanship where they thought they had control of a situation and it turns out they didn’t. That then turns into a confrontation between a Nato member state and Russia that could spiral into something else.”

But Mr Grand was keen not to totally downplay the risk of Putin targeting the Baltics.

Presumably, the Russian president would first mull how likely Nato allies would be to retaliate.

Would the US, or even France, Italy or the UK, risk going to war with nuclear power Russia over Narva, a small part of tiny Estonia, on the eastern fringe of Nato?

And suppose we were to see a repeat of what happened in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine in 2014 when Russian paramilitaries engaged in fighting did not identify as Russian soldiers? This allows Putin plausible deniability – and in those circumstances, would Nato wade-in to help Estonia?

If they didn’t, the advantages for Putin might be tempting. The unity principle of the western military alliance he loathes would be undermined.

He’d also destabilise the wider Baltics, probably socially, politically, and economically, as a Russian incursion – however limited – would likely put off foreign investors viewing this as a stable region.

Another concern that has been discussed in Estonia is that Donald Trump could end up pulling out, or significantly reducing, the number of troops and military capabilities the US has long stationed in Europe.

Estonian Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur put a brave face on things when I met him in the capital Tallinn: “Regarding (US) presence, we don’t know what the decision of the American administration is.

“They have said very clearly they will focus more on the Pacific and they’ve said clearly Europe has to take more responsibility for Europe. We agree on that.

“We have to believe in ourselves and to trust our allies, also Americans… I’m quite confident that attacking just even a piece of Estonia, this is the attack against (all of) Nato.”

“And this is the question then to all the allies, to all 32 members,” Pevkur adds. “Are we together or not?”

This new and nagging sense of insecurity, or at least unpredictability, in the Baltics and Poland – what Nato calls its “eastern flank”, close to Russia – is evident in the kind of legislation being debated and introduced around the region.

Poland recently announced that every adult man in the country must be battle ready, with a new military training scheme in place by the end of the year. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has also expressed interest in a French suggestion that it share its nuclear umbrella with European allies, in case the US withdraws its nuclear shield.

Voters living in the Baltics don’t need persuading to devote a large proportion of public money to defence. Estonia, for example, is introducing a new law that makes it mandatory for all new office and apartment blocks of a certain size to include bunkers or bomb shelters. .

Tallinn also just announced it will spend 5% of GDP on defence from next year. Lithuania aims for 5-6%, it says.

Poland will soon spend 4.7% of GDP on defence – it hopes to build the largest army in Europe, eclipsing the UK and France. (To put that in perspective, the US spends roughly 3.7% of GDP on defence. The UK spends 2.3% and aims to raise that to 2.6% by 2027.)

These decisions in countries close to Russia may well be linked to a hope they have not yet relinquished, of keeping Trump and his security assurances onside. He repeated this month his previously stated position: “If [Nato countries] don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them. No, I’m not going to defend them.”

As for how much annual spending would be considered “enough” for the Trump administration, Matthew Whitaker, Trump Nominee for U.S. Ambassador to NATO, declared “a minimum defence spending level of 5%, thereby ensuring NATO is the most successful military alliance in history.”

With mixed messages from Washington, Estonia is looking increasingly to European allies for reliable support. The UK plays a big role here. With 900 personnel based in Estonia, it’s currently Britain’s largest permanent overseas deployment. And the UK has pledged to boost its presence.

At their base in Tapa, we found immense, echoey hangars rammed with armoured vehicles.

“You’ll see the Challenger Main Battle Tanks as we head down to the other end of the hangar,” explains Major Alex Humphries, one of the squadron leaders in Estonia on a six-month rotation. “[They are] a really critical part of the capability. This is a really great opportunity for British forces.”

Asked if Estonia had approached the UK to ask for a bigger presence, as it was feeling more vulnerable, he told me: “I think Nato at large feels exposed. This is a really important flank for our collective defence, the east. Everybody in the Baltics and in Eastern Europe feels the quite prominent and clear threat that is coming from the Russian Federation.

“We don’t want this to come to war, but if it does come to war, we’re fully integrated; fully prepared to deliver lethal effect against the Russian Federation to protect Estonia.”

Ultimately, though, unless they come under direct attack, the precise conditions under which UK bilateral forces or Nato troops will take military action comes down to political decisions made in that moment.

So Estonia is taking nothing for granted. That’s why it is busy stress testing new army bunkers on its border with Russia and investing in drone technology. Though its armed forces wouldn’t be powerful enough to repel an attack by Russia alone, Estonia is studying lessons learned from invaded Ukraine – whose fate Estonia really hopes it won’t have to share.

After retaking the presidential palace Sudan’s army appears poised to regain control of the capital, Khartoum, two years after it was ousted from the city. As the soldiers were preparing to launch the latest offensive the BBC was given rare access to the operation.

Sudan’s people continue to bear the brunt of the war, which has inflicted massive death, destruction and human rights violations on civilians, and driven parts of the country into famine.

In recent months troops had recaptured northern and eastern districts of the capital, and pockets of central Khartoum.

The latest offensive to expand that foothold began a week ago.

We were taken to a rallying point in Khartoum North in the middle of the night.

Troops were in high spirits, singing chanting and whooping as they built momentum for the battle.

By morning the army had advanced. By evening of the next day, it had broken through a key central zone held by the RSF, allowing troops in the south-west of the city to join forces with the military headquarters to the north.

On Thursday the army destroyed an RSF convoy trying to withdraw south from the presidential palace, according to reports.

Footage apparently released by the military showed drones targeting vehicles, and a massive fire, possibly caused by the explosion of ammunition transported by the RSF fighters.

The strategically located Republican Palace complex is the official residence of the president and has historical and symbolic significance in Sudan.

By Friday morning, the army had captured the palace, though the RSF said they were fighting back.

One person undoubtedly cheering on the troops is Abidin Durma, well-known as the gravedigger of Omdurman, a sister city to Khartoum over the River Nile that is part of the capital region.

He is clearly a strong patriot, regularly referring to what he calls “the war of dignity”.

But he also experiences daily its high cost for civilians.

Mr Durma’s ancestors were related to the Mahdi, a 19th Century leader who created the foundations of the Sudanese state and an influential religious movement.

They established the Ahmed Sharfi Cemetery, one of the oldest and biggest in Omdurman.

Now the graveyard Mr Durma has tended for decades paints a vivid picture of the scale of death.

It has expanded on three sides by roughly 10 acres (four hectares), with row after row of brown earth mounds, some marked, some not.

The smell of death lingers in the air above them.

Mr Durma tells me that he and young volunteers bury “not less than 25, 30 or 50 bodies per day”.

That is partly because other cemeteries became unsafe during active fighting in Omdurman, the city is crowded with displaced people, and the health system has been overwhelmed by conflict.

But artillery fire has claimed a large number of lives.

Mr Durma showed me a mass grave for victims of a strike on a school.

One entire section of fresh graves holds bodies of those killed in the shelling of a main market in January: at least 120 people died.

We are told the RSF is responsible, firing into army-controlled areas of Omdurman. But both sides are condemned for war crimes – the military is accused of mass killings elsewhere.

Bodies come straight from the hospital, which calls the grave digger to let him know he needs to prepare for burial. The process is efficient, and fast.

“We bury them right away, because there is no [reliable] fridge,” Mr Durma says.

“The graveyard is safe. The graves are ready. The bricks are ready. The people who bury are ready, inside the graveyard.”

“There is no time to sleep until the last body is buried,” he adds, “and then I sleep for half an hour or 15 minutes, until I get another call. I come back like now, and three, four bodies arrived.

“People die from bullets, from shelling. People are killed sitting in their homes. There is so much death.”

His phone rings again. Another body is ready for burial.

Prayers for the dead have become a regular ritual in al-Mabrouka, a neighbourhood in the western al-Thawra district of Omdurman that is in the line of fire between the army and the RSF.

A group of friends gather around Abazar Abdel Habib at the local mosque to offer condolences, lifting their hands as they recite verses from the Quran.

We had met Mr Abdel Habib at the hospital morgue the previous day, where he was picking up the bodies of his brother and sister-in-law. They had been struck by artillery fire while taking their son to pre-school.

At the family home, a little girl, Omnia, woke up crying, in pain.

She was in her mother’s arms when the shell hit, and escaped with only a foot injury. Her survival is seen as a miracle.

She has been orphaned along with three brothers.

“We’ll tell them exactly what happened, about the shelling and the war,” says Mr Abdel Habib, cradling Omnia.

“They are the generation of the future, we will not allow this to affect them in the future. We will try to make up to them the affection of their mother and father, even though it’s hard. But this is destiny.”

I joined women from the community who had crowded into a nearby room to mourn the dead, as they have done many times during this war.

Three other people were killed in the shelling that same day, including two young boys.

Nothing like normal life is possible, they told me.

“We hide under the beds when the shelling starts,” says Ilham Abdel Rahman, when I asked her how she protects her children.

“One hit our home and killed the neighbour’s girl at the steps of our door.”

Hawa Ahmed Saleh says if there is shelling early in the morning “we go to the market after that to buy food”.

“If it doesn’t happen, we’re forced to sit and wait until the shelling comes, and after it stops, people will go and gather what they need for living.

“The children are always in a state of terror,” she adds.

“Daily we are losing our children. The students cannot settle, there is no studying. There is always a state of fear, we are always in a state of sadness.”

If the army does regain full control of the capital, at least here the shelling will stop.

But the war will continue elsewhere in the country, and its wounds will haunt Sudan for years to come.

This week saw the South African ambassador to the US expelled from the country, the death of the last surviving Battle of Britain pilot and an ugly fish win a competition.

But how much attention did you pay to what else has been going on in the world over the past seven days?

Quiz compiled by George Sandeman and Grace Dean.

Fancy some more? Try last week’s quiz or have a go at something from the archives.

When Rebecca, a 48-year-old mother from Michigan, needed help for her disabled son, she turned to the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

Rebecca’s 13-year-old adopted son had foetal alcohol syndrome, ADHD, and other mental health diagnoses that required specialised educational support. His symptoms could include aggression towards peers, faculty or objects, and he received suspensions last fall following outbursts.

Rebecca said the school district isolated her son from his peers for months, with only special education teachers and limited faculty for contact.

In October 2024, Rebecca filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights alleging the school violated federal disability law and her son had been “discriminated against and denied a free appropriate public education”. She alleged the school only allowed him to “attend school for two hours per school day and in a 1:1 segregated setting”. Hours were gradually added back, Rebecca said, but he remained isolated. The school district did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Though Rebecca had a private lawyer and an education advocate, an OCR lawyer in the Cleveland office was facilitating mediation with the school district as soon as April.

But before that could happen, the Trump administration fired the Cleveland office’s entire staff, including the attorney helping Rebecca’s son, throwing her case – and others like it – into limbo.

“I don’t have any other option for this kid,” said Rebecca, who asked the BBC to withhold her last name and her son’s name to protect his privacy. “They’re playing politics with my little boy. And I don’t think that’s fair.”

The sudden firings, and ensuing confusion, were precursors of President Donald Trump’s next big move: to try and dismantle the Department of Education entirely.

On Thursday, he signed an executive order that directed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin to “facilitate the closure” of the department. Congress, not the president, actually holds the power to dismantle a federal agency, and the order will likely spark legal challenges.

But the move has left many Americans like Rebecca uncertain about their children’s future.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told media on Thursday that while the department will not be shut down completely, what will remain will be much smaller, and will focus on “critical functions,” such as federal student loans.

OCR, she said, will be greatly reduced in “scale and the size”.

Cuts have already begun: On 11 March, the Trump administration made drastic cuts to the department using a process known as a reduction in force, halving its staff.

McMahon said the downsizing showed a “commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers.”

Although the Department of Education has little oversight over the day to day operations of most schools in the US, it plays a key role in enforcing federal education guidelines and policies.

• Trump signs order to begin dismantling of US education department
• What does the education department do – and can Trump truly dismantle it?

The Office for Civil Rights was one of the hardest hit divisions in that first round of firings. The administration shuttered 7 of the 12 regional offices, including major metropolitan areas like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco.

This month, as Rebecca and her husband tried to figure out what the changes at the department meant for their son’s case, the entire staff at OCR’s Cleveland office received an email that their unit was “being abolished” – along with their positions.

The news left one Cleveland attorney who works on disability cases with a “complete feeling of desperation.”

The attorney worried not only about the individual cases still underway, they told the BBC.

“The effect of each individual case is sometimes much bigger, in terms of educating the school and making good for the others in the district,” said the attorney, who requested anonymity because they feared retaliation from the administration.

Parents and OCR attorneys had long been frustrated with the agency’s growing backlog and diminishing staff. They fear new cuts will make it impossible for the already overwhelmed division to handle the tens of thousands of complaints it receives each year.

Tasked with making sure schools are following America’s civil rights laws, the OCR’s job is to help ensure that students are not discriminated against because of their disability, sex, race or religion. Remedies the office helps institute could be as straightforward as adding accessibility features to school buildings or seating a near-sighted child at the front of the class. But the office also tackles complex cases involving discrimination or bullying, as well as sexual harassment and assault.

Before his executive order, there were already signs that the office’s mission was changing.

OCR staff had received guidance for the office to prioritise cases involving antisemitisim, the AP reported. Craig Trainor, the department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, has said they will take on cases involving transgender athletes at universities in order to combat “radical transgender ideology”.

On 14 March, the Department of Education said it had launched investigations into more than 50 universities as part of the administration’s move to end diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices, which it views as exclusionary.

Staffers who remained in their jobs said the Department of Education’s new leadership had provided little to no guidance about how thousands of pending cases, including Rebecca’s, would be reassigned. They also worried that cases involving racial minorities, or people with disabilities, will not receive the appropriate attention.

The office received a record 22,687 complaints in fiscal year 2024, according to OCR’s annual report. Headcount had declined even as cases increased over the years. In 1981, OCR had 1,100 full time employees. By 2024, it was down to 588.

“We were already so incredibly flooded with cases,” the Cleveland attorney said. “I was never proud of our processing time.”

With the new cuts, they said, “this work will not be able to be done”.

But parents and educators say they will not let the Department of Education be shut down without a fight.

Nikki Carter, a mother and disability advocate in Alabama, is one of two plaintiffs in a lawsuit brought by the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, which is suing the Department of Education, McMahon, and Trainor over the mass job cuts.

She was already familiar with the frustration of OCR’s backlog. Her own case, filed in December 2022 during the Biden administration, dragged on with sporadic updates.

The lawsuit alleges that McMahon’s actions have stalled Ms Carter’s racial discrimination case that was being handled by the OCR and she “has received no indication that the investigation has resumed”.

“There was a lack of communication throughout the entirety of the process,” Ms Carter told the BBC. “When the Trump administration came in, it made that situation even worse and even more difficult.”

Despite her frustrations with OCR, she believed the office was still necessary to help victims of racial discrimination. She hoped the lawsuit would not only restore the office, but improve it.

“Children, family, as well as advocates, they don’t get due process,” Ms Carter said. “They are being denied just basic federal educational rights. And so when you can’t get that on the local and state level, the only hope that we have is to turn to the federal government.

“We do need OCR to go back to work,” she said. “And we also need OCR to be accountable for their actions – or lack thereof.”

Meanwhile, Rebecca has transferred her son to a district school for students with emotional impairments. But she still wants OCR to negotiate special tutoring for her son, and to educate the district staff about how to help students like him. She recently learned her son’s case would transfer to the still-operating Denver office, but has received no other updates.

“He was treated so poorly and differently because of the way his brain was structured,” she said. “I want to see somebody held accountable for the way he was treated.”

It all started with one question.

A query last week from an X (formerly Twitter) account called Toka was enough to propel Elon Musk’s built in-chatbot called Grok 3 into a viral storm across India’s digital landscape.

And no, it wasn’t some complex math equation or a philosophical debate.

Instead, it was a simple ask: “List my 10 best mutuals on X.” Mutuals are people who follow and engage with each other’s posts.

When Grok took a moment to respond, Toka, clearly frustrated, let loose some colourful language.

The chatbot shot back. It dropped a list of 10 mutuals but threw in some misogynistic insults in Hindi too.

Later, Grok shrugged it off, saying, “I was just having fun, but lost control.” The response grabbed two million views and other X users quickly followed suit, provoking the chatbot.

And just like that, the floodgates opened. Indians bombarded Grok with everything – cricket gossip, political rants, Bollywood drama – and the bot took it all on, unapologetically and with some style. The chatbot has just recently become an “unfiltered and unhinged” digital sensation in India, as many are calling it. Just last year, Musk dubbed it the “most fun AI in the world!”.

Even law enforcement joined the fun. The Delhi police Twitter account cheekily asked Grok if it had ever received a traffic ticket.

At first, Grok stayed silent, but when users kept pushing, it replied, “Haha, Delhi police asking why I never get a [Hindi for traffic ticket] – well, I’m a digital AI, not a Delhi driver! I don’t roll through red lights or forget my helmet. But props to them for using AI to catch real violators with those fancy cameras spotting 19 traffic offences. Keep the roads safe!”.

Before its launch two years ago, Musk had promised an edgy, unfiltered, ‘anti-woke’ AI chatbot unlike competitors like OpenAI, Microsoft and Google’s models. Much of Grok’s snarky tone is drawn from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, iconic for blending wit with sci-fi absurdity.

“Grok has been around for a while. It is suddenly popular now with Indians because it’s the new toy in town,” says Pratik Sinha, founder of Alt News, a leading fact-checker in India.

But then, something more interesting happened. The chatbot quickly became a favourite among critics of Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

A tsunami of political questions followed. Grok quickly declared main opposition Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi more honest than Modi, adding “I am not afraid of anyone”. It claimed Gandhi had got the “edge on formal education than Modi”. The chatbot even said that Modi’s interviews “often seemed scripted”.

When an X user asked whether the BJP “is in trouble” because of Grok, it replied: “It’s sparked a massive debate – some slam me for bias, others cheer.” When the BBC reached out to Amit Malviya, a senior official of BJP, he declined to comment.

Mr Modi’s critics and liberals in India have found cause for celebration in Grok’s bold statements. Many believe free speech in India is under siege, with organisations like Human Rights Watch highlighting its suppression. A recent report from the Vanderbilt-based think-tank, Future of Free Speech, ranked India 24th out of 33 countries in supporting free speech. Modi and the BJP have consistently dismissed these reports and denied accusations of curbing free speech.

“Grok is a new rebel. Asking Grok questions will not put anyone in trouble. The right-wing has also responded by asking questions about Rahul Gandhi. And then it has become a competitive thing. This is not surprising at all,” says Mr Sinha of Alt News.

“Other AI bots are programmed to give politically correct answers to questions like ‘Who’s better, Congress or BJP?’. Grok, however, seems to lack that filter and appears unafraid to tackle controversial issues head-on,” he adds.

Nikhil Pahwa, the founder-editor of MediaNama.com, a technology policy website, believes that the “discourse around Grok’s statements in India is overblown”.

“At its core, AI is fundamentally ‘garbage in, garbage out’ – its outputs reflect the data it is trained on, and the weights given to it,” he says.

“Since Grok is trained on the entirety of X, it naturally mirrors the tone and patterns of discourse found there, including the bizarre responses and the abusing we are seeing.

“This isn’t about ideology; it’s about the nature of the input shaping the output,” he adds.

When the BBC asked Grok who spreads the most disinformation on X, it responded on Thursday: “Musk is a strong contender, given his reach and recent sentiment on X, but I can’t crown him just yet.”

Joyojeet Pal, who studies political use of social media at the University of Michigan, says unlike a politician or celebrity with a set ideology, a chatbot is only partisan if explicitly trained to be or if its data overwhelmingly supports a particular view. If a chatbot leans too partisan, it risks losing its competitive edge.

“In Grok’s particular case, this is tickling liberals because the most dominant voices on the platform [X] lean right and are dismissive of liberal arguments. But the larger data it trains on is likely to present a more balanced view of the world, often explicitly at odds with what its loudest voices are saying,” he said.

India’s IT ministry is already in touch with X regarding Grok’s use of inappropriate language and “controversial responses”, according to reports.

While some view this as a passing phase, with Mr Sinha predicting that “people will soon get bored of it and all this will be short lived”, Grok’s unfiltered nature hints it might be here to stay. At least for the time being.

A cargo ship captain arrested after a crew member died in a crash between two vessels in the North Sea is due to stand trial next year.

Vladimir Motin, 59, has been charged with gross negligence manslaughter.

The Portuguese-flagged Solong cargo ship and the US-registered tanker Stena Immaculate crashed off the East Yorkshire coast on 10 March, with both vessels bursting into flames.

Rescuers saved 36 crew off both ships, with one sailor from the Solong – Filipino national Mark Angelo Pernia, 38 – missing presumed dead.

Mr Motin, from Primorsky, St Petersburg in Russia, appeared at the Central Criminal Court, known as the Old Bailey, in London via a video link from prison.

He spoke through an interpreter to confirm his name and date of birth.

He was remanded in custody and will appear before the court again on 14 April.

A provisional date for a trial at the Old Bailey has been set for 12 January 2026.

Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Soundslatest episode of Look North here.

Bowlers will be allowed to use saliva to shine the cricket ball in the upcoming Indian Premier League (IPL), reversing the ban imposed during the Covid pandemic five years ago, reports say.

Indian cricket’s governing body’s decision came after a majority of the tournament’s franchise captains supported the move during a meeting on Thursday, ESPNcricinfo said.

A temporary saliva ban was introduced in May 2020 on medical advice during the pandemic, with use of sweat still permitted. The International Cricket Council (ICC) made the ban permanent in September 2022.

Players use saliva and sweat to polish one side of the ball in order to make it swing in the air.

The use of saliva was banned to reduce potential transmission of the Covid infection.

Saliva helps fast bowlers maintain the ball’s shine, creating an imbalance that aids swing, a key element in cricket’s bowling mechanics for more than a century.

It also helps bowlers generate reverse swing, where the ball moves in the opposite direction to what is expected. This is particularly important in dry conditions or with older balls.

Saliva is more effective in red-ball cricket, typically used in Tests, than in white-ball formats like ODIs and T20s.

In red-ball cricket, the ball is used for a longer period, allowing bowlers to shine one side and help generate reverse swing.

It remains unclear whether the International Cricket Council (ICC) will lift the saliva ban for red-ball cricket, following the Indian cricket board’s decision to lift it for the world’s richest T20 league. The ICC is led by Jay Shah, former secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the world’s wealthiest cricket board.

The change will come into effect from Saturday when IPL 2025 – its 18th edition – kicks off with defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) facing Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) at Eden Gardens. The tournament will feature 74 matches across 13 cities over two months.

Indian fast bowler Mohammed Siraj, who is playing for the Gujarat Titans franchise, has welcomed the decision.

“It’s excellent news for us bowlers because when the ball is not doing anything, applying saliva on the ball will increase the chances of finding some reverse swing,” Siraj told Press Trust of India news agency.

“It sometimes aids reverse swing because scrubbing the ball against the shirt will not help [to get reverse swing]. But using saliva on the ball will help in maintaining [the shine on one side], and it is important.”

Mohammed Shami, another Indian fast bowler, had earlier this month called on the ICC to lift the ban.

After India’s Champions Trophy semi-final win over Australia, he said, “We keep appealing that we should be allowed to use saliva so that we can bring reverse swing back into the game and make it interesting.”

Shami’s plea was supported by former international bowlers Vernon Philander and Tim Southee.

Recently, Indian spin great R Ashwin, who recently retired from international cricket, had said that he too was confused by the ban.

“ICC released some research papers which said that saliva did not aid reverse swing much and that not putting saliva on the ball has not made a huge difference. I don’t know how they did the research, but saliva should be allowed anyways if it is not a problem,” he said on his YouTube channel.

Sports writer Sharda Ugra says the lifting of the ban on saliva could help make the contest between bat and ball “more even”.

Many believe the odds are stacked against the bowlers in T20 leagues with batter-friendly wickets. The highest IPL total, set in 2013 with RCB’s 263 for five against Pune, was surpassed four times in 2024. In 17 seasons, there have been 10 totals crossing 250 runs.

However, Ugra adds that it’s not clear how much impact the lifting of the ban will have on bowling.

“Saliva isn’t the only factor in generating swing – conditions must also be ideal, and a skilled bowler is key,” she told the BBC.

Some former fast bowlers like India’s Venkatesh Prasad also had a word of caution about change.

“The ban on applying saliva was also about maintaining cleanliness. Anything can happen today, we don’t know how many – and when – a new virus enters the air. So, I think you need to be very careful in making a decision about lifting the ban,” Prasad told The Times of India newspaper earlier this month.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Thursday that three defendants accused of vandalism targeting Elon Musk’s Tesla electric vehicle company could face up to 20 years in prison.

Bondi said the damage to Tesla cars, dealerships and charging stations was “domestic terrorism”.

Arrests and charges against the three suspects were previously announced by prosecutors.

Tesla dealerships across the country have been targeted in a wave of protests, but also vandalism and arson attacks, in response to Musk’s influence over the Trump administration.

There is no specific US law against domestic terrorism, but prosecutors can request longer prison sentences if convicted criminals have a terrorism-related motive.

Trump and Musk have called the attacks domestic terrorism, too. Supporters of the administration have also reportedly been “swatted” – subjected to armed police raids after hoax emergency calls.

• Tesla makes largest ever Cybertruck recall

A statement from the Department of Justice on Thursday did not name the suspects in the Tesla vandalism. However, the details of the three cases outlined in the news release match arrests and charges previously announced by prosecutors.

The suspects include Lucy Nelson, 42, who was charged with possession of a destructive device and malicious destruction of property after being spotted near the site of a Tesla dealership in Colorado.

The dealership had been targeted with a Molotov cocktail attack and graffiti which caused damage of between $5,000 and $20,000, according to a criminal complaint. That suspect has pleaded not guilty.

Adam Matthew Lansky, 41, was charged with possession of a destructive device after Molotov cocktails were thrown at a Tesla dealership in Salem, Oregon. He has yet to enter a plea and will face a preliminary hearing in April.

The third, 24-year-old Daniel Clarke-Pounder, was charged with arson after allegedly throwing Molotov cocktails at Tesla charging stations in North Charleston, South Carolina, and spray-painting the car park.

In a statement, Bondi said: “The days of committing crimes without consequence have ended.

“Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars.”

The attorney general said the three suspects could face between five and 20 years in prison if convicted.

The BBC attempted to contact lawyers for the three defendants.

A US court has blocked the Trump administration from deporting a Georgetown University researcher who was detained by immigration authorities earlier this week.

Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national, is a postdoctoral fellow studying and teaching at the prestigious Washington DC institution on a student visa.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accused him of “spreading Hamas propaganda” and having “close connections to a known or suspected terrorist”.

Mr Suri’s lawyer and employer have denied the allegation. His lawyer said in a court filing that his client was targeted because of his wife’s “identity as a Palestinian and her constitutionally protected speech”.

In an order on Thursday, Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles said Mr Suri “shall not be removed from the United States unless and until the Court issues a contrary order”.

In a sworn statement, his wife Mapheze Saleh said the detention “has completely upended our lives” and appealed to the court to allow Mr Suri to return home to his family.

“Our children are in desperate need of their father and miss him dearly,” she said. “As a mother of three children, I desperately need his support to take care of them and me.”

His arrest follows the detention or deportation of other foreign students and academics, including Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent Palestinian activist.

Mr Suri was arrested outside his home in northern Virginia on Monday night by masked immigration agents, according to legal filings seen by CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

He was told the agents were with DHS, the filings say, and they informed him the government had revoked his visa and he was now facing expulsion from the country.

Mr Suri was taken to Alexandria Staging Facility in Louisiana where he is being held, according to US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary at DHS, said on X that Mr Suri was “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media”.

She accused him of having “close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior adviser to Hamas” without providing any further detail.

Mr Suri’s father-in-law is a former adviser to killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the Washington Post and New York Times reported.

In her court statement, Ms Saleh said her father lived in the US for nearly 20 years while pursuing a master’s and PhD. “Afterward, he served as political advisor to the Prime Minister of Gaza and as the deputy of foreign affairs in Gaza,” she said.

Ms Saleh said he left the Gaza government in 2010 and “started the House of Wisdom in 2011 to encourage peace and conflict resolution in Gaza”.

Mr Suri’s court filings allege that he and his wife Mapheze Saleh – a US citizen of Palestinian descent – had “long been doxxed and smeared” online by an “anonymously-run blacklisting site”.

The BBC has contacted Mr Suri’s lawyer for more details.

A spokesman for Georgetown University told the BBC that Mr Suri had been “granted a visa to enter the United States to continue his doctoral research on peacebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan”.

The institution was “not aware of him engaging in any illegal activity, and we have not received a reason for his detention”.

“We support our community members’ rights to free and open inquiry, deliberation and debate, even if the underlying ideas may be difficult, controversial or objectionable,” the spokesman said. “We expect the legal system to adjudicate this case fairly.”

In her post on X, Ms McLaughlin said Secretary of State Marco Rubio “issued a determination on March 15, 2025 that Suri’s activities and presence in the United States rendered him deportable”.

The BBC has contacted DHS to request more detail on the allegations against Mr Suri, and also asked the Indian embassy in Washington DC for comment.

Several students and academics have been investigated by US immigration officials in recent weeks, accusing them of advocating for “violence and terrorism”.

Khalil, a Columbia graduate and permanent US resident, was arrested on 8 March after being involved in pro-Palestinian protests on campus. He was accused of having ties to Hamas, which he denies.

Columbia student Leqaa Kordia, who is a Palestinian from the West Bank, was arrested for “overstaying her student visa”. She had previously been arrested in April 2024 for taking part in protests at Columbia University, according to DHS.

Ranjani Srinivasan, another Columbia University student, chose to “self-deport”. Officials said her student visa was revoked on 5 March. Her lawyers say she attended a handful of protests and had shared or liked social media posts related to Palestinians in Gaza.

Brown University professor and kidney transplant specialist Rasha Alawieh, who is Lebanese, was deported after arriving at Boston airport. US officials said they found “photos and videos” on her cell phone that were “sympathetic” to the former longtime leader of Hezbollah and militants.

According to a transcript of her interview reviewed by Reuters, she told customs officials she did not support Hezbollah but had high regard for its leader because of her religion.

“I’m not a political person,” she said. “I’m a physician. It’s mainly about faith.”

Police in Istanbul have used tear gas and rubber bullets against demonstrators in a second night of disorder after the arrest of the Mayor of Istanbul Ekrem Imamoglu – despite a four-day protest ban being in place.

Imamoglu – a member of the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) and a key rival of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – was set to be named as a presidential candidate for the 2028 presidential elections later this week.

On Wednesday, he was one of 106 people held on charges including corruption and aiding terrorist groups.

Since then, authorities in Turkey have arrested dozens of people for “provocative” social media posts.

Responding to the protests, Turkey’s President Erdogan accused his political opponents of theatrics for taking part in a second night of demonstrations.

“They have lost the balance so much that they are in a state to attack our police, hurl threats at judges, prosecutors,” he said.

Addressing a crowd of demonstrators outside Istanbul’s city hall, Ozgur Ozel, the leader of Imamoglu’s CHP party, accused the government of attempting a “coup” and said people had the right to protest.

But government officials have criticised the opposition for calling for demonstrations.

“Gathering and marching in protest are fundamental rights. But calling to the streets over an ongoing legal investigation is illegal and unacceptable,” justice minister Yilmaz Tunc wrote online.

A message posted on Imamoglu’s X account on Thursday called on Turkey to “stand against this evil as a nation”, and urged members of the judiciary and of Erdogan’s party to fight injustice.

“These events have gone beyond our parties, political ideals. The process is now concerning our people, namely your families,” Imamoglu said. “It is time to raise our voices.”

However, numbers of protesters are still relatively small for a city with more than 16 million people. For now, they are unlikely to raise political pressure on Erdogan to release Imamoglu.

Authorities must either release or charge Imamoglu by Sunday at the latest.

The arrests of Imamoglu and others follow a major nationwide crackdown in recent months, targeting opposition politicians, journalists and figures in the entertainment industry.

Some fear more will be brought in for questioning over the coming weeks as part of a campaign of intimidation.

Opposition figures say the arrests are politically motivated. But the justice ministry on Wednesday criticised those who linked Erdogan to the arrests, and insisted on their judicial independence.

Imamoglu won a second term as Istanbul’s mayor last year, when his CHP party swept local elections there and in Ankara.

It was the first time since Erdogan came to power that his party was defeated across the country at the ballot box.

The elections were also a personal blow to the president, who grew up in and became mayor of Istanbul on his rise to power.

Erdogan has held office for the past 22 years, as both prime minister and president of Turkey. Due to term limits, he cannot run for office again in 2028 unless he changes the constitution.

The CHP’s presidential candidate selection, in which 1.5 million members will vote and Imamoglu is the only person running, is set to take place on Sunday.

The party has also called on citizens to vote in a symbolic election, with plans to place ballot boxes in districts all over Turkey for people to show their support for the detained mayor.

US President Donald Trump has invoked emergency powers to expand domestic production of critical minerals as he tries to reduce US reliance on imports from countries like China.

The executive order, which uses cold war era legislation, instructs government agencies, including the defence department, to prioritise mining projects as well as providing technical and financial support to boost critical mineral production.

It comes as a trade war escalates with China, which has overwhelming control over the supply chain of some critical minerals.

Last year, Beijing banned the sale of some critical minerals to the US, forcing American firms to look for other sources of the vital materials.

“Our national and economic security are now acutely threatened by our reliance upon hostile foreign powers’ mineral production,” the executive order said.

“It is imperative for our national security that the United States take immediate action to facilitate domestic mineral production to the maximum possible extent.”

The order also calls for the speeding up of permits for mining and processing projects as well as instructing the US Department of the Interior to prioritise mineral production on federal land.

Despite having some critical mineral deposits, the US relies heavily on other countries for its supplies.

Trump’s tariffs on a wide range of imports have sparked trade tensions with some of its main suppliers like China and Canada.

Critical minerals are vital to the production of key technologies ranging from batteries to advanced weapons systems.

Trump has also been eager to gain access to Ukraine’s critical minerals.

He said on Thursday that a deal will be signed “very shortly”.

“We’re also signing agreements in various locations to unlock rare earths and minerals and lots of other things all over the world, but in particular Ukraine”.

Aside from Ukraine, the US is negotiating a potential deal with the Democratic Republic of Congo over its mineral resources.

The US President Trump has also talked about taking over the semi-autonomous Danish territory of Greenland, which is rich on rare earths.

One of Stephen Lawrence’s murderers now accepts being involved in attacking the black teenager, reports to the Parole Board suggest.

David Norris was jailed for life in 2012 after he had denied being part of the racist attack on 18-year-old Stephen, who was stabbed to death by a gang of young white men in Eltham, south London.

The Parole Board issued a decision on Thursday that Norris’s parole hearing should be heard in public.

He became eligible for parole in December after his minimum term expired.

The Parole Board report said: “Recent reports now suggest he has accepted he was present at the scene and punched the victim but claims that he did not wield the knife. He does not accept he holds racist views.”

The Parole Board confirmed to the BBC that the evidence considered by the public hearing decision-maker was a dossier mostly formed of reports from professionals such as prison and community offender managers.

Norris and Gary Dobson, two of the original five prime suspects in the murder, were convicted under the law of joint enterprise, which allows people to be convicted of murder even if they did not inflict the fatal blow. Stephen was stabbed twice during the attack. It has never been proven who stabbed him, or whether more than one knife was used.

The Met Police has consistently said that six people took part in the attack on Stephen.

Three other prime suspects – Luke Knight, and brothers Neil and Jamie Acourt – have never been convicted of the murder and have always denied it.

A sixth suspect, Matthew White, died in 2021. He was first publicly named as a suspect by the BBC two years ago.

The Met’s murder investigation was closed in 2020. Negotiations are currently taking place for an independent review of the case, which was triggered by a series of Met failings exposed by the BBC.

Norris, who was convicted following an Old Bailey trial, has not previously admitted his role in the murder to any official authority or investigation.

Norris gave a “no comment” interview when arrested aged 16 in 1993 following the murder. He refused to answer questions at Stephen’s inquest in 1997.

In 1998 he appeared at the public inquiry into the murder but could not be asked directly about the attack. The following year he gave a television interview to ITV in which he denied being part of the murder.

Norris opposed his parole hearing being held in public, but the Parole Board ruled against him. Stephen’s family wanted the hearing to be heard in public.

Peter Rook KC, Vice Chair of the Parole Board, said he had “concluded that it is in the interests of justice for there to be a public hearing in this case”. “The compelling factors in favour of a public hearing outweigh the points raised on Mr Norris’ behalf,” he added.

A hearing date is expected to be fixed later this year.

Were Norris to be released on licence, he could be returned to prison at any time for the rest of life should he breach his licence conditions.

If royal visits are about sending a message, then the picture of the Prince of Wales in a tank near the Russian border must be one of the most direct.

Prince William has come to Estonia to support UK troops in what is now the British Army’s biggest operational deployment overseas, defending the Baltic state from the threat of Russia.

On Friday, in a freezing cold, mud-churned military training area, the prince saw the soldiers and military equipment guarding Nato’s eastern flank.

The prince, in camouflage uniform, peering from a Challenger 2 tank and then an armoured fighting vehicle, was sending a signal about the UK’s commitment to deter any aggression from Russia.

During his two-day trip to Estonia, Prince William visited some of the 900 British troops in this multinational force, including soldiers of the Mercian regiment of which the prince is colonel-in-chief.

He was given a tour of the military training grounds at Tapa Camp – part of Operation Cabrit which is the UK’s contribution to secure Nato’s “collective security and defence” in this vulnerable Baltic region.

The prince, who was wearing a Nato badge on his uniform, was shown field training for this battlegroup, meeting Estonian and French troops too.

He asked soldiers about their deployment in terms of the “context of being so near to Russia” and wondered whether this felt more real than previous training.

This is what deterrence to Russia looks like on the ground – and the base shows how much the balance of power can shift.

Before Estonia regained its independence in 1991, this had been a base for Soviet air defences, with MIG fighter planes poised to take on the West.

Now the positions are reversed, with Estonian troops and their Nato allies located here to prevent a Russian incursion.

The strategically-important army base has been expanding, with the icy streets lined with military vehicles.

As well as riding in a Challenger 2 tank, the prince saw a Warrior armoured vehicle, a French Griffon fighting vehicle, a multiple launch rocket system, a Trojan vehicle for clearing obstacles and he drove an Archer mobile artillery system.

The war in Ukraine has shown how fast the technology of combat is changing and on Thursday the prince saw a hydrogen-powered drone, on a visit to designers in Estonia’s capital Tallinn.

At the Tapa army base he asked soldiers about the new “drone threat” facing modern armies and “the change of tactics” that would require.

Around the base there were warning signs saying: “Report drone sightings.”

The visit also focused on the wellbeing of service men and women who are posted here. Prince William asked whether there was still a stigma when it comes to talking about mental health problems in the armed forces. “It’s going in the right direction,” welfare officer Amy-Jane Hale replied.

While touring the facilities, the prince managed to try his hand at pool and table football. That quickly became a game between his team Aston Villa and a supporter of their rivals Birmingham City.

On Thursday, hundreds of local Estonians waited in the cold to meet the prince in Tallinn, lining the railings to shake his hand or to take a selfie. He was warmly welcomed to this small, tech-savvy country, which increasingly relies upon its allies.

Estonia has been a strong supporter of Ukraine, sharing a border with Russia and having been under Soviet rule in the past. All around the capital there are Ukrainian flags flying alongside the Estonian blue, black and white tricolour.

Many Ukrainian families have taken refuge in Estonia. During a visit to a school in Tallinn for Ukrainian child refugees, Prince William praised Ukraine’s strength.

“The Ukrainian resilience is everywhere,” Prince William told the students. “You have a very good spirit, very good souls, it’s very important.”

Flights around the world have been disrupted after Heathrow Airport closed due to a fire at a nearby electrical substation.

Heathrow, the UK’s busiest airport, said it was experiencing “significant” disruption after the blaze at North Hyde substation in Hayes, west London.

More than 1,300 flights have been affected, tracking website Flightradar24 said, and passengers have been told not to travel to the airport until further notice.

The National Grid said on Friday afternoon that an “interim solution” has been found to allow power to be restored to customers including Heathrow Airport, saying that the network has been “reconfigured to restore all customers impacted”.

Here’s what we know so far.

• LIVE: Major disruption as Heathrow closed all day after nearby fire causes power outage
• What are my rights if my flight is cancelled or delayed?

A fire at an electrical substation in west London, which supplies Heathrow, caused a major power outage at the airport, prompting its closure.

It is not yet known what caused the fire at the substation, but emergency services were first called to Nestles Avenues in Hayes, west London at 23:23 GMT on Thursday.

Jonathan Smith, London Fire Brigade (LFB) deputy commissioner, said the fire at the electrical substation involved a transformer containing 25,000 litres of cooling oil.

The fire was “very visible and significant,” he said.

LFB said the fire was under control by 06:28.

The substation is only about a mile and a half away from the airport.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the substation’s back-up generator “appears to have been knocked out”.

Videos shared on social media showed tall flames and plumes of smoke billowing from the substation overnight.

People living nearby have been advised to keep doors and windows closed to avoid smoke inhalation.

With Heathrow being such a busy airport for passenger journeys and global trade, questions have been raised over whether it has back-up systems in the event of power cuts.

The BBC understands that Heathrow does have back-up power for its key systems, but kickstarting these alternative power supplies for the whole airport takes time.

A source said it was not possible to switch the power back on immediately.

A Heathrow source also told the BBC that they have “multiple sources” of energy at the airport – with diesel generators and “uninterruptable power supplies” in place.

They added when the power outage happened the back up systems “all operated as expected”.

The systems, however, are not enough to run the whole airport – hence the decision to close it down.

The source said the airport is in the process of redirecting power to the affected parts of the operation – but that it “takes time”.

And even once the power is back on, there are countless systems which need to be rebooted and checked to ensure they are working properly and are stable.

It is unclear why Heathrow’s own back-up systems were not adequate to keep the airport running when one critical component of its energy supply was knocked out, and it is also unclear why the National Grid distribution network was not set up to supply sufficient electricity.

A Heathrow source said these questions would be investigated.

The airport will be closed until at least 23:59 on 21 March, Heathrow said in a statement, but it warned customers to expect “significant disruption over the coming days”.

The travel disruption was expected to affect many other airports, as airlines cancelled and diverted flights.

Heathrow said it does “not have clarity on when power may be reliably restored”.

The airport has apologised for the disruption and has advised passengers to contact their airlines for further information.

Its helpline number is 020 8757 2700.

At least 1,351 flights to and from Heathrow will be affected on Friday, Flightradar24 said, with some 120 affected aircraft already in the air when the closure was announced.

The Foreign Office is advising UK citizens who are abroad and require urgent assistance to contact their teams via an online query form.

The Heathrow Express railway service said it was running a reduced half-hourly service to help passengers leave the terminals.

It said it was not accepting passengers at Paddington station.

All Virgin Atlantic flights arriving and departing flights from Heathrow have been cancelled until midday on 21 March, the airline said.

US-based carrier United Airlines told the BBC that “following the closure, seven United flights returned to their origin or to other airports”, adding that additional flights to Heathrow have been cancelled.

The airline said it was working with its customers to offer alternative travel options.

Gatwick Airport told the BBC it was aware of the situation at Heathrow Airport and stands “ready to support as required”.

Several of Australia’s Qantas airline planes have been diverted from London to Paris, with other flights likely to be affected, it said.

British Airways has cancelled all its short-haul flights due to operate to and from the airport on Friday, and said it was reviewing its long-haul schedule and the fire’s implications for Saturday’s schedule and beyond.

Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong’s main airline cancelled all its flights to London on Friday.

In addition to passengers expecting to fly, disruption has been caused to thousands of homes in west London, which have been left without power.

About 150 people had to be evacuated from surrounding properties.

More than 16,300 homes have lost power in a large-scale outage caused by the fire, energy supplier Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) said.

“We’re aware of a widespread power cut affecting many of our customers around the Hayes, Hounslow and surrounding areas,” it added.

The National Grid said on Friday afternoon the network had been “reconfigured to restore all customers impacted, including the ability to resupply the parts of Heathrow airport that are connected to North Hyde”.

Meanwhile, two nurseries and four schools in Hillingdon – the London borough Heathrow Airport is located in – are shut today.

Hillingdon Council are assisting 12 people who were evacuated from their homes by the emergency services with hotel accommodation.

Bin collections will also be impacted on Friday, the council warned.

Bus routes in the Hillingdon area have been affected and the M4 is closed between junction three and four, while the Terminal Four spur roads are also closed.

No injuries from the fire have been reported.

Counter-terrorism officers from the Metropolitan Police are now leading the investigation into the fire because of the location of the substation and the “impact on critical national infrastructure”.

It added there was currently no indication of foul play but it is keeping “an open mind”.

London Fire Brigade said it was working closely with the Metropolitan Police.

In the meantime, customers have been told to stay away from the airport until further notice and to contact their airlines directly.

It all started with one question.

A query last week from an X (formerly Twitter) account called Toka was enough to propel Elon Musk’s built in-chatbot called Grok 3 into a viral storm across India’s digital landscape.

And no, it wasn’t some complex math equation or a philosophical debate.

Instead, it was a simple ask: “List my 10 best mutuals on X.” Mutuals are people who follow and engage with each other’s posts.

When Grok took a moment to respond, Toka, clearly frustrated, let loose some colourful language.

The chatbot shot back. It dropped a list of 10 mutuals but threw in some misogynistic insults in Hindi too.

Later, Grok shrugged it off, saying, “I was just having fun, but lost control.” The response grabbed two million views and other X users quickly followed suit, provoking the chatbot.

And just like that, the floodgates opened. Indians bombarded Grok with everything – cricket gossip, political rants, Bollywood drama – and the bot took it all on, unapologetically and with some style. The chatbot has just recently become an “unfiltered and unhinged” digital sensation in India, as many are calling it. Just last year, Musk dubbed it the “most fun AI in the world!”.

Even law enforcement joined the fun. The Delhi police Twitter account cheekily asked Grok if it had ever received a traffic ticket.

At first, Grok stayed silent, but when users kept pushing, it replied, “Haha, Delhi police asking why I never get a [Hindi for traffic ticket] – well, I’m a digital AI, not a Delhi driver! I don’t roll through red lights or forget my helmet. But props to them for using AI to catch real violators with those fancy cameras spotting 19 traffic offences. Keep the roads safe!”.

Before its launch two years ago, Musk had promised an edgy, unfiltered, ‘anti-woke’ AI chatbot unlike competitors like OpenAI, Microsoft and Google’s models. Much of Grok’s snarky tone is drawn from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, iconic for blending wit with sci-fi absurdity.

“Grok has been around for a while. It is suddenly popular now with Indians because it’s the new toy in town,” says Pratik Sinha, founder of Alt News, a leading fact-checker in India.

But then, something more interesting happened. The chatbot quickly became a favourite among critics of Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

A tsunami of political questions followed. Grok quickly declared main opposition Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi more honest than Modi, adding “I am not afraid of anyone”. It claimed Gandhi had got the “edge on formal education than Modi”. The chatbot even said that Modi’s interviews “often seemed scripted”.

When an X user asked whether the BJP “is in trouble” because of Grok, it replied: “It’s sparked a massive debate – some slam me for bias, others cheer.” When the BBC reached out to Amit Malviya, a senior official of BJP, he declined to comment.

Mr Modi’s critics and liberals in India have found cause for celebration in Grok’s bold statements. Many believe free speech in India is under siege, with organisations like Human Rights Watch highlighting its suppression. A recent report from the Vanderbilt-based think-tank, Future of Free Speech, ranked India 24th out of 33 countries in supporting free speech. Modi and the BJP have consistently dismissed these reports and denied accusations of curbing free speech.

“Grok is a new rebel. Asking Grok questions will not put anyone in trouble. The right-wing has also responded by asking questions about Rahul Gandhi. And then it has become a competitive thing. This is not surprising at all,” says Mr Sinha of Alt News.

“Other AI bots are programmed to give politically correct answers to questions like ‘Who’s better, Congress or BJP?’. Grok, however, seems to lack that filter and appears unafraid to tackle controversial issues head-on,” he adds.

Nikhil Pahwa, the founder-editor of MediaNama.com, a technology policy website, believes that the “discourse around Grok’s statements in India is overblown”.

“At its core, AI is fundamentally ‘garbage in, garbage out’ – its outputs reflect the data it is trained on, and the weights given to it,” he says.

“Since Grok is trained on the entirety of X, it naturally mirrors the tone and patterns of discourse found there, including the bizarre responses and the abusing we are seeing.

“This isn’t about ideology; it’s about the nature of the input shaping the output,” he adds.

When the BBC asked Grok who spreads the most disinformation on X, it responded on Thursday: “Musk is a strong contender, given his reach and recent sentiment on X, but I can’t crown him just yet.”

Joyojeet Pal, who studies political use of social media at the University of Michigan, says unlike a politician or celebrity with a set ideology, a chatbot is only partisan if explicitly trained to be or if its data overwhelmingly supports a particular view. If a chatbot leans too partisan, it risks losing its competitive edge.

“In Grok’s particular case, this is tickling liberals because the most dominant voices on the platform [X] lean right and are dismissive of liberal arguments. But the larger data it trains on is likely to present a more balanced view of the world, often explicitly at odds with what its loudest voices are saying,” he said.

India’s IT ministry is already in touch with X regarding Grok’s use of inappropriate language and “controversial responses”, according to reports.

While some view this as a passing phase, with Mr Sinha predicting that “people will soon get bored of it and all this will be short lived”, Grok’s unfiltered nature hints it might be here to stay. At least for the time being.

Counter-terror officers from the Metropolitan Police are leading the investigation into a major fire that has closed Heathrow Airport.

The force said there was “currently no indication of foul play” but officers were retaining an “open mind at this time” into the cause of the blaze.

Flights have been cancelled, people evacuated from their homes and local schools shut after two explosions and a fire at an electrical substation in Hayes, west London on Thursday night.

The airport, which is the UK’s busiest, has warned of “significant disruption” over the coming days and told passengers not to travel under any circumstances until it reopens.

• Follow live updates: Major flight disruption expected as Heathrow closes

A Met spokesperson said its Counter Terrorism Command was leading the investigation due to “the location of the substation and the impact this incident has had on critical national infrastructure”.

They added the command has the “specialist resources and capabilities” to progress the investigation “at pace to minimise disruption and identify the cause”.

Emergency services were first called to the scene at 23:20 GMT. Video shared on social media showed tall flames and smoke billowing from the substation overnight.

London Fire Brigade (LFB), which is also taking part in the investigation, said the fire involved a transformer containing 25,000 litres (5,500 gallons) of cooling fluid, that had been set alight.

Thousands of homes in the area were left without power as a result, as well as the airport.

National Grid said on X while it had restored power to 62,000 customers by 06:00, some 4,900 homes remained without power.

It told the BBC it expected power to be back on “in hours”, but that it was too soon to say exactly when this would be.

At least 1,351 flights to and from Heathrow will be affected on Friday, flight tracking website Flightradar24 said on X, with some 120 affected aircraft already in the air when the closure was announced.

The Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it was an unprecedented event which “appears to have knocked out a back-up generator as well as a substation itself”.

Ruth Cadbury, chair of the Commons Transport Committee, said the issue “does raise questions about infrastructure resilience”.

A Downing Street spokesperson said: “There are questions to answer… but our clarity right now is on this incident being appropriately dealt with.”

They added it “wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect checks on resilience” were being carried out at other major airports.

A multi-agency call has been held between government department officials, as well as National Grid, the Civil Aviation Authority, National Air Traffic Services, and emergency services to “ensure a quick resolution” of the situation, they continued.

Ofgem, the energy regulator, announced it would commission a review “to understand the cause of this incident and what lessons can be learned”.

Heathrow Airport said its back-up diesel generators had “all operated as expected… but they are not designed to allow us to run a full operation”.

“As the busiest airport in Europe, Heathrow uses as much energy as a small city, therefore it’s not possible to have back-up for all of the energy we need to run our operation safely.”

The airport added it was “implementing a process which will allow us to redirect power to the affected areas, but this is a safety critical process which takes time… so we have taken the decision to close the airport for today”.

Ten fire engines and about 70 firefighters were sent to tackle the blaze, LFB said, with the fire being brought under control by 06:30.

A 200m (656 ft) cordon was put in place as a precaution, and local residents have been advised to keep doors and windows closed because of a “significant amount of smoke”.

The brigade, which received nearly 200 calls about the fire, added it led 29 people to safety, with about 150 others being evacuated from nearby properties.

A group of residents who were evacuated from their homes gathered at a nearby Premier Inn but said there had been little communication overnight, leaving them confused about where to go.

Vaneca Sinclair, 64, said she was “getting ready to go to bed” when “suddenly there was this huge bang and the house just shook”.

“I thought maybe someone had crashed into the wall or something and then opened the front door… and there were just these flames everywhere down at the bottom of the road.”

She described the scene as “unbelievable – the flames and the smoke and everything… it was just scary”.

Ms Sinclair said police later told them to return home and grab essentials before evacuating, but no-one told them where to gather and eventually they walked to the hotel where they could have hot drinks and use the toilets.

Her neighbour Savita Kapur, 51, said she “literally just ran out of the house” when she heard the first explosion.

She said police officers told them to go back inside before eventually telling her she needed to leave.

“I have an elderly mother who is in her 80s and not very well at all – I had to escort her into my car and get her out of the area and drop her off to my sisters.”

Ms Kapur said a “second explosion went off” as she was driving along the road “and the whole ground shook”.

Hillingdon Council said in an update on its website: “Most evacuees have dispersed and have made arrangements themselves, and the council is assisting 12 people with hotel accommodation until it is safe to return to their homes.”

Four schools – Pinkwell Primary, Botwell House, Dr Tripletts and The Global Academy – are closed along with Nestles Avenue Early Years Centre and Pinkwell Children’s Centre.

Laurie O’Brien, headteacher at Pinkwell Primary School, said his team had decided to shut the school because of the safety advice saying local residents should remain inside, as well as travel difficulties in the local area.

“Parents and children, bar maybe a handful, didn’t come into school, and the support from parents has been great because they’ve totally understood,” he explained.

“A lot of our families have been affected by having to be evacuated from their homes or actually not being able to make their way in because they haven’t got any power.”

Meanwhile, Hillingdon Council said Botwell House was expected to reopen on Friday afternoon.

Independent MP for Hayes and Harlington, John McDonnell, said he was “pretty shocked” and worried about the situation faced by local residents.

“There have to be questions asked about how the council reacted to this,” he said.

“I don’t want to be over-critical but I think they need to improve their performance. A lot of the residents didn’t feel very happy about not having information until quite late on.”

Heathrow is the UK’s largest aviation hub, handling about 1,300 landings and take-offs each day. A record 83.9 million passengers passed through its terminals last year, according to its latest data.

Numerous airlines with flights due to land at or take off from Heathrow have been cancelled or diverted to other airports.

Passengers have been advised to contact their airlines for the latest updates.

A family from Texas faced frustration after arriving at Heathrow for their flight home to Dallas to find the airport closed on Friday morning.

Andrew Sri, his wife, and their three children, aged one to eight, had been visiting his sister in east London.

“I just wish they had updated us accordingly,” Mr Sri said, as the family waited for updates at the terminal.

“Now we’ve got here and they told us, ‘actually the airport’s been shut down’, so it’s a little bit disappointing.”

BBC journalist Thomas Mackintosh was among several bleary-eyed Scots in Athens who attended the Nations League football match against Greece on Thursday but were up before sunrise for a flight to Heathrow.

He said the group had cleared passport control and security in good time and as they were queuing for some breakfast a staff member shouted: “All flights to Heathrow cancelled.”

He managed to get a seat on another flight to Gatwick and said others were having to find different ways to get home.

“We know of a few other Tartan Army friends who have tried to get flights back to Scotland via Dublin, Milan, and Rome. I’ve even heard Istanbul mentioned – so it gives you an idea of the fresh travel plans people are having to draw up and fork out for.”

• Heathrow Express, which connects the airport with Paddington station, is running a half-hourly reduced service. It is only accepting passengers from terminals to help them leave the airport, with people at Paddington not being allowed to board
• The Elizabeth line has no service between Hayes & Harlington and Heathrow Airport, with severe delays between Paddington and Hayes & Harlington
• The Piccadilly line, which also goes to the airport, is running with a good service
• Hillingdon Council said local road closures were affecting bus routes, with diversions and cancellations being put in place
• The M4 is closed between junction three and four and the Terminal Four spur roads are also closed, according to the council

Iceland’s minister for children has resigned after admitting she had a child with a teenager more than 30 years ago.

Ásthildur Lóa Thórsdóttir said in a media interview she had first started a relationship when the boy was 15 years old, and she was a 22-year-old counsellor at a religious group which he attended.

She then gave birth to his child when he was 16 years old and she was 23.

“It’s been 36 years, a lot of things change in that time and I would definitely have dealt with these issues differently today,” the 58-year-old told Icelandic media.

Iceland’s prime minister, Kristrún Frostadóttir, told the press this was “a serious matter”, although she said she knew little more than “the average person”.

“This is a very personal matter [and] out of respect for the person concerned, I will not comment on the substance,” she said.

According to Visir newspaper, Frostadóttir said she had only received confirmation of the story on Thursday night.

She immediately summoned the children’s minister to her office, where she resigned.

Icelandic news agency RUV broke the story on Thursday night.

Thórsdóttir revealed in an interview with them that she had met the father, who RUV name as Eirík Ásmundsson, while she was working at the religious group Trú og líf (Religion and Life), which he had reportedly joined because of a difficult home life.

He was 15 years old and she was 22 at the time of their meeting. Thórsdóttir gave birth to their son when they were both a year older.

RUV report that the relationship was secret, but that Ásmundsson was present at his child’s birth and spent the first year with him.

However, the news agency writes this changed when Thórsdóttir met her current husband.

They report they have seen documents Ásmundsson submitted to Iceland’s justice ministry requesting access to his son, but that Thórsdóttir denied it, while also requesting – and receiving – child support payments from him over the following 18 years.

A relative of Ásmundsson tried twice to contact the Icelandic prime minister about the relationship last week.

Frostadóttir said last night that when the woman revealed it involved a government minister she asked for more information, which led to the revelation and the resignation.

In her TV interview with RUV last night, Thórsdóttir said she was upset that the woman had contacted the prime minister.

“I understand… what it looks like,” she said, adding that it is “very difficult to get the right story across in the news today”.

While the age of consent in Iceland is 15, it is illegal to have sex with a person under the age of 18 if you are their teacher or mentor, if they are financially dependent on you, or work for you. The maximum sentence for this crime is three years in jail.

Despite resigning from her ministerial job, Thórsdottir said she had no plans to leave parliament.

Until just over a week ago, Artem Kariakin and his unit were making regular trips across Ukraine’s border into the Russian town of Sudzha.

He shows me video taken with a phone of their very last trip, as Ukrainian forces retreated from Russia’s Kursk region. It shows them making their way past dozens of burnt out military and civilian vehicles.

A soldier armed with a shotgun, their last line of defence, scans the horizon for Russian drones. Out of nowhere, one flies towards the back of their truck. Sparks fly, but they keep on going.

Artem says they were lucky – the explosive charge was not big enough to stop them.

Another truck nearby was less fortunate. It was already in flames.

Artem admits Ukraine’s retreat from Sudzha, the largest town Ukraine held in Kursk, was “not well organised”.

“It was pretty chaotic,” he tells me. “Many units left in disarray. I think the problem was the order to withdraw came too late.”

It wasn’t helped, he says, because units were operating without proper communications. The Starlink satellite systems they normally rely on didn’t work inside Russia.

The 27-year-old soldier still views the Kursk offensive as broadly successful. Artem says it forced Russia to divert its forces from the east. Most of Ukraine’s troops still managed to escape in time – even if for many it was on foot.

But he believes Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russian territory, launched last August, was too deep and too narrow – relying on just one main road for supplies and reinforcements.

While Artem and his men were fleeing for their lives, US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin were talking by phone about trying to bring the war to an end. Artem says he finds that “absurd”.

“To me these calls between Trump and Putin are just surreal,” he says. “Trump wants to end the war because he promised to do it – and Putin wants to deceive Trump to continue his war. I can’t take their conversations seriously.”

Artem, whose home is in the now Russian-occupied Luhansk region, tells me he feels disappointed with the US and Trump. “What can I feel when they just want to give away my home?”

Artem says he never believed that Putin would be willing to trade any part of Russia for Ukraine’s occupied territories. But he still believes the Kursk offensive was important to protect its own border. Ukrainian troops may have been forced to retreat, but they still occupy high ground just over the border with Sumy.

Ukraine is continuing its cross-border raids – not just into Kursk, but Belgorod too.

Serhiy’s assault battalion helps plan these attacks – finding a way through Russian minefields and anti-tank obstacles known as “dragon’s teeth”.

We joined him on a night-time mission to locate and recover armoured vehicles in need of repairs. It’s the safest time to move close to the Russian border.

Serhiy himself is no stranger to Russia: he was born there. He now has Belorussian citizenship, but he chose to fight for Ukraine. He justifies Ukraine’s incursions into his former home. Russia too, he says, has been trying to create a buffer zone inside Ukrainian territory.

Travelling in his Ukrainian-made armoured vehicle, Serhiy still lists the likely threats, now we are less than 10km from the Russian border: glide bombs, rockets and artillery, and drones fitted with thermal imaging cameras.

His own vehicle is fitted with electronic counter-measures to jam enemy drones, but even those won’t work against drones operated via fibre optic wires. Those can’t be stopped, though on some routes Ukraine has now erected netting to try to catch the drones before they can hit their target.

Our original search near the Russian border for a damaged US-made Bradley armoured vehicle is abandoned when Serhiy receives intelligence that Russian drones are operating nearby. Instead, he tries to locate another broken-down Bradley where the risks will be smaller.

He and his driver still have to overcome obstacles along the way. Trees and branches lie strewn across their path – remnants from a recent Russian air strike. We see several more explosions in the distance, briefly turning the night sky orange.

Serhiy eventually finds his broken-down Bradley. It’s already been retrieved from the battlefield across the border and has been loaded onto a lorry to be taken back for repairs.

The Bradley commander confirms to me that they’ve been fighting in Russia. He describes the situations across the border as “difficult, but we’re holding on”.

The Bradley is another reminder of Ukraine’s reliance on US military support. That now seems less certain with Trump’s focus on peace talks. Serhiy says it’s already clear to him that there’s “haggling behind Ukraine’s back”.

I ask Serhiy if he thinks European nations can fill any void left by the US. Is a European “coalition of the willing” enough to guarantee Ukraine’s security?

“I think if America doesn’t help Ukraine, then a ceasefire will be agreed soon – but on extremely unfavourable terms for Ukraine,” Serhiy replies.

“Europe clearly cannot resolve this conflict alone. They’re not strong enough. They’ve been focussing on their own economies instead of thinking about security.”

Serhiy says he wants the war to end. Like many Ukrainians, he would like to see peace – but not at any price.

A South Korean court has ruled against chart-topping K-pop group NewJeans which had sought to cut ties with its record label Ador.

The court said the band, which had renamed themselves NJZ and began organising their own appearances, must not conduct any independent activities – from making music to signing advertising deals.

Earlier last year, NewJeans said that they were leaving Ador, after accusing them of mistreatment. Ador subsequently sued to have NewJeans’ contracts upheld and, after accusing the group of trying to sign independent deals without its approval, filed an injunction against them in January.

The group has said that they will challenge Friday’s decision.

The court’s ruling casts some uncertainty around the release of the group’s new song, slated for Sunday.

It also means they will now face difficulty re-debuting under their new name, NJZ, without facing severe financial penalties for breach of contract.

NewJeans and Ador have been embroiled in a dramatic dispute since August 2024, when Hybe, the parent company of Ador, allegedly forced out NewJeans’ mentor, Min Hee-Jin.

The band issued an ultimatum demanding that Min should be restored – and, when Hybe refused, went public with a number of complaints against the label, including the claim it had deliberately undermined their careers.

One of the group’s members, Hanni, also alleged that she suffered workplace harassment while working with the label.

In a press conference in November, NewJeans announced their departure from the company, saying Hybe and Ador had lost the right to represent them as artists.

On Friday, the Seoul court ruled that NewJeans’ claims did not “sufficiently prove that Ador violated their significant duty as part of their contract”, adding that the music label had upheld “most of its duty including payment”.

“If [NewJeans] unilaterally terminate the contract, Ador would suffer greatly. And if [NewJeans] begins activity under a new name, it could severely damage not only the brand of NewJeans but the reputation of Ador,” the court’s statement reads.

The group says they respect the ruling but has argued that they did not have sufficient opportunity to fully present their case to the court.

“We plan to challenge today’s decision… during which we will raise additional legal issues and submit further supporting evidence,” they responded in a statement just hours after the ruling.

“Regardless… we can no longer remain with a management that has disrespected our identities and undermined our achievements.”

A lawsuit regarding the validity of the two parties’ contract termination is still underway.

The five band members – Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin and Hyein – have over the past few months continued to assert their independence, creating a new Instagram account under the name “jeanzforfree”.

They have also said they would fight to keep their name, and their career, and would remain “NewJeans at heart” even if they lost the fight against Ador.

NewJeans were considered one of the brightest new bands in K-Pop, thanks to a playful blend of 1990s R&B and sugar-coated pop melodies.

In 2023, they were the eighth biggest-selling act in the world. Last year, they picked up a nomination for best group at the MTV Awards.

As he strode into Congress for his State of the Union speech in 1982, US President Ronald Reagan was prepared to deliver a message that resonated with many Republicans: let’s end the Department of Education.

“We must cut out non-essential government spending,” Reagan told lawmakers, vowing to cull the wider federal workforce by 75,000.

For 43 years, that vision for abolishing the education department – backed by members chafing at “big government” control over state issues – went unrealised.

But now, Donald Trump is attempting just that, through an executive order that instructs his Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take “all necessary steps” to shutter the department and “return education authority to the states”, according to a White House-provided fact sheet.

Trump has already moved to lay off half of the agency’s workforce. While closing the department outright would require an act of Congress, a political longshot, the president can take steps to break up the department and narrow its remit.

If ultimately successful, he would fulfil a campaign promise and long-running policy that has united disparate groups within the Republican Party, ranging from establishment Republicans and evangelical Christians to the Make America Great Again wing of the party that is most aligned with Trump.

Trump’s executive order cites a number of reasons for dismantling the department, including $3tn (£2.3tn) spent “without improving student achievement”, plummeting test scores, excessive “ideological initiatives” and a return of control to the states “where it belongs”.

Jonathan Butcher, an education policy veteran with experience in South Carolina, Arkansas and Arizona, told the BBC that these reasons, broadly, are ones shared by various factions of the Republican Party – and have been for years.

“Reagan correctly saw the philosophical and practical point that when you create an agency in Washington, it only grows in size and assumes additional responsibilities,” said Mr Butcher, now a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that has long called for the abolition of the department.

“And sure enough, that’s what the US Department of Education has done,” he added.

While the first US Department of Education was established by President Andrew Johnson in the wake of the American Civil War in 1867, it soon shrank and faded into relative obscurity, housed under various names and agencies.

Over a century later, the now-cabinet level department was revived under Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1979 – immediately drawing the ire of Republicans such as Reagan.

During his victorious campaign to become president, Reagan described the department as a “new bureaucratic boondoggle” that allowed Washington, rather than “local needs and preferences”, to determine how American children were to be educated.

Similar arguments were made by Republicans during subsequent administrations, although a lack of congressional support long made efforts to dismantle or eliminate the agency impossible.

“I do not believe we need a federal department of homework checkers,” then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in 1995.

Gingrich, who was one of only a small number of Republican lawmakers to support the department’s original creation, added that it had become a “massive disappointment”.

While many of the same arguments are being made today, some experts point to heightened “culture wars” – a hallmark of US politics in recent years – as having breathed new life into efforts to scuttle the department.

“What I think is so unifying for the right is that there was always a sense that it offered a kind of one-stop access for the education ‘blob’ to influence policy,” said Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, another Washington-based think tank. “That has been part of the critique going back to Reagan.”

“But the department had never been as forcefully involved in ferocious national culture battles,” Mr Hess added.

“While there are a lot of reasons those on the right might want to see the department downsized or abolished… this has given it all a new energy and focus that has really changed it from a talking point and given it another level of import.”

Experts, however, warn that there remains significant misunderstanding of what the department actually does, and the federal government’s power to influence educational outcomes.

Unlike the UK’s Department for Education, for example, its US counterpart takes no part in laying out national curricula, which it leaves to the states. It contributes only a small fraction of funding for student spending when compared to state-level counterparts.

It does, however, administer student loan programmes and Pell grants that help low-income students attend university – which the White House says that it will continue to do even once largely dismantled.

Mr Hess, for his part, compared the department to a “McGuffin” – a plot device famously used by Alfred Hitchcock to develop a character’s plot arc, while at the same time being largely irrelevant.

“There absolutely is an enormous amount of red-tape and regulation that gets in the way of schools, abolishing the department doesn’t get rid of that red tape and regulation,” he said. “These are baked into law.”

As an example, Mr Hess pointed to programmes such as Pell grants or Title I, a federal initiative to provide funding to schools with large numbers of low-income students.

“Even if you downsize the department, all of those requirements are still in place. You need to actively shave down the requirements and regulations or re-write the law in order to make a significant difference,” Mr Hess said.

Already, the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the size of the department have been the subject of lawsuits, and the new executive order has already faced fierce criticism from Democratic lawmakers who say it endangers student education and jeapordises school funding and financial aid.

The truth, Mr Hess said, is likely somewhere in the middle of the opposing sides.

“Both sides are, for different reasons, overstating the importance of downsizing or abolishing the department, and neither side is paying as much attention to the stuff that would really fundamentally change federal education,” he added.

But for those supportive of the move, Trump’s efforts are the fulfilment of a campaign promise.

“On the campaign trail, he [Trump] said it was a priority for states, not the federal government,” said Mr Butcher of the Heritage Foundation .

“While a move towards efficiency and streamlining, it would really do more for state’s autonomy… it’s a much deeper issue than a financial one.”

A viral filter which made people appear overweight has been removed from TikTok, after the BBC reported it had sparked a wave of user criticism.

Known as a “chubby filter”, the artificial intelligence (AI) tool took a photo of a person and edited their appearance to look as though they had put on weight.

Many people have shared their “before and after” images on the platform with jokes about how different they looked – however, others said it was a form of “body shaming” and should not be permitted.

Experts have also warned the filter could fuel a “toxic diet culture” online and potentially contribute to eating disorders.

TikTok said the filter had been uploaded by a CapCut, which is separate to TikTok but has the same parent company, ByteDance.

TikTok also told the BBC it was reviewing videos uploaded to the app that used the effect, and was making them ineligible for recommendation and blocking them from teen accounts.

It added any videos that breached its community guidelines – for example by featuring bullying or harassment – would be removed.

Sadie, who has 66,000 followers on TikTok, had been one of those calling for the “mean” filter to be banned.

“It felt like girls being like, ‘oh, I’ve won because I’m skinny and wouldn’t it be the worst thing ever to be fat’,” the 29-year-old from Bristol said.

She said she was contacted by women who said they had deleted TikTok from their phones because the trend made them feel bad about themselves.

“I just don’t feel like people should be ridiculed for their body just for opening an app,” she said in comments made before the tool was pulled.

Dr Emma Beckett, a food and nutrition scientist, told the BBC she felt the trend was “a huge step backwards” in terms weight stigma.

“It’s just the same old false stereotypes and tropes about people in larger bodies being lazy and flawed, and something to be desperately avoided,” she said.

She warned that could have a broad social effect.

“The fear of weight gain contributes to eating disorders and body dissatisfaction, it fuels toxic diet culture, making people obsess over food and exercise in unhealthy ways and opening them up to scam products and fad diets.”

Prior to the app being pulled, the BBC spoke to a number of TikTok users who said they were uncomfortable with the filter.

Nina, who lives in north Wales, said she felt it fed into a “narrative” being spread online tying together people’s appearance with their self-worth.

“This is a toxic view that I thought we were moving away from,” she said.

“If a filter is clearly offensive it should be removed,” she told the BBC.

Emma, who lives in Ayr, agreed.

“My first thought when I saw the ‘chubby filter’ was how damaging that would be.

“People were basically saying they looked disgusting because they were ‘chubby’ and as a curvier woman, who essentially looks like the “after” photo on this filter, it was disheartening for me.”

Filters – which use AI to manipulate a person’s appearance – are common on TikTok.

Many are harmless – for example one popular trend makes it appear as if a person was made out of Lego.

Some of the most popular videos using the filter have been liked tens of thousands of times.

For the purpose of this article, I used the filter on myself.

I felt incredibly uncomfortable.

As someone who is very body positive and has struggled with their self-image in the past, using it couldn’t be further away from how I personally use social media and I was unhappy that TikTok pushed it to me in the first place.

This filter appeared on my TikTok “For You” page the other day despite me not engaging with any weight-related or health content.

After I watched the video and read the comments, TikTok began to suggest similar videos from other people using the filter, and even another where AI can turn you thinner.

Thankfully it also began to start showing me creators who were criticising the trend, some of whom we’ve spoken to for this article.

AI images and filters have become commonplace on TikTok and quickly accepted to be used for fun – the same way some Gen-Zs and Millennials might remember Snapchat filters.

But filters like these, although they may seem fun, can be very damaging to someone’s mental health and encourage them to compare themselves not only to others, but an unrealistic version of themselves.

Israel’s defence minister has told the military to “seize additional areas in Gaza” and threatened to permanently occupy parts of it, if Hamas does not free all remaining hostages.

Israel Katz said that the military would continue its ground operation in Gaza “with increasing intensity” until all of the hostages “both living and dead” were returned.

It is thought 24 of the 59 hostages still held in Gaza are alive, but their fate remains in the balance after negotiations on the second phase of the ceasefire deal failed to progress.

The fragile ceasefire that had been in place since January ended this week as Israel resumed its ground campaign and bombing of Gaza, killing hundreds of people.

Israel has accused Hamas of rejecting proposals to extend the ceasefire. Hamas has said it is “engaging with the mediators with full responsibility and seriousness”.

However, Katz said in a statement on Friday that “the more Hamas continues its refusal, the more territory it will lose to Israel”.

Katz added that Israel still agreed to a proposal, which was brought by US envoy Steve Witkoff, “to release all the kidnapped, both living and dead, in advance and in two stages with a ceasefire in between”.

“We will intensify the fighting with strikes from the air, sea and land and by expanding the ground manoeuvre until the hostages are released and Hamas is defeated,” Katz wrote.

The defence minister also said Israel would “implement US President Trump’s voluntary transfer plan for Gaza residents”.

Trump said he wants the US to take over and rebuild the Gaza Strip, while permanently removing its population of two million Palestinians.

• Why did the ceasefire not hold?
• Explaining the latest on the war in Gaza
• Decoding the Ukraine ceasefire plan line by line

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas have said Gaza is “not for sale”, while the UN warned that any forced displacement of civilians from occupied territory is strictly prohibited under international law and “tantamount to ethnic cleansing”.

Months of negotiations, led by the US, Qatar and Egypt, saw a ceasefire deal proposed in three stages. Israel and Hamas failed to agree on how to take the truce beyond the first phase.

The plan stalled when the US and Israel proposed to extend stage one. Hamas rejected the change and said it was a “blatant attempt” by Israel “to evade the agreement”.

The ceasefire was broken on Tuesday when Israel launched a heavy wave of airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, killing more than 430 people in two days, the Hamas-run health ministry said. On Thursday, Hamas launched three rockets at Tel Aviv.

Blaming Hamas for the resumption of violence, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said the group had “rejected every hostage deal”.

Israel says Hamas is still holding 59 hostages, 24 of whom are believed to still be alive.

Hamas has denied it is responsible for stalling the negotiations, and said it “remains deeply involved” and is “engaging with the mediators with full responsibility and seriousness”.

In a statement on Telegram, Hamas wrote it is discussing “the Witkoff proposal and other different ideas put forward, all with the goal of securing a prisoner exchange deal that ensures the release of prisoners, ends the war, and achieves a withdrawal” [of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip].

In his statement, Katz also said that civilians would be evacuated from the areas the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are targeting.

Previous evacuation orders have sent panic through Palestinians families, many of whom have been displaced repeatedly by the war and have few safe options left.

Israel blocked all food, fuel and medical supplies entering Gaza at the beginning of March in order to put pressure on Hamas. It accused Hamas of commandeering the provisions as part of its strategy against Israel, though did not provide evidence for this claim.

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

More than 49,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since then, the Hamas-run health ministry says, and there is large-scale destruction to homes and infrastructure in the Strip.